Today we are talking with Ariadna Sar, Venezuelan artist born in Caracas in 1993, she is an integral artist with a lot to tell us about her artistic work, enjoy!
Astrid: What artistic work have you developed throughout your life?
Ariadna: Visual creation through ink drawing, watercolors, oil and acrylic painting, are the traditional means through which I form ranges of vivid colors as in my context, Caracas. I have also produced in other graphic printing techniques such as monotype, woodcut and linocut, not to mention digital illustration.
Astrid: Which branch of art do you identify yourself with the most?
Ariadna: I am passionate about drawing, I seek in it the expressiveness of the stroke to tell the world around me and how I see it.
Astrid: Can you relate performance with painting and achieve an artistic fusion?
Ariadna: Yes, for me painting is all pictorial manifestation, that is, the attractive qualities to the eye that an image may have, whether it is real or represented. For example, in my performance Ofrenda al Agua, I cover myself with clay, turning it into pigment on my body. In this case, by impregnating myself with this element I connect myself to the intention of unifying myself to the work.
Astrid: Have you participated in events, exhibitions, forums, at a national level? Tell us about that and with what artistic work you participated.
Ariadna: I have exhibited at my university, Unearte, at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Caracas. After graduating I moved to France where I have done artistic projects with communities and recently in April of this year I exhibited with the Ojo Loco Cinema Festival.
Astrid: Are you an independent artist or do you develop within a crew or collective?
Ariadna: I am an independent artist and my pseudonym is TIMOTOHANA, a compound word in reference to the name of the tribe of the southern Andes of Merida, where my paternal line comes from. I conjugate it with the Japanese word for “flower”. Taking into account the phenotypic similarities and the favorable maritime displacement between the region of Japan and Peru, I think that the Andean tribes could be descended from those.
Astrid: What personal message do you try to project when you express yourself artistically?
Ariadna: Depending on the concept, the message. My main project as an artist is Lo Pictórico en el Cotidiano, on which I based my thesis to graduate from Unearte and which I just exhibited for the first time in France at the Festival de Cinema Ibero-Latino-Americano Ojo Loco. This work speaks of my city, Caracas and my affective relationship with the landscape. On the other hand, I have devised and am producing the series Dónde está Éros, an organic investigation that portrays the amorous gestures of found bodies. There is also another important project where I involve the international community of France called Our House : the whole world, which I carried out with the mayor’s office of Grenoble in early 2020.
Between talking about public space, community or erotic intimacy, I always keep drawing in search of the expression of line and color in figuration.
Astrid: Do you have any upcoming projects?
Ariadna: I want to generate investigations of urban, anthropological and social reflection based on Lo Pictórico en el Cotidiano, which has now been transformed into Paisaje Lúdico (to make it a more accessible title to the public). A project to be realized with the participation of the communities of the city of Grenoble, France where I live from the second half of 2019.
Astrid: What social impact do you think your work as an artist can have?
Ariadna: I think my proposal is positioned in the valorization of the context and the poetry that we find in it. I like to know the context of others through pictorial dialogue and thus refigure the imaginary that we can hold of a place. In this sense, yes, I think that inviting to look at the urban imaginary is an opportunity to analyze it and find sensitive reflections that can bring a positive transformation to it.
Astrid: Between digital and manual tools, which one is more comfortable for you?
Ariadna: It would be difficult to classify one as a favorite. It is more comfortable to express on a large canvas what we feel, but by using digital media, it saves a lot of the cleanup work involved in traditional painting. So as far as comfortable as such, the second would be the most comfortable, yes.
Astrid: Would you do this for the rest of your life?
Ariadna: Well, I have already committed myself for quite a while, it seems important to me to hold the flame of my dream along the way and to continue trusting the rest of the steps that life allows me, with its small and big signs.
Thank you very much to Ariadna for allowing me to conduct this interview today, for me it is always an honor to learn more about these great artists and their talents, I invite you to follow her on her social networks and digital platforms.
Social media:
Instagram: @timotoari / @timotohana
