Many elements of care are present in Socially Engaged art, which Pablo Helguera loosely defines in his book Education for Socially Engaged Art: A Materials and Techniques Handbook. While the word ‘care’ is not explicitly mentioned in its pages, the act of caring is woven into its tenets, which, like care itself, are non-exhaustive and best demonstrated through example.    

Pablo Helguera is a visual artist with a background in literature, writing, music, and drama. He was born and raised in Mexico City and lives in New York, where he teaches Socially Engaged Art, Management, and Entrepreneurship at the New School’s College of Performing Arts. In this role, Helguera helps performing artists develop independent projects and build their careers in an environment that fosters civic consciousness, social good, and entrepreneurial spirit. 

While Helguera's pedagogical and creative projects span eras, geographies, and media, social engagement is the connective tissue that threads them together. His care for the experiences and opinions of those who might typically be viewed as spectators or audiences repositions them as collaborators, both in the making of art and its meaning.

In this interview, edited and shortened for clarity, Helguera reflects on storytelling, pedagogy, public engagement, mass media, and placemaking through projects he is revisiting and reinterpreting, decades after their initial iteration. 



Arts Education in Museums

Helguera:
During the nineties and early 2000s, I was the director of Adult and Academic Programmes at the MoMA, where I organized events, workshops, and classes for the visiting public. I had to train myself to pay attention to how people perceived and experienced art. I would not be able to help them if I did not listen to them and if I were not invested in their independent journeys. This attention influenced the way I started making work. I started feeling that what I wanted was to give what other people wanted, that’s what made me happy, which might sound insincere but is true. That was the source of my enjoyment in making things, creating pleasure in others rather than just admiration. It evolved organically, and I think the subject of care is closely tied to that principle.

Izzy:
What is it that made you want to draw people, whom many artists and art institutions were not necessarily thinking about, into art?

Helguera:
Anybody who works in a museum automatically agrees to be part of a public service. You only become good at your job insofar as you are providing that service or that support to the public, regardless of whether you work in the IT department, as part of the building staff, or as a curator. That said, the inner workings of museum life often separate the worker from, let’s say, “the floor,” and many people who work in museums spend their lives conducting research in a library cubicle, developing ideas rather than dealing with the public. In my case, I was the person greeting visitors, talking to them, and trying to meet them wherever they were in their relationship with art. The profession of museum educator places enormous importance on the ability to listen to and empathize with others. You cannot do your job if you don’t genuinely care about what the other person is feeling or thinking; you must have a genuine curiosity about their experiences if you have any hope of helping them. And that’s central to education in general, not just to museum education. As a professor at the New School, my job is to help art students find their way in the creative process. I don’t think I’d be able to do that successfully if I didn’t care about what they were interested in. So I think naturally it evolves as part of the profession. Of course, it’s also part of who we are and our personalities, not everybody is wired to be that way. 

Izzy:
It’s interesting that you mentioned it also comes down to personality and one's own beliefs. I think the question of whether or not art should be socially-engaged is one that there are quite strong opinions on. 

Helguera:
Imperatives about art are always doomed to fail for two reasons: first, because they produce work that is generic and formulaic, and that’s proven by academic art; When you attempt to establish rules about how art must be made, the more boring that art becomes. When those rules are followed, the art practice becomes an academic exercise. But it’s also problematic when art is sought to be constrained by moral imperatives, such as when one says “you cannot make art about sex, or you cannot make art about race, or you cannot talk about this particular issue.” Putting a box around what art is allowed generates an inevitable pushback, which is usually far more interesting than the art following the dictates of whatever governing rule there is at that moment. It’s not helpful for us to say what art should be, and I’ve always tried to be very careful, as an educator, to avoid value judgments. All I can do is share what I think certain art approaches do. That’s what I did in my book, Education for Socially Engaged Art: A Materials and Techniques Handbook. I did not argue that a particular type of art should be made, but I wanted to describe the processes that are tied to socially engaged art: conversation, collaboration, documentation, and so forth. What are the limits? How can you use them or appropriate them? How do they become malleable? What kind of effects can they have in the real world? But the business of what is good or bad art should be left to an art critic. 



