Lima Conversations | Localities: HAWAPI
This interview is the third in a series of written conversations with Sophie Williamson, Camden Arts Centre’s Programme Curator: Exhibitions, during her research residency at Bisagra, Lima, as part of Gasworks’ International Curatorial Fellowships Programme.
Sophie speaks with Maxim Holland, founder of HAWAPI, an independent arts organisation that each year takes a group of artists to demanding and unexpected locations to develop and produce site specific works in public space. HAWAPI chooses locations that encourage the participants to engage with marginalized communities and environments that are deeply immersed in, or palpably effected by specific social, economic, political and/or environmental issues.
Sophie Williamson: Why did you decide to set up HAWAPI? And what’s the significance for the artists of going to such remote and challenging locations?
Maxim Holland: At the time I had been following and been involved in the street art scene for a while but was becoming very disillusioned by where it was heading as a movement. I felt like it was being commodified and that a lot of the artists working on the streets were not engaging with the place they were working; as a result the work was becoming banal and purely decorative. At the same time I was beginning to get more involved and taking a greater interest in gallery and institutional contemporary art but felt that, while a lot of the work was anything but ‘banal and decorative’, it existed in a bit of a bubble and there was a preciousness about the work that didn’t exist within the street art community. I felt quite strongly that by bringing artists from these two different spheres they would each benefit from one another. At the same time I felt that it was important to take artists out of their comfort zone and put them in a setting in which they would have to engage with and react to a real set of issues.
SW: Whilst in Peru, I was acutely aware of public space having a very different context and set of social conventions to those that I am accustomed to in Europe. Furthermore, contemporary art is not so widely known about or even recognised by a general public. How does this effect the way you work and the work that is produced by the artists?
MH: This is definitely something that has been challenging at times for us when setting up the residency and trying to convey to the local populations our intentions and what the project consists of, however when it comes to the actual work of the artists we have actually found that the level of comprehension and engagement has not been that different to that of audiences with more contact with contemporary art. While they do not necessarily frame in the terms typically associated with contemporary art, at the end of the day this is just a linguistic difference and the level of critical understanding and comprehension is much the same as with any audience. Because almost all the works the artists are producing are in some way a reaction to immediate issues that affect the community they are able to engage with the pieces in a very personal way that is not always possible in more conventional artistic settings.
SW: Your aim is that the local communities of these locations will be your primary audiences, and you mentioned that you always try to find opportunities to make works which can be left behind. This means that opening channels of dialogue with local people; and often careful negotiation. The projects necessitate cultural translation to be at the core of everything you do, how do you approach this?
MH: Absolutely. I think that often contemporary art exists in a social bubble and this creates a feedback loop that is counterproductive. Our hope is that by getting artists to produce works for audiences that do not have frequent access to contemporary art we can break this cycle. By encouraging artists to produce public works in the communities that are directly affected by political, social and environmental issues they tend to create more thoughtful and consequential work. While I think it is in the nature of many artists to be inquisitive, analytical and critical it is easy to simplify issues when one is not in direct contact with the communities facing the consequences of these issues. A great example of this was last years location, Huepetuhe, a small town in the Amazon rainforest which is at the heart of an illegal and informal gold rush which is having devastating effects on the environment. The dramatic and visibly shocking environmental impact of these mining activities made it very easy to simplify the whole situation and demonise the people involved, however what one finds when one goes there is a community of immigrants who have taken great risks and made huge sacrifices in order to break out of a cycle of poverty that they have been trapped in for generations. The majority of people in Huepetuhe and the areas around it view themselves as pioneers in much the way that American culture views (and romanticises) the early settlers in the wild west. The reaction that these communities have received from urban populations, the press and the government is both shocking and feels completely unjust to them. This has made them incredibly wary of outsiders and especially towards the press. This presented us with very real and at times scary challenges, but also forced us to rethink our approach and to take steps to understand the situation from their perspective and adapt our discourse accordingly. Finding a way to engage with the community and respect their values while confronting very real problems such as human trafficking, sexual exploitation of minors and the devastating environmental damage caused by their activities in the area was a challenging but also led to a much deeper understanding and meaningful engagement with the community.
