MdP
How did the idea of collaborating on an exhibition between the three of you come into being?
APQ
From the start, Esvin and I have been in communication, discussing art and life; however, we also felt a need to exhibit together. An opportunity arose to participate in a group show at a gallery (Sol del Río) in Guatemala City in 2023, followed by one in Dallas (Liliana Bloch Gallery) in 2025, and now our concepts travel to London.
EAL
It is evident that the three of us share a common Central American imaginary – but with rich, deeply specific natural, territorial, and personal contexts – and therefore we individually enunciate different voices within contemporary culture, as our heritages are diverse. More importantly, what made us collaborate on this special project is friendship, as, for me at least, it is both political and artistic, becoming a fluid, sincere, and collaborative way of understanding the place in which we are inserted as human and living beings.
SV
I think that the three of us were drawn together by friendship and by a sincere admiration for each other’s practices. We had all previously met and liked one another and our work, but, for the purposes of this show, the way I remember it is as follows. First, Esvin visited me on the beach in La Libertad, El Salvador; then I visited Atitlán for my 50th birthday in 2022, and following Esvin’s suggestion, I visited Pichillá’s studio in San Pedro La Laguna. A few months later, I visited Esvin’s studio in Guatemala City, and it turned out that both Antonio and I had made the same suggestion regarding the shields in one of Esvin’s works. We also started talking more on the phone, mostly voice messages, and we all kind of organically fell into the habit of telling each other a little about the place where we were calling from: a beautiful but hot morning at the beach, or a pleasant afternoon at the lake, or a rainy night in the city. Eventually, we started to think about collaborating, and when my gallery in Guatemala City, Sol del Río, offered me an exhibition, I suggested doing a three-man show. That’s how the first exhibition, Nuestro Lugar en Estos Mundos (Our Place in These Worlds) came into being, and it was shown in the context of the 2022 Paiz Biennial.
MdP
Did the idea occur to you of collaborating in the creation of a multi-authored artwork to be exhibited in the context of Our Place in These Worlds?
SV
We were, and are, not interested in creating multi-authored works. I don’t think any of us has suggested that at any point. But we have been interested in creating a dialogue (trialogue?) between our works, our territory, our ideas. We are all curious about each other and the places that inform our processes. What we did create together was the curation, how one work related to, or reacted to another, things in common, actions, versions… Also, at Esvin’s suggestion, we invited Maya K’iche’ anthropologist María Jacinta Xón Riquiac, who wrote the essay, and Esvin handled most of the catalogue creation, translation, and printing, along with fellow artist and designer Yavheni de León, who did the graphic design.
EAL
I see this question as an interesting provocation. Because it somehow outlines the limits, but also the ethics of collaboration and co-creation, and I think that is good and healthy.
Friendship, mutual respect, and admiration are among the political conditions that shape this project. I guess that as artists we are territorial beings, and that is precisely why the issues that are intertwined in our practices deal with land and politics: territory. So maybe in an intuitive manner, we all felt that some friction would happen when we share the problems, but also the light that we see in the world. Because our practices deal with coloniality, gender, belonging, and so many other issues that are part of current contemporary debates, and we do it because they are part of our everyday lives. In this sense, we did this project because we see similarities and affinities that we don’t interpret as a lack of originality but as a way of seeing that makes us realise these affinities are also big differences.
Collaboration is a form of art; some artists have it as their preferred strategy, and that is valid. We do collaborate in our practices in different ways. But if I may say something more radical, I would not propose creating an object in collaboration because of the risk it represents. The most important debates in Guatemala come from Maya thinkers. I had learned from them how the mix between Europeans and indigenous people was, among many others, one of the strongest strategies of colonisers to erase Mayan identities. We as artists share a critical posture about these systems of reductionism, and this is why we collaborated in a way that would allow us all space for nuance and debate without romanticism. I think that our co-authored artwork is, in this way, invisible. It is the mechanism that allows friction, difference, nuance, and friendship.
APQ
In my conversations with Simón and Esvin, we inevitably talk about art and the art system – fairs, biennials, curating, and who holds the power to decide what gets the green light and what doesn’t. Yet, it isn’t all about art; we also discuss life, our families, political actions, and their impact on our communities. I have always valued these conversations. We are artists who collaborate, but we are not a collective; I am more interested in maintaining this friendship than in being a collective.
