Carolina Castilho
Embracing the Domestic Space with Tamara Jacquin
Entrevista, Suboart Magazine Issue nº25 (Junio 2024)
Hello Tamara, thanks for taking your time to answer our questions. For people who are not familiar with you and your work, could you please shortly introduce yourself?
I was born in Chile in a city by the sea, Viña del Mar. In 2013 I came to study an MFA in Spain, where I have been living ever since. I have a background in architecture, interior design and visual arts, and I am also very passionate about history. For ten years I have been developing an interdisciplinary artistic body of work where I combine photography with printmaking, painting, sculpture, video-perfomance and installation. I love to build things by mixing different media. Throughout my career I have developed different lines of research but currently I am focused on domestic space.
You just mentioned that you studied Architecture, Interior Design and Fine Art. How have these different experiences and fields of interest influenced your work and your path as an artist?
This is interesting. I think that professional training in a certain way shapes you, it teaches you not only how to practice a profession, but it teaches you a way of thinking, a way of seeing the world. This way of seeing the world will always be with you. For example, when I think of a sculpture or another type of project, after the idea is born, it is very important for me to draw up plans, to have a floor plan with dimensions, elevations with different views and sections if necessary. This come from my architecture side. Sometimes I also make models. It's my way of understanding how to build the object that I have in my head. I also think about the construction details - they are very important to me, even if you can't see them. Often people say to me, "but you can't see this", as if what you can't see doesn't matter. But what you can't see does matter, details always matter, and for me it's important to make it as good as possible.
I also think a lot about the space, about how the pieces are going to be shown and from which points of view they are going to be observed. I think about how the viewer’s body is going to relate to the artwork, how it is going to walk through them. Maybe that's why I like installation art so much, because it's more corporal. Then, for example, interior design has inspired me a lot in my current project on domestic space. Interior design has made me focus on the sensations transmitted by the objects or elements we live with in our houses. I find this fascinating because it is the relationship between people and their daily lives and how this everyday environment, which is made up of objects and decorative elements, influences them. And finally, the visual arts have given me not only techniques but also knowledge about art and art history which, from my point of view, is fundamental to understanding the contemporary art ecosystem in which we move. This means that knowing what has been done up to now and why, as well as what your fellow artists are currently doing, is fundamental for knowing where to position yourself when it comes to creating; that is, defining what your contribution to the visual arts will be.
You work with different mediums: sculpture & installation, textiles, video-performance and photography. How do you go about choosing which medium is more appropriate for a particular project? Is it intuitive?
I usually mix different media, and yes, depending on the project I choose the most appropriate media and materials to tell or transmit an idea. Nevertheless, for the last seven years, I have been using two very specific media and techniques that are present in almost all my work. That is to say, I develop the idea from the beginning by considering these media as a starting point: photography and transfer, which is an engraving technique. Consequently, my work almost always begins with a photograph that I take or that I obtain from an archive. I then digitally manipulate this photograph and prepare it for transferring in black and white to another medium using the transfer technique. This consists of applying acetone and pressure to a laser print so that the new support absorbs the toner from the print and the image is transferred. This is my favourite technique and I have been perfecting it for years. It gives me a lot of play and versatility and I can use it to make a small painting as well as a large installation. In this way, I can turn a photograph into a sculpture, for example. Because photography for me is the raw material for the transfer, and the transfer is the raw material for two- and three-dimensional pieces. So with these two starting media, I can then work with sculpture, painting, add embroidery, etc.
That sounds fascinating! Let’s speak about some of your pieces now, the ones we are showing in this issue of Suboart Magazine…
These pieces are part of the project I am currently working on, Poetics of the Ordinary. In this project I explore the domestic space through its everyday objects and their decorative patterns, but I approach it from a historical perspective. My aim is to rescue these elements from between the 16th and 19th centuries and relate them to industrial materials and techniques of our time, in order to create something totally new. The "Furniture" series is inspired by wallpaper and tiles from different cultures and time periods. “Furniture I”, in particular, is based on an English wallpaper in the Damask style from the early 18th century and Portuguese tiles from the city of Oporto. These sculptures are an aesthetic proposal that recalls a piece of household furniture, such as a bedside table, a chest of drawers or a wardrobe.
“Welcome Home V” and “Teapot Study” are closely related because they are both based on research I carried out on the history of porcelain. The pieces featured in “Teapot Study” represent 17th and 18th century porcelain teapots from China and Japan, beautiful examples of the decorative arts that were imported from Asia to Europe and represented a symbol of luxury and social status. These teapots are a clear example of this, as well as of the new habits that were being acquired in different European kingdoms, such as the costly pleasure of tea. Originally, porcelain could only be imported because the secret of how to make it was not known in Europe. It was not until the early 18th century that its chemical secret was discovered in the Kingdom of Saxony (now part of Germany). King Augustus II the Strong ordered the porcelain manufactory to be set up in Albrechtsburg Castle to protect the secret.
