Lost in translation Print

Hi, my name is Gema and I live in Germany. I am originally from Bolivia, but since I was eleven I´ve been moving sporadically to different places. I´ve lived in USA, first in Chicago and then in Las Vegas, New Mexico. In Europe I´ve stayed in Portugal, England and now in Germany. My parents were not diplomats or something similar, it was me who somehow found a way to move around, sometimes with a scholarship and others because of work. In Germany I live with my three wonderful children. I´ve created many things in life, but my best creations have been my children. And I know that sounds like a cliché, but who cares, this is exactly how I feel. I am an Architect, although I feel myself more like an Artist. I studied Art when I was in New Mexico, and that changed my whole life. I thought I couldn´t live anymore without making Art, which proved itself to be wrong. When I moved back to Bolivia and I was almost imposed to study Architecture, I survived without doing any Art, except for my architectural projects. Anyways after having done a bit of everything in this wonderful world, from cutting down bamboo poles to build ecological lodges, going through analyzing wind flows to improve the energy performance of a building and drawing details for concrete structures, I thought it was about time to expose the real me through my paintings, which have been sporadically a part of my life, just like my travels. This is my way of making Art in a more constant manner. Following a conversation with my talented daughter, who I wanted to motivate to pursue a creative path, her pragmatic part came out and stated that she wouldn´t do that, since it was not profitable. And a perfect example for that was me. I never really dared to sell my paintings, not even to expose them. This is how I ended up here, as a way to prove her wrong, and hopefully to encourage her to follow her heart.