Carolina Adan at 2B Art Gallery

Carolina Adán Interview: “Art is Life”

Rebellious art rule-breaker, Carolina Adán is one of the most prolific urban artists working today in Spain. Inspired by an array of movements and visual references from the pop universe, mythology, books, cinematography, music, and street art, Carolina shares her unique part of the personal universe with her audience by addressing the cultural constructions of power, identity, consumerism, and sexuality.

Carolina Adán’s artworks are spot on, and honestly refreshing. They look colorful and romantic, full of positivity and sheer joy. She has become a spokesperson, a role model, for an entire generation of girls because quite simply, there’s no one else like her. In between her new group exhibition “Crew on View” and numerous projects all over Majorca, we caught up with the lovely Carolina to ask her some questions. We talked about her art metamorphosis, inspiration, beginnings, and much more.

Carolina Adan - Jack Nicholson mural

2B: How did you start? Do you remember your first artwork or mural?

CA: Well, I started in the dumbest way, I had a friend who was having a bad time in her life, and in her house, there was the main staircase that could be seen from the street. I painted her a mural promising her that it would make a difference in her life. And in the end, it not only changed his life but it changed mine as well.

Carolina Adan paints mural

2B: What inspires you?

CA: I am inspired by old images, vintage children; The women of the years between 20 and 50, their way of dressing, of expressing themselves. I am inspired by colors, everything that is life.

Carolina Adan mixes paint

2B: Galleries, museums, or the streets?

CA: I prefer the walls of the street, but I think that the three mentioned in the question keep their importance since one would not be without the other.

Carolina Adan Merylin painting

2B: Why urban art and not another type of art?

CA: Because urban art is for everyone. It is the collection of all of us who inhabit.

Carolina Adan paints Pulp Fiction artwork

2B: Tell us a place where you always wanted to paint a mural?

CA: In the nursing home where my grandmother is. She spent hours watching me paint and the hours seemed like minutes.

Carolina Adan Charlie Chaplin artwork

2B: If you wanted your message to reach a specific audience in a powerful and transcendent way, where would you make your work or where would you place it?

CA: In jail or a nursing home, I believe that art is therapy for others.

Carolina Adan - Love is blue mural

2B: Which technique do you most identify with?

CA: Oil painting.

Carolina Adan - El gordo y el flaco

2B: If you weren’t an artist, what would you have been?

CA: I would be NOTHING, EMPTY…….for me it is a way of life. A lifesaver, a mode of expression.

Carolina Adan paints mural

2B: Do you think that Street Art today has ceased to be transgressive?

CA: Without a doubt YES. Everything, when it begins, is transgressive, but the human being needs to catalog to make sense of it.

Carolina Adan artwork Art is LIfe

2B: Do you listen to music when you paint? If so, which one?

CA: Yes, jazz music, especially of women. One of my favorite songs “LA VIE EN ROSE” by Daniela Andrade. I’m also very inspired by Suzzane Vega.