Sexual Pleasure to Death: An Interview of Fawn Rogers on Her Series "The World is Your Oyster"

June 2, 2023

interview by Millen Brown-Ewens
hair by Justin Inman
makeup by Niohuru X
all images copyright Fawn Rogers

MILLEN BROWN-EWENS: Could you start by telling me a little bit about the paintings in your upcoming solo exhibition Burn, Gleam, Shine in Beijing with Galerie Marguo in July.

FAWN ROGERS: The work is from a series called The World is Your Oyster. The paintings are larger-than-life representations of sea personalities, which invite the viewer to dwell on the unbuilt world, death, and sex. Photorealistic from afar, at a closer view they are composed of painterly shapes and forms. They are seductive, erotic paintings that celebrate female sexuality. But I hope people will consider their wider resonances too. Human intervention in their cultivation has changed the primary process of their creation and relationships. Eroticism in this time is fraught with scary implications. We are so atomized as a species and removed from our origins that placing sexuality alongside environmental destruction almost feels forbidden, but I like things that feel forbidden.

BROWN-EWENS: What is the significance of the erotic and ostentatious image of the oyster in your paintings and how do you think this offers a critique of anthropocentrism?

ROGERS: I can’t help but to dismantle anthropocentrism in my work. At times it feels like a burden I was born with, it’s my reality, but essentially, I’m trying to find harmony through my work. The World is Your Oyster pays homage to these idiosyncratic and complex forms, inviting viewers to consider life, sex, and death simultaneously. While oysters are commonly considered luxurious rarities forged by nature, like many things, we have subverted the organic process of their creation. The oysters are harvested and pearls cultivated. An excision made to the oyster's flesh assaults the viewers' senses; ultimately this work is both violent and sensual, and at the center of these contradictions, the oyster is a symbol of lust, pleasure, opulence, and indulgence, all-consuming and offered up for consumption, a literal embodiment of the anthropocentric.

Oysters are both very fragile and highly sensual. It’s so easy to forget about the suffering of other lifeforms, they all want to live just as much as we do. The spider in the shower, let it live or kill it? I’m trying to place the human in patchworks of vibrant ecologies. I want to feel the delicacy and complexity of the tangled tension and vulnerable webs of life that surround us. This is connected to pleasure too. Our society represses sexuality, especially female sexuality, at the same time as it regards other life forms as unimportant. It is the same violent and disregarding gesture. It’s ostentatious to even be alive. Human existence is really a volatile party at the expense of all other life. Our role is both hilariously small and frighteningly disastrous. I try to call attention to expanding empathy for all life and not give up—dark humor helps.

BROWN-EWENS: Can you describe the conflicts between human nature and the natural world that arise in your practice?

ROGERS: It’s not just my practice, it’s my internal conflict because it’s how I view our world. I am trying to be present in a world that is being destroyed and full of suffering, and I am part of that destruction. When I paint a massive clam floating on a brightly colored, monochromatic background with its plump tongue sticking out, it’s darkly funny to me. It’s both sexy and gross to look at, and I have to kill it, consciously or unconsciously, to survive. We are supposed to have a conscience, and you’d think we would use it for creating a better world, but we don’t. Instead, let's go to Mars. It’s grimly ironic.

A good example from my practice is a work entitled R.I.P., a re-envisioning of the game of chess with chessmen depicted as sculptures of recently extinct animals. Black and white patina bronze on an oversized faux fur board, the animals are presented with regal dignity and personality. Each sculpture has material weight and nobility. Chess is a game of triumph, but triumph is a corollary of conquest. It is an enduring artifact of strategy, competition, domination, and has long been admired as a bastion of logic and order, but it is, at its core, a game of war, predicated on machinations of violence and obliteration. The game’s colonial history is traceable from ancient India, to the Muslim world, to imperial civilizations in Europe and northern Asia. Coupled with an emphasis on dominance, chess finds fresh implications in the contemporary subjugation of the natural world. Even the historical styles of chess—Romantic, Scientific, Hypermodern, and New Dynamism—allude to shifting cultural values and power structures, concluding, perhaps, with the game’s association with technology and artificial intelligence.

Chess has also long held a place of fascination for artists. Matisse, Man Ray, Duchamp, Paul Klee, Tracey Emin, Damien Hirst and Rachel Whiteread have all engaged with the game of chess. Jake and Dinos Chapman in their 2003, Chess Set, give resonant form to pre-adolescent male obsessions with fantasy forms of conflict, violence, and mutation. I wanted to repurpose a familiar form. In its prescient entanglements of order and chaos, civility and savagery, R.I.P. presses past a playful exploration of anthro-ecological history and evades purely dogmatic, observational, or elegiac orientations. The viewer becomes a player, autonomous yet complicit: a participant in the Anthropocene, at once a witness and contributor to a legacy of humanity, immortalization, and extinction.

Fawn Rogers
*Free of God,* 2021
oil on canvas
65 x 85 inches

BROWN-EWENS: What is ecofeminism and why is it important to distinguish?

ROGERS: I believe that the forces of patriarchy and everyone that support it oppress female-identifying and non-binary people, and they also exploit the natural world. At the same time, though, I feel that all people hold responsibility for our huge, sad state. For me, my work is liberatory. It makes me aware of the powers that emerge between people, and the world’s ecosystems. I am interested in a future evolution of humanity with empathy, less repression and destruction. In this geological era, our planet is a giant crime scene and we are all implicated. I am interested in finding ways to unleash emancipatory and sensual possibilities that may embed us more deeply in actuality.

BROWN-EWENS: Evocative titles add an additional layer to these pieces, calling on historical and pop cultural imagery such as Our Lady of Guadalupe for symbolic imagery. Could you talk a little bit about this piece in particular and its narrative within the series?

ROGERS: I find the concept of the Virgin Mary to be repressive. The idea of virginity as sacred and virtuous is a denial of the power of sexuality. I was interested in embracing Mary as utterly human. I wanted to free her from oppressive ideas that are antithetical to human equality. In this painting, you are looking at Mary’s giant sex. But it is not a desecration. I see it as a celebration of reality, a way of honoring life. I wanted to subvert the myths that have been written by men and supported by women, myths that have oppressed women across history. Poor Eve. Poor you, poor me! Ultimately, these ideas oppress everyone.

BROWN-EWENS: Your style incorporates hyperrealism with conceptualism to create these pillowy, silky scenes. Could you tell me a little bit about the interaction of these styles and practically how you set about depicting them?

ROGERS: I like the interplay between the representational qualities of painting and scale. My paintings of oysters teeter between realism and abstraction, depending on your point of view. They are my mandalas with a prayer, but I’m not religious. Before these paintings, however, I created a body of works called Eat You Eat Me, a two-channel video, The World is Your Oyster, then another series called Poisonous Harmony—all flirting with ideas that would come together in these current paintings. It was at this point when I found myself wanting to create these giant, sexy, wet, gooey oysters and through that deep dive arrived at wanting to have a visceral experience up close and personal with their forms. After painting them in a realistic way, I found the process a bit boring and decided to go back over each of them to take a closer look, and that’s how I ended up with this representational interplay that highlights the oyster’s many complicated and confounding qualities. They can harbor deadly bacteria while being a delicacy and perhaps an aphrodisiac. Plus, there are so many fertile concepts that attach to oysters. The expression “the world is your oyster” is said to young people embarking on life, but it comes from a Shakespeare play, The Merry Wives of Windsor, and there is an undertone of violence in how it is used. Dutch historical paintings of feasts often depict oysters and their symbolism for morality or sensuality. During the Spanish Flu pandemic in 1919, oyster beds were raided because they were thought to help prevent the disease. Oysters span everything from sexual pleasure to death, environmental violence and luxury consumption to femininity. They are even being used to build storm barriers in New York.

Fawn Rogers
*Comet Tail #3*, 2022
oil on canvas
14 x 11 inches

BROWN-EWENS: I’m intrigued by your photo series which you have described as exploring your Cherokee heritage. Do you think your ancestry has influenced your dedication and attentiveness to the natural world?

ROGERS: These photographic images were the start of my exploration into my Cherokee heritage. It is an oppressive history and is connected with a violent removal from the unbuilt world. My Cherokee ancestors walked the Trail of Tears to a reservation in Oklahoma. They became cotton pickers and also collected venomous water moccasin to survive. My great-grandmother was removed from her mother and placed in a home with European settlers. Her daughter, my grandmother, eventually made her way to the Oregon coast, where oysters were and still are harvested. To be free of the shame they lived with, because they hid their history, I chose to be naked in these images, and the photos contain symbolic details: horses, eagle feathers, pearls, handprints. If there is a single symbol for humanity it is the image of the human handprint. It can be seen on every continent and across all ages. The pearls are also fascinating. Everything from the history of the pearl with First Nations people to the way they are formed from irritants to gems.

BROWN-EWENS: What do you hope people take from this work?

ROGERS: I don’t expect any particular response. Maybe I hope people might react to this series in a way that is visceral. I want the paintings to draw you in and spit you back out. I do hope the collection will trigger thoughts about the fragility of life and the equality of all people. The splendor of sex. The beauty of the pussy!

BROWN-EWENS: I understand you’re set to have a busy year. What else have you got coming up?

ROGERS: June 24th, I’m excited to be included in the group show, Beach, at Nino Mier in New York. I just finished five group shows across Asia, the US, and Europe, including a Sotheby’s benefit auction curated by Nadya Tolokonnikova, who cofounded Pussy Riot. I also have an exhibition with Penske Projects curated by Sophia Penske at Phillips, which just closed in LA along with Boil, Toil & Trouble in Chicago curated by Zoe Lukov. In Beijing with Galerie Marguo, coming up July 13th is a solo exhibition titled Burn, Gleam, Shine. I have another solo in September titled GODOG in Los Angeles with sculpture, paintings and neon curated by Michael Slenske at Lauren Powell Projects. I’m also working on a new body of work, going from surf to turf and will be showing video, paintings, and sculpture with Galerie Marguo for a solo exhibition in Paris in October titled Come Ruin or Rapture. So we’ll see what happens after that!

Nothing Is Fixed: An Interview of Edoardo Monti on His Artist Residency in Brescia, Italy

May 30, 2023

interview by Lara Monro

Edoardo Monti is the force of nature behind the Artist Residency, Palazzo Monti. You will find the historical 13th-century palazzo in the Northern Lombardy Region of Italy, in the city of Brescia, halfway between Milan and Verona. Adorned with frescoes from 1750, the palazzo is a unique, utopian space that was purchased by Edoardo’s grandfather in the 1960s. It brings to mind a real life master’s painting, emulating Baroque grandeur paired with a splash of contemporary design and artistic influence.

Monti’s penchant for collecting art began at the ripe age of fourteen. With a modest budget and keen eye, he began making connections in the Italian art world, initially with local galleries and artists. This passion has continued to evolve, as has his taste. In 2017, after a decade of working in fashion for Stella McCartney, Monti turned his dream vision into a reality: an artist residency, which captures the imagination of a new generation of artists and champions a dialogue between the past, present, and future.

Every year, Monti invites three international artists to stay for 4 - 6 weeks at a time. Since 2017, over 200 artists, including Cristina BanBan, Somaya Critchlow, Charlotte Edey, and Henry Hussey have attended Palazzo Monti.

As the residency’s reputation continues to grow within the international contemporary art world, so does the fierce competition for places, with over 400 applications per month; not to mention the impressive board members and honorary directors, which includes the founder of Great Women Artists Katy Hessel.

The palazzo’s aesthetic, its connection to Italy’s Renaissance and the desirable location are enough to convince us that it is the preeminent utopia when it comes to artist residencies. I spoke with Edoardo to learn more about his journey with the palazzo and to understand in more detail his personal definition of utopia, and how he connects this to the palazzo Monti Artist Residency.

LARA MONRO: Do you see the Palazzo Monti Residency as a utopia?

EDOARDO MONTI: I know that I live in a beautiful and lavish palazzo, but I am a very down to earth person! What really interests me is the production aspect, what's behind a piece of art, which can be quite complex, but also very rewarding once you become aware of the whole process. The reason why I'm saying this is because a couple of years ago I curated a show in Brussels called Hétérotopie. This is a term coined by the French writer and philosopher Michel Foucault. It is an alternative model of utopia defined by the spaces that we live in. It describes certain cultural, institutional and discursive spaces that are somehow 'other': disturbing, intense, incompatible, contradictory or transforming.

I like this approach to defining utopia as I feel it is more down to earth. It highlights spaces within the world that we exist in yet these spaces have different rules that you can only make sense of if you live within the spaces. I would like to insert this concept to the residency, and in particular, parts of the palazzo to this style of utopia—a physical utopian space.

That said, in some ways, the palazzo also carries traditional connotations of being a utopia. It's not a dream world that I aspire to live in, but I have the luck to be present in this particular utopian world every day. It's a building that's been around for 800 years that has decorated and adapted over the centuries with style, passion, and love. Think of all the families who have been here and the memories that have been made. It has a very positive energy. Apart from a hotel, who houses creatives for a month at a time? It fits this notion of being a very special world with its own rules. There's rooms for sleeping, there's rooms for working, there's communal areas, there's a communal kitchen. The balance that's created throughout the palazzo changes every month because the residency is built on a program that allows for artists, to check in, connect creatively, and then check out. And then it happens, again and again, over and over. For me, this idea of utopia is directed towards making this physical project the best it can be—continuing to grow it and offer a positive environment where creatives can flourish.

MONRO: Can you tell me about your artist selection process?

MONTI: We have an executive board and also an honorary board of directors. The executives are based in London, New York, Paris and Korea. Between us, we go through a selection process. This includes meeting artists in person or traveling. As a team we speak almost on a daily basis. We do lots of research. Every three months, we meet online to go through the applications. We have a very hands-on approach.

In 2021, we established an honorary board of directors. We looked into the archetypes of the main figures that feature in the creative world; the collector, the curator, the gallery professional, designers. The role of the honorary director is to mentor one artist of their choice per year. It's a great opportunity for the artists to ask questions about the market, curatorial direction, and so on.

MONRO: You want to provide the artist with a sense of liberty in the way you curate the palazzo’s interior. Can you tell us a bit more about this?

MONTI: There are three main design strands; my grandparents pieces; I’m sitting at my grandfather’s desk as we speak and the bar that we have, a corner bar, is also from my grandparents. So, we have items that come from the family. Then, we have pieces that were simply acquired out of need; lighting features or tables, beds, and so on. The third strand is either commissions from resident designers or artists creating something specifically for the space. Because of this, the palazzo has been evolving over the years. Nothing is fixed—we are flexible and able to move most things around in the palazzo which gives a great sense of freedom for the artists who want to create something here. It is a very dynamic space.

MONRO: Are there are any common threads that run through the work of the residents?

MONTI: I mean, we intentionally promote complete liberty for the artist to either continue their practice or explore new mediums, or continue with their existing medium but in a new/different way. I think that's part of the beauty because we don't sell the works, we're not a gallery or a museum. So, this leaves complete, free reign for the artists to fully delve into and express their creativity. There are a few recurring elements. I’ve had a dog for the past three years and sometimes she pops up in the paintings. I myself sometimes appear in works also. The sky is definitely a great influence. All of the studios are facing west, which is where the sun sets. There's a lot of beautiful sunset colors in many of the paintings and sculptures. So, without anything being forced, there is definitely a lot of inspiration coming from the palazzo and surrounding areas.

MONRO: You began collecting art at the age of fourteen, what sort of art were you interested in then, and do you still have a similar taste now?

MONTI: I was very young and I had a very small budget, so I would acquire small prints or various small paintings. Owning multiple small works taught me a lot. Having a chance to see and appreciate the works you have acquired on your wall is priceless. I don't come from a family of collectors. I was the first one to start this passion/obsession. I was doing small jobs while at high school to earn some money, which allowed me to create a relationship with some local galleries and artists. I would say I was consistent in my taste in that I always went for figurative sculpture and I think this has somewhat stayed the same as I am still fascinated by the human figure. It's very cute looking back at what I collected at the beginning and comparing it to what I've been collecting over the past years. It’s interesting, and hugely personal to see how my eye and interests have evolved.

Finding New Babylon: A Conversation with Actor Benny O. Arthur

May 30, 2023

sweater by Dries Van Noten
jeans by Y/Project
belt by Saint Laurent

interview by Camille Ange Pailler
photography by Riccardo Meroni
styling by Ina Witzel
talent Benny O. Arthur @ Martensgarten
hair & makeup by Simona Parrella
production by Pier Guccione Prata @ Residenza Production
light assistance by Leonardo Galeotti
styling assistance by Typhaine Porta

CAMILLE ANGE PAILLER: When did you discover your love of acting, and what inspired you to pursue it as a career?

BENNY O. ARTHUR: You know, I’ve always had a love for storytelling. I was a very observant kid and would always watch people at school, or on the train, and try to imitate them and their mannerisms. I also used to love playing with my sister’s dolls. I would create characters and stories with them that I would perform for my family. There was a sense of accomplishment and satisfaction when I created and played out these storylines, because in my head, it was as though I had just made a movie. I also have to credit my mom for this, I guess we can call it motherly intuition, because without any connection or access to that field, she signed me up for local theater programs when I was in third grade. She didn’t grow up watching a ton of movies or going to the theater, but somehow she just knew. I was fourteen when I took part in my first professional theater production at the Deutsche Opera Berlin. It was super exciting seeing how what had started in my bedroom with my sister’s toys suddenly happened in real life on such a large scale. When I graduated from high school, I realized that an acting career was something that I seriously wanted and could pursue. But yeah, I think maybe I’ve always kind of known.

PAILLER: What has been your most memorable role or project so far, and why?

ARTHUR: I’ve been fortunate to have worked on some really cool projects, but so far, I’d have to say that the series Django, which premiered on Sky earlier this year, has to be the most memorable. I had never really envisioned myself being in a Western, let alone playing a cowboy because I had only ever really encountered this genre through a white perspective that left out stories of cowboys of color. What really drew me to this story was this new perspective and the potential for stories from these kinds of individuals that were very much present in that era. It was such a privilege to get to work with an incredibly talented cast from all over Europe. Being in the midst of Matthias Schoenaerts, Nicholas Pinnock, Lisa Vicari, and Noomi Rapace, and just being able to learn from each one of them by watching them work is something I am really grateful for.

dress by De Pino
leather pants & shoes by Saint Laurent

blouse, belt & leather pants by Saint Laurent

PAILLER: Tell me about Django and your role as Kevin.

ARTHUR: Django was a really special project. The series is a reimagining of Sergio Corbucci’s classic Spaghetti Western character. The series tries to show more perspectives of different people in that period—the minorities, and the world they created for themselves after the American Civil War. I played the role of Kevin Ellis, son of John Ellis, who is the visionary founder of an idealistic city called New Babylon. It’s a community that welcomes all outcasts and people of different races and creeds as equals. When we meet Kevin, he is his father’s number one advocate. He believes uncompromisingly in his vision. Our parents are often like superheroes to us when we’re kids, and it’s only as we get older that we recognize their humanity and their flaws. As John’s youngest son, Kevin has a youthful and hopeful worldview, which eventually brings him into conflict with the harsh realities of the Wild West. The idealistic image he has of his father begins to crumble as he comes to terms with the fact that even our heroes harbor darkness.

PAILLER: What do you enjoy most about being an actor?

ARTHUR: There is so much out there in the world, it can be quite daunting to think that you only get to live one life. You can find yourself doubting your decisions and questioning if the path that you’re on is the right one, or if there’s something that you’re missing out on. But as an actor, your life kind of revolves around letting yourself face and live through the realities, emotions, and experiences of so many different lives, different jobs, different time periods, perspectives, mentalities, and cultures. It’s one of the most enriching jobs out there because you learn to see not just through your own eyes, but also through those that may be in complete contradiction to your own.

PAILLER: Were there any particular actors that inspired you during your childhood?

ARTHUR: I don’t know if as a child I really looked to the actors very much. But as I have gotten older and gained more perspective for the craft, I have really come to love and appreciate the work of actors like Mahershala Ali, Viola Davis, Albrecht Schuch, and Félix Maritaud, to name a few. I also always get super inspired and excited about the new young talent that emerges like in Lukas Dhont’s Close.

PAILLER: Can you share any upcoming projects or roles you are currently working on or have lined up?

