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Third Text 48, Autumn 1999 17

ArteFacto in Contemporary NicaraguaHaunting the borders of acceptance

Lindsay Jones

1 On the Nicaraguanelections in 1990, seeJames Dunkerly,'Reflections on theNicaraguan Election', inPolitical Suicide in LatinAmerica, Verso, London,1992, pp 115-138;Thomas W Walker, 'USImperialism ChokedNicaragua's Autonomy',The Messenger, Athens,Ohio, March 11, 1990; andMitchell A Seliason andJohn A Booth (eds).Elections and Democracy inCentral America Revisited,University of NorthCarolina Press, ChapelHill, 1995.

2 Many of the ideas on'postcoloniality' on whichI have drawn arediscussed in theintroduction toContemporary PostColonialTheory: A Reader, (ed)Padmini Mongia, St.Martins Press, New York,1996, pp 1-20.

3 See Thomas W Walker,Nicaragua, The Land ofSandino, Westview Press,Boulder, 1991; and John ABooth, The End and theBeginning: The NicaraguanRevolution, WestviewPress, Boulder, 1982.

4 See Donald Hodges,Intellectual Foundations ofthe Nicaraguan Revolution,University of Texas Press,Austin, 1986.

On February 25,1990, as a result of the political institutions established by theSandinista-lèd revolution of 1979, Nicaragua experienced its first everdemocratic transfer of power without any real celebration. The winners of thiselection were so stunned by their success that they simply had not planned aparty. The losers were so sure they would win that the remnants of theirplanned celebrations made the silence in the streets even louder.1 From thisstark reversal of fortune was born the dissident, neo-Dadaist, artisticmovement Artefactoria and its magazine, ArteFacto. This article examines thecontemporary publication ArteFacto in its historical context with a particularfocus on the provocatively marginal place it occupies in the Nicaraguan artworld today. Drawing upon historical sources, as well as recent interviews inManagua, Nicaragua, in January 1998 with the artists and collaborators, I willexamine such issues as postcoloniality and the idea of a vanguard critiquethrough artistic practice in Nicaragua today.2 The first half of this article will bean overview of ArteFacto and its historical locus as well as historic project. Thesecond half will feature statements by the artists of ArteFacto about theiravowed aims.

The dictatorship suffered by Nicaragua between 1937-1979 was one of thelongest Central America has ever seen and certainly the most dynastic.3 For42 years the Somoza family accepted and manipulated a clientalisticrelationship with the United States that virtually turned the entire country ofNicaragua into their own private hacienda. On July 19, 1979, the FrerïteSandinista de liberation Nadpnal, or FSLN, officially overthrew Somoza androde to victory in the capital city of Managua, while capturing the internationalattention of an entire generation.

Created in 1961, the FSLN was mainly composed of young intellectualsinfluenced by a distinctive mixture of classical Marxism and a new variant ofChristianity commonly referred to as Liberation Theology.4 In a relatively short

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5 The literature on theimpressive gains ineducation, health care andhuman rights in revolu-tionary Nicaragua is verylarge and quite impressive.See, for example, FernandoCardenal and Valerie Miller,'Nicaragua 1980: The Battleof the ABCs', HarvardEducational Review, vol 5 no1, 1981, pp 1-26; Richard MGarfield and EugenioTablada, 'Health ServicesReform in RevolutionaryNicaragua', in Nicaragua:Unfinished Revolution, (eds)Peter Rosset and JohnVandermeer, Grove Press,New York, 1986, pp 425-432;and Dianna Melrose,Nicaragua: The Threat of GoodExample?, OXFAM, 1985.

6 See the key collection ofprimary documents by theFSLN on cultural policy:Háck una Política Cultural dela Revolutión PopularSandinista, (eds) DaisyZamora and Julio Valle-Casb'llo, Ministry of Culture,Managua, 1968.

