“I Grew Up in a Household of Death”: Raúl de Nieves Takes RF. Alvarez Inside His Grief Sanctuary

“I grew up in a household full of death,” Raúl de Nieves told his friend and fellow artist RF Alvarez on a Zoom call last week. De Nieves, 42, lost his father, grandmother, and grandfather at a young age but began to redefine his relationship to death—and his art—as a portal to remembrance and transformation. The Mexican and Catholic influences in his work shine as radiantly as the light beaming through the windows at Pioneer Works in Red Hook, where he’s just opened his newest exhibition, In Light of Innocence. Here, the artist has used acetate and photo lenses to mimic the effects of stained glass, enveloping the space in rays of folkloric imagery. “It’s almost like I’m creating a mirage or an illusion,” he says. Before the show’s opening, he and Alvarez had a wide-ranging conversation about light, loss, The Beatles, and the human condition.

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RF ALVAREZ: Raul’s in here, right? Hello?

RAÚL DE NIEVES: I’m actually his stunt double.

ALVAREZ: Oh my god, hi. I love the background light. It was so nice to meet you on Saturday.

DE NIEVES: I know, thank you so much for coming by.

ALVAREZ: I’ve known about your work for a while, but this is my first time seeing it in person. I found it awe-inspiring. The first question I want to ask is about the tension between the works and the space itself. Your previous stuff has been shown in a white-box gallery context, but the site specific nature of this installation was so interesting.

DE NIEVES: Yeah. The most interesting part of making this work is that it really does take on the responsibility of a space and creating a feeling. It has almost an ephemeral effect, because after the work moves on it disperses itself into these fragments of the idea that was conceived specifically for the space. That’s kind of been one of the most difficult things to deal with afterward, because you’re like, “What do I do with 50 of these repetitive stained-glass windows that don’t necessarily fit in a home, or are really hard to translate into a more conventional exhibition experience?” When I started making these works, they were an afterthought to an exhibition. I usually would dress a window just as a decorative element, but then I started really thinking about the effect it was creating, which tended to be this iconography of what a church or a sanctuary might feel like.

ALVAREZ: I love the idea that you’ve taken something that was a framing device previously and now it’s the focal point. Also, what was striking about the space is that it feels really quiet in there. Do you think that’s because of the color entering in and absorbing the focal point, or do you think it’s just because we’re in a space that sort of nods to a church?

DE NIEVES: I mean, the cool thing about Pioneer Works is that if you go when there’s no live music or people in there, it’s very serene. You’re walking into a space that really feels natural to the elements of the work. It feels like it belongs there. So that’s kind of been the greatest achievement, that this work really allows me to create this…

ALVAREZ: Transformation?

DE NIEVES: Yeah, transformation and also the quality of the materials that really do allow for that stretch. Because these aren’t necessarily real stained-glass windows there.

ALVAREZ: I know.

DE NIEVES: They’re in my own interpretation, which works as a real stained-glass window. But then when I was showing you the paper quality and how there’s this crudeness to how it’s being made, the preciousness somehow disappears. I guess I would say that the most precious thing about this work is the labor that goes into something that is ephemeral. And I love the ephemeral quality.

ALVAREZ: For context, I guess we should say that you’re using very simple materials and transforming them to look a lot like stained-glass, but they’re not. But the thing that bowled me over was how clean your work was with these simple materials. Basic materials like acetate or photo lenses, and then through your hand you really elevated them. Multiple people kept asking, “Wait, so this isn’t stained-glass?” That was the ongoing question of the day.

DE NIEVES: It’s something that still happens. I mean, the way we look at art now is mainly in a digital context, and not everyone can access these installations. So as a viewer, I would also ask, “How is this not a real window?” The vocabulary of it looks so real and people constantly are like, “Where do you get these fabricated?” And I’m like, “In my studio by my hands.”

ALVAREZ: “You’re looking at it right here.”

DE NIEVES: It’s almost like I’m creating a mirage or an illusion. I think that’s something that art does a lot, where it gives the viewer an opportunity to drift off into an idea and really connect to what they’re looking at.

ALVAREZ: The other thing I wanted to talk about was your use of mythology as a reference–transforming something that’s expected within a church environment and folding in your own variation of mythologies.

Courtesy of the artist and Pioneer Works. Photo by Dan Bradica Studio.

DE NIEVES: Yeah. It was so interesting, when Gabe [Florenz] and I were talking about the show we considered the fact that sculptures could live within the space. But I started to realize that maybe they would take away from the experience. I think there’s something beautiful about the maximalism that disappears, because this is still an extremely laborious process. They’re almost harder than my sculptural practice. 

ALVAREZ: Really?

DE NIEVES: Yeah, because they become mechanical. I’m repeating the same thing over and over again. And it’s never three, it’s always a composite image of 27. Or there’s never just a single window, it’s always a space that has multiple windows, multiple situations where the viewer can ask “Oh, my god, what is this?”

ALVAREZ: I kind of got the impression that one of your favorite things about these works is not necessarily them, but the way that the light comes through and spills across the space itself. I feel like doing a piece that removes the sculpture from your usual work and focuses just on that is now becoming the narrative relationship to the building itself.

DE NIEVES: Definitely. The first time I did this at the Whitney, the piece was so raw. It was literally just the paper and acetates and at that point, I didn’t even think about adding a layer of resin. When you don’t add the resin to these materials, the crispness of the reflection is so insane. It looks very designed and less organic, but the resin creates this jewel-tone kind of water. It looks more real to a stained-glass. 