"Welcome Home V” is inspired by this history and uses the decorative patterns of the castle walls to build a structure based on a partition wall. Also inspired by palace chandeliers, I created this proposal for LED neon lighting to illuminate the walls and create an atmosphere that envelops the entire piece. With these pieces I seek to construct new narratives of domestic space where cultural heritage, identity and traditions merge with our present and bring new imaginative interpretations to domesticity.
I personally love the theme of domestic space and think that it allows for much exploration. You seem to be very fascinated wit it…
The domestic space is something that attracts a lot of my attention nowadays. Years ago I started working with the concept of the house but from the outside, as a construction that protects, a refuge. Currently I'm interested in the interior of the house. I'm interested in its details, the objects that compose it, the decorative patterns that dress its walls, its furniture, its textiles. I am interested in the sensations that these objects transmit and how human beings perceive them. And to understand all this, the decorative arts are fundamental. They are very relevant to understanding our own culture and heritage because they relate to people's daily lives. They also reflect very well how society's taste and customs have changed over time and the influence that socio-political factors have had on these changes.
You describe your work as merging “the antique with the present, reality with representation, and mass production with the unique and unrepeatable.”
When I say that this project merges the old with the present, I am referring to the history behind the objects or decorative elements that I rescue, and how bringing them to the present and mixing them with industrial materials of our time produces a fusion. The result is neither something old, nor something that you can normally see today; it is something totally new. This fusion is the encounter between two worlds that are very distant temporally, but at the same time are totally related since one is the result of the other. Therefore, I consider these contemporary artworks to connect with a valuable historical heritage while being totally timeless.
When I speak of merging reality with representation, I am referring to the aesthetic and conceptual result that the development of the work itself implies when working with decorative patterns or antique objects. For example, in “Welcome Home V”, I photograph the walls of Albrechtsburg Castle in Meissen, which I then work on in black and white and transfer to wood. What we see in the piece is neither frescoes nor wallpaper, but a representation of what I photographed in the castle. But at the same time, this representation becomes the material of a new work of art, which has pink light, which has planes of colour, which is on a structure, and so on. Thus, it again becomes something real within a work of art.
Finally, by contrasting craft production with the uniqueness and unrepeatability of "works of art", my project reflects on our culture of mass production and consumerism in relation to the value we as a society place on art and the decorative arts. Central to my work is how the value we place on art and decorative art has changed as access to these goods has expanded to different layers of society since the 18th century.
A more practical question now, I wonder if there is a part of the process you particularly enjoy when creating your pieces?
Yes, my favorite part is working out the idea. When you have a conceptual idea, the next step is to give it shape, that is, how to materialize it. I really enjoy working out the “how” of a piece and thinking about its constructive processes. I also really enjoy it when the different parts of the process come together and the work begins to take shape, because that's when you start to see if what you planned and imagined actually works or not.
Let’s shift the focus now from you and your work to the viewers who see it and interact with it. If there was only one thing that people could take away from your pieces, what would you want that to be?
For me the most important thing is that from a first impression the artwork evokes new stories within the viewer that can be completed with his or her own personal background and experience. That is to say, that the work awakens the imagination. Now, of course, knowing the explanation behind the work increases the complexity and depth of the viewer’s understanding, which greatly enriches the experience. But I think that in order to spark that interest in knowing more, it is crucial that the piece transmits something and tells a story in itself, that the audience can associate it with a subject of their interest, that it activates something in their memory or in their emotions.
I would agree with you on that. And let’s wrap up our conversation with three las questions. First. Let’s talk bout Madrid. How is your life as an emerging artist there and what are some of the opportunities and challenges?
Madrid is a great city to live in and to be an artist. It has a huge cultural offering, both institutional and private. There are many art galleries, artist’s studios, independent cultural spaces and art schools. There are also many art fairs. In short, there is a great artistic ecosystem to move around in. So there are plenty of opportunities if you are active and know how to navigate it, although it is also true that there is fierce competition and it is not easy to make a living from your art.
Next questions, what has been inspiring you lately?
For a little over a year now, my main inspiration has been history, particularly through visits to museums, monuments, historic houses, and palaces. Lately, I've been traveling and photographing decorative patterns and everyday objects that catch my eye, learning from them along the way. I've been pondering domestic spaces throughout different periods, imagining how life was in past times and considering which elements from those times I'd integrate into my own home today. I've also been exploring the origins of simple things like drinking tea, considering that tea originated in China, and so on. My imagination has also served as a significant wellspring of inspiration.
And last question, is there any upcoming project you’d like to share with us and our readers?
Yes, I am still working on Poetics of the Ordinary. Stay tuned because during this second half of the year you will see some very interesting new pieces inspired by the history of Madrid and its surroundings.
I look very much forward to that.