La Decadencia: Interview with Piki Mendizabal

Temprano en la Manana, Piki Mendizabal, All images courtesy of the artist.

Anyone who knows Piki Mendizibal will tell you that he is insistent on candid encounters, and our interview was no exception. As we sat down at his kitchen table, he poured two glasses of wine and insisted that I put away my pen and paper suggesting that we get to know each other first. It wasn’t long before we naturally made our way to Piki’s favorite topic of conversation: his home country of Cuba. He shared his anecdotes about old Havana so passionately that I could feel the exceptionalism surrounding this place he grew up. As Piki continued to pour round after round of drinks, the meeting lost all semblance of a formal interview. We instead swapped childhood memories and ghost stories, as if we had been old friends. When I finally set about trying to ask some of the questions I had written down in my notebook, his reply was simply, “If you haven’t noticed, we have been having the interview this entire time.”

How old were you when you first started painting?

I started to paint professionally, if we can call it that, at 19 years old. My first painting was a still life that I sold for $8. When I finished that painting I knew that I wanted to be a painter and since then I have been an artist. The transformation was very great, my whole life became dedicated to painting, there was no turning back.

The Lost Steps, Piki Mendizabal, All images courtesy of the artist.

How did you wind up in the United States?

I always knew that I would have to come to the United States for opportunities to develop professionally and sell my work. When my government found out that I had aspirations to live in the USA, they sent a an agent to my house. He asked me to be a spy and report information back to my government. When I said no, I knew that they would try to keep me in Cuba and possibly put me in jail. I knew that I had to find a way over quickly. Luckily, I knew a woman who said she would marry me and through her I was able to get me all the paperwork I needed. Two days later I was on a flight to Miami.

And what brought you to New Orleans?

I was in Miami two years, and the people there I respect and say thank you to all of them because they love me as a Cuban, as an  immigrant. But New Orleans for me is like home. I knew about New Orleans from my friends in Cuba and my teacher. They were telling me about the jazz, the culture, the buildings— I had that in my mind I guess, y tenía muchacuriosidad. As soon as I got here I knew this was my city. You either love it or you hate it. I came to visit somebody I knew from Cuba, but I ended up staying and living in the Treme. I found a gallery where they pay $15 bucks for you to come and draw. I went there and I met the owners and they said to me, look we don’t like the place you are staying, you are coming to live with us. That gallery used to be on Magazine and Louisiana and after that I started working in construction.

Havana Interior, Piki Mendizabal

Do you think New Orleans, also being a Caribbean city, is as inspiring to you?

Definitely yes. I feel this city because we have the presión of the water. The water in Cuba means freedom, especially in the 90s, it was their only way to escape. The Mississippi River is now my bahía de la Habana. The movement of the water and its mysterious sound is the natural force most represented in my work. The only thing is I have to substitute the blue color of the Caribbean for the brown color of the Mississippi.

In addition to water, the built environment seems to be a major thread in your work that both cities have in common.  

In my painting Los Pasos Perdidos for example the building is disappearing like a ghost. It represents death but also history and the past. I love history and I learned a lot from Cuba of the 1940’s, when we finally got nuestra propia identidad—José Lezama Lima, Virgilio Piñera, Wilfredo Lam—I admire that time, but I am not from that time. In my time, this is what I see: ladecadencia. Things are falling apart, but they are at least trying to survive.

Do you think there are ghosts of the past trying to survive in your paintings?

All the places that I paint have so much history that there is probably some soul or spirit still attached to it that are maybe still alive.

Mundito, Piki Mendizabal

Have you ever seen any ghosts?

I have never seen a ghost in New Orleans, I am too new here. It’s not my time yet.

How long have you been here?

Only 8 years.

That’s enough time to have seen a ghost or two.

I did have one experience in Cuba. The building I grew up in was built in 1789 and my grandmother, who never believed in anything, said she always saw a blond girl at the bottom of the staircase. Years after my grandmother passed away, they found a hole underneath the steps and they discovered, una lapida, a gravestone of a little girl who lived from 1890 to 1900. It read something like “De tus padres, te queremos Lolita.” We always thought my grandmother was crazy but now who knows maybe we are the crazy ones for not believing.

Your sense of the past also seems to distort the present reality in your paintings. There are stairs that lead to infinity, doorways that lead right out into the water, almost like M. C. Escher.

I do believe M. C. Escher and I have perspective in common. He’s a better drawer than me by far, but because he was such a good drawer, his work ended up becoming a game of math with lines and perspective. My paintings, my drawings, they are not games, they are reality. They say my work is realismo mágico. That’s possible in Cuba, that’s possible in Colombia. Escher never lived there. His imagination was born in Turin, Italy and in the Alhambra of Spain. I have been to the Alhambra and to Turin, but I grew up in Cuba, where everything is falling apart but the people still offer you rice and beans. In his technique there is a lot of joy and there is no joy in my work, only the reality of Cuba.

What else has influenced your sense of magical realism?

My father is a palero in the Yoruba religion. I grew up seeing ceremonies in my house that I have no way to explain what was happening. He speaks an African Bantu language but he’s never left Cuba. I think the realismo mágico comes from Africa and it was something normal that was always around me growing up.

So where do you locate yourself now in relation to your father and your religion being so far away?

Now I prefer that people call me humanista. When I make paintings about the ceremonies of my father, I am a collaborator who is explaining his work. I am the bridge. I am not able to follow his path but my paintings can act like a witness to his work as a palero. My father will never understand this, but it’s my way of saying thank you to him.

Piki Mendizabal currently resides in Mid CIty and is represented by Jonathan Ferrara Gallery. More information about his work can be found at www.pikimendizabal.com.

Anunciation by Piki Mendizabal.

El Palomar del Danny by Piki Mendizabal.

El Cuerpo en Llamas de Juanito by Piki Mendizabal

Corvengencia by Piki Mendizabal.

Agua by Piki Mendizabal.