Ivana de Vivanco, Error Explanation, 2021
“Landing in places you didn’t even imagine you could land.”
Name
Ivana de Vivanco
Profession
Artist
Website
Where are you from?
I’m Chilean and Peruvian. I was born in Portugal, I grew up in Perú, Chile and Ecuador and I have been living in Germany for the past 9 years.
Your style in 3 words?
Colourful, dark, tragicomic.
Your weakness? Your strength?
I’m quite neurotic and insecure sometimes, but I would say that’s also a strength when working in the studio. The process full of doubts and obsessions is a real struggle, but that’s precisely what makes the works interesting in the end.
What makes you different?
I’m a good dancer as well and I can dance and paint huge formats simultaneously with a very good coordination.
When did you decide to become an artist?
Oh, I don’t even remember. I suppose when I was able to hold a pencil for the first time. Then I never put it down again.
What do you find most fascinating about your work?
Landing in places you didn’t even imagine you could land.
A few words about your favourite creation?
At the movement I’m enjoying very much the challenge of working on different forms of “extended painting”: I start from flat paintings and move in other directions. In the last exhibitions I have been trying to create immersive spaces where the gallery is transformed through colour and where painting coexists with other media in the space.
Someone else’s work that inspired or inspires you…
I just visited the retrospective of Georgia O’Keeffe in Paris last weekend and I felt I had to run back to the studio to paint. I love to visit exhibitions that generate that feeling and make me want to work. I really enjoyed looking at her paintings very closely, discovering their textures and also seeing how she moves in a very fluid way from figuration to abstraction and vice versa. I find that permeability between abstract and figurative compositions very inspiring.
Who would you like to work with someday and why?
Oh, there are so many inspiring people out there! I think that I’m moving every day towards a more and more interdisciplinary praxis and I’m discovering how wonderful it is to cooperate with artists from different disciplines. I’ll love to work on projects with people that make me see thigs from other perspectives and languages.
A new project coming up or an idea you want to work on?
I’m preparing a show in Miami for the begging of next year and the common thread of the works will be the paradoxical figure of the banana. More details will come in a couple of months.
Finish the sentence „More important than my career is…“
The people I love.
2021: Where are we going?
I’m not sure yet, but I hope towards a better year 2022!
When the going gets tough…
I look at the work of other artists.
Put on your future vision glasses: What direction is our generation moving in, what will our world look like in 50 years?
Oh, I think I’m scared and hopeful at the same time. I have some apocalyptic tendencies, so of course the first thing I imagined was humanity standing on the edge of the abyss! But I hope we get to the turning point before that and start doing things differently.
What would you do if you could change the World?
I would redistribute and I would take very seriously other matriarchal non-European epistemological models.
If the universe is everything and it’s expanding, what is it expanding into?
I have no idea what the universe really is, but maybe it’s expanding inside of another universe, that I hope is expanding as well, because if it isn’t, the premonition of the Big Crunch would be the only option.
Tell us about your future plans…
Working a lot in the studio and putting together beautiful shows in several continents.
Your city’s favourite spots?
Definitely my studio.
Last but not least: what is your favorite Song?
I don’t have just one favorite song, but recently I have been listening to Los Jaivas a lot – after almost 10 years of not doing it! – and oh my god “Sube a Nacer Conmigo Hermano” is such a fabulous song. When I feel I’m lacking energy I play it and I immediately need to move my body.
One last statement please: „Wood or stone, gold or art?“
Mmm, I would pick wood and I would definitely go for art: art can contain gold but not vice versa.
Your #…?
