Amías Ariel Atiles Aulí

Lives and works in Carolina, Puerto Rico

Artist statement

I paint because there are things I don’t know how to process any other way. Sometimes it is a memory, sometimes grief, sometimes a dream I don’t want to forget. Other times it is something I see in Puerto Rican history that feels close enough to the present that I need to return to it. My work is mostly autobiographical, but I don’t think the feelings within it belong only to me. A painting may begin with something very specific from my life, but once someone else stands in front of it, they bring their own memories and experiences with them. They may not know the person I lost or remember the place I am painting, but they know absence. They know longing, fear, comfort, or what it feels like to miss something that no longer exists in the same way. Memory is important to my work because it is never completely reliable. The longer I live with a memory, the more it changes. Grief does the same thing. Dreams complicate that even further: I can wake up remembering a place I have never actually been and still feel nostalgic for it. Painting gives me a way to reconstruct these things without pretending I can recover them exactly as they were. I don’t paint to resolve these experiences. I paint because I need somewhere to put them.

Artwork