Associação Cultural Videobrasil

Sometimes I feel happy

“Sometimes I feel a pleasurable, macabre happiness, much like Glenn Close cooking the rabbit of Michael Douglas’ daughter.” Miss Tacuarembó, Dani Umpi

Montevideo, June 16, 2007, 3:00 a.m. I just arrived from the Central concert hall, where there has been a party-tribute to the Pachamama, one of the city’s emblematic nightclubs in the past. Dani Umpi appears onstage along with a particular group of people who push the boundaries between pop and kitsch.

Don’t You Want Me, Human League’s 1980s hit, is the song of choice of Dani Umpi, the performer, as the audience stands seduced and waiting. Shortly thereafter, the group Palangano takes the stage, perfect voices, carefully designed grotesque motions, and a state of emotiveness that is contagious, and which is not always present in the Montevidean scene, characterized by sobriety and circumspection, even when it comes to art and pleasure.

Dani stands out for a moment, his body outlined, naturally capricious, as he dedicates the song to his friends and to all those who participated in the Pachamama. Upon seeing him leave the stage, one might think of how improbable it would be to pigeonhole Dani Umpi into one single cliché, because he has the ability to put himself into as many as he wishes, or as many as viewers may fit him into.

The reason for that mobility is far from being the result of chance. It has to do with the fact that the pillar that holds his image and conceptual strategy is erected upon many different fields of production, linked together by zones of contact: melodrama, ambiguity, fiction, and everyday life make room for other possible territories.

These zones are interconnected in a precise manner, and they function as devices loaded up with affectivity and concepts that mobilize the passivity of viewers. 

Alter ego

The work of Daniel Umpiérrez is multinodal and rhizomatous. His positioning within the artistic field denotes different ways of operating within a conceptual strategy that consolidates itself as work in progress. A single reading cannot be made, without taking into account the vessel that connects with another point in the network. 

Nelson Daniel Umpiérrez Núñez was born in Tacuarembó in 1974, and has lived since 1993 in Montevideo, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in advertising and artistic and recreational communication. Parallel to that background, he developed his activity as a visual artist, originally as a member of an artistic action group entitled Movimiento Sexy, and later continuing with his career individually, both as curator (a good example is the Tics exhibition, held at the Cabildo de Montevideo, in 2004) and as art critic, by means of one of his alter egos, the architect Adriana Broadway.

Among the nodes that can be visited, writing is among the highlights. Of his narrative works, the three that were edited by now are: Aún soltera (2003, Ediciones de Eloisa Cartonera, Buenos Aires), Miss Tacuarembó (2004, Interzona, Buenos Aires), and Sólo te quiero como amigo (2006, Interzona, Buenos Aires).

His literature proposes to visit microworlds using a direct technique that reduces distance from the reader, in a style similar to that of television soap operas, which has led him to be compared to Manuel Puig, the renowned writer of Kiss of the Spider Woman, among other works. He also made his poetry known in editions published by the Buenos Aires gallery Belleza y Felicidad.

In his activity as a singer, he has been carving out the profile of a unique performer for himself. His mise en scène and choice of songs give rise, since the album Perfecto, to unusual, seductive atmospheres that run the gamut from lyrical singing to bossa nova, including international pop and folklore music.

Nelson Daniel Umpiérrez Nuñez has gradually created Dani Umpi: visual artist, singer, writer, and performer; the architect Adriana Broadway, art critic and curator; and Nelson Nilson, a politically correct architecture student. All are part of and interpreters in this machinery of creation that could be regarded as a big TV soap opera.

All of these aspects are featured in the videos selected for the FF>>Dossier—Ilarié, Compraré, Try to Remember, No hay cómplices, Zona urbana, and Wonderland—, as these works present the facet of the performer who selects music and atmosphere with sharpness, bringing us close to universes and situations that move to the rhythm of the stories escaping from a TV set.

