SUAVE MAGAZINE — interview

with SANTIAGO MARTÍNEZ ALBERÚ by ANA VALESCO

^{It’s nighttime and Santiago and I sit on the couch of my apartment in Roma Sur, where, with the press of a recording button, the conversation goes abruptly from friend intimacies to talk about work and collaborations. Santiago Martínez Alberú is a designer whose interest and specialization in editorial and publication work led him to found Suave — a print magazine that represents art and culture with a pristine viewpoint and an inviting ethos. The level of taste and empathy reflected in Suave is no surprise as they are intrinsic parts of Santiago as well — an artist whose viewpoint is broad enough to understand the value of the Criterion Channel as well as of the Bravo universe. Santiago and I have had many conversations about life and work throughout the years, this is the first time we recorded and shared it. Suffice to say this conversation has been edited for length.}

^{text —ANA VALESCO, mexico city. portraits —KEEGAN KEENE, paris}

^{originally published on BESO MAG + secret backstory here}

ANA VELASCO — We’ve been friends for many years, but I was thinking earlier before you got here. I feel like there are some parts of your story that I don’t know.

SANTIAGO MARTÍNEZ ALBERÚ — Well, I grew up in Pachuca, about an hour from here. Growing up, I always somehow knew I wouldn’t live there. I wanted something more for myself, whatever that was. In high school I started seeing graphic design, and then a friend told me about a school in Mexico City, where I ended up studying visual communication, specifically graphic design applied to editorial and communication fields. And it was funny, because in my first design classes they would show us these very geeky things, the rules for paragraphs or spacing between letters, and I realized: these are things I had been noticing my whole life. When I was little I would be reading a book and be like, ‘This is wrong — these two words are too close.’ I loved designing presentations for school. When I got to university I was like, wow, this is what I’ve been doing my whole life.

ANA VELASCO — I definitely see that in you as a person. You’re so informed. I’ve met a lot of designers and there is something very particular about your work — knowing how much you love all these aspects of culture, music, books, film — it feels like a different influence than just graphic-ness.

SANTIAGO MARTÍNEZ ALBERÚ — I don’t think it’s a bad thing, but a lot of graphic designers are very much conocedores. Very knowledgeable about who’s doing what and where. I know the designers I like, but I don’t see graphic design as a field by itself because it connects to so many others. My references are not, for example, the logo of whatever brand. When I was studying, the school where I trained taught us a lot of Swiss design, brought back by and passed on by Mexicans who had studied in Basel. When I started my own work, I was very worried about how it would look in the context of European or American firms. I would compare it a lot to that. And then at some point I just let go. I was like: my references are that, but they’re also all the messiness that Mexico has, in a good way. It’s all these layers. So I stopped trying to position my work within a certain aesthetic and started letting the influences come by themselves. Translating from the gut, more than from the head.

ANA VELASCO — I feel like there’s a fluidity in it. Your work is very precise, but it’s not aspiring for perfection. It doesn’t eliminate the human touch.

SANTIAGO MARTÍNEZ ALBERÚ — Yeah, I like that layering. It’s not messiness exactly, but it’s complex, which is the way projects usually are. What I like is trying to understand the client and what they need, what they want.

ANA VELASCO — How would you describe your work in three words?

SANTIAGO MARTÍNEZ ALBERÚ — Heartfelt is one. Layered. And hermoso (beautiful). I try for things to be beautiful. I went to a Barragán exhibit the other day and they had his entire acceptance speech for the Pritzker on the wall. He talks about the importance of looking for beauty, and how critics have removed the word from their vocabulary. But he felt it was what people should strive for. I feel very connected to that.

ANA VELASCO — I agree. I think beauty, when it doesn’t stay in the superficial, is a real North Star. It makes your experience in life more profound, your connection to yourself, to your decisions, to other people. And I think when you strip people of beauty, you strip them of dreaming, of dignity, of aspiration.

SANTIAGO MARTÍNEZ ALBERÚ — Exactly. I use the word hermoso a lot when I see things that I like. Sometimes I’m like, I should say something more profound, more intellectual. But to me, when I say something is hermoso, I mean I see light and God in it. I see the connection to the person. That’s what beauty means to me — more than something plastic.

ANA VELASCO — I agree. And you really represent that. Obviously there’s this big leap you’ve made as a tangent of your work as a designer — which is Suave. What made you want to start an editorial, especially in this climate?

SANTIAGO MARTÍNEZ ALBERÚ — I was a little angry that there wasn’t — in my opinion — a good magazine in Mexico. I had these references I loved: Buffalo Zine, Marfa Journal, Re-edition, Acne Paper. All these European magazines I would see in school and feel so connected to but couldn’t find here. Then I was on a plane back from New York with those three magazines and I was like, well, I should make it myself.

ANA VELASCO — I wanted to talk about being in the first issue, because my poem in it is called ‘How To Be Alone By Yourself in Private,’ which is a title I probably like more than the poem, still.

