The Queer World of Relationships: In Conversation with Francesco Esposito


Francesco Esposito self-portrait, 2023, Courtesy of the artist.

By Irene Bernardi

The photos taken by Francesco Esposito tell more than meets the eye. They are visual poems that narrate what new generations are experiencing in an increasingly complex world. Through the lens, the Italian artist tells the delicate relational entanglements of a polyamorous couple that he follows step by step in their personal growth. 

Born in Naples in 1997, Francesco Esposito moved to Bologna where he started his artistic career. He attended the Academy of Fine Arts in Bologna and received his BA in Graphic Arts and MA in Photography. Esposito’s works have been exhibited in major art events such as Open Tour and Art City promoted by the Academy of Fine Arts of Bologna, IBRIDA Festival of Multimedia Arts, and BASE Milano.

Irene Bernardi: In your early work, you expressed yourself through graphic signs and engraving, then later you switched to photography, using a completely different medium. Did you ever find a meeting point between the two?

Francesco Esposito: Absolutely. I have been taking photographs since childhood. Later, I started combining these two disciplines and making photogravures. My approach to etching was born from the desire to learn about a new medium of expression and the extreme similarity between these two techniques. Both mediums involve the use of external agents to create an image. In the case of etching, the agent is acid that etches the material, while in photography it is light that impresses a photosensitive surface.

IB: The themes you deal with in your photographs are relevant to today’s society, which tends to suffocate us more and more and homogenize us as a function of productivity: we need to be perfect and neither feel nor demonstrate our emotions. What drives you to confront these major issues characteristic of Generation Z?

FE: Being born between two generations has exposed me to changing ideals and perspectives on life. This [has] had a significant impact on my perception of the world and my artistic expression. Becoming aware of the major issues that have come up in our society at the level of mental health and sexuality, I decided to make them central themes in my poetry. I am talking and taking pictures about these issues to contribute more information and awareness for part of the public.

Understanding and acceptance of sexuality can have a direct impact on people’s mental health, while mental health can influence self-perception and one’s relationship with sexuality.

Worry, 2022, Courtesy of the artist.

IB: Looking at your portfolio, I was very impressed by the Worry series where you discuss when anxiety becomes pathological and the sufferer dissociates from reality, losing control of it.
What technique did you use to make these shots? How did you conclude that it was the best method to render that feeling of loss and dissociation?

FE: When I decided to start this project, I was going through a period in my life fully involved with this theme.
The choice of this technique came from the idea of “glow,” something that blinds you, distances you, and alienates you from reality. I wanted to reproduce these “glows” by using flash on smooth, reflective surfaces; however, the result did not satisfy me. However, I continued to think about the idea of reflection, something that we cannot eliminate, something that often attracts and obsesses us.

The solution came when I visited an Anish Kapoor exhibition in Venice: the Indian artist used distorting mirrors, which made me realize that the distortion effect could best represent my state of mind. So, I began taking photographs of my everyday life using the bottom of a bottle as a distorting filter.

Installation view, QueerPandèmia. Artistic contaminations of other kinds, 2023, Base Milano, Courtesy of Riccardo Ferranti

IB: Your latest project, People’s House, has been selected to be part of QueerPandèmia. Artistic contaminations of other kinds, an exhibition hosted at Base Milano as part of Milano Pride in July 2023. This show by ULTRAQUEER, a project of TWM Factory, aims to give space, voice, and representation back to the Queer community, centering the discourse on how it is perceived by the outside world. Reflections take place on queer identity and its relationships, going through tools, struggles, and new practices with which to invade spaces and gain a place in the world.

The People’s House series includes very complex and delicate shots that run through the lives and relationships of Enea and Luna, a polyamorous couple living in Bologna. How did this collaboration come about?

FE: After becoming interested in the topic of polyamory, having never had this kind of relational experience, I realized that I could only know more about this topic by getting to know people living in that kind of relationship. Conversing with some friends, I met Luna and Enea who gave me the possibility to collaborate with them, making me [closer to] this world.

IB: Photographs of their daily lives are accompanied by shots of natural elements that dialogue with forms and compositions that the bodies create. Flowers, stems, shoots, but also water and light, reflect the relationship of mutual love and trust that polyamory creates, as in the relationships between plants and natural elements.

Nature is wonderfully homosexual, non-monogamous and queer, which is the basis of Queer Ecology(1) theories. This scientific theory aims to unite queer theories and ecology to shift paradigms from binary, rigid, and heteronormative ways of understanding nature toward interdependence and fluidity. How does this theory relate to your shots?

People’s House, 2022, Courtesy of the artist.


 FE: These shots representing nature, aim at an analogy with polyamorous relationships. They don’t have a scientific basis, they are only metaphors for this. Often, we are wrongly pointed out to how the queer, polyamorous world is “against nature.” I tried to metaphorically counter this word with these shots.

People’s House, 2022, Courtesy of the artist.

“Today, polyamory is often misunderstood as strictly sexual behaviour or an open relationship. In reality, this kind of relationship implies much more: it implies bonding, involvement, freedom, and shared growth with multiple individuals, just as it happens spontaneously in nature.”

IB: I think this quote from your project is very important for today’s society to revisit the concept of a “natural relationship” by stepping out of heteronormative dynamics—the queerness of nature has long been ignored, suppressed, and dismissed to reflect society’s underlying prejudice against non-heterosexual and non-cisgender identities.

What reflections arise from this project of yours and your personal experiences?

FE: People’s House is not exclusively about polyamory, but also about freedom and spontaneity. Realizing this project, meeting people, and talking to the people who were part of it, I realized how there is no difference between a polyamorous relationship and a monogamous one. It is often considered a happy little bubble, but what makes it true and equal to monogamy are precisely the same issues that are faced.

Spending time with people who collaborated on the project, I also decided not to focus on the sexual and carnal dimension of this type of relationship more than necessary, but more on their sentimental reality, on the understanding that is normally created in any type of polyamorous or non- polyamorous relationship. This is precisely to depart the idea of polyamory from the concept of an “open” or exclusively sexual relationship, something which it is often confused with.

People’s House, 2022, Courtesy of the artist.

IB: Your photographs give a very strong and pleasing intimacy and delicacy. Is there a shot (or more than one) that is particularly meaningful to you?

FE: It’s hard to find one shot that I consider more meaningful than the others, precisely because from a personal point of view, each shot tells the story of the path that I took with the people I portrayed. Therefore, they all have great meaning for me, even the discarded images.

If I had to choose the most emblematic ones, I think they would be the one depicting hands crossing and the one in which two guys lying in bed, naked and conversing with each other. The first is because I think it is also the one that best summarizes the entire work, the second shot chosen I find is perfect for explaining how much intimacy and freedom there is between each individual member in that relational situation.

IB: As the last question, can you share some visual and non-visual artists who have accompanied you in your personal artistic process?

FE:In this last period I was very inspired by the shots of photographer Ute Klein (2).She is young but with her photography she creates bonds between people by intertwining their anonymous, unidentifiable bodies.
These bodies have souls, feelings and just like the bodies of Enea, Luna and their partners: intertwining they tell us the beauty and fragility not only of their story but of the stories of all.

You can find more of Francesco Esposito’s work on his Instagram @serafjno. You can find out more about Base Milano on their website and Instagram. Check out Ultraqueer on their website and Instagram.

You can find the QUEER PANDÈMIA book here.

1 Ingrid Bååth, Queer Ecology, Explained, https://www.climateculture.earth/

2 Ute Klein, https://cargocollective.com/uteklein


Part One: Ash Barbu and Natalie Bruvels in Conversation

Maximalism and the Postmaternal

Cat Attack Collective, Walk in the Park, 2023, Ottawa City Hall Art Gallery. Image: David Barbour.

In this two-part dialogue, spanning contemporary feminist theory to modernist art criticism, independent curator Ash Barbu and interdisciplinary artist Natalie Bruvels reflect on the relationship between maternal caregiving and collaborative authorship. Specifically, they discuss the recent exhibition Walk in the Park (2023) created by Cat Attack Collective, an artist duo consisting of Bruvels and her 11-year-old son Tomson. Walk in the Park transforms the white cube Ottawa City Hall Art Gallery into an expansive environment that blurs the line between the surreal and the everyday. Building from the prior exhibition Abound (2022), presented at the Ottawa Art Gallery, the installation incorporates co-created paintings and sculptures of recycled, accessible materials that intersect and overspill. In the exchanges that follow, through considerations of accumulation, refiguration, and immersion, Barbu and Bruvels propose readings of ethics and aesthetics that foreground the inherited context of the work of art.

Ash Barbu: I often think about research as a parallel life process in which we grant ourselves the freedom to move beyond the limits of the merely possible. Having recently completed the first year of your doctoral studies, how does your academic work reflect your experience as a mother?

Natalie Bruvels: I’m drawn to the concept of the postmaternal, coined and developed by theorist Julie Stephens. This term offers a useful framework to address how caregiving, maternal subjectivities, and maternal epistemologies are erased in university spaces. It is also a framework that allows us to examine how the catastrophic effects of this erasure are objectified in visual culture. During this period of research as a PhD student, I have immersed myself in different concerns about maternal theory. The layered experiences of mothers are incredibly diverse and need to be taught. And they need to be taught in a feminist way. After all, caregiving is a component of reproductive justice. For the time being, I’m exploring questions of pedagogy rooted in a post-structuralist analysis of words that don’t yet exist—words that we need to make sense of our experiences. In the previous year, completing my MA during the pandemic, I don’t think I saw anyone. Researching and homeschooling was difficult. But I had the opportunity to take Andrea O’Reilly’s maternal theory course at York University, which saved my sanity. To be clear, it saved my life as a researcher. It was the first time I saw someone get up in front of a class and unapologetically create space for this discussion.

AB: In academia, sometimes we wander into what feels like an empty landscape. It can be intimidating to create space for yourself lacking the comforts of disciplinary foundations. At the same time, it is a sign there is more to be done there. What we need is more, not less disruption. How do these theoretical interventions on the postmaternal figure in your artistic practice?

NB: A few years prior, during my time in the MFA program, I began thinking about caregiving through alternative forms of collaboration. I always liked the idea of Tomson and I coming to the Visual Arts Building on weekends. As a parent, you try to give your child experiences that will stay with them. I decided we should go ahead and create something new. It was a learning experience, as I had to rethink the meanings we traditionally assign to authorship.

To begin, I assumed that the work would be prescriptive—that we would follow my idea. I quickly realized, though, that I couldn’t be in control. Yes, I’m responsible for this individual’s safety and well-being. But he is going to do exactly what he wants to do, for as long as he wants to do it. What I want to say, though, is that the work is freeing. Completing an MFA, you’re often probed and expected to have the answers. To say that I can’t anticipate where this work will lead in the future might seem like a deficit. Yet it is the only truthful answer. Right now, I’m taking the studio back into our home. We aren’t collaborating much as I try to put the space back in order.

