Meet Morela Avilan | Visual Artist

We had the good fortune of connecting with MORELA AVILAN and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi MORELA, can you tell us more about your background and the role it’s played in shaping who you are today?
I was born in Caracas, Venezuela, a country located in the northern part of South America whose coast faces the Caribbean Sea. Venezuela’s southern border adjoins the Amazon basin and on its west side the Andes mountains. Venezuela’s center incorporates large verdant plains. Caracas, the capital city, is located in the north, very close to the coast, and is about 2,000 feet above sea level. For me, its most important attributes are its climate—warm and fresh—and it’s clear light. These characteristics are important to me because they form part of the basic inventory that I use for the creation for my pieces. The city is in a valley surrounded by a majestic mountain, El Ávila, which changes its tonalities continuously, as a person changes his/her mood. Although I am now rather urban, I spent part of my childhood in Barlovento, a coastal region full of jungles, rivers and beautiful beaches. Growing up in that natural environment certainly influenced the way I first approached art; that upbringing has definitively guided my more recent avenues of artistic research as well. It is because of my youthful interaction with nature that I insistently investigate its connection with my later interests in humans-as-expressions-of-the-divine in my art. Professionally, I have forged two occupational paths–as an artist and as an engineer. I graduated from the Universidad Central de Venezuela with a degree in civil engineering. I traveled throughout Venezuela practiced this profession, constructing a wide array of buildings such as schools, hospitals, and sports facilities as well as other public projects such as recreational parks and water networks. Additionally, I served as a professor of mathematical analysis at the Universidad Santa Maria in Caracas; I have also owned a small construction company. All these various activities led me to travel widely and frequently across Venezuela; consequently, I got to know its people, its landscapes, its climates and, fundamental to my art practice, it’s light very well. In the area of engineering, I never wanted to work for a large consortium, a transnational company, or anything like that; I was always more interested in construction projects that would benefit society at large. My intention in choosing this career was to serve the public, to work towards improving, even in a modest proportion, the vital needs of the most disadvantaged communities. Since my childhood, I was attracted to literature, poetry, and painting. In high school, I was part of the students’ musical ensemble; additionally, I created a theater group. When I was in college, I took some photography courses and I began to write poetry. Some of my friends convinced me to participate in a contest to obtain a scholarship to attend the literary workshops of the prestigious Centro de Estudios Latinoamericanos Rómulo Gallegos. I applied, was accepted, and subsequently worked for there for a year with well-known poets like Yolanda Pantin, Armando Rojas Guardia, and William Osuna, among others. As I mentioned, I have traveled widely not only throughout Venezuela but also in Brazil, Mexico, the United States and across Europe; these voyages have most certainly affected my development as an artist. Visiting scores of cities and discovering the particular light that each possessed fascinated my senses. Likewise, indulging in each city’s museums, galleries, and artistic communities and learning about the culture of each location was food for my creative spirit. I can say without hesitation that pretty much all the various manifestations of art, but especially theater, cinema, dance and, above all, music, have shaped me as an artist. Also consequential has been my studies of philosophy, the mystical world, and the search for the essence of humanness, have shaped my aesthetic discourse. In 1999, I achieved my first solo exhibition at Fundación Arte 125 in Caracas. I titled it “Expressions of the Sign” to show the connections existing between the earth, the ocean, the sun, and the elements with mystical symbolism, which unites us as humanity against the unknown. In 2007, I exhibited again individually in the Alianza Francesa de Chacaíto in Caracas. This exhibition was a tribute to Marc Chagall, to the gypsies and to the ‘cante jondo’ (deep singing) Andalusian gypsy culture of southern Spain. I titled it “Zahorí”, named after the person who searches and detects in a magical and divine way, underground water sources, using a wooden fork. I think we are all, in a certain way, zahoríes, searching within ourselves for the mystical source that brings us closer to the divine. After these exhibitions, I had a period of reflection where I traveled and read a lot, trying to get closer to the philosophical principles of religions. I was investigating the reason of our existence, the meaning of life, and how all this is connected with science. As my life has hovered between rationality and intuition, I began to explore more deeply—including subjects like the Heisenberg uncertainty principle and Jean Pierre Garnier Malet’s doubling theory of space and time. They studied physics including quanta, quasars, and the talk about the energy of the atoms, but they left an open door to mystical subjects as well. The latter point to how our consciousness and our thoughts have “weight” and can affect reality, and to the existence of multiple realities and/or parallel universes. I came to understand that a prayer said with emotion can change reality no matter the distance. These kinds of topics from the perspective of my recent work: to capture this subjective mechanism through color fields and the vibrations that brushstrokes activate. With this, I want to allude to a kind of “enlightenment” or creative trance that artists possess and that, somehow, heals, by opening an access to a common consciousness.

