Lia Porto
Q. Tell us about yourself…
A. I’m a multidisciplinary artist living and working in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Q. How would you describe your artist style?
A. Contemporary.
Q. How has it evolved over time?
A. My practice originated in painting and drawing, but over time I incorporated embroidery, collage, and installations. I’m very interested in hybridising techniques to amplify the range of the materials that I work with, because that allowes me to reach further in my conceptual explorations.
Q. What’s the most valuable lesson you have learned as an artist?
A. Trust intuition.
Q. What is Fiber Art?
A. Fiber involves the use of textiles. I’m particularly interested in using recovered materials that carry social, cultural, and emotional information.
Q. Where do you find your inspiration from?
A. I work with my daily concerns, everything I experience I process through my artistic practice. My work and life are deeply entangled.
Q. What do you do outside of art?
A. Galleries, museums, yoga, nature, and spending time with my family.
Q. What artists inspire you? Why?
A. Many artists inspire me and in different ways. It is very nurturing to stay open and aware to what others have done and are doing.
Q. What projects or pieces are you most proud of?
A. I’m more interested in process than I am in result. The continuity of my practice is more relevant to me than any individual piece. It’s great to see the big picture of many years of work and to see how each piece is the result of the ones that I’ve done before.
Q. What in your personal life has influenced you to choose your career?
A. A deep need to express myself.
Q. Where or what is your happy place?
A. I want myself to be my happy place, I’m working that out.
Q. If you could change one aspect of our society though your work, what would it be?
A. In many of my recent works I’m exploring the idea of coexsistence and cooperation.
Q. Do you think creativity is innate or learned?
A. Creativity is innate, but we have to learn how to connect with it.
Q. What piece of advice would you give a young artist?
A. I see art as a practice that needs to be developed, a kind of muscle that we have to train. It is a process in time and it needs patience.
