Vanessa Vallejo Cunillera
I was just a girl who spent lots of hours designing the cover of a birthday card before writing inside of it. After some years of practice, my intention is somewhat the same: to craft messages with care and attention. 🐛💌
Interview about “Metaphormosis” for Metropolis M magazine.
Interviewed by Gerda van de Glind.
More about the magazine here.
Could you tell me about your graduation work? What do we see? Could you describe it?
Based on speculative and theoretical research around the life cycle of butterflies; I worked to acknowledge metamorphosis as a creative process. This is showcased through an experimental print series, as well as the results of my ongoing journey of becoming a self-publisher. This is why my project is titled “Metaphormosis”.
What story are you telling or what do you hope the work communicates?
My work is an experiment on rawness and honesty. It was a choice to do a project composed of many small things; as it was a choice to praise the process, complexity and the depth of it over one big fixed result. Another choice was to use an in-between space to display my prints, in this case a staircase because of the way it can be navigated by escalating and going back down. I hope it communicates that there can be a space for different realities within one context. I consider this an existential approach to my final project in the context of the finals exhibition. This comes from the cyclical aspect I studied within metamorphosis. We can be at different stages at different times, each with our own rhythm and it is important to show that. While we dare to experience the idea of becoming in a non-linear way, we commit to stay ever-growing over grown-up.
What materials did you use and how did you create it? In other words: could you tell me about the process of creating the work?
The process is the main focus of this work.
A linocut printmaking process requires the destruction of the material for the creation and reproduction of an image… I embraced this technique in an experimental way; printing not only with the block but also with the linoleum scraps left after carving; as well as continuously shapeshifting the initial block to pieces. This was inspired by the resourcefulness aspect of metamorphosis, where caterpillars eat and self-digest to accumulate proteins that fuel the further process for a butterfly to emerge.
This method opened up different branches within the same sequence. It showed conflicting visual results, even while following the same direction forward... in some cases, the continuation of this process looked like addition; yet in some others it manifests as disappearance.
By creating in this way, the overall progress became more about allowing than controlling.
How did your work develop over the course of your study, and where do you stand now?
Over the course of my study, I have been confronted with total freedom, which was at the beginning overwhelming. I used to operate more as a transmitter of others’ messages, not necessarily with my own content, but with my own way of shaping it. I think that comes from my Graphic Design background, being a service oriented profession. This study has been an experiment on autonomous design and how to make it work; which means exploring my own theme, my own concept and my own way of creating something tangible from it. I think regardless of the technique or type of project, what I have practiced the most is concept development and how to get a message from my inner context across. This of course, doesn’t stop here and besides practicing this further, it is my wish to keep experimentation alive; also outside the context of school.
What does your graduation work mean to you? What is important for you as an artist to get across?
I have touched on multiple layers of meaning while approaching a creative career in a metamorphic way, coming from my personal experiences. It has been comforting to reimagine ways of being and creating from a non-human context. This gives room to be proud of every step along the way within a creative practice, if we see that as something totally natural. No matter how messy or confusing the changes might seem we have to be proud of our ups and downs because they all shape our trajectory… If I have reached anything through the metaphorical embodying of these transitions and my continuation through them; it is the affirmation that there are and will continue to be moments for hatching, for crawling, for absorbing, for rapid change, for becoming bigger, then smaller again... for hiding, for skin-shedding, for face-falling, for self-digesting... for clarifying, for emerging, for wing-spreading and for flying all over the place.
What important questions am I maybe not asking, but is important to know?
I would like to add that these reflections on metamorphosis are also related to adaptation and resilience. As an international student I have experienced lots of contrasts in this totally different geographical and cultural background. This metaphor is also hopeful for the internal adjustments needed to grow wings when traveling far away.