THE UNCANNY IS A BIRD 

EN | ES

Interview to Simón Sepúlveda (b. 1989), lives and works in Madrid, Spain. 

La Esperanza es un Bar is the name of the latest project by Simón Sepúlveda, developed during his residency at the Artistic Residencies Center of Matadero Madrid between January and July 2026. We met the Chilean artist in his studio, surrounded by paintings of twin sunsets, sculptures reminiscent of shopping malls, and enormous canvases adorned with tear-gas birds encircled by vividly colored plants. Everything in his work seems to draw from what surrounds him, from that random interplay between the intimate and the collective: the bar on his street, his children, a passerby, the ferns of Casa de Campo.

Within this intersection emerge broader notions as well: gentrification, cyclical processes, and myths as both possibility and a narrative of the end of one structure collapsing to make way for another.

In the middle of our conversation, a little bird wandered in from the street and fluttered overhead…

Let's start from the beginning: your father is a film director. Was art something you grew up with at home? Or how did you come to choose a creative path?

Yes, my father is a film director, my mother is an art director, and my uncle is a book editor. My grandmother also wrote a lot. My older brother and I talk about this all the time: more than a matter of culture or the specific things our family taught us, I think we were raised with a great deal of freedom. Beyond particular references, I believe the biggest impact my parents had on us was giving us the freedom to be whoever we wanted to be, to be tolerant of everyone, and to remain open to different ways of thinking and living. For me, at least, that has been a major influence.

You started out in design and gradually moved toward art, partly to distance yourself from more commercial processes. Would you say you have found in art the freedom you were looking for?

Yes, although I still work in design, and I think there is something very liberating about solving your financial situation through another avenue. I believe there is a certain taboo in the art world around the idea that you should only devote yourself to your artistic practice, and I don’t think it has to be that way.

I find it very valuable to have a source of income and, at the same time, be able to do whatever you want in art. To step away from the logic of clients, deliverables, feedback, and revisions, and instead play, experiment, and turn it into something freer and more playful.

You have mentioned on several occasions that design and art share certain things in common, but also have major differences. Could you tell us more about them?

The processes involved in art are more complex. In design, things have to work, whereas art is not functional in a practical sense. Obviously, it has purposes and fulfills certain roles. However, one can present a chair that nobody can sit on as an artistic object, and in design I think that is much more difficult. For me, that is the key difference.

Of course, all of that can be challenged. For example, the Dutch Design Academy produces incredible work that pushes aesthetics and ideas to their limits, and I find that fascinating. I also think design has something more humble about it. Art can sometimes carry a sense of grandeur, whereas design tends to be more at the service of a project. That can be either good or bad. Sometimes it is very interesting how art can elevate a project. I also believe the two fields can engage in dialogue with one another; it is possible to use the tools of one discipline within the other.

On the other hand, there is a criticism that, at a certain point, design became a tool in the service of capitalism: something harmless, tied to branding, focused on making everything look nice, with rounded shapes and polished aesthetics. In a way, it ceased to be a more confrontational or politically active medium. 

This opens up a topic I wanted to ask you about: the idea of the artist who is politically engaged, which I think you embody quite strongly. How do you see that position? Does an artist have to be explicitly political, or not?

It depends on what you intend to do with your art. Although I think that if you want to have any kind of agency or participate in an ecosystem with a particular vision, then you should have a position. If you want to paint flowers while locked away in your house, great. That can also be deeply political or deeply intimate. But I find it very strange when someone says they are apolitical. Basically, it makes me think of privileged right-wing people. There are memes about that. It doesn’t make much sense. That doesn’t mean you have to be literal about it. You can paint flowers and still be talking about a political process.

There is also the question of how platforms are used. I mean, for example—though obviously not on my scale—what happened with Rosalía and her decision not to take a position on the genocide or on other issues. It is interesting to think about how a platform is used and what it means to take a stand, or not, through that platform.

Many of your works deal with very intimate themes: home, love, relationships. In that sense, you seem to establish a connection between the political and the domestic spheres.

Yes. There is a kind of statement there: major political, social, structural, urban, or architectural events and contingencies affect our private lives and our intimacy. That is where the two spheres become linked.

In my work, I may be talking about my personal life, but at the same time I am reflecting on our relationship with objects. That connection emerges from the need to propose new ways of rearticulating our present.

For example, during the pandemic I was alone with my objects, and I began to think about them almost as if they were characters. From there I can move the line up or down: I can talk about the social uprising in Chile, about Plaza Dignidad, or about a toothbrush. But I feel that, in some way, I am talking about the same thing.

