Kaleidoscopic No. 9: Marina Salvo

An artist's journey....from Asturias to Berlin

Leonardo Bravo:

Marina it’s so nice to meet with you here as it's actually the first time I do a Kaleidoscopic interview in person instead of on Zoom. So it's really great to meet up with an artist especially after having seen your artwork at your studio. Thank you so much for joining me.

Marina Salvo:

Thank you very much, Leonardo. It's a total pleasure being here. Thank you for the invitation to speak about my work. I was very happy when you told me to have this meeting, this opportunity. I really feel it was very easy to talk with you in an artistic sense, but also like a human being. I think this is important also to share how we feel with our art process. Yeah. So it's a pleasure.

Leonardo Bravo:

I'm interested in the fact that you are originally from Spain and that you are here in Germany, in Berlin; to learn more about your journeys, your travels, what got you here to Berlin, and how you ended up here.

Marina Salvo:

Okay, so well, I was in Barcelona. I moved in different countries, as you know, and in the last moment before I came to Germany, I was in Barcelona and I was doing a program, the name is Bar Project, and it's about contemporary practice, but more or less also how you present a project. I did “Punto de Escucha/Hearing Point” which was a project related with social issues related to suicide. So I was doing this research and then afterwards my goal actually was to go to Los Angeles, to attend CalArts, but, life sometimes changes, even when you have a plan. I ended up having an invitation to come to Germany, for a job offering to run a castle, Schloss Muhlberg in Brandenburg in the countryside.

Leonardo Bravo:

Wait, Marina, you said to run a castle in Germany? That's a pretty interesting job!

Marina Salvo:

You can imagine as I was already settled in Barcelona, which is very nice city, and I have this opportunity to come to Germany, to this very small town. And at the beginning I thought, okay, I will go just three or four months, like a residency. But then I while I was there something happened and I had the opportunity to be the director of the place. The owner of the site is a person that I had worked with before in Mexico City. So the project itself was more like a real estate renovation, but we were doing also doing artist's residencies. Mm-hmm. So yeah, I was multitasking throughout ....but yeah, crazy!

Leonardo Bravo:

So you were doing everything at once. And taking care of this incredible property, right?

Marina Salvo:

Abandoned actually. Also sometimes. It was a scary, and even there were…

Leonardo Bravo:

Ghosts there, Marina?

Marina Salvo :

I never see it but I felt it. But yeah, it was a huge experience and a big change. And while I was there I also applied to go to LA to CalArts to do an MFA and I was accepted but then this crazy pandemic moment came and it was not an option anymore. So instead I decided to come to Berlin and even though I wasn't planning to staying in Germany, but the more time I spend here, I realized it's one of the best countries to be an artist living in a very contemporary city.

Leonardo Bravo:

There's so much arts and culture and history here in Berlin and Germany. How have you adapted or started to connect and started to do your own work?

Marina Salvo :

Okay. So in this point I need to say I'm not very connected in this city. I mean, in the sense, or in the level of connection I had before in Barcelona or in other countries, such as Mexico City when I was there. In Berlin I feel everything is feels a bit slower than in other countries. So this, I feel also in myself, because it's a different culture, a different language altogether. At the beginning, you need to feel comfortable to know the manners of the people.

Marina Salvo:

And I think it's the same in the arts to be connected. Because here, compared to how remember in the United States or other countries, you go to an exhibition and it's very easy to talk with everyone. And here, I don't know if it's just my impression or my feeling, but it's not as easy to.

Marina Salvo:

But I think it's also interesting to understand that it's new for me and now I'm enjoying thinking of it like a long term project. Which is, okay, let's respect the process! And this is what I'm doing now, as I consider myself, doing more artistic production during this last year, so now I'm ready to be connected and to talk Germans about it all!

Leonardo Bravo:

That's such a great point because I think that's part of my own process. I've started to learn that it does take time and will require some time to really, not just to connect, but to also understand, this country and this place and the way people do things and how things work here in terms of arts and culture. So that's nice to hear that you've started that process as well.

Leonardo Bravo:

I went to your studio for a visit, and really loved the new pieces you are working on, which are more painterly. Can you share about your thinking on these and how you've started to work with them and the process behind them. The surfaces are really beautiful and atmospheric, the way you work the layers and the textures.

Marina Salvo :

Thank you very much. I really appreciate it. I realized that after doing many projects that were overtly social or more political, I began to think a lot about what's in the art for me. What's the meaning in my life to be an artist and to do art, and in which way I want to do this. Because before I was very focused on art that conveyed our power to communicate and talked about social and political issues.

