Can I Ask, "What Is Art?" : Interview with Saul Aguirre

For my interview project with Borderbend, I set out to explore some of the unanswerable questions that have been squirming to escape my mind, and fired them on Chicago artists in search of some marinated wisdom. I ask why art is important in communities, why humans value art, why artists care, and what makes art art. All of their words have helped me on my path as an art student, and a person making sense of this world. Their challenges to survive in the art world of Chicago are inspiring yet devastating, their passions are strong, and their work is meaningful and genuine. Enjoy, and keep your eyes open for any of their upcoming work. Thanks for reading.
- Hannah Brookman

Saul Aguirre

What is art? 

To Saul Aguirre, a Mexico City born Chicago artist, art is a civil obligation, “a personal cultural investment.” Aguirre’s work does not try and capture beauty or please the eye and ease the mind. Though you may find beauty in his pieces, aesthetics are not in his job description. “As an artist you have a job,” says Saul, “you can’t just throw paint on the wall and say ‘I’m an artist’ there has to be a purpose to a piece of work.” 

Much of Aguirre’s work addresses his Latino background. One of his first pieces was a painting juxtaposing an indigenous man with a business man, which he created at the age of sixteen. It was finding something worth painting about that made art important for Saul Aguirre. “I noticed I was creating things that had already been done, and I thought ‘well why don’t you talk about something that matters to you.” History matters most to Aguirre, and he believes his work to be important because it is informative. One performance called Tokeo, performed at the Urban Institute for Contemporary Arts in Grand Rapids, Michigan, October 30, 2013, addresses the presence of GMO’s in our food. In this piece, Aguirre wears a gas mask and ceremoniously wraps tamales made of dirt, shredded American dollars, and a few corn niblets. After each is wrapped, and offered to the sky, he then offers them to the audience. “People start realizing that there is something going on with the GMO’s. Even if I just make one person think about it, I did my job as an artist. If I make twenty people think about it I’m good.”

Saul believes social criticism is the job of artists.”If we don’t give social criticism or a social process of thinking in peoples minds were not doing our jobs. I could sit down and paint beautiful flowers, hundreds and hundreds of beautiful flowers and make hundreds and hundreds of dollars but just to be complacent.” He sees other artists painting deserts and campesinos, and he claims “thats their own guilt, I have no guilt.” 

“But it’s all artists responsibility to deal with social problems?” I ask him from across the checkerboard coffee table. “Not necessarily.” Replies Saul, “A lot of artists want to be history but they need to start thinking in a progressive way to be history, they cannot just say ‘this is beautiful.’ They have to be progressive with the work they do. Thats what makes the difference. There are two different ways of seeing art. You could have an amazing technique and become a great artist, or you could have a social criticism and become a really good artist.” 

Saul is successful in the latter. He has survived as a self sustaining artist for 23 years, and worked full time as a taxi driver and a swim instructor and completed almost four years for college in the meantime. Right now he is looking forward to finishing his fourth year at SAIC, and has recently curated an exhibition of sociopolitical printmakers living in Chicago. 

“I think art has to be sociopolitical at all times, as much as possible. All history is important and we need to talk about it in the arts.”- Saul Aguirre

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To see more of Saul Aguirre's work, please visit www.saulaguirre.com/