On developing a singular voice through self-reflection

It seems like all of your projects—whether essays, exhibitions, or events—begin with more personal fascinations. I’d like to talk about your creative process—how do you fall in love with an idea? And how do you decide how to realize it?

Well, first, before we get into it, I want to address your use of the word fascinations. I love the word “fascinate,” and it’s one that I’ve been coming back to lately. It has surprisingly sinister origins. A lot of the time my research begins with etymology. There’s a word, and I’m always curious to know its history, so I’ll look it up. And that opens up a whole world of creative possibilities. “Fascinate” is one of those words. Its earliest meaning—to bewitch or to cast a spell or an evil eye—derives from the Latin word fascinum and its related verb fascinare, to use the power of the fascinus, which meant to practice magic, to enchant, to bewitch. In the religion and magical practices of ancient Rome, the fascinus represented the divine phallus, and effigies and amulets were used to summon its protection and to ward off evil. As with most words, its meaning widens and meanders over time, and “fascinate” has come to mean that we are intensely captivated by something or someone, or spellbound. Its association with evil and the supernatural has dissolved with the modern age, but I remain irresistibly drawn to those roots.

This etymological immersion gives you a little glimpse into my creative process. It often begins like entering a labyrinth. I’m frequently unsure of where it may lead. It might bring me back to where I started or guide me towards an entirely new idea. Either outcome is positive. It can start with a word or a phrase, often from books, images I encounter or discover that can be online, libraries, during my travels. But the sources are almost always from reading. I read extensively, and that fuels my creative process. My reading primarily consists of primarily nonfiction work, along with some fiction and poetry.

Another part of my creative process involves the numerous notebooks I use and keep at home, which I label “labyrinths of curiosity,” just like a series of volumes I’ve been accumulating. They contain my ideas, my thoughts, detailed notes and quotes from books and readings, drawings from archeological museums and other general writings, especially from when I travel. The archeological drawings, if I’m there alone and can take my time at a museum, I like drawing, for example, the designs on pottery, like on Neolithic pottery, which I recently did in Greece. It makes me feel a little bit more connected to the past by using my hand to draw it, as opposed to just taking a photo of it, which I also do. I’m always jotting things down. I revisit these fragments and sometimes use the material from them for projects. I love archiving material, both digitally and materially.

Can you tell me a little bit about the process of archiving?

Right now, I’m working on a curatorial project for an institution. It’s a university, so it will involve the work of students and alumni, but that also means that I can dig up historical objects from the permanent collections. I’ve been doing a lot of research on the subject matter—which I don’t want to reveal just yet—but that means that I’ve been digging deep into all the different university collections, their libraries and museums. I’m making lists of things that I need to go visit in person. Plus, I keep tabs and files and folders on my desktop with all these images related to the research.

Beyond images, I’ll bookmark essays, I’ll download documents. I love archive.org. That is maybe one of my favorite sites. You can find the weirdest things on it. You can find obscure texts and books. I’m constantly marking and archiving that stuff. And, of course, I feel like I never have enough time to read all of it.

Often, in a curatorial context, one is expected to respond to what’s happening right now. You’re doing that too, but there’s a real valuation of archaeology, literature, the occult—really specific histories. What advice do you have for those who are developing their own creative voice, but feel uncertain?

Well, I know this sounds cliche, but I think that following your intuition is the most important thing. Tune into that. And I think asking yourself, “Why am I attracted to those particular interests and topics more than others? Why am I so drawn to history and archaeology?” I’m constantly asking myself that. I tried to address this for an essay I did for Ursula Magazine two years ago, where the editor asked, “Can you try to trace this path of how you arrived here, and what drew you to these interests?” The answers are never clear, but I think the unresolved nature is what makes it more intriguing. These connections should feel visceral.

Whenever I’m around ancient sites, I wonder, “Why am I so drawn to this?” I’ve been fascinated by archaeology since I was growing up in Mexico, obviously surrounded by ancient things. I think that constantly being around them was the igniting fire—the thing I wanted to study before art history was archaeology. I wanted to get my hands dirty. I wanted to touch the past. I think archaeology is incredible—and I know it’s a romantic view because everyone knows that you need funding and that it’s bureaucratic and complicated–in the sense that you could unearth things from so many layers of our past. Part of developing a creative voice is in exploring the things that stir you, compel you, pull at you, almost like an invisible force.

In her autobiography, Simone de Beauvoir traces her life back to birth and the birth of her parents, describing how it’s just a series of chances that leads someone to the present. I don’t really know why I’m interested in these things. Maybe it’s just by chance. That, in a way, is a beautiful thing. The uncertainty of your voice will probably never disappear, but I think it’s natural and normal and healthy to have that uncertainty. That unknown is what makes it more beautiful. Instead of following another’s steps, forge a new path for your creativity. That’s what I’ve been doing and continue to do.

