»I’m floating freely« – Interview with Artist Hilda Palafox

The moment you arrive at the gallery Proyectos Monclova in the fancy Polenco district of Mexico City on this Saturday afternoon in March, you know this is the place to be. In front of the art space with its spectacular blue facade, young creatives are having a drink, inside they are strolling amidst the bold and intense paintings that show women dealing with The Effort to Find Oneself, which is how Hilda Palafox named her first show here. And the graphic de­sign­er and illustrator, who has become one of Mexico’s famed contemporary artists, knows what she is talk­ing about. Her works, which are influenced by graph­ic design as much as by Mexican art and heritage, ­visualize the struggle to find balance, strength, and her own way. We talked to Hilda Palafox about her path from being a graphic designer and working in an ad agency to becoming an artist, about drawing as a form of dancing, and about being a woman in today’s times.

About the six years you worked as a graphic designer in an ad agency you said “I never felt less creative in my life”. What went wrong?
Hilda Palafox: That was right after I graduated from the design school here in Mexico City and I was really happy to get this job. All my friends said that work­ing in advertising is the best thing that can happen to you, because you travel all the time and probably win Lions in Cannes. But I never felt connected to this world. Everybody around me came up with thou­sands of ideas, but I just didn’t speak that language. I also really, really missed doing something with my hands. For as long as I can remember, I have always been drawing or building little things. But in the agen­cy, I had to sit in front of a computer the whole time. That wasn’t for me.

Finally, you quit, and I read that the festival for character design Pictoplasma had something to do with it …
Oh yes. The agency had offered us to take part in a project, a course or workshop and I chose to go to the ­Pictoplasma conference in New York. When I lis­ten­ed to all the creative people there, something in my mind switched and I suddenly saw so many opportunities. Some of the people even used to work in advertising but had started something new that suit­ed their cre­­­ativity much better. That gave me courage and I re­member this conference with a lot of love.

And you started to paint murals then …
When I finally quit my agency job, I did illustration and at one point I really wanted to draw big. When you work in a smaller scale and at a table, you move the paper and not yourself. After a while I longed to use my whole body and wanted to feel every line with it. When you do a mural, you have to stretch yourself, you have to move your arm to draw long lines and you use extensions to reach the highest points. I felt the need to turn the process of drawing into a kind of dance. So, I knocked on some doors of muralists here in Mexico City and asked if somebody had a wall for me. Finally, I got one from a project that tries to upgrade poor neighborhoods with murals. That was many years ago, and the last time I looked, the mural was still there and not even covered with graffiti or tags. I take this as a compliment.

That was the first mural of many. And since then, you have even worked on two silos.
That was in Arkansas and actually a tough one. When you paint a cylinder, you never see the whole area you are working on. I had only five days. It was very cold, and it rained a lot so that the color got runny and I had to repaint it. But it was still a very nice project. Also, because I somehow managed to do it. (laughs)

And that in a man’s world …
Oh yes. At all the mural festivals where I painted there were always like twenty guys and three or four girls. It was often said how badly they needed wo­men to attend and that wasn’t too thrilling because it sound­ed like we weren’t invited for our work but to fill that gap. But that was a few years ago, and a lot has changed since graffiti got more and more taken over by the illustration world. Now many women are doing murals, and that’s a really good thing.

From the beginning, you have painted female figures.
I have been doing this for as long as I can remember. It came with the desire to express myself as a woman. The only thing that changed, is that my figures grew and got bigger and bolder. Just like I developed as an artist and feel freer and more confident in what I do. For me, it’s like we’re walking hand in hand and both became stronger and more mature.

Your female figures are impressive women, even if they never have facial expressions.
They still show a lot of emotion, but more through their body language because you can approach a much bigger range of feelings through this.

And they don’t have pupils either. Is it because they are looking inwards?
Yes, my work is very introspective. It’s about the ques­tions that are constantly bothering me and that are very private, yet universal. At least in terms of women living in current times.

»Being a woman in Mexico is a very important aspect of my work«

Often your figures seem overwhelmed by all the things they have to manage day in day out, by the expectations they have to juggle, and their own needs they have to fit in somewhere. After all, one of your series, which you’ve been working on for a long time, is titled Balance.
I started this series when I felt immense pressure of proving a lot of things to myself and others. Even when I knew that it was much more important to ­figure out what I wanted for myself, instead of ful­filling expectations that I thought society had of me as a woman. To look inside yourself and into your needs is an act of freedom and this series shows how I struggled with that.

