Catriona Robertson

Catriona Robertson photographed for the Robert Walters Art Prize 2021 by Reece Straw

Photo courtesy of the artist

Damaris Athene:  Could you start off by introducing yourself please Cat?

Catriona Robertson:  Sure, I'm an artist working across sculpture, installation and occasionally performance. I tend to make quite large scale pieces, but recently I’ve been trying to develop fragments of larger scale pieces, smaller pieces as well. I graduated from Royal College of Art in 2019 in sculpture. I live and work in London and have been here for quite a long time, but my family is from up north, Scotland and Oldham and I grew up in Surrey. I moved to London to do my Bachelors in Fine Art at Central Saint Martins. Now I’m a part-time sculpture technician at Central Saint Martins. I've always worked with materials and love learning different processes and I really enjoy teaching alongside my practice.

DA:  What a great job to have! Could you say a bit more about your practice?

CR:  I've done quite a few residencies over the years where I've made work in response to a particular place, influenced by the architecture, geology and its materials. I can draw from those ideas and take them to different places as well. I’m currently doing a residency in the Lake District at the Merz barn. It's connected to the German Dada artist Kurt Schwitters. His works are very much rooted in destruction, fragments and collecting waste residue materials to make collage and architectural installations such as his famous Merz Bau. I also tend to use a lot of residue, detritus and rubble in my work and I collect found materials - sometimes organic materials like digging clay, or building or domestic materials like corrugated roofing, carpet or lino. In this residency at the Merz Barn I'm responding to the storm damage across the lake district from the storms we had this year and the debris of fallen trees. This damage is partly due to soil erosion, and a number of other factors such as the land being prone to scarring due to the agricultural practices and the history of industries of the area. Trees were chopped down to clear the land which left the remaining woodland vulnerable. The network of trees was disrupted and vulnerable to disease. Now I'm looking at all these uprooted trees everywhere which are pretty monumental. Everything is horizontal and loads of slate has been pulled up entangled in the earth roots that stand as upright as if stone walls. I'm starting to think about the underground and I’m going to build my wormy columns again. There's a connection with this idea of these worms rejuvenating soil and kind of bringing it back to life, but also the history of Roman ruins and columns at the same time. These two connected ideas have developed over time, because originally, I didn't think of the sculptures as worms until the structures started to bend and collapse. There's a connection to regurgitation of materials as the worm absorbs detritus on its outer shell and I imagine it transforming these synthetic materials. When I did another residency with Proposition Studios last year, I started to think a lot about ideas of an urban strata that has been formed in the Anthropocene, with landfill and chemicals and waste being put into the ground. What kind of new sediment is being formed? What kind of rock or stone might have emerge in 1000s of years? From these ideas my sculptures narrate remnants of future monuments that are made up of these waste materials, that take on this anthropomorphic form of the worm that eats these materials, it's become quite gargantuan. It's been a journey in a sense of the work itself that keeps transforming and growing. When I was in art school, I felt pressured to make something new every week. Now I enjoy just letting it flow from one piece to the next.

Rock Paper Scissors, 2020, Paper-clay, papier-mâché, paper-concrete, re-claimed timber, plywood, 50cm x 55cm x 242cm, Photo: Catriona Robertson

Standpoint Gallery, Mark Tanner Sculpture Award Graduate residency

Photo courtesy of the artist

DA:  Where did the worms and columns originally come from? 

CR:  The original column started during a different residency in Oslo in 2018. The theme of the Oslo residency really spoke to me, to make something that was monumental and temporal out of waste materials. They took us to the recycling centre where I collected a lot of materials that looked a bit like stone to me, such as Lino flooring that had a stone print on it and grey coloured carpet tiles. I found the corrugated sheeting there that I started using as well to cast concrete panels. It sparked this idea of the corrugated sheeting referencing a Doric column, and I had the idea of this material that is used as a temporary shelter meeting the monumental symbol of the column. I had to build it very quickly, in about five weeks. It was quite strange to build something so monumental that was then taken down again. I find that my work only exists in the space that I install it in for a moment in time that refutes the concreteness of sculpture. Residencies can make you think quickly!

DA:  They’re like a pressure cooker! What initially drew you to work with sculpture and installation? 

CR:  I'm not sure. I remember my art teacher in 6th form college told me I wasn't allowed to make a sculpture because there wasn't enough space. I started smashing up old sinks and things and attaching things to my canvas and I made these really heavy paintings. When I applied to go to art school in London, I sort of accidentally ended up in sculpture. I had actually applied to Fine Art at Chelsea College of Art but they rejected me. My tutor said, ‘You should apply to Central Saint Martins’. So I did and got a place in the 3D pathway that felt right. I really enjoyed it and I loved being in the workshops. I wanted to learn as much as possible. I had a gap between my BA and MA before going to the Royal College of Art. I think it was really important to take some time to gain life experience. I spent a lot of time in Berlin and was a bit obsessed with visiting abandoned buildings, so I think that influenced my ideas about erosion and nature reclaiming the urban.  

Conduit (it’s all just gone a bit coo coo), 2021, Paper, Galvanised steel, scaffolding clamps, latex, acrylic paint, spray paint, Dimensions variable

Site responsive installation exhibited as part of ‘Pigeon Park’ at Manor Place, Elephant and Castle. Supported by ‘This is Projekt’ curated by Christopher Stead, Joe Dennis and Stephen Burke

Photo courtesy of the artist

DA:  How do you explore architecture in the monumental in your work?

CR:  There's a few things that I think about, I guess. Sometimes I respond to the architecture of the space itself, I'm quite drawn to in between spaces. I also think about how much sculpture can interact with the space, like imagining that it's going through the ceiling or going into the ground. I would not usually show my work on a plinth, for example unless that was a part of the work, sometimes the plinth is the work. Sometimes my sculptures move through a space as if escaping or leaving the room, eating and tunnelling, going through a wall or into the ground, connecting spaces. So they've become quite performative in that sense. There's always a sense of my sculptures moving through a space, inviting the viewer to imagine a space beyond the walls. They become the architecture that you don't necessarily see. The last thing I did for a show in Catford they went through office ceiling tiles that felt like the sculptures had grown into the space like trees. It made it look like it was propping up the ceiling. I like this idea of something being bigger than the space, living in London you feel quite confined by space and time. Squashing a big sculpture in a smaller space can subvert perception and make it feel bigger, whereas, when I have done larger things in warehouses, suddenly your sculpture feels really small. The sculpture I made in Oslo was almost seven metres tall!

DA:  Wow! That’s incredible.

CR:  It was a really well supported residency with amazing technical support. The residency was in between my first and second year of my MA at the Royal College of Art, and I had to come back and think, Okay, so how do I fit this kind of work into my small studio? It was then that they started to bend and twist and look as though they were going through the wall. I'm drawn to weird and crumbling spaces as well. Doing work in dusty warehouses informs my work and then I can take that and put it into a regular white cube gallery setting. Recently I’ve had to show in more conventional spaces. So that's been quite weird for me.

Install shot of Catriona’s work ‘Rude Enormous Monoliths’ 2022 in ‘Lost in a Just-in-Time Supply Chain’ curated by Josh C Wright at Peacocks in Catford, Hypha Studios, Photo: Rob Harris

Photo courtesy of the artist

DA:  Could you speak more about your approach to materials within your work?

CR:  I love materials and getting messy. I use a combination of things. As I mentioned earlier, I collect discarded and reclaimed materials. Sometimes I'm really drawn to collecting flooring and roofing, discarded building or domestic materials. I like contrasting things that look a bit squishy with my hard cast surfaces. I'm obsessed with the idea of aggregate at the moment, as well as mixing things into my casts. I work a lot with concrete and that's where this idea of aggregate comes from. It's a conflicting material to work with sustainably. I've read quite a lot of things about concrete, I’m obsessed with how the Colosseum lasted such a long time. This long lost recipe of concrete that is so durable that it can outlive a civilisation, but yet contemporary modern concrete is perceived as so precarious. It’s weak and we often demolish it. It cracks because we haven’t taken care of it and we treat it like a throwaway material. I’ve started mixing my paper into my concrete and making it much lighter and to reduce the amount of concrete that I'm using, and the paper erodes away leaving cracks and gaps. The lightness means I'm able to be a bit more playful with it. It can alter people’s perception of my sculptures as it looks like I've made this really heavy object but it's actually quite lightweight, it can make you do like a double take, especially when it looks like it is going to collapse. I've started working with paper pulp and papier-mâché a lot as well and making it look a lot like concrete. I’m going back to that idea of monumentality, how does something look like it's monumental when it's actually made of newspaper or something else that looks heavy. I flip between different materials depending on what I'm doing. For The Factory Project show that I did last year, which was curated by Thorp Stavri, I made this giant concrete slab that was actually made out of papier-mâché. It got lifted on top of my scaffolding sculpture that had other real concrete elements on the ground. I suppose it’s a bit of a facade in a way.

Close-up of Fissility, 2021, 90cm x 110cm x 15cm, Paper-clay, newspaper pulp, cardboard pulp, clay, acrylic paint, reclaimed perspex, ratchet strap, Photo: Catriona Robertson

Exhibited at the Muse Gallery, Winter Show January 2022 

Photo courtesy of the artist

DA:  It's really interesting to have that layer of playfulness and facade or deception within the materiality of the work itself.

CR:  I like the idea of casting as well, because I don't always know exactly how it's going to turn out. There's a lot of experimentation with the layering up of materials, and sometimes by mixing different materials together I can create cracks and eroded surfaces, but also some polished surfaces depending what aggregate I mix in. I work a lot with layers. At the moment, they're kind of turning into paintings. You're always working in reverse and then there's a big reveal at the end. 

DA:  A nice surprise! How do your sculptures relate to your own body?

CR:  There's something quite fun about how I play with the weight. I’d like to play around with that more. I like making something bigger than myself and I really like being on ladders! Recently I have started to occasionally perform with my sculptures. I did a sleeping performance with the work I made for the ‘Terra Nexus’ show last year and for my show ‘Underlay’ at Set Studios. I started lying down next to my sculptures, because I began to feel that they were becoming quite immersive, as they have become more bendy and architectural in the way that I was moving around them. I just wanted to lie underneath them and look up at them for a moment. That makes you feel quite small and they also have this sense of precariousness about them sometimes. People think that they're going to fall down. They look like they're going to collapse. Sometimes I climb on top of my sculptures as well, but I wouldn't let anyone else do it. With the sleeping performance, partly I was tired, but I was imagining this idea of sleeping through time and sinking into the ground, becoming part of the work in this new sediment layer in the Anthropocene. There is a limit to my own capabilities as well. I like to make things that fit exactly through the door and that flat pack, things that I can install and deconstruct myself. I try to do things within my own reach to a certain extent, but they have started to get bigger lately which become problematic!

'Sleeping Performance': ‘Dreaming of the Underland’ and what signatures we might leave on the Deep Time Strata. I could just lie here for a million years and let myself sink into the ground, sealed over by concrete’, Set Studios, Woolwich, 2021

Photo courtesy of the artist

DA:  That's such an important practical thing to consider. When you show a sculpture or installation again and put it back together in a new location, does it stay the same or change?

CR:  It’s quite hard actually to put it all back together in the same way. That's something I've had to think more about lately. The work only exists for that exhibition period, a lot of the time, which is quite a difficult thing to deal with emotionally, and sometimes physically too. There's a temporality to these giant structures. It can be exhausting, but also difficult to repeat. They respond to different spaces so they do take on a different form. Sometimes I get new materials as well, but some elements stay the same. I’ve got really good at working out what pieces go where and what angles fit together. I can gauge a space and gauge how I’ll need to rebuild the structure, but sometimes there’s an extra 50cm you have to add on! 

DA:  It sounds like a lot of work! How did you find that the pandemic affected your practice?

CR:  I just stopped to be honest. I didn’t go into my studio and I started redecorating my flat. I think I really needed a break. I found it quite challenging at first. I tried to do a few paintings here and there, and drawings. I taught myself a few things on Rhino, 3D modelling software, and updated my website which has since helped me with designing larger installations. I did a residency in the Old Central Saint Martins building in Holborn which was early on in the pandemic. It was so eerie as London was so empty. I spent my time exploring as they’d demolished half of the building. I didn’t end up doing much apart from drawing and photography as I was in awe of the place and a bit lost and confused. It was a place to contemplate. Sometimes it’s important to look at your surroundings to get inspired even if it’s not obvious what will come out of it immediately.

Burrow Sprout Grow, 2021, Concrete, paper-concrete, timber, plywood, resin, plastic, cardboard, foam underlay, corrugated roofing, window foil, carpet, lino, 90cm x 90cm x 260cm, Photo: Catriona Robertson

Exhibited at the Saatchi Gallery in London, Second Prize UK New Artist of the Year 2021, supported by Robert Walters Group

Photo courtesy of the artist

DA:  What would you like people to get from your work?

CR:  I'm not sure. They can think whatever they want to. I'm open to ideas, but I suppose there's a sense of reclaiming materials and reclaiming the landscape, particularly for the work I’m making at the Merz residency. Maybe there's a sense of rebirth or elation too. 

DA:  Am I right in thinking you often reuse materials from old installations for new work?

CR:  Yes. I’m thinking about this idea of reuse and I am a bit of a hoarder too! People tend to throw things away very quickly, and I’m interested in how you can recycle, reuse or adapt something. That reuse is not always entirely visible in my work as things are often embedded in the surface of sculptures. 

DA:  Have you had any surprising or memorable reactions to your work?

CR:  There was a really good comment from my friend's son. He responded to the piece exhibited at The Factory Project. He said, ‘If this was a roller coaster, it would make me feel sick’. I thought that was so fantastic and makes it seem more playful.

DA:  Yes! Whose work inspires you? You mentioned Kurt Schwitters earlier, but is there anyone else that really stands out?

CR:  I love Phyllida Barlow, she’s a big inspiration for me. I’m always amazed at how she creates her monumental work. I guess there's a lot of comparison with our practices in terms of deconstruction and reconstruction. 

Fissility: Holding it all together, 2021, Paper-concrete, paper-clay, galvanised steel, clamps, reclaimed perspex, resin, acrylic paint, spray paint, ratchet straps, Dimensions variable, Photo: Thorp-Stavri

Site responsive installation as part of ‘The Factory Project’ curated by Thorp-Stavri

Photo courtesy of the artist

DA:  Yeah, definitely the monumentalism of her work.

CR:  Yeah. She's always recycling her work. I think she has a graveyard of her old sculptures. I was really amazed by the kind of heights her work can reach and she just doesn't care how messy the work is. It's got this unfinished quality to it. I don't think I'll ever finish anything either. Everything is ongoing.

DA:  Apart from the residency you’re currently on, are there any other projects that you're working on?

CR:  Yeah, I'm working on an exhibition at Tension Fine Art in Penge at the moment. I'm also taking time to work on my professional artistic skills as part of the year long mentorship from the Royal Society of Sculptors Gilbert Bays Award. It's been really good. There'll be a show at the beginning of next year and I need to start thinking about what I’m going to make. 

DA:  I look forward to seeing what you make in the future. Thanks so much Cat! 

CR:  Thank you so much.

Find out more about Catriona’s work:

Website

Instagram

Detail image of paper-concrete, 2022, Paper-concrete, pigment, Photo: Catriona Robertson

Site specific public sculpture at the Merz Barn, Elterwater, Lake District

Photo courtesy of the artist

Peihang Benoît 黃沛涵

Peihang Benoît in her studio photographed by Clara Yu

Photo courtesy of the artist

Damaris Athene:  Could you start off by telling me a bit about yourself please Pei?

Peihang Benoît:  I'm originally from Taiwan and I spent my childhood in the States. I moved to London for further studies but, before I moved to London, I already had a career in Taiwan and decent gallery representation in Taipei. Yet I always felt like there was much more in the world that I should explore. So I took a chance and restarted in the UK. It feels refreshing, like I've had a second life to restart over. It was extremely exciting to be in London, because all sorts of people live there. After five years in London, I had the opportunity to move to Paris. It's another challenge. It’s not the easiest because there's a language barrier and French culture is very unique. But I feel incredibly lucky to experience three major cultures, American culture, British culture, and now French culture. My roots are in Taiwanese and Chinese culture. I hope it all influences my practice in many ways.

DA:  I didn’t know you used to have gallery representation in Taipei. What's the art scene like there, and in Taiwan generally?

PB:  There's an East Asian character that's very identical. The activity and market over there could be top 10 in the world or more if you consider the tradition of collecting Chinese antiques and modern masterpieces. It is a lot bigger than we realise. I still think people are very influenced by Japanese culture and aesthetics in terms of contemporary art. Super flat has a big influence for instance, as well as artists such as Nara Yoshimoto and animation. It's getting more and more international, and the new generation is rising. The character of the Taiwanese art scene is moving very fast with technology. 

Youth Activities 4, 2019, Oil, oil stick and acrylic on linen, 180cm x 115cm

Photo courtesy of the artist

DA:  Fascinating! Could you tell me more about your practice?

PB:  My practice is basically about my everyday life. I think it was rooted in me from the very beginning of my practice when I tried to look around my environment. It's a bit like a personal diary — I’m like a mirror to reflect what is happening around me. It's not just about being Taiwanese, you know, it’s also about being a female or being a kind of identity, or a living person in general. At the moment I'm working on something about the experience of confinement. I think it drives men even crazier than women, because I feel like at some point, we're ready to be confined. Taking myself for instance, when I just gave birth to a baby, I knew that I had to stay at home, so the lockdown that happened at the same time was ok. But it became extremely painful for my husband — he felt like he lost his own world and that kind of change and how he reacted to it intrigued me a lot. I tend to switch topics or subjects about every two or three years. My last project ‘Youth Activities” was about my relationship with my mother. She passed away a few years ago. I went to dig into our history — I enjoyed the process of taking myself out of it, and then to review her life and my life as a whole to compare.  

DA:  Interesting to hear how your ideas change every few years. 

PB:  It corresponds to different stages of life. My topic is always in flux. I work through things and then move on. 

DA:  Yeah, it’s evolving as you're evolving yourself. When you come across different obstacles, you can use it as a tool.

PB:  It’s like therapy!

Gateway 3, 2022, Oil and acrylic on linen, 60cm x 50cm

Photo courtesy of the artist

DA:  Do you work with any other media apart from painting?

PB:  I make ceramics. I’ve also made some songs and done some photography, as well as conceptual artwork. When I go on residencies, I like to try something different. I also did some social projects based on painting that were more like a performance. Painting is the main thing and then ceramics is my second love, because it feels like painting in 3D. 

DA:  How did your painting style develop?

PB:  I have had this very strong intuition and this very painterly style from the very beginning. All these years, it’s stayed the same whatever the subject or the method of painting. It’s evolved but it’s still there. It has built my confidence. I have a specific way of touching the paint. From very early on I was shown Impressionist paintings. In Taiwan we have had this strong influence from Japan since being colonised by them. They love Impressionist paintings there because of the Japanese/French connection after the war. 

DA:  It's fascinating to hear how your style has developed. How do time, space, memory, and the migratory experience feature in your practice?

PB:  My practice is all about my everyday life and how I experience it personally. I’m an individual who is influenced by a bigger tidal wave of history. Since I decided to leave Taiwan, I felt like my life has changed a lot. The first thing you have to face is how to place yourself in an entirely different environment. I would say in these four key words, the migratory experience is the most important one. Time and space change because of the change to be in different places and within different cultures. Memory corresponds to time — you always look back to your own past. What has been changed and what has not and what has been left there for you to carry on? All these questions, and the somehow uncomfortable things caused by my personal experience of constantly moving, are things that I want to visualise in my works.

Installation view of Peihang’s solo show ‘All Her Bright Times’, Yiri Arts, Taipai, Taiwan, 2021

Photo courtesy of the artist

DA:  Can you take me through your process?

PB:  All my works are photography based. I use random phone photos and my memory. I come back to dig into my own archive. 

DA:  There’s a lot of fragmentation in your paintings. Do you mentally collage the different photographic images in your head, or are you responding to the paint on the canvas?

PB:  Well, there are two stages, the pre canvas stage and working on the canvas. I do have a kind of collage method in my mind. With my current project I take interesting contours from my phone archive, using shapes to lead to another world outside. It's about interior and exterior, about now and the future or the past. In your mind you can be in many places at the same time. My process is heavily influenced by the Photoshop process as well and I use it to make a reference image that I then paint onto the canvas. Once I’m painting the texture is very important, you need to respect the material itself. Paint has a lot of potential to be thick and to be thin. I feel a rhythm with oil painting. It's like singing a song. As a result my work is very organic.

DA:  Your paintings are so visceral and delicious! I hope I’m able to see them in person one day. The materiality of the paint is so seductive.

PB:  It's like having the pastry, you know! The cream on the cake. I love to embrace beautiful colours. The subject could be serious but visually it has to be something that sings along with me.

DA:  Yeah! How has the pandemic affected your work?

PB:  The pandemic is everything in my work right now. Have we even got over the pandemic yet? There are long term effects. It was important for me to not respond to it immediately in my work because I need the time to reflect and explore things in more depth. 

Gateway 2, 2022, Oil and acrylic on linen, 40x30cm

Photo courtesy of the artist

DA:  What would you like people to get from your work?

PB:  I love people to see part of themselves in my work, everybody has a different history. We're not from the same culture but we're humans. As humans we go through the same thing. 

DA:  Whose work inspires you?

PB:  My all time favourite is Francis Bacon. I like the tremble in his work and I try to do that with my work. I also love Cecily Brown. There are many more women artists who inspire me more than men. Early on, I was so drawn to Jenny Savile. I was quite shocked by her work. I love Marlene Dumas a lot. You feel the flesh in a very thin, washed layer of paint. Thinking about time and space, Julie Mehretu and Sarah Sze are artists who give me a very good sense of addressing directions, finding the map in your mind. They are the artists who inspire me to pursue this direction in my work, not the visual outcome but the process. In terms of younger artists, I like Michael Armitage very much too. It's very painful and has this historical context, but it's also everyday life. I think his work is fantastic. Caroline Walker is someone else I’ve been looking at. There has been a renaissance in painting recently. More and more artists are embracing and celebrating painting in a very painterly way. I quite like Rute Merk and Avery Singer too, their works are about post-image and very interesting. 

DA:  A great selection, you’ve mentioned so many of my favourite artists. We have very similar tastes!

PB:  I also like Jenna Gribbon, and Flora Yukhnovich. A lot of people have said that we have a similar visual language. Her works give you a strong impression. The list goes on and I could mention so many more people! 

DA:  What projects have you been working on recently? You mentioned the series about confinement earlier. 

PB:  That will be it actually, at the moment, because I'm pregnant! I will be giving birth to a second daughter in August. I'm trying to finish as much as possible before then. But this pandemic thing will continue because pregnancy is another confinement. I can use it, embrace it further and revisit it.

Youth Activities 1, 2019, Oil, oil stick and acrylic on linen, 180x115cm

Photo courtesy of the artist

DA:  Congratulations! How much time will you have to take off painting?

PB:  We'll see. My studio is at my home which helps. It works really well for me. During the hours the babies are asleep, I can still do a little bit of this and that. 

DA:  I hope you're able to carve out some time, although I'm sure it will be difficult at the beginning. Are you having any exhibitions before then? Or are you in wrapping up mode now?

PB:  I'm wrapping up and I will have a major solo exhibition next year in Taiwan. I'm really looking forward to that, because it's in a dream gallery where the curator is constantly in touch with me to discuss the development of the work. 

DA:  Amazing news! I look forward to seeing photos of the exhibition.

PB:  I hope to have more capacity for projects in Paris or London as well. I'm developing my knowledge of the art scene in Paris. The two years where everything was shut down and it was just hard to explore all over again from scratch. So that’s why I felt like we were living on an island.

DA:  It's a hard time to move to a new place.

PB:  It's quite a challenge with not just the language barrier but also the cultural barrier, and then with having a family I’m not as free as I used to be to go out and mingle. But it will come! 

DA:  Indeed it will! Thank you so much Pei. 

PB:  Thank you for the questions.

Multiverse 4, 2022, Oil and acrylic on linen, 60x50cm

Photo courtesy of the artist

Find out more about Peihang’s work:

Website

Instagram

Peihang Benoît working in her studio

Photo courtesy of the artist

Hollie Miller

Tears like opals, 2022, Collaboration with make-up artist Sim Virdi, Performance to Camera, Photo: Hollie Miller

Photo courtesy of the artist

Damaris Athene:  Please could you start by telling me a bit about yourself Hollie?

Hollie Miller:  I'm a performance artist with an interdisciplinary practice and a background in contemporary dance. 

DA:  How did you make the transition from dance to performance and visual art?

HM:  My journey was through contemporary dance, ballet and Butoh, before seeking a freer way to express myself through performance art. I’m still interested in dance, but mainly somatic techniques and experiential anatomy now.

DA:  What are these?

HM:  They explore movement based on the imaginative sensorial body and help heighten your awareness of sensations and subtle shifts within the body. I enjoy them because they aren’t technique based dance forms and allow you to delve into the subconscious. 

DA:  It sounds amazing. What does your practice entail?

HM:  I work with performance, film, photography, sculpture, costume and my naked body.

Blood Bone Breath, 2022, Performance to Video Camera by Hollie Miller and Hannah Buckley, Sound: Craig Scott, Costumes: Hollie Miller, Camera: Kris Abdai, Filmed at Wainsgate Dances, Supported by Arts Council England

Video courtesy of the artist

DA:  What kind of themes are you exploring in your work?

HM:  Recurring themes such as rebirth, metamorphosis, life and death cycles and embryology. At the moment, I'm working on a duet with dancer/ choreographer Hannah Buckley, which has a somatic focus exploring softness, rest and being in relation to another body based on healing and recovery in response to the pandemic. I also work a lot with my partner musician Craig Scott. We are currently building a new wearable musical instrument. Each project has a different focus, but they often come back to the same recurring themes of bodily lifecycles.

DA:  I look forward to seeing how your wearable instrument with Craig turns out, will it make noises depending on how you move?

HM:  Yeah, it resembles an external nervous system that is strapped onto my body with lots of tubing. I have conductive chords attached between my fingers and toes that turn me into a string instrument. The sound is activated by my movement. I'm connected to Craig’s sound sources through an umbilical cord. This instrument could have been wireless, but Craig works a lot with analog hardware and we've been really thinking about how bodily these wires are and how they can become an extension of my body’s nervous system. 

DA:  That sounds really interesting. Do you have any performances coming up?

HM:  We have an upcoming residency at V SS L in Deptford and are performing there on the 18th August. 

To Melt/ To Crystallize, 2019, Performance to Camera, Video Still: Hollie Miller

Made during a residency at the Serlachius Museum, Finland

Image courtesy of the artist

DA:  What motivates you to work with performance and time based media?

HM:  It's just how I express myself. When I was younger, I was very shy but I loved dancing and gymnastics. I always had a bodily confidence that I didn't have in speech. I'd make really elaborate dance routines in the living room and perform them at school concerts and it just grew from there. 

