Music Artist Artifex Talks About the Lack of Equality in Music

The Cuban-Swedish, model, and artist, known by her stage name Artifex, shared with us her stiff road to success in a primarily male-dominant industry; music.

Raised in Sweden, born to a Cuban father and a Finnish mother, her childhood was surrounded by cultural duality. It was the best of both worlds for the young artist so her music is HER music, influenced by Cuban 50’s boleros, Scandinavian pop and 90’s R&B. She started taking singing seriously at the age of 12 and spent her third year studies at the famous Swedish Pop/Rock music school named Rytmus High School. After school, Artifex would spend time in studios writing songs and recording backup vocals. Shortly after graduating, she moved to Italy to work as a model, working the stages of designers such as Valentino, Etro, Cedric Charlier, BluMarine, Antonio Marras, and more.

It was difficult to transition or or even combine modelling with music and she had to face many hurdles when she moved to LA. When we asked her how the music industry could we change that, and make the road a little easier on women, she said that first of all by listening and understanding each other’s journey —specifically women’s journey— which historically has been more complicated than men’s. The other step would be to reach for equality which could be more complicated because, as Artifex said:

“In order to reach equality people would need to sacrifice certain positions of power. So the ones who are on top might have to step back and let others enjoy the pie too.”

We all know the ones who have the power are not likely to let it go or share part of it. Power is not given, power is taken, and our challenge is that we have to push back against the resistance to change the system.

We are still a long way to go. According to United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres gender equality is “300 years away” according to the latest estimates from UN Women. That means not you, nor me will see gender equality. Not our daughters, our granddaughters. So we can’t sleep in our laurels and, we need to stir things up! Don’t wait until next March to make some noise and fight for what you think is fair.

Check our Women’s Special Mujeres In Charge to hear some amazing latinas sharing their journey!