SW: One of HAWAPI’s aims is to ‘decentralise the Peruvian contemporary art scene’. From other discussions I’ve had with people here, this is a common concern amongst certain organisations and groups. Your projects are very transient though; do you see a potential long-term impact of the projects, both for the communities and locations that you work within, and for the artists that take part?
MH: Decentralisation is definitely a bit of a buzzword in the local art scene at the moment, and with good reason, however I wouldn’t say that HAWAPI is trying to decentralise the art scene. I think that this is much too ambitious a goal and is going to require major political commitment and policy change. Instead I think what we are trying to do is decentralise creative discourse and generate a more engaged dialog within the contemporary art scene in Lima. What the long-term impact of HAWAPI, or any art initiative for that matter, will be is really hard to access. What I do know is that the project has significantly influenced individuals within the communities we have worked and that this has had a ripple effect and achieved things that we could never have hoped to achieve in the short time we have spent in those communities. There are a number of these that come to mind but one that really stands out for me is the affect HAWAPI had on a group of young activists in Pisco who get heavily involved in the project there in 2013. At the time they were a loosely organised but highly energised group trying to promote social change within their community which had been devastated by an earthquake in 2007 and was struggling to recover from. After their involvement in HAWAPI they incorporated cultural activities such as film screenings and art competitions into their social activities and ended up reactivating a cultural center which had been built by the Spanish government after the earthquake but which was in a state of total abandon.
SW: The next edition you are planning is for Triangulo Terestre. Its unlikely that you’ll gain authority to access to land, so the project therefore takes on a conceptual significance. This seems quite a departure from the previous editions, where the audience is no longer a local community but instead the officials who you liaise with along the way.
MH: Definitely. The Triangulo Terestre is a departure from previous editions in more than one way. I think what sets it apart the most is that the issues that surround it are not tangible in the way that they have been at other locations where HAWAPI has taken place. Aside from that it has been a huge challenge trying to get official permission to access the area from both countries. What draws me to the Triangulo Terestre as a location is the Kafkaesque absurdity of the situation and, although I think this is going to make it much more challenging for the artists to address the issue and create works related to it, the results will be varied and interesting. You hear a lot of talk about process and failure in the art world these days and I think that these two elements will be a fundamental elements of the HAWAPI this year.
SW: You also promote the projects online, through social networks and produce a publication for each edition, within the context of the globalized art world. In its different forms, HAWAPI employs different languages, sensibilities and approaches, and even content. How do you see the relationship between the two different manifestations of the projects: art world and public realm?
MH: While the residency period on location and the projects developed there are the central focus of the project it is very important for us that the results of each HAWAPI reach a larger audience and feed back into the contemporary art scene in Lima and beyond. This has been one of the hardest aspects of the project and we are continually fine tuning the process. The publication is an important element of this because it serves as a documentation of the processes and work produced during each HAWAPI, however the exhibition and other events such as round tables, symposiums and artists talks that we organise have a crucial role in engaging the public in a continued conversation about the issues the project has been contemplating. Having a greater online presence in order to bring these conversations to a wider audience beyond Lima is something which we feel is very important but so far has also proven very difficult and is something we intend to continue pushing so that the work we do does not end up existing in a vacuum. Over the last four years we have amassed a huge amount of information in the form of texts, images, video and audio much of which has not been distributed, so creating an appropriate platform in order to make this material available to a wider audience is our next big challenge. I think the various approaches that the participating artists have taken in order to confront the issues we have explored offer an alternative interpretation that are not necessarily provided by traditional media or organisations. I think it is at this intersection between what is happening in the world and the way issues are understood that art can have the most meaningful impact.
For more information about HAWAPI visit: www.hawapi.org
