Tag: profile | Femme Art Review

Profiles on Practice: Khadija Baker

By Nadia Kurd

Khadija Baker. “Birds Crossing Borders.” 2018. Photo Courtesy of Artist.

In 1987, Chicana poet and feminist Gloria Anzaldúa wrote, “a borderland is a vague and undetermined place created by the emotional residue of an unnatural boundary. It is in a constant state of transition.”^[1] Born in the Northern Syrian town of Amûdê‎, Montréal-based multidisciplinary artist Khadija Baker fully understands this constant state of transition as her birthplace sits uneasily between Syria and Turkey. “I always saw the border in Northern Syria in the Kurdish region where I was born as a tool to divide and stop the fluency of daily activities,” reflects Baker.^[2]

As an artist, the border, both as a metaphor and the actual division between nation-states has long informed her approach to art making. Baker reflects that she has, “developed various ways to reflect on the re-creation of what we can literally and conceptually call a map in my artwork…[in my work], the border is a developing, changing form that can reflect our connection and comfortable daily lives and can also respond to human needs.”^[3]

However, Baker’s work is not only informed by her lived experiences as a Syrian Kurd, but also the current events and Kurdish oral storytelling traditions. For example, in My little voice can’t lie, (2012/2019), Baker sits motionless on a plinth, with small speakers braided into her long hair. Gallery visitors can approach Baker, take hold of a braided plat and raise the speaker to their ears. What they will hear are the recorded stories of displaced women from Kurdish, Palestinian, and Persian backgrounds. Here, Baker’s body becomes the medium for these narratives, collapsing the distance between the women’s stories, the artist and the audience.

Khadija Baker. “My little voice can’t lie.” 2009, 2012. Photo courtesy of the artist.

The multimedia installation Behind Walls (2008/2017) looks at the systematic program of renaming of Kurdish places in Northern Syria since 1962.^[4] To visually acknowledge this history, Baker made 80 clay spheres that are connected by a mesh of strings suspended overhead. These strings are spun from clothing and combined with sand to create an altogether web-like formation. An audio soundtrack that accompanies the installation and audio soundtrack of recordings by Kurds living in Montreal. Fading in and out, is a projection onto the clay spheres also reveals the Arabic names—directly onto the names of Kurdish places which have been inscribed in the clay. Viewers can walk through the work and reflect on the impact of a forced map on the daily lives of stateless Kurds—ultimately, to show audiences, as they move through the installation, “the arbitrary nature of maps and history, the fragile nature of memory, and even the interconnectedness of a diaspora scattered across the globe.”^[5]

Khadija Baker. “Behind Walls.” City Hall, Karsh-Masson Gallery, 2008,2011. Photo Courtesy of the artist.

In another installation, Birds Crossing Borders (2018), Baker weaves together a complex assemblage of water-filled and tube-connected Plexiglas boxes, video and live performance. One Plexiglas box is filled with tinted water, and with the connecting tubes, transports its contents to the next box, and so on. The eventual transference of colour serves as a metaphor for both migration and adaptation. Moreover, the videos that document the stories of Syrian refugees surround the linked containers, further emphasizing change and movement. In this project, Baker asks, “How will the host society own the collective memory and generate the sense of understanding? How will it grow more familiar with the newcomer?” In the installation space, the viewer is confronted with these questions, but more importantly, they are asked to examine disconnect in humanistic values that separate the refugee from the citizen.

Khadija Baker. “Coffin/Nest.” 2007, 2017. Photo courtesy of the artist.

Coffin/Nest (2007-2019) take up borders and displacement in a much more personal and material way. Using recycled clothing from friends and acquaintances, Baker weaves a circular nest around herself. Surrounding her woven fabric nest, are long, life-sized bundles of fabric, which mimic a cocoon or womb (or alternatively, body bags). As Baker weaves, she becomes fully immersed in her protective nest, and each time this work is performed, the final outcome manifests in different ways. The work examines on the difficult history of systemic mass murder and burial of people in northern Iraq (mostly ethnic Kurds, but also Shia Muslims), and how the only way to identify human remains was through articles of clothing.^[6] The self-made nest also acts like a shelter – Baker enfolds herself within this history in a way to commemorate lives lost and to also recognize survivors.

