Inés Aponte: Seeking the Stroke of Conscience

We are entering a challenging stage of human interaction where the written word seems to substitute the verbal. Our exchanges seem limited to email and text messages. Nobody calls. Though many may bemoan the loss of the human voice—the absence of volume and tone, the emotional component of dialogue—for those among us who love the epistolary, this challenge presents an opportunity to expand on the literary endeavor. With this in mind, in early 2018 I had a written conversation with artist Inés Aponte on the introspective evolution of her creative process and her most recent work. The text that follows seeks to communicate her complex methodology and technique by means of a generous dialogue on a series of drawings that connect us with the human body, as part of a long genealogy of vital experimentation of contemporary art that seeks to experience and communicate visually the direct experience of reality.

EP I would like to begin this exchange by mentioning the visual impact of your marks, because they remind me of the Neolithic strokes immortalized in caves as one of the first cultural documents that evidence the birth of human awareness, born of the mixture of art with ritual and functionality. Your marks also contain features of Zen calligraphy, a product of deep breathing, awareness, and seeking to capture a “pure gesture.” Lastly, I see how you avoid primitivism through the use of abstraction; as well as your reluctance towards the précieux, which you avoid through repetition, which, in turn, takes us to the field of psychology and the Rorschach images. What can you tell me about your complex visual equation?

IA I call this selection “Direct Experience.” I have always sought raw expression; always avoided the précieux, gradually moving towards what I consider to be strictly essential. My mark-making process consists of inking body parts, specifically bones and joints, to transfer them onto paper. I treat my marks as a language that is the product of the collaboration between my body, the ink, and the paper. Repeating my marks has to do with a desire to return our attention to the sense of touch as an integral element in the search for reality. My drawings strive to have the freshness of actions that are direct, simple, and repeated again and again as a meditative practice. I have created this series of drawings as “portraits” in which I seek to reflect every person’s search.

EP As a performance artist, I completely agree that using the body as a tool redirects our perception towards reality. Have you ever considered taking on a more performative process and work? 

IA I love drawing; I am passionate about the act of marking surfaces and creating registers. I am fascinated by the qualities of tracings and the variations in the lines. Without a doubt, as you pointed out earlier, there are references to the drawings of Zen Buddhism. Their masters understood the importance of working in the present; they valued the direct non-dualist experience of reality and sought to transfer it to drawing. Ink is an ideal medium for these purposes. It is fluid and spontaneous but also capricious; it does not allow for rewriting or correction, although its tones can be varied quite simply. It is also light and can be applied easily to the body, capturing myriad details. I understand that this work could be “performative” but that is not a goal of my creative process. In time, collaborations could arise with artists from other media but at this moment, I am only going to accompany the work with some photographs documenting my process.

EP Keeping in mind the exercises from the Greg Goode manual, how do you differentiate between illustration and drawing? Is it valid to establish that distinction?

IA As a writer, Greg Goode tries to direct us towards the realization that there is no separation between the world and us, between the observer and the observed—between the artist and the material. These are all platonic constructions of perception expressed by language. Platonic language promotes the illusion of a “reality” that is parallel to direct experience.

The Greg Goode manual includes a series of very detailed exercises that direct the reader to explore reality with conscious attention. His text is organized in four parts: The World, The Body, The Mind, and Consciousness. To explore each of these four areas, Goode subdivides the chapters and exercises aimed at focusing our attention on the perception of these areas according to the register made by each of our senses. I have sought to transfer this investigation into my drawing practice. The first pieces I did were illustrations of some of the exercises that appear in his chapter on the body. I titled them “Sensations of the Body.” These works helped me make a gradual transition from my meditative exercises to art.

In exploring the sense of touch, Goode invites the reader to close his or her eyes and touch the surface of a table. When I did this exercise, I remember having felt wonderful because there was no separation at all between the table and my hand. During the experience, distances dissolved in pure sensation, expanding my consciousness. This register of sensations was new to me. I experienced “my hand” and “the table” as mere names, words that had no place in direct experience. Both the notion of the subject who experiences and that of the world experienced from “out there” dissolved. Gradually, the reality that arose was intimately linked to the consciousness of my perception of it, without any type of separation.

I have observed how each sense registers the world in a particular way and how codifications change as we go from one sense to another. For example, touch registers hardness and softness, temperature and humidity, while sight captures forms and colors. In this process, intellect establishes relationships between the diverse codes. This is how we “construct the world.” Making these drawings has been like traveling from the concrete to the intangible, from the familiar to the remote, from that which I understood as known to that which is unrecognizable. As a result of this entire process, I decided to transfer my tactile experience to drawing. I substituted the table for paper and, in addition to my hand, decided to mark with other parts of my body. It all became marking. I went from illustration to drawing, literally, a body of new drawings.

Drawing has contributed a cultural element to my search for direct experience; drawing has made it public. Creative investigation has revealed to me that in the act of creating a marking within the context of art, ink and paper allow me to create an artistic visual registry of the basic act of touching, rubbing, moving, and marking that communicates my search beyond the illustrative.

EP Your work contains notable influences of what could be called the global literature of the human spirit, while at the same time your drawings are also part of a very important genealogy in contemporary art. This combination of sources and trajectories, to my understanding, gives them a multidisciplinary quality.

IA This work engages in a dialogue with all of those who have broadened and transformed the practice of making art in order to “bring it closer to life.” To me, it is important to remember those sources and trajectories to establish links of knowledge. For example, in terms of “spiritual” literature, I make conscious reference to Atmananda Khrishna Menon and Nisargadatta Maharaj as thinkers who established legacies that have served to define conscious existential paths. I would not have created these works without them. As I mentioned earlier, Zen Buddhism also has an effect on me both because of its influence on the use of materials and for emphasizing the importance of the immediate: working from the present, with full attention. I am sensitive to its appreciation of the raw, the essential; of getting rid of the superfluous.

Also very important to me are the questionings that occurred during the 60s regarding drawing as a process and not as a medium for representation. That unleashed a new orientation of the medium where drawing was redefined as “making markings on a surface.” Drawing began to redefine itself as the act of marking and the materials used became very important. The behavior of the material without the interference of the artist began to be appreciated, removing or reducing the intentionality of the “subject.”

Then other modalities of drawing arose; for example, drawing as documentation or registration of an activity. This led to a broadening of both its discourse and its formal aspects, creating registers of “direct experience.” This coincides with the incorporation of the “performative body” in the visual arts, a process that began with “interventionist” practices and replaced the emphasis that had been placed on the representation of the figure by the presence of the body itself. This evolution of the medium is definitely relevant for “my body” of drawings.

My works are inserted in spiritual and plastic genealogies: my drawings engage in a dialogue with Yves Klein’s Anthropometrics, Ana Mendieta’s registers in soil, Richard Long’s lines etched on the ground, Bruce Naumann’s videos of simple and repetitive acts, the integration of the body in the paintings of Jackson Pollock, Kiki Smith’s references to the body, and the works of Lygia Clark and Hélio Oiticica, among many others.

EP I think that your academic work must also have influenced you when trying to communicate all of this to your students. Your drawings synthesize a lot.

IA As part of my academic work, I teach basic, anatomical, and advanced drawing. That experience has also influenced my current work. In the basic courses, we work with traditional practices and media, which we later transfer to the drawing of the human figure. The human figure is initially approached from anatomical knowledge and the legacy of the classic schools. However, it was by questioning the media and traditional representations used in the teaching of advanced studio drawing that I began to move from the idea of the human body to the direct experience of the body. I started to become interested not so much in the representation of the figure but in the body and its experiences. In perspective, teaching three drawing courses at different levels in turn generated a series of dialogues with my students that had significant repercussions on my work.

EP How do you intertwine your abstraction, which is so personal, with modern abstraction?

IA I have been very interested in exploring how abstract forms are produced by an act as simple as marking watercolor paper with my inked body. That tension between the concrete figure and the abstract mark produces a very interesting dialogue in these works. That exploration goes back to something I mentioned earlier: that each of the senses has its own language and reading. In this case, the resulting abstract marks are typical of the language of touch and challenge the reading made by the sense of sight. The abstraction created by touch dismantles the cognitive expectations of sight, because the anatomical model of portrait drawing typical of the sense of sight is absent. In the perceptual spheres, cognitive preconceptions are dismantled in the act of transference between the senses. Touch translates as the temperature, humidity or dryness of a surface, the softness or hardness of an impression, and sight translates as form and color. In this case, the impression registered has its own life and loses the anatomical model.

