Kaleidoscopic No. 5: Hazel Mandujano & Juan Capistran
DIY as a heartbeat and an ethos for collaboration
Leonardo Bravo :
Hello Hazel and Juan, I'm calling from Berlin. It's wonderful to see you guys. It's very early, 7:00 AM in the morning LA, so thank you so much for making the time. It's wonderful to see you again. We have known each other for a while through the years in LA and various collaborations so I thought it would be really great to chat and get an update as I miss so many of my peeps from LA. I wanted to start off and hear about your individual practices and connect to the ethos of collaboration that carries forth in so much of your work.
Hazel Mandujano :
Well thanks for having us. We're both excited about this conversation. So individually, I would say my practice is lately more focused on graphic design. I think one thread that's been consistent for me since before art school has been books -- book making, book design, book production. That's one thing that I've always really loved growing up. Growing up my mom and I were always been very close. And that was one special bonding point that we had is books and reading, taking me to the library, book fairs, that sort of thing. So there's a lifelong love of books for me. So in college I started making comic books, zines, mini comics, which I haven't made in a while, but I still very much love to do.
Hazel Mandujano :
And it's evolved. So when I went back to school for graphic design, I learned how to do the technical aspects of producing a book, I started to understand typography and why it mattered. And I've done a lot in between, a lot of handcrafted projects. I like to weave, I like to sew. I like to crochet and knit. I think hand production has always been a big aspect for me when it comes to making and that's partly again, my upbringing. Having a lot of babysitters from different parts of the world, teaching me how to make things, keeping me entertained. But I think because of the home life I had, it was the best escape I could have to just sit down and focus on something.
Hazel Mandujano:
And then lately and sadly, I've been making a lot of memorial and funeral programs in the past few years. So that's kind of a very truncated version. But I just really love, what's a good way to describe it? I mean, DIY is at my core. Absolutely. So in terms of the history, the aesthetic, the production methods, all of it makes the most sense for me. And it's where I think my genuine sort of heartbeat is in DIY. I think in terms of subject matter it's always been embedded as well for things I'm interested in.
Leonardo Bravo :
We'll switch over to Juan, but I do have a really good anecdote because almost eight years ago or so, around 2014, I did a Big City Forum program that included Kali Nikitas at the Armory in Pasadena with other designers. And Kali in her presentation included your work, she spoke so highly about your work in typography, bringing you up as one of the best students she had at Otis, and she brought up samples of your work. I took notice and created this little note of Hazel, and that's why I reached out to you years later to be involved with Big City Forum, because the way Kali talked about you made such an impression as she emphasized the purpose, attention and focus that you bring to your practice.
Hazel Mandujano:
Oh, thank you. Thank you! I mean, yeah, I think that's one thing I was able to really infuse from my fine art education is criticality. And also, I guess intention. I mean like very focused and intentional decisions. I don't even know if that's the right way to say it. But when I was able to really bring together all of these ideas and passions in terms of production when it came to book making, that was huge for me to really explore, a book from beginning to end. And the distribution and considering that as part of the purpose, intention, and lifespan of the publication. And in terms of typography, I do have my aesthetic, I think my favorite book designer and graphic designer is V. Vale of Re/Search books, who is just so punk rock and makes books using whatever he has access to.
Hazel Mandujano :
But actually, I do have to give props to Kali for opening that door for me and just being supportive and believing in me as a designer. That gave me the confidence to keep digging and keep trying and keep learning, and then having the confidence to open up to my classmates and my friends.
Juan Capistran:
Thanks again for having us. It's great to see you and excited for you and what will happen in Berlin. Yeah. I have to say I'm a little jealous cause I always tell Hazel that we should have been in Berlin 15 years ago. But excited for you and hopefully we get to go and visit you.
Leonardo Bravo:
That would be wonderful. Yeah, you guys can come and would be amazing to do a project together with some independent project spaces here in Berlin.
Juan Capistran:
That would be amazing...but yeah, my own practice. I'm a conceptually based artist. So the projects range anywhere from photography, sculpture, installation, works on canvas. The works always deal or spring from a personal autobiographical moment, but are woven into this context of contemporary American, specifically Los Angeles Mexican American history or histories. I tend to always make work about moments or events that have somehow affected me personally on a very deep level or somehow affected the course of my life. Like Hazel touched on, I grew up an immigrant in a predominantly black neighborhood. So at an early age, I was always trying to find a community. So I was part of a lot of different subcultures growing up and I think that has also influenced my practice, this idea of constantly being in flux and different ideas coming in, colliding and appropriating from different sources.
Juan Capistran:
So there's always this kind of also DIY not necessarily an aesthetic, but a principle in the work. A while ago when we had Mandujano/Cell running we talked about how we like to operate on the periphery or on the outside by choice. Not because we're forced to or because we have no agency. We choose to stand in, but at the same time, out of the mix. I think it gives us a little bit more clarity and a little bit more agency to really do what we are really interested in. It goes to what Hazel was saying about we get to really say no or yes to what we want, and there's a great freedom in that.
