By Neil Strebig
Vilma Vargas is one of many artists Pittsburgh’s City of Asylum has taken under their wings via their ‘Artists in Exile’ program. It is a program which helps aid various artists from across the globe in their pursuit of creative freedom – a liberty often denied to them in their native countries. Vargas has been a cartoonist and activist for over 20 years and has been nominated twice for “World Press Cartoon” in Portugal. During this interview, she was working out of her Radiant Hall studio in Nova Place where she expressed her thoughts towards her art, society and the current political states in both her native Ecuador and her adopted home here in the states. Vargas returned to Ecuador on January 18.
**Note the interview has been edited for space and fluency**
Northside Chronicle: What is the biggest difference working in the United States compared to your native Ecuador? Has working with City of Asylum made the perusing your work and accomplishing your goals easier?
Vilma Vargas: Having a scholarship is definitely important and helps to do my job. In my country, I cannot draw every day; I cannot live only with my cartoons and paintings – there are newspaper, magazine and web pages [in my country], but nobody dares to publish me. From here, I am posting on social networks every day about politics in Ecuador. I should not worry about anything else.
NC: What drew you to be a cartoonist and how would you describe your style? And how did such an interest in politics come about?
VV: The caricaturist profession starts basically when you realize that you are pretty useless for just about everything, except for drawing and painting. From a very young age, I had my first job as a cartoonist in a newspaper in a small city in Ecuador. And then I had no alternative, but to draw on politics because politician have that bad taste of influencing society and therefore in our lives. It is not possible to remain indifferent.
NC: Who inspired you as an artist?
VV: Many artist and masterpieces have been my inspiration, but mainly I am interested to personal and community stories. Abuse of power and injustice are themes that are always in my mind and ‘if the inspiration comes, I hope that it find me working’ like Picasso said.
NC: You have a wide variety of focal points in your art ranging from Aleppo and atheism to the Brexit and rape culture; is it challenging covering such a wide range of topics? Or is it the topical diversity something inherent to both your views as an individual and as an artist?
VV: Any topic can be treated from art. I do not separate what I think about the society or the politics of my activity as an artista or a citizen. I believe that is the artist’s responsibility to use any means to give his or her opinion about any topic.