Everyday

In Ilarié, Dani Umpi intervenes in the Juan Manuel Blanes Museum, a premise destined to the fine arts containing one of Uruguay’s most important collections. On the museum’s walls, modernity is a pathway to a not so distant past. The artist appropriates himself of the museum premises with a certain irreverence, perhaps disrupting the sacred silence that the museum proposes. This becomes evident not just from the music of Xuxa, but also from his own garments, a striking palette of strong orange that cuts the axes imposed by the premise.

The video proposes a double tour of a place that establishes, in a symbolic manner, a nonlinear relation between artist, viewer, and museum space. The camera creates continuity between artist (who intercepts the sight) and historic work. The mise en scène is anachronistic; the motions, the voice, and the appropriation of space, with a certain amount of caprice, reveal part of what the artist would develop in years to come.

Fictional

Compraré and Try to Remember are two works that share friction zones between them. In the first video, the scene takes place in the back of a car, as the singer and star system member rides around in a convertible, accompanied by two ladies as he sings José Luis Perales’ ballad song. The ride does not pass by a wide avenue of a big city, the song has no glamour, and the ladies do not fit into the expected prototype. Nevertheless, fiction unwinds in a full, credible way, as in a cult road movie. 

In the second video, the artist reiterates his arrival at a space in which the setting seems to contemplate the absurd. The reason is validated in waiting for friends at a surprise party, as they salute him with balloons, serpentines, and a birthday cake. The melody repeats itself with each scene, interpreted by a new artist. The recipient of the tribute changes his style and his surprise with each sequence. Spontaneity ends up being a stimulus for simulation. It no longer matters how many tributes may be paid, it all points to Deleuzian “difference and repetition,” to being able to indicate and think beyond that which is taken as predictable.

Ambiguous formats

No hay cómplices is almost a music hall work. Umpi moves within a strict register established by the choreography. Everything is symmetrically defined, each character is contained in its own function, and each piece falls into a precise location. The artist puts his body and voice, disclosing a mordacious, sensual personality, at the service of pleasure, or the insanity of love. In this quasi-hysterical game, the fact that the choreography attains formal perfection does not preclude the existence of freshness and seduction.

Zona urbana potentializes the ambiguity of its artistic proposal, since it is a recording of a homonymous show in free-to-air Uruguayan TV. In order to promote his spectacle, Dani Umpi presents, along with musician Adrián Soiza, a performance in which he sings as he slices vegetables. Unexpectedly, he starts to throw the food at the team of journalists at the show. The performance ends up in an all-out battle, until the journalists leave their presumed position of spectators. The video creates all types of questioning: What is the actual performance? What is the role of the artist? What is the role of mass communication media? Undoubtedly, the recording is eloquent, and Dani Umpi emerges as a superhero in a TV series who fights for his universe, using weapons as particular as they are precise.

Melodramatic

Wonderland. Each territory has its own wonders, each sector of intellectual or artistic production too. The rites, the parties, and the award ceremonies to a certain career are, no doubt, a screen on which to produce and in which to be seen. Dani Umpi was nominated to an award ceremony as the young revelation of the year. This leads him to participate in an event held annually in Uruguay.

With glamour on a Montevidean scale, i.e., with circumspection and discretion, the guests arrive at a party. Umpi greets, perambulates, and in his arm he wears Charly García’'s “Say no more” bracelet. He sits at the table, and from then on the border between simulation and truth becomes diluted. As he cheers up the party, with the complicity of many colleagues, the joy that stems from the award granted to the artist starts to get exaggerated. In between euphoria and confusion, the purpose is to celebrate Dani.

The party ends, the young man sits alone at the entranceway staircase of the party hall, without his prize. By recording his own event, the artist intervenes in the public place and in the means of communication. Without abandoning irony, he exposes himself, but most of all, he exposes this setting as a creation, and thus he fictionalizes the growing illusion and disappointment, as in a virtual soap opera.

Gentleman Umpi

Slavoj Zizek calls “virtual imagery” the phenomenological experience that structures our relation with other people and objects, based upon the representation of idealized images that erase elements that would make our experience unbearable or impossible. For example, he mentions that, when we interact with another person, we forget that the other transpires or feels hunger. Dani Umpi exacerbates the virtual imagery until he takes it to the limit. Solemnity gets subverted, drama is converted into spectacle, and happiness is merely another category within the virtual imagery. The freshness with which he escapes this labyrinth allows him to follow the thread of Ariadne while he entertains conversations with Dionysos.

