The City: Marcela Avelar
““Writing is like making love. Don’t worry about the orgasm, just concentrate on the process.””
Foreword
Artista multidisciplinaria. Founder of TheArtuist. Performance painter. Global citizen. Guadalajara-born. Brooklyn-based.
Preface
Born in Guadalajara. The middle child of a couple of not so traditional Mexican Chemical engineer parents. An artist in a house of scientists. I was messy in the most organized house, clothes by color and cans always looking in the right direction. I was loud between the silence of my parents. Learning math and following the rules helped me to camouflage. I tell you this story, not because my upbringings were tough, I had and still have a beautiful family but that doesn’t shield you from big feelings. Art was my scape mode, a drug or a meditation but was the only place my mind will quiet down. Art came easy to me, life a little less so. I remember at 7, laying on the couch, looking at the shadows changing on the walls and I closed my eyes and pray God to take me with him. I cannot tell you why I felt that way, but I remember so vividly wanting to die. Life keeps going and we keep adapting, faking what we don’t have, doing what we love, doing what we must do and when the time to pick a career came it came with many questions. I was good at art, but will art be enough? I studied design. I had my first payee client at 17, opened an agency at 22, closed it at 23, freelance for many years and moved to NYC in the search of adventure and answers. It was supposed to be one year but after 15 years I am still looking for answers. Adventure on the other hand, I found plenty and every day was better that I could ever imagine. New York is a wonderful lover, but a self-absorbed one. One year wasn’t enough for him to fall in love with me and I was definite not ready to commit, but every time I thought I was going to leave it will give just enough to stay. New York might be my longest relationship till today and it has been good to me, it gave me a beautiful family of friends, it opened opportunities I never even dreamed of and constantly challenges me. 2020 was hard for many people and I wasn’t spared. Questioned many decisions, felt lonely and had a hard time getting the basic care. One day in my living room, crying on the floor and desperate I realized something, depression was back and it felt like this time I was aware of her settling in, I was able to materialize her as a woman flirting with me since months before, and as much as I fought her, laying on the floor that day I gave up and ask her to Kiss Me Goodnight. That day the poetry book wrote its first page. I am a visual artist, but I had nothing in me to paint so I wrote what I saw and kept writing, I had no choice, the words needed to be written. And what painting as a kid was meditation, poetry was my medicine. I wrote without limitations, these poems were never meant to be read, not by strangers and even less by my loved ones. Marce was colorful, not black and white, I had a facade to keep alive. But one day, these words were burning, and I needed to let them go. I was probably still in the gray area (at that point I thought I was leaving the white pages blank) and I had the courage to show to my good friend and poet, Emily Fiskio, and as naked as I felt her words made me keep going.
My mom was a statistics teacher at Universidad Autonoma de Guadalajara, I used to love to go with her and draw in the board, I am not going to lie I also ate some of that chalk. She showed my drawings to a phycologist friend at UAG, sister of a friend of hers, she said my drawings were not a 5-year-old kid because they had too many details.
Kiss Me Goodnight / A Tale About Depression, Melancholy, Joy & Other Drugs
Epilogue
On April 27 of 2025 the book was finally published. The release party was a night of intertwined media in lower Manhattan at 334 Broome Gallery. I read my poetry out loud for the first time, between the walls filled with my art and Dan Iaed’s music. Composed of 9 feet of fabric and brushed with tempera, my two-waist dress came to life in the hands of Erica Johnston and movedwith the pedal steel sounds while I painted live. The fluid sculpture is a dance between light and shadows and the acceptance of duality within us. Dancers Billy Cannon and Tiffany Mangulabnan personify this affair, moving from Darkness to Light, in an unending quest for balance. First was the poetry, then the art, finally the performance. All senses, same story, a story is not only mine but ours. The more I share this the more I realize hiding it didn’t serve me, and there are more of us out there in the wild. I would like to keep co-creating with different media artists live, every night is different and can’t be repeated, the piece is as much as of the artists performing as is from the crowd. And art is my way of healing, my gift and my offering to the world. Kiss Me Goodnight intents to give Hope and I intend to keep doing art with purpose.
I had three serious depressions:
a. 23 when I closed my agency. My identity disintegrated and what I thought I wanted was not what I expected, and life didn’t have a direction anymore, little by little my value as a person washed away.
b. 29 when I moved to Ny, lack of sleep and a unknown future is a bad combo.
c. 2020, covid shook my priorities, I was alone in a crowded New York and the lack of structure in a world guided by success, I started spending the days in bed until standing was not an option.
6. I learn that depression is my alarm when something is off place and I must learn to listen you it before she is stronger than me.
Bibliography
The City
Favorite thing about living in New York ↝ Any normal day becoming an adventure
One thing you can't survive without in the city ↝ Community and…my cold brew
Three adjectives describing New York ↝ Chaotic, bold, expensive
The most inspiring spot in the city ↝ The subway
Current obsession ↝ Fun clothes (interactive, LED, upcycled) // Ugly Delicious by Roy Choi