DA:  How interesting that your initial form of communication was with your body. Could you speak more about how you use your body in your practice?

HM:  My body is my primary material, it is a raw and evolving piece of flesh. It is always there for me - it is very loyal. It fascinates yet frustrates me and I return to it over and over again. I try to work through these blockages. I find restrictions can be creatively helpful to push against. 

DA:  Has using your body in your practice changed your relationship with it?

HM:  It’s helped me to connect more deeply with in search of a spiritual and philosophical meaning behind what it means to be embodied in a physical form. 

DA:  Do you train your body in certain ways to be able to do the work?

HM:  I do yoga and dance improv classes. If I am preparing for an endurance based performance I’ll do some extra training to get my fitness up. In my performance 'Animus' I performed in a pool of slime for a long duration. I ended up injuring my knee. While I explore the limits of the body it was a reminder that it is my main material and I need to look after it. I have since thought more about ways to incorporate care and sustainability into my practice.  

ANIMUS, 2020, Durational Performance and Sound Art Installation in collaboration with Craig Scott

Video courtesy of the artist

DA:  Do you show a lot of video work as well so you don't always have to be there and be present?

HM:  Yeah, I love making films and taking photographs, but with that you just send an mp4 file or a print off to a gallery and I don't really get a kick out of it like I do with performing. Performing is an adrenaline thing, you get high off the liveness and intimacy with strangers. It's all about the audience’s presence and how they influence the moment. That's the magic part. 

DA:  Could you expand on how you use sound in your work?

HM:  Craig is a musician, sound artist, composer and decomposer! He builds sound sculptures out of electronic detritus. He creates the musical scores for my films and we perform together live. We did a piece called ‘Sonic Archetypes’ where he made a feedback mobile from a group of speakers that spin on a stick around directional microphones. We’re now trying to take our collaborative work a step further by building this new wearable instrument so that the sound and movement making is simultaneous. 

Sonic Archetypes, 2020, Collaboration between performance artist Hollie Miller and sound artist Craig Scott, Performed at San Mei Gallery, London, Camera: Sam Williams

Video courtesy of the artist

DA:  Your performances and the sound alongside are really powerful. Animals and nature often feature in your work and sometimes sort of human-animal hybrids. For me, nature feels like a sinister force, and I was wondering whether you could expand upon that.

HM:  There is a darkness to my work regarding the nature/ culture battle. When I perform naked I am trying to strip my body of culture but that’s impossible because culture is so embedded in us. I’ll often cover myself in organic matter eg. mud in an attempt to erase my identity and ego. Eventually we die and nature consumes us and lives on. It is an overpowering force, we are just ants! That’s why I like performing outdoors in the landscape. It puts the body into perspective. 

DA:  That's really interesting how you’re trying to strip your identity away. A lot of it is so uncanny with the costume and in the movement, and it’s very unsettling. We're not used to seeing humans like that. It's almost like you're being taken over by nature and the sound adds a lot of tension to the work. How do you usually work? Do you find that that's been affected by the pandemic?

HM:  As a live performer it was very difficult. All of my gigs disappeared and that was the bit I love most. Like many other performance artists I did more lens-based work. 

DA:  What would you like people to get from your work?

HM:  Some of my work can be a bit uncomfortable and I think especially now, because of the pandemic, there's more anxiety over the body and intimacy. In my work where I am naked, I am thinking about the agency of my displayed female body and the audience’s gaze and playing with the malleability of this power play- this emotional elasticity and psychology interests me greatly. I aim to intrigue or provoke. I'm not trying to shock, but subtly get under people’s skin!

Disgust/ Lust, 2015, Performance to Camera, Photo: Genevieve Lutkin

Photo courtesy of the artist

DA:  Yeah, I think that can be a lot more powerful than something that's really in your face. Have you had any surprising or memorable reactions?

HM:  One time in a performance a woman screamed and threw her handbag at me and ran out! 

DA:  *laughs* How do you find it when you're performing with your naked body?

HM:  When I first started doing it, it was really raw and vulnerable and I wasn't really sure what I was doing. Now I often have Craig supporting me with his sound. Often in gallery spaces the audience is everywhere as there’s no front or back like on a stage so Craig’s sound casts a protective space around me, it gives me energy and power that I didn’t have before.

DA:  Whose work inspires you?

HM:  Doris Uhlich, Keira O'Reilly, Regina José Galindo, Rocio Boliver, Iiu Susiraja to name a few!

DA:  What ideas do you have bubbling away?

HM:  I’m currently obsessing over Leda and the Swan. I’d really love to make a new piece about that.

DA:  Good luck! Thank you so much Hollie, it’s been great talking about your practice. 

HM:  Thank you!

Spikes and Ladders, 2021, Documentation of live performance collaboration with Craig Scott at UK Mexican Arts Society, London, Performance: Hollie Miller, Sound: Craig Scott, Camera: Sam Williams

Video courtesy of the artist

Find out more about Hollie’s Work:

Website

Instagram

Vimeo

Mercury, 2020, Performance to Camera, Photo: Hollie Miller

Photo courtesy of the artist

Carole Mousset

Portrait of Carole Mousset in front of one of her paintings

Photo courtesy of the artist

Damaris Athene:  Carole, can you please start off by introducing yourself?

Carole Mousset:  I'm a French artist, but I have lived in Brussels for almost seven years now. I decided to come to Brussels to finish my master's degree in painting. In my work, I've always been interested in flesh. I've always wondered why and I think it’s because I had a disease when I was a teenager that changed my view of flesh. It's a time when your body is in a huge growing process and so it really changed the way I saw my own body. I had to put this in perspective. This was the time I started to watch gore movies and became interested in gore images and flesh stuff. It was a way to heal myself and I think it was a way to express how I was seeing my own body at the time. I think this is where it started. Since that moment, I like to see the body as a fluid container in constant mutation. Something really wet and fleshy. This is something that I like to call the body gaze, seeing the world with a fleshy prism. Everything if you reframe it can be organic. In my work I like to create viscous patterns that could be erotic also, because the matter is so soft and wet. I’m interested in the ambivalence between revulsion and attraction. I try to change people’s preconceptions about disgust. 

DA:  Thank you, it’s fascinating to hear how your interest in the body started. What draws you to work with different media?

CM:  Mostly I do painting, but I like to mix it with sculpture and sometimes photography. For photography I often mix photos I have taken with photos I have found on the internet to create a wall texture. I like to print the photos on glue backed paper that you can stretch on the wall and to present the paintings on top of it, creating different layers of pattern. For sculpture I like to do frames for my painting. I’ve been doing ceramics for two years now. For me ceramics and painting are very similar, there is this slowness in the process. It takes time and it's about soft shapes. For me, it's another way to talk about fluids and flesh. I like the fact that the painting and sculpture can be in dialogue with each other. The glaze on the clay is really shiny and I can find in ceramics some things that I really like in painting. Sometimes I also bring a kinetic and sound side to my work; I made a few fountains. I was like, Okay, I work with body fluids, so why shouldn't I do some fun things! I have tried out a mixture of fluids, milk and coloured water. I also made an expanding foam sculpture that I covered in plaster, painted and coated in Paraffin wax and I used a mist maker with it. I really like expanding foam as it’s so easy to make body shapes, everything looks like organs.

Les Courants Lymphatiques (Body Cloud), 2021, Oil on canvas with ceramic, 35cm x 45cm x 5cm

Photo courtesy of the artist

DA:  I hope I’m able to see some of your kinetic sculptures in real life one day! How did your painting style develop?

CM:  Actually, when I started to paint human flesh I worked from screenshots of gore movies. It was very explicit and gory. I liked the provocative side of it but you don't say anything with that. So after that, I reframed the images and I started to abstract them. Now, I always have a balance between abstraction and realism. I try in my painting to make people understand that it comes from something real. In the process of abstraction I change the colours or reframe things. The paintings have become more and more blurry and focus on shiny things. 

DA:  Are you still using a lot of reference images?

CM:  Yeah, it really depends. Sometimes it's screenshots, not only from gore movies, but also from animal documentaries. Sometimes it's medical pictures, or macro pictures of plants, or a 3D texture that I found on the internet. I don't have a specific source for my painting, I like to mix everything. I take inspiration from everywhere.

DA:  It's really interesting to see what comes into your paintings, because there's so much that goes behind every artwork, isn't there? How does the body and bodily fluid feature in your practice?

CM:  So it's by the representation of them and sometimes I show real fluids, often either water or milk, but I try to make people think about other fluids. Lately, I did a series of paintings about milk, but actually everybody says it looks like semen! It can therefore be seen as a non-binary biofluid. I like the fact that you can see whatever you want in the four big paintings. I took a mixture of milk splash 3D images from the internet, mirrored the image or took a small part of it and then put that in front of a marbled skin texture. What I like the most about body fluids is the fact that it makes everything shiny. In painting it's really cool to paint the small white sparkles. Representing fluids is also a way to express movement, matter that is constantly flowing and evolving. 

Trouble Minded, 2021, Ceramic, water, food colouring, pump & plastic pipe, 56cm x 45cm x 50cm approx.

Photo courtesy of the artist

DA:  How do you develop ideas? What’s your process when making the ceramic frames? 

CM:  It depends, sometimes I start with the frame or sometimes the painting. It’s difficult with ceramics because it shrinks when it has been fired so it's quite difficult to adapt it to the painting. Sometimes I just have an idea for a frame. Lately I did one with roses, things that look like a huge vulva actually! I don't have a painting for that yet so now I'm trying to think about one. Sometimes I just do a frame and then I have a painting at my studio that it will really fit together with. I don't have a specific process for that. Right now I'm working on a project where I’m doing corners as it would be really difficult to do big frames for big paintings. With the corners you can put them on every size. I like the fact that it's not a frame, it's just ornamental. I'm doing corners for a painting which is the surface of a swamp. It looks like a numeric pattern actually, but it's water. I'm making white enamel corners that colonise the wall and can colonise the painting too. I’m realising that I like doing ceramics where it can go with different paintings. I think it's sad to just decide that this frame is going to go with that painting and that's it. I prefer to make ornaments, things that go on the side of one painting that can dialogue with different paintings.

DA:  Have you shown much of your ceramics and paintings together?

CM:  I've shown ceramic frames with paintings in group shows, but I have never shown them all at once. Actually, this is something I would really like to do, to exhibit all the frames and all the paintings on a wall with maybe a picture behind it. That would be really cool.

DA:  That would be amazing. I hope you get an opportunity to do so! Has the way you work been affected by the pandemic?

CM:  I worked a lot from my place during the pandemic during the lockdown. I developed a small canvas series and I painted a lot. I had a lot of time, because the store where I was working was closed. It was strange and interesting, because I was working on body fluids at a time when you had to hide them. I wanted to work on something that was even more taboo at that moment. That's when I decided to work on saliva for an installation in Liege behind a window, and then decided to paint huge milk splashes.

L'équilibre des courants cosmiques, 2020-21, Oil on canvas, 160cm x 120cm

Photo courtesy of the artist

DA:  An interesting time to be thinking about fluids and infection! What would you like people to get from your work

CM:  I’m interested in changing the relationship that they have with disgust. I like it when they see my painting and they think there is something aesthetic about it, something that they're attracted to and then when I tell them what the subject is they're like, ‘Oh my God’. I really like it when you change their way of seeing disgust and it makes them change the way they see their own body. I like creating science fiction fantasy worlds with flesh images that focus on texture. I’m proposing new texture worlds, something dreamy and weird at the same time.

DA:  Whose work inspires you?

CM:  I would say the most important inspiration for me is David Cronenberg. I really like the concept that he created of body horror. He created a cinema theory which he calls ‘creative cancer’, filming things with the ‘disease prism’, seeing the world with the point of view of a sick or wounded body.  It's like the body gaze that I was talking about earlier. I also like the paintings of two young artists. One is British and she’s called Elsa Rouy, and the other one I think she's American, she’s called Rae Klein. They both did a show at a gallery in Antwerp called Everyday Gallery. They do blurry shiny things. I really like the dreamy world Rae Klein is painting, everything is so delicate, and Elsa Rouy is so gory, and there's something really feminist that you can feel in her work that I really like. Also Joey Holder who does multimedia installations inspired by biology, science, and technology.

Texture #2, 2021, Oil on canvas, 30cm x 24cm

Photo courtesy of the artist

DA:  A great selection! What projects have you been working on recently?

CM:  At the end of May I exhibited in a group show for Antwerp Art Weekend curated by the Belgium curator Zeynep Kubat. She curated the show ‘Sugar for the Pill’ with 10 women artists. It's about self love and self care and fluids. She was inspired by Hildegard von Bingen, a nun from the 12 century who came up with humoral theory. 

DA:  That sounds amazing. Congratulations on the show! What plans have you got for future work? 

CM:  I would like to go back to making huge paintings in my studio, because it's been a while now. I'd like to do a swampy series, green fleshy things. I'd like to do a series about nature and the body and to paint nature as a wounded body.

DA:  I can’t wait to see what you make! Thank you so much Carole. It was fascinating hearing about your practice. I hope I’m able to see your work in person in the not too distant future!

CM:  Thanks so much! 

Stay Hydrated (detail), 2022, Oil on wood, paraffin & epoxy, 44cm x 92cm x 2cm

Photo courtesy of the artist

Find out more about Carole’s work:

Website

Instagram

View of Carole Mousset’s studio, 2021

Photo courtesy of the artist

Ibuki Kuramochi

Ibuki Kuramochi performing

Photo courtesy of the artist

Damaris Athene:  Could you just start off by telling me a bit about yourself?

Ibuki Kuramochi:  I’m an interdisciplinary artist born and raised in Japan. I obtained my artist visa in 2019 and moved to Los Angeles. I was born in rural Gunma Japan where my family owned a well established sake store. I grew up as an only child and my parents worked late, so when I got home from school I would eat alone and spend all my time drawing. I loved that alone time and I think it is what made me the artist I am today. For example, my ability to shoot my own videos, perform them myself and produce them all by myself, including costumes, makeup and editing. From an early age drawing and interacting with myself became an essential act in supporting my daily life. Also, when I was 12 years old, my family took a trip to Nara and Kyoto, and I still strongly remember being moved by the murals painted by the Japanese artist Ikuo Hirayama which were displayed at Yakushiji temple. It was an immersive exhibition in which the entire space was enveloped by the scenery of the Silk Road. Along with that impression, I strongly felt that I wanted to become an artist myself. When I was 18 years old, I entered art college and lived in Tokyo for about 10 years. While in school, I had the opportunity to go to an overseas study trip to Paris and London so I was exposed to art scenes overseas. I began to think that I wanted to work mainly internationally so I started studying English through online lessons. Soon afterwards, I had a solo exhibitions in New York and Taipei and began showing my work in other cities such as Sydney, Paris and Milan. Currently, I'm focusing on my activities in Los Angeles. 

DA:  Could you tell me a bit more about your practice?

IK:  My work is mainly about physicality. I work in a variety of media including video art, media art, such as digital paintings, performance that incorporates Japanese Butoh dance and painting. Butoh is a Japanese modern dance form constructed after World War II. In the world of Butoh, the idea of the perfection of the male body as an ideal is still rooted in the patriarchal culture of Japan. I critique these patriarchal physicalities  with an exploration of the phenomenal body, the uterus and the female body, which emerge anew in conjunction with the concept of cyborg-feminism and technology. In addition, now that the Internet has become widespread and pervasive, people's consciousness is drifting in the digital world, and as a way of breaking free from ‘forgetfulness of the body’, I have been creating and publishing video works related to the body in self imposed isolation, like a diary. My physicality, which appears online, is contracted, cut off, expanded, and metamorphosed into all kinds of forms that transcend time and space. The physicality extracted on the media screen is a dualistic phenomenon of ‘body without consciousness/ghost’ and ‘consciousness/ghost without the body’. My work evokes a departure from the oblivion of your physical body in today's virtual world and an awakening to a new physicality - a physicality extracted from the media.

Matrix, 2022, Video still

Image courtesy of the artist

DA:  What draws you to work with different media.

IK:  I use a variety of media, but with everything I am creating a painting. I started my artist career by painting and later I began to incorporate Butoh dance movements into my live paintings and further sublimated them as performance art. My transition to digital painting and video art production was deeply influenced by my experience with the pandemic. When I perform, I dance using the space as a canvas and myself as the paint. Currently, I feel that I have more possibilities in performance and digital art than in painting, which I have been doing for a long time. These are all connected. For me, digital painting and video art are the same process as painting on canvas.

DA:  Could you expand on how you explore the body in your work?

IK:  In the pursuit of physicality, I use performance movement and Butoh dance methods. These dances and movements are photographed, digitised, and transcribed into various forms beyond the framework of the body. The anatomy of the body, the mechanism of the skin, which is said to be the third brain, and all kinds of body imagery will be discussed. In addition to moving my own body, I have also started muscle training and recently started boxing. I am most inspired by the process of my body's response through physical training in dance and sports, and by my own encounters with new physicality.

DA:  Could you tell me more about the history of Butoh dance?

IK:  Butoh is known as the ‘dance of darkness’. It was founded by Tatsumi Hijikata and Kazuo Ohno after World War II as a means of reestablishing Japan's cultural identity. Turning away from modernisation and Western dance styles, Butoh dance was founded on unknown principles such as philosophy, the subconscious, primal instincts, and ancient, unexplained myths. Butoh can be defined as a dance that pursues harmony/excess, beauty/ugliness, Western modernity/pre-modernity, formality/ emotion, extension/intensity, and the subversive beauty that can only be found in the latter. Unlike classical ballet, which is oriented toward the heavenly world through techniques such as leaping, this dance is oriented toward the lower world through its commitment to the floor and ground, its crab legs, and its low, bent hips. 

Matrix, 2022, Video

Video courtesy of the artist

DA:  How did you find out about it?

IK:  Through one of my artist friends who advised me to go to the Ohno Butoh dance studio where I met Mr. Yoshito Ohno, the son of Kazuo Ohno, one of the founders of Butoh. When I first met him, I was overwhelmed by his quiet but intelligent aura. I still cannot forget the Butoh training I received which began with an encounter with space, we performed a dance called "greeting space”. The teacher led us through the theme ‘The space of the classroom is the inside of your mother's belly, and you are the foetus’. Each of the ideas of Butoh is connected to Eastern thought and philosophy, and its fundamental base includes the question, ‘What is life?’. The two founders, Kazuo Ohno and Tatsumi Hijikata, had different styles like Yin and Yang. Kazuo Ohno was a Christian and pursued a dance rooted in Yang. In particular, Kazuo Ohno pursued mother worship and the connection between himself and the unborn child. I was very much influenced by the philosophy of Ohno’s Butoh. For example, in 2019, I did a performance at Orange County Center for Contemporary Art called ‘The Uterus’, a combination of Butoh and live painting. The circular transparent paper in the gallery represented the inside of the uterus, and the ropes attached to the body led to the ceiling representing the umbilical cord and the foetus. The performance symbolised the writhing of the foetus and the movement of blood in the uterus. My video work ‘Matrix’, exhibited at the Torrance Art Museum in March 2022, was about the uterus, ovulation, and the cyborg body. The Matrix is the maternal body, the uterus, which is also used in biology and medicine as the term ‘interstitial’. In this video performance piece, the focus is on the ‘essential difference’ that exists in the body, or corporeality. The egg in the video is a symbol of circulation time, identity, and heredity, while the flesh is a symbol of sexuality and physicality. Butoh dance is ritualistic and transformative, as well as a physical expression that moves between life and death, sexuality and asexuality. The different physicalities of the self that emerge through Butoh are at once transformative and cyborg. The onset of ovulation, the biological repetition of bodily difference, and the encounter with the endogenous cyborg that emerges at the intersection of internal identity and the ritual of internal difference.

DA:  That’s all fascinating, thank you! What impact has Sigmund Freud's work had on your own practice?

IK:  When I first learned about the concept of ‘Id’ from reading Freud's dream diagnosis, I strongly felt that this concept was involved in the process of creating my work. The fundamental desire of ‘Id’ is the urge for sex and death, and when I make a video work, I consciously search for my ‘Id’ and output it as an image. When I make paintings, I output my ‘Id’ as if I were swimming unconsciously. These unconsciously and consciously extracted ‘Id’ consistently have a physicality. They include sexuality, transformability, fusibility, eroticism with interchangeability, and so on. I also have sleep disorders and have frequent nightmares. These violent dream experiences can appear in my work as visceral representations.

The Uterus, 2019, Performance at Orange County Center for Contemporary Art

Photo courtesy of the artist

DA:  What is cyborg-feminism and how does that manifest in your practice?

IK:  The Cyborg Manifesto is a paper published by Donna Haraway in 1985. The cyborg is a creature of a post gender society, and the image of the cyborg is the result of a condensation of both imagination and material reality. The cyborg has no precedent in the history of Western thought and is an entity that escapes patriarchal and capitalist constraints. Haraway's conception of the cyborg demonstrated an idea that transcended the oppression innate by gender difference, and this idea is not limited to machine technology, but has gained tremendous support even today by discussing feminism in broader terms, such as biology and the environment. I felt such a strong sympathy with these ideas constructed by Haraway that I could not separate my own art from them. For example, Haraway claims women of colour can be understood as a “cyborg identity, a potent subjectivity synthesised from fusions of outsider identities." This shows the significance of my existence as a woman of colour creating art in the extremely white male-created world of contemporary American art scene. Also, I connect strongly with these two quotes, “From one perspective, a cyborg world is about the final imposition of a grid of control on the planet, about the final abstraction embodied in a Star Wars apocalypse waged in the name of defence, about the final appropriation of women’s bodies in a masculinist orgy of war.” and "The cyborg has no mother, but has a matrix. It was not born in a garden, but in history." Butoh dance was built on the groundwork of post-World War II grief and hatred and hidden within that Butoh movement is a hidden political nature. I was born and raised in Japan, where patriarchy and contempt for women are very prevalent. It is true that even today, in the world of Butoh, there are many men who idealise the male body as perfect, and in this context I find the concept of cyborg feminism is necessary. This is because the cyborg is a creature of a post-gender society, a being that has no precedent in the history of Eastern or Western thought, and one that is exempt from patriarchal constraints. My video and digital painting works are particularly strong in cyborg feminism. When I create digital paintings, I film my Butoh movements and cut out my bodies. I also construct them by combining body parts from my other body image. Many viewers are surprised that the dancing movements are the source. The physicality created in the video works is pregnant with extensibility and melting that transcends the original body. My cyborg physicality, wandering on the digital, transcends the burden of tradition, the absurdity of gender, and these ties, and constructs a post-gender physicality.

Matrix, 2022, Video still

Image courtesy of the artist

DA:  How do you usually work and how has that been affected by the pandemic?

IK:  I usually work in my home studio. My digital paintings are created by recording my performing body on video and then digitally cutting and stitching those bodies together. Through the experience of the pandemic, I have become more aware of the relationship between my own body and the digital body or ghost. In the early days of the pandemic, I felt a sense of fear, as if I had lost my physicality as people's consciousness, including my own, converged online. I began making performance video works and posting them online almost daily, as if in a diary. My physicality, floating online, is very permanent. It can metamorphose into any form over time and space, contracting, being cut off, expanding, and so on. The pandemic experience awakened me to a variety of physicality and discovery, and I can say that 2020 was a very unique year.

DA:  It's great that the pandemic gave you an opportunity to go deeper into what the digital body meant.

IK:  Yes. Before that, I had never made digital work, especially video. It was a very good timing!

DA:  Yeah! What would you like people to get from your work?

IK:  I think it's two things. Number one is a physicality broken free from the patriarchy, and number two is the possibility of physicality.

DA:  I definitely get that from your work. Have you had any surprising or memorable reactions to your work?

IK:  Before moving to the US, I was unsure if my expression would fit well into the American art scene. When I moved to the US from Japan in 2019 I was featured on the cover of the annual special issue of LA Weekly, LA's most famous magazine. I was very happy.

DA:  That must have been a great confidence boost to know that your work would be accepted in America. Whose work inspires you?

Endocrine, 2021, Video still

Image courtesy of the artist

IK:  Kayla Tange and Caroline Yoo, also based in Los Angeles, are artists I admire. As Asian women artists who also work in the US, I am moved and inspired by their work, which deconstructs patriarchy and challenges boundaries by using the female body image. I love the performance art of Shigeko Kubota of Gutai and the embodied performance art series of Carolee Schneemann. And of course, Donna Haraway.

DA:  A great selection of artists there. What projects have you been working on recently?

IK:  A group exhibition will be held at California State University, Los Angeles in June. I am currently working on that piece and recently completed a pilot video art piece leading up to it. The piece will reference evolution, fish, and the uterus.

DA:  A very interesting combination! I’m intrigued to see how that ends up. What plans do you have for future work?

IK:  This year I was selected as an ambassador member of Super Collider, an LA-based artist collective institute. Super Collider is a research institute focused on art, science and technology. I am looking forward to exhibiting my work and curating opportunities. This year, I will focus more on science and technology in my work.

DA:  That sounds amazing. Thank you so much Ibuki. It's been lovely meeting you.

IK:  Thank you so much.

Intradcrine, 2021, Video

Video courtesy of the artist

Find out more about Ibuki’s work:

Website

Instagram

滲 SHIN, 2020, Digital media

Image courtesy of the artist

Alexandria Valentine

Alexandria Valentine photographed by Jalen Hamilton

Photo courtesy of the artist

Damaris Athene:  Could you start off by telling me about yourself please Alexandria?

Alexandria Valentine:  I'm from the South Side of Chicago, born and raised. My family that came over during the Great Migration is from Mississippi and Arkansas, so I like to say that I’m from Chicago byway of Mississippi and Arkansas. I'm a writer, a poet, a visual artist, cultural worker, archivist, and a human!

DA:  What does your visual art practice involve? 

AV:  I'm primarily working in collage right now. I've been mostly working with Blac Tress magazine. It’s a hair magazine catered to Black women, featuring different hairstyles, products, horoscopes, and articles. The magazines I’ve found are primarily from the 70’s and 80’s. I really enjoy this magazine specifically because there's a lot of portraiture in it. It's very different from the sorts of magazines we see now, there’s a very unique artistic hand in it, something quiet about the photos. I'm also using National Geographic magazines, which is kind of funny, because my mom used to buy me National Geographic magazines when I was little. I didn’t cut them up then, I would just flip through the pages, fascinated at all these different places that existed outside of my own neighbourhood. It's interesting that I’ve come back to that. I'm fascinated with landscapes and I’m drawn to combining them with the women in the Blac Tress magazines. I have a series I’ve been working on, on and off, called ‘Planetary Feelings,’ where I combine a portrait from Blac Tress and a  landscape from National Geographic. I’m trying to get at the way our feelings and emotions mirror the patterns of the natural world and the solace that can be found in using the natural world as a way to represent feelings that we do not yet have a name for. As far as future endeavours go, I'm preparing for a show in May here in Chicago at Heaven Gallery where I’m working with photos from my family archives. So, I'm switching gears and that's really exciting. There's a different pressure when you're working with images of family, though. I feel even more precious with the imagery and it can be tricky to even move forward, but I’m excited about where the work is going. 

