Raul De Lara

Interview by Charlie Tatum

Raul De Lara’s works are not quite what they seem. The artist’s often humorous sculptures are carved out of wood, but take forms as varied as upholstery, human tongues, and tiny leaves glistening with dew. Drawing from his personal experiences as an immigrant and DACA recipient, De Lara uses his sardonic and uncanny installations to poke holes in the myth of the American Dream. For example, his Tired Tools series includes shovels and brooms, whose twisted, drooping handles are slumped over hooks on the walls they’re installed on. These sculptures hint at both the completely exhausting labor taken on by undocumented immigrants in the United States and the apparent futility of navigating the false notion that in white America one can simply work hard and be rewarded.

Other recurring motifs in De Lara’s work include masks and plants, which the artist uses to consider the simultaneous flimsiness of identity and the serious power of long-standing rituals and traditions. Sourcing wood from sites including Robert Motherwell’s old studio and sacred land in his birth country of Mexico, De Lara gives his materials new life as components of art objects that travel from his studio to galleries and other venues. I spoke with De Lara on the phone about borders, the idea of homeland, and the difference between fossils and fireworks.

Charlie Tatum (CT): You recently moved from Texas to New York. How does place factor into your process for creating new work?

Raul De Lara (RDL): Yes, I just moved here from Texas. Place has always been an exciting part for me and a challenge because I've been moving so much. I was born in Mexico. And then when I was twelve, my family moved to Austin, Texas. And then when I finished undergrad, I moved to Chicago for two years—and then Richmond, Provincetown, Texas again, and now New York. Usually when I go to a new place, I try to connect with its material language.

That could be with different species of wood that I'll use for my sculptures. Like in Provincetown, I was using particular trees that would fall in certain parts of Boston. In Texas, I would go out to friends’ ranches to get specific kinds of cedar or mesquite. Here in New York, it's been more of a fusion of materials brought from Texas with materials that I'm acquiring from here.

CT: Do you have any formal experience studying botany or trees?

RDL: Not exactly, but I grew up in a wood shop. My dad's an architect and he had a furniture factory at his firm. For whatever reason, that was where I gravitated, and he was nice enough to make sure I didn't cut my fingers off and also taught me how to work with materials.

Growing up, I've been able to weave into this material different interests. For example, the botanical side of wood—like the more genetic understanding of that material—it comes into place when I'm trying to figure out what species to use for strength or stability. Some parts that I make need to be strong under pressure or not change so much with the humidity in the air, and some materials I just need to be really flexible, but still be wood.

Then, there's another side of things—a sort of spiritual and mystical side. There are certain woods that I acquire from certain parts of Mexico that I need to get imported here—that then I worked with under a full moon ritual that I've been researching for a while that the Mayans and mask-makers from my home country developed.

Other woods that I use that have stories behind them. Woods that were part of old structures that were demolished or trees that were planted by a famous painter—I used a tree that was at Robert Motherwell’s old studio that fell and, through the grapevine, I was able to acquire that tree and use it.

For Being Left-Handed, 2020

Wood, Steel, Acrylic, Chiclets Gum

15 x 13 x 13 in.

CT: Your artworks often have a sense of humor. You use exaggerated smiles and frowns, especially in the form of masks, and your “tired tools” replicate everyday objects like shovels and brooms as if they've been melted down and then re-hardened. How does humor factor into your art?

RDL: I use humor generally when I'm tackling intense subject matter—immigration, for example, or me being a DACA recipient currently. After we came to America in 2005, for eight years I didn't have any kind of documentation or papers or anything.

Humor happens to be a universal way to communicate with someone, for goodness or badness. I had teachers when I was in freshman year of high school, when I was learning English, that I would communicate with through motions. And laughter was a key moment where we both either knew that we understood each other or that we didn't and we had to figure out something else. It was a sort of agreement.

I think also humor can be used to create a gentle access point for conversations. For example, the tired tools, those are based on the idea of the hard, exhausting labor of immigrants in this country. So they're portraits of workplaces that I've worked at or presentations of people who work themselves to the point of exhaustion, but having this sort of animated, sort of humorous, object gets people a little more interested in thinking deeper.

I think that there are many ways to talk about immigration, race, and culture, especially here in America. But for me, it's been successful to use humor as one way.

