An Interview with Roberto Rodriguez

This interview was conducted on December 27, 2002, at the home of Manuel Velázquez in Xalapa, Mexico.

ROWELL: I have always been struck by your work. But I cannot name it—that is, I don't know exactly what it is. For example, the piece you and I looked at before this interview is an example of what I am talking about. Neither you nor your work is a problem; I am. Your extraordinary inventiveness leaves me speechless and in a state of awe. It is fascinating how you break down the borders between genres, how you force us to view art in new ways. I love your works, but I don't know what to call them. We can't call them paintings. Some, of course, we can call sculpture, but the others—and I think this is a good thing—escape our narrow impulse to define or categorize or classify. I can only say that a great part of your work is mixed media. What is your work? Do you name it?

RODRÍGUEZ: I could not catalogue in what sense it is, in what it would be. Definitely what interests me is the question of creativity, creation. It is not exactly that this, precisely this, is sculpture, that this is painting or that this is a relief. I am truly interested in creating, and it is not necessary for me to say that this is a piece of sculpture or a painting—because, above all, my roots are very important. And not only my roots, but primitive cultures are important to me also. So, for example, the people in those cultures do not worry whether they are making art or not. And then cataloguing whether something is a sculpture or is a painting, or a relief, or something else. They dedicate themselves, truly, to addressing one question, one expression, that can at times even be ritualistic and is not concerned with where it will be catalogued. So then, that is what interests me in that sense. That is also why I identify very much with primitive cultures and why what interests me is creating. So then sometimes it is difficult to catalogue something, but what interests me as I was saying is creating. What I sometimes make are pieces that also have a certain element of rituality. That interests me a great deal. Of course there is a theme in each piece, and I approach it in a different manner than an indigenous person would, because I have a different cultural base than theirs, and my intention is different. That is why there is a difference. But I do identify myself in these questions with considerable liberty. In the work that I do, I reframe their philosophy—not exactly their forms—although there is a resemblance there, too. They end up looking a great deal alike. Because of the sources, the work ends up looking similar to some of their work. But that is also a question of visual information that we have, and it ends up appearing more or less the same.

ROWELL: Is there a relationship between your work on canvas and your "sculpture"?

RODRÍGUEZ: What you're calling "a relationship" is, for me, more of an exchange. I believe it is a personal preference. I like to work on a sculpture with color. I believe that that is where all this stems from. In fact, when I was studying, some teachers would tell me that sculpture is not painted, but for me that was not possible because I wanted to paint it and that's the way it had to be. So I believe that is where this attitude toward sculpture comes from. I do not conceive of it without color because it is a very whole part of the sculpture in the sense that color, for me, expresses many things. So for me, sculpture has to carry color. When...