Hazel Mandujano :
I think it's also because we're both critical thinkers so we're in an area of like questioning. So I would say it's this place of feeling like we can still push and question and give ourselves space to make our own decisions and not necessarily be part of the construct of what we have to be a part of. As artists we understand that part, but we also push it.
Juan Capistran:
I think we took the ethos and this idea of not being part of the hegemonic every day culture, that for me, I never felt a part of it. For my own, being an immigrant that grew up in a community that was so different to me, I was constantly looking to be, I don't know if I was even looking to be a part of something, but I knew that I wasn't, and that I needed to be able to navigate through all these different worlds. So I think that has carried over to my practice and I think also to Hazel's this idea of being able to navigate multiple identities, multiple worlds, multiple ways of being. And I think as an artist that really helps you in framing work and how you view the world and how you talk about your work and the things that you're interested in.
Leonardo Bravo:
There's many parallels with both of you guys, but also with Juan, because I myself am an immigrant to the US from Chile and came fairly late in eighth grade to a very white suburban enclave of Huntington Beach, CA and by the time I turned 15 or 16 I was very drawn to subcultures of that time, punk rock and hardcore, but also to the whole mod thing. And I remember being a 16 year old and my friend had this amazing photo book that had been republished of all these images of mods in the 1960s in England. And I had such a pull towards that, and the whole deal; the Lambrettas, the scooters, the look, just the whole attitude. I don't know why I was drawn to it, but I already felt like an outsider to begin with and possibly felt like this whole world was a message from somewhere in the past or the future to let me know that I belonged to something else. That held so much agency for me.
Juan Capistran:
Yeah, and I think as an artist at least for me, how I view art and art making, it's about questioning, it's about challenge. It's about pushing ideas and sometimes, I don't know the answers to the questions I pose, but I'm really interested and curious. And especially living here in the States in the time that we're living in, it blows my mind how sometimes it feels like the rest of the country is asleep, you know? Like they could care less of these pressing issues that are affecting us, right? And people move about their day, like nothing.
Leonardo Bravo :
Let's go back to this place of choosing periphery by choice and use that as an anchor for Mandujano/Cell and how that came together. Talk a bit about the ethos, the structural framing of the space, and what you guys did and maybe continue to do. I'm sure it will continue to have iterations, right..in the future?
Hazel Mandujano:
I had always wanted to have some sort of bookstore or a place, and Juan had always been trying to figure out how to make it happen. We started to look for a place and we found the perfect space, for what? And I don't think either of us knew, but we weren't quite sure. So we found an office space in Inglewood with two big beautiful windows facing a street called Regent on the corner of LaBrea. We were trying to figure it out, and I think this is where we really met in terms of our minds when we agreed to leave the space exactly as it was, leave it as an office space, because we started to think about all of our favorite places that we were discovering when we were young, our own interests as like flying solo as just young, kind of weirdos.
Juan Capistran:
Trying to find something in the world that we felt, like how you were saying a connection, connected to. That pulled us in and felt kind of a sense of belonging and..
Hazel Mandujano:
Oh also, just inspired. For me the reference was a small record store in Hermosa Beach called Scooter Records. I never felt that they took me seriously as a teenage girl flipping through their records. For Juan, it was a little different, but we both went to the same record stores and exploring different neighborhoods and sort of finding the punk shops and the underground stuff. So we wanted to create a space that people would discover in, and be together as artists and also to discover maybe something new and sharing things that were exciting to us with people by choosing the books and by creating a visual experience too, when you walked in.
Hazel Mandujano:
And then Leonardo, I think you paid me one of my highest compliments when you said that I was a good selector.
Leonardo Bravo:
Yes, of course, because when I visited it felt that you gave so much purpose and attention to every item there. And it felt like a special place in Inglewood, a place that would have these visual and conceptual treasures and they were all little constellations or mappings of something that added together.
Juan Capistran:
For me Scooter records was the record store that I discovered rock and roll from other places cause he used to stock sixties rock and roll, Latin American rock, non-English speaking stuff. So it was interesting to discover this treasure trove and to realize that there was a world outside of this American culture. To be reminded of that.
Juan Capistran:
I had that at home. I grew up with that. But at the same time you're a kid, you're rebelling against that, you're pushing against your parents, the authority figures. So Scooter Records was an influence. And then also for me, it was Deep River Gallery in downtown LA, growing up or going to school in the late '90's experiencing what Deep River was left a mark in what I felt a community space should be like. And I think around 2014, I wanted to change my focus a little bit from doing solo projects, even though we collaborated on things already, I really wanted to focus on something bigger Yeah, a collaborative project. And I think that's when we really talked about doing it.
