Alicia Barney: In Wonderland 1/3

A conversation with Alicia Barney and art critic and curator Emilio Tarazona

Translated to English from Spanish

Special thanks to Emilio Tarazona for authorizing the translation of this interview

ET: How would you introduce yourself? Who is Alicia Barney?

AB: I don’t want to pigeonhole myself, nor to be pigeonholed. I think one would need to be very insecure to try to self-define, and in defining something you limit it, and I am limitless.The artist statement is a way of presenting oneself, and I don’t need a presentation, because I can elbow my way in there myself. Now, if what you’re asking is if I have a style, I can tell you that when I would leave class—before I studied at Pratt, I studied visual arts in a college in New Rochelle—and I don’t know what happened in that class, but I think they showed us an artist who was terribly mediocre and who had a very defined style. From there, I came to the conclusion that to be mediocre was simply to have a style, and so I vowed never to have a style in my life.

ET: As promised, Alicia Barney achieved her escape from style, but I could not escape my attempt at describing her. Beginning in the second half of the 1970s, she is one of the first artists in Colombia to pointedly address environmental problems in her practice. Through works, many of which have become emblematic, her lens warns and denounces practices of industrial contamination (both deliberate and accidental), the destruction of nature, and the loss of biodiversity. Working in a variety of media and formats, including art interventions, assemblage, sculpture, photography, installation, the two-dimensional image, and most recently, textiles, this conversation focuses on some of her projects and aims to point toward the breadth of her body of work.

ET: Alicia thank you for receiving us, in your home once again. Well, the second time for me.

AB: Last time he didn’t even bring me a chocolate, and today he didn’t either!

ET: The chocolates are coming, they’re coming, and a little wine that I promised too.

AB: Hmm, I’ll be waiting.

ET: This conversation arises in the context of an exhibition that opened in the month of July in Lisbon, in the municipal gallery Quadrum, curated by Giulia Lamoni and Vanessa Badagliacca. The idea is to dialogue a little, in part about some things we’ve talked about. I don’t have a plan. I haven’t brought anything. I have looked at several things regarding your work, some things that I knew about, and others that I was not so familiar with. In fact, there are several things about which I think it may be best not to ask too precise of questions, especially about things that I am not totally familiar with. You studied in New York in the 70s, not only at the College but also at Pratt Institute. From what I understand, New York at that time was suffering several crises. What is your impression of New York in the late 70s and early 80s, in terms of what was happening socially and culturally? Because in those years, curiously, the magazine Heresies made its first appearance.

The appearance of the magazine Heresies during the years of Alicia Barney’s studies in New York comes into the picture because it is from the 13th issue of this historic publication, established in 1981, that the curators drew the title for their exhibition. The show, conceived of as a homage to the magazine, opened in 2020 in the capital of Portugal. Titled Earth Keeping/Earth Shaking: Feminism and Ecology, the magazine cover featured in this edition includes a startling image of the then-recent eruption of Mount Saint Helen as it appeared in 1980. Perhaps the coincidences of time are never totally arbitrary. At the beginning of the essay, which I wrote for the catalog of this exhibition in Lisbon, I begin by highlighting that only five years separate the emergence of the words ‘ecology’ and ‘feminism.’ In 1866, Ernst Haeckel, a zoologist born in Potsdam, first used the term ‘ecology’ in a study on general morphology in organisms. And in 1871, the term ‘feminism’ appeared for the first time in a medical doctoral thesis proposed by Ferdinand Valère Faneau de la Cour at the school of medicine in Paris, to designate particular effects in boys caused by tuberculosis. Both of these terms arise in the context of a crisis: the Franco-Prussian War and the Paris Commune, each representing a historical fissure, in France and in Germany respectively. While editing this dialogue with the artist, I noticed that the title I have chosen for this present dialogue (which plays both with the artist’s name and particularly with one of the works that she will talk about later on) is also one I have taken directly from another work which Charles Dodgson published under his famous pseudonym Lewis Carroll. The book, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, and its sequel, Through the Looking-Glass, were printed in 1866 and 1871 respectively. In other words, we are talking about stories published simultaneously with the emergence of the words ‘ecology’ and ‘feminism.’ If you were to ask me what this means…well nothing really, or at least that’s what I think for now.

