Teng's Auguries of Innocence

Inside the show, cries of “that’s so cute!” can be heard like clockwork, but the last and most resonant time I heard this cry came from someone outside it. Following the voice, I left the gallery and quickly stumbled upon the source of the reaction — a window display of adorable plushes, drawings, and figurines from the “Oriental Gift Shop” located within the same mini mall. Little animals and people with enormous bubbly eyes, pastel colors dominating the palette, an abundance of winking; the same products that cover this window have become ubiquitous to the Western eye. Precious cargo from East Asia, this style of imported cuteness is frequently donned by westerners as “kawaii” or “ke’ai” — the Japanese and Mandarin words which are often translated reductively into the english “cute.”

However, the relationship between Teng’s show and the "Oriental Gift Shop" isn’t one created exclusively through coincidental proximity — the two engage in a direct dialogue. Utilizing a similar visual language to the one found inside the shop, Teng interrogates her persona using the same style that in many ways has boxed her in, effectively translating her conflict between internal and external self into a material world that exists within the walls of Whaam Gallery.

The show is undoubtedly cute, but to only call it this is reductive in the same way that translating the highly complex “ke’ai” into simply “cute” is. An audience’s tendency to generalize is precisely what allows Teng’s show to thrive, so come for the cute, but challenge yourself to see through it to find the essence of Teng.

Art

For Eimear Walshe, There are no 'Goodies or Baddies'

April 23, 2024

Eimear Walshe and I sit on the ground by the water at the Arsenale in Venice, just 100 yards from their widely successful exhibition Romantic Ireland for the Irish Pavilion at this year's Biennale. Romantic Ireland is a multilayered piece that utilizes contemporary storytelling to address the bargains we make through the traditional Irish practice of earth-building. Their work centers on Ireland's late 19th-century land contestation and its relation to private property, sexual conservatism, and the built environment. The piece consists of three primary storytelling elements — the earth-built sculpture of the physical exhibition space, the five-voice operatic soundtrack written by Walshe describing an eviction, and the video consisting of seven dancers, including Walshe, dressed as 19th-century to 21st-century Irish archetypes, sporting green, wide-eyed latex fetish masks.

The layering of symbols and the use of atypical languages, specifically a physical and movement-based language, create a multilayered and complex piece that deals with the dualities of living in modern society and reckoning with the past where, as Walshe says, there are no 'goodies or baddies.'

By Isabella Fox Arias
Images by Eimear Walshe

Isabella Fox Arias — How does language play into your work? Despite using a visual medium, language is still omnipresent throughout.

Eimear Walshe — The process of making Romantic Ireland started with writing, and I am very word-oriented, even as a visual artist. Writing comes up high in my communication fluency areas, so my challenge for this pavilion is thinking about the three different things produced.

The first part is the libretto in terms of its development, and that's obviously a writing process. But the challenge with the other aspects, like the video and the sculpture, was to think through, you know, the performers don't speak; they communicate just through gestures.

That was a challenge because I want to get more fluent with working just through gestures. What better way to do that than through dancers with their own vocabulary? I was really lucky to get to work with the dancers, performers, actors, and musicians who convey without words. Then, through the building, it was like thinking about retelling a part of history just through the material itself.

I'd love to hear more about constructing the story of the building.

The libretto text was the starting point and, I suppose, is also like the temporal anchor point in the sequence where the video was set. It's the biography of a building — the building site is the before, the eviction is the destruction of the life of the building, and then the ruin is the afterlife. The libretto about an eviction became the fulcrum of the narrative arc of the pavilion. It's central and primary, but I think it's also something that I try to challenge myself with. That's why it's so special to get to work with other people: you find out their languages, their fluencies, and their modes of conveyance.

Have you worked with dancers before, or is this your first time working so heavily with just a movement-based language?

Yeah, this is my first time. I got Muftar Yusuf on board at the very start. I did that because, in his work, he has the ability to communicate incredibly large volumes and intensity through very minimalistic gestures. Some of his works involve really explosive, hugely energetic movement, but then others involve microscopic movement, like having individualized control of a whole sort of fan of muscles on your body. That extends into the kind of narrative that he is able to make through those really microscopic movements. I remember seeing one of his performances that involved moving a bicycle a tiny bit backward and forward. It's just incredibly beautiful. That ubiquitous movement captured and repeated was really of interest to me in terms of the earth building. The brief or the remit for the movement and why I was so comfortable working with Muftar as a choreographer was I don't really want there to be dancing. I wanted to be built around the types of movements required for this kind of labor and building practice.

Working with Muftar, Rima Baransi, and Gallia Conroy, who were the crew members with strong backgrounds in dance, was really inspiring. They just have a different way of creating. I was able to write the scripts really differently than I usually would; I'm usually a little bit over-contrived. People who are improvisational dancers are going to challenge that. For some parts of the script, I just bought laminated photographs of pieces of furniture.

What kind of furniture did you bring?

