A conversation between Antonio Vidal de Lascurain and Esther Fan
ANTONIO VIDAL DE LASCURAIN is a visual artist from Mexico City pursuing an MFA at Columbia University. His work delves into the relationships between myth, religion, ecology, eroticism, and personal narrative, using archetypal symbols to navigate their intricacies.
Vidal is drawn to the wilderness as space and symbol of untamed thoughts, beliefs, and ecologies. Layering colors, he uncovers hidden stories and dialogues with childhood games and memories, exploring how paint can create a symbolic, conversational middle ground.
Esther: Hey Antonio, thanks for joining me today. Could you introduce yourself, your practice, and why you chose to participate in Hidden Narratives?
Antonio: I'm mainly a painter, though I delve into sculpture a little bit. I’m from Mexico City and I currently live in New York, doing a master's program at Columbia.
I was interested in Hidden Narratives because it was a unique opportunity, the curation seems cool. I’m really excited about the other artists we’re showing and the Wonzimer space. Finally, I think the show’s curatorial concept aligns well with my work. It’s a really, really good fit.
Esther: Can you tell me more about your art journey in Mexico and the US?
Antonio: I did my undergrad in San Francisco. The art world there wasn’t exciting for me, I didn't feel part of it. As a fresh grad, getting opportunities was hard, and COVID didn’t help. The city’s expensive and dominated by tech. So artists were being pushed out of the city little by little.
Then, I went to Mexico City and started building something there. But I decided to pursue a master's. Sadly, the art world has systematic barriers and institutional validation. I applied to different grad schools, mostly in Europe. I also applied to Columbia, wondering what would happen, because it's a competitive program. You make work alone for so long you develop imposter syndrome. At the end, I got in. I talked with the chair, Gregory Amenoff. He really understood my work and saw things in it most people weren't seeing. Things I was missing made complete sense.
New York is also an art capital. The art scene is insane, everything is happening all the time. I had wanted to go to Europe, it’s cheaper, and I was really excited about Nordic artists– materially, what they're doing is amazing. How they deal with color and images, I just love it. Despite that, the New York program felt more catered to who I was, and they understood my work and what I was trying to do.
Esther: How has art helped you make sense of or tell stories with your world?
Antonio: I see a lot of patterns in the world, it’s very visual. That’s one way painting helps me make sense of the world. Nothing feels pointless.
Life happens. When you make work, you can build something constructive out of that. You have a unique ability to give a purpose to different emotions and events. If it’s meaningful to you, that’s value enough.
Esther: In your work, you tie cultural, religious, and ecological archetypes with personal experiences. Could you elaborate on these elements and how they speak to your story?
Antonio: I had a very religious upbringing. These themes and their deconstruction is big to anyone that grows up in this kind of environment. They overlap in a single space very organically. These topics and things I’ve been reading subconsciously bind themselves to my work. Once I started spotting this, I’ve become more intentional with it.
The pieces I'm showing with you are inspired by childhood games. “El Piso es Lava II” (The Floor is Lava) portrays a classic game you play with siblings and friends, jumping around furniture to avoid the floor.
These games exist horizontally across different cultures, showing how intuitive it is for everyone to exist in similar ways. In mythologies and religions, across time and cultures, these elements overlap. I think of Jung’s collective unconscious and active symbology, and symbols he uses to analyse dreams and life experiences.
Esther: I like how you describe “the floor is lava” as a horizontal game. Thse lateral connections don’t rely on shared roots. You have this game in Mexico, we have it in Hong Kong, with different elements but kids still to have fun. How something can be particular but also relatable is powerful, and your work does just that.
Antonio: Yeah, and I love that. It interests me when you meet a work at three angles. There's the angle of the artist narrating something personal or interesting to them, the angle of something bigger, and the angle where it meets you as a viewer. The works I like usually have a consolidated triangle of these three elements.
