Today we’d like to introduce you to Milagros Collective and Felici Asteinza.
Milagros and Felici, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
I, (Felici), have been interested in making art and drawing since I could hold a pencil. I was born in San Pedro Sula, Honduras and raised in Panama City, Florida where I took art class all throughout school. I took my first painting class in middle school in Miami while I was on summer vacation staying with my aunt and uncle and cousins and was instantly hooked. Eventually, I went to Florida State University to study Studio Art. There, I met a lot of folks who I began collaborating with, Joey Fillastre was one of those people and we’ve been working together ever since. When I finished school, I moved to New Orleans for a little while where I stayed with one of my childhood best friends and have been coming back ever since. Joey and I and our friend Evan Galbicka ran an art space in Gainesville called “the church of holy colors” in a former Baptist church while I attended USF for graduate school and lived in Tampa and have been traveling pretty regularly for art ever since. We split most of our time in between New Orleans and Miami and now have a home base in New Orleans again. Our artistic home in Miami is at Gramps in Wynwood. Working with Adam Gersten and Brian Bo on the space has been a true labor of love and watching the space grow and change over time has been a very amazing experience.
We are mostly known for our mural and installation projects that typically feature a concentric, line-pattern. We’ve lived in almost every city in Florida and we most often come back to Miami. We’ve been collaborating with Gramps consistently for the last six or so years and that has led us to get to know so many amazing people in the community. With the work, we are making we are most interested in creating platforms for community and collaboration. Accessibility and collaboration are at the heart of what we do. Energizing, and creating vibrancy for people to experience is always our goals with our public works.
Has it been a smooth road?
It has not always been a smooth road, and sometimes, I still experience pretty serious bumps in the road. I feel like with social media we only tend to share the positive things in our lives and it can often seem like we are more successful than we actually are because of that. Navigating communicating with older men has been a really difficult process at times because we don’t always have the common ground necessary for productive dialog. I have been incredibly lucky to have male collaborators to help me through those moments and allow me to take a break and take care of myself. I have endured some pretty intense instances of misogyny from people as young as 19, to people I considered my friends trying to invalidate my voice. I feel so lucky that I have had a strong community of friends to help me through these moments and they have encouraged me to share my story and to grow from these negative experiences. I am working really hard to create a new lens for myself for these situations where I stop viewing myself as a victim and show more self-compassion and see them as learning experiences. My advice for any other folks beginning life in the creative fields is to do this for yourself. It is going to be a lot of hard work, rejections, and failures that make the successes even sweeter. Find your community, they make it so much easier when you are inevitably dealing with the negative sides of creative/gig life. Plenty of people will try to use you but if you are focused on yourself and larger goals it makes it a lot easier to stay level and keep going.
Please tell us more about your work, what you are currently focused on and most proud of.
We are most well known for murals and installations. We typically feature a concentric line pattern in our work that’s always made intuitively on the spot. This process has been very meditative for me and allows me to react to the sites where we work. We love to use abstraction as a way of making something that is more ambiguous and can be read in multiple ways. Creating work that is accessible is really important to us. We have worked on a lot of projects that we are incredibly proud of and have been defining moments for us, like working with Young at Art Museum in Davie, the city of Decatur, GA, and the New Orleans Public Library. Most recently we created a St. Joseph’s day altar in a de-sanctified Catholic church turned hotel (Hotel Peter & Paul) in New Orleans and it was one of the most deeply spiritual projects we’ve ever done. St. Joseph’s day is a huge deal in the city and tons of churches, businesses, and homes open for the day to share their devotion to St. Joseph. Often, they give food and cookies away as part of it. Our altar was on view only for one day on St. Joseph’s feast day and we had over 1,000 visitors come through. It was such a positive experience working on it, we had assistance from so many of our friends (especially the prince of New Orleans, Johnnie B and his mother, the amazing Nina) and so much help from the hotel and staff (Hi Mac, Nathalie, and Miss Elodia!). It felt so amazing to be working in the space which still has such a historic feeling even though it is no longer used for services. It felt very special to be there all day and we met a lot of people who attended school at the church during their childhood. We got our fava beans and salt and St. Joseph cards blessed by Father Emanuel at Our Lady Star of the Seas church in St. Roch (who have an AMAZING mural in their church). The response was very positive and made me feel more connected to my own Catholic roots. It felt really lovely to do something truly free and open to the public and I cannot wait for next year.
I think one of the things that set our work apart from others is our commitment to community engagement. We work really hard to put up work that the surrounding neighborhood wants and feels proud of. Our goal is always for people to feel included and heard in our projects. I know there are other artists working towards a similar goal but it is not something that everyone is thinking about at this moment, especially with murals and installations.
What do you feel are the biggest barriers today to female leadership, in your industry or generally?
The whole damn system is set-up for men to succeed. We NEED women in charge and re-structuring things to make them more equitable and accountable. I think there is a tendency for folks to not validate voices that aren’t cis male and white and thats a crying shame because ALL of the other voices are what makes our country great. There is no such thing as neutrality and anyone trying to convince you of that more than likely has ulterior motives. When we did a project in Decatur, GA, we worked with a team of women at the top and it was one of the best projects we’ve ever worked on. They were very communicative and never left us in the dark about what was happening. My hope is that this will happen more often and that other people get to have experiences like this.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.milagroscollective.com
- Email: [email protected]
- Instagram: www.instagram.com/milagrosyall
Image Credit:
Karli Evans
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