Iliana Emilia Garcia is an extraordinary Dominican artist living in Brooklyn, New York. She uses different media in her installations, but what stroke my attention were the chairs. She gives them personalities and puts them in controversial settings and situations that people can relate to. Her art is about time, space, relationships, feelings, and pinching people "about things that they should be saying or doing so they can be true to their emotions," as Iliana says. Iliana Emilia Garcia is collected by El Museo del Barrio in New York, Centro Leon and Museum of Modern Art in the Dominican Republic among other international public and private collectors.

How did you get involved with the arts?

My whole family has been very involved with the arts, so I guess I was born into a family of artists. It became like a natural thing to do. We used to go to museums, exhibitions, and theaters. In the Dominican Republic, most people were not used to visiting museums. When I was five years old, I thought that the museum was ours because we were usually the only family roaming around.

It was a very normal thing that we did. We saw everything in a visual way. We created and built things because that was my way and my sister’s way. I really didn’t get that I was an artist. I just saw that that’s what we do. We later realized that not everyone saw things the same way. Then I though, "Oh! I may be different."

What are your first artworks that you remember creating?

That would be drawings, always drawings. Telling stories, making things like books—it was always something with a sequence. After that I remember going into printmaking and doing a lot of silkscreen and collage works.

Did you and your sister (Scherezade Garcia) do art together?

No, we don’t do art together. We have very similar language, the direction may be the same, but the methods are completely different. Her way of solving problems are very different than mine. We were actually thinking about this: why can’t we get to the point to collaborate on projects, especially since we have a lot of things in common. But we are very different too. She’s more baroque, and I am a minimalist, more pop, and more graphic. She is about layers and layers, and a lot of history. It’s interesting that now I think we have reached the point where we can do something together.

The base of my work is usually the cultural history of things. It’s not about geographical or physical history, but more about the value we give to things. Everything depends on the "eye of the beholder." Something may be very valuable for me emotionally, but may cost nothing. The value that we give is emotion, not really the physical or the monetary value. My work involves a lot of history and a lot of memory. At times we may have common denominators, but it’s now, not before. It’s interesting how things are working out.

The one project that we possibly can work together on is the one my sister is currently working on. She has a beautiful piece that she is going to do at the border of Haiti and the Dominican Republic. I may do something with her on that project, because we are going in the same direction on that idea.

You do mostly installations, is that correct?

I have done installations, but I have also worked with other media. It depends on the time that I was thinking of doing the work, on what I was thinking, and the solution may have best being suited for an installation. Installation for me lies between drawing and sculpture. I am not really a sculptor. It’s a completely different skill, but I like the three-dimensional space. I like to build things and create new shapes. For me it’s very clean. I just like installations. I’ve done a lot of photography lately also, but it’s because that was the best solution for what I wanted to show. Next year, it could be paintings. It changes.

How did you discover that you actually liked installation?

I was doing this series in 1998 or 1999. I always drew and painted chairs, but I have never used the chairs as a three-dimensional piece. There was a conversation about Dominican identity. I was in an exhibition called "One Foot There, One Foot Here" about people who lived in different places at the same time. And I came out with a painting of a chair that was made out of glass. I then realized that I should have actually made the glass chair. The drawing and the painting became a three-dimensional piece—I got a chair and I started wrapping the chair with material. I remember that I was not thinking about the installation, I was thinking that that might be a solution for my drawing. The piece was called, "And I dress up as an island." I began to do different ones: it became the "water chair", then the "bread chair", etc. Things started becoming and I started building things. I didn’t see it as a beautiful installation, but as a solution of what I was doing already. I always believed in how much I liked that solution, and not the installation.

How do installations express your feelings and thoughts?

Installations are not very graphic. When you make installations, you need to have certain elements. It’s almost like when you do graphic design, for example. When you have to do a logo, that logo has to say a lot. I have to make sure that when one sees the logo, they can read the kind of company it is and the kind of services they provide. Installation for me is like that. When I do an installation, it has certain elements that are going to describe and explain what it is on its own. I think that I have a graphic education with installation. It is always very clean and even. For me it’s like graphic design. Every piece is a logo that has to say by itself what it is. People have different opinions and interpretation about things, but I want the interpretation to be about a common thing that everyone can see. It’s almost like designing something that everybody should understand.

What are some of the messages transmitted through your art?

Most of the time it has something to do about longing, a person, or a memory. It’s almost like a connection. I like the fact that when you see a piece, it has to connect with something that happened to you or something that you feel. I want people to connect.

I usually write on my art. For example, I had this neon heart-shaped piece with the words,  "I" with the heart and "You". It was basically like saying, "I love myself". That was very direct in a medium that is used in public places. It was not intimate, because the neon light serves to announce a thing or a service, like a hotel or a club, or something very ordinary for everybody. But when I used the neon sign associated with something intimate, it took on a different meaning. Do you ever say, "I love myself"? People don’t say that ever. They may think about it, but they don’t say it. Sometimes people say that it’s bad to say that you love yourself, but it’s not true. To love someone else, you have to love yourself. For Valentine’s Day people receive hearts. They don’t only get hearts because it’s Valentine’s Day; there is something behind the hearts. Many of the things that people don’t say, or they feel but don’t express… I want to pinch people about things that they should be saying or doing so they can be true to their emotions.

