Introducing Alejandro Santamaria, connecting textures and NFTs with ARI.
Ari Swap is excited to announce that Alejandro Santamaria will be a guest speaker at The ARIval event in Barcelona the first week of April. He will showcase his work and at the same time share more about his background and the life experiences that influence his art.
Who is Alejandro?
Alejandro Santamaria was born in Sevilla, Spain and with a love for art, he started to work as a photographer when he was sixteen. Further down the road, at the age of eighteen, he decided to move to London to improve his English and work in the fashion industry. After some years, he went back to Madrid, Spain where he studied at Instituto Europe di Design ( IED) and worked as a brand image designer. Since 2018 he has been living in Berlin, Germany.
Where does your inspiration come from?
Alejandro’s sources of inspiration are many. Starting from his personal experiences, emotions, and famous artists to movies and songs that left an indelible takeaway on him. However, he thinks that artists can’t name everything that inspires them since artworks can be elaborated from basically anything.
Among all these sources of inspiration, there is one that stood up for him and drove Alejandro to create astonishing works, which was the need for him to express all his feelings after testing positive for HIV. Back in the day, this disease was terminal and a large number of people died from it, but thanks to the advancements in science in the 21st-century, pundits found a way to reduce the severity of HIV, and nowadays it is not lethal anymore.
As an artist, he is proud that he managed to turn a traumatic situation into a tool for motivation and a stimulator to focus 100% on his profession.
What is the mission behind your art?
Even though HIV is not a cause of death today, it does not change the way people speak about it. Hence, as Alejandro described: “People do not suffer by the disease itself because with the appropriate medication it can be treated and you can live without any complications, the issue is that they deal with the pressure and the critics of public opinion.”
Alejandro went through this suffering himself and he can now empathize with the people who are undergoing the prejudices of society. Thus, he wants to contribute to the battle toward the eradication of the stigma that people have about HIV. He knows that individually he will not reach the end goal but he understands that by providing his granite of sand to this cause he can drive people to join this fight and spread more consciousness about the harm judgments like these can cause to someone.
What is your collection going to be about?
From his point of view, life is not plain and functions as an ever-changing cycle of many textures, colors, reliefs, without any color. Since every day you will feel, act, and perceive differently as well as live a variety of diverse scenarios. With that being said, Alejandro will seek to portray all his frames of mind with this collection, looking to express the internal battles and fights he deals with every day.
The truth is that his creative process relies on his state of mood and what he needs to transmit at that specific moment. As a result, his objective is to be able to reach more people and display his constant journey through his experiences, emotions, and feelings.
What the future holds for Alejandro
Alejandro is a restless individual, with a thirst to continue growing as a person and as an artist. His emotions are the engine that makes him work and allow him to break his boundaries, step out of his comfort zone and keep learning.
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