When Leticia Cardoso arrived in Austin, Texas in October of 2009, I could not have imagined that I would learn so much about life and love. As part of the Mapping Exchange program organized with the Blanton Museum of Art and the College of Fine Arts, Cardoso arrived from Brazil as the selected artist in residence with the Ibere Camargo Residency program, a collaboration between the Blanton Museum of Art, The College of Fine Arts, the Brazil Center at LILLAS, and the Ibere Camargo Foundation in Brazil. Inspired by Wim Wenders’ film Paris, Texas, Cardoso arrived full of questions that she had no intention of answering, and instead consistently sought moments in which to lose herself in the Texas landscape, to remain lost in translation, and to rediscover the beauty of self-realization in a foreign landscape.
In November, I accompanied Leticia and Andre França of the Brazil Center on the road to visit the real Paris, Texas, in an attempt to help Leticia discover her muse. In a mix of English, Spanish and Portuguese, comprehensible communication became impossible. Using a series of devices (3 cell phones and 4 cameras) we succeeded in finishing Leticia’s proposed video project. On the five hour drive each way we talked of love, travel and language, and how (according to Cardoso) true love requires no translation. As it turns out, Paris really is the city of love, and in an absurd twist of fate, it became quite clear that though none of the three of us could define what love is, butwe drove back to Austin knowing that each of us had fallen.
- Who or what are your artistic influences?
At this moment Wim Wenders, Bill Viola, Louise Bourgeois, Jessica Stockholder, Mariana Abramovic, Clarice Lispector, Mathwey Barney, Pedro MC, Fernando Lindote, Fabiana Wielewicki, Lucila Vilela, Cynthia Pimenta, Elisa Noronha, Zé Lacerda, Janaína Tschape, Eija-Liisa Ahtila, Andy Warhol, love, noise, silence, Texas, the landscape, and the desert.
- What was the moment that you decided you were an artist?
I am still waiting for this moment…what does it mean to be an artist today? I often wonder if my blog is a work of art or if it is just like every other travel blog. My guaranty is the Ibere Camargo scholarship I have received to be in Austin, as well as the people that believe in my work. When I send one project or proposal to a gallery and it is accepted, then I am sure that I am an artist. When I don’t have this tangible answer, I instead have the passion for art and my desire to be alive through my work. I learned the difference between “work” and “job” while I was in Austin.
- What is the moment that you believe art becomes art? When does that moment occur that art becomes more than a concept but instead a living, breathing statement?
I was born in Criciúma and I lived there until I was 15 years old. We did not have museums there, and I grew up without them. When I was 9 years old I studied arts in a small house with lots of fantasies and images. My teachers took me to the a Bienal de São Paulo, and when I returned I was sick…it was too much, but I loved it, and in that moment I didn’t understand the border between art and play, and I’m not sure that I still know the difference. But my father always believed in traveling, and I learned that you have to change your location to see museums in your life in a different point of view. So, when I was 15 years old I lived in Oxford for one month. One day I saw the Sunflowers of Van Gogh and I felt something strange that day. When I was on the bus from London returning to Oxford I could see a difference in color, and I realized that something had changed. When I returned to Brazil I told my parents that I wanted to study art.
- Your entire residency program at the Blanton Museum has been inspired by the Wim Wenders’ film Paris, Texas. How and why did that film inspire you to travel across the state of Texas? What were you expecting to find in the landscape?
I don’t know what love is, and the film Paris, Texas, director Wim Wenders makes me ask more questions about the border between images and words. Initially I didn’t believe in what Wim Wenders was saying with the film, and asked “so, Paris is a small town in Texas?”. I had to see it to believe it, and now that I’ve seen it, and have learned that Parisians are so kind (they paid for our breakfast and showed us Jesus wearing cowboy boots!). But mainly, I went to Paris because of the trust I felt between Leslie and Andre França who drove me, because I wasn’t ready to drive in the United States, and driving is the only way to get to Paris.
- Please tell me what Paris Texas the movie means for you, and what Paris, Texas the town means for you?
What is Paris? Is it the center of the arts in the world? I have never been to Paris, France, I have never been to the Louvre, so does that mean I’m not an artist? Paris, Texas is an image that changed all my existence. We are always changing and it’s so hard because at times I just want to hold onto some word and just be safe. I feel that we are always lost and this is good too, it’s like the story of the tower of Babel, being lost in a lot of languages.
- Can you describe the feelings you had when you arrived in Paris, Texas.
No I can’t, sorry…maybe the images could show us a lot of things about my feelings.
- How does your residency project fit in to the trajectory of your body of work? Where do you see yourself going now that you have accomplished the great feat of getting to Paris?
We live in an amazing world of television, internet and movies. People can travel a lot, see different places and people, and oftentimes we only see these things with our eyes, but I want to know more, because I believe that some changes just happen inside the body, when we are dislocated, for instance, and when we change our orientation, and watch the world in another situation, like being a stranger. It’s like watching the world with another point of view. Sometimes it’s hard to be a stranger, but really, I think that in some ways we are always strangers, and some people like to be with strangers and some don’t, because being a stranger could be dangerous, you can get lost in another culture.
- You have spoken of ‘silence’ and ‘noise’, could you please define these and how they are evidenced in your work?
Noise happens when you say something and those listening don’t understand. It can happen in the same culture, and in the same language, these things just happen all the time everyday and in every place.
Silence can be a lot of things and a lot of words, it’s a mystery, we never really know what it is. It can be the choice to be alive, like in the ditadura (the dictatorship in Brazil). Sometimes I talk a lot because I can’t understand the silence between people, sometimes I choose silence just because I feel like I am a stranger and I can’t understand what people are talking about, and at times, it’s good to be alone, in silence, with my images, an my memories, just listening with my eyes. For me, traveling alone through the desert is something like looking at the landscape, waiting and waiting for images and memories evoked by the landscape. I believe that it becomes possible to hear your own heart, and for me the heart is the only road map I really believe in, but I often wonder if this is just sweet, and at times it really isn’t.
- Your work is very related and falls into a clear trajectory where one video piece/photo informs the next step that you take in conceiving another project. What is your thought process in moving from one project to the next? What are you thinking when you are conceiving your next work?
I don’t know, the images just happen. So, now I am beginning to think that one doesn’t need to talk about mysteries. Sometimes, however, we are blind and we have to work a lot to make money, but for me images are food, without them I am dead. So I continue breathing, and exchanging with the world, and the work just happens at some point of my day or my dreams.