You designed the poster for Tengo Miedo Torero, the film adaptation of Pedro Lemebel’s novel. It is a work that precisely blends the protagonist’s intimate story with the political context surrounding it.

The director is my father, so there was also a family dimension to that project. I used to tell him that many films about the dictatorship communicate through a very dry, very gray visual language. And of course, it is not a happy subject; it is an incredibly tragic one. But the question was how to make the character’s inner world visible—the world of “the queen,” as the character is called in the novel.

I was interested in finding a way to introduce that dreamlike, colorful universe, something more connected to fantasy than to reality. That inner world functions almost as a form of individual resistance against a completely adverse political situation. It is an intimate space that, in a way, stands in opposition to an all-encompassing reality.

On several occasions, you have referred to your paintings as islands. It makes me think that you find a sense of safety in these creations.

Yes, they can be places like that. In fact, on an aesthetic level, I also shy away from the perfection of graphic design, from things that feel overly vectorized. I think there is something about handmade work that creates a sense of closeness. I’m not sure when I first used the island metaphor, but yes: they can be places where a certain warmth is felt. Sometimes that also comes through in the color palette. I am interested in how someone confronts a large field of color, and how that affects them. There is something there about affection, connection, and a sense of containment.


The project you created for Generación 2021 at La Casa Encendida seems very connected to what we've been discussing. It had a documentary and historical dimension, but also a very intimate one. How did you experience it?

Exactly, it goes back to what we were saying about intimacy. The project was called 1989–2019, referring to the thirty years between the end of the dictatorship in Chile and the social uprising. During that period, many historical milestones took place, but 1989 is also the year I was born. So I began introducing a kind of personal timeline into the historical chronology.

I think that is where the archive, or the project's more formal, historiographical dimension, starts to crack open. For example, in 1994 the president changes, but at the same time my younger brother is born. So, in my household, that year means something completely different.

I wanted to think about those milestones through a different hierarchy. At La Casa Encendida, I exhibited a tapestry about the protests of the social uprising and, right beside it, a painting of my brother. There was also a work created with a group of friends using mobile phones, which documented what was happening at that moment, almost like a real-time calendar. In addition, I presented another tapestry constructed from the texts of a manifesto that I invented. What interested me was precisely that intersection between the historical, the personal, and the collective—the possibility that all three levels could coexist on equal footing.

I feel that your work has a pretty accessible style. Are you intentionally aiming for a figurative and narrative approach that is easy to engage with?

I think figurative art comes with certain codes that we can all recognize. But something else also happens in my work: I invent narratives and stories, even though an individual painting can later exist on its own, independently. It is not necessarily my concern whether someone connects it to the larger project or not. The encounter happens, rather, between the person and that image or object.

But yes, there may be something accessible about the work. I think what I am trying to create is something very simple: a gesture that is precise and straightforward, without overworking it. Very often that does not happen, because simplicity is difficult to achieve. It is almost like searching for a certain timelessness—that someone might feel they recognize a work even though they have never actually seen it before. As if it were something you already knew and yet did not fully know at the same time.

I think there is an interesting game there: trying to make the paintings function almost like “non-places.” They can appear both retro and completely contemporary at once. There is an intention to reach a certain universality, or at least to build a space where different people can project their own experiences.


When you were living in New York, you developed a series of textile works decorated with phrases and slogans that ironized failure. I'm interested in this theme because it seems to run throughout your work and, in a way, challenges the capitalist ideal of success that is so prevalent today.

Yes, I think there is also an element of laughing at oneself. To some extent, that comes from a certain insecurity, from that constant doubt about whether I am taking myself too seriously or not seriously enough. But I also think the idea of failure is appealing because it resembles the feeling of being nervous about something: if you are afraid of failing, it is because you care. When something does not matter to you, it does not generate anxiety or expectations.

Failure also has something inherently comic about it. There is the idea of falling, of making mistakes, of play, of trying again, of repetition, of disappointment. I find losers and failures much more interesting than so-called winners. Failure makes me laugh. I think that also comes a bit from my family: we laugh a lot at ourselves and at other people.

On the other hand, it is a strange word. The ideas of failure and change are sometimes confused. We have a very particular relationship with grief, death, and endings. For example, if a ten-year relationship comes to an end, is that a failure? To me, that seems like a way of thinking that is overly focused on outcomes, very binary, and deeply tied to a capitalist logic.

Right now, I am painting on raw, unprimed linen because I wanted to recreate certain earlier paintings. But I feel they are not working the way I expected. I find myself wondering: is that a failure? Or is it simply an attempt? Are we experimenting, playing? I do not know. I think the idea of failure is too closely linked to the final result, as if everything came down to winning or losing. A very football-like way of looking at things.


