ALLURE:How did you get into the arts?
Was it something you were always connected to, or did you find it later in life?
Rocio Cabrera:I have always been into art.
I remember I was on a bus ride home from Atlantic City.
I was super-bored and fell into a YouTube hole about polymer clay.
I went home and tried to make my first pair of earrings, and people wanted them.
Tantrum Earrings, $75
And now I’m here, paying my rent with jewelry.
It’s pretty crazy.
But yeah, I think I’ve always been an artist.
Don’t B Jelly Earrings, $55
I’ve always wanted to be an artist.
I don’t see myself doing anything else at all,ever.
RC:I worked in ahair salonfor fucking six years as a receptionist on the Upper East Side.
Courtesy Rocio Cabrera
So that gave me the push to be like, I’m leaving."
Like, no warning.
And then I just started selling artwork in the subway.
Courtesy Rocio Cabrera
Then I started doing markets and I accidentally started making earrings.
I really don’t know how the fuck this is still happening, or how it’s happened.
But it’s been dope.
ALLURE:How do you stay inspired?
And I have to get over that.
RC:Tim Burton was my favorite artist growing up.
Courtesy Rocio Cabrera
Lisa Frank will always be the shit, you know.
[I also] get inspiration from the outdoors.
I was really inspired by kids, by little girls, honestly.
Courtesy Rocio Cabrera
There’s always stars, or rainbows, or clouds.
I want it to be comforting.
I’m making a lot of my art for little Rocio.
Like, “this can be cute,” and also, “fuck the police.”
But it’s still me.
Rainbows and stars and whatever the hell they are, they can still make as big of a statement.
It does matter to me how I’m expressing myself.
Thats always going to be in the background.
A lot of my creativity comes from a place of anxiety or depression.
Or, like, really high highs.
I can’t create when I’m just feeling super-fucking normal.
ALLURE:If money wasn’t an object, what would you have for Rocio Art?
RC:I feel like deep down inside I really like to stunt.
So, aside from buying things for myself, I’d really like Rocio Art to be an empire.
Id love to make pink-rhinestone refrigerators, funky couches, and shag fucking wallpaper.
ALLURE:The art world can often be very white and male-centered.
And it’s naturally going to include my identity I can’t run away from that.
But that is not the thesis of my art.
So it makes me question myself.
I’d love to be in galleries, right?
And be respected in the art world amongst these white dudes.
But if it doesn’t happen, I’m perfectly okay with that.
So I don’t really think about that anymore.
In college, I used to think about that a lot.
Like, Is my work big enough, important enough, political enough to be in these spaces?
But now I’ve really been able to find comfort in the fact that I can make work forme.
And if it sells, it sells.
But there isn’t a lot of thinking that goes into my process.
It’s very natural.
I don’t draw things before I make them; I’m just sitting down, painting.
ALLURE:I noticed that instead of using traditional colors for skin tones, you use bright colors.
Are these figures supposed to have a race?
RC:Well, most of my girls are self-portraits.
They’ll have bigger noses or bigger mouths.
These are Black girls whether they’re blue or purple or not, you know what I mean?
I want people to know that.
And they were from the Bronx; they were called Uptown Babies.
And I was just crying and working super hard.
I was like, Nah, this doesn’t represent me.
ALLURE:Seeing the experiences of Black and Brown girls represented in a fantastical way is beautiful.
We rarely see depictions of us being fun and carefree; we don’t have that luxury.
RC:[My art is] about me, and I am a Black person.
I feel like everybody is dealing with the same shit, right?
Like, we can all relate really fucking hard.
Especially now during [the]Black Lives Matter movementsand stuff.
I felt guilty having a good day on Instagram, as a Black person.
You know what I mean?
It’s like, how dare you be chillin' in your apartment, having fun.
I feel like it is not our responsibility to fix the fucking world as Brown people.
I think our happiness should be our first priority.
And that is our job.
You know, while we’re here.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Angelina Ruiz is a Nuyorican writer and artist, currently living in Puerto Rico.
you could follow her onInstagram.
Check out her newest project,The Radical Database, a website dedicated to anti-racist resources.
I’m Going to Go Extra Hard."
Now watch three makeup artists turn themselves into a Monet painting:
