This week I was interviewed by journalist Jonh Huston for the Pioneer Local Press in Oak Park about my show Años de Miedo / Time of Fear. So here is part of this interview.

How'd you get hooked up with the Oak Park gallery Expressions Graphics?

I moved to Chicago from Nicaragua last year. My wife and I were looking for a good place to live, so we found a place in Oak Park and walking around I found Expressions Graphics - a non-profit Printmaking Cooperative and Fine Arts Gallery - so I became a member. Since then I have been involved in some projects and outreach programs in the Oak Park community with them.

Preso Político print by Carlos Barberena 

How long have you been painting? Exhibiting your art?

Well, I grew up in an artistic environment, my mother is descended from an important family of artists in Nicaragua (poets, painters and musicians) and my father dedicated his free time to writing poetry, painting watercolors and playing guitar. In fact my two older brothers, Robert Barberena and Cesar Barberena, are artists as well; they studied fine arts in Nicaragua. I think that helped me get involved in arts. But it was in 1990 that I was really interested in artistic knowledge because it allowed me to revisit my memories, so I began to take art seriously and started showing it. I am a self-taught visual artist, I never attended fine arts school, because when I was a child I did not like the way the "art academy" teaches, sometimes was too archaic, so I left.

This exhibit, you say on your web site, is based on your memories of war in Nicaragua in the '70s and '80s. Did that experience inspire you to get into art in the first place?

Yes, of course. I mean, I was already attracted to art because of my family, and living the terrible experience of war and exile hit me, so I got seriously into art one year after the war finished. During this period of time I worked in a variety of different styles, but in 1999 I started to work on a big show "Años de Miedo/Time of Fear," (that was) a manner of reflection about war and its effects and how these memories and fears affect our lives not only physically but also in psychological terms, and for that show I produced more than 70 pieces in different techniques, but I only exhibited 50 pieces. I presented this show in Casa de los Tres Mundos Cultural Center and Praxis Gallery in Nicaragua in 2000, and at the National Gallery in San Jose, Costa Rica. So now I made a Print Portfolio inspired by sketches and drawings that I did not show before. Also, recent world events have given me new material to draw on. Read more...