To understand how local artists shape the material to extract their vision of the world, you have to meet them. Spotlight is a series of portraits that appears every end of the month. Forays into the world of creators who work on their works in unusual ways, away from current cultural events.
Santiago Tamayo Soler did not move his studio to the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (MMFA) in the spring, but practically. He went there for eight weeks with the aim of creating a series of works, as a beneficiary of the Empreintes research and creation residency — and its 7,000 dollars. At the end of April, halfway through his comings and goings at the MMFA, he spoke about his approach, sitting on a bench in the Quebec and Canadian art pavilion. Not a bad workshop.
“This is one of the first images I created,” says the Concordia University graduate, holding out a sheet of paper. It has changed a lot and this is the most recent version. There is a painting by Tom Thomson, one by James Edward Hervey MacDonald. »
The paintings in question, Aurora borealis (around 1916-1917), by Thomson, and Mountain Chaos (1925), by MacDonald (from the Group of Seven), are preserved at the MMFA. Free from reproduction rights, they are part of the vast collection from which the artist imagined landscapes worthy of postcards.
An expert in sampling and fine mixing of visual sources, Santiago Tamayo Soler is not a painter. Or if there is one, you must add the digital label to it. On his canvas – his computer screen – he composes scenes whose common material is images found online. Rare exceptions: the works of Thomson, MacDonald and company.
The man who was pushed by the COVID-19 lockdown to delve deeper into computer creation, and to abandon camera work and performance, believes that “pixelating allows everything to be acceptable.” “I started mixing images that I recorded on a green screen and images that I found on Google Maps,” he says. Since 2021, three of his works have circulated in Montreal (PHI Centre, Dazibao, Bradley Ertaskiran Gallery), Sherbrooke (Sporobole), Saguenay (Bang) and even Paris (Canadian Cultural Centre).
His time at the MMFA will not have kept him away from the screens. It was from an “old computer” that he had access to the database. “It makes more sense to work with that than to ask to see 80 paintings,” he says, deadpan and down to earth at the same time. “The residency is a rich experience,” he concedes, happy to have still been able to visit the reserves.
Confronting prejudices
Born in Bogotá, Colombia, a Montrealer for eight years, Santiago Tamayo Soler is one of the artists who enrich Quebec art with their accents, their stories, their concerns. Since 2013, the Empreintes residency has echoed this by targeting “a visual arts artist belonging to a cultural community and living in Montreal”. Karen Tam, Ari Bayuaji and Leila Zelli, for example, have already benefited from this program run by the MMFA and the Conseil des arts de Montréal.
Santiago Tamayo Soler came to the museum with the idea of intertwining, if not confronting, prejudices. The Postales project he had in mind would talk about migratory stories, and in particular those of the Colombian community in Canada. It is not limited to those established in Quebec, because Ontario remains the main destination for this population. “The majority live in London. London ” he says, laughing.
If he chose the postcard, it is because of its status as a “fantasy image of a place”, but also because it allows him to simulate a possible correspondence with relatives. The migratory reality is not always the El Dorado dreamed of, recalls the artist, thinking of his own mother who remained in Colombia.
“In my postcards, we find elements of Canadian landscapes and Colombian landscapes. They are invented, hybrid landscapes. I want to talk about a liminal space,” says the man who is one of the five recent winners of the Prix en art actuel du Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec.
Four postcards — one per season — were created during the residency. The work constructed from the Northern Lights painted by Tom Thomson corresponds to winter. This image of nature specific to the Group of Seven (of which Thomson is an inspiring figure) is redefined here by the strong presence, in number and in the foreground, of an emblematic plant of Colombia, the frailejoncharacterized by its water retention in desert areas.
” THE frailejon is something between a palm tree and a cactus, he comments. There are many of them around the village where my family comes from. Putting them in opposition to winter, or the northern lights, that’s a bit of an exercise.”
Whisper of experiences
Beyond the game of appearances, Santiago Tamayo Soler’s project has social flights. This is what he wanted when he testified in front of the recorder. His landscapes may be invented, but they constitute metaphors for adaptation to change.
“The majority of the landscapes represent forests. Each postcard contains a whisper of individual experiences. The forest is the multiplicity of these experiences that develop and change according to very slow processes, but always there, in community,” explains the artist.
“What I explore,” he continues, “is where we come from and what transforms us when we migrate. »
Coming from a family of non-professional artists, Santiago Tamayo Soler merges the paintings from the MMFA with works by his grandfather, uncle, aunt… He also included works by women (eight), despite the challenge that the collection from the museum asked him. It had to be held in periods 70 years old or more – the question of reproduction rights – those where “all the artists are men, and white”. “I was not interested in reproducing the history of the landscape as seen by those who colonized it. After discussions with the conservation team, colleagues and friends, I decided to keep the works retained and thus let the absence speak. »
Without playing vigilante, Santiago Tamayo Soler is sensitive to marginal causes. If the Spanish speaker imbues his postcards with linguistic ambiguities, his identity finds salvation in the hybridity of his compositions. “I offer landscapes and a world of Latin America from the point of view of a gay Latin American. These are futuristic works. But that’s the future. No point,” he concludes, having suffered from Colombian machismo “for years.”
In September, the artist and the MMFA curator of Quebec and Canadian art, Anne-Marie St-Jean Aubre, will discuss the work carried out during the residency in front of an audience.