In this scheduled metamorphosis, there are no forewarnings, and the unlikely conditions to which the artist submits us give rise to the creation of a universe that has an imagery of its own, which filters and deactivates the conventional devices for assimilating art. In this territory, Dani Umpi strolls around like a gentleman, distinguished by his particular elegance, between mass consumption culture and the huge capacity for pointing out that the truth (Zizek dixit) can only be arrived at by adopting a subjective, committed, partial stance with regard to artistic creation.

Art critic, curator, art journalist, and visual artist, Jacqueline Lacasa (Montevideo, 1970) assumed in 2007 the direction of the National Museum of Visual Arts of Uruguay. As head of the institution, she is implementing her Museo Líquido project, which includes the creation of a mediatheque, and focus on hosting international artists and exhibitions. In 2006, she coordinated the edition of Palimpsestos: escritos sobre arte contemporáneo uruguayo 1960-2006 - Cuadernos de arte contemporáneo, and attended the meeting of the International Association of Art Critics, in Paris. The holder of a degree in psychology, she is a member of the Uruguayan Association of Art Critics, and of the FAC –Contemporary Art Foundation of Uruguay. As an artist, she participated in the 9th Bienal de La Habana (2006) and in the Mercosur Biennial, in 2005, and she established the newspaper La hija natural de JTG (Joaquín Torres García).

The tragicomic melodrama appears to be the foundation and birthplace for all your creations. Is that right?

Absolutely. This distorted view of reality and feelings provides things with an amazing strength, it allows one to see details in a wider scale, out of orbit. It is the ultimate decontextualization within daily life, an inspired, visual gaze that everyone can have. If, on the one hand, it is artistic, the constant resignification of all things is also a feature of daily life. To me, humor is essential. The act of turning something silly into something extreme has a charm that hallucinates me. I enjoy melodramatic products, whether created conscious or unconsciously. I like the common places they generate, the intense emotions they conjure, the mechanisms they use. Soap opera dialogues, love letters and love songs, Xuxa singing an antidrug song to a girl in a wheelchair. How can something so simple give rise to an experience of the “sublime”? Why does it arouse such emotion? Love pains are a very powerful driving force.

Based on a single work, Dani Umpi Records, you changed not only your career path, but also your very artistic persona, abandoning the name Daniel Umpiérrez to be reborn as character Dani Umpi. Was that also the point of inflection for your sudden twist in the direction of fields such as music and literature?

My experience with institutional art in my country was conclusive. I do not want to make destructive criticism, so I could say that there were beautiful things and pathetic things. The most pathetic is that artistic practice, my activity as a contemporary artist, gave rise to lots of prejudice in me. The fact that everything has to have a statement, an explanation, a reason, has limited me to a great extent. I have always been a dispersive person, with a zapping sensibility. To have a symbolic production that encompasses so many languages (music, literature, art) raises suspiciousness. The medium awards continuity and insistence. Most artists’ careers are built upon the perspective of discursive redundancy. I used to feel that I should define myself through one single language, until I realized that I had no reason for doing so. What is so strange about writing, singing, creating work? To me, it was the most natural thing in the world. That was what I did. The artists who interested me were like that: Yoko Ono, David Byrne, Boom Boom Kid. The key was to find a place from where I could produce. Not a physical place, but rather a mental and social one. When I showed, I felt that I was showing things to people who were not interested in that. I felt that no one was interested in art. I began to operate within that evil logic. I used to attend exhibitions myself, and it all seemed silly, a digression. Fortunately, I exited that state. When I started singing, I noticed that there really were people interested in my stuff, both in the art world, and people who never entered a museum or gallery. I felt a lot of freedom because I created my own space, and did so without taking it away from anyone. I feel as if I am something apart. This allows me to be inside and outside. The paradoxical thing is that, instead of having a dispersive oeuvre, I increasingly gained coherence. Now I realize that I always speak of the same issues.