MdP
I am quite interested in collaborations, and I love working with more than one artist in a same show, whether the suggestion of dialogue came from me or from them. It’s interesting because, as a writer and curator, for me to collaborate with someone translates mostly as co-authoring. And however fun that may be, I think it is a privilege to be able to collaborate whilst keeping your individuality, hence the question.
Moving forward: it seems like the very notion of territory is being problematised in the show: through the presence of maps and spacemen, through the title of the exhibition, through dealing with various cultures… What is it about territory, or places, that you would like the audience to consider?
APQ
Since we first exhibited in Guatemala in 2023, the essence –or spirit – of this exhibition has been the respect for practices rooted in our respective territories: Simón Vega in El Salvador, Esvin Alarcón Lam in Guatemala City, and myself in San Pedro La Laguna, a town 170 kilometres from the capital. These are three distinct territories and contexts that shape our artistic practices; to speak of Central America in this exhibition is to speak of migration, geography, sociopolitical issues, living Maya culture, and our social struggles.
SV
I agree with you regarding collaborations; even though we are not creating artworks together, we are having dialogues with the pieces as we hang them close to each other or across the room. I think what is really at the core of the exhibition is these exchanges of ideas around how the other views and understands our work, how the works react, enhance, or contrast, with that of our fellow artists. This conversation, as well, makes the ideas and process bounce off each other; the installation will also be a collaboration betweenyou, us, the staff, and the gallery that will eventually enrich the spectator’s understanding.
Regarding the second question, I believe we are not so much problematising the notion of territory, but rather being conscious of how our land, our local communities and our relationship with them shape our ideas and our artwork. We are departing from and arriving at our territory. We all love the place where we live, and it nurtures us and our ideas, and it also makes us react when it’s threatened and misunderstood.
I think there’s poetry in these works, some humour as well. There’s also a strong sense of belonging, of understanding ourselves not as separate from our land but rather as products of the earth, the sea, the lake, and the metropolis, of the transplantation that took place in history, and our own personal stories that brought us to where we are.
The colours, materials and dynamics of our surroundings all make their way into our ideas and work. We are talking about what it means to be fruits of these lands, of the places we call home.
EAL
Indeed, our practices deal with territories, and yes, these territories are intertwined as we move; our displacements change what we are as humans, friends, artists, and so on. I guess our territories are in conflict all the time; this is how we understand life. Because territory is alive, and it is not something we can take for granted. Because when you come from a history of invasion and conquest, and/or a diasporic experience, you learn territory is a space of conflict, therefore a space for poetry, a space for love and creation, a space to create meaning among friends. And you learn that a very important part of the territory is within us; it’s not merely a physical thing. This is why identities are conflictive; they are like volcanoes. This is why I like to think of friendship as a border, because, as you’ve mentioned, when we collaborate, we share authorship, and that is a privilege. To think as a collective in these times is a privilege. Yet to be in a space of constant conflict and dispute is not a privilege, but something to be honoured, and this is why art matters.
MdP
Whilst some of the pieces that were present in the first exhibition are also on display at Elizabeth Xi Bauer, there are new works on show. Moreover, the world has changed substantially since the beginning of this collaboration in 2023. Do you feel that you and/or your practices have also changed over the past three years? If so, how are these changes visible in this new configuration of Our Place in These Worlds?
SV
Yes, our worlds have changed, and the show keeps evolving. Chiefly in my case are the effects of unrestrained “development” and gentrification that have intensified and are radically changing the coastal area of La Libertad in El Salvador, where I live. This theme was already present in the works I showed at the first exhibition in Guatemala, but now it is addressed more directly in the spacesuit series.
The video art and the two spacesuits that I am presenting in London show how the last two years’ global changes are accelerating and impacting smaller regions such as El Salvador, to the extent that they are displacing local communities and destroying nature and resources at an alarming speed. Our homelands are becoming new colonies full of extremely expensive towers and buildings, out of reach for the locals, targeted towards cryptocurrency hubs, drug trafficking and money laundering paradises. The spacesuits represent how out of place these colonisers are, and how blind they became to the suffering of the native populations that they are displacing.
I must also comment that the videos and animations that I have been making since 2022 are part of a sub-series called Esta Tempestad (or This Tempest). The ones that I am presenting in this third instalment are directly inspired by William Shakespeare’s 16th-century homonymous play, particularly in the main characters, archetypes that are identical to those found in this day and age. The spacesuits presented are those of Prospero and his daughter Miranda, representing today’s cryptocurrency investor and the ‘woke’ culture girl. A third character, Caliban, is presented in the video as the local and “wild” or “primitive” surfer that the woke girls come to sexualize and domesticate. I think there’s an irony, and also a synchronicity, that’s making this story come back to England.