The Socially-Engaged Art of Soap Opera

Izzy:
There are tenets that together make a recipe for what socially engaged art could be. Where does care play a role? 

Helguera:
Looking back at the relational art work of the 90s that many artists of my generation were exploring, participation was more conceptual. You participated by eating, by hanging out, by doing this or this or that, but it was not an active mode of inquiry with another person. It wasn’t an active attempt to get to know the other. Myself and many other artists felt we needed to really consider the humanity of the participant, not just use them as another element of the composition, like a medium. This could only stem from a personal commitment and sincere interest in the topics we were dealing with, which is why some of the most interesting works were by artists responding to concerns personal to them and to the communities that they cared about. It was not the type of work that was common in the period of nineties globalization, where you would just go to some random foreign country and make an installation. It was a much more committed engagement to a place and a community – usually your own place, your own community. As an immigrant from Latin America, I was interested in connecting immigrant Latin American audiences. Currently, I’m revisiting one of my first social practice projects, called Instituto de la Telenovela. 
One of my uncles was a soap opera actor and when I was growing up in the eighties, my mom would turn on the tv in the afternoon to watch him, which gave her (and by proxy, me) an excuse to watch what was really considered subpar mass entertainment. Because telenovelas, or soap operas in English, are considered ‘trashy’ by high culture. Fast forward to the late nineties/early 2000s. I was dating somebody from Eastern Europe and while visiting the Balkans, I noticed that soaps were huge. I actually saw my uncle in a rerun of a Mexican soap opera with Croatian subtitles! That soap operas had such a universal impact really interested me and I decided to do a project propelled by my interest in the millions of people who were not part of the art intelligentsia, but who watched these corny stories on TV. I was very interested in how these stories spoke to them and how they spoke to me as a child. In a weird way, being an immigrant, I saw this idea of escapism in them. Telenovelas create these ‘perfect’ worlds, Cinderella-type stories of self-realization, of resolving insurmountable problems. I wanted to create a project that engaged a public that might not know anything about contemporary art but knew everything there was to know about a particular soap opera. In that way, I felt I created a community of care that paid respect to the knowledge base of those who would not be validated in the mainstream contemporary art world.

Izzy:
How did this telenovela project manifest? Where was it experienced?

Helguera:
The first iteration was in 2002, at my friend Tadej Pogacar’s alternative art space in Slovenia. I created the Instituto de la Telenovela, also known as The Soap Opera Institute in English. It looked like any research institute, tables strewn with publications and so forth. We were examining the social, socio-economic, and cultural impact of soap operas around the world, aspects that people often overlook. For example, after a certain soap opera was broadcast in Spain, in which one of the characters had breast cancer, the rates of national breast cancer examinations shot up significantly. In Peru, a soap opera called Simplemente Maria, about a maid who saves up to buy a sewing machine and becomes a famous fashion designer caused a major spike in sales of sewing machines across the country. These stories had an enormous impact on social and cultural behavior and we would collect and present that information through workshops, conversations, lectures, publications, alongside an art exhibition. But it was already more than just an art exhibition because it had this pedagogical component that went beyond presentation. That’project was really the beginning of my interest in localized social practice.



Izzy:
So it started in Slovenia, but the majority of the telenovela audience are not in Slovenia. What was the relevance of setting up the Instituto there?

