Ana Cubero is the artist that I have least known at the time of proposing to participate in Ocho por Tres. The last few months back in Valladolid have allowed me to meet many artists from the city, and it seemed like a good opportunity to reflect it on the project - with all this personal touch that I try to keep in its background. I was talking about it recently in an interview for Ah! Magazine: it took me a while to link Ocho por Tres to the city because I had not lived here for ten years. That's the reason why it's so noticeable how it has started with artists from other places where I have lived in recent years and little by little it has been interacting more with the local circuit. Somehow, although I am not sure that this is perceived, Ocho por Tres reflects an intimate journey through the approach to the work of others. It is not overly orthodox, it is not journalistic: I am an artist and, above all, I look.
I had already talked with her occasionally, and I came across some of her interventions on Cristina R. Vecino's photographs during the fourth anniversary of El Carrusel gallery. As she tells me, she had previously worked on similar collages during the Joint-Kids meetings in the gallery; but this time they were «more slow and refined» works. Now I ask, couldn't we say that the work of Ana Cubero on our billboard is a new intervention of her on Cristina's work?
These constructions are not his only collaborative works. Ana is, in fact, a creator who tends to the association to push enthusiastic and forceful projects. This is the case of his contribution to "Montaje" (Andrés Carretero and Saúl Alonso), with whom she designed pavements and draperies in 2017/2018, or the firm "Pinapardo" (together with María Tamames) under which multiple works were carried out - both as a team and individually.
«Pinapardo was a very nice project, very important for me and very serious. It helped me to experiment and to learn. At the beginning we were two people who worked well together, for example in projects related to wool and manual printing, but then, the most interesting thing for me was to be able to turn over my personal concerns, I was able to carry out my own projects under the protection of the brand. To name a few, the visuals that I made to accompany Nacho Román at the Meet electronic music festival, a very intimate and experimental project that was screened on the roof of the Patio Herreriano Museum. Or the pieces that I designed for "Creadores Inquietos" (an annual exhibition held by the European project Creart), consisting of a textile piece and two collages, and that was also based on two fragments of paper as the piece I present here for Ocho por Tres. Also worth mentioning is the In_formal dialogue with Fernando Guijar in the Javier Silva Gallery, for which I made a study on the form based on photographs and some textile pieces.»
«And above all the collections of silk scarves with my own prints, which emerged in a fun and natural way. I was producing so many designs and because of that, the first time, it took me a lot to take them to production. I remember it was a very hot July, everyone was on vacation and I had to choose between all those compositions and colours. We managed to create a very personal imagery. I put a lot of effort into the project and a lot of enthusiasm.»
Concurrently to her research, the artist and textile designer teaches a subject at the ESI design school in which she deals with a topic that is constantly at the core of her work. It is a transversal subject to all the studies of the school that addresses the concept of circular economy within the framework of design, that is, that teaches to take into account that the life cycle of a product must consider its entire production chain: from the people who extract the material to the user and the waste management. As she defines it, her work consists essentially in «making the new designers see that they are going to be environmentally and socially responsible agents». In the month of March she will also give a "surface design through stamping" workshop in LAVA (Arts Laboratory of Valladolid), open to all levels.
Admirer of the humour and the experimental value of Elsa Schiaparelli, Ana Cubero decodes "The Sense of Order" to the rhythm of Ernst H. Gombrich, while her gesticulating hands confirm that she knows how to deal with both a classroom full of students and knitting needles. With clear references, it is easier to cut the patterns and freely configure a personal imagery that makes your own touch perfectly recognizable. The difficult thing is to let yourself be soaked. But without fear of intranquility it is how you will get to rest.