Meet Angélica Muñoz Castaño

Today we’d like to introduce you to Angélica Muñoz Castaño.

Every artist has a unique story. Can you briefly walk us through yours?
I didn’t find art until I was about 18 years old, even though creativity fueled my life since an early age, it took me several years to see myself as an artist, back then I thought an artist had to know how to draw, and be proficient in several if not in all of the art mediums, like Leonardo Da Vinci and renaissance masters alike. I just considered myself a photographer, and it was not until Grad School that I started to identify myself as an artist. Nowadays with technology at our fingertips everybody thinks they are a photographer, but not every photographic capture could be art (or could it?), but you certainly can create art through photography…well as with anything.  My views have expanded since then, knowing that anything can be art, the way you live your life could be your most important work of art.

Art came into my life at a very crucial time, and at a very significant age, at barely 17 I had just lost my mother and moved from Colombia to the U.S leaving everything behind.

My photography became my north, a tool of investigation of my roots and of what I had lost, with which I also explored the contrast of my new surroundings and a culture that raised me.  Photography became a tool of introspection to better help me know myself while floating between cultures. I guess my story is one of self-search, but aren’t them all, in some sort of way?

Please tell us about your art.
My aesthetic inspiration has been my culture and folklore, and my visions…imagined and dreamt.  And I learned how to portrayed them by studying the classic masters of photography like Manuel Alvarez Bravo, Henri Cartier Bresson and a couple of contemporaries pros like Graciela Iturbide, Alex Webb, Gregory Crewdson, among others.

However, since I first picked up a camera, my conceptual inspiration has come from a very deep urge to look for answers, to understand many loses, an almost painful search for clues to put a story together.  Perhaps,  pieces of separated realities, vanished ancestral memories. My photography is a documentation of the disappearance of fragments of my “life”.

I cannot hope people understand my work, I’m just getting to understand it myself.  Most people that see my work say it is beautiful, but that is what you say when commenting on someone’s children, most people agree my photography is melancholic, but I guess some of my titles just suggest this, and few viewers find some of my images disturbing, eerie or scary.

I just know my photographic journey has helped me evolve tremendously, ironically it has also brought me even more questions that the ones that inspired my search.

I still ponder about life, identity, purpose, traditions, about the many answers my artwork has brought me, and where it has brought me to.  I haven’t produced “meaningful” work in several years. I guess creating/producing hiatus time is also important and part of the creative process, I’m just getting familiar with it, accepting it and letting it teach me, we will see what visions come to me next…

Choosing a creative or artistic path comes with many financial challenges. Any advice for those struggling to focus on their artwork due to financial concerns?
I really think that unless you learn to see your art as your business and become proficient in balancing the creative and the business parts of it, as crushing as it is, it will be very unlikely that an artist would live of just making art. Advice? I just have questions ha,ha… mmm well, being honest with yourself is always a great exercise: until when will you be willing to struggle in the name of love for your art?

How or where can people see your work? How can people support your work?
Some of my work will be exhibited this month at Santa Fe College in Gainesville, Florida and it will be up for a few months, that is a wonderful opportunity to see my images up close if you are in the area: The Santa Fe College President’s Hall Gallery is open Mon-Friday from 8 am- 4 pm and by appointment.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.angelicamunozcastano.com
• Email: angelicamunozcastano@gmail.com
• Instagram: angelicamunozcastano

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