Interview by Tess Martens
February 2020. I was in Mexico City for the Material Art Fair. I went to eat alone at a restaurant and two total strangers, Maria and Nico, asked me if I wanted to come with them and party. I was hesitant at first, and then I thought “When in Mexico City”… I met Colu Diaz through them and now we are close friends and collaborators. I video chatted with Colu at the start of the pandemic. What is Netflix’s Made in Mexico star and model really about? Keep reading to find out.
Martens: Tell me about your art. Your ceramic penis vases, your painting, and collage work.
Diaz: Okay what do you want to know?
Martens: First, tell me about the work that you sign, spray your perfume on and send off.
Diaz: I love it! I love spraying perfume on my work because people identify with what I am doing. It’s like people are taking pieces of me. Spraying a little bit of perfume on it makes it so that when people open it up and smell like me, it is a whole experience. Those are the lithographies that I did of collages I made. I did lithographies because they are easier to spread around. It is an original but not an original and is more accessible for all sectors of the world. I hope to inspire many artists who feel like little fish, who live in different parts of the world, and feel unnoticed by the rest of the world. They are really important, and can bring their culture to others and should attempt to become big fish in the art world. The Nemos will be owning the sea in the future. Hahahaha.
Lithography is a really nice way to print because it’s ecological. That’s partly why I decided to do the lithography and the collages from vintage porn magazines. I wanted to deconstruct the message of the porn and say something with it. I grew up going to Catholic school. It is very common in my country [Mexico]. Changing the power of the image. Questioning god, the church, our bodies, and our sexuality. And that’s my collages!
Photograph by Neko Man, Collage, "Esta Viva" Risografia - El Agua No Me Sacia - Ciervo Indefenso x Colu Diaz
Martens: Awesome!
Diaz: It was a vomit of my heart and my soul at the same time. When I was doing them, I did not know where they would go; where it would take me. I was sober; weird! I started just cutting and it was like I connected to something else and everything started making sense. You know?
Martens: Yeah.
Diaz: Those are my collages and lithography that I am selling with the perfume.
Martens: Wonderful! And who buys them usually?
Diaz: Well the first piece I sold was to from a girl in Paris. I obviously sell a lot in Mexico. I have a lot of customers in the United States, Costa Rica, and Europe. The people who buy them are usually 18ish, even some younger people buy them. Then I have people in their 30s, 40s that are buying them.
Martens: Please talk about the vases you make a little bit.
Diaz: My flower vases. An idea I had for a long time. I remember that I was thinking about art history. Men's bodies, we are used to and it’s only women’s bodies we talk about. We only sexualize, and objectify women’s vaginas and titties. Haha. From my feminist position, I thought it would be a good idea to start talking about masculinity because there are a lot of taboos around the penis. About the perfect size, and how it is so powerful the image of the man.
I decided to have something in the house that normalizes the penis too. Using it as an object and sexualizing it and normalizing it. Why are we talking only about my body parts and not talking about your balls and your penis? The beauty of genitals are the different colours, flavours and textures you can find in them. That is why I wanted my vases to be based on real penises. A lot of people were scared of me taking a mould of their penis because of fragile masculinity. So now I am just taking the images from my imagination. I am outsourcing some people to get the molds of penises and do the flower vases around them.
That's what it comes from. Normalizing it and if we can have a naked woman in our house, we can have a penis vase. A penis vase ejaculating flowers. Hahaha. I think it’s a little hard for a man or woman seeing a penis. It’s a strong and beautiful message. I started doing something weird; I did a huge one and I did a second one going through it. Yeah!
Photograph from Colu Diaz’s Instagram page @ciervoindefenso, penis vase, 2020
Martens: I love it! Anything else you want to talk about in regards to your art?
Diaz: I also have my blazers that I paint on the back of. I really like those pieces because I get bold. At the beginning, I was just capturing men’s blazers. Then, I started writing on them and painting on the backs of them. A reflection of me being a woman in Mexico. I started with phrases like, “Shave your balls” because I was mad at society for asking me to not have hair on my body. I have something that says, “If I didn’t cum, it doesn’t count”. I think here in Mexico and probably around the world they cum and they don’t care if the other person cums. The angry writing in the chaotic painting is really beautiful.
Martens: So you are really challenging sexuality, sexual norms, male fragility and focusing on feminism.
Diaz: Religion.
Martens: Sex.
Diaz: God. I am starting to talk about what is close to me. A woman in Mexico talking about society. What is close to me is made to control us, fill us with fear.
Martens: Tell me about your advocacy, supporting sex workers and recent victims of the Mexico City earthquake.
Diaz: I felt like I had to talk about the victims of the earthquake because we had a horrible horrible thing happen in Mexico City and the government wasn’t helping us. They didn’t have a plan. This already happened to us in 1986. They didn’t have a fucking plan to back up the citizens if something happens like this again. So it was basically the citizens saving the city. So I thought that I had to talk about it. I had to use my connections, I know a lot of people in Mexico. I had to use that voice that I was given to get everything that I could get.
And the sex workers, I use my voice to also talk about the lack of sexual education in Mexico. In this pandemic, I decided I wanted to help sex workers because they are at the centre of the city which is so dodgy due to their exposure to the COVID-19 virus. People don’t like sitting next to a sex worker. They like them to fuck but they don’t like to see them as part of society. I think at this time we are all having a rough time and they are working the streets. With the pandemic happening, it’s like they are exposing themselves way more. I saw my neighbours were doing something to help so I called Raoul, “Hey, Raoul, I really like your initiative”. I was thinking of doing it but was trying to see who was the right person to do it with. They posted on my social media feed and I thought “perfect”. Let’s put our strength together to talk about it. To talk about sex workers is to normalize it. We gathered whatever the sex workers needed to survive, including food. They are used to work in hotels. It’s a safer environment to work but when they don’t have a hotel, they work outside, putting themselves in more danger. When they tell you that they haven’t been eating because they haven’t had any money in two weeks that is when you say okay, I’m going to use my privilege to help them, and that’s how it started. We’re helping sex workers and the trans community in Mexico as well.
Martens: What would you say to someone who wanted to do a similar line of work as you? Or wanted to be like you?
Diaz: You cannot be anyone else! If you are trying to be someone else or copy someone else then you are on the wrong path. You can get inspired. If you are trying to be someone else, you are doing everything wrong. Haha. I would tell them, “Baby, try to empower yourself and find out who you are. Get inspired. Close your eyes and express yourself.” For me, getting into the art world was just about feeling myself. One of the problems of doing art is comparing yourself to other artists.
Martens: I would agree.
Diaz: What the fuck is art, Tess? It comes from the people who make it and the eyes and soul see it. Art is not for everybody. Some art is not for me! So my advice, fucking do you! Don’t worry about what other people will do. Because when you start doing things with the intention of people liking it, everything is going to be wrong!
Martens: I like that!
Diaz: You do things for you! Fuck everyone else!
Martens: I love it!
Find Colu on Instagram here and find her art Instagram Ciervo Indefenso here.
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About Tess
Tess Martens (she/her) is currently based in Montreal, Quebec. She graduated from the University of Waterloo with a Master of Fine Art focusing on performance art in 2018. In her art practice, personal experiences are re-contextualized through performances. Humour is often used in her performances to invite and engage the audience. In 2019, Martens performed in The Hague, The Netherlands, and in New Mexico, USA. In 2020, prior to the pandemic she attended Venice International Performance Week, and performed at Pandora Art Gallery, a small underground gallery in Berlin, Germany. She has also performed in Ontario and Quebec, Canada. When she is not performing, she is painting in her kitchen and working with seniors at a Montreal senior residence.