You like to use chairs in you art. Why?

Chairs are my models, like people can be. I think that chairs have personalities. They have some dynamics between them. They also have this ambiguous aura about them, that when a chair is empty it looks as if somebody left or waiting for someone, at the same time it has this security feel about it. They take a space and there are elements that take a space and invite you to think about either leaving or coming. I like that ambiguity.

How did you discover that that’s what you see in a chair?

I like the shape. To me, chairs look like sculptures with legs. And I always feel like somebody has been sitting there. You see the possibilities of that body that I like…

You participated at the exhibition "Back to Back – Face to Face" at the Embassy of Haiti in DC with a few pieces from "The Unknown differences on discovered island" series. What were you trying to say in those pieces?

I think the photographs from that series are the ones that I am most happy about, but also more worried about. With that group of installations, I feel like I achieved something that I was looking for in a long time. It’s very sentimental, it’s very nostalgic, but at the same time it’s very strong. The first piece that I did in that series was two chairs bound together with the natural rope. It was a piece that I did to represent Haiti and the Dominican Republic, because I know that in Haiti the chair is a very important icon and for the Dominican Republic also. The chairs that we make are made in a different way. They are made of natural branches, so they are very organic looking chairs. They look the same, but they are completely different at the same time because none of them have the same height or the same weight. When I did that piece, it was the first time that my work had a social context, but it was very sentimental also.

We have a love-hate relationship with Haiti, one that is more love than hate. But it’s a very long story, and it has been very violent and passionate. In that series on the beach, the chairs became two people. They may be close together physically, and at the same time they may be worlds apart emotionally. The whole series is about that. About how far we are in one way and how close we are in another way. We have to find a place in between. That place in between we cannot even measure, and we don’t know how small or how far it is. We basically are in these between states always. It’s almost like each person is an island. What we say is not always what we mean. Even when you are close to someone, it doesn’t mean that you are completely 100% open to that person and that person knows enough of whom you are. Every time you meet someone, you discover an island and you don’t know how attached you are with that someone. It feels like a long distance.

Did you actually think of Haiti and DR when you created "Dinamica- Unknown Island"?

Yes. Dinamica was in many ways about Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Not completely, but it had that closeness and farness that we have.

When did you create this particular installation?

In 2002, and I completed the one with the ocean in 2006.

Where did you photograph the installation?

I took the pictures in New York. I didn’t go to the Caribbean because I was looking for the grayness and the coldness of the beach. I didn’t want a beautiful tropical beach, I wanted something melancholic. The beach in Montauk, Long Island, has that gray cloudy colors that I needed.

Where did you get these chairs?

Those were brought from the Dominican Republic to New York. They make them in the countryside from tree branches. They are handmade and untreated.

How many chairs did you bring?

Only three.

How many art pieces make up this series, and how is it called?

The series is called "Unknown differences on discovered islands." There are seven pieces.

What should the relationship be between Haiti and DR?

It should be, but it doesn’t mean that it’s going to be… We have such a long history and it is very violent. If we go back to the days the French and the Spaniards colonized the island of Hispaniola, you will see that they did not get along either. Most of the islands received their freedom from a European country. We got our independence from Haiti. So the relationship is different, but should be better. The government should put aside all the old things and bad vibes from the past. The world is changing and we are on the same island. There is no one solution. I’ve never had any problems with Haiti. Everyone I know from Haiti, I always fall in love with them and get along well. But you have the generations that grew up against them. We have these gaps in our generations.

We have too many things in common. We have a lot of music in common, we have a lot of artists in common and so forth. The governments must talk.

How can you see art and artists contribute to stronger ties between the two countries?

We are very tight actually. We have common exhibitions. Artists care about art. We don’t think in a political way. Even when the work may be political, we don’t think political, we think about art. When you get together with people, you care about the people who are creating the art. Artists easily integrate, and they are the best solutions to the problems because we don’t have rules, we don’t create barriers. We just enjoy what we are creating. We collaborate together in so many things.

How often does the subject of Hispaniola appear in your art?

Not many times. In the early 90s when I moved to New York, it was actually the time when I had a sense of Hispaniola. When I was in the Dominican Republic, I was not very conscious about it. When I came here, you have to say where you are from and I became more conscious about divisions and landscapes.

Even though I have touched and worked with the Haiti-DR idea, I haven't worked with "Hispaniola" as a theme. "Hispaniola" represents a physical and geographical entity that places you in a certain landscape.  My work is not about "measurable" distances; there is not a "here and/or there" and documented history attached to it. My work, especially the one between Haiti-DR, happens in an undisclosed site and it is about the dynamics of companionship, differences, continuity, and relationships. When you mentioned "Hispaniola," it took me right away to a specific time and geographic place, so it became a physical experience that could be measured and discovered. I am not looking for that. I am obsessed for the "beauty of our differences and the strength of our similarities" as beings, not citizens of the republics.