UNIVERSITY EDUCATION - Post Graduate Studies at Royal College of Art England

Painting is my one refuge and savior from this unstable world. Painting is where I can combine the vastly different worlds and lives I live. In my studio practice, I spend considerable time studying the fragment, or the broken pieces. I am fascinated with deconstruction because I find it to be the essential and often disregarded component of construction.

I think when we examine things once they are taken apart, we learn new things about them and we understand them in a much more complex way than when we just see the perfect assemblage. I believe that the true nature of something lies in its components, or how it is when it’s broken. When you go through a tragedy with someone or you see someone at their most broken, then you know them far better than when you just know the external image they project to the world. I am in love with that type of intimacy, vulnerability, and violence.

I believe my personal experiences are mirrored in this emotional volatility of the broken, the fragmented, and the lost in limbo. I also believe currently in America a similar type of deconstruction is happening on what it means to be an “American”. Our identity and collective history is changing so rapidly, becoming so incredibly muddled, that currently all we see is a landscape of devastation and unassembled messes. Really though, this is the crucial component of construction; of us building our new home. We are evolving so rapidly and our culture is a varied myriad of experiences, colors, and histories that clash in the most enormously beautiful ways. Because of this there is a remarkable emotional volatility in the American landscape of identity right now that is yearning to be expressed. 

I am interested in the history of our image, the depiction and representation of being categorized and documented, how documentation in the modern world alienates or aligns us; or does both simultaneously. I believe we are all displaced and that new America dialogue deserves to be shared with other cultures. As I continue merging digital paintings with hand paintings, my works are taking on complicated “lineages”. A single painting could be digitalized, edited, reprinted, and repainted hundreds of times. Over time I produce many varied and different works that can all be traced back to the first painting. By replicating and deconstructing our messy experiences in what it means to be “American”, what can we learn about who we are?

At the Royal College I want to investigate this identity crisis further and see how they align or dis-align with the current contemporary visage of the U.K. I want my work to further clash, not just against itself and its diverging identities, but now against a new cultural environment. What happens when an artist like me, making the work I do, comes to the U.K.? I am dying to see that dis-assemblage compose itself on the canvas.

After coming so close to achieving the practically unachievable UK Fulbright (that has a 2% acceptance rate) only to be cut in the final round, I had entirely given up on attending the Royal College. It feels amazing to now be granted this opportunity by the Inti Raymi Fund. The story itself truly highlights how my world is made up of huge disparities and inevitably, incredible moments and opportunities like this. Thank you so much.

THE INTI RAYMI FUND PROVIDED A $25,000 EDUCATIONAL SCHOLARSHIP

Post-Doctorate Study in Printmaking at the Royal College of Art in England for Doraelia Ruiz, USA, Printmaking

As an Inti Raymi grant recipient, I plan to work with the distinguished faculty at the Royal College of Art in the Printmaking Department in a unique program called the “Post Experience Programme”. The Royal College PEP program is a unique type of Post Doctorate but for the arts. At the Royal College I am allowed the freedom to undergo an investigative project using a medium outside my typical repertoire. For this project I am branching outside my focus as a painter and investigating the realm of printmaking. For my project I want to merge the world of digital printmaking and lithograph series, with the traditional world of painting.

During the three-month full-time stay at the Royal College, I will work closely with distinguished faculty such as Head of Printmaking Jo Stockam, and graduate students in creating a discourse about my current work and dialoguing with students from around the world about their work. My study there will end with a show organized by the Royal College showcasing the work I’ve pursued in my tenure there.

At the Royal College of Art I want to heighten this dialogue and pair it with the new skills and new mediums I will learn under the tutorship of the best artists in the world, including Jo Stockam, the Head of the Printmaking department at the Royal College. I believe there is no better program in the world for this pursuit. I intend of spending the semester making several editions of pieces that will have one base origin, and be altered over time and experience. The pieces will evolve and transfer their experiences from one generation to the next. In doing so I am studying the human experience, my own experiences, our collective experiences of how we evolve from one moment to the next, one instance to another, one generation to another.

I have long passionately loved the Royal College and the independence it fosters with its students. I long to study at the same university where Tracey Emin unapologetically and transgressively confronted class culture in the European art world. I thrive in that sort of environment and believe I would create profound work at this institution. I believe the otherworldliness of my experience in direct clash with the Royal College, would create dynamically confrontational and beautifully violent work.

Recent articles covering Dora’s work can be viewed below:

http://voyagela.com/interview/meet-doraelia-ruiz-artist-hollywood/

https://www.artslant.com/la/articles/show/49090-doraelia-ruiz-answers-5-questions