APQ
I recall that for the initial version of the exhibition in Guatemala, we set up a WhatsApp group to exchange text and voice messages, develop our ideas, and decide together how we wanted the exhibition to take shape. Fortunately, the Sol del Río gallery granted us that freedom – and, in essence, freedom is the very spirit of any artistic practice. That same year, 2023, Guatemala held presidential elections; a candidate who did not represent the economic establishment won, and we came close to a coup d’état. However, thanks to the Indigenous peoples who took to the streets in protest to demand respect for the popular will, the course of the country’s history was shaped, impacting the economy, politics, and society, and prompting us to reflect on our progress and the extent of our independence. Three years have passed, and now we are making a new exhibition in London featuring a mix of
earlier pieces and new works, such as those centred on fire and seeds, elements that are vital to the daily life of contemporary Maya culture. The seed, representing the art of planting and synonymous with food security, and fire, representing our spiritual connection and our enduring resistance.
EAL
At the end of the day, the foreign policy of the current US administration is a continuation of a longer historical project. White supremacy didn’t start with the current president, and it won’t end with him either. But besides geopolitics, you inquire about the worlds in which we have lived
throughout these years of collaboration. I feel particularly touched by the question because I moved back to my country, Guatemala, just a year ago, after a period of living mostly in Berlin. In this last year, I have been reconnecting with my land as the relationship I have with the world and my own body has shifted.
In the exhibition, these changes will not be visible for everyone, but only to those who are willing to pay close attention to details. When I was in Berlin, I assisted with the book presentation of Palestinian writer Adania Shibli, Minor Detail. It’s a heart-tearing and beautiful book that reminds us that minor details are not perceived by everyone, but by sensitive beings. In this exhibition, for instance, my work that uses pink versions of national flags from Caribbean countries where homosexuality is currently illegal was produced again. I didn’t want to show the ones that were produced in Berlin, as they were too perfect, too mechanical, too industrial. In this new version, I collaborated with my mother, as I wanted to embroider with her. To have her and my touch present in the materiality of these flags, which remind us that borders are porous and penetrable spaces. Despite representing the patriarchal and colonial past and present, they also remind us that the world is a space for opacity, solidarity, memory and friendship.
MdP
This show touches on so many rich and interesting themes, weaving in personal experiences that speak to something universal. This will be the third time Our Place in These Worlds has been exhibited, each time in a completely different geographic setting. Would you like to continue taking the project to new places?
APQ
It has been very enriching to share spaces for our work; we aren’t a collective – we’re friends – and the idea of exhibiting in other locations or bringing in another artist is very flexible.
SV
Each venue has been different, and the works and installations have varied accordingly. I think that even though we are being very local, feeling and thinking about our immediate surroundings, many of the topics, as you mention, touch upon a more universal tone and therefore can mutate for different spaces without losing their essence.
We really haven’t talked about showing this more times after this. At the moment, I’m very happy to have this triad; it makes sense for a three-artist show, but we’ll see. I guess we are all excited and mostly thinking about this upcoming show at Elizabeth Xi Bauer. I think that it was a big change to have the show in Dallas after Guatemala; it did feel like two different worlds or continents. I think it will be a bigger change to have it in London. The context and the audience, the very distance away from its origins, will surely make the dialogue and works change. I’m curious and looking forward to seeing how it goes.
EAL
Images always reflect light and project shadows. It is fascinating to show works in different places because we all share the same sun but experience its light in different time zones. I am trying to say that cultures permeate how art is produced, thought and interpreted, so this fact enriches the project because we all learn from the frictions that moving through places invariably bring. We all learn that we might be something, but we learn through movement that this is not something fixed. Because in different places your political status changes, and that can be both violent and fascinating. Besides sharing physical proximity and a passion for engaged art practices, Antonio, Simón, and I love travelling because we experience life precisely by looking for experiences that would lead us to a different array of conversations. I would love to show this project in as many places as possible, from Oceania, Asia, Africa, but also in places like Brazil, Cuba or Puerto Rico, that are closer to us, but where light and shadows work differently. Difference is what makes the world a place that is worth living in.