7 For a broader discussion ofFSLN cultural policy, seeDavid Craven, The NewConcept of Art and PopularCulture in Nicaragua Since theRevolution in 1979, TheEdwin Meilen Press,Lewiston, New York, 1989;and, more recently, RaulQuintanilla, 'A SuspendedDialogue: The NicaraguanRevolution and the VisualArts', Third Text, no 24,Autumn 1993, pp 25-34.

8 This remark is from aninterview with ErnestoCardenal by David Cravenand John Ryder onNovember 30, 1983, at theUnited Nations in New YorkCity. See David Craven,ibid, pp 298.

period of time, the FSLNaddressed the major social-issues facing their people. Inremarkable fashion, they greatlyraised the literacy levels,dramatically improved healthconditions, and notablyempowered the people ofNicaragua to act for themselves.5

One crucial element of theirnational plan was culturalpolicy.' The Sandinista Partyused art and culture as means toaid in the difficult process ofcritically addressing a coloniallegacy and advancing nationalautonomy.7 As part of theircultural policy, the Sandinista-led government actively fieldedand generously promotedartistic interests like thoserepresented by AlejandroCanales' 1980 mural Homage toWomen: the Literacy Crusade inManagua. They created localcasas de cultura throughout thecountry which provided free art,dance and theatre instruction inaddition to performances forrural communities. In the wordsof Ernesto Cardenal, 'In Nicaragua we now have a new concept of culture... Bymeans of its art, Nicaragua now reveals artistic participation in social transfor-mation'.' The importance placed on art by the Sandinista leadership led to aspecific rise in the status of artists throughout the nation, while the Revolutionwas openly supported and admired by members of the artistic communityworldwide who flocked en masse to Nicaragua to analyse and praise the role ofart and culture in the new government.

However, not everyone was as enthusiastic about the policies of the highlyindependent Sandinista administration. For much of the 1980s the UnitedStates government, threatened by the loss of its geopolitical client and obsessedwith the cold war, chose to organise and covertly fund a contra army whichwaged an illegal war on the people of Nicaragua. In 1990 the US redirected itsgaze and massively funded the election of Dona Violeta Chamorro and theconsortium of 22 parties comprising the UNO.' Having failed to defeat theFSLN militarily, the US Government succeeded instead in buying an electoralvictory.

One of the first initiatives of Chamorro's administration was to privatise allnationally funded programmes of art and culture.10 In response to thesemeasures, artists gathered together and discussed strategies to sustain theirUnion and to maintain their progressive visions of the future. In the words ofartist and ArteFacto collaborator Patricia Bell:

Cover of Artefacto 10

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We were numb, people simply did not know what to do. At first we talked,planned, and connived but eventually people simply lost contact. The Chamorrogovernment surprised us by not arresting us for our opposing political viewsinstead they privatised everything, co-opted some of the older more famous andfinancially secure artists, and mostly ignored the rest"

Two things resulted from the radical privatisation of the art market: mostartists were unable to make a living from their work, and a new audience withfar more limited expectations was created. In contrast with the public orienteddecade of Sandinista rule, the 1990s saw the main art patrons in society becomeprivate banks, multinational corporations, and a few international haute-bourgeois clients. The artistic community generally responded in one of twoways to these new circumstances: the majority of artists began to create workspecifically for their new private audience, while a few others formed themilitant and critical group around ArteFacto and tried to keep art in the publicsphere, however marginally.

In a 1994 issue of NACLA entitled The Political Uses of Culture, Jean Francocontributed the article, 'What's Left of the Intelligentsia? The Uncertain Futureof the Printed Word', in which she stated that, ironically, 'In the age of globalflows and networks, the small scale and the local are the places of the greatestintensity'.12 What she termed 'global flows and networks' have indeed led to astandardisation of production among many artists in Nicaragua. Most galleries

Alejandro Canales, Homage to Women: The Literacy Crusade, 1980, a detail of themural, acrylic. Velazquez Park, Managua.