One of the really important ones was a phone stand, which is a funny mid to late-20th-century piece of furniture that you'd have in your hallway. There's a little door, you put your phone book in a little press, the phone is up high, and there's a little place to sit. That appears in some of the photo documentation of the work. Erin plays the harp, so she needed a harp stool; my businessman needed a big mahogany desk, so we made that out of our bodies, and the landlord wanted to shit on everyone, so we made them a toilet. That was incredible because it was not an area of aptitude for me. It was really special getting to work with people who were not even exclusively in that field but who have such strength in that area.

That's wonderful! I was also interested in your choice of using masks for your dancers. I found it powerful that the identity was erased from the dancers, and instead, they became almost monster-like.

Yeah, I mean, those masks have really different associations for different people. People asked me the least about the sort of monster alien end of the spectrum, and I'm excited to talk about that, actually.

Really? It was my first thought watching the piece.

Yeah, I guess there is a spectrum of associations with those masks. Their primary use is their fetish objects, and they're from a latex company that produces custom whatever you want sort of latex pieces in any color. They're in olive green, so they also have an association with Ireland, the military, and the colors that were worn by volunteers in our revolutionary history. Also, any kind of face covering is often associated with clandestine activities. There's some kind of line between deviance and criminality when you have to cover your face because of what you're doing. Thinking about the different types of external forces that create the necessity for that but also thinking about, especially the fact that they all wear it even though they're all from different historical and class positions, this kind of universal marker.

The monster bit is really relevant because I'm thinking about the way that colonized people, whenever they resist in any way, shape, or form, including peacefully, are constructed as terrorists. That's definitely something that's at play with this. These constructions of forced clandestination, deviancy, and the relationship between armed resistance and liberty. All this is painted on them, and then they act out a soap opera. I suppose what I'm asking of the viewer is, can you when you see them go through all these daily activities, can you identify with them anyway, even though they've been othered by this costuming?

You mentioned otherness, which I felt while watching your work. You piece made me think about otherness and its relation to being a queer artist. You are non-binary and your work deals a lot with transient middle space that exists between two extremes. I’m thinking about how your work deals with coming from a land that was both the colonizer and the colonized. There's not really a question there.

But you're onto something aren't you? You certainly are.

Yeah, this is what your work has been making me think about.

I think there are two things with that: the interest in forced clan destination probably does come from thinking about the kind of bargains that you cut, and there are the invitations to self-betrayal, which includes betrayal of your history, betrayal of your ancestral struggle, and betrayal of your peers. That's certainly something that I'm thinking about with this. What you were saying in terms of Ireland as a colonized, a settler colony, but also the agent of, certainly in a really extensive way, religious imperialism. We tend to be a bit less keen to discuss.

Then secondly, the assistance to the extension of, and the aiding of, for example, US imperialism. We are a colonized nation that aids in the colonization of others and has learned nothing. In terms of what that has to do with being non-binary, maybe there's something very kind of simple in terms of creating a narrative film where there are no goodies or baddies. Why is Ireland so keen to discuss its victimhood in relation to colonization and so shy of or even in denial of how it perpetuated it? Part of it is because narrative framing doesn't allow you the complexity to have both, and that's also the case in lots of other kinds of categories.

Art

Caleb Hahne Quintana on 'The Salt of Two Seas' at Newchild

April 22, 2024

A group show acts as a nexus where artistic perspectives converge, intertwine, and interact to tell a story that transcends the individual, revealing connections and contrasts that might not be apparent when considering each artist’s work in isolation. The Salt of Two Seas, currently on view at Newchild until May 8th, reflects the rich Latin tradition of storytelling intertwined with history, myth, and personal narrative. This exhibition showcases artists Esteban Cabeza de Baca, Bernadette Despujols, and Caleb Hahne Quintana, who employ narrative as a means of preserving cultural heritage, transmitting wisdom, and fostering a sense of belonging amid the unknown. In light of the show, we caught up with Caleb, who, together with Newchild, ensured that The Salt of Two Seas serves as a cohesive narrative that authentically celebrates Latinidad across the diaspora. We delve into themes of migration and belonging, Belgium's Flemish painting heritage, our current 'cowboy' renaissance, and limpias (Mexican spiritual cleansings).

Interview by Sahir Ahmed
Images courtesy of Newchild / artworks courtesy of the artist.

What was your thought process in organizing this show? I’m curious to know how you thought the artworks would interact in the space.

My practice requires a lot of emotional labor and research, so doing a solo show is a pretty arduous process that I’d prefer to spend at least a year on. Considering the turnaround time, I wanted to use this opportunity to work with other Latino artists who are invested in their practice in a way that's similar to mine, whether it be through land or figuration. Diego, one of the directors of the gallery who is Colombian, was also really interested in this language in terms of what it means to bring these artists to a port city like Antwerp, known for trade, diamonds, and printing.

I felt that that was an opportunity for an interesting conversation to happen there, especially because there’s such a rich history of 15th and 16th-century Flemish painting with Bruegel, Rubens, van Dyck, and others who have controlled that region. I asked myself, How can I bring this outside language of the desert, controlled burns, landscape, and migration into such a place? Esteban and I come from similar parts of Colorado and our families have similar kinds of migration patterns from Mexico up to the southwest. The entire team at Newchild was really helpful in gauging how we could talk about migration in a place like this.

Where does the title of the show come from?

