Get to know SqW:Lab 2018 fellows – today we speak to artist, Gustavo S Ferro.
Where can you be found?
instagram: @gustavosferro @piquetesanonimos
email: piquetesanonimos@gmail.com
website: gustavoferro.org
Wee Sculpture, Gustavo S Ferro, 2018
Tell us about a creative action you have taken this week.
I started to make some experiment with cardboard, trying to transport some drawings I am doing in notebooks to something more physical. Things are constructed and them disrupted in a process of creation and destruction and reconstruction. I use my living room as a studio. Things start to occupy more space. I don’t know where it will take me. I keep making.
What does ‘home’ mean to you?
A place of memory. Home is a place where I can see the horizon. Where I can swim and dive, be naked and in silence. Glaswegians always ask ‘where are you staying” instead of “where do you live”. We are always staying somewhere. Passing by. Everything is a moment. Home is not a place, is a state of mind.
What was the last thing you drew?
I finished a notebook few days ago. I worked on it during 2 weeks, filling the pages everyday. I see it as a catharses. All thoughts composed together in a sequence. Unpredictable shapes. Intimate writings. A form of prediction, or self understanding. Constructions and deconstructions. Superpositions. Accumulation. Fragmentation. Composition. There is another way of making drawings. It happens through the movement of our bodies in the space – in the city… but it is another moment.
Tell us about 2 of your most subtle influences.
I met Phyllida Barlow’s work few year ago and it had a big impact on me. In 2016 I went to Wakefield to see her installation at the first edition of Hepworth Prize for Sculpture; and more recently I have been to Venice Biennale and again experienced her installation at the British Pavilion. Both times I got ecstatic facing her work, the way it occupy the space and makes our body experience it in a different way. She creates sort of utopian playgrounds, that can be oppressive and cozy at the same time. I love the way her work explores materiality, landscape, memory, body and architecture. In a different way Helio Oticica’s practice evokes a mix of feelings and thoughts about the physical experience, leisure, participation, chance, relationship, art itself, education, process and the city.
Please share your thoughts / a few words about your expectations of the SqW:Lab fellowship, of being in Mumbai and the project in total.
I am excited with the opportunity of join this fellowship and be able to immerse in a process of learning and exchanges with others artists and creators. I believe that this kind of experience opens a range of possibilities for collaborations, understandings and practices. I am very curious about meeting Indian culture and I’m looking forwards to navigate through the streets of Mumbai.
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