Under the alter ego Adriana Broadway, you wrote a rather mean review of your own oeuvre, claiming that Dani Umpi creates different theatric views of his own intimacy. Is fictionalized reality easier to digest, and does it attract more interest?

My character Adriana Broadway is very mean to me because she has an academic background. Since I am very prejudiced about these people, I gave her that trait. The reality is far worse than this thing of “creating theatric views of my own intimacy,” because oftentimes there is no intimacy, there is no experience in these issues, I have completely made them up. How can I discuss relationship issues if I haven’t had a boyfriend, or fallen in love in ages? It is not my intimacy recreated, but rather fictionalized, fantasized. It is an idealized view of being in love. For some reason, this appeals to me. You have a charming musical genre, which is sertanejo music. Those rough men, from the countryside, suffering for love and singing in a quasi-falsetto, making such delicate metaphors, telling such dramatic stories. It is much better than the tango. That interests me a lot. I do not know whether it is easier to digest, because these things hurt sometimes, but the fact is, there is something that forces us to listen to those songs. The emotional dimension always attracts interest, and it is always savored. I am convinced that people want stories. That is why self-help books bring so many examples, so many illustrative cases, and they work so well. Not to mention religions and their derivatives.

The mocking character in some of your work echoes and corroborates criticism with regard to contemporary cultural icons and prejudices. To take Xuxa to the Blanes Museum, to combine an essentially Uruguayan singer like Fernando Cabrera with Voyage Voyage, to come out as an out-of-tune singer, it all seems as an attack on concepts such as high and low culture, art and mass culture, good and poor taste. In Brazil, a prominent communicator, Chacrinha, popularized the saying: “I have come to confuse, and not to explain.” Is that also the case with you?

Yes, yes, yes! I love the comparison with Chacrinha. Confusion is of utmost importance because it allows the reintroduction of things. I believe in combining the extremes, in the coexistence of everything with everything (in fact, this is the most natural thing in the world). I am kind of old fashioned, kind of 1990s, kind of Benetton; I think mixing things up is a powerful, healthy thing. There is too much division. I do not criticize the icons; what I do is make a spoof of my own self. That is why I face my imperfections as if they were virtues. When I sing, I wear men’s or women’s clothes indistinctly or, for example, a dress made of rags and real, I mean, real expensive shoes, which I could not afford even with three months’ worth of work. In fact, between high and low culture, I always went for low. But it is a fact that I mix them up.

Your universe and the artistic persona that you have built provide coherence within the rules of paradox. You are a “modern” person who is well liked by old ladies, someone who acknowledges your own sexuality but is criticized by part of the gay community, an iconoclast who reveres images. What is the heart and the ambition behind your investigations and artistic proposals?
See, it is all about tags, places that people put you in. Some people say that I am “modern” or “glamorous.” I know that I am not, but why do people say that? It does not have anything to do precisely with me, but with other mechanisms. Ambiguity is moving, it teases. It also gives you freedom. Why does a homosexual have to act according to a stereotype? What does it mean to be “modern”? Why are iconoclasts revered? Why cannot images be revered? Which images should be revered? These are very relative concepts, and I am surprised that people are not aware of that. I think people need to relax more. To make an effort in order to fit some place is exhausting, and it does not work. Motion is best. Why is it that old ladies cannot go to my concerts? In some rock circles, I feel uncomfortable, I do not understand the codes. With the old ladies, I am perfectly at ease, I love to have tea, to discuss plants. Nevertheless, I sing, and often I do so at rock music festivals. I try to look at the various existing settings as valid locations for symbolic production. Not that it is the same to present a performance on TV and in a gallery. But it all coexists. Television, for instance, constantly generates high-impact symbolic production. Low culture does exist. Xuxa does not come from the art realm, and she only enters it if an artist resignifies her. Nevertheless, “planeta Xuxa,” with its symbology, does exist, and it strongly influences society on the artistic, aesthetic, and ideological levels. No art book makes mention of it, because the history of art runs parallel to the history of the world. If I give my mother the catalogue for some biennial, it is as if I were giving her a book on quantum physics. I am not saying that things should be different. What I mean is that there are other spaces to produce and show. The “pulp” of my core is in several places. Not just in the “art field.”

