Ricardo Bouyett
Ricardo Bouyett isn’t a big fan of the linear photography process. That doesn’t mean he’ll turn down family clients looking for a nice, “normal” photo session. “It’s not really what fulfills me,” he said. The true portfolio of Bouyett incorporates color, movement, and effects that highlight the light and dark nature of being a human. He especially captures this in his writing, which often becomes the source material for his short films. His work mirrors his external and internal journey through life, as well as his relationships with others. That’s the true essence of his creativity and spirituality.
Story by Sam Rakestraw
Visuals courtesy of Ricardo Bouyett
What are the kind of projects that fulfill you?
I would say work that will challenge me to think more critically about how empathy works and the ability to relate to others emotionally. If you look at my work in 2014 to 2017, I talk about my experiences with rape—like how I recovered from it, what I did with the trauma, and how I was going to internalize that. I talk a lot about toxic masculinity and toxic peers and relationships and all that, and I also have to own up to my own stuff. So, what fulfills me is when I can actually learn something and grow with the projects. I’ll write my experience out and help someone find some emotional satisfaction in viewing the work.
How is this most clearly described? In other words, what makes the essential Ricardo Bouyett?
Color and always movement. I always incorporate dancing, because dancing to me is a spiritual practice. I’ll dance with my friends and I’ll feel some kind of spirituality, so I include that in my work.
How do you capture spirituality on film?
For me, the spirituality of the work comes from making it. Then, when I release it and people come to view it, the spiritual practice is in the viewing and consuming. For example, in a lot of Sugarcane, you see the still images of people in these situations. You see them very, very poised and in very strong, stoic positions, but in clothing or colors that are very soft. I play a lot with softness and vulnerability. It’s “how can I juxtapose the duality of being human and all the while, try to tell my story?” I like to play with a lot of strength and weakness, allowing it to be this kind of circular thing. I feel like a lot of things that make us human are cyclical.
So, it's very symbiotic. You can't have an ultimate depressive darkness within you, if you don't have an ultimate light or vice versa. So, it's like you go through these different stages in your life where you kind of have these moments that break you, find you. It's really about the choices you make with those moments that tend to pull you closer together.
What are those experiences? Share as much as you want.
When I was in college, I was raped in 2014, and I was struggling. It wasn’t anyone at Columbia, but it was at a Columbia party. They were trying to console me and invite me back to their place. Next thing I know—. After that, I was doing these lighting classes, and I decided to start doing real writing about my experience and trying to make sense of it through photos. So, that's how I got into writing poetry more, combining it with my photo work, and actually starting to write little short videos in my studio class—I would experiment with this Plexiglas that I put in front of my camera and then have an actor perform movement. That helped me kind of start kind of being more okay with writing about it and showing it in my work. And then it was my senior year of college, and I decided to be more vocal about it.
I was in three shooting classes, which was frowned upon. The amount of workload you got will burn you out, but I did it anyway. So, I focused more on finding out what I wanted to talk about regarding what I went through. And [I didn’t find that] until after graduating. For graduation, I made this short film series called Lionheart. I had to raise money for it and I was able to do so but then it was denied for showing at our senior exhibition. My friend Kelly offered to host a screening party for it at her place and we did that instead. So, I ended up creating this series that would kind of help me realize, “Ok, what do I want to talk about? What about this whole recovery from rape and mental health issues and all that?” So each entry in that series touched on a facet of trauma, stagnancy, and healing to a degree.
And it was in 2016, when I worked on this collective called, Oh Bouy. It’s a little play on my last name where I’m talking very openly through poetry, photo and video about my relationship with men, what I think about rape culture as a whole, how I want accountability for men, and my want for men to be involved in this conversation. They need to realize, “we need to hold each other accountable too.”
You know, I was more focused on the LGBT context, because I’ve never seen gay people have this conversation. Between 2016 and 2017, my focus was really on Oh Bouy; I created five volumes up to this day each that felt like a progress update on my own recovery. And from there, when I moved back to the city in Chicago in 2017, I started to focus more on films. I was working at an H&M call center, and between working 40 hours a week there, I was directing three new films of mine.
I realized I was trying to hide from the whole recovery process instead of actually trying to go to therapy. So, I was kind of becoming a hypocrite in the fact that I was making work about these experiences and the need to heal them and to have more solutions, but not really for doing any of that for myself. I moved back to the suburbs of Aurora to actually focus on therapy and to get back to a more stable mindset. I was in the process of making the last volume for Oh Bouy called Sugarcane. There, we’re finally talking about self-love and getting to that point where I finally realized that what I really want to talk about is the relationship of the self. How we connect, relate, and bridge between ourselves and each other through empathy. I also really wanted to talk more about having that discussion of how we raise our kids, especially in Puerto Rican households or other Latino households, can condition you into believing or not believing things about mental health, sexuality, and spirituality. I want to combat the tradition that’s been established of emotional repression and offer up a new way of thinking and relating to others through vulnerability and healthy emotional expression.
Writing came to you at a time of trauma. How did it evolve overtime? Was it like you couldn’t speak so this was your new way of communicating, or was it easy to express yourself and it just had to be on paper?
