Ana Liz Cordero

‘In a certain way, I felt forced to study. I was not good at it. Sometimes, we hear a lot of voices in our head. Some of them make you grow and others make you down. So you need to listen carefully to the right voice, for me I call it the voice of God, the voice of your heart. Because if this voice helps you grow, it is because this voice is from God. But other voices, the one that makes you scared about the future, this voice is not the right voice you need to hear.

I’ve decided to become an artist when I listen to my heart and my emotions. I want to live with passion. Everyday I wake up and I create, I imagine things and I want to share. It’s not only about creating art and sell paintings. It’s part of my life and my inspiration. I always notice the little details in nature. People often tell me that there is no nature here in Dubai. But that’s not true, there is a lot. We just need to look for it and appreciate what we have. I have a strong connection to the birds. I also enjoy the mountains, the sea, the simple rocks,…The dead materials from nature such as the flowers or the leaves, inspire me. I collect them and I make art out of it. We are not separated from the nature, we are part of it. For me it’s important to create art according to nature.

People nowadays only focus on technology but they sometimes forget the authentic things. We are humans, we are not robots. Tough my art, I’m trying to reconnect people to their roots, their essence, their elements. That is my responsibility, to try to look at the simple things. The things that we think today are not important. We live in a ‘rush’ and we have a lot of things to do. The reason why I’ve created the series ‘Freedom’ was because I got stuck due to covid in a hotel room for fifteen days. I felt as if I lost my mental and physical freedom and the only freedom that was left for me was the spiritual one. These negative situations have helped me to understand what is the real freedom. So for me my responsibility is to communicate with people and for them to not forget that we are spiritual people and not machines. 

During lockdown, everything changed. Since then, I’ve tried to understand better the value of nature and conservation of my Ecuadorian identity, my Inca roots. It’s the first time I used the element sand. Sand is a dead material and I’m trying to make it alive again while using it on my canvasses. Other elements from Dubai really inspired to create the series Freedom such as the palm tree. It’s a strong tree and has deep meaning to Emiratis. And I’ve used gold and white. White represents pure, good and divine things. And gold represents my connection to the ‘inti’ which means sun in quechua. My people in Ecuador have a party called ‘Inti Raymi’ which means ‘the party of the sun’. Communities come together to share their food and customs. In a certain way, I have this connection here in Dubai because we have more than 300 days of sunshine in Dubai. I want to reflect the connection to the sun and the elements in these series.

I always call my art organic abstraction which is for me taking the elements of the nature and create art with it. It’s like music, you need to take a pause to deeply appreciate it. Nature is just the same. You need to hear nature and its simplest things.I love painting outside. Sometimes inspiration comes and sometimes it does not. I always write my ideas on little notes, and stories, the connections and feelings that I have. When I come to my studio, I see all these notes and I start making the sketches. And then, when I have sketches that I really love I start painting. I select very carefully the colours and materials. After a lot of practices, the results usually come easily and everything looks very natural.

I love going back home, to my family. I feel so much love when I’m there. Sometimes people are different because they’ve changed but I try to focus on two things: love and compassion. Because we are different and we always change. I compare this to my paintings. Because it represents life and life is about mouvements. And whenever I go back to my country, I see all of these mouvements and this is part of life. The changes are good because it helps me understand the way to live. I am not perfect, I am a human being and I am a medium to create art. I think the most creative artist in the world is god. I need to look at everyday as an opportunity to grow and to learn from everything and everyone.

I love waking up sometimes at 3am because that’s one of the only moment where there is silence in the city. And I ask life to reconnect me to my light. That’s what I want to transmit through my paintings, I want people to reconnect with their light, which is inside each person. As a human, I do have moments of frustration and moments where I feel very sad but I think you need to surround yourself with the right people. The people that can help you go towards the proper way. Sometimes, we lose our way. We go to the right, to the left…but the way is just in front of you and you can’t see it. You need these people in your life to connect you to this proper way and part of it is to be willing to share our vulnerability with others. The people around you are like a mirror. What do you want to see in your mirror? So the people in front of you represent your mirror. You need to connect with people who have a huge heart and a lot of love to offer. So that they can help you and give you some ideas with love.

I think that true love is when you think about others. When you stop thinking only about you and you try to help others. I think my art, in a certain way, is thinking about others. I want people to see beautiful things so that is my way to say hello, I share my love with you. Because each painting has a part of me which represent a lot of love. So this love is for you, it is not for me.’

A conversation with Ana Liz in her studio in Al Fahidi, one of the oldest district in Dubai.