Is that approach also connected to women’s situation in Mexico? I went to the march on International Women’s Day here in Mexico City and I still get goosebumps thinking about it.
It was so unbelievably intense, all that singing, screaming, and then the mothers condemning the countless femicides, carrying pictures of their murdered daughters. It is being said that more than 80.000 women were there. This movement started five years ago and from the be­ginning I have been going to all these marches. They are very emotional, and I always feel charged by all these resolute women who are demanding freedom. And yes, being a woman in Mexico myself is very important for my work. The world sees Mexico as a true macho country. And it is. But within the ­fam­ilies, women have a very powerful role. I grew up with two tough grandmothers who came to Mexico City from little villages and had no education. But because they lost their husbands very early, my grandmothers were running the families. How impressive is that. For me, the fight for equality already start­ed at that time. Of course Mexico is still a very dange­r­ous place for womem, but we’re getting stronger and stronger. This year, for the first time, the female ­police officers who guarded the march and are, of course, harassed by their male colleagues every day, stepped out and walked with us for a bit.

You can tell that the women you’re painting are from Mexico, or at least from South America. That hasn’t always been the case, and you came up with this idea in Japan.
I’m travelling a lot, but being in Japan for a while was like nothing I’ve ever experienced before. They have a very beautiful and extraordinary way of thinking about nature and the world, but it’s really different there. My residency was in a small and kind of conservative town where not too many things were happening. So, when I had an open studio day, many of the townspeople came. But when I talked to them, I realized that although they had seen my work, they didn’t have any idea where I came from. For them, I could have been from Brazil, Spain, or the US. They just didn’t know. Since I’m proud being a Mexican and think that we have a rich culture, that hurt a little. And that was when I decided to show where my roots are and what my heritage is more strongly in my work.

How are you doing this?
It’s just a little shift and it happens very slowly, very gradually and I’m still working on it. It’s like I search within myself for the seeds and from there I let the branches slowly grow outward. Aside from the fig­ures themselves, this shift is also about the colors. They are more vibrant or sometimes also more earthy, much like in Mexico itself. In Oaxaca you have an­other color palette than at the Pacific or in the north of the country. I try to take these inspirations from everywhere and translate them into my work. Sometimes, I also quote Mexican handcrafts like pottery and add a vase for example.

You started working with ceramics yourself.
I started with ceramics a couple of years ago and saw it more as a hobby. I took some lessons but soon real­ized what a very demanding craft it is. And that you never have complete control. When you make a piece and put it in the kiln, the fire has the last word. I had actually planned to show a few ceramics in my exhibi­tion here as well, but they broke apart. I will continue to work on it, but this time in a more sculptural way.

I saw some vases you made, and they were very striking.
These are inspired by Mexican craft and a mixture between vases and sculptures with carved-in shapes. But now I want to work more in a bidimensional way and the pieces won’t be utilitarian any more.

Were there Mexican artists who inspired you?
I really like the work of Ricardo Martínez de Hoyos who painted these huge and massive figures. They are kind of stoic and it’s undefined whether they are men or women. Mexican muralists like Jorge Gonzá­lez Camarena are very important to me and also the Guatemalan-Mexican artist Carlos Mérida. I’m especially inspired by him because he started with illustration and then he moved gradually to more artistic work.

Your works are also defined by their distinct shapes. Are they influenced by your beginnings as a graphic designer?
Absolutely. My background in graphic design taught me that less is more. At the same time, and as my work really comes from drawing, I like to pay tribute to the line itself. That’s also why I work a lot with neg­ative spaces now and in only one color, so that the line defines the whole image. Even when I started to work with oils last year, I liked to keep this graphic design approach in my work. I don’t know where the oil paint will take me, because I’m floating freely and even though my work has become richer in texture and color by working with oils, I definitely will keep the cleanness that comes from graphic design. I don’t want to use a lot of things to tell a story, my language is clear, but also very symbolic. And the ambiguous scenarios in which the figures are positioned are al­so influenced by this reductiveness. They are not em­­bed­ded in any scenery and you cannot locate them. They seem like they are in the middle of nowhere and like time has stopped. I like working like this.

It’s interesting how you balance your work between art and illustration, and it seems like you don’t differentiate much between them.
I always let my curiosity drive me, no matter in which direction. When it no longer fulfilled me to work with acrylics, I started with oils. This is my way of work­ing; it works on its own. Much like it was when I want­ed to draw with the whole body and moved from illustrations to murals.

»My background in graphic design taught me that less is more«

But you also take assignments. You have worked for Sephora, for Google and especially for Nike. During the pandemic you designed a wall in the cafeteria of the new Nike headquarters here in Mexico City.
I don’t work for brands too often anymore. But this mural, like the works for their campaigns I did before, was about women, empowerment and about movement. I felt very connected with that and they always give me a lot of freedom in what I’m doing.

So, you still enjoy doing assignments?
I’m very grateful for what I have accomplished and there’s no need to deny your path. Working for brands was mine and it also led me to where I am now.