Considering all the feedback you’ve had during your career, do you still perceive a noticeable mental closure of the society in front of particular and taboo themes? What would you let clear and evident with your visual creations?

It would seem people do not like talking about uncomfortable things. Or most people do not like to be disturbed, have their values questioned. My work deals with constructing new realities, speaking from a place of queerness, chronic illness and speculative futures coming from the Global South; I used to get told a lot that there were more “positive” ways to frame my research. My response over the years has evolved, and like myself, I’ve managed to see my work outside of many binaries (positive/negative, fictional/factual, and so on); just because things are the way the are, that does not mean this is the *only* possible configuration for desire, or progress. Instead of thinking through a logic of opposition, I’ve grown into thinking in terms of difference. This is also challenging, because modern thought is intrinsically binary. It is always making value judgments in favor of capital, or efficiency and productivity. Paul Preciado mentioned at a recent talk in Bilbao “to defy binary thought is to enter psychosis”, and for the modern neurotic this is often undesirable, letting go. Now I think of my work as a kind of trap: through the use of rather sensual and alluring materials like glass, or dynamic compositions, my audience is enthralled, like some kind of unconventional ritual. Once they are in my world, then they are confronted with alternate truths, new potentials and possibilities. Surprise.

Share your most significant unpopular opinion that you wish could be normalised.

The idea that artworks are good because they are “relatable”, or because they represent a “community”. Of course visibility is essential, but this obeys a reactionary logic: we can only extend our understanding if we see ourselves in what is in front of us. A logic based on the acceptance of difference, of unconditional love is beyond identification. Maybe something extraordinary about the work is its uniqueness, the specific conditions which constructed a subjectivity able to bring forth art that shakes these foundations.

In your works, a significant contrast is evident in the blend of cybernetic aesthetics, technological applications, and emotional sensitivity. Regarding the use of artificial intelligence and technological tools, is your approach entirely positive, or do you think the excessive use could negatively impact creativity?

I don’t think that tools, technology, is intrinsically good or bad. I think these categories are rather contextual, but that in using them with a profound understanding of their internal processes, I can redirect their power in favour of my interests. In that sense I think of myself as a “maker”, I appropriate different technologies, I recontextualise the way they operate. A huge problem of modernised society is our reliance on technology, while vast majorities of users do not understand them fully, so the direction of technological progress is left to private enterprises with questionable interests. If we all participate in the development of the tools we employ, we gain control over our collective future which will be, more and more, mediated through technology. Regarding creativity and art produced through these means, I sympathise with philosopher Émilie Carrière: if the art being made is meaningless to the extent it can be automated, so be it. If we think of the artist as simply a producer of images, then IA will be its doom and that should be fine. Which is why I believe in producing works which articulate the personal, the collective, knowledge and emotion- works that cannot be replicated through recombining data. Maybe these advancements will force us to finally define what separates us from machines, something disciplines like traditional economics fail to do with abstract models on “human behaviour”. What is human behaviour? What is it to be human?

What would young Luis have wanted to become when he grew up, and if you could choose, is there something you wish you had wanted to do or known much earlier?

I always knew I wanted to be an artist. Although my introduction to art was first through Natural History, and thus understood art as a social and contextual practice, based in knowledge.
When deciding what to study however, I was split between art and science. A huge part of me reckons the importance of developing new knowledge, and while science seemed obvious in its material contributions to society, art seemed more abstract. Eventually I decided to study art, and realised that through the lense of art and my own subjectivity, I could observe science. That I could more critically dissect what we thought were “fundamental laws of nature”, which excluded the perspective of countless minorities. This is why I focus on exploring anti-essentialist perspectives, the idea that nothing is truly “authentic”, because this affirmation excludes all other possibilities of existence. Now I coin my approach as “meta-fictional”, recognising all facts as contextual fictions. Acknowledging this earlier would have saved me a lot of headaches.