Marina Salvo:

And it was important for me and it was important in that moment. But then when I was alone by myself, I realized it wasn't what I wanted. And painting has always been for me a first priority. But it's crazy how you can change. How you can change your path and your passion.

Marina Salvo:

As I started to paint again, it was wow! Like really pulling me in and I could feel a sense of joy and happiness doing that. And with the colors, I really feel something that I have a natural talent to do it. Because with abstract painting, you can have the technique that I learned in the university, but it's also the innate talent to mix color. For me it's something that you need to have a natural affinity for. And honestly yes, what I'm doing now is I will say more focused on doing something beautiful. But it's also more than that because it's kind of how you can see the world from an artist's point of view.

Leonardo Bravo:

The works have a sense of atmosphere and related to the way the skies might change here, especially this northern European light which is definitely different than a mediterranean light or where I come from in California. It's different radiations of color. Is that something that you're thinking about or looking at?

Marina Salvo :

For sure the skies, for me, it's there, it's something very important how they change, how you can feel the color change all the time. Which is something very poetic in a way. What I experience with the painting, I don't experience with anything else, it's this kind of transportation and beyond with the abstract painting.

Marina Salvo :

I mean that it's the same sense of when we travel, you see things that your brain can record. Something that you see and then you paint in those colors.This is what I experience sometimes in the painting.

Marina Salvo :

I feel so connected to being in the moment with painting and sometimes I feel I'm totally out of my mind and very out of control. But it's true. The work that I'm doing now is painting the elements of the skies and also the element of gold, which I have some pictures and photography of myself also with this material. This is very intimate but also something in relation with a sense of personal transformation also. Like an artist, but also as a person as well. Which are more my priorities now than before, and more like my goal really.

Leonardo Bravo:

Let me just describe it, but the gold is sort of a gold leaf that you apply in different parts of the painting as well.

Marina Salvo :

Yes, and I think now I feel I have various elements, inclding the skies, the gold in the painting and also, sorry, I think the Spanish word is nido.

Leonardo Bravo:

A bird's nest!

Marina Salvo :

Yes. A bird's net. I found in this form something that is naturally I found in nature but it's also important for me in this sort of poetic way. So I've been playing for a while with those natural forms and the gold on the painting, to perhaps refer to a sense of rebirth.

Leonardo Bravo:

Something else that I saw in the works, is maybe a sense of memory. I don't know if nostalgia would be it. Can you share how you grew up in in Spain. Were you interested in the arts as a young child? Were you inspired by your parents or your family?

Marina Salvo:

My family, my parents were artisans.

Leonardo Bravo:

So they made things with their hands.

Marina Salvo :

Yes! Which I think is totally the definition of being an artist, right? Absolutely. Like just doing something with your hands. They have a studio atelier in the house. And I was born in this house, which is very special for me when I go visit my father as he's still living in the same house

Marina Salvo:

And this is in a very small town in the middle of the mountains in Asturias. In a village actually.

Marina Salvo:

I have my first memories of jumping into the mountains, like very free, and the very same approach to life also. I think this had a deep influence in my life. So I'm so happy to have had this opportunity to grow up in this kind of environment.

Leonardo Bravo:

And when you said your parents were artisans, what kind of work did they do?

Marina Salvo:

They did textiles. But the family from my father's side, they're all artists, and clothes designers, and also textiles, and painting. They all had this amazing ability. Yeah. One of my first memories when I was five years old there in Asturias, and it's a memory that I return to a lot, it was me in the school painting a mountain scene and the teacher told me, you can paint it in any color you want. And I keep this memory very close because it felt so good having this feeling of painting whatever I wanted. This was very important and grounding. Later on in my teenage years I wanted to choose something artistic because I was also dancing in the conservatory for five years.

Marina Salvo:

And then the only thing I was motivated to do was painting. So from the beginning, I knew I had to do something in relation with art. And then I studied art in general but also mozaics and restoration for two years in the south of Spain. I had the option of continuing to study restoration or go into fine arts and I decided for fine arts because I could have the freedom to create which is very important for me. So I really knew it was my place from day one. And even in some periods, we all need to do the things to have money or whatever. But even with that, I've always known that art is my thing. Even if sometimes you cannot earn a lot of money. But it doesn't matter. It's not just about this. It's more, like it is my way to live.