An intuitive process guides much of Baker’s work, and she often relies on stories and materials to guide each project. “I work against a specific methodology,” notes Baker, “my work reflects things I have witnessed and lived.”^[7] In other words, in each of her projects, Baker researches, embodies and pushes the narratives she gathers. Varied and never totally finished, her multidisciplinary performances and installation works are highly emotive and fused with a lived, collective sense of pain and mourning. Baker’s art channels and comes to terms with the current turbulent history of Kurdish displacement through performance and storytelling. By placing herself publicly at the forefront of this lived reality, Baker seeks to present and visualize not only her experiences, but also the humanity of Kurdish people.

Since completing her MFA (Fine Arts) in 2012, Baker has remained a core member of the Centre for Oral History and Digital Storytelling at Concordia University (Montreal). A participant in numerous international exhibitions and residencies, Baker’s work continues to articulate the story of forced displacement and struggles especially women and children who face violence around border issues in all its aspects. Her life and work straddles place, language and belonging – all borne from cruel necessity to preserve Kurdish life. The precariousness of life also echoes the poetic words of Gloria Anzaldúa when she writes:

This is her home

this thin edge of

barbwire.

To see more of Khadija Baker’s artwork and upcoming projects, visit: http://khadijabaker.com or follow her on Instagram @bakerkhadija

Nadia Kurd (she/her) is an art historian and curator based in Amiskwacîwâskahikan (Edmonton, Alberta). Her work can be found on www.nadiakurd.com.

^[1] Anzaldúa, Gloria. Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza (aunt lute press: San Francisco, 1978), 25.

^[2] Baker, Khadija. “Imagining Borders” Liminalities: A Journal of Performance Studies, Vol. 12, No. 1 (2016), 1.

^[3] Ibid.

^[4] As Human Rights Watch reports, “In 1962 the government carried out a special census in al-Hasakeh province in northeast Syria on the pretext that many non-Syrian Kurds had crossed illegally from Turkey. Kurds had to prove that they had lived in Syria since at least 1945 or lose their citizenship.” This evolved into land expropriation and a process of “Arabization” of the region. For more on this history, see: “Repression of Kurdish Political and Cultural Rights in Syria,” Human Rights Watch (2009) https://www.hrw.org/report/2009/11/26/group-denial/repression-kurdish-political-and-cultural-rights-syria

^[5] “Artist Spotlight: Khadija Baker’” Aesthetica Magazine https://aestheticamagazine.com/profile/khadija-baker/ (accessed 25 August 2020).

^[6] Artist website, http://khadijabaker.com/index.html.

^[7] Artist interview with the Author, 2020.

Profiles on Practice: Christina Battle

Christina Battle. BAD STARS, Installation documentation, Trinity Square Video, 2018, Photo by Jocelyn Reynolds. Courtesy of the artist.

By Nadia Kurd

“The weather,” writes scholar Christina Sharpe, “necessitates changeability and improvisation; it is the atmospheric condition of time and place; it produces new ecologies.” For Sharpe, ‘the weather’ represents the social and political climate that shapes and produces anti-Blackness. The weather is contextual and ongoing. It is both the condition and the resulting effect on Black life in the aftermath of slavery.^[i]

It is within the complexity of ‘the weather’ that Edmonton-based, media artist Christina Battle wants to articulate her interests in disasters and imagine how we cope and respond to change. The concept of disasters —be they social, political, ecological fallouts or otherwise —are the focus of Battle’s art practice. The interconnected nature of past events, history and ideas can manifest in contemporary disasters and as a result, continually create new circumstances and a need to address survival. In her work, Battle also looks at how these ideas and actions are circulated and communicated through social media.

Christina Battle. Portrait courtesy of the artist.

Her process begins broadly by reading and gathering information and images online. As Battle moves through her research, she also quickly makes gifs and other digital images “as a way to reflect on our larger visual sphere.”^[ii] Her work brings together digital images and text to animate them in a variety of ways. Sometimes spontaneous, many of these pieces are either reworked or further developed into larger projects. For Battle, “different strategies are taken up depending on the issue at hand. If I’m thinking about satellite mapping and issues related to how we engage with tools that are continually tracking us…the work pulls from aesthetics reminiscent of those technologies.”^[iii]

What drives Battle’s practice is her interest in how people use varying modes of communication with one another. “We don’t seem to be doing a very good job,” reflects Battle, “of even recognizing, let alone admitting the problems we face and that drives a certain sense of urgency for me.”^[iv]

Christina Battle. Notes to Self, video still (2014-ongoing). Courtesy of the artist.