Black and Blue Series 05, 2020, Collage on paper, 7.5’’ x 8’’

Photo courtesy of the artist

DA:  How did you first come across the Blac Tress magazines?

AV:  I really love eBay and Etsy and sometimes I go down rabbit holes. At the beginning of the pandemic I was in a writing program at Columbia University and I was trying to force myself to make visual work but my brain was just like, “No!” When I got out of grad school, I finally had the mental space to work on visual work and started to look for source material. I typed in ‘vintage Black magazines’ and they popped up. I'd never heard of Blac Tress before then. That's one of the reasons I love eBay and Etsy because you can find  things that you never in a million years would have thought existed. I’m also a homebody so being able to do so much exploring from the comfort of my bed is perfect.

DA:  Were you working with collage before you discovered Blac Tress magazine or has it always been your art form?

AV:  It's been a bit of a journey. I went to the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, for fashion design actually. When I got in the department I didn’t enjoy it. I like to take my time and that's not what the fashion industry, as I understand it, is about. I like art because it gives me a chance to slow down, space to spend time with myself and to make things that I'm proud of. The fashion design program I was in was the complete opposite of that for me, it was pure chaos. After leaving the fashion department I was in this weird liminal space where I was like, okay, I don't want to do fashion anymore, so what am I going to do? I always loved journaling and writing for myself, so I thought why not try out writing? I took an intro to writing class with Suman Chhabra and fell in love. Even so, I really still had the urge to do something more with my hands. When I was in the fashion design program, instead of drawing clothes on my figures I used to collage them so I went back to that, but instead of collaging clothes I just did whatever felt good. 

DA:  Do you find that your writing feeds into your visual art and vice versa?

AV:  Yeah, for sure. I think everything really starts with the writing. In my writing I'm asking questions or trying to figure things out and the art is an extension of that. There's this quote by James Baldwin, in his essay ‘The Artist’s Struggle for Integrity’, where he says “The poets (by which I mean all artists) are finally the only people who know the truth about us. Soldiers don’t. Statesmen don’t. Priests don’t. Union leaders don’t. Only poets.” I think about that quote a lot, poets, writers and writing is kind of my North Star. I’m always returning back to a line in a book, a quote by my favourite author, a poem, my own journal—that’s sort of the engine that keeps everything else going for me. 

Through the Valley, 2021, Collage on paper, 7’’ x 7’’

Photo courtesy of the artist

DA:  Do you ever exhibit your writing alongside the collages?

AV:  I haven't done that in a while. A couple years back, I took a text and image class, and I really enjoyed it. That’s definitely something I want to get back to.

DA:  I'd be interested to see how that looks. When did you first become interested in archives?

AV:  My grandpa was always taking photos of our family and my mother was also very into documenting me growing up. My grandpa used to always let me use his Polaroid camera so I could take my own photos of the family, which was really cool now that I think about it, trusting like a five year old with your favourite camera. I think it started there, with the idea of being able to archive myself. It’s something that gave me agency over my own narrative at a very young age whether I realised it then or not. That was something I was very interested in as a child and it fizzled out as I grew up. It came back up when I was moving through a lot of predominantly white spaces in college and in grad school. I was looking for something to ground me. Being a Black American, there's so much of our history that we've been purposely divorced from, and so much that we just don't know because of the transatlantic slave trade. So this process of archiving is me trying to hold on to what we do have. So I started asking my grandma and great aunt for photos, and tracking down photos throughout our family. I don't want these photos to go missing. I want to digitise them and hold onto as much history as I can. This search for photos also led me to have these conversations with the women in my family about their lives and experiences. When I ask  them questions, I get these answers that I never would have expected, The stories that they tell me are really interesting. When my grandmother talks sometimes it feels like I’m reading a Toni Morrison novel. After getting my grandma talking, I asked her, “Why haven't you ever mentioned these things before?” and she said, “Nobody ever asks!”

DA:  Do you record any of those conversations?

AV:  Sometimes they happen by accident, and I wish I was recording. I am starting to record things, especially because my grandmother is hilarious! And I want to be able to hear it back in her voice.

In Wait, 2021, Collage on paper, 9.5’’ x 10.5’’

Photo courtesy of the artist

DA:  That would be a lovely thing to do. In your artist statement you mention Black latent thought, ancestral landscapes, and the Black Romantic; how do you explore these within your practice?

AV:  Black latent thought is a term I coined that speaks to the unique landscape of Black subconscious thought and points to the idea of a larger interconnected Black collective subconscious that includes the joys, traumas and experiences that are unique to us as a people. I needed a word for what I was interested in, so I came up with one. I'm really getting to this idea of the subconscious in my work, in both my writing and my visual work. We’re existing in one way, in front of people and in the world, but what's going on behind all those layers? What are the things that are actually making up who we are as people and perhaps the things that we don't like to talk about or don't want to talk about, but that are there. I'm really interested in psychology, it was one of my favourite subjects in high school. In regards to ancestral landscapes, I've been talking to family members and I’ve been trying to visually imagine the landscapes they're explaining to me. They were in Arkansas and had a farm, some of my family lived in Natchez, Mississippi in a place where my great-aunt describes the soil as being reddish. I’m working through understanding what those landscapes meant to them and what they mean to me. My grandma was telling me a story about her grandmother, Pauline Donald, who had a horse and was super badass. These stories make up the memory landscapes my work is concerned with. It's really nice to be able to look at the National Geographic magazines and take out landscapes that perhaps I've never had an actual physical relationship with, but feel drawn to. I think like, how does this relate to the emotion that's on this person's face? Or how does this relate to that one story that my grandmother told me? I would love to be able to have physical relationships with these landscapes but for now I can use National Geographic as a way to see these different places. The Black Romantic is a term that I became interested in after reading an essay on Studio Harlem’s website by a friend of mine, Jada-Amina. They mentioned the Black Romantic in their essay, and something clicked. I was like, Oh, that's such an awesome concept. Their definition of the Black Romantic is “the unique way in which Black people express sentimentality, through our affections for one another, our culture and adornment.” When I think of the Black Romantic, I'm thinking about romanticism and the exploration of solitude, holding nature in high esteem, respect for the spiritual and the world unseen. I'm also thinking about my grandmother and my mother, and the way they live their lives. The way they dress, the perfumes they wear, the way they decorate their homes. There's such a sense of romanticism there. The world has been very harsh and difficult, but they’ve found beautiful ways to exist and survive within it, that’s romantic to me. It feels like they're having this love affair with themselves and the world around them.

Black and Blue Series 03, 2020, Collage on paper, 7’’ x 7’’

Photo courtesy of the artist

DA:  Those weren’t terms that I came across before, so thank you for explaining all of that. What draws you to work with collage?

AV:  Accessibility is my favourite part of it, but I'm also finding catharsis in being able to take something completely apart and then put it back together. Especially, in these wild times we're living in it feels things are coming apart and they're never getting put back together. Collage gives you that control to say, okay, I can take this apart as much as I want to, but it can come back together again. Nothing's ever fully lost.

DA:  How would you usually work and has that been affected by the pandemic?

AV:  I tend to work by myself a lot and I'm still working by myself a lot so it hasn’t changed that much. I have a studio mate now, which is nice. People can be cool!

DA:  Do you think it's changed what you're exploring or thinking about in your work?

AV:  Yeah, I think it's turned me in towards the idea of Black latent thought for sure. It’s something I've always been interested in, but I think it's pushed me there more, because I‘m spending all this time by myself and aspects of myself that usually simmered more in my subconscious are coming forward and making themselves known. It's pushed me towards wanting to know what is going on in my brain and the brains of other people. 

DA:  Whose work inspires you?

AV:  There's an artist named Shabez Jamal. Primarily, I believe he's a photographer and anytime I see his work on Instagram he surprises me. I'm always waiting to see what new things he's doing. Also, a good friend of mine and colleague that I mentioned earlier, Jada-Amina, is inspiring to me. They're a collage artist, video/sound artist and singer. It trips me out that they’re on so many planes. I’ve listened to one of their songs so many times, like a quarter of the listens on Spotify for that song might just be from me! I also really enjoy the work of  Lorna Simpson, Toni Morrison, and Deborah Roberts. Their work feels so kindred to me. If I'm stuck, they help me get unstuck. 

Pieces, 2021, Collage on paper, 12.5’’ x 15.5”

Photo courtesy of the artist

DA:  A great selection! What projects have you been working on recently?

AV:  Too many! I'm in this show called ‘Resplendent’ in Baltimore that opens in March at Baltimore Connect Gallery.  It's curated by Teri Henderson, a pioneer in the Black collage movement. She recently put out a book called 'Black Collagists', which I was lucky enough to be a part of. The show is about Black women in standards of beauty and advertising and popular culture. I’m working on my largest piece to date which is anxiety inducing, it's about 30 by 40 inches. I normally work very small. I’m working with an image that I found of my grandmother. It’s a graduation photo where she’s in this big dress and she looks like she should be in a cotillion or something.  I’m also working with some of the images from the Blac Tress magazine.

DA:  Did you scan the images and blow them up? Or have lots of small images on a big sheet of paper?

AV:  I scanned it. Scanners are like heaven sent it. For the images from Blac Tress magazine, I pieced them together from the regular size, taking them straight out the magazine. I also have a show at home in Chicago at Heaven Gallery that opens, May 20th. It's called ‘This Way Home’ and that's something I'm still working through. I'm one of those people that, instead of trying to do everything late, I try to do it super early, because it's so anxiety-inducing to try to wait till last minute where I worry everything is going to go wrong. I'm working on collage pieces and might be working on some text paintings using my grandmother’s language from some of the stories that she's given me in the phone interviews we did.

DA:  So lots of exciting things in the pipeline!

AV:  Yeah, I'm excited and I'm a little nervous!

Macrocosm, 2020, Collage on paper, 7’’ x 7’’

Photo courtesy of the artist

DA:  What other plans do you have for future work?

AV:  I'm going to be working more with my family archives. I'm sure I'll still be dipping in and out of the Blac Tress magazines, because I still have a ton of them and lots of imagery left to work with. I'm also trying to push myself to work in different mediums. I was kind of scared of screen printing at one point, because during undergrad the class I was taking was moving too fast for me, and I thought it wasn’t my thing. But I actually like it, I just needed to take my time. The text paintings I’m working on are going to be screen prints.

DA:  That sounds great. I'm looking forward to seeing the screen prints. It could look really nice combined with the collage, you could screen paint over the top.

AV:  Yeah!

DA:  Thanks so much Alexandria, it was lovely talking to you about your practice. 

AV:  Thank you!

Find out more about Alexandria’s practice:

Website

Instagram

Black and Blue Series 01, 2020, Collage on paper, 7.5’’ x 8.5’’

Photo courtesy of the artist

Kalpana Vadnagara

Kalpana Vadnagara

Photo courtesy of the artist

Damaris Athene:  Could you start off by telling me a bit about yourself, please? 

Kalpana Vadnagara:  Yeah, I'm a visual artist born and raised in India and currently living and working in California, US. I received my Bachelors in Mathematics in India and then I moved to the US. I received my MFA in craft from Oregon College of Art and Craft, Portland, Oregon. When I realised my passion for art, I was too busy raising my two sons and had a lot of other family responsibilities, so I had to wait until my kids were grown up and went to high school. In India, due to age limit restrictions, I couldn't attend the fine art school. So I held my desire to study art until I moved to the US.

DA:  What brought you down to California? 

KV:  My whole family is in California. 

DA:  Did your husband and sons come with you when you went to Portland? 

KV:  No, it was just me, by myself. My sons were in school and my husband had a job there in California. My family supported me financially. It was a tough decision.

DA:  That must have been really difficult to be apart from them for so long. 

KV:  Yeah, I cried a lot.

DA:  How tough! What do you explore in your practice?

KV:  After doing my MFA here in the United States, I was able to combine my Indian roots with the art exposure that I received at my school. I created a hybrid art practice that enabled me to view Indian subject matter through a Western lens. My mixed media work allows me to experiment with Western art using religion and culture. My practice is specific to my experience as a woman from India. My practice is focused on Indian Women's daily life and their religious rituals. I characterise rituals as a subject while also using it as a strategy. 

Wedded (51), 2019, Rice Paste, House Paint on Canvas, Wheat Flour, Concrete & Wood, 57” x 57” & 11” x 11” x 37”

Photo courtesy of the artist

DA:  So it's the subject but it's also the medium of the work and the process behind the work?

KV:  Yeah. 

DA:  What are the rituals? 

KV:  The rituals are mundane, things like cooking, worship, prayers. It is everyday life, but I focus only on women's rituals. 

DA:  Could you expand on how you explore the domestic and women in your practice? 

KV:  I believe that women dedicate their lives to their family and community by putting others needs before their own. Still their sacrifice often doesn't get acknowledged. Indian society views the daily tasks of women as mundane rituals that lack imagination and skill. I question these value judgments hidden in the word mundanity. These daily rituals of Indian women have a profound effect on Indian society and it inspires my creativity. My work is informed by my cooking practice. I might my process is very much similar to my cooking. I merge contemporary artistic investigation with the traditional sense of ritual and responsibility reflected in domestic work. 

DA:  Are you the sole cook in your house?

KV:  I have taught my two sons how to cook and they both cook very well. They both have inspired my husband, so now he can also cook!

DA:  That's amazing!

KV:  It's very unusual in Indian culture.

Ganesh Chaturthi, 2018, Concrete, House paint, Turmeric & Cheesecloth, Size Variable

Photo courtesy of the artist

DA:  What different media do you use in your work? And what symbolism can these materials have? 

KV:  I started my art practice with drawing and painting when I joined the community college but then when I went to do my MFA, it was a different kind of school, and now I use mixed media including digital art, ceramics, installation, and social art. I've been using materials from my daily life as an inspiration. This could include ingredients from the kitchen, like wheat flour, rice, and all my spices, and also materials from my mother's shrine like pigments that she uses for her idols, red thread which we call ‘Nadachadi’, it’s a very significant material, and her faith. It has helped me to recognise my utmost admiration and respect for women who work so hard with no expectations for their loved ones. Another medium that I started using is language. It’s become a core ingredient of my practice, because I understand that language plays a significant role for any culture, but as an immigrant, translation is a pivotal part of my daily life in the US. 

DA:  How was your English before you move to the US?

KV:  I mean, I've never talked in English before, but I raised my two sons and they were studying in English medium. I was teaching them up to high school so I was familiar with the English language. After coming here, language was a barrier for me. 

DA:  What's your native language? 

KV:  Gujarati. 

DA:  So very different in structure. 

KV:  Yeah very different. Hindi as the Indian national language, so I know Hindi very well, too.

Unposted, 2018, Kanku & Ink on Canvas, Size Variable

Photo courtesy of the artist

DA:  You’re trilingual! That's very cool! How do you usually work and have you found that that's been affected by the pandemic?

KV:  Usually, I work in my home studio. I'm fortunate enough to have an amazing supportive family who encourage me spending time and energy on my passion. The pandemic didn't change much of my work style. However, I was planning a lot of projects which needed social gatherings and I had to put them on hold. I would definitely admit that the pandemic has changed my mindset, I have become more aware of uncertainty and I have learnt to be more flexible and to not stress over small things.

DA:  All important things to learn. With the social element of your practice, what form does that normally take?

KV:  I did some projects before, where I made roti, which is an Indian daily food. I got the audience to make roti and I asked them why it's not art. You need to understand the consistency of the flour. For me the consistency is similar to clay. I did another project where I was cooking in front of the audience. They were all there helping me while also taking turns doing other activities, kind of creating a family type of environment where everyone can sit, cook together, discuss, enjoy and relax. I want to take that to galleries and other public places.

DA:  That sounds amazing. Maybe now that things are calming down, you might be able to. What would you like people to get from your work?

KV:  I want my work to be viewed as a celebration of culture, rituals, prayers, language, beliefs, and faith. I want all those routinely rituals that go unnoticed to be noticed and also get appreciated. I want to embrace the wealth of my culture and my femininity. 

Memory Box, 2018, Ink on Paper, Rice, Sugar, Turmeric, Kanku (Red Pigment), Red Sacred Thread, 12” x 12”

Photo courtesy of the artist

DA:  Have you had any surprising or memorable reactions to your work? 

KV:  Yeah, years ago, I created an artwork for a group show, which was kind of a memory box. It was a combination of a candy box, and a worship offering box that I have always seen in the temples. As a child, I recall seeing that offering box with ingredients used in common worshipping, like Prasad. Prasad means holy offering. If you go to the temple, there will be a box, and you can do your prayers and take Prasad with you. I wanted to reference that and incorporate it in my work. So I created 54 small 5cm by 5cm watercolour paintings on paper from my childhood memories. I displayed them in the box with all the other ingredients. One day I received a phone call from an old lady who wanted to buy some of my smaller watercolour works for her grandson. I informed her that they weren’t for sale and she mentioned that some of her friends had taken some of my watercolour works from the exhibition, thinking they were for the visitors. This reflected the exact same practice where the holy offering is taken by the visitors. Unknowingly, someone reacted the same manner and I was able to make a connection in two different worlds. It was surprising! I didn't think that would happen in a gallery with a camera, security and a ticket to enter. 

DA:  Were you upset that you didn't have that work anymore?

KV:  At first, I was little bit upset. But then I felt like the meaning of that work came through. It touched my heart and I feel like it’s the most memorable work because of that reaction. 

DA:  It’s interested when you can bridge two worlds with your work. Whose work inspires you?

KV:  That is difficult to say a few because I admire and enjoy many artists’ work. I love Janine Antoni's work. I feel like I can easily connect her process with my work. She uses her body to transform the everyday activities such as sleeping, eating, and bathing into ways of making art similar to my transformation with religious and domestic rituals. I was inspired by her work, especially her wonderful work made out of chocolate, soap and lard. Another great inspiration is Zarina Hashmi. She is a minimalist but her work is very sensitive and very intriguing to me. Of course, my mother, my mother in law and all the women around me are inspiring too. An Indian artist called G.R. Iranna, who also works with similar concept like Indian culture and religious rituals, has also influenced my work. Recently, I changed job and now I have to commute for three hours each day. I’ve started listening to podcasts which are so amazing. They’ve introduced me to so many artists.

What Matters?, 2018, 3D Printing, Yarn & Turmeric, Size Variable

Photo courtesy of the artist

DA:  Which podcast would you recommend? 

KV:  There are so many. Two of my favourites are Conversations About Art by Heidi Zuckerman and The Great Women Artists by Katy Hessel. 

DA:  What projects have you been working on recently? 

KV:  I'm working on three projects at the moment. I cannot work on only one project, just like when I’m cooking and I have four stoves on. All my projects include language, cooking, religion, and ritual. I'm embroidering 27 Nakshatras on window screens. Nakshatras are lunar mansions, segments of the ecliptic through which the Moon passes in its orbit around the Earth. They’re very significant in our culture.

DA:  Wow!

KV:  Another project is an extended version of my previous work named 'Not Me’ where I translated my name in 132 languages. It's kind of a prayer. I was inspired by my mother doing Sahasranama, a prayer where you repeat Shiva's or Vishnu’s name 1000 times. I translated my name because I feel like that is most familiar thing to me. I dyed my canvas with turmeric, wrote my name with charcoal and then I dyed it again so that all the languages became one language. I did this about 10 times. This time I'm writing in a book. It's a long process! I’m recording it and will exhibit it as a video of the process. It's a kind of performance, but not in front of the public. For the third project I am making the phases of the moon in clay. In India we use a lunar calendar. 

DA:  Do you have any other plans for future work?

KV:  I have just signed up to volunteer for a senior community in Brooklyn, New York. I have to teach them art online because they are all vulnerable and isolated. I'm also hoping to make my social practice more artistic. In my family, we sit in a circle every evening at Sandhya, twilight time, do our prayers and then all take turns speaking about our day. I’d planning to do that at the library or the park and I'm planning to go to India and document the daily rituals of women.

DA:  I look forward to seeing all these projects come to life! Thanks so much Kalpana.

KV:  Thank you!

Mercury, 2022, Moving Image, 0:32 - “As young girls in India we are told that if we can’t make a roti into a perfect circle, we will never get a good husband. In reflecting on this custom I was struck by the artistry involved in making a perfectly round roti.”

Find out more about Kalpana’s work:

Website

Instagram

A photo of Kalapana Vadnagara’s process

Photo courtesy of the artist

Miranda Boulton

Miranda Boulton in her studio

Photo courtesy of the artist

Damaris Athene:  Can you start off by telling me about yourself?

Miranda Boulton: I'm a painter. I live and work in Cambridge. I grew up in Suffolk. At school my two loves were art and history. Both my grandparents on my father's side were artists. My grandpa died before I was born, but my Granny kept his studio as it was when he was last in there. When we visited, I would sit in the studio and just look around and stare and imagine him painting. The thought of an artist was very mysterious and amazing to me at that small age. So, when I went to university in Sheffield, I quite naturally did history of art. But I always hankered after the materiality of paint and I knew deep down that's really what I wanted to be doing. Throughout my 20s I did lots of short courses trying out different mediums, but I always came back to paint. At the age of 30, I made a decision that it was time to go for my heart's desire. My husband and I sold off our flat in London and went off traveling for six months. We hired a flat in LA in Hermosa beach for three months and I painted and drew continually. I didn't judge what I did, I just produced work. It was amazing. It absolutely liberated me. I felt like, I'm here and I can't give up now. When we got back, I set up a studio and after my second child was born I started on the Turps Banana correspondence course. It was a perfect vehicle for me. It gave critical input and deadlines. I thought one year would be enough, but three years later I was finally done! 

DA:  *laughs* Could you say more about your practice?

MB:  The dominant part of my practice is looking at art history. For me, my paintings are having a conversation with other paintings from art history. I focus on floral still life imagery and I paint from memory. I spend time looking at these paintings, either in real life, on my phone or in a book, and then, usually the next day, I will start painting based on those memories. I'm trying to distill that memory into a contemporary context or my own visual language. It's acknowledging history, time, space, place. Sometimes it doesn't even look like the painting! I never have an image of the painting I’m referencing with me when I’m painting. I’m pulling on that deep down memory. It can be quite hard and painful. It's an intense exercise to really go inwards in your head. It helps me with the process of painting because I get into a meditative state where I respond instinctually. I think of it like going underwater and above water, you’re sort of aware and then you dip underwater, and when you come back different parts of your brain start to analyse whether the painting is working or not. It’s that flow I’m really interested in. I want the painting to surprise me. 

Into the Groove, 2021, Oil paint and acrylic spray paint on canvas, 76 x 61cm

Photo courtesy of the artist

DA:  Is that a process that you've developed over quite a long period of time? I'm thinking that maybe the first step would have been to look at the reference images while painting, and then you realised that it was quite constricting?

MB:  It was a real mixture. I used to sometimes use them, sometimes not. And then I became aware that, like you say, I felt really restricted having the images there. It's the essence of something I want, not the actuality. The other thing that I’ve realised is really important in my practice is my experience of the surface and the formal elements of the painting. It was quite a jump a couple of years ago, when we went into the first lockdown. I spent much more time going back over paintings and really thinking about them in depth. The speed of the paint, the gestures, the marks, and the tensions on the surface became much more apparent to me.

DA:  You also started using spray paint didn't you?

MB:  I did. The spray paint is so lovely and buttery and powdery. It was a new tool to play with which made me much more aware of the other elements. I started making built up impasto areas as well because of how beautiful they were next to the spray paint. 

DA:  That’s great that you were able to have that time to reflect more. How has your painting language developed?

MB:  You're influenced by many different artists on your journey as an artist and I suppose each one of them leaves a little imprint on you. You have your core of who you are, how you draw, your experiences and then there's all these different phases you go through, absorbing different influences along the way. I can recognise that gesture might have come from here or that one from there. You develop a toolbox of gestures which become part of your repertoire. 

View of Miranda Boutlon’s studio

Photo courtesy of the artist

DA:  What draws you to flowers?

MB:  To me flowers are poignant. They have the cycle of life. They’re beautiful but have this transience to them. They've got the big life events covered, but then they've also got the every day. It just makes me really happy to paint them. Also, they are a vehicle for an inquiry into the formal elements of painting. I used to paint landscapes and figurative work as well. When I was on the third year of my course, with Turps Banana, I would switch to another genre every time a painting got problematic. I don't think my inquiry was ever overcoming any hurdles. I was just sidestepping them to keep the flow in the studio. I had a fantastic tutor who made me aware of this. She asked me to write ten rules of the studio. I looked at Richard Diebenkorn’s studio notes and made the decision to stick to painting flowers. It was probably the best thing I've ever done, by restricting the subject matter it allowed me to go much more in depth into my practice. Sometimes you feel like you're going around in circles, but you always end up in a slightly different place and I really like that.

DA:  What helpful advice from your tutor! How do you usually work? Has it been affected by the pandemic?

MB:  Yes, when the pandemic hit I had a studio in North Cambridge and during the first lockdown I just couldn't get there. I converted an outbuilding in our garden into my studio. I love having a studio home now. I think it's the continuity of being able to paint all day and to be able to spend time with the work. 

DA:  What would you like people to get from your work?

MB:  I suppose a sense of emotion. Impasto has a really emotional effect on me.  Flowers are life affirming, but they are also transient.  I suppose I want to convey beauty, happiness and sadness all at the same time.

Wildflower Soul, 2021, Oil paint and acrylic spray paint on canvas, 76 x 61cm

Photo courtesy of the artist

DA:  Have you had any surprising or memorable reactions?

MB:  The biggest surprise so far was when I won the Jackson's painting prize! I was bowled over. It was wonderful! It's probably the most positive reaction I’ve had to my paintings.

DA:  That's incredible. Congratulations! What's your most unforgettable experience with art?

MB:  I went to an exhibition of Richard Diebenkorn’s work at the Royal Academy. I think in 2015. There was something about his work that just hit me. I spent about four hours there and just sat and stared. I was really hit by his confidence to leave areas bare. In his Ocean Park series there are so many mistakes and over drawings. I adored it. It felt such honest work. Nothing was covered up it was so sincere and brave.

DA:  Amazing! Which other artists inspire you?

MB:  Manet has been a huge influence. I work with his flower imagery a lot. I have such deep memories of so many of his paintings that I don't even need to look at them anymore! Matisse’s use of colour. Francis Bacon, Auerbach and Joan Mitchell. I love the speed and vigour of her gestures. Cy Twombly too. And more contemporary, I really admire Tracey Emin. I love her work and I've read a lot of her books. Una Ursprung too. She uses spray paint in a very different way than I do. Her paintings are so light, airy, and beautiful. Keith Tyson is another one. He does a lot of flower paintings, but they're really detailed. I enjoy his different analytic approach to a similar subject.