Hazel Mandujano :
What I found at Scooter was the music that at that time, no one, none of my friends, even punk friends didn't like. I was listening to I guess slightly more obscure Riot Girl stuff or just stuff that you just didn't hear in Wilmington. We didn't hear Sonic Youth on the radio or Brat Mobile or Cub or whatever, and I found it there. That was exciting, you know? I wanted that feeling for people who came to Mandujano/Cell. So I think for both of us when it was time to make it happen, it was interesting how we ended up with a similar feel of independence as Scooter or Deep River.
Hazel Mandujano:
Also we always maintained our own independence. I think that's one of the parts that I find really interesting about when Juan and I collaborate on anything is that we are both interested in the same ideas but we get there in very different ways.
Juan Capistran:
Very different, Yeah, very different approaches and routes. But at the core we both understand that we, I don't know if agree is the right word, but we are trying to reach the same angle. So the space physically was divided into three areas, a main space, and then the two small offices. And, the naming, the project space was Cell as in we were next to the Inglewood jail and also using the term cell as this kind of, like going back to the body and growth and production, and transmitting ideas, knowledge, and you know infecting them.
Juan Capistran:
But also taking the word cell even deeper into this kind of clandestine operative group that exists underground. Again, there were all these meanings and layers to the name.... There's multiple interpretations.
Hazel Mandujano :
For me Mandujano was important because that last name came from my dad being given someone else's identity when he crossed the border. And then when Amnesty was given we found out who in our family was born in Mexico, who was born here in the US and everyone else got the real last name, the new one. And my brother, my other brother and I who were born here kept Mandujano because it was too expensive to change it. And because Juan and I don't have children together we wanted to somehow keep the name going. So that it was important for me to build a legacy around this name.
Leonardo Bravo :
It's amazing. That's incredible. What a story!
Leonardo Bravo :
Can you share about some of the artists you selected to have as projects.
Juan Capistran:
I think we were interested in working with our own community that we had met along the way. We were interested in working with young emerging artists as well as established artists. Towards the end, our last year of programming all the exhibitions that we did were outside of the space which I think was a really great experience.
Hazel Mandujano :
And it also was a good benchmark for us especially when it came to thinking about how the space would evolve. We both knew this space was gonna evolve, but different roads of getting there. And that really opened our eyes in terms of what this space could be and, and how it can exist. It exists as an idea, it exists as like a mobile purpose. And I get really like imaginative with this but I think for me, it started to feel like it was gonna go into the air, like a mess or something, or go underground and bubble up through the soil.
Hazel Mandujano:
And that was interesting to me in terms of it doesn't need to be in this one physical space, it can start to become the fog and go everywhere. And I think in a different way of thinking, Juan was probably on the same wavelength, and once the shows started to happen more globally, that was amazing. And so when it came time to at at least close the space that we started in, it felt fine. There were some moments where we were like, oh, you know, what's gonna happen here? I guess before we got to that point we already had 15 or 16 exhibitions
Leonardo Bravo:
We started talking about a sense of ethos that has informed your work and how that ethos has manifested in the different projects. It's also interesting to think about what it takes to collaborate, to come together, to understand that you also bring different perspectives and critical awareness and how these things might look or end up being, becoming, and how sometimes tension is essential to making, to lifting something up. I wanted to switch a little bit to your community and pedagogical work and the initial project that we collaborated on Talleres Publicos which was a set of community based workshops in the city of Pacoima with Hazel. You brought this beautiful kind of weaving and paper dying approach to the project.
Leonardo Bravo :
And later on we collaborated on a project with Devon Tsuno at Cal State University Dominguez Hills called Praxis Studio, where we brought local high school students from the community to engage with artists such as, EJ Hill, Mario Ibarra Jr, Ana Llorente and the both of you. So wanted to hear about your experience, what that residency was like working with students, because you approached it by using sound as a building block, using sound as collage building tool with the students.
Juan Capistran:
Yeah. One of the things in terms of the project we really wanted to engage with the students and have them dig in with this project, listen to their community, to their surroundings, to their sense of place. Going back to this idea of critical thinking, it's something that we always want to emphasize when we talk to students or young artists this idea of really looking and listening and taking things in to get a better understanding of your context that you exist in. So we wanted to engage with the students in that way, we wanted them to be able to pause and take in what is around them in a way that they might have not done before. We're visual beings, we see things, we are constantly taking things in that way but we wanted this idea of nudging something or slightly pushing students to go a different direction.
Hazel Mandujano:
Juan came up with the majority of the concept of using sound and we called it Acoustic Ecology, but this idea of experiencing the world through sound I think is important in how we approached it, which is also reflective of our approach when it comes to youth from underserved places, that we both come from that, that is our community.
