Elvan Levent: You are doing so many things, films, photography, inspiring talks -like your TED X talk… What is the priority for you?

Woody Rosaland: It's a great question! For a long time, I thought I would make that one project I’d always dreamed of—the project that would change everything. I think we, as creatives and artists, often fall into that trap. It was interesting to work on those projects and then move on, only to realize my life kind of stayed the same.

To me, the joy really lies in the creative process. Over the last four years, I’ve been stepping into the traditional art world of painting, which has been fascinating. For example, that Portugal movie (Naughty Boy- Avfri) cost $10,000 out of my own pocket, required a lot of time, and involved many people. As I dive into painting, visual art, and conceptual art, it feels so freeing—you can still use video and all these different elements, but there are fewer gatekeepers. You can have an idea, form a concept, and bring it to life with complete freedom.

That’s especially true for this upcoming Mexico City project. Creating something for the institutional art world is really exciting to me. I’ve worked in the commercial film world and in my own free-roaming personal space, where I have complete creative control in my studio. Stepping into the institutional art world feels like the next compelling direction. That’s where my focus is right now—with this Mexico City project and the residency—and I’d love to see how I show up in an institutional context.

EL: Is this an artist residency project?

WR: It is. I leave in 17 days for the Mexico City project and will spend a month down there.

To explain the project, I should talk a bit about my background: when I was younger, I had cancer and had my leg amputated. In my early twenties, I went through a period where I worked as a motivational speaker—which was a strange job to have at 21. Speaking at pharmaceutical sales conferences about the meaning of life right after losing a leg felt surreal.

I realized then that I didn't have much of a professional skill set yet, having spent so much of my high school and college years in hospitals. It felt weird to just be 'the cancer guy.' That’s when I discovered video and photography. It was such a welcome change of pace because the focus was no longer on me, yet I could still build a useful skill set, create, take on projects, and make a living. For a long time after that, my identity around cancer and amputation was pushed into a corner.

Lately, though, I’ve been asking myself what I can do in that space. This Mexico City project shares a lot of metaphors between amputation and gentrification—when your identity changes without your consent, or when you experience difficulty navigating a changing world. It caught my attention because whenever I start a project, I ask: 'What is something that only I can do?' If anyone else could do it, maybe it’s not for me. I think of it like a Venn diagram—at the center of all my circles of identity, access, and ability, what is unique to my perspective?

My wife and I have been learning Spanish for the last four years, so I’m preparing to do a project in a foreign tongue. Losing a leg is a deeply destabilizing experience; learning a new language is also destabilizing, almost like constructing a new identity. There are so many conceptual points where these ideas intersect. My goal in Mexico City is to explore those connections through a multidisciplinary approach—combining film, photography, and painting—to see what interesting work comes out of it.

EL: The change and the transformation you have been through is so interesting that I feel like it guided you, it opened to you a new way of perception. It feels like you are revealing everything through the different mediums of art: through photography, painting, film… If you look at this experience, how do you see it changing you, was it always like this, or something has shifted in you?

WR: My first stage experience was a school talent show in the fourth grade when I was ten years old—I did stand-up comedy. I remember loving the feeling of being on stage and getting that attention. That was the first spark, but over time I've developed this concept of a 'trauma portal': the idea that if you want meaningful change or transformation, you often have to go through an equivalent amount of friction or trauma first. For instance, I have friends in Lisbon and I love experiencing the city, but to get there, I have to go through the trauma of the airport, the flight, the exhaustion, and people sneezing on you. That discomfort is how you earn those new experiences.

In a broader sense, I view my cancer diagnosis and leg amputation as massive trauma portals that unlocked a different level of creativity, resilience, and life perspective. In a strange way, I consider them a gift. When I look at the person on the other side of those experiences, I feel more interesting, more capable, and more sturdy.

That’s why this Mexico City project is so fascinating to me—exploring the parallels between individual trauma and urban transformation. But it raises a tough ethical question: Can I simply copy and paste those personal attributes onto a city undergoing gentrification? Doing so risks ignoring the real human cost. Are there genuine benefits to a city enduring these difficult, disruptive shifts, or does that logic fall apart on a macro scale? Through this project, I want to examine where these metaphors hold true and where they break down when detached from the individual experience.

EL: Very very interesting.. So, why Mexico?

WR: My wife and I have spent a lot of time in Mexico. A few years ago, we decided to start learning Spanish. The United States is actually the second-largest Spanish-speaking country in the world—tons of people speak Spanish in almost every city you go to, and it’s a huge part of American culture. We have friends whose parents run an orphanage in a coastal city called Mazatlán, so we spent a lot of time there while I worked on a video project for them. During that time, my wife and I realized that we really needed to learn the language. We’ve been taking weekly lessons for the past four years, and now we’ve reached a point where we are very conversational.

I feel like there is a deep bond between the United States and Mexico; we are neighbors in every sense of the word. Neither country is going anywhere, despite the political and social difficulties in both places. We are here, our communities interact constantly, and people are mixing all the time.

Last year, while waiting for our Mexican residency visas in Mexico City, we were reflecting on whether we wanted to spend a significant part of our lives there building projects and community. Right as we were going through that process, there was a massive protest against Americans moving to Mexico City. It was such an ironic moment (laughs). We literally got our residency cards saying 'you are allowed to live here' while people were protesting in the streets, with graffiti reading 'Kill the Gringos!' It felt like the loudest possible message from the universe.

It made me realize how many intersecting dynamics are at play between our two countries. Gentrification, in particular, feels like a gigantic global problem. Living in Colorado, I see how gentrification impacts people in huge ways. I grew up here, and even though my wife and I both have successful careers, we still can’t afford a house where we’d like to live. It isn't just an American or Mexican problem—it’s happening in Berlin, Lisbon, and nearly every major city you can name. It feels like a fundamental symptom of modern capitalism.

I also recognize my own participation in it. I love visiting Lisbon and have friends there, but every time I stay in an Airbnb or visit a cute local coffee shop, I realize that lifestyle comes at a cost to the locals. Most of the time, it’s easy to wash your hands of personal responsibility by thinking, 'It’s going to happen anyway; if I don’t move to Mexico City, someone else will.' But gentrification really is one of the defining problems of our era.

The other day, I was at a museum with a friend who loves ships. We stopped to look at every painting featuring a boat, including one depicting Antwerp in 1654. It was cold and rainy in the painting, showing a dog on the street and a snapshot of daily life in Antwerp nearly 400 years ago. Looking at that canvas made me reflect: regardless of what happens with billionaires, gentrification, or these massive socio-economic shifts, using art—and my own unique experience as an amputee—to witness and record what is happening right now feels deeply worthwhile.​​​​​​