"Humor happens to be a universal way to communicate with someone, for goodness or badness. I had teachers when I was in freshman year of high school, when I was learning English, that I would communicate with through motions. And laughter was a key moment where we both either knew that we understood each other or that we didn't and we had to figure out something else. It was a sort of agreement."

CT: You received your DACA status as an artist. Can you tell me about that experience?

RDL: When I was in my sophomore year of undergraduate school at the University of Texas at Austin, the DACA program appeared and I was enrolled in an art school. Basically, when you first apply to DACA, you have to provide a lot of information that's very sensitive—not only to my safety, but the safety of my family—because you have to provide how you came here, where you went, where you live, where your parents live, their information, your information, if you’ve worked illegally.

With all these things, you basically frame yourself, under the eyes of the law, to have committed many, many crimes, and DACA was supposed to be this kind of promise that if you got accepted, those crimes would not really be looked at and you would be given permission to be in the country for two years and work here legally. Every two years you have to reapply.

As an artist, keeping DACA was tricky, because being an artist is not considered a profession under law. Even with a master's, under the law it's not equivalent to being a doctor or lawyer. When I was in grad school and President Trump got into office, one of the first things he did was pause DACA and he was going to get rid of it.

At my university for my master’s, the President of the school sent out this public email being like, We love you, DACA people, and we're going to support you no matter what. You have our unequivocal support, we'll do anything for you, etc., etc. Then a few months later, I got an email from HR at the university that said if I didn't get DACA again that I was going to have to leave the university.

I wasn't able to find anyone anywhere to help me in the university because everybody was trying to save their asses from having to make a decision and have a stance. One of the people higher up told me, Raul, it's tricky for you because the people that fund a lot of these universities are people that don't want you here in this country, so we can't be on your side of this openly. So yeah, DACA in schools and as an artist has been tricky.

Zompantle / Us, 2019

Zompantle, Tzi-Te Beans, Red String, Walnut, Oak, Lacquer, Neodymium Magnets, Pine

84 x 18 x 19 in.

CT: You address borders in your work pretty often, both by addressing the idea of a homeland, and by physically making your artworks modular so that they can be shipped from place to place. Can you tell me a little bit more about that?

RDL: I think the best artworks are accessible by anyone, not just ticket buyers or people who can get to the Guggenheim physically. I strive to make work that can resonate with a lot of people—people who speak English, people who don't speak English, people of any age range. Kids too, they're great critics.

The modularity of the works came from my being able to financially continue getting my work places. Sculptures that were the size of a table or a car—at least on my end—I wasn't able to afford to ship places. So I was just thinking of ways to make work that could be big and small at the same time.

The first case was in 2014, when I was at a residency in Michigan called Ox-Bow, and there was a scientist there, like a proper scientist. He was doing research on invasive species, and I asked him, 'So how long does it take for an invasive species to no longer be considered invasive?' And he was like, 'Well, that's the thing. The people who own the land, they will have the power to call you invasive. They're the ones that decide who's invasive and who's not.' That's like a metaphor for my life here. Of how the border crossed us—we didn't cross the border—how there's all this power in keeping us “invasive.”

That led to making these leaf sculptures out of wood that take up a wall. I think the biggest one that I’ve made was 50 feet by 20 feet. And it ships in a box, the size of a shoebox. The work changes depending on where it goes. It absorbs the shape of the walls it inhabits, kind of like invasive species do.

I created these certain rules for how to install the work that lets the person installing have some judgment and creative decision-making while installing the work. So then it also absorbs that person's creative output or ability. It also can be installed in any shape—so if they give me a show with a really skinny, tall wall, the work can go there. Or if they give me a ceiling, if they give me a corner. I was thinking about this work as a living thing and obviously modular. But for me, It was very interesting to play with the idea of sculpture as an ever-changing thing.

"I think the best artworks are accessible by anyone, not just ticket buyers or people who can get to the Guggenheim physically. I strive to make work that can resonate with a lot of people—people who speak English, people who don't speak English, people of any age range. Kids too, they're great critics."

CT: What have you been thinking about lately? Are there any movies, TV shows, books, or ideas that have recently stuck with you?