Without taking more time on this gratuitous factoid, let us continue with the dialogue in progress. We were talking about the crisis in New York in the 70s, the emergence of the magazine Heresies, and the presence of Alicia in that city.

AB: Well, I was about fifteen at the time. I arrived in ‘69, so I wasn’t aware of any crisis; rather for me, that city was super thrilling. Pratt is in the middle of a big Latino and Black ghetto called Jefferson Stuyvesant. It's enormous, but it isn’t as violent as the neighborhood known as the Bronx. The Bronx is the famous one. I mean, it wasn’t a good idea for one to go there as a white woman (which I am), since my being Latina is not apparent. So just from looking at me, people would say, “If you go to the Bronx, you won’t come out.” That’s how dangerous the Bronx was. One day I was in Jefferson Stuyvesant taking my dog out for a walk, and I could hear bottles breaking behind me. Well, it turned out that they were throwing bottles at me and my dog. Of course, this was something I came to learn later, I mean I was very naive—nothing ever happened to me because I was totally naive! I think that when one is that naive, one manages to save oneself. Of course, afterward I came to understand that the bottles were meant for me. As a Latina, I didn’t feel gringa, so what do you mean they were throwing bottles at me?!

ET: And the art scene?

AB: The art scene was the same, anything could happen. Beginning at the time that I studied in Rochelle, I would go at least once or twice a week to Manhattan to see exhibitions and concerts; in other words, to participate in cultural life. I was seeing a lot of things, so anything and everything influenced me. And anyway, I am the kind of person who likes everything and is interested in everything. I’m not very selective. I find that even bad movies can be good. They can have something good, whether it's the music or the costume design. It could be the movie with the worst actors but it could have the most incredible costume design. So there is always something to find.

ET: What galleries did you visit?

AB: Well at that time Soho was just emerging. The Kitchen was big in Soho.

ET: At that time while you were at Pratt, you were basically producing Diario Objeto—a part of it, a version that consisted of an amalgamation of things. You speak about this work biographically.

AB: Totally, yes.

ET: Biographical, we could also say, in an alternate sense, right? You aren’t speaking directly about yourself, but rather about the objects that you find. I understand that these were things that you would pick up on a given day.

AB: Yes, but those objects weren’t just any objects for me, not in the sense that they might be for you. Rather, those objects were the ones that called out to me. For me, they had a certain significance because, if not, I would be someone who picks up trash. And that wasn’t the point, I didn’t pick up everything that I saw.

ET: We could say that it also functions as a kind of calendar.

AB: Yes, at that time I had read about– what are those called? 

ET: Quipus? 

AB: Yes, quipus. I had read about them in something that wasn’t about art, in some magazine. That impacted me profoundly because here in Colombia—well I mean, I didn’t know anything, and that seemed fantastic to me…the horizontal format, the use of color, the way that information could be registered according to knots. In other words, it offered a method of organizing information that was completely different from that of the written word.

ET: Quipus were like a form of writing, as you rightly point out; they were Inca, from the Inca Empire. Initially, the Spanish reduced it to a form of note-taking, as if it only dealt with statistics. But in reality, it's a very complex language that can tell stories, tales, even fantasy, through a system that today is still not totally decoded. Although there have been many scientific approximations that are starting to translate what basically consists of different forms of knots and colors that hang at different distances from a mother cord.

AB: Yes, that is the horizontal plane.

ET: Exactly, it is a horizontal plane from which many vertical cords that carry information hang. I’m not sure exactly how it works.

AB: Everything I would pick up would end up on my floor. Eventually, there came a moment when I couldn’t get to my bed because it had become too difficult to traverse. I couldn’t do it anymore. So I had to put together all these objects, and it was at that time that I read the article about the quipus. So that was how I arrived at the solution of how to organize all these objects that were, at that point, keeping me from getting to my bed. It was like it fell from the sky, it was incredible. Anyhow, those quipus came at the moment that I needed them, and so that is how I made Diario Objeto.

ET: It’s a work that concerns memory in a way, because the quipu is also that, it registers something. So Diario Objeto is articulated based on these memory-capsules that constitute full days, and are represented by the objects you collected. 

