Adrian Pepe: ‘My Work Grants Voice To the Animal'

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by Alexandra Mansilla

Adrian Pepe: ‘My Work Grants Voice To the Animal And Vice Versa’

5 Jul 2024

Photo: Marie Ravn

Insane fury tubes at The Sharjah Architecture Triennial. A building facade affected by the port explosion, wrapped in hand-felted wool textile. The exhibition dedicated to human hair. Wool in various forms. You definitely know the artist behind these works: Adrian Pepe.

But is he only about wool? What other forms of art is he exploring now? And what type of work did he create before working with Awassi wool? Read our conversation with Adrian to find out more.

— So, Adrian, why animals? Why sheep?

— I was lucky enough to encounter this very specific and ancient breed of sheep while living in Lebanon, one of the oldest, bred in the region over five thousand years: The Awassi Sheep. Having such a long co-history with humanity, one can start to speculate over various narratives, reinterpret them, present them today, and remind ourselves of our connection with these close domestic relatives. My work is a sort of reanimation of memory and process not necessarily related to the preservation of craft. For me, craft, these pre-industrial modes of production, are a way of interacting with the animal and manipulating its biomass by use of the body. In manipulating the biomass of the animal, you enter a conversation with it; you are both communicating something.

In the site-specific installation “Utility of Being” for the Sharjah Architecture Triennial, a series of bodies made of inflated animal skins of the Awassi sheep, the idea of inflation granted breath to these bodies, reanimating them. The project was presented at the old municipal slaughterhouse of Sharjah, which was the perfect site for this project. We begin to understand that the life of the animal doesn't cease to exist in its demise; it continues to live as we manipulate its biomass, turning it into artefacts; it is transformed.

All of my latest works, whether "breathing" or not, seek to grant voice to the animal and vice versa. An interesting example of how we grant voice to each other is parchment paper. Much of the human history in the region was written on parchment paper made of animal skins; illuminated religious texts, contracts, and other official documents were captured and carried on the backs of the animals for centuries. As we progress through this post-natural era, it is important to delve deep into our relationship with all animals, plants, minerals, and everything else. How do we manage these relationships today? How can we create a new sort of morphology of care — becoming a caretaker rather than an extractor, removing the colonial mentality that everything is at our service, and recognising that we are also in service of other things?

Everyone sees something different in my works. Some see something pretty and furry; others see something ancestral or primitive. Sometimes, questions regarding our contemporary treatment of animals arise, and it's great that there are a variety of interpretations.

Photo: Alessandro Fagioli. Courtesy of Sharjah Architecture Triennial

— How many animal protectors came to you with some questions?

— Good question. When dealing with delicate subjects, it is important to be honest and have a clear understanding of your intention in making these works. The few times I was approached with questions about animal treatment, we managed to have a fruitful conversation about the topic. Personally, I believe that how we treat animals is symptomatic of how we treat ourselves. Before working with the Awassi sheep, I worked with other materials that touched on delicate subjects related to the human body, like human hair.

The first fibre I worked with was human hair, and I manipulated it using the same processes one would use to manipulate other animal and plant fibres to create an everyday object, a bed set. I wanted to challenge the idea of how we understand self and other, subject and object, equalising the human fibre to other fibres. Our understanding of what "human" and "animal" are needs to resurface and undergo re-evaluation. The “animal” has long been used as the ultimate "Other" against which we define what it means to be “human”. Then again, humans are part of the animal kingdom, and separation seems abstract to me. This separation is prevalent in many cultures or modes of thought where humans are often seen as distinct and superior, with other kingdoms serving them.

However, the relationship between people and animals developed over time, leading to practises like animal sacrifice and the use of the inedible parts of the animal to create objects of use or cultural significance.

I believe that the ritual involved in sacrificing an animal made people more intimate and caring towards it. Sacrificing an animal is a very solemn and ceremonial act — one speaks to the animal, says a prayer, and gestures toward a sort of understanding of what is being offered. This act is uncomfortable but essential for maintaining a respectful connection with the animal.

