• Artist: Anahí González 
• Exhibition space: artcite inc.
• Performance video footage: Justin Elliott - JEL Media

Full Artist Interview Transcript: 

Anahí González interviewed by Dr. Philip Gurrey

AG - My name is Anahí González. I'm a photographer, artist from Mexico (from the north of Mexico) and I'm based in London, Ontario. I'm doing my PhD at Western University and I’m starting my fourth year.

PG - Can you talk to us about some of the themes that run through your work?

AG - My research started with curiosity about my surroundings, living in Mexico. My hometown is an industry hub, there is a lot of automotive manufacturing. And when I moved here, (London) I was very interested in the theme of Mexican labour and thinking about how that labour moves.

I was thinking about Mexican migrants and seasonal workers. Then in my MFA, I started a photographic project, connecting with Mexican migrants in the GTA. I felt strange deciding who was in the photographs, and I started reflecting on who I was to dictate Mexican imagery or representation, or what a Mexican looks like. That was the starting point for thinking about the impact of photography and representations, stereotypes, and also photography as an event. Thinking about my hometown and the labour connections between Canada and Mexico. When you talk about Mexican labour in the region, immediately you get a response of seasonal workers, agriculture etc. coming from a city where all the labour is exported; automotive, mining etc.. I was thinking, why is that? Maybe we need to start talking about other industries and thinking about Mexican labour as more than seasonal workers and agriculture. I agree it's very important to talk about it, but then other labour is not talked about that impacts the Canadian economy. It’s funny. I left my city because I didn't want to work in anything related to automotive manufacturing. And now I am talking about it through my photographs.

PG - Could you talk a little more about your hometown’s connection to Windsor?

AG - My hometown is Saltillo. It's three hours away from the American border. Saltillo and Windsor are twin cities, meaning that both are connected economically, and both are automotive manufacturing hubs. Interestingly enough, my city, since NAFTA in the 90s, which is the agreement between Canada, the United States and Mexico, has grown so much. And it's because many of these companies are now based in my hometown. You have Chrysler, Kia, and John Deere, you have other companies that build the auto parts that are exported to Canada and the United States. The universities also have connections. The University of Windsor and the University in my hometown have exchanges. It was really important for me to have an exhibition in Windsor. My show at artcite inc. addresses this relationship of both lands through Mexican labour, not only agriculturally but also through automotive manufacturing which I think has a big impact on society.

PG – There is a theme in your work that I'm hoping you might respond to. The idea of presenting something which alludes to its negative other. What we see points towards something else which remains unseen.

AG - After that photographic project and that feeling of my role as a photographer, also as Mexican, I began to think about nationalism and what does Mexican mean? What does it mean to be Mexican? I started reading Ariella Azoulay, who talks about photography as an event and as a political one, meaning that when we talk about photography, we talk about the subject, the camera, the photographer, the image, the object of the photo, where is the photograph published? And you start talking about that event, as a political one.

For my MFA thesis show, I had two simultaneous shows, one in my hometown Saltilla and one here in London, Ontario. It is important to talk about both sides and just open conversations about it. One was in a train station and just next to it, you have all the train cars going up to the United States and to Canada so that relation of the show in Mexico, in a train station moving the products to Canada, in this case, London, Ontario, was in a way opening the conversation or the theme of moving labour and goods and products and the connection of both lands. So now in this show at artcite inc. I'm interested in Windsor because in Windsor they also have conversations about that labour moving out of the city. The labor moved to Mexico and now my city is a hub and it's growing so fast. These are hard conversations to have, but interesting ones. For my show, I needed a performance or participatory work that kind of combined those conversations.

PG - I wonder if you could talk a little bit about labour in your own practice?

AG - Well, I see it more as a construction of photographs. I studied communication studies, and my undergrad was in journalism. And you see labour in photographs through a photojournalist’s decisions. Photographing, framing and where those photographs are shown which gives another implication or another reading. I'm thinking about that when I'm constructing my photographs. I think it's a good starting point for questions like does the image that I'm looking at feel altered or constructed? So labour goes into choosing what to photograph, how to photograph, and moving the object.

