Interview with Ruben Verdu: Updated February 20, 2008

The thoughts above are some that I share with Ruben in this interview, particularly through the mode of questions, particularly from an indirect approach. This interview began on December 20, 2006, and is ongoing. We both felt that an ongoing dialogue, separated by thousands of miles and personal responsibilities, yet connected through digital means, would be a more lively and challenging structure in which to continue this interrelation. It is odd that this interview has worked out this way, for as the reader may gather, it mirrors the elusiveness and infinity of our first meeting. –Sergio Munoz-Sarmiento

INTERVIEW

December 20, 2006 

Sergio Muñoz Sarmiento: Ruben, I remember first seeing your work at the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP), sometime in the early ‘90s, around 1994. It was a piece with a running electric fan and some text, I believe it included the words: “Prima la porta…” I remember thinking that this work was very different from other student work I was seeing there at the time (or any other work in El Paso for that matter). 

Ruben Verdu: In truth, you are kind of making a hybrid, and putting together parts of two pieces that were shown, I think, at end of 1992. The main installation took advantage of the settings which I’ve always found very curious. As you know, three walls of the gallery were made out of panes of glass that run from floor to ceiling, an issue that not only gave that space its name, the Glass Gallery, but also a certain look of vitrine, of display. The fact is that it wasn’t very accommodating space for some artists, especially painters, photographers, and others that rely on walls to show their work. That’s why there were permanently a number of floating walls to compensate for that lack of support and opaqueness. It was also high, and overlooking across the border into de colonias of Ciudad Juarez. From there one could enjoy, almost everyday, a full blown sunset. Can you see? It displayed a concrete panoramic, a Benthamian privilege. So I began by emptying the space.

(Mater Politica, Installation View, 1994, U.T. El Paso Glass Gallery)

It just happened that the only opaque wall that opposed the otherwise transparent scheme of the gallery was placed in front of the door. I could, therefore, organize the viewing accordingly. The installation was titled MATER POLITICA. This was highlighted on that wall which, painted entirely in black, displayed the title of the show in monumental dimensions. I rigged, as well, an industrial fan that blew a huge mass of air toward the door, and prevented a confident entrance into the space. In front of the fan, and blowing with more vigor, there was, most importantly, a white fur flag with eight nipples on each of its sides.

(Detail shot, Mater Politica, 1994, U.T. El Paso Glass Gallery)

As you know, Gilles Deleuze, was very fond of analyzing territorialization practices. He believed that territorial animals are amazing because to constitute a territory has always been very close to the beginning of all art. One image accompanied my thoughts, then, all the time, the etruscan Capitoline she-wolf that reared Romulus and Remus, that became the symbol of the establishment of the Roman Empire, and a model of our modern concept of State.  

Can you talk a little bit about how you ended up in El Paso, UTEP, and what your experiences in both that city and the university’s art department were like, and how they affected your work?

I arrived to El Paso from a year traveling through Mexico and Guatemala. I arrived very politicized, and with intentions to return to the south soon. I was at the time trying to obtain the Mexican nationality, can you believe it? I’ve always dealt with my kind of blurred, undefinable, mistaken identity, a bit of this, a bit of that, naturally, without surprise, without shock.. A couple of months ago, I meet in Barcelona two other alumni from UTEP. One is a very good friend of mine, the writer Roger Colom that lives now also in Spain, but that was born and grew up in Ciudad Juarez. When I first met him in El Paso, he began talking to me in Catalonian. We did great work together, my best work while in school, and we presented it at the other side of the border. It was so important to work that way!

(El Organismo del Animal. La Raya. Ciudad Juarez. 1992)

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