It’s interesting you say that because it does really feel like people are less up in arms about everything despite the fact that things have seemingly gotten worse. I was reading an article that was talking about how the age of hyper-politics is over, activism is no longer white hot and there’s more of show versus tell energy but really I just think a lot of people are numb.
Right and with the rise of fascism, we also have body fascism. Fashion is a reflection of our world and we see people changing their bodies to fit in and that’s the thing with fascism, it’s about things falling in line rather than expanding the lines, so people are doing that with their clothes too because they want to feel comforted. It’s also a class thing because people who are able to have this “fit body” are usually people with more access to resources. There are so many factors to all of this and the industry and brands at large are playing into it too without realizing that it affects the people who see these shows and makes them think that’s what they’re supposed to look like. But back to the not using models, I also really love to make these human effigy type doll sculptures because they have these distorted features that no human has and also relates to the main horse sculpture, the kinetic sculpture that's in the show right now. It's made in the same kind of fabrication process and has the same human-like features, the skin and eyes, that the dolls did.
Ok it all comes full circle. This being your debut painting exhibition is nothing short of a big deal but I feel like it’s also important to acknowledge the duality in your practice, you’ve always been both an artist and a designer but it’s obviously easier for people to digest if you just occupy one lane. I feel like the transition was just about you making things more sustainable for yourself because the big question is, how do you do any thing long term? How much of it means lowering your attachment to achievement?
The biggest thing for my work was never to be the biggest brand with the most sales in stores. The thing with my painting and sculpture kind of a similar thing where I'm like, if I can sustain myself with the work, that's enough for me. Beyond that, I'm not trying to be like an art star diva. When things grow to a certain point there's a lot of pressure, first of all, because usually you have more people involved who are invested or rely on the work so that becomes its own complicated thing. I think no matter what you do, the bigger something gets, the more you are faced with decisions where you're going to be making compromises, big or small, while thinking about exploitation of labor, I guess that's the biggest thing in capitalism, you can only hoard capital, if you are willing to exploit others. To be smaller is a choice, it allows for adaptability but it can be a big challenge to to make things work then too because you just have fewer things happening.
And in American culture, it’s never about trying to make smaller things work, it’s always about dreaming big, reaching for the stars, being the best because you deserve to be. It’s also ironic that the greatest American value, freedom, feels like its being lost because we’re all self-censoring because our lives are a public spectacle.
The idea that deserving anything goes with the medals and things that I have in the show. It's this idea that you earned this, even if it’s just for participating, it’s all a very American thing. What does it even mean to win? We're competing with each other to earn these meaningless symbols of success. Yet we don't have a competition for being the most kind because that’s incompatible with this kind of culture that I grew up in where you have to be better than someone else to be someone. There are a couple of paintings that are in the show that exemplify this too. They’re the ones titled “Cupid Death Blow” and “Eager Opponent" and take reference from the show, American Gladiator, which is a reality show from the early 90s where they have these average Americans competing against professional bodybuilder athletes. They have them dressed up in these freaky red, white and blue hyper sexualized, spandex outfits in this huge arena. They’re all oiled up and it just screams sex because they’re all conventionally hot people in competition, and violence because well, they’re fighting to win but to win what?
Right it’s just like the image of winning, of being seen as a winner and the validation that comes with it. It makes me think about how there’s now a degree of professionalism to creativity, how the image of being an artist almost eclipses the work itself and what the consequences of that really are. If you have to be concerned about portrayal and idealized image in order to be seen as professional that seems a lot like censorship to me, fascism baby.
Yeah it’s like here I am doing it all and also looking great while doing it. I'm traveling, I go everywhere and I do it everywhere. There are a couple things that you said there that I would speak on, I'm not an art critic by profession, however, I don't think that it would shock anyone if I said that there is a lot of bullshit out there. I'm not gonna say it's bad work. I will say that I find a lot of what I see to be ineffective when it comes to comparing the written artist statements to the physical product. It speaks to that situation that you were just talking about where it's about the money first and then after that it's about the facade of the artist; like this person can talk to people in the way that they need to in order to get their bag whether or not the work conveys what they're saying, it doesn't matter because it's not about that. I think a lot of people can see that and will say that is what's happening but it's also kind of a taboo thing where you can't walk into a gallery and say, wow, this is not good because it's all very subjective.
Right and at what point does being hushed by subjectivity become art’s downfall when it’s supposed to be an active commentary or critique on the time and you know these are wild times.
