The multidisciplinary artist Ago Paez Vilaro has made an incursion in diverse techniques and styles. From Casapueblo and her Octogono in Uruguay, after the 2016’s tour in Argentina, her scale of mandalas keeps growing.
How do you join art and spirituality?
Art is a language of the spirit. I confirm this everyday when I dig deeply in my internal path, letting everything flow and acting as a channel.
From this channel within you, how do your works born?
Paint is to go into my temple, there I work wherever I am. I enjoy it a lot! I connect by contemplating and feeling all the elements that emerge from the process.
How was it to build Casapueblo in Uruguay with your little hands, your bothers and your parents’ hands, Carlos Paez Vilaro?
We started Casapueblo without even dreaming that it would be an over 5000 meters’ castle. My father said that to build with two hands was easier that to build with the beak as the hornero when building it mud nest. We had fun doing it and without even noticing we created an sculpture to inhabit.
Many artists find creativity by going through difficulties. How does it happen to you?
When I started painting I needed to focus facing the difficulties. Then, i got more deep, to recognize the essence that lives in all of us. There, it began my transformation. I released myself by connecting with my creativity and expressing it at all times.
Tell us about your first exhibition in memory of Copihue.
It was dedicated to the dog my father gave us when my brother’s accident happened, a surviver of the Los Andres tragedy. Copihue was a very special little dog. A car run him over and so I dedicated him my paintings and color to be with him in his flight (to heaven).
What do the whales have to you?
I grew up watching them, I welcomed them each year in their pass toward the south. They come to the Uruguayan coasts to procreate. Their vibration made me happy. Their closeness is a blessing!
With such a recognized father, how did you reach your identity as an artist?
My father did not change when he became famous. I always knew how he was, the good and the bad. That helped me to find my path, motivated by his advice that I must always follow the sun, and so I discovered the sun, within me! I let myself be swayed by its glow, I met the essence of God and my life transformed impregnating me with life and color.
What do you permanently exhibiting in the Gomez Sicre Gallery?
I exhibit in different galleries from over 30 years, but I have an special place there that my father created for me to share my Mandalas and creations.
Why do you choose to create Mandalas?
The Mandala is a point, a center, a circle, a planet, my mother’s belly. Everything starts there.
How does your school of Mandalas eleven years ago?
It emerged in Rosario where my maternal grandmother was born. Her and her family’s home is the current Esteves Museum located in front of the cathedral.
Why from the Southern Cone?
The seed was born in the Southern Cone! Everything is magically connected and from there it expands.
How do you teach the process of making them?
The forms born naturally, they manifest without thinking, but feeling.
What is the “Sanarte”(healing) technique about?
Is to heal through art, sound, color and shape. In the experience with the Mandalas I was able to heal and I keep healing myself, that led to share that experience.
You are multidisciplinary but you choose painting. Why?
I work on pottery, sculpture, or writing, but painting makes me feel alchemist of the color, it enchants me.
I was to paint an airplane?
to make a flaying painting was one of the beautiful foolishness of my father, as also to have a panther brought from the India as a pet when I was a child! The most beautiful thing after painting together, was to fly in it and be able to see it go through the sky.
Which is your biggest stamp in the spiritual and artistic level?
I has wonderful teachers and guides, great artists, friends and colleague of my father. The most important thing is to know the strength of God in my heart, to acknowledge it as my guiding star. It all illuminated from that miracle.
How did you build the Octogono de Ago, your space for activities in adobe and color?
To build in adobe was my father’s dream, since I was a child he told us stories of his sculptures that born from the termites’ houses in Africa. With the experience of Casapueblo, the help of different artists and Jorge Belanko’s direction of the El Bolson in Argentina, I was able to build the Octogono de Ago in the valley of Punta Ballena.
How do you experience the public art and its maintenance?
The murals are created to share art with everybody. Sometimes, we can restore the, and in other occasions time destroy them. I live the present, the joy of painting with children and teenagers, of delivering the mural and to detach from it.
How do you feel the Uruguayan identity?
I carry it in my ancestors. They inspired me to create the internal path to Uruguay to receive the earth , to discover unknown paths and to respect its immensity.
What does the act of go over roads, such as the one of Compostela in Galicia, the Inca in Peru, the Transat Jacques Vabre on Brazil, and the inside of Uruguay, gives you?
By walking I remember my origins, I give thanks to life, to the planet for what it gives us, to my body that holds me and to my spirit that connects me with God, with nature and creation. Walk gives me peace.
How do you see the art nowadays?
Art nowadays starts to manifest from the being. I have the internal certain that the path exists. To be channels to manifest the divine is our mission and art is the way of transmitting what is urgent to away thousands of people which are sleep and need something that move their hearts to go back home.
When do you incorporate angles to your figuration?
I have always been connected to my magi world, the mythology, the life of nature in shapes and colors. I painted angles when my friend Graciela Iriondo invited me to draw in her books, and since that moment they were always present.
You have historically participated on the LLamadas de Carnaval on Montevideo. What are going to do for 2017?
The Candombe and the Llamadas are in me, they start the preparation in a month. The Tambores will be painted with color mandalas, imparting their circular energy to the show.
Rewarding the masculine predominance on the arts, what does the feminine conscience contributes?
The feminine connects with love, the embrace, life, the cell and the mother. Art is love, when it comes out of a woman it has a heart.
What feminine figure has left an unforgettable mark on you?
My mother, Mary Magdalene, Mother Teresa, Frida Kahlo and all the women for their capacity to love.
What is for you necessary, urgent?
To manifest love in everything. Art is a wonderful tool to do it. To heal ourselves to help others heal.
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