Her ongoing video-based work Notes to Self (2014-present), addresses this sense of urgency. In the videos, Battle records the burning of paper, which features short phrases and words. Often lasting a few seconds, the notes mimic the visual and sound bites of social media. However, as Battle writes, this work is also unlike social media as “the fate of these updates is controlled and finite, existing only for a few seconds before being completely destroyed.”^[v]

Christina Battle. BAD STARS, Installation documentation, Trinity Square Video, 2018, Photo by Jocelyn Reynolds. Courtesy of the artist.

In the multi-video installation work, Bad Stars (2018) Battle examines the theme of disaster from an astronomical perspective. Primarily a multi-screen and image installation, the exhibition of this work also brought together a collaborative group of individuals who “to help forward the discussion, beginning with the invitation to contribute to a wall of photographic imagery included in the exhibition.”^[vi] The parallel multidisciplinary discussions and presentations that occurred at Trinity Square Video in 2018, allowed for,

… room for those from various disciplines to come together for shared conversation and experience, programming invites those actively researching and working to tackle issues of disaster into the space of the gallery.^[vii]

The participatory aspect of this installation allows for the images and videos in the installation to be grounded in tangible realities. Though not similarly interactive, the billboard project the view from here (2019) immerses images into the built environment. Mirroring the impact of advertising, the large-scale collage billboard merges satellite images (from where the works are located) and the texts to evoke self-reflection on situational environmental themes such as “How to Sense What You Cannot See” and “Locate Yourself”. In presenting these large-scale digital images, curator Jayne Wilkinson notes that the work, “asks viewers and passers-by to consider how the digital infrastructure and global networks are obscured by the surfaces of the sea.”^[viii]

Christina Battle. the view from here, Capture Photography Festival, 2019. Documentation by roaming-the-planet.

A large part of her creative work has included curating exhibitions. In 2020, Battle will be organizing a group exhibition titled Grasping at the Roots at the Mitchell Art Gallery (Grant MacEwan University, Edmonton). While still in development, this upcoming exhibition will feature both regional and national Canadian artists who work closely with communities through critical sustained engagement.

With a background in Environmental Biology, film studies and fine arts, Battle is currently completing a Ph.D. in Art & Visual Culture at the University of Western Ontario. As she researches and explores the changing nature of online communications, her work will no doubt shift in order to respond to the complexity of our world. “I am trying to make images as a way of starting conversations with people I don’t know,” writes Battle, “I consider how others might engage with the images and how through images we might come together and form some kind of collective understanding.”^[ix]

To see more of Christina Battle’s art, visit her website or to see her work with seeds and plants visit @c_I_battle on Instagram.

Nadia Kurd (she/her) is an art historian and curator based in Amiskwacîwâskahikan (Edmonton, Alberta). She tweets @nadia_kurd and more of her work can be found on nadiakurd.com.

^[i] Christina Sharpe, In the Wake: On Blackness and Being (Durham: Duke University Press, 2016), 104.

^[ii] Christina Battle, interview by author, Edmonton, AB, August 4, 2019.

^[iii] Ibid.

^[iv] Ibid.

^[v] Christina Battle, Artist Website: http://cbattle.com/, (accessed August 4, 2019).

^[vi] Ibid.

^[vii] Ibid.

^[viii] Capture Photofest. “Signals in the Sea”, https://capturephotofest.com/public-installations/signals-in-the-sea/ (accessed August 4, 2019).

^[ix] Artist interview with Author.

Profiles on Practice: Meera Sethi

Meera Sethi headshot. Courtesy of the artist.