AB: While I was making Diario Objeto I discovered Oldemburg’s Store, so it fit like a glove.

ET: Let me see if I am mistaken in my reading: The great difference that I find between Claes Oldemburg’s The Store, which is from around ‘71, and Diario Objeto (the first or second version), is that you chose objects that you wouldn’t necessarily find in window displays. What Oldemburg deals with are like hamburgers, ice cream, things that one might find in a candy or clothing store.

AB: It also has a pistol, weapons.

ET: Objects we could say, that are in a store, right? Something that is there to provoke a kind of interest in the client. In your case, your objects are in rather a distinct lane. They are objects which normally are of no interest to a consumer. 

AB: Yes, that is true, but there is also another thing. For me, an object is something sacred. It becomes sacred because of something akin to shamanism—I mean, while I was in New York, it was as if I were in a trance, but not like being high on any drug. Rather, it was something natural. Since I was little, in my house they would treat me as if I were dumb because I would stay, for example, all day under a tree. So as a little girl, I was very strange. On other occasions, for example, they would make sure to spy on me because I would get into dangerous things. I would steal alcohol and a lighter and I would set things on fire, and watch the fire. I would sit and watch it while it was over there igniting something, so I had to be watched because I would do things like that. 

ET: We could say that the way you record your own story, in the form of a personal calendar and through objects, creates a statistical register of your day-to-day—something which is not unfamiliar to those of us who have been shut in all these months, looking at statistics regarding infections and death tolls in different parts of the world (with respect to the pandemic.) It is also familiar to those of us who are interested in ecology because we are always counting the species that are disappearing, along with the thousands of tons of greenhouse gases that have been launched into the atmosphere in the past years. Not to mention the quantifiable and permanent environmental degradation which has been occurring…to the stupor of some people we could say, more than others. What I wanted to ask is how a personal diary can translate to address the environment—or in your case, to a lens that is interested more in the space that surrounds you, and not your personal story.

AB: When I came back to Colombia I brought Diario Objeto (the original) to Cali—to el Valle.  Here I could see it with different eyes because I had returned; I was no longer in New York. I noticed that Diario has a lot of nature. That, combined with the fact that I grew up on a farm where I saw environmental degradation firsthand. I would notice a ravine with a lot of water for example, and then one day I would notice it was just a trickle. When I saw Objeto here, I said well, this has a lot to do with nature and with my farm upbringing, and also with environmental degradation. So I got to thinking of a strategy. Obviously, at that time I wasn't thinking of it as a strategy, but it wasn’t any less of a strategy. I resolved that the way to convince people is to be very scientific; not to have a sentimental narrative regarding nature, but rather to present something very quantifiable, which was to show what this extinction was. So I resolved to make some works, I made several which are very scientific and try to speak in that language, to see if I could convince someone that this was important. And I failed. It was a total failure. But in any case, I made these works like El Río Cauca, like Yumbo, which are works that quantify… and which have as their format, like the format of Diario Objeto, the format of the quipu.

ET: So they all have a calendar structure, Diario, Yumbo, and even Río Cauca.

AB: They do, I hadn't thought of that.