What’s an example of when one of these inspirations came to you and you had to decide to take the leap?

With my gallery, Fortnight Institute. I had been working with Richard Prince and that had been such an important learning experience. I think that because I had the chance to do so many cool projects with him—whether it was publishing or exhibitions or very weird events in various places—I was inspired to create my own space to do those things. And so I took the leap of leaving that job, and it eventually became Fortnight Institute.

Before the gallery, I hosted a salon in Brooklyn Heights where I used to live. It was a private salon, a stepping stone to becoming a public space. That was the biggest inspiration to take the biggest jump and risk, to go from that to being like, “I guess we’re opening a gallery.”

I wanted to ask you about the most important lessons you learned from running an art gallery. A small business, but in a very specific industry.

I love this question. I would say again that one of the most important things is to stay true to your vision. With Fortnight Institute, there was a connecting thread through everything that we did. We set the tone of the gallery with our inaugural exhibition in 2016, featuring Carmen Winant. And we stayed true to our vision, which was reflected through a thoughtfully and instinctively curated program. It was really important for us to be thoughtful about how to start that program, and we followed suit throughout. We didn’t want to follow any trends or do what was popular. We were more trying to go against the grain and stay weird. But staying true to our vision was only part of it—what we did was for the artists, the relationships we built with the artists were the most important and rewarding. Openness, communication, mutual respect, and support are essential.

After Fortnight, these relationships continue. Even now when I meet one of our former artists or employees at an opening, perhaps for someone connected to Fortnight in some way, and they refer to it as the Fortnight family, it makes me feel that we did things right. Alongside this is the extended community that supports what you do in small and big ways. You cannot do it without that support, so never take it for granted. And one more thing is boundaries. I think they’re very important. We did our best to surround ourselves with the people we wanted to work with as there was mutual respect, admiration and honesty. You don’t have to work with or engage with toxic people or unsavory characters. You can have boundaries.

Can you go into that more? I think a lot of people have this idea that toxicity is something inevitable when you’re collaborating.

I’ve learned, having the gallery for eight years, that you do sometimes have to deal with unsavory characters. But when we had that experience, we would say, “That’s the last time we’ll do that.” There are other ways.

It’s the same thing when people are like, “Oh, you have to be a bitch in this world to survive.” I don’t believe in that. If you’re going to be a public space, you can’t just look down at your computer and never greet anyone that walks through the door just to have some elite air to your space. You’re a public space. Smile, say hi. It doesn’t matter who’s walking through the door.

So with boundaries, it’s the same. I think the reason we created the gallery was to make it feel like it was a community space. In fact, there were various points in the gallery’s life where people thought we were not-for-profit. We did our best to make it feel inclusive and to make people feel welcome in the space. And so the same goes for people who came in and were rude and disrespectful—you don’t have to accept that. I don’t think that’s necessary to run a gallery. Walking away from those people makes a huge difference in your sanity and well-being.

We were talking earlier about how you have felt like a bit of an outsider in most things that you do, even though you are often a leader in those areas. How do you make sense of the feeling of being separate from this thing that you’re doing and maybe not feeling completely at home in it, but also being perceived as someone who’s leading and changing that thing?

One of my first art world jobs was with Alex Katz, and I worked for Richard Prince. These things, they feel very “art world”. These are giants. And yes, I was running a contemporary art gallery. I think the outsider part is probably more that a lot of my interests were a little bit outside of that, even though it’s all ultimately connected. But I wasn’t reading ARTnews or Artforum on my days off, and I wasn’t going to art world parties because I was trying to make connections elsewhere. I was going home and reading Archaeology Magazine or going to the ancient wing at the Met and doing the opposite of all that art world contemporary stuff. And so that made me feel a little bit more distant, but I needed that boundary. I couldn’t make it all about the “art world.” I’ve always felt that it is just a strange world. Fortnight was that space that we wanted to build. It was creating an outsider space in the insider world and navigating the inside world from an outside perspective.

Also, as an immigrant woman from Mexico, I didn’t know a lot of other Latino, brown women doing something similar. So in that way, also, I felt like I was coming in from a different direction. I dealt with people who were like, “I need to speak to the owner of this gallery.” And when I said, “I am the owner of this gallery,” they were not able to believe that I was. So there are many things that have played into this, but I take that all with strength. For me, feeling like an outsider was almost like a weapon, not a weakness. It was like, “If I’m going to be in this world, I want to set my own rules.”

The next question might seem strange to ask in a creativity context, but I think we agree that death and creativity are quite intertwined. So much of what we do is because we know that the time is limited. Your work seems to never shy away from questions around death. In a world where many people ignore their own mortality out of fear, how do you make sense of this reality?