Were you surprised or amused by being the theme of a cycle of debates at the Museum of Latin American Art of Buenos Aires? Has Dani Umpi become a subject of study?

I was surprised and embarrassed. A part of me wanted to go there to listen to what was being said, but my ego is not that large. To me, it was too much responsibility to be cited in the title of a cycle about pop in such an important place for the medium in which I work. Whenever I am presented as an artist who represents my generation, I feel embarrassed. I do not want to represent anything. I never thought I could get to the point where I would be analyzed. Nevertheless, artists are presumed to seek that.

All of your work features a blatant aura of fictionalization. Is simulation the key to enter this world?

Absolutely. My academic background was in communication sciences, which I studied in the late 1990s. Baudrillard was a Paulo Coelho of sorts, a best-selling thinker to my generation. It is impossible for me to see things from another vantage point.

North, the CD-joke that became a hit and opened up a new avenue in your career, was oddly recorded on September 11, 2001. Did you leave the studio and became aware that the world had collapsed? Was that a moment of involuntary “fictionalization” in your life, when you were absent from what was perhaps the greatest “real fictionalization” of this century?

Ouch, I had never thought about that afternoon in those terms! What you are saying is quite interesting, and it is strange that I had never thought of it. First of all, the North CD was not a joke about Jaime Roos, as it was often said to be. One only has to listen to it to start laughing, not at Jaime Roos, but at me. At that time, I was part of the Movimiento Sexy collective (of which Martín Sastre and Paula Delgado were members, among other young Uruguayan artists), and on that afternoon we got together to produce a work. In between one recording and the other, we would watch TV and could not understand what was going on. I think we still do not really understand that scene.

“I like to be on good terms with everyone. In that sense, I am honestly fake,” you said once. Is living, inside and outside the artistic context, a “make-believe”?

No. I no longer live within that scheme of “everything can be a work,” I no longer “make believe.” Not that it is wrong, but I am not interested in that. What I am interested in is making. But not everything I do is a work. I learned a lot about that when I had to face a situation with an important ethic component to it. I decided to make a series of “travel notebooks” with some fans. I would write them and they would answer me, and so on, until the notebooks were filled up. I was thinking of showing that material, of using it as a work of art. But many fans would use the notebooks as journals, they would tell me personal stuff. I would also keep everything that was given to me at the shows, dolls, letters, because I took that as “a work,” something that would have a gallery as its destination. But in the letters people told me about their lives. I could not show that, it would be a lack of respect. So I decided to live those “actions” for what they are, without rereadings. As opposed to “making believe” that I was a singer, and that I was making artistic experiments based on that.

In 2004, the Tics exhibition, which you curated, was named “one of the innovative happenings of the year” by Uruguayan daily La República. What do you seek as a curator?

I am very curious. I like to be fascinated, to satisfy my capacity to be amazed. Perhaps that is why I am very little retro, revisionist, nostalgic. I enjoy the new, the emerging production. Tics was part of Adriana Broadway’s project; the exhibition was curated by her. The curatorial script was based on works done in a compulsive or neurotic manner. It included work by artists widely known in my country, work by artists who had never shown, by people who did not consider themselves as artists, and by children.

Many people who see you singing are not familiar with your work as a visual artist, and some sectors in conventional art do not consider your musical work to be art. How do you position yourself amidst this “amphibian” situation, between two worlds?

I really like that “amphibian” notion. I regard this situation as something very interesting. It does not make me uncomfortable, even though sometimes I get a bit tired of having to justify and explain what I do. People do not need to know why I write, nor do they need to view my music as “artistic.” I do not ask for that kind of “whole” valuation. What happens is generic, and it does not have much to do with me. Not all of the people who are interested in current art are also interested in music, not all of the people who are interested in narrative follow current art. Not to mention the producers, the curators. The more specific the interests are, the more closed off they are to other languages.

