Today we’d like to introduce you to Aggie (Agustina) Flores.
Hi Aggie (Agustina), it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?
I grew up in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in a turbulent environment that made me grow up very quickly. I started working when I was 15, while I was still in high school, and from an early age I became determined to build a different life for myself.
But I didn’t do that alone. I learned very young to ask for help. Throughout my childhood and adolescence, I sought psychological support and found people who gave me guidance, perspective, and tools at moments when I deeply needed them. I can say with certainty that I would not be where I am today without some of those people.
My relationship with God also became very important during my adolescence. It wasn’t necessarily about religion as much as developing a relationship with life itself. Somewhere during those years, despite how difficult things could be, I developed a profound love for being alive. That became an anchor for me, and I think it has quietly guided many of the decisions I have made since.
I kept working and saving, knowing that eventually I wanted to leave Argentina and experience a different life. At 21, while studying Industrial Design at the University of Buenos Aires, I had saved enough to begin traveling to the United States through J-1 programs.
Between 2013 and 2017, I spent four seasons in Aspen while continuing my studies in Argentina. I trained in snowboarding, became an instructor, and around the same time began working with Red Bull, which became my introduction to marketing and experiential events.
In 2017, at 24, I officially moved to the United States to work in event marketing for the company now known as Yerba Madre. For the next three years, my life was almost entirely on the road. I traveled through more than 30 U.S. states, Canada, Mexico, Argentina, Uruguay, and Paraguay, sharing yerba mate and its culture. As an Argentine, there was something very meaningful about introducing people to something so deeply connected to where I came from. It felt like opening a small window into my country everywhere I went.
By the end of 2019, I settled in Charleston, South Carolina, with the intention of leading the company’s Southeast region. Then 2020 changed everything.
At 27, I lost the job I loved and found myself navigating immigration, marriage, and an entirely new life during the pandemic. Because of my immigration status, there was also a period when I couldn’t work at all. When I was finally authorized to work again, I went from being an International Marketing Creative Lead to selling empanadas for $10 an hour. It was an enormous lesson in humility, but it also forced me to ask myself who I was when the career and identity I had built disappeared.
That was when I began building something of my own. I started freelancing from scratch, formed my first band, Aggie Flores & The Wildflowers, began making artwork for friends’ projects, and slowly found my way into scenography and art installations for events.
During that period, a few friends and I also created Artcelium Fest, a series of multidisciplinary gatherings in the woods. We had access to a 6,500 acres property with lakes and campsites, so during a time when people were isolated from one another, we created a place where artists, musicians, makers, and people from many different disciplines could safely come together in nature. There were art installations, music, kayaking, biking, and collaborative creation. Artcelium will always have a special place in my heart because, in many ways, I created the kind of gathering I desperately needed myself.
In 2022, after my separation, I returned to Aspen and started over again.
This time the rebuilding was not only professional. I came back physically depleted, and returning to the mountains became a way of returning to my body and to myself. I rebuilt my life by doing whatever work I needed to do. I taught snowboarding, managed VIP and Platinum areas for C3 events, organized a multi-state custom hat tour through music festivals, worked as a florist, server, instructor, hat maker, producer, musician, artisan, event designer, and kids camp counselor.
I wore every hat I needed to wear to get here. Trabajar es digno.
Looking back, I used to think all of those changes meant that I didn’t have a straight path. Now I see that the path was the point. Every time my life asked me to begin again, I learned another medium, another skill, another way of creating and connecting with people.
Today, for the first time, I don’t feel like I am rebuilding. I feel like I am living inside the life all of those different versions of me were trying to create. I take better care of my body, I make space for rest, I am surrounded by community, and all the seemingly disconnected things I have done have finally come together.
I realized I was never changing disciplines. I was translating the same internal language through different forms.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
It has not been a smooth road. Many of my greatest obstacles have been structural rather than creative: immigration, bureaucracy, settling into a new country, and finding enough stability through work to fund my own projects. When you arrive somewhere without an established network, you have to weave an entire community from the ground up.
I first built a life in Aspen, working in marketing and helping develop other people’s projects. Later, I moved to Charleston to begin building my own artistic career, and a few years later, another move meant starting over again. Each transition required learning a new place, its language and social codes, its creative industry, and how to find collaborators and a sense of belonging.
I also entered the art world through industrial design rather than a traditional fine arts education. That background has deeply shaped my work, but it has meant teaching myself how the art world functions while already trying to sustain a practice: how to price work, apply for residencies and opportunities, present a project, and build a viable career. I think much of my journey has been about becoming a self-made artist while continually crossing borders, disciplines, and communities.
As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
I am an interdisciplinary artist working across installation, macrame, light, sound, illustration, and participatory experiences. I specialize in creating immersive systems that translate internal processes into physical form. My work often begins with an intuitive question and gradually becomes a map made of symbols, repetition, geometry, movement, and material.
I am especially interested in the relationship between the micro and the macro, the quantum and the cosmic. I look for patterns that repeat across scales: in cells, bodies, emotions, relationships, ecosystems, and galaxies. My background in industrial design allows me to approach these ideas structurally, while my artistic process remains deeply intuitive. I often create works that function not only as objects, but also as tools for reflection, interaction, and self-location.
I am becoming known for large-scale macrame and light installations, as well as interactive pieces that invite the audience to participate rather than simply observe. Music is also an essential part of my practice. I do not experience these disciplines as separate careers; they are different expressions of the same internal language.
I am most proud of having built a coherent artistic practice without following a traditional path into the art world. I have created it through experimentation, self-education, resilience, and a willingness to keep starting over.
What sets me apart is the combination of intuition and systems thinking. I trust intuition as a form of intelligence, but I also give it structure. My work lives between the handmade and the conceptual, the intimate and the cosmic, the personal and the universal.
Alright so before we go can you talk to us a bit about how people can work with you, collaborate with you or support you?
I am always open to collaborations with artists, musicians, designers, scientists, cultural organizations, and communities interested in exploring consciousness, connection, and the relationship between the inner and the outer world.
People can work with me through commissions, installations, public art projects, exhibitions, residencies, performances, workshops, and interdisciplinary collaborations. Support can also take the form of acquiring my work, funding a project, offering materials or studio resources, sharing opportunities, or connecting me with spaces and people where the work can continue to grow.
I am especially drawn to collaborations that allow different disciplines and perspectives to meet, creating something that none of us could have made alone.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.aggieflores.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/aggie.flores/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@aggieflores
- Other: https://open.spotify.com/artist/6eSRE29zQwZIp3UkvLIVAS?si=Ty8iyatITHOQDdOeqhR1aw
