Evans Mbugua. Courtesy of the artist.

ARTE & PALABRA. CONVERSATIONS WITH CARLOS DEL AMOR

There is a work by Evans Mbugua (Kenya, 1979) titled Live life as a celebration that could serve to define the work of this African-born artist who, before he was twenty, moved to France, integrating what he was, what he lived, what he is and what he lives in his art. In this work in which he appeals to the celebration of life, we see a boy playing or dancing - it doesn't matter if it is one thing or the other because playing and dancing is celebrating - and happy, and this is intuited in the rest of the works, happiness is vindicated through small and inconsequential big things. A chat, a ball, a place.

Evans' work is made up of bits and pieces of what he has been living and collecting, throwing into an imaginary suitcase from which, at a specific moment, he extracts the concrete experience of a lived experience to transfer it to the canvas. We are what we are because we come from where we come from and we are what we are because on the way we transform ourselves in an imperceptible but constant way. For this reason, and continuing with the play on words, in order to define what we will be, we must keep in mind what we were and at the same time not be afraid to build ourselves a little every day with the reality that surrounds us and molds us. Roots, origins, happiness, everyday life, essential ingredients in the vital adventure we undertake every morning.

We are all Spinning around the Same Sun 1. Oil and acrylic on methacrylate. 2022.

If you had to define your art in one sentence, what would it be?

My work is a contemplation on humanity from the perspective of a Kenyan living in France.

Every artist is what he is because of where he comes from, because of his origins and roots. Could your art be understood without your roots?

My work could be understood without necessarily my roots, because our lives are made up of lived experiences. And I pick out memories which are important to me, and I translate them into artwork. So my roots give me a certain perspective. But I am interested in topics, in ideas, in concepts around the world in which we all live in. So anyone can be able to identify with a childhood gimmick, with a couple dancing, or with a friend taking a selfie.

What is the clash between Kenya and France, and how do they coexist in your work?

There are many differences between Kenya and France, and the most obvious one being the language. I'm an anglophone living in a francophone country. So what I'm interested in is the influence that these differences have on the person that I am and the person that I'm becoming. As time goes by, I believe that our DNA, our human DNA, is embedded with cultures and traditions and histories which have been passed on through generations. And so we are never just one thing. So I'm interested in the contemporary hybrid identity that we become, especially today, accelerated by the Internet, social media, etc, etc.

We are all Spinning around the Same Sun 3. Oil and acrylic on methacrylate. 2022.

It's curious how everyday, the acts that are part of the routine like a boy playing football or a conversation can be a gesture as exciting as any other and be elevated to the category of art. What importance do you give to the little things?

I'm interested in the everyday, mundane, lived experiences, because these memories construct who we are. Art plays an important role in informing us of human feelings. But I think that art can also be a tool to help us heal, to help us learn how to love. It can be a tool to restore and affirm our humanity. And I think that's what I would want, to use my art to participate in our life, in what we are becoming today. Well, at least I hope that art can be useful to healing.

Is happiness an important ingredient for creation?

Yes. I think I always want to be happy with what I'm creating. In any case, we all want to be happy, and we have a right to find happiness. The Dalai Lama says something like that, and I totally agree.

We are all Spinning around the Same Sun 2. Oil and acrylic on methacrylate. 2022.

How much of your work is "emotional archaeology"?

It's a new term for me, although probably most of my work adheres to this idea of emotional archaeology, because emotions are the heart of my work.

You have to live to create, should art be a lived art?

For me, every form of art is a living expression. And so for art to exist, it has to be experienced by living beings. So I think one exists because of the other. Art cannot exist without being experienced.

We are all Spinning around the Same Sun 4. Oil and acrylic on methacrylate. 2022.

Where do you think your art is going?

My art has evolved a lot recently. The works I will be presenting at Art Madrid 2024 are part of the conclusion of a series about childhood that I started around 2017 called Back to the Future.

From there, I'm going to continue a series that I started recently, in a gradual way, where I'm exploring adolescence or young adulthood. Through a character who is on the African continent, probably in Kenya, and who I would like to place in a period between the sixties and seventies, to also help me dig into my own family history. It is a project that I am very excited about at this stage of my creation.

On the other hand, I want to move from the flat surfaces like paper or methacrylate that I have been using to other more sculptural supports. I have begun to experiment with soft sculpture and textiles, as well as ceramics and bronze.

