Review

In Conversation: Lisa Iglesias and Jeremy Mikolajczak

Lisa Iglesias at her studio. Image: courtesy of gallery

University of Central Missouri Gallery of Art & Design
Warrensburg, Missouri
March 11 – April 10, 2010

Lisa Iglesias is a Norwegian-Dominican, second-generation New Yorker who was raised with three sisters in Queens. She received her B.A. from the State University of New York at Binghamton in 2001 and her Master’s of Fine Arts from the University of Florida in 2006. She has exhibited her individual work as well as work made with her sister, Janelle, as part of a collaborative they call Las Hermanas Iglesias. Recent exhibitions include the Queens Museum of Art and the Appleton Museum of Art as well as other national and international galleries and non-profits. Ain’t no grave gonna hold me down is Lisa Iglesias’s first exhibition at the University of Central Missouri’s Gallery of Art & Design. The title of the exhibition is based on a scene from the 1967 film Cool Hand Luke. A pivotal scene in the film about torture and humiliation, Luke (played by Paul Newman) has to dig a trench, fill it in, and dig it out ad nauseum. With references to the Myth of Sisyphus, the exhibition will hold relevance to the current political climate, climates in general, and an expressed struggle of “forever digging.”

Lisa Iglesias, before the opening of "Ain't no grave gonna hold me down." Photo: courtesy of the gallery

On a night during installation of her exhibition at the UCM Gallery of Art & Design, Director Jeremy Mikolajczak sat down with Lisa Iglesias to talk about the exhibition and her work.

JM: Can you talk a little bit more about the work in the exhibition, Ain’t no grave gonna hold me down?

LI: The title of this show is the namesake of the American Gospel song Ain’t no Grave by Claude Ely, incidentally the last song Johnny Cash allegedly recorded before his death. In the film Cool Hand Luke, Paul Newman’s character is punished for his attempted escape from the Florida chain gang he was serving time with. The prison guards order Luke to dig a trench and fill it in again and repeat the process all night until his inevitable collapse. Luke’s fellow inmates serenade him with the song Ain’t no Grave in support while he digs. The idea of a stubborn persistence in the face of overwhelming odds accompanied with a bit of humor was the force behind the works in this show. They’re continuations of my fascination with repetition, futility, and time.

JM: Your work has made major shifts in the past two years. It started as tight, animalistic illustrations drawn with fine graphite on paper and you are now working with text and changed materials to found objects, cardboard, and yarn. How did the new work manifest?

Lisa Iglesias, still from "Ain't no grave gonna hold me down," video of sequence of graphite-on-paper drawings. Image: photo T. Abeln

LI: Even when drawing, I’m using found imagery in the spirit of the found object and I continue to draw the graphite renderings you’re talking about. I’ve been wanting to explore drawing in more three- and four-dimensional ways for a long time, so recently I’ve been experimenting with working out similar concepts in video and sculpture that I talk about in my drawings — namely issues of repetition, memorialization, and the uncanny. I’ve also been thinking about how the rendering in my drawings is as close to the fragment of the found image I’m referencing at the time as I can manage — and in most cases of the more sculptural work, I’m still using a real-world referent. I’m still trying to approximate the guise of a nameplate or the embodiment of a factory-made celebration banner with my own hands.

JM: Your family history has always been a major influence in your work. Does that still exist in the new work?

LI: Definitely, though perhaps less directly than in the past. Stay Gold involves a collection of pretty melancholic expressions about time and fate in English, Spanish, and Norwegian, the languages I grew up listening to, spelled out in the form of celebration banners. While I feel connection to Spanish and Norwegian, my sisters and I weren’t raised bilingual, let alone trilingual, and I am far from fluent in either of these languages. The accumulation of these banners are displayed in such a way that renders their expressions un-readable — the expressions become the material — I wanted to talk about my relation to these languages, which is at once intimate and divorced.

Lisa Iglesias, "Always and Forever," scavenged cardboard, dimensions variable, 2010. Image: photo T. Abeln

My Norwegian grandmother was famous in her farming village of Foldall for being an expert rag-rug weaver and especially for her talent of mending torn clothing. In many ways, I feel like I’m channeling her attention and pleasure for repair and renewal whenever I embroider (as in Gutter Blanket) or take something apart just to put it together again like in the video work in the show.

JM: You did not choose to go immediately from graduate school into teaching and decided on residencies instead. How has this helped or hindered your work and your “career” as an artist?

LI: Right now, I feel a real momentum and desire to actualize certain ideas, to expand projects in my own work and in the collaborations I do with Janelle. When I’m an artist-in-residence, I have the time to make mistakes and think of new ideas, focus on certain research, create work — the things I want my career to be about. Residencies have enabled me to sustain a rigorous studio practice, so I think they’ve definitely helped me at this stage.

JM: How is it to work collaboratively with your sister, Janelle Iglesias?

Lisa Iglesias, "Forest for the Trees," graphite on paper, 23" x 21", 2009 (not part of "Ain't no grave gonna hold me down" exhibition). Image: courtesy of the artist

LI: Janelle and I are able to fight each other one minute and then get excited to work on a project the next, so our collaboration definitely thrives off our willingness to communicate to each other directly and honestly. Both of us enjoy bringing a sense of humor to the table – settling disputes with ping-pong tournaments or developing projects like Sibling Rivalry in which we compete against each other in pie-eating contests or arm wrestling so that the performance is about the act of collaboration itself. When we work together, there is definitely the sense of having a posse — that we have each other’s back in this adult world as we did in the schoolyard. Also, we’re able to do things together that would be much harder to do with just one set of hands, which opens up possibilities in a fun way.

JM: You’re a New Yorker by birth, but live in Ithaca, New York. Do you think it is necessary to live in New York City as a working artist?

LI: I love Queens. I love the boroughs. Certainly you have access to a concentrated community of artists, writers, curators and museums, galleries, and project spaces in New York City. But no, I don’t think it’s necessary to live there. You make it work wherever you are.

JM: What’s next for you?

LI: Make, make, make.

The Gallery of Art & Design is an entity of the University of Central Missouri. We support the academic mission of the department and college; by offering exhibitions of art and design, multidisciplinary learning experiences, and community focused outreach.

-re-

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