Hello, my name is Maxim, and I am currently part of the Communication Design MA programme at Gray’s School of Art in Aberdeen. I will be focusing my project on issues concerning migration.
I was born in Tokyo in 1993 to a Mexican family I constantly miss. I have lived in many cities and become fascinated by paper. I enjoy working with it the most because I like the materiality it offers storytelling, while also being light enough to bring with me wherever I go.
I am interested in migration because I am a migrant and understand the importance of creating spaces where stories about people in transit belong. In an effort to offer a place for these stories, I make collages.
A reporter once asked Mexican film director, Guillermo del Toro, “how he balances the darkness and terror in his often monster-filled films with the joyful and loving person that he is”. “I’m Mexican”, he replied simply, “No one loves life more than we do, in a way, because we are so conscious about death. When you eliminate one of the two sides from the equation, it’s a pamphlet. When you take into account the dark to tell the light, it’s reality.” I suspect that having been six months exactly in front of a closed Gray’s School of Art, looking at it from the window, while trying to find beauty in grief and ways to communicate and connect while isolating has been a test to my «Mexicanity».
You can view where I see some of the stories I have shared with you here moving forward in the future:
Little Stories of Little Griefs:
Please feel welcome to click here and visit the website I created for my MA project.
La Tortillificación:
I revisited the illustration I had made about the patron saint of migrants, Santo Toribio Romo, to include on the webiste. Although I grew up without religion, I like to think that the intention for protection extends to others.
These are 9 stages of isolation:
1. I borrowed some rocks from the River Dee a day before lockdown started. I will give them back when everything goes back to being a little less terrifying, which I hope is soon.
2. I didn’t know if I was going to be able to stay, so I took everything from the studio with me, in case I had to leave. I unpacked and moved it to the desk I share with my husband. We also have breakfast there.
3. Some days I get sad and frustrated, but I have found comfort thinking about my mother’s house in Mexico and its rooms. Every now and then I imagine what she is doing in the living room and wonder how she is sitting on the sofa.
4. People send me photos of jacaranda trees. In return, I draw their portrait badly.
5. I sing to my plants now.
6. I do my makeup sometimes just to recognize m face in the mirror.
7. During an anxiety attack, I felt like I was going to die and confessed to my husband that the tomato juice he loves has, indeed, clam juice.
8. Amongst the things that quarantine changed about the things that connect us, my joints are killing me.
9. We bought plane tickets and boxes to pack our many things. Sadly, not our plants.
I revisited a story I wrote when I first arrived to Aberdeen. I have written other stories about Manuela. She, like myself, is sometimes too big for pants to cover the entirety of her legs when it gets cold and wishes to get acquainted with birds, but moves around too often to properly get to know them and viceversa. I made this illustration for the website.
I found a series of quick vignettes I drew with pencil when I was trying to document the tortilla making process. I digitally retouched it, translated some words, and cleaned it around a little bit. I edited the size of each vignette and made them squares, so it would be easier to share on Instagram. The vignettes above are unedited.
Annette had suggested to use the paper cut outs left from my collages to try stenciling. I kept a couple of pieces where I had cut out small jacaranda flower, so I used purple paint to stencil it onto craft and off white cotton paper.
They immediately reminded me of how the purple flowers look on the floor after falling from the tree in the front of my mother’s house in Mexico City and found a pair of photos of it:
I thought the craft paper somewhat resembled the tone of the clay tile, and decided to try the different floor patterns.
I scanned also one stencil where the paint had moved around and smudged a bit, but liked the watercoulour feel to it:
With these flower I decided to give it more definition, while taking advantage of the texture, so I digitally drew on them and formed kaleidoscopical images:
I have been revising my past work and revisiting my sketchbook from semester 1, where I found some cut outs I liked that were leftover from the collage I made of Market Street. I scanned them and played around a little with them. I liked using dark colours for the night on the last illustration I made, as well as adding texture digitally, which is why I made one in daytime and one in nighttime.
For the first one, I wanted to include the red thread that has been constant in my work to link the birds with feet to the bird with a human head, as well as showing the birds still attached to something else we can’t see. The red thread also links feeling, language, and thoughts to another identity that is not complete, but is being constructed with hope.
For the second one, I thought of the blackbirds that just won’t let me sleep a full night. Sometimes it sounds as if they are up to something other than being a bird, and it made me think of other things that might be something else at night. I haven’t been downtown in so long, so I concluded that the sea might as well be covering the whole city at night for all I know. Maybe that is what the blackbirds are trying to tell.
Cafecito literally means «little coffee». It is more than that. Cafecito is an action. It is the act of making home. A cafecito is the hours you spend talking after the meals have been eaten. It is the sweet bread that intrinsically comes with it. It is an invitation to share oneself. Cafecito is a measure of time, of words spoken, of love.
After asking people on instagram about what made their houses their homes, I reflected on mine. For me, it is this moment. A cafecito in the morning, another in the afternoon. Sitting around my mother’s kitchen table with her, my sister, my aunt, my cousin, with my back to the window. It is a good spot because I can see the plants’ reflection on the mirror above the sink, to where my sight is naturally directed. I go out to the corner bakery. We like conchas.
I really liked how one of the ink vignettes I drew for this project. It was the one where «voices and smells» made a house a home for someone. I digitally revisited it and added corn plants, a night sky, stars and a way to get there.
Maxim Zaragoza 