Without this ritual, people are disconnected from the animals they consume. They avoid or are uninterested in understanding that the lamb chops on their table were once a living creature. Slaughterhouses remove the notion of ritual, and as a result, people are uncomfortable with the idea of sacrificing animals. However, when a caretaker takes the life of the animal through the right processes, it becomes an intimate act rather than a dissociated one.

There is a growing sentiment to reconnect with these natural processes. People are returning to rural spaces, seeking to re-establish their connection with nature. This rural revival is about engaging with materiality and caretaking for other species, discovering the self through the way of another. The wilderness instinct and gut feeling are something people want to feel, which is lost in an urban setting, arguably.

"Human Hair" Exhibition. In collaboration with Pimprae Hiranprueck

— So, your first exhibition, “Human Hair,” was in 2013, right? You were 28 years old. I was thinking that maybe this was part of your process of finding yourself, your way of expression, and the materials you wanted to work with. Was it like that for you, or was it different?

— Funnily enough, my latest exhibition allowed me to really understand how it all connects. Even though I went to art school, I kept switching programs because I wasn’t sure where my place was within the art world. I had a strong desire to engage, but I needed to return to something more personal. Thankfully, my school had a fibres program where I took my first classes. There was something very familiar about it, and I immediately wanted to engage with my own fibres, which is where the idea of working with human hair started. It took my partner at the time, Pimprae Hiranprueck, and I a whole year to prepare it; it was a very self-reflective process.

After I graduated, I worked with several people and experimented with various materials. I began working with hard materials like wood and metals. However, later, I realised I wanted to focus on something different and more malleable. This process helped me understand my journey and how everything from my background and experiences connects to my current work.

"Human Hair" Exhibition. In collaboration with Pimprae Hiranprueck

— Also, do you know the roots of your interest towards bodies, animals, nature, etc.?

— Looking at my latest exhibition in Beirut, “Entangled Matters 2.0”, I noticed a pattern in my work going from exploring the surface of the animal, its hair / its wool, to exploring its insides, what lives behind the skin, internal geometries, vulnerable soft tissues... It was then that I saw hints of my upbringing and how heavily my father influenced me. My father is an orthopaedic surgeon and traumatologist. He always wanted one of our six siblings to go into medicine. The youngest ones, including me, received the hardest push.

We were often taken to his operations, where we saw human bodies opened up as he dealt with the core hard structures of the body, its bones. He would drill into them, insert metal rods, and we would observe. He made us look at people’s bodies, pointing out asymmetries and how they affected movement. None of us went into medicine, but my interest in exploring what lives behind the hair and skin stems from there, presumably.

This deep connection between human history, animal sacrifice, and medical knowledge has profoundly influenced my work, blending the physical and symbolic elements of healing and understanding our place in the world.

One example of how all these themes integrate is surgical sutures, originally made from animal intestines. The same string used in violins was used as bodily sutures; you hear the animal in music and see it in the healing of the body as the sutures are absorbed and integrated.

Wool was also commonly used in healing practices. In my last exhibition, we took a building affected by the Beirut Port Explosion and wrapped it in wool as a way of extending a gesture of healing, much like bandaging a human body.

— So, you were born in Honduras, then travelled a lot and eventually came to Lebanon. Was it tough to adjust to the new culture?

— My upbringing involved a lot of moving and adjusting. I left Honduras at 16 and lived in various places: Holland, the US, Africa, and finally, Lebanon. For more than half my life, I have been a stranger in a strange land. In the last ten years, I have started to think about how I have managed that relationship with new territories. Do I have a pattern? What rituals help me in the process of integration? Seems to me that one way in which I associate with a new territory is through its materials and processes, translating them into my work.

— Where was the hardest place for you to become familiar in an unfamiliar land?