ARTHUR: I’m really excited about a feature film titled Wake Up, which we shot on the Canary Islands last year and is set to come out sometime later this year, as well as another Sky original Series with an incredible German cast. Definitely keep a lookout!

Cultivating a Circular Practice: An Interview of Louise Frances Smith

May 26, 2023

Louise Frances Smith
*Collect install Assemblage no1 oyster shells*, 2023 (detail)
mixed media including clay and crushed oyster shells
photograph by Yeshen Venema

interview by Lara Monro

In the context of art history, sustainable ways of creating have been around since the birth of conceptual art in the 1960s. Take German artist, Nils-Udo, whose plant creations placed in nature were left to develop and subsequently disappear as a way of commenting on the links between nature and humanity. Today, as we are faced with the sobering realities of humankind’s impact on the planet, environmentally-conscious art forms are becoming increasingly widespread. By working with found objects, natural and upcycled materials, and through processes that intentionally avoid damage to the Earth’s resources, artists are using their creative expression to highlight environmental degradation and the stark reality of climate change.

Margate-based artist Louise Frances Smith worked mainly with clay until she became increasingly concerned and frustrated with the unsustainable plastic packaging used to store her medium of choice. After conducting considerable research, it became clear to her that it was not possible to naturally source clay from her local area, so she decided to get creative and utilize what was available, better yet, she used what was in abundance: seaweed and oyster shells. Smith has spent the last two years collecting and experimenting with both as part of her newly adopted approach to creating sustainable work.

This year, as part of Somerset House’s 2023 Collect, Smith exhibited Sargassum Tide, a new body of work that examines wireweed seaweed and Pacific oysters, two non-native species thriving on the UK coastlines due to climate change. She subsequently presented the series in a solo show at The Margate School where she facilitated workshops on how to work with sustainable materials in collaboration with community groups, families, and creative practitioners.

In the following interview, Smith shares her journey with adopting a sustainable art practice, discusses the scientists, artists, and experts that have inspired her, and where she hopes to take her sustainable practice in the future.

LARA MONRO: You began your creative practice working with clay to create sculptural works. What initially drew you to this medium?

LOUISE FRANCES SMITH: My first encounter with clay was on my degree at Kingston University. It was a Fine Art degree so I took advantage of being able to play with different materials—I worked for a while with latex, paper pulp, drawing, and printing. Then in my third year, one of our visiting lecturers ran a clay workshop. After my initial frustration with this new medium, I quickly fell in love with it because you can do so much; I love its tactile qualities. There is so much scope when working with clay and the different stages of making—dipping in slip, adding glaze, creating textures, casting, carving, moulding, slab building, coiling, there are so many possibilities. I enjoy being able to combine clay with other materials too and I’m keen to continue exploring this in my work.

Studio portrait of Louise Frances Smith
photograph by Stuart Leech

MONRO: In recent years you have introduced sustainable, bio and found materials into your practice. Can you tell me about this development—what was the catalyst for the step change?

SMITH: Covid and the 2020 lockdowns, a catalyst for so many things. My place of work was closed and I was very lucky that my daily walks allowed me to explore 15 - 20 minutes down the road to the Margate coastline. I’ve always been drawn to my surrounding landscapes and my work has been influenced by the coastline, but this was a deeper connection because it became a part of my daily routine. I made a body of work called Fragments of Isolation, Margate where I was starting to look closely at the patterns of the landscape, both natural and man-made, and making collages from photographs and drawings of my walks. When I started to translate these drawings into clay there was a disconnect when I was pulling clay out of a plastic bag. I knew this material (clay) came from the ground, but I didn’t know how to go about looking for it. After being successful in applying for Arts Council England ‘DYCP’ funding, I learned how to dig my own clay via two incredible tutors over zoom, Rosanna Martin and Nina Salsotto Cassina (Unurgent Argilla). I soon discovered there is no clay in Margate, so I started to look at what materials there were along the coastline and seaweed was one which is in abundance—this led to research into biomaterials. I was very inspired by a Material Matters podcast with Julia Lohmann, from The Department of Seaweed, who I was also lucky to have a mentorship session with. There are a lot of incredible artists and designers working sustainably who have inspired me to continue this journey in my own practice.

MONRO: What is your process for sourcing your found objects/materials?

SMITH: I take a bag with me on my daily walks and pick up anything from the beach that I find intriguing—like a strange piece of rock or a beautiful shell. I also try to collect any litter I see when I’m doing this too; there are always fishing nets tangled in with seaweed. I don’t use any of this in my work at the moment, it's mainly the natural objects I use. I only collect seaweed that’s washed up on the beach, most found on Margate beaches can be collected from April to September (to allow nesting birds to take the seaweed over winter) but the seaweed I have recently been working with is an aggressive, invasive species (wireweed), so I have been allowed to collect that over winter months too. I make sure to shake it out before bagging it so I’m not taking any little critters home!

I have also been collecting oyster shells from a local restaurant in Margate, Angela’s. They do not have a use for the shells after the oysters have been eaten so I go and collect them as a waste material to use.

MONRO: How do you incorporate these into your work—do they define how you create a new piece, or inform it?

SMITH: I think it varies from material to material and what the idea of the work is in my head! I’ve recently learned about Material Driven Design through a brilliant bioplastics course run by Through Objects and Bonnie Hvillum (Natural Materials Studio). It was an interesting concept for me because I think sometimes I have an idea of what I want to make in my head (from my sketchbooks, research) and I’m looking for a way to do so. When you work with clay, you can get it to do so much, in a myriad of ways. Whereas when you work with a new material, it’s fun to experiment and play with what it can do and then bend your idea or concept to adapt with the material’s qualities.

There have been a lot of experiments that I haven’t been able to use. But then, I started to look at these fragments from my experiments and use this ‘waste material’ to make collage. I’m trying to keep a circular practice and consciously ensure there is no waste. So, to answer your question, it is both.

MONRO: Since adopting a sustainable creative practice what have been the most insightful lessons you have learned from being more environmentally conscious?

SMITH: When I started looking at making my practice more sustainable, I was thinking about the materials I was using and how I was sourcing them, which is really important. But something I hadn’t thought much about was waste from my studio and making processes. There were techniques I was already using that I hadn't thought about but are very important: recycling clay and glazes, finding ways of using firing pieces to reuse in the work in some way. There are so many potters and clay studios who adopt these practices already but might not on the surface appear to have a ‘sustainable practice.’ Waste is the first thing to look at, and also if you can use someone else’s waste, then even better! There is a brilliant book called Wasted by Katie Treggiden that highlights a lot of artists using waste as a material in so many different ways and across different industries. Katie also says that it’s important to stay curious and that it’s okay to be imperfect, and I think that’s really great advice. No one is going to have a totally sustainable practice over night, so it’s all about making small changes and building on that. I am still on my journey, I know I will continue to make mistakes and that there is so much I can improve on. I’m excited to see where my line of enquiry takes me as I continue to embrace these changes.

MONRO: You recently exhibited Sargassum Tide, a new body of work at Collect 2023. Can you tell me about the series?

SMITH: The works in Sargassum Tide are made using wireweed seaweed (Sargassum muticum) and Pacific oysters (Magallana gigas). These are two non-native species currently thriving on the UK coastlines due to climate change. I wanted to make work that shows the repercussions of human intervention on our fragile coastal ecosystems through the materials. The inspiration for the works comes from epibiosis; the close interaction between two different organisms, the host organism providing an environment for the other which is attached to its living surface.

Pacific oysters were introduced to the UK for farming in the 1970s. They brought with them wireweed seaweed which was thought to have been attached to the oyster shells. At the time it was believed that it would not flourish, but since the rise in sea temperature, these species can now bloom. My research has led me to conflicting evidence of whether these species are ‘good’ or ‘bad,’ which has been really interesting. I think what drew me to these materials initially, beyond the story of their arrival, was that they are currently in abundance on my local coastline and can be used.

MONRO: In April you exhibited Sargassum Tide at The Margate School. Was it important for you to showcase the work within the local environment from which most of the inspiration and materials came?

SMITH: Yes, very important. I was really excited about displaying the works at Collect 23, in such a beautiful ornate building, and to a new audience. But an important part of the project is to highlight the abundance of these materials locally. So it felt important to share what I had collected from the landscape with the local community in Margate. I would love to inspire others to use these materials that are in abundance on our local coastlines, or just to be aware of what is there—to look closer at our local environments.

MONRO: You facilliated workshops on how to create sustainable art works using biomaterials as part of the exhibition at The Margate School with local community groups. Are you keen to pursue this educational element as part of your practice?

SMITH: The workshops I conducted were a combination of making works with biomaterials and also clay workshops where we explored texture, pattern, and shapes from the local coastline. Working with biomaterials requires a bit of extra health and safety precautions so it hasn’t been possible to run these for all of my workshops, but just starting to have these conversations with people and showing them what you can do with biomaterials is really important. I’m really keen to pursue this as part of my artistic practice, and to learn more about what local community groups would like to understand about how to create sustainable work.

I am also working with a creative digital agency, Studio T, to create a new section of my website that I will update quarterly with interesting content for artists and makers on their journey to having a sustainable practice. So, there will be a recipe for something to make, an interview with another artist, and a short film about a material or process I use in my work. This has all been made possible by an Arts Council England National Lottery Project Grant I received at the end of last year.

MONRO: Are there any materials you are interested in experimenting with moving forward? Perhaps there are places in the UK you would like to explore to take inspiration for new work?

SMITH: There are so many possibilities and so many materials to explore! I feel like I’ve just scratched the surface of working with biomaterials. I think next, I would love to collaborate with other artists and biodesigners. I am very interested in the texture of the oyster shell pieces so I would like to continue on this and explore how far I can push the material in terms of scale. I still have a passion for clay. There are so many places over the UK where you can dig and process your own, so I would like to continue with this research in the future too.

In A Forgotten Tongue: An Interview of Mattea Perrotta

May 19, 2023

Mattea Perrotta
*Perdòno*, 2023
oil on canvas
57 x 77 in
195.6 x 144.8 cm

interview by Lara Monro

Our primary means of conveying meaning is through spoken and written forms, as well as sign language. But what do we do when faced with language barriers, unable to verbally communicate with another/others? Google translate is one option, but what happens when we use our imagination? Or when we explore the imagination of others through our own unique lens?

The earliest civilizations used cave walls as canvases to share their knowledge, beliefs, and stories. For visual artist, Mattea Perrotta, art has become a way of conveying her secrets and vulnerabilities. It has also become a lexicon to connect with others, often from different countries and communities. During her time in Morocco, challenged with learning Arabic but keen to connect with her hosts, she started using drawings to engage with her companions. It was a familiar and natural way of interpreting the world around her.

A diagnosis of synesthesia at an early age was the catalyst for Perrotta’s need to develop an individual language; mathematical formulas made sense when color coded, as did phone numbers. This subsequently translated into her art form, which began with abstract shapes, defining her earlier career. Perrotta’s practice evolved organically, and in recent years a figurative approach has occupied her canvases as she investigates, questions and challenges the canon of art history referencing the work of Pablo Picasso and Leonardo da Vinci.

This May, Perrotta is exhibiting in her hometown, Los Angeles, for the first time since moving to Europe five years ago. Her solo show, In A Forgotten Tongue, at Praz Delavallade, signifies a turning point for the artist, harking back to an abstract style whilst continuing her investigation into art historical movements; Baroque, Renaissance and Cubism. Each shape within a canvas, or tapestry work, takes on its own vocabulary, distinguished by color and size. As this is Perrotta’s secret language, we are left with subtle signals and our imaginations to interpret the work.

In the following interview, the artist explains why she describes her paintings as being similar to lasagna and what she will be researching during her residency this summer at the American Academy Rome.

LARA MONRO: Can you tell me about how your early diagnosis of synesthesia impacted you creative practice?

MATTEA PERROTTA: School didn’t come naturally to me. Mathematics and spelling were incredibly difficult (and still are). I took exams in other rooms than my classmates to have more time. It was really embarrassing as a kid. I would get so nervous before going to school I would throw up. My mom found this hippie healer outside of Los Angeles to help me deal with my nerves and anxiety in elementary school. She asked me what I enjoyed doing in my spare time and I told her I loved to draw. During our meetings I would draw whilst we spoke. While I was drawing with crayons I told her that when I used a particular color I would see a letter or number—that was my earliest introduction into synesthesia. As I got older and understood what synesthesia meant, I began to use it as a learning tool in school. I essentially was able to cheat my way through academia because I created my own unique language through color that had direct associations with letters and numbers. For example, in math, I would color code on my arms equations or formulas. I still use it to this day when I need to remember phone numbers or how to spell something. Recently I began teaching and I share this with my students who ]might have synesthesia without knowing how it can be used as a learning tool.

Mattea Perrotta
*Lingua Madre*, 2023
oil on canvas
77 x 57 in
195.6 x 144.8 cm

MONRO: Do you see all your art as your secret language?

PERROTTA: Of course. That's the power of abstraction. You can share your deepest secrets and emotions without giving too much away. It’s incredibly liberating. I resist revealing myself. I’m comfortable with secrets. Abstraction allows me to reveal myself, be vulnerable, whilst still having it be my own. I’ve created a language through abstraction where my secrets can breathe on canvas, but behind a veil of form and color. This is the age of diaries, the talk show, the autobiography, social media. Everyone is an online activist—this self and this experience of selfness in its guises and disguises as it addresses language and as it confers secrets and meanings.

MONRO: Can you tell me how your art form has helped you communicate in the different places you have lived over the years?

PERROTTA: The first memory that comes to my mind is when I was living in Morocco. I was an artist in residence below the Atlas Mountains in this very tiny town called Tahanaout. There were two local artists there, Mohammed Mourabiti and Mahi Binebine. Mohammed ran the residency and Mahi had a studio there. I recommend everyone to get to know their work. I lived on site and painted in another studio during Ramadan. We would gather in the evenings and have dinner together. They spoke in Arabic, I attempted to learn the basics as much as possible, but it wasn’t enough for me to communicate. We began drawing during our dinners to express what we wanted to say. One can imagine how long these dinners were speaking through paper and pencil. I’ll never forget it. We sat in a cave underneath his studio exchanging stories about our homes, and our practice. Art can be an amazing tool for communication when we’re in unfamiliar territory.

MONRO: You will be showcasing a new body of work in your upcoming exhibition, In a Forgotten Tongue. Is the show connected to your last two exhibitions, which examined the canon of art history through the work of Pablo Picasso and Leonardo da Vinci?

PERROTTA: Absolutely. My work always had a heavy influence from Renaissance periods and Picasso’s cubist period. My love for Renaissance painting comes from my time living in Florence after I graduated from [UC] Berkeley. While living there, I studied Renaissance painting and iconography at the Uffizi gallery. In 2018, I moved to Paris and lived near the Picasso museum and would frequent places that he and the surrealists, Dora Maar hung out at. I completely immersed myself in his world and became obsessed with his way of painting and playfulness. That time in Paris for an artist was so special. In recent years—the London years I say—I have been exploring a way to combine the two periods (Baroque and Cubist) into one lens. Research has always been a large part of my practice. Being a traveler keeps me eternally curious about studying the language, traditions and art of where I am, and incorporating that into the work. My paintings are a bit like lasagnas; layers of information I’ve been fed from various places.

Mattea Perrotta
*Lo Straniero*, 2023
oil on canvas
77 x 57 in
195.6 x 144.8 cm

MONRO: It seems that the works presented in In a Forgotten Tongue are moving away from your more recent figurative pieces?

PERROTTA: Indeed. I’ve been incredibly fortunate to work with galleries that allow me to take risks within my work. I’ve always been someone that’s gone against the grain of what is expected to an extent. I was lucky enough to have my first show with abstract paintings and have it be received well, but after that I wanted to continue to explore different realms. Again, traveling feeds me with so much information that I like to digest it in different ways in my work. In a Forgotten Tongue is a full circle period for me. It’s the first show I’ve done in my hometown in five years since I moved to Europe. It feels like the right time to go back to my earlier abstractions because Los Angeles was that for me. The architecture of the city, the light, the colors, history, immigration of cultures feels like one big abstract painting. Then I left and lived in a few different cities that had heavy influences of Renaissance art from churches to medieval cathedrals. Being able to make abstract paintings incorporating these earlier Renaissance traditions—periods of places I’ve lived through a contemporary lens—feels really on a par with where I am right now in my life and my family’s history.

MONRO: You have created tapestry pieces for this show. Were they created by the same weavers you worked with when living in Morocco in 2017? And, what drew you back to creating tapestry works?

PERROTTA: While I was living in Tahanaout, I became fascinated with materials and mediums. Mohammed and Mahi worked largely with various materials, which opened the floodgates for me to think differently in the studio. On my way there, the airport confiscated my bag of oil paint, so when I arrived in Morocco I didn’t have access to supplies as easily. I began using pigments from the souk as paint. I’d take dirt from my walks and apply it to the canvas. I used the land as a medium. Then, I started thinking more existentially about the painting as a living and breathing being. Morocco is known for their carpets. I met the group of weavers whom I’ve now been working with for the last seven years. The first time I went there with my friend, we got lost three different times, hitch hiked, and had an entire village helping us find the studio. It’s in a very remote town outside of Rabat. I became interested in the way of turning the painting into a livable being, such as a carpet. How it can be enjoyed as a tangible object, eating on it, laying on it, how the painting becomes part of you in a more visceral way. I enjoy the challenge of bringing these instrumental paintings to life, such as my L’Ultima Cena series—making it an interactive and somewhat performative work of art. For the Cena show in Berlin last year, my dear friend Frank Maston composed my paintings into medieval compositions. We released a little cassette for the show. The audio played throughout the entirety of the exhibition. I loved the idea of a painting becoming an invisible feeling that only exists in the ethers. I wanted the paintings to have a voice. My other friend from Bronze Age in London printed a lithograph book of the paintings with text about each apostle. My mother made her famous pasta and we had dinner at the table I had installed for the show. It became a feast of the senses on every level. I really enjoy exploring different territories within my work.

Mattea Perrotta
*Perdoni I*, 2023
hand dyed, hand sewn wool
57 x 77 in
144.8 x 195.6 cm

MONRO: You will be artist in residence at the American Academy Rome this summer. What inspired you to apply and what will you be working on during your time in the program?

PERROTTA: AAR has been a place where many artists I’ve admired have resided, such as Philip Guston, Bert Long Jr., Martha Boydenn, Jannis Kounellis, and David Hammons, to name a few. The program gives me an opportunity to live within an artistic community and learn about my peers’ process and practices, immerse myself within the history of those who worked there, and challenge myself to find new ways of approaching my studio time. Rome is one of the greatest cities in the world, the history, art, culture—there’s so much beneath those walls that can be explored 1,000 times over again and I feel as though I’ve only ever managed to scratch the surface. Being able to live and work there will allow me to further dive into my research of connecting the dots between Renaissance and contemporary narratives through art, history, and architecture.

MONRO: Being in different places is a huge part of your identity and creative practice; engaging with different cultures and communities. Are you planning to stay and work in Italy post residency?

PERROTTA: I am. I’ll be living and working in Naples full time. My father is Italian and I recently got my dual citizenship. I’ve always felt connected to the culture and my family’s heritage. They grew up in a region called Campobasso in a small village as farmers. It’s a beautiful, tiny mountain town not far from a seaside town called Termoli. They value tradition, the piano piano lifestyle, which in Italian means “slowly, slowly.” I really like to transition into that after living in metropolitan cities, to immerse myself in the humility of it, and see where it takes my paintings. There’s so much more to explore and learn. People and places will forever humble and inspire me to be the best version of myself as a person and artist. I feel very lucky to have the opportunity to live in such a way and share it with others.

Mattea Perrotta
*Echoing Dialects*, 2023
hand dyed, hand sewn wool
77 x 105 in
195.6 x 266.7 cm

In A Forgotten Tongue is on view through June 24 at Praz Delavallade 6150 Wilshire Blvd
Los Angeles CA 90048

Signifiers of Embodiment: An Interview of Charlotte Edey

April 10, 2023

text by Lara Monro
portrait by Brynley Odu Davies

Charlotte Edey is a London-based visual artist who adopts a multidisciplinary practice as a form of personal and political expression. Drawing on a multitude of themes, her work addresses notions of femininity, gender, body politic and mythology. Edey’s tapestry, embroidery and sculptural pieces are extensions of her drawing practice, and her distinct artistic language focuses heavily on symbolism and the investigation of space. Recognized for their surreal dreamscapes and pastel palette, she employs a recurring water motif that takes inspiration from Ovid’s “Metamorphoses,” which serves as an investigation of ‘hydrofemininity,’ and the belief that our bodies are fundamentally part of the natural world.

