Seila Fernández Arconada is not an artist who intends to paint a canvas in a study that ends on the walls of a museum, but a kind of art activist with firm feet in complex territories. This ecosocial and multidisciplinary artist born in San Felices de Buelna, Cantabria, in 1986, has worked in places of the Amazon, Colombia, China, England, Netherlands, France or Ukraine and defends creation as something shared. Today develops the project Dnipró River: Ecosocial belonging in times of war. He has spoken in Santander in a UIMP course.
Ask. What does art do outside museums?
Answer. My great focus is how to treat contemporary uncertainties from intermediate spaces that integrate art, science and other disciplines to find other ways of doing and imagining. It is there where artistic practices have a lot to do.
P. For example?
R. Climate change, conflicts, the impacts of nature extractive practices. I seek to create spaces from collective meanings and devise future tissues with the now, imaginary that today are not the focus of attention. I try to work with scientists from artistic practices.
P. He lives where he believes, right now between Berlin and kyiv.
R. Yes, for two years Berlin is my base camp and from there I move to different countries. I went to Ukraine for the first time in 2016. I worked with local and international activists in Donbás in a project that addressed the post -conflict. There were already many displaced in Kromatorsk. And since 2022, continuing there has become responsibility. They are artistic, but also humanitarian, mutual support projects.
P. For example?
R. Right now I work in a project linked to the DNIPRO River. I work hard with bodies of water, for me it is important to rethink from the river and rethink it as an entity that witnesses and suffers this war. Many in Ukraine do not have drinking water. We work with children who live near the war front and do it with artistic methodologies to welcome them in spaces for freedom and healing that, although they are temporary, leave them a great place. They are camps in the west of the country where they can feel safe within uncertainty.
P. How are those children?
R. They come very shrunk and frightened by what they live, very damaged, suffer a lot and need to express. You accompany them, you contribute affection for them to feel heard and supported.
P. Is art therapy?
R. There is art therapy that is using artistic techniques together with psychology. I am an artist, I know the potential and magical power to create collectively. It is not only to create meaning, but also an intention.
P. How do you integrate other disciplines?
R. In Somerset, in England, I worked with engineers, hydrologists, climate change researchers and flood experts in that area of England and among all we believe, also with the local community. We built a ship that was a positive response to water and we had many encounters related to it. That ship was part of the local identity and tried to work and grow the sense of belonging. People who do not necessarily speak with each other or believe in a common space, from farmers to activists, to integrate imaginary. It was not about creating cultural activities, but about flowing within a collective sense. That left great footprints, even some legal change.
P. You were born in a small town in Cantabria. How did that love arise? Your parents?
R. My father worked in a factory and my mother worked in a school canteen. I had concerns and much curiosity, although not so much interest in drawing. But the subject of Plastic Arts at the Institute with a great teacher led me to study Fine Arts in the Basque Country and then my intuition did the rest. It was not painting, but curiosity. I succeeded with it and from there it was about intercalating it interdisciplinary.
P. We have started talking about art outside the museums. Do you see your art in a museum?
R. I have exposed in Santillana and the Botín Foundation. Art can happen in the public space and return to the museum, the theme is how we think the role of the artist in society, if it must be isolated in a study or be part of broader conversations. Artistic guidelines create knowledge and must be interwoven with other disciplines.
P. Do you see museums as a living part of society?
R. Yes, but there have to be different practices also connected with other worlds and that does not happen so much in the world of contemporary art. There is an academic leg and another in civil society. The museum space has other logic.
P. Your reference artists?
R. I cannot choose because they coexist with me in my world and because the art world is not the only one that inspires me, they inspire me, very diverse people, I respond a lot to the now. My travel companions are talented people with whom I feel we are growing together.
P. Do you think they are doing something that did not exist?
R. Things that did not exist are being done, projects in which you do not know the final result. From my logic, there should be freedom to create from collaboration, and institutions go far behind. We bet on a project trusting artists, within the possible parameters and letting this uncertainty be part of the project.