There are some specific works - Contacto Estrecho, for example - in which I clearly see that interest in the tactile. I also feel it in Para a Ilha eu Tenho o Portal, the work you presented at Cosmos in Lisbon, which is an almost sculptural painting that invites viewers to walk around it. Are you interested in playing with the tactile and the installation-based dimensions of art?

I think that, especially when working with large formats, painting can acquire a volumetric dimension. It can generate space or take on a presence that is closer to sculpture, even revealing its reverse side. I am interested in exploring that possibility. That is why I sometimes introduce other objects or invite other people to activate certain works through performance.

Contacto Estrecho comes from a different place, although it may be related to what you are describing. It has more to do with the idea that I cannot control what moves me emotionally. For example, I might be more moved by bachata than by Danish techno—just to give a random example.

In that sense, “close contact” is about connection, about touching, about allowing oneself to have a direct relationship with things. It is about not pretending that something moves you emotionally simply because, according to certain external standards, it is supposed to. It is a way of pushing back against ideals constructed from the outside and searching for something more personal, more intimate. It means stepping away from the academy a little, from what is supposedly expected. I am also interested in painting badly, in a certain sense. I do not want to pursue a perfect glazing technique, for example, because then I feel as though I am trying to become something that I am not. I would rather embrace my own form of expression, even if it is imperfect.

Maybe I could never achieve perfection anyway, but, deep down, that is not what interests me. I move toward what attracts me, what I enjoy, and what makes the process pleasurable.

Actually, I had a question related to that: I feel that there is an important component of humor and irony in your work. Is that something you consciously seek?

I do not know if I seek it out specifically. I think I have a great sense of humor, and a very good one, too [laughs]. But more than anything, it is a way of being: constantly laughing, having a good time.

I think there is something important about enjoying yourself, about not being pretentious. Sometimes people strive for a certain solemnity, or want to be taken very seriously, as if, in the art world, the only way for that to happen is by producing work that is deeply transcendent.

At the end of the day, I want to enjoy myself. I want to make things that are meaningful to me, but from a place of pleasure and laughter. So yes, I think humor is present, although not in the sense of telling jokes. It is more a way of looking at things, a way of playing. Humor is also difficult. It has a lot to do with idiosyncrasy and with how different places understand things.

For example, here it is sometimes harder for people to catch certain jokes. In Chile, very often you are saying one thing but actually meaning something else. You are laughing, but not in a completely explicit way. If you get offended by the joke I made, you lose. There is a game there, a kind of shared code. It is also tricky, because if you do not calibrate it properly, you can end up joking all the time. But I think that is precisely what makes it so much fun.


That also opens up the question of language in your work. You use it a lot, especially in the textiles, almost as a visual element. Sometimes it feels as though you are trying to ironize the language of advertising or slogans.

I think I used it more in the past. I am becoming increasingly less interested in literalness and in the direct use of words. Sometimes language still appears in the titles. I also write short poems or haikus. These days I am more drawn to using words in a less advertising-like and more evocative way. Something more dreamlike, more playful. Less descriptive of what I want to say and more open-ended.

[Simón suddenly falls silent, looks up, and points to a spot above our heads. A small sparrow is flying over his works.]

A little bird.

Spring arriving... I’ll mention that in the introduction [laughs]. Continuing with what we were saying, there does seem to be an increasingly dreamlike quality in your work, particularly in the paintings. I wonder whether lately you’ve been drawing inspiration from the world of dreams.

More than dreams, I think it has to do with a need for change at a structural level. I feel that, in the West right now, there is a collapse taking place—systemic, emotional, and physical. There is something in our society as a whole that is no longer functioning.

From that idea, I began working with the sunset as a universal element, one that speaks to this need for duality: day and night, death, the ending of one thing so that something else can begin. Death creates decay, but it also produces compost and fertility for what comes next. From there, I started making paintings related to the death of loved ones, but also to the need for change on a more abstract and philosophical level, something less concrete.

Recently, I have begun working with a specific case, which is what I am developing here at Matadero. It is called Hope Is a Bar (La Esperanza es un Bar). The project revolves around a shopping center in Ermita del Santo that was demolished to make way for luxury housing. At the same time, there is a bar next to my studio called Bar La Esperanza, which has become a space of resistance against gentrification. The owner has been offered money to sell the bar many times, but he remains there with the local community of Carabanchel.

