BETSABE MENDEZ “En cada quimio plantaba una flor”

PERFIL
Nombre: Betsabe Mendéz
Día nacimiento: 5 July 1992
Nacio en: Guadalajara, Jalisco. MX
Ocupación: Florista

Ms. Sassen, as a photographer, does art always start with the self?
I think all art is some kind of self-expression! For me, when I’m working as an artist and I have total freedom in that realm, I can totally let go and I can express myself fully — maybe this isn’t always true for commercial work where I have to give the client what they want, but I think even if you make really abstract or conceptual art, it always says something about yourself. I think all artists make self-portraits in some sense.

Has it gotten easier to express yourself through your work over the years?
Well, for instance, I do these large collages nowadays, which can be quite huge, spanning entire walls, they often look quite monstrous, almost like monstrous beings because I work with so many different elements. And I think when I was a young woman, I would not have had the guts to do that, you know? I think you grow over time as a person, as a woman. It takes time to find your voice. Of course, there are also young women who already have this kind of enormous power to just express themselves and go big, but for me, it really took time get there. I had to experience more in life and and go through so many different phases. The transition has been kind of liberating! The woman that I was when I made those early self-portraits, I think she still had a long way to go!

“I’ve long been intrigued by the idea of showing and hiding. In an early interview, I remember I described myself as a shy exhibitionist!”

Your self-portraits were some of your earliest work as a solo artist, just after you stopped modelling to take photos yourself.
Yes, I was working as a model for some time when I was young, and I always felt it was not really for me. I was too shy. I was very self conscious, and I was always working with these male photographers who tried to get something out of me that I was not prepared or willing or able to give. It was often about a certain kind of eroticism, sensuality, or sexuality… I was just so young. I was green as grass, and I felt very awkward with their directions, they would tell me to make love to the camera or pout your lips or pretend that they’re my boyfriend. This was at a time when I was experiencing my first sexual encounters, you know, I had my first boyfriend, and, so I was still very much trying to figure out what that all meant and what the body meant to me, what I was prepared to give or to show. So all of that definitely was important in the sense that at some point I picked up that camera and started making these self-portraits because it was a way to kind of reclaim my own image and my own body.