Boca/Jennika is a 46-year-old Venezuelan artist living in Mexico City. She is a mother of 2. Her career as an artist started as a child, her mother was a baker, and Jennika was the cake decorator. She left Venezuela 11 years ago, due to the political situation, and moved to Aruba with her children. In Aruba she started making art again. She would collect driftwood, paint it and take it to the art fairs at the big tourist hotels and sell her art. This was the beginning of BocaGrandiart.
Three years ago she moved to Mexico City. She moved so that her daughter could go to a Spanish speaking university to study medicine.
She is taking advantage of the rich, artistic education in Mexico City, and is taking master classes in Art.
Her color palette is to invoke the beauty of the Caribbean, but to also draw attention to the destruction/poisoning of the ocean/planet. Her intention is to bring awareness to the litter and pollution that is being dumped into the Caribbean.
She draws inspiration from the Mexican Artists, Leonora Carrington and Remedios Varo. The way that they depicted nature in their environments, the interplay between the two, is an inspiration to her. She also draws inspiration from her time in Aruba. The culture was very diverse with people from many different countries, but they all shared their love of the beach and ways of depicting the natural landscape.
We discussed her piece, Embryo, which was inspired by DaVinci’s study of the embryo. In that study, he only shows 1 arm of the embryo. So, she depicts 1 arm in her Embryo(mermaid), as a comment on the pollution in the sea that is mutating the development of humankind/the mermaid.
We also discussed Penumbra, which is part of her Green Mermaid series. This is a depiction of her mermaid in a moment of sadness about the destruction of the Caribbean sea.
We then went on to discuss her series on Solana, called Primitive Lines. This is a very different style from her Bocagrandiart. She does these on paper, utilizing continuous lines. She mentioned that she lost the music in her hand form doing too much digital drawing, and went back to drawing on paper. And with the guidance of one of her mentors, Ernesto De La Pena, to find her pure line.
We ended on the topic of what message she wants her audience to take from her art. She said her main reason for creating art is to be able to tell her story to her children, of the beauty of the Caribbean, and to inspire people to be the best versions of themselves. To be bold, and to keep the door open. There are so many opportunities in life, if you keep the door open.
Listen to the full podcast here!