Time Will Tell, 2021, Oil paint and acrylic spray paint on canvas, 120 x 100cm

Photo courtesy of the artist

DA:  You’ve mentioned so many of my favourites! What have you been working on recently?

MB:  I am starting to embark on a few new projects. I finally went to the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford where they have the most incredible room of Dutch and Flemish, still life painting from the 17th and 18th century. I'm starting a new body of work based on memories of those paintings. I’m going to work through these memories very quickly by doing studies on paper. It’s too cold to be in the studio at the moment! 

DA:  Have you got any shows coming up?

MB:  I have a few group shows coming up. I've got one Rye Art Gallery at the end of January. It's specifically a flower painting show. It's going to be nice to see my work alongside lots of other people’s interpretations. I've also got a group show at Studio 1.1 and No Format gallery. I’m doing an Arts Council application. I've been looking at the work of Mary Moser, who was a founding member of the Royal Academy in the 18th century. She was a flower painter, I want to do developing your creative practice application based on researching her work and then responding to it. I'm really excited about it because it brings all my art history research together. 

DA:  Have you got any other plans for future work?

MB:  I've got an exhibition in October looking at poetry and painting. I’m going back throughout my life looking at poetry that has influenced me. I don't know what I'm going to do yet.

DA:  It all sounds amazing! I can’t wait to see it all! Thanks so much for sharing your practice with me Miranda. 

MB:  You’re welcome. Thank you!

Find out more about Miranda’s work:

Website

Instagram

Miranda Boulton painting in her studio

Photo courtesy of the artist

Eman Khokhar

Eman Khokhar

Photo courtesy of the artist

Damaris Athene:  Could you start by telling me a bit about yourself, please?

Eman Khokhar:  Sure.  I am originally from Pakistan. I was born there and I grew up in the Middle East in the UAE. I studied at Cambridge School of Visual and Performing Arts for my foundation degree. Then I completed my bachelors at Oxford Brookes University studying fine arts, and then came back to do my photography MA at the Royal College of Art. Prior to first entering the UK, I studied for a year in Switzerland, in a finishing school called Institut Villa Pierrefeu.

DA:  So you’ve been around! 

EK:  I'm very grateful. It's been a lot of fun. I’ve traveled as much as possible. I've gained so much exposure around the world, as well as just being in the UK.

DA:  What drew you to the UK?

EK:  It has such an exceptional array of universities that will give you confidence and support throughout your time, especially in the arts field. I've always loved the UK, I don't know what it is, there’s just something that gives me comfort about it. I am so grateful for all the opportunities given to me whilst living there.

Peaking Through, 2021, C-Type Print, 80cm x 60cm

Photo courtesy of the artist

DA:  What do you explore in your practice?

EK:  So my most recent project is called 'The Space in Between’. It’s about the relationship between a mother and a daughter. I wanted to depict a South Asian mother and daughter, and to show how there's a lot of dependency versus independency. I really wanted to focus in on the space in between the two of our relationships. Growing up in the Middle East and having the culture that I have and the religion, there’s the cost of compliance versus freedom. It’s made it difficult to be open about my work, and what I've been choosing and wanting to make. During the pandemic, I had the opportunity to explore things further because I realised that I didn’t know where time is going and what's going to happen. All of that uncertainty brought me to the point of doing something I've been meaning and wanting to make for a very, very long time. And obviously a relationship of such sort is a very fragile matter to approach, you have to approach it with a lot of care and kindness. During the pandemic I began getting closer to my mother, because she was the only person I wanted to talk to. The pandemic broke relationships, but also brought back relationships. I realised that it was the culture that kept stopping me, the strict rules that I was going along with while craving independence and freedom. I began noticing how she would hold her prayer beads, how she would pray, how she held her veil, how she would wrap it around her head. It would be so delicate and fragile that I just fell in love with these notions of hers. That's where my practice began to evolve with our relationship.

DA:  Has your practice always been photography?

EK:  Not in the past, it has mainly been installation based work. It's actually been a lot about the veil, prayer, and water. There’s this wonderful Chinese philosopher called Lao Tzu who speaks about the beauty of water and how delicate it can be while at the same time it can be so hard that it can break rocks. The beauty of water was something that really resonated with me in my past work. Slowly I began doing videography as well, and then through that I got into photography.

Untitled, 2021, Photograph

Photo courtesy of the artist

DA:  With your recent project with your mum, is it all photography?

EK:  Yes, but I plan on expanding it further. At one point I experimented with Urdu calligraphy because my grandfather, my mum’s father, passed away during the pandemic. I had a lot of his handwritten notes which are kept close to my heart. I’ve tried out using my mum’s handwriting and his on my work. I want to do something different than just layering the calligraphy onto photographs. I want them to have their own individuality but still compliment one another, if that makes sense. 

DA:  I’m interested to see how that turns out. Could you expand on how you explore comfort and discomfort within your work?

EK:  It relates back to the cost of compliance versus freedom, independency versus dependency. The discomfort is living in a cultural society where things are put on you and you don't really have a choice. How do you work around it? The comfort being that with everything that's happening in the world, the only comfort I do find is within my mother and the bond we share.

DA:  How do you find it being back home? Are you coming back with a different mindset than when you lived there before?

EK:  Yes, I'm coming back with a different mindset. It's not the same as it was before, I’ve gained so much exposure of the world, that my new way  of thinking has helped me cope with where I am today. I still have the tendencies of wanting to get back out and travel, but not a lot can happen because of the situation we are all in. So I accept where I am and I’m looking forward to what I create next!

Ami (Mother), 2021, Photograph

Photo courtesy of the artist

DA:  That sounds like a really positive change that's happened. How do you investigate your cultural identity within your work?

EK:  The way I touch on cultural identity is mainly to do with the veil. The veil has been such a prominent aspect of my work for so many years, the covering of the face that's hiding the identity. The beauty of bringing back cultural identity through the veil has always been such a joy for me.

DA:  Do you wear the veil yourself?

EK:  No, I don't, but I am surrounded by it because of living in the middle east. There's beauty in the different ways of wearing the veil and what’s fascinating is what it means to people and the effect it has. I personally see it as a second layer of skin.

DA:  How would you usually work and how has that been affected by the pandemic?

EK:  Well, I usually work in the studio so that was a slap in the face. I lived in my studio. As my recent project was very home based, it worked for me being at home, but at the same time being in the studio allows you to rethink the whole project again. It has been challenging during the pandemic, I wish I had had more of an opportunity to travel and go back to take more photographs.

DA:  Did you edit the photos?

EK:  None of the images are edited. I worked hard trying out different layering combinations in the studio. There was a lot of trial and error in the process. But that’s exactly how you learn what not to do next.

Tasbee, 2021, Photograph

Photo courtesy of the artist

DA:  That's so interesting, because I've only ever seen them online and I had no idea that there were different layers to the images.

EK:  Yeah, there are a lot of layers. I don't like overlapping on Photoshop so I physically do it. 

DA:  I hope I can see them in real life one day. What would you like people to get from your work?

EK:  I'd like to hear what people think about the relationship through the work. The conversation of the space in between, the gap of being so close yet so far.

DA:  What does your mom think about the project?

EK:  She loves it. She's been very supportive of the work. She loves hearing people's views on the work. It’s so exciting not only for me, but also for her to hear what people think. 

DA:  Are there any reactions that are particularly memorable?

EK:  There was one lady who came up to me and asked if everything was staged in the photograph of The Blue Room. People assume I edit my photos but I don’t. All of the objects in the photo are how my mum places them there every day. The only thing I did was to place her in the middle. It gives a calming sensation because there's something so calming yet so intriguing at the same time. Who is that lady? Why is she in this room? Why is she so delicately placed here? It got me to look around more in my house for my mother’s touch, how she places things. My photographs then didn’t need to focus on the lady anymore but just her touch. It's just what is placed there. That's really beautiful.

The Blue Room, 2021, C-Type Print, 60cm x 80cm

Photo courtesy of the artist

DA:  Whose work inspires you?

EK:  Definitely Shirin Neshat and Donna Matar. There’s another really great philosopher, Gatean De Clerembault. I wrote my dissertation on him and he focused on women and their fetish about the veil. I found that insanely interesting. It led me on to the veil and the female gaze. Then also Chantal Faust, she spoke on touch. She inspired me a lot about the notion of touching within my work and the materials I used for printing. 

DA:  Some people for me to look into! What projects have you been working on recently?

EK:  Recently, I've been taking a bit of a break but I am going to take a step back from working between the mother and the daughter and open my horizons to a couple of other things. I want to work on a more universal speech. I’d like to make images where people wouldn’t need to read the concept behind them to understand them. I've been extremely interested in writing and calligraphy and bringing that into my work. I’m very interested in the brain and psychology, and how the mind works. Also how words have an effect on people, I have a feeling this will be a bit challenging, but I’m up for it! 

DA:  Interesting. Are you planning on coming back to the UK?

EK:  I hope so. Nothing is set in stone!

DA:  I look forward to seeing what you do next. Thank you Eman! 

EK:  Thank you!

Find out more about Eman’s practice:

Instagram

RCA 2021 Degree Show

Searching, 2021, Photograph

Photo courtesy of the artist

Sarah Larby

Sarah Larby in her studio

Photo courtesy of the artist

Damaris Athene:  Could you start off by telling me a bit about yourself?

Sarah Larby:  Yeah, I'm from Northumberland which is north of Newcastle. I grew up there, went to uni at Leeds, studied Fine Art with cultural theory, rather than art history. I did a couple of art history modules, but I was mainly looking at film and television. I did a year abroad studying classical sculpture in Warsaw, Poland, which was really interesting. That was all figurative based, working from a live life model to do sculptures. We did metal work, bronze, aluminium, stone carving, and a massive life-sized clay sculpture of a life model that was then cast in ceramic plaster. 

DA:  Wow!

SL:  That took the full year! I came back from Poland and had my final year, which ended in the pandemic. I had about two/three months of working from home before graduating and then moving back to Leeds. I’m now got a studio at Assembly House, which is an artist-run studio complex. In terms of my art, I started out doing painting, then digital and installation and then back to painting and sculpture.

DA:  Where are you with your practice now?

SL:  I've stuck with sculpture. It's where I want to be. I just tried a little bit of everything at uni, really. I find sculpture a lot more like freeing. I got a bit obsessive with painting. I mainly work with casting materials, or materials that have a transition period between two states of matter, like between fluid and solid, for example foams or plasters. I try to let the material guide the process of making the work and look at how much I can control the process. Specifically, how much do I need to control it to make something interesting? Because you can just let material do what it wants to do and it turns out shit. 

DA:  *laughs* Yes!

Untitled (work in progress), 2021, Plaster, tights & silicone, various sizes

Photo courtesy of the artist

SL:  I've always been interested in working between boundaries. Whether that’s between fluid and solid, something looking slightly bodily that also isn't bodily, or control and chance. The boundaries between supposed binary opposites. I like seeing how far you can push something.

DA:  It must be such a fun process of experimentation! Could you expand upon how material exploration guides your work?

SL:  It started with looking at minimalism at uni. I started to move towards that and researched into how those artists worked. One thing that I was always struggling with was knowing what to make. Being led by the material itself meant that I didn’t need to have an idea, the idea is the material itself. Normally I'll mix the material, whether it's plaster or something, see what it's like in its fluid state, see what it's like in its solid state. If I put it in a balloon, what does it do? If I put it in a pair of tights, or I make a shape, that kind of thing, and then I see what quality I find interesting. When I started working with plaster, what I found really interesting was the shape of the curves that it made. When it reacted with gravity, when you're hanging it, it's such an organic shape that you can't really replicate by carving something or sculpting something. So I was like, Okay, what could I make that exploits that? That curve is almost bodily, so maybe I'll accentuate that a little bit. Then I'd look at maybe building a structure, or using string or using a found object to control the material to get the outcome I want.

DA:  How do you explore colour within your work?

SL:  Colour has been a weird one. I have my ups and downs with it. I either go through periods of time where I use a lot of colour and periods of time where I go really monochromatic. I think colour is such a difficult one because it has so many connotations. As soon as you mix colour in plaster it goes really pale, which can have connotations with the girly and bodily and you’ve got to be careful if that’s not the kind of connotation you want. I’m trying to be a bit more conscious about what that colour is going to say about the object. Unlike a painting of a person, with my work you're looking at the material properties so the colour and texture become more important. At the minute, I'm doing something in black silicone. So then I've got to be aware that it can look like bin bags and may have sexual undertones because it's like black vinyl. I've done it before when something's been really colourful and it’s been because I’ve been in a good mood and just enjoying making something. Colour can also have connotations of emotion and playfulness as well, which is something that I really want to bring into my work.

Tipping Point, 2021, Plaster, pigment, wood & gravity, 100cm x 40cm x 20cm

Photo courtesy of the artist

DA:  Your work that really stands in my mind is the one with pastel plaster blobs that are placed on top of each other leaning against a wall. They look like they might be about to fall down and there’s tension within the piece that contrasts with the sickly sweet associations of the colours. Could you expand upon the control, chance, and tension that you have in your work?

SL:  I don't really know where that came in, I think it’s just something that intrigues me. When I started to work in sculpture I was letting myself play with the material. With that freedom comes loads of mistakes and creating unexpected things a lot of the time. Something that almost makes you look twice, like, how has someone done that?

DA:  I find it so much more intriguing if there’s that pull of wondering how something is made. It invites you for a closer look. 

SL:  You can interpret tension in a lot of ways. A lot of people would say that it can be a manifestation of anxieties and tensions you feel in your own life, because, subconsciously, a lot of things go into your art pieces. The works that had that kind of tension were made in my final year at uni during the pandemic. Recently there’s been less tension in my work. 

DA:  What are you making at the moment?

SL:  I'm making a lot of pillars. 

DA:  That feels quite different than your other work that has, in my view, a strong relationship with the body. 

SL:  Well, I kind of see these pillared pieces as people. I'm trying to make them relative to someone's body size. They're piles of plaster on top of each other and they're still quite bodily. But I think it all comes from circumstance as well. When I had a smaller studio space I had to work off the walls, whereas now I've got more floor space.

The Wall (pigeon-proofed), 2020, Garden trestle, plaster, nylon, rusty nails & screws, 180cm x 110cm x 85cm

Photo courtesy of the artist

DA:  Yeah, studio space affects your work so much! How do you usually work and how has that been affected by the pandemic?

SL:  Well, I guess the main thing is not necessarily because of the pandemic but I had to get a job. Now I can only make art in the evenings or on the weekends. During the pandemic, I did a little bit of work on the sewing machine and I was working outside more. What was interesting about the end of my university degree was seeing all my sculptures outside. It was very different to working in a studio environment and having a white cube. I saw everything with grass and trees. I made a piece where I needle felted wool over this expanding foam shape, and then I left it out in the garden. A couple of weeks later, the birds had taken all of the felt out for their nests! One of my pieces I called ‘The Wall’. I built a wooden frame so that I had something I could hang my sculptures off of and then it became part of the piece. Pigeons kept sitting on top of it, so then I put all these rusty nails on the top so the pigeons didn't sit on it and then I called it ‘The Wall (Pigeon Proofed)’. I quite enjoyed it actually, getting wrapped up and going outside to work.

DA:  It must be a very different experience working inside again! What would you like people to get from your work?

SL:  I think that's why I like exhibitions so much, as I never really know what people are going to get from it. I like seeing what people's interpretations of things are. Quite a lot of the time I make my sculptures on the edge of looking like something that you see in real life. So quite a lot of people will try and make sense of them because they’re semi abstract. Everyone always thinks it reminds them of something different, which is always really interesting. I’m interested in that element of curiosity, if someone is figuring out how something is made. 

DA:  Have you had any surprising or memorable reactions to your work?

SL:  Yeah, when I moved from painting into sculpture I made lots of face casts and stored them all shoe boxes in my university bedroom. The house got burgled and I came upstairs to my room to find all of these shoe boxes open on my bed. I would love to see that person's reaction. You're like, oh my god, we're in the house of a psycho!

DA:  *laughs*

Jolene (from if these walls could talk), 2021, Silicone, pigments, resin & found object, 22cm x 24.5cm x 3cm

Photo courtesy of the artist

SL:  I also made some silicone bean bag heads, that’s the only way I can really describe them! They probably had the strongest reaction out of everything I’ve made. Some people thought they were hilarious and some people were so freaked out. It was polar opposites. I did an exhibition with them where I let people touch them and interact with them which resulted in loads of people punching them. I would never have expected that. That was probably one of the strangest reactions. Another thing is that a lot of my art tutors would be like, Oh, that's quite phallic, isn't it? I was like, I don't really know what you mean. It’s my auntie’s favourite thing to say, I don't really get it, but it's all a bit sexual isn't it? Like, not to me, but okay. That's what's going on inside your brain auntie, not mine!

DA:  Everyone puts their stuff on it! Whose work inspires you?

SL:  Eva Hesse is a big one. I really love Phyllida Barlow as well. Holly Henry too. And then, Katharina Fitz, she was in New Contemporaries. She plays with casting stuff, which is really interesting. I've got so many. I've got Jean Arp there as well. He made organic shapes, very simple sculptures. 

DA:  Oh I haven’t come across him. 

SL:  I think you'd like his work. The shapes are similar to your paintings. He was a stone carver mainly.

DA:  I’ll have to look him up, thank you! What projects have you been working on recently?

SL:  Recently, I've been spending a lot of time figuring out what I want to make after uni. Now you don't have anyone telling you what to do, or what gets you a good mark. I had an exhibition in Newcastle after graduating, which was really good, and then I had a couple of online things, a couple of little bits here and there around Leeds. Now I'm planning my own show with a couple of friends from university. We're going to curate it ourselves at Assembly House, which will be nice because you get more of a hand in how things are displayed.

Untitled (work in progress), 2021, Plaster, tights & silicone, various sizes

Photo courtesy of the artist

DA:  When are you planning it for?

SL:  It's going to be from the 17th to the 19th of December, just three days.

DA:  What plans you have for future work. What are you going to make for that show?

SL:  Actually, I think I'm going to finish some of the pillar-esque pieces. I want them to act as things for people to walk around, dividing the space, like walking through a crowd. But that depends on how many I can make. I really like it when people can get close to artworks as well. I’ve also been working on a series of what I call ‘skin pieces’. They’re more towards the bodily. They’re paintings, almost, in old charity shop frames. I think might display them for the first time. I'm trying to think how to pull different things together and deciding if I want all the pieces to relate to each other or if I want to have them as separate things. 

DA:  I'm excited to see what you make. 

SL:  Me too! *laughs*

DA:  Thank you so much for sharing your practice with me Sarah. 

SL:  Thank you! 

Find out more about Sarah Larby’s work:

Website

Instagram

And in the process the salt dissolved the slugs, 2021, Plaster, foam, wood & other mixed materials, 165cm x 135cm x 145cm

Photo courtesy of the artist

Naomi Chan

Naomi Chan at work while on a residency in Finland

Photo courtesy of the artist

Damaris Athene:  Could you start off by telling me a bit about yourself?

Naomi Chan:  Yeah, I was born and raised in Hong Kong and I came to Norway to pursue my second master program. The first master I did was about yoga and natural therapy. My bachelor study was about art and computing, new media art. I came from a very digital and technical background. I also work on digital photography and filmmaking, programming, coding, and interactive things like face detection and motion tracking. But I don't really enjoy working on technical things because it requires a lot of brain activity. I have to keep thinking about how to solve the problem. With coding it’s all one's and zero’s, and it either works or it doesn’t. I’m interested in the action and reaction of these technologies and not working on how to make that happen. So I needed to find a new way to make work and I wanted to get back to more traditional art skills. I cannot enjoy the creative process by just coordinating and making things happen. Before I went to Norway, I spent one year in Taiwan focusing on wood engraving, tea ceremonies, meditation, and sand patterns. I also worked on Chinese painting. Man, it makes my creative process more enjoyable, I could feel that it’s somehow meditative. I can let my brain rest. When people come to the interactive work is just, ‘Oh, it works’. They input the signal and the signal outputs. I think it’s more interesting to see the interactivity with traditional art, like with painting we look at it and we feel the connection between the artist, the mind, the scenario, the colour combination and the intention. I find this kind of interaction is more rich. The connection is in more in depth. 

in.carnation, 2021, Installation displayed in Trondheim, found Tear gas canister from Hong Kong protest in 2019, pink-rose carnation

Photo courtesy of the artist

DA:  I know what you mean, with technology and interactive art you're getting instant gratification as a viewer and you don't have to engage on a deeper level if you don't want to. 

NC:  If you’re from a coding background you’ll judge the work in a different way. If it's just one click and something happens, it’s not skilful at all. It's too simple. The reason why I placed myself in Norway is that I was really impressed by one of the first artist residencies I did in 2016 in Finland. This changed my life. The location was really impressive. I had never stayed in somewhere in the middle of nowhere before because I born and raised in a small space with 7.5 million people, actually more than the entirety of Norway, in 1,000 kilometres squared! I went to a silence space and at night I couldn't hear anything. I could hear the reverb in my ear. I was so shocked and I really enjoyed it, but at the same time it was the protest time in Hong Kong and I felt really disconnected to my hometown. It was an unforgettable and weird experience. I had never placed myself somewhere to completely focus on my art. So I went to Norway to pursue my master's program. In Hong Kong is so difficult to have an art career because the rent is crazy and it’s difficult to find a balance. In Norway I could get closer to nature and get into a totally different atmosphere. My practice in Norway was initially about nature, but it changed. In 2016 it was the Umbrella Movement, and in 2019 it was the Water Revolution, now we’ve lost the spotlight from the media because of the Corona virus. My work was mainly about the protests and politics during my masters because my mind was full of this at that time. I didn't realise that the Hong Kong identity affected me that much but moving to a different country changed that. You’re always asked how it is growing up in Hong Kong. Sometimes I get asked about a topic I’m not familiar with and I have to go and research into it so I can explain more next time. It’s made my work have a stronger link to politics. 

Get In Touch, 2020, Interactive Installation displayed in Trondheim, Tibetan singing bowls, electronics clips and wires

Video courtesy of the artist

DA:  That's really interesting. What form does your practice take? What materials do you work with?

NC:  I mainly do installation with materials that can be found in daily life. 

DA:  Could you speak a bit more about your piece ‘Get in Touch’?

NC:  That is a piece about connection. Is an interactive work. Covid discourages touch and interaction among people. While physical touch was what we familiarised with, yet it becomes strange at this moment. The method of this piece is kind of simple, electricity goes through the conductive materials, they become one; when we touch and connect them, it triggers the pr-recorded meditative sound. I would love to take this piece to encourage people to explore inwards. 

DA:  How have your studies in yoga and naturopathy fed into your practice?

NC:  I think it changed my perception and perspective. I grew up in a city with a very competitive mindset where everything has to be very efficient. Yoga and naturopathy made me understand more and made me slow down. Naturopathy is about how to see the world by observation and to see the interconnection of everything. I think observation is the key to all knowledge. 

DA:  How do you usually work and how has that been affected by the pandemic?

NC:  I think it actually gave me more ideas about the work because I had to look the into the interaction of humans. The pandemic brought about new ways to connect with each other, like what we’re doing right now on Zoom. I made use of the time to make an exhibition, and we could connect to people in different parts of the world. I had two exhibitions in Germany, and one in Oslo. For me the quarantine or being alone is not the most difficult part for me. I had to focus more on digital platforms, and I pushed myself to consider digital marketing more and make better documentation. 

Reflected 31 times, and then?, 2019-20, Installation displayed in Trondheim, 3D printed PLA sculptures, 20cm (H), 100cm (W), 100cm (L) 

Photo courtesy of the artist

DA:  It's great that you were able to adapt to that and embrace it. What would you like people to get from your work?

NC:  I would love to make a conversation. I think an artwork should speak for itself. I’m interested in peoples’ own interpretations. I want to have the interaction between the audience and the artist.

DA:  Whose work inspires you?

NC:  I really like the work of On Kawara. He was a Japanese painter and he used to paint the date every day. It's very simple, but it's about a performative thing. The idea is very interesting. It's about the present moment. 

DA:  Does anyone else come to mind?

NC:  I like work that requires a lot of time and includes repetition. Another work I like is 'The Book From the Sky' by Xu Bing. He took four years to make it. It’s made up of four books that contain invented Chinese characters, so it’s not readable. I think it’s very interesting when you work on something that looks very familiar but, at the same time, you cannot understand it. 

DA:  Do you find a similar durational element in the work that you make as well?

NC:  Yeah. I found my way by them making art in this direction.

The making of Reflected 31 times, and then?, 2019-20, Installation displayed in Trondheim, 3D printed PLA sculptures, 20cm (H), 100cm (W), 100cm (L) 

Video courtesy of the artist

DA:  What has been your most memorable experience with art?

NC:  Recently, I had an art exhibition in Norway. It was my first time selling art as I was working with interactive media art which is difficult to sell. Someone wanted to buy an art piece because it was their birthday. It’s very different in Hong Kong, because this is not a normal thing people would do. Art is a luxury thing in Hong Kong. Only rich people buy art, the level is different. But in Norway normal people buy paintings to decorate their homes. 

DA:  That’s an interesting difference. Congratulations on selling something! What projects have you been working on recently?

NC:  I just moved back to Hong Kong, actually, I may stay here for six months or longer. I want to continue to learn more traditional skills, Hong Kong things. I will continue to learn porcelain painting. In the old days, Hong Kong was popular for ceramics, the typical white and blue painted porcelain. Last time I was here I met our master. He retired and has started to get back to the field to teach young people how to paint porcelain. I followed him for two months and he really liked me so he wants me to continue to learn from him. If I don't learn these skills they will fade out when my master get older and older. And right now I have a couple exhibitions still cooking. We want to make our exhibition in Hong Kong and get some painting from Norway and Sweden, to invite people. The idea is about ‘How do you place yourself as a stranger to this place?’.

DA:  What plans do you have for future work?

NC:  I will continue to work on the handcraft things instead of the multimedia work, but I'm also trying not to refuse or reject to my skill set. I need to find the balance and make it enjoyable. I want to merge things in my future work. 

DA:  I look forward to seeing what you make and hope that you're able to find that balance. Thanks so much Naomi. 

NC:  Thank you Damaris. 

Find out more about Naomi’s work:

Website

Instagram

Youtube

Eggs and The Wall, 2019, Installation, 210 x 60 x 70 cm

Photo courtesy of the artist

Eleanor Louise West

Eleanor Louise West photographed by Amanda Summons

Photo courtesy of the artist

Damaris Athene:  Can you start off by telling me a bit about yourself, please, Eleanor?

Eleanor Louise West:  Yeah, so I'm Eleanor Louise West, I use she and they pronouns. I was born in Portsmouth, and I did my degree at Camberwell College of Arts and I finished that in 2019. Since then I've been trying to create art outside of the institution, which has its challenges, but also is really exciting and has different opportunities. Hopefully, I can continue to do that.

