Daniela Luna

APPETITE is the work that represents me the most. Sometimes I find it difficult to get used to the idea of being an artist because most of my work has a very strong entrepreneurial and social approach, but in the end I always end up understanding why one understands art from the point of view of the practice, and why that's okay. If, as an artist, my work would be constitued by my very few installations, drawings or performances, then I definetely wouldn't like to be considered an artist; I think that being an artist requires a great deal of work and dedication, much more work and dedication than what I can give to it. At least 90% of my time is devoted to Appetite and the annexed projects to it in a way so that everything else is secondary. The market interests me, not as an irony, criticism or metaphore, I'm interested in the market in a genuine way and I believe in its possibilities. I had been working on this for several years before I even turned into an artist, almost by accident. I'm interest in influence it, and at the same time, bring it nearer to people, but from another side. Last year I ended up saturated and exhausted after so much work, and that made me reconsider why is it that I'm doing this. Until before I had started out with Appetite, a year and a half ago, I had gone through different life experiences, and I didn't stay fixed in any of them, why would I do so in this one. I believe that my work with Appetite defines me better than anything else because it connects with many issues that concern me. Working with the market, the great challenges that this means, you never go back to doing something monotonous or simple, I'm always planning its further growth and working to make it happen. Feeling I'm building something up that contributes to the growth and development of something I believe in. It requires commitment and rigor, and at the same time allows a certain flexibility in one's own ideas and shelters the delirium of many people, including myself. That's the way it is. Having been able to group together those two poles of my personality into one thing is the best thing that could have ever happened to me, although it still needs further development. All my life I've had too much energy and the need to set myself challenges; that made it difficult for me to fit in, socially, so many times I ended up using such energy in a selfdestructing way. As time went by I've learnt how to handle it and discovered that everything the world denied me was because of its own flaws, so instead of hating it I started building up the world I want to live in. This may sound naïve or idealistic, and I have a little bit of that. I'm like a teenager in the way I feel things. I'm not interested in trying to look moderate because I'm not, or hiding the contradictions of my personality. I think that's the perfect combination for APPETITE to exist. APPETITE is my own way of running the world around me to make it look more like the world I would like to live in, and that’s how it also works with my new projects SO MUCH LOVE, devora-me.com.ar and others soon to come. My appetite is voracious, insatiable and it makes me be ridiculous and kamikaze. But yet I find a balance with my rational side that forces me to analyze and plan it all so that everything could be translated into real and earthly strategies, and I'm perseverant and mad enough so that, once I’ve taken all the decisions, I'm prepared to be up to the challenges of working with so many people and with a constant investment of money that has to flow for this to work. Turning crisis into opportunities (like its meaning in Japanese) is something that I constantly do and a vertigo that attracts me.

There's many people that I admire and take as a reference point, most of which aren't artists. I find it difficult to name them all so I'll just take some of them at random. Hugh Hefner, because he came up with new concepts, interfered in culture by providing it with a new dimension, Playboy is part of the vocabulary and collective imagination everywhere. Rock bands!! Bands in general and some of them in particular, but I'm not make a list because I'd look like a grupie. Also women I love listening to and see dancing and singing, from Beyonce, Gwen Stefani, Shakira... I admire and experience music more than anything else. I'm excessively fanatic and I could turn myself to music with such devotion that this has many times ragged me down the road to perdition. John Maynard Keynes: "(Investing is) intolerably boring and overdemanding for anyone who doesn't have a gambling spirit; while he who has it, must pay this proclivity at the adequate price." Paul McCarthy, Araki, Mike Kelley, Sarah Lucas, Ana Mendieta, Nam June Paik, Miyamoto Musashi.

There're many exhibitions that have fascinated me for many different reasons, so I'll just talk about some of them with which I feel a particular identification. I'm very interest in the work Luciana Lamothe talks about in Ramona 50. The work she talks about and the work she creates through her story. All of Luciana Lamothe's work. Galindo's Fiesta del Agujero (Hole's party), and actually all of his work, from performance, to video or poetry. Nicanor Aráoz and Martín Legón have some things that melt me and blow my head off. Diego Bianchi. Leo Estol's exhibition called "Parque" (Park), it came to tell me exactly what I was needing in the right moment. And I'd also name many exhibitions that took place in Appetite, but they involved me too directly.

No idea, I don't like labels. Maybe the need for us to work less alone and more opened to exchanges and collaborations, in terms of groups. Those processes interest me.