Edey’s newest body of work, Framework, is currently on view at Ginny on Frederick. In this exhibition, a dialogue between each piece has been created by the artist as she examines various ways to blur the boundary between the real and the represented through the motif of the window and frame. Using these as a point of departure, she explores the notion of transparency to identify and differentiate between interior and exterior, public and private. Her intricately detailed—hand sewn and beaded—tapestry works and larger mirrored pieces are symbolic gateways that gently interrogate interior space, identity, and observation. We spoke on the occasion of Framework’s opening to discuss her development in recent years, as well as her interest in the symbolic interplay between windows, frames, and eyes.

LARA MONRO: You attended The Drawing Year at the Royal Drawing School from 2021-2022. How instrumental do you think this period was for your development as an artist?

CHARLOTTE EDEY: Interestingly, I feel like The Drawing Year allowed me to really consider the relationship between drawing and embroidery in my work. Alternating between observational drawing classes and textiles, I was considering the role of mark-making in embroidery. Satin-stitch embroidery has such a direct relationship to hatching and even blending; layering colors to create tone. Similarly, beading feels like a stippling process. Forging this relationship has made me more ambitious with my embroidery and the works really feel like they now inform the other.

I was studying during the Covid-19 lockdowns, and I think the restrictions of that time leant a real introspection to my experience. I had some wonderful teachers who really pushed me to contextualize my instincts in drawing. I started working primarily in soft pastel as I’m interested in a sort of unnatural light, and pastel is such a generous medium for a glow. As a lot of my subjects are anthropomorphic, I find an uncanny luminosity lends a kind of autonomy, or agency, to subjects that aren’t always explicitly figurative.

Installation photography by Stephen James. Courtesy the artist and Ginny on Frederick.

MONRO: You have started to work in very interesting ways with frames; both bespoke and found (often antique). Can you tell me about this new artistic line of inquiry?

EDEY: There are recurring motifs in my work of mirrors and windows as portals to these imagined landscapes. The first bespoke frames were made on The Great Women Artists residency curated by Katy Hessel at Palazzo Monti in 2019; a series of tapestries exploring the transcendent image that referenced the altarpieces in the Baroque churches of Brescia.

I feel like these methods of display provide an immediate context to the works they house by employing the pre-existing narratives of these objects. I really enjoy the collaborative nature of working with found objects. They are their own archetypes which deeply inform the textiles and drawings, and they imbue them with a sense of both location and time.

MONRO: Your upcoming show at Ginny on Frederick is titled Framework. Can you talk about the importance/relevance of the frames within the context of the exhibition?

EDEY: I was interested in interrogating the role that framing plays in my practice for this show. Consequently, Framework takes the motif of the window as the point of departure for a series of works exploring the potency of the window as a symbolic portal. The motif of the window by virtue of its transparency, its flat dimensionality and its frame, is predestined like few other motifs for fundamental reflection on the image and the process of seeing.

There’s a passage in Olivia Laing’s The Lonely City[: Adventures in the Art of Being Alone] I often revisit where she states that “windows are thought to be analogous to eyes, as both etymology (wind-eye) and function suggests.” This symbolic interplay between windows, frames and eyes seems the perfect avenue through which to create works that explore interior space and identity.

MONRO: It seems you are beginning to adopt a more immersive approach in the way you exhibit your work. Take the window pieces in Framework, for example, which feel more like installations. Is this something you are looking to explore further?

EDEY: The process of seeing is so integral to the visual symbolism of the window, it felt essential that the works reflect each other, creating an exchange of looking within the space. I was conscious too of responding to the ceramic tiles of Ginny on Frederick. The framework of the grid forms the underlying structure of both the tapestries themselves and of the panel sash windows that house the drawings. The grids recurring and reflecting throughout the show feels immersive and deeply specific to this space.

MONRO: For Framework you have created beautiful woven jacquard tapestries which you have hand sewn with intricate pearls and glass beads. Can you tell me about this process and where your inspiration came from?

EDEY: I was considering the role of glass within a window frame. In lieu of a sheet of glass, I wanted to cover the surface of the tapestry in a layer of glass through extensive hand-beading, akin to rainwater on glass panes. There are well over ten thousand beads across the tapestries! The beading is most dense in the highlights, with opalescent, transparent and pure white beads and irregular freshwater pearls creating a luster that echoes the bright light of the drawings. I really enjoyed working into the folds with metallic blacks and dark greens, so even the shadows glimmer.

The exhibition is accompanied by the most magical original text ‘Soft Pastoral’ by poet Ella Frears, which opens with the line: “The beads collected on the surface like condensation.” The connection she draws between the beading and beads of sweat adds a bodily dimension to the works that I just adore.

MONRO: You are using the tapestry works to examine the window as the point of intersection between interior and exterior space. Can you tell me more about this?

EDEY: Deleuze discusses the transparency of the window as enforcing “a two-way model of visuality: by framing a private view outward—the 'picture' window—and by framing a public view inward—the 'display' window.” The works in the show are divided by these two realms of public and private, exterior and interior.

The embroidered tapestry works navigate a controlled visibility. In these intimate ‘display windows,’ the curtains are drawn to the public stage, blurring the interior. The glass beads and freshwater pearls cover the surface, further obfuscating the act of seeing. Conversely, the idea of transparency and observation permeates the drawings in the show. Through the corporeal ‘picture windows,’ the sexual symbolism of spatial openings is explored. Signifiers of embodiment—eyes, mouths, loose sheets—wink and whisper across the anthropomorphic landscapes.

MONRO: Where will you be exhibiting next and do you have any plans to make new work?

EDEY: I will be exhibiting a new series of works alongside Gal Schindler and Alexandra Metcalfe with Ginny on Frederick at NADA, New York in May. After that, I’m very excited to be working towards a two-person exhibition with Azadeh Elmizadeh at Seaview in Los Angeles and an exhibition with Eigen+Art Lab in Berlin later this year.

Framework is on view through April 22 @ Ginny on Frederick 91-93 Charterhouse St, Barbican, London

Skunk Hour: Nikki’s Maloof’s New Paintings Are An Existential Crisis On Canvas

April 1, 2023

Portrait of Nikki Maloof with *Dog Roses* (2023). Photographer: Guillaume Ziccarelli. Courtesy of the artist and Perrotin.

interview by Oliver Kupper

Nikki Maloof’s domestic tableaux are startling and at the same time humorous reminders of our own existence. Bright, prismatic, dreamlike, her paintings grapple with unexpectedness—freeze-frames before the tragicomedy unfolds. Fragments of a scream before a murder. A foot descending a staircase, a hawk’s talons moments from clutching a dove, a hand behind a curtain. The uncanniness is haunting and visceral. Maloof’s current exhibition, Skunk Hour, now on view at Perrotin gallery in New York until April 15th, explores a new suite of paintings, many of which feature culinary activity in the home, the title of which is borrowed from a Robert Lowell poem of the same name. “I myself am hell;” he writes, “nobody’s here— / only skunks, that search / in the moonlight for a bite to eat.” The following is a short excerpt from an interview that will be published in Autre’s Spring/Summer 2023 issue.

OLIVER KUPPER: Where are you based these days?

NIKKI MALOOF: I live in Western Mass[achusetts]. My husband is from this area originally, and we would visit a lot when we were still living in the city. About six years ago, we decided to move. So, this is where we live.

KUPPER: I love that area. It has a weird, mystical quality.

MALOOF: Very hippie-dominated, kind of arty. But also, the colleges bring a lot of young people, so it's a cool place.

KUPPER: I want to start with your chosen medium, which is still life. I'm curious what first attracted you to the medium?

MALOOF: Well, I went to Indiana University, and it's a very traditional painting school. So, I really learned how to paint from painting still lifes. When you paint something from life, you turn off your brain and you're just doing it. It’s something I would pepper in with other things that I was doing in the past that had more to do with my imagination, and it's just always been there. But, when it came to this body of work, I retreated more into the home as a setting. I started wanting to treat the spaces in a home like a character and not necessarily paint the people that inhabit them. That lended itself to looking to the objects that we surround ourselves with for ways of conveying meaning. I'm very attracted to houses and the things that we compile. I'm always following a little trail of crumbs and one painting will lead to the next. It started off with animals, but then it slowly became about our interaction with the domestic space.

KUPPER: I think of the Dutch still life painters and how portraiture completely started dropping out of those paintings in this really surreal way.

MALOOF: For a long time, that kind of painting would not have been the thing that I related to as a more developed painter. As a young painter, I would always walk past those paintings, and it's been an interesting challenge to try and make a still life catch your attention or convey emotion because they're sort of inert.

KUPPER: Even though those paintings are about objects, each object has this deeply spiritual quality.

MALOOF: When I started to look deeper at those works, I became aware of a whole language that is lost at first when you just think, oh, like fruit, whatever. I find that really intriguing—that there’s little messages all the time.

Nikki Maloof, Skunk Hour, 2022.
Oil on linen, 74 x 114 inch.
Photograph: Guillaume Ziccarelli.
Courtesy of the artist and Perrotin.

KUPPER: Seafood became part of those Dutch still lifes because of their connection to water. In your work, there are also some symbolic notions of seafood. Can you talk a little bit about the symbolism in your work and about some of the different objects that reoccur?

MALOOF: Painting things like seafood began years ago when I was painting a lot of domestic animals—trying to make stand-ins for us. I was thinking about the way that we interact with animals on an everyday basis. One of the biggest ways we interact with animals is by eating them. It's this relationship where we tend to look away really quickly because it can be a weird reckoning, especially when you look at the industry of it. So, I was thinking I should enter the kitchen because that's where we actually interact with animals. I thought it might be a challenge to make a fish seem emotive, and I wanted to borrow from the realm of the Dutch fish paintings, but make it my own by breathing some weird life into them. Fish are such a strange thing, because we don’t feel much for them. Fish ar strange because we feel almost nothing for them, but then they look so alive compared to any other thing that we come in contact with. There's a dark humor there—something that’s kind of ridiculous about it all. Also, painting fish and food is extremely delightful, and I think if something seems weirdly fun, there’s usually some reason that you need to go there. If the desire is there, I usually follow it, and then see if it has any repercussions.

KUPPER: There's also this humorous, dark side to a lot of the work. During the pandemic, and also during the Plague, painting started to become very dark and strange, and people started dealing with their emotions in different ways.

MALOOF: Yeah, I'm really attracted to anything that is on the line. All artforms that are one foot in lightness, one foot in darkness are really intriguing. I feel like that's what it is to be alive. Ideally, you want to be on the light side, but that's an almost impossible place to remain. Being a human, there’s too many factors to grapple with. So, that tone really makes sense to me.

KUPPER: The title of your new show, Skunk Hour, was inspired by a Robert Lowell poem. It’s interesting to hear about an artist’s inspirations outside of painting.

MALOOF: I've been really interested in poetry since grad school. I look to it for answers in a way that I can't with painting. A poem conveys meaning without telling you exactly what the answer is and I found it very freeing when I realized that you don't have to explain everything—that the artwork takes on a life of its own. I like that Robert Lowell poem because you're basically following him as he drives around his town and notices things. He's describing it and slowly coming to terms with his own mind. It goes from being somewhat light to this intense, dark place. And when you're in a space that's so familiar to you, like your home or your neighborhood, those things do occasionally hit you. That’s the whole point of the show: the realization that there's moments in our everyday lives that are so intense, and we notice them, but they’re always in the background, and then we have to move on. Skunk Hour is like nighttime, when we're alone with our thoughts. It’s about the way that we deal with existential experiences in everyday life.

Nikki Maloof, The Cherry Tree,
2022. Oil on linen, 64 x 48 inch.
Photograph: Guillaume Ziccarelli.
Courtesy of the artist and Perrotin.

Leave Your Thoughts On Boobs After the Tone: An Interview of Carly Randall

March 23, 2023

interview by Lara Monro

Carly Randall is a visual artist, filmmaker and creative producer. Her work explores issues and themes that specifically impact women in modern society. These include knife crime, online bullying and filter culture, as seen in her multi-award-winning dance film, FILTERFACE: Double Tap to Like, which examines how social media filter culture affects the mental health of young women.

In 2022, Carly was awarded a Develop Your Creative Practice grant from Arts Council England to create a 2-minute-long, educational art film that exposes the language men use to talk about women’s breasts, highlighting the ubiquitously misogynistic and objectifying attitudes. Carly set up a hotline for teenage boys and young men to share their honest opinions on women’s breasts via voicemail. She created posters to promote the hotline, strategically placing them in prime locations around London’s East End Borough of Hackney (sometimes up to 200 a go), and shared with universities, colleges and friends who posted them in city centres nationally to ensure a diverse response that fairly depicts the breadth of the UK. To accompany the voicemails, Carly worked with a casing agent to bring together a selection of women from around the UK to shoot and film their breasts—those which our patriarchal society have deemed “undesirable": too flat, too big, odd nipples…

Carly has created a unique social experiment that creatively dramatizes the disparity between the ‘fantasy’ and the ‘reality’ of women’s breasts as a result of unrealistic representations created by the porn industry, perpetuated across social media and reaffirmed by patriarchal conditioning. I spoke with Carly about her motivations behind the art piece, how Playboy inspired her backdrop for the art film, and her main takeaways from listening to the voicemails.

LARA MONRO: When did you get the idea to create a film that examines how young men of today view women’s breasts and what would you say were your biggest motivations for making the film?

CARLY RANDALL: The film was conceived one evening whilst watching the Edgar Wright documentary on the weird and wonderful Sparks Brothers. On hearing their 1970s track “Tits,” I was struck by lyrics which, exposed a man’s disappointment at his wife’s breasts no longer being “a source of fun and games” having been repurposed to nourish his newborn son. It made me curious to explore to what extent the male gaze still exists within society today.

I’m also fascinated by technology’s impact on the growth and development of young people. A few years ago we looked at the effect social media was having on young girls' mental health with our film FilterFace: Double Tap To Like and it felt timely to turn our attention to young men, especially with the rise of toxic influencers like Andrew Tate. In the age of the iPhone, sexualized imagery of women is readily available to young men whether streamed through sex/porn websites, shared on Whatsapp and Snapchat, or disguised as an innocent influencer dance on TikTok. I wanted to create an educational art film that exposed the language men use to talk about women while presenting a cross section of what real women's breasts look like. The aim was to encourage young men to interrogate their current perceptions, or those of their peers, by debunking the unhealthy and unrealistic depictions society places on the female form.

MONRO: What do you want viewers to think/feel as a result of watching TITS?

RANDALL: I think it will elicit different reactions. Some people may find it amusing, some disturbing, some embarrassing and some offensive. It’s uncomfortable watching because you are being shown these beautiful headless nudes whilst hearing audio that is quite crude and coarse. The comments range from being quite innocent and playful to being a bit creepy, but ultimately, they boil down to the female form being objectified by the opposite sex.

MONRO: This film was made possible through an Arts Council England grant, can you tell me more?

RANDALL: The Arts Council has a DYCP grant which enables creative-minded people to develop their artistic practice, whether that’s poetry, dance, filmmaking, or any other medium. It’s an incredible opportunity to set aside some time to carry out research and development into your practice, and then craft and hone those skills.

MONRO: What was your casting process for the women?

RANDALL: I worked alongside the casting agent, Lane Casting, to find the women featured in the film. Lane reached out to women through multiple channels, including through their network, through flyering, and also researching specific groups on Facebook with responsive audiences like arts, modeling and even some nudist groups. It was important to make it clear to everyone what the film was about. This way, we could be sure to attract people who connected with the project.

In addition, I posted a series of Instagram stories and had some female friends re-share on their profiles. I had such an incredible response and quickly developed a one-on-one dialogue with the women who had reached out. It was great, as I was able to get an idea of their stories from early on in the casting process.

Off the back of this, I held Zoom interviews with each of the women to find out about their breasts. Due to the sensitivity around nudity, I was not able to actually see any breasts until the day of the shoot. This made the zoom interviews incredibly important as I was essentially casting blind and relying on our conversations to understand their insecurities around their breasts.

MONRO: What was your process on shoot day? Did you have a specific way of working with the women: guiding them on how to position themselves or was it more intuitive/organic?

RANDALL: Prior to shooting, I researched 1920s pinup posters, which back then tended to be illustrated where a woman would pose for an artist. Typically, these depicted over-sexulaised images of women with small waists, large, pert breasts, and curvaceous buttocks. I was keen to flip the narrative and hijack these poses to depict real beauty so each woman was assigned a pose, which would celebrate their particularly unique breasts. Working with my co-director we then drew up 3-5 camera moves, which complemented the nuances of each set of breasts.

On the day of the shoot, I wanted the women to feel at ease and like they were entering a safe space where they could relax and let go of their inhibitions. For this reason, we had an all-female film crew, closed set, and music. The entire crew brought a great energy on set which made filming fun and laid back. With only 30 minutes per woman, we had to move fast, but working with 16mm film means you spend more time planning, and less time shooting as the film is so precious. Ailsa [Aikoa], our DP, was incredible and captured each of the ladies with a real sensitivity.

Working with real people, you need to be empathetic and nurturing when directing, so it was really important to develop a relationship with them ahead of the shoot. In addition to this, I was mindful that they were being asked to perform nude, which would make anyone feel vulnerable, so I was conscious to check in that they were feeling comfortable and maintained conversation throughout filming.

MONRO: Can you tell me about your stylistic approach to the film set?

RANDALL: The red backdrop was inspired by Playboy Magazine who adopted the color from its launch in 1953, and used it heavily throughout their sixty-seven years. It was featured on their iconic masthead within wardrobe as well as a backdrop behind scantily clad women. Through the use of this red-colored backdrop, I wanted to take the power of the Playboy red, a color used to promote sexualized imagery of women, and subvert its use to showcase real female beauty.

In addition to this, I used simple cuts of fabric to drape under or behind the women to create a softness to the environment that contrasted the crudeness of the audio voice messages.

MONRO: You set up a hotline for teenage boys and young men (16 - 30) to share their answering machine messages on how they view breasts. Was it popular and were there any messages that stood out (for good and/or bad reasons?)

RANDALL: We received roughly 500 calls ranging from 5 seconds to 2 minutes. Some people just wanted to shout “tits” down the line, while others went into great depth sharing their unfiltered thoughts. It was a really intriguing and eye opening experience sifting through hours of audio ranging from the complimentary to the crude. There were also some very similar themes (unsurprisingly) most men seemed to like round, squashy, big, pert or jiggly breasts. There was also a couple who rang in that definitely sounded like they were getting off as the boy described his favorite breasts and a girl giggled in the background—it was all getting a little kinky before the line went dead.

MONRO: What were your biggest takeaways from the hotline and the messages that were left?

RANDALL: People like to talk about breasts. Considering the limited distribution of the hotline posters, lots of people happily gave up their time to call in and share their views. It was interesting to discover this was clearly a subject matter that people want to express their opinion on.

MONRO: What did you enjoy most about this creative project?

RANDALL: The unknown. We were totally at the mercy of the material organically gathered.

MONRO: You recently became a mother. Did this experience impact/influence how you approached the film?

RANDALL: I was expecting a baby boy at the time of developing and filming TITS, and in the back of my mind I was wondering what kind of young man he will grow up to be, and whether he would be influenced by the world around him.

MONRO: Will there be a sequel to TITS?

RANDALL: You Betcha! I can’t divulge too much, but I’ll just say we’re thinking of switching things up a bit.

A Family Gallery: An Interview Of Sow and Tailor's Karen Galloway

February 15, 2023

text by Oliver Misraje
portrait by Enio Hernandez

Important things to note about Karen Galloway in no particular order: Karen is an Aries-Taurus cusp, the name of her gallery, Sow and Tailor, is a zeugma for the space’s origins as a sweatshop in South Central Los Angeles, and, if given the choice of which animal she’d be reincarnated into, she’d choose a cat (her husband and frequent collaborator Greg Ito says he’d be a beaver).

