Maria Jesus Lopez Hierro: "I don't understand who says they don't like the flamenco»

I open this window again to canteThis time, outside the comfort zone provided by my generation and the one that preceded me, I am greeted by the fresh air of a millennial artist, of that generation that has generally been marked by a greater use and familiarity with communications, the media and digital technologies. Maria Jesus Lopez Hierro (Huelva, 1985) is one of those artists who at the beginning of the XNUMXst century had not yet crossed the threshold of adulthood. Self-taught, transformative, direct and conceptual.

“I have always been painting. Inventing. My grandfather – Paco Hierro – taught painting classes at the psychiatric centre, next to the La Rábida Institute. My mother also painted. I still remember the smell of paint and the planks in my grandfather’s yard.”

– How did your artistic work begin?

– When I was a child I won a math competition. The so-called Thales competitions. That is why, among other things, although my inclination was always towards fine arts, my father convinced me to study architecture. Shortly afterwards I dropped out of my studies and went into Civil Engineering in Cáceres. And it is there, far from my personal sphere, where I began to develop, to a greater extent, my artistic abilities and concerns. At the beginning of the 10s I exhibited for the first time at the PLOTC [an independent platform for multidisciplinary artists from Huelva, located on Barcelona Street, next to the old Carmen market], and later I was invited by Samuel Fuentes to exhibit at his art gallery in the municipality of San Juan del Puerto. Since then I have not stopped exhibiting. After combining engineering and art, three years ago I decided to devote myself completely to the latter.

– Maria, you are offsider and self-taught. You come from outside the art world and decide not only to be an artist, but to learn to be one, as well as a gallery owner. How did you achieve this?

– Being a gallery owner, having a gallery [smiles], La Ecléctica. I try to treat artists better than many galleries outside Huelva. I am self-taught. I learn through determination, effort, expanding my knowledge. Trial and error. I do my bit from the province of Huelva by offering worthy proposals.

«Rhythm is what I live for and have lived for. The flamenco It's part of that rhythm, of course, because it's part of my life, wherever I go it sounds in every corner. That's why I don't understand people who tell me they don't like it. flamenco, I don't like contemporary art. Then they haven't explained it to you properly. To say that you don't like something, you first have to be exposed to it.

– How do you see Huelva?

– There are very good people. But there are also malinchism. People are disconnected. The eternal discussion between the classic, the modern... We gallery owners should support each other more. During the pandemic I was an active part in bringing together artists from various disciplines. I think that the work, among others, of the gatherings of Bar 1900 or people like Ramón Llanes or Marcos Gualda act as social glue. I like the interaction of artists and art lovers in common places. I always use the perspective effect as an example, the one by which some cosmonauts have experienced a cognitive change of consciousness in their space flights when observing the Earth from orbit. From there our planet is a fragile ball of life floating in the void, borders disappear and the conflicts that divide people do not seem important, making it necessary to grow as a society with an obvious and pressing destiny of common protection. It seems to me that united and grouped together we would help each other more to develop our work.

– Maria, art flamenco is also involved in these disunities. Without going any further, a city like Huelva has six peñas flamencos, sometimes each fighting for their own interests. Whoever says Huelva says any other city or municipality in our Andalusian geography.

– In this way we can only end up diluting ourselves and moving away from the big objectives. I like to recommend that we go to different galleries, that after enjoying an exhibition we go and share those experiences with other colleagues and other works that will surely be different, but that will enrich us professionally and personally.

– Do you like the flamenco?

– I don't have much of an idea, but to me the flamenco It excites me. Why am I not more flamenco? Maybe because my friends are not at all. Although I think that people who are sensitive, are sensitive to everything, and when it is explained to you and you feel part of an art or a discipline, it is easier for you to like something. It is like having an open little door. I remember my great-grandfather. He belonged to a rondalla. In my house we have always been into typical songs. From the oral tradition of the lyrics. Above all, the women in the family. I love the lyrics of the flamenco. flamenco [He says it with an emphasis that almost moves me].

«In my opinion, in the flamenco hierarchies are dissolved. You can come from the lowest social level or from the middle class and place yourself at high levels artistically speaking. In the upper social classes, there is distrust of those who come from below and want to place themselves at the same level. (…) Perhaps this is why flamenco It has not been a mass art. Or maybe in Spain they have not transmitted to us well the love for it. flamenco»

– Do you know any lyrics?