I think it will be a very exciting future in which I will embark on new projects whose forms of representation occupy a different space than what I have done before, so I am very excited.

Thank you Carlos!

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The practice of the collective DIMASLA (Diana + Álvaro) is situated at a fertile intersection between contemporary art, ecological thinking, and a philosophy of experience that shifts the emphasis from production to attention. Faced with the visual and material acceleration of the present, their work does not propose a head-on opposition, but rather a sensitive reconciliation with time, understood as lived duration rather than as a measure. The work thus emerges as an exercise in slowing down, a pedagogy of perception where contemplating and listening become modes of knowledge.

In the work of DIMASLA (Diana + Álvaro), the territory does not function as a framework but rather as an agent. The landscape actively participates in the process, establishing a dialogical relationship reminiscent of certain eco-critical currents, in which subjectivity is decentralized and recognized as part of a broader framework. This openness implies an ethic of exposure, which is defined as the act of exposing oneself to the climate, the elements, and the unpredictable, and this means accepting vulnerability as an epistemological condition.

The materials—fabrics, pigments, and footprints—serve as surfaces for temporary inscriptions and memories, bearing the marks of time. The initial planning is conceived as an open hypothesis, allowing chance and error to act as productive forces. In this way, the artistic practice of DIMASLA (Diana + Álvaro) articulates a poetics of care and being-with, where creating is, above all, a profound way of feeling and understanding nature.

In a historical moment marked by speed and the overproduction of images, your work seems to champion slowness and listening as forms of resistance. Could it be said that your practice proposes a way of relearning time through aesthetic experience?

Diana: Yes, but more than resistance or vindication, I would speak of reconciliation—of love. It may appear slow, but it is deliberation; it is reflection. Filling time with contemplation or listening is a way of feeling. Aesthetic experience leads us along a path of reflection on what lies outside us and what lies within.

The territory does not appear in your work as a backdrop or a setting, but as an interlocutor. How do you negotiate that conversation between the artist’s will and the voice of the place, when the landscape itself participates in the creative process?

Álvaro: For us, the landscape is like a life partner or a close friend, and naturally this intimate relationship extends into our practice. We go to visit it, to be with it, to co-create together. We engage in a dialogue that goes beyond aesthetics—conversations filled with action, contemplation, understanding, and respect.

Ultimately, in a way, the landscape expresses itself through the material. We respect all the questions it poses, while at the same time valuing what unsettles us, what shapes us, and what stimulates us within this relationship.

The Conquest of the Rabbits I & II. 2021. Process.

In your approach, one senses an ethic of exposure: exposing oneself to the environment, to the weather, to others, to the unpredictable. To what extent is this vulnerability also a form of knowledge?

Diana: For us, this vulnerability teaches us a great deal—above all, humility. When we are out there and feel the cold, the rain, or the sun, we become aware of how small and insignificant we are in comparison to the grandeur and power of nature.

So yes, we understand vulnerability as a profound source of knowledge—one that helps us, among many other things, to let go of our ego and to understand that we are only a small part of a far more complex web.

Sometimes mountains cry too. 2021. Limestone rockfall, sun, rain, wind, pine resin on acrylic on natural cotton canvas, exposed on a blanket of esparto grass and limestone for two months.. 195 cm x 130 cm x 3 cm.

Your works often emerge from prolonged processes of exposure to the environment. Could it be said that the material—the fabrics, the pigments, the traces of the environment—acts as a memory that time writes on you as much as you write on it?

Álvaro: This is a topic for a long conversation, sitting on a rock—it would be very stimulating. But if experiences shape people’s inner lives and define who we are in the present moment, then I would say yes, especially in that sense.

Leaving our comfort zone has led us to learn from the perseverance of plants and the geological calm of mountains. Through this process, we have reconciled ourselves with time, with the environment, with nature, with ourselves, and even with our own practice. Just as fabrics hold the memory of a place, we have relearned how to pay attention and how to understand. Ultimately, it is a way of deepening our capacity to feel.

The fox and his tricks. 2022. Detail.

To what extent do you plan your work, and how much space do you leave for the unexpected—or even for mistakes?

Diana: Our planning is limited to an initial hypothesis. We choose the materials, colours, places, and sometimes even the specific location, but we leave as much room as possible for the unexpected to occur. In the end, that is what it is really about: allowing nature to speak and life to unfold. For us, both the unexpected and mistakes are part of the world’s complexity, and within that complexity we find a form of natural beauty.