Mexican artist Karla Kaplun makes work around the construction and functioning of collective memory, and how that unfolds in dynamics of control, both in political and interpersonal frameworks. Her presentations are often theatrical in nature, with paintings architecturally embedded in the space, cast in chiaroscuro lighting, or mounted ornately in a style reminiscent of the baroque. These choices are not merely aesthetic, but serve to heighten the emotional impact of the work and to draw attention to the ways in which history, memory, and power can be staged or performed. Kaplun considers power struggles in various contexts, including that of cultural assimilation, without assuming a moralizing or pontifical stance, thus mitigating the urge for categorization and allowing nuanced interpretations more aligned with the complexities of humanness and potential power of spirituality in understanding a shared experience. Rather than o!ering conclusions, her work opens contemplative spaces — zones where memory, identity, and power intersect in ways that remain fluid, unresolved, and resonant.
Caroline Elbaor: Let’s start by talking about your show “Carmen” at High Art in 2023, as I think it distilled core components of your practice.
Karla Kaplun: I’ve always been drawn to theater and drama. I explored this approach in my first exhibition at House of Gaga in Mexico City, in the use of curtains and ornate framing. When High Art asked me if I was interested in doing a show with them, I noticed that the gallery was once Georges Bizet’s home, the French composer. It felt like fate. As I read the book Carmen, I recognized all its historic complexity, because it’s written by Prosper Mérimée — a Frenchman. Escaping from this good or bad is what produced this idea of otherness and being frightened by this figure of sexuality. Bizet later wrote the opera based on the text with this same idea of Orientalizing Spain, which is kind of weird for me as a Mexican. It plays into the idea of conquests and the period of baroque art history.
CE: I think that the baroque, including all of its ornamentation, goes hand in hand with the idea of excess in terms of flesh and sexuality, and especially sexualization of women. I think what’s interesting in “Carmen” is how you talk about the other, but the other particular to women — how essentially it’s a desirable figure, but a figure that’s also intimidating precisely because she’s desirable.
KK: Exactly. Like this pastiche, and recycled images of mixed identities. Aside from the fact that it’s a femicide, it’s as if he’s killing a tornado, or killing otherness to reaffirm an identity. But at the same time, exploring the other through flesh or desire.
CE: I think it’s interesting the way it plays into politics, specifically sexual politics and domination, because a conquest is a domination. Men want to dominate women. And then the way that sexuality comes out is that they’re evil, but I desire her, and this otherness makes them something that needs to be quashed or possessed. So that there’s a parallel there between male and female dynamics, but also just the Other in general. And the idea of the conquest, as with Spanish conquistadors in Mexico.
KK: I totally agree. Because the idea also of how it happened, the conquest here in Mexico by the Catholics, was different than in the United States, where they eradicated everything dissimilar to them. As I read the Carmen text, it was clear that, to them, Carmen was no longer human, and she became kind of a demonic figure.
CE: A symbol.
KK: Exactly. Of the one that can’t be possessed. The one that can’t be conquered. Of course, in the story, there was the love triangle and jealousy. But in the end, I think Escamillo’s character ultimately kills her because he wasn’t able to assimilate to the culture of his rival, Don Jose. There also felt like a parallel with the baroque when he kills her during the Fiesta Taina in the opera. The killing of Carmen at the end is elevated more like the sublime.
CE: Sublime in what sense?
KK: It’s no longer only a femicide, in my opinion. It’s like a sublimation because of what’s happening in the background. When I saw this at the opera, I got goosebumps at the end, because it really pushes this idea of “Bravo! Victory!” And at the end, the liturgic, almost ecstatic killing of the bull happens at the same time as Carmen is killed in the shadows, and then the torero and the party, and everyone is in on the excess, and also the animal violence — it’s open to the sacred.
CE: Yes. Speaking of Catholicism, there’s a very church-like atmosphere to the way the work is installed.
KK: I was thinking of how the artist can be this figure of domination, and about how to make people look above: not at the other, and not at the wall.
CE: Forcing the spectator to look above completely flattens any hierarchy that exists between those observing the work.