— The most difficult moment for me was my first move to Europe when I was 16. I went to the Netherlands, and it was one of the most shocking experiences of my life. It was shocking on many levels, coming from a conservative coastal town of Honduras at a time when the internet was still a young technology and Google Maps did not exist, the days of "penpals". The process of self-discovery brought a lot of awareness. The bigger the risk or the stranger the place, the more awareness one can achieve, pushing one’s limits and reaping great rewards. This idea of sacrifice is similar. The bigger the sacrifice, the bigger the reward. Sacrifice started as a way to navigate future realities — sacrificing something today for future benefits. In moving to the unknown, the comfort of my present reality was being sacrificed.

Moving to Lebanon, where I currently reside, was a different process and much more familiar than I expected it would be. I was struck by people’s deep sense of legacy, knowing their history for thousands of years. I was inspired by how people connected with the land and their traditions.

— When did you move to Lebanon?

— 10 years ago.

— So you were in Beirut when the explosion happened.

— Yes, I was very close to it. That experience actually inspired my last exhibition in Beirut in June of this year.

— “Entangled Matters 2.0”, right?

— Yes, we took a villa, part of the Sursock Palace Domain, that was affected by the port explosion and wrapped it in felted wool. The idea started when I noticed that all the damaged buildings in my neighbourhood were covered by scaffolding with green and blue textiles covering them, sometimes jute fabrics. In my eyes, these textiles took the form of bandages. Over months, I followed some of these buildings as these applied textiles sagged and draped down like a scab on a wound.

I started collecting these textiles and integrated them into my work with wool, drawing a parallel between the healing textiles of the urban body and the human body. As I said earlier, wool was commonly used in healing practices of the body. Extend this gesture onto the building, formalising this parallel.

When I think about trauma, I realise that my work often revolves around it. One of my works features a tree birthing human bodies, and another shows me felting myself in wool and emerging from it. These pieces, created after the explosion, made me understand how much I was dealing with the theme of trauma and healing.

I arrived at the conclusion that the first bodily trauma we all experience is birth, as the body is extracted from our mother's body. Throughout life, we undergo various traumas, whether physical or conceptual, and we find ways of emerging from them, experiencing various cycles of birth and rebirth.

As I looked at my work, I saw a consistent theme of bodies emerging from things, processes of trauma and healing. It was only when I put all these works together that I realised their consistency. Every six months, I was creating something related to trauma and healing, reflecting on my upbringing and my father's work as a healer. He would create casts and bandages, and in a way, my work with wool is an extension of that memory, something I noticed as a child observing my father at work.

Entangled Matters 2.0. In collaboration with Lamia Choucair and Sursock Palace Association; funded by UNESCO Emergency grant, Robert A Matta Foundation and Sept Winery

— Again, about Beirut and the explosion. Do you remember that day?

— When thinking of Lebanon, it wasn't just the explosion. We were also dealing with COVID-19, an economic crisis, and I broke my foot around the same time.

It is interesting that it happened to my foot because it prevented me from moving, pushing me to focus on my studio practice. All these occurrences, this series of unfortunate events, became impregnated into the work. I didn't see how all the themes were connecting and how much my life translated over in an intuitive and subconscious way. Big themes, dreams, and nightmares — all were expressed and became a form of healing, even if I didn't see it initially.

— I heard different stories from people who experienced the explosion. Some immediately began helping those around them and rebuilding the city, while others were paralysed by stress, unable to do anything, stuck on the sofa. Everyone coped with stress differently. What did you do?

— I worked as much as I could, but I found myself turning inward and becoming an observer. I became obsessed with these buildings and textiles, watching them as they fell and draped over months. I kept returning to my studio, examining these dirty, filthy textiles covered in concrete and dirt, trying to understand myself as I collected them. There was no real function to them outside of what they represented: their memory.

It was the first time I had gone through a process like that. Many people in the region have experienced different moments of war and violence, but I had never faced that sort of violence before. When I came to Lebanon, it felt like one of the safest places I had ever lived in because Honduras, where I grew up, was considered the murder capital of the world for many years. Most of my siblings and I left Honduras because of how violent it had become. We were escaping a pervasive sense of violence.

I observed the impact the experience had on my insides. This led to a period of intense work in my studio. I stayed there, working with the textiles, creating stories of bodies emerging from bodies, and continuing my work with the wool, the medium at hand. I became deeply intrigued by internal processes, partly triggered by breaking my foot at the same time.