Cat Attack Collective, Walk in the Park, 2023, Ottawa City Hall Art Gallery. Image: David Barbour.

AB: What about the feedback this work has received? A mother and child working together in the spirit of spontaneous production—this is far from conventional artistic research methodology. I sense you have faced gatekeeping regarding the so-called sanctity of art, both institutionally and interpersonally.

NB: There is the question of artistic merit. I have heard people say: “Why should I be looking at this?” While others might bring up the topic of exploitation, which enrages me and sometimes makes me cry. If there is anyone in the room who genuinely cares about this child, if there is anyone who will suffer the consequences of a lack of love, it is me. And if you’re not feeling protected, if you’re overworked, if you’re exhausted, if it is the wrong time in your menstrual cycle—all these things can add up to the point where you lose your equilibrium. Let’s say it can make it hurt more. In another context, I face gatekeeping from simply saying the word “mom” in an academic setting. There is also gatekeeping concerning the acceptable structure of the nuclear heteronormative family. Further, I have seen critics borrow from emancipatory feminist discourses in ways that deviate from their original intent. In the end, we are speaking about a single mother living below the poverty line, trying to raise her kid during a pandemic with no help. Having this conversation today, I feel the need to foreground that sense of judgment.

AB: I have spent a considerable amount of time thinking about Cat Attack Collective’s exhibition Walk in the Park at the Ottawa City Hall Art Gallery. From this collaborative, immersive installation, I see two subjects in dialogue, learning and unlearning from one another through artistic experimentation. I can’t help but think that the question of exploitation acts as a form of silencing.

NB: It serves to erase maternal subjectivities from the public forum of art spectatorship. As an MFA student, I immediately knew that the limitations brought on by COVID would interfere with my ability to complete the coursework and develop my studio practice. So, whenever the question of ethics is raised, I wonder why we refuse to consider the opposite point of view? How is this mother going to make new work? She must simultaneously provide care and find an activity that is engaging for her child. Therefore, they are now a collective. If that collective doesn’t exist, she is not making art—that studio practice is erased. What does it mean that we are ignoring this inherited social context of artistic production?

Cat Attack Collective, SS Same Boat, 2022, Ottawa Art Gallery. Image: Justin Wonacott.

AB: Walk in the Park troubles neutral, apolitical readings of maternal caregiving. Through a variety of display strategies, you directly engage the context of your arrival to the gallery space as a mother. To this extent, the exhibition is concerned with means as opposed to ends.

NB: Prior to this exhibition, in 2022 we created an ambitious mixed media work for the final MFA exhibition at the Ottawa Art Gallery titled Abound. In the middle of the gallery sat a towering floor-to-ceiling boat wrapped, draped, and tied in colourful reusable plastics. We called it SS Same Boat. Completing the degree, everyone kept telling me: “Oh, Natalie, you’re fine—we’re all in the same boat.” I often use titles to play against the aesthetic. They allow me to express the inner workings of my discontent, particularly in an acerbic, humorous way. For our current exhibition at the Ottawa City Hall Art Gallery, we wanted to reuse the materials from SS Same Boat. Tomson said he wanted to make trees—it wasn’t a long brainstorming session. The title Walk in the Park is beautifully straightforward and utterly facetious. And I would like both things to remain true. One does not erase the other. Instead, the premise and the critique are always already held in tension. Representing the complex relationship between a mother and child through an accumulation of art objects—it is a fantastic puzzle.

Today, many mothers are making challenging feminist work about the maternal—we don’t hear about it. 

AB: How might we situate this complexity, art historically speaking?

NB: In Western art history, these interactions have been romanticized by individuals who are not mothers. One concern is the curatorial siloing that occurs. We have been led to back into the corner and be a niche. To call motherhood a niche—this itself is an important piece of evidence that demonstrates how we have internalized such restrictive ideals. Today, many mothers are making challenging feminist work about the maternal—we don’t hear about it. I’m not even sure that we have the eyes for it. I include myself in this category. This observation is partly based on philosopher Julia Kristeva’s essay Stabat Mater (1977). She uses psychoanalytic theory to describe what happens when we look at the artistic motif of the “Madonna and Child,” or any idealized representation of motherhood. For Kristeva, it hardly matters if the viewer is a mother or not—they will identify with the image of the child. And this identification with the child involves a primary narcissism. It is that transportation to a place where I’m nourished, where my needs are met, where I receive care before I had a care in the world. Looking at the “Madonna and Child” is like taking an aesthetic drug. Therefore, when we encounter something like a feminist rendering of the maternal, there is room for profound disappointment, affectively or psychologically. With Walk in the Park, the viewer happens upon a scene that seems ultimately unfulfilling. It is an unsettling landscape of entangled contexts. Here, something rendered historically invisible contends with the problem of what it means to be seen.

You can read Part two of Barbu and Bruvels’ discussion here.

—

Ash Barbu is a writer, curator, and researcher who holds an M.A. in Art History from the University of Toronto. A recipient of the Middlebrook Prize for Young Canadian Curators, they have produced numerous group exhibitions foregrounding the limits of reparative visibility, including Words Unsaid: Autobiography and Knowing at the University of Ottawa’s Department of Visual Arts (2023). Their recent writings have appeared in publications such as OnCurating, Peripheral Review, and Esse art + opinions. Barbu lectures on queer theory and trans studies locally, nationally, and internationally.

Cat Attack Collective consists of Natalie Bruvels and her son Tomson. They are a multidisciplinary collective working primarily in painting and large-scale installations. Established in 2020, Cat Attack Collective has exhibited at the University of Ottawa, Art Mûr, the Ottawa Art Gallery, and along the Greenboro Pathway as part of Microcosm, the City of Ottawa Public Art Program’s COVID-19 pilot initiative.

Natalie Bruvels holds a Master of Fine Arts and a Master of Arts in Contemporary Art Theory, both from the University of Ottawa. She is currently enrolled in the Feminist and Gender Studies PhD program at the University of Ottawa. Bruvels is researching maternal subjectivity in art and visual culture, while advocating for caregiving supports in a university setting. Bruvels has presented the work of Cat Attack Collective at various academic conferences, including the Museum of Motherhood in St. Petersburg, Florida. She has subsequently published writing in The Journal of Mother Studies.

Tomson is in grade six and is happy to be back at school in person to spend more time with his friends. He loves dodgeball and has a special affinity for zip-ties as an artistic material. He is the youngest artist to have his work exhibited at the Ottawa Art Gallery.  

“The Professor’s Desk” by Zinnia Naqvi: Mayworks Festival

Zinnia Naqvi. Before the Settlement – Professor Chun’s Desk, Inkjet Print, 2023.

Interview by Aysia Tse

“The Professor’s Desk” series by lens-based artist and educator Zinnia Naqvi features archival materials from four specific cases of racial discrimination in or about Canadian universities. Naqvi uses her own student/professor’s desk to frame these cases of systemic racism and considers the impact and legacies of each case, reflecting on the ongoing struggle for racial equity and justice in academic institutions.

As a selected artist for the 2022 Mayworks Labour Arts Catalyst, Zinnia Naqvi worked with the Asian Canadian Labor Alliance (ACLA) with support from OPIRG Toronto to create the photo-based series “The Professor’s Desk.” The series was co-presented with CONTACT Photography Festival at the Whippersnapper Gallery from May 4-31st for the 2023 Mayworks Festival of Working People and the Arts. Mayworks’ Labour Arts Catalyst is a program that helps to facilitate the collaboration between local labour organizations and artists. As Naqvi describes, her creative and research processes for this project came together organically. After connecting with the two ACLA chapters based in B.C. and Ontario, Naqvi accessed an online archive of digitized materials from ACLA’s 20 years of activism which was her jumping-off point for her research.

I spoke in depth with Naqvi about her process, creative and political considerations for each of the six images in the series, and what she has learned from research into Professor Kin-Yip Chun’s case.

Aysia Tse: Can you discuss your deeply collaborative and multi-focus research process for this series?

Zinnia Naqvi: ACLA hired filmmaker Lokchi Lam to make a video for their 20th anniversary. Lokchi spoke to members and gathered many materials from past events they supported and organized them into five Google Drive folders. One of the folders they made was about instances of anti-Asian racism on Canadian campuses was called “White Fear on Campus.” Lokchi Lam put three events together; Professor Chun’s case, Maclean’s Magazine “Too Asian” article from 2010, and the W5 CTV News segment from 1979, which is what I [made] the project about.

Professor Chun was exploited and wrongfully denied a tenure track position four times at the University of Toronto in a span of 10 years. In 1998, Professor Chun launched a complaint with the Ontario Human Rights Commission for unjust dismissal. His case soon attracted national and international attention.

On the panel, Chris Ramsaroop was one of the founding members of ACLA Ontario, and a student at the time of Professor Chun’s case. He was very actively involved in supporting Professor Chun’s case and there were a lot of student organizers, so he was able to give me insight on the significance of the case from a student perspective. I teach part-time at the University of Toronto and was able to access historical newspaper databases by having institutional access. I found all the Toronto Star articles written about his case specifically and visited their picture collection at the reference library to access images. It was through my own digging that I then found out about OPIRG and the Dr. Chun Resource Library of feminist and critical race theory. Professor Chun donated funds to support the library during his case and it was later renamed after him.

Zinnia Naqvi. After the Settlement – Professor Chun’s Desk, Inkjet Print, 2023. Courtesy of the artist.

Aysia T: It’s great to hear how bits and pieces of the research came through. OPIRG sounds like a cool grassroots organization whose work relates to what you’re doing. So that was a great collaboration opportunity.

Zinnia Naqvi: Yes, I reached out to them while I was making the project and they generously agreed to support the panel and partner with Mayworks. As a result, we [could] fly Professor Chun to Toronto for the panel. It was interesting looking at this case 20 years after it happened because it isn’t part of the collective memory of the current students.

When I came across this research that Lokchi did, what stuck out to me about Professor Chun’s case was that someone was able to speak out against such a big institution as the University of Toronto and take them to court for racial discrimination. As someone who teaches sessionally in universities and has recently been a student, I have dealt with instances of racism or prejudice in the institutional space. However, to prove that in a court of law and in front of the Ontario Human Rights Commission is significant. There’s a report called the Chun Report that’s a very comprehensive study of the case and all the events that unfolded. It illustrated how toxic the environment was and how blatant the racism was that he faced. I realized that it got to a point in which he had no choice but to take legal action from the school because his treatment was damaging his life and career.

