Navigating my culture Through Art

An Interview with Raul Perales

by Jessica Rivera, PhD

Raul is currently an MFA student in the design program at OSU. He is originally from El Paso, Texas. He is currently working on his Master’s thesis, that merges his passion for design with his Latinx background as a way to help people navigate loss.

Can you tell me a little about yourself, where you grew up, how you got interested in art?

I’m from El Paso Texas, right on the border of Juarez, Mexico. My dad is from Utah and my mom grew up in El Paso. Growing up in El Paso really shaped a lot of who I was. There was so much art being made there, and I wanted to be a part of that. Even my parents were both artists, not in title, but they really love art. I am the only person in my family that decided to make art my entire life and make a career out of it.

When did you start taking art classes?

My school’s art programs were cut by the time I was able to take them. I mostly learned to draw from watching my parents. They would like to draw as a hobby and when I would see them drawing, I would sit down next to them and draw too. Then I found out about design in college, and I felt more attuned to that. I’m designing games that focus on what it means to be Hispanic American. It feels good to do that because it is something I have struggled with. For one of my projects, I was able to interview my family as a designer and that really brought me closer to them and allowed me to access a part of my past that I didn’t have before. Growing up, school was challenging, because there was a lot of shame in being a Spanish speaking kid. As a result, I lost my ability to speak Spanish.

What influences your art?

I think my third year of college there was a cartoon called Steven Universe that approached very adult concepts like coping with death and loss, how it feels to grow up in a single parent household, blended families and dealing with generational trauma. And it did this so elegantly, but it still looked like a kids show that talked about very broad topics that are often heavy. The show didn’t talk down to its viewers and it didn’t try to confuse them or try to be profound, it just talked. One of the biggest strengths of design is knowing what you are trying to say before you say it. That really got me into game design. It was an avenue for people to feel connected to the narratives being told and be able to examine their own experiences. I thought then, why not try it with grief and loss? My original master’s thesis was looking into how people cope with specific traumas like anxiety or things like that. This led me to looking into games that help people mitigate feelings after facing traumas. I still do hope that my work helps others who have had similar traumatic experiences.

Is there a specific audience for your art?

I think I wanted to make art for a younger me. A younger me is someone who is trying to navigate being Hispanic and American. I always wondered if it was better to abandon your culture so that you didn’t have to keep going back and forth on your identity. When I saw the film Coco, it made me realize I needed to see parts of my own identity displayed in a big sense and I realized that is something I need to put in my work.

You talk a lot about navigating your identity as a Mexican and American, how are you navigating that in Columbus?

I feel more like myself here. In El Paso, I was seen as not Mexican enough because of how I talk. This gives you a complex about whether or not you are enough. But in Columbus I feel like those aspects of my identity are a little more validated.

Can you talk a little more about your video game Triste?

This story was about my own personal loss. Before I had come up here, I lost someone very special to me. But I couldn’t access that grief, there was a lot of pain and I just walked with it for a long time. Triste was an experimentation of figuring out how to deal with it another way. Where you are a person going into the underworld to bring someone back, but ultimately can’t. You revel in the memories until you feel them with you again, but differently. It got me thinking about my other games. In this one, you use things like flower petals and conchas to heal yourself. This reminded me of seeing an ofrenda as a kid. It helped me realize that things that remind you of someone you lost helps you heal yourself. Looking back is the thing that helps you let them go. It makes it easier to understand that they are not gone from your life, but they are in a new home. I love the concept of Día de los Muertos and the Mexican underworld because it is so much kinder of a story than how I grew up learning about death.

Has this helped you with your mourning?

Because of COVID, I had to deal with this a lot. One of my uncles was battling cancer and passed while we were in lock down, and I had another uncle who contracted Covid and passed. And before I got to Columbus my best friend in the whole world was in an accident and passed. I began investigating different ways of coping, specifically Mexican afterlife myths and how it is to grieve as a Hispanic person, opposed to how it is to grieve as an American person. A lot of what I was taught was that you have to let go and that the person no longer exists. That they are in a better place, but that felt so dissatisfying to me. Growing up when my mom was stressed sometimes, she would smell cigarette smoke. She would say that was her mother because nobody in the house ever smokes. That felt like how I want to grieve. I want to know that if my friends still wanted to visit me, they could. But as an American, hearing all these stories made me feel like I was crazy. But last year, I did an ofrenda and I got to feel what it meant to miss someone differently. It felt like I was coping in another language and I’m pretty sure I didn’t do it well. Growing up as a male, there is also the context that you are not allowed to cry. But I remember that my dad cried at my grandmother’s funeral. I think that memory told me you can only cry when you are at your worst. I still felt like I was taught to be sad quietly. That is something I have had to unlearn as an adult. I think it’s important that people know you can be sad loudly.

To learn about Raul’s artwork and download the games he has designed, please visit hiswebsite: https://www.rauladrian.com ■