[upbeat music]
- Liubov Szwako: It's never about what it can be.
It's about what it is when it's in front of you.
[spray can hissing]
[spray can rattling]
What I like about art,
it's that I'm allowed to be me and put me out there.
[playful music]
My name is Liubov Szwako.
Originally from Mexico City,
born and raised.
And I just really enjoy playing with paint.
[upbeat music]
I think my work is very abstract.
I'm not a big fan of telling people what to think
or what to believe or what to see in my work
or what my work represents.
And it's also more freeing
and it doesn't have to fit any boxes.
It doesn't have to fit any look.
It doesn't have to fit any, anything, you know?
It can just be whatever it wants to be.
[spray can rattling]
Like for most people, what they relate to
or what they see me at is with the mattresses.
[upbeat music]
You know, since I'm an immigrant,
I have to comply with certain rules,
and I have to go through certain things
that most people don't have to go through.
So, I couldn't get myself,
I couldn't afford to get myself in trouble
and do it legally,
so I was like, how can I spray paint legally,
without having the cops look for me
or get my immigration status, you know, in trouble
because I was spray painting.
So, I think the closest thing to a wall was like,
"Oh, look at all these mattresses
"that are just sitting on the side of the road
that literally are going to the trash, to the dump."
[bold swagger-filled music]
There's a bunch of things that I got to consider.
Like, 'cause believe it or not,
all mattresses are very different.
Some of them, like, some of them will have blood
and some of them will have, you know,
like, weird stuff on it.
So, you don't want to get too close to certain mattresses.
Will it absorb the paint correctly?
Some of them drip.
Some of them you can spend a lot of paint
and they just soak it up and it doesn't show,
so it's like literally a waste of paint.
[upbeat music]
I definitely painted over 200 pieces,
between mattresses and couches,
TVs, mirrors, all sorts of stuff.
So, definitely over 200 of 'em.
*
[brush rolling]
I don't see any limitations of the things that I can do.
And I don't see any limitations of the things
that, what other people can do.
If I do this line this way
and if I just do a twist here
and if I add this dot or this line here,
what will it create?
[upbeat music continues]
The one message that I encourage people to do,
doesn't matter what it is.
Even if it sounds like a pipe dream,
it sounds like a wildest thing.
If you really are curious about something, give it a shot.
Just give it a shot,
just to experience what it's like
and just focus on not if you did it right,
not if you did it wrong.
Just focus on, on how it felt when you were doing it.
[upbeat music]
I found that by doing what I do,
I somehow bring happiness to some people.
That, to me, it's awesome.
Like, you doing what you do,
it's making someone else happy.
Like it doesn't get any better than that, you know?
So, yeah.