When I incorporated movement into my markings, they became even more evasive, more distant from the original reference to anatomical drawing. The cognitive world clashed with the direct register of my body, which ended up abstracted in lines, points, triangles, circles, and strokes. This result links my work to the tradition of abstract language, established during the early decades of the 20th century and later restated by abstract expressionism. During the reformulation of abstract art in the 60s, there were fusions with surrealism and expressionism that consolidated with the language of abstract art. During that stage, strokes, stains and gestures of abstract language were added. All of that repertoire is displayed in my drawings.

The act of making the same mark again and again, moment to moment, seeing how, despite always marking with the same form, the register constantly varies, has been part of the research of this work. Organizing them in lines and columns provided me with a neutral structure that allowed me to focus taxonomically on my marks, which at the same time was consonant with the reductive intentionality of the work in general. I also want to add that movements such as minimalism have provided me with “purified” aesthetic criteria that are interesting to consider. The grid, incorporated as a resource in these works, responds to a “minimalist concern” for neutralizing expressiveness.

EP Your works give me the impression of “bridges” trying to reconnect you with the vulnerability of your body in order to reclaim it.

IA During this process I have discovered how I used to live imprisoned by mental patterns I had never questioned. Having been able to find a methodology to observe them has given me the capacity to open up psychic spaces, to gain some knowledge of quietness as the mind’s original natural state. During the process, I became aware of my body because my brain no longer occupied all of my attention. I became present in my simplest daily activities: noticing sounds, tastes, colors, odors, and textures that used to go practically unnoticed. It greatly broadened my day-to-day experience, my capacity to perceive the extraordinary in the ordinary.

EP What can you tell me about managing personal identity during this process and the tensions that could arise?

IA I believe that, sooner or later, all of us who embark on the path of questioning what is real will have to question the construction of our own identity. The deconstruction process will shake our very foundation and can be terrifying. Everything we have constructed—identity, beliefs and relationships—will be transformed and eventually seen for what it truly is: a fluid and changing activity. On this journey we face monsters that had been sleeping for a long time; rage, fear and sadness will parade before us, disconcerting us. Each one will burst in with great intensity, like forces experienced by the body. I have observed that, as we grant them space, view them without judgment, the monsters walk through and disappear, or they become weakened and we learn how to live with them.

EP What “polite challenge” are you posing to your public?

IA I think that my gesture is an invitation to experience everything anew. We will not return unchanged from that contemplative experience.

EP For those young artists who may read this, who I don’t doubt will become inspired to experiment with drawing and probe into direct experience, could you provide us with more details about the techniques you developed?

IA The marking process generated the work’s technique. There was an initial exploration in which little by little I observed the process of creating the marks; initially observing which parts of the body created the most defined markings: muscles, bones, hair, mass or extremities. This led me to note that bones generated the clearest marks and how the variations in positioning my body affected my impressions.

At the technical level, I considered several types of paper and ink before deciding which provided the best results. I worked with pure and diluted ink. In making the transfers with ink, I experimented on varying the pressure of my body against the paper and alternating the duration of the markings. I identified which effects interested me more, polishing my technique.

With practice, I also discovered that the original inking for each mark allowed me to make four repetitions, creating a variety of tones and textures in the sequence: the first was always darker and more solid; the following marks would progressively move towards tones of gray that were more textured. The final marks were softer and captured subtle registers of the skin. Every four marks, I would repeat the inking. 

After achieving a satisfactory technical protocol, I was able to divide the work into three phases. In the first phase, I consolidated what I called my “primary language.” In the second phase, I incorporated my movement; and in the third phase, I began to create combinations between my marks and my movements. The process of the work required a technical acceptance of certain irregularities because, as a tool, the human body creates a highly sensitive equation. 

After much producing, destroying, and conserving, I proceeded to a curatorial selection of the pieces which, in technical terms, I considered “finished,” and began making curatorial decisions based on my formal training as an artist and on the experience itself; on those moments when paper and ink became indistinguishable, dissolving into pure sensation. I studied the drawings objectively and carefully selected those works that, technically, combined the greatest varieties of tone and clarity of the marks with my highest levels of concentration and introspection. 