This connects to something else: a couple of years ago, during a trip to New Mexico, I came across a piece of jewelry made by Viviana Orques, a Native American woman who lived near Madrid, New Mexico. She died in 2011. Starting from that piece of jewelry, I invented a myth: when she dies, the soul of the jewel is released and begins flying through different galaxies in the form of a bird, searching for new knowledge. When it tries to return to Madrid, New Mexico, it makes a mistake and arrives instead in Madrid, Spain, near the Manzanares River. It lands on the moon-shaped structure of the shopping center and begins wandering through it, observing this decaying space, almost like a ruin. The bird then travels to different places, goes to La Esperanza, speaks with people, and watches the area being torn down. It feels deeply saddened. What it does then is cry for twenty days. Its tears flood the shopping center and reconnect it to the flow of the Manzanares River.

This entire myth that I have invented is what nourishes me as I develop a broader line of research connected to this need for change.

What other forms has this research taken?

I am making paintings, a series of found objects, a sculpture, and a number of replicas. I also have a series of paintings that emerged from thinking about what the world will be like for my twin children: twin sunsets, doubled sunsets, conceived in relation to this need for change, as well as to beauty and the fundamental cycles of life.

I also made a film, shot on analog film stock, which I am currently editing. There are several different strands within this broader idea of a painterly installation, which is the direction I am working in right now.


I'm intrigued by this impulse to invent a myth yourself. How did you arrive at that idea?

I did not want to fall into a way of presenting the subject that felt overly pedagogical or too obvious. What happened with the shopping center, put very reductively, is a process of neighborhood gentrification. I think that if I talk about the building and its destruction solely through the specific historical event, everything becomes more literal and tied to the past. Through myth, on the other hand, you can project things into the future. That seems more interesting and more fun to me.

I also think it has to do with the moment when I went to New Mexico and discovered that there was a town there called Madrid. I found that connection fascinating. From there, I invented this myth.

This project establishes a strong contrast between the natural and the urban. Would you say that, in your work, the urban is connected to a certain idea of progress that you are interested in questioning?

Perhaps. To be honest, I had not thought about it in exactly those terms. But I do think that this idea of endless progress—that we must always be progressing—is an aberration. I am someone who has lived in cities my entire life, and I love them, but I also see that we are not doing well. I think there is a need to slow down, although I am no longer sure whether that is even possible, whether we still have that kind of control. But yes, I think it may come from there: a desire for a stronger connection both with nature and with human relationships, with affection, and with the simple things in life.


You’ve spoken about the idea of collapse, but you haven’t fully specified what it is that you believe is collapsing.

I think several collapses are happening simultaneously. There are economic collapses, which translate into very concrete realities such as the widening gap between the richest and the poorest. There are environmental collapses as well. There are structural crises related to housing, or food crises, for example, linked to the amount of meat we consume.

What I think ties all of these together is a spiritual collapse. That is where I feel there truly is a failure. We are failing because we possess all the tools we need to live extraordinarily well, and yet it is as though humanity took the wrong medicine and ended up drifting down the wrong path.

When I think about what you were saying regarding the city, or everything built by human beings, there are places—an industrial estate, a roundabout—that are so ugly, so inhospitable, that I think: even if I tried, I could not create something so ugly and so harmful.

I think those places represent very clearly what we are building. I am not talking about ugliness only in aesthetic terms, but also on a spiritual level. These are spaces that dehumanize people, that disconnect them. They function almost like sacrifice zones: places built so that some people can live well at the expense of the well-being of many others. There are places where people live poorly, sleep too little, earn too little, and eat poorly in order to sustain the comfort of others—that top one percent of which, in some sense, we are also a part.


You also teach. Do you think this has to do with your interest in collectiveness and in collaborating with others?

Yes. I was contacted by Elisava, a design school in Catalonia. They reached out because there was a specific issue: many students were arriving with very clear Instagram references that they wanted to imitate. So the question became: what am I thinking? What am I feeling? You realize that, within this idea of looking at references and copying, there is also a need to belong. It can come from anxiety: What am I going to work on later? Are there correct or incorrect styles?

A large part of my work in those classes has to do with validating one’s own creative process and one’s way of seeing things. In the end, graphic design is communication: we are not designing a light switch. You have to have a position, an opinion.

We did an exercise that I really like, connected to the idea of the collective and of exposing yourself individually. It was basically about revealing yourself: each person shared a secret. Then all the secrets were brought together into a huge tapestry that we displayed in the street. Some people shared very simple things, like “I stole an ice cream.” Others shared much heavier things, like “I feel responsible for my father’s death.” Through the process itself, questions started to emerge: How far am I willing to go? How much am I willing to risk?

Something else interesting happened: if I know your secret, or twenty people know it, that is one thing. But if we all share our secrets with each other, a kind of collective trust starts to appear. In a context where everyone is competing for jobs or trying to belong to certain spaces, that exercise created something more emotional, more human. The truth is that it worked really well.

