The art of waiting

Carlos Lalvay Estrada

What pieces or projects have you been working on lately?
I have been working on a project that began in 2012 called Pica. It merges drawing and graphic language with cyanotype across a variety of surfaces. In recent years, the work has become more painterly, more gestural, and through it I explore themes related to waiting and memory. I work extensively on paper, fabric and other materials, and have even created a 9 × 3 metre mural using this technique. Over the years, I have pushed a photographic process to an extreme level of experimentation.

My latest series represents a further evolution of my approach to cyanotype. It is the result of countless minutes spent waiting for the work to be exposed to UV light, years of observing how the iron-salt emulsion transforms into matter, and a bureaucratic limbo of waiting, suspension and disappointment. This combination created the conditions for something that exceeded every expectation, something necessary.

I spent a year in the studio working, experimenting and following certain “technical errors” within the process. The resulting images were not pre-designed. They emerged from my condition rather than from a desire to produce a specific image, allowing something to reveal itself instead. Each work is the trace of a temporal decision.

The work arises from a condition in which time, matter and reaction operate without a predetermined outcome. The image is what remains when this condition is interrupted out of necessity.

What did you learn (or unlearn) while working on it?
I often found myself immersed in a process where time, matter and reaction operated without a predetermined outcome. At a certain point, the need to interrupt that condition would emerge, and I would select an image precisely when it stopped becoming something else.

I learned when not to intervene. I learned how to stop time.

What words, ideas or emotions were running through your head?
There were many, but “beyond” was probably the word that stayed with me the most throughout the process.

I reflected deeply on my condition as a foreigner in Italy, despite having lived here for about twenty-five years, and on how my body becomes a political space limited by a document that is often withheld for years. Without it, you cannot participate in public calls or travel outside Italy. Perhaps this also pushed me to search for new spaces within this latest series of cyanotypes.

I also thought a great deal about John Herschel and experienced, in my own small way, the feeling of discovery. As an astronomer, Herschel spent his life observing the sky, and I never stopped imagining the nebulae he saw through his telescope.

Were there any conversations, movies, music, or books that made their way into that work?
I am very sensitive to what happens around me, and I had many conversations about my bureaucratic condition. I was born in Ecuador and have lived in Genoa since 2001. During the development of this series, I was invited to participate in an artist residency alongside three artists of different nationalities in the city where I live. The residency lasted one week and involved working with a museum that houses works from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century.

Genoa played a significant role in the so-called discovery of the Americas, and much of its historical wealth is connected to that event. The residency gave me the opportunity to reflect on why I am here in Europe and on the enormous quantities of gold and silver extracted from the Americas. During my research I also encountered world maps created before the Americas had been “discovered” by Europeans, and the imagined seas represented on them. These ideas also found their way into this body of work.

One of the films that stayed with me the most was Nostalghia by Andrei Tarkovsky, which I was fortunate enough to watch on film.

Musically, I listened to a great deal of radio, especially Ocora Musiques du Monde, as well as musique concrète, cumbia, salsa and an Afro-Indigenous album from the northwestern Andes of Ecuador called Juyungo. Music is always present while I work. I also share my studio with musician Tommaso Rolando, who runs the label Torto Editions.

Among the books that were especially important were Open Veins of Latin America by Eduardo Galeano, which I reread this year out of necessity, and Huasipungo by Jorge Icaza. I was also fascinated by the six-part series of articles published in The New York Sun in 1835, titled Great Astronomical Discoveries Lately Made by Sir John Herschel, later known as the Great Moon Hoax. All of these references contributed, in one way or another, to enriching the imaginary behind this new series.

What’s been the most difficult thing you’ve faced recently in your creative process?
The greatest difficulty has been the uncertainty of finding the right space in which to present my latest series of cyanotypes. This period of suspension sometimes turns into a creative block. When I don’t know where or how the work will exist publicly, the studio process is affected as well. It is not an easy phase, but I hope it will soon lead somewhere.

What is your favorite coffee shop and why do you like going there?
I don’t have a favourite coffee shop yet. I’m still looking for one. What I enjoy are simple, quiet, unpretentious places with very little noise. I like spaces that allow me to sit, think and observe. As a compulsive drawer, I value being able to draw in peace.

If your life were a movie this month, what would it be called and who would write the soundtrack?
Limbo, with a soundtrack by Mesías Maiguashca.

Which studios, laboratories, or workshops have you collaborated with recently or would you like to collaborate with in the future?
I had long wanted to develop a publication in collaboration with a studio or another person. Finally, that opportunity has arrived. For now I prefer not to reveal any details, but something will be ready very soon. I can’t wait to share it.

Recommend one or more artists you follow who inspire you, and tell us what you like most about their work or their way of working.
I highly recommend Filippo Balestra, a poet and friend whom I know well. I admire the way he works with language and continually reshapes it. Lately he has become increasingly focused on performance. If you’re in Italy, I strongly recommend seeing him live and discovering his work.