Sila Chanto and her multiple mirrors vigil Extract from the interview by Alfonso Peña
“... Sila Chanto has developed over two decades an extensive interdisciplinary work whose nuances and profiles exceed the traditional media. In her creation, it is possible to trace a number of thematic elements that are in clear and continuous evolution (...) we find philosophical speculations, urban metaphors, iconoclastic and irreverent poetry, historic immersion, ludic language, and morbid humour that permeate, in one way or another, her visual proposals and writing. Sila unfolds herself with great flexibility within the intricacies of engraving, taking it to vertical, experimental, and unsuspected positions; which may be evidenced by her visual proposals and performances through different cities. In interventions in the public sphere with a high dose of a conceptual order, the artist collects diverse materials: giant canvas, acrylic, printed gauze, prints on both sides, technological elements ... This is a way to encourage the public, the visitors, to become an active/creative part of her proposal: whether it is an installation, a poem-image, or the appropriation or desecration of certain “sacred areas”. It is enough to remember the La guarda decorativa (The Decorative Guard), El cadaver exquisito (The Exquisite Corpse), or El Muro (The Wall), ephemeral theoretical-imaginative installations that lead the visitors through many times banned or forbidden paths, as opposed to the common place, or the monument to clisé, so much in vogue in visual arts. A.P. There is an impression that you started your artistic work as a woodsmith. We just have to picture you in your workshop surrounded by gouges, chisels, and all the paraphernalia of this iconic and enjoyable discipline. Share with our readers your trajectory, from the very beginning, your evolution, and the significance of the engraving in your life and work. S.Ch. I am not sure where it all started; every time I think about it, a new memory comes to my
mind. The wood could be the origin of a more visible stage, but my initiation in graphics was through metal, in the late eighties. Although I am not sure either. Before this, I remember going to “La Casa del Artista” in San Jose but I think I became an artist the very first time I held a pencil in my hands. At the age of eight, on a visit to the newly opened Museum of Costa Rican Art, I was deeply impressed by a small piece of art named “Ma Fleur” by Juan Luis Rodríguez, and ten years later I took an engraving workshop with him. I do not follow any kind of media or technical formality, I believe that my work is rather hybrid and not exclusively graphic, although that is usually the basis; I move towards the object, the installation, the process work, serial products, literature, and historical research, without the emphasis on one implying the abandonment of another, but a mutual convergence of all areas. Going back to my origins, academically speaking, I can say that my visits to the engraving workshops of the University of Costa Rica, with which I got involved at different times, had a significant influence. The first, and perhaps the most crucial one, was in the late eighties, under the direction of Rodríguez. To him we owe the systematization of the graphic workshop at the University of Costa Rica and the implementation Creagraf workshops. I had the privilege of attending what I think was the last of these workshops in 1989, with master Luis Gutiérrez. At that time, I shared the workshops with wonderful human beings and artists, like Ileana Moya, Jorge Crespo, Rolando Líos, Rolando Garita, Hector Burke, Alejandro Villalobos, and Hernán Arévalo among others, including visits of Manuel Zumbado and Alejandro Herrera. It was a time of interesting production and solidary competitiveness, where we would literally lock ourselves for weeks trying to master the technique and define a language. These were days where we streamlined our ideas, our existential questioning and, in many cases, our texts with the same diligence we studied the
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