9 For a recent and insightfullook at the consequences inNicaragua of these neo-liberal policies, see KevinBaxter, l inder the Volcano:New liberalism FindsNicaragua', The Nation,April 6, 1998, pp 21-24.See also Thomas W Walker(ed), Nicaragua WithoutIllusions: Regime Transitionand Structural Adjustment inthe 1990s, ScholarlyResources Books,Wilmington, Delware, 1997.

10 Tim Johnson, 'Artists Giventhe Financial Brush-Off', TheMiami Herald, June 20, 1992,pp1-3A.

11 Interview with the author,Managua, Nicaragua,January 8, 1998.

12 Jean Franco, 'What's Left ofthe Intelligentsia? TheUncertain Future of thePrinted Word', NACLAReport on the Americas,vol 27 no 2, September/October 1994, pp 16-24.

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exhibit art which plays in superficial ways on primitive forms or exoticisedtropical identities. These themes are articulated by a variation on twopolitically innocuous motifs — edible fruit, as in Rosario Ortiz de Chamorro'sMitad de narcmja söbre naranja of 1996, and large sexualised women with ediblefruit by various artists. The dynamic of this phenomena has been succinctlydescribed by art historian and critic Gerardo Mosquera:

13 Gerardo Mosquera, 'TheMarco Polo Syndrome:Some Problems ConcerningEurocentrism'. Thisquotation is from a 1992 textwritten by Mosquera andtranslated by David Cravenfor presentation at theNational Convention of theCAA in Chicago in February1992. Unfortunately,Mosquera was barred fromentry into the United Statesby the Bush Administration,thus he was unable to attendthe CAA Conference and hispaper was read in hisabsence.

14 For a short history of artgalleries in Nicaragua, seeRaul Quintanilla, DavidCraven and Luis Morales,'Nicaragua', The Dictionaryof Art, vol 23, Macmillan,London, 1996, p 85.

15 Interview with the author,Managua, Nicaragua,January 12, 1998.

16 For more on Praxis, seeJorge Eduardo Arellano,Historia de la PinturaNicaragüense, Banco Centralde Nicaragua, Managua,1977; the revised 5th editionof 1994, Part III; and DavidCraven, op cit, pp 15-28.

The post-modern interest in the Other has opened-up some space in the 'culturecircuits' for the vernacular and for non-Western cultures. But it has also introduceda new thirst for exoticism which is the carrier of a passive Eurocentrism — onewhich, instead of universalising those paradigms that have been conditioned bycertain cultural practices in the periphery, ends up being in accord with paradigmsthat were already anticipated by the centre in order to consume itu

In Nicaragua the dependence on a very specific and quite limited art markethas led to a general crisis in artistic production. One factor which inhibits thegrowth of young artists as well as old is the fact that it is almost impossible foran 'average person' from the popular classes to see any real art in Managua. Ofthe capital city's seven galleries, six are located in upscale neighbourhoods andmost are open by appointment only. In fact, only ArteFactoria's gallerydisplaying the work of ArteFacto collaborators is located in a popular barrio andis always free of charge. All public museums have been closed save for one,which is located in the austere National Palace and costs ten cordobaor, orroughly ten dollars admission, an astronomically high price for Nicaraguans.This museum currently displays ten to fifteen paintings of modern art byhistorically recognised Nicaraguan artists; however, even this institution isunder renovation and soon to become a natural history museum. Perhaps thegreatest loss to Managua is that of the Museo Julio Cortâzar. Despite its closure,the museum continues to house one of the most diverse collections of LatinAmerican art in the world rotting in its basement."

Virtually the lone voice in sustained protest to this situation is the artmagazine ArteFacto. In the words of one of its initial founders, artist andmagazine editor Raul Quintanilla, 'ArteFacto is like a sniper, taking shots at amassive wall of propaganda and silence'.15 In an installation piece, Quintanillamixes indigenous elements like com with a machine gun from the time of thebattles of Sandino, an image all too familiar in Nicaragua, to trigger a joltingand disjunctive perceptual encounter. In contrast to the essentialist images andstandardised art forms demanded by the global market, ArteFacto challenges itsaudience through unorthodox means to re-examine the starkly inequitable waytheir world is changing. One good example of this strategy is found on the backpage of the second issue, which addresses the Quatrocentennial celebration ofthe European invasion of the New World. By juxtaposing indigenous imagesfrom the pre-Colombian period of Mesoamerica with a seventeenth centuryEuropean etching of various torture devices employed by the Spaniards,ArteFacto does not allow its audience to lose sight of Latin America's brutalcolonial past.