Sow and Tailor is situated next to a tunnel, under a freeway on Grand Street. It has elements reminiscent of the urban fantasy genre: It’s a tiny, practically invisible nook, that intermittently lights up with art and its patrons, both from the neighboring community and art world Westsiders willing to venture east of Western Avenue. Karen’s description of Sow and Tailor as her “little speakeasy” is apt. Greg Ito, has a studio conjoined to the building next door. Their physical proximity reflects a professional dynamic shared between the two: they work and live together, often advising one another, while still possessing firm boundaries between her work and his practice.

But the naming is more than just a play on words, Sow and Tailor is an ethos firmly posited in nurturing— both as an abstract, moral concept, and a practical strategy towards community and its cultivation. Take, for example, the gallery’s trajectory— Karen was seven months pregnant with her daughter Spring when she decided to quit her job as a producer for a notoriously exploitative fast-fashion company: “I had been on set for a shoot with a high-profile rapper since 6 am, while obviously pregnant. I was in pain and still expected to perform manual labor. There was this total disregard for my condition, and after being asked to stay past 2 am, I decided I had enough.” The conception of both her daughter and her gallery were unintentionally, yet symbolically in conjunction with one-another. Karen gave birth to Spring on February 2nd, 2021. Two months later, Sow and Tailor opened its doors for its inaugural show, Hot Concrete: L.A. Arrangement.

Although initially an outsider to the art-world, Karen credits her mother with nurturing a passion for curation: “I grew up in Pasadena. We were always ballin’ on a budget, but she was a patron for all things culture, especially free, public events, whether that be classical music concerts or Shakespeare in the park. Our mailboxes were constantly stuffed with mail from museums’ or other public works, she knew how to scout out an event.”

This is all to say Sow and Tailor, as Karen puts it, is “a family affair”, more explicitly expressed in their last show Friends and Family 23’, curated by her nephew, Cairo Pertum. Karen tells me the concept for the gallery was inspired by Japanese bonsai trees, which translated, means “planted in a container”. At the heart of Sow and Tailor is the question: how can the limitations of physical space help cultivate a flourishing tree? A concept, carried out magnificently, in the ways the gallery, despite its nook-like arrangement, manages to feel more cavernous than its 700 square footing.

Since its humble beginnings, Sow and Tailor has rapidly cemented itself as a hotspot for emerging artists, receiving institutional recognition usually reserved for legacy galleries—Sow and Tailor is one of the youngest galleries to be accepted into the Armory Collection. But as the gallery continues to grow, its ethos remains firmly planted. Instagram clout doesn’t operate as a currency here, with many of the featured artists being fresh in the embryonic stages of their career. Karen, afterall, is a risk-taker. It takes a certain gusto to abandon your comfy, if ennui-ridden life as a producer to enter the gallery game, just as it takes a bravado to invest in young artists who’ve yet to establish a name for themselves.

Karen and her gallery tend to keep a busy docket, starting with a solo show featuring the works of Kayla Witt from February 11th until March 25th. Sow and Tailor has also been invited to host a solo presentation of Veronica Fernandez at Frieze LA next week, along with a group booth at Felix, featuring both new and old faces. The gallery will also be holding an off-site curation at the Soho House in West Hollywood for Black History Month, highlighting L.A.’s legacy of African American art.

While the accomplishments, past and future, of Sow and Tailor reflect its growing branches, the roots remain firmly planted.

Karen Galloway and Greg Ito’s daughter Spring

The Way We Handle One Another: An Interview of Choreographer Holly Blakey

February 8, 2023

interview by Lara Monro

Born in Harrogate, North Yorkshire, Holly Blakey found contemporary dance as a teenager. After she was rejected by a number of well-known dance schools, she attended University of Roehampton where teaching dance was the only option. What was initially a devastating and painful life transition turned out to be a profound moment for Blakey, leading to a fruitful career as a choreographer. Free from the confines of institutional models and languages of dance, she created her own — one that advocates drama and our lived experiences.

Honesty, intimacy, and a sense of community feed into her work, as does her fascination with music, film, and TV. Her ability to emulate pop culture has led Blakey to traverse multiple creative industries such as directing music videos for musicians who include Florence Welch and Coldplay. She also had a longstanding collaboration with the late fashion designer Vivienne Westwood, whose widower Andreas Kronthaler, has designed the costumes for the return of her performance of Cowpuncher My Ass. This Wild West dance show, scored by Mica Levi, takes the notion of the hyper masculine, yet camp cowboy, as a starting point to explore the archetypes of masculinity through non-linear perspectives.

Cowpuncher My Ass will be playing at Royal Festival Hall, Southbank Centre, Wednesday 15 February at 7:30 pm.

Autre’s London editor at large, Lara Monro, spoke with Blakey in between rehearsals to discuss how the performance challenges what might be deemed acceptable in choreography and much more.

LARA MONRO: How would you say your transition from being a dancer to teaching has impacted your approach to choreography?

HOLLY BLAKEY: Well, I think because it was so non-linear it meant I had to reframe what its potential could be and think of new ways of accessing it. I found a separate authenticity so that I could practice in a way that felt clear and realistic to who I was and what I was doing. It really did feel like the end of the world at the time because I'd danced all my life and I now think it was my biggest gift because I had to shift the way I was accessing things and I had to adjust my way of thinking. I think it's led to me have a practice that hasn't been so shaped by others. It’s allowed me to find my own language, I hope! So, I'm always quite grateful for that failure.

MONRO: Where do your ideas often come from and what's the process there?

BLAKEY: Well, I suppose like any kind of author, in a way it's about how you feel or experience life and the things you find sweet, or not. I'm more interested in people than I am in dancers or dancing, per say. I'm more interested in seeing the person within it. Even though I work with dancers, it's always about setting what the dancing is and then learning who the people are inside of the moving. That's what I'm most interested in.

MONRO: So, when you are putting together a piece of choreography, how do you choose the dancers that you work with?

BLAKEY: Well, the dancers I'm working with in Cowpuncher My Ass I've worked with for about ten years. Some of them since they were 18. So, we have a secret language, you know, and an understanding about what it is we're doing, or want to do. We share that feeling of rigor and I think they get me. With other dancers who might join the cast, it will be a more simple audition process. It will be logistical.

MONRO: Cowpuncher My Ass stems from a fascination with the archetypal idea of the cowboy and themes of masculinity, right?

BLAKEY: Right. It's mainly about people and the threat of masculinity being a loud voice within that. It isn’t about masculinity from one perspective. I remember speaking to my boyfriend recently and he said to me, “How do you think I feel when I walk down the street and I see a load of lads with their shirts off?” The idea and threat of masculinity is one that impacts all of us, you know? And sometimes we can forget that. So I suppose that although masculinity is vital in the conversation, it's about people, ultimately, and the way we handle one another.

MONRO: Can you tell me more about the choreographic style of the piece?

BLAKEY: What's important about Cowpuncher is that while a narrative is unraveling, at the same time, there is this confrontation with what's acceptable in choreography, what's acceptable to put on a stage, and what is dance. So, while we're having this conversation, we're also trying to look at what we can do as makers and to dismantle the ideas of expectation. There are so many different styles within one performance because we experiment so much. And it's also this idea of it being messy; that it doesn't have to be one specific style. It can be lots of different things. It's doesn't have to be linear.

MONRO: How do you want your performances to impact your audience?

BLAKEY: What I really want my work to do is to be like when you read an amazing book and you believe it's been written about you. You feel like what’s unfolding is about your own life—that you see yourself within it. That's the most important thing. And for it to feel like a shared experience. At the beginning of Cowpuncher, for example, we have the lights on, which is a lot about the audience feeling situated in what's going on, recognizing themselves in the space, you know, feeling the people who are sat next to them. The dancers are watching you, watching them, and there becomes this continual conversation. So, you're invited into the experiences of the dancers in a very intimate way.

MONRO: What are your influences around that notion? Are there any in particular?

BLAKEY: Well, I'm someone who's more interested in films and television than I am in dance. I go and watch a lot of dance, but I try to not think too hard about what other people are making choreographically. I like movies, I like cinematography. In a way I'm more inspired by capturing narrative. I recently spoke about the Sopranos. It is one of my favorite things ever to have experienced. It's those scenes with Tony and Carmela where they're just in the kitchen and they're moving around that really grab me the most. How, how do you create something so beautiful and simple and show people in such an amazing way? I'm kind of more interested in that.

MONRO: I read that you want there to be a sense of community in your performances. Does this partly stem from your appreciation of club culture?

BLAKEY: My first work that toured was called Some Greater Class (2012/2013). That was a lot about being in the club; this notion of social dancing. This sense of social dancing is a loud part of what I look at—I want to be able to articulate the power of this moment within a party or communal dance.

MONRO: You talk about being influenced by TV— soaps, the Sopranos. How do you translate these into movement?

BLAKEY: I think I'm trying to harness an idea: How does that make me feel? What does it remind me of? How does it relate to my past? What was that in my past? Why the need to recreate this? Where is all this sadness coming from? Why do I need to expel this feeling? How can I communicate this to a group of people? Oh, they understand too. They've experienced life. You know, it's like the looping of it all. So, it's about trying to execute that and let the dancers practice it; unravel it in their own kind of way to begin with and then, okay, this works, and then oh, what did you feel there? Okay. This reads like this to me. Try it like this. Try it like it's two o'clock in the morning. Try like your dog just died, you know? Okay, now I read this. There's a lot of drama. I love drama and I'm not afraid of drama. I had a very crucial conversation the other day with my friend Eve Stainton, the artist and performance maker, who helped me realize just how important drama is to me! I don't want to steer away from the feeling of things being dramatic. I want it to feel like that. Why shouldn’t we embrace it?

Wish You Were Here: An Interview of Heather Agyepong on Her Exhibition at the Centre for British Photography

January 24, 2023

The Body Remembers, Le Cake-Walk, Wish You Were Here, 2020 © Heather Agyepong

interview by Lara Monro
self-portraits by Heather Agyepong

On Thursday 26 January The Centre for British Photography will open for the first time. Founded by the gallerist and philanthropist, James Hyman, the charitable organization will present free, self-generated exhibitions as well as those led by independent curators and organizations championing the work of British photographers.

Hyman explains: “We hope that through this initial showcase to make a home for British photography we can, in the long run, develop an independent centre that is self-sustaining with a dedicated National Collection and public program.”

There will be two leading exhibitions, organized in partnership with Fast Forward Photography. Headstrong: Women and Empowerment celebrates photographers based in Britain who have made work concerned with how they are represented, what they are dealing with in their everyday lives and what it means to embrace diversities that challenge the conservative order of a patriarchal society. And, Images of the English at Home takes the viewer on a journey from the street, up the front steps, and into the private spaces of the living room, kitchen and bedroom before sending them out into the back garden.

Alongside the exhibitions, The Centre will spotlight five British photographers as part of an In Focus display; Natasha Caruana, Jo Spence, Andrew Bruce, Anna Fox and Heather Agyepong.

Autre’s London editor-at-large, Lara Monro, spoke with the multidisciplinary artist, Heather Agyepong, to discuss her body of work, Wish You Were Here. Commissioned by The Hyman Collection in 2019, the series explores the work of Aida Overton Walker, the celebrated African American vaudeville performer who challenged the rigid and problematic narratives of Black performers.

LARA MONRO: Wish You Were Here pays homage to the work of Aida Overton Walker who was known as the Queen of the Cake-Walk. How and when did you first come across Walker’s work, and can you tell me more about the Cake-Walk?

HEATHER AGYEPONG: I came across the word Cake-Walk in a script I was reading, googled it, and saw a video of this dance with Black performers doing this high-kicked, structured dance but later found out that it was originally to mock slave owners. I thought to myself, there is a project there. A few weeks later, James Hyman wanted to meet to commission me for some work and proceeded to pour out these postcards of cake walk dancers! Some of the depictions were beautiful but a lot were racist and pretty disgusting. We later discovered someone called Aida Overton Walker who reimagined the dance and was celebrated as a Black, female performer who reclaimed the dance and filled it with grace, preciousness, and technicality. She was my anchor into the work, the woman I felt was calling out to me at the time to reclaim and take space.

Anne Mae, Le Cake-Walk, Wish You Were Here, 2020 © Heather Agyepong

MONRO: Your images are layered with symbolism to illicit a conversation about the boundaries of how we see ourselves both in real and imagined realities. Can you tell me more about this and your specific use of symbolism?

AGYEPONG: A lot of the work is centered around pop culture references, memes, gifs and song lyrics very much present within the Black diasporic experience. For example, the triptych Anne Mae is a reference to the gif of Annalise Keating (played by Viola Davis) where she left a disrespectful conversation by rolling her eyes and taking her bag. For me especially as an actor, seeing a dark-skinned, Black woman know her worth and saying “No” unapologetically felt like something I wanted to channel for myself. The themes of the work focus on ownership, giving oneself grace and acknowledging the challenges of navigating creative spaces as a Black art maker.

MONRO: As well as concepts of ownership and entitlement, the series explores mental wellbeing. Can you talk me through how you explored these themes through your images?

AGYEPONG: At the time of making the work, I was feeling a little lost and overwhelmed. My first major photographic series did really well (Too Many Blackamoors) but I kept being told to make work about race in a particular way. I was thinking two things: how do I make this career sustainable and survive? but how do I also retain my integrity and my intentions of making work to better understand myself? Overton Walker was the light at that moment; someone who survived and made a mark in an incredibly hostile environment where only limited embodiments of Black bodies were allowed on stage. She subverted, agitated, and pushed the boundaries of her limitations. Without figures like her, I wouldn't be where I am now. So, to honor that, I better damn well use my will as freely as possible.

Caucasian Chalk Circle, Le Cake-Walk, Wish You Were Here, 2020 © Heather Agyepong

I Hate Books for the Happy Few: An Interview of Love Me Tender Author Constance Debré

January 18, 2023

interview and photographs by Sammy Loren

Until Semiotext(e) published Love Me Tender, Constance Debré was unknown in the United States. Like most French novelists, Debré’s life and literary career happen in Paris, a city she’s called home since birth, a city that seems to have shaped her classic French distaste for many current American cultural exports and obsessions. And perhaps it’s that Parisian je ne sais quoi that helps explain, in part, Love Me Tender’s splashy reception among American literati. Few foreign novels get translated and even fewer receive glowing reviews in The New Yorker, The Guardian, and The LA Review of Books. So why is this novel appealing to Americans? And what does its embrace say about US literature?

Love Me Tender follows an unnamed narrator who abandons her bourgeois marriage and law job to become a writer. Along the way the protagonist loses custody of her young son after her spurned ex-husband weaponizes her newfound lesbianism against her. In a surreal literary twist, the ex-husband’s attorney convinces the courts that her collection of books by Genet, Bataille and de Sade prove her degeneracy and the embittered ex wins full custody. As the narrator’s legal appeals inch through the French courts, she writes, swims and takes many lovers, her months punctuated by awkward, chaperoned visits with her son at a state-run center once every fifteen days. Love Me Tender is a painful examination of motherhood, family and the lines an artist must draw between themself and the world. But it’s also a punky take on sex and freedom drawn from Debré’s own biography, though the novelist provocatively insists that the book is not ‘about’ her.

Reading the novel in LA during the waning days of 2022, I couldn’t help but see in it a rebuke of the current literary moment, one often critiqued as straight-jacketed by moral and social objectives. On the other hand Love Me Tender is deliciously French, the narrator unsentimental, blasé even about choosing literature over motherhood, responsibility, and the trappings of upper middle class life.

Originally, Debré and I met at the LA launch of Love Me Tender in October, 2022. After inhaling the novel, I invited her to read at my reading series Casual Encountersz — I was curating one in Paris and Debré enthusiastically accepted. Though a health issue ultimately kept her from the event, we met the following afternoon at Chez Jeannette, a bistro in Strasbourg Saint Denis popular among Parisian artists, writers and glitterati. Debré, like the narrator in Love Me Tender, has a swimmer’s build and in person she’s warm and intellectual, kind of grand in her own way, gently tapping sugar crystals into an espresso, often palming her buzzed head of hair. Despite the lousy January weather, we sit outside, Debré across from me with her back to the street, just beyond Chez Jeannette’s awning. Though it drizzles throughout our conversation, Debré seems indifferent to the rain.

SAMMY LOREN: I really loved the book and found it very refreshing. No one is writing books like this in the US right now and I'm curious if you have any thoughts on the state of American literature.

CONSTANCE DEBRE: I'm gonna answer, but why do you have this feeling?

LOREN: Well, I read a lot of contemporary literature, I'm following it. Many have MFAs and are focusing on identity.

DEBRE: Something I hate, of course. There are many things I hate in literature. I hate books for the happy few. I really hate that. I hate psychology in literature. I hate sociology in books. I'm really fed up with trauma. I don't believe in identity. But I believe in the human condition, which is something we don't know what it is, but it's being crossed by many emotions and hidden feelings, this thing that drives a path through us.

LOREN: Why don't you believe in identity? Can a belief in identity and the human condition not coexist at the same time?

DEBRE: I mean I don’t even know what people mean when they talk about identity. I feel things. I think things. I’m doing things. That’s how I would describe being a human being. I don't know how those external things people are referring to define our or their identities, or what that has to do with life as we really live it. I am sorry, but I really don't care about being a woman, or white, or French: it's there somewhere but so, so far away from what's really happening in my life, and of what interests me in my life or others. I read Dostoievsky and his characters are Russians, men who lived 150 years ago under the Tsars and yet I am, for instance, Ivan Karamazov more than myself. I am also Swann, Ishmael, etc. We are all the possible identities because identity is nothing, at the level which interests me. I can be Descartes, Blaise, Pascal. That is why I don’t have any problem identifying with people who have nothing to do with me. That’s what literature is all about, that we can talk to each other, even the dead with the living because we have something in common: the human condition, and the language to try to shape it. Identities and categories are useful, although always simplistic and vague, for sociology or marketing: not in art or literature, I think. Art or literature is about one topic: being, which means the one and the whole, the singularity and humanity, it's almost mathematical.

LOREN: Your writing style is very clean and direct. Which writers — French or American — influenced that stylistic choice and why is it important for this book to employ such simplicity of language?

DEBRE: Thank you for speaking of stylistic choice. Because it is. I used to be a lawyer and I loved law school. At some point I even almost became a law professor. And French law is very specific and different from US law. It's all based on written law — not case law — and on very specific language which is precise, clear, and effective. And I think — as many writers used to do — that it's the most beautiful style. I think the most beautiful thing about literature is the fact that it's so simple. One thing everyone has is language. I love the simplicity of language, which can be understood by everyone. The aim is not to prove that you have read Spinoza or that you go to museums or art shows. That’s one of the reasons my sentences are very short. My vocabulary is very simple. I decided to write like that because I wanted my book to be very direct. And — regarding French law or my stylistic choice — it's also related to a political conception: it has to be immediately understood and more, felt by anyone. It has to work, and to work on everybody possibly, and not only on a few super educated people. I hate that boring French bourgeois tendency. A good book is about what all of us have in common, what makes us human, not about our little singularities and snobisms. I am influenced by a pair of jeans, William Eggleston’s photography, or Terry Richardson’s or Tillmans’, by music from Bach to rock ‘n’ roll to rap, by the beauty and simplicity of American English: by our modernity. From all of that I make my style. Writing about things Dostoievsky and Shakespeare and Conrad and Hugo and those kinds of writers have written about. I don’t read a lot of contemporary literature, I have to confess.

LOREN: I'm curious how you describe Love Me Tender. Is it a memoir? Fiction? A mix of both?

DEBRE: It's a novel. Everything is true. The main character is made out of me. And the events are representations of true events. But it's not at all a memoir. It's not about me. The difference is that there is a form. I mean, you can take a chair or me or anything, but the thing is to find a form that has a meaning. And the meaning is not the meaning which is written, it's the meaning that helps us to live.

LOREN: What are your thoughts on autofiction? Do you see a distinction between fiction and autofiction?

DEBRE: Distinction? It depends what you do about it. Because it could be a memoir, for instance, or it could be something completely different. What is very interesting is the first person and I have been very interested in this question. The moment you choose to write in the first person you experience something that has no evidence. You don't know what it is. So, that's exactly the evidence that identity is a narrative. It's not something true. So this, I, what is I? Okay, I am having a coffee. I can say that. What does it mean? What is this I? When you try to write in the first person, you have to decide what you're gonna put in this I. I mean, I'm not interested at all about telling my own story, or in this literature of talking about all the little dramas of personal life and of childhood, I'm just fed up with it to tell you the truth.