By Nadia Kurd

“I came to making art through a circuitous route,” says Canadian artist Meera Sethi. As a self-taught graphic designer, Sethi felt that her transition to a full-time visual artist was a gradual one. Despite earning a BFA (1998) and MA in Interdisciplinary Studies at York University (2001), it was only after graduation that Sethi began experimenting with acrylic paints and became more confident working directly with various materials in her studio. As Sethi reflects, “I sometimes wonder if it was because there were no clearly defined role models for me to follow as an emerging visual artist.”[1]

Her experimentations with paint eventually led to figurative paintings that explored her interests in South Asian identities and place. Painting series such as Firangi Rang Barangi (Colourful Stranger, 2009-2012), Foreign Returned (2013) and Upping the Aunty (2016) combine her graphic design and painterly sensibilities. These vivid and highly graphic paintings and drawings examine the hybridity and evolution of South Asian clothing, gendered norms and societal expectations. Most often portraits, these works emphasize the individuality of her subjects and provide insights [into] the diversity of South Asian culture.

Meera Sethi. Pinky Aunty (Upping the Aunty series), 2016, acrylic, fabric and crystal on canvas, 36 in. x 60 in. Private Collection. Courtesy of the artist.

For example, in her three-part series Upping the Aunty, Sethi presents portraits of middle-aged South Asian women who are informally referred to as ‘aunties’. Though not always a biological relation, these women are part of the larger South Asian community, who Sethi points out, are “neither our mothers nor part of our peer group, aunties may be trusted confidantes or gatekeepers of social decorum.”[2] Along with these painted portraits, Sethi includes street-style photography and a colouring book. The playfulness and broad appeal of these illustrative works humorously highlight at the misconceptions about the personal lives of South Asian women.[3]

Moreover, the work of established artists such as Mona Hatoum, Doris Salcedo, and Louise Bourgeois have been important to Sethi for understanding how to foreground the feminist body and the ways in which these artists have linked personal histories to larger social and political events. However, it is ultimately the stories and histories of communities that she is connected to such as queer people of colour and her family relations that she is most invested in. For Sethi, it is the stories from these communities, particularly histories of migration, the global flow of capital and colonization that exposes the current, complex lived experiences of people today.

Meera Sethi. Outerwhere Series, detail. Courtesy of the artist.

Sethi develops her work organically as her process involves preliminary drawings, reading, and written reflection. More recently, Sethi has shifted from working in a stationary, graphic design manner to one that is much more mindful and body-focused in nature. “When I work in a studio environment, I spend a lot of time sourcing material and understanding its visual and material language” observes Sethi, “I sit with objects and give them time to speak to me, trying not to force an outcome, if during the process I feel stuck, I get up and move.”[4]

In her current textile-based works, Outerwhere (2019), Sethi stitches together second-hand winter coats and various embellishments such as food wrappers, plastic flowers, fabric ribbons, and mirrors. As it develops, this project seeks to study “the binaries of inside/outside, personal/public, past/present as they relate to material culture and the migratory experiences of South Asian-Canadians.”[5] More importantly, the work reveals the intersections of textile, lived experiences, and objects through an everyday, protective garment.

Meera Sethi. Outerwhere Series, mixed media textile, 2019-ongoing. Courtesy of the artist.

As she continues to evolve her work, Sethi has moved away from her past design practice to a more experimental, and time-sensitive approach—one that utilizes her history and memories in a more personal way. On this change in her artwork, she notes that “I find myself curious about new mediums such as durational sculpture, textile, and performance and I am also interested in exploring moments of transition and being in-between places, identities, and locations in a way that opens up questions rather than provide answers.”[6]

In 2018, the Melissa Levin Emerging Artist Award through the Textile Museum of Canada recognized Sethi’s work (alongside Indigenous artist Catherine Blackburn). For her, the move from her graphic design to a more visual arts practice has allowed her to move towards a deeper reflection on the world around her. “My work is about the undoing of myself,” says Sethi, “through working with the materials I know best and my own life, I am able to draw connections that make world-making possible.”[7]

To see more of Meera Sethi’s artwork, visit her website, meerasethi.com or follow her on Instagram @meerasethi

Nadia Kurd (she/her) is an art historian and curator based in Amiskwacîwâskahikan (Edmonton, Alberta). She tweets @nadia_kurd and more of her work can be found on nadiakurd.com.

[1] Meera Sethi, interview by author, Edmonton, AB, June 12, 2019.

[2] Meera Sethi, http://www.meerasethi.com, (accessed July 4, 2019).

[3] For more information on Sethi’s Upping the Aunty project, click here.