The polemical insights offered by ArteFacto are almost the only printedcriticisms of the art world in Managua. The mainstream newspapers functionlargely to provide lists of local showings or cultural events and they feature afew brief survey articles of influential cultural actors from years past, such asthe Praxis Group of the 1960s." Depending upon finances, ArteFacto is usuallypublished four times a year. It has always been free of charge, although it

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Image of Icarus from the subscription ad. in Artefacto 14, Fall 1997

17 Stuart Hall, 'CulturalIdentity and Diaspora', inContemporary PostColonialTheory: A Reader, op cit,pp 110-121.

18 David Kunzle, Murals ofthe Nicaraguan Revolution,University of CaliforniaPress, Berkeley, 1994.

recently began actively seeking subscription. ArteFacto identifies itself withIcarus, the fallen figure of Greek myth, and there is a flippant awareness thatthe magazine 'is probably worth it'. This publication is distributed throughoutManagua at universities, newspapers, government buildings, schools and whatis left of the casas de cultura. As the political situation of the 1990s worsened forthe popular classes, ArteFacto became more oppositional in tone. Yet, as a resultof its activist, even militant, position it has been unable to keep mostadvertisers for more than two issues. In contrast to the rest of the Nicaraguanart market, the views of culture and identity presented by ArteFacto are more inline with what Stuart Hall describes in his article, 'Cultural Identity andDiaspora',17 where he articulates cultural identity as a never-ending process ofproducing and constructing hybridity and mestizaje. The destruction in 1990, bythe then Mayor of Managua, Arnoldo Alemân, of the mural, Homage to Women,is on the cover of the fourteenth issue of the magazine and this photo is anexample of ArteFacto's watchdog role in criticising the Chamorro adminis-tration's attempt to revise and redirect the culture of the Nicaraguan people."ArteFacto contains broad-ranging articles on art history, art criticism, sociologyand politics along with reproductions of works and poems. For example, oneissue contains essays by Marta Traba, Charles Baudelaire, Gerardo Mosquera,Alicia Azuela, and Meyer Schapiro. The magazine adopts a consciouslypostcolonial stance, and its conceptual framework, as well as actual format,defies typical western notions of periodisation in art history by juxtaposingarticles on art historical subjects from almost every era in world art next to the

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19 For a discussion ofSobalvarro's valuablesupport for the FSLNduring the 1980s, see BettyLaDuke, 'Six NicaraguanPainters', Art and Artists,July 1983, p 13.

contemporary criticism of artists working in Nicaragua today.One topic the ArteFacto collective repeatedly dissects is what it refers to as

the 'sacred cows' of modern Nicaraguan art. These are grand figures from thePraxis years (1963-1973) like painter Orlando Sobalvarro. What ArteFactobrings to light is the lack of political commentary or ideological critique in thesewell-known artists' most recent work and the fact that several of these painters,who now are the favourites of the new private patrons, have not developedstylistically for the last few years. One sees this when looking at Sobalvarro'swork from the early 1980s, such as Paisaje verano en Subtiava (1982), and his moreanodyne recent pictures, such as White Dove from January 1998. There isconsiderable continuity in subject and style over seventeen years, whichdenotes both greater pictorial refinement, if not growing precocity, and alessening of formal and ideological rigour. Recently, Sobalvarro's works havecome to please more than inspire or challenge." By generating controversy

Cover of Artefiicto 14, Fall 1997, showing the destruction in 1990 of Alejandro Canales' mural Homage to WomenPhoto: Maurido Duarte

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Orlando Sobalvarro, Paisaje verano en Subtiava, 1982, oil on woodPrivate collection

about famous artists and conventional subject matter in the commercial sense,and sometimes by publishing scathing indictments of the art market and itsmercenary values, ArteFacto strives to be an innovative, provocative and vitalliving force in the spirit of Dada. ArteFacto contends that the currentNicaraguan market's view of culture is sterile, exclusionary and eviscerated.Through its own commentary, ArteFactoria attempts to energise the art worldwith a nagging presentation of what is marginalised and edited out by itscurrent institutions.