After he reached an initial settlement, he received significantly more discrimination or hostility from other people in the department. Journalists like Margaret Wente wrote very damaging articles in the Globe and Mail, saying that Professor Chun was just trying to get attention. Still today, Professor Chun takes care to not call the University of Toronto racist or any specific person racist, but rather he was talking about systemic racism at a time in which people were not used to hearing that term. That’s another reason why his case felt so significant because it started to change the discourse and language around these issues.

In the Chun report, there is an account stating that at one point Professor Chun was put in an office that had sewage, cockroaches, and mice in it. That’s when the report started to paint a visual picture for me. I started to imagine how experiencing that might look or feel. So that’s the approach I decided to take with this project, to frame it within the space of the office. I’m placing myself in his shoes in a way, but it’s a flex space that’s my imagination of what his desk would be like.

Zinnia Naqvi.What’s Behind the Diversity Numbers?, Inkjet Print, 2023. Courtesy of the artist.

Aysia T: Your desk compositions feature small details including those cockroaches that allude to these important aspects of Professor Chun’s case. What are some of the symbolic considerations you had when curating these pieces? Can you walk me through your thinking about the details you included?

Zinnia Naqvi: With “Before the Settlement,” I wanted it to be this space that’s in between balancing his career as a seismologist, who studies earthquakes and teaches physics. He talked about the personal significance of what this case caused him. He is also a father and there’s a family photo on the desk. He’s an incredible scientist – he received a lot of national funding for his extraordinary research. A lot of that got sidestepped because of the case and the toll that the case took on his life and his career.

The second image is called “After the Settlement.” That’s when I’m imagining the case taking over even more of his life. Things start to get messy and unravel even further.

Then there are also the other images that address different instances from ACLA’s archive. With the images of the controversial 2010 Maclean magazine “Too Asian,” I wanted to show the article and then there was also a book that I have placed on top of it, which was made directly in the aftermath of the article in which many scholars address Anti-Asian racism in universities.

The other image shows the cover of the same Maclean’s magazine, and it was interesting to me to see this image of two students with the Chinese flag that was taken, from what I understand, without their permission. However, the cover image of the magazine is of this very happy-go-lucky white student and the contrast of that was interesting to me.

It also started to make me think about diversity images and when images of diverse people are used for profit. Those images are used to attract students to apply to schools, but then a lot of people who are working or studying within those spaces are not actually supported. This also relates to the other image of the posters; those are current posters that I took from both University of Toronto and Toronto Metropolitan University where I work. It was interesting that I would see a lot of the same posters in both schools. There are a lot of posters about mental health studies, tutoring, and scholarships. It just shows the precarious financial situations of students, especially international students who are brought to these schools and don’t have citizenship status and are not able to work or are limited to how much they can work.

The last image I made is about the W5 CTV News segment from 1979. CTV aired a special that was [essentially] saying that international students were taking the place of Canadian students, especially in medicine and dentistry programs. Then there was a rebuttal by the Chinese Canadian Council, saying how that was factually incorrect and very racist, and there were a lot of protests about that. I have included excerpts from that news segment, articles about the protests, and then again, my school materials and other props to situate these issues in physical space. With these three cases from the past, it was significant to see how the rhetoric was so similar from 1979 to 2010 and continues today.

Zinnia Naqvi. What’s Behind the Diversity Numbers?, Inkjet Print, 2023. Courtesy of the artist.

Aysia T: As a part of the Mayworks Festival programming, you had a public talk with Migrant rights organizer Chris Ramsaroop, moderator Furqan Mohamed and of course Professor Chun about his story and wider conversations about Indigenous, Black, and racialized workers in academic institutions. Can you share more about this discussion or any highlights that came out of that conversation?

Zinnia Naqvi: All the materials I took about Professor Chun’s case were from public archives. But it also felt like at the end of when I read his report, I wasn’t sure where he lived or if he would be interested in the project, but it felt important to me to reach out to him. He originally had said that he would like to be part of a Zoom panel and then later, he said he wanted to come in person. This was significant because it has been 20 years since his case closed and he hadn’t spoken publicly about it for a long time.

What I was interested in with research on Professor Chun’s case is that I wanted to pay homage to his struggle because now, especially in the arts, we’re seeing the flip side of what he had to go through. We’re seeing now that institutions are aware of their lack of diversity and are trying to rectify that by holding targeted BIPOC hires. We’re aware that there’s a problem that’s trying to be resolved. There are still a lot of flaws in that process too as it can be tokenizing. A lot of times people are again invited into the institution, but they’re not supported once they’re there.

But we are at least in a moment where people are openly recognizing that there’s a problem and I do think, we [must] thank people like Professor Chun for making that part of the discourse. He sacrificed a lot to shift the public conscience and I wanted to pay homage to him in this project. Now that we’re in a different moment that still needs a lot of work, but we are trying to make change. We discussed that he wasn’t the only person who had public legal battles with universities in Canada. Many other racialized scholars are still in legal disputes with schools for not being supported or for speaking out against discrimination.

…You’re expected to keep your head down and be grateful that you’ve been given any place at all, even if it’s a precarious one.

Aysia T: I imagine you’ve been thinking about your own role or your own experiences within the institution and with your students. How has that informed your thinking about this project?

Zinnia Naqvi: I was thinking a lot about my own experience, but also about my students. Although I was and am a minority student and faculty, especially in the arts programs that I was in, I was also born here, and I wasn’t an international student. That was one thing I wanted to also be aware of as I was making the work.

We don’t always think of professors as workers because there’s a certain prestige that comes with the academy. That was another thing that stood out about this case. To me it felt like Professor Chun did everything right, he went to these Ivy League schools, and he did everything that you’re supposed to do on paper. Yet you’re expected to keep your head down and be grateful that you’ve been given any place at all, even if it’s a precarious one.

I was thinking about the way that my students, especially the ones who are international students, manage work, worry about grades, and all the pressure that the school puts on them. I’ve had a lot of support from the institutions that I’ve worked at but again, I feel that has come at the expense of others who have come before me.

Aysia T: I think some people dislike when people ask, “What do you dream of?” or “What would be an ideal change?” but I’ve learned to ask it anyway because it’s important. Do you see this work as a call to action for better support for BIPOC artists, students, workers, and staff within academic spaces? What do you hope to see in the future regarding these topics?

Zinnia Naqvi: I’m teaching a digital photography class at U of T right now, and I brought my students to the [Professor’s Desk] exhibition on the first day. It’s funny because it’s a photography class, and I’m making this very political work.

It’s always an awkward space because sometimes as professors, we don’t want to push our own work or our own research too hard. But I would hope that showing this work makes students feel like they can talk about these issues within the space of the school. It’s interesting with Chris Ramsaroop and some of the other student organizers who helped Professor Chun’s case, many of them are working in universities now.

I’m not sure if students today would do a one-week sit-in at the president’s office where they slept there for a week in support of Professor Chun. I just don’t think that we protest in the same way as they did in the nineties. But I think it just shows the impact that students have in these cases. I’m not sure if young people feel like they can make that change [through the idea of collective action]. I think this can be an example that they can. It takes a lot of resources and a lot of confidence to be able to do it. I think it’s also amazing and important to remember. They were able to create collective action and Professor Chun really got the most support from his students. I think talking about these issues and feeling like we can also be peers with our students is important.

You can view all of the images from “The Professor’s Desk” series online on the Mayworks Festival website and read more about OPIRG Toronto’s work on their website.

You can find out more about Professor Chun’s case through the Chun Inquiry.

Check out more of Zinnia Naqvi’s work on her website.

From Women to Everyone: In Conversation with Mulieris Magazine

Muleiris team. From left to right, Greta Langlianni, Chiara Cognigni and Sara Lorusso. Photo by Arianna Angelini.

Interview by Irene Bernardi

Mulieris Magazine was born in 2019 in Italy as an online platform. Greta Langianni and Sara Lorusso, the founder and co-founder, with the collaboration of Chiara Cognigni as graphic designer & Art Director, wanted to create a space for women and non-binary artists who usually find themselves on the margins of the art scene. Mulieris is a Latin word that means ‘of woman’: the magazine started online and has a printed issue in which the team asks women and non-binary artists to work on a specific theme.

This year Mulieris celebrates its fifth birthday—In addition to the print magazine with the fifth open call that has just ended, the opening of Mulieris Studio marked another big step for the community.

Irene Bernardi: I want to start at the beginning: I remember your first print issue Shapes. After all this work and success, what would you like to tell yourself about the past looking back now?

Sara Lorusso: After all the hard work of these years, I would try to motivate us! The project managed to grow and become more important and concrete; for all the times we thought of giving up or did not know where to start, I would like to tell ourselves that with calmness, perseverance, and determination, we came out much more mature and enriched.

Mulieris Magazine. Photo by Sara Lorusso.

How important is having an online platform and a print issue? What strengths and weaknesses have you found in using these two different media?

SL: The online platform made it possible to attract a part of the public that would never have bought a printed magazine. The audience of a print magazine is very specific, and we have always thought that Mulieris is purchased first for the topics and then for the design. In the end, we created two different communities and now they coexist together.

Talking about connection is very important for us, especially since today’s society wants us to be more individualistic: creating connections with others is the last chance to save us.

The Degrees Between Us is the name of the publications’s latest issue about the power of connections, and how far we are from each other. Every person on the planet can be connected to every other person through a five-degree chain: many times, I wonder how healthy these connections are and how important they are for everyday life. How important do you think it is to talk about connections in today’s society?

SL: Talking about connection is very important for us, especially since today’s society wants us to be more individualistic: creating connections with others is the last chance to save us. Mulieris for us was just that, in fact, this issue is about us. We were completely lost at the end of university, it seemed impossible for us to enter the creative world and so we tried to create a space for ourselves and for all creative women who were trying to make their work visible.

Installation view of the exhibition DREAMTIGERS.The Rooom 2023. Photo by Alexa Sganzeria

On the occasion of ArtCity 2023 in Bologna, Mulieris opened the exhibition DREAMTIGERS curated by Laura Rositani in collaboration with the concept studio The Rooom. Six international female artists, Lula Broglio, Alejandra Hernández, Joanne Leah, Sara Lorusso, Sara Scanderebech, Ayomide Tejuoso (Plantation), and The Mosshelter by Marco Cesari, lead the visitors in a sort of “dream world” where plants, humans, and animals mutate and dance together in the secret gardens of unconscious. What do you want to tell with this exhibition?

