Interview: Rubén Torrés Llorca
by Onajídé Shabaka – June, 2005
Shabaka: I remember when I met you back in 1995-96. Why did you choose Miami as a residence as opposed to any other place you could have gone as an émigré from Cuba?
Torrés Llorca: Before I moved to Miami I lived in Sao Paulo for one year, Buenos Aires one year, and Mexico City two years and a half. I had not planned on living in the U.S. because I knew living here was very difficult. I had few friends here but, I am very close with my friends. Friends are very important to me.
I always wanted to be an artist. It is one of the few jobs in the world where you can get paid for what you love to do. The market in those other countries was very difficult. In Mexico City I was able to eek out a living but, it was not something I could count on as permanent. And, the Cuban Embassy was trying to make me return to Cuba. My son was born in Mexico City and I decided that my son was not going to grow up in a society like that, the life of a refugee. I didn’t want him to pass through the same things that I had passed through. So, instead of returning to Cuba, I decided to try the United States, like I had tried the other countries and, Miami was the logical place because I had a couple of friends here. Also, a number of galleries here in Miami were interested in showing my work: Fred Snitzer, Gutierrez, if you remember them.
When I arrived here in April is was so hot. I thought I was going to die. In Cuba, even though it gets hot there is always a cool breeze blowing to keep things tolerable. And when I went through the city and saw the lack of architecture and, that was SO different than Mexico City or Buenos Aires, which are gorgeous cities. I said to myself, “Oh, what is this place! What have I gotten myself into?”
If you remember, at that moment it was impossible to see even good art cinema. The cultural options were so few, so little. Nobody knew anything about the books I wanted to buy. I used to go to book stores where people knew everything about the books they were selling. There were very few art exhibitions and few galleries. There was just no comparison with what I had seen in Havana, Argentina or, Mexico.
Now we’re hearing that Miami is such a great place for art and, that’s good and all but, there’s still not yet a generation of artists from Miami from which there is a something like we had with the MoCA exhibition, “Defining the Nineties.”
Shabaka: This was an exhibition that said in Miami, NYC and, Los Angeles, there were some specific artists that defined or, summed up, a moment in contemporary art.
Torrés Llorca: Right now we have a commercial moment with Art Basel Miami Beach and, it is mostly related to money. And, money is the worse enemy of art.
Shabaka: Were you in attendance in Arté Americas which just ended a week or so ago?
Torrés Llorca: Yes, I was there. It was a quality show. By that I mean that more than 60% of the galleries had very good work. You know, for an artist we sometimes get very bored with the work at art fairs but, this one was good.
Shabaka: However good the fair was, the general consensus was that Arté Americas failed to promote the fair adequately and, galleries were very upset about poor attendance and sales.
Torrés Llorca: Yes, that is true. One well connected collector that I know only found a small article in a local newspaper and rush over during his lunch hour on closing day to see the show. They didn’t seem to spend the money on the marketing for what is basically a commercial venture. From the cultural standpoint it was great in that there were museum quality works from a wide variety of artists. But, there were also some very interesting young artists.
A gallery from Puerto Rico showed very interesting work on child abuse, a very difficult subject, that was well balanced and not overly political.
Shabaka: It’s pretty obvious an artist needs to change and grow during his or her career. When we first met you were making more 3-dimensional works. I’m curious as to why your most recent pieces seem more 2-dimensional. Can you talk a bit about that?
Torrés Llorca: What you probably don’t know about me is that even though I was doing sculpture at that phase, I was trained as a painter. As you know, most of my sculpture, you cannot go around them. They are not truly 3-dimensional. Part of the reason I decided to do that work when I arrived in Miami is because galleries here didn’t seem to have a problem with making holes in the walls for mounting the works.
However, let me tell you, what pays me to most is to do what I find the most entertaining. It’s boring doing the same type of thing over and, over. I have many interests and, I want to explore them. I want to incorporate painting and photography and sculpture. I want to work with new ideas. I want to have fun. The day I don’t make art is the day I get bored. I don’t care about taking a fifteen day vacation because I love to work. I’m a workaholic. It’s funny though, because I don’t produce a lot. I take my time and, what I don’t like, I destroy.
Shabaka: Can you talk a bit about your overall process of art making?
Torrés Llorca: I grew up in a poor Afro-Cuban neighborhood in Havana. We didn’t go to children’s birthday parties, we went to the saints parties. When I was a young teenager I received a very sophisticated formal education. What I try to do is create a balance between these two worlds from which I come. So, my approach to art making is like a psychologist, or medicine man. You have a problem and for that problem, you have a solution. And, the solution tells you have to do the piece. So, what is going to decide how the piece should be is what the surgeon tries to do. The surgery is related to my personal problem at that moment in my life. I’m trying to come up with a solution to my problems and to continuation with my life. When you understand the problem better, you can deal with it, even if you don’t agree.
You know, sometimes people come to me saying they want a piece like I used to make. I tell them that I cannot do it because I don’t even know how it was made because that moment is gone and we, unfortunately, cannot go back in time in that way. I was a different man at that moment. Twenty years ago I was a different man with different problems that needed solutions.
Shabaka: Twenty years ago!! (both laughing)
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