DA:  Nice, and could you say a bit more about your practice? 

ELW:  I started at Camberwell on the BA fine art photography course. At Camberwell all the fine art courses have labels, but it's really interdisciplinary. In the first unit the main question they set was, How do you not take photograph? That set me up for falling out of love with photography. I chose the photography course because I was like, well, I can't paint or draw, so I might as well take photos. But through my time at Camberwell I fell out of love with photography, especially as a queer woman photography has its own challenges around spectatorship and ownership of images. Through some external stuff I was doing with a queer craft club, I found I loved embroidery, and I found that a much better vessel to capture my ideas, especially around representation and how I wanted people to interact with my work. So since then, I've been doing lots of textile work. I really enjoy quilting, embroidery, anything that's soft and beautiful is kind of my thing! I've also been playing around with doing some illustration work, and I still do photography from time to time, but it's become part of my practice that informs my other work rather than being the work itself. That's not to say that I don't think photography can be an amazing vessel for queer representation. My main inspirations are still photographers, Tee Corrine and Zanele Muholi. But for me when I was taking photos of myself, and then presenting them (especially to an all male tutored course at university at the time) it didn't feel right for me. Everything is a lot about how my image, or images of people that I love, can be abstracted and used against them, especially as most of my subjects are queer and/or trans. In my second year, there was an associate lecturer who I had for all credits who was homophobic.

Safety First, 2019, Two Quilts with hand embroidery and digital print and bedframe

Dimensions variable

Photo courtesy of the artist

DA:  How horrible. I can completely understand what you’re saying, especially showing work to an audience that’s mainly cis males. Your subjects can maybe be fetishised or viewed in a way that you really don't want them to be, and there’s that duty of care you have over the people that you're representing.

ELW:  I was also told to think about my audience and who I was making art for. I learned quite early on that I was making work for a queer community. So then presenting that to mostly cis hetrosexual audience that was really male dominated was really difficult. For a crit, I chose to show a piece of work that I'd already shown to my community, that had really resonated with them, and they said “This doesn't teach me anything about your experience, I'm not getting anything from your work.” And I was like, well, it's not for you. I'm not your teacher. I'm doing this because I'm trying to find something that will resonate with my community, and teach them something. There was a lot of back and forth.

DA:  That sounds so frustrating, you’re not there to educate them about the queer community.

ELW:  There were a lot of good things about the course. But in the end, the tutors ended up being like, Do you just want to tell me about your work and I'll be quiet?

DA:  So did you stay on photography, even though you were going into textiles?

ELW:  I did. It never really occurred to me at the time that I should switch course, because I have a lot of internalised thoughts about talent. I thought, Well, I'm not a taught sculptor, I don't have any experience in sculpting, so why would I do that? It took me a while to actually recognise that the work that I was making was sculpture. At the time, there were quite a lot of people on photography making sculpture, but I was the only person working in textiles. I was pretty much solely self taught in that sense.

Work in Progress shot of Greenham Common, 2021, Textile quilt with thermal image transfer, hand embroidery, lace and crochet, 135cm x 200cm

Photo courtesy of the artist

DA:  That must have been really hard, not really having anyone to guide you, or to have any peers that were doing similar things. 

ELW:  True. I think my practice was quite removed from the course, but a lot of the critical theory and the understanding, like ways of looking and the truth in images was really interesting to me.

DA:  It's such a journey to figure out your niche! What draws you to working with textiles and crafts?

ELW:  Textiles and quilts have a very long history in both feminist and queer culture, especially in activism. If you think about protest banners, or making  a blanket for like a new baby or someone who's ill. I got really invested in researching Greenham Common, and the textiles that came out of that, like edited clothing, jumpers, banners even some of the tarpaulin structures that they made are really, really interesting. I think a lot about how textiles are considered a lesser art, that they’re a craft rather than an art, and they're particularly feminine. As someone who's gender queer, it’s really interesting to play with that, especially when I use quite “masculine” imagery. It's a play between this really feminine, pink, girly free thing and also my own identity.

DA:  That's fascinating. Textiles have a real power to be subversive because of the weight of that history and all of the connotations wrapped up within it. Could you speak a bit more about how you explore your experience as a queer person in your work?

ELW:  So the first queer piece of art that I made was a screen print of a campaign by Act Up, an American gay rights movement thing. They protested the film Basic Instinct, because they disagreed with the way a bisexual woman was portrayed. They had this really iconic phrase, which was, ‘the lesbians always end up dead, and the bisexuals always end up with the men.’ I made some screen prints replicating the poster they made. I found it really interesting. Moving forward, I've been thinking about communities of care, especially as a queer femme being sort of a mother to a lot of younger queer people. I spent a lot of my time online in my early youth interacting with people who were maybe like a year or two younger than me in their journey of coming out. For a lot of people looking at me and my partner was really affirming, because they could see that queer people have a future. Queer elders nourish a community of queer people, and bring them together, even when their families reject them. I will always try and explore things that I've personally experienced and translate them to try and capture those feelings and see if they resonate with other queer people. I try to do that in an affirming way to be like, look like, this is us, but we get through it.

Catherine Did It! , 2017, Screen Print, A4

Photo courtesy of the artist

DA:  How does that manifest aesthetically in the way that you make things?

ELW:  I'm really captured by John Walters’ idea of shonky art, which is kind of the uncanny, but in many ways, a little bit shit. But that's what makes it brilliant. Quilting takes a lot of maths and sometimes you don't get it right, but embracing that and having repairs in it, that in itself is queer. It's making good, you’ve been dealt the cards you have been so I try to bring it together to make something which is bright, colourful, soft, and cute. That's really engaging for me. I try and embrace the mistakes I make. There's a difference between a work being technically perfect and a work being right.

DA:  Totally. How does Cold War Civil Defence imagery come into your work?

ELW:  From a young age I've been really interested in dystopian, apocalyptic novels and I think, in many ways, the reason why I'm drawn to them is the idea of society starting anew. Not that I'm for nuclear war! But I think there's something interesting in looking at the way the authors portray society rebuilding or the way that communities are formed after that. In my second year I read ‘Octavia's Brood’ which is a collection of speculative science fiction for social justice. There are a lot of women authors, a lot of women of colour, actually, and queer women in that book. Something really resonated with me. I also have really big interest in history and the Cold War is such an interesting time, because we have Margaret Thatcher's Reign of Terror, the AIDS crisis, which is obviously horrific, and then alongside that we have the bubbling tension and anxiousness of a nuclear threat. All that compounded, I find it really interesting. I started looking at Civil Defence guidance that the government brought out in the 80s, especially 'Protect and Survive'. It's a series of videos and a booklet, which attempt to guide the public to survive a nuclear war, and everything is so silly and morbid at the same time. It's like, put some doors up against the wall - and that's gonna save you from a nuclear weapon! Obviously, that's nonsense. But I was trying to think about how, as a queer person, I'm disabled and I'm queer, but I'm still white, and I'm still relatively cis passing. When I talk to other queer people, sometimes it can feel like, even using my experience, or even just talking to them isn't enough, because as one person I can't make a change. I can't fund people to leave their homes as one person. I can't lobby the government on my own. I was trying to think about the things I can do like creating community, creating comfort, talking to people. A lot of my work has sort of honed in on the shelter aspect of the defence guidance, but how we can make physical or theoretical shelters for our community, safe spaces. It is really beautiful graphically as well, and a lot of it focuses on home. As a queer disabled person my life and community is very different to someone who's able bodied because I can't get into many clubs, especially in London. My queer and gay scene is very different to some other people's queer and gay scene, because I physically cannot get into spaces they inhabit. So thinking about how I bring the community into my home or in spaces that I can access and using that as a queer space. A queer heterotopia if you will. *laughs*

Greenham Common, 2021, Textile quilt with thermal image transfer, hand embroidery, lace and crochet, 135cm x 200cm

Photo courtesy of the artist

DA:  *laughs* I like it. Eleanor for Prime Minister! That's so interesting as well as the all the Cold War imagery is all about the military and traditionally masculine, and then you’ve combined it with these traditionally feminine quilts and craft making a really interesting symbiosis between the two.

ELW:  Yeah, when I was researching for my degree show piece I was using a clip from the H bomb, a film that was produced for civil defence workers to understand the horrific magnitude of what a hydrogen bomb is compared to an atom bomb, which is like 1000 fold the damage or something ridiculous. I went to the Imperial War Museum, dressed head to toe in pink looking my femme self, into an office full of men being like, Can I see this film? It was such a strange experience, because they were kind of suggesting other things to me. I was like, actually, I'm not really interested in how big the guns were. I'm interested in the effect that it had on people. I was there to see the nuclear exhibit, which touched very briefly on Greenham common. I think especially when people are interested in history a lot of it could be perceived as glorification of war, which makes it really inaccessible. A lot of my research comes from Julie McDowall. She's a Scottish nuclear war researcher who researches the civilian stuff.

DA:  What a strange experience! What barriers have you faced to making art?

ELW:  Space, money, time, the usual. I'm the first person in my family who has had the privilege of attending university, but also outside of that I'm the first person in my family with an interest in the arts. So trying to explain to my family that this is what I'm doing, isn't that cool? They were like, “I thought you're going to be a cruise ship photographer, why are you doing this?” Also, being working class, a woman and disabled in the arts is the worst. I also need to rebuild my confidence after my degree, I had quite a lot of traumatic experiences with tutors on the course. I'm really thankful I had a really strong queer community outside of university at the time because they kept driving me to make and they kept giving me actual feedback on my work. The real thing is accessibility. A lot of small galleries do not have lift access, or they're in a basement or they're up three flights of stairs. So actually finding places where I can exhibit work and install work is a challenge in itself as well.

Pressed, 2018, Digital Print with Traditional Letter Press, A4

Photo courtesy of the artist

DA:  That must be so difficult. So many small galleries are really inaccessible.

ELW:  It's such a shame. I understand why those places are where they are because they’re small arts organisations and they might not have the money to rent somewhere accessible. But as an entry level and early career artists, it's kind of the places where we have our opportunities. So it's a continuous cycle of not getting opportunities, because I can't access them but they’re the ones that are at my level and I’m not qualified for the bigger places yet. 

DA:  It's a struggle even if you're able bodied, so I can't imagine how difficult that must be if you can't actually access those spaces. How do you usually work? Did you find that's been affected over the last year?

ELW:  Actually, it's been quite useful being able to work from home, because I was able to sit in meetings with my camera up while I sew, which definitely helped for a lot of my projects. Also cutting the commute time, which can take two hours out of your day, two hours that you could be making art. The only thing is that there has been a drop off, obviously, in physical exhibitions, and as a sculptor you want the world to be seen and or touched. But online opportunities have been on the up, which has been really exciting because I can actually access those opportunities, because there's no stairs required! It's been good and bad, but I've always created from home anyway, even when I was at university.

DA:  It’s great that now we can see exhibitions online, even though has its limitations. 

ELW:  It's limited, but it means that people outside of London and people who don’t normally have time to go to galleries can see my work, which is exciting. I've been thinking more about how my work lives on social media, because social media is very accessible.

Bedroom Debris, 2021, Textile quilt with hand embroidery, shrink plastic, handmade paper and crochet, 20cm x 8cm

Photo courtesy of the artist

DA:  I'm interested to see how that develops! What would you like people to get from your work?

ELW:  I have thought a lot about where my role sits as an educator and as an artist. I think it's really important for queer people to understand that they don't have to make work that straight people get. Your role doesn't have to be that of an educator. If that's work that you want to make, and you have the mental capacity, stamina, and quite frankly the thick skin to be able to do that, that’s really amazing. But if you are interested in making work that maybe can only be understood by a specific community, being empowered to still create the work is really important. In my work I describe the anxiety that can be felt as a queer person, so I hope that people could look at that work and see themselves in it, and gain comfort in that. When I was coming out, having a community around me that understood what I was going through and the challenges that I was facing was sometimes enough, even if there weren't answers. 

DA:  Have you had any reactions to your work that really stick in your mind?

ELW:  As a textile artist, one of the most frustrating things is when people touch your work. Also I made a quilt, that unfortunately has since been destroyed due to studio clear out and a mix up, which had lots of small patches with the 'Protect and Survive' logo with things inside it. One of the patches said ‘Set boundaries’ and one of the people in my chosen family really resonated with that part of the work and actually now has it tattooed on them!

DA:  Wow!

ELW:  That's a reaction I'd never expected, that someone would want my textile work on their body forever, potentially. I don't know whether I want to remake that work because it's a work that I really liked, but I also think it's really exciting and kind of poignant that the only iteration of the work that exists outside of photography is on somebody's body. 

She/They Collar, 2021, digital work including a handmade collar hand embroidered and a self-portrait of the artist (made as part of 30 days 30 works by the 12ocollective)

Photo courtesy of the artist

DA:  How interesting! Whose work inspires you?

ELW:  Allyson Mitchell, a lesbian textile artist, with the iconic Hungry Purse piece. It's this massive yonic structure which is built out of reclaimed textiles. There’s a lot of crochet and stuff they found with charity shops. One of the first queer artists I really resonated with was Tee Corinne, a lesbian photographer. She used solarisation to abstract her subjects, to still represent them while protecting the subjects’ identity. It's really interesting the way it plays into the resistance of sexualisation of those bodies. One of her most famous works is the Yantras of Womanlove series. It depicts all types of lesbians, lesbians with mobility aids, fat lesbians, it's really cool. A more contemporary photographer I'm really inspired by is Zenele Muholi. They are a South African artist who takes pictures of their community. I'm interested in their 'Somnyama Ngonyama, Hail the Dark Lioness' series, where they use household materials to abstract themselves while making themselves into women figures of their history. I love textiles, but I'm also very heavily interested in photography. Also, Daniel Fountain is a living artist who’s very good. He makes quilts and they are amazing because it there's a lot of repair and rebuilding in them.

DA:  I’ll have to look up the people I don’t know! What projects have you been working on recently?

ELW:  I had an exhibition in Kennington at the end of September, and there's hopefully some exciting stuff coming out that exhibition, thinking about the longevity of that work. I made a quilt based on Greenham common. I don't have any more exhibitions planned in the near future, but I do have a lot more collaborative work plans. I'm currently helping my partner with their installation for the Greenwich Docklands festival and I’ve got some other collaborative projects coming up with them. 

Quarantine Quilt, 2020, Textile Quilt with hand embroidery, 25cm x 25cm

Photo courtesy of the artist

DA:  Have you got any other plans for future work?

ELW:  Yes, I've got a lot of different works planned. With my partner we're making a quilt, which is based on the bank of community, I don't know if you've heard the phrase 'We're all passing around the same time 10 pound note’? We're physically making a massive quilt that’s the 10 pound note. With fundraisers for queer disabled people, queer people, and trans people, it does feel like it's always the same money doing the rounds, which is really useful because it means that when people need the money, they can get it. It also means that there's a feeling that if you were ever in trouble, there would be people around you to help. Other than that, I want to start making work in response to a lot of the science fiction that I've been reading recently. I've been reading a lot of Octavia Butler, and the way that they create worlds and futures is really interesting to me.

DA:  I look forward to seeing what you make. Thanks so much Eleanor! 

ELW:  Thank you! 

Find out more about Eleanor’s work:

Website

Instagram

Eleanor Louise West photographed by Amanda Summons

Photo courtesy of the artist

Davinia-Ann Robinson

Davinia-Ann Robinson photographed by Rhiannon Hunter

Photo courtesy of the artist

Damaris Athene:  Could you start by telling me a bit about yourself?

Davinia-Ann Robinson:  My name is Davinia-Ann Robinson, I am 34 years old and my pronouns are she/her. I was born and grew up in Wolverhampton. I moved to London, when I was 18, to do my BA and I recently graduated from the Slade for my MFA, where I was in the sculpture department. 

DA:  Could you say a bit more about your practice? 

DR:  I'm interested in how Black, Brown, and Indigenous bodies can enact presencing through corporeally and tactically engaging with environments which we dwell in, and if these engagements can act as a means of dismantling colonial and imperial frameworks which our bodies and nature is understood. My work does this through sculpture, writing, and I’m also starting to look at performance as well.

DA:  What kind of form does that performance take?

DR:  My works are quite performative anyway, it's just a lot of it isn’t seen. Making the sculptures involves impressions of my body on to beds of clay or making casts to make wax sculptures. More recently, the clay and the impressions of my body has become the work. I've realised that the processes of handling the clay, rolling the clay, cleaning the clay, and even gathering it are performance. I visit certain sites where I've experienced colonial violence and I gather the soil or the clay from that space. Alongside that I’ve started to develop sound with my work. 

DA:  What form does the sound take?

DR:  The sound initially came from poems which I wrote which explore colonial violence I've experienced, the spaces that these took place and the emotions that were felt. It developed from me reading the poems, to my voice emoting those emotions I felt through sounds, which don't necessarily make linguistic sense, but are making sense through a feeling that they evoke. I incorporate the sound with the sculptural pieces. 

whose flesh you are, 2021, Gathered Clay, Filtered Clay, Body Impressions, Soundscapes

Dimensions variable

Photo courtesy of the artist

DA:  I remember in your degree show piece that the sound felt very bodily and guttural. It's really interesting to hear the link with your poetry and your emotional responses to colonial violence you’ve experienced.

DR:  With the sound work at my degree show, there were three tracks. Two were developed from soundscapes, which I previously made. I cut up sounds and made them into a synth. It was the first performance that I'd ever done, at Quench Gallery, Margate earlier this year, which was this solitary performance where I hooked up a touch sensitive synth to the clay, and then I conjured these emotions felt during these experiences and pressed my body into the clay, and the clay played these sounds back. The soundscapes are becoming more embodied as the work develops. 

DA:  Do you find the processes of going to the sites where you've experienced colonial violence therapeutic?  Being able to take the clay and make it into something that's your own. 

DR:  Yeah, it is really therapeutic. It's also very uncomfortable. You're going back into an environment where someone may question you, may deem to have more right over that environment or that space than I do. You're opening yourself up to being questioned, to being stopped, but exploring my connection to these environments, through tactilely engaging with the earth are an important process, in dismantling’s colonial structures which dictate which bodies are allowed to dwell in and engage with certain spaces. 

DA:  Have you ever felt like you wish you hadn't gone back? 

DR:  No, I haven’t, which is great. I also write about these experiences while I am revisiting the environments. In doing so it provides different layers of exploring my time and I can revisit that writing at a later date which sometimes offers an unrealised perspective. It also gives an opportunity for me to expand on that moment and to think about other bodies that have been in the space as well. 

EARTH, BODY. 2020, Soil, Wax, Gold Earrings, Stones, Braids, Fern

2m x 4m

Photo courtesy of the artist

DA:  How do you normally present your writing, if you're not reading it to make sound work?  

DR:  A few weeks ago I released a publication for the first time entitled ‘Corporeal Intimacies: Through Tactile Knowledge’s of the Anthropocene’  which coincided with a group exhibition at Kupfer, a gallery in London. The exhibition was called ‘Being Here’ curated by Jeanette Gunnarsson. There is also some of that writing on my website, but normally, it just stays with me and will come out in the sound work or in the installations. 

DA:  Congratulations! What motivates you to work with sculpture and installations?

DR:  It feels really natural to engage with materials. It's not about knowing what I'm going to make, but it’s about exploring that material and discovering more about what I’m thinking about through creating. 

DA:  Sculpture makes sense with the connection between your body and the work, them feeding back between one another and having this very direct relationship between the material and your body. How have you explored colonial and imperial frameworks within your work? You've touched on this, but is there anything you'd like to add? 

DR:  I explore through my own experiences, that's how the work comes along and then it spreads out. Colonial Imperial frameworks are all around us and press into us daily. It's experienced constantly. I explore these frameworks. A couple of weeks ago, I had an interview for some funding, during the interview I was asked by a member of the panel who was a white elderly man of a high economic status ‘could you explain what kind of colonial violence you have experienced?’

DA:  Ouch! All of the trauma!

DR:  Tell me and prove your trauma, is basically what they said. I gave an example, I wish I had not, it was inappropriate for me to have been asked this question, but in the moment I gave an example of when I was working on a bar in Australia at a party and someone gave the birthday person a golliwog as a birthday present. 

DA:  Oh, my God!

BOD(Y)IES THAT WEATHER, 2020, Soil, Water, Wax, Pigment Made From Earth, Propagated Plants

1.5m x 0.5m

Photo courtesy of the artist

DR:  Imperial and colonial violence seep into our everyday constantly. This is a violent act. It has derived from extraction of Black, Brown and Indigenous bodies and extraction of the natural world. These acts led to this golliwog being created and given as a gift. I was told by the member of the panel who asked the question, that my experience was ‘not colonial violence’. Being asked to prove my lived experiences to anyone, let alone someone who experiences great social, economic, political, and racial privilege and who is in charge of a large sum of money,  I need, whilst having my lived experiences of colonialism denied, is colonial violence. 

DA:  Thank you for sharing that. What horrible experiences. What significance does soil have in your practice?

DR:  I think maybe two and a half years ago I started revisiting the sites where I've experienced colonial violence. It was as a means of repair, connecting myself to the space, re-articulating myself and that space, and exploring how my body is in that space and how I am in that space. The soil or clay locates a space, but also has a colonial history that my body also has, extraction practices of bodies and of natural resources through the Atlantic Slave trade. There’s this shared violence which has taken place. It marks displacement and movement, but also at the same time, it marks a connection to an environment. We've come to understand our relationships to land and ourselves as being separate through this colonial framework of extraction.

DA:  It must be really labour intensive process processing this clay, which must have so many impurities within it. Could you speak about that process?

DR:  For my degree show work ’whose flesh you are' the clay was from London. I filtered more than half of the 700 kilograms I collected. It was a process of washing, soaking, sieving, and then hanging the clay from the ceiling of my studio in pillowcases to let the water drip out before putting it on plaster beds to soak the rest of the water out. Then I had to wedge the clay. It was a really labour intensive, exhausting process, but very performative as well. I think you can see that the clay has been dug from the ground. There's this history to it.

Clay preparation for ‘whose flesh you are’

Photo courtesy of the artist

DA:  Do you recycle the wet clay from your installations at the end of each show?

DR:  Yeah, so I soak it again to rehydrate it, clean it, wedge it, and wrap it up for the next time. Every time I use it, it looses little bits. I’m imagining the moment when its half gone!

DA:  When you display the work, how much of that process do you share in the information you put alongside it?

DR:  I'll say things like gathered clay to imply that is not shop bought. It’s something that I want to develop further. There's all this other process to the work, which I've come to realise is actually the work. I want to start incorporating the performance element to my work alongside my sculpture and installation works. 

DA:  I look forward to seeing how it develops! How have you found your practice has developed over your time at Slade? 

DR:  I think it's become more open in terms of medium, incorporating writing and sound. The work still stems from my personal experiences, but it has become wider reaching in what I'm exploring. It's developed in ways that I didn't foresee it developing, which is great. 

DA:  How do you usually work? Has it been affected by the pandemic?

DR:  I think, for a long time, without really knowing that I'm in deep thought. I have inklings about the sorts of things that I want to try or directions that I want to go, but I don't realise that I've had those inklings until I'm doing the work months later and I look back.  I might not be in the studio more than a couple of times a week, for two months or something, and then I'll have six weeks where it's intense and I'm there from 9 in the morning till 11 at night. I’ll be doing a lot of physical making at that moment. 

EARTH, BODY. 2020, Soil, Wax, Gold Earrings, Stones, Braids, Fern

2m x 4m

Photo courtesy of the artist

DA:  I saw your work for the first time at Quench Gallery. Could say a bit more about that installation? It had hair, weave, and then water as well.

DR:  There was a large piece of work in the space called ‘EARTH, BODY.’ Creating that work was the first time I'd ever gone to a site and gathered from that space. I went back to Wolverhampton to my old school grounds and I gathered the stones which feature in the work from the path which I walked every day. It was also the first time I ever used soil or compost. The sculpture consists of a pair of hands made of compost and wax with a fern growing out of it. With that work I was exploring ‘whose bodies are allowed to encroach on whose bodies?’ I was thinking a lot about the movement of violence, and what does violence look like? What does it sound like? I started writing as well. Initially that work had a soundscape with it, which I later took out to develop it further. 'BOD(Y)IES THAT WEATHER’ another work in Quench, was a puddle which I'd made with compost that had casts of my thumb's made with pigment from earth I had gathered floating in it. The thumbs also had plants growing through them, which I had cultivated in my home. I was thinking about how my body exists and weathers in different spaces that I dwell in, and the shared history of displacement and movement, that Bodies of Colour and plants have experienced. I have a lot of plants in my house and I was thinking about this moment of care and what it meant for my displaced body to care for these displaced plants. The third work was the remains of a performance called ‘Flesh to Flesh’. It was the first time I'd ever done a performance, I called it a solitary performance. I connected the synth with my soundscape and pressed my body into the gathered clay to relay certain sounds. The title of the show, 'I'm unsure as to if it is still alive', was taken from a poem which I'd written while revisiting a particular / the same environment over the period of four months. It was a duo show with Natalia Gonzalez Martin.

DA:  What would you like people to get from your work? 

DR:  That's a good question. I've been thinking about it a lot. If you don't understand what the work is trying to say, then it's not for you. The work is not there to inform and educate about colonial and imperial frameworks. The labour of that is not for my practice, at all. If the work resonates with someone then that’s who the work is for. 

whose flesh you are, 2021, Gathered Clay, Filtered Clay, Body Impressions, Soundscapes

Dimensions variable

Photo courtesy of the artist

DA:  Whose work inspires you?

DR:  I really love the work of Vivian Caccuri, Tabita Rezaire, Dineo Seshee Bopape, Grada Kilomba, Veronica Ryan and Ana Mendieta's work as well.

DA:  Ana Mendieta is the only one out that list that I know, I’ll have to do some research. I can definitely see the connection with her work and yours. The imprint of the body on the land and the performative nature of it as well.

DR:  Completely. There’s no boundary. It's super simple, but not, you know, which I really love.

DA:  What projects have you been working on recently?

DR:  I had my degree show and then I had a group show at Kupfer and had a group show with Hot Desque  in Newcastle called 'Terrestrial Act', this summer. The show with Hot Desque  was a one-day exhibition,  a film is being made exploring the works, which is going to be shown at NewBridge Project. My work ‘Earth, Body.’ is on show at Firstsite Gallery, in Colchester on the 24th of September, part of New Contemporaries and it’s  being shown in the Art Encounters Biennale in Romania at the end of the month. I am also starting my PhD at Goldsmiths next week.

DA:  Oh, nice that you're carrying on studying. I look forward to seeing how your work develops. Thank you so much Davinia-Ann! 

DR:  Thank you!

Find out more about Davinia-Ann’s work:

Website

Instagram

Davinia-Ann gathering clay

Photo courtesy of the artist

Bo Nawacharee

Bo Nawacharee on the set of ‘Pieces and Bits’ 2019

Starring Belle Visa, Andrew Bliek, and James T. Majewski, Produced by Angel Teng, Cinematography by Art Parnitudom, Length: 00:14:15

Photograph by Looksorn Thitipuk Teeratrakul and photo courtesy of the artist

Damaris Athene:  Could you start off by telling me a bit about yourself? 