Alright, so let’s move onto what keeps you busy professionally?
Everyone who migrates to a new country faces, in some way, a crisis. Migrating, by definition, uproots a person; it can dismantle a person as well. Having to leave your native country, a country like Venezuela, because living in it has become extraordinarily difficult, can lead to an overwhelming feeling of sadness and frustration. You realize that everything for which you once struggled has been destroyed. However, today, I am convinced that migrating to this great country, the United States, has boosted my career as an artist in a way I could never have imagined earlier. Today, I have managed to carve out a place for myself in the artistic environment of a city that I had previously only visited as a tourist; this is important to me since Miami has become a relevant reference in the circuit of international contemporary art. I have had to work hard and intensely, but I have been lucky enough to meet people who believe in my creative project and who have supported me. It’s about being constant, persevering and open to learning. As a woman, I am aware of the battle that my gender faces to be a professional in any area. It’s no secret that the art world and its market are areas that have historically been inclined to favor men but I am fortunate to live in a time in which women artists are being valued critically and monetarily. I, too, have had to face the prejudice that being an engineer means to certain folks in the art world. Coming from a technical career, I have encountered many people who did not take me seriously or who simply thought I had no sensitivity to art.I consider myself, fundamentally, to be a painter. My artistic language is framed within abstraction although I maintain very subtle links with figuration. I mainly use acrylic paint because its qualities allow me to work by overlapping layers of different tones which give depth to the pieces. At this moment, when I am developing my Solar and Solaris series, I apply a minimum of ten layers of pigment to each work, achieving a visual fabric of different shades of yellow, white, orange, or pink. I use brushes of different diameters to achieve the juxtaposition of colors and, subsequently, the vibration at the retinal level. In this sense, my work could be considered a contemporary approach to impressionism and pointillism. I have studied deeply the work of the Impressionist and neo-Impressionist masters, especially Monet, Seurat, and Signac. They, in their objective to get a reliable approach to reality as we perceive it, sought to represent the mutable character of the environment through the impact of light. To accomplish this, they suppressed the use of black and even the mixture of colors on their palettes. So far, I have exhibited two solo shows in Miami: “Chromatic Capriccio”, which was presented in 2016 at the Alejandro de Humboldt University in Coral Gables, and “Solar”, held in 2017 at Curator’s Voice Art Projects in Wynwood. But in the two and a half years I’ve been in Miami my exhibition activity has been constant. I have participated in more than 25 group exhibitions, both in the United States and abroad. These include: ICFF Art Fair (New York, 2017 and 2018); “Personal Structures”, held among the Venice Biennale events (Palazzo Bembo, 2017); Art Brazil (Fort Lauderdale, 2018) in which I was the only representative from Venezuela; Art Market San Francisco (2019), “A Journey Through Perspective” (New York, 2019); Focus Contemporary (Palm Beach, 2019) and PLAS Contemporary Art Show (Seoul, South Korea, 2019).Everything about social networking interests me because these tools are very dynamic ways not only to show my work to a wider audience but to connect with other artists whose concerns are similar to mine. Finally, my intention is to expand my presence in the international art market, particularly in Asia where I have already had some recent success.

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
1. National Shrine of Our Lady of Charity (Ermita de la Caridad del Cobre) 2.Vizcaya Museum and Garden. 3.Perez Art Museum and Frost Museum.. You can have a light meal and a drink at the Museum Restaurant 4.Bayfront Park and Bayside market Place 5.Miami Sea Aquarium 6-Wynwood Art Side and having a good meal and drink in any of the restaurants in place 7- Design District. Lunching at Ghee Restaurant 8-Brickell Ave, hangin garound and eat the most delicias pizza at Stanzione 87 .

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
I would like to thanks all great teachers and masters I have who teached me the way to get in touch with my goal as an artist. For example Victor Hugo Irazabal, National Prize Award in Venezuela, Pedro Terán venezuelan artist, Armando Rojas Guardia,in poetry, Edda Armas, and all the great masters of óptical art ; Soto, Cruz Diez. As mentors, I would name Victor H. Irazabal, Rafela Bimbo, venezuelan poet, Lavinia Pinto, also a venezuelan poet. And now, here in Florida , Katherine Chacón and Milagros Bello.

Website: www.morelaavilan.com
Instagram: @morelaavilan
Facebook: Morela Avilan Noria

Image Credits
Carolina Muñoz, Photographer Morela Avilan.