Helguera:
I need to backtrack to explain what was happening in the Balkans around that time. The region comprising Yugoslavia, Serbia, Croatia, and Slovenia had gone through a really terrible war in the 90s. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, different regions separated and entered into conflict. During the post-communist period, there was a realization, conscious or not, that class difference, racism, sexism and so forth still existed even if they were not discussed in the public square. Telenovelas had this ability to express those tensions in a very subtle way, through stories that indirectly dealt with parallel problems but in exotic scenarios. When you’re in Croatia looking at a soap opera taking place in Mexico, filled with haciendas, horses, and beautiful bright colours, it’s like a faraway, mythical land…yet the emotions, the desires, and the hopes of the characters are exactly like yours. I wanted to share the joy in seeing these telenovelas and also help people learn about themselves and their experiences through the stories. This is also what happens in museums. You look at a painting and might feel a sense of awe, of hate, of love, or of discomfort that you might not be able to explain. And what the education part does is help you make sense of these feelings. When people say, ‘hey, this is not art’, it’s actually a fantastic way to start a conversation because then you might ask, ‘Well, what is art? What does not make it art?’ That person has to articulate what is in their mind to another person. By articulating it, they start understanding themselves and what their feelings are about. It is almost like a form of therapy. 

Izzy: 
I was just thinking that! 

Helguera:
That’s what the telenovela project was about, sharing stories and talking about them together. The other reason why I loved this project is that people sharing their knowledge and opinions didn’t have to be specialists in art at all. In other words, they were freer to speak because they were not constrained by theory and concept. I felt very much in community with this group of people, making a work that awoke an interest in topics that the community had not discussed before yet that connected us all. Going back to the subject of care, I think it mattered that this project was not about prescribing anything, rather it was like ‘Here’s the story, let’s talk about it.’ And they would take the initiative to say, ‘I love the story. I don’t like the story. This makes me cry. This makes me angry.’ Together we’d unpack those feelings and ideas instead of me coming and saying, ‘you should love this or you should hate this’. I was never interested in that kind of propagandistic type of art.

Izzy: 
Turning this art project into an institute means the process is inevitably collaborative – 

Helguera:
 –  Exactly! And it’s meant to be reflective. My entire work is about understanding a problem in an ontological way. First, let’s look at soap operas. Later, I was like, “Let’s look at dying languages, or let’s look at the subject of Pan Americanism. What does it mean? What does it mean to be Colombian or Canadian or Salvadoran? How would you articulate that to yourself?” I’m always interested in those terms and in trying to help people reflect on them. The research component of my work comes from this desire to unpack these questions. 
I am in a very retrospective mode these days and I have an opportunity to revisit the telenovela in an exhibition next year, but I’m also combining my other interests, such as the whole of Latin America. Iterative learning, going to different places, doing expeditionary research, is what my past project on “American-ness” was all about. I went from Alaska to Chile asking people what it means to be Pan American. I am also integrating my interest in the art world as a system – a social, nonsensical, idiosyncratic, weird system with its incongruities, ironies, paradoxes, and contradictions. I’m now working on combining all of these different elements into a screenplay for a soap opera about an artist couple competing against each other in the art world context. We will film different scenes in various Latin American cities. 



The Book as an Object of Care

Izzy:
One of the things that I relate to in your work is this idea of effacing the artist as the illuminated visionary and centering art in the collective making process. Stories and the act of storytelling are collaborative in this way. There is a suspension of disbelief that cuts through the specifics of one’s condition to reach more universal ideas and values. It’s never a solo experience because it draws on the connection between the author and reader, the character and reader, as well as the collective engaged in the storytelling experience.

Helguera:
I’m going to tie this up with another project centered on storytelling that connects to the subject of care. In 2013, I established a used bookstore, Libreria Donceles, which sold books in Spanish. I created it in New York City partly as a nostalgic reaction to the fact that bookstores are dying. When I was growing up in Mexico City, I would go to these used bookstores I to learn about big ideas, buy whatever I could find on those subjects for 20 pesos or whatever. I would find some weird 18th-century book about sculpture or something random like that. Yet it felt really special because I was the one who had found it. I gained a knowledge very specific to me, you know? So I have always loved used books, also for their physical qualities, the look and textures hinting at the life it had when it was carried by someone else. I’m part of the last generation of people who lived before the internet era, where having a collection of encyclopedias was still necessary. If you needed to do your homework, you needed to have that encyclopedia at home, otherwise you would flunk. 