EP Many artists want to achieve an international, or even global, presence. But I have always believed that globality begins at home, in achieving a local depth that then connects with other equally profound localities throughout the world, creating a network that to me is true globalism, a globalism of intimacy. How do you position yourself within globalism? 

IA My creative process has been intimately linked to my work as a teacher at the Escuela de Artes Plásticas de Puerto Rico [Puerto Rico School of Fine Arts]. In the classroom, my students and I share concepts and practices that arise from the creative process in my studio. More recently, having received the Pollock Krasner grant has allowed me to generate a broader platform to disseminate my work. Greg Goode will be writing an essay for the catalogue, Miriam Muñiz will write about my work and, simultaneously, I will create a website that will help establish a dialogue with various communities. I still ask myself whether those dialogues will develop with groups of people who are inquiring into the nature of reality, or with art students and artists who are researching the new possibilities and languages of contemporary drawing. My new works converge with both fields.

EP After producing a work like this, what’s next in your trajectory? Where is your practice headed?

IA The next step has already started emerging. I have begun a series of new drawings while working with flour to make bread. I ink the flour and knead on the paper. I have also been experimenting with the movement of feet on sand with red ink. The result has been fascinating. I am thinking of “inking” other activities. It’s a work in progress and, as a draftswoman, I question the relevance that documenting these next explorations may or may not have. I’m inclined to think that, beyond mere documentation, the process of creating them may be relevant to the presentation of my future works. Maybe that’s where the “performative” component you had mentioned earlier might come into play.

EP Your works seem to be documents on humanity. It’s as if you wanted to rescue what we have left as humans post-industrialization, at the threshold of the robotization that is replacing so many groups of workers. I envision you as an artist stopped at this crossroads to remind us that we must not leave the body behind, lest we pay an irrecoverable price.

IA Contemporary culture is manipulated by distractions aimed at reinforcing consumption. We live a hurried life, possessed by superfluous desires that create debilitating addictions, coveting excessively, fulfilling expectations produced by others’ agendas. Rejecting all of this and stopping means “returning to the body” and, eventually, “returning to the world,” but as awareness. I think my work can contribute to experiencing a different paradigm, pointing to other ways of being in society. That is what these drawings are, a full stop for direct contemplation. I work with young students and I feel a great responsibility for generating that awareness, being present in the world.

EP ¿Can you describe the human price that creating this work entails, in terms of silence and solitude?

IA My work definitely entails long hours of research, not just in the studio. I observe everything consciously in order to be able to transfer that meticulous attention to the studio. I meditate on the totality of my activities. I strive to dedicate entire days to the execution of my work, to have enough time to work without interruption. Working with the ink requires intimacy; it cannot be rushed because, as I mentioned earlier, ink is very sensitive and records even the tiniest detail. Technically speaking, the process of drawing is secondary to the process of inquiry while I mark, but both activities require my full attention. The contemporary world presents an enormous challenge to this activity but, eventually, it also becomes integrated into my meditation and nothing is excluded from the register.

EP These works read monastic, but with an urban quality that transcends the traditional medieval monasticism of the West. Are you trying to say that individual and collective awareness can be achieved within the urban context?

IA In the past, individuals would enter monastic spaces to inquire on the nature of what is real, but nowadays, with so much information available regarding the dialogues between science and spirituality, many “spiritual” persons lead a contemplative life without having to “renounce the world,” without having to leave their social context. In addition, the dialogue between religions has evolved and there are groups of people who are awakening to their own nature without needing to insert themselves within rigid religious institutions.

Eventually, all of these distinctions will vanish and we won’t even speak of the difference between the contemplative and the social. We are the world, we are society, as all non-duality teachings assert.

EP Is it possible to achieve awareness in the midst of a crisis?

IA It is possible. Puerto Rico is going through one of its most difficult moments in modern history. My everyday life takes place within that context. That register is also in my work because I do not experience a separation of any kind: it is direct experience. For me, experiencing reality is compelling. Only then can we achieve social transformation on the island and everywhere. This work is my contribution to that transformation.