SL: The works in the exhibition are choreographies of bodies with blurred faces and are stills of animalistic details. They are the tigers mentioned by Jorge Luis Borges in his book Dreamtigers[1], those animals so admired in childhood and only to be encountered in dreams. Dreamtigers is talking about us, we are “tigers” to know. I quote an excerpt from the critical text written by exhibition curator Laura Rositani:

“The works create a succession of visions that immerse us in a fusion of animal, plant, and human worlds. They are a network of cracks to rejoin a sphere of memories. They are ever-changing, vegetal extensions, they are curtains ready to open. Through photography and painting, they look like snapshots of a past event that does not want to give up. They are dreams from which we no longer want to wake up. The surfaces of the works acquire volume and tactility, becoming unreachable to our senses.”

I have a question for Laura Rositani, the curator of DREAMTIGERS. I visited the exhibition twice and it reminds me of some passages from the book The Promises of Monsters by Donna Haraway, a book that is undoubtedly complex, but reasons about the relationship between human and nature. Haraway cites Spivak[2] and explains how nature is “one of those impossible objects that we cannot desire, that we cannot do without and that we cannot in any way possess”[3]: once we wake up from the ‘“dreamtigers” where everything coexists and mutates together, what awaits us in the real world?

Laura Rositani: I’m very interested in your association between the exhibition, this publication, and with Donna Haraway’s studies in general. “Dreamtigers” was meant to be a safe space, unreal at times and suspended in space and time. The nature portrayed is a changing nature, a hybrid one.

The awakening, the return to the real world is probably very disappointing. In reference to what you were quoting: we cannot be without nature, but neither can we possess it. Nature is not an essence, a treasure, a resource, a womb, a tabula rasa. Nature cannot be grasped in its totality, nor can its boundaries be established. Let’s consider what it is currently happening in Italy with continuous climate emergencies.

Perhaps the only way is precisely what Haraway points us to: to think of ourselves as virtual, that is, able to do things together.

Orchid Flowers. Artwork by Sara Lorusso.Installation view of the exhibition DREAMTIGERS.The Rooom 2023. Courtesy of Alexa Sganzeria and the artist.

In DREAMTIGERS, a few of your photos are also included in your first photo book As a Flower published by Witty Books. Specifically, the picture of the orchid, a beautiful flower that is usually fragile. In the image, the flower definitely refers to a vulva, but with an almost punk and rebellious hint, with these piercings hanging from the petals. Could the main picture represent the mission of Mulieris and the studio?

SL: I usually say that this photograph is a self-portrait of me in 2017 when I took it. When I took that photo, I did not yet know that I suffered from chronic pelvic pain and I had not yet come out as a queer person; this made me smile a lot because I knew practically nothing about myself but now, looking back at that photograph, things appear clear and simple to me. I like to find new significance to my photographs and associating this picture in particular with Mulieris and our mission as a project could be very powerful.

The last question is about the future of Mulieris: do you have any new projects on the horizon?

SL: There are many projects planned, the most imminent of which is the release of the new issue and the Launch Party on 23th of June in Milan. We are also organizing a new exhibition in collaboration with an art gallery in 2024!


You can find more about Mulieris Magazine and Studio Mulieris on their website and you can pre-order the new issue on Frabs Magazines.

View more of Sara Lorusso’s work on her website and Instagram, and her book As a Flower.

[1] Borges L. Jorge, Dreamtigers, translation by Mildred Boyer and Harold Morland, illustrated by Antonio Frasconi, Texas Pan American Series, 1964.

[2] Theory by Gayatri Spivak, american philosopher of Bengali origin. Active in the fields of postcolonialism, feminism, literary theory and gender studies.

[3] Haraway D., The promise of monsters: a Regenerative Politics for Inappropriate/d Others, Routledge, 1992, pg 37.

Soft Bodies: Marianne Burlew and Brianna Gluszak

Marianne Burlew and Brianna Gluszak. Soft Bodies installation Shot. Wall Space Gallery. Photo credit: Ava Margueritte.

By Moira Hayes

Vulnerability of the self is created in how we choose to take up space. How do we present ourselves to others? What choices are we making to allow space for others? And more presently, what space are we holding for ourselves?

Soft Bodies was exhibited from March 11th through to April 4th at Wall Space Gallery in Ottawa. Marianne Burlew and Brianna Gluszak were paired together by the gallery’s curator, Tiffany April, to deliver an exhibition hinged on the idea of vulnerability.

Burlew is based in Ottawa. She draws from a background of video and sculpture to create her current work; emotionally driven pieces in a 3D modelling software. While her work is direct, the colourful imagery offers multiple interpretations for the viewer; striking questions about seriousness versus sarcasm. Burlew received her MFA from the University of Waterloo.

Gluszak is Ohio-based. They work in sculpture to create glasswork and textile rug hooking, addressing ideas of gender and body. Gluszak draws inspiration from cartoons and how viewing one another can become gendered. The varying scale of their work between the textile pieces and the glass work impose different connotations for the viewer. Gluszak has an MFA from The Ohio State University.

Marianne Burlew, Folly, Ed: 1/100, archival print on Hot Press paper, 16 x 20 in. Framed by Wall Space.

Marianne, you work with digital 3D modelling software, and working digitally makes things accessible. The feelings you point at in your work, patheticness or being a fool, are universal emotions. Can you speak to using digital software to express human emotions?

MB: My background is in sculpture and video. One of the biggest obstacles I was having was getting my work into a space due to budget, facilities, distance, and accessibility. In my current job at an engineering company, I weaseled my way into learning this modelling software.

I just fell in love with the software, and I saw it as an opportunity to make things that could reach a lot more people. You can make a print, put it on a screen, or put it on social media or different places a lot more easily.

I do feel hesitant in some ways to share work online publicly, just because it is easy to have your work taken. I’d love to have it on screens and more readily available on social media if I had a little bit more protection in that area.

I’ve also fallen in love with the print aspect of it. When it gets printed, there’s another transformation that’s amazing for me. That bright, vibrant, densely saturated paper with the colour, and how different parts of the work will be flat, and others will be three-dimensional is interesting to me.

Brianna Gluszak, Please don’t forget me, Blown glass, 19.5 x 12 x 7.5 in.

Brianna, can you explain the process of composing the positions of your glass pieces? They kind of look like people playing Twister.

BG: I love that read. First off, I think one thing I do with the glass works, in particular, is that I’ll make a bunch of them. I don’t know which ones are going to go with which ones. So, it ends up being a process of almost creating a library of glass objects. I’ll have a period of making in the studio where I’ll be doing drawings, and then I’ll be going into the glass shop trying to make that original drawn form.

But the glass is like, “No, I don’t wanna be that form.” I’ll go back to drawing, I’ll draw the form it did become, and through that translation, we’ll build up a variety of different shapes and colours and textures and objects. And then I play with them in my studio, and I just see which ones fit together and which ones I like together.

And maybe I’m too much of an object oncologist where I’m like, okay, so this one wants to be with this one today, and this one wants to be with that one. They’ve sort of become personified in a lot of ways for me. I do see them as being a representation of gender and body.

Marianne Burlew, Pathetic, archival print on Hot Press paper, 28 3/4 x 36 in, framed by Wall Space Gallery.

Marianne, you face the unavoidable, uncanny imagery of worship in your pieces. But you derail that with a practiced absurdity. Can you discuss the process of choosing the keywords in your pieces?

MB: You’re right about worship. My family is Christian, but I didn’t grow up going to church. I’ve never read the Bible.

There’s a lot of Western influence in what I make and so I just try to play with it. I’m not necessarily trying to cite any kind of religion, but for this series, I was very interested in shrines or putting together devotional pieces where it’s almost more of a spiritual devotion where the piece sits as an architectural niche.

Sometimes there are other objects. Sometimes it’s just the glass itself creating these moments where you can sit with these things and meditate on them. 

And for me, the word [aspect] of it seems essential. And choosing is hard to describe. It’s trying to capture things that are succinct and hard-hitting but don’t lean completely in one direction.

When I was making “pathetic,” I felt like it was harsh and I [thought] this might be too mean to just put pathetic in a window like that. You’re going to reflect that criticism of yourself. I feel like the colours were so nice then making it like that’s the twist, taking something so devastating and then trying to make it beautiful and fun.

I am interested in active looking and when a look becomes ingrained in gender.

Brianna Gluszak, I kissed a girl and I liked it…, tufted rug, 52 x 26 1/2 x 1/2 in. 

Brianna, your rug work possesses an unavoidable gaze disguised as fun and playful. The sheer size of the work denotes power over the viewer, especially up close. Are you proposing a struggle between the work and the viewer? What did you aim to convey with the choice of scale? It feels like a staring contest between the viewer and this work.

BG: I think the scale has become kind of like a natural choice for that work. The rugs started during COVID when I got locked out of the studio, and was like, okay, let’s figure out a way to make things at home.

This particular series of rugs is about research that I’ve been doing on Tex Avery’s character Wolfy, from “Red Hot Riding Hood,” which is the first instance in cartooning where the eyes come out of a character’s head at the sight of a woman.

The version available on YouTube ends as Wolfy pulls Little Red Riding Hood off a stage after his eyes have shot out at her. But that’s not where the cartoon actually ends. From going into the cartoon archives, I found the other half of the cartoon.

Wolfy goes to grandma’s house and grandma oogle’s him back with AWOOGA eyes, and the wolf runs away. But what I thought was so interesting about the archive version versus the version that was available on YouTube is that role switch.

We always constantly think of the wolf’s eyes shooting out at Little Red Riding Hood, but we don’t really think about grandma. You know, how she sort of gets him back because she’s like, “oh, you’re sexy wolf. I’m gonna look at you that way.” 

I am interested in active looking and when a look becomes ingrained in gender. When a look is perceived to be the male gaze or the female gaze and what things we like to note between that.

Marianne Burlew and Brianna Gluszak. Soft Bodies installation Shot. Wall Space Gallery. Photo credit: Ava Margueritte.

There is a conversation between the works about depth. Marianne’s work draws the viewer inward, holding space inside the pieces. Whereas Brianna’s work pushes into the viewer’s space, demanding room from the viewer. How do you find this lends to the overall idea of vulnerability in Soft Bodies?

BG: Some of the work stems from things that could be seen as vulnerable, but I am more interested in the opposite end of that word, and it being more explorative in an empowering way. Or in a way to have the viewer understand a different identity than they came in understanding.

For me, that kind of pushing out, and enveloping of the viewer, is about how to involve them in the work or have them gain a connection to it. The allowance of the viewer is to take as much or as little as they want of what I’m trying to get across.

And I do think that one of the interesting things about Marianne’s work is that you’re almost sucked into another world versus being present in this space.

MB: Brianna’s work is a lot more present in the space. Each piece is like its own body. And then mine is much more about an internal space or having space within them. But I think that push and pull can be great. I mean, vulnerability is just about rethinking or allowing yourself to be open to rethinking. I think Brianna’s talking about reaching into space being confrontational with the gaze and that engagement, whereas a lot of my inclination is to go smaller and deeper internally. I think the show has a good balance and a good variety to it because there are many different ways that you’re being reached out to, or you have to reach into.