ET: Here I will proceed to some brief descriptions. The first version of Yumbo, realized in 1980, is a pioneering work that points to the continuous pollution generated by industrial activity in the municipality of the same name, located in the northern part of the city of Cali. There the artist captures, in the 29 glass cubes that comprise the work, the equivalent of 24 hours of contamination. Each cube corresponds to a day in February of the 1980 leap-year. The following year, with her work titled Río Cauca, she embarks, as if on an expedition, to different sites located along the river channel. Her visits, which take place on different dates and over the course of 4 to 6 months, are aided by the collaboration of a photographer (who deserts at the beginning of the project and is replaced by the artist), as well as a biologist (who also deserts, though only at the end when the data from the samples has already been compiled). From these sites, navigating via canoe, she gathers sample materials of contaminated waters. Barney points to five sites of interest throughout the hydrographic basin that spans the country, and the whole of the department of el Valle del Cauca, from south to north. Another site she calls attention to is a place close to the source of the river, which she was not able to photograph due to the presence of actors involved in narco-trafficking and the Colombian armed conflict. From these sites, she extracts the water that she uses in the first part of her proposal. The installation includes three horizontal tanks, all containing samples from the same area, but each corresponding to different depths of the stream: deep, of medium depth, and of superficial depth. At the bottom of each tank, she engraves a map of the river basin, over which she installs the 5 tube samples. Each sample marks the site where it was collected and demonstrates environmental degradation according to its depth and location: La Balsa, Puerto Navarro, Puerto Issacs, Zambrano, and Gutiérrez. Accompanying the installation are notes as well as 5 panels with visual georeferencing images. The images and notes describe the landscape and environment of each of the sites of extraction, according to their position: North, East, South, West. Here the river is a metaphor for time, and in this case, also for the irreversible damage caused by human activity; human activity that accumulates at the same time that it is dragged along by the river, and which to an extent, even causes the river to overflow. Her work El Ecológico circa 1982 consists of an intervention. She works with a historian to select clippings of news and images that she cuts and then pastes onto the cover, or the first page, of different national newspapers of the time. On them she stamps three seals in green ink: the first crosses out the original name of the newspaper, and the second substitutes the title of the publication with the new name she gives it (El Ecológico), which is also the title she gives to the project. The third alternates in each case between two messages: Species in danger of extinction or Species not in danger of extinction. She then protects each of the clippings with transparent contact film. 

The artist thus projects her predictions onto each clipping. She selects, perhaps beyond all personal judgment or desire, the subjects and situations that represent cultural spaces, activities, or forms of life and consumption of which she supposes either a permanence or inevitable disappearance in the near future.

AB: But yes, there is an element of countability because el Yumbo is a diary. I would go every day. It's a diary of pollution, but it is still a diary. El Ecológico (which is the newspaper on view right now in the exhibition in Lisbon) was born, like many of the other works we’ve discussed, because I was very poor. I thought, what is the cheapest thing I can use? Well at that moment the cheapest thing was glass. So I commissioned some glass boxes which were very inexpensive. They are 20 by 20 or 25 by 25 centimeter boxes, very small. The only expense was the gasoline to go and come back, since I would go back to cover and seal the boxes. And the newspaper—well of course, the newspaper was made of newspapers! That’s another thing, I needed to get out of my house because of the amount of newspapers that I had accumulated. I exchanged an hour of my time with a history student who helped me select the images. I made ten newspapers, and each one had 40 pages. That’s a ton! Now what we have here are some themes. I'm thinking about how one of the throughlines of the works that we have been talking about up to this moment, is time.

ET: Yes, there is a throughline. In Diario Objeto Versión 1 and Versión 2, Río Cauca, and eventually El Ecológico, your interest in time is a connector of your interests told via objects…Which I think is a very good way to talk about environmental topics. 

AB: Actually I am currently working with extinction, which constitutes the maximum amount of time and pressure on the Earth, wherein a fossil is created. It's like creating a diamond. Can you imagine all the thousands of years it takes to create a fossil? The thousands of years and the thousands of pounds of pressure, whether on a diamond, or the carbon that becomes a diamond? So it's another way of thinking about time. 

ET: Of course, strata. In fact, mass extinctions—some say that this is the sixth, others say it is the seventh. But let's say all of these mass extinctions coincide with archaeological changes. That is to say, it is the mass extinction that creates an archaeological change that can be perceived in the strata. There are species that disappear from there on down and species that continue to appear from here on up. It is the extinctions that mark these lines.

AB: It’s just that I am happy as can be making fossils. 

ET: Making a fossil in record time is a process.

AB: I can show you a fossil, I'm having a lot of fun. I resolved that I don’t want to do any more exhibitions or any of those things because people from the art world are horrible, and all that. So I simply have decided that I will have a lot of fun working on my own projects without any obligations. I have suffered a lot making the work, and I have suffered a lot showing it too, instead of the pleasure it should be. There are moments of pleasure, but more than anything, it has been a tragedy. So I don’t want that anymore because I'm doing very well, I deserve to enjoy my work and nothing more, without commitments or anything. But it's very very fun every time I make a fossil.