ADRIAN PEPE

The Ritual of Craft

Adrian Pepe is a Honduran-born fibre artist living in Beirut. Investigating materials and his process, he interweaves nature and culture to create objects as tools that serve to open a new discourse.

Tell us a little bit about how you embarked on your creative journey.

When practising and performing ancient craft processes, we find ourselves in a space of re-enacting histories and ritual, consequently arriving at meditative flow states accessible through recursion and repetitive motion. From this perspective, the importance of craft lies in a bodily engagement with matter as it is sourced and transformed. It awakens a primal, dormant instinct of a more tangible understanding of bodies in nature, an ancestral memory of simplicity in complexity. In textile artistry, the act of applying structure to raw fibre connects the artisan to a wider ecosystem, as the soil births the grass that nourishes the sheep that grows the wool. It is an intentional thread weaving humans to earth through millennia-old choreography. Thus, a renewed responsibility is forged as relational ties are internalised as muscle memory.

What is your favourite natural element to extract inspiration from and why?

Thus far, fibre is my chosen medium for making and source of inspiration. As a fibre artist, my works are textile-based. Through the process of directly colliding with the sentient provider of the raw material, be it plant or animal, relational ties are formed, resulting in objects of use and cultural significance and, more importantly, a holistic understanding of processes in nature. Through my work I’d like for people to reconnect to a sense of primalism, a return to the origins, revisiting an ancestral knowledge-base. During these unprecedented times, this moment of global fragility invites us to search for answers from a more integrated perspective, revisiting more grounded forms of existence.

How do you go about sourcing raw material and natural mediums throughout your creative process?

Im constantly searching and investigating new mediums to use in my creative process. The first step is an immersive experience within the context where the raw material exists, interacting with local communities, artisans, and the sentient providers of the raw material, the flora and fauna of the place. In the case of Levantine wool, many of the craft practices surrounding the material have atrophied, hence the need to research and explore past modalities of wool labour and ritual. Sheep are normally sheared during the spring/summer time. The wool is then purified through willowing and fluffing, processes related to the cleaning of the raw material. These rigorous, physical activities are translated into a sort of dance, a language used to further investigate the relationship between humans and sheep, humanity and ritual. Through contemporary choreography, the makers embark on a somatic exploration of the complex relationships, transforming movement into symbol, process into ritual.

You are fascinated with historically significant artisanal crafts, tell us more about that. The work serves as an access point for reflecting on shared cultures between people and matter in different time periods. By reflecting on an ancestral knowledge base, a more intimate relationship is established with common materials from which we are contemporarily disassociated. The work invites a discourse surrounding the human condition in our rapidly-evolving social and technological context. As we move toward a deeper understanding of our natural world, our existence becomes increasingly animistic.

How do you incorporate your heritage in your works?

I grew up in Mesoamerica; a region known as a global crossroads where local and foreign cultures clashed and integrated in the formation of the ‘New World’, including pre-Columbian societies, European settlers, African and Asian migrants.

With this amalgam of people and ideas, flourished a new sort of identity in the region, one which constantly sought to find its origin, sieving through the few cultural and historical remnants that remained. This attitude informs my work and craft; a significant part of my methodology stems from retracing processes and material histories, reviving and performing craft gestures and actions to better understand today.

When you’re not creating, what do you enjoy doing to reset yourself?

The ultimate reset that I know of is silent retreating, or Vipassana, a practice involving deep meditation and stillness. The first Vipassana ceremony I participated in was six years ago in Indonesia. Focusing all youar attention on the sensations in the body, it is a practice that you carry with you to train yourself on mindfully reacting to the fluctuations of daily existence.

Exporting Culture

What themes are explored in your work?

The most important thing to me is to represent my culture in my work. Living in America for about 9 years was eyeopening, because of how little westerns knew about Morocco. So I made it my mission to share the incredible stories of Moroccan people and to break the stereotypes that foreign people may have about Morocco. One of the themes that find myself going back to is nostalgia. had a really happy childhood, growing up in the Medina, the old part of the city of Marrakech, and experimenting with this theme allows me to reconnect with my roots.

Where did your love for visual storytelling begin?

My love for documenting life began at a very early age. My family had a business renovating historical Moroccan riads into bed and breakfasts and we used to live in the same riads as the tourists that would come to visit. Most of the tourists we would host were painters and photographers. So I was surrounded by creative people at a very young age and it grew from there.

Based between Marrakech and New York, you’re part of two immensely colourful cultural and visual landscapes. Do you ever feel there are crossovers between the two cities and how they inform your work?

All the time! The most exciting part to me is finding those crossovers and experimenting with them. Most people don’t realise that Marrakech and NYC are more alike to me than they are different. Both cities are very hectic and loud and they are magnets for all sorts of creative people.

How has your relationship with home shifted after living in New York?

It has been such a wonderful experience of re-discovery. After being away for so long, I have gained a new perspective, there is so much that I appreciate even more about my home. I’m blessed to be from a country that’s so rich in history and culture… As an artist that’s where I find endless inspiration.

Your work often removes its subject from their environment and places them in alternate contexts. What inspires this manipulation of visual landscapes that’s present throughout your work?

Living in-between two different countries hasn’t always been easy. I love my home country, but I also feel a deep connection to NYC. For the longest time I felt like I had to choose one or the other and that’s not easy. The idea to photoshop an American model that shot in the US and change her environment to the sahara desert was a way for me to have the best of both worlds.

What sources of inspiration do you draw from when creating your ‘custom frames’ and the images that live inside them?

The idea for custom frames came at a very dark time during the quarantine era. It was winter and was stuck in the midwest. It was also around the same time finished school and, for the first time in my life, didn’t know what I wanted to do next. The custom frame series is about breaking boundaries and borders using unconventional materials that you wouldn’t necessarily associate with a frame. Building things with my hands is something that I enjoy doing and it helps me connect with my home country because craftsmanship is something that I grew up around, so the sculptural element of building the frames helped me connect with home in a time of disconnect.

What elements do you seek out when sourcing the diverse range of materials you work with?

Because”Custom Frames” is a new project and I’m still experimenting with it, I try not to think too much about the material. It’s more like I walk past something and if it sparks an idea I collect it and put it on the side until the right photograph comes.

Tell us about a moment in your journey that you are proud of.

I think my proudest moments are when my family sees some of my work shared on a social media platform and they send it to me with an encouraging message. Family is important, without them wouldn’t have the freedom to do what do. I know how hard it is, in Morocco specifically, to have a family that supports your artistic endeavours and try not to take that for granted.

What message do you hope to contribute to growing conversations on contemporary art and culture in the SWANA region?

There is a lot that admire about my country. I think we’re blessed to be part of a country that’s so rich and diverse in culture, nature… but there is a lot that needs to get better in terms of gender equality, historical preservation, and environmental issues. hope that I can create some content that will inspire Moroccan people to care more about these important issues.

What aspirations do you have for the future of your practice?

My aspirations for the future are to keep learning and to get better at creating art that Moroccan people can connect with, and that non-Moroccans can discover [more] about our diverse country.