LOREN: You spoke about writing in the first person and how this proves that identity is 'narrative.' I wonder if you can expand on this concept.

DEBRE: The first person is great in literature. It works instantaneously. Think of “Call me Ishmael” or “Longtemps je me suis couché de bonne heure” [“For a long time I used to go to bed early”],which are the opening sentences of Moby-Dick and À la recherche du temps perdu [Remembrances of Things Past]. We identify immediately with a book’s first person, and we follow the voice, the character. This is something almost magical. The character who says I has a strength no other has: he’s the one telling the story. And this power is what we readers are looking for when we open a book. And yes, if identity exists, it is moving, and up to us, it's a narrative and not an origin, it’s the way you tell stories and the way you walk, not where you come from. It is the form we give to everything. And this is where freedom lies, in the form we chose.

LOREN: Reading the book, I kept thinking of punk music for some reason, like, it had a punky spirit. Do you listen to music when you write?

DEBRE: A little, yeah. I mean I'm not, not listening to music, but like anyone living there's music, movies, there's this culture around me: punk music, rock music, rap music, classical music. But it's another thing I think we have in music and a little bit in movies, but more in music, much more than in books: transgression. Literature in some ways can be much more conventional these days than music.

LOREN: What do you think is driving that? Why do you think literature is more conventional these days than other art forms?

DEBRE: Oh my goodness, I don't know, but listen, there are many reasons. Everyone is very cautious now, publishers and writers as well, because they're afraid of being canceled.

LOREN: Do you feel like that's a big fear in France?

DEBRE: Less than in the US, but yes. For instance, that's why I didn’t want to present a main character that would have been too easily likable. She’s a mother and the story with the son is very sad and unfair. And she's a lesbian, so it would have been very easy to represent her as a victim. I didn't want that. That’s why I emphasize that the character is not complaining, she's not explaining anything. And I wanted her to be a lesbian but not in a bourgeois way and for many lesbians that’s not a ‘good’ way to be a lesbian. I wanted there to be some discomfort. That's the trick when you write in the first person and the main character is made out of yourself: the moral obligation is to draw a character, which is not completely likable.

LOREN: Especially when the writing has many parallels to one's own life. Like, you could paint the character as the most sympathetic version of itself. Sort of like, everybody be nice to me and like me, you know?

DEBRE: Yeah, writing about me is fine, okay, I'm gonna gonna write about me, but it's not me. But I do have, I mean, I have the obligation to be a bit scary too. And, if I want to represent a lesbian in these times where actually it's very acceptable to be one, to be gay, I mean, nowadays in our countries, it's, I'm sorry, it's extremely easy and it's almost trendy. But if being gay is being a ‘good gay,’ I want to represent a lesbian who is not ‘good,’ who doesn’t want to have one partner, that’s more fun.

LOREN: Maybe the most interesting part of Love Me Tender to me was where you write about what you basically just said, which is when the protagonist concludes that if she had left her husband only to keep practicing law and to get together with a similar upper class woman and was a conventional bourgeois lesbian, it wouldn’t have meant anything. Why is this radicalism central to the character’s project?

DEBRE: Yeah, I think the more radical thing is refusing money to dictate her choices, to write whatever the price is, even if it means to have no money and then lose her son. To do what she wants to do.

LOREN: Did you notice any differences between the way the book was received in France and in the US? I'm curious about how the reception has been different, like how do audiences see the book for you?

DEBRE: I'm very happy with the American reception because I think in France, well, it depends, but some people were a bit more interested in me. They thought it was about me telling a story about myself. No, it's great, this girl, she used to be a lawyer, and then she did everything to become a writer and she cut her hair. And this is not important at all. But in the US I think the radicality has been seen through the language itself.

LOREN: Why was it important for you that the protagonist not be perceived as a victim in the novel?

DEBRE: Because I don’t believe in a world of victims and the guilty. I don’t believe in innocence and am not interested in it. We are all victims and we’re all guilty. We are sinners and we are pure as the newborn. It is the human condition. Moreover, we are all the innocence and the guilt of one another. It is something complex but absolutely certain. This is much more interesting and beautiful than a world of victims and oppressors, which is a boring and dangerous lie.

Teresa Baker Weaves Visual Autofiction with Willow, Yarn & AstroTurf

November 30, 2022

Teresa Baker at Fogo Island Arts Studio, Newfoundland. Photograph by Joshua Jensen, courtesy the artist and de boer, Los Angeles.

interview by Summer Bowie

Raised nomadically along the Northern Plains of the United States, artist Teresa Baker spent her childhood shrouded in tribal storytelling. Although, it wasn’t until recently that she realized how thoroughly steeped her visual work had become in all of these inherited allegories. Working with a wide range of materials, both organic and inorganic, she weaves the fiction and nonfiction of her heritage to create works that reflect the complex nature of American tradition. Referencing artists of the abstract expressionist, cubist, and postminimalist movements in harmony with the topographical territories and utilitarian objects employed by the Indigenous nations who inform her practice, Baker imbues her works with an autonomy that allows them to be singular and timeless. In anticipation of her solo exhibition with de boer, Los Angeles at NADA Miami, I spoke with the artist about her unusual path into artmaking, the influence of her wide-reaching travels abroad, and the delicate balance of becoming a mother while the demand for her work has skyrocketed.

SUMMER BOWIE: You are from the Mandan & Hidatsa tribes of North Dakota and grew up traveling throughout the national parks of the Northern Plains. How did you come to have such an unusual childhood and how did it inform your work?

TERESA BAKER: My father worked for the National Park Service, and while he held various positions over his thirty-six years there, he held the title of Superintendent when I was growing up. He was Superintendent of Little Bighorn Battlefield, Chickasaw National Recreation Area, Corps of discovery II, and Mt. Rushmore. His mission as the first American Indian Superintendent of a National Park was to bring the Native side of the story back to the parks where he worked—through public programs as well as by making permanent changes to the exhibitions within the parks. He involved the local tribes from wherever we lived. Spending my childhood not only in nature but also in sacred and historical sites, looking at educational exhibits, and listening to storytelling—this all had a major impact on my art and myself.

BOWIE: You grew up with a lot of oral storytelling. Do you see your work as a form of storytelling?

BAKER: Only recently did I begin to see my work as a form of storytelling. For so long, I thought because my work is abstract, non-linear, non-narrative then it couldn’t be storytelling. But over the last few years, I have come to understand that my work is actually a form of storytelling on a few different levels: formally, in the way shapes, color, and textures work together to create their own language and relationships; and personally, because of my history with place and memory, and how the materials I use represent culture both traditional and contemporary.

BOWIE: When did you realize that you wanted to go to art school and what made you choose Fordham and then later California College of the Arts for your MFA?

BAKER: I had no idea I wanted to be an artist when I went to Fordham for undergrad. At the time, my biggest mission was to just get to NYC, and out of Nebraska where I went to high school. It wasn’t until I took an art class in college that something clicked. I then took advantage of an opportunity to study abroad at Gerrit Rietveld Acadamie in Amsterdam, which really solidified my interest in art. Once I returned to Fordham I changed my major to art and ended up working with incredible professors who both challenged and supported my work. After living in NYC for about four years after undergrad, I decided I needed a “proper” art school. As great as Fordham was, it was not an art school, and I wanted to take advantage of the time, facilities, and relationships that art schools offered. I also knew I did not want to stay on the east coast or apply to an east coast MFA program—so I found CCA. I was drawn to its interdisciplinary approach—an approach that resonated with my interests and practice. It ended up being a great experience and time for me and my practice.

Detail of Found in Layers, 2022
Courtesy the Artist & de boer, Los Angeles
Photograph: Jacob Phillip

Teresa Baker
Found in Layers, 2022
yarn, spray paint and buffalo hide on artificial turf
64 x 72.5 in.
162.5 x 184 cm
Courtesy the Artist & de boer, Los Angeles
Photograph: Jacob Phillip

BOWIE: You work a lot with AstroTurf, which references grass and you create shapes that reference both hides and territories. Can you talk a little bit about your use of reference?

BAKER: For a long time, I initially talked publicly only about the formal aspects of my work, but my work has always been so personal to me. The intentions I put into it have always been hopeful, sentimental, searching, and referential. I have found that even though I have an intuitive practice, at the end of the day, I am aiming to capture the place/places where I am from. The lands where I am from and the materials I use represent so much: culture, politics, environment, relationships, and spirituality.

BOWIE: Your work is very concerned with autonomy and power. How can a work be autonomous and what gives it power?

BAKER: For me, autonomy comes in the form of letting each piece find its own shape and take on its own compositional strategies that may not be directly referenced in the work that comes before or after it. While I stick to the same materials, and they all have the same feeling and certainly are related, I also have a hard time making the same shape over and over. If I do that, it starts to feel like a prescription, and the object doesn’t get to be singular. I can only hope the work has power—that’s the ultimate goal, and part of what keeps me making. I think power comes from a particular balance of maker and materials. And power for me is tied to what is visceral, non-static, and alive.

*Baker Basket,* 2022
Courtesy the Artist & de boer, Los Angeles
Photograph: Jacob Phillip

BOWIE: A few years ago you ventured into freestanding sculpture with your woven willow baskets. Can you talk about ‘burden baskets’ and the role they play in Hidatsa culture?

BAKER: I don’t make traditional burden baskets, but they are certainly the inspiration for the baskets I make now. Burden baskets are used in various ceremonial ways, one of which surrounds harvest, specifically corn ceremonies. Another role they play in our tribe is utilitarian—for hauling produce to and from our gardens. The Mandan and Hidatsa had villages on the upper Missouri River in what is now North Dakota, and we had vast gardens, so the burden baskets made by and used by the women were important within daily and spiritual contexts.

BOWIE: You’ve also considered exploring some of the clay pottery techniques that are traditional to your Mandan/Hidatsa culture. Is that something you’ve been working on?

BAKER: Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to investigate that yet—it’s a project that is still waiting.

BOWIE: Your work has taken you all over the United States. You went from the Great Plains to New York, Texas, and California. However, in 2007, you were awarded the Susan Lipani Travel Grant, which brought you to Berlin and more recently you finished a residency at Fogo Island. How have your experiences outside of the United States informed your practice?

BAKER: They have strengthened my attachment and commitment to home, to memory, and to understanding my ties to place and community. I love to travel and explore, but I also recognize the impact of the expanse of the Northern Plains landscape—it’s a vast, quiet, and grounding place that gives a lot. My travels have all been for different reasons, and come at different points in my life. Being in residence on Fogo Island, NL for three months last summer was incredible. The island is beautiful, and living surrounded by water is not something I am used to. At the same time, in its expansiveness and movement, the sea shares a lot in common with the prairie, so I love to be an observer of that. And I love to be an observer of a new place and see how it makes its way into my work. Because my practice is largely intuitive, sometimes I don’t see how the new places come into the work until after I am done working. Oftentimes, the places stay with me for many years.

Teresa Baker
Field Notes, 2022
willow, spray paint and yarn on artificial turf
74 x 120 in.
188 x 305 cm
Courtesy the Artist & de boer, Los Angeles
Photograph: Jacob Phillip

Detail of Field Notes, 2022

Teresa Baker
Lucky Mound, 2022
spray paint, yarn and willow on artificial turf
71 x 76 in.
180 x 193 cm
Courtesy the Artist & de boer, Los Angeles
Photograph: Jacob Phillip

Detail of Lucky Mound, 2022

Teresa Baker
Trace, 2022
willow, spray paint and yarn on artificial turf
70 x 108 in.
177 x 274 cm
"Courtesy the Artist & de boer, Los Angeles
Photograph: Jacob Phillip

BOWIE: You’ll be hosting a talk at NADA Miami this year to discuss how you combine modern aesthetics and materials with natural ones to create abstracted landscapes. Can you tell us how you discovered this process?

BAKER: Many years of playing with formal investigations of paint and various materials has led me to this point. I’ve delved into a variety of materials in the past ten years—like polyurethane foam, felt, wood, canvas and vinyl—always searching for the right one that would be my ground, structure, and support. I accidentally happened upon a piece of bright blue AstroTurf in Beaumont, TX while looking for other supplies, and that was the beginning of working with this unexpected material that checked all the boxes of what I was looking for, but then it also nods towards some of the larger concepts I have always been concerned with—such as land, culture, natural and artificial worlds, and fragility.

BOWIE: Can you talk about the body of work you will be presenting at your solo exhibition with de boer, Los Angeles for NADA Miami?

BAKER: There are a lot of new moments and investigations in this work, which I am excited about, such as new colors I don’t always work with, like red. I am having a little bit of an obsession with red. On Fogo Island there were a lot of deep oranges and reds in the rocks outside my studio, which led me down that color path. I was able to find a very vibrant, red artificial turf that I then had to contend with, excitingly. I loved the challenge of working with such a loud color. I also began working with a long-haired AstroTurf, which doesn’t interact with yarn in the same way as the shorter-haired version, but I began to cut into it to make marks. There are a lot of new subtleties I played around with, like AstroTurf on AstroTurf, and sewing the same piece of AstroTurf back together in different patterns, against its weave, to alter the background. I also collaborated with a furniture designer in Fogo Island, Cody Ramseyer, to make a table for the fair booth. The shape of the tabletop references a shape found in one of my works, and it’s made out of Ash, a species native to Canada.

Detail of Left In Place, 2022

Teresa Baker
Left In Place, 2022
acrylic, parfleche, artificial sinew, yarn and thread on artificial turf
53 x 38 in.
Courtesy the Artist & de boer, Los Angeles
Photograph: Jacob Phillip
134.62 x 96.52 cm

Teresa Baker
Hidatsa Red, 2022
yarn, spray paint and buckskin on artificial turf
70 x 40 in.
177.8 x 101.6 cm
Courtesy the Artist & de boer, Los Angeles
Photograph: Jacob Phillip

BOWIE: Finally, your work has been making major waves in the past two years. You received the Joan Mitchell Fellowship, The Whitney just acquired a large piece, you had a solo exhibition at Scottsdale MoCA, and you have upcoming shows at Ballroom Marfa and the Nerman Museum. Has it been difficult to keep up with the demand?

BAKER: It’s really exciting, I am actually energized by it all, and happy my work gets to have a life outside the studio. The interesting and challenging timing of it is that I am also a new mother, and so everything you mention has coincided with me being pregnant and my first year of motherhood. I have had to be very intentional with my priorities, but I am really fortunate to have a supportive partner who goes all in and takes on the parenting and domestic responsibilities when needed. He values my practice and has an artistic background as well, so that has made all the difference because he understands what goes into art making.

Teresa Baker will be speaking about her practice on December 1 @ 3:30 PM @ NADA Miami where her solo exhibition with de boer, Los Angeles is on view through December 3 @ Ice Palace Studios 1400 North Miami Avenue.

Teresa Baker on Fogo Island, Newfoundland
Photograph by Joshua Jensen, courtesy the artist and de boer, Los Angeles.

Navine Dossos Invokes Ancient Sumerian Symbolism & Digital Logos to Represent Parenting in a Pandemic

November 22, 2022

interview by Lara Monro

Navine Dossos uses painting to question the way in which we see, understand, and represent the world around us. In Panicle Paintings, she continues her line of artistic enquiry with fifteen works that examine the world’s changing relationship to the digital realm and documents the experience of becoming a parent during a global pandemic. Like so many, Dossos turned to an online community to stay connected as both an individual and an expectant mother. Each work acts as portraits of fifteen parents who, like Dossos, gave birth during the Covid-19 pandemic. These figures appear as palms and a multitude of other hybrid trees, deriving from Sumerian seal scrolls that symbolize childbirth and fertility. Dossos uses the ancient stories of gods such as Inanna/Ishtar to highlight, and also subvert, tropes of identity around motherhood. To accompany her metaphorical portraits of people as trees, Dossos includes familiar logos such as the WhatsApp, Twitter and Apple symbols. These are used to show the world’s intensified online existence, which resulted in new archetypal forms of visual language.

Autre’s London editor-at-large, Lara Monro, spoke with the artist about her personal connection to Sumerian seal scrolls, the societal expectations of a parent’s role, the importance of mythological representations in their portrayal of the masculine and feminine coexisting within a single entity, and how we can call upon this in generative and affirming ways.

LARA MONRO: Your work has often focused on finding a new language to reflect patterns and connections, which you then generate in the digital world. This series focuses on your need for online connection during the pandemic as you were navigating becoming a parent. Did it feel like a natural continuation of your artistic line of enquiry?

NAVINE DOSSOS: Yes, absolutely. So much of my work in the past few years has been about the lives we live online and how that connects to archetypal forms of visual language. For instance, how images such as the Twitter bird, the Wifi symbol, the WhatsApp speech bubble, and the Apple logo are all instantly recognizable to us and carry meaning. It wasn’t a big leap to take that language and apply it to the lives we all lived online whilst isolated during the Covid-19 pandemic. This period intensified the online lives of many of us and introduced new symbols to the lexicon that were specific to the health issues of the virus—how to stay safe and where to buy things online when we were unable to venture out.

MONRO: Can you tell me about your exploration into the ancient symbolism of palm trees in Sumerian cylinder seals and how you started to draw parallels with your experience in becoming a mother?

DOSSOS: I was approached by a good friend and collector of my work, Hooda Shawa, to make a work for her relating to the Sumerian ideas around the palm tree in particular. She had been looking into this for her own research and thought the subject matter might chime with me, given my past work on palm trees that culminated in a large-scale, site-specific installation at the Benaki Museum of Islamic Art in Athens called Imagine A Palm Tree in 2016. When it became clear that the Sumerians linked these trees to fertility and childbirth I felt a very personal connection to the subject given my recent experience of becoming a parent, but also how to explore ways to represent new parents without falling back on figurative tropes of pregnant bellies and breastfeeding babies. There is so much more to say about this radical shift in identity and that doesn’t necessarily have to be linked to a bodily portrayal. So, this gave me a way to explore what was possible through making metaphorical portraits of people as trees.

MONRO: It is interesting how you managed to marry nature and ancient traditions/history with 21st-century technology in such a harmonious way. What was your process for painting the series?

DOSSOS: I began by looking at existing images of Sumerian seal scrolls from various museum collections, and identified several types of representation of trees from within this very defined and highly symbolic existing visual language. I then worked on fifteen paintings simultaneously, drawing the trees to the same scale, and making sure all the backgrounds were part of a linear scroll-like continuation of bands of color. These colors are directly linked to those found in the Ishtar Gate, currently on display at the Pergamon Museum in Berlin (although it should be returned to Iraq in my opinion) and relate the paintings on paper to a more architectural heritage of temples and sacred space.

As the trees began to emerge on the paper, they also took on ‘personalities’ of parents I knew who had also given birth during covid, and I began to add technological symbols that related to these individuals and my relationships with them. For instance, if we often communicated by WhatsApp, I would add this logo, or if I knew they used Amazon a lot to get baby supplies, I would include this. In some cases, we had made plans to see each other that had been canceled due to travel restrictions, in which case I would make sure to put a ‘no fly’ image in there too. So, many of the contemporary symbols that appear are those that were pertinent to our shared experiences during this time.

MONRO: In addition to your exploration of the palm tree and its association with the feminine, you also include a variety of hybrid trees, which are known to have characteristics that are both male and female. Can you tell me more about these?

DOSSOS: At the goddess Inanna/Ishtar’s temple at Uruk and many other sites, sacred prostitutes of both genders were employed to ensure the fertility of the earth and the continued prosperity of the communities. Transgender individuals, known as kurgarra, castrated themselves, while those born female who identified as males were known as galatur; both were thought to have either been transformed by Inanna/Ishtar herself or created by the father god Enki to rescue Inanna from the underworld (as described in the epic poem “The Descent of Inanna”).

So much of parenthood becomes a reduction of a person to gender and biological function. I felt this very keenly not only when trying to conceive, but also in motherhood. After years of exploring myself and more gender-neutral/queer aspects of my identity and relationship with my partner, I felt much of this work was quickly undone by the societal expectations of the roles of parents. It took a long time and hard work to reconnect with these aspects of myself. Many of the parents I know have more complex gender identities and I wanted to be able to address this and not make the paintings as reductive as the experiences I had been through myself. Sumerian culture had the kurgarra and galatur as important figures in the sacred life of society. The seal scroll symbolism includes fictional trees that are a mixture of the palm and cedar, as well as the Tree of Life, which also contains both parts of the reproductive process. It isn’t about making all the trees gender-neutral or queering them per se, so much as pointing out that even in such ancient history and its mythological representations, there are many ways in which the male and female coexist within a single entity, and that we can call upon this in generative and affirming ways.