It’s based on a painting I made in 2022 called I Am the Salt of Two Seas. That painting is the convergence of me being half Mexican and half German. Well, the German part is funny. I never know how to say that I’m really not German in any way. I'm very Mexican American, very Chicano.

I was in a show at the Denver Art Museum two years ago. That was the biggest Latin American show that they had had at that time. My friend Raphael, who curated the show asked me what I saw happening with a lot of Latin artists. And I think that there are these expectations for South American, Latin, and Chicano work that are really contrived. These artists are expected to perform, and I just see so much amazing work happening from individuals that aren't strictly tied to their identity. And I think that it would be cool to make work that way.

And I see that in Esteban’s works, which are all kind of landscape-based with his personal experiences blended in. His works, how vibrant and eclectic they are, also feel out of place against the pristine off-white walls in the gallery. It brings your attention to how rare it is for someone visiting this gallery to see this kind of work.

Exactly. I'd been to Europe a handful of times, but I had never been to Belgium, so when I got there to show this work, it made me that much more aware of the place that you're at. This desert landscape is very true to my core, to my being, and to my practice. Going to Antwerp which is ancient in a different capacity, it’s kind of bizarre. You're like, Wait, where the fuck do I belong in any of this? Especially making work and thinking, Okay we’ll see how people connect to this. And it’s been kind of a challenge in some regards, which is okay because that’s exactly what I wanted.

I want to talk a bit about the juxtaposition of these three bodies of work. As we said, Esteban focuses more on these landscapes, while Bernadette’s paintings depict moments between people. Then your work feels focused on this in-between space, whether that’s an apparition or movement, as in In Our Bones the Soil Secrets. You have this person in the middle of a footstep and these two other figures — one that could be their previous footstep or an ancestor and then another figure who could be a sort of successor. There’s almost this tension that emanates from this moment frozen in time.

That is spot on in many ways. In a lot of my work, that does seem to reoccur too: everything in between, there's always a step. I think that comes from my fascination and interest in storytelling and reading. I like this idea of something always being in pause. I'm even writing a short story right now, and it’s funny, I kind of started the short story in the middle and I have no idea how to start the beginning or how I'm going to end it, which relates a lot to my practice.

The title, In Our Bones the Soil Secrets comes from a poem I had written and the painting I did when I had just gotten back from Mexico. I go down there pretty often and we were in Arca Tierra, famous for these boats people drink on, but there's this whole other part of the canal that is rich in history. You go on this canal ride for 45 minutes and then they feed you a meal from this farm there. You also go super early in the morning.

When my family immigrated, they were in New Mexico and then Colorado. My great-great-grandmother was a curandera and whenever I go to Mexico, there's just this — not to sound too corny — innate connection to the landscape that other places haven't really granted me. Like I love New York, but I'm not a New Yorker, and I'm okay with that. When I'm in Colorado or New Mexico or Texas, all of these southwestern states, there’s this deep comfort that I feel there.

Whenever I go to Mexico, my grandmother’s like, Why are you doing that? We did all this to get here. And now I think its typical for anybody in our age group, this idea of Chicano revivalism, coming back to where you’re from, and this painting is almost a compression of all of those things.

This generation gets a lot of shit for being nostalgic, but I think the yearning for preservation and maintaining tradition is so important. And it’s very of this generation. So many of the 20th century’s art movements were focused on creating something new, now we’re navigating this postmodern state that seems past that. It’s less about being part of a movement and more so about expressing these personal experiences and narratives through the work.

Totally. And that makes me think of Denver and Aurora where I grew up. There’s this really famous Chicano poet from Denver named Corky Gonzalez. He was a professional boxer. We even have a library named after him. He has a really famous poem called “Yo Soy Joaquin”, essentially about being Chicano in America, which feels very to your point about this idea of a movement. Then there was Axis Mundo, this movement between the 60s — 90s of queer Chicano artists.

While these movements do exist, individualism is a bit more pertinent now. Well, I guess everybody’s story, like look at me man, I’m fucking white as hell. When people find out that I'm Mexican, that I speak Spanish, and see my family — not so much in New York but back home — they are always so confused. I always felt like I had to prove myself. Now I'm 31 and I still feel this incessant need to prove who I am, maybe not so much anymore, but definitely in my early twenties. In terms of my experience, my parents never married and I grew up primarily with my mom, who is married to a Mexican man who has been there my entire life. Like my family calls me guerito, both of my parents were Latin. Biracial sounds so antiquated but being a white Mexican kid with two Latin parents was my whole identity.

You’ve essentially been navigating this dual existence your entire life.

And even still. I've actually grown bored talking about it and I don’t feel like I need to define myself anymore. I also think that definition was based on white people's comfort, whereas whenever I meet Mexicans, especially in Mexico, nobody fucking cares. My Tia has red hair and blue eyes, and she was born and raised in Mexico. It’s a very American expectation.

Have you interacted with anyone viewing the works at the gallery?

I had an interesting conversation with this woman from Spain, and I don't meet a lot of legitimately Hispanic people. It was a nice chat. She was like, Are you Spanish? And I said no, but her term for Spanish was all-encompassing, while here in the States you don’t say that. I think an uninformed person might say Spanish, but for the most part, it’s like, Oh I’m Chicano, or I’m Dominican. There are all these sub-sects.

