EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW with the creator of «No Soy Tu Chiste»
GAYLES.TV.- «I do not do activism for activists or draw for cartoonists and I do not write poems for poets. I don't want jerked egos. Because I do not want to stay to live on only one side of the speech, in the comfort that I repeat that I say it is true. Because I don't want to walk on only one side of the sidewalk ». DANIEL ARZOLA (Venezuela, 1989)
What have you learned from the other side?
That maybe there are no absolutes, that nobody is completely something. I met macho women, racist blacks, and homophobic homosexuals. I learned that it is very easy to lose oneself in causes and end up being a victim transformed into an executioner. I wrote that text after intervening the MetroBus stops on Avenida 9 de Julio in Buenos Aires, a person attacked me for exhibiting with the sponsorship of a conservative government (From which I did not accept any other payment than to go to Buenos Aires to supervise my work). For me it was a victory, that is, that a conservative has to show my work and have to stand on our side because history forces him to, for me there is a victory in which someone who has had homophobic expressions in the past today wants to show what what I do, even if I am not sincere, because there is a message there, the story ends up putting things in their place. People who think differently from us should often be our target when it comes to communicating. And I believe in the power of communication. There are people who do not know how to argue, and who continue to repeat their speeches only on their side of the sidewalk. I am interested in sowing thoughts in minds that are opposed to mine, because hearing over and over again that I am right is very easy. I came to learn, I keep learning in the difference, because that's how I am.
Why did you create the series «No Soy Tu Chiste»?It was a rebellion against the great absence of justice in which I grew up. Venezuela is a very unfair place, where people laugh easily at your pain. I still have marks on the head of mockery, of the different. And there are thousands of people going through the same thing. But, my work has always been not to stay in that story, because it happened, I transformed everything into drawings and colors, into sentences, into poems and then I did Artivismo. My work started with a not so good story, that now had its first dose of justice, and it was a very big dose: Say what I feel and be heard. That others find a house in my history. To be able to shout in a universal language that is art, and to be heard.
You are a poet, cartoonist and activist. Does one side predominate over the others?
I think I do the only thing I know how to do, and that's what I recommend people to do. Everything is born with wondering what do I know how to do? And I do what I know. For me, poetry, or drawing, or my political positions (which is not the same to be a politician as to be a partisan) are born from the same nucleus: the need to say something, to show something, from dramatic action. For many years I was absent from drawing, because only words helped me to get these ideas out of my being. I think the series "No Soy Tu Chiste" is a mixture of everything I knew at the time. Art, advertising, graphic design, poetry, activism, all of that is in No Soy Tu Chiste.
You suffered bullying and a painful exit from the closet. How has it affected you?
I learned to fight when I was already fighting. When I tell some things that happened to me, many people can see this "victim" in those stories. I never felt like a victim, nor do I feel that way, I felt like I was a boy who had bad things happening to him, things that shouldn't happen. And I understand that one does not choose when to be the victim but we can choose when to stop being it. These processes left me with the conviction that I am a good adversary, since I have come out alive from many struggles.
How it all started?
It started in my room, my bed was a mattress on the floor, the roof of my house in Venezuela is still made of zinc, the country is getting more and more denurated, and shots were sometimes heard outside. But my ideas did not have enough space, when you grow up in a country like Venezuela to dream hurts you, and I dreamed a lot, I still do. I had a lot to say, I still have a lot to say. First it was people saying on Facebook that they wanted my work in English, then it was teaching artivism to activists from Argentina, Uruguay, Colombia, the United States, Canada, Holland, Russia and India, then it was Madonna saying that she loved my work, then for the first time leave the country and get on a plane for the first time and see so many countries and be able to show my work there. And speaking bad English but communicating in Amsterdam and getting lost in New York… I think I still haven't processed everything, I'm working on it, but I try not to take anything for granted. I just try to learn and absorb everything I can to continue creating, I am very lucky, I have met unforgettable people.
How do you choose the sentences of your illustrations?They are phrases that I used at some point to defend myself. Some were in my poems. In fact when I started with this series I first wrote a poem: "I ask for the floor."
Do you think it is necessary to make sexual orientation visible?
I think it is a mistake that many of us make in thinking that we are all the same. I have a point when I say that we are all different. It is not the same to leave the closet in Uganda as to do it in Canada. It is not the same as a Venezuelan actress to say that she is a lesbian (because no other woman had said it) that someone in Hollywood does. A kiss can be a gesture of affection or it can be a political act, everything depends on where you are. I think so, it's still necessary.
How has your sexual orientation influenced your work?
I only tell what I live, what I feel, through my work. When you are homosexual, Latino, aspie, immigrant and agnostic you will make someone annoy (how many labels), and I believe from conflicts that I was part of without wanting to be, that is, we do not always have problems with someone who has a problem with us . I create things from my story, and that's it.
What do you consider to be more urgent when it comes to the LGBT + collective?Let them stop you from killing or imprisoning you for it. Its the first.
Tell us about your other project "HIVva la vida, the H is for Human."
There are a billion HIV prevention campaigns. It is clear, nobody wants to have the virus. But every day more people become infected. I interviewed some 30 people and I asked them about that moment, in which they received the news, and I wanted to compare it with how they feel now. I thought: There are many prevention campaigns but I never saw a work dedicated to people living with the virus.
What are your future projects?
I want to fulfill my dream of exposing in New York, I want to write a book about my theory of artivism, I have many ideas now that I have returned from a trip that included four cities in two weeks in the United States. The debt of publishing a book is something I really want to pay off. But above all I want to live!
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