Francis Almendárez — Deep Red Press

Francis Almendárez is an artist, filmmaker, and educator from South Central Los Angeles, currently based in Houston, TX. His work takes on many different forms including collaborations, performances, screenings, workshops, and exhibitions that have been presented in museums, universities, arts nonprofits, artist-run, virtual, and DIY spaces both nationally and internationally. Through the merging of history, autoethnography, and cultural production, his works offer ways to navigate and reconcile with intergenerational trauma and reclaim diasporic identities. Recent presentations include DIY film workshops and screenings in Honduras and El Salvador; public photo-murals outside FotoFest in Houston; and a live reading of prose set against an improvised score on trumpet in collaboration with his brother Anthony at Antenna in New Orleans. Writing on his work has been featured in Moving Image Art London, D Magazine, and The Invisible Archive among many other publications. He has also contributed images, interviews, and texts to publications including Burnaway Magazine, Strange Fire Collective, and La Horchata Zine. Almendárez received his MFA in Fine Art from Goldsmiths, University of London, and his BFA in Sculpture/New Genres from Otis College of Art and Design.

BEF: Hey Francis, how are you? How is the new year treating you?

FA: Hi Brenda! Thank you for having me. I’ve been an admirer of Deep Red Press for a few years now and feel right at home being interviewed amongst many of my favorite artists in Texas. It’s my honor to be in conversation with you and to be a part of this growing archive. The new year continues to be busy, and although there’s a lot of uncertainty, I’m still hopeful and excited for new possibilities.

BEF: Where did your interest in photography come from?

FA: I actually started off with a camcorder first during middle school making silly videos with my brother, mom, and grandma. I was simply recording us doing whatever it was that we were doing together as a family. I have a really hard time remembering that part of my life because it’s when my parents divorced but I remember my mom specifically bought the camcorder during that time so that we could have our own family home videos in the future. I remember using this camera to film our road trip from LA to Portland and just documenting the long journey from the backseat. We never actually made it to Portland but we spent a lot of time together sightseeing along the Pacific Coast Highway which was amazing and beautiful.

While growing up, my mom did take a lot (and I mean A LOT) of family photos but for some strange reason, I never noticed her doing so during that time. It was very different in the 90’s because you couldn’t stop to preview the photo after taking it, and you wouldn’t stop whatever you were doing to recreate or re-pose for a photo if you didn’t like how it came out that first time. It was very in the moment. You would get what you would get, and you wouldn’t know what it was until you would get the film back from the lab. These photos were also consumed in a very private way; they would end up in family albums as opposed to social media and the internet today so you weren’t as worried about appearances nor who would see them. In many ways, it was less performative than family photos tend to be now in this digital age when access to camera phones and social media is pretty democratic.

It wasn’t until the end of high school that I decided to buy disposable cameras and I began to photograph my friends as a way to memorialize that period in my life that I actually did want to remember. Middle school was a very horrible time for me. I didn’t even graduate because I didn’t pass my algebra class. I was too consumed by my parent's divorce and trying to make sense of my queerness, all while being part of a religious community that deemed those two things as sinful and wrong. However, I was very fortunate to land at a high school that was able to provide me with a sense of community. Via the music department and the FFA program, I was enabled to create art, work with plants and animals, and form long-lasting friendships that I’ve maintained to this day.

After accumulating several rolls of film, and not being able to afford to get them processed, I decided to take a photo class in community college just out of curiosity. At that point, I was a biology major so it makes sense to me now why I was initially more interested in the darkroom process over photography as an artform or mode of expression. Soon after that, I was hooked and that was the start of my journey into the visual arts.

*Untitled*, 2011, Acrylic mediums on discarded clothes, hand-sewn together, installation dimensions variable

BEF: As a multidisciplinary artist, can you talk about what your process looks like?

FA: It looks a bit shambolic, at least in the last three works I’ve worked on. I don’t think of myself as creating something new per se but rather re-arranging what’s already around us and proposing that we see it through a different lens. These works have been way too large and complex for me to fully know in advance what they will ultimately look like or be about. So my way of working really goes against this dogmatic way of producing that’s typically expected from let’s say grant or exhibition applications. Literally, anything can happen, and I like to make sure I leave room open for chance, intervention, and being affected by the tools, materials, environment, and subject matter I’m working with.

Installation views of *rhythm and (p)leisure* at Artpace, San Antonio, TX in 2019.
Photos by Seale Photography Studios

I usually start with ideas that I want to try out. Most of the time those ideas don’t work out, or they don’t come out as interesting as I thought they would, and that’s okay because they almost always pave the way for new or different ideas that are much more interesting. So those trials, errors, and failures are an absolutely necessary part of my process. I need to go through those motions to warm up, become vulnerable, and surrender myself to the process so that I could come out on the other end in some way transformed.

BEF: Your art practice tends to involve your family and you often collaborate with your brother. Can you talk about that and why it’s important for you?

FA: Yes, and it wasn’t always like that. It’s grown over the years and it’s become a way for us to come together and work in challenging yet fruitful ways. Earlier I mentioned my parents’ divorce, well that experience significantly affected my relationship with all of my family and actually created a lot of distance between us. All these years later, the making of art and the collaborative process have both been ways for me to heal myself and reconcile these relationships. It’s been a slow, ongoing, and difficult process but totally worth the time and effort.