– I like a lyric from some alegrías that Argentina sings. Wait, let me see if I remember. It was about Quiñones. The cannons / on the corners of La Viña / have told me The cannons / that cleaned La Caleta / have told me what a great poet you were, Quiñones. / That Caleta cap / was a crown of verses. / Paco Alba already said / that all of Cai was a dream. / You taught the stones, / the waves and the east / that it is the most beautiful corner / to stay in.

– What do you feel when you listen? flamenco?

– I recognize myself in their sounds. They are familiar to me, and I unconsciously call upon them when I listen to some music close to my roots. Aesthetically, the flamenco It couldn't be more beautiful. I like everything from its sounds to the story of the singing cafés that Patricio Hidalgo, the painter from La Puebla de Cazalla, tells in his pictorial work. In addition, this is confirmed when you travel. The further away you are from your land, the closer you are to its roots. Outside of Huelva is where you are most flamenco –or its melodies– I hear. In Spain, far from the flamencoI don't find other moments to share music. That happens in Morocco. The evenings and nights end with music. Through music people understand each other, they interact. They don't have to tell you anything else.

– It’s true, by singing or sharing your music you reveal part of your anthropology, right?

– Exactly. For example, I love Rodrigo Cuevas, the Asturian musician [I do too, I ask him]. In Calabacino – a village in the Sierra de Aracena and Picos de Aroche, in the province of Huelva – there is a group, Cantareiras, that I also like a lot. They are rescuing part of the music and folklore of our land. With new sounds and instrumentation, they can rescue and attract more people who are interested in tradition. Another example is Cristian de Moret.

«Aesthetically, the flamenco It couldn't be more beautiful. I like everything from its sounds to the story of the singing cafés that Patricio Hidalgo, the painter from La Puebla de Cazalla, tells in his pictorial work. Furthermore, this is confirmed when you travel. The further away you are from your land, the closer you are to its roots.»

– Maria, I have always had the feeling, and that is why I wanted to open this Window to the cante, that he flamenco has not interested the intellectual community, with some exceptions, and has not been treated flamenco with the dignity it deserves. As part of the culture that you are, do you have that perception? Don't you have the feeling that this art has been marginalized?

– Look, Jesus. María Alcaide, a plastic artist from Aracena (Huelva), when she left the village to study, began to take an interest in the traditions of Spain. Among them, the flamenco. He held an exhibition on complaints and moans. He made an artist's book that included a technical note on prevention, with advice on the regulations for the prevention of occupational risks. In it, he asked the artists flamencos if they took drugs at night. I wonder if this question, if this item is appropriate. Would the same question be asked of a teacher? From my point of view, the teacher is being given the flamenco a negative connotation that it does not deserve. Would that also happen in other music? Besides, the flamenco has always been in the night. What professional activity is the night compatible with? Among other things, because it is at night that improvisation, magic, creativity arise. Intellectuals, normally, have not stuck to the flamenco, those who did it were the romantics. The so-called cultured man has not wanted to associate with those nocturnal and ill-fated characters. That may be one reason for what you ask me. Another is that in my opinion in the flamenco Hierarchies are dissolved. You can come from the lowest social level or from the middle class and place yourself at high levels artistically speaking. In the upper social classes, there is distrust of those who come from below and want to place themselves at the same level. I compare it with the equal to of the mystery steps and palios in the brotherhoods of Holy Week. You are equalized by your size, not by the social class you come from. Perhaps these aspects are what have made the flamenco, originally, it was not a mass art, or simply, that in Spain they have not transmitted to us well the love or affection for it flamenco.

– However, nowadays the flamenco It is in the best forums and stage spaces in the world.

– Yes. In Japan, in the United States, in France you say that you are flamenco, or that you come from the land of flamenco, and they put a carpet for you. In addition, today we have unlimited access, at any time, through networks and different platforms streaming to any music. Of course, among them the flamenco. In this way it reaches us more easily and we can value it. On one occasion I went to a performance by Sara Baras. Enjoying it I thought: what is this, my God! I can't believe that flamenco don't get me excited. If I get excited about a muñeira, how can you not get excited about an alegría, a soleá, a fandango. Also, it strikes me that foreigners come to Andalusia for the flamenco and they have to remind us that this is cool.

– Of the three disciplines –cante, touch and dance – perhaps dance is what most resembles plastic arts?

– No, no. I think everything is connected. I like to think, and I don’t think I’m wrong, that all the arts have a thin thread that leads them to each other. I like people who live in the middle, between two worlds, who don’t sit back. I love them. Maybe because I haven’t stuck to the established rules. I had something else to say. For example, I want to listen to someone who is an agricultural engineer and journalist, and also a painter.