Bo Nawacharee:  My name is Bo Nawacharee, I go by Bo Nawacharee but Nawacharee is actually my first name not last. Coming from Thailand, I have longer name than just that, it’s Nawacharee Piyamongkol. Thai people usually grow up with a nickname and I was given Bo because my brothers' names are Boat and Bank. It's this B thing at home, it’s very common in a Thai family to have the names all starting with the same letter. Anyway, I’m now in California. I did graduate school here at a film directing program at California Institute of the Arts, Cal Arts. My undergrad I did in Thailand, which was a BA in cultural studies. So I'm coming to film in a theoretical way. To go further back, I grew up in a Thai Chinese family. I was put in a Christian all girls boarding school in Thailand for 12 years. It was a very interesting setting looking back at it. My mum is very religious, she’s Buddhist, and she’d often take me to a temple at the weekends and then I’d be going to church and singing hymns at school during the week. I felt in a bubble, especially growing up with two older brothers, I felt like a sheltered little girl. So throughout school from high school through uni I went to live in Oxford, London, and Bath, as well as Korea, even testing living out here in LA as well. 

DA:  So you moved around a lot?

BN:  I wanted to because I was so sheltered growing up. I had this urge to see what the hell is out there! I grew up in the transition between connecting the internet with your home phone during the younger times, to using an iPhone when I was in high school. 

DA:  What motivated you to go to California?

BN:  At first I'm very interested in the idea of movies world building and of escapism. I thought that if I wanted to study filmmaking, I should go to LA, to Hollywood. I have to say though that I both hate and love LA because it's such a weird city. I applied to New York too, but it's so rushing and I'm a type of person who rushes myself internally so I need to live in a chill city to calm myself down! I now live in Studio City. 

DA:  Is that where the studios are?

BN:  I think it’s called that after CBS starting a studio here. We also have Warner Brothers and Universal nearby.

Three, 2019

Starring Bo Nawacharee, La-ongtham Nichakaroon, Ava Dulyachinda, Produced by Bo Nawacharee, Cinematography by Bo Nawacharee, Length: 00:03:49

Video courtesy of the artist

DA:  Is it a weird place to live?

BN:  It’s not, LA as a whole is weird. It's really similar to Bangkok actually. Bangkok in Thai is called ‘krungthep’ which literally means City of Angels, and LA is also a city of angels - Los Angeles. My friend pointed that out one day, and it blew my mind! They're both very flat cities that are spread out. You have to drive from one place to another, you can't really walk. The food wins though, that’s why I can't leave!

DA:  Could you say a bit about your practice? 

BN:  I'm a writer/director, a filmmaker, but filmmaking is a very big blanket. I write my own scripts and then I direct them. Sometimes I direct commission work, but that’s pretty rare. I’m not in a studio system where I’m being assigned work all the time. Maybe I can say I'm grateful I'm not in a studio system where I'm being assigned works all the time so I can be picky with what I give to the world. I have to link myself to the work personally. I mean, filmmaking at the end of the day, sometimes we would question it - how important it is still, why are we doing this? But it is super important to me. It's weird but like any other art practices I believe the makers just want to keep making things. When I haven't made a film in a while I feel like I need it. I need to write something, edit a script, seek for possibilities, find approaches for my actors, go on set. Also sometimes I write prose and poetry. It helps me deal with emotions *laughs*. It's on my website.

DA:  When you're making these films, what are the stories that you're telling?

BN:  I usually tell personal stories, but I think most filmmakers would say that as well! I tackle concepts of identity, the relationship of the person and the world, and/or the person within themselves. Most of them deal a lot with sociopolitical issues and ambiguity. And when I say ambiguity, I mean identity ambiguity or relationship ambiguity. Who am I in this relationship? Or who am I to myself, or who am I to the world. When I look back at how I came about as a person, I've lived in so many places just to figure out who I am. I think the films convey that exploration of, who are we? I’m not too solid with all the identities that have been given to me, like my nationality, my race. I mean I am pretty Asian *laughs*, but I live in a Western setting. Even back home, I live in a Buddhist house, but I had a Christian education. All this ambiguity and blurred lines between identifying certain value to another is something that I enjoy picking out and giving to the world. 

Fall Into My Palms (film still), 2021, unreleased

Starring Yue Zhu and Matthew Kuang, Produced by Bo Nawacharee, associate produced by Yikai Luc Wu, Cinematography by Yikai Luc Wu, Length: 00:03:35

Image courtesy of the artist

DA:  What makes you choose film to do that?

BN:  It's more that I wanted to make film, and then this became something so important to me that I had to incorporate it into my work. When I was really young, like 10, I had an interest in music videos. It the summer holidays I would watch MTV. There wasn’t any internet or phones then. I thought, I can do this. I started coming up with like scenarios all the time. After a while, I forgot about it and I wanted to become something else. Then I found my way back into film when I was an undergrad because it became a sanctuary for me when I got so stressed out with school. I found escapism in film, I could be someone else for two hours - experiencing someone else's emotion, someone else's experience. It was a bubble for me and I start wanting to create that bubble for someone else and build a world. It’s now also become a medium of communication for me, and somewhere to exercise empathy and sympathy. It’s an opportunity to experience someone else's perspective.

DA:  What interests you about tackling sociopolitical issues and personal stories?

BN:  It's so intimate and personal and I think every single one of us can identify with it on some level. It's a constant struggle and it's a constant frustration. I walk around carrying this Thai woman identity with me, I did not choose it but it comes with a bunch of stereotypes that are perpetuated by the media. Almost every Asian women can be fetishised, this goes with Latina as well, for white women and black women. It became something that I wanted to touch upon, because it’s so constant, it’s 24/7. 

DA:  Yeah, I can identify with what you're saying. How did your interest in showing ambiguity in your films come about?

BN:  It surfaced after a few films that I made at school. One of my mentors said to me, you often have so much ambiguity in your films, you touch on so much grey areas, but in your life you’re always trying to push for an answer and I feel like that's your problem. *laughs* it was one of those mentoring moments when you're like, holy cow am I in therapy? With me and my relationships in life, I have the urge to know what's going on. Who am I to you? Who are you to me? We should define this! We have to live it, let it breathe, but it's so hard. I think that's why I explore the possibilities of what it could lead to in my films. The pandemic actually fed into that. There's no solidity, there's no confirmation.

Fall Into My Palms, 2021, unreleased

Starring Yue Zhu and Matthew Kuang, Produced by Bo Nawacharee, Associate produced by Yikai Luc Wu, Cinematography by Yikai Luc Wu, Length: 00:03:35

Video courtesy of the artist

DA:  I think ambiguity is one of the hardest things to learn how to deal with and, like you say, the uncertainty over the last year means that we have to learn to live with it.

BN:  Yeah, I agree. It happens in almost every era in history, like after World War One and World War Two, people realised that there’s no assurance of the future. Now we’re all experiencing the same thing with a pandemic, we can't be sure of anything anymore. 

DA:  Have you found that the pandemic has affected the way that you work?

BN:  The pandemic hasn’t affected the writing too much, apart from the fact I can't travel. Every time that I would feel stuck, I would try to go to another city and walk around. It helps a lot to look at peoples’ lives. New York is one of the most inspiring place to walk in because there are so many stories. 

DA:  It's just so alive! 

BN:  Yeah, without traveling writing was kind of hard. At the same time, I always reach out and meet new people. I find connecting with people helps with writing and is good for collaborations. Without meeting it's kind of difficult because Zoom doesn't feel the same as grabbing a cup of tea or meeting at a bar. Also production gets smaller and no-one wants to give money to making films anymore because there's no solidity and profit coming out of it. The grants have been cancelled too.

DA:  Is that what you'd normally do? Would you come up with an idea and then apply for a grant to be able to make it happen? 

BN:  Yeah, I would go talk with the team of producers I have. There's six of us, me included, and they're all women. We all try to find investors, sponsorship, grants, fundings, or any sort of opportunities together. 

DA:  Nice. So I guess you haven't been able to do any filming?

BN:  Last year was hard but me and my producer, we did a short film together in October. It was so difficult because there were only 10 people on set, including the actors. I’m dying to be like, Can someone adjust that damn light? But there’s no-one else there. We did a micro shooting in Thailand as well with even less people. We shot a dance film in March this year about air pollution in Bangkok. It’s a big issue in Bangkok at the moment, and it’s been going on for two years now. Our very inefficient, incompetent government is not dealing with anything. I can't fix the air, so I'll make a dance film about it!

Bangkok 2.5 (film still), 2021, unreleased

Starring Napat Rodboon and Saruda Chantrapanichkul, Produced by Pornpailin Chuaphun, Cinematography by Kero Sirinimitwong, Length: 00:04:17

Image courtesy of the artist

DA:  Amazing! I look forward to seeing that when it comes out. When people are able to see your work, what would you like them to get from it?

BN:  I always want them to get a good conversation out of it, whether it is about the film that I made or whether it is about their life. Whatever the film triggers them to talk about. With the film I made about Thai female identity, some people asked me like, Oh, do you want to educate people about this issue? But that's not a good word. For me, education is great, but it's not what my aim is. I want to tell them what's going on. I don't want to teach them about how bad we suffer. You know, I just want to be like, this sucks. Can you see? *laughs* My films can be a catharsis for them to talk about certain ideas that aren’t often spoken about in daily life. It can allow them to talk about something difficult, or something like intimate or sensitive, without feeling the burden of like, why are we talking about this or blaming each other or pointing fingers. I'm blessed if that happened.

DA:  And whose work inspires you?

BN:  This is one of the most difficult questions! It’s hard to say because there are loads of filmmakers where I like some of their work but not all of it. I did think about two people. One of them is a writer. His name is Alex Dimitrov and he's a poet based in New York. He wrote this book called 'Together and By Ourselves', which I have not finished because I can't bear to finish this book. I’ve reread it so many time. I love it so much. His prose and his poems are so visual and have so much feeling in them. When I can't think of a scene I'll read his work and so many pictures will come up in my head. Then the other person is a film director, called Kim Bora. Her short film 'Recorder Exam' is one of my favourite shorts. It's amazing. It's so simple. I usually love intense, disturbing things, but this is so simple and beautiful. It's about a little girl and her relationship with her family and her relationship with herself and the family hierarchy.

DA:  It’s hard to have someone where you like everything they make. 

BN:  I also love Yorgos Lanthimos’ films a lot, I have to say. They’re so strange and courageous. And I love Jenny Holzer, but I can't say how her work impacts my practice.

Bo Nawacharee, crew, and cast on the set of ‘Pieces and Bits’ 2019

Starring Belle Visa, Andrew Bliek, and James T. Majewski, Produced by Angel Teng, Cinematography by Art Parnitudom, Length: 00:14:15

Photograph by Looksorn Thitipuk Teeratrakul and photo courtesy of the artist

DA:  I think it all feeds in though, subconsciously. Yeah. What was your most memorable experience with art?

BN:  That is also another very hard question. I've thought about it for so long and one of my most memorable experiences was in London. I saw three big Monet water lily paintings that were shown together for the first time. They’re usually in three different countries.

DA:  I know exactly what you mean. I saw it too and it was amazing.

BN:  When I was growing up, I admired him and his painting so much. To see it in front of my eyes when I was older was insane!

DA:  Especially the fact that they've never been together before! What projects have you been working on recently? 

BN:  A bunch of things actually but also we’re funding a script for a short film that I finished writing last year. I've been writing it for a year or more.

DA:  So it takes a long time to write then?

BN:  Yeah, I do fix my scripts like crazy. I think it might be something that comes out of school for me as I had the luxury of being able to keep on fixing it and try out every possibility. The short film is about a Thai photographer who lives in Singapore and go back goes back to her family because of family issues. It allows her to relive a life in Bangkok. It's called 'Bangkok A Brief Walk’. It’s literally her walking around the city, seeing what's going on here. There are a lot of people who suffer from the really bad city planning which is already super hella stressful to look at, like, the cracks on the sidewalk or electricity cords that hanging from everywhere, that could electrocute you to death. We've been trying to finance the film, but it's not a good time so we’ve put it on hold. Then I just wrote another script last week funnily enough. 

DA:  Amazing!

BN:  It's about two girls who get stuck in a Thai restaurant in LA and find out something that they shouldn't know. I haven't started editing that script yet. It might take a bit longer.

Pieces & Bits, 2019

Starring Belle Visa, Andrew Bliek, and James T. Majewski, Produced by Angel Teng, Cinematography by Art Parnitudom, Length: 00:14:15

Video courtesy of the artist

DA:  Apart from that, have you got other plans for future work, are you just going to be editing that script?

BN:  I mean, there are a lot of other scripts that I wrote and we have to find funding for. I finished three films last month, and I’m waiting to circulate them. I don't think there's gonna be any shooting soon.

DA:  How long does a film normally take to make? Is that a very difficult question?

BN:  It's very difficult. It depends, with my thesis film 'Pieces and Bits’, about Thai stereotypes, I took a year and a half to write a script and half a year to research it. It was half a year of finding funding and then shooting for two weeks. I think I did half a year of post production.

DA:  How long was your thesis film?

BN:  15 minutes long. 

DA:  Wow! I’m always amazed when I've done any film work myself by how long it takes to make such a short a bit of film.  

BN:  I think it’s because I'm very meticulous about it as well. With some projects we have the luxury of being able to keep on editing. When I edit myself it goes a bit crazy because I explore every possibility of what the film could be from the materials I shot. 

DA:  I guess there's an infinite number of compositions with the footage that you have.

BN:  Right. I think it's the same with any artwork too. You can keep doing it forever. I think it’s the most difficult thing to know when to stop! 

DA:  That’s so true! Thank you Bo. It’s been lovely meeting you and chatting about your work. 

BN:  Thank you so much. 

Find out more about Bo’s work:

Website

Instagram

Vimeo

 After10: Keep You Cool (still from commercial film), 2019

Starring Saruda Chantrapanichkul and Kanokporn Worapharuek, Produced by Ladapha Sophonkunkil and Nattanich Luengteerapap, Cinematography by Art Parnitudom, Length: 00:01:17

Image courtesy of the artist

Emma Brennan

Emma Brennan in her studio, photograph by Kate Donaldson assisted by Niamh McCann

Photo courtesy of the artist

Damaris Athene:  Could you start off by telling me a bit about yourself?

Emma Brennan:  I’m a visual artist and now, I work a lot with performance. I'm originally from Dublin, in the Republic of Ireland, and now I live in Belfast, in Northern Ireland, and I've been here for almost three years. I came up here because I had a directorship with an organisation called Catalyst Arts.  

DA:  What's a directorship?

EB:  It’s a two year voluntary role. They're a gallery and a not for profit, artist-led visual arts organisation. Your first year is like training and the second you run the organisation and get to program a year’s calendar of events. The same people run the board of management as are on the board of directors which keeps it non-hierarchical. They're funded by the Arts Council of Northern Ireland. I was on their marketing sub committee and the chairperson on their board for the last year of my directorship. I ended up getting marketing  jobs in the arts as a result and now do that for my day job with different organisations. 

DA:  Are you able to make enough time for your practice?

EB:  It's been hard. I have a studio here at Flax Art Studios, and I go through bolts of being in there every evening and then times where I'm just very overwhelmed at work and I can't practice. It's definitely not consistent or balanced. I try not to give myself a hard time over it when I’m not getting in the studio. It can be really overwhelming doing jobs and trying to live and all that that includes as well.

DA:  It's so hard to juggle everything as an artist and, like you're saying, it's so important to not give yourself a hard time when you can't get in your studio.

EB:  Yeah, it is, but it's so easy to berate yourself. Sometimes I'll even just go into the studio on days that it's hard and just spend a day there but not do anything. I'm very forgiving of the fact that I was just in the space. Things come up eventually because I gave myself that time. Does that make sense?

DA:  Totally. It's so important to have that time to sit and reflect and not put pressure on yourself to be making all the time. I find in my own practice when I force it, it's not good. You've got to be in the right headspace. 

EB:  Yeah, definitely.

Heed, to the Mound, Dublin Fringe Festival, The Complex, Dublin, 2018

Photo Credit: Carmen Reichle, Performer: Renee van de Schoor

Photo courtesy of the artist

DA:  It's not like some other kind of job that you can just switch on.

EB:  No, you can’t. I'll be very frustrated for a really long time and my brain feels like mashed potatoes, and it just won't work, and then I'll be in the shower, or I will be having a conversation and then something will happen. Oh my gosh, that's an idea! I need to go and figure that out right now! So I think it's better not to force it. 

DA:  I definitely agree! Could you say a bit more about your practice? You've mentioned that it's mainly performance based?

EB:  Yes, it is now. I did my BA in the National College of Art and Design in Dublin and I did Fine Art and Media Studies. I ended up, towards the end of my BA, doing a lot of performance work but all video. I used a lot of green screen and it was very strict, scripted and comedic work, using tropes of TV, film, and advertising culture. I was assuming a character as well as being the videographer, the editor, the script writer. It was a one woman show! Towards the time of the degree I had started to dip into live performance. I'd done workshops with Dominic Thorpe and Emma Haugh. Live performance felt more successful for the stuff that I was trying to say but I didn't have the confidence to include it in my final show and I felt that there wasn't really that space for it in terms of marking or grading. My first ever live performance outside of college was with Livestock, a live art organisation in the south of Ireland run by Katherine Nolan and Francis Fay and at the time Eleanor Lawlor, who has since sadly passed away. They're really good at supporting people like me, coming out of college wanting to make live work in a supported environment. Then, what solidified my performance practice, was when I went traveling to Canada and our car got broken into. My laptop and my camera got stolen. It was a complete nightmare.

DA:  Nooo! Oh my god!

EB:  I had an upcoming residency with the Draíocht in Blanchardstown which was very much based around doing video work. It was a studio based residency and I didn't have the means of making multimedia work anymore. So I thought, I'm just gonna lean real hard into this performance stuff, because I have my body and analog ways of documenting. So that's how I've been working for the last few years. In the Draíocht I did end up doing a small triptych video installation of me moving an amount of dough equivalent to my bodyweight across the space. Then three TVs were placed in the exact same space where it was filmed so it looked as if my body was moving through the screens in that space.

DA:  Cool!

Landscaping, Catalyst Arts Gallery, Re-Vision Festival 2020

Photo credit: Ben Malcolmson

Photo courtesy of the artist

EB:  Yeah, that was fun to do. Then that grew into a live performance with a group of women for the Dublin Fringe Festival. We trained for it that whole summer, almost in a way that you would for a sport. We did a lot of mental and physical exercises, strength building, and creating a bond between us because we needed to be each other's support network for that day. 

DA:  What did that performance consist of?

EB:  There were 10 women, 9 pushing mounds of dough equivalent to their own body weights.

DA:  With yeast in it or just flour and water?

EB:  Just flour and water. Then overnight, they proved and doubled in size. All of us moved our personal mounds through the space for about three hours. Then there was one assigned performer, Helen McGrath, who was our flour dredger. When it got too hard to move the dough, Helen would flour the floor, so that we could keep it moving. 

DA:  Wow, it sounds amazing. What is it that motivates you to work with performance and installation?

EB:  I'm really interested in the things that happen in between the start and the end of things. Sometimes it’s about capturing the things that you can't see or touch, but feelings and energies that exist that are almost physical. I feel like you can do that with performance, through people feeling and connecting with the energy in the space. With wall based mediums I can’t get there. I like to work with dough because of a similar alchemy and its process of living, breathing and growing. 

DA:  Yeah, I guess it's all to do with the passing of time, and you need a medium that moves through time. 

EB:  Yeah, exactly, that's a good way of putting it, I'll write that down!

Hatching, Glassbox Gallery at Ulster University, Belfast International Festival of Performance Art 2021

Photo credit: Jordan Hutchings

Photo courtesy of the artist

DA:  *laughs* Apart from the living, breathing and temporal nature of dough, what other symbolism does it have for you within your practice?

EB:  It's definitely related to my body, a projection of how I visualise or understand it and what it's like to live in it. It has a lot of maternal aspects for me in terms of creating a life and the body as an incubator. I think about that a lot. It’s linked to my Mam’s side of the family, especially to my Granny, who passed away in 2018. She always made brown soda bread and all the women in the family knew how to make it. In my final year of college, I was interested in the idea of value and exchange and what happens when you take monetary understanding out of it. How we perceive value is actually very different individually because it reflects our core values. I curated an exhibition of work that I obtained by exchanging a loaf of this bread that I made for artworks.

DA:  Amazing!

EB:  It was really nice. I got everything from, like, a beautiful self portrait painting by Salvatore of Lucan to a scrap page of someone’s notebook. For Sal, a handmade loaf of bread was so valuable to him and he equated that to the labor that he had put into that painting. That started me working with bread.

DA:  You've mentioned the link with dough and bread to the female lineage of your family, and I was wondering what other ways your Irish identity has played into your practice?

EB:  My Irish identity is very tightly woven into how I identify as female. Even in the last 10 years, there has been the Repeal The Eighth movement and the Marriage Equality movement but then there’s the cervical cancer scandal and the Motehr and Baby Homes graves. It feels like women are constantly being disappointed by the Irish government, but yet there has also been massive achievements from its people.  I'm working with dough and I'm working with my ancestry and sentimentality and that is so specific to me being a woman. The matriarch is very important to me. I have three brothers and no sisters, and my mam is from a Catholic family of 11 children where there are only three girls. It's a heavily male dominated family. She’s from Longford, which is in the midlands of Ireland and quite a rural area. There's a lot of bog and farm land around there. I grew up with these associations to the land and split labor practices for men and women. This personal heritage informs my decisions around performances, like costumes or materials or gestures as well as the grander history of Ireland. I've been reading a lot about the move here from Paganism to Christianity and its result on women. Bridget for example was a leader and a goddess before Christianity, where she was reappropriated into a saint under their patriarchy.  

Water Bodies, with Cara Farnan and Jennifer Moore, Catalyst Arts Gallery, 2020

Photo Credit: Simon Mills

Photo courtesy of the artist

DA:  How do you feel your work has developed since finishing your BA in Dublin?

EB:  It’s definitely more confident. In particular, I’ve figured out a lot about what actually works for me and what doesn't in how I work in a studio. I found it difficult, without people validating or challenging me like they did in college. I think I was self conscious in the studio in college, and wouldn’t take up space or make a mess or really get into something for the consideration of others. 

DA:  How do you usually work and how has that been affected over the last year?

EB:  I would call my process a constant collage. I’m always collecting thoughts, whether it’s through conversation, cooking, watching films, going to events, whatever! Then I just let them sit there in my brain and when I’m in the studio, I trust that the important things will come to the front. I basically enter into a child-like state of play there. I don't force anything too much. Sometimes I'll just read or sit then sometimes I could literally spend hours making a big mess. I'll look back on it later and be like, what am I trying to get out there? In performances I might make a gesture or make certain decisions that I don't even understand at the time, but actually comes from spending that time in my studio. Allowing myself to be bored as well you know, boredom is a really good space to make, it’s a very fertile ground for thought.

DA:  Definitely, and something we don't often experience in our modern ever connected lives. Have you been able to continue that process like normal?

EB:  In the first lockdown we weren't able to go into the studios so I basically turned our front room into a little mini studio. It was really nice to have that time to figure things out. Since things have opened back up, it actually feels harder to back into that funk. I almost have to figure out how to be back in the world again, everything feels  very busy and chaotic and overwhelming.

DA: Yeah, I’ve been feeling that too! When people see your work, what would you like them to get from it?

EB:  I really like people to come to work, any work, with an open mind and take from it whatever they want and to make their own opinions. I don't like telling people too much so then they can make their own associations with it.

Dough Scales, Flax Art Studios, 2021

Photo courtesy of the artist

DA:  That's a great way to think about it. Who's work inspires you? 

EB:  I could go on for ages! Thinking of female performance artists in Ireland,  you can't not talk about Amanda Coogan. She’s always working and making impressive stuff. She's also a very sound person and an excellent teacher. Then of course there’s BBeyond, who are a performance collective in Northern Ireland, they do a lot of stuff in public space. I'm a member of theirs now as I got their 2021 New Commission Artists Award. Out of which I got a mentorship from an artist I greatly admire, Siobhan Mullen Wolfe. She makes really stunning work and is incredibly generous, empathetic, and compassionate in her work and her mentorship. She’s had a massive impact on my work this year. I think often the biggest influences are your peers. I have friends who are artists,  poets, musicians, screenwriters and more. I worked with Cara Farnan and Jennifer Moore as part of my Catalyst director show ‘Waterbodies’. I worked with them because they're my dear friends and we connect on an intimate level. They're both incredible artists and have a very nice way of working, in particular when working with others which is important to me. 

DA:  What projects are you working on at the moment?

EB:  I'm going to be performing a work as part of the Cathedral Arts Festival in Belfast. It was postponed from May to September because of the pandemic. I'm working on that as part of the award with BBeyond. I'm also showing work as part of a show called 'Butter and Eggs' which is curated by Moran Been Noon in November. 

DA:  Lots of things going on then! Do you have any other plans for future work? Or are you just focused on producing the stuff for these shows?

EB:  There were a couple of months where I was hell for leather applying for stuff and then suffering the rejections of most. You know what that's like! At least I have a bank of very good applications now, including a proposal for a completely new body of work that I really want to make, I just need the funding.

DA:  Fingers crossed that you manage to find some funding!  Thank you so much Emma. It was lovely to meet you. 

EB:  Thank you!

Find out more about Emma’s work:

Website

Instagram

Hanging Dough, Steambox Studios, Dublin, 2017

Photo courtesy of the artist

Samaneh Roghani

Samaneh Roghani working in her studio, photo courtesy the artist

Damaris Athene:  Could you start off by telling me a bit about yourself?

Samaneh Roghani:  I'm from Iran, Tehran. I'm 37. In Iran, I got my bachelor of photography. In 2012, I moved to Malmö in Sweden. Here, I got my other bachelor BFA and then MFA at Malmö Art Academy. I have my studio here and I’m trying to establish myself here as an immigrant. It's quite tough.

DA:  Yeah, and it's been nine years you've been there?

SR:  It’s good as here people are interested in art, and especially art that is not common, like from another country. But also it’s difficult, because I am an immigrant so I'm not really part of society, even if I think I am after nine years.

DA:  That sounds really difficult. What made you choose Sweden?

SR:  I could come to Sweden. So I just took a chance.

DA:  Are you able to go back to Iran? 

SR:  I can go back to Iran, but I don't want to do that because I don't dare to go back. Who can guarantee I go, and I don't end up in prison.

DA:  That’s really tough. Could you say a bit more about your practice?

SR:  I'm really interested in making installation and sometimes they’re interactive. Photography and video are always part of the installations. I use different materials, techniques, and it depends like how I imagined my future work.