You once defined Dani Umpi as the kid who tries to showcase his abilities at the year-end party to get applause. This might be the initial concept for the character, but the success of Dani Umpi stems from other elements, does it not?

The mise en scène that I put up when I sing live or in my music videos is a festive one. I like party, it interests me. Nearly all of the songs are “dance songs.” On the other hand, I am concerned with making it a good product in the technical sense, well done, competent. The image is an original one in my medium, and I think it works. Perhaps the relative success derives from the “spirit” of tragicomedy. The songs have despairing lyrics, but they are up-tempo. I present myself as an “antidivo divo,” an imperfect, humane star. But it does not please everyone. Many people cannot stand me.

One of the reasons for the popularization of your work is the fact that you prepare it to, if not captivate, at least attract attention. Is resignifying the established culture while operating with the market codes another serious game by Dani Umpi?

The market is the only instance that receives me as a “multifaceted artist,” which does not find it odd that I write, sing, and create artwork, because it views it all as virtues that contribute for the whole. The market sees figures. To me, it is more of a scenery, which has allowed incredible things: when a song of mine entered the Top Ten at MTV Latino, I was competing with Madonna and Shakira. Is that a work of art? I do not know, but for an artist like me to be in such a situation seems significant to me.

What are your upcoming projects, desires, or obsessions?

I am very enthused about the invitation for the Videobrasil, the Meetings, the Dossier, and Brazil. In October I will show in Rio de Janeiro, in Niterói. Since I am going to be in those lands, I want to meet Elke Maravilha. Her manager contacted mine because it seems that they have heard a song I dedicate to her, Vira Elke Maravilha, and she liked it. I was ecstatic. In fact, what I am planning is to make, in Rio, a place where I can meet her, a blue sky filled with cut paper.

Daniel Umpiérrez is a son of the same land that gave Carlos Gardel to the world—as Uruguayan historians swear. Nevertheless, the world’s most renowned Tango singer’s fame was not enough to release Tacuarembó from the condition of being just one of many farming sites in the country.

Closer to Brazil than to Río de la Plata, 390 kilometers away from the capital Montevideo, life in Tacuarembó goes on without any major disturbances, under a very hot weather. Not much differently from nowadays, daily life in the 1970s was full of folkloric parties, traditional celebrations, meetings at the parish, at the square, around the bandstand, in the park, at friends’ homes.

For eighteen years, these typical country distractions have provided the framework for the microcosm of Daniel Umpiérrez, as his imagery was supplied by the chaotic cauldron offered by television, a window that connected him to a world discordant with all that he saw around himself. Imported TV series, Brazilian soap operas, Iggy Pop, and Elke Maravilha shined in that box of light and sound to which the boy paid much attention.

Adulthood marked his arrival in Montevideo. Decided to become an artist, he did not take long to find that he was more comfortable with his inner universe than with the appeals and possibilities that the capital offered him. He tried the conventional approach: to produce within the expectations of the visual arts in his country, to create a cohesive, coherent, consequential “oeuvre.” His uneasiness would not go away. He had the “feeling that no one was interested” in his stuff, as he says in an interview for this Dossier.

An experiment-joke-catharsis of sorts came to rescue him from vocational apathy. In 2001, intending to make fun of the marketing strategies of the recording industry, the artist created the label Dani Umpi Records, under which he recorded a parody, in English language, of a classic album of the Uruguayan songbook (something like versions of Caetano Veloso standards using Internet-based automatic translation software), and an album of dancing, sampled versions of contemporary hymns of his country.

Destined for restricted museum and gallery halls, the CDs ended up escaping the art circuit, and received airplay on FM radios in Montevideo. Thus was born Dani Umpi, singer, performer, and whatever else comes up.

Free from the straitjacket in which he felt confined, he set free the many heteronyms that he always lived with and—upon bringing together all of his personas—he elects as a leitmotiv the small, trivial human tragedies and miracles, liquidized by daily life. Territories usually distant from the art world, such as beauty parlors or baby soccer courts, became the arenas where he promoted his first concerts, currently attended by punks, underground people, rockers, upper-middle-class kids, and middle-aged ladies.

