EYE-CATCHING

Adriana Jaros is a multidisciplinary artist from Caracas, Venezuela known for her intuitive use of colour and space, both in art works and installation paintings. Jaros uses three-dimensional space to stage visual design concepts. Her site-specific work abstracts and overlaps the design within the architecture to create an imaginative and interactive experience. Established & Sons commissioned Jaros to create a dramatic space for the collection within London’s historic HEALS Tottenham Court Road store. The high street is reinventing itself in this post-pandemic era. EST Journal met up with Adriana to find out more about her influences, inspirations and how art can also be a way of living.

EST: What elevates a space for you?
JAROS: The special feeling a space can evoke comes, in my opinion, from all the combined small (or big) details. Each little aspect of a space can help it create a special environment. This is why I find it so enriching to work with a concept and narrative as these can help guide the atmosphere of a space and help create and transform a space into a magical feeling.

EST: What helps you form an idea for a good installation?
JAROS: I think I go a lot by intuition or concepts that feel interesting visually and conceptually. For me the narrative aspect of every project is truly important. It is what carries each project and makes it cohesive and coherent in all its different elements. Within all the processes I place high importance on materials, collaborators, manufacturers, ethical production and aesthetics.

EST: How did what you study affect your approach to your work now?
JAROS: I did two degrees, one in Visual Communication back home in Caracas, Venezuela and one in Textiles Design here in UAL Chelsea. I think studying affects your practice as it's liberating to be in a world where you are exploring different avenues and meeting other peers who have similar interests. In the same answer I must say life outside of education is what really shows and reveals what it is you are about, your approach to your practice, to life and others.

EST: What is your process?
JAROS: Hard to say, I don’t have a process per se. I think every project is very different so it must be treated differently. In general, I do love to find a concept and narrative, I tend to look at references of things that move me and inspire me. I always start with hand drawn ideas and such. But I would like to stay away from a recipe or process. Every project has a different DNA and I respond to that.

EST: What is design to you?
JAROS: Design to me is when function and aesthetics meets with a good amount of balance to enhance and inform societies and lives.

EST: What is satisfying?
JAROS: So much can be satisfying. If you have the right mind set and mentally awake and aware, I think I have said this before, a door frame can be highly inspiring and satisfying, a well finished project, a good relationship with a client, a happy customer, a lamp shade, a museum visit, the colour of someone’s eyes, a good read or a lovely meal with friends and family. Human interaction is what threads lives together and inspires us. Other people's ideas and minds are extremely exciting to me!

EST: How do your ideas form?
JAROS Not quite sure, my mind does not stop. Sometimes it is truly overwhelming. I could be walking somewhere in London. I see a lovely building. I snap a photo, do a little sketch and months later it can become an idea for something else. I think ideas take time to reveal themselves to us. We need to digest the present moment to be able to conjure good thoughts. Most of my ideas are not great, I have them, test them and then get frustrated, so many times they are just the path towards the next idea.

EST: What have you been working on recently - what has it revealed?
JAROS I have been in an artist residency with Porthmeor Studios in Newlyn, Cornwall. So far it has been truly revealing as I have been forced to slow down from London times and hours and just absorb what's around me. Being new to a place, different faces, different smells, different people. I have not been as productive as I thought but I have been nicer to myself, my process, and my mental health.

Photography: James Champion