DA:  What ideas that are behind these installations?

SR:  I focus on sociopolitical issues. I share my stories from the country I come from and other similar countries in the Middle East. In Iran we are breathing politics, everything happening around the world - boom - directly affects our lives. I have to read to know what is happening there and keep this connection while I'm living in peace and democracy here.

(in the foreground) For The Silenced, 2019, Photo installation, analogue self-portraits printed on ceramic tiles coated with liquid emulsion, glass, water, ink, 150cm × 80cm × 113 cm

(in the background) For The Forgotten, 2020, Self-portraits printed on ceramic tiles coated with liquid emulsion, natural fibre ropes hanging at different heights in the whole room

Documentation from ‘Future Watch’ exhibition at Kulturhuset in Stockholm

Photo courtesy of the artist

DA:  I guess you have a third person perspective from not being in the country anymore. You can look back in a different way. 

SR:  Exactly. That's true. 

DA:  What motivates you to work with different media and techniques in this installation format?

SR:  Living such a country, my life was always limited. Like, don't do that. Don’t do that. Illegal. Illegal. Back in Iran, I only worked with photography, hanging on the wall. Then moving here, I studied fine art and didn’t want any limitation. I want to think widely. With small projects you cannot say what I want to say. I use different techniques and media to be able to make the images real. It takes so long for me to make work as I’m always using new techniques and materials.

DA:  How do you explore social and political issues, such as the injustices against women, in your work?

SR:  Right now I'm really focusing on women's rights, because before I moved to Sweden, I didn't know I had rights. In the first years, I would be like, what, I can live like that? For me it’s is very important to share what we women from those countries have been through. With the current situation and racism increasing and I think it is important people get to know what is happening. With media news we don't get this information. By using my own story, I believe I can show a very small part of how life is in the other part of the world. 

DA:  Has your use of self portraiture changed the way that you relate to yourself or your body?

SR:  Oh yes, very much. 

DA:  In what way? 

SR:  When I started self portraiture in 2007 or 2008 I was not very aware about women's rights, human rights. I could understand that I had problems by digging and finding them. I bring them into self portraiture as a reflection of society, because of the way you used to live or the situation you used to live in. Making self portraits became therapy for me.

Image of the video ‘Reenactment’, 2018, Video installation, 16 mm film, digitally projected on a scarf, 2:32 minutes

Photo courtesy of the artist

DA:  That sounds amazing to have that opportunity for self reflection. What barriers have you faced to making art?

SR:  I think of course many, but the most important one is censorship. Censorship is a big thing in Iran. As a woman, I need to cover my hair. I think it's even more difficult for writers, artists, musicians, because you need to find a way to say what you want to say without getting in trouble and ending up in prison, or even worse. You need to add many layers of censorship to your work and it can become very abstract. Even now, living in Sweden, I still have these fears, especially as my family are still living in Iran. 

DA:  I can't even imagine how hard it must be to try and double think everything you're doing. Has anyone you know been sent to prison because of their work?

SR:  Yes. 

DA:  That must be scary. 

SR:  Very scary.

DA:  What happened to them?

SR:  They’re out now but it’s pretty common for people to be sent to prison. I haven’t lived there for 9 years so perhaps many more are now in prison. It’s hard to get information out. Prison has become a place for intellectuals and journalists. That's why I'm working with these issues. It’s very important for me to bring it up and share it.

DA:  Yeah, so people know what's happening. When people are able to see your work, what do you want them to get from it? 

SR:  I want them to understand how life is and to understand immigration. I want to be with my family and work in my country, like anyone else. I ended up here because the situation I had. With installation, I think it's easier for people to literally feel it. I work with material that you can smell or touch. 

DA:  Yeah, having that sensory interactive experience stays in your mind a lot more. Have you had any responses to your work that stand out?

SR:  Yeah, a lot during the last month with the exhibition I’m currently in. People direct contacted me, saying they didn't know the situation was that extreme. They read the news but it’s very vague. Some of them got goosebumps because it’s so scary. The other day, I was just showing my website to a friend and she was like, Oh, can you give me a little bit of space to breathe? I'm happy with that, not that I'm happy to make people sad. Just... 

DA:  That it has that impact? 

SR:  Yeah. 

Samaneh spraying on ceramics made for the work ‘For The Silenced’, 2019

Photo courtesy of the artist

DA:  It means that what you're doing is working. I hope to be able to see you installations in real life one day. What's your most memorable experience of art?

SR:  When I was 20, or even younger, I went to a Museum of Contemporary Art Museum in Tehran with my friend. I had just started art school. There was an installation where you could see your shadows, but bigger. We were so happy and it was empty. We stayed for more than half an hour, playing, making, imitating. We laughed a lot. When we came out, we saw a lot of people were watching our shadows from the other side. I felt very ashamed and just wanted to leave. People people started laughing when we came out. It was kind of a performance for them. We thought it was private. You wouldn't do that as a young girl in public in a country like Iran. It hit me, Oh my god, how limited we are. I don't remember the artist unfortunately. That art actually opened my eyes.

DA:  Thank you for sharing that story. Whose work inspires you? 

SR:  Mahmoud Bakhshi, an Iranian artist who used to be my favourite. Also, William Kentridge. I really appreciate his work. It’s very inspiring. Afshin Chizari too. 

DA:  What projects have you been working on recently?

SR:  Right now I'm making a photo installation. It's about how, in the news, we don't really get information about things happening in different parts of the world, like countries that are not interesting for the West. They are poor, there is war there, we don't want to know. In the end it's like they are censoring it. Like last month, things were happening in Palestine but there wasn’t much news about it. Or like, what is happening right now in Iran. Nobody knows. It’s such a bad situation there.

DA:  What else is in the installation apart from photos?

SR:  It's hard to explain, because I need to see if it works. I'm using 12 kilometres of fishing lines! It took so long to decide on this material.

DA:  Wow!

Barzakh (Limbo), 2018, Video installation, 7 meter corridor, hanging ropes, 1:03 minutes on loop

Documentation from Charlottenborg Spring Exhibition at Kunsthal Charlottenborg in Copenhagen

Photo courtesy of the artist

SR:  *laughs* Yeah. It's a little bit hard to work with. 

DA:  What will you do with the fishing line? 

SR:  The fishing line will hang. I have an image in my head of how it will look but during the process it will change. 

DA:  Very tricky to work with because you can't really see it! *laughs* 

SR:  *laughs* Yeah. 

DA:  Where will that installation be shown?

SR:  Hopefully in an exhibition at Krognoshuset in Lund. 

DA:  Where's the show that you have on at the moment?

SR:  In Stockholm. I’m showing my work 'Silence for the Forgotten’ and ‘For The Forgotten’ at Kulturhuset. It's a group exhibition called 'Future Watch’ with 10 artists. It’s curated by Ashik Zaman and Koshik Zaman, two twin brothers. I’m also doing a residency at the moment in Malmö which will finish at the end of October. It’s the Unicorn residency, for artists at risk.

DA:  So you’ve got lots of stuff going on!

SR:  Yeah, I’m so happy! I also have an exhibition in September at Odenplan metro station in Stockholm. In the 80s they created a platform for artists to exhibit there. This is really important for me. Only certain people will go to galleries, but then in metro stations everybody would pass. This was most important thing to happen for my activism. So I need to work hard to Yeah. There's no time plus I have one and a half year old daughter. It's a bit tricky now.

DA:  How much time are you able to be in the studio?

SR:  I try to come in the morning until five. I need at least two hours with my daughter everyday. It’s a very intense time right now.

Samaneh working on her current project in her studio, 2021

Video courtesy of the artist

DA:  It sounds like it! Do you have an idea of what you’d like to work on after that or are you just too focused on your current projects?

SR:  Yeah I’m very focused right now. I need to make almost 8000 holes for the fishing lines. I cannot think about anything right now, my life is about making holes in wood. 

DA:  Wow, that's a lot of holes! Do you often need to do very repetitive tasks to make your installations?

SR:  Yeah

DA:  Do you enjoy that?

SR:  Oh I love it. When I working I’m also thinking about about the project and what it’s about. It’s always dark. It's about humanity and how some people don't have rights, get killed, executed, all these things. So it's quite heavy. To do something for this issues makes me happy.

DA:  Yeah, and feel like you're making some change in whatever way you can. 

SR:  I wish I could make a change, but I think I'm too small to do that.

DA:  Educating people about it is making a change, I would argue. 

SR:  Yeah, even if one person thinks about it, it’s good. 

DA:  True! Thank you so much. It was lovely meeting you. 

SR:  Thank you. 

Find out more about Samaneh’s work:

Website

Instagram

For The Forgotten, 2020, Photo installation, analogue self-portraits printed on ceramic tiles coated with liquid emulsion, natural fibre ropes hanging at different heights in the whole room

Documentation from ‘Future Watch’ exhibition  at Kulturhuset in Stockholm.

Photo courtesy of the artist

Emma Prempeh

Emma Prempeh in her studio, photo courtesy the artist

Damaris Athene:  Could you start off by telling me a bit about yourself?

Emma Prempeh:  I'm a painter and I love to dabble in film and projection. I like the idea of using paint in ways that transcend the canvas. That's what I always try to do but it never works out, obviously, because paint is flat. I guess that’s why I like adding in fabric and really black paint. My work is usually pretty large because I like figures to be the same size as me. I'd love to feel like you're in the room with them. I am from southeast London. I went to school in Bromley and then I studied in Croydon, and I went to Goldsmith's University. Now I'm at the RCA on my first year of MA on a scholarship. It has been quite a transition.

DA:  Hopefully an exciting one too! Could you say a bit more about your practice?

EP:  Yeah, so I look at the intangible ideas of the human experience, what I experience and what we experience that we can't see. So whether that is emotion, or whether that's something paranormal, or something that is spiritual. I like looking at consciousness, because of my own health problems. Maybe it's an existential thing and I'm having continuous existential crises within my paintings. That’s why I like to translate these experiences into painting to help me and I like seeing people have a reaction to it, what they think I'm trying to convey. This ties into family, looking at the past and who relates to me and why I'm in London right now.

DA:  Is all your work figurative?

EP:  A lot of it is recently, but I'm trying to move away from that but not necessarily completely get rid of it. I am trying to move more into abstraction and using projection.

DA:  I'd be intrigued to see your use of projection. Would you set up scenes or would you be filming things you saw?

EP:  When I was at Goldsmiths, I filmed scenes in London, like, what I was seeing on my journey to university or home. I broke up with my ex at that point and it was based on the idea of time continuously moving although when you're with someone, the moment stops, and you might feel like time doesn't move. Actually, the projection was an accident, but it worked out. It's always been my dream to have a dark room with paintings all around that have projections on them.

Limbo, 2021, Oil, Acrylic, Imitation Gold leaf and paper on canvas

A diptych, 110cm x 200cm for each canvas

Photo courtesy of the artist

DA:  I’m interested to see those ideas come to fruition! How did your painting style develop?

EP:  So it developed in second year. In first year I was working with bright colours thinking about the chakras and the different areas of the body having different auras. Then it became quite difficult when I tried to add in figures because I would paint my family members and they're brown. So I was like, how can I do this and make it more earthy but still make it seem ethereal or like you’re stepping into something that's paranormal? I was playing with oil paint and white spirit, and it became this weird style that worked. That's also when I found gold leaf. I like gold leaf not only because it was gold, but because of what it does when it tarnishes. When it oxidises it decays and embodies time itself. That's why I keep using it because I'm referencing family members and it worked to bring time into the piece. It was weird when people started buying my work as in a few years’ time it's not going to be gold anymore, it will be black and blue and green. It makes me excited to see what all my pieces will look like in the future. 

DA:  That's so interesting. Did you decide to warn people that were buying your work?

EP:  Yeah, so I try to tell them now. There was one person who wanted to buy work and when I told them, they didn't buy it. Someone has to accept that it’s your artwork, and I shouldn't change it for them.

DA:  No, it's good to retain that integrity, and that can be so difficult if you need the money. 

EP:  True. I feel like people shouldn’t be shy about saying that because if you need to sell something, I don't think it's bad to change one aspect. 

Red White Blue and Brown, 2020, Oil, Acrylic, Imitation Gold leaf, fabric and heat press print on canvas

190cm x 140cm

Photo courtesy of the artist

DA:  Yeah, no, definitely. Could you speak a bit more about your painting process?

EP:  I work in layers and I usually start with an acrylic background or wash or something. I get the feel for a piece either from a photo or from the idea I have so I can translate that with what colour I would use and then I put the gold leaf first and then paint on top with oil paint. It's tricky sometimes because you must figure out what parts you want to leave gold and what parts you don’t. I try to focus in on areas of the face that I want to be more realistic and just leave gaps in places because sometimes when you paint over gold leaf it becomes quite dull. I usually add the materials on after that.

DA:  What are the kinds of materials that you add on?

EP:  So like curtain material. It's a symbolic thing that my grandma and my mum always had these net curtains. It's something that's in most Caribbean households. It reminds me of family. So I would add fabric to the painting, or if it's relevant, I would add sheets and print on them. I also use heat transfer to print things onto the canvas, sometimes images like a part of a face, or words. I use it when I think it's relevant.

DA:  Trust your gut! How do you feel your practice has developed since starting at the RCA a year ago?

EP:  I actually don't think it's developed very much. I don't know whether that's because I'm not in the studios. I feel like when I was at Goldsmiths, I was more experimental with people around me doing different things. Because I've been at home, I've stuck to the same thing. Because of having solo shows and actually selling work it makes me feel like I should keep to this thing that people like, which is bad. At one stage I was even told to change things. I'm never doing that again. I went to the RCA because I wanted the chance to experiment more. My ideas are so much broader than what I paint on a 2D canvas.

Closeup of ‘Windows Of Emotion’, 2020, Oil, Acrylic, Imitation Gold leaf, heat press print and fabric on canvas

177cm x 227cm

Photo courtesy of the artist

DA:  That makes sense if you haven’t been going into the studios and haven’t been getting that tutor time either. Have you been working with galleries since graduating from Goldsmiths? Or is it more recent thing?

EP:  When I first graduated, I worked with a gallery. That was the first time I was introduced to selling work. But it really took off in 2020, despite the pandemic. I think it was having the opportunity to have a solo show, and then collectors collecting. I also won a competition where the prize was a solo show. The two shows weren’t supposed to be so close together but because of the pandemic it pushed them tighter. It was hell doing work for two shows that were basically back to back. Now I'm working with Gillian Jason Gallery and ADA Accra in Ghana. I'm enjoying working with them. They support me with everything, from financial stuff to taking work from my studio and moving it to storage. They've been so wonderful. I'm so lucky to have people that actually want to help.

DA:  Amazing. It must be so confidence building in this early stage. How do you usually work and have you found that that's been affected by the pandemic?

EP:  Last year from graduating Goldsmith, I did have a free studio in Camberwell for a while. I wasn't able to go there for four months, mainly because I have a health condition and I was scared. I used to walk there from here. 

DA:  How long did that take?

EP:  It was nearly two hours. I would walk there, stay there and just see what I could paint for two or three days and then walk back home. I usually work very slowly. Mostly because of the thought that goes into a painting, not necessarily me making it. I like to take my time, sit with it if I can for a few months, and add stuff. I feel the best things come that way. But if I have to get something done fast, I can. I can either work really early in the morning or really late at night, which is kind of inconvenient. At lunch I'll eat, and I just sit there for ages, and I won't pick up the pace until 5pm.

Install shot of ‘Forgetting’ and ‘Brief Encounters’ in ‘The Face of Love’, V.O Curations Post Residency Solo Show

Marylebone, London, 2020

Photo courtesy of the artist

DA:  That must be very inconvenient if the whole middle of your day is useless! *laughs*

EP:  *laughs* I said to myself by October, please Emma, please do this properly so you can do it full time. I want to push myself to be completely self-reliant.

DA:  I hope you can find a good routine. Whose work inspires you? 

EP:  A big inspiration is Lynette Yiadom-Boakye. Her work is amazing. She came as a visiting tutor in my second year at Goldsmiths. She was really cool and really funny, and she did teach me little things. In my studio I used have a rug and a candle on my table. She came in and was like, you're gonna burn the place down! She recommended using glass as a palette as you can just wipe it clean. She also told me to, instead of using black oil paint, use a mixture of brown and blue. She was the first successful black female artist I ever saw. At uni I didn't have any tutors that looked like me. When I was younger when visiting galleries I always liked Caravaggio, because of the dark colours he used. His figures were white, so I had to adapt his techniques to black skin. I also like Jenny Saville. She does such big paintings and has such attention to detail. I think that's what made me use such massive canvases in the first place, actually. It's difficult when people ask me who inspires me, because I'm inspired by a lot of different things. Usually, it's more of what I read like philosophy, and I was very into english lit, religious studies and fantasy in school. I’m inspired by reading books about spirituality and consciousness.

DA:  Are there any books you’d recommend?

EP:  ‘Thinking Fast and Slow' was a really big book that I read, and 'The Power of Now’.  There was one called 'The Celestine Prophecy', which I got into, which is about this guy who travelled to Peru in pursuit of this power that can be harnessed. The way they described it was like the air in between your hands and if you could focus your meditation close enough, you could see like these white lines.

The Cains, 2020, Oil, Acrylic, Imitation Gold leaf and heat press print on canvas

190cm x 140cm

Photo courtesy of the artist

DA:  They sound really interesting. What projects are you working on at the moment? 

EP:  I've been working with ADA Accra, the gallery in Ghana, and I've been painting pictures about my personal and future experiences, and one of them includes using projection. It’s primed and ready, but I need to film. I've been working on establishing my relationship with my father's side of the family. I'm bringing in structural aspects of living in London and just seeing what I might come up with when I go there and the differences in how I feel. I’m showing a piece in the group exhibition ‘Mother of Mankind’ in Mayfair in July. It’ll be open until 31st August. It’s a crossover between me and my grandmother on my father's side, who I didn’t know. I wanted to ask her questions and I used print on the piece. I wrote down questions I would ask her if she was still alive. Things like, what did you do when you had a sad day? What did you do for fun? I wanted to highlight her clothing because she’s wearing this common Ghanian print with leaves. I will be going to Ghana after that exhibition for my solo show there. Everything is very exciting and I'm very happy and very lucky to be going because I've never been there before. I've never been outside Europe. I'm scared but very excited. 

DA:  Nice! What plans you have for future work after these projects are finished?

EP:  I'm going to continue to finish the other pieces that I have in my studio. Projection is a big thing in my head that I really want to do. I really enjoyed the process of writing things out and printing them on the canvas with the piece my grandmother is in. That's the only way I could speak to someone who's related to me who I didn't know but I feel close to in a way.

DA:  How nice to feel that connection through your work. I’m really excited to see what you make. Lot of irons in the fire. Thanks so much Emma it’s been lovely talking to you. 

EP:  Thank you. 

Find out more about Emma’s work:

Website

Instagram

Closeup of ‘Back Home’, 2020, Oil, Acrylic, Imitation Gold leaf, multimedia on canvas

175cm x 175cm

Photo courtesy of the artist

Frances Bukovsky

Frances Bukovsky, image courtesy of the artist

Damaris Athene:  Could you start off by telling me a bit by yourself?

Frances Bukovsky:  Sure, my name is Frances Bukovsky and I use she/they pronouns. I am a photographer and multimedia artist currently living in South Florida, though I grew up in upstate New York. My work is centred around my lived experience of chronic illness and disability.

DA:  What drew you to Florida from New York?

FB:  I moved for the weather, actually. I have a really bad cold intolerance. So every winter I was just sitting inside. Once I was able to go to college, I was like, I'm picking the warmest state!

DA:  That makes sense! Can you tell me a bit more about your practice?

FB:  As well as photography, I also do multimedia or video, art and illustration. I'm interested in all forms of photography: film, digital and camera-less processes like anthotypes and lumen printing.

DA:  What are they? Can you enlighten me? 

FB:  Lumen printing is printing directly onto photographic paper, using the sun or UV boxes with a negative or putting materials directly onto photo paper. Then you fix it and there's no development process. You've got pretty much a unique print that has interacted with the environment. Anthotypes use plant matter as photo sensitive material. 

DA:  Wow!

FB:  Yeah! I’ll put beet juice directly on watercolour paper and expose it in the sun over several hours. With that process, there's no way to fix it. So it will eventually fade and the image will be gone.

Methotrexate, 2018, Digital Photograph

From the series ‘A Family of Complicated Bodies’

Image courtesy of the artist

DA:  That sounds like an amazing process to work with and kind of poetic that it eventually disappears to nothing. In your statement you mention documenting family ties, and also your relationship with living spaces and your own body. I was wondering if you could expand on that?

FB:  Yeah, so I'm working with chronic illnesses as a subject and trying to communicate lived experience. A lot of the time illness gets contextualised within the medical field, or doctors offices or hospitals. I've worked in those spaces and documented either treatments that I've had, or spaces that I have been in during treatment, but I'm much more interested in how being sick affects my day to day life and where it shows up so that I can communicate how chronic illness is intertwined in every aspect of my life. I come from a family where each person has a different chronic illness. I feel like I'm in this unique situation of everybody's experiencing their own health issues and trying to figure things out. It affects the family dynamics so much because we're all trying to figure out very separate things, but we’re also being interdependent as well.

DA:  So do you all live together?

FB:  Yeah. Especially since the Covid virus. My brother moved back and so we've all been in one room, or one house not one room. Sometimes it feels like one room. *laughs* 

DA:  I'm sure it does. *laughs* Are there times when you're all going through like bouts of more intense illness at the same time?

FB:  Yeah. For example, my father had revision surgery on his spinal cord stimulator at a time where I was undergoing a full neurological workup, so sometimes things just overlap. The dynamic has changed over the years as we are all adults now. We joke around that we take turns being sick. We have a very dark humour to cope with everything.

DA:  I guess you have to, you can either laugh or cry. 

FB:  Exactly! 

24 Hour Observation (My Heart is Quickly Beating), 2020, Digital Photograph

Photo courtesy of the artist

DA:  Do you find it a cathartic process using your art to explore these difficulties that you're having every day?

FB:  Definitely, and I think it's helped us as a family communicate with each other. It's funny, a lot of times people ask me like, does your family consent to all of this? And the big answer is, absolutely. We talk very much about the work. It's gotten to the point where if something happens, somebody will ask me, Oh, do you want to take a picture of this? Or, look here's my surgical incision, take a picture! It's also helped us really see each other, where we are at each moment. To just recognise that we're all going through things, but we are going through them together.

DA:  It's amazing that you're able to support each other through that, although I'm sure it's extremely difficult at times as well. What motivated you to explore all of this with photography, and all these alternative photographic processes?

FB:  I've always been around very casual family photography; my grandmother always had a disposable camera at every family event. I've always been really interested in photography. I went to school originally for illustration, but it just didn't stick and photography, I don't know what it is about it, maybe it's the immediacy or the fact that it is so heavily reliant on being in the moment and present? It really interacts with the environment that you're in at the time. Photography has always been the art form that I most return to.

DA:  Yeah, and that link to reality and documentation as well which is very pertinent to your work. You haven't got that step of removal that other mediums have.

FB:  Definitely. I sometimes work in that documentary space, which gives me a chance to create an emotional distance between myself and whatever situation that I'm documenting. Not so much that I cut off those emotions from it, but more so that I can take that image and then reflect on it at a later time, so that I can gain more understanding of the moment, maybe in a way that if I didn't go through the process of making the images I might not have.

Hemosiderin Deposit, 2021, Lumen with MRI Negative

8” x 10”

Photo courtesy of the artist

DA:  No, that completely makes sense. Has your exploration of self portraiture changed the way that you relate to your own body?

FB:  Absolutely. I went through a decent span of time where my experiences with illness really disassociated me from my body and I didn't connect to my body because a lot of the time I was trying to escape either pain or other symptoms. Portraiture really made me see what I was going through and it also made me reconnect with my body. It also just gave me the self validity that I didn't need somebody else to tell me that I was sick. I could see that I am sick. I am dealing with these things, and it gave me a lot of self confidence as far as advocating for myself with doctors or just being able to understand that this is my body, and I'm living in it.

DA:  It must be such a difficult process having that autonomy taken from you in the medical process. I don't know if you've read the interview with Jing Su? She had a very traumatic experience with male doctors and not having any say in what was happening to her own body.

FB:  Oh, absolutely, that interview resonated with me so much because of my own personal experiences with that, of losing autonomy, or even not being given information, and not being able to give informed consent for procedures. One of the diagnoses that really impacted my life was being diagnosed with endometriosis. I was misinformed throughout much of my early treatment of it and that led to a lot of medical decisions that had lasting negative impacts on me. Going through that process and using photography as a tool to not only see myself with that, and also connect with a larger community of people who are also dealing with endometriosis allowed me to access so much more research and information, which led to a much better track of treatment for me personally.

DA:  Oh, that's so good, that something positive could come out of it. Because in the UK, I don't know whether it's any better or worse in the US, people can have it for 15 years without a diagnosis. Absolutely horrendous. The extremity of the pain isn't taken seriously.

FB:  Absolutely. Yeah, it's really hard. Going back to the disassociation thing, after seven years of being told that what I'm experiencing is not actually what I'm experiencing, it became really hard for me to even say, well, no, I am dealing with this. Because all of those voices are right back in here in the backseat. I took my body back through image making. It let me say this is what I'm dealing with, it's not normal, and I need to seek help for it. It also let me access a level of intuition around my medical care that I had just ignored, because as I thought doctors knew best. Doctors can be brilliant, but they're human too. So they might not always know what's best for a specific patient, and sometimes a second opinion is needed.

Well Acquainted With the Floor, 2019, Digital Photograph

From the series ‘Where the Red Flowers Bloom’

Photo courtesy of the artist

DA:  Yeah, and gaining some control back. What barriers have you faced when to making art?

FB:  A huge one tying into disability in general is the financial aspect of the art world. I come from a working class background. So although I was privileged enough to be able to attend art school, I came out with a lot of loans. Things like unpaid internships, cost of entry for competitions and institutions aren’t something I can afford as a disabled person with very unsteady income who is also having to pay for healthcare. Then also just labour in general being disabled. I have to really evaluate free labor because I don't have the energy levels that somebody else might have. I can't participate in burnout culture at all. Burnout for me leads to hospitalisation. I think burnout is just unhealthy for everybody, in all honesty. Even going through college and being told I have to work at a certain pace, and you have to stay relevant and you have to produce and produce and produce - I just can't do that. I'm really interested in creating and exploring ways that the art world can rebel against that and we can honour artists while also honouring their physical and mental health too.

DA:  Definitely, that’s so important. How do you usually work and how has that been affected by the pandemic?

FB:  This question was so interesting for me to reflect on, because pre-pandemic, for about a year beforehand, I was already in and out of  isolation with my own health issues going through surgeries. I wasn't working as much then. I do freelance video editing as my day job, so that didn't really change much. Before that I was working a lot doing portraiture work with other people. Now my practice is exclusively within my house, within my family, it's with myself. It's narrowed a lot, but I think I've also gained a lot of clarity, because I've really had to just sit with the question of what can I make within the confines of my home. 