PG - Some people could say you're dealing with very serious themes in your work. You've incorporated performance into your artcite .inc show and there is a lot of humour involved in it too.

AG - One starting point for the show was a piñata car that I found in a lot. I like working with my dad when I'm at home and we were driving and I saw in some abandoned land, a red piñata car. I use red a lot in my work because it talks about nationalism. Red is the colour that is in both flags (Mexican and Canadian). It talks about passion, about work and the idea that you need to love your work and work hard. So there is a lot of red in my work. So I grabbed the piñata car. We went to a factory and I went to the parking lot and I parked the piñata there and took the photograph. When I started showing that photograph people would laugh a little. There's something in that, but I don't know what. I know there's something there.

Something that I felt in my four years of the Ph.D. was the absence of people. I really missed connecting with people. I tried to connect with people through photography, and it didn't feel good. So how? I was thinking about how to bring the human component or worker component to the show using bodies without photos. It started as the idea of hiring a consultant or someone who could help people improve their C.V. But that didn’t feel right. A year ago, my partner bought a car and we went to a dealership. And the whole experience for me, something kind of popped in the back of my head. You're talking with a salesman full of jewelry, they are looking you in the eyes. And it's like, this is the best deal. Then you go to the finance person, which was a woman. I remember I didn't even buy the car and yet I felt so taken care of and so protected. And then the workers stopped replying to my partner’s emails after the deal was made. So that whole process, it made me think about trade agreements, moving goods, and workers. 

So the idea of Windsor and Saltillo being sister cities, automotive manufacturing and that relationship, I was like a car dealership. But how?  The show is made up of photographs and a human component, which is a participatory work performance. The idea is to sell the best opportunities and each opportunity is something that connects Mexico and Canada, like the automotive industry, the train and many others. 

It's me, Manuela, the dealer, Willie the goose is employee of the month. And he keeps selling, selling, selling. You see in the back all the frames of his portrait of employee of the Month January, employee of the Month February. And I'm just trying to beat Willie and sell as much as him. Somehow he's selling. He works 24/7. He's at his desk all the time working. I'm just trying to sell. Manuela, the dealer, has three jobs, has a dog she needs to take care of. She's stressed about making the deal. So, from that experience of the dealership a year ago, I conjured up someone that it's stressed to make the sale but you’ve got to trust her. After the sale, the visitors sign the NAFTA agreement in a 60-page document that is printed super small. And in the opening, I had people asking, have you read it? And I, in my role as Manuela, I was like, no, because I trust them. It speaks about the trade agreement, I haven't read the trade agreement, none of us have, but somehow we sign it. So I think that work, bringing in the human component and talking about a work or an office experience that also speaks to, gender in the workforce, immigrants in the workforce, of having three jobs.

PG – Do you think the humour in the performance makes the serious issues inherent in the work more palatable?

AG - Definitely the humor brings people’s guard down and it was fascinating. In the opening, there was a retired man and the deal that he wanted was the virtual Nomad, a visa between Mexico and Canada. In Mexico, this means that any digital nomad can apply for this visa. They work from Mexico. Europeans, Americans, and Canadians can go to various cities in Mexico and work from there with a salary in American dollars or euros in Mexico. So the man was like, oh, I want that. I started saying, well, Mexicans are super welcoming. You’re going to love it. Kicking my Mexican cousins out of their apartments! One of the comments was that Mexicans are so welcoming, they're going to yell at you, go back to your country, gringo. Which made everyone laugh. A professor made the point that you're going to be talking very closely with people and using humor and people might get offended. So what are you going to do if you have someone that reacts aggressively, what is the protocol that you’re going to use? What I do in that situation is I talk to Willie the Goose, I say talk to the employee of the month. I'm not paid to deal with this. So I can also use humor to bring in Willie. And I think that's the power of Willie the piñata goose in a way.