SANTIAGO MARTÍNEZ ALBERÚ — I love the poem. We weren’t really friends at that moment — we had met once through mutual friends. But I loved how you write.

ANA VELASCO — I remember you told me you were starting an editorial and I was very excited because I had grown up a huge fan of magazines and editorials — it was my dream to work in editorials, which I was able to do before the industry crashed. So I was excited. And knowing your taste, even if we weren’t that close — I really admired your perspective and your eye. And it felt like a very loose brief.

SANTIAGO MARTÍNEZ ALBERÚ — It’s always loose.

ANA VELASCO — Which was very exciting and very nerve-wracking, because there aren’t so many opportunities — especially a few years ago — where someone invites you to just play. I felt very trusted. Very accepted, invited into something very special. I feel really proud of being in this work, and in a couple of the other Suaves. It really comes across that you love artists, you know?

SANTIAGO MARTÍNEZ ALBERÚ — Thank you. When I start an issue, it’s always a little vague. What I always see is that everyone ends up thinking about similar things. So I try to guide it in a very subtle way, and then once the issue starts forming, I begin seeing all these connections between the contents. The whole first issue ended up being about the individual — everyone was looking into themselves, thinking about their place in the world, their connection to loneliness. Even the only interview in the issue is an artist interviewing himself. It came through by itself. And it’s funny because it was even hard for me to see myself as an editor, because I didn’t study that. My name is super tiny on it — ‘edited, printer, designed by’ — all very small. Even though it looks like a finished product, I felt like, I don’t know how I did this.

ANA VELASCO — I think that’s what it was though — a very safe place to play, including for you. And to gain this confidence, because it is a very serious thing that you created. Very professional, very beautiful. An incredible collection of art. And I think that maybe a lot of people who you asked to contribute hadn’t really been asked from a place of — I don’t know — taking themselves seriously. That’s how I felt. And you’re saying that for yourself as well, as an editor.

SANTIAGO MARTÍNEZ ALBERÚ — Yeah. I also wanted, from the beginning, to show the work of people that — and it’s connected to something we were chismeando about earlier — who are maybe not in the main scene of Mexico City, the echelon you would see in Purple when they do something about Mexico, or those profiles of the “cool” Mexico City people you “need” to know about. I love all those people, many of my friends are there, it’s not a top-down thing. But I also wanted to show it from the inside. And to show the connection between art, fashion, and photography that Mexico has — working with the legacy of fine arts photography here and bringing fashion into that. Some other magazines are doing that now, but at that moment, that was what I wanted to show.

ANA VALESCO — And there is also this invitation of queerness that hadn’t been shown from a place of artistry and beauty and respect.

SANTIAGO MARTÍNEZ ALBERÚ — Yeah. After the first or second issue, people would say, ‘Oh, the queer magazine.’ And I was like, I don’t see it as that. I never wanted it to be just that. But every issue is about what I’m learning at the moment, or something I feel I need to learn. The first one had a lot to do with my own queerness, my confrontation with gay aesthetics — putting it out there. There’s always a gay thing in Suave, which is important because I’m gay and it’s going to come by itself. But even the contents that aren’t queer in an obvious sense have this very open-ended queerness to them. Nothing is questioning why this thing is next to that, or why this photographer is followed by this poem that has nothing to do with it. It has the freedom — that queerness has — to confront how things should be made.

ANA VALESCO — And a real representation of the Mexico that a lot of people do experience, that isn’t the socialite parts of this culture. So, Issue Two — how long afterwards was that?

SANTIAGO MARTÍNEZ ALBERÚ — For Issue Two I did this thing — you were in it, you’ll remember — where we had a website with one piece of content on the home page at a time. A video, a poem, a text. People wouldn’t know how long it would be up. And then it came down, and it was down forever. I’ve always been interested in how you can put attention on just one thing at a time, because right now that’s nearly impossible. If you see something online, you know it’ll be there forever, so maybe you don’t finish the article or you don’t watch the video. The magazine is the same — you flip through it and put it on the shelf because you know you have it forever. I was thinking about how you can connect to something and then let it go. But it was a bigger issue — we were working more with brands. We had this cover with Laura Bozzo.

ANA VALESCO — Which was a huge moment.

SANTIAGO MARTÍNEZ ALBERÚ — A huge moment. And literally the moment the magazine came out, she had to go into hiding because Interpol was looking for her.

ANA VALESCO — For anyone reading — Laura Bozzo is a very, very famous figure. The Wendy Williams of Latin America.

SANTIAGO MARTÍNEZ ALBERÚ — The Wendy Williams of Latin America wearing Demna’s Balenciaga. It was the most fabulous shoot. It was also where I met Rogelio Burgos, who is now the fashion director of the magazine. We drove to Acapulco with trunks full of clothes, shot there in two days in her house. It was the most incredible but also most dramatic experience — and I didn’t really get to enjoy it, which is why I always say my goal on this new issue is to enjoy the process. I was so nervous the whole time. What if the light falls? Put all the photos in the drive in case something happens. I wish I would have enjoyed it more. But the experience was incredible.