When I moved back with my family, I knew I needed to write more because I couldn't talk to them about it initially. I couldn’t talk about how one of their kids got raped—I don't know how to talk to them about that. I got raped back in 2014, and my grandma just passed away. It was my first experience with grieving the loss of a family member. So there was a lot of trauma tacked on. In January of that year was the rape. In March, during spring break, a friend came over to try to console me, and his idea of consoling me was sexually assaulting me in my house and then disappearing from my life. After that, my grandmother died. I was in Puerto Rico for her funeral. Everything hit me really hard and I didn’t know how to talk to anybody about it, so I turned to writing.
My writing was very abstract and had no real cohesion to it, but I kept writing anyway. And then I came back to Aurora that summer, just to be around people since I was living in a studio by myself. In 2012, I came out to them after my first pride. They love me, but they weren't that open-minded or accepting back then. Nowadays they’re more than supportive and respectful as any Catholic Latino parent can be about the matter.
What was “back then?” How has your relationship with them changed?
Our relationship has gotten better. I can't talk much about anything related to that around them, but I can talk a little bit with my mother, my dad not so much, but he loves me and supports me in his way. I've come to a point where I accept that, because you know your parents are your parents; you can't change them. You can only love them for who they are the same way you want them to love you for who you are. At the time, I didn't want to talk to them about it, because I just knew what they’re views on it were. My mom was really intuitive, so she knew something was up. So, finally, when I talked to her. She knew, and it was easier to write about.
Those abstract ideas come from your emotions and process that you can’t really put to words.
Yeah, exactly. Sometimes when I'm walking around, I'll get an idea or inspiration and just jot it down my Notes app. But before that, it was just so hard to concentrate on actually writing—it had to be an emotional response. And then, as the years went on, I got more comfortable expressing my experience and talking about it. You know, Oh Bouy has tremendously helped me with being able to discuss in a direct way.
This feature length screenplay you’re working on now, is it dialogue or continuing to write in prose?
All my new work is very dialogue heavy. I’m trying to grow from that. So, I’m trying to get into more narrative driven work with the screenplay I’m currently workshopping. It very much examines the spiritual awakening I went through in my relationship with my ex and even after. For a time it felt like a twin flame relationship. Lesson-heavy. So, I thought, “let me write about twin flame relationships.”
What’s a twin flame relationship?
Essentially it’s this divine union between two people where the emotional bond is so intense that it kind of feels like you already know them. It's an instant connection that flows and it can be scary. There's always a runner and a chaser at some point; you're so psychically linked, and you mirror each other's darkness and lightness. It can get to be too much if you don’t address your needs and shortcomings, especially for the one person that's not as spiritually inclined. Then they'll end up running away from you in a period where you're chasing but they’re still running. It comes to a point, and then you're in separation.
So that's pretty much that concept, whether or not I am fully 100% convinced that that's a real thing—it’s beyond me at this point—I just trusted what I felt. For a long time, I’d always feel this connection with him, even long after we stopped talking. I could feel his energies and his emotions and his sadness, his depression, and I'm like, “What the hell is going on?” So I would feel things and somehow know when things are going wrong in his life, I’d checkup on him, and he would tell me exactly what I had already experienced in a dream or a thought that came to mind during the day. I just, I don't know, it just felt weird and I started to write about it with this screenplay called Strawberry Boys.
I pretty much go over the first half of the relationship which is the union prior, and there's a separation where they're not together but they see and visit each other in these dreams that they have and they can’t explain whether or not the dreams are actually real. But they’re happening; they're having these emotional conversations they otherwise can't have in person, because one of them just can't handle it and the other person is too scared to approach them. And so, the whole film is just the journey of them meeting in this place and having to face their truth within themselves and their connection. It's honestly a story about true unconditional love and how it can shift and form you into someone you didn’t think you’d ever be or make choices you never knew you could make.
Would you say that you were a runner or chaser?
I was definitely a chaser. I wanted answers. I wanted to understand. I'm a classic Gemini; I need to understand the logic behind something; I need to understand. How can you say you love a person, but then run away from them? How can you say you care about someone, that they matter to you but abandon them every chance you can?
He called me one night when his anxiety was triggering his suicidal ideation, and I was there for him because I didn’t want him to be in that headspace alone. I dealt with that earlier in my college years and growing up. So I know what that feels like. If you clearly want me to be there, I’m definitely there—but I needed someone to be there for me too, for my PTSD episodes. It was unfair, and I think I reacted more than I thought. I could’ve changed how I acted, probably. But we all do things that we don’t realize, because we're at that point in time. I’m only human and that relationship definitely instilled that in me. I always held myself up to impossible standards and that journey with him helped me ease those expectations. I think what I have to thank most for that experience is that it helped me realize where I needed to grow, what emotional and mental wounds I needed to heal, and what I need to do to become a better person. Not that I was bad, but I was unfair with a lot of people in my life in the way I expected so much from them instead of accepting them for who they were. I used to think “If I am able to do and think this way so can they”, and that is such a dangerous mindset. My work really has helped me become a better person, and I’m thankful for that.
