INTERVIEW WITH THE ARTIST

LUCIA PASQUALE: What are you currently reading?

aung.robo: I just finished a very reading heavy quarter of school in which we read Wittig, Foucault, Anzaldua and more. Some books that I am carrying around, and wanting to read are: Saint Foucault by David M. Halperin, Massacre of the Dreamers: Essays on Xicanisma by Anna Castillo and I want to re-read Testo Junkie by Beatriz Preciado.

LP: What musical artists inspire you to create?

AR: I am heavily into multi-process everything. This can be dual vocals in a band, multi-person poetry performances and more. I am interested in the “power in numbers” ideology so anyone who is making big space for folx whom dis-idenitify with the mainstream is important. Lately my world was filled with Emily Wells – like the past three years. So now I am moving on to Angel Haze – whom identifies as non-binary – critically important – and makes space to feel anger and express it with the state of people’s treatment in society.

LP: If you could go on the adventure of a lifetime, where would you go?

AR: I would travel on wheels to meet other queer trans people. I would go anywhere so long as there was coffee, conversation and an opportunity for me to photograph someone in a particular environment.

LP: In three to five words, describe what art means to you.

AC: Catharsis, documentation, visibility.

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aung.robo (°1988, Washington, United States) is a political visual artist whose works, in a variety of media, study the intersections of race, class, and gender. By investigating language on a meta-level and personal-level, aung.robo tries to grasp language as it evolves to make space for folx whom are “Other.”

Her artworks distort recognisable forms which she hopes move viewers away from ingrained beauty aesthetics.  Here that vision shifts, becoming multifaceted as if to expose the humanity in oneself through emotive images, often juxtaposed with snippets of text. By applying abstraction, she creates intense personal moments masterfully created by means of omissions, acceptance and refusal, luring the viewer into the image.

Her works focus on the inability of communication to visualise reality, the attempt of dialogue, the dissonance between form and content and the dysfunctions of language. In short, the lack of clear references are key elements in the work; she develops forms that do not follow logical criteria, but are based only on subjective associations and formal parallels, which incite the viewer to make new personal associations.

Her works are based on formal associations which open a unique poetic vein. Multilayered images arise in which the fragility and instability of our seemingly certain reality is questioned.