This interview provides insight into the creative process of visual artist Beatriz Eugenia Díaz (b. 1965), who is also involved in the field of music. It discusses specifically her early work No hay Absoluto (1991), which addresses the dual relationship between music—an art that takes place in time—and the visual arts—which occupy space. On a conceptual level, the piece formulates a conversation between disciplines around the number seven—chosen because of the artist’s fondness for it—which is broken down into the sum of four and three, where four is associated with space and three with time.
The interviewer—Colombian artist and researcher Jorge Luis Vaca (1985)—is primarily interested in the relationship between art and technology, inquiring into how the artist faces the wide range of possibilities available in her creative process. Díaz asserts that, for her, there is no major difference “new” and “old” media; she reflects on the importance of research, creation, and production that heed the requirements of each work. After all, she argues, any and all tools are, in the end, technology.
The interview also provides a timeline of certain socio-political events that took place in Colombia around the time No hay Absoluto was produced. Díaz mentions the “Séptima Papeleta” (1990), the Asamblea Nacional Constituyente (1991), and the assassinations of Colombian politicians and presidential candidates Luis Carlos Galán Sarmiento (in 1989), and Bernardo Jaramillo Ossa and Carlos Pizarro León Gómez (both in 1990), which she considers of great importance.
Beatriz Eugenia Díaz studied music and visual arts at the Universidad de los Andes in Bogotá from 1988-1992. She did post-graduate work at the Universidade Federal da Bahia (1997) in northeastern Brazil. In addition to her work as an artist, she has taught at the Universidad de los Andes, the Universidad Javeriana, the Universidad Nacional of Colombia, and the Universidad Jorge Tadeo Lozano. Her work has been featured in exhibitions such as “TELE-VISIÓN" (1999) at the Museo de Arte Moderno in Bogotá; DOMÉSTICA Una mirada cotidiana (2001) at the Biblioteca Luis Ángel Arango in Bogotá [see doc. no. 1131435]; and at the IV Versión del Premio Luis Caballero, where she submitted the work Polaris (2007) [see Ejercicio de agrimensura, Ospina, Lucas, doc. no. 1133061].