The Invisible Struggles of Rossina Bossio

Rossina Bossio is an artist with a powerful visual exhibition career. We invited her to delve into her creative process and build bridges with Faber Franco, our first artist invited to the printed edition, who cites her as one of his main pictorial references. The detailed description of her work, as well as the strength of her sculptural body are undoubtedly a great experiment.

Photography: Faber Franco, Styling: Francisca Ceballos, Text: Adela Cardona 

Sitting on the brown armchair in her living room, in front of Desliz II, one of her paintings, Rossina Bossio touches her chin lightly, between the silences of our conversation. Her hands are white with long fingers and transparent nails. Immaculate, for a woman who has created 350 paintings over the course of ten years.

Her space, of earth tones and white walls, has accents of color in her objects: in the yellow book she is reading, in the magenta sculptures on the black piano, in the purple candle in front of the fireplace and in the painting, made of grayed greens and turquoises, yellows, reds and a woman standing dressed in white.  Kena, the cat that four years ago saved her from the huge mice that 76th Street brings, moves elegantly and pampered on the carpet, her black and white streaks are like Rossina's work, an amalgam of opposites. 

Her series "The Holy Beauty Project", "Strange Correspondence", "Doll's House", "Stranger", "Fallopite" and "Sacred Beauty" play with notions of religion, femininity, chaos, sexuality, illness and beauty. But a nuanced, complex, provocative beauty.

Rossina not only paints. She is an artist who expresses herself in various media: video, performance and photography are formats she has used to explore other facets of her series and expand the paintings. In many videos she can be seen dancing in front of the camera with fragmented and sometimes erratic movements. The training she has had for 17 years in different genres such as jazz or ballet has led her to express herself through her body. Her struggles, her experiences, the themes that have touched her since childhood, her obsessions, are transparent in her work, which is self-referential and visceral. Her work has been present in spaces such as the Museum of Contemporary Art in Taipei, the Belgrade Cultural Center, the Museum of Art of the Imperial City of Beijing, the Tribeca Cinemas in New York, the Grand Palais in Paris, the Museo Iglesia Santa Clara and the Casa Cano in Bogota. 

Dressed in a gray blazer, her hair longer than it has been in a long time, and looking out into the garden, Rossina is ready to share her experiences, taking pauses to organize her thoughts and laughing out loud every time she recalls a childhood anecdote or talks about something that reveals itself as absurd.

Let's talk about the residency you did a month ago in Spokane, Washington. Why did you decide to attend a dance-focused residency?

It was my first residency. I wanted to do a multimedia project with dance, video and painting. The residency offered to go there to work with local dancers and invited interactive art artists to do something with them. 

I started auditioning dancers, interviewing them and recording them, because the idea was that the audios would be used for the music. That was my first session. In the second one I got in front of the camera, got several costumes and explored different qualities of movement. All this over the course of three months, prior to each recording session I had to prepare and then edit. On the last shoot everything came together because I found an amazing dancer and wardrobe. 

I was going with a simple editing plan of putting the audiovisual material over the music, but as soon as I had the music I wanted to edit in a way that would match the movement second by second with the music. 

From the residency I was also left with a need to be in nature. In Spokane, it took me fifteen minutes by bicycle to get to some wildly spectacular nature spaces, with rivers and waterfalls. Here in Bogota I miss it. 

How did you find this dancer? How did your relationship with her come about?

Her name is Mackenzie Fagras and she was in the circle of people who work with this residency. I added her on Facebook, watched videos of what she had done, and found her to be very versatile. I sat down to talk to her and the interaction was very fluid, I feel like it was a matter of chemistry. I would say something to her that would wind her up and she would talk and talk. Then I put a dress on her and with references of what I had done I would say "let's go this way", or I would give her instructions like "imagine you are pulling a rope". She's a girl who doesn't have to do much to look stunning. She, just by her presence, carries so much that also plays into the soul of a person who dances or performs: the personal story. This is a woman who stands in front of the camera and fills it. It happened to us that she happened to put on her dress bag and so we used the bag as well.

In the video of Fighting With Air, a product of that residency, you are in front of the camera. How was this experience with dance?

I usually dance alone, at home, in any corner I can find. I have a basic training in ballet, modern jazz, dancehall and hip hop, I started taking courses since I was a teenager, I've been attending different academies since I was thirteen years old. When I dance alone I improvise and take elements from all that background. Before getting in front of the camera I needed about four sessions a week of intense dancing and finding the songs I wanted to use, the movements. I also used cameras to get used to it because dancing in front of them is difficult, they put you in an extremely vulnerable position. It's very different from dancing on a stage with people. I set up the cameras and I had a person who zoomed in and zoomed out. There were two cameras to take two shots. In that case it was like that, in other cases I have needed to work with a director or a cinematographer to handle the camera. We always talk beforehand about shots, movement, the cinematographic style I want. At that moment I put all my trust in that person and I concentrate on my own thing, which is the performative part. The main concept of Fighting With Air revolves around the exploration of the difficulty of creating the video itself, as well as the liberation of the internal struggles we each have, and their acceptance. It shows the steps for the construction of the performance, from the interview, to the rehearsal of the movements and their final achievement with the costumes and the ideal dancer.