Izzy:
There’s care in that as well, right? To actively take out a book, to flip through its pages, to search for something. 

Helguera:
The book becomes a really emotional object. With Libreria Donceles, I wanted to rekindle our relationship with the book as an object. It was almost a surprise to me, the enormous emotional response from visitors who would immediately come and tell me stories –  “This is the first book that I read, this is the book that my grandmother gave me, this book defined my childhood, this book is what I read in high school, in college.” Your life can be told through a series of books; it’s your biography. 
Objects are often given such a bad rap in our current society because their production is directly linked to issues like pollution, global warming, exploitative labor. Commodity production pushes objects into this realm of the enemy, the other. But it’s our relationship with them that’s the issue.

Helguera:
At MoMA, I worked on a show by major feminist artist Martha Rosler. We transformed the main atrium of the MoMA into a giant garage sale, where you could find all sorts of random objects – a giant teddy bear, unusual ashtrays, and old plates – and Martha would price them at random. This would be one cent, this would be $500. The prices didn’t make any sense and what she wanted was for you to haggle with her. It was really funny and a lot of fun. What I think she really wanted was to reflect on the object as a commodity. In Libreria Donceles, I was interested in the emotional and almost biographical relationship you have with a book. Everybody has walked into a bookstore and knows what it is, so there’s no surprise in that relationship, and this hopefully makes somebody more comfortable than when walking into an art installation, where you don’t know what to expect. You know how to behave in a store; we are all creatures of capitalism, whether we like it or not. I’m interested in starting at that familiar place so that I can get to another place with the visitor. In the case of the bookstore, I was reflecting on the book as a mirror of who you are, something that tells you about yourself and tells you about your world.

Izzy: 
Where is it now? 

Helguera:
It’s going to open in Minneapolis and has travelled to 15 different cities. I thought that I would run out of books but there have been thousands of book donations. In many of them I would find personal items – a receipt, a movie ticket, love notes – 

Izzy:
– Inscriptions.

Helguera:
Yes, inscriptions. All this makes it so personal and so interesting. It tells you the story of somebody going somewhere. There’s a bus ticket from a person who traveled to Puebla, Mexico, in 1982 while reading this book. You start to imagine where the book was being read, in what context, and how it finally ended up in your hands.

Izzy:
So much of your work is about education and pedagogy outside of the classroom. Many of the people that we’re interested in interviewing for CareLab have both a creative practice and a pedagogical practice, and often they intersect. I’d be curious to know where they intersect for you and how one has maybe influenced the other.

Helguera:
Last year, I created the studio for education as art with the intention of more actively pursuing research into the relationship between pedagogy and art-making through the lens of social practice. I taught a class on humor for educators, for example. I taught a class on pedagogical curating, how curators can engage with the field of education. I’ve taught a wide range of courses on socially engaged art, and I’m particularly interested in how the artwork is also a pedagogical tool, which is still something that is not fully embraced by the mainstream. There’s a separation that exists so that when you represent Education in an exhibition, it’s kind of like making a painting about a school, instead of running a school. 

Izzy: 
So what does socially-engaged art look like in the classroom?

Helguera:
At the university, it’s different because I’m working with individuals who are performing artists. The focus of their work is going to be their specific performing practice; they’re going to be singers, actors, pianists, or composers. What I’m trying to do in those classes is show them why socially engaged art matters and why, even if your work is mostly performed on stage, it’s so important to be aware of how the arts are interconnected with society – you cannot exist like a mushroom, just doing your own thing.

Izzy: 
Well, the irony is that a mushroom is completely interconnected.