Through this process, I began to access my narrative with my father and our failed relationship. Despite the difficulties, I took something valuable from that relationship. This journey helped me realise the power of personal experiences and how they shaped my art.

— Why do you call it “failed”?

— We had a complex relationship; as much as he wanted us to enter his field and propel his legacy forward, it created distance between us which eventually brought us together in time. Our relationship has evolved for the better as we find our proper footing in our own narratives. I find it interesting how parental ties affect us, how their image continuously lives within us and it expresses itself in ways we sometimes fail to see. The memory of my father expresses itself every day in the work that I do.

— And what about your mom? You have dedicated her a post on your Instagram!

— She introduced me to working with materials and engaging in the arts along with my older sister. She always wanted to pursue a career in a creative field but couldn’t because, at university, certain fields were dominated by men, and it wasn’t considered appropriate for her to enter them. So, she became a social worker and met my father while bringing patients to him during his residency in Costa Rica. They got married within a few months, and he brought her to Honduras.

She was never at ease moving to Honduras, where my father is from. Even though they are neighbouring countries, they are very different, and she never really felt assimilated into the new environment. That is why we would spend four months out of the year moving between the two countries.

This sense of dissatisfaction and discomfort transferred to us, leading us to move around a lot, trying to find a place that resembled us. This displacement was more about self-understanding than the actual location. Understanding what it means to be part of a region, having a cultural identity was an issue we grappled with.

I realised that the core problem wasn’t the place itself, which is why I eventually stopped moving around once I understood that. I haven't been back to my place of origin, my birthplace, since COVID-19, but I think it is time to explore it further. I would like to explore transatlantic historical pathways, such as the colonial exchange that displaced animals, plants, people, and ideas across continents and what that means and signifies today.

Photo: Courtesy of Adrian Pepe

— Can you tell me a bit more about the type of work you created prior to working with Awassi wool?

— My earlier works are few and far between. There was a lot of shame and confusion in them. I understood that to properly enter the art world, I needed to feel comfortable in my own skin and expose my soft belly. It wasn’t until I processed that shame and trauma that I could allow myself to be seen by others. I plan to eventually show the archives of these early, unseen works in the future.

They take the form of performance for very small audiences. I haven't gone through the process of editing many of these yet, but I am slowly returning to them.

— In what mood do you create the best works?

— I think I create my best work when I am not thinking too hard. They are the most spontaneous and easiest works; they just come out effortlessly. These accidental pieces often turn out to be my best work.

There is something about accidents — like when you fall. You are not thinking about how to fall; you just fall. It is natural, truthful, and honest. If you can capture that honesty, it shows in the work. People are very sensitive to this kind of authenticity. I have noticed this over time, showing different works and seeing people's reactions. They can tell when a work is honest and genuine.

— At the beginning of our conversation, before I turned on my recorder, you mentioned that you were overwhelmed after everything that happened last month. Can you share more about it?

Well, as I mentioned before, I had never placed all of these works together in one room, and I think there was a struggle, a block. I was still moving forward and being productive, but there was something heavy about going through the whole process. My new show, even though most of the works weren't made for it, became very cathartic for me because it allowed me to see the connections between them. It helped me understand that I was going through a process of reparation myself, which all the works reflected.

Seeing the works together relieved me a bit. It made me realise that my struggles weren’t related to external factors but all internal. Productivity and industriousness were masking something else, which became unmasked through these moments of association between the works. The works spoke to each other, and I listened, learning from them.

I often talk to my works. As I sit with them, they reveal secrets and insights to me. Engaging with physical materials over a long time becomes a form of meditation, even though it is difficult and not many people want to meditate in general. However, sitting in silence with material or with yourself leads to a better understanding of things.

— What should we wait for from you in the near future? Tell me what you can tell.

— I am exploring the notion of entanglement, and while I talk about it a lot, it is not always obvious in my work. I am trying to expose that entanglement more by combining unrelated things and showing their structural similarities.

by Alexandra Mansilla