Fefe Talav­era
http://​fefe​ta​lav​era​.blogspot​.com/
http://​www​.flickr​.com/​p​h​o​t​o​s​/​f​e​f​e​_​t​a​l​a​v​e​ra/
Sao Paolo, Brazil.

Fefe Talav­era is an inter­na­tion­ally known mural­ist whose per­son­al­ity is some­times mis­un­der­stood because of the mon­sters she cre­ates. Her inten­sity of expres­sion speaks to the irre­press­ible, deep­est urges of the cre­ative process, and comes from a place of joy. Rework­ing pain, suf­fer­ing, and ugli­ness in her native Sao Paulo as well as along the paths her life has taken since is in fact for Fefe a pos­i­tive, regen­er­a­tive process that enriches her life and her paint­ing. She works to reach the true depths of emo­tion; the rigor of the search and the furia with which she con­ducts her life are not acts of an unquiet and pes­simistic mind, but rather show her strengths as a per­son at cop­ing with and mak­ing beau­ti­ful all that life serves her.

Curbs and Stoops: Could you say a few things about your back­ground and where you came from?

Fefe Talav­era: I was born in Sao Paulo, Brazil, and I can tell you that Sao Paulo is a par­tic­u­larly chaotic city, with all its vio­lence and inef­fec­tual laws, the traf­fic and garbage, the igno­rance, filth, and grandeur, the class con­scious­ness and misery…all of this greatly influ­enced me, in how to cre­ate as well as how to live. An intense but incred­i­ble city if you know it to its depths. Sao Paulo has its own per­son­al­ity and char­ac­ter. You only have to see it once to under­stand what I mean.

Curbs and Stoops: What was your first expe­ri­ence with mon­sters? Did they have a sig­nif­i­cance for you as a child?

Fefe Talav­era: The mon­sters are a way of exor­cis­ing my feel­ings, my angers, my sad­ness, my igno­rance, my fear. It is the only method by which I suc­ceed in express­ing my rage at life, my fury. When I was a girl every­thing that drew my atten­tion was dark or under­ground, the gloom, the ter­ror, the mag­i­cal, the occult.

Curbs and Stoops: You are known for your large, col­or­ful, often tribal murals, letter-​monsters, and the raw energy with which you ren­der these fig­ures. How has your style changed over the years? The color-​monsters at the Mini Galería exhibit appear to call on a more reserved bank of emo­tion, when com­pared with your more feral, ener­getic mon­sters you’ve done in the past. What influ­enced those changes?

Fefe Talav­era: Like I said before, my mon­sters are emo­tions which man­i­fest them­selves in my art. There was a period in which I was very happy and I was unable to make the mon­sters ter­ri­ble, or ugly; I only wanted to make col­or­ful ani­mals, but I was not very happy with the result — I didn’t see myself in them.

Curbs and Stoops: You exper­i­ment with dif­fer­ent forms of cre­at­ing images. Vendo Almas involves cut and lay­ered paper, for exam­ple. Could you talk about how the actions, such as scratch­ing in your light work Lib­er­tad Per­dida, in com­par­i­son to those of the feath­ered pen draw­ings, like Mama Quilla?

Fefe Talav­era: Every work has its moment, the tech­nique for me is the least impor­tant. What you hand me is what I will work with. Most impor­tant is not the mate­r­ial I work with, but the act of expelling, vom­it­ing my feel­ings. I like to exper­i­ment with every­thing. What’s new for me is the dis­cov­ery — it inspires me to con­tinue cre­at­ing new things.

Curbs and Stoops: Could you talk about the other imagery you use in your work, like the bleed­ing heart or the large hand, among other fig­ures in Ilu­mi­nación? What about the mul­ti­ple eyes that many of your pieces con­tain, or the large hand? They seem to add another layer of mean­ing to the per­son­al­i­ties of the mon­sters and to the piece as a whole.

Fefe Talav­era: Always when I make eyes it is because the eyes are what express most in peo­ple. You can tell whether they are angry or sad or happy by their eyes. I also use the eye often as a third eye, or the inner eye, which allows you to see with­out see­ing. The large hand in Ilu­mi­nación means that this hand is illu­mi­nat­ing the neg­a­tive, the bad, and trans­form­ing it into life, cre­ation, sun, light, and the positive.

Curbs and Stoops: The mon­sters express a range of emo­tions — they are whim­si­cal yet fierce, play­ful yet solemn, angry yet joy­ful. They seem to invite inter­ac­tion. How do the mon­sters see or inter­act with our world, or the peo­ple in it? How do they inter­act with our world, and with us? What has been your expe­ri­ence with oth­ers’ reac­tions to your work?

Fefe Talav­era: The mon­sters are fairly rebel­lious — they don’t like to inter­act much with the real world. They don’t care about what peo­ple think or feel. Gen­er­ally they don’t like the peo­ple who don’t under­stand them, or have a reac­tion to them. I believe that you have to know me before­hand in order to under­stand what I’m try­ing to do. Some­times peo­ple who know my work and don’t know me think that I am a dark and neg­a­tive per­son, but I’m the oppo­site. They are con­fused by my per­son­al­ity and my work.

Curbs and Stoops: How do your friends or those around you affect your work? You have done col­lab­o­ra­tions in the past with Hugo Debens and Remed Bil­bao, for exam­ple. How was work­ing with them?

Fefe Talav­era: Col­lab­o­rat­ing with friends is always a plea­sure. Exchang­ing ideas, moments, feel­ings is unique, and moreso when you change who you’re paint­ing with. Work­ing with Debens is like putting two kids with cans of paint in a giant space and let­ting them flow with it and see what comes out. With him I feel very free, but at the same time I learn a lot, the same for him. And with Remed, it’s dif­fer­ent — well, he was my hus­band, for one, and we were always clash­ing when­ever we painted together. I felt sort of pres­sured to sat­isfy his tastes, and in the end I would not feel very happy with the result. But now after two years I see what we did together and I like it.

Curbs and Stoops: Could you speak to the role of art as a cop­ing mech­a­nism? That is, how mak­ing draw­ings or paint­ings affects you on a psy­cho­log­i­cal level, or a sub­con­scious level?

Fefe Talav­era: For me, paint­ing is an escape valve. It leaves me in peace, in har­mony with myself. I find my equi­lib­rium after­ward and feel good. It affects every­thing in both the sub­con­scious and con­scious mind.

Curbs and Stoops: What other new medi­ums or projects would you like to try, when you have a lit­tle more time? What projects are you cur­rently work­ing on?

Fefe Talav­era: I have a lot of projects in mind, I just have to put them in paper. I’m think­ing big. In five years I want to start exhibit­ing in big muse­ums. At least I want to begin to orga­nize myself bet­ter to suc­ceed in what I intend to do. I want to make gigan­tic mon­sters in 3D with lights and sound.

Curbs andStoops: What rules or lim­its have you come to accept, or not, as you have entered the more for­mal inter­na­tional art world and started show­ing at gal­leries? Do you think there is an inevitable com­pro­mise there, in cre­at­ing with the aim of show­ing in galleries?

Fefe Talav­era: From what I have seen, I’ve sold more alone than in the gal­leries with whom I’ve worked. I think that if they impose rules and con­tracts, you can’t do this or that…I’m don’t really agree with the rules. Some­times I feel very pres­sured to do what they want, but, from their point of view, they find impor­tant col­lec­tors who may end up being the per­son who helps you pay your rent, taxes, and to eat.

Trans­lated from Spanish.