KK: FINALE (2023) has this really intricate frame. On the left side, there’s this excess, the party, this…
CE: Dionysian affair…
KK: And on the right, there’s Carmen nearly dead, in the dark, and this contrasting position of these two ideas: the death, and the party and excess. It’s also like the excess of the flesh, as well as thinking in a more primal way, which is almost like the two touch each other — the feast and the fright.
CE: I was going to ask you if there’s any element of shame that plays into this excess and desire.
KK: I don’t think so. What amazed me is that at the end, Carmen wasn’t ashamed of being herself; at least in some parts of the opera, she hesitated before being appropriated by the other.
CE: I meant shame more in the sense of male shame for what he wants.
KK: How do you read that? Because I think that the male characters in the opera are a little bit, how to say it in English… losers. A little bit like losers.
CE: But that’s exactly why I think they experience shame, because they’re aware that they feel ashamed of their desires, of their wants. So the thinking is, “You represent something that I don’t like about myself. And if I can’t control you and make you adopt what I need you to be, then I’m going to kill you.”
KK: It sounds like the history of femicide all over the world: I have to kill what I desire.
CE: Killing her is a representation of attempting to kill this desire within yourself. But it’s not going to happen, my friend.
KK: Totally. But in this possibility of getting rid of the desire, it feels like the male attempts to go backward to the traditions and thus reestablish order. We have to kill what’s prohibited to reestablish order.
CE: Lovely. Men are great.
KK: At the end, the character is weeping, like, “Oh my God, Carmen.”
CE: It’s like, “You did that, dude. I don’t feel bad for you.”
KK: That’s what I thought. And it’s written by a man.
CE: Let’s transition a bit to your current exhibition. I was interested in how you used ceramic tiling, because tiling is used in both a church context and a domestic context.
KK: I read this beautiful book from Santa Teresa called The Interior Castles (1588) — what I thought at first was this tiling and this monastery scenario. In Guadalajara, paradoxically, there’s a huge tradition of tiling and ceramics. And so I can make something that relates with what I’m reading, and also liberate my paintings a little bit. What I wanted was something that allowed me to do something that functioned as a graphic element: to use the tiling in these two registers, but also as the Inner Castle, something more, something that transposes you to the spectator to bring you to this reference. It’s what you were saying, with the tiles being more domestic, more female, but to use it as the canvas as well. So I did this mural making this inner castle, almost like a mystical, imaginary garden. And with this idea of the heart being taken, as with the Santa Teresa text. In Rome, you have this baroque statue by Bernini ––
CE: I was just about to say: it’s my favorite statue in Rome. I go see it when I feel depressed. I feel like a freak because she’s essentially having an orgasm with God. But I love that statue.
KK: Really? I believe in God. That’s why we are talking. For example, the Christ painting. It’s more about the idea of eternal working machines, the devices that work forever. And how, if you read the painting in a circular way, the blood of Jesus is kind of feeding all the elements of the painting. Almost like, as with the blood, Christ becomes the device of eternal motion. The blood is what serves as energy.
CE: You’re right also with the idea of the Eucharist; when you’re ingesting that, you essentially assume this form of eternal life. That’s the hope.
KK: Well, a very magical hope. I love that image, of course, to be the perpetual motion machine and the blood being something that moves the world, because the blood is then really a symbol of love.
CE: There are so many different ways that can be read. I’m sure you’ve seen in fiction where people will cut the palm of their hand, and then clasp their hands together so that the blood integrates.
KK: Or the idea that the milk is blood. That was the idea in some of the paintings in my current show at House of Gaga. Or, for instance, the altar at the 2022 House of Gaga show in Los Angeles. It’s really coded.
CE: Tell me, in what way?
KK: With the altarpiece, the starting point was Noah’s Ark. It deconstructed Noah’s Ark, and how you can be inside and outside the Ark yourself as a spectator. But I also put a lot of symbols there; I liberate the content. And then it can be anything, almost like the baroque functions, like a machine. Every symbol is there for a reason, but it can be any reason.
CE: Yes. And it’s set in stone. But that’s not the function of art. The function of art is meant to connect people and not be so deterministic before it even arrives.
KK: Yeah. Because I think determination is big in contemporary art. Maybe it’s my hippie theory here, but what I’ve been looking at is the potentiality of spirituality in art.