It’s important for me that they’re a part of my work because I wouldn’t be who I am or where I am without them. Also, the work would be entirely different without them. Before going out and doing anything, I brainstorm with them and then later on they help me problem-solve how to put it together. In many ways, it’s an extension of the dynamic we have at home living together so it’s become much more organic over the years.

More recently, I’ve begun collaborating with other family members, artists, and community members, and that’s because the projects grew in that way. Although the work may have started from a very personal experience, it eventually outgrows me to the point where it’s no longer about me or my experience but rather how that experience is shared and connects a larger group of people or different communities. Making space for that to happen is far more interesting and much more important to me.

Video stills from *Navigating the Archives Within*, 2020

BEF: Looking through your bodies of work there are consistent themes around labor, capitalism, the exploitation of bodies, all through the lens of the diaspora and migration. More so from the Caribbean and Central American perspectives. Where does this interest come from? Why do you think it’s important for these themes to be explored?

FA: It’s a lot, I know, but these are all interconnected and inextricable. I’m pulling directly from my own lived experience and familial histories, and using them as entry points to try to interrogate and unpack power structures and the complex social constructs they impose upon us. It’s important for me to think through and understand these mechanisms and how they operate, as a way to make sense of our present conditions, and to counter the violent and ongoing erasure of the peoples, histories, and cultures of this specific region.

When we think of Latin America or the Caribbean, it’s always the usual “major” countries or islands. The same happens within art. Central America in particular is always excluded or conflated in scholarship on Latin America and the Caribbean, and as a result, important contributions by Black and Indigenous communities, both in the region and in the diasporas are erased. That is problematic considering the historical importance of the region, how the extraction of its resources and exploited labor force has literally sustained the U.S. economy. Not to mention the growing diasporic populations within the U.S. and how they have also historically provided a cheap labor force within its borders and continue to do so. As this part of the population continues to grow and these different communities come of age, it becomes increasingly important for this demographic to see themselves reflected as part of American society and for the U.S. population at large to see that as well.

Video still from *rhythm and (p)leisure*

Geographically speaking, Central America is not only part of Latin America, it is also part of the Caribbean. It is literally on the same tectonic plate. It is at the crossroads between North and South America, as well as the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans. You can’t get any more intersectional than that in this part of the world. So any discourse on Latin America and/or the Caribbean that excludes Central America is committing erasure that upholds and perpetuates the violent and oppressive, white supremacist, classist, hetero, patriarchal, colonial, imperialist, neoliberal status quo.

BEF: How does your identity shift as you create and explore through your work?

FA: I feel like different parts of me come through at different points and it all depends on my mood, my environment, and what I’m working on. There are moments when I allow myself to be very vulnerable and the work comes out extremely personal and intimate. Then there are moments when I need to set a boundary and distance myself from my work just a little bit for my own well-being.

I feel that as artists, we are always so generous, always giving, and unfortunately, that’s often exploited. Specifically, as BIPOC artists, we’re often expected to produce certain kinds of work or to act certain ways based on our identities, and I like shaking that up a bit. When I make work for myself, meaning it’s not a commission and it’s not being made for a specific exhibition, that’s when I feel the freest. The challenge here is figuring out what exactly it is I’m doing and when to stop. However, on the few occasions I’ve been commissioned to produce a work for a specific exhibition, the challenges are very different. You’re usually in conversation with whoever is organizing the show. There’s a push and pull, a deadline, and usually, limitations which all place a lot of pressure on you. So one’s identity definitely shifts in these kinds of situations as a means of negotiating and completing the work. I would say the parts of you that are the most important to the work being made, come forward the most. That’s not to say other parts of you aren’t there because they are, they’re just more subtle and that’s okay too. The more work you do, the more layers you grow and gradually reveal.

For me, every work that I have created has begun as an idea, a project, an experiment, and usually nowhere near what I had initially imagined or envisioned. Each of these has taken me on some kind of journey or transformation where I end up learning something new about the people I’m working with, the spaces I’m working in, who I am, and who I want to become.

Installation views of the ongoing *Denim* series as part of *Public Life: Recording the Blur*. Photographs on vinyl, 7 x 10 ft. Photos by Ryan Hawk. Courtesy of FotoFest International

BEF: Are there any projects or exhibitions you have coming up on the horizon?

FA: This is going to take some years but I am expanding the Navigating The Archives Within (Click Here to Watch) project. When I planned the performance in 2020, I thought it was going to be a one-off. But after going through the motions and releasing the footage out into the world, I realized there’s a lot more I want to learn, contextualize, and share. So I am stubbornly applying for support to get funding to do travel and research, and to be able to pay all my collaborators for their contributions to the project. The goal is to develop two more performances to complete a trilogy and to have it travel across the country (akin to a band on the road) and maybe even the world. I know it probably sounds crazy but you have to start somewhere and that’s really the work I want to produce right now. In addition to this project, I’m working with Mary Montenegro on organizing a weekend of performances and film screenings to take place in Houston sometime in the early summer so please keep an eye open for that lineup coming soon.

BEF: Thank you, Francis!

FA: Thank you, Brenda and DRP for working so patiently with me! It’s my honor and pleasure to take part in this and I look forward to seeing how this platform continues to grow.

francisalmendarez.com

@francis_almendarez