Blanca Miró Skoudy (Barcelona, 1987) is a multifaceted artist who is always enigmatic and has a lot of suggestive power. Although she is mainly focused on drawing and sculpture, she is also surprising in her performative actions. Her house is her studio and vice versa. If she could, she would resurrect Nikola Tesla to collaborate with her.
BLANCA MIRÓ
2021 / 06 / 02
How many shrooms does the trip cost?
BM: Well, with the issue of lockdown and all that, you can imagine what it’s about. What does it mean to you?
Well, it leads me to introspection…
BM: Exactly. I made the piece during lockdown. I couldn’t travel and was thinking about inward psychedelic journeys. I wanted to travel, it was March, I was tired… I stayed put until October without being able to leave Barcelona. That’s why I was experimenting with micro doses of mushrooms: the inward journey.
“Unable to travel, I was thinking about inward psychedelic journeys.”
Did the tarot influence you to do this work?
BM: Well, there’s the mushroom, the candle, the hand… but the tarot… I don’t know. I wanted to find compelling elements to make a compelling narrative, other than a simple image with objects. I see that it has led you to interpret that there is a relationship with the tarot, the unknown, the uncontrollable. If this comes to your mind, that’s perfect for me because it means you’re already interpreting it in your own way. Maybe someone else would suggest something else; that’s what it’s all about. It is true that the elements of fear and magic are present in the work. I don’t know, it came out like that.
We may be overthinking it, but it has given us that feeling.
BM: I like your overthinking; your interpretation is very useful for me, really.
It reminds me of the archetype of the Madman card.
BM: If I had to compare it to an archetype, it would also be with the Madman but, above all, with the Star – the one of a woman with two vases pouring away water. Not that I am an expert on tarot archetypes.
Who would you resurrect to spend time with in your studio?
BM: Well… let’s see, let me think… I’d like to resurrect Tesla and do a project. Like Jung, he reaches spiritual conclusions, but he also comes from a scientific or theoretical world. He really is a person who experimented with energy and came to a very strange place from these experiments. I would say he came to mystical conclusions and that is what attracts me. He is a person who transcends his own field; who, through experimentation, reaches similar conclusions to quantum physics. I am not an expert on the subject! But Tesla blows my mind. Perhaps it is scientific explanations that can bring us closer to God.
“Perhaps it is scientific explanations that can bring us closer to God.”
I would resurrect Kurt Cobain right now.
BM: Yeah, it would be cool to go for a drink with Kurt Cobain: a ratafia, hahaha. It’s just that Tesla is the first thing that came to my mind, and that’s why it would blow my mind doing a project with him.
Is your home your studio or is your studio your home?
BM: When someone calls me on the phone and asks me, “Where are you?”, sometimes I say that I am at home. But at other times I say that I am in my studio. I don’t know, the truth is that it’s the same. I try to put a boundary between home and studio, but it all overlaps. Bear in mind that even the bathroom is in the studio. The truth is that there is a physical separation, but some elements are in one place and others in another. In the end, because I’ve made everything myself, I make the space. At first there was no clear limit; everything was overrun by the studio. The truth is that I don’t care because I like to work in different spaces, depending on the light. For photos, for example, I use more space in my home, which is emptier. I think my answers are not very interesting, hahaha. I am a very boring person.
Is there any difference between the Blanca who draws and the Blanca who is more “trash”, more performative?
BM: I simply think there are different open fronts, and in some mediums some elements are used and in others not. It’s not that drawing doesn’t allow me to do what I want, it’s just that they’re simply different mediums, with different elements. Volume, for example: models with clay or sculpture. I adapt to different formats. With drawing I focus on lines, and with other things I approach it differently. The truth is, it’s intuitive; I don’t think about it so much. It’s cool that you asked me that; it makes me think about it a little bit.
Do you really like hats?
BM: Well I don’t have a special fetish for hats, but the truth is it’s an easy thing to do when you don’t know how to do a lot of things. I don’t need to finish the pieces, or do them “well”. You can leave the hats halfway done. With trousers, shoes… it’s different, they have to be completed. Well, I once worked in ballet…
Go on, go on…
BM: Nothing, I worked in ballet costume and made hats; and the truth is that seeing them in a theatrical context blew my mind. That’s why I keep on doing them.
It seems to us that, in your piece, a genie comes out of the lamp. What three wishes would you ask for?
BM: I would ask for two wishes, and the third would be for three more wishes, hahaha. That’s the thing with wishes, you can’t raise the dead… but I think I could ask for this one.
Who would you like to see on a MAUS® label?
BM: Well, any of my friends, they are all awesome. But, I’ll say Irene Royo and Rafa Castells. I say that because of proximity. Rafa slept here yesterday and now Irene is coming.
What book, series and movie do you recommend while having MAUS®?
BM: I can’t read while drunk… I only recommend a documentary film, El Somni (Christophe Farnarier, 2008), which tells the story of a shepherd. It’s something very traditionalist. The camera follows this man. I really liked it. It sounds boring but it’s not. The man drinks ratafia for sure.
INTERVIEW: POL FERNÁNDEZ
JUNE 2021
MAUS®
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