Helguera:
Yes, you’re right. Everything is interconnected. For too long, we have promoted this idea of the individual genius who appears in the world and shines there majestically. We all influence each other. I often mention John Cage, who played a central role in the history of the New School and the emergence of the Fluxus movement. In one of his famous phrases, he says;
"When you start working, everybody is in your studio- the past, your  friends, enemies, the art world, and above all, your own ideas- all are there. But as you continue painting, they start leaving, one by one, and you are left completely alone. Then, if you are lucky, even you leave."
His point is that we don’t work in isolation, we are a community, we contain multitudes, and the work produced – whatever it is – is the result of everything that has come into you. It may feel in many ways that it’s your voice and only your voice, but it is also the filtering and the synthesis of everything that you have lived.

Izzy:
And why is it important to care about that synthesis?

Helguera:
Thinking that you’re a lone genius is unrealistic; it’s doomed to fail. When you are a performing artist, or any artist at all, you need to understand that you exist in the public realm. You cannot expect that people will understand you if you don’t understand them. If you don’t care to engage with the world, why would the world care to engage with you? Maybe you are a crazy, eccentric genius; that’s fascinating, but it’s also kind of a cliche. The reality is that we are beings in the world, we exist in that world, we engage with it continuously – we speak to it, we suffer with it, we try to improve it. The success of our work depends on how well we can engage with it. I want my students to truly understand that there’s a world out there with people who have feelings, interests, and desires just like theirs. Our job as artists is to learn how to engage with this world. And the moment we understand this connection, it can be so exciting! We can make something that changes people’s minds. I know it sounds romantic…

Izzy: 
Well, I think it’s because it’s just so obvious, and therefore it’s forgotten.

Helguera:
When I was in the galleries talking about art with people, it didn’t matter whether I loved or hated a painting or an artist. I had to do many, many tours and workshops about work I didn’t really care about. But that didn’t matter to me. It’s as if the doctor doesn’t like the patient that they’re operating on.

Izzy:
They took the Hippocratic Oath.

Helguera:
Your job is to save that person, not to love that person or their opinions.  If I say that I hate an artist’s work, that’s complete failure. My job is to get people to arrive at a greater complexity in understanding the artwork. Loving it or hating it has nothing to do with it; it’s about engaging with it. My job would never be to force you to love an artwork, but to show you that it’s not that simple. Maybe ten years ago, we had a Frank Lloyd Wright retrospective at MoMA, and I remember having this family that did not like him at all. I wanted to show them the complexity of his career from the beginning. By the end, they actually were in love with the work, which is unusual, but shows the complexity of everything that you might have never appreciated before. That, to me, is a great achievement and requires not necessarily thinking about yourself. 

Izzy:
You said that in that role at MoMA, it didn’t matter what you thought. But I think it does matter, it’s just not the only thing that matters.

Helguera:
I think this is where we started. I have this menu of options, and I love it when you love option B, or D, or F. That’s much more interesting than me telling you to pick option F. But there’s also finding the right moment for assertiveness. It’s a little like a choreography of being motivated by the interest of others, but also the risk and excitement of putting your interests out there. In socially engaged art, trust becomes important because it is a process by which you expose yourself and make yourself vulnerable, hoping that the other person will appreciate it.
 - And not necessarily expecting them to do the same.

Helguera:
Exactly. So that’s the challenge. 

Izzy:
Do you have any last words? 

Helguera:
Well, I think that when I think about care, I usually perceive it as caring for someone else as a caretaker, but I don’t think that understanding paints the full picture. The majority of the time, the artistic process is a collective journey where we share things that we mutually care about. In other words, we, as artists, educators, and cultural producers, need to develop the ability to truly understand points of commonality. I might not expect people to be interested in the weirdest things that I’m interested in, but there’s a ton of other areas where we share common interests – like soap operas! So that’s an excellent departure point. It’s not like I care for you or you care for me; it’s about how we care for each other.