MONRO: You mention Inanna/Ishtar, the rural goddess of agriculture; a unique and rare-to-come-by female figure in ancient history for being represented as an independent woman who does as she pleases. Can you tell me more about how she relates to the series?

DOSSOS: Inanna/Ishtar is a fascinating goddess to me. She represents fertility, love, desire, and also war. She holds within her the capacity for creation and destruction. The way she is written about in the epic poems is as a young woman who very much takes what and who she wants, and often gets bored with lovers and throws them over for new ones. She tends to get herself into some terrible situations—mostly through her own doing—and often because of her capricious, short temper, and her thirst for revenge when slighted. To me, she is quite relatable in her flaws and failings, and encapsulates what I so admire in the approach that Sumerian mythology has to its deities. The Ishtar Gate is also an iconic monument in Europe (again, it shouldn’t be there) and for years I have been inspired by its colors and designs. To bring together this monumental scale of the Gate with the miniature language of the seal scrolls, whilst keeping Inanna/Ishtar very much at the centre of things was an exciting challenge for me. My aim was to find a human scale in the middle of these modalities.

MONRO: How has creating this series supported you on your journey into motherhood and understanding how to navigate it?

DOSSOS: I started out by making three paintings for my friend Hooda, and this was the first studio work I had done since becoming a parent. It seemed a safe way to begin this life again once my child was old enough to go to nursery and I had some hours each morning to myself. But as the subject matter expanded before me, so did the series, and it grew incrementally each week until I was working on fifteen paintings simultaneously! Even this ability to start small and expand was an important step—insomuch as it was a gentle confidence-building exercise, rather than being thrown in at the deep end on a project with high expectations that might have been harder to manage emotionally and temporally.

I had never intended to show the full series, rather just to have them for myself as a means to an end of getting back into work. But I was lucky enough to have an informal studio visit with Alix Janta who runs Alkinois Project Space in Athens, and she encouraged me to show them with her as part of her program. The Panicle Paintings exhibition developed out of this, and finally included elements of wall painting in the installation. I felt very supported by Alix to make the show, and it was a way to have all of my friends—these parents in the paintings—present with me, urging me to get back to work, and to take pleasure in my work once again.

Panicle Paintings is on view through November 25 @ Alkinois Project Space 6, Alkinois Str., 11852 Athens

A Spirit Of Generosity: An Interview Of Art Mentor Ceri Hand

November 18, 2022

text by Lara Monro

From running a successful commercial art gallery to becoming Associate Director at Simon Lee Gallery and director of programs at Somerset House Trust, London, Ceri Hand, also known as the Artist Mentor, is championing a more holistic support framework for creative practitioners and professionals through her mentoring and coaching services.

Lara Monro spoke with Hand about how her own experiences in the arts shaped her approach to mentoring and coaching, and why her upbringing instilled a level of responsibility in championing a more inclusive art world.

Growing up in the Midlands, Hand was introduced to the importance of social justice and the need to support others from a young age. Her mother established and ran women's refuges and her father taught children with learning disabilities. While Hand came from a multi-racial family who combatted racism by achieving great success in business and embracing family, music and dance, she was confronted by the realities of prejudice from a young age:

As I've got older I've realised just how lucky I was to be influenced by my parents and wider extended family. From a young age there was a sense that it wasn't all about me. We would have people coming to stay all the time; my cousins, women from the refuge and their children, and all sorts of lodgers. It is interesting to reflect on my multicultural upbringing, growing up in the Midlands in the ‘70s, where riots and racism have been well documented. My uncle, who came to the UK from Jamaica when he was a kid, tackled racism by becoming a successful businessman. I was around seven when I fully understood what racism was. I was very lucky with my family, we were never made to feel different from one another. I think this also instilled a level of determination for social justice. Then of course, I began my journey into the arts where the disparities in equality and inclusion became very apparent.

*The Ghosts of Songs: A Retrospective of The Black Audio Film Collective,* 2007, FACT
Curated by Anjali Sagar and Kodwo Eshun, Commissioned by Ceri Hand
Photo Brian Slater, Courtesy of FACT and the artists

After completing an Art Foundation course in Shrewsbury and art college in Bradford, Hand co-ran an artist cooperative called Quebec Street Studios before making her way to London where she secured an internship at Make, the magazine of women’s art. It is here that she met and worked with inspirational women such as Heidi Reitmaier, Althea Greenan and Nicky Hodge who shared her enthusiasm for exciting and diverse content;

Heidi, the editor of Make was from Canada and really wasn't bogged down by the nonsense of the North/South divide or class systems in the UK. Coming from the Midlands, this meant a lot. The team were also amazing in how they championed women artists, such as Alexis Hunter, Maud Sulter and Sonia Boyce, who at the time had not yet been recognized for their incredible talent. Boyce was the first Black woman to represent Britain at the the Venice Biennale, winning the Golden Lion and she was notably represented by Simon Lee Gallery.

Hand’s determination to showcase talent more representative of modern Britain continued throughout her roles in both the commercial and public art worlds. In 2007, when working as Director of Exhibitions at FACT Liverpool, Hand commissioned The Otolith Group (Kodwo Eshun and Anjalika Sagar) to curate the exhibition THE GHOSTS OF SONGS: A Retrospective on the Black Audio Film Collective 1982 - 1998 (touring to Arnolfini Gallery). Designed by David Adjaye of Adjaye Associates, it was the first retrospective to explore the significance of BAFC’s entire body of work exploring the personal and political in a new kind of international, experimental moving image work.

That exhibition was one of my proudest moments at FACT. Not only was it the first time the seven-person strong collective were given an institutional show, I also worked with John Akomfrah, Lina Gopaul, and David Lawson on placing several works in the Tate collection, another first for a Black collective. Managing to bring Liverpool University Press on board as a partner to fund the book Ghosts of Songs, beautifully edited by Kodwo and Anjalika, including essays by Jean Fisher, Kobena Mercer and Okwui Enwezor, was also a huge moment in the realignment of understanding how Black archives were essential to readdressing history. At the time, it didn't seem like a major milestone, it felt like an amazing part of the job, but on reflection it was a big deal.

Hand’s working relationship with the Black Audio Film Collective (BAFC) didn't end there. In 2019, when director of programs at Somerset House, she commissioned Zak Ové to curate the landmark exhibition Get Up Stand Up Now featuring a showreel of pioneering works by BAFC. The exhibition spanned art, film, photography, music, literature, design and fashion, celebrating fifty years of Black creativity in Britain and beyond. Through cultural exchanges and collaborations across the African diaspora, trailblazing creatives such as Armet Francis, Dennis Bovell, Althea McNish and Horace Ové were acknowledged for their commitment to changing the consciousness of British society. These themes extended out from the galleries into the courtyard, through a stand-out Summer Series of performances and Film 4 Summer Screen line-ups. The exhibition was designed by award-winning Yinka Ilori and Horace Ové received an OBE in 2021, for his contribution to film.

While Hand is grateful for the opportunities she has had to work with inspiring creative agents of change, she is also transparent about her personal battles, including the loss of her father, an uncompromising workload and gender prejudice, all of which over time resulted in serious health issues. After much research and exploration into different therapeutic options, Hand is a fervent champion of seeking out help and support at every stage of our lives, from therapy to coaching:

Back when I was pursuing my career, we dealt with the challenges of a heavy workload and daily casual sexism by working even harder and adopting a mask. I now understand what impact these forms of structural racism, sexism and classism had on me, my friends, peers, and my family. Now, I understand how the body keeps the score. It all makes much more sense. On reflection, I didn't get the support I needed. I would get sick so often; the physical side of my trauma presented itself as glandular fever and chronic fatigue syndrome.

Navigating her varied roles and personal battles whilst working in the arts, Hand began to recognize the lack of support systems available for creative professionals and artists:

I’d worked so hard, so relentlessly for so many years, then after a major, life-threatening accident in 2019, I suddenly realized I had been working against my nature and was on top of the wrong mountain. Having an understanding of the amazing jobs that so many commercial galleries do for their artists, combined with the support that public commissioning bodies offer, I had a range and depth of insight into the fundamental support that is missing for so many of us in the creative sector.

Since 2020, Hand has supported thousands of creatives through mentoring and coaching services, her free newsletter, Beat the Block, delivering coaching support direct to people's inboxes, free monthly In Conversation events with established creative professionals and her blog, Elevation, aimed at demystifying the arts and lifting others up.

*Fresh Trauma,* Ceri Hand Gallery, London, 2013, Co-curated with Rebecca Lennon

In December this year, Hand will launch her new self-study digital course, How to Price and Sell Your Work: 5 steps to successful sales, for artists who want to earn a living doing what they love.

And in January, she will launch a new online coaching program and community platform for mid-career artists. For Hand, it is about creating an ecosystem where she can use her expertise and that of her associates to nurture an international community of artists and creatives who feel fully supported as they navigate their journey, be it for creative or professional development purposes:

I want to encourage a spirit of generosity to combat the market driven meritocracy. I believe that everybody makes an important contribution, so I want to harness the community we’ve already built and champion a holistic approach to supporting creatives. You don't have to ruin yourself mentally and physically to have a successful career. Shifting how we think of ourselves, what we are capable of, and taking time to zoom out to acknowledge our own needs is necessary. I want to work with individuals to help them think about how we can change thought patterns and form new habits. But ultimately, I believe that creatives make the world a better place. We need them now more than ever to help us come up with creative solutions and to help us find joy along the way.

Daniel Richter: A Very Boring Dream Come True

November 3, 2022

Daniel Richter
*Fun de Siecle*
2002
Oil on Canvas
115.75 x 151.18 inches (294 x 384 cm)

interview by Oliver Kupper

Artist Daniel Richter cut his teeth designing music posters and album covers in the antifascist, squatter punk scene of Hamburg in the 1980s and ‘90s. Now based in Berlin, the spirit of rebellion is wielded by the knife blade of his paintbrush in works that cross violently across the threshold between abstraction and figuration. With inspiration from early French symbolists, his work holds a mirror to a society pervaded by chaos and perversity. His show, Limbo, which coincides with the 59th Biennale di Venezia, was presented in a palazzo where a Catholic brotherhood once provided spiritual benediction to those sentenced to brutal public executions. Today marks the opening of his solo exhibition, Furor II, at Regen Projects in Los Angeles. We caught up with Richter while he was on vacation in Trieste, Italy where an oligarch’s seized Philippe Starck-designed superyacht was moored just outside his hotel window.

OLIVER KUPPER: As someone who grew up in a Germany divided by communism and capitalism, can you talk a little bit about this and how it influenced your work?

DANIEL RICHTER: My work is based on only one belief system, and that's the church of painting (laughs). Growing up in Cold War Western Europe in the northern German countryside meant that you were embedded in a welfare system that guaranteed education, a higher level of consumption, social security, pension funds and, at least for the white working class, the promise of leaving its class behind. During the Cold War, the communists had to prove that they were guaranteeing a better, more just life than capitalism, but they didn't. Both are installed narratives, but capitalism has won. And the culture we all participate in is like a big blob of oil drifting in an ocean of shit, and both are not mingling. The promise of this constant cultural production offers the poor the promise that if they only try hard enough, they’ll make it, they will be able to participate. But that pile of shit, that huge ocean of misery, depression, exploitation, and materialistic promises is not gonna go away just because you finally can afford a Rolex. A very boring dream came not true. The idea or belief that life could be fair and everybody should have the same rights and the same benefits has sadly nearly completely vanished.

KUPPER: In Europe, and around the world, there’s a growing xenophobia just under the surface and I think your paintings started to explore this shortly after 9/11.

RICHTER: Yes, for sure. Xenophobia, such a noble word for racism! I find it interesting that those nationalists and racists find their counterpart in the Islamists, the same idealization and hatred towards women, that whole idea of a dumb, violent patriarchal system. When 9/11 happened, it could have been way worse if they had been thinking in military terms. They could have bombed atomic power plants. Instead they bombed the Twin Towers as a symbolic castration of the West’s finest power symbols. It’s a war against women, a war against softness or weakness. It’s a war against reason and reflection. It's a war for dumb guys believing in lord penis, in guns and violence, and all that kind of paranoid, fascist, megalomanic power scheisse. And it's always “the nation” or “righteous path” or “the glorious past.” And in a weird way, they won, because you could say that Trump, or Putin, or Bolsanaro are all perverted, Christian versions of these extreme Islamic beliefs. It’s weird, this dialectical hop that the whole thing took in the years after 9/11. Invading Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and then the engagement in Syria—all in the name of democracy and women's rights with the result of not liberating one woman, but incarcerating all of them. I always wonder why nobody talks about the flourishing American economy under the auspice of homeland security. The military machine is an absolutely idiotic, counterproductive system. All these combinations just build up so much anger, frustration, and depression.

Daniel Richter
*Amsterdam*
2001
Oil on Canvas
88.58 x 57.87 inches (225 x 147 cm)

KUPPER: It definitely seems like we're on a path to some kind of collapse.

RICHTER: On the other hand, darkness is huge and your little iPhone lamp is small, but also when night is the deepest, dawn is the nearest. I don't know—how did we get into this topic? Oh yeah, my paintings—my paintings are beautiful and colorful, by the way.

KUPPER: Art is a good way of synthesizing these ideas. Like the work of Francis Bacon, who people compare your work to—the zeitgeist of war, by osmosis, embeds itself into the artist’s psyche.

RICHTER: I understand why people make that relation to Bacon, but it was accidental. I think it has to do with those images I made that focused on WWI cripples—guys that lost their legs in combat and are on crutches looking like sad insects. And the squeezing and banding of those figures, combined with the flatness of the backdrop, the aggressiveness and the softness of the bodies—the stress and tension somehow forced itself into an architecture superficially similar to Bacon. But his bodies were isolated and under observation in an empty theater. In my work, the space itself pushes the figures. I never really liked Bacon that much, though—not a lot of humor in it. I gained more from late 19th-century French painting because it’s so beautiful and bourgeois, and so distant from my thinking. Before the first World War, art was more optimistic and also already influenced by different cultural and technological sources, from African sculpture to Japanese woodcuts, and from lithography to photography. I think comic books were for me what photography was for them. And then, there was the whole thing about the possibilities and opportunities of the brush and the material of paint itself. These ideas in those days were like promises of an unknown land, that bland is now discovered and mapped, but I like to pretend it’s not. Sounds nostalgic, I know.

KUPPER: Going back to comic books and your upbringing making art for album covers and posters, can you talk a little bit about how you got into working within the music scene?

RICHTER: In the early ‘80s, late ‘70s, when I was young, punk was the way out. So, I moved to Hamburg. Hamburg was a city with lots of squatters and a red light district with a certain underground appeal. I couldn't make music and I didn't want to make music because you have to rehearse with others, which is how I realized I could draw. So, that was the natural role the subculture chose for me.

© Daniel Richter, Courtesy Regen Projects

KUPPER: What was the visual language that you were pulling from when you were making these album covers?

RICHTER: I would say somewhere between Raymond Pettibon, Charles Burns, and the work Ub Iwerks did for Disney. But also, John Heartfield, George Grosz, that kind of Dada influence. In those days, information was rare, so it was gathered at record stores, in fanzines, and at concerts. And there was also Linder, who designed the Buzzcocks’ seven inch, Orgasm Addict. And all the Crass records—the idea of having an anarchist collective designing a whole identity for a band and accidentally becoming the role model for millions of idiot punk bands afterwards is quite funny. If there was a band I really liked and they appealed to me, I would do artwork for them, and if somebody needed a poster for an antifascist action concert, I would also do that. I have an antifascist background, so I would design posters and t-shirts for demonstrations etc. You just steal from everybody—it’s very simple.

KUPPER: How did you get involved in the antifascist movement?

RICHTER: There was a squatting scene in Hamburg in the mid-’80s, but there was also a huge right wing hooligan scene and regular trouble with fascists and skinheads at concerts. Hamburg was also the home of the militant neo-fascist movement in Germany. So, at some point, we had to turn to self-defense. I mean, all over Germany, generally all over the world, every city has its underground where the outcasts hang out, but every city also has this right wing, macho culture that aims their anger at a perceived enemy. Throughout the ‘20s in Germany, there were a lot of working class, self-defense movements against the Nazis, like the Antifaschistische Aktion.

KUPPER: Did you ever experiment with psychedelics when you were that age?

RICHTER: The only drug I really recommend, also because it does the least harm to mankind and those producing and distributing it, is LSD. I think LSD is a great drug. It’s very fascinating to watch your brain connecting thoughts, feelings and observations, and structuring the world as a constant ornament in very complex layers, and also leaving your body behind, or intensifying its tactility is a life-changing experience. Weird, that even this drug is nowadays used as a self-optimizing tool.

Daniel Richter
Bill
2015
Oil on Canvas
78.74 x 106.3 inches (200 x 270 cm)

KUPPER: People have described your work as psychedelic, would you say that’s correct?

RICHTER: For some of the work, I think it fits well. Some of the early, non-figurative, abstract work was definitely a way of getting the complexity of psychedelics together with chaos theory and the looming of the world wide web, you could say. Digital tools in the early ‘90s were promising as a means to change the world for the better … but that just transformed into a huge pile of really shitty flyers for techno raves.

KUPPER: In the early 2000s, you had this really interesting exploration in the figurative works of riots: people in riot gear, sexuality and pornography, the rise of the internet being this primary driver of technology. Can you talk a little bit about these thematic explorations—the rise in tribalism and militarism?

RICHTER: I just got bored doing the psychedelic thing. I had been searching for something and I found it—mission accomplished. The paintings were surprising to me because they tried to elaborate chaotic structures that asked, “When is too much too much? And what kind of structure is underneath? Are there secret patterns that we do not recognize at first glance?” It was about deciphering chaos. Also, it was fun trying to squeeze in everything I could think of. And then, I thought it was interesting to shift into the opposite direction, which was looking at representation, politics, history, and the world that surrounds me. I can claim to be the first artist who focused on Al Qaeda in his work. On the 10th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, I made a painting that looked like a mix of the Passion Of Christ and the fall of the Berlin Wall in the manner of a psychedelic [Emil] Nolde, but was actually based on the Al Qaeda bombing of the American embassy in Nairobi. The circumstances under which it was shown blurred the reception. The fall of the Wall and the crumbling of the Soviet Union are the reason for the reappearance of religions and nationalism haunting us today. So sad.

Daniel Richter
*Phienox*
2000
Oil on Canvas
99.21 x 144.88 inches (252 x 368 cm)

KUPPER: I want to talk about your show Limbo that was on view in Venice. Can you tell me about the show and the history of the building [Scuola Grande di San Fantin] that the exhibition is in?

RICHTER: It is a building where for a couple hundred years a Catholic fraternity begged God for forgiveness for prisoners sentenced to death. But begging forgiveness did not mean that they would be guaranteed direct access to heaven, or protect you from hell. Once you gave them your money, they would only guarantee that you would end up in in Limbo after death, which is like a waiting room where your fate is not very clear. So, after you got sentenced to death, the fraternity took the sentenced under its wing. On the day of your execution, dressed like the Ku Klux Klan, but in all black, they would wave buckets of ember, sing in praise of the Lord, and beg forgiveness for the poor sinner. At the first stop of that walk, the hands were cut off in public and people would cheer in joy (laughs). And then, a doctor would cauterize the wound to stop the bleeding. After that, they put your hands on a chain and hung them around your neck. Afterwards, they would walk you another 500 meters to cut off your ears and nose, and rip out your tongue—all while you are still alive. And at the end of that long march ending at San Marco, you would either get skinned alive or torn into four pieces by horses. One aristocrat got sentenced to death because he cursed Mother Mary after losing a poker game. He was at the wrong party at the wrong time. So, the mood of the building is somber. And I thought, that's a great place for my work, because my work is also about Limbo, planet Earth is Limbo. All paintings are based on just one postcard of two men that had lost their legs in 1916. I had never done that before, focusing on only one image. But It liberated me from the force to establish a narrative myself, since the inherent drama is already there. It was the absolute naivety of millions of people entering the first World War—really believing it would be over in four weeks. Matter of fact, it lasted four years, and for some it lasted a hundred, and since they didn’t know better, they may have even liked it, but I doubt that. Anyway, I am happily swinging my brush and spatel knife, drifting on and in my little blob of oil, drifting in an ocean of endless opportunities that smells rather rancid.