PG - There are many layers of meaning in your work. I'm interested in whether that's the result of serious philosophical and intellectual forethought in the studio or whether you start with something and that starts to grow these layers as you continue to work.

AG – It’s something that starts and grows and grows. It started with me just seeing the whole deal of buying a car and that feeling of, I feel safe. And then after I questioned, what was that? What was I really feeling? Were they really taking care of me or was it just for the deal? Which makes me think about trade agreements. It’s definitely something that even me sitting in the office being Manuela and just feeling that I got to sell, I got to sell and that passion in my eyes, but also, really selling it made me think about being a woman in the workforce.

PG - Could you talk to us a little bit more about how you felt playing the role of Manuela?

AG - A couple of months ago, I had everything planned, and every time I thought about it, I thought, this is amazing. And then I remembered that I was the one doing it. And then I would panic. So I asked Camila Salcedo, a Toronto artist from Venezuela who also works with performance, whom I've known for a while. I asked them if they could mentor me for a couple of sessions for my character because I was having a hard time thinking about it. One of the things that Camila said, that I really took in, was to use my anxiety in my performance. I was feeling very anxious and scared, and I channelled that. If I was feeling anxious during the performance, I would grab the phone and pretend that I was gossiping about Willie with my cousin. I didn't know that I was good at improv, but I was just following my gut. So it's just following this gut feeling, using my intuition and reading people.

I'm going to give another performance on August 16th. When the gallery is open and the performance is not on. There is a sign on the desk that says, Manuela can't do the deal, she has three jobs, has a dog, and it also has a commentary about how everyone nowadays has two jobs, three jobs, because they can't make ends meet. At the bottom of the sign it says if you have a job let me know, because I want to be employee of the month, so when the performance is not on people can still get a sense of it.

PG – There are photographs as part of this show, and performance too. Would you say you feel comfortable working in any media, if it’s right for that particular project?

AG – I always say that I'm a photographer. I don't think I'm a performance artist. In the artcite inc. exhibition, my photographs connect to the performance. During the performance, a truck driver entered the gallery, and we were talking about the movement of products and within the exhibition there is also a photograph of a truck, which brings that photograph to the performance, and it feels natural and organic. so I feel that photography is my medium, but in this project, I felt something else was needed. I feel in this project, performance makes the most sense to add to the photographs. I don't know if I'm going to keep doing it if it makes sense. I think I'm open. If it makes sense to the project, I think about the project, not me.

PG - even though photography physically takes more of a backseat within this exhibition, it feels like the performance comes from a photographic history somehow?

AG - Yes it does, and it comes from my personal experience with the dealership, but it also comes from my work experience in Mexico and advertising and the idea of selling and the telling of a story. The performance and the photographs are like a puzzle. With the photographs, there was something missing. It looked good, but I just felt something was missing in the project.

PG - There are themes in your work that are conceptual, political, and metaphorical, you address race, identity…serious subjects that are dealt with through humour. There is also a sense of activism running through the work too?

AG – It’s more than an awareness. I think it's being curious because I think nowadays we're working so much that we don't have the time and space to be curious, and I'm just hoping that my exhibition opens up that curiosity. That also applies to when I'm doing work, photographic work, it comes from me being curious. I think when you start being curious, questions are popping and then you're motivated to look for answers.

PG – Curiosity suggests that you're teasing things out of the viewer rather than pushing things at them?

AG - Yes. And that's the goal for me. It's just being curious. I think when we talk about Mexican workers, we're also talking about workers here. One time in a presentation in a class, there was someone from Windsor saying that for them it was a personal experience when because of the NAFTA agreement in the 90s the automotive manufacturing moved to Mexico, there were conversations about Mexicans stealing the jobs. And it's like, well, let's talk about that because it does matter. Why is that labour moving? And it's those trade agreements, created by the leaders that we trust. And I talked about that in the participatory work with signing the agreement. But it's important to bring that into the conversation. And it's just maybe at the end we have more questions than answers. But I think that's good. Even in my work, I have more questions than answers. But that's the fuel to keep doing it.