Interview by Lucia Barbiero
Aída Miró welcomed us with her wonderful smile and with the availability of Ibiza ‘s native people.
Aída Miró is one of Ibiza’s artists who is most represented throuoght the world.
An artistic career in continuous evolution in which she unites urban art, expressing herself on the city walls leaving her signatures and/or Tags, a more figurative style, where the soul of the person who is being portrayed comes out through the romantic touched brushstrokes, and also using art as a therapeutic purpose in a city like The Bronx, where she decided to move to 10 years ago.
She managed to bring her fellow artists, Jerom from Ibiza and Twoflow from Mallorca, to the Bronx for an important Mural Project.
Aída earns her living with her art and is a great example of humility, courage, passion and strength in a person while she shows us her artistic expression.
You started as graffiti artist. What incited you to leave a tag on the walls, what sensation were you looking for? HERE IN IBIZA WE WERE A VERY SMALL GROUP. It was when I decided to go and study in Valencia that I met some graffiti artists and from then on it was pure adrenaline.
What was your tag/signature? Soul
How was your evolution from tags/signatures to figurative painting?
Painting graffiti and painting pictures in the studio, which was my most intimate part, has always gone hand in hand. On the one side it carried the academic studying part and learning, I enjoyed that part of intimacy and I liked painting portraits. On the other hand the excitement of painting in the street and going out to paint, planning with a team. It was my most social part. They were two different worlds and I didn’t want to put them together. But now I realize that one thing has helped me for the other.
Painting figurative is very intense. What are you trying to get out of a person’s face?
I like to capture the soul of the person. The eyes are what I prefer to paint the most and that is where we can see it, the eyes are where it all comes out.
What does the world think about the art of Ibiza?
The world of art in Ibiza? … well, people who know Ibiza what they say “ahhh … good partying there”. They never ask you “how’s the art world?” … they don’t know that side.
People want to come and live in Ibiza. You were born here, so why did you decided to live in the Bronx?
Precisely because in Ibiza there are people from so many places … I’ve always been curious to know all of these places. I have always liked to travel and New York has always been a place where I wanted to live, not just for a holiday … but the Bronx feels more real, more authentic than New York that has become Disney World. I like culturality … the’re not all young and beautiful people, they are much more authentic people and they defend their place and their culture a lot.
How did you get to be known artistically in the Bronx in such a short period of time?I went asking for an artistic residency. Imparting painting classes for the elderly. They gave it to me because of my background as teacher, art therapist, and because of speaking Spanish … so it was easy to be accepted among the elderly Puerto Rican people. Growing old in the Caribbean is a completely different story because they are super happy, they always dance, especially salsa music … we connect a lot through music.
I feel that in the workshops, and this is the reason they want artists not social workers, the artists can transmit to the students, the retired elderly because we normally work with elders, that can work in the same way that an artist works.
I have students who have gone full on to become artists.
And with Graffiti in the Bronx. How did you manage it?With graffiti it is more difficult because in the Bronx they are very territorial. Painting walls in the Bronx is not just anything. It bothers them when someone from Brooklyn comes to paint in their neigborhood, imagine if your coming from Spain… .but I t’s not like I came on vacation… I’ve been living there for 6 years… .so it’s like… helloooo, I’m living here too, I’m a part of….
With Jerom and Twoflou we had worked in the “Women” project on a Mural in Ibiza and it is a tribute to women and it has taken us to the Bronx where we have painted the wall of a very large building through a grant from the city council of the Bronx.
Do you follow this project?
Circumstances have changed this project of “Tribute to women” on murals and I have had to transfer it to oil portraits with women from the Bronx. I have done an interview with each one of them and a photo session with wich I am doing the portraits, using images from these photos. I like it when it looks real, so the use of the light and shadows is important because I need to see them, I don’t want to invent them. Who are these women, according to what criteria have you chosen them? It is a tribute to women and diversity. There is a lot of diversity in the Bronx. The Bronx is a place that is a bit stigmatized … Women have also always been given less, and less valued … with this project it is about giving them a voice, of valuing them more … there are millions of super interesting women in the Bronx … I would spend all my life painting them….