I also don't want to exclude myself from this whole thing because that would be hypocritical and I don't think that my own work is beyond criticism and if it needs to be taken apart, it should. That’s what you sign up for when you put your stuff out there and the same thing goes with fashion too. In fashion today some things are clearly not cute but it’s gone beyond that now.
Well fashion is now about the “community” nowadays, it’s about the who’s who of carrying what bag, wearing what designer, gifted that collab. When you mentioned the commodification of bodies, well that’s it.
We’ve talked about this before but I'm kind of taking a break from all this stuff because I don't give a shit what celebrity is trying to wear my stuff. Celebrities are people too, yes, but at the same time, having your stuff be on their body symbolizes something. They have stylists that are like, we're going to put you in this because we know clothing means something, and if you look this way, it means something and it's going to influence others. Even with magazines, if there is going to be something in a magazine, I'm interested in it being something that isn't just like a model looking “cool.” I'm not saying there's no value in that because I was influenced by fashion imagery that I saw on Tumblr but getting into the industry, you start to see the complete picture of what goes into having that image exist. I just don't value it as much anymore.
So if this moment in your trajectory is a pause per se, what are the conditions that would warrant you wanting to come back to fashion? It’s no secret that people are fed up with the industry at large but I don’t really know what’s being done about it.
I look at fashion in the same way that you were just describing what artists should be doing and I think fashion designers should be saying something about what's going on in the world. I would want to do that when I feel like I’m in the right situation to say something with the work I’m doing. Even though I'm doing all this painting and sculpture, I'm still coming up with little designs and stuff but I want things to exist in the right context, in the right time and the right physical space and situation.
Who knows when that will be though ha! It's interesting because even in me asking you that, there does have to be this distance between fashion and art that feels more palpable these days even though both mediums ideally serve the same purpose in terms of commentary and expression. In fashion, with the celebrities, the community, the bullshit of it all, its adjacency to art feels further. Do you agree?
I do. And at the same time, I think art is moving further away from art.
This may be a dumb question but how are you defining art? What is the current state of art in your mind and what should it be?
That's tough because I think I have a pretty broad definition of what art can be and I would only define it for myself. I want art to be like a sincere expression of something I'm feeling and thinking about the going ons in my world – which is a world that obviously I share with everyone else, but I say my world because it’s my own perception of the things that exist around me. I want to see that from other artists as well. Something I also think about is that I grew up seeing things, being influenced and inspired by them and thinking like, wow, I don't want to die because I experienced this. Young people are feeling pretty bad because things are bad indeed and it's a goal for me to make things that people connect with, to feel understood and inspired by.
That just makes me think of the title of your show because ultimately, you want your show to be a success, you want it to be good, which then equates to being proud. It’s hard to say what’s honest or not today because more than ever, we have seen that there's kind of a formula for what you should be doing, what magazine you should be showing up in, what you should be wearing, and it muddies everything. Like is it popular and people genuinely like these things or does it just work?
I think it's evident when people are like, I'm doing this shit because I have to get my bills paid. The moving horse sculpture in the show was inspired by this Kentucky Derby horse that is highly-decorated, has won a lot of awards but it’s skeletal, ragged. She's tired, she has done what she's had to and now she's a couple gallops away from the glue factory but she's still going. This is something that we see around us too, where people have to compete in this way in order to stay afloat and pay their bills. We're forced into these situations which you can then see in people's work too; whether or not they mean to show it sometimes you're just like, I can tell you just did this because you knew that it was gonna get your bills paid and that’s all part of it too.
It makes me think about the word “purpose,” we all want it, we all want to feel it but it has to be discovered, it has to come from being inspired, and those are feelings that I find to be far and few to have these days while functioning to achieve.
What I want is for people to have the freedom to just express themselves and not have it be so dependent on it being “good.” I guess what I was talking about earlier with some of the art that we're seeing out there that feels a bit empty, it’s coming from artists who aren’t necessarily worried about having opportunities to show their work. There are a lot of artists out there who have never had a show and may never have a show because they're too busy trying to pay their bills. If we weren't in that cycle, then people would have the freedom to make art without having it weigh on them or needing to have a purpose other than just existing.
Sometimes reality also hits me and I’m like wait, we’re working in fashion and art, we’re already living in a fantasy, we are the spectacle.
Yeah to a certain extent, we already have our needs met otherwise we wouldn't be having time for this.