Right, and I relate to that because I’m half Dominican and Bangladeshi, but I resonate more with my Dominican side.

Yeah, and as far as the response to the work, I think that because I look the way that I look, and I've experienced this for a lot of my life. A lot of people expect me to be the spokesperson for Mexican people. And I just can't speak to that experience at all because I'm white, and I'm abundantly aware of that. So when there’s an expectation for my work to be about a certain thing, it’s not always the case. There’s a painting in the show — probably one of my favorite paintings actually — of me cutting my friend Rogelio's hair. He’s also Chicano. I’ve known him for like 10 years, he’s recurred in probably five of my paintings. I think he’s a really good stand-in for me in a lot of ways. He had these really long braids and hadn’t cut his hair in 10 years. He moved to New York recently and the second he got off the plane came to my house and asked me to shave his head. I took a video because it’s crazy to be the person to shed this person of 10 years of their life. The still from the video captures exactly what you said before, the tension right before I cut the braid.

To me, that painting is a conversation about intimacy, bonding, and masculinity that has nothing to do with being Chicano. There's this expectation or this idea that the work has to be very literal about who I am, but it just so happens that these are all paintings about where I'm from and who I know which just so happens to be bridled with this amazing history. I could be Chicano and be from Iowa, and I wouldn't have the same relationship I have with Chicano activism, food, or culture because Denver and Aurora where I specifically grew up are so rich with Mexican-Americans.

Artists are sometimes automatically expected to engage with identity politics, but it doesn’t have to be that. When I look at your work I think of reading a novel and being given certain snippets or details about a moment and having to piece those together to bring the image to life in your mind. I’d also like to point out how these specific scenes wouldn’t be found in a cityscape.

Yeah. It’s funny too. When I first moved to New York, my work was already very rooted in the southwestern landscape. People asked if I was going to start painting New York scenes. I guess as a painter I felt I had this duty as an observer and recorder to do that, but I realized pretty quickly that wasn’t my job. I'm not from here. I have no need to tell any of these stories because it's not who I am. Being from the Southwest, there's this affinity for a big city where you want to know what that's like, yet moving here made me much more aware and grateful for the abundance of the desert and the plains of the Southwest. It brought me closer to home in a way, and that's been a great gift of authenticity in terms of knowing who I am and who I'm not. I think if I moved here when I was a lot younger, I would've struggled with that because it's such an influential city. But as an adult, and I'm not saying this to be self-aggrandizing, there's a certain degree of awareness of things I just don't fucking care about. That just comes with time, truly, and I think that this city has granted me that experience.

Yeah, and there’s so much here. It can be overwhelming even as a native.

Totally, there are times when I meet people, and it's hard not to be influenced. You're just like, Damn, these people are cool, they’re into cool shit. Yada, yada, yada. Also, not to go off on a slight tangent. There’s been this revival in Cowboy Americana, especially with the Beyonce album and all these other moments in pop culture, which has been wild to see as someone who’s from that place and grew up going to stock shows where people are into that yee-haw shit. I was just in Texas for a wedding, for my childhood best friend, and I got to wear my cowboy hat again and I was like, Damn, this feels good. In New York, it would feel too out of place although I probably wear cowboy boots six out of seven days of the week.

It really has become a kind of spectacle in pop culture, even though something like cowboy boots has been popular for a long time. I do think it’s great that people are revisiting Cowboy Americana and revealing its Black, Chicano, and Indigenous roots. Renaissance Act II brings up a lot of specific references to Texan history that aren’t in the textbooks. It’s quite literally a renaissance of a culture that has been dominated by a white figurehead for so long.

To that point, my family were rancheros, vaqueros. My great-great-grandmother was a curandera and her husband, my great-great-grandfather, was a horse thief. He stole horses with Pancho Villa. All my family is from Colorado, Texas, all these different places in the south and southwest. My entire childhood, it’s just been like yes, cowboys are Mexicans, so witnessing this western renaissance has been kind of interesting. In Colorado, they have these horse competitions and dances, all the most extravagant ones were always Mexican. I’ve painted horses for seven years now pretty consistently because it’s just always been part of my experience. I would visit my biological father every other weekend and his house backed a ranch. One of my sisters used to ride horses for that ranch. I would wake up and there'd be horses in the backyard. Horses have been a vehicle for so many things for me, and they're mythic in this really kind of unreal way. As many horses as I've been on, every time I’m aware that this thing could fucking kill me. And that's crazy, but it’s amazing.

Right, and I sense this reverence and awe you have for nature even in your works. I’m thinking about the piece Hard Country. Those depicted are on a horse looking out into the distance but you can’t tell if it’s the beginning or the end of something.

