10 Questions with Andrés Mario de Varona

Al-Tiba9 Art Magazine ISSUE14 | Featured Artist

Andrés Mario de Varona was born in 1996 and grew up in Miami as a first-generation Cuban-American with two Cuban families. The majority of his teenage years were spent running cross-country while attending high school. Being interested in images and writing, and pressured to take a more practical approach, Andrés pursued a degree in journalism. However, he realized that he did not want to take pictures but instead create them. Little by little, Andrés learned to speak a language true to himself. The death of his mother helped him discover this, and it galvanized his need to know more about himself and question what he is capable of expressing. After graduating with a BFA in studio art, Andrés moved to New Mexico. Since living in the desert, his obsession with death morphed into an obsession for life, and he became eager to learn what it truly means to connect with others. Andrés has had to ask himself why he is attracted to illness and intensity. He believes his own sense of loss and unfairness has made him want to see other people who have experienced profound loss or that are going through a painful change in themselves.

Art is a tool for Andrés to measure cycles of indignation and healing, our growth as human beings, and as a way to record victories. What he aims to create is an attempt to enter the collective human experience, as well as an access point into himself.

andresmario.com | @andres.deva

ARTIST STATEMENT

This project, TRIALS, streamlines individual narratives into a visual record in which all collaborators (including Andrés) are depicted as a living memorial, enacting and becoming testimonies to events that once happened in their past lives. By viewing themselves as such, they acknowledge a person's history, what they are going through now, and how they will be moving into their future. Their bodies serve as personal monuments - representing their dedication to time spent healing, accepting, and transforming. This visual record is a tool to enter the collective human experience, in which art is used as a celebration within the midst of intense life changes and acknowledged as a victory against the harsh realities of living. Andrés' images don't provide answers or resolutions, but instead point to areas of thought which are more difficult to express or access in language. His photographs aim at the delicate truth of what it means to be human by working with the body to visualize the frictions of reality, wounds from survivors, and the ambiguity of conflict.

***Envoy***, Archival Pigment Print, 40 x 40 inches, 2022 © Andrés Mario de Varona

Trials | Project Statement

“I started to realize that I was building my own family, and streamlining our own narratives into a visual record of collaboration, indignation, healing, growth, trust, and victories, but I wanted a space to visualize this in, I wanted a home. Marcia, Aaron, his brother Russell Garcia, myself, and two more friends, Osiel Gonzalez & Alicia Mujynya, began to construct an outdoor structure that would be the home for TRIALS. After nine months of planning and building, we constructed our outdoor desert studio and called it the Refuge. It’s a space meant to absorb personal histories and energies every time it is used, and felt again the next time when entering. To collect narratives and de-compartmentalize those stories throughout the timeline of the structure’s existence. In the Refuge, secrets and movement are shared, photographs are made and recorded for TRIALS.”

— Andrés Mario de Varona

INTERVIEW

First, how would you describe Andrés Mario de Varona to our readers in three words?

Ready, energetic, and willing.

You are of Cuban descent and were raised in Miami as a first-generation Cuban-American. How much does it reflect in your work as an artist?

My Cuban identity plays an important role in my artistic practice. In Cuba, there is something I call the Cuban Resolve. I use it when referring to the ingenuity of the Cuban people to fix, rebuild, or repurpose something. This is something that taught me a great deal and impacted me personally, both in my life and in my practice. I am also greatly influenced by Catholicism and Santeria, as well as rituals and magic.

***The Gray Room***, Archival Pigment Print, 30 x 24 inches, 2021 © Andrés Mario de Varona

***Osmosis***, Archival Pigment Print, 50x40 inches, 2023 © Andrés Mario de Varona

In your biography, you mention how photography is your true language. How did you first get interested in this medium?

I first got interested in photography when I received my great uncle’s Minolta x-700 camera. I spent my late teenage years working with this camera, photographing friends and family, as well as street scenes. My mother’s death in 2016 is what made me rediscover the medium in terms of an art form. Since that rediscovery, I’ve worked at creating imagery that stands as a testimony to someone’s life.

You actually studied journalism before turning to photography. How does your training as a journalist help you with your photography work?

I don’t think my journalistic training helps me with my photographic work, but at the time, it did make me more eager to leave the academic bubble and be in real life. Real life is where the real people are, and the real stories are. I think my desire to study journalism was actually a disguised desire to participate in the mystery of life and dig deeper into myself by learning from other people.

***Sails***, Archival Pigment Print, 30 x 24 inches, 2023 © Andrés Mario de Varona

Let’s talk about your series TRIALS. In your statement, you mention how it is a recollection of narratives and stories related to your personal experiences, your family’s, and friends’. How did you develop this first idea into the series we can see today?

I would say TRIALS is somewhat of a loose stem off from my first series Contact. Although they are entirely different, formally and conceptually, both are a collection of narratives. Contact was a ritualistic series that I worked on with my family to reclaim the experience of my mother’s death, while TRIALS is about life and understanding our narratives as a living and changing memorial, with a particular emphasis on the narratives that have been most challenging.

The photographs are mostly in black and white. Why did you choose to avoid color?

Before every image that I set out to make, there is a preliminary moment where I am living with that photograph in my mind. I envision it over and over again, fill in details, and make some sort of a mental blueprint for it. When I do this, my mind sees it in black and white. I wouldn’t say I am avoiding color; I just simply do not feel the need to work with color as of now.

How did you choose the subject to photograph and the setting for the images? Did you pair them for any specific reason?

Yes. In fact, almost every image that has been made in TRIALS is done so within this outdoor desert studio I constructed with Marcia Reifman and many other friends. We’ve named this structure: The Refuge. I see this space as a blank canvas, which allows me to create a new installation and environment specific to every image and person. The Refuge is not a permanent installation and consists of eight 10x10 foot panels, and originally sits as a 20x30 foot rectangle. The fact that it needs to be assembled before use means I can stage the piece into any shape, can choose how many walls to have up, or can stagger them in any sort of orientation. The structure lends itself to the haptic experience.

A picture is usually worth a thousand words. In a society overloaded with images like the one we live in, do you think this is still true nowadays?

I think it depends on the kind of picture and the kind of words.

How was the project received by the public?

Truthfully, I am not sure.

And lastly, do you plan to exhibit or publish the project in the future?

Yes, I am always trying to find opportunities in both. I have an idea for a book told in three photographic chapters, as well as exhibition formats in both traditional gallery/museum settings, but also in alternative ways that are more accessible and public.

Artist’s Talk

Al-Tiba9 Interviews is a promotional platform for artists to articulate their vision and engage them with our diverse readership through a published art dialogue. The artists are interviewed by Mohamed Benhadj, the founder & curator of Al-Tiba9, to highlight their artistic careers and introduce them to the international contemporary art scene across our vast network of museums, galleries, art professionals, art dealers, collectors, and art lovers across the globe.

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