In your work, would you say you have some clear references that inspire you?

If I make it more specific, in terms of painters I really love, I would say Peter Doig, Kerry James Marshall, or Nicole Eisenman. They are artists who bring their own lives into their work—their experiences—but at the same time they play with visual codes that are quite universal.

I think there is something interesting there: connecting your biography with a project, with a way of being in the world. I am interested in that moment when your own biography starts becoming visible in what you do. For example, I discovered the shopping center at Ermita del Santo because it had a swimming pool and I used to go there to swim. Then, a year later, I discovered Bar La Esperanza. Then I go to San Francisco, New Mexico, and find this other piece of jewelry… Everything starts connecting.

You cannot force that. I think that is what is beautiful about it. That is also why I am very interested in the people I look up to: their lives, beyond their work. I am curious about the way they live. Many of the artists I fantasize about are connected to that. They are people I would like to be friends with, beyond being colleagues. I would like to go have a beer with that person.


I’m also interested in your perspective as a Chilean artist who has emigrated. How do you see the situation in your country in relation to the places where you have lived, and specifically Spain?

As an artist, I have worked more here than in Chile. Over there, the art scene is smaller. Here, for example, I find it very interesting how different the landscape of Barcelona and Madrid is. In Madrid, I have been surprised by the role of galleries and also by the role of institutions: who gets shown in each institution, how those relationships are structured, and how they operate. You can also notice that there is a fairly strong public policy focus toward the Latin American or migrant community.

In Chile, everything is smaller, more local, and there is less funding. But there is also a lot of self-organization, and that creates very interesting dynamics. Although nowadays everything is also much more diffuse. Curators can be in Chile, see your work, and bring you somewhere else. Geographical location has become something very ambiguous.

Social media creates the possibility of appearing as though you are in many places at once. It is very common to see portfolios that say “between New York and Madrid,” and you think: Are you in the Atlantic on a raft? There are many aspirational narratives, a constant performance of seduction, that also contain a certain level of dishonesty. That whole idea of “fake it till you make it” is heavy.


This opens up another topic I wanted to discuss. There are several works—for example, Notaría—where I see a very clear exploration of Chilean local culture, of what is native to that place. Is that something you are specifically interested in?

Well, I am Chilean. More than being about the “native” or “indigenous,” it is simply my context. On one hand, there is observing everything that is happening in Chile from the outside. On the other, there is wanting to continue participating in what is happening there. There is also the question of how I feel being Chilean somewhere else. Spain is a place where, in theory, there are many cultural similarities, but at the same time people know very little about Chile. So rather than the “native,” I think it has more to do with my identity. My entire family is there.

When people talk about the “native” or the “local,” that word often comes from an outside perspective. I am simply talking about my context, about what I encounter. There is a song by Virus, an Argentine band, called Tomo lo que encuentro (“I Take What I Find”). I love that idea as a working methodology: taking what appears in front of you.

You are in a shopping center, you meet someone who paints murals, you follow them one day, you end up painting a mural together, then they invite you to their house for lunch, their brother makes an empanada, and that empanada has a particular shape… And all of that starts connecting. I think there is something about the random encounter that really interests me. Life has a lot of that: chance, randomness. I find that incredibly stimulating.

I was actually reminded of a conversation with the Peruvian artist Raúl Silva. He told me that sometimes, being in Spain, he felt he was boxed into a certain type of artist who was expected to address specific postcolonial issues and themes.

Completely. There is something very reductive about that, like filling in boxes. It feels as though, if you are Chilean, you have to talk about the dictatorship or the post-dictatorship period. Or about what it means to experience discrimination in Spain. Not necessarily. I want to talk about many other things.

It is strange because, at the same time, there are topics that genuinely interest me and that other people appropriate without any issue. You start wondering why, for example, a white artist can talk about intimacy, affection, or simply being at home, and I am expected to only talk about the dictatorship. I think there is also a lack of understanding about the diversity of realities within a country. Things get simplified too much.

I think everyone is trying to do their best, but sometimes institutions operate in a very basic way: “Okay, I have a Latin American artist, so they must be political.” And then these automatic checklists start appearing, which ultimately do not contribute very much.

To finish… A dream for the future? Where would you like to see yourself in a few years?

I would like to have the time to dedicate myself to art one hundred percent. Time and money, basically. I’d love to continue developing research-based projects, exploring methodologies. Maybe live closer to the countryside. Spend a lot of time with my children, travel, continue participating in different art scenes, discover new places. Something like that.

Interview by Victoria Álvarez Conde. 29.06.26