Along with Dani Umpi, also born were the novels Miss Tacuarembó, Aún soltera, and Sólo te quiero como amigo, flashes of everyday banality filtered through a humor as acid as it is omnipresent.

“I am increasingly outside art as an institution, and at the same time I am increasingly inside it, because now that I do not maintain a steady rhythm of exhibitions and performances, people have started to become interested in my work and my old pieces, they are analyzing what I did and buying my work. This made me realize that in fact I have always discussed the same things, I have always been very coherent and much too monothematic, too naïve. I basically discuss boyfriends, breakups, and dates using a discourse and a perspective that are childish, adolescent, as if life were a sitcom where all that exists are affections and their ridiculous conflicts,” he claims.

Nevertheless, the reality that emerges from his writings is seldom a sweetened one, in which alienation or desperation are less choices than they are conditions to which the characters are doomed. Like a neighbor lady who stands by the window every afternoon to watch other people’s lives, the habit may seem serene, touching, and harmlessly decadent, but the fruits collected from that activity may come loaded, beyond familiarity, with disturbance, surprise, and repulsion.

InMiss Tacuarembó, the character Natalia goes out dancing, does drugs, and, minutes before entering a bad trip, she jots down: “I am still jumping, but something bothers me; I look down and realize that I lost one sandal. I try to find it around the dance floor, but it is impossible with all these people gathering together. Suddenly, I see it between the legs of some girls who think that they are Björk in her first album, dancing around like stupid dolls, making childish faces, and caressing the ridiculous rolls in their heads, seemingly tired of carrying the empty transparent backpack on their backs. I throw myself down at the floor. It is a bed, a pool, a couch like those in expensive hair salons.” 

The main inspiration, says Umpi, comes from conversations with friends: “I often copy directly what they say and do, I put it textually into a song or something else. I am very much interested in that discourse, its commonplaces, its hallucinations.” 

Beyond the fictional exercise, like a schizophrenic Fernando Pessoa, the artist not only multiplied his creations, he came to make his creations real, as they took over artistic productions, curatorships, demonstrations. Among them is Nelson Nilson, a politically correct architecture student, depressed over the fact that his girlfriend left him. As the young man, the artist participated in street protests, drew “quite psychotic” models, and attended courses in the School of Architecture at Universidad de la República, where he even taught a class.

Passion also defined the personality of Willy Will. “Will was a very good-looking adolescent, who was in love with me, and who wrote me love letters,” Umpi explains. In order to provide the story with life, the artist would send inflamed messages to himself: he would send them by mail to the studio of which he was a member. “A delirium.”

Finally, the most complex and active creature was Adriana Broadway, architect and curator. “I would write for magazines, curate exhibitions in the Montevideo scene, I would charge for works as if I were Adriana. I did things that I loved doing, such as commenting the Bienal de São Paulo for a magazine without having attended the exhibition. In this case, I did not approach love life, it was more... conceptual. I would discuss art, the market, the local critics, the various agents, and things that I am less and less interested in reviewing and criticizing.” 

Nowadays, well known enough not to be able to go unnoticed anymore at events or public meetings in his country, Umpiérrez has left his alter egos aside to feed the only one that allows him to be himself (and something more) without having to change his attire, appearance, or humor. This makes it increasingly difficult to dissociate author and character, a position that pleases the artist. “The only one still living is Dani Umpi. I continue to live in him. I no longer work with the fake, except for when it is based on myself.”

Umpi singer
The artist’s official Web page highlights his work as a recording artist. Features concert photos, samples of music videos and concert performances, MP3 samples of original songs and covers, as well as small excerpts from his three novels. 

Umpiland
The artist feeds his fotolog virtually everyday. Images of his intimacy, of meetings with friends, messages from fans and acquaintances mix with cultural tips and suggestions for links ranging from Maitê Proença to Milli Vanilli.