Yeah, I really appreciate that read. The title, Hard Country, comes from a long format poem by Sharon Doubiago, who kind of traversed the West from Seattle all the way down and then back up into Canada. One of the things that I felt drawn to about that, and its kind of fascination with migration also comes from my experience of living in New York. I remember last year when there were forest fires in Canada, and the whole sky turned orange here, people were so freaked out. It's funny because that’s a common occurrence in Colorado. It gets incredibly dry so when lightning strikes forest fires happen pretty often. Every summer we had these apocalyptic ash storms where the sky would turn lilac and umber. It’s a weird thing to experience if you’re not used to it, sort of like snow. It’s had to tell in the photograph of the painting, but there’s this hard-cutting flame through half of the painting with the smoke billowing out into the left side.

There’s a mythical quality to it in that you can’t tell if the earth has been scorched already or if it’s coming toward them. My gallery director said that there’s no fear. And I love that calmness to the painting, this dreamlike quality of not being afraid of this fire.

Yeah, I see that, so what exactly inspired this calmness? Typically a fire wouldn’t provoke this reaction.

We have this thing called controlled burns that work similarly to the cutting of the hair — the positioning of these two paintings next to each other speaks to things done out of regeneration of cleansing. It’s kind of like split ends. You have to cut off the end of your hair so that it can grow back healthier. When the land gets riddled with invasive species, especially due to climate change — even something as much as a foreign grass can disrupt the pattern of a certain soil, controlled burns act similarly. When you burn off a top layer of crabgrass, new grass is born from underneath it, and I find that incredibly poetic. There are certain things that need to be done to maintain order.

It’s one of the truths of our reality, everything happens in a balance — that just speaks to physics even. It’s interesting when you see art capable of translating one of those universal truths. And a citizen from Antwerp might encounter this painting completely unaware of ‘controlled burns’.

Yeah, and it’s also an ancient practice. Indigenous people have been doing it for ever. There’s something meditative about the landscapes in the exhibition among my work and Esteban’s.

I’d love to speak about the intimate moments depicted in Bernadette’s works.

Yeah, so we wanted a couple more works from Bernadette, but she has a solo show coming up, so it was a little bit harder to get more and her works take a bit of time. The two people in her painting, if I'm not mistaken, are her nieces. What I really love about that painting is that one of her nieces is in a gi and the other is in flamenco attire. There’s this conversation between her work and mine across from it that speaks to this generational thing. In Our Bones The Soil Secrets speaks to past present and future in a particular way and Bernadette records her family with a different vehicle. She’s quite literally using people from her family.

The last piece I want to touch upon is Limpia II (After William Blake).

It’s funny, that’s kind of become the poster image for the show. I made a Limpia painting around three years ago. So in Mexico, there are these things called a limpia, maybe it’s cross-cultural. Do you know what that is?

Like a spiritual cleansing?

Yeah, so when I was 24, I was going through a hard time, and I had one done. It started with a heart-to-heart, then we went into a room and the woman called all of my ancestors into the room. I lay on this table, and she starts a prayer in Spanish. She spits this water on me, burns a plant over me, and roasts my body with an egg. She then bit on my chest right above my heart and started screaming into my heart. I started hallucinating and it was really intense. After it all ended and I came to, I remember this image of a bunch of white horses running through a blue field and hearing in Spanish, Calm the ocean of your mind. The next day I was at a thrift store and I found a blue handkerchief with a bunch of white horses on it.

What came of the cleansing?

My understanding of my family was pretty limited at the time, there was a lot of pain that people didn't really want to talk about, and I also don't think I had the right questions. Through this practice, I started uncovering a lot of things. I started learning all of these things about my family being rancheros, stealing horses, my great-great-grandmother being a curandera, all of these spiritual things that have always been in my blood and in my bones. It took me kind of doing that to really ask all of the right questions.

And so, you started painting white horses.

Yeah, so the first one I ever did in 2021 is just a single horse running through this blue field. For the second one, I liked the idea of the horse acting almost like a spirit guide, jumping over me, and in this person's face, there is no fear. There's almost this gaze of admiration for the barren landscape. It was intentional to do it in this ultra-marine blue so it has a dreamlike sense, if it has too many colors, it riddles you too much with reality. It’s funny too, because I use a Flemish paint brand that makes a very specific ultramarine blue.

I wanted this to feel like that hallucination I had. It felt so cinematic that everything got silent and I went into this other place. The reason I added ‘After William Blake’ is because of his paintings of white horses. He's such an icon in terms of painting that if I didn't, it would feel a little too literal. I'd had this image ruminating for like seven years, but I just had to wait for the right time. And I love this word, limpia, because it kind of reads like Olympia which has this mythical quality to it while in Spanish it just means cleansing, or to clean. The power of language is beautiful to me in that sense.

So much can be said with one word.

Art

For Jurgen Maelfeyt, Books are an Exhibition Space

April 21, 2024

Time's gold tooth gnaws at the equinox, whittling down the ordinary things – July’s incendiary lust, the loneliness that trails a held tongue, freedom’s actualization in hindsight, the choice to see something as a sign – into wistful dust. In this life and the next, we long for the same things. Our triumphs, our mistakes all recast in the image of an absent god, resurrected through enduring ideals, hierarchical strivings and values well-endowed. Immortality dangles itself just over the horizon cooing with baited breath, there are no new sins just different ways the light hits them. We create fame in its image, legacy in the form of tales, forever in the pages of books. Forget me but bookmark where I changed your mind.