And I don’t necessarily think we have to have done the same thing or have the same method to accomplish that. Vulnerability would just be like that shift of a boundary, right? Or that invitation to change your mind.

You can find more of Marianne Burlew and Brianna Gluszak‘s work on their Instagram.

Make Me Less Evil: In Conversation with Angie Quick

Angie Quick. Make Me Less Evil installation shot, Museum London. Image courtesy of the artist.

By Adi Berardini

The first thing to know about Angie Quick is that she isn’t afraid to express herself. Whether that means speaking her mind or making fluid and fleshy paintings, Quick has a way of captivating an audience. I have gotten to know Angie since she is my studio mate and last spring, we switched studio spaces. We helped each other move our paintings and supplies, and I admit, I may have gotten a bit excited about stumbling upon one of the erotic lesbian magazines she uses as a reference. Tenderness across time is at the forefront of Quick’s mind. Inspired by the everyday and encapsulating effortless eroticism, she is interested in how modern life can seem just as antiquated as the classical periods before and what it means to envision a more empowered way of being.

Working in both painting and performance as a medium, Quick is a self-taught artist who has established herself in the local London art scene over the past years. Her recent solo exhibitions include The Moonlight Made Me Do It at the McIntosh Gallery in 2021 and when i die i will have loved everything at Glenhyrst Gallery in 2019. She has had an exciting year with her first commercial solo show at the Michael Gibson Gallery, A Life of Crime, and an exhibition at Museum London, entitled Make Me Less Evil. Quick forefronts the question: Can art make you less evil? 

Angie Quick. i won’t be happy until you’re dead, 72x60in., oil on canvas, 2022. Image courtesy of the artist.

Can you explain more about your exhibition ‘Make Me Less Evil’ at the Museum London and your inspiration behind it?

I didn’t know what the show was going to look like. I was just looking at stuff, researching, trying to figure out what I wanted to make. The earlier paintings were the Vermeer paintings. I was looking at a lot of Vermeer work and that was the impetus for it.

I was looking at classical works and the idea of the figure within them. That body of work is about tenderness and vulnerability and looking at intimacy. And I think that was often portrayed through bodies and the title Make Me Less Evil. That came midway while I was working on the series.

I was thinking a lot about personal ethics, like the idea of [someone] asking to be made less evil. But then also the power of art and if art can make one less evil, by the viewer looking at the work. I like that title as an overarching theme because as I was making the work, it just seemed fitting. I think because people find some of my work eroticism or see erotic things within it there’s like this “turning away.” I think it’s asking a question of the viewer and embracing it.

Angie Quick Make Me Less Evil installation shot, Vermeer inspired series. Museum London. Image courtesy of the artist.

The way I interpreted it is a lot of times, especially women, if they’re promiscuous or sexual, they’re made out to be “evil” when that’s not the same standard as men. So, I thought that was an interesting title because it’s almost reclaiming eroticism itself.

 I felt like the title could mean something to anyone who reads it because I think anyone could have a sense of what that looks like to be made less evil or what they carry within themselves or what society puts on [them]. I think a lot of my work is breaking down those boundaries of what we consider right or wrong or what we’re allowed to do or not allowed to do.

In addition to ‘Make Me Less Evil’ you recently had a solo show at Michael Gibson Gallery, A Life of Crime. A Life of Crime deals more with the implication of people in the space, with a more abstract approach and an inspiration from the Rococo era of opulence. On the other hand, ‘Make Me Less Evil’ is more erotic and depicts people in intimate settings. Can you explain the difference in your artistic vision in ‘A Life of Crime?’

I feel like the difference is more something I can see once I saw both works separately, but they almost bled into each other. They were similar and yet different. I made the museum work, but as I was making the museum work, Michael Gibson asked me to do this exhibition.

I made a whole new body of work and some of the work that was going to go to the museum ended up going to the Gibson Gallery. I think there must have been a shift occurring where fewer bodies were visibly present within the work. And it was almost like the bodies are present but absent at the same time. Whereas within the museum work, they’re very much in your face and present. I don’t know why that shift started happening. I do think I was looking at more Rococo work and more at the furniture and the interiors and the sense of someone maybe having just left the room or the memories that exist within the room.

Angie Quick. the night you wore your jogging suit to bed, 60 x 60, oil on canvas, 2022. Museum London. Image courtesy of the artist.

You can see the influence of your everyday life in your paintings. For example, referencing parts of your living room in ‘A Life of Crime’ or your self-portrait Make Me Less Evil depicting yourself napping on your studio couch. Can you explain more about your interest in referencing the everyday in your work? 

 I think everything that I experience in a day culminates onto the canvas. Not so much that it’s a portrait of myself, but I think my interest in being obsessed with something in my everyday life can make its way into the canvas and then it is next to something not directly related to me.

I think those things being in relation allows room for a viewer to make their own narrative within the canvas. So [that’s] why I like having personal stuff—it’s the same with my titles. My titles are probably the most autobiographical parts of all the paintings because those are usually direct snippets from my life while I’m working.

I think that kind of sensibility also lends itself to personal items that make it into [the work]. And I like the idea that there are moments in the canvas that are maybe just for me, but then suddenly it’s for everyone else. I think that the difference between what’s personal and impersonal. The lines blurring is exciting to me.

Can you touch upon your interest in depicting vulnerability in ‘Make Me Less Evil’? Can you also expand on your interest in intimacy and eroticism through your paintings?

It’s one of those things where I maybe am not hyper-aware that I’m making very erotic work. It’s maybe after the fact, having people look at the work and then tell me it’s either shocking or erotic. I don’t think I’m aware of it when I’m making a painting. I like the interactions of bodies and self and it just feels natural for me to come out into those dialogues. I don’t know if it just comes down to being shameless or if that’s just what I’m fascinated and obsessed with.

I love how you spoke about how butts are universal because everyone has one during your artist tour at Museum London.

I don’t even know what the psychoanalysis of that is, but I think there is something about how it’s a non-gendered thing. Everyone has a butt. And I also like the idea of the naked body just existing almost in a timelessness.

But are we just like a Caravaggio painting with a cell phone?

I sometimes wonder how much we’ve progressed or changed as people, when I’m looking at so much classical work and stuff, I think okay, now we have cellphones. But are we just like a Caravaggio painting with a cell phone? There’s so much moralism that still exists and restrictions that I have a hard time thinking that there’s much liberation within a lot of how we live.

I think it’s an interesting parallel to think of, they had letters before, but now we have texts. There are a lot of parallels even though it’s such a different time. 

I think now we can get things more immediately. We still love Shakespeare so much. It makes me think that as people, we only have a certain [number] of emotions and that’s why Shakespeare still seems relevant because it still resonates with all that we can express.

I also love Anne Carson. She’s like a classicist and she’ll take classical work and make it relevant to today so it’s almost like collapsing the timeline. But sometimes I can find that depressing too. It’s not that I don’t believe in progress necessarily, but sometimes when people look at my work and they’re like, “oh, this is happening,” I think that shouldn’t be shocking. It just seems like there’s no change.

You hope and you think that there’s progress, but even just seeing what’s happening now politically, rights are being rolled back. How far have we actually come?

It seems medieval almost. I feel like one of the differences now is that we do have the internet so it’s easier to make propaganda, but it’s also harder at the same time to control a whole population. I can be in communication with somebody in Europe and finding out information and stuff can be translated quicker. But sometimes I think we’re just very medieval, just wearing Adidas or something. Then that sense of humanity is important to me in my work and when I’m saying tenderness, it is seeing people as people.

Angie Quick. the cannoli eaters, 60x120in., oil on canvas, 2022. Image courtesy of the artist.

You have explained how you are interested in certain symbolism such as animals (lambs, rabbits, etc.) and religious symbolism in art historical contexts. Can you explain more about your use of symbolism?

I think because I was raised by two atheists that religion and Christianity are constantly very shocking to me. I was talking to my mom today about how people can be so horrified about sexuality or just like the freedom of an individual to be themselves.

And yet we can walk by churches all the time and there’s just like crosses and crosses resemble someone being killed. A naked man dying on a cross is constantly in our subconscious. Since I was a kid, I was wrapping my head around that.

I think I find it fascinating how so much of western art history uses those things, but they don’t necessarily mean what they’re supposed to mean to me, they become something else. I think I’m creating a personal narrative and ownership of certain symbols and then playing against universal ones. 

I think I just get attracted to certain things and I’m also really into emojis. I think the emoji is like the modern-day crucifix. It’s a sense of using something to delineate information in the shortest amount of time. And so, utilizing that in painting is interesting to me. And then, I can have my own symbolism that I start to create in my work by constantly or obsessively using it. I think they relate to each other since it’s a pictorial language and that’s why I find it exciting. I like the idea of information being condensed and then becoming something that can mean something to everybody. And then maybe skewing that slightly.

Who are some artists (or other inspirations such as books or music) that influence you and your work?

I like Salman Toor a lot. I liked like his sense of playfulness in his work, but then also there’s like a very strong resonance of personal meaning within it.  

I’ve read a lot of Sheila Heti this year, I read all her work. And Jesse Ball wrote Autoportrait, which is inspired by a [memoir by a French writer Édouard Levé], but I was reading a lot of works of autofiction and auto portrait. I think I was also listening to a podcast, and they were talking about how that’s like a new feminist way of writing and I think it’s taking control of one’s narrative. I find that was very influential in how I was working. I don’t know exactly how, but like somehow just taking in all that information. Anne Carson is also a huge influence.

I’ve always loved Cecily Brown because I think she’s like a good painter’s painter. Yeah, I feel like since I was fifteen, I’ve been haunted by Cecily Brown’s paintings.

Do you have anything you’re working on that you’d like to share?

I’m interested in the idea of horniness. At the Gibson opening, someone described my work as being horny and I love that. That’s the best compliment to me because I feel like that’s such a huge encompassing feeling. I’m interested in it and countering the impulse to procreate, the idea of being horny being almost universal, and the way that we can engage in that and the sense of purpose in life and horniness, but in a liberated sense. Like that horniness is liberation.

I was listening to a podcast with Meeka Walsh, who’s the editor for Border Crossings [Magazine], and she was talking about how a good piece of art makes you want to make love. And I was like, oh, horny. It was a more intellectual way of saying horny—I love that.

Check out Angie Quick’s exhibition Make Me Less Evil on view at Museum London until May 28th, 2023.

Taking up Space: In Discussion with Hanna Washburn

Hanna Washburn in the studio, 2023. Photo courtesy of the artist.