ALVAREZ: It does.

DE NIEVES: That’s another thing I’ve learned to love, and it’s something that people really want to experience. But that’s also kind of the beauty of it, that it can’t always be experienced. It’s all up to whatever time of day you’re visiting the exhibition, or it all has to do with the elements. That’s where I’ve also become so engaged with this idea of ephemerality, and how what I’ve been doing is an extent of my emotional feelings. It’s like, I can’t always be that happy person or that sad person. You have to experience it in whatever form I come in on that day. 

ALVAREZ: Right before I went to the show, this big thunderstorm blew through. I don’t know my way around Red Hook, but I got stuck in a bar with a bunch of people and had to wait out the rain. It was cloudy when I finally made it in, but then the clouds parted as we were talking about the pieces. The light started to spill across the room, and I think that was part of the transformational experience of seeing the works, having to battle the elements outside. Maybe that’s also part of the reason why it felt so quiet in there. It was just bare, this open vessel for the light to come into.

DE NIEVES: Yeah. I like to think that the work is doing its own performance. It’s showing you this kind of dance whenever it wants to. So you really have to either just wait around for it or force it, which is really hard to do.

ALVAREZ: Mm-hmm. The dance actually makes me want to ask you about Felix [Gonzales Torres] and how he made it into the works.

DE NIEVES: Oh, yes. When I first started coming up with the theme for this exhibition, I was thinking about all of these individual windows. There’s 36 real windows within the space, and then we created a mural that’s made out of 14 fragments into one image. I don’t read tarot, but my friend had given me the Marseille deck, which is the earliest tarot deck. And the images or the characters, the way that these symbols were drawn really affected me. I was like, “Oh my god, this is perfect. I can use some of these symbols to reflect onto the figurative element that could happen within the space.” But it was also images of the Major Arcana, these cloaked figures that already have a performative aspect of the self. Then once these conversations started happening, I was really thinking about how we relate to other people’s ideas and Felix was one of the only people that was really generative in these conversations. Because his work is a continuation of this fragment of someone’s life, and it’s always restaged with these instructions. You’re constantly ephemerally recreating his practice, and anyone can do it. That was why his name became so sacred within that structure.

ALVAREZ: I think for anyone who knows his work, particularly a queer audience, it is such a tip of the hat to the fact that impermanence is so deeply embedded in our history and culture. Also, I found the comfort with the presence of death in the works really compelling. You had the flies, but you also had a piece called Death. I think you handled it with a very tender touch, which I really appreciated.

DE NIEVES: Yeah, I grew up in a household full of death. My father, grandmother and grandfather all died when we were very young, and I really got to see how my mom’s family related to death. There was sadness in us, but it also gave us hope in how it became a celebration of the self. It came to be an acceptance of the courage needed to keep going, and the most beautiful thing is the remembrance of a person. My god is the remembrance of my father. And I constantly think of my grandfather as the stars and my guidance. I’m not necessarily a religious person that goes into church and prays to god, but I feel like the god that I’m mostly connected to is the memory of these people. It’s almost like the show is dedicated to Felix, and all those moments of feeling connected to the sadness of other people’s loss.

ALVAREZ: All the love left over.

DE NIEVES: Yeah.

ALVAREZ: Tell me about the ring.

DE NIEVES: The ring, oh my gosh. That was when I was talking to my friend Joy, and I was explaining the disconnection from the sculptural element in the space. We were looking at my hands and my friend was like, “Why don’t you design a ring for the show? It would be a token of that moment.” I have a really strong connection to jewelry and especially other people’s jewelry. I tend to buy old, old pieces that have history. I essentially wanted to give myself that moment of time too, to create something that could easily move through the hands of others. This ring is almost like a tool of manifestation and when I made it, I was really thinking about this new chapter in my life. It feels kind of serendipitous that a conversation ended up leading to the grounding stone of the exhibition.

ALVAREZ: It does. It feels like this relic that sort of kicks off a journey.

DE NIEVES: You had mentioned before that your work was so crystallized when it was in the form of a painting. I’m just thinking about the word ephemerality and how you come up with subjects or feelings that you embed into your work.

ALVAREZ: I think at some point I was trying to hold onto fleeting moments by painting them. I paint a lot of my own life, almost as a way to not lose things. As I get older, I’m starting to realize that losing things is the point. I have a painting in this upcoming show that is also inspired by Felix. In the work, the most striking things are these two pieces of jewelry, my wedding ring and my grandfather’s bracelet. I think this idea of connecting through people, through objects and something that’s passed down really speaks to a relationship. My work is starting to change more, not just to be capturing moments and memories and bottling them up, but more about trying to say something like that. Trying to use the language of painting to say something.

DE NIEVES: I love that. Well to finish off, I wanted to quote this Beatles song, “The End.” They’re barely singing in this song, it’s more like just jazz. But at the end they say, “And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make.” I just resonated so much with those words, because they’re so true. I was like, “Man, that is one of the most powerful forms of connection that I’ve had in a long time.” Again, we are celebrating the existence of yesterday when we’re living today, but tomorrow will be this aspect of our lives in other people’s lives. It’s beautiful.

ALVAREZ: Very beautiful. Thanks for that. I’m tearing up a little bit, not to be dramatic.

DE NIEVES: It’s been so nice to meet you. I hope we get to cross paths again.