In an age where our camera rolls have become the vestigial organs of memory, everyone is no longer just a photographer but a publisher too. A response to the fleeting nature of the doom-scroll, the online feature improperly archived, broken links, the desire to hold on to something – self-publishing is on the rise. While it’s deemed “refreshing,” is vanity simply in disguise? What makes a good book? Does every project need to be actualized and bound?

Interview by Lindsey Okubo
Images courtesy of Jurgen Maelfeyt / Books published by Art Paper Editions

Jurgen Maelfeyt LIPS (May 2018)

Since 2010, Jurgen Maelfeyt of Ghent-based design studio 6'56" has been independently publishing books through the platform he founded, APE (Art Paper Editions) and more recently, Monogram. An APE book is a feeling, a system created in hindsight, guided by instinct. It is a response to a body of work, not its calling. Viewing the book as an exhibition space, Jurgen had developed long-standing relationships with some of the industry’s most beloved artists and photographers including the likes of Carlijn Jacobs, Camille Vivier, Richard Kern, Paul Kooiker, and John Yuyi. His books are acquired by institutional libraries such as MoMA, Centre Pompidou and Macba amongst others.

As a teacher of graphic design and self-published photographer himself, Jurgen’s understanding of the publishing landscape has been shaped by nuance and instinct by way of firsthand experience. He’ll be releasing his next book Toy on APE platforms soon and will be in New York for the NY Art Book Fair next week: booth C28. office chats with Jurgen about why something wouldn’t need to be published, the editing process and why you shouldn’t produce work with an end product (a book) in mind. Hint, hint.

Lindsey Okubo — Hey Jurgen! So nice to meet and chat. Know you founded APE in 2010 and I’ve been following your work for some time now so let’s take it from the top! Can you tell us about its early beginnings, motivations, etc.?

Jurgen Maelfeyt — In the beginning, I was producing zines on my own and APE actually started somewhat by accident because I didn't have a publishing house. There was a curator that needed to put my name on the colophon for some publication and he quickly asked if I could officially be the publisher because he couldn’t be and I was like, Okay, let’s take the chance. That same year, I was invited to Offprint in Paris and it was a huge success. I brought some suitcases of books with me, I went to all the shops and I came home empty-handed, I sold everything. It was fun from the beginning especially because you got to meet so many people at the fairs. I grew with the fairs as I then went to New York, other places, etc. We grew from just being a graphic design studio into distributing worldwide. To stay independent we needed to scale up and by that I mean we needed to produce between 15 and 30 books per year so that I could hire the necessary staff. We switched over from one distributor worldwide to several, we have now eight different distributors globally and they know the shops better, it’s more local. It’s not a machine that's behind it all but it's a system. For every publication, everyone plays an important role in the process. The goal as an independent publisher is not just to make the book but to spread the book all over the world. That's our goal. Also we have a personal approach, it’s always me that the artists are talking to so that's a huge difference.

Amazing! It's interesting because there's seemingly been a rise in self-publishing, people doing books, printed matter, what have you. The same way that “everyone is a photographer” now, everyone is also becoming an author in hopes of finding new ways to immortalize their work in the age of the doom-scroll. When you make a book, you think of it as being forever and how much of that is related to things like vanity and overplayed nostalgia?

I get many book proposals and there are two questions I always ask myself when reviewing them: does it attract me or not? I have to feel something, it's a very personal approach. I also ask: does it need to be published? I think there’s an overload nowadays where not everything needs to be published. If you look at the proposal from the viewpoint of the artist or the photographer, you want it to be published, of course. But my point of view asks if it adds something to all the books that are already out there — that makes a huge difference.

What are some of the qualities that resonate with you that would warrant something being published? And why would something not need to be published?

That's a very difficult question to answer because I try not to focus too much on one category. I do love fashion myself and I'm very connected to that world but not every fashion photographer is an art photographer. Most of the fashion photographers that I work with come from art backgrounds first and then have gone into fashion. Another example is that normally I do not have a thing for documentary photography but sometimes it's so good that I still do it, the same goes for landscape photography. I did landscape once but in 99% of the cases, I will say no because it's just not my thing. If it's not my thing, I have difficulties designing or editing the book so that's mainly the reason why I don't do it. It’s all very personal.

Richard Kern Medicated (August 2020) / Richard Kern Polaroids (July 2023)

When you're talking about the differences between fashion and art photography, does that have to do with the speed at which things are produced? With fashion, it moves in trends and cycles which essentially become predictable.

The thing with fashion photography is that there's a lot of copying going on. You have to be careful because fashion photographers are used to working with mood boards and those mood boards can kill photography sometimes. Mood boards are supposed to inspire people to photograph something but then the client comes in and they want exactly what's on the mood board so people start copying things. Also, fashion photographers sometimes think that they want to produce an art book but they see it as an editorial, and it's not. The line is very thin and when I work with fashion photographers, I just try not to grasp that bit of fashion in them, I try to see the other things that they have. I just worked with John Yuyi on a book and she works in fashion but what she does in art is so different but it's very valuable.

