Interview with Libbi Ponce
Libbi Ponce is a sculptor and installation artist who uses 3-D imaging, sheet metal, and found foam to create experiences on-screen and in the gallery. Their art draws inspiration from Pre-Columbian artifacts, and serves as memories from the Ecuadorian diaspora. BASE REMOVED at Tempus Projects is an exhibition of Ponce's recent works that were created while on a residency at the Bemis Center for Contemporary Art in Nebraska, and were inspired by a Fulbright Creative Research Fellowship to digitize artifacts at the Museo Antropologico y de Arte Contemporaneo in Guayaquil, Ecuador.
The exhibition consists of four pieces. luz estridente (2022) is a drawing made using a plasma cutter and sheet metal that shows a hand holding a device flashing light onto an artifact of a feline with a computer screen in the background. It is a contour drawing of the process Ponce used to digitize the Ecuadorian artifacts while on the fellowship, and it serves as a legend that informs the entire show. owl_butterfly_star_heart_bird (2023) is a human-sized, sculptural rendering of one of the figures depicted on an artifact Ponce scanned. Its heart-shaped face is at waist-level, and its segmented antennae protrude like tentacles which make it both imposing and inviting. halo ring (2023) is an oblong loop of rough-edged metal that hangs from the ceiling and rests on the floor. It’s big enough for viewers to step through like a portal to the exhibition’s antagonist: the spider. Artec space spider of my nightmares (2023) stands on gangling strips of metal, and, attached to the top of it, has a glass model of the 3-D scanner Ponce used to digitize artifacts. The shape of the spider’s body mimics that of the shape of the device held by the hand in luz estridente.
Libbi Ponce: This is a direct depiction of what it was like to carry out this Fulbright project proposal of 3-D scanning artifacts in the archeological reserves of the Museo Antropologico y de Arte Contemporaneo. They mostly focus on artifacts from the Andean Coast of Ecuador. In the top-left, you can see a hand holding this 3-D scanner object. There’s light flashing on to an artifact; it’s sort of a standing jaguar figure on a turntable, and it’s being recorded on the computer screen. There’s a keyboard and a mouse. I see this piece as a legend for the rest of the show.
I first learned about 3-D Scanning and 360° imagery while at USF at the 3-D Access Lab under Dr. Laura K. Harrison. My introduction to this lab was through my sculpture teacher, Victoria Trespando, who set up a demo of the 3-D Access lab for our sculpture class.
Tom Winchester: Did the Fulbright project include the pieces made from steel and plasma-cutting?
LP: In a round-about way it did. I knew that I needed to make sculptures with an armature in them that’s modular, that I could take apart, just for ease of transport and storage. In the beginning of 2022, I was in Ecuador, and I was just asking around like, “Does anyone know a welder that will let me use a metal shop or something?” A friend of mine put me in touch with someone who ended up being with the university I was affiliated with for my Fulbright fellowship.
I just kind of started working in there, and I really didn’t know anything, so I was just learning how to solder and weld, and angle grind too. It was a very macho, masculine environment, and I asked if I should practice anything before I started doing these things, and they were all like, “No, just do it.” I actually met my mentor for the Fulbright fellowship there. It was great to have access to the shop and learn so much.
During that span of time in Ecuador, I was still using steel mostly only as armature. I started using fiberglass there, which is expensive here, in the States, but affordable for my budget in Ecuador. I was doing work with scrap foam and polyurethane. Then, I made three fairly large pieces made only from steel. At first, I thought I was going to paint the steel, but I really fell in love with the heat patina on those sculptures. Those were either plasma-cut or cut with an oxy-acetylene torch, and I also fell in love with that texture: it’s kind of a droopy, liquified edge.
TW: The shape of halo ring looks like a Möbius strip, but it also looks like a portal or a barrier. It’s sculptural because it seems like one piece, but I think it can read as an installation as well.