– Something else you like about it flamenco, Maria.

– I like gestures. What is it, what are they? Why does everyone agree on those poses? Also, how different are the gestures in each place. I noticed in Morocco that they don't do that there. palmas like us. It's like a language. It's postural memory.

«To me the flamenco It excites me. Why am I not more flamenco? Maybe because my circle of friends is not at all. Although I think that people who are sensitive, are sensitive to everything, and when it is explained to you and you feel part of an art or some discipline, it is easier for you to like something.

Maria, now that you mention postural memory, on constant occasions when I am talking to someone or listening to them – right now, with you – I am making a beat with my knuckles, or if I am comfortable, I relate you to a cante“That's called synesthesia,” the artist tells me. “One of your paintings tastes like cante for cane. Amós Rodríguez Rey said, in one of his glosses, that the cane was called that way because its woe They sounded like the sound of the wind blowing over the cultivated cane. “How beautiful!” answers Maria.

– María, do you relate your art to people or music?

– No. I cannot relate my art or my work to a person. I cannot do it. I make the painting in a rhythm, in a beat that is marked for me, or that is intrinsic to the work. This rhythm would not be the same if it were from another place. The rhythm is what I live for and have lived for. flamenco It's part of that rhythm, of course, because it's part of my life, wherever I go it sounds in every corner. We live on the street and that's contagious. That's why I don't understand people who tell me they don't like it. flamenco, I don't like contemporary art. In that case I answer: then they haven't explained it to you properly. To say that you don't like something, you first have to be exposed to it.

– You hit the nail on the head, Maria. How would you explain art or flamenco, in particular?

- flamenco It is so broad… It is integrated into our way of speaking, of expressing ourselves. There are artists who are not capable of singing if they do not gesticulate. There is something for joy, for sadness, for the ultimate pain. Art is that, it gives you relief and/or words when you need it. Those who deny that are because they have not read a poem or heard a song at the right time. There are those who create general or social blockages and project themselves into not liking something. But today there is a return, a revitalization of certain traditions. Let us continue working for what works. What is well done only needs to be improved.

"The flamenco It is so broad… It is integrated into our way of speaking, of expressing ourselves. There are artists who are not capable of singing if they do not gesticulate. There is something for joy, for sadness, for the ultimate pain. Art is that, it gives you relief and/or words when you need it. Whoever denies that is because they have not read a poem or listened to a song at the right time.

– What artists and cantes flamencodo you know?

– I know the joys. I feel that the fandango from Huelva is mine. If I hear it in other geographies I recognise it perfectly. It is an auditory memory. And the saeta, in Marina street, for example. I love José Mercé. I even have some of his records. I really like Lole y Manuel, as well as Rocío Molina and her creative space, The Oil. I like him cante from Argentina and Verónica Silverio. And if I think about it further, of course, Paco de Lucía, Enrique Morente, Manolo Sanlúcar, where do you choose?

– And artists from other disciplines?

– I love Mona Hatoum (Beirut, 1952). She is a multidisciplinary artist. She has a work that she presented at the Valencian Institute of Modern Art (IVAM), where a world map made of crystal balls was projected. Visitors could approach and touch the work. At the end of the exhibition the world was totally deformed. It reminds you that borders do not exist. That everything is deformed, or rather transformed. Perhaps like the flamencoI also like the Chinese artist and activist Ai Wei Wei (Beijing, 1957). He was an artistic collaborator of the Olympic stadium in Beijing and among his works there is a critique of the obscurantism of the Chinese authorities. On his website he posted the names of children who had died in a school after the earthquake several years ago, with the caption “he was happy while he lived”. I am very much in line with the contemporary artist Ignasi Aballí (Barcelona, ​​1958), close to the conceptual practices that his work develops through formalizations, techniques and diverse materials. And I highlight a work by Marina Vargas (Granada, 1980): The inverted Pietà.

And as that letter says, the birds are clarions / among the cane fields / that say good morning / to the divine rising sun. María Jesús and I heard several birds chirping, which cheered us up throughout the meeting and warned us this time of the sunset, in the courtyard of the 15th century sailors' house, now converted into a hotel, in the heart of the city of Huelva, a few meters below where our artist has her art gallery, La Ecléctica. María has given me her vision of art, life and the flamencoListening to her and absorbing everything I could from her words, in time with our knuckles, we left today's window ajar so that fresh air could continue to penetrate. Cultured air. flamenco. ♦

→ See here previous installments of the series A window to the cante, by Jesus Naranjo.