DA:  For a lot of people I've spoken to it's been a really helpful moment to, like you say, get clarity and hone in on what's actually important. When people see your work, what would you like them to get from it?

FB:  I'm always interested in generating more empathy for not just people with disability or chronic illness, but for everybody in general. I also want to address what illness “looks like.” All of my illnesses are ‘invisible’ so I don't look disabled, which is a privilege and at the same time, fighting for access for things can be more difficult. I have to provide a lot more documentation or reasoning behind well, why do you need that accommodation. I’m also thinking about ways that we can create cultures of accommodation and access for everybody, so that everybody is supported. Also I haven't really gone into this too much with my work yet, but I'm interested in working more with medical research and providing resources or at least give people a jumping off point for their own research, whether they're researching for themselves or for a loved one. And just creating more conversations about illness. It’s an uncomfortable subject, but what if we just talked about it and made it a little bit less uncomfortable? And a little bit less othered?

My Blood Holds Barometric Pressure, 2021, Digital Photograph

Photo courtesy of the artist

DA:  Definitely, and then you’d be able to share what you needed more easily. What's the most interesting or surprising response you've had to work?

FB:  I'm not sure if this answers that, but the one that always excites me the most is when people reach out, specifically about ‘Where the Red Flowers Bloom,’ which still kind of boggles my mind, and say that my work helped them get a diagnosis, or put them on a track toward better treatment, because they didn’t know that what they were experiencing was more than the “bad period” doctors seem to blame symptoms on. ‘Where the Red Flowers Bloom’ is about my journey with endometriosis. Hearing that I have helped somebody in that way means so much, and also highlights how much work is left to be done in educating about diseases like endometriosis and other chronic diseases. Or when people say like, wow, these images make me feel a little bit less alone. That really excites me because sometimes illness can feel so isolating. Feeling that little bit of connection is so heartwarming to me.

DA:  That sounds amazing and how wonderful for those people that they're able to come across your work and feel connected. Whose work inspires you?

FB:  LaToya Ruby Frazier. I found her work in college, when I started getting diagnosed with autoimmune disease. Hearing that there was a working photographer who had Lupus was such an uplifting, hopeful moment for me. Her work is so incredible and intimate. Also, Rora Blue. They're an artist who focuses on queerness and disability, and they do a lot of installation work, which is just incredible. They speak a lot about ableism in culture in general. I'm always really inspired whenever I see one of their pieces. Then Panteha Abareshi, they do a lot of work about disability as well. Lots of installation work and books and really gets into the medical iconography that we often associate with illness. I think they do a beautiful job of translating internal experiences out into a visual form. 

DA:  That must be quite hard to do in your own work.

FB:  Yeah, that’s definitely like the question that's always in my mind. How do I describe this thing that is invisible, and only I am experiencing it?

DA:  Have you found it has got easier over time, or have you found working methodologies to try and tease that out?

FB:  Yeah, definitely. For me, just making a lot of work has helped me see patterns of like, Okay, this is working or this isn't working as much. Then also, I think that's where more of the camera-less processes come in where I work with internal medical imaging, like MRIs and ultrasounds. I'm referencing medical diagnostic tools, and then also working with layering and writing to approach this internal thing and try to get it onto the paper.

Spine Anthotype, 2021, Beet Juice Anthotype with MRI Negative

5.5” x 8.5”

Photo courtesy of the artist

DA:  So has it been a more recent thing using these other processes?

FB:  Yeah, over the pandemic. I was looking for something new and shiny to focus my energy on! Now it's growing more and more in my work. 

DA:  Nice! What projects have you been working on recently?

FB:  Over the past year, I've been working with Life at Six Feet, which is a photographic community that came out of a need for community during Covid-19 and has grown into an incredible space of practice for photographers all over the world. We come together around topics that are relevant in the community’s lives and create and discuss work around those themes in a meaningful, supportive way. That has been one of the most fulfilling projects that I've worked on over the past year. Then more of my own personal work, I am working on a book with Korax Press Project. The working title is ‘Anatomy of a Homesick Body’. It's basically my perspective on the past year as a disabled, immunocompromised individual, and contains a lot of the work that I've made over the past year.

DA:  I'm excited to see it, it sounds really interesting. What plans do you have for future work?

FB:  I'm definitely interested in exhibitions as experiences and installation work. I’ve yet to see one of Panteha Abareshi's exhibitions, but the documentation from it is incredible and inspiring. Their work and Rora Blue’s work opened my eyes to a way of pushing into a more physical space with my own work. I would love to explore giving people a chance to experience, not what it's like to be sick, but maybe to find ways of creating experiences that describe these invisible things that I've been talking about.

DA:  I would be very intrigued to see how that manifests. Thank you so much Frances. It’s been lovely meeting and talking to you. 

FB:  Thank you. 

Find out more about Frances’ work:

Website

Instagram

Work in progress shot of ‘Brain Lumen’, 2020, Lumen Print with MRI Negative

8”x10”

Photo courtesy of the artist

Shivani Aggarwal

Shivani Aggarwal in her studio

Photo by Sandeep Biswas

Damaris Athene:  Could you start off by telling me a bit about yourself?

Shivani Aggarwal:  I was brought up and I've been living in Delhi, I did my bachelor's at College of Art, Delhi. In 2003 I got a scholarship to study  in London at Wimbledon School of Art. After returning to Delhi ,I began practicing. It was a little tough in the beginning, because I was still trying to find my language and I was trying to figure out a way to keep a balance between my work, my finances and everything. Slowly, things began to change, after the birth of my daughter, I think my work became more intense. I began looking for opportunities as an artist as my work progressed. I got an opportunity to exhibit in Pakistan in 2006. Pakistan being a neighbouring country,  I was called to do an exhibition by Salima Hashmi at her gallery Rohtas II. She's a well known artist, activist and was a former professor. I had another solo exhibition in Bombay in 2007. After that I associated myself with Studio Art Gallery in New Delhi in 2008 and since then, I've been working, showing and getting regular opportunities from them.

DA:  Nice. So do they represent you?

SA:  Yes, so over time our relationship grew, and the gallery decided to represent me. 

DA:  That's brilliant. That’s the goal for so many artists to have a gallery behind them. 

SA:  It was never easy. For artists it's a struggle on many levels, you know, you're struggling with your work, you're struggling with your finances, trying to get the money to create art, and then to showcase your art in the right way with the right people who understand your intent. It has always been a struggle to be represented in the right way and to be doing what you want to do, to be growing with your language.

DA:  It's not an easy path to take at all. What made you want to come to London for your MA?

SA:  It's just that I applied for an all paid scholarship and was successful. It was always in my mind that I needed to pursue my studies. My stay there changed my work immensely, tremendously. Because I got a third person's perspective to my art, you know, coming out of my country, looking at myself, my work, what I had been doing, everything came in question. It was very interesting and helped me focus on my language a lot better.

Stitched Skin, 2019, Photography and crocheted thread on paper

Variable set of 12 images, takes 4 x 6 ft. of wall space

Photo courtesy of Studio Art New Delhi and the artist

DA:  That's so interesting. Did you find that there was a difference in the way that art was taught when you were in India and when you were in England?

SA:  Yes, of course. In England there was a lot more questioning, which was very interesting, because you end up questioning yourself, questioning your intent and thereby finding answers. Then these answers lead you to more questions! So this whole idea of questioning came into me, why I'm doing something. Why am I photographing something and not painting it? Even today, I sometimes refer back to a few things I did there, just to understand why I did them and what I thought then.

DA:  That sounds like a really valuable process, to be able to dig deep into what you're doing and figure out your motivations for things. Could you say a bit more about your practice?

SA:  I was always fascinated by things that I saw around my house, around myself. I began photographing them, I was photographing them way back in England as well. Things that were inside my room inside the house I was living in. I would photograph them and try to develop a language around them. To my surprise, I could form little stories about them or about myself through them. Now, I'm seeing a lot more through these objects today because now I am not just photographing them, I'm painting them, sculpting them, I'm bending, twisting them. They have developed in the past 10/12 years, they have grown in size, grown in understanding, and grown in terms of my questioning something. Every material lends itself to the whole meaning of the work today. When I photograph a hammer or if I sculpt a hammer there is a difference. Many things change with material and I enjoy that a lot. Now I enjoy this usage of material and how one thing can be interpreted and changed and manoeuvred in terms of meaning. It has been a struggle because I am trained as a painter, so I wasn't used to working with material. But over time, I have learned from my friends, from people who helped me with my sculptures. It's been a very interesting process.

DA:  And what what draws you to making work with these everyday objects?

SA:  I have always been fascinated by them and because I've observed them for so long, things are lying around me. I keep looking at them. They are symbols of memory, time and function. Sometimes I am fascinated by their form, so I start drawing them, photographing them or I start thinking of a sculpture with the form. Lately I've begun sewing their forms on rice paper. 

Thread Reel, 2015, Fibreglass and thread

7.5 x 3 ft.

Photo courtesy of Studio Art New Delhi and the artist

DA:  Like drawing with thread?

SA:  Yes, that has been my thing for the last year. Because of the pandemic I was restricted in what material I could buy. I was trying to make art with whatever I had with me at home.

DA:  Nice. And in your statement you mention exploring gender and the human condition. Could you speak a bit more about that?

SA:  Being a woman, being an artist has never been easy, especially in a country like India, where we basically come from a conservative mindset and conservative ideas. I grew up among women, with my grandmother, my mother, my aunt. I was very close to their lives and I used to see them suffering as women, physically and sometimes emotionally. I think I was expected to live the same kind of life. I felt this pressure many times. They don't say ‘We want you to do this’, but it is expected of you. This expectation led me to question why I should follow the same path. This whole circle of life of following a certain social rule, and then suffering due to it. I see it a lot here in India. We have changed over time over the past, say 20/30 years, things are not how they were. This all led me to understand what condition are we humans living in? Why do we bind ourselves into these rules, into these structures, into this social conditioning? Why aren't we breaking out of them? Are they really required? Are they really needed? So this entire thing led me to actually question a lot. 

DA:  Do you feel that now you’ve broken out of those social norms? And if so, how have your family reacted to that?

SA:  So strangely, I have not broken out of any social norms, I’m married and I have a child and all that, yet I live a very independent life. I have discovered my independence and I think everybody has accepted it.

DA:  Was there a point when they tried to discourage you from being an artist?

SA:  I would not say they discouraged me but they were unhappy and they thought that I should be doing something maybe more safe, like being a teacher. So I was never directly told, but I was expected to understand. 

DA:  That sounds like it was really difficult to carve your own path within that.

SA:  Yes, it was. I think you have to be just intelligent to be able to manoeuvre yourself.

DA:  And strong willed.

SA:  Absolutely.

New Objects, 2019, Acrylic on paper

9 x 12 inches each, set of 15 boxes

Photo courtesy of Studio Art New Delhi and the artist

DA:  And going back to your practice, you spoke about working with different mediums. Could expand on your motivation to work with different things and how that's changed over the years of your practice?

SA:  I started off being fascinated by threads. I used to see threads everywhere. In India When people are getting married they would be tying a thread and we also have a festival here called Rakhi, where the sister ties a thread to the brothers wrist. It symbolises a sacred bond that they share. I used to see threads playing a big role in our culture. I began collaging them on different surfaces and, to my surprise, they would start to look very interesting. I would start to make stories. And so from assemblages, I began doing very intimate small paintings, but I felt that it wasn’t enough, I needed more, I needed to say more. So I began to work with fibreglass. My earliest work is the knitting needles. I made them with the help of a friend who is a sculptor. The knitting needles have knitting hanging on them, which I made with the help of my mother because I didn't have good knitting skills then.

DA:  Was it knitted with the sculptural knitting needles?

SA:  No, they’re huge! Six feet long! We knitted with pointed wooden logs. After that installation I began experimenting with other objects. I wanted to make a hammer which was bent and made of wood. I got the help from a wood carver. So my mediums changed due to what I wanted to do and the thought behind it. The work selected the medium, not the other way around.

DA:  That's really interesting. You've spoken a bit about the significance of thread in Indian culture, but is there anything else you'd like to add to that about the significance of thread in your practice?

SA:  Yeah. I always used to make these entangled threads and ideas around these threads binding or threads opening up or something like that. I wanted to talk about relationships, how it affected me, and how things sometimes don't work or sometimes work. Threads are very interesting because they can signify a bond and, at the same time, they can signify bondage. In the early 2000s, I was creating small 10 by 10 inch paintings and over the years I thought that they needed to find a bigger space. I began enlarging my objects. My sculptures are generally very, very big, around 7-8 feet,  I think I can go even bigger.

How do I knit?, 2013, Fibreglass and thread

Knitting needles: 6 ft. Knitting: 3.5 x 4 ft. approx. Space taken: 5 x 8 ft. approx.

Photo courtesy of Studio Art New Delhi and the artist

DA:  That would be amazing! You mentioned that you’ve started using thread again during the pandemic, has the way that you work changed in any other ways? Would you normally be going to the studio?

SA:  Yes, I have not gone to my studio as much as I would have liked in the past few months. I was restricted to being at home, I was just crocheting. I got this opportunity to be part of this exhibition where I had to produce works solely out of craft. So I decided to crochet wire and I created a very large piece, which is almost 20 feet now. So it took me around six months of working diligently and tirelessly at home. And that's why I think I now need a pair of glasses.

DA:  Wow, that must have been very hard to be able to see what you're making if it's that big. How would you ever get an idea of the whole?

SA:  I did it in pieces and then joined them all together. I asked a friend who has a gallery space if I could go and put it up and see what it looks like because you're right, I couldn't see it properly. This work is called the trap because I think we humans keep knitting traps that we get stuck in.

DA:  Wow! Amazing! Is it going to be suspended when it's exhibited? 

SA:  Yes, it will be suspended, hung from the ceiling.

DA:  I’m excited to see it! When people are able to see your work in person again, what would you like them to get from it? 

SA:  Well, I would like them to understand what I've done, to notice the delicate intricacy and the sensitivity that I engage with, and to understand what I mean through my work. So I basically want them to understand the language that I use. It's very interesting when people read more than what I intended to say. In another work I made distorted hangers and one of my friends said that these hangers are distorted because of some pressure. So where is the pressure? You haven't made the pressure, so the pressure is invisible, yet it is there. I did think of pressures and how they distort us, but I was not aware of it while I was making it. I like that open ended bit where people are discovering  and reading between the lines.

Detail of ‘Hangers’, 2020, Wood

19 x 19 inches each, set of 5

Photo courtesy of Studio Art New Delhi and the artist

DA:  Yeah, definitely. And whose work inspires you?

SA:  A lot of people I love so many artists. When I was in London in 2019, I happened to see Olafur Eliasson and Mona Hatoum's work. I was totally taken aback, especially by Olafur Eliasson. His works are so amazing and so sensitive. I really loved his work and I loved Mona Hatoum's work as well. I also like Louise Bourgeois a lot and Shirin Neshat and Anish Kapoor. Shirin Neshat is an Iranian artist who makes extremely interesting work. The work comes from war. 

DA:  I see that link with the work of Mona Hatoum. Her work contains undercurrents of violence. And what projects have you been working on recently?

SA:  Being at home last year, I was actually with my needle and thread. I realised I can do a lot of things with it. I've begun doing works on canvas with a needle and thread. I'm really enjoying this, this newfound interest because I think I had forgotten about it. Without the pandemic I wouldn't have been working with needle and thread and crocheting.

DA:  What's the exhibition that the crochet pieces are going into?

SA:  It’s part of the Indian Ocean Triennial, that is happening in Perth, Australia. It's a parallel event with them. There will be many Australian artists and me. I was offered a residency there for a month, but I don't think I'll be able to go because of their strict restrictions. 

DA:  That's such a shame. What other plans do you have for future work. More stuff with thread and stitching?

SA:  Yes, maybe with stitching, and I am intending to create some more sculptures. Now that the lockdown is lifted, if I'm able to create something with wood, I would like to do that. With the stitching and the crochet, I want to continue with this and and see where it goes. Maybe create a sculptural work with them.

DA:  I look forward to seeing what you make! Thank you so much. Shivani. It was so lovely to meet you.

SA:  Thank you so much. It was lovely speaking to you as well.

Find out more about Shivani’s work:

Website

Instagram

Detail of ‘Weaving Traps’, 2021, Copper wire

Photo courtesy of Studio Art New Delhi and the artist

Jing Su 苏静

Jing Su in her studio, photo courtesy of the artist

Damaris Athene:  Could you start off by telling me a bit about yourself?

Jing Su:  My name is Jing Su (Chinese: 苏静). I am a visual artist. I am currently based in London. My studio is in Westminster. I was born in Inner Mongolia, China.

DA: Did you come to London to study?

JS:  In 2014 I arrived in London and began studying English as I did not speak any English. I got the opportunity to study illustration at Camberwell College of Arts and graduated in 2017. After that I had various opportunities including internships at galleries, commissions, projects and so forth. I decided to apply for a Masters course at the Royal College of Art and was accepted, this allowed me to focus my research and art practice.

DA:  But then you changed from illustration, didn't you? What was the name of the MA that you did?

JS:  It's called Contemporary Art Practice. The Illustration course at Camberwell is very open and similar in many respects to a Fine Art course, so it wasn’t a huge change. I was more interested in the living conditions of an artist in London. After my undergraduate I took a one year education gap and during this time I made a decision to challenge myself and try new things. The course doesn’t limit you at all so I applied and I was in the Public Sphere pathway, where basically we discuss societal issues.

DA:  And that's what interests you the most?

JS:  Yeah, for me it’s interesting because I want to understand how we live in our society. What can we discuss about it and what is the social function of art.

DA:  That’s something I find really interesting too and that leads nicely onto you saying a bit more about your practice and the ideas you explore, and also the mediums that you use.

JS:  My practice is focused on challenging the perception of the female condition and the impact of technology or living in a multimedia way. I use various media such as painting, video, photography, sculpture, and ceramics. I am a multidisciplinary artist where concepts inform the process of my work.

DA:  What initially drew you to making work about the body, especially control over women's bodies in the medical field?

JS:  At the beginning of the autumn in 2018 I fell ill and I had to go into hospital in London to have an operation. This experience was incredibly unpleasant and I was told that I could get cancer if I did not cooperate. It was an intense time for me and this drove me to reference this experience in my work. When I rejected my male doctor's suggestion, he was still trying to convince me to have an operation by saying, “Oh, we can still do this procedure when you are having your period” and saying a lot of scary words as well. In that moment I saw that he only faced the disease space and I saw my body become a separate pathological space under this medical gaze and my voice disappear gradually inside this medical treatment.

GIVE, 2020, still from HD digital video

Photo courtesy of the artist

DA:  So you experienced a lack of autonomy or control over your own body?

JS:  Yeah, and the communication as well.

DA:  Did you ever deal with any female doctors in your time in hospital?

JS:  The consultant was a female doctor sometimes. The surgeon, who was the most important doctor, was male. My female consultant told me that he was the one of the best surgeons for this kind of procedure.

DA:  That must have been so difficult, especially being in another country as well.

JS:  I was in a lot of shock. I had just started my study at the Royal College of Art.

DA:  That sounds awful! Did you have to delay your course at all?

JS:  No, I didn’t. This is why I used this profound experience in my practice.

DA:  That’s amazing you were able to still carry on with your masters! I was really interested in the combination of references that you have in GIVE, your series of moving image works that you had in your degree show. This mirroring and distortion of the human body, creating these alien hybrid forms and almost bacterial like multiplication of the body. It was making me think of the history of feminist sci-fi writing and the way that that can reimagine societal structures and ways of living. Then these emojis are spewing out to the body like confetti, and they're celebratory, and kitsch, but kind of obscene and gross, sort of like bodily fluids leaking out. I was interested in what your references were for this body of work and what kind of things you were drawing on? Sorry it's a long question!

JS:  Yeah, but it's a very good question. When I made these videos it's based on my experience and I was thinking about meditation. I would rather make something playful than didactic. I was thinking about the audience. Sometimes when I talk about my experience, I've found it quite harrowing and I find it can be a bit over sharing as well. I don't feel great to talk about again and again like I had a bad experience at the hospital. So I don’t want to tell people some really harrowing story. I tried to make it fun using the female body. I don't really remember how many different video clips I created. I made a collage of impressions and divided it into 13 videos, where I create a fictional space. We can explore and question clinical representations of the female human body but in a playful way.

GIVE 2, 2020, HD digital video

Video courtesy the artist

DA:  What made you choose emojis to do that? Was it just the light hearted nature of them?

JS:  I think it was spontaneous really, because emojis are very common for people chatting, for communication. It's quite informal as well and they transcend language barriers. I wanted to bring some humour into the videos also.

DA:  I love them! I think it works really well. The contrast between the emojis and the weird bodily form works really well.

JS:  Thank you. I'm really glad that you enjoyed GIVE. I’ve been told that some people find they're too much.

DA:  That’s interesting. Would those same people not like seeing the body sexualised? Because it's seeing the body in such a different way. It's almost like the body as its own life form without any kind of person connected to it, rather than this hyper-sexualised female body, which we see every day in advertisements.

JS:  Yeah, I didn't have an intention to talk about sexuality or beauty standards.

DA:  What was the process for making them? There’s a stark background and then it looks like you've done a lot of digital editing or CGI on the top? Did you film your body in a studio?

JS:  The process is quite long and I did a lot of filming. The human bodies are all organic and came from filming in a studio. Then I would edit the films in After Effects. I had another video work, which is talking about agriculture. I was filming in the countryside and the films felt quite homemade. I need a lot of equipment for the editing, a very powerful screen. I cannot make the work using my own laptop. 

DA:  How long did it take to edit them?

JS:  The editing process was relatively fast. However, I spent a very long time thinking about how to make the work.

DA:  And is it your own body? Or was it a friend that you used to film?

JS:  Unfortunately, it was me. My plan was to find a model. I had an image in my mind of white skin, because I like to see the veins and it's really beautiful as well. Because of the pandemic I didn't have the chance to have a model.

GIVE, 2020, still from HD digital video

Photo courtesy of the artist

DA:  Has that changed the way that you view the work, or change your relationship to your body in any way?

JS:  To be honest it hasn't changed my relationship to my body because when I filmed myself I was absorbed in the process. I didn't really think about the fact that I’m filming myself. I was literally treating myself like an object. If I had found a model it would have been a more enjoyable process, because I can't be totally outside of it when it’s me.

DA:  Are you planning to develop the ideas more for this body of work?

JS:  Yeah, I would like to talk about this with you when you visit my studio next time. 

DA:  I was also interested that you'd read Maggie Nelson's book, the Argonauts and I wondered what effect that had had on your research and your practice?

JS:  I got that book when I was doing my dissertation. It's a piece of writing using Autotheory, using autobiographical material to challenge theoretical frameworks. The term hasn't been defined yet, but it's often used in feminist practice. Autotheory is a way to make the personal become political, the subjective experience challenges the perception of objective realities. I engage in empowerment ideologies to show the reality of structural oppression still operating on women. Autotheory helped me to understand the relationship between me and the power in the institution.

DA:  That's so interesting, I think it's a brilliant book and I really enjoyed reading it myself. I was also wondering how you usually work and how that's been affected by the pandemic?

JS:  Usually I work at a studio but not during the lockdowns. I have had a few online exhibitions and worked with emerging curators, through emails and Zoom. I think it was fun to have a virtual group show and get to know people through the internet or social media. It’s a totally new experience for me, Also, to learn to be adaptable for the current situation. It's nice to take a break from time to time. I found the pandemic slowed down my life as well. 

DA:  That’s nice to hear it’s had some positives. What's your earliest memory of an experience with art?

JS:  My grandparents used to run a very big restaurant that was filled with amazing Chinese painting and calligraphy. I remember they were so powerful, fascinating and poetic.

GIVE 3, 2020, HD digital video

Video courtesy of the artist

DA:  What a lovely memory! And whose art inspires you now?

JS:  I like Es Devlin, Rebecca Ackroyd, Saelia Aparicio, Marianna Simnett, Holly Herndon, Rene Matić. Saelia made lots of transfers of the human body to monsters or creatures by discussing our body condition. I really liked those works and, to be honest, I'm not sure they have inspired me, but I really like their work. We don’t explore the same topics. 

DA:  But things can inspire on so many different levels, can't they? You know, it can be someone who does work that you actually hate and that can end up informing how you make your own work in some way.

JS:  Yeah, definitely.

DA:  I’m a huge fan of Marianna Simnett! Her work has got such a dark side to it and dark humour. I can definitely see that connection to the work that you make.

JS:  Thank you. I really like the way she films.

DA:  Do you know the work of Kate Cooper?

JS:  Yeah I saw her work at Hayward Gallery in 2019 and have her book. 

DA:  Snap!

JS:  I like the quality of her video as well. It's very beautiful.

DA:  Yeah, really beautiful. The CGI women are in this weird non space, a white void, which I see in your work as well.

JS:  Thank you very much. I would like to make something simulated. I would like to use CGI.

DA:  That'd be cool! What projects have you been working on recently?

JS:  Recently, I have had some online exhibitions. I showed work with Do It Your Way on Instagram. Also, I have been spending my time learning Python during the lockdowns. It was a live course, not a recorded lecture. I was the worst student in my group, because I was the only one that didn’t come from a computer background. I did ask a lot of illogical questions because it's so new to me. I'm passionate about everything digital, as my experience involves producing digital art.

GIVE, 2020, stills from HD digital video

Photo courtesy of the artist

DA:  What will you use Python to do? What will you be coding?

JS:  I learned website development basically, and also using the code to make the pictures. Really simple 2D animation. I think it's good to take a break and learn how to take advantage of computers. It doesn't have to work immediately on my art practice, but it might be useful in the future, who knows where it takes you. It's a journey!

DA:  What plans do you have for future work?

JS:  I’m looking forward to the lockdowns ending because I would like to go to Berlin enormously. I want to go to galleries and clubs, I like techno. This is the first thing I would like to do once I feel safe to travel. I hope I can do an artist residency in Berlin, to maintain video practice with music/sound. This is what I have been waiting for.

DA:  Nice. So are the videos for ‘GIVE’ meant to have sound? The SoundCloud link wasn't working when I watched them.

JS:  Yeah there’s a technical issue. I uploaded the music last year around July 2020 to the RCA platform, but this platform is not stable I am afraid to say.  It's a very new online platform I cannot edit by myself.

DA:  Did you make the music yourself?

JS:  I made it collaboratively with another artist called Milo Creese. He made the sound for my videos.

DA:  Ah, nice. Well, thank you so much, Jing. So lovely to meet you.

JS:  Thank you very much.

GIVE 1, 2020, HD digital video

Video courtesy the artist

Find out more about Jing’s work:

Website

Instagram

Vimeo

GIVE, 2020, still from HD digital video

Photo courtesy of the artist