LILIANA CASTILLO

LILIANA CASTILLO CASTILLO

Recycling nature into truly works of art

Meeting with Liliana Castillo Castillo

Since her beginnings in Art school, she was inexplicably attracted by all the natural elements, the respect they need, their shapes, textures, and colours. ‘I turn natural materials which have completed their cycle into works of art, therefore revealing their own essence. This creative process has been a kind of reciprocal therapy, a particular connection to get rid of anything negative and give a second life to those forgotten pieces’, explains Liliana.

She started working in this project in March 2020, when new roads and systems were about to start in our lives. It was spring, the long days started to make their entrance and the course of nature continued without stopping. But the entire world came to a halt by a pandemic called Coronavirus. We seemed to be in a bubble, untouchable, waiting for a path to move forward and for life allows us to wake up, or maybe staying asleep inside that bubble built by each one of us.

Liliana decided to build a beautiful experience with sculpture, discovering a means of artistic expression, which allowed her to listen to the materials and natural elements she worked with. ‘I gladly share my stories and secrets with those willing to be part of them through the forms and shapes arising from each of my pieces’, she says.

Prehistoric Abstract Sculptures

Liliana lives intensely the creative process in each project. In the abstract prehistoric sculptures, she manages somehow to connect with her own past experiences, binding and cleaning during long hours until leaving the destroyed timber behind to reveal a magnificent work of art. Each layer recovered reveals its true splendour.

She worked on a series of pieces from trees which had suffered electrical storms in Russia. Those twisted, burned, and forgotten logs were the raw material she was looking for. The strength of these elm wood fragments, were struck by the fury of nature, appears in almost prehistoric silhouetted forms. This is how the wood and resin become the narrator of the story, always respecting, and caring for the environment.

‘My way of working layer by layer, stage by stage, makes it possible to discover the needs of the different pieces.’ Each of them needs a different type of treatment, its own healing process, just as the different stages of life need their own types of curative treatments. It is about working on the most needed pieces, accepting the marks and scars in each piece and exploring their deep side to improve and reveal the hidden essence and beauty.

In this therapeutic path of art, Liliana brings out the beauty of the forgotten, unknown, and discarded pieces. A work highlighting the lost essence, discovering its own beauty. ‘Art is a powerful tool allowing to express and transmit what, for some reason, cannot be heard’, she concludes.

LILIANA'S BIOGRAPHY

With a Degree in Graphic Arts, Liliana also holds a Master’s degree in Communication and Design from IED in Milan, a Master's degree in Interior Design from IED in Barcelona, and a Postgraduate Degree in Management Development from Euncet (Barcelona), in addition to other training and projects in which she channels her creative restlessness, bestowing her little ray of light to the world. A good example was the creation of a digital platform for photographers, born under the name of Blipoint, with the aim of advertising the talent of emerging artists.

Currently she is completely immersed in the creation of artistic projects and uses materials recycled by nature itself. With her latest series of sculptures reborn from damaged elm trunks, Liliana shows us the secrets and true splendour of the elements with which she works, also reflecting the richness of her own personality and intense experiences. In this high-speed trip through the moments that have left a big imprint in her life, the artist takes us not only into the eternal human complexity, but also into the beauty of the resulting learning lessons, using art in such a natural way as a personal valve for expression.