Interview by Adi Berardini

Artist Hanna Washburn’s work is undoubtedly playful and lively. Soft forms bulge, sag, and spill over, camouflaged in bold and delicate floral patterns stitched together. The sculptures are unapologetic, taking up space and asserting themselves, challenging the expectations put on feminine bodies. Washburn often incorporates nostalgic items from her childhood such as dollhouse furniture and her grandmother’s curtains, and other recycled fabrics from her everyday life. Embodying a range from the maternal to the sensual, Washburn’s work highlights the complicated experience of being in a body that is constantly transforming and changing.

Both an artist and a curator, Hanna Washburn is based in Beacon, New York, and holds a BA in Fine Art and English from Kenyon College, and an MFA in Fine Art from the School of Visual Arts. She has exhibited at Sotheby’s Institute of Art, Moody Center for the Arts at Rice University, SPRING/BREAK Art Show, and the Munson Williams Proctor Art Institute, among others. Hanna has been an artist in residence at Vermont Studio Center, the Woodstock Byrdcliffe Colony, and the Textile Arts Center. Currently, she works in the Curatorial Department at Storm King Art Center.

Hanna Washburn. Small Step. Photo courtesy of the artist.

Your textile sculptures are so animated and lively. Can you discuss how you’re inspired by the body to create your sculptures?

There is so much of the body in my sculptures, a body caught in the process of morphing and changing. Something that is in flux and not static. I think of my sculptures as representing different versions of the same body in different moods and phases. A body that is slipping between different things, that is many things at once. 

I am also interested in capturing certain moods and gestures with the work, without being too explicit about what exactly is happening. [I use] shapes and movement that make you think of your own body in relation. There are parts of my work that are more unsettling, but I also try to capture the joy of being in a body and the idea that all these different feelings can coexist.

Hanna Washburn. Pink Pivot. Photo courtesy of the artist.

Your sculptures assert themselves and take up space, challenging the associations and expectations put on women and femme bodies with forms that spill and sag over. Can you speak more about this concerning your work?

These things are all connected, what they look like and what they’re about—the body and expectations of femininity. They are layered in together. I construct my sculptures with this kind of patchworking as a visual tool, but it is also this thematic thing of these pieces of identity and body coming together, being stitched together.

I think especially with my freestanding sculptures, I am interested in creating something we have this almost one-to-one relationship with, like the way a viewer connects to it with their own body. This thing that’s standing, burdened but still upright—it’s struggling to stand, but it’s standing. And I think it becomes an exercise in empathy, to see something that is trying to maintain a certain balance. There is something of that I see in myself, and I believe others have that experience too. [Experiencing] how it feels to exist in a body, to feel certain expectations of your body, to feel the pressure of external definitions, so people can see and understand how to categorize you when we are really all un-categorizable. 

Our experiences in the home space are also a big factor in my work. I have a tendency to anthropomorphize things, especially in the home, like furniture. Something that is standing up has this bodily connotation for me, [like an] entity that has a certain stature. I have this irresistible urge to relate to it as a human or a living, bodily thing.

These things are all connected, what they look like and what they’re about—the body and expectations of femininity.

Hanna Washburn. Swell. Photo by Ally Schmaling. Photo courtesy of the artist.

You integrate certain childhood and nostalgic items in your work. Can you explain this inspiration further?

I am a big-time scavenger of things in the world but also of my own life, like clearing out my parent’s attic and pulling [items] that remain from my childhood as these kinds of fossils.

I incorporate things like my old doll beds, or toys or small little objects into my work. If I don’t still have the actual thing it often becomes about its memory. I try to recreate either something I had when I was a child, or an aesthetic that was formative for me. I think about childhood a lot, that identity-forming period. I was always really drawn to objects and creatures. 

I am also interested in the aesthetic of the suburban modesty of my upbringing. A lot of floral patterns, and a lot of muted domestic colors and textures. And again, sometimes I use literal curtains from my grandma’s house. But sometimes it’s about trying to recreate something that I remember or saw in pictures. I am interested in using that kind of modest aesthetic-to take its flatness and make it lumpy.

Hanna Washburn. Curiosities. Photo by Ally Schmaling. Photo courtesy of the artist.

I like how you use recycled fabrics and items from your life. It’s nice from an ecological perspective as well. Have you always been drawn to using textiles as a medium? Can you expand on your interest in using recycled materials and textiles?

Textiles are all around us. We wear them, we live with them in our homes, and we have so many attachments to them. It’s this intimate material we wear on our bodies and sleep in. I think a lot of people are drawn to textiles for reasons of comfort and familiarity. I’ve always really been interested in recycling things, both from an environmental standpoint, but also for the richness of something that has been around for a long time, that has changed hands and has its own memory. 

As far as sewing techniques, I’m a big fan of the whipstitch. It’s one of the first stitches you learn, this overhand, repetitive stitch. It also shows up in surgical stitches, so it has that bodily connotation. I love the visual of how it stitches things together; it’s just such an additive process. And my practice is very improvisational, so when I’m in the studio, I am making visual connections and directly responding and stitching. It feels like this extension of my brain in my hand.

I learned how to sew at home from my mother, my grandmother, and my great-grandmother. It’s a practice that I learned and inherited from outside of art school, outside the institution. It feels personal, as something that I learned from women in my family that I’m continuing as well as complicating. Having this practice connected to the personal and the familial makes a lot of sense to me.

Hanna Washburn. Rosy. Photo courtesy of the artist.

Who are some artists (or other things) that inspire you and your practice?

I try to look at as many different things as I can, not just sculpture or fiber art. I like to engage with a lot of other forms of art, too. I love to go to the movies; I love to read fiction. I try to immerse myself in different kinds of storytelling because it adds richness to my practice, but also just as a person in the world, and the way I think about things.

I’m lucky to know so many artists, visual artists and other kinds [of artists] with all different practices. [We have] casual interactions talking about ideas, going to see things, having informal crits, creative exchanges, and collaborations. I think a lot of my daily inspiration comes from surrounding myself with people with that kind of energy. And I treasure it, because it is important to keep questioning and pushing not just your own stuff but looking at so many other things and learning about other people and their practices and their stories. It’s just so enriching. I have my list of visual artists that I turn to again and again, but that daily stuff is equally important to me because it feeds the [creativity].

Check out Hanna Washburn’s work in the upcoming exhibition Homespun, a survey of textile artists in the Hudson Valley at the Samuel Dorksy Museum – SUNY New Paltz, opening on February 4th, 2023. 

Washburn will also be part of the NYC group show, Paroxysm, curated by Alison Pirie, from February 8 – 23rd at Westbeth Gallery, NYC. 

Additionally, Washburn will have a solo show this fall at the Lake George Arts Project from September 23 -October 27th, 2023.

You can find more of her work on her website and Instagram.

Original Sisters: In Conversation with Anita Kunz

Anita Kunz. Original Sisters: 365 Portraits of Tenacity and Courage Installation shot. Photos courtesy of TAP Centre for Creativity.

Interview by Adi Berardini

Walking into Anita Kunz’s Original Sisters: Portraits of Courage and Tenacity at TAP Centre of Creativity on opening night, the gallery was transformed with 365 portraits—one for each day of the year—of remarkable women. Walking through the crowd, it’s clear there were hours of research put into the descriptions of the women depicted in the illustrated portraits. It felt easy to get emotional in response to seeing the spotlight reflected on these women because although some women are widely known, many of these women’s stories remain widely unknown by the larger public. The portraits’ gazes stare back at me with a sense of empowerment. Finally, their names are known, and they receive recognition after too long.

Anita Kunz is an established Canadian illustrator and artist with a wealth of accomplishments. Her socially and politically themed work has been printed in major publications such as Time magazine, Rolling Stone, Vanity Fair, The New Yorker, GQ, The New York Times, and Newsweek, along with many others. She has received an Honorary Doctorate from the Ontario College of Art and Design and a second from MassArt College of Art and Design. Additionally, Kunz has been appointed Officer of the Order of Canada and received Her Majesty the Queen’s Jubilee Medal of Honor. In the following interview, she speaks more about her exhibition Original Sisters: Portraits of Courage and Tenacity.

Anita Kunz. Original Sisters: 365 Portraits of Tenacity and Courage Installation shot. Photos courtesy of TAP Centre for Creativity.

Original Sisters: 365 Portraits of Tenacity and Courage spotlights 365 original illustrated portraits of inspiring women, spotlighting many stories that are too often unknown and excluded. One aspect that stands out in the exhibition is the range and diversity covered by the portraits. You include different faiths, backgrounds, and cultures from different time periods. I also love how you cover diverse fields such as science, math, art, literature, and activism. Can you expand on your process of researching these women?

The most important thing for me in this whole project was diversity. I wanted to celebrate all kinds of extraordinary women, many of whom have been overlooked, starting from the beginning of time and the cave paintings to the very recent ones.

I knew that I was going to do a lot of them, and I didn’t want to make them from Canada or the US only because there are so many more. I mean, there were just so many. I had a couple in mind when I started, and then I started asking people I knew. I asked somebody that I know who’s a scientist and [asked if he could] give me any names of women who have been overlooked. So, he gave me one.

There were a lot of good resources, a lot of blogs, historical blogs, Encyclopedia Britannica, and Google. Even the Google Doodle of the day sometimes I thought “Oh, I didn’t know who that was. Let’s research her.” The New York Times has recently started a new [column], an obituary section where it’s called Overlooked No More. That’s a good resource. But it was not hard to find subjects, that tells you it’s kind of a sad thing.

It was very easy once I started looking. Now, I’ve done 365 and I have at least 300 more than I could do. And I feel that that’s only scratching the surface, this is only the beginning. This is something I could probably do the rest of my life and probably easily do a thousand, but I’m getting ahead of myself!

Anita Kunz. Original Sisters: 365 Portraits of Tenacity and Courage Installation shot. Photos courtesy of TAP Centre for Creativity.

It was fascinating to see. One that I remember standing out to me that I didn’t know was that the creator of Monopoly was a woman [Lizzie Magie].

Why would you know? It wasn’t taught to us and it wasn’t in the culture. For the whole project, I started with stories that nobody knew [until] later, especially in the book. [The publisher] also wanted me to add a few people who were a bit more well-known. 

I feel like I’ve barely begun [with] the sheer number of women who you wouldn’t have known. And even Roxane Gay, who wrote the book forward, she’s an incredibly brilliant feminist academic, and she said, “how come I’ve never heard of half these women?” So even she hadn’t heard of them, somebody who knows more about feminist history than almost anybody I know. Even she was startled by how many were missing from our [cultural narrative].