The artists who collaborate as ArteFactoria share certain beliefs about theinadequacy of the art world in Nicaragua, and they showcase these views in themagazine. The views include their assessment of the negative role of the artmarket, the general public's lack of access to art, and ArteFacto's drive to 'shock'society back into an engaged understanding of how culture affects their lives.Although they share some common ideas and core positions, the work of theartists in the collective represents a very broad spectrum of different styles andmessages. According to Patricia Belli, it was only when they realised howmarginal artists had become in the post-1990 'new order', and that they werenot going to sell their work anyway that they really began to experiment in amore aesthetically adventuresome way. Of the eight artists involved inArteFactoria only painter Denis Nunez, whose work deals with indigenousthemes in a language of semi-figurative abstraction, is a full time professionalartist. Celeste Gonzalez, who works in photography and produces most of thephotos for ArteFacto is also a staff writer and photographer for the mainstream

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Patricia Belli, Espinas, 1995, mixed media

20 Interview with the author,Managua, Nicaragua,January 8, 1998.

Nicaraguan magazine Envio. Painter David Ocon, whose work, such as Roperro:iconos yam una psicopatologia del poder, draws on Pop Art, holds a full timeposition as an architect for the government. Painter Patricia Belli, whoaddresses issues of healing and women's rights works through multi-mediapieces made from fabric and thorns (such as Espinas, 1997), runs a bar andrestaurant. Aparicio Arthola, a well-known sculptor who also paints somestriking neo-expressionist imagery, teaches fine art at an art school. Theseartists collaborate in the sense that they are constantly doing critiques of eachother's work, conversing about the art world movements that affect their lives,and organising public manifestations under the 'notorious' banner ofArteFactoria. Their plurality of visual languages are not essentialising in eitherformal or conceptual terms, and these styles provide many different, engagingand 'anarchic' examples of contemporary Nicaraguan Art that haunt theborders of acceptance.

The main promoters and movers behind ArteFacto are Raul Quintanilla,Juan Bautista and Teresa Codina. For them, ArteFacto is a comprehensive,alternative lifestyle. From the moment Dona Violeta took office and continuingthroughout the administration of her current successor, Arnoldo Alemân,Quintanilla and Bautista have declared themselves officially 'unemployed' in asociety where neo-liberal policies have thrown almost sixty percent of the workforce out of work.20 They do not say this out of arrogance or because they areaffluent, but rather because it is a bold statement about asserting a dissidentbelief in relation to a power relationship and social formation that are heavily

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21 Interview with the author,Managua, Nicaragua,January 12, 1998,

22 William Robinson,"Nicaragua and the World:A Globalization Perspective',in Nicaragua WithoutIllusions, (ed) Thomas WWalker, op cit, p 23.

Raul Quintanilla, El sueno de razôn produce monstruos, 1992, mixed media

stacked against them. In the Nicaraguan election campaign of 1990, the USgovernment actually spent over one dollar for every five cents spent by theSandinistas, thus reminding Quintanilla and others of how hard it is to fight UShegemony even during a 'peaceful' period.21 After Dona Violeta had dramat-ically 'won' the elections, the Nicaraguan way of life soon changed drasticallyfor the majority. According to sociologist William Robinson, after 1990 thegovernment in Nicaragua became a system known as a 'polyarchy'. By this hemeans that a 'small group actually rules and mass participation in decisionmaking is confined to leadership choices in elections carefully managed bycompeting elites'.22 The 1990s have meant that policies of neo-liberalism andstructural adjustment, topped with US goods, have flooded Nicaragua. Raul