RDL: I don't really watch TV or movies. I haven't owned a TV since I was a kid. I do read a lot. I've been reading a lot of poetry lately. When I was in Provincetown, Massachusetts at the Fine Arts Work Center, I was living with ten writers and ten poets and ten artists for around nine months. It was the first time that I've been surrounded by professional writers.

Ever since I was there, I've been thinking a lot about language—written language and spoken language. I think there's something really beautiful about successful poetry, when there's this very clear and transparent puzzle that gets put together out of words so they can get read by somebody and something happens, the magic happens.

Another thing is just this idea that I think about when I make works. I think about whether I’m making a firework or a fossil—whether the work is this sort of experience that's going to come at you and explode like fireworks and create this outward experience that gets absorbed through certain senses, versus a fossil that requires a personal, time-based, research-based interest to dig in and see what's inside of this thing.

CT: Do you tend towards fireworks or fossils?

RDL: I try to do more fireworks. I think that fireworks, like humor, fall under that category of a general understanding of appreciation. Like watching thunder. No matter where you are in the world, no matter who you are, there's this response to it. And that's, from the outside, how I think of my work. I strive for it to be interesting to me and have this sort of personality that is inviting. And the fossil comes in if people are interested in my work a little more than just the general appearance or the aura that I try to go for and they can look deeper into the stories behind the materials.

For instance, one time I had to get one particular piece of wood from this farm in the middle of South Mexico to Richmond, Virginia, and I got a guy to cut a piece of the tree. He cut a piece of the tree and sent it to me, and I didn't know that it was going to be the actual trunk, with spiders and dust and everything, and it got taken at the airport when my aunt was traveling with it.

The next time I told him, I was like, 'Hey, so we're going to try something new. You're going to follow my instructions and I think this is going to work.' So I told the guy, 'Hey, go back to the tree. You're going to cut me a rectangle. A clean, perfect rectangle of these dimensions. And then you're going to sand it and take off the dust, and you're going to paint it a solid color and write on it “Live, love, laugh” and send it to me.' He sent it to me and it worked and nobody had a problem with it. Then I got the piece of wood, and then I sanded it off and carved it. But it was funny. I had to mask this very special material as this kitsch decor for a sorority house.

Welcome!, 2017

Sand, silk, pine, steel, water, wood glue, epoxy, fiberglass

84 x 150 x 30 in.

CT: What does a day in your studio look like? Can you tell me a little bit about your process? How do you start on a new artwork?

RDL: I usually start with a vision in my head of a sculpture. The next step is to think about the materials and deconstruct it. I have to figure out how to make it. Luckily, nowadays my imagination and my technical abilities are on the same page. When I was younger, I could not really match my visions because I didn't have the technical abilities to make them. But now I feel pretty one-to-one with them generally.

I don't really sketch or draw much at all. Usually, I have a wall that is like nine feet by nine feet of just paper, and I just randomly throw doodles or shapes or writing or whatever onto it. Then, after months or years, it turns into this huge map of ideas. I grab what I need for the sculpture. That's the sexy part, but in reality, I'm just carving and sanding away, wearing a respirator and headphones all day long.

CT: What are you working on now?

RDL: The first thing that I’m working on is building up my new studio. Through the years of moving and moving, there are big tools that I have had to sell or leave somewhere or purchase again or make again. So I've been here in New York, building out tables, purchasing machinery, putting things where they belong, and kind of like getting the rhythm of my studio down. I have to have that set up first before I get working.

I recently made a sculpture named Tornado. I went camping with the sculpture. We climbed this mountain for two hours because I wanted to get a picture of it at the very top of the mountain. So I was literally holding this very fragile sculpture in my arms. That sculpture was a pretty important moment for my practice. I think it was a sort of vision of how to approach my sculptures. The overall lesson I've been trying to teach myself lately is how to get a better connection between the stories I want to narrate and the objects.

Charlie Tatum

Charlie Tatum is a writer and editor based in New Orleans, Louisiana. He has written essays and conducted interviews for art and culture publications including Pelican Bomb, Art in America, Hyperallergic, Temporary Art Review, and BURNAWAY, and contributed to catalogues published by Prospect New Orleans, the Joan Mitchell Foundation, UB Art Galleries, and the Charlotte Street Foundation, among others.