Channeling & Challenging the Salvadoraness of my Artwork: An Interview

Earlier in the year, a Salvadoran student from UC Davis named Sophia Escobar reached out to me to conduct an interview for a paper they were writing for their Latin American Art class. Sophia’s paper was focused on doing a comparative analysis between the artwork of Fernando Llort and two of my works in that style, De Centroamérica a Westlake con amor and San Romero en el paraíso.

Aside from the honor of having my work being compared alongside Llort’s, what I found personally meaningful and moving were the sincere words from Sophia in her essay:

“The difference between the homeland art of Llort and the diasporic art of Interiano is the [latter’s] use of political criticism needed to heal the Salvadoran people from all the wounds created by colonial institutions that influenced the civil war… Although these two artists are separated by geographical distances and political outspokenness, they are connected by their love for their people. They both chose to represent their people […] in their day to day lives, but their use of vivid colors also created joyous scenes that represent the strength of Salvadoran people despite their trauma.”

Escobar, Sophia “Comparative Analysis of Homeland and Diasporic Salvadoran Folk Art” UC Davis, 2019

Wow. For me, it’s like being seen and heard by someone like you and who understands you, and so, suddenly, you exist. And not only is there existence, but continuity and connectivity with what was, and perpetuity with what will be. It feels quite healing. Thank you Sophia for reaching out and making this bicho happy.

I was also tremendously impressed by the questions that Sophia had prepared for me, not only because there was much precision and thought behind them, but also because they compelled me to dig into myself more than I had expected. And so, with Sophia’s permission I am presenting below the full interview transcript.

1. What impact has the civil war had on you, and did you feel its effects while still living in the diaspora?

Most people simply don’t understand that for us Salvadorans, the civil war is this immense, amorphous entity, like a shadow that envelops, permeates, and intersects with every aspect of our existence, from the overt to the invisible. It manifests itself in ways that surprises even us years later. How and where we choose to live, who we choose to allow into our lives, how much of ourselves we reveal to the world is always invisibly informed by war-driven fears and paranoia.

I grew up in Los Angeles in the 1980s, during the height of the war. I remember how even revealing that I was Salvadoran meant that people would look at me with a gaze that had already been tainted by whatever horrible imagery the news had broadcasted about El Salvador. When I was six or seven, my mother and I were in mass at St. Vincent de Paul’s and the priest made a call to the congregation to pray for El Salvador, and then asked for any Salvadorans to come forward to the altar. My mother got up and pulled me with her. As we walked down the church aisle, people would extend their hands out, some would pat me on the head, others on the shoulder. I didn’t understand why people were touching me, and why they were looking at us with faces of pity. I hated being the object of their charity.

2. As a Salvadoran living in the diaspora, what led you to create artwork such as De Centroamerica a Westlake con amor?

Back in 2015, I applied to become part of the Community Scholars Program, a joint venture between the UCLA Luskin School of Urban Studies and the UCLA Labor Center. The program aimed to being together scholars and community members to work on a particular social issue. That year, the issue on everyone’s mind was how to address the unaccompanied minors coming from Central America. The group I was a part of (Education) decided to create a resource guide for Central American families in the Westlake-Pico Union districts. Since we needed artwork for the guide, I decided to give it a go and that’s how that piece came into being. The really interesting part is that it was the first time attempting to draw something in my life. My motivation in creating this piece is the same as today: to show the world that us Central Americans are not misery and sorrow, but that we are full of life, color, and joy. That our lands are rich with diversity, and that we bring these riches to the United States (albeit involuntarily).

3. Why did you choose to use the national birds of Central American countries in your artwork?

I am not a big fan of nation-states nor their nationalist symbols. This is why most of the art I produce never uses any of the Central American flags as symbols of pride. But I’ve always been an amateur ornithologist and so I have a tremendous amount of love and respect for birds. The birds of Central America, much like our people, are unique and full of color. And more importantly, because of flight, birds do not recognize arbitrary human-made borders. Their home is wherever their is sustenance and safety. It serves as a good analogy for migration. Perhaps it’s due to Disney creating an entire industry out of anthropomorphising animals for our entertainment, but I’ve found that using anthropomorphic birds in my political artwork has allowed for easier acceptance of messaging.