Quintanilla and Juan Bautista are twoordinary people who have chosen to usetheir lives to make a programmaticpolitical statement. While they areunemployed in the capitalistic 'wage-labourer' sense, they are busy mobilisingpublic discussion by writing, editing andpublishing a magazine, promoting'dissident' local artists to any open-minded collectors who travel in search ofcontemporary • Nicaraguan art, andpolemicising against the status quo whentravelling throughout Latin America andthe world, handing out ArteFacto toadvocate shows of Nicaraguan artists whoare critically engaged. Most importantly,Quintanilla, Bautista and Codina makepresentations in Nicaragua to localuniversities and high schools about arthistory, art criticism and the choices theyhave personally made. Therefore in asystem which typically demands thatevery person be a 'wage-labourer', Rauland Juan have systematically devoted thelast eight years of their lives tomaintaining a constantly anti-systemicand searching critical voice through theirart and activism in the smug and exclusivecultural life of neo-liberal Nicaragua. Theactions of ArteFacto focus on how aGramscian-type hegemony in thepost-1990s is gradually taking overNicaragua once again with a selectiveplacement of international corporatecapital. It is not that ArteFacto would haveus choose Communism as opposed toCapitalism, but rather that these'anarchistic' and Neo-Dada provocateursare questioning our idea of what ourchoices really are and how there are moreprogressive options than we presently

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23 Edward Said,Representations of theIntellectual: The 1993 RathLectures, Vintage Books,New York, 1996, p 102

know within the existing order of things.In Representations of the Intellectual, Edward Said states, 'Speaking the truth

to power is no Panglossian idealism: it is carefully weighing the alternatives,picking the right one, and then intelligently representing it where it can do themost good and cause the right change."3 Those associated with ArteFacto haveadapted specific lessons of Sandinista cultural policy from the revolutionary1980s to unsettle the 'post-revolutionary' environment of the 1990s. In responseto the privatisation of the art market and its resulting standardisation of artisticproduction as well as its suppression of public space, ArteFacto provides analternative critical voice and artistic experimentation with a popular accent,through which innovators and revolutionaries attempt to shake the public outof their acceptance of a greatly reasserted hegemony of corporate capitalism.

INTERVIEWS

Raul Quintanilla

Why did you decide to begin ArteFacto in 1990?

When we began ArteFacto in 1990, just after the election, it was almost a joke.Everybody thought we were crazy. You have to understand the situation. Forthe first few days following the Sandinista loss, the streets were empty, and inManagua it was like a city-wide funeral. Everyone, not just the artisticcommunity felt helpless, scared and abandoned. No one could believe that themajority of the population, not including artists, had voted out the Sandinistasand no one knew what to expect from the policies of the new government. I sayArteFacto was like a joke because things were so bad that all we could do waslaugh. The uncertainty of the situation was leaving people paralysed. We hadto do something. We had to believe things would keep going.

How has the mission of ArteFacto changed over the years?

In ArteFacto we are trying to establish a basis for critique in Managua. I am anartist myself and with the others formed ArteFactoria. This is a group of artistswho show together. We have a gallery called 'Albricias', or little gifts, but whenwe first came together in 1990, we wanted to have a concrete symbol of ourendeavours and so I created the magazine. Over the last eight years we havebecome more serious, more dedicated to the magazine, and far less conser-vative in our presentation and viewpoint. In the beginning, we were concernedwith courting advertisers and the community. However, as the political,economic and artistic environments in Nicaragua have deteriorated it hasbecome more important to us to risk, to speak the truth, to be outrageous, andas a result we have offended some people.

What is the place of ArteFacto in Managua?

We want ArteFacto to be of the world. Here, there is a tradition of 'passing thetorch' to the next generation. We don't want the fucking torch. As a result ofour rejection of certain ideals and our perceived lack of proper respect for our

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elders, the cultural community in Managua is always announcing our death.Yet, eight years later we are the only public voice who dares to criticise themonotony of the art market and the tragedy of this. We publicise the loss ofstatus of the artist after the election, and the way the government has attemptedto reshape our destiny. In Managua, we have to fight to be artists.

