@1tm122n22m Atma Unum
Iris Aggeler, a multifaceted artist from Chiapas, fuses passion and art. Her work crosses borders and surprises with innovation. 🎨❤️ #IrisAggeler #Art #Passion #Culture #WomenArtists https://wp.me/p3JLEZ-7HO
We reproduce the interview conducted by Guillermo Ochoa Montalvo in his column “Al Sur con Montalvo”, titled: “Iris Aggeler: Passionate Painter”, in which Master Ra’al Ki Victorieux (Iris Aggeler) is mentioned. It was republished in Alfaro Noticias on December 17, 2014. This is part of the digitization process of the Atma Unum archive.
Dear Ana Karen, the restless young woman from the 90s comes to my mind, when she explored the arts as one who searches for her own identity confronting a traditional society. It is said that true education can be found outside the conventional school system, out there in workshops, in the street, in the daring to create and produce works different from the ordinary. Thus, Iris Aggeler, known by different names throughout her life, made her way into the cultural and artistic life of Chiapas and primarily Mexico.
I remember her exhausted, with courses, trips, grants, exhibitions, catalog presentations, guided tours, cultural promotion projects, television programs, critical texts, but always stealing time from the clock. I recall that Chiapas is a key place where she lived much of her life. Iris, as a scholar of “Young Creators,” created that art project Passion.
Iris, painter, writer, poet, and performance artist, talks to us about Passion from her alter ego known as Unum Atma which you can find at:
—Imagine that I have the freedom to question, express, with various languages, the same idea, which in this case is to dialogue with myself and others, about passion: love, heartbreak, eroticism, pornography, respect for the partner, and of course, issues including violence. PASSION is about turning intimate attitudes into public expressions. That’s why there are increasingly more public feminine visions. Some may see the feminine and pop world as vulgar or frivolous; they consider it kitschy, bad taste, cheesy, banal.
Iris takes all these elements in the “art letters” of the collection “Amor, amor (love, love)” which she circulates via the Internet, mail, or deliver in her exhibitions to gather the responses she receives and then translates these literary constructions of the epistolary genre into painting and conceptual art: video, mail art, installation, performance, digital art.
—What matters is the proposal, Iris clarifies. The medium is secondary. Even my painting has conceptual nuances. I am very interested that the works have a coherence with my position as a woman creator, creative, rebellious, and transgressive. I like and draw from works, authors, and pop creations, cultured or popular: Robert Rauschenberg, Peter Greenaway, Penthouse comic, Betty Boop, Bettie Page, Madonna, Björk, makeup brand ads, drinks, travel, clothing, movies, popular Mexican signs, the national lottery, pin-up girls, and posters.
—Tell us about the stages you have gone through.
—Of course, there are stages, and this stage of PASSION that I began in 1999 gathers more elaborate and mature works. This series has been shown in several dozen collective exhibitions to which I have been invited with works selected by juries, in addition to 4 solo exhibitions held (Oaxaca, Germany, Tuxtla Gutiérrez, Chiapas, and Xalapa, Veracruz) and several upcoming ones.
Iris squints her ever-curious eyes evoking the memory of her trip to Mojvirovce to participate in the “Mexico – Slovakia” meeting, to which she was invited as a result of her maturity and experience.
—My work motivated the invitation to an artistic residency in Mojvirovce, Slovakia. It was a gathering of artists from Slovakia, Mexico, Russia, and England. Slovakia is a country that had only been in the capitalist system for 10 years after going through socialism and monarchy, so it has a very peculiar social and economic situation that, of course, affects art. There is generally limited development in visual arts, along with many concerns to get things done.
Iris, Unum Atma, as she calls herself, gestures when she speaks; she becomes passionate when describing her experience because she herself is passion incarnate.
—There are exceptional artists; international gatherings of glass, ex libris, and even conceptual works take place. Now they are open and eager for information to incorporate themselves even more into the economic pace of Europe. My stay in the host castle gave me amazing experiences. I was news in the most important newspaper in the country with my conceptual and public work. Public art, whether ephemeral or not, and conceptual art interest me to cross the gallery barrier, reach people in the street, provoke, seduce. For this reason, I selected some benches in the street to intervene them, and the children, gypsies, beggars talked to me and even helped me create the collage and painting. These benches were in the central park of the town, in the middle of the bus stop, the church, the school, the restaurant, the castle, and others.
—How did the population react? I ask her.
—The “nice” ladies of the place spoke very upset with me to stop my work and said they would complain to the mayor. One day I found what I had advanced destroyed, but I continued painting. Then the mayor came to the park worried because the benches could no longer be used for the bus stop. I explained to him that it was an artistic project and that when I finished my work, they would not be museum artworks but would still be used as always. In the end, I invited the gypsies to the inauguration of the Mexico-Slovakia exchange at the castle, and days later the mayor, the castle director, and I took a picture with the benches. Who is in my heart are the children from the orphanage. They see the benches from the window of one of their classrooms. They called me “Esmeralda” from the soap opera featuring Thalía. One of their teachers, Duda, told me that my visit was very special to them and on my day of departure, they thanked me with dances, nuts, fruits, and small books and drawings made by them. I swear it was the most moving thing, I am super grateful to them. And of course, all these experiences nourish me as a human being and influence my work.
Iris does not accept being a polyglot despite the profusion of phrases in Spanish, Russian, German, French, and English in her texts.
—I write the epistles that are a core of PASSION in Spanish, my mother tongue. I speak a good level of English and basic German to survive; as a child, I hated it, though I studied it quite a bit, and it was through my trip to Germany, where I visited my family and as many cities, galleries, museums as I could, that I reconnected with German. Now I even like it. Rainer Fröeschlin, who is a fan of “The Cure,” proposed painting “Blood flowers.” We listened to the song over and over, and upon detecting that it was composed in three fragments, I decided to handle it in German, English, and Spanish, and Rainer himself did the translation into German, and he would have kept the painting if it weren’t for the fact that he insists I send it to Robert Smith, the leader of “The Cure.”
In another work, there is a poem of mine in Russian, and the translation is by Eugene Ilatowsky, who was my workshop partner. In Slovakia, I gave a lecture on conceptual art at the School of Arts and Design in Bratislava, and Irena Melusova, a friend, translated simultaneously into Slovak; I thanked her with a bottle of the best tequila.
Iris has no age. Perhaps 29 chronologically, 20 for her freshness and enthusiasm, eternal for her experiences and life stories. Iris creates, molds, writes, captures through photography images that no one could do better. Iris created the concept that was previously called Visual Arts and now has the name of arT&+ Production of Environmental, Educational, and Cultural Events. The tapachulteca Iris, trained at the Academy of La Esmeralda, knows that life is art and much more. Iris, with her passion, is a matter of love.
Original publication:
Guillermo Ochoa Montalvo (December 17, 2024) Alfaro Noticias. Column “Al Sur con Montalvo.”
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