Methods of Art – Archive of Artists Interviews

I tend to say that my studio is a museum where I observe visitors all the time. It’s a style of studio. I
also have a traditional studio I would say. That is really where I produce more conventional artworks.
What is it really what drives the product? I feel very strongly that the idea should always be the
driving force of whatever you do. In other words, I don’t believe in this idea that I should go to the
studio and say, I’m going to make a painting today or I will be making a painting that will look like this
or that. I don’t operate that way. I operate more in a sense that I need to make a project that is really
about the relationship between land and the sea, or something about borders. I study the problem
and as I study the problem, ideas emerge and issues emerge and that leads me to certain resources,
certain things that might lead me to ways in which I can respond to them and then when I am in
that moment of responding to them then I can look at the set of tools that I have available to do
that. It could be through a cartoon, it could be through a drawing, it can be through building a giant
structure, or making a video. The limitations are just my own capabilities of what I can do to respond
to it. I also wonder maybe because I am a performance artist, I think that I like to adopt those roles in
the production process of becoming someone else. So I have become a book store owner, a book
seller, I have become a research institute director, I have become a social protest singer, and a
bunch of other different identities and to me that becomes a very important aspect of the entire
work. Just adopting and accepting that identity.

Pablo Helguera / Production

Bio

* 1971 Mexico City/MX, based in New York City. Helguera works with installation, sculpture, photography, drawing, socially engaged art and performance. His work focuses in a variety of topics ranging from history, pedagogy, sociolinguistics, ethnography, memory and the absurd, in formats that are widely varied including the lecture, museum display strategies, musical performances and written fiction. His work as an educator has usually intersected his interest as an artist, making his work often reflects on issues of interpretation, dialogue, and the role of contemporary culture in a global reality. Pablo Helguera performed individually at the Museum of Modern Art /Gramercy Theater, in 2003, where he showed his work “Parallel Lives”. His musical composition, “Endingness” has been performed by the Detroit Symphony Orchestra. Helguera has exhibited or performed at venues such as the Museo de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid; ICA Boston; RCA London; 8th Havana Biennal, PERFORMA 05, Havana; Shedhalle, Zurich; MoMA P.S.1, New York; Brooklyn Museum; IFA Galerie, Bonn; Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum, Tokyo; MALBA museum in Buenos Aires, Ex-Teresa Espacio Alternativo in Mexico City, The Bronx Museum, Artist Space, and Sculpture Center, amongst many others. Since 2007, he is Director of Adult and Academic programs at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. He has organized close to 1000 public events in conjunction with nearly 100 exhibitions. In 2010 he was appointed pedagogical curator of the 8th Mercosul Biennial in Porto Alegre, Brazil, which took place in September, 2011. He is currently Senior Resident of Location One in New York. He presented a solo exhibition at Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City in 2012

http://pablohelguera.net

Transcript

PDF

Credits

The interview was conducted on March 4 2015 at Museum of Modern Art, New York.

Interviewed by: Johannes M. Hedinger

Filmed and recorded by: Konstanze Schuetze

Edited by: Paul Barsch

Transcript by: Wolfram Eggebrecht, Lea Hoßbach, Ella Tetrault

Produced by: University of Cologne (Cologne), Institut für Kunst&Kunsttheorie