KUPPER: It's a dark prospect, but true. And the way artists operate on the outside of that is very interesting.

RICHTER: It sounds bitter, which maybe has to do with the fact that I’m on holiday and I have too much time on my hands. Honestly, a lot of cultural production is really interesting and is one of the pillars that hope can be based on. Aside from mainstream media culture, I think there's a lot of stuff that is very interesting, very honest, very touching. It makes me learn, and think, and consider beliefs, and rethink old habits. How do we get out of the bog? It's easy to be cynical or sound a radical critic of culture—it's much harder to be humanistic.

KUPPER: Your show at Regen Projects. Can you talk a little bit about that show?

RICHTER: I am just following the trail I laid out. Some of the paintings may be good, some may even be better. We’ll see.

KUPPER: So, you’re in Limbo again.

Daniel Richter: Furor II is on view through December 23 @ Regen Projects 6750 Santa Monica Boulevard, Los Angeles

Daniel Richter
*Punktum*
2002
Oil on Canvas
78.74 x 118.11 inches (200 x 300 cm)

A Rich, Somber Undercurrent: An Interview Of Alannah Farrell

October 5, 2022

Alannah Farrell
*Alex, Resting*
2022
Oil, acrylic, spray paint, and latex on canvas
50 x 78 in

text by Stella Peacock-Berardini

Alannah Farrell — the sexual awakening to colors and hues, to kinks and dreams. This queer, trans-identifying artist from rural New York gracefully depicts the real bodies of their queer scene in atmospheric paintings, the magic of which stems from the shapely emotional nuances of each subject. Here, their struggles are visible, but so are the celebrations. Though currently represented by Harper’s and Anat Ebgi, they've had an enduring journey to their current career, beginning as a child yearning for a creative outlet, from babysitter, to cashier, to model, to dungeon domme, and later, Cooper Union graduate, allowing their art to leap from the confinements of their bedroom to their first show at The Painting Center in New York. With the vibrant bodies and milky pigments enclosed in these works, Farrell expresses the multifaceted layers of their subjects’ queer identities, supporting the normalization of all expressions of beauty and power within the LGBTQI+ community. We see these queer bodies and faces through a lens unfocused on the taboo fascination that society perpetuates. It is one that instead centers the subject and how they wish to be seen and heard. Undoubtedly a New Yorker, Farrell pursues these intimate scenes and perseverances throughout the city with heart. They allow us, the viewers, into these blissful connections. We sat down with Farrell to discuss their expansive ideas surrounding queer identity in art, the fluidity of life, and their newest solo exhibition, I Want to Thank you, at Harper’s Gallery in New York.

STELLA PEACOCK-BERARDINI: Do you feel the queer identity or LGBTQ+ scene within New York differentiates heavily from other culture-heavy cities, like LA, for example, and does your work primarily present these moments in culture through an East Coast perspective?

ALANNAH FARRELL: I’ve visited but never lived outside New York, so my work is distinctly NYC, based on where I make it and the people I paint. Many different LGBTQIA+ scenes exist here.

Ultimately, I think painting exists in its world, not limited by geography or physicality — it doesn’t document in the same way photography can. Paintings might attempt a facsimile of reality, but they always deviate and become something else. That being said, I plan on meeting and working with people outside New York for my upcoming shows, and it will be interesting to see how my work changes when made in other places.

PEACOCK-BERARDINI: What does the fluidity and intimacy of bodies mean to you, and how has that changed throughout your career?

FARRELL: I find the fluidity of bodies endlessly fascinating, and I wish it were something our society treated with more curiosity, wonder, and celebration. A body’s age, ability, size, and secondary sex markers aren’t fixed. Fluidity, change, and transformation entered my paintings more obviously in the past years, but it’s something I’ve always focused on internally. Doesn’t everyone with a body think of change and transformation? Some specific paintings deal with fluidity and intimacy as a singular image. Another approach is that I have worked with the same people for years over multiple paintings. That is maybe my favorite way to depict fluidity and intimacy. Over time both the sitter and I, and our relationship will change.

Alannah Farrell
[detail of] X (Pearl Street)
2022
Oil, acrylic, and latex on canvas
78h x 50w in

Alannah Farrell
Adonis and his Fujifilm (Fidi)
2022
Oil, acrylic, latex, and spray paint on canvas
60h x 40w in

Alannah Farrell
Annasophia at Dusk (Fidi)
2022
Oil and acrylic on canvas
96h x 90w in

Alannah Farrell
Lilith (Bushwick)
2022
Oil, acrylic, and spray paint on canvas
60h x 40w in

PEACOCK-BERARDINI: The fascinating and intimate depictions of trans bodies appear to be a focus in your work. How did this start for you, and how have your experiences provided a gateway to this success?

FARRELL: The greater public isn’t familiar with a wide range of trans bodies. Trans bodies can be and look like any number of bodies, and they can be binary, non-binary, or fluid. Media pushes these thin, white, androgynous people, highly binary trans people, or low key transmisogynistic stereotypes as trans representation—which is bullshit and doesn’t represent the reality and majority of trans people. Also, not all the people I paint are trans.

As for my experiences, I’ve had a lifelong toxic relationship with my body. I think it’s an experience many people share. Trans or not, I would guess most people experience body dysphoria at least once in their life. Cis people experience body hatred in numerous ways. And I think they may have more in common with dysphoric trans people than they want to admit. We are stuck in our bodies 24/7, and even as someone who is good at disassociation, it is hard not to be aware of my body. These vessels we are stuck in hold both mental and physical pain, and I am sure my work relates to that on some level. Hopefully, when I paint other people, they experience more joy and wonder than pain in seeing their image come through in painted form.

PEACOCK-BERARDINI: How do you feel the palette of pastels and hues of blue within your newest exhibition at Harper’s Gallery play a role in your subjects’ bodies, and how do these colors connect throughout the pieces?

FARRELL: I’ve been attracted to a darker color palette heavy on blacks, greys, and rich deep blues for a long time. Almost comically a depressed person‘s color palette. The oldest painting in I Want To Thank You at Harper‘s is Annasophia At Dusk (Fidi), which I started in 2020. This painting transitions from richer, darker hues into a more pastel and luminescent palette. Annasophia styled herself in this wonderful opalescent dress, full of shimmering pastels. I loved how an epic twilight backlighted it on the evening she came to my studio. She has magical energy, which radiated quite literally that evening. From there, most of the other paintings were started in 2021 and finished in 22. This coincided with when I started HRT [hormone replacement therapy]. It was a tough year of personal upheaval and uncertain living situations. Meeting the wonderful individuals that came and posed in the various places I was living and working in became a healing experience throughout a year of radical changes and instability. And many of these individuals were going through multitudes of trying situations, too. This may be a reductive take, but manipulating light and color towards an airier and pastel direction while keeping a rich, somber undercurrent felt the truest to both individual narratives and my emotional state.

Alannah Farrell
*Ari (Downtown Brooklyn)*
2022
Oil, acrylic, and latex on canvas
40h x 60w in

PEACOCK-BERARDINI: The ability to translate the experiences of the many queer muses in your artwork is incredible. So many triumphs and hardships can be seen within these models, but do you ever feel overwhelmed by these struggles that you and others face, and do you feel like your artwork ever projects those moments of frustration or fear?

FARRELL: I love this question. Yes, I often feel overwhelmed. I don’t personally know anyone who isn’t feeling overwhelmed at least some of the time. My paintings probably do project frustration, fear, and hopefully other emotions, like love, resistance, solidity, occasional humor or playfulness, and transcendence. I try to be mindful of not harming the people I paint with the images I create. Because these are real people, even if the paintings have fantasy elements. I think about the projected messages and how the model feels about seeing their image while working on any painting.

PEACOCK-BERARDINI: As a trans artist who produces moments of queer vulnerability, do you feel your audience mostly caters to the LGBTQ+ community as a way to provide a safe space for these experiences or as a mixture of something entirely different?

FARRELL: The art world is majority cisgendered. That’s a fact right now, in 2022. So, whether I like it or not, my audience is not mostly LGBTQIA+, although I hope it caters to us. I question how much power or influence in creating societal change art (that is not propaganda) has. But if seeing my work opens cisgendered and cishet people to learn more about what trans and queer people are going through and maybe empathize, I would feel good about it. As a working trans artist, I hope to contribute to safe places, specifically for those who sit for me. I see the studio as a space to escape the bullshit and just be, whatever that means. Real, messy, evolving, angry, grieving, joyous, and shameless. Sometimes I feel the process of creating paintings and working with others is more important than the result.

PEACOCK-BERARDINI: In the mass media and social networks, big companies often monetize trans or queer trauma; how do you feel about this, and is there a proper balance that can be made between trauma and simply existing as queer within these TV and movie storylines?

FARRELL: I don’t watch much TV or movies and don’t spend much time on the internet, so I might be the worst person to ask! I think monetizing trauma porn is popular and can be done in different mediums. If individuals or corporations are profiting off trans and queer trauma, or any trauma for that matter, and not giving back to those communities in equal amounts, then it is exploitation. It is something I think about and try to be extra conscious of, even on a small scale. Having people from the actual community on every level, production, writing, funding, etc., lessens the chance that narratives will be flattened into trauma porn. *Hint, the art world, that would be people with money and power: dealers, collectors, and museum directors*

Someone with lived experience creating work funded by people with lived experience seems like it would lead to more nuanced work, TV, media, and storylines.

Alannah Farrell
*Serene, Sky, and Kaz Bathed in Light (Bushwick)*
2022
Oil, acrylic, spray paint, and latex on canvas
70h x 130w in

PEACOCK-BERARDINI: Was there a moment of clarity for you growing up, when you felt seen as you grew into your queer identity?

FARRELL: Honestly, I’m not sure people saw my gender queerness until adulthood. Regarding internal moments of clarity, around age 9, I knew I was sexually attracted to women and effeminate men. I always felt like an effeminate boy/man. I was in love with (but more deeply wanted to be) Michael Jackson, Prince, Frank N. Furter from RHPS, the classics. Any character that was blatantly and stereotypically homosexual, I identified with (which there was a surprising amount to choose from in the ‘90s cartoons I would watch at my friend's house.) We would role-play in games — elementary school age — and I’d always play as those characters. Growing up, there wasn’t commonly-known language to describe genders outside the binary or transgendered people. Cross-dressing was known. I grew up in a creative household and loved fashion, but I didn't necessarily associate clothing with gender — it was all theatre. Because of the histories of famous creative individuals, society thinks artists, more than other people, have a higher probability of being gay, queer, melodramatic, crazy, or a combo of those. So, even if my family didn't necessarily see my queerness, they labeled me with an “artistic personality” from day one. (I’m pretty sure it was code for moody, pain in the ass.) There were challenges in the conservative working-class area of upstate New York where I grew up, but I'm fortunate my friends and bio-fam didn't directly have an issue with queer people.

PEACOCK-BERARDINI: How do you feel this newest exhibition allows queerness to transcend the physical realm and disrupt time? What are some experiences in queer social scenes where you witnessed this moment of altering and challenging the norms of time and space?

FARRELL: Queer nightlife disrupts time and transcends the physical realm. In NYC, I wish queer nightlife workers were protected and paid more. That’s another conversation, ha. I think these paintings in I Want To Thank You are familiar enough to communicate with the past, but I hope the dialogue centers more on the present and future. Ultimately, I view the painting process and studio time as the most transcendent, narcotic, and time-disruptive in both arduous and ecstatic ways. Whatever work I make is and always will be inherently queer. I try to trust that people can feel the love and pain I unashamedly put into a painting and not worry too much about embarrassment. That approach to making paintings feels very queer, timeless, and freeing to me.

Alannah Farrell’s debut solo exhibition I Want to Thank You was on view from June 30 - August 13 2022 @ Harper’s Gallery CHELSEA 534 West 22nd Street

Work Show Grow: The Online Educational Platform Paving the Way for a More Inclusive Art World

August 3, 2022

interview by Lara Monro

Becoming a successful artist has a reputation for being especially challenging; creating a strong presence online, building a creative network, connecting with galleries and art institutions, placing your work in collections (private and public), and of course making money. The comprehensive Livelihoods of Visual Artists Report from December 2018, for example, showed that artists earn on average as little as £16,150 per annum in the UK, with only 36% of that attributable to income from their practice. Unfortunately, this has not changed over the last four years. Whats more, if we take into consideration the gender pay gap, which in April 2020, was recorded as 15.5%, a female artist’s average annual salary is recorded at an alarming £13,355.

Natasha Caruana, an award-winning and internationally recognized visual artist, photographer and educator, founded the online educational platform and community, Work Show Grow, as an alternative way of supporting artists in their professional and creative development.

Frustrated by the traditional framework of art school where grades and deadlines define success, Caruana believes a more collaborative and community focused approach is far more productive. Since 2018 Work Show Grow has championed the progression of its members creative work, demonstrating that this can be achieved through supportive online teaching, in ways that can be fun, untraditional and effective.

Caruana has organized a Creative Retreat that will take place at Colehayes Estate, South Devon, UK, from September 19 - 23. It will be a unique opportunity for creative practitioners and the art-curious to connect, collaborate and create amongst the twenty hectares of natural landscape — from woodland, marshland and freshwater habitats of the stream and lake. In between breakfast, lunch, and dinner (cooked by a private chef using local produce) the retreat will offer a diverse range of talks and workshops with well-respected guest speakers and facilitators such as newly appointed National Curator of Contemporary Art Forestry England, Louise Fedotov-Clements and artist Ibrahim Azab.

Since becoming a mother in 2021, Natasha advocates a more accessible art world where artists who are parents and caretakers should be considered. Private viewings, for example, are often held at the same time as bath/bedtime. Perhaps they could be during the day or over weekends? In May, Caruana explored these issues, and how she balances her work/parenting roles, with art critic and author of On Art and Motherhood, Hettie Judah, as part of the (Re) Production: Parenting and the art world online symposium.

The Creative Retreat at Colehayes is a continuation of Caruana’s support for a more progressive art world as she offers accommodation for up to four families as well as child-friendly activities. Hopefully this can be a useful framework that can be prescribed to more artist residencies and other areas within the arts, to pursue the support of parenting and caretaking artists.

Caruana shared with Autre her inspiration behind establishing Work Show Grow, as well as some of its biggest challenges and rewards to date and a few of her goals for the platform's future.

LARA MONRO: You founded WSG in 2018. What inspired you to start the online educational platform?

NATASHA CARUANA: I started Work Show Grow very spontaneously as a way to teach more artists a professional practice of how you can set yourself up. There is no road map to success and often art schools don’t properly equip artists with learning about funding, getting their name out there, etc. I’m passionate to support artists at whatever stage they are at on their journey. Traditional art education is based on deadlines and grades, which can often result in competitive environments. I wanted to create a supportive community space in which artists can thrive.

During the pandemic, with so many exhibitions and opportunities cancelled for my own art practice I threw myself into supporting others and Work Show Grow blossomed. In September 2020, what were initially monthly workshops happening in person in my studio evolved to become the online school which it is today.

MONRO: What have been the biggest challenges and rewards since setting out on your mission with WSG?

CARUANA: Seeing the progress of Work Show Grow artists has been incredible and is a daily reward. Many creatives come to the school with a burning desire to get back to their creative side. Or they have pursued other work and know that there is a future artist in them. The feedback has been fantastic and we have 100 artists from approximately thirty different countries. They are all connected and together support each other in their creative journeys. It's inspiring to watch.

Now that the world is starting to slowly return to normality, it's definitely a juggle between my own work, Work Show Grow, my academic post, and becoming a new mum. Luckily, I share the running of the school with my husband, Simon, who is a fantastic producer. He keeps everyone on track. We have also made a couple of hires. I really value work life balance so having support in the background is very important, or we could easily end up working every hour of the day!

MONRO: What three words would you use to best summarize what WSG stands for?

CARUANA: Community, Creativity, and Support

MONRO: The 2022 Creative Retreat is the second iteration of your WSG annual artist residency. What were the main reasons for starting these annual trips?

CARUANA: I wanted to create an accessible residency program for both artists and the art curious — one that isn't intimidating, or requires a huge application form, or payment. After spending two years online it’s an opportunity to bring people together in a fun and relaxed environment. As an artist myself, I definitely need this for my own creative cup. I want everyone to go back to their corner of the world fulfilled, inspired, and ready to take the next steps in their work. It’s a moment when artists or the art-curious can create, play, and connect outside of their usual day-to-day.

MONRO: This year you have decided to make the retreat accessible to artists who are parents/caretakers. What were your main motivations around doing this?

CARUANA: Everyone should be playing a role in making the art world more accessible. Offering an environment which welcomes artist parents is my way of contributing to this. I recently took part in an online symposium funded by Arts Council England and produced by one of our Work Show Grow artists, Andrea Allen. I participated in a session with the writer Hettie Judah, who is an incredible advocate for artist parents. This opened my eyes to needing to do more.

MONRO: What are you most excited about at this year’s retreat?

CARUANA: I’m so excited to spend a week in twenty hectares of private countryside, which surrounds the stately home that the retreat is taking place in. To be able to stroll to our private lake and take a dip in between workshops is going to be magical! I literally can’t wait! I love to cook so I’m also looking forward to our group dinners and evenings around the fire pit.

MONRO: What would you say are some of the biggest challenges of being a parent and juggling your creative and professional roles?

CARUANA: The lack of time and headspace is the most challenging juggle so far. It's really hard to peel yourself away from baby cuddles to go and tackle your inbox! I haven't found the answers yet. Each day seems to be different as Suki develops so you need to embrace going with the flow!

MONRO: Where would you like to see Work Show Grow in the next five years and what do you want your artist residencies to look like?

CARUANA: I would like Work Show Grow to still be supporting artists and for more people to know about our great community. We have big ambitions for an international residency program, a school that has different pathways. And I’d love to put on a Work Show Grow artist event at the Tate!

MONRO: What would your advice be for new mothers who are also artists and determined to maintain their creative practice?

CARUANA: I feel forming a community around you is so important. It's common to create a mum community, but I would also say try to add a couple of mum artists in there too. Being an artist parent is so nuanced and difficult for others to understand. At Work Show Grow we have a number of artist parents and it's humbling to see how they can lean on us for support.

Suspended in Memory: An Interview Of Veronica Fernandez

July 8, 2022

text and photography by Shelley Holcomb

Standing in front of Los Angeles-based artist Veronica Fernandez’s paintings you may start to feel as if you’re part of a fever dream or someone else’s past life regression. They are raw and autobiographical, a place where the viewer is invited to float through fragments of extremely personal memories while being entertained by the various textures and materials Fernandez has thoughtfully arranged in each work. There are painterly aspects that divide you from reality, yet it still feels as if you're walking into someone else's actual space and you’re welcome to stay as long as you’d like.

The paintings are in essence a mapping of her family lineage, their struggles and their persistence captured through the lens of old photographs passed down from her grandmother. Through these photographs, Fernandez is navigating her own identity as it relates to her childhood and her closeness to family. She manipulates these images to tell a story of adolescence that most of us couldn’t comprehend and yet she finds strength in these memories, weaving them into a narrative about what it means to call somewhere home and to make a place for yourself.

I visited Fernandez in her studio as she put the final touches on her first solo exhibition entitled When you hold onto my spirit, will you let your spirit grow? at Sow & Tailor in Los Angeles.

SHELLEY HOLCOMB: To begin, can you give a bit more about your family background? And in what ways do you think it influences your work?

VERONICA FERNANDEZ: My father is Dominican and Puerto Rican, and my mother is Bolivian, but I was raised by my father and I connect more with that side of myself most of the time. Although I grew up primarily in Jersey, I was also raised in Miami, where the majority of my family is from. A lot of the time, the vibrant colors of Miami can come through in my work, I think, from that tropical environment down there. I also think a lot about my grandma's garden, the wood and textured objects from her house, the fruits she grows, and the objects she has that have been passed down from different generations. My grandmother is a strong, proud Dominican woman, who taught me core values she learned from her mother as well. The narrative for the exhibition begins with my great-grandmother as a matriarch, it shows my grandma and my father as a child, to set up the start of my father’s upbringing, and then because we’re his offspring, we also see my cousins that all came from his family.

