Beyond collecting and patronage: a conversation with Griselda Hurtado

Terremoto talks with Griselda Hurtado, collector, restaurateur and art patron based in Cuernavaca. Her interest in art has contributed enormously to the dissemination, visibility and support of the local art scene, acting as a haven for many artists during the last decades. In this interview, the collector talks about the current cultural and political contexts, the economic power of culture and the voices that make up her collection.

Terremoto: I would like to begin this conversation by situating us in the political and cultural landscape currently faced in the state of Morelos, where culture, institutions and their agents seem to be increasingly fragmented. How do you understand your position as a collector and patron in this situation?

Griselda Hurtado: Unfortunately, it is a landscape that is not exclusive to Morelos, it is the reality of the entire country. Governments are aware of the power of culture, that is why they use it when they need a powerful entity capable of unifying an entire people and, at the same time, they marginalize and mistreat it because they know its ability to generate critical thinking in society. A cultured person is not so easy to manipulate.

What’s terrible about the state of Morelos, in addition to the precariousness suffered by the cultural sector, is the complete disinterest of the ruling class. They appoint people to head cultural institutions without the slightest understanding of the sector they are going to lead or much less of the work they must perform. The result during the last six years has been the inexistence of public policies that promote and guarantee cultural rights; instead, the management of occurrences, banality and underuse of resources has prevailed.

I am interested in cultural management and promotion, but I am a businesswoman, I know the economic power of culture. It is a sector that generates employment, that promotes tourism, something that the political sector has failed to understand or has refused to see. When you build a solid cultural offer and guarantee equity in the production, distribution and consumption of cultural goods and services, you simultaneously promote and strengthen the economy. It is proven that the consumption of culture increases over time and generates a qualitative increase in human capital, that is to say that the entire population that you constantly expose to culture increases its capacity to produce and contribute to the generation of economic or cultural flows in the future. It’s a win-win circle!

This is where I see a possibility of having an impact, as a businesswoman and cultural promoter, as someone who understands the economic power of culture and puts it into action.

Terremoto: How did your collection begin and what is the criteria with which you collect? What was your first acquisition? What and who can we find there?

Griselda Hurtado: It is difficult for me to define a specific moment in time when I started collecting art, since it was not really a very conscious or premeditated act. It was a random or perhaps intuitive process. Above all, it was a response to a sensitive need that began to arise in me to be able to understand a different world, a reality different from the one that touches us, that bothers us, that is insufficient for us and that leaves us feeling dissatisfied.

At some point in my first encounters with local artists, and especially with their work, I realized that what they offered me was the possibility of understanding reality from other eyes. Through them and their work, I understood that, we could say everything that we are asked to keep quiet through art. Art takes us to those places that society avoids, to the forbidden but also to the censored.

It was then that I also understood the social importance of the existence of artists, and the relevance of culture as a space and as an idea, to recover social values that are diluted in everyday life. Values and dynamics that overshadow our daily work and that find a critical light in art.

The first work I received from an artist was in exchange for a plate of food; it was a barter that I understand in a different way today. We both need to feed each other. It is for this reason that my collection was born and took its first steps, along with my first gastronomic project, Iguanas Greens. Since then, my restaurants have been spaces of confluence to eat and to enjoy in an environment surrounded by the expression and talent of local, national and foreign artists.

My collection is very diverse and heterogeneous, because it is not governed by aesthetic standards, nor by betting on a career, or by market speculation. I would say that it is governed more by very visceral tastes, by the way in which something that I don’t understand provokes me. Sometimes simply as a challenge, immersing myself into the work until I understand what it provokes in me; that takes some time.

The collection shows part of the richness of languages and the artistic vitality of our state, and brings up the debate of promoting other collecting models. Today, it brings together more than five hundred pieces; a collection that ranges from emerging and experimental art to works that are already part of the history of national art today.

In it, there are works by artists from different generations and geographies. Graphic, pictorial work, sculpture, video, object art, textile, queer art. I can proudly say that there is a lot of art from Morelos, and that I have been able to accompany the evolution and growth of many local artists. I can also say that, as part of the collection, there is a lot of popular art, since both expressions can coexist and inhabit it without any problem, in my opinion.

Terremoto: You are one of the few collectors in Morelos who, beyond their interest in collecting, support artists to create, commission work and hold exhibitions. Can you talk about your role as a patron and the ways you have found to support local artists beyond the institution?

GH: My main motivation has been to promote the effort and dedication of tenacious and consistent artists, and over time to promote culture as a necessary public good. For me, art has been a space that summons, that binds and that liberates. My interest in art is born from that genuine curiosity, to understand that there are other languages, other ways of communicating, of understanding reality and the world around us.

Terremoto: Years ago, a resignification of Latin American art began, which seeks to dehomogenize what was understood by “Latin American”, and which is revising certain stereotypes. In that sense, how do you understand your collection from a “Latin American” perspective and how do you relate it to your popular art collection?

GH: I think that, more than a dehomogenization, what is happening is a deconstruction of the concept of “Latin American art.” When we talk about art in Latin America we must avoid stereotypical generalizations loaded with exoticisms. It is necessary to break with the established perspectives, which are only unilateral interpretations based on a geographical and narrow perspective that has fragmented the continent, instead of on the understanding of a cultural, economic and social community that has a complex diversity. There had not been an effort to get closer to and learn from each other, and it seems that this is changing.

Latin American art has had and still has a close relationship with its social and cultural context. It constantly interacts with the vernacular and the popular imagination, with tradition and social problems; it is rebellious and responds to its provocative environment. That’s where I try to focus my collection, not just popular art. A gesture that began with the aim of helping an artistic community that was often mistreated, over time took on a real interest in reflecting the link between the individual and the environment. Most of the artists I have collected, whether popular, visual, plastic, realize this. Some of them, like Javier Ocampo or Jahir Romero, belong to communities that have been marginalized, and therefore, made invisible, and their proposals have responded to this situation. Others work closely with popular artists building communicating vessels between the popular and the urban or between tradition and the avant-garde, like Cisco Jimenez or Francisco Toledo.

The interest I have in my art collection is that it reflects the diversity of the artistic scene of Morelos. That does not mean that I only collect artists whose practice takes place in the state; there are examples of creators whose language has crossed borders and their influence is universal. Hence, at the same time that I have added the clay work of Zenaida Nava from the Cuentepec pottery community or Gloria Aniceto from San Agustin Oapan, I have acquired pieces by Magali Lara, Javier de la Garza, Alejandro Santiago, Lalo Lugo, Ray Smith or Andy Warhol.