[4] Meera Sethi, interview by author.

[5] Artist website.

[6] Meera Sethi, interview by author.

[7] Ibid.

Profiles on Practice: Shawna Davis

By Nadia Kurd

Shawna Davis, Studio shot. Courtesy of the artist. 2019.

Scholar Sherry Farrell Racette notes that given the aggressive history of European colonialism in Canada and the US, a number of traditional Indigenous arts have survived because individuals and families had carried out cultural practices covertly. “The simple act of retaining and protecting knowledge was political,” writes Farrell Racette, “the materials themselves often believed to be living and potent.”[i]

For Gitxsan/Nisga’a artist Shawna Davis (also known as Hayatsgan), her beading practice followed a slightly different trajectory and began shortly after seeing the beadwork that adorned her partner’s home in 2014. Davis notes that her partner’s community of Old Crow, Vuntut Gwitchin First Nation “is a place where beadwork is life, and historically, a sign of wealth” and that he “was surrounded by it: moccasins, his baby belt beaded by his late Sitsuu Ellen Bruce hung in his apartment, medicine pouches. I had never really seen beadwork like this before.”[ii] Such beadwork practices were uncommon in her traditional territory of the Gitx̱san and Nisg̱a’a Nations as she was accustomed to the unique aesthetic characteristics of Indigenous west coast visual culture, which is well known for its form lines, button blankets, woodcarvings, and cedar weavings.

Shawna Davis. Salmon necklace design: Lianne Charlie (Northern Tuchone). Courtesy of the artist. 2019.

Davis’s skills were first developed when she participated in a workshop hosted by the ReMatriate Collective in 2017. Since then, she has been creating vibrant beaded works that are primarily meant for personal adornment. As a Gitxsan/Nisga’a person and non-traditional beader, Davis is conscientious about her practice and the implications of using distinct patterns and processes, explaining, “I understand the significance of coming from a place. To come from a place means that your sovereignty rests in your land, your language, your laws, and your art.”[iii] Each design that Davis creates is inspired by the work of other Indigenous womxn, her family, and the land, as well as the “Li’liget (our feast hall) and all of its teachings of our laws, governance and knowledge systems that we have practiced since time immemorial.”[iv]

Shawna Davis. Courtesy of the artist. 2019.

The process to create each work may take days to develop and finish. Beads are fastened to felt—which is thick enough so that it provides a strong base to stabilize the beads and other items such as porcupine quills, and abalone buttons. Each object features an array of bead colours and sizes. Sometimes these designs are also stitched directly on animal hide, quilting interface or fabric, which can contrast with and change the overall composition of the beadwork design. Once the design is fully beaded and the edges of the item are complete, the item may be gifted, traded or sold online.

Shawna Davis. Courtesy of the artist. 2019.

For the past year, Davis has been working on a much larger and more personal endeavor. She has been steadily creating objects for her upcoming wedding, which will include various items for the wedding party, herself and her groom. Not simply decorative in nature, Davis says that some of these items “will be gifted according to our clan system, laws, and protocols.”[v]

Another long-term beadwork project will include a more pointed examination of the politics and policies that continue to shape the Canadian settler state. Davis intends to make works that focus on how the government has exercised control over the lives of Indigenous people and its exploitative attitude towards natural resources, land, and agreements.

Shawna Davis. Courtesy of the artist. 2019.

Currently living as an uninvited guest on Unceded Musqueam, Tsleil Waututh and Squamish homelands, Davis continues to work as an artist full-time. For her, the process of beading is much of a creative act as it is a deeply personal one. “Beadwork is medicine to me, a strong medicine,” writes Davis, “it gives me the ability to learn patience, discipline, focus, and perseverance.”[vi]

To see more of Shawna Davis’s artwork, follow her on Instagram @strikingstick

Nadia Kurd (she/her) is an art historian and curator based in Edmonton, Alberta. She occasionally tweets at @nadia_kurd

[i] Sherry Farrell Racette, “Tuft Life: Stitching Sovereignty in Contemporary Indigenous Art,” Art Journal, 76:6, 114-123. 2017.

[ii] Artist correspondence, April 2019.

[iii] Ibid.

[iv] Ibid.

[v] Ibid.

[vi] Ibid.