You speak about taking the torch from the older generation, and yet most of the majorcontributors to ArteFacto are in their late thirties and forties. Shouldn't you bepassing the torch to the younger generation?

In a sense we are attempting to reach the younger generation through themagazine and through our presentations. We do feature semi-regular contri-butions from a few artists in their twenties. In my opinion, however, there is acrisis in art production by the youth of Managua. First, the drastic nature of ourcurrent economic situation inhibits many people from choosing to create art.Second, the younger generation has no memory of Somoza; they only knew theRevolution in the post-1985 period. What they associate with the Sandinistas ishaving no toilet paper and no toothpaste because of the US embargo.Unfortunately, the majority of the young artists don't question their identity intheir work, instead they are creating for the only market they know andperceive and this is limited to tourists and banks.

Juan Bautista

What do you see as ArteFacto's place in the art world?

ArteFacto is iconoclastic. Nicaragua is a country where everyone is a hero of therevolution and these symbols are used over and over until they begin to losetheir meaning. We are here to break through the propaganda. ArteFactodefiantly and loudly exposes the reality of the current situation. Even if we arewrong, at least we initiate and demand public conversation. ArteFacto is a hairin the soup.

What is ArteFacto's mission?

Our mission is to publicly acknowledge that we have not forgotten how tochallenge and question authority, and to acknowledge that we do not justaccept things. As part of this mission we are attempting to make contacts withartists in all parts of the world. During the 1980s several artists travelled toNicaragua, but in recent times we have had to reach out to them. The magazineand our group exhibitions offer a way to re-establish the connections that havedisappeared.

Teresa Codina

What do you think of the editorial opinions in ArteFacto and the relations betweenmen and women?

At ArteFacto we practice 'Magical Marxism and Magical Capitalism'. Above allwe question our identity and the myriad ways this is constructed both by

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ourselves and by those who have power over us. We all believe in theimportance and power of asserting who we are. Consequently, the magazinecan be polemical to make a point. In terms of gender relations, we areandrogynous. There is mutual respect. That is why there is no hierarchy. All ofArteFacto's collaborators are too strong, too individual and too aggressiveabout their particular viewpoint to allow for any type of hierarchy. This strangeconglomeration seems to work.

Aparicio Arthola

Which artists influenced your work?

Goya, Courbet, Cezanne: the ones that inspire a dialogue in their work. I wanta form in which all participate, a form which speaks. Right now, I have a piececalled The Hangman about the suicides in Nicaragua. Recently, in the last twoor three years, the suicide rate has risen drastically, especially among men. Mywork is part sculpture, part painting and it deals with a topic we are allignoring. The suicides are a silent undercurrent of the vast discontent amongthe people here. I would be an artist wherever I was. It is not merely revolu-tionary, it is who I am. Right now I teach students of all ages the techniques offine art and this pays my bills.

Patricia Belli

How would you characterise the environment post-1990?

In the beginning no one risked anything; everyone just waited and kept tryingto sell their works. Finally, when we realised we were certainly not going to sellanything, it was a freeing in a sense. The artists of ArteFacto began to reallycreate work for themselves and push their limits. In my opinion ArteFacto is aproduct of this time. Now, looking back, our work has changed a lot. There isa clear progression of styles.

How has your own work changed as a part of this process?

In the beginning I was a painter but most recently I have been working withfabric and materials indigenous to Nicaragua. My work now is about healingand suffering. I went to the government and I told them that I was going tohave a show in Peru. I asked them if I could put up a show of my work at theNational Palace here in Managua. They agreed, but I had to pay for the wholething myself. There were no lights so I had to bring in my own. I had to designand pay for the catalogue, everything, but it was worth it. It was an amazingexperience to speak with the people who came to see my exhibition, I was veryinterested to hear their thoughts. I hope my work exposes the legacy of thepast, the power of healing, and our individual ability to heal. There is hope.

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