Esther: There's an element of translation, like a game of broken telephone. Every person who mediates the message changes how it is conveyed next. The three points you talk about show how artists are translators speaking at different levels. One of the ways you do this is by layering paint to tell stories.
Antonio: My raw reaction to working that way is that it’s interesting materially. The overpositioning of diaphonous layers reveal the entire history of the painting—it’s traces and mistakes. The colors underneath build themselves up into a more cohesive and transparent narrative. It’s the same way myths and stories get passed down.
Broken telephone is a great example. It's a children's game, but it’s also true in how we convey information, family narratives, or urban legends. In these moments of translation things just keep evolving and changing but there's still essence of its core and elements of its origin.
Esther: Can you speak to your use of reflections and horizons?
Antonio: With reflections, water refracting an image is cool to me. It’s attractive visually and interesting to paint an element, then redo it refracted. Repeating the same action in a more carefree way, simulating water without having to overdefine it.
Water is such an important mythological symbol. Lacan’s mirror stage, where you identify yourself in an exterior object, happens in childhood. I tie this back to childhood games, and the divine child archetype that operates in different cultures.
They’re these ouroboros of energy where it's rebirth and starting over again. The most rudimental way to identify yourself externally is by your reflection on water.
The horizon part is a little harder. There are tendencies hard to escape, elements that just keep appearing. Horizons give you a sense of space without having to define the edge. It's just something I keep doing, for better or worse.
Esther: You balance showing with leaving space for the viewer’s interpretation. For example, the figures you paint are ambiguous.
Antonio: Overdescribing elements is not something I'm interested in doing. I like when the viewer puts things together based on snippets of visual information given to them.
For my figures, I think it has to do with lack of definition. When you see people in work, anthropomorphic figures, the first thing you ask is, who is this? We try to position them in a context. By homogenizing and abstracting features, you take away the importance of that question.
I don’t talk about a specific person or narrative, just people. The number of people are more important to me. Numbers are important in mythology, religion, and our world— 12 hours, 12 months, 12 disciples. Sometimes the numbers are referencing something more universal, other times it’s personal. It makes sense to me, hopefully I'll meet the viewer in the middle.
Esther: We’ve talked about how many of your figures are hanging.
Antonio: It references “the floor is lava” in a different way. An aspect of it is religious. One of the most directs way to deconstruct the belief system I grew up with is evolutionary theory.
I reference sapiens, primates, or human evolutionary steps, and avoiding the floor in a flooding state where everything's disappearing. You're holding on to your life.
There's also tension in the work with gravity. The paint I use is super liquid, there's a pull down. The resistance of pulling down when people are in this constant state of hanging creates tension and weightlessness. I’ve done paintings of people flying when there's a strong gravitational pull in the material. Hanging is a motif I go back to.
Esther: This conversation makes me think of how we live with pieces of experience and cultural upbringings that become our tools. You create by assembling what you know with what you don’t, and maybe, say something with it.
Antonio: The difficulty I have talking about my work is that there are so many moving pieces. Do you talk about them all? When you talk about one of them, you put it on the forefront. It creates a pyramid of value and everything else becomes less important.
I like when the viewer meets piece and prioritizes their own reaction. I don't care so much whether what I see aligns with what the viewer sees.
For the mythological aspect, I want my work to have the essence of myths without referencing actual narratives. It can join the archetypical field without pre-existing as a real story, sharing the same technical elements.
It’s not that I’m against exploring pre-existing myths or religious narratives. That’s awesome too. I’m just currently interested in building my own in parallel to that.
Esther: What is the next step for you?
Antonio: That's a big question. Things are happening little by little. The show with you guys, open studios in November, and my thesis at the end of spring. Right now, I'm focusing on getting ready for these events. Then hopefully I can be New York for another year.
After that, I don't really know. If I had the choice and resources, I would really like to work between Mexico City and New York. At the end of the day, my life is in Mexico. My family is there, my friends, my culture. I would paint and maybe explore other mediums, but that’s the dream, just being able to keep doing it.