We are excited to announce our fourth ImpactART event featuring artist and illustrator, Aria Villafranca, December 5, 2019.

For details and to RSVP to the event, please click here. The event will be held December 5, 2019, starting at 6pm. The opening is free, and drinks and pupu will be provided. Find more work by Aria on her website, on Facebook, and Instagram.

If you spend any time here at Impact Hub HNL, you’ll likely recognize Aria’s work, which adorns the pillars in the Queen Street side of the space. The scenes are from a sci-fi cityscape and it was some of the first work to color our walls, so it’s really exciting to host this event that features a more full body of work from this multi- talented artist.

Aria, born and raised on Oahu, received a BFA from the University of Hawai’i at Manoa, and is currently working towards an MFA in Sequential Art at the Savannah College of Art and Design.

In this coming show, which features comic book-style sequences, standalone pieces, and animations, Aria invites us to examine the familiar through an unfamiliar lens. This alien world has been created for the viewer to enter, fully examine, inhabit, and interact with this new world to escape reality to enter a world of fiction. See selected images from the show in the Gallery below:

I chatted with Aria about her work for the show and to learn more about the motivation behind some of this work.

Andrea Bertoli (AB): Where does your inspiration come from for all the different worlds you create?

Aria Villafranca (AV): Whenever I create a world for any of my stories, there’s both a visual inspiration and a thematic inspiration. One can come before the other, but they both work together to shape the world. It’s hard to pinpoint a hard and fast “rule” when it comes to creating, because I usually build up these worlds over a long period of time, so the process is slightly different for each work. I like to keep it organic though, and I usually compound ideas as I think of them.

Visual inspirations often come from reality, or at least ideas from other media that are informed by reality. For “Vox,” my visual inspiration comes from cities, and the idea of cities. I’ve always had an interest in cities and urban architecture, so I wonder if my exploration of cities via this work is my way of vicariously experiencing life in an urban space, since most of my time is spent in smaller communities. What time I have spent in cities has really resonated with me, and the visuals and feelings I keep from those experiences heavily influence “Vox.”

What has struck me about these places is the juxtaposition of different perceptions that one can have of them. When you see advertisements for these places, they are very polished, very flashy and inviting; but when you get there, there are a lot of parts that are dirty, that have trash in the streets, dilapidated storefronts, graffiti on bus stops, and other darker sides of urban living. These aspects of “the city” are not advertised, particularly, but they are there as part of the reality of city living. In the interest of money and tourism, many people would like to pretend that these less than pleasant aspects of a city’s image is non-existent, and it’s for that reason I am inspired to utilize these aspects.

And honestly, I just think that the actual messy reality of a city is much more interesting to exist in and be a part of. It feels lived in, it has character, and that really appeals to me to not have the world exist as a pristine Stepford Wives-esque utopia as seen in advertisements.

I’m also pretty influenced by other forms of media that thematically tie into the “mood” I’m going for in my work. Music is a big part of how I conceptualize ideas, so there are a few hip-hop and electronic music artists that convey the grit and grime I’m portraying in “Vox”, like Run the Jewels and Foreign Beggars. Then there are shows (The Wire, Futurama), films (Blade Runner 2049, Dredd), comics (Blacksad, The Spire, V for Vendetta), a bunch of non-fiction books and articles, and of course, the news.

In these depictions from other media, there are aspects that speak to me, that I then translate into my own world. There’s the bombastic violence and glamour that Run the Jewels raps about, the zany alien culture of “Futurama,” the repetitive and looming structures of “Blade Runner,” the cameras and police of “V for Vendetta.” These themselves are inspired by reality, starting a game of telephone between what exists, what is depicted, and what is predicted, in the culture of these real and imagined spaces.

There are just so many aspects from so many different things that influence and inspire me at different intervals that contribute to this stew that then becomes this world. It’s a process.

AB: What do you think viewers can learn from living – at least temporarily- in this fictional/fantasy worlds?

AV: I think that by entering a fictional world the viewer can remove inhibitions when it comes to thinking about certain ideas. In the real world, we can often be guarded and stubborn when it comes to issues we care about. My theory is that, when experiencing a fictional situation, you are more likely to take it at face value, without preconceived notions, and you become more open to contemplating an idea you perhaps would not have in reality if someone just presented it to you, even though the core concept is the same.

The way I see it is fiction can be used as another way to explain a point of view. It’s like if you’ve ever been in a discussion, and you didn’t understand a concept, and someone used a metaphor and it suddenly made sense; that’s what fiction (and fictional worlds) have the potential to be, if that’s the artist’s desire.

In each fictional world I create, and their corresponding narratives, my intent is to tackle specific issues that I feel are worth talking about. In “Vox,” I hope that by reframing situations we face in the modern age, viewers can understand the absurdity, tragedy, and danger we face in the current socio-political moment that we are living in.

AB: In your artist statement, you write about dealing with ‘made up conflicts to forget real problems–’ so do you envision your work as a kind of self-reflective therapy?

AV: I was actually being playfully sardonic there; weird as it is to say about a story with no humans in it, my work is rooted in reality, so in the narrative sense, it really is only about real problems. While I am speaking to issues I care about in society, I am also trying to entertain the viewer to some degree (otherwise I could just be writing academic essays). The irony is that, in a lot of works that are explicitly or implicitly making statements on contemporary issues, because the work itself is so engaging and, for lack of a better word, fun, viewers can… miss the point.

I think it’s perfectly feasible that a viewer can forget real problems by being entertained by made up conflicts that are themselves commentaries on real problems. But this is also the double-edged sword of creating art as entertainment, balancing the line of being too overt or too subtle with your intentions. It’s also not up to me to determine what someone takes away from the art; as long as they take something away, I’m happy, but there is also a specific intention that I have when I’m creating something.

Creating the work is therapeutic for me, because I feel that I am contributing, at least in a small way, to the discourse surrounding important issues. Explorations of poverty, race, class, law, and power are interesting to me and necessary; whether the viewer themselves also finds this therapeutic is probably up for debate. I hope, though, that the work provides the opportunity for viewers to experience internal and external reflection about what’s going on in the world and how that relates to themselves.

For details and to RSVP to the event, please click here. The event will be held December 5, 2019, starting at 6pm. The opening is free, and drinks and pupu will be provided. Find more work by Aria on her website, on Facebook, and Instagram.

What is ImpactART?
ImpactART supports Hawaii’s artists by creating an equal exchange of artwork for studio and exhibition space. Co-created by Impact Hub HNL and Honolulu Biennial Foundation in 2017 to address the need for art studios and the proper valuation of artists’ work. We have thus far hosted three ImpactART events, featuring artists Lauren Hana Chai, Boz Schurr, and a group show featuring Sheanae Tam, Ryan Higa, and Bai Xin Chen.

Anne Weber, Impact Hub HNL Community Manager, explains, “The idea for ImpactART was inspired by our commitment to creating community impact. When we opened in August 2017, we had huge blank walls and wanted to figure out a way to beautify the space, support local up and coming artists, inspire a new audience of art lovers, and show the business community how they too can support local arts in a creative way. It is a win-win.” To inquire about art space or to learn more about Impact Hub HNL, contact us.