As Zona Maco kicks off in Mexico City this week, it’s perfect timing for this interview with Sarah Buckley Samiani, public artist, designer and visual philosopher. Buckley recently moved from LA to CDMX. I’ve been inspired by her and her work since I first laid eyes on it. Through our mutual friends we finally landed in the same city of Mexico and were able to meet up for breakfast. Buckley embodies an insatiable curiosity and a deep seeded desire for discovery. She is the type of person that you can find yourself, hours later deep in discussion with about something very particular and multidimensional. She is also the type of artist that is able to set her ego away and lead with her gorgeous heart in all that she expresses in the world. Deeply moved by this woman, here are some of her words in Amor’s first feature. And if you happen to be at Zona Maco this week, you can find her at the opening of Dimensions Partalelas at Casa Lambb, show’s flyer below.

WHAT IS YOUR OCCUPATION?

I am an artist, thinker and designer.

WHAT IS YOUR STRONG SUIT?

At the base of all my work is a strength in drawing and philosophizing/inquiring.

WHAT’S ONE THING PEOPLE DON’T KNOW ABOUT YOU?

That I had careers in politics and the music industry before becoming an artist.

HOW HAS YOUR WORK EVOLVED SINCE YOU FIRST STARTED OUT?

When I first started, my work was looser, denser, a bit of a heavier hand. Currently my work feels more concise, very balanced, clean and lighter. I am actually interested in finding a middle point between the two now, I’ve been going back and referencing my old work as a way to reconnect to that version of myself.

WERE THERE ANY PARTICULAR MOMENTS THAT SHIFTED YOUR PERSPECTIVE AND HOW DID THAT SHOW UP IN YOUR ART?

Too many to count! The work is always so tied to what I’m learning and growing through in a particular moment. In the last few years life has been teaching me a lot about letting go of control, healing anxiety, and fully allowing grieving processes to submerge me, rather than avoiding dark moments in life. So now I’m using my work to address and reflect on the technology of grief and surrender as a way of honoring how much growth we gain from fully feeling the parts of life we normally prefer to resist.

WHAT IS YOUR CREATIVE PROCESS LIKE?

My process is quite streamlined at this point. For almost any medium I’m working with, the process begins with research and drawing, then doing a digital mock up of the piece where I plan out the final color & composition. From there, I begin creating the work, classically hitting some kind of big snag in a later stage where it feels like the piece is doomed, so I have to work that out for a bit, then I get past it and bring the piece to completion. I am grateful for the fluency that I’ve gained over the years by developing this process, it makes me feel like anything I can imagine to create is possible by following those steps.

HOW DO YOU NAVIGATE SETBACKS OR A LACK OF ENTHUSIASM SOME DAYS?

Routine is my tether for this. It’s all about getting into a rhythm. I can be spacious with myself if I need to start later or end earlier or pull an all-nighter, as long as I have locked in a steady practice of showing up to the studio everyday. So I don’t really panic about setbacks or low enthusiasm anymore because I’ve got a sort of mechanized system of working that allows me to show up and know my daily tasks, so I can do them with full gusto or no gusto and it works either way.

WHAT IS YOUR VIEW ON THE ROLE OF ART AND ARTISTS THESE DAYS?

I believe that the role of art has always been to bridge us back to our soulful, sensitive and most humanistic nature, and that the artist functions as a scientist of Self (so to speak) communing with their intuitive and emotional worlds on behalf of society. Artists are meant to feel and remind others to feel. While that sounds like an oversimplification in ways, I believe that the simple act of experiencing emotions is deeply subversive, it often endangers the status quo because it opens us to continuously reconsider what is and what could be. This is an essential part of human evolution- questioning the rigidities of our existing systems. Therefore art, by way of the artist allowing their mind to travel beyond what’s been imagined so far, creates a nonverbal channel to transmit possibilities for the collective imagination to grow— and for new realities to emerge. I do feel that the Information Age coupled with capitalism has complicated our capacity to express or even come into contact with Truth. So these days it feels all the more important that artists actively reach into deeper subject matter rather than skimming the surface and creating solely decorative and superficial work. I wish for the role of artist to expand and be honored in more practical parts of society rather than being sequestered by ourselves in studios or in the white boxes of galleries and museums— there’s so much more that our creativity can be applied to in our aching world. I imagine artists becoming part of the conversation on how we redesign our collective experience and address our largest existential issues. By putting artists on the boards of cities / countries as advisors for creative problem solving, there’s so much potential to create a shared reality that weaves more humanity and whimsy into our overly rational and efficiency-driven world.