LP: The shape of it is determined by the architecture of the space. It hangs from an electrical conduit connected to the ceiling; they gave me permission to hang it from there. Even when I make a more sculptural piece, I still like to take an installation approach to it. I like being able to take command of the space. I want it to have a relationship with the space, but I also want the piece to recognize its own individual autonomy as an object, and that it can be taken out of that context and put into a different one. It’s a nice meeting point between sculpture and installation.
It’s four twelve-foot strips screwed together with bolts, inspired partially by the video game, Halo. The namesake of the game is a ring that is supposed to be a weapon of mass destruction that will obliterate everything and start anew.
I’ve also seen photos in Ecuador—I don’t know if it has to do with being on the equator and it just happens more often—but you know how a rainbow is an arch? In Ecuador, the rainbows sometimes appear as a full circle around the sun. I was definitely thinking about that while making this piece. I know its a weather phenomenon that can happen anywhere, but these images circulate a bit more often from media outlets there.
People say it looks like a big bandsaw blade, a bear trap, open-mouth jaws, or a portal. When I realized it was flexible, yet ridgid, I was thinking of the NuvaRing and menstrual discs. They’re these things you squish, and are flexible, but they’re ridgid when you put them in. I didn’t necessarily intend for any of those interpretations, in the beginning—and I definitely see it as more of this abstract piece—but if it’s anything, I’d like for it to embody the energy between the other two sculptural pieces in the show.
When I made the spider piece, I put it together and I thought it was terrifying. It’s made of sheet-metal ‘legs,’ and it has a base on which there is a glass ‘body,’ and the glass body is an iridescent-glass model of the 3-D scanner I was using for the Fulbright fellowship to scan the artifacts. That scanner is a very cost-inaccessible, professional-grade scanner that the lab let me borrow. But it looks like a banal, domestic item. It looks like an iron, or a radio. The piece is a spider because the 3-D scanner is called the Artec Space Spider. I thought, ‘The name is already telling me what it wants to be.’
That’s where the title of the show comes from. The title of the show is BASE REMOVED, which is a step in the post-processing of the scan. The process is more intuitive now, but for the process I used to scan, at the time, there was a step called ‘base removal’ where you take away all the unnecessary information that the scanner grabs while gathering. You would delete the turntable and anything that’s not necessary to make the object. You would go all the way through the process and it would say, ‘Base Removed.’
TW: What is the inspiration behind owl_butterfly_star_heart_bird?
LP: That piece was taken from one of the artifacts that I scanned; a witch’s cooking pot from the Milagro-Quevedo culture, in Ecuador. There were two types of zoomorphic figures on that pot. I was really enthralled by both of them, but, honestly, I think I was freaked out and scared by this one. When I first saw it, I saw an owl in the face, and only later did I see the heart-shape around the face.
On the pot, both of the figures have a ‘braided’ element that’s achieved using a tool to just squish into it, like bread or something. I wanted that texture. I took some liberty to give the piece that braided quality a bit more, some more dimensionality, and it sort of started looking like stacked rocks.
I really developed an appreciation for the terra cotta color while I was scanning the artifacts. It’s orange because that’s the color of the artifacts. It’s a really rich orange-brown. It’s the earth. The piece is made out of found scrap foam that I carve with a hot wire cutter and then I cover it in grout that I’ll mix with pigment. The finish gives it the color and texture of rock.
TW: Do you have a personal connection to the artifacts?
LP: My parents are from Ecuador. I was born and raised in Tampa. My interest in this stems from me investigating my personal cultural history. This artifact is from the Milagro-Quevedo culture, which is partially located in the small town of Milagro, forty-five minutes outside the biggest city in Ecuador. That’s where my mom’s side of the family grew up. But there’s a mountains-to-coastal migration going on, and has gone on, because of petroleum-fueled ideals in the country.
TW: Sounds alot like economic colonization.
LP: That’s definitely what’s going on.