I could sit here all day and talk about death, but it’s not everyone’s idea of a Thursday afternoon. Well, death is the most certain reality. Not one of us can escape it. I believe that confronting your mortality, the understanding that we have a limited amount of time to exist, to be with others and to do the things that we love, helps reduce that fear and increases our presence in each moment and in all that we do and how we do it. We are finite in this world. Those flowers, the moon, the people you love, they’re all finite as well. And isn’t it astonishing that we even exist? I think that should be the opposite of a morbid topic. I find it remarkable. What are the chances that we’re here to have this one chance at this life?

I always think of Mary Oliver’s prompt—“Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” This perspective isn’t abstract for me. I’m from Mexico and grew up viewing life and death as almost one entity, holding hands or as mirror images of each other. In Mexico, you grew up learning not to fear death, but, of course, pain and grief will always be there when you lose someone. That doesn’t go away. One of my main interests is the study of funerary rites and customs across cultures and time as they can reveal much more about the living than the living reveal about themselves.

What’s an example?

We could start with Mexico. It’s the one I’m most familiar with, as I’ve experienced it every year since I was a kid. Day of the Dead is now a holiday that everybody’s familiar with, but it has rich pre-Hispanic roots. I remember growing up and going to the market to pick out skulls made of sugar, labeled with the names of the people you’ve lost. We would set up the altar, decorate with candles, papel cortado, sugar skulls, cempasuchil flowers, photos of the deceased, and beverages and foods they loved when they were alive. On this night, the veil between worlds is thinnest, and these altars and ceremonies were for the living to welcome back the dead. The scent of the cempasuchil flowers is meant to be a guide to the dead as they return to our realm of the living.

I have always been interested in how the living communicate with the divine and engage in worship. For example, the beliefs of the Mexica—better known as the Aztecs—were deeply complex. They were pantheists; they saw divinity in all things—believing they moved through a sacred, enchanted universe. They were profoundly attuned to the present moment, to the beauty and mystery of the world around them. At the same time, they often turned to ritual specialists and diviners to interpret signs, perform ceremonies, and guide their spiritual practices.

Believing that the dead come back once a year, or maybe they are here all the time, we just can’t see them, is a beautiful way of honoring those lost souls. How we treat our dead through ritual reflects on our culture as a whole.

Sometimes the creative path is not clear, and it can be difficult to find flow and direction. What do you do to clear a creative block? What do you read, where do you go?

I have a few tools to help me overcome it. Sometimes they work, sometimes they don’t. A straightforward, simple one that I think everyone’s familiar with is simply taking a walk without your phone. Another technique I’ve been using for a while—and it helps me—is going to my bookshelf, picking a random book, opening it anywhere, and reading a page or two. This shifts me to a new mental space that feels refreshing. It’s like bibliomancy for creative blockage, a form of divination that involves using a book to gain insight or guidance by randomly selecting a passage and interpreting its meaning. When the block is harder to overcome, I go to the gym and do strength training. I love lifting weights. I find that if I push myself physically, such as lifting heavier weights, until I fail, it does wonders for the mind.

When you’re a person who’s researching a lot of different things, it’s easy to get obsessed with something really niche and not have anyone to talk to about it. I’m wondering: what are you excited to discuss more?

I’m always happy to discuss the Black Death, the bubonic plague that ravaged Europe in the 14th century. It might not be a very niche topic, but as you can imagine, it’s not exactly a popular topic at social gatherings.

There are also the “gods below,” also known as the Di Inferi, were ancient Roman spirits and deities connected to death and the underworld. Votive objects and offerings, which reflect a profound interconnection between the earthly and divine, the material and the spiritual.

I’m also thinking about the archaeological findings at the sacred, revered spring in San Casciano dei Bagni, Tuscany. In the first century AD, lightning struck the spring, and that led to the burial of hundreds of votive offerings by Etruscan and Roman priests beneath terracotta tiles. A ritual called fulgur conditum, or “buried thunderbolt,” was said to have been performed to seal away the sacred objects and consecrate the lightning-struck site as a sacred one. Imagine witnessing that ceremony…

Etruscan linen books, too. There is a particular story I love that I learned about while listening to a podcast with Lucy Shipley, an Etruscan archaeologist, about the survival of an Etruscan linen book. I had never heard of these books! Through an extraordinary, chance-driven journey of 2,000-plus years, the linen of the book was preserved when it was used for mummy wrappings in ancient Egypt. This is the only surviving Etruscan linen book! I’ve read that this may also be the oldest European book.

I could keep going, but one last thing is flowers and how the scent of certain flowers in Mesoamerica, specifically in ancient Mexico, was believed to attract supernatural beings through their aroma. Some cave entrances, as those in Teotihuacan, were shaped like flowers and considered mythic places of origin. Of course, there’s the vivid orange cempasuchil from the Day of the Dead, but also the el yauhtli flower, used in rituals and burned as incense. Its powerful scent and smoke created a bridge to the sacred. I learned about these connections from the work of the excellent scholar Doris Heyden.