Interview

The wonderful world of Mònica Fuster
Marga Melià

When one tries to aproach Mònica Fuster’s work finds a world full of fantasy, a very particular and simbolic universe able to state a series of questions, and to provoke a tickling curiosity in order to enter this suggestive and misterious universe. In this interview Mònica tells us some of the most revealing aspects to understand her work.

You have been dedicating many years to the world of art, how did it all begin?
I don’t exactly know which was the starting point, when it all began nor why it happened. I only have feelings difficult to unriddle. I guess certain moments and experiences awake in us new channels and lead us to make associations that with the passing of time we need to give expression to. As far as specific people are concerned, I would like to point out a great friend and artist called José María Labra and some of my teachers like Raimón Arola, Alicia Vela and Jaime Coll, with whom I keep a special friendship. I feel fortunate for all the knowledge which I have adquiered inside and outside of the University and which have helped me to widen my vision of the world. It would be perfect to be able to keep oneself in a permanent state of formation and apprenticeship.

Where does the particular universe that you reflect in your creations originate?
I try to bear in mind what is recurrent and constant, things that repeat themselves in us and that trough ourselves make them intelligible. It exists an intemporary way of constructing, of formalizing concepts, of generating spaces ans materialize images. In an inconcious way, this practice has been latent during thousands of years in the majority of forms created by man, who has a special instinct to concrete tangible and definite shapes based on a language of concepts, archetypes and metaphores. From now onwards I try to create unique forms and to materialize the imaginary. Starting from this premise I take as a starting point the simbology, iconology and iconography. Going back to the origins, to prehistoric art; what interests me about it is the actitude of man towards space, that represents the psychic reflection of his visual world and his open way of representation.

In your work are ever present the human body, the animals and the vegetables, how do you state the relation between them?
The human body is the starting point. Its biological relation with nature and matter interest me. It exists a filter through the glance of the creator, but I would like that this glance would widen itself beyond the subject. By means of the creative process I don’t pretend to express my feelings and personal experiences but to speak from a more poetical and common conception understanding art as a language that speaks about art itself. As the animal world is concerned, I am interested in inquiring it as a lost reference and archetype that represents the deepest lyers of the inconscious and the instinct. Animals of darkness, mistery, and imagination. Sometime I use clear mythological references but often I convert them in hybrid characters or antropomorphical figures at my own free will. I use them to narrate stories and even sometimes to camouflage myself, as masks or alter egos without name. In that sense the human body and the animal one merge themselves, perhaps even their souls, who knows? The vegetable world appears fascinating to me. You can also find masks and armours in it, as well as fantastic places. Specially the trees attract me in a strange manner. Based on the effective meeting with nature it takes place a poetical recreation with the landscape.

Which are your favourite materials at the time of work? I understand that you have an special preference for paper why?
Generally speaking, I work with soft, ductile and organic materials, that offer little resistance. The same idea can be applied to the use of paper; its qualities and its fragil presence interest me. I guess that it is due to this attraction for this material that I like so much the “artist books” and graphic. Technics ans materials keep connecting to what I need to communicate. I always try to find the way that offers me more freedom of action.

Tell me the importance that the concepts of mutation and change have for you.
It’s clear that life implicates change, movement, mutation. That is what I try to express in a very natural way through my works and my interest for the transformation of matter and substances. When I speak from sculptural terms I always focus my interest in matter and in the relationship within her ans space ans consequently, with the spectator. This can be appreciated in the majority of my proposals where in most occasions I include incorporeal elements such as light, sound, odour, air and print.

In your work the relationship between fiction and reality is usually quite close, explain us your vision on that respect.
I don’t corroborate the existence of something but I state the possibility of the existence of this something. The intention gravitates, then, in a more metaphysical and poetical territory than in a reflection about the models of the real and its credibility. I like to situate the glance just in the point where the reality and the fiction can question each other. You can start from one sense or another and make the way in reverse. A world contains the other one and even parallel worlds can be created, as a made in the proposal Huellas y Señales; animales de otros mundos, where the principal idea of this tactile and audible book was to make evident the presence of another possible reality based on the register of a series of minimal elements. To enter in a world to granted its existence, that was my premise. A parallel world, latent, expectant, full of strange creatures.

In your works you always reflect a balance between the ironical-ludical and the dramatical-trascendental, do you have a preference for one of these two tendences?
It is important to look at life sometimes as a comedy and others as a tragedy. In my work this is shown in a sort of merge between matter and fantasy. I feel myself irresistibly attracted by these two conceptions but when I go too far in one or the other then the creation doesn’t work, an internal tension desappears, which is that turns it into something slippery. That is the point that interests me most because then it also catches me as if it had come out from a place than even I don’t recognize.

As an artist you have touched many fields, what impulses you to go further than the drawing working also the sculpture, the video, etc?
Drawing interests me when it appears from the deepest levels from the unconscious and the instinct and it’s able to connect different microcosmos. It’s found in the nucleous of the work, as the axis based on which the creative thinking is articulated. But matter is also an important part. Working from the organicity attracts me and at the same time conjugate matter with tecnology creating a sort of transitable laboratory in which nothing remains stable. To construct ephemeral installations and arquitectures in relation with nature and the human being together with videographic pieces in mutual dialog. Beyond matter there exist other territories that interes me equally: light, sound, print an even air.

Which has been the project that more has allowed you to grow as an artist?
One project leads to another and so, if you analize them, they are all important , even the failed projects. Anyway, if I had to point out some of them they would be the installation Sad Trees, the exhibition Traç and the project Site Specific Andvarp (sigh) in Iceland. On the other side I have prepared two very extensive projects which meant one revision and selection of my works: the creation of the “artist book” Drawings and the recent exhibition Raons Foradades, shown in the two exhibition spaces of the Maior Gallery simultaneously. I would also point out the tactile and audible book Huellas y señales; animales de otros mundos.

After having lived so many years away from Mallorca, how have you lived your return to the Island? Which positive aspects and which lacks do you find in the cultural and artistic majorcan panorama?
Going away of what its familiar to you is usually an enriching experience because it makes you change and learn new forms and actitudes of behaviour. You even have the opportunity to reinvent yourself. From the distance you get perspective. Mallorca has turned into a place where increasently converge more people from all over the world. In the artistic field I have felt positive changes as well as the ever increasing necessity to stablish bridges outside of the Island and make ourselves known. This aspect seems fundamental to me and it is necessary that cultural institutions increase these interchanges with an open and dearing spirit.

Tell me something about your future projects.
One of my most inmediate projects in which I insist is to investigate how to free sculpture of its weight. I have been working for some time on different systems of levitation. Challenging gravity it’s a matter that states deep questions regarding the nature of man’s physical ans psychical potential. Up to now I have materialised these experiments in a piece that I presented in the Maior Gallery entitled 10 onzas contra la fuerza de gravedad thanks to my friend’s Joan Sitges collaboration. Within a few months I will present creations in this type of work in the Ducal Palace of the orgia in Gandía. Theren are more exhibitions foreseen for this year in the Municipal Museum of Santa Cruz de Tenerife, in the Convent of San Agustín of Barcelona. Thanks to a award that was granted to me in the Estampa Fair, towards the end of summer I will carry out a project in the Serigrafía Centre of Portugal in Lisboa. I also have prearranged the participation in several european fairs, as well as the possible participation through La Huella Múltiple Gallery in the Bienal de Grabado de la Habana.