ANA VALESCO — The stakes were higher. Did you still feel like an imposter?

SANTIAGO MARTÍNEZ ALBERÚ — A little less. But I was going through a breakup, so it was very sad when I was printing that issue. I thought maybe it would explode more — we had the Laura photos. But they were so beautiful that it became impossible for the work to be trivialized or memefied. And I realized: that’s not what Suave does. Even with three celebrities on the cover of Issue Five, it has never gone viral. And I think it’s because of how grounded it is. That’s maintained a growth that is different from what brands would expect of a magazine they might fund, but it’s because we’re striving for something else.

ANA VALESCO — I think the recontextualization is the most palpable thing. These huge figures, but you’re seeing them grounded. There’s a seriousness — not self-seriousness — but something where you can’t laugh at it.

SANTIAGO MARTÍNEZ ALBERÚ — To me, featuring those people is also talking about people who have shaped Mexican and Latin American culture. They’re important. They have this place that is untouchable and respectful, and to me they are as important and as highbrow, if you will, as the fine artist we commission or the fashion story we shoot with an emerging designer. In Mexico, I feel like that’s how we see things. Everything is in the same field.

ANA VALESCO — I loved working on that edition. And I remember — my mom was in the hospital that week, and you invited me and I switched from sleeping at the hospital to coming to play, and it was so therapeutic. That’s what Suave has always created: a space for people to express themselves, a place of release. Why did you change the format to newspaper for the last issue?

SANTIAGO MARTÍNEZ ALBERÚ — After Issue Five, I realized a lot of people weren’t really reading the magazine. I do the same — I buy magazines I love and I flip through them and put them on the shelf. I wanted to expand out of our same circle of readership, also out of the magazine’s format and size. So I decided to do a newspaper. I wanted it to cost what a newspaper costs, which is 10 pesos — at least that’s what it cost when I was little. Some people didn’t like that decision. But to me it was about two things: being honest to the format as a designer, and being honest to something I felt as a child, which was this wonder that something that costs so little could have so much inside. I felt people would want to look at every page.

ANA VALESCO — And you’re meeting the moment. People want to reclaim their time, their attention, their beauty, the way they feel about themselves. People want to read. Even if we’ve forgotten how to.

SANTIAGO MARTÍNEZ ALBERÚ — Yeah, and I want to keep exploring these notions of time and attention — how you can demand it. Which might sound a little presumptuous, like, I want you to spend time looking at this. But that’s what I’m interested in.

ANA VALESCO — The physical experience is so different too. It’s big — you have to put it on a table.

SANTIAGO MARTÍNEZ ALBERÚ — It has 200 pages. It was monstrous to do. I got sick making it. Printing it sounds romantic — a whole week at the printers — but it was a lot of energy. And there were a lot of no’s from brands, who are getting more and more used to magazines catering to them. It’s hard for PRs in Mexico to understand a magazine that isn’t selling influencers. I was really angry when I finished that issue. What do I need to do to have this magazine and sell it for 10 pesos?

But then we printed 10,000 of them. We distributed in Sanborns and in kiosks across Mexico City. And it was really nice for people — kids at the book fair where I gave a talk last year would come and say, “I always wanted one and couldn’t buy one until now”. That meant something. Because the truth is, we live in Mexico. Selling a magazine for 800 pesos is not an accessible point for a lot of people. It was nice to be able to show that. Beauty — again that word — but to me, that’s what it was.

ANA VALESCO — I think you were reclaiming it. The launch event was so lovely — people sitting on the floor reading it together, by themselves. It felt spiritually connected to the essence of why you started it. And now you’re going again — what made you come back to it?

SANTIAGO MARTÍNEZ ALBERÚ — When I finished the last one, I wrote in the editor’s note that it might not happen again. I even talked about it in therapy. I got a little out of myself on that issue — I started feeling like a secretary for contents sometimes. Then I went to Paris for three months because I needed a disconnect from Mexico City after 12 years, which is where I met Willa. And because that’s where Rogelio is and where the brands that have helped us are. I wanted to see the industry there — and I guess, if I’m being appreciated somewhere, I just wanted to be there.

Being there, talking to Rogelio, we started talking about how we wanted to do it differently. There was this moment where all the fear I had been carrying — the nervousness, the pressure — just lifted. I thought: this might be the last one, so let’s just do it our way. And I felt very free by that idea.

ANA VALESCO — That’s exciting. You inspire me a lot. Suave inspires me a lot. The work you make — not just in Suave — inspires me a lot.

SANTIAGO MARTÍNEZ ALBERÚ — Thank you. You know, you are the person who has been featured the most in Suave. One of my rules when I started was not to repeat collaborators — I wanted to push myself to find new people every issue, because what I saw about magazines in Mexico, and in general, is that they bring back the same photographers again and again. But with you I’ve made that exception. And not for the last time.