In this teamwork you describe, with the directors for example, how do you manage to communicate the idea of what you need and get them to execute it? 

The key is to find someone with whom I have an aesthetic and artistic affinity. Before working with a director I look at what he or she has done. I always look for references before developing a video. In this one, for example, I used as a reference the videos I had made for "The Holy Beauty Project", I chose the dress because it is a reference to the virgin. And I have a problem, which I'm working on, which is that it's very hard for me to let go of control. I need to be in control of everything and that's problematic. I feel that there are moments when I have a hard time and I don't trust, but in the end very nice things have always come out. So with experience I've realized that it can work. 

Tell us about the process of a work or a series from its conception to its exhibition or completion.

I am very intuitive. I have notebooks or in my cell phone I have notes or audios of ideas that come to me. Sometimes I go back to them and say "no, not that, or this could be useful". There are ideas, and it usually happens to me like that, that obsess me. They don't leave me and don't leave me until I have to develop them in some way. My great series have been obsessive ideas. I have some little loose things of art works that I have done, but I have had five large series of works, which have lasted between two or three years, in which I have recurring images that I want to take to the canvas or to the screen, and I look for a way to carry them out. And in the development I begin to understand why, or what it is about or the subject matter. 

It usually has to do with a personal process. For example, "The Holy Beauty Project" had to do with my religious and gender upbringing. I grew up in a home where we were a lot of women, but it was a macho and traditionally feminine home in the sense that there were manifestations of crying, of drama. So I wanted to explore all that and somehow release it and make catharsis. I also wanted to question it and find out what I thought about it. Because when you don't move away from that core, you don't question what you were taught. "The Holy Beauty Project" was born precisely in France, where for the first time I could put into perspective everything that was my education and decide for myself. "Casa de muñecas" had to do with female sexuality, which was another part of my education, there was a lot of taboo. Extraña correspondencia" came about when I returned to Bogota and the city inspired me, but it also has to do with a personal process of a search to find beauty in chaos. Bogota is a supremely chaotic city and it served me as a stage to develop that search.

And this notion of beauty, how has it transformed for you?

For me, beauty has always carried with it the light and darkness of life. It seems to me that what is strictly beautiful, sweet, tender, lacks the counterpart. In that in-between is where I find what I find beautiful. I feel that the dark part, because of my personal development and because I feel that I am in a better moment of my life, is less and less dense than when I was painting ten years ago. I feel that I am looking more and more for that balance between the one and the other: between the complacently beautiful and the provocative.

You majored in Fine Arts at L'École des Beaux-Arts de Rennes in France, why did you decide to do it, how was this experience? 

On the one hand, I wanted to leave Bogota. I wanted to go to Europe and in France the education is economic. When I entered the Arts career in France I really appreciated what the Javeriana was for me, because at a technical level they gave me many tools, and in the school in France the learning was totally conceptual and discursive. It was more about talking about the work, justifying it, learning to defend it.

Does your individual work depend on schedules or is it a more random and fluid process?

I used to have extremely strict schedules. For eight years I was religious about getting up early and at eight in the morning painting for six to ten hours. I was crazy. But just in that process of letting go of control, also for mental health, I try not to have such strict schedules. I go more with what I have during the week.

What role does music play in your life? Do you have a favorite soundtrack to work to? 

For me music is extremely important. It moves a lot of things in me and sets the mood. I have some eclectic music playlists, I like to sit down and randomly watch, listen and add. I like to organize those lists by curves and invite people to dance. I have periods. Right now I listen to dancehall and Afrobeat with electronic fusion, I love to dance to it, put it on when I work and when I do the dishes, because it cheers me up. I've had more rock moments. I have a classical music playlist, but I discovered that I like classical music with the andantes. I've gone back more to pop, but I'm very selective with it, I don't like the mainstream stuff. And I say I'm coming back because between the ages of ten and eleven I was fascinated by Mariah Carey. As a teenager I became a "superdark": I listened to Portishead, Moloko, Massive Attack.

What role do external stimuli play in your work?

There are always outside elements that come into play. For example, in this residency I had been looking for costumes for several weeks, going to thrift stores, and I said to one person: "I can't spend any more money on dresses, why don't you take me to your dancer friends' houses and go through their closets? And a girl said to me, "I have my wedding dress," and I thought, "No, I'm too lazy".  We were about to leave the house and suddenly I see her wedding picture, with the dress. It was not in my plans to wear such a grandiloquent or exaggerated piece, but I saw it and I said "I have to wear it, nothing to do". So I think it's a marriage of subconscious and reality and those marriages are very fortunate. My creative process is a mix between listening to myself and my ideas, and being open to what inspires me around me.