Right and circling back to the word I mentioned earlier, “vanity,” which I know invokes an ugly context but publishing a book does add this level of acclaim to one’s work which could explain the confusion. It’s interesting that publishing nowadays has become a stamp of approval or validation in a way that a blue checkmark could never.

That goes for photography in general too. If you're not published as a photographer, you don't exist – is what they say but I don't think it's true, there’s still a lot of hidden talent out there which I hope to discover through books.

A book is meant to be timeless in that whenever you’re picking it up, it exists in that moment, no matter if it's this year, or five years from now but it’s interesting to think that so much of the editing process is about looking back. When you're editing, how are you ensuring that the images you’re selecting will be narratively strong regardless of when someone views them?

When people send me images I'd rather have 1000 images to choose 20 images from rather than having to pick 20 from 22. The editing is very important and it's different from making selects when you’re making a book. I don't know if the images will stay relevant but I’ve made some books 10 years ago that are now classics, I call them APE classics. In most cases, how the editing process is done is to find a system in editing.

... there are two questions I always ask myself when reviewing them: does it attract me or not? I have to feel something, it's a very personal approach. I also ask if it needs to be published?

Liv Liberg Sister Sister (January 2021)

For example with Liv Liberg’s book Sister, Sister, we found a system where we did it in chapters of months. She had photographed her sister for 15 years and we could’ve done it chronologically but that would be adding in another storyline of her sister growing up and we didn't want that. We wanted to see it as her sister being a muse and dressing up, that was the whole point. What we did is to put the images in folders by month: January, February, March etc. All the images from January were selected and put at the beginning of the book no matter what age her sister was and on it went from there. It was a methodology on doing things to make sure you avoid certain stories that you didn’t want to tell in the book. I will never use that system for another book. Every book has its own way of editing.

Right and I know the way you describe APE is that you see the book as an exhibition space, is this methodology of creating a system what you mean by that?

I see the book as a sort of architectural product itself because you build it as an object. It needs some things to structure it and it becomes a book when you bind it. Otherwise, you have loose sheets. If you do architecture, you have to make sure that every wall stands, every floor supports the whole of the building so it doesn't fall apart. With books, it’s the same.

Right and we kind of forget about the actual process of making a book, where it literally comes in folios, you have to consider the thickness of paper, proofs have to be physically shipped etc. These aspects make it sacred and almost ritualistic. I know another word you use and consider when making a book is “balance,” how are you defining that word?

90% of the people who are editing or even photographers editing their own work start from the beginning of the book and work through to the end. But if you are at a book fair and you look at the people browsing through the books, you will see that not everyone opens the book from its first page. Some people open it from the back, some people open it from the middle — and that's how I also edit books. I want people regardless of how you’re going through the book to have the same feeling throughout it.

And when we’re using the word narrative, the consumer landscape as of late requires every product, every thing, to have a story but do things always have to have a story? Do beginnings always have to stem from an epiphany?

No, no, no, it can also be just the images.

Paul Kooiker Nude Animal Cigar (February 2015), Fashion (November 2023)

Do you find that purer almost?

Yeah, I think so. My own books do not have a narrative at all. It's the title and the images, that's it. For example with Paul Kooiker, there's never a narrative, never. It's always the title and the images. The first one that we really did together was Nude- Animal- Cigar so that’s what he photographed. You don't have to think of a story but it was the only way that it all fit together, it had to be those three things because nude and animal had like a weird connotation, animals and cigars didn't make sense, and nudes and cigars had the wrong connotation. That was the whole story behind the book.

You’ve been publishing your own work for a long time too and I’m wondering how your own relationship with photography shifted or was impacted by keeping that former process in the back of your mind while shooting?

When I find the time or when I think I have an idea, I make a book. That's the process. I've been doing this for years so there's no real strategy behind it. The next one, Toy, is ready, and will be out soon and I don't have any clue what's next. [laughs]

Right and it’s kind of the same with writing too; where if you know you’ll be editing your own work, it becomes a challenge to just write freely. You end up self-censoring a bit. Does that ever happen with you while shooting stuff? Do you think people should shoot or produce work with the product in mind though? That feels like a slippery slope.

Yeah but for me, everything is made for books so there's no thinking of other things than making a book. If you're a bookmaker, it's easy. I don't think photographers should be thinking about the kind of paper they’ll use while they’re shooting but for me, that's what happens.

Jurgen Maelfeyt Toy (April 2024)

Interesting. And in publishing someone’s work, you’re really able to understand and be a part of an artist’s growth and career trajectory if you establish a regular publishing cadence. It’s refreshing because magazines nowadays won’t do it, they’ll be like, oh we covered them a month ago, we're not going to do a story on them now – I think that’s a huge miss.

Oh yes, I have good relationships with many artists and photographers and I’ve published many books with them and I’ll publish many more. When you build a relationship with artists it's a very personal relationship. I'm not their agent or anything but they trust me with their work. The more I know them, the more they show me the work before it's even edited down which I think is fun. I like to talk a lot about books so with many artists, that’s what we talk about even before we start selecting images or thinking about paper, etc.