Hazel Mandujano:
It was really important to us to not treat the students as though we were giving them something that they lacked, that we were there to help or rescue or guide them to this successful path. We are so irritated by that approach because that's what we experienced coming up. We wanted to treat the students as artists, as equals, and as critical thinkers, and that's what made it a really different kind of workshop because the students all walked away with specific skills. They collaborated, they talked to people as artists, you know, so there was a taste of that for them and that critical approach. We secured audio equipment, thanks to you and Devon, so they got to learn how to use these tools and devices, and we also taught them how to access this ability on their own and at home.
Juan Capistran:
Like how to access free apps online to be able to edit their sound works. How to then create images in a very analog way, again going back to this DIY aesthetic and how to produce on a budget.
Juan Capistran:
We were interested in, okay you have a limited set of tools. How then do you take these tools and what you have access to, and then elevate it and then use it in a very sophisticated way, and output a very sophisticated looking thing. We told students, you do this sketch, like what if we throw it through the copy machine and do something with it, like move it around so then it abstracts the image and then produces something else...so we kept pushing them.
Hazel Mandujano:
Like how sound occurs for them, walking down their neighborhood, or down the street or using machines that are office supplies to make art and transforming the image and their ideas. So we ended up making a zine with them and they got to keep one at the end, and at the culmination they showed or exhibited their collages. And we had this panel where we and the students all participated together, instead of us standing there and telling them what we did, well these are the artists too and they should be able to talk about that experience. Ultimately we wanted them to have that experience and value it, so that they weren't just part of something we were doing, we were actually part of something they were doing. When the exhibition happened at the university gallery, we used their sound pieces as part of the artwork so they were collaborators in that aspect as well.
Leonardo Bravo :
That's amazing and so powerful.
Leonardo Bravo :
So to wrap it up, Hazel I was really touched by what you said that part of the work you have been doing is a lot of memorial and funeral type of work; loss, remembrance and grief. So the question is not only what's currently giving you joy, considering all the upheavals we've all felt, social, emotional, and collectively the last two years, but also what's giving you pause. It's so interesting being here in Berlin and watching everything in the United States from afar, and it's almost like political theater. It's like the intensity of everything just feels so jacked up and in that context what's giving you joy, optimism, hope, and what's giving you pause at this moment.
Hazel Mandujano :
I think for me it's the same things, but in different ways. So what's giving me joy is Juan and my family and the joy in being with him and them, and treasuring that because of so much loss I've experienced as well.
Juan Capistran:
I think for me I actually took a hard pause these past two, three years. You know it's been really overwhelming. For years the work that I make talks about this moment of crisis that we are in so then it's very hard to not be overwhelmed by, at least the way I see the world.
Juan Capistran:
That it's not getting any better. So that gets overwhelming and makes me pause. This kind of sense of loss of control and it's become really overwhelming As an artist, what can you really do?
Leonardo Bravo:
And as an artist, you're highly perceptive to it or have this additional sensitivity to these contexts.
Juan Capistran:
I think the only thing that kind of brings me out of it or lifts me out of dread and pending doom, is the idea, taking it all the way back to what we started with, is this idea of what's to come, that there's still this possibility of a better world. That there's still this hope for change in our life.
Juan Capistran:
And the life to come for our families and our friends. That we can still somehow, by creating a little space in Inglewood where people can come together, that they then do something on their own. I think that was one of the things when we had the space and how people would come up to us after we decided to close the space, they would talk about the space and how much it meant to them. And people that we maybe didn't see at shows but they knew of Mandujano/Cell, they had seen or heard of the space and they would compliment us on it or talk about it.
Hazel Mandujano:
Also the myth of the space too, because I have a mentor friend who said, I don't ever wanna go there, I just wanna keep wondering about it. It's not understanding it quite what it is, just knowing you guys are doing something really important.
Juan Capistran:
And to maybe end it on a tip of things to come, you know? We've been in the process of reopening the space for a while now. So Mandujano/Cell 2.0 will be emerging.
Hazel Mandujano:
But we have a new home and I think that's big for us. Like, we want people to come to it I don't know how to put it, I think we feel like we wanna open our home. So that's kind of a hint.
Leonardo Bravo:
That's a lovely way to end with that sense of invitation for folks.
Leonardo Bravo :
Well, listen, I mean, it's been such a pleasure and I deeply respect the work you guys do both individually and collectively. I love the authenticity you bring to it all. I mean that's part of your ethos having that authenticity that feeds into everything you do. So I truly appreciate the conversation. I truly appreciate the way we've been able to connect over the years, and I hope to continue that here in Berlin and beyond.
Hazel Mandujano :
Thank you so much, Leonardo. And thanks for everything you do and, and staying connected with us and just being supportive and such a good friend. So thank you so much.
Leonardo Bravo:
Okay, you guys. Thank you. Adios!
So proud of those two!!!
Thanks for the nice comment!