How and when did you decide to become an artist?
Being an artist is a commitment that you renew every day of your life. It’s a call that gravitationally pulls you simultaneously inward and outward. There is a growing biological need: the need to know, compare, observe, expand, and evolve. It’s an ongoing, cyclical, and relentless process of learning, discovery, experimentation, struggle, grit, failure, and success. Professionally speaking, I began my career in the late ‘90s, progressively gathering momentum. I moved to the United States in the early 2000s, receiving recognition and support for projects that became exponentially more ambitious. I grew my international practice, opened a second studio in Mexico City in 2013, and never stopped.
Your research seems to encompass a number of diverse fields of study, like philosophy and mathematics, politics and science, history and geography, among others. What inspires you to engage in so many different disciplines?
I’m interested in the innate desire, the unstoppable drive human beings have to journey into the invisible dimension, the unknown: to collect data, synthesise information, attain knowledge, and create meaning; the socio-political context that catalyses events; the natural phenomena and geological capsule that constitute the environment where everything happens. American physicist and philosopher John Wheeler (1911-2008) introduced the idea of a “participatory universe”—that existence emerges as an articulation of the connection between cognition and reality. We are not external observers, we are part of that which we seek to understand. Many of my recent projects emerged from this idea of the relationship between human intelligence and universal consciousness, as an intrinsic and necessary part of natural processes.
Your most unforgettable exhibition: where, when, and why?
Each exhibition gives birth to the next exhibition. Like a Russian doll, one contains countless more within. They’re all special and unforgettable in their own way. Though separate and distinct, they bleed into one another—a series of autonomous parts that ultimately coalesce as a cohesive conceptual whole. Each exhibition contributes to the construction of a growing personal alphabet, opening new questions and bringing me new answers.
Can you talk about your project currently on view at the Mattatoio in Rome? How did you conceive and orchestrate such a monumental and complex show during this difficult time?
The exhibition was conceived as an open laboratory, an experiential environment in constant and continuous evolution. I envisioned a live intervention with a three-month performance that gradually unfolds over the entire duration of the show. I thought of something that has no beginning and no end, that does not correspond to a specific space-time, but is simply the cross-section of a process.