Carlos Herrera’s work does not permit indifference. His intimate installations, sculptures, performances, and photographs reflect on life and death, madness, sexuality, rites of passage, and spirituality as he tries to make the visible and material into the “stuff of memory” and emotion. Using a vast assortment
of materials, including sheets, blankets, wood, cut flowers, feathers, bread, meat, bones, water, and soap, he draws on the traditions of still-life and self-portraiture but takes a personal and irreverent approach to the ephemeral nature of existence. For Herrera, his meticulous arrangements of dying, dead, and inanimate materials allude to the work of composing and recomposing the self while also acting as a kind of memento mori, reminding him of his past and future.
María Carolina Baulo: Your work operates like a mirror in which you reflect yourself. And to “design yourself,” you rely on arrangements and ornaments that nod to the history of art, ikebana, and Eastern philosophy. What is the purpose of these arrangements?
Carlos Herrera: My childhood and adolescence were spent in the countryside around Rosario in Argentina. My grandparents and parents dedicated their entire lives to the production of cut flowers, which were distributed commercially in the Rosario Flower Market. There were five hectares covered with seasonal flower crops and green foliage for ornamentation. The countryside, with its flowers and animals, was my natural context. . .
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