Art, Islands & Intuition: A Conversation with Joze Zyberchema

Originally trained in biology, Joze Zyberchema gradually moved toward photography, audiovisual work, and cultural projects. Based in Madeira since 2009, he became closely connected to the island’s artistic scene through projects such as Arte de Portas Abertas, reflecting on culture, ecology, public space, and the importance of keeping places alive through people, not only tourism.

How has your work changed in the last 3–5 years?

Every five or seven years, you have to turn around everything you do.

Moving from Madrid to Madeira allowed him to live closer to nature and develop another rhythm.

Today his work is strongly connected to photography, image, and intuition.

“I work a lot through intuition,” he explains.

For him, artistic work does not always need verbal explanation: “The important thing is to keep doing things.”

At the same time, he remains cautious about artificial intelligence in creative fields: “Using technology to replace people’s creativity does not convince me.”

What was the biggest challenge after the pandemic?

Joze says the pandemic mainly revealed how technology can both connect and isolate people. “Used well, a phone is a wonder,” he says, but when people are physically together while communicating only through screens, “something is failing.”

He also reflects on the loss of privacy and direct human connection: “Everything that is on the internet is not private.”

Still, he believes people continued finding ways to create and communicate despite isolation and closed cultural spaces.

How do you understand the role of culture in relation to the climate crisis?

Joze sees culture as “a very important weapon to show what is happening, what we are doing to nature.”

For him, art can transform abstract ecological problems into emotional and physical experiences. He recalls an installation about global wildfires using real-time maps, red graphics, and oppressive sound atmospheres to make viewers feel the scale of destruction.

He also points to the hidden ecological cost behind everyday technologies and materials. At the same time, he highlights artists working with recycled materials, natural pigments, earth, stones, and plants as examples of alternative creative practices.

“Art generally has to mark important things; it has to make you react, for better or for worse.”

Where does the responsibility of cultural institutions end?

Joze believes institutions should support culture seriously and thoughtfully. Art may not immediately generate money, but it creates well-being:

“If you generate well-being in the people who see art, those people will work better.”

He also insists that artists should learn not only theory, but how to sustain their practice professionally. “More than anything, people have to be taught how to earn money.”

What in your work is already “sustainable”, even if you don’t call it that?

For Joze, sustainability means adapting, improvising, and continuing to create with available resources.

Speaking about Arte de Portas Abertas, he explains how a neglected street in Funchal was transformed through public art with minimal resources: “With 7,000 euros, all this was changed.”

He also describes his photography project Último Jardín. Unable to secure funding for the large exhibition he imagined, he instead used simple tools — a computer, thousands of images, a printer, and A4 paper. “I did not do what I wanted, but I did something of what I wanted.”

“There are always ways to do things without so much money.”

What decisions are made automatically, without reflection?

Joze says many artistic decisions emerge through intuition rather than overthinking. “I do not reason things too much,” he explains. “It is more about seeing what I feel.”

“I do not photograph what I see; I photograph what I feel.”

For him, photography is about transmitting atmosphere, emotion, and presence rather than simply documenting reality.

What is the biggest obstacle to real change?

He believes humans often destroy rather than collaborate. “We are one of the few animals that kill ourselves,” he says.

Real change, for him, depends on collective work: “We have to function as a team.”

Where do you feel a conflict between ecology and the realities of culture?

“The greatest conflict is in everyday reality: wanting things to happen too quickly.”

Using Arte de Portas Abertas as an example, he describes how cultural regeneration eventually became overtaken by tourism and commercial pressure.

“Life is maintained with people living there, not only with people sitting in restaurants or tourists.”

Are artists ready to take on an educational role?

Joze believes some artists can teach, but not all. Teaching requires the ability to share techniques and processes, not only talent.

At the same time, he says artists who truly love what they do can naturally transmit this passion to others. Education, for him, should encourage curiosity rather than memorization.

Education, for him, should encourage curiosity rather than memorization. “They have to teach you to have the taste for learning.”

What would you really like to learn?

Joze says he wishes he had learned more languages. For him, language is directly connected to communication and human connection.

Still, he believes understanding goes beyond words: there is also

“the language of signs, of looking at “the language of signs, of looking at people.”people.”

What would be useful tomorrow, not in five years?

“When you are in a place, or you go to a place, you should go with good vibes.”

He describes his morning ritual in Santa Cruz — making coffee, looking at the sea and sunrise, listening to birds, feeling the light — as a way of beginning the day differently.