A lot of my photographs from childhood take place in Miami, Jersey, or Virginia, where I was born in a naval hospital. There are objects that pop up in my work, for example, the Malta Goyas in the installation, a beverage my father was always drinking in the house, that is directly inspired by him, his family, and my upbringing. Throughout my work, there are hints at my identity trying to navigate itself and find pieces that were lost through that separation caused by us moving around so much.

HOLCOMB: At first glance, you seem to be juggling a lot of references and stringing together multiple narratives in this exhibition, can you tell me how it came to fruition for you?

FERNANDEZ: This is one of the first paintings that inspired the show called “Take Shelter” and it’s of my own personal story, my family, and the many obstacles that we faced. It’s based on a photo of my family while we were living in a shelter, that was one of the things in my life that helped me to perceive how people are, their backgrounds, and the layers that can exist in everyone's lives. I wanted to make this painting that examines how people take up space and what makes the foundation for a home. The home becomes what it's made of and not the actual physical space.

The whole theme for all of them is about the specific ways in which people adapt to the experiences that they go through. My work is about people and how they engage with their environment, their experiences and their memories of them, and how they perceive them over time. My grandma gave me these photographs of her in her childhood, her mother, and my father when he was younger. Because I was raised by a single father, I saw firsthand the experience of someone struggling over time and having to adapt to their environment due to unfortunate circumstances and obstacles that they went through, so I wanted to use that kind of story.

HOLCOMB: We see your dad referenced a lot in these works, would you say he is the protagonist?

FERNANDEZ: My dad is the thread that keeps the show together. In some of the scenes that don’t involve him, his spirit is still within the painting or the spirit of those that changed a generation. Hence the name of the show: When you hold onto my spirit, will you let your spirit grow? And I refer to that by proposing the question of when you come into this space and you are immersed in all of these spirits that live in the paintings, like my father’s or my experience and what I’ve gone through, the emotions that carry through that, will you carry something with you? And I took the title from a bit of poetry I wrote, It talks about how people can just actually see each other, you know when you first meet someone you don’t really know the layers of what actually made them the person they are today and so it talks about that exchange of each other’s struggles, this clear understanding of where you came from. The writing started when I was creating the show and it’s me having this imaginary conversation with a person about what it would be like to actually see someone, not just existing in these spaces, but actually being seen and heard and understood. And I think when you’re going through obstacles like I had to in my life, you really just want to be understood.

HOLCOMB: Images of children and the portrayal of adolescence seems to be a common motif you’re working with, what is your connection to this imagery? What do they signify to you?

FERNANDEZ: Children for me are very unpredictable and just naturally curious about the world. I think everyone who comes across a child and sees their actions, or the way they conduct themselves, imagines the type of person they might become or even reminisce about their own childhood, a time when they didn't think about the future, living only in the moment. I think a lot about how that time of our lives is such a fundamental aspect that starts paving the way to how we perceive the world around us and what shoes we eventually are meant to fill. I think about my own upbringing and seeing firsthand how difficult living can be, in general, growing up and having moments where even though you're at an age of a promising future, you kind of have these early negative feelings about the world and you have to push yourself to get past them, sometimes it can feel never-ending. I was lucky that despite all I've gone through I had my father constantly instilling in me that I was more than what we were going through. I think it weighs on me to think about those that didn't have that guidance or have been swallowed by the hurtful factors of their environments. When I think about children in my work they really reflect the unforeseeable future of people.

There’s a painting in the show called “Watch A Leader Cry” that hits the nail on the head when it comes to talking about young people having to take on roles they’re not prepared for. As I said, my father raised us as a single parent, there were many times that my siblings and I, when we were growing up, saw him down because of different situations. This particular instance references a memory I have of losing everything on a bus seat, the bus driving away, and seeing him crying, chasing it down. In that moment, you’re left standing there like okay, I guess I need to take on this new role of the leader because he’s withered down. It’s exaggerated by the flipped umbrella and all the groceries and him clearly being upset. That’s one of the paintings that’s very specific when it comes to those emotions of having to adapt, and children having to utilize what they have in order to help their parental figure. Those older siblings who always had to take the brunt of something that happened.

HOLCOMB: The painting that stands out the most where children are featured prominently is in the work “Trust Fall”. There’s also the glaring red figure, which we see come up a lot in your work, what’s that about?

FERNANDEZ: Yes, this is where we see the chaos of all of the cousins together because everyone thinks they are the one that has control. All the kids are naively thinking they can catch this figure and it talks about the way that they take on roles they aren’t prepared for, they’re not necessarily even sure that they’re able to handle. There’s no one there guiding them, there’s a baby here wanting to jump, thinking he can participate as well, it circles in a broken Coca-Cola bottle, emphasizing danger and how there are all these kids in this one space naively thinking that they’re prepared to carry this weight. They all have their own different expressions and their own roles, some of them are impacted by the situation that’s happening and some of them are oblivious.

For this painting, I wanted to emphasize that these red figures are people that stem from other generations and they’re navigating themselves, how to go about their lives, and exist in these spaces they’ve been put in. When I paint these red figures they’re signifying they are transformative figures in the works that get impacted, their futures get altered dramatically. Kind of like on a plane when there’s turbulence, those are what the red figures are, out of control and you don’t know what’s going to happen, they’re very unpredictable.

HOLCOMB: Something else I see a lot in this show and in previous work is the recurring image of bread, what does it symbolize in your work?

FERNANDEZ: Bread was something that I noticed at a young age was always so cheap, which meant you would have an abundance of it, whether it be those 3 for $1 rolls or a loaf of Wonderbread, it was always a sweet deal! When my family only had a few dollars we always bought bread or eggs. It was something we could manipulate to make different meals when we didn't have much. My dad used to make syrup or butter sandwiches, or toast as a snack. Bread, as mundane as it is, was an object that kept us full, notably when we lived in areas where we were living off the corner store and didn't have a car that could take us across town to get fruits or veggies. It wasn't necessarily the healthiest option but not everyone is given that choice. In many ways, human beings use whatever options they have and make the most out of it, especially when times are just hard.

HOLCOMB: We also see a lot of sports iconography in your work, the Yankee cap or the Jeter shirt, can you elaborate on your connection to sports and its importance in your work?

FERNANDEZ: I always incorporate sports in my work in one way or another. I think, because I was raised by my father, the essence of boyhood is always present. My father put us in sports when he could, we were all always terrible, like the worst, but he was always there, being all passionate on the sidelines. My household was always sports and video games, I remember my father would play all his Yankee and Giants games really loud throughout the house, screaming at the TV. We used to gather in the living room every Monday and Friday for wrestling and it was our bonding time. We became obsessed with WWE and my sister and I would get all excited when women wrestlers came out! There are a few pieces in the show where you’ll see figures wearing jerseys or Yankee symbols. In my installation, I included these cutout baseballs under the chair legs to protect the feet of it, as you would see on elementary school desks, and related it to how that aspect of sports was a protective or nurturing outlet for our family. The older Panasonic TV plays a loop of three Yankee game clips from the years my siblings and I were born. My father told us those years were extra special because the Yankees had won the World Series all three of those years. I thought it was sweet when he chose those clips. To him, it was luck from us being brought into this world. The essence of my father's love for sports is very special to me, it makes me feel at home.

HOLCOMB: When you’re crafting the compositions for the paintings, is it the direct photo, or do you collage them together from different references?

FERNANDEZ: Some of the pieces in the show are either from my memory, some of them are directly from old photographs and I just alter them. The paintings that I pull from my family photos are very authentic, it’s important to me to have a photo of these particular experiences. The paintings are very fluid in that way, they’re not something that’s concrete, like the photo exactly, they're all kind of head-spacey paintings. I tend to create spaces where the more you look at them, they just don't really come together. Like, it will never actually make sense and that comes from reflecting on these memories I’ve retained. We never see the experience the same way as we get older—they never stay the same. Memories can change and over time we perceive them differently.

I wanted to make a show based on older photographs I had and have it chronologically start off with my grandma and the photos she gave me, those backstories of where I came from. So the paintings feature my grandmother and my great grandmother, then down the line, it goes into the story of my father, and then us, showing these different generations and the different roles they take on and how they find their place in each of these individual environments. How are they adapting to these spaces? How are they not just existing, but also living in the spaces? I want the viewers to have the feeling that these people are really living in these paintings. Sometimes people would think "Aw, those people that go through things like that, they must be so emotional,” but they are just everyday people who live their lives and they aren't as fortunate. They don't see their lives as sad all the time. I want people to feel like, these are just their experiences, they're not always miserable.

HOLCOMB: I feel like you’ve brought a lot of sculptural elements into this show, is sculpture a new practice for you? What do these different objects mean to you?

FERNANDEZ: It’s a brand new thing I’m doing. In the show we see these laundry carts, you know the ones, you see them everywhere. I wanted to have something that was very universal. I feel like everybody has seen these at one point or another. I also wanted to add items that would touch people in a familiar way, like throw blankets with Mickey Mouse on them, Winnie the Pooh, like pop culture figures that everyone can relate to. These kinds of everyday objects you can associate with childhood or a domestic setting. I have this one memory of when we had to walk all the way across town to get to the laundromat just to do laundry. We would have to walk all the way there and all the way back with loads of laundry, so I just associate them with a form of labor.

A lot of the sculptures I have in the show have a sense of human touch and human labor behind them. Like, for example, the sculpture "For Bread and Eggs," it's a stocking getting twisted in order to make a design to make this garnished item, to make yourself at home. There's that human touch and this work that's put into making and creating these items. The entire design on that chair in the installation was made by hand. I was originally going to get a chair that was the same design as the one I saw in an old photograph that I had, it was a striped satin chair, but then I decided to make the pattern by hand because I feel, much like the paintings, that I want to have this presence of the artist there. This body of work means a lot to me, so, I'm just really excited to show it.

When you hold onto my spirit, will you let your spirit grow? is on view through Jul 17 at Sow & Tailor 3027 S Grand Ave

Moving Past Giants: An Interview Of Devon DeJardin

June 24, 2022

text by Stella Peacock-Berardini

Devon Dejardin’s exploration of art may have started from the humble encouragement of a sugar daddy psychic, but it has grown into a journey of healing and reflection that continues to drive his success in the art world. Within his cubist-influenced style of work, Devon Dejardin, an LA-based painter, processes through the elements of life demanding answers to all of its most urgent lingering questions. Dejardin employs his work as a way to unpack and understand the entropic nature of the universe through his lens of belonging, going deeper into the storms he's faced that brought him to the clear sky of his creation. This 29-year-old, self-taught artist originating from Portland juggles depression and anxiety within the creative realm and expresses his gratitude for the therapeutic release his art supplies to himself and its viewers. His newest project, Giants dives into this preconceived idea of spirituality and shifts its narrative to his ideas surrounding the guardians of the world, those that protect, aid, and grow in strength and vulnerability within the boundaries of our world. His art, huge in size, mimics the ideas of giants and how they are commonly perceived, yet it develops further than that. These feelings, or challenges in life, such as sadness or grief materialize as giants, but represent the deception life can have on us all. We sat down with this artist to explore his influences, conceptions around his work as a whole, and his first New York solo exhibition at Albertz Benda.

AUTRE: We live in an age of anxiety and uncertainty—you are an artist who found refuge in painting, how has your adolescent experience with anxiety and now as a painter prepared you for our current zeitgeist?

DEVON DEJARDIN: It taught me that sometimes we need to go to dark places in our life to gain a better understanding of ourselves and our place in this world. Anxiety and painting both can create times of uncertainty. However, if you continue to push and wrestle with what is in front of you, oftentimes beauty is birthed. I almost feel times of anxiety have become a guardian for me. It slows me down, humbles me and redirects me … very similar to the process of creating a painting.

AUTRE: Are you hopeful about the future or is there a sense of pessimism?

DEJARDIN: Always hopeful. Pessimists are depressing to be around. Even in the worst of things there is so much good. So much of life has to do with perspective and looking at situations from all different angles.

AUTRE: Your work utilizes a lot of abstract forms, it’s almost cubist, but also extremely reflective of our 21st-century digital age, how would you describe these forms?

DEJARDIN: So much of our current physical reality is constructed by a few simple shapes that are altered and manipulated to form structures. We see these shapes in architecture, art, design, nature etc. When approaching this series of work I wanted to use these simple shapes to create something powerful. To show how the manipulation of simple constructs can form something that speaks and carries weight. The idea that simplistic forms can carry a complex identity.

AUTRE: Do you feel like the forms in your paintings are ominous or do you see them more as benevolent entities?

DEJARDIN: I think that if you look at history much of the benevolent entities we have learned about are described to be quite ominous. To answer the question, I see both. Many religious texts speak on the idea of an entity saying “fear not” before they reveal themselves. Why? I think encountering any sort of spiritual being … light or dark … would be pretty intimidating.

AUTRE: Do you dream about unrealized paintings or imagine them before the paintbrush hits the canvas, or is it an intuitive experience?

DEJARDIN: Yes and no. There are many times where it is a free flow battle aimlessly moving paint until a picture appears. However, I tend to lean more towards a controlled intuitive process. A process where sketching, creating studies, and spending time thinking give way to a much more intimate painting. I find myself lately really enjoying the process of drawing before painting. Reimaging the same painting multiple ways.

AUTRE: Your new work that will be on view at Albertz Benda is inspired by spiritual allegory, when and why did you become interested in this subject matter?

DEJARDIN: From a young age I was always interested in the concepts of “where did we come from?” and “what is next?” Spirituality or religion are primary disciplines for investigating the boundary questions of life and death, of love and hate, that characterize the human condition. All persons crave for self-transcendence in one mode or another. Religious Studies provides the opportunity to understand, with depth and nuance, the many beliefs and rituals that move persons to appreciate the alternative world of reality. I think it is important to have a strong understanding of the major concepts humans use as a framework to exist…

AUTRE: Can you talk a little bit about the parable of David and Goliath and how that fits into your new work?

DEJARDIN: Much of this exhibition stems from Malcolm Gladwell’s 2013 book, David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants. This book was an investigation into the relationship between underdogs and giants.

In the book, Gladwell discusses a story from the Bible about David and Goliath. The Israelites were in war with the Philistines, but they were at a disadvantage to win because of the champion, Goliath. Goliath suffered from acromegaly which made him a physical giant and no one wanted to fight him. However, David stepped up to fight him even though he didn’t think he could defeat Goliath. We learn that due to Goliath's growth disorder he suffered from many physical ailments such as vision impairment, lack of coordination etc. making David, a slinger, a much more evenly matched opponent. David was easily able to defeat Golith even though the odds seemed to be against him. The simple lesson is that often these “Giants” in our lives often are not as “big” as they seem. The work in this exhibition tells the story of pushing through and ultimately moving past “Giants” in our lives.

AUTRE: You are displaying some large sculptures at the new show—can you talk a little more about these sculptures and the materiality, and what has the experience been going from two dimensions to three?

DEJARDIN: I've always wanted my work to be able to be seen in all different kinds of settings and landscapes. Painting is limited to primarily being able to be indoors but I think there's so much power in allowing work to be placed in all different types of environments. These sculptures created for the show are made of bronze and will be able to live in earth's elements for hundreds of years.

The experience going from 2D to 3D is something that I'm still learning. I'm being mentored and taught. I'm working alongside people that are far more experienced than I am at sculpting and it is a process that takes many hands. The process goes from taking an original sketch, making it into a painting, and then I bring it into a 3D format on the computer to envision what these paintings would look like from all angles. For me, that's the tricky part because all of my paintings and portraits are forward-facing. Taking on a side angle or the back angle and creating balance within that has been the most time-consuming part of it.

AUTRE: When you are working in the studio, do you have something that jump-starts the creative process—do you listen to music, is it a solitary experience or do you like to have a lot of activity?

DEJARDIN: For four years I painted alone and most of the time without music. I found solitude to be a form of therapy and the time alone helped me start to better understand my place in this world. It allowed me to gain a better sense of my voice. Now, I enjoy the communal aspect of having people in and out of the studio. I like to bounce ideas and break up my thought patterns in hope that more ideas will come forth. I think we as humans are designed to be in community with one another and I'm starting to see a much more healthy balance with how I approach my work.

AUTRE: A lot of your new show explores misrepresentations, but what about you as an artist—are there things that people get wrong about your work or you as an artist?

DEJARDIN: I am sure there are many misrepresentations about me and my work floating out there. It is not something that I need to focus on. My work is a reflection of my truth and my identity. I am responding to an innate pull to create and to share ideas with the world. If people want to twist, pick, and misinterpret … all are welcome.

Devon DeJardin: Giants is on view June 30 - August 5 @ Albertz Benda 515 W 26th Street New York

CATEGORIES: ART / CULTURE / MUSIC / FILM PROSE / DESIGN / FASHION

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@maxrichtermusic on his collaborations with @mrkimjones and @dior “With Kim [Jones], we initially connected via a shared enthusiasm for Virginia Woolf and the Bloomsbury Group. He has that wide-open, inquiring mind, which is so fun to be around and connect with. I’m fascinated by the interpenetration and borderlessness of fashion.” Max Richter is one of contemporary classical music’s most revolutionary and innovative composers, known for his sociopolitical awareness. Richter’s new album, In A Landscape, which wavers between electronic and acoustic sounds, is a moving soundtrack for a new era of uncertainty and chaos. In Autre’s FW24 Citizen Issue, @hansulrichobrist has an in depth interview of @maxrichtermusic 🔗 in bi0 interview @hansulrichobrist photographs @kuba_ryniewicz styling @anitaszymczak_ grooming @oliviacochrane art director @martinmajor grooming @oliviacochranemakeup all clothing @dior men #maxrichter #dior #classicalmusic #music #kimjones #hansulrichobrist #interview #quotes #inspiration #quoteoftheday #creativity

Max Richter is one of contemporary classical music’s most revolutionary and innovative composers, known for his sociopolitical awareness. Richter’s new album, In A Landscape, which wavers between electronic and acoustic sounds, is a moving soundtrack for a new era of uncertainty and chaos. In Autre’s FW24 Citizen Issue, @hansulrichobrist has an in depth interview of @maxrichtermusic 🔗 in bi0 interview @hansulrichobrist photographs @kuba_ryniewicz styling @anitaszymczak_ grooming @oliviacochrane art director @martinmajor grooming @oliviacochranemakeup all clothing @dior men #maxrichter #dior #classicalmusic #music #kimjones #hansulrichobrist #interview #quotes #inspiration #quoteoftheday #creativity

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interview by Millen Brown-Ewenshair by Justin Inmanmakeup by Niohuru Xall images copyright Fawn Rogers

interview by Lara Monro

interview by Camille Ange Paillerphotography by Riccardo Meronistyling by Ina Witzeltalent Benny O. Arthur @ Martensgarten hair & makeup by Simona Parrellaproduction by Pier Guccione Prata @ Residenza Productionlight assistance by Leonardo Galeottistyling assistance by Typhaine Porta

interview by Lara Monro

interview by Lara Monro

text by Lara Monroportrait by Brynley Odu Davies

interview by Oliver Kupper

interview by Lara Monro

text by Oliver Misraje portrait by Enio Hernandez

interview by Lara Monro

interview by Lara Monroself-portraits by Heather Agyepong

interview and photographs by Sammy Loren

interview by Summer Bowie

interview by Lara Monro

text by Lara Monro

interview by Oliver Kupper

text by Stella Peacock-Berardini

interview by Lara Monro

text and photography by Shelley Holcomb

text by Stella Peacock-Berardini

interview by Millen Brown-Ewens
hair by Justin Inman
makeup by Niohuru X
all images copyright Fawn Rogers

interview by Camille Ange Pailler
photography by Riccardo Meroni
styling by Ina Witzel
talent Benny O. Arthur @ Martensgarten
hair & makeup by Simona Parrella
production by Pier Guccione Prata @ Residenza Production
light assistance by Leonardo Galeotti
styling assistance by Typhaine Porta

text by Lara Monro
portrait by Brynley Odu Davies

text by Oliver Misraje
portrait by Enio Hernandez

interview by Lara Monro
self-portraits by Heather Agyepong