Right and when you’re talking about trust, there’s a huge sense of that when someone is publishing something because it’s autobiographical, it can be revelatory. But when it’s done, it’s done. You can’t change its contents, it’s sitting on someone’s shelf. Identity isn’t fixed and we have to keep in mind that a book won’t always represent the artist, they will change but they trusted you in that moment with whoever they were and with their work.

Although I start each product from scratch actually, I do feel APE has a sort of identity. It’s not a visual identity, I cannot explain it, but people come to me and say, oh, it looks like an APE book. I'm not sure what they mean by that all the time but I think the straightforwardness of our books is one of the main characteristics of them.

Nowadays you go online, you see a website, an Instagram profile, a magazine layout and everything has seemingly been made in the reflection of the other. There are distinct aesthetics that render something marketable or relevant and an adaptive mimetic sense of conformity has settled in. That being said, it’s indeed a feat to be celebrated when someone says your work is actually distinguishable.

I know about the trends because and now it's through social media but it started out with the Internet. 20-30 years ago, every country had its own visual language. Now it's switched where everybody in the world has the same visual language. I don't change what I’m doing and sometimes they're in trend and sometimes they're out of trend. There's two types of designing, you can design with a certain personal identity, which means that you always have a sort of grid or template in mind that you’re fitting things into. But if you design from a content perspective, you ask what the content needs in order to be translated into a book. I try to design from a content-perspective. I also teach graphic design so methodology is a topic.

I didn’t know you were a teacher! How do you think artists can maintain their sense of autonomy or purity? As you’ve said before, everything is indeed a copy or you’ve randomly seen it before, it’s kind of this subconscious absorption of content and aesthetics.

I think even with AI’s newfound prominence, you can ask the same question of what is original and what is not? It's going to be a question that will be answered in the next few years. The people that are really authentic are the people that are not using all these moodboards, they aren’t using Instagram as inspiration or Pinterest or whatever. It's also very interesting to research this question.

If you do architecture, you have to make sure that every wall stands, every floor supports the whole of the building so it doesn't fall apart. With books, it’s the same.

Camille Vivier Twist (June 2019) / Katie Burnett Cabin Fever (2021)

When people are researching or going through archives, they often end up using the same sources of information too. And if it’s not AI, your point of genesis is the self and it’s all essentially influenced by one’s own experiences. Intuition is innate but it’s also developed. What are some of the experiences you’ve had that have shaped your eye?

Yeah, that's the difficult part because the online resources or archives are all the same. What the eye sees as valuable is also a learning process, now I see it faster because I have experience from the past that lets me know if something works or doesn’t work. When I’m researching I can now easily dig into something and know if it’s going nowhere and when to change directions. It's a process of years, time past and experience.

How do you know something is quality? That’s a feeling, no? It’s the mark of an editor.

That's pure instinct. I'm very visually oriented. I recognize things very quickly if I’ve seen it before and sometimes I cannot describe what I've seen, but I recognize it.

Right and in that sense of remembering references, it kind of invokes this idea of collecting things mentally, collecting books, whatever it is. It can feel very physical or burdensome sometimes, do you feel like a collector?

I am not a book collector but sometimes I buy books. I have two reasons to buy a book, I love the work or the artist or because it's a very well made or well designed book, but I find this to be the case less and less. Sometimes these things don't match up either. I’ll find a book that's not very well made but it's beautiful work, the design is very relative in that case.

Carlijn Jacobs & James Chester, Mannequins (February 2021) / Jurgen Maelfeyt, Kaskcinema (November 2022)

I know you have Toy coming out soon. Do you want to talk a little bit about that?

It’s the same as Wet and Furs but the only difference is that Toy is more suggestive, less a literal translation of the title.

Have you always been shooting or how did you get into photography?

I don't consider it like fully photography because it's like re-photographing things. I call myself more of an image maker than a photographer. When you call somebody a photographer, I always think of somebody who's running around with a camera all the time, right? I'm not. I use a camera when I have an idea.

I know you also do Monogram and earlier we talked about editing with a system in mind. For Monogram there’s a certain prompt for the artist, a certain scale they’re working with etc. Perhaps it can seem limiting but in reality, I can imagine it helps to apply a uniform thought to artistic process.

The first idea for Monogram came from wanting to commission an artist to make a monogram. I decided to fix the size of the work but left the design to be free. I wanted it to be something that was not a magazine, not a book, but something in between, more like a zine. It would be fast-paced all around, especially in production so that's also why it's stapled. Because it's stapled it cannot have more than 64 pages. If you had a project that was too small for a full book but wanted to make the work nonetheless, you could make a Monogram. For example, Yuji’s book In memory of… which documented her nose job. One artist, one project, fixed size, free design.

Monogram 5: John Yuyi, In Memory Of... (December 2023)

Got it, so what do you think is the difference between a book and a zine? Obviously size but more so just conceptually.

I think of something more as a zine based on its content. The feel of a zine content is a very fast paced thing. I think of fanzines which are very quickly produced and if it fits that, it can fit in Monogram. I haven't worked on a Monogram for months but I could do a Monogram each night for example, that’s how quickly it can happen. They’re all limited to an edition size of 500 whether you’re famous or not.

As it should be.

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