Whoever wants to know something about me as an artist which alone is significant they should look attentively at my pictures and there seek to recognise what I am and what I want.
– Gustav Klimt
María Cabeza continues her series which introduces us to remarkable human beings. I know that I am in the presence of someone special, so I focus on an unusual fact before I begin this interview: Some butterflies sip the tears of the tortoises to feed themselves. And so it is with Victoria Elena Ferreyra too. The difference is that she drinks the tears of the suffering, digests these tears and transforms them into pieces of art which nourish souls. Miss Ferreyra seems to transfigure – to mutate before my eyes. She begins to radiate and transmitting life and colour. She becomes a BUTTERFLY.
María Cabeza: Hello Victoria, Let me start by asking what you do for a living?
Victoria Elena Ferreyra: I am a pianist, muralist and a painter. I am also an expert on resilience and social responsibility. I founded and manage an NGO called Pinta Argentina.
MC: What exactly is Pinta Argentina? How did it start?
VEF: Pinta Argentina started in 2012 as a personal project and in 2014 it became an NGO. It is a sociocultural initiative stands for the inclusion and the validation of humankind. It highlights our individual and collective abilities [by accepting our differences] through the collective and, perhaps, universal language of painting.
Since I was a girl, I experienced how other people ill-treated disabled individuals – my youngest sister suffers from Down Syndrome – and that discrimination led me to begin a project to stop this [discrimination] through art. With a paintbrush in your hand you can change the world.
MC: What is the aim of your project?
VEF: The aim is to create an appreciation for [all] humankind, to accept the differences and to enrich ourselves [with and] from them. I will also include sowing the seeds of sharing solidarity, empathy, and equality.