Leonardo Bravo:

That's so interesting what you said, because as a child, I grew up in the south of Chile in a little town called Valdivia. Two things that connect to what you were talking about in Asturias, that the landscape of nature is very powerful. I felt very similar as a little kid in the south of Chile, it's like you feel the wind, you feel the energy of nature. It's almost as if nature has its own energy, and it's almost like there are spirits in nature itself. And then that freedom of being an artist, as a five year old and being able to paint. I also had this ability to paint and it was so empowering and freeing. And it was just such a joy. And that's like, you know, that's the thing I've always wanted in my life. It's that same joy.

Marina Salvo :

Yeah!

Leonardo Bravo:

The work that I had seen when I first met, you seemed like you were doing very conceptual, maybe socially engaged work, and really thinking about larger issues such as immigration, and issues of mental health and care. Can you share a little bit about some of those projects. The one that comes to mind is about the cardinal directions to North, East, South, West.

Marina Salvo :

Definitely. So I started this project because I consider myself a very empathic person and of course if I'm in the mountains, I will be empathic with the mountains!

Marina Salvo :

But this project you mentioned, “Dentro y Fuera, Inside and Outside” which is this kind of meeting points. I was in Mexico and I was very intrigued with the symbology of meeting points. At that point I was highly aware of the feeling and the thought of being in another country. So this started as a way of thinking through this kind of confusion sometimes you can feel when you are in different territories.

Marina Salvo :

And you are not inside, but not outside. So you start to feel like, who am I? Which is my real home? Or I want to be there or here, these unsettled feelings that everyone goes through even if you don't move territories. Sometimes you can feel this way in the same neighborhood you grew up in. It's more like a physical mentality and feeling. So I started thinking a lot about that, this sense of perhaps displacement, and I was also having conversations and interviews with philosophers. But then when I came back to Cadiz which is where I grew up as a teenager in the south of Spain.

Leonardo Bravo:

And Cadiz is very much across the straight of Gibraltar, right? It’s very close to northern Africa.

Marina Salvo:

From Cadiz you can see Africa and Morocco! And as a European you can cross the strait. But people from Morocco, they see us as well, but they cannot cross. This is the issue. And the disturbing thing about frontiers, about borders.

Leonardo Bravo:

It also brings to light the privilege of being Europeans. And people from other parts of the global south not having that access, that entry point.

Marina Salvo:

So when I came to Cadiz, this project began to change because of the contextual meaning. I became aware of this problematic with people from North Africa crossing and arriving at the beach on a Patera which are refugee boats but with no security or safety for the people traveling across. And for me this brought up the questions of why is that? I started to think about this sense of inside and outside, but also the sense these people needing to move, and risking so much in a situation that is untenable and you have to leave it behind, but ultimately you are not allowed to have these basic human rights of asylum.

Marina Salvo:

And living there, I became so aware of this situation and it's important for me to be part of the context that I am in with people. I'm really interested in the local context and history, the local sense. So being open to discussing and talking about these issues, but also realizing how everyone has such different views and sometimes they think the opposite or bad things about these people who are trying to better their lives by trying to cross. So this is a kind of fear of the other sometimes.

Leonardo Bravo:

It's interesting because it's very much related to what happens in the United States, the way the border between Mexico and the United States signifies such a division and a rupture. And, Americans, not all but a large portion, tend to think of those people as the other, you know, they don't want 'em to come here. When in fact those are human beings and because of their life conditions and the economic precarity they live in, they need to seek a better life.

Marina Salvo :

It's the same. Totally the same. I think is always the same between territories, countries, politicians who have more power than others. So when I was in Cadiz I felt I needed to make this part of my project for sure, so I became involved with a human rights association, APDHA which is the main one in the south of Spain. I had the opportunity to do workshops also in the local towns, which for me was very important because speaking about these issues with classrooms in the south of Spain with children of 12 and 11 years old, this was very powerful for me. Most of the time this kind of project can be more powerful in artistic way than doing an exhibition, because when you do an exhibition is in a context of the art market and art community, something that all artists know.

Marina Salvo :

But using art as a tool to speak about issues and things with people that they don't usually speak about in many contexts, for me is very, very powerful. And to be able to do that with the communities I worked with was very beautiful. And because that I had some incredible results with this project as I then had the opportunity to do a residency in a space called Marca Blanca which is an artists space but also an editorial press in Madrid. We published 12 letters from some of the children involved in the project in Cadiz, and because the prompt was to ask "what will you write to a child when they are in Morocco, before they cross the channel?”

Leonardo Bravo:

This is so emotionally powerful!

Marina Salvo :

One of the letters was basically saying run. In capital letters, the children wrote "run", because of course when the refugee families arrive onto the beach, in the south of the Spain, they have to run. Because otherwise the police will try to catch them of course. And another student she wrote in the letter, come, don't worry, you can be at my home. I will pay for you for your flight. And suddenly another student, she came to me and she asked me, teacher, can I also pay for their fligth? Beautiful. And I say, wow, this is incredible.

Leonardo Bravo:

It really speaks to what you were saying about how art can be such a powerful tool to connect people, to create empathy like you were talking about, and to create understandings.

Marina Salvo :

Yes. But it's very difficult work as sometimes we are trained to do this and we don't have the tools of a social worker as an example. We don't have the tools, but sometimes artists, we want to do everything. And this is the power also of being an artist, we can do whatever, which is very privileged. We are very privileged in that sense.

Marina Salvo :

But I do love this about art. That we don't have to define those limits or boundaries but I'm in the feeling of, but sometimes I think these projects require more time and deep thinking about the context and the limits of our impact.

Marina Salvo :

At the end of the day, I'm feeling myself, okay I can give more of myself. But you begin to question your role and how much you can give of yourself. Because I have just this moment to them, but no more. Ultimately this personal approach requires to give so much of yourself. But in general, what's beautiful or what's important is what the participants can gain from it. What becomes powerful for them. I feel it's good that these projects are finished. Because really with this kind of project dealing with migration or other social and political issues, you can work for all your life, because ultimately these are really lifelong projects for activists. For activists, they might work with some critical issue for their entire career. Because of course, you never truly resolve these issues in the larger scope of things, you can never finish talking about this because it continues to happen.

Leonardo Bravo:

It's really interesting to hear you talk about that work and how your own emotional sensitivity, your personal sensitivity as a human being, connects to these issues, and then thinking now about the work that you're currently doing. There's so much emotional sensitivity in the paintings that you're working on. The mediums are totally different, but I can see the connections and the bridge, between these different dimensions that you are involved in.

Marina Salvo:

That's beautiful to hear, because sometimes we don't personally realize or understand those connections. But I think it's true when you do something from,

Leonardo Bravo:

The heart!

Marina Salvo :

Your heart, yes. It's always honest. For me, this is very important position to be in the art world, but in life itself to be honest. With your work, which is as we know, not all artists nowadays could say that because the structure is very powerful in a bad sense.

Leonardo Bravo:

It can be. It's a business. It's an art market. So there's that aspect of it, as a business based on the creation and the labor of artists who tend to be very sensitive human beings.

Marina Salvo :

Yes. And also the ego involved, which is sometimes a very important role to have in those contexts. Like having this position of empowerment about your art, which I don't deny any of that. I understand , the business and it's good to have the business as well.

Marina Salvo :

But I think also like an artist, like a human being, you need to choose what kind of space you want to inhabit, what you want to be. Sometimes it's another approach or a different room in the space. And not just doing something to have the position or leverage, but we need to do art because it's urgent, because otherwise our emotions could be very confused. Or we can have very bad feelings about life itself, about creativity, and art is give us this fuel to continue to push forth, and we need to respect that.

Leonardo Bravo:

So to finish off, Marina, what is inspiring you right now? Either in things that you're reading or looking at, either related to the arts or not.

Marina Salvo :

Okay. Now, in this point, what is inspiring me is to try to be in the present.

Marina Salvo :

To be really in the present. And sometimes it is very hard. And this is what is motivating me right now, like seeing what I'm seeing, the colors, the sky, the moment. But enjoying the present without any expectations about the future. I will say in a more professional way, I'm focused to be more connected here in Berlin. I think it's a very good city to have and develop opportunities. And I'm looking forward to that because I'm more in the studio now, I have already some pieces I feel are strong and compelling, so I'm looking forward to be more active and productive.

Leonardo Bravo:

Oh, that's great. Well, it's been such a pleasure meeting you here in Berlin. And also, the fact that I'm a recent arrival to Berlin as well, it's great to meet somebody who speaks Spanish, who's in the arts, and to have that connection and understanding. And this is wonderful to learn a little bit more about you.

Marina Salvo :

Thank you. It's been great!

https://marinasalvo.net/