Artist Interview #9 – Migueltzinta C. Solis

A little bit about your background, where did you grow up, where do you live now, education, family, etc...

Redacted Life

What did you do for fun as a teenager?

                                   Apparently this:

Troublecage

What was your first work that really pleased you as an artist?

What art movements do you relate to?

Dadaism has always been near and dear to me. It's an artistic language that finds ways to express human-ness in times when words fail society. I feel that in our current state of environmental and infrastructural collapse it's important to access this kind of language. I see a lot of interest in a global discussion of race, class and environment, but there is an unseen hand that's pushing us away from having this discussion in the open. This means we need to perform these discussions in covert, encoded languages. A lot of people see absurdist art and say “I don't get it.” Of course you don't. It's there to challenge you. It's an encoded message.

How has your work changed?

Well, I’m 27, which is young for an artist. I keep switching mediums, mixing them together. I started with writing, and added in layers photography, acting, sculpture, filmmaking, book alteration, painting, and most recently performance and conceptual social media projects. The versatility that comes with accessing all these mediums really frees me to come up with fresh ideas. What I’m struggling with right now are the stakes of my work. I’ve noticed I’ve gotten a little fearful with my art, and am not taking the kind of risks that would really push my art to the next level. I currently have a non-art job as an irrigation system designer and salesman that keeps me very comfortable materially, but leaves me little time to work on my art. I expect to see some new changes soon.

Most significant project or accomplishment

Transitioning from female to male has certainly been the most significant accomplishment:

What are your goals?

I want to have influence on the world. I want fashion movements, art movements and literary movements to take cues from me. I want college students fifty years from now to have to mention me in their essays about post-post-post-post-post modern art. I want to finish my novel. I want to attend residencies all over the world. I want to get a fine arts degree in Mexico. Also, goats. I really want to have some goats.

What toys do you have?

I have two new toys worth mentioning. I just got a smartphone for the first time, so it’s much easier to correspond with everyone from film festival organizers to casual sex partners. Also, trolling, which is very important to my artist identity – think of it as a sort of social media intervention, a vandal-dadaism on your Facebook feed – is much easier with a smartphone. I love disrupting and exploiting normalized languages and forms. Memes, for example, are such an excellent use of referential humor and I love how they encourage people to appropriate images from pop culture and insert their own subcultural humor into it. I am currently working on a couple of essays in the form of buzzfeeds. TMDMM 5 : Shampoo Commercial is a satire of the progression-of-time transition videos common to trans culture on Youtube.

And the apps! Oh the apps! There are such apps in the world that open up whole new potentials for cybernetic art. Smartphones really do make us cyborgs, you know, because we can now transpose our creative selves wholly into cyberspace if we care to. Instagram is my favorite right now, but Snapchat is the one that really blows my mind because of the notion of impermanence. The image once received from the sender is only viewable for a few seconds and then it’s lost forever! It’s like the image as object has become so prolific that instead of trying to preserve it physically in an album forever, we are content and even excited by it only lasting a few seconds.

My other new toy is my body. I started the physical transition from female to male about three years ago when I started undergoing hormone treatment. It’s been about a year and a half since I had chest surgery and, now that I’ve healed I’ve been very interested in pushing the limits of my body as a performance in and of itself. I could give you the whole “at last, I feel right in my body” speech, but I try and resist the narratives we’ve started getting used to hearing about transpeople. For me it’s altogether like having a new body, a new vessel for expression. There was nothing inherently wrong with my previous body, I was just ready for a new toy.

What do you eat?

eatpaper

What are your favorite movies/tv shows?

Right now I am completely infatuated with House of Cards. It is so excellently queer, and I love stories about power and manipulation. Also, Kevin Spacey is endlessly entertaining.

Do you believe in magic? Why or why not?

I feel that the stories of my family coming to and settling in this country were made possible by a specific kind of magic. So, yes, family law obligates me to believe in magic.

(If you are having trouble seeing this video here, click to see it here.)

               Should there be censorship?

God yes! But, of course, I am the only one allowed to choose what is appropriate and what is not.

What advice would you give to others?

Whatever that thing is you know you need to do but you won't? Go do it.


I love chatting, answering questions and being flattered/insulted so please, please feel free to contact me! I can be contacted through any of the following:

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