About

I was born on November 13th, 1989 in Germany, to a Mexican mother and a German father. I was raised in both Germany and Mexico, this way always living in two cultures at once. Two cultures that could not be any more different from one another. Since I was a little girl I learned how to travel and how to travel alone, how to move around in the world. Growing up like this was a privilege, but it also gave me an insatiable curiosity that has made me live in four different countries in the last ten years. Sometimes people ask me what it is that I am looking for. A question that is very difficult to answer. And maybe it is because it is not about specifically looking for something, but about the fact, that everywhere I go, I find something. 

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Nací el 13 de noviembre de 1989 en Alemania, de madre mexicana y padre alemán. Me crié en Alemania y en México, viviendo así desde siempre en dos culturas al mismo tiempo. Dos culturas que no podrían ser más distintas la una a la otra. Aprendí desde chica a viajar y a viajar sola, a moverme por el mundo. Crecer así fue un privilegio pero también me dio esta curiosidad insaciable que me ha hecho vivir en 4 países diferentes en los últimos diey años. A veces me preguntan que es lo que estoy buscando. Una pregunta que es difícil de contestar. Y tal vez lo es, porque no se trata de buscar algo especifico, sino de que en todas partes logro encontrar algo. 

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I wurde am 13. November 1989 in Deutschland geboren, von einer mexikanischen Mutter und einem deutschen Vater. Ich bin in Deutschland und in Mexiko aufgewachsen und habe auf diese Weise schon immer in zwei Kulturen gleichzeitig gelebt. Zwei Kulturen die unterschiedlicher nicht sein könnten. Seid ich ein kleine Mädchen war habe ich gelernt zu reisen und auch alleine zu reisen, ich habe gelernt mich in de Welt umherzubewegen. So aufzuwachsen war ein Privileg, jedoch hat es auch in mir diese unsägliche Neugierde ausgelöst die dafür verantwortlich ist, dass ich in den letzten yehn Jahren in vier verschiedenen Ländern gelebt habe. Manchmal werde ich gefragt, was ich denn Suche. Eine Frage, die sehr schwer zu beantworten ist. Und vielleicht ist sie das, weiles gar nicht darum geht etwas bestimmtes zu suchen, sondern darum, dass ich überall etwas finde. 

STATEMENT

WHAT ART MEANS TO ME:

Art is like a language that everyone can understand and interpret, but not everyone knows how to talk in it. Being able to speak that language, to do art, to feel art is a privilege. For me, a girl that grew up stuck between two cultures, it is the language in which I am the most honest about what I think and feel. It is a way to talk about yourself without even talking. It is comparable to situations when people smile with their eyes or thank you with a gesture instead of a word. The language of art has this certain secrecy that the spectator can overcome if he is just a tiny bit curious about the person that is actually speaking. And it also has this mystery at the moment in which he, the spectator, does not know anything or does not care about the artist and he just feels the art and becomes part of it.

Therefore art is this language for me in which I tell stories. Secret stories, sad stories, stories of love, stories of anger and courage. My stories. I tell them for me, but I also tell them for anyone who wants to listen, for anyone who wants to see.

I grew up in a very creative environment given to the fact that my father is an artist too. Very early I learned not to compare myself and my work to the work of others. I am very independent and maybe even a bit ignorant in that aspect. I do not follow assiduously the art of those specific artists that to embroidery or of those specific artists that talk about the same things I do. And by any means, I do not ignore them either. I just think that it is wrong trying to be better or more interesting than someone else, I prefer investing energy in being the best version of myself. I feel inspired every time I step into a Museum, every time I read a book, every time I watch a movie and every time I take a walk. Nonetheless, I have a few very important characters in my life that have influenced me and my work. The first person I want to mention is Louise Bourgeois. I got to know her work when I was about 16 years old and I identified with her immediately. Not because our work is alike, because is it not, but because of the great melancholy and sorrow you can feel in everything she did. It is the sorrow of a woman that was raised as a little adult, a woman that was always to smart to not acknowledge the lies around her, a woman that moved as far away from home as possible to be free from all that. What I learned from her, besides being brave, is that everything is in a way three-dimensional, even though the end product is two-dimensional. You have to feel things to understand. In my creative process, I do a lot of three-dimensional things to understand what I am doing and how to translate it in embroidery.

I started to embroider on paper before I started my BA, even before I finished High School. My relationship to embroidery is a very folkloric one because I knew it from the traditional Mexican clothing my mother so proudly wears. So in a way, I have always known and acknowledged this craft. When I started working with embroidery I had not researched about textile art or anything related to it but it seemed logical for me to take it to paper instead of applying it to another textile. I took a trade, that in Mexico is taken for granted and badly paid and tried to present it in a way people would acknowledge and admire it. In my Art School in Merida, my teachers respected my embroidery work but they could not really help me because no one had any experience with it. So when I took an exchange year in Mexico City and met Carla Rippey and it was enlightening. She sews on paper and does a lot of book art. So our work could be defined as alike. I learned a lot from her in that year about different materials, papers, about what glue to use, about how to handle textile on paper and also about how to be a strong woman living far from what you used to know. 

The third influence I want to talk about is one taken from the world of literature, where most of my inspiration lies. When I wrote my thesis a few years back I was told that I had to present a certain number of quotes of work that has influenced me. When I finished writing and gave the thesis to my readers I got the same comment from every one of them 'You are majoring in art Carolina, but you are not mentioning even one artist. Why are all your influences poets' I had not noticed, but that is how my brain works. One of the most important poets for me is one that, again, has this melancholic but realistic way of seeing the world: José Emilio Pacheco. And I want to leave you with a few words of his about how pointless the arts might seem but then again about how meaningless life would be without them.

Crickets

José Emilio Pacheco

(A Defense and Illustration of Poetry)

I retake an allusion by crickets:

their murmur is hopeless,

the chattering of their elytra

is of no use whatsoever.

Yet if not for the cryptic signal

they broadcast to one another

(for crickets) night would

not be night.