Since I’m an artist, I was shocked at realizing how limited my art history education was. I mean, there were women whose work, I thought, “How come I didn’t know these?” Incredible artists, poster artists, and painters. I have had an art education background and there are so many that I didn’t know who they were.

…They were out there; they just weren’t in the curriculum. We didn’t know who they were. They weren’t celebrated or even taught or anything like that.

I think it’s outrageous. Everybody talks about how the art world is so skewed in favour of white men, you know? A lot of people get lost in that narrative. I went to school for illustration, and I went to a workshop with all the best illustrators when I was young. They were all white men and they brought in one artist, Barbara Nessim. They brought her in for two hours and that’s the only interaction with a female illustrator that I had as part of my education. That’s really shocking because they were out there; they just weren’t in the curriculum. We didn’t know who they were. They weren’t celebrated or even taught or anything like that.

Anita Kunz. Original Sisters: 365 Portraits of Tenacity and Courage Installation shot. Photos courtesy of TAP Centre for Creativity.

The concept of Original Sisters started during the pandemic. What first initiated the idea behind doing these portraits of remarkable women throughout history during this time?

I worked for a long time as an editorial illustrator back when editorial illustration was a thing. It used to be that you could make a decent living as a magazine illustrator.

I always wanted to do things that had something to do with society, a social issue, or a political issue like that. I wasn’t necessarily interested in the decorative arts. I wanted something with substance, something that could have meaning to it. I was able to make a living with magazines and that was great. I started out doing magazine work, but the trouble with magazine work is that you do maybe two or three a week, and you just do the next one, and then it seems shallow.

I wanted to do, at some point, something that was a deep dive into something. I’ve done so many portraits and it seemed like a logical thing to do portraits of women I admired and whose shoulders I stand on who paved the way.

I did an artist residency in Maine, and we went out on a boat ride, and the captain explained that this windswept island is where a woman lived there in the winter. And I was like, “Whoa, hold back. How could she live on a rock in the winter? She must have built a cabin. I thought, “What would she have eaten?” It was rugged. I had to find more out about this. Turns out she was a trans woman, and I think this was in the 18th century. And again, I could not find anything about her, I wanted to fill in the blanks, and I never could. Then, I thought that I wanted to find women whose stories need to be told.

Who do you have in mind to illustrate next?

I started already; I have done six more. I did one of the first female photographers today and another artist who did the most magnificent covers for Vogue Magazine. I have another one here on my desk–Helen Dryden. [She created] just beautifully designed, brilliant covers.

I’ve also painted Zaha Hadid, the Iraqi Architect. She was amazing. I mean, there are so many more. There are also areas that I’d like to discover more. I need to do far more Canadian and Indigenous women because I was born here, and I think I don’t have enough representation there yet. I’m always happy to hear if anybody has ideas or suggestions. I’m happy to hear them, so if you have any, let me know!

Anita Kunz. Original Sisters: 365 Portraits of Tenacity and Courage Installation shot. Photos courtesy of TAP Centre for Creativity.

I also really liked how you did the text. Was the style of text inspired by the women as well? 

Absolutely. With each of the portraits, I wanted them to be a celebration and I wanted even kids to like them. I deliberately made them colorful and kind of joyous. For each one, I tried to do something about the background that had to do with the person. I tried to [capture] the time that she was living or and the same thing with the typography and wherever possible I tried to find their actual signature. I thought that would just be more authentic. But where I couldn’t find their signatures, I used a font that would sort of indicate the time they lived in. 

For Zaha Hadid, I tried to make the type like her buildings, I had fun with them. For the first photographer, I tried to make it like a stamp, like how photographers used a stamp on the back of their prints. It’s fun for me, and I thought it would just give a little bit extra instead of just a face, you know? I wanted to give it a bit more depth.

Check out Anita Kunz’s Original Sisters at TAP Centre of Creativity until January 14th, 2023. Original Sisters: Portraits of Courage and Tenacity is also available as a book, published by Penguin Random House. You can also find Kunz’s work on her website, anitakunz.com, and Instagram at @anitakunz. 

Depression Cooking: In Conversation with Sonali Menezes

Sonali Menezes, Depression Cooking. Image courtesy of the artist.

By Rebecca Casalino

Sonali Menezes is a Hamilton-based artist who maintains an interdisciplinary practice deeply rooted in community. She works as an arts educator, facilitator, and knowledge gatherer throughout her artistic projects. This intersectional approach is highlighted in work like her 2015 project “Untitled (Lavender Harvest)” where she collected local lavender and made jellies and syrups as gifts for the workers who cultivated the garden. Her work as a knowledge gatherer is evident in her zine-making practice where digital copies of So Your Anxious As Fuck and Depression Cooking are available for download on Etsy for $1.00. Menezes’ body of work varies in medium with her politics acting as a connecting thread throughout her performance, video, sculpture, printmaking, and poetry.

Portrait of Sonali Menezes. Photo by Ariel Bader-Shamai.

Rebecca Casalino: Depression Cooking: easy recipes for when you’re depressed as fuck is so lovely and so personal, Sonali—it was a pleasure to read, and it was lovely to attend your Depression Cooking Virtual Dinner in February. I wanted to start this interview by speaking about the people you thank for supporting and inspiring you throughout the making of this zine. Can you speak to your Depression Cooking allies?

Sonali Menezes: It meant so much to me that you came to the virtual dinner, Rebecca! You also shared a wonderful idea for depression focaccia using store-bought pizza dough (total genius). I really want to emphasize how much this zine doesn’t belong to me; I don’t own the knowledge that’s shared. It’s very much collective, and I like to think of myself as a collector in this context.  So much of the inspiration for this zine came from really everyone I’ve ever lived with or eaten with in my life. Conversations with friends and family, and messages from complete strangers on social media. To narrow things down a bit, I want to focus on thanking four people. The first is Anna Bowen from artseverywhere.ca, who sent me a pitch invitation for her Complicating Care, series and helped me find a home for this project. The second is Abedar Kamgari who encouraged me to apply for special project funding through Hamilton Artists Inc. so that the first print-run of the zine could be shared entirely for free. Third is Jeffrey who is my number one supporter and always washes the dishes. Last is my maternal grandmother Elizabeth Francis who taught me that all you need to do to start cooking a meal is to fry up a chopped onion and garlic in a pan with oil.  But I do stress both in the zine and I also mentioned this at the virtual dinner: that cutting onions is not ideal for depression cooking. Mainly because when you induce crying in depressed humans, it’s hard to stop crying!

Your family’s support of this project is so wholesome. Can you speak a little bit about their roles in creating, and inspiring the zine? 

I’m very lucky and privileged that my family always supports my weird projects. Whether they understand them or not, they show up and I’m grateful. I learned how to cook from observing the adults around me growing up – and that was my parents and my grandmother. I have specific sections of the zine that are inspired by them. The ‘faster boiling method,’ which involves bringing water to the boil in an electric kettle and then pouring it into a pot on a hot element on the stove comes from my father. Open-faced sandwiches, or “Things on Toast,” as I call it in the zine, are inspired by my mother. I started relying on meal replacement drinks thanks to my sister. It’s impossible to divorce my relationship with food from my family.

The experience of writing Depression Cooking while depressed and trying to cook for yourself must have been very meta. You even describe being unemployed at the beginning of the pandemic and struggling. How do you handle professional struggles artists face like unemployment, rejection, and the constant juggling of deadlines? 

Initially, I had planned on releasing the zine in November of 2021. But then the days became colder and darker, and my seasonal depression kicked in on top of my regular depression, and honestly, I really struggled with completing the zine. After only recently moving into a new house with two roommates, we got evicted and needed to find new housing. I needed to flip the timeline on the project to reflect on what was happening in my life and to balance my own mental health. I had initially written the Depression Cooking Zine into a residency proposal for the AGO that was rejected. I find the key to handling constant rejection is to keep applying, despite the rejection because eventually, something will stick. And I was right with this project, it fits well into Anna Bowen’s Complicating Care Series. I think deadlines are so tricky. I’m a full-time arts administrator for my day job, and the only way I’m able to manage the projects I do are with deadlines. But when I’m off the clock working on my own personal projects, I find deadlines hard to meet outside of my 9 to 5 while balancing the rest of my life. Being an artist while also paying your bills is hard, and I haven’t quite figured out a balance yet.

Sonali Menezes, Depression Cooking Manifesto. Image courtesy of the artist.

Food is so political, personal, and vulnerable especially when it intersects with mental health. I loved the way you tackled diet culture calling out propaganda, white vegans, and neoliberal consumerism. Can you speak to writing The Depression Cooking Manifesto in the center of the zine?

I actually wrote the Depression Cooking Manifesto in one sitting at the Central Public library in Downtown Hamilton, and I feel very connected to the second floor for that reason. Writing the manifesto was very cathartic for me. Suzanne Carte asked me during the virtual dinner if there was anything that I learned from writing the manifesto. And my response is that I learned how to be just as kind to myself when it comes to food as I am with my intended zine audience. Sometimes it’s easy to dole out advice in my zines, it’s another thing to genuinely listen and apply what I’m writing to my own life. The manifesto was this moment where I was able to do that.

I loved that you mentioned chocolate Ensures in the “Grab-and-Go” section of the zine. How did your sister introduce you to the idea of meal replacements?

I was at my sister’s apartment during the pandemic. She’s a doctor and incredibly busy between work and a full-time master’s degree. We were unloading groceries and I was very hangry.  A six-pack of ensures were sitting on her counter and she suggested I try one so that I would be less hangry before we cooked lunch and I’ve relied on them ever since.

Sonali Menezes, Depression Cooking. Image courtesy of the artist.

You allude to this need for community knowledge when you write “I wanted to create something that I could have given my 18-year-old self when I moved out of my parents’ home.”[1] Do you see this project as adding to a conversation around resource sharing and the need for more community resources? 

Definitely. All the information I’ve shared already exists in the world; I don’t own it. I think this all especially exists in some form on the internet, but I find the internet to be an incredibly overwhelming place. I think that’s why zines have endured, despite the internet—because they’re focused. I don’t reach the same sense of overwhelm or exhaustion when reading a zine that I do trying to find a straight answer on the internet. So, Depression Cooking is me trying to fill that gap. My first zine that entered into the realm of resource sharing was So You’re Anxious As Fuck: tips and tricks and things, from 2016, I made the second edition in 2018, and that’s my most popular zine apart from Depression Cooking. That zine is a little more ‘self-help’ oriented and prescriptive, but I like to think of Depression Cooking as more of a love letter to my depressed kin.

You address the reader directly and personally – and I find you give them quite a bit of agency. In the introduction to the zine, you write: “you’re the expert on your own survival”[2]. How did you approach writing for a depressed audience?