There are stimuli that influence me indirectly, for example, I used to look at and get a lot of inspiration from fashion magazines. How I'm going to dress a model is key. The last year I've been obsessed with reading autobiographies of comedians. Comedians have a touch of humor in them. I like comedy that tackles complex issues and usually has a dark edge to it.

Why work with various formats? Photography, video, drawing, painting, what does each medium give you as an artist?

On the one hand, painting is a solitary work. I need a balance between a lot of solitude and interacting with people. Painting is very meditative. That contrasts with video work that involves a team, and a production that is extremely stressful. Plus I do everything with my fingernails, because making videos is very expensive. There is also the part of working with dancers. The movement of the body, the human figure in general, which is present in all my works, is what I am most passionate about. There is nothing more perfect than the body to talk about the human, about the paradoxes of the human. That's why I also like the exploration of movement very much. I have been doing it lately with other dancers, I wish I could do it myself but there is not enough time for everything.

I need that whole spectrum of artistic languages, I can't help moving. I could say that certain ideas are more effective when expressed in video and others in painting. Video, the moving image, allows me to develop more subtleties and more layers of symbolism. The still image can develop the layers of that image and reveal them all. That is why there is a permanent communication between painting and video. When I make a painting and then take it to video, I am giving life to that painting.

How do you choose the colors for each medium? In painting you work with pastel tones and in photography you go closer to strong contrasts and light and dark...

In the last video with the dancer, Fagras, I tried to assimilate more the part of color and contrast to my painting, because I realized that. I think a lot of things happened by chance. In the videos, since I don't have many elements, I have to adapt to what I can find. I feel that in the last two projects I have come closer to there being a correspondence of color palette and contrast between the painting and the video. When we worked on color in Sillas I was very strict about matching it. Also over the years I have been polishing. I have only made eight videos.

How do you relate to the materiality of painting, the canvas? Do you feel that the process is different from the photographic work, where you no longer create but unveil a work of art?

In painting there is also a lot of chance. In my case, I make a sketch and build by layers and with relatively loose brushstrokes. I care a lot about the gesture of the brushstroke, the strength. It comes out without having thought about it, but from the ability that you have developed from years of painting. And then you decide "cover or leave it", if it serves for the configuration of the image or not. It is a permanent negotiation. Video is more random to the extent that you have less money to control what you want. Painting and editing are similar processes. To the extent that I have to take various bits of choreography to put together an emotional curve with the images and the rhythm. Each shot helps me to generate a final emotion, which is what I feel with the layers of the painting: each one helps me to configure a final image, which also generates an emotion. And I have my favorite colors, my oils that I always use. As for the materiality of the medium, I don't like to smear much when I paint, I work with gloves.

And what are these favorite colors?

I realized that I use a lot of pink, because of this whole gender issue. But it's a nuanced pink, like gray, it's not garish. And that goes a lot to my childhood: I lived in a room where half of it was pink and half of it was green and white wallpaper. I also use a lot of green and a grayish turquoise, which I sometimes take more to blue. That's where the subconscious is. It was an apartment we lived in from the time I was seven until I was twenty, the whole house was like that, even the kitchen had wallpaper.

Considering that you are present both as a self-portrait and as a reference in your pieces, can you tell us more about the self-referential in your work?

It has always had to do with something personal. There have been many themes of my own that I have wanted to talk about, which at the same time can be universal. For me it is important to talk about what one feels and how one feels, and that is my way of talking about these issues. In my works there is always something self-referential even if it is not explicit.

You've said, with respect to Fighting with Air, that you like the idea that we have something invisible inside us that we constantly struggle with. Which struggles have you left behind and which ones are you still battling with?

I think the issue of religion and gender were strong things for me because my history with religion is very particular: I went to Catholic school, but my mom was Protestant, Christian, evangelical. I went to church twice a week for fifteen years of my life. Mass one day and Christian worship on Sundays. That's an overdose. But in my teens I began to question everything and to walk away. It was very difficult because it was the way I related to my mom. If I stopped believing, I lost my relationship with her. That is a struggle I no longer have. 

The gender issue also, discovering what I wanted to be as a woman. Because for many years, because of my upbringing, I felt like a second-class human being. So it was like empowering myself and leaving that idea behind. I paint only women and little by little I have tried to leave the gender discourse aside. Somehow trying to imagine how I would like things to be: that it is no longer necessary to talk about gender issues. It is a kind of statement, a declaration, in many ways.

Today my struggle is the issue of control in many aspects of my life. I am trying to let go. The residency and the method I worked with was very much about that: to make things more fluid and to have confidence in my decisions as an artist. Because there are many factors that can make you doubt. So it's about trying to ignore them and say "I've been around for ten years and I think I have the experience and the background to make those decisions". Another part of this struggle is that we have been taught that, for the sake of productivity, we have to be well and happy all the time; and it's not true: we have to reconcile ourselves with the amount of emotions that we have by nature as human beings.