NOW Art sat down with artist Carmina Escobar for a live conversation about her work and collaboration with our Attune project on Instagram (@nowart_la). As a creative art agency, we love to foster conversations around art, sound, design, and more art initiatives around Los Angeles and beyond. 

Below is a transcript of the video: 

Carmen Zella (CZ): Hi Carmina! You look fabulous — look at you! I love it. Sorry about the tech issues earlier. I even put a little ambiance on with a fireplace so we could have a fireside chat. Where are you calling in from?

Carmina Escobar: Thank you! My cat is being a little wild right now — you might hear her in the background. And behind me, that’s actually a print from a film I made. It’s one of my favorite scenes from Bajo la Sombra.

CZ: It’s gorgeous. Are those mirrors covering your whole body in that image?

Carmina Escobar: Yes, it’s a full mirror costume. And no, I’m not holding a lightsaber — that’s just my reading lamp!

CZ: It totally looks like a lightsaber. I love it. Okay — tell me everything. How are you doing?

Carmina Escobar: I’m good. I have some exciting news I can’t share quite yet, but things are moving. I’m also working on a project coming up in February with The Industry’s lab.

CZ: That’s fantastic. Let’s dive in. I want to introduce you to our audience — many followers at NOW Art already know your work, and your reputation definitely precedes you. I was just talking about you with Arcia Hack from Crystal Stone at a party last night.

The purpose of this conversation is to share more about you, your practice, and your involvement with NXT Art’s project Attune. So let’s start with the basics: How would you describe yourself and your artistic practice?

Carmina Escobar: I describe myself as an interdisciplinary artist whose primary instrument is the voice. Through the voice I understand the world and my own practice. It’s a physical experience that expands into the ether through sound — something relational, something that moves emotions and affects. I’ve worked with the voice for about twenty-five years now.

CZ: You look so young! You must have started when you were one.

Carmina Escobar: (laughs) I wish! I’m 44. I actually started late — around 18 — and I wasn’t naturally gifted with technique. I met an important person in my life, Fernando Vigueras, an incredible musician from Mexico City. Through him, I entered the world of music almost by accident. There was a university strike happening at the time, and while visiting the Institute of Fine Arts, I somehow got accepted. I had a flexible voice, but no ease, no natural talent. In Mexico you find extraordinary voices everywhere — sopranos, tenors — but I had to build mine from the inside out. Before that, I wanted to be a scientist. I studied biology. I was fascinated by the natural world, by aesthetics in science—the microscope, the creative process of forming hypotheses. Growing up in Mexico City, a huge cement landscape, nature felt like “the other,” something separate. That curiosity shaped everything for me. While studying music, I felt alienated because we were learning European classical traditions. I was curious about other possibilities — spectralism, serialism, sound art. Fernando and I had a duo exploring experimental sound, using pedals and electronics to transform my voice.

CZ: Do you have recordings from that time?

Carmina Escobar: A few — mostly from a bit later. In the very beginning, we performed Lorca poems with improvisation. We didn’t have money, so we performed on buses or in the subway, and later in small cultural centers. That was the real start — not the school.

CZ: Looking at your work from then to now, do you feel like there’s been a big shift, or is there a continuous thread?

Carmina Escobar: It’s both. I’ve gone through improvisation, contemporary music, many frameworks — but in the last few years, I’ve returned to the original ethos: nature, affect, embodied resonance.

CZ: Why do you think that is?

Carmina Escobar: There’s an inner drive — intuition, something deep-seated that guides you. You explore outward, learn many things, and then return to the thread that has always been there. Artists often can’t logically explain why they do what they do — but there’s openness to being led, to offering something the public actually needs. In my case, it’s about being a vessel. When I connect with my instrument, it’s not about ego. It’s about giving something, being vulnerable, facilitating something larger than myself. That’s also how I understand intuition: an ancestral form of knowledge, passed through us from our lineage.

CZ: When you create a live performance, especially something like Attune, do you begin with structure, intention, poetry, or something else?

Carmina Escobar: I start with context — what world am I entering? For Attune, the foundation is the idea of connection through sound: invisible waves, energy passing between bodies and across the city. I  research, gather symbolic and poetic threads, and think scientifically as well. The seed is this sense of a sonic rhizome — like a mycelial network — expanding through the land, connecting us.

CZ: Final big question: What is the role and importance of the artist today?

Carmina Escobar: It’s complex, because art often operates in symbolic realms rather than direct material impact, like medicine. The effects can feel imperceptible. But artists create different worlds, perspectives, and ways of seeing our reality. They help us confront existential questions as a society. Artists generate symbols — sonic, visual, kinetic — that help us situate ourselves beyond the material world. Their role is vital. The challenge is the commodification of everything, including art. Yet even in Western society, art still carries a shamanistic quality. It connects us to something intangible but essential — it allows us to move through time, to evolve as a species. Art is a form of alchemy.

CZ: The way you translate energy from individuals in a room and shape it into a shared experience is extraordinary. We’re thrilled to have you participate in Attune. Your presence feels like a mycelial network reaching through LA County.

Carmina Escobar: Thank you. I’m grateful to be part of it. I live for these kinds of interactions with the world.

CZ: Thank you so much for joining us on this rainy November day. We appreciate you.

Carmina Escobar: Thank you. Bye!