4. Who inspired your artistic aesthetic? Is Fernando Llort one of your inspirations?

Fernando Llort is certainly one my inspirations, though of course, there’s now a multitude of artisans in El Salvador creating magnificent artwork on wood, so credit goes to them as well. Though I would say that Llort’s work tended to also be both fantastical in scope and minimalist in detail at the same time, using only black outlines and a handful of vibrant colors to depict every day scenery, but as interpreted by the surrealism of one’s dreams. Perhaps the type of imagery that our ancestors saw when they drank chicha! I tend to take the spirit of that aesthetic and give them a bit more detail.

Another source of inspiration, particularly for my political artwork, are the anti-imperialist posters from the late 1970s and onward. For example, on the left is a poster from the early 1980s condemning U.S. interventionism in Central America; while on the right is my own design calling out the U.S. utilizing the Mexican government as its own anti-migrant attack force.

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5. How does your art differ from other Latinx artists- especially those of Mexican descent? How would your art differ from other Salvadoran artists who live in El Salvador?

I feel that the Mexican Revolution at the onset of the 20th century played an enormous role in developing a nationalist aesthetic sensibility that was fueled by indigenismo and the movement of revolutionary and populist muralism. Fast forward a century later, and add the hyper-popularity of the surrealist work of Kahlo, and you have the foundation for Aztec-kitsch that seems to be at the core of much of present-day Mexican-American and Chicanx art.

I think that because of the cultural and institutional lack of exposure to Central American art movements, some Central Americans in the diaspora have tended to reproduce that Chicanesque kitshy aesthetic in their own art and poetry. However, when Central American artists have either lived or visited the homelands in the isthmus, or grew up in households where the very particular aesthetic of our artesanal artwork was absorbed through osmosis, it creates not only a deeply personal connection to it, but it radically changes their creative cosmovision. As an example, Kiara Machado is Salvadoran-Guatemalan artists who paints large landscapes of green jungle foliage that hide Mayan inspired dolls and worry dolls, wearing colors and patters that can only be reproduced after having been absorbed in person.

So the same goes for me. The pieces Westlake and San Romero are very much influenced by Salvadoran artisans. Even the political art that I’ve made has it’s roots in political posters from the 60s-80s calling out the repression in Central America and U.S. interventionism.

And that’s the particularity about Salvadoran-American art that differs from Mexican/Chicanx–war, migration, displacement, uprootedness are always in the background, in the unconscious intentions of the artist. There’s a deep sense sorrow for the loss of language, traditions, history. Whereas for Salvadoran artists living in El Salvador, the work they produce tends to channel a collective anxiety over the future, or some degree of apathy over the current state of affairs.

6. I don’t think you’re religious, but why did you choose to make an art piece of St. Oscar Romero, and what significance does he have to you?

While I am not a Catholic, or follow any form of organized belief system, I do possess some ancestor-based spirituality. That being said, for Salvadorans, the figure of San Romero transcends the borders of El Salvador and Roman Catholicism, to become a universal symbol of courage and love for one’s people. I personally have mixed and contradictory feelings about San Romero. There’s a part of me that grieves for him as a martyr for our people, there’s also the other part of me that is suspicious because of what the Catholic Church has represented in El Salvador: genocide of indigenous peoples, ladinization, misogyny, heterosexism, and patriarchy. And it is for this reason that when I created the piece San Romero en el paraíso, I decided to include all kinds of Salvadorans in the background, not only peasants, but also migrants, students, guerrilleros, gang-members, and queer couples. I’m perfectly fine holding San Romero in reverence, while still interrogating and challenging what he represents.

7. What does living in the Salvadoran Diaspora mean to you?

Rather trying to dig through my feelings to give an inadequate explanation, I’ll repeat something I wrote a while back:

“To be Salvadoran at times feels as if one were an ambulating wound, held up only by the most minimal of scarred tissue, constantly anxious that any small blow will open a discharge of plasmatic weeping, globules of rage, and blood clots blackened by all the pain we have sustained as a people. We ambulate in a state of constant denial that we are survivors of a profound and collective trauma, which we appease with sad nostalgia, or exaggerated Salvadoraness, or an absurd love for the gringo nation.”

8. What makes Salvadoran art different from other Latinx art?

Salvadoran art is much like its creators: brutally honest in a way that gets confused for vulgarity; at once fearful of touching our wounds, but once we get into that zone of pain, we wallow in it; apathetic and cynical about present existence, but oddly nostalgic and hopeful for a better future; morbid and dark as our nightmares about the war, or colorfully bright as our souls when we hear a cumbia.