Eugenia Alejos
How do you define your art / creation / project?
My multidisciplinar work aims to investigate vulnerability, sensuality and identity. I notice my subjects in fashion and collage all have a similar expression of being both vulnerable and threatening at the same time.
I assume it’s a reflection of some part of myself.
I found collage accidentally in Oporto. I’d thrifted old photo magazines and pinned photos on my studio wall. One night I tore them down and began to collage them. I was always a very reserved person and doing collages was for me a way of expressing everything I felt, it was a sort of embodiment process and therapeutical.
My job as creative director and visual artist is to gather fashion, society and photography magazines to show that art itself can be picked up from the daily mess of modern life. More recently I feel pressure to conform to certain aesthetics to please magazines or clients but I try to maintain my own vision.
Collage as an art form continues to be nothing if not controversial.
What does it like to be an artist woman nowadays?
To assume yourself as an artist today is a delicate matter. Not only because of what it implies as in any profession, but because being an artist implies the objective of creating, which is the same as traveling through a veil of mystery, such as scientists who discover things or inventors who develop artifacts. The act of creating involves many challenges. To be an artist is to give yourself permission to create, to produce works of art, which may or may not be liked in the first place, or may be worth a lot or nothing. That’s why art is a mystery.
Despite the failures, as an artist I give free rein to my imagination. That is why my works are flooded with emotion. The emotion of creating goes beyond the acceptance of your works in society. You learn to see with the eyes of the soul. My thoughts, feelings and actions have the power to affect the spirituality of society. As an artist, I am obliged to create a positive impact on the world in which I live.
‘My job as creative director and visual artist is to gather fashion, society and photography magazines to show that art itself can be picked up from the daily mess of modern life.’
What is feminism for you today?
Feminism for me is a man or a woman who says: Yes, there is a problem of gender nowadays. We must fix it. We have to do better. To start talking about feminism we must talk about gender. The problem with gender is that it prescribes how we should be instead of recognizing who we really are. Men and women are biologically different but those differences are socially exaggerated and there begins the true beginning of the movement.
Feminism is root. It is the coherence before any claim. It is the word that reminds us that half of the population is oppressed by the patriarchal system. It is the first and indispensable step to be better, but if I had to summarize in one word what feminism means to me, this word would be sorority.
I close this paragraph with a phrase from Mary Wollstonecraft:
“I do not want women to have power over men, but over themselves.”
Who is your biggest Muse?
Select only one name is quite complicated since this list has been growing for several years. I will talk about a muse who inspired me to follow the path I followed more than 10 years ago. Hannah Hoch was a German plastic artist and photographer, integrated into the Dada movement. She used photomontage as an expression mode, being considered a pioneer in this photographic technique. One of her concerns was the presentation of a “new woman” in the Weimar Republic and the denunciation of a sexist and misogynistic society. It was one of the few women who participated in the Dada movement.
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