INTERVIEW
You are currently in residence at the Cité internationale des arts through a residency programme designed with ENSBA Lyon and as a winner of the Prix de Paris. What does this represent in your career and what does this residency bring you?
"It is a recognition not only of my time at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Lyon (ENSBA Lyon) but also of a whole series of higher studies and professional experiences that lasted about twelve years. This award is a recognition of my efforts and those of my family; it represents for me the beginning of a professional life that has fortunately allowed me to continue to move around to meet people and spaces that have been interested in my artistic practice and in me as a person. The residency at the Cité internationale des arts offers me a privileged space in the heart of Paris to pursue my projects, to meet professionals inside and outside its premises, as well as an intimate space where I can show my research to people who are interested in it. This residency gives me visibility in contemporary art today. This residency shows me, once again, that it is important to generate emotional and human links with people who come from abroad like me. Discovering artists, thinkers, musicians, art people from other parts of the world is something that stimulates me completely and especially to get to know the people themselves. It is clear to me that this year of residency will be very important in my life and what makes me happiest is that here I find another space where I feel very welcome to continue to build and renew myself on a personal and professional level."
What artistic and professional opportunities have arisen since your residency? Is the exhibition Les Sillons #1 in which you are participating at the Ferme du Buisson one of these projects?
"The Cité internationale des arts offers visibility within a professional circuit in Paris and abroad. Thanks to the Cité, with only two months of living here, I have been able to establish links with Brazilian, Spanish, Japanese and French curators, and find people from Latin America, in this case artists, with whom I can express myself in my own language.
The exhibition Les Sillons #1, in which I am participating, was born before my arrival at the Cité. Thomas Conchou, the new director of the Centre d'Art Contemporain de la Ferme du Buisson contacted me last October after seeing photos of my diploma on the school's website. Thomas Conchou and his team appreciate and are interested in my work. Thomas Conchou's invitation as well as that of Inès Geoffroy for the exhibition 100% L'EXPO at La Villette are a series of great opportunities to continue to show my projects and move forward."
Can you tell us a bit about your current and future projects?
"For now, I continue to formally explore the project that earned me the residency at the Cité internationale des arts: naab, which is about a school of Mayan painters during the Late Classic period (600-900 AD), who used white flowers to sign their creations.
My future projects concern my general research illuminating the consequences on lifestyles of the arrival of European Modernity in America, mainly in Mexico, in relation to ancestral techniques. I explored these two projects during my master's degree at ENSBA Lyon and I would like to continue to exploit this form. The first one is about the family heritage of earthen construction techniques and toxic painting techniques in Mesoamerica. The second is research on pre-Hispanic bird feather mosaics and stone carving. Living in the city and having access to different museums and research centres allows me to enrich my investigations and to consider projects in a contemporary context establishing a dialogue with history. One of my main objectives is to establish links with history and in particular with the history of Western art to show that there are different modernities and identities.
BIOGRAPHY
Born in 1991 in Mexico, Omar Castillo Alfaro studied Chemical Metallurgical Engineering at the Universidad Autónoma Nacional de México (2014) before joining the Bachelor of Visual Arts at the same university in 2018. Subsequently, he was in residence at the Faculty of Arts in Medellín, Colombia.
Omar graduated from ENSBA-Lyon (DNSEP-Art) with honours (2022) and won the Prix de Paris 2022 at ENSBA Lyon.
"This process of geographical, artistic and political migration inhabits his work and contributes to the "wild" identity he claims. A repository of traditional know-how, he revisits ancestral craft techniques to question the persistence of traumas linked to the colonial continuum. He borrows as much from the Mayan school of painters as from telenovelas or popular poetry to nourish a practice of sculpture and installation through which the past and history hold the present in question." - Thomas Conchou, director of the contemporary art centre La Ferme du Buisson.
Omar Castillo Alfaro is currently in residency through "ENSBA Lyon x Cité internationale des arts" programme.