La Cholla Jackson
La Cholla Jackson (1989, San José) is an interdisciplinary artist whose work encompasses performance, happenings, video art and assemblage. She is part of the Haus of Weisas collective which has carried out several happenings in public spaces. She has participated in the Performing Arts Memory Laboratory (MAE); the OPQ Residence at the Cultural Center of Spain, San José, Costa Rica, with Transvestism from Yesterday and the Future (2019) and the Residence at La Casa Encendida, CA2M, MACBA in Madrid (2021) with the happening Veneno Trash Atlán(tica).
In 2023, her Artist Residency at Cero Uno Gallery in San José, Costa Rica, culminated in a solo exhibition titled The Cold Enters Through the Feet. The exhibition featured assemblage made with deconstructed fashion, photographs of the artist performing drag and sculptural moments using bus doors, discarded objects and trash from the street, and inherited objects.
Interview (on the occasion of the exhibition) by Costa Rican Artist Lucía Madriz:
L.M: You are presenting very complex objects for this exhibit. Could you tell us about them and about what the pieces are made of?
L.CH.J: These objects are ensembles and grow out of my need to customize her garments to reflect a chosen theme or concept. Also they have a sentimental value because I have used many of them in performative actions. These pieces are born in the world of clothing and evolve to place themselves in the world of art where I conceptually relate them to Arte Povera, an art movement originating in Italy, in the latter half of the sixties, a movement that tells us about a society in decline.
(The artists of this movement used materials considered "poor" such as stones, mesh and earth; and waste such as clothes and dishes. With these practices they critiqued the consumer society and pop art.)
These pieces are located in a current cultural context, in which the third world must take charge of the first world's waste, for this reason it is important to me that these pieces have already passed their useful life in order to convert them to trash- bestialism.
L.M: How do these objects relate to your lifestyle?
L.CH.J: I find it entertaining to give new meaning to things that are supposedly, already a given, and by doing so, they become an extension of my body, which in turn, with time and reflection, become artworks. This search for objects and its redefinition is a constant in my life.
L.M: There is a contrast between the elements you find on the street, such as bus doors, and intimate elements, such as inherited objects. Can you tell us how you perceive both worlds?
L.CH.J: They are spaces with their own well-defined characteristics. I conceive the intimate space as my field of creation where I face the object with the potential it already possesses, which is why for me it is almost sacred. In addition, it is where I can be myself without judgments, especially those of family members; a space of refuge and fantasy without constraints.
La Cholla Jackson’s work has been exhibited at the MADC Museum of Contemporary Art and Design, the Cultural Center of Spain in San José, and at La Casa Encendida and the La Neomudéjar Museum in Madrid and has been presented in Mexico, Honduras and Nicaragua.
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