Mathias Sielfeld; illustration as a critical and humorous tool

Mathias, tell us a little about yourself...

I was born and lived in Concepción until I was 18. In 2004 I moved to Santiago to study Integral Design at PUC where I also did a Diploma in illustration.

Since then, I have been working independently making illustrations for various media, participating in projects related to the arts and collaborating with various foundations. Starting in 2015, I make cartoons of humor and social criticism that I upload to my social networks under the pseudonym @oyemathias.

At the end of 2017 I published my first book "La gente opina" edited by Catalonia.

This year, after 14 years in Santiago, I am going to live outside of Chile, with the idea of ​​working remotely. Initially I will arrive in Madrid but there is nothing very defined for the future.

What do you like the most about being an illustrator ?

 Being able to work from anywhere in the world (long live Wi-Fi) and having an incredible possibility that my source of income is creatively expressing my points of view.

Something that I really like about this discipline is the friendship that you can establish with other illustrators through work, there is a very nice collective support and you can end up making friends with people you admire who live in far away places.

What inspires you to work or what message would you like to leave ?

 It inspires me to educate people with important and little visible issues in order to generate a more empathetic and less violent society.

What have been your biggest challenges or fears as an illustrator?

 Having to organize my times and save for periods of less work. On the other hand, generating your own projects is always difficult but also very rewarding.

A song or artist/album to work on ?

 Pillar Point-Dove . I also really like MØ

 Someone you admire or follow their work a lot

 @nachoeterno (Instagram)

A book that you recommend?

 I don't read many books, I recommend the Netflix series "Please Like Me"

What motivated you to make the Map of Chile and why did you decide to do it as such?

I was very motivated by the project due to the diversity of illustrators who had already participated with their maps. I found it very nice to be able to apply my own style and provide a different map to the fauna that already existed.

Seeing the ones that were already ready at that moment, I wanted to differentiate mine a bit and for the same reason, I wanted to do it with a background color and I left the territory of Chile blank.

I really like patchwork and I decided to make the map with that effect, from afar you can see a great texture but if you get closer you can see details and elements of each area that I wanted to rescue. The places I chose were my favorite places in Chile.

I also rescued native peoples and some plots are inspired by crafts from the area.

Mathias's map is called "Patchwork" and it is already out of print in his series.