I thought about myself as a depressed human and what I would like to hear and wrote with that in mind. Mind you, we’re all depressed in very different ways, and I know this zine might not be ideal for everyone.

To wrap up I wanted readers to know the context of this zine within your wider artistic practice. Knowing your work and background, the concept of The Holy Trinity of Depression Cooking [3] (Mac and Cheese, Instant Ramen and Toast) really made me chuckle. The body and shame are so tied up in Catholic ideology and I appreciate your different approaches to these subjects. I was wondering if you could talk a bit about your recent video work that you made during your residency at Factory Media in 2020, and how it relates back to mental health and community support.

I think moving through zines, video work, and performance work really demonstrates why I call myself an interdisciplinary artist! While I would no longer call myself a Catholic, the lessons I learned being raised as a Catholic are constantly informing my practice. The video work I made specifically during my residency at Factory Media was about rejecting my jealousy of white, blonde women through rituals informed by my Catholic upbringing. I wanted to explore the notion of jealousy being a ‘sin,’ that could be cleansed or forgiven. But then I also wanted to complicate this notion of jealousy being a bad thing within the context of being raised under white supremacy. In 2019 and 2020 I was healing from exiting a bad relationship with a racialized man who had been cheating on me with white, blonde women. My mental health was at a low point, and I relied on a lot of support from my friends and family at that time. Sometimes the best way to heal is to make bad art about your feelings.

Check out Sonali Menezes’ Etsy shop for print copies or digital downloads of Depression Cooking.

You can find this interview in the second print issue of Femme Art Review on Queer and Feminist Collaboration.

Notes

  1. Menezes, Sonali. “Preface,” Depression Cooking: easy recipes for when you are depressed as fuck. Publication Studio Guelph, Artseverywhere.ca and Hamilton Artists INC. 2022. 2.
  2. Menezes, “Introduction.” Depression Cooking: easy recipes for when you are depressed as fuck. Publication Studio Guelph, Artseverywhere.ca and Hamilton Artists INC. 2022. 4.
  3. Ibid, 5.

The Bed: In Discussion with Maayan Sophia Weisstub


Maayan Sophia Weisstub. The Bed. The Museum of the Home. Images Courtesy of the artist.

Interview by Adi Berardini

CW: Discussion of domestic abuse

Displayed at the Museum of the Home as part of the Festival of Sleep from June to September 2022, The Bed by Maayan Sophia Weisstub is a powerful installation that takes the visuals of bruises and injury and pairs them with the comfort of a bed. Although the bed is often associated with solace and security, for domestic abuse survivors, a bed can hold complex and negative associations. As Weisstub explains, The Bed explores the physical, mental, and emotional toll of domestic abuse, addressing how even after the bruises fade, the emotional scars still linger. The installation sparks difficult but essential conversations about domestic abuse to ultimately create awareness and healing. 

Currently based in London, UK, Maayan Sophia Weisstub is an interdisciplinary artist working with a range of media from drawing, animation, collage, and sculpture and installation. A graduate of the Royal College of Art, Weisstub has shown at the Saatchi Gallery, Christie’s, and Pavlov’s Dog Gallery. Her work has also been featured in White Hot Magazine, Kaltblut, and Design Taxi, among others. The following conversation discusses The Bed and her broader practice. 

Maayan Sophia Weisstub. The Bed. The Museum of the Home. Images Courtesy of the artist.

Can you speak more about your installation The Bed at the Museum of the Home which aims to raise awareness and reflect upon domestic violence against primarily women and children?

Raising awareness is regarding everyone. It’s commonly towards women and children but also towards men, I don’t want to take that part away. It’s a topic that always concerned me, like many other social topics. I also did a project with a graphic design office in Munich last year to raise awareness about violence against women. It’s not the first project where I’m dealing with this topic. I wanted to do a bit more because a lot of my work is naturally [based on] the things I deal with. It’s important for me also to touch on other topics and make a little change or protest. It’s not always easy for me to go outside and protest so I can raise awareness in a way that I can or know how to. This is my way to contribute to it as a start [to a conversation about] this topic. 

I didn’t want this to be about me or my experience, but it touches me in personal areas. I wanted it to be in the entire spectrum of domestic abuse. I think it touches most people in some places. Whether it’s been sexual abuse or verbal abuse that I think many people have experienced in some sense from parents or siblings, or a partner a lot of times. Sometimes we don’t necessarily think of it as scarring or domestic abuse, but they are all on the spectrum. And then, of course, the more severe ones—I don’t know if more severe, cause it all depends on the effect—but the physical violence and abuse that we hear about in the news.

We don’t hear about it [often], but during COVID, we heard about it more because cases were rising since more people were at home. I think [people] felt frustrated with their conditions, and many were out of work and didn’t make the money they needed, or they took their aggression on their partners or children. I think it’s something that should be [discussed] more because I feel like there’s not enough attention [paid to] it. Then I decided I wanted to do a piece about it, and I had this idea, like a metaphor.

Maayan Sophia Weisstub. The Bed. The Museum of the Home. Images Courtesy of the artist.

The Bed evocatively bridges the personal and the public and juxtaposes the softness and respite of a bed with the pain of physical violence. Can you elaborate on your approach to using these opposites and how The Bed addresses trauma and survival?

I see the bed as a shelter where you can rest at the end of the day or even cry when you need to be with yourself. Also, intimate relationships and physical contact happen in bed. So, the bed is a very personal, private, or intimate symbol. On the one hand, it’s supposed to be the safe place where you could be vulnerable. Then, on the other hand, it’s also like it can be a door to nightmares or for dark things that may happen in situations in bedrooms, behind closed doors as well. 

There’s bruised skin [depicted] in different stages of healing. I researched bruises and looked at photos of domestic views of survivors. I wanted it to [reflect] different stages, but still, there are some scars there. Some heal, some don’t, and some stay forever. 

The bed is a very personal, private, or intimate symbol.

Then I approached and was in contact with Refuge, a charity that helps children and women who are survivors of domestic abuse. They sent me some materials and I researched from people around me and my own experiences. [I was in] contact with them regarding the text I wrote that accompanies the artwork, to ensure that it’s not offensive. I wrote victims at the beginning, and later they told me that it’s correct to say survivors, not victims in this case of domestic abuse. That was the only thing, but it’s a big thing to change. I think it’s important.

Then I reached out to a Museum of the Home, it was very fortunate that they did the sleeping exhibition [Festival of Sleep]. It fit well with their program. I reached out to other places, but this was the place I wanted the most because I feel like they’re very involved with the community and social topics. I was very intrigued by The Museum of the Home. It’s a beautiful building that was built in the 1700s. The head of the Ironmonger Society built it for retired ironmongers and widows of ironmongers. And later it was bought and turned into a Museum of the Home in the fifties where it showed different sets of interiors in Britain to teach people about the history.

They do a lot of community workshops and stuff with different communities, such as Turkish, Jewish, Indian, or African, they have a very diverse community coming to the museum. I felt that it would be the best place to show The Bed. Of course, I want it to be shown in galleries and museums as well, but it’s also important for me to show it to audiences that aren’t necessarily the same audiences who would go to the Tate. It’s also free so there are a lot of different audiences that would come and see it. It’s not necessarily [just] artsy people. Once they said that it fits, I [thought that] this is the best match.

I co-hosted a workshop about The Bed on September 28th with a friend who is a designer. It was a therapeutic workshop quilting scars, so attendees added their scars to this communal blanket. It was informative and provided a safe space to do craft work together. I think it added to the experience of The Bed shown there.

Maayan Sophia Weisstub. The Bed. The Museum of the Home. Images Courtesy of the artist.

It might be hard to gauge, but what has the response been like, do people often share their stories with you?

I went there with friends, [a couple of] art curators and a journalist to show them the work. I mainly got responses from people I went with because museum visitors didn’t know that I made it. I like that because then I can see their response from the side.

There was one woman who went there, I saw her staying there and taking a photo, and then she told me and my friend that it was “very powerful.” That was very nice to hear. Also, I saw a couple come in, and one woman said to the other, “The bed is very small,” and then she walked out. The work is not easy to digest. I know from my friends that they had different responses.  

Some people said it’s meaningful and powerful. With these kinds of abuses, you tend to feel a sort of loyalty to the person who has done that to you, whether it’s a family member or a partner. You don’t want to make them look bad. I don’t feel people necessarily have to share their experience if they don’t want to. If they brought it up, I would ask and talk, but I wouldn’t force anyone into an inconvenient or uncomfortable spot. I hope one day we will be able to talk more openly about the pain that we go through and not be ashamed of it, or scared to share, or worried about making someone else look bad if they’ve done something wrong.

With friends, it takes time to gain trust and feel safe enough to share traumas. It takes a certain degree of knowing each other to share these vulnerable experiences. 

Maayan Sophia Weisstub. Mnēmē, A Breathing Object. 2021.

Your work commonly connects inanimate objects to emotional feeling (such as a table and chair, with the kinetic sculpture Mnēmē, A Breathing Object), giving it human qualities. Can you speak more about this connection and your inspiration of how people connect to objects?

Mnēmē is a word that describes the effect of the past on the present. That work was my graduation project from the Royal College of Art, where I graduated last summer. This piece was dedicated to my father who passed away almost eight years ago. It was about how we project sensations, memories and experiences onto inanimate objects and bring them to life doing that.

A lot of it was also inspired by reading In Search of Lost Time by [Marcel Proust], there’s a part that [clearly] describes this experience. I always feel like I get attached to objects quite easily. If someone brings me [something], I can’t throw it away easily. I keep it and associate it with memories of that person. It breathes life into the object, becoming a sort of monument forever. In the book, there’s a part where the main character eats a Madeleine. Suddenly, he goes into a stream of memories from his childhood triggered by the smell, touch, and taste of that cookie. I think that you can get that when you find an old shirt, for example, that belonged to someone you cared for, suddenly it brings a lot back to you.

The objects in that installation are all objects that I [used to] create an imagined scene of my father’s room when he was younger. It’s all furniture from the fifties, including the book. 

Everything is finely [selected] and symbolizes something. The article the book is opened on is an article about life and death, different theories by different philosophers about how to conceive death in regards to time. We may not know what happens next, but I believe it doesn’t just end when someone passes away. 

How do you choose your medium with the work that you do? 

I usually think of an idea and then I think of what would be the best medium to share it with the world and communicate it. A lot of times, I see my drawings and collages as sketches for future installations, sculptures, or films. I do them at home on paper or Photoshop, just because these are my immediate resources. I would like to produce more large-scale installations and video works. I like things that immerse you in an experience.

You can view Maayan Sophia Weisstub’s work on her website and Instagram. Check out her upcoming installation at Room25 in Tel Aviv in May 2023.