Meet Federico Casalinuovo

We recently connected with Federico Casalinuovo and have shared our conversation below.

Federico, so excited to have you with us today. So much we can chat about, but one of the questions we are most interested in is how you have managed to keep your creativity alive.

I think art as a result and a great way of facing life, so the most important for me is to be connected with how we inhabit reality. I find interesting to observe the ways each of us deal with everyday life in order to imagine new ways of living in a world getting more and more difficult. I find it attractive to listen to different people talking about their lives and connect with their stories, their choices, and how they overcome adversity. That is why I enjoy sharing time and work with other artists, friends and that is also one of main the reasons why I love being a teacher.
Being a multidisciplinary artist allows me to acquire mixed experiences from the different media I work with and that always makes my creativity flow to places that I may never imagine.
Another thing that is particularly inspiring for me is music. When I’m stuck in an artistic process, a good way to unblock myself is by listening to music or playing my keyboard and singing.
When I was younger I used to be more anxious about the creative process. But lately I understood that, sometimes, a good part of it is taking distance and nourishing myself with experiences outside my specific artistic practice.
Lastly, I would like to share with you that writing about what I am going through is very helpful to me. It is a good exercise to know about my present and create material to continue working.

Appreciate the insights and wisdom. Before we dig deeper and ask you about the skills that matter and more, maybe you can tell our readers about yourself?

I am from Argentina and I currently live in Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires, where I studied scenography and got a degree in visual arts at Universidad Nacional de las Artes (UNA). I worked for many years as a set designer and costume designer in several theatrical works. On the other hand, I am a singer too and I work in musical and theatral projects as a performer.
Approximately 10 years ago I began to mix my artistic practices. These last years I have been developing multidisciplinary projects with a strong presence of textile art, performance and music. I also work with archival material and video art. My work then expands into projects that range from theatrical and performance works to exhibitions, including teaching. I have been a singing and art teacher for over 15 years and that is a part of being an artist that I enjoy so much. For that reason, since 2016 I have had a teaching space called Casa Prisma, where I give vocal technique classes, and I also accompany my students’ artistic processes.
As I told you before, for me it is very important to create projects that have to do with the ways we face reality, thinking about new ways of inhabiting the world, doing our best with nature, animals and people. I deeply believe that each person brings with them an amount of very important experiences for their development. I also understand personality as the result of the impacts that our bodies and emotions suffer and what we are, or not, able to do with those marks. That is why my artistic practice is crossed by the notions of childhood, personal history and reconstruction of one’s own identity. All this from a Queer point of view, making visible problems that concern us people who are within the LGBTIQ+ community.
Lately I’m working on a new series of textile pieces that I’m very excited about and I am planning some exhibitions as a curator with some artists I admire. I would love to see them happen this year.

There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?

I think that three important things I have learnt as an artist, and person, are to be patient, to be willing to open my mind continuously and to trust the process as a fundamental part of the work. I would add one more: to deal with one’s own and others’ prejudices.
If I could give one piece of advice, it would be to work on knowing ourselves as much as possible to be able to generate projects that make us feel good about ourselves, giving value to what we have to say and, above all, to the way we manage to say it.

We’ve all got limited resources, time, energy, focus etc – so if you had to choose between going all in on your strengths or working on areas where you aren’t as strong, what would you choose?

I think that both attitudes are very important and I believe that the best thing is to be able to integrate both ways of facing not only our work, but our life.
By relying on our strengths we can go after what we need to improve. They are reciprocal because thanks to the fact that we can trust in ourselves, we can go out into the world to seek new experiences and make our artistic practice and our lives richer. Part of gradually losing prejudice is encouraging ourselves to grow. So I think the best option is not to close ourselves off from showing what we have to share with others, nor from going looking for what others have to share with us.
For me, that is what building culture and living in community is about.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/federico.casalinuovo/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/federico-casalinuovo-a9a416265
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@fedecasalinuovo

Image Credits

Leandro Rodriguez was the photographer of all the pictures.

Mica Tzara is with me in the picture of the performance “Un volcán es un cuerpo en erupción”,