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‘Disrupting the Canon’ w/ Natalia Arbelaez, Heidi McKenzie, Habiba El-Sayed and Magdolene Dykstra
194 Plays5 years ago
“Disrupting the Canon” investigates how four women of colour use their practices to disrupt a predominantly Eurocentric, male art narrative. The goal behind this exhibition and presentation is bigger than diversifying the canon, which can still leave artists of colour and women on the margins. Rather, this discussion is part of the huge project of deconstructing the racist and sexist tendencies of our societal and institutional structures with the aim of building a new foundation of multiplicity. Natalia Arbelaez, Magdolene Dykstra, Habiba El-Sayed, and Heidi McKenzie work to fashion a more egalitarian canon through artistic practices that delve into diverse histories.
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Transcript
Introduction of Podcast and Guests
00:00:01
Speaker
You are listening to Something Rather Than Nothing. Creator and host, Ken Volante. Editor and producer, Peter Bauer. This is Ken Volante with the Something Rather Than Nothing podcast and very excited to have a panel of guests here, artists working ceramics, Magdalene Dykstra.
00:00:29
Speaker
Natalia Arbelaez, Habiba Al-Sayed, and Heidi McKenzie, who have done a presentation of this sort in the past, but what we really want to get into is discussing what the canon
00:00:42
Speaker
is in the art field and what do we do about it? Whose interest does it serve and what needs to happen?
Artist Introductions and Backgrounds
00:00:50
Speaker
I'd like each of my guests to introduce themselves to you, my listeners. I'm going to start with a friend of yours from a prior episode, Magdalene Dykstra. Welcome back to the program. So happy to have you and thanks for bringing your artist friends. Tell us about yourself, Magdalene. Thanks, Ken. Yeah.
00:01:12
Speaker
Well, my name is Magdalene Dykstra and I am based in St. Catharines, Ontario. I'm an artist educator. I just finished a visiting artist in residence position at Concordia University in Montreal.
00:01:28
Speaker
but since then I've returned to St. Catharines as my home base. My work currently occupies two positions. On one side of my work I use clay often in an unfired way.
00:01:46
Speaker
to meditate on the vast number of human beings that are on the planet. And then on the other side, the other position my work is occupying is finger paintings. So it works on paper where I use my fingerprint to create fields of color. Yeah. And again, welcome back, Magdalene. Natalia Arbelias.
00:02:13
Speaker
The listeners would love to hear from you. Yes, I'm Natalia Arbelize. I'm currently in Pomona, California, doing a residency at Amoka where I'm studying, researching their permanent collection to highlight women of color who played an important part in ceramic history. And so right now I'm just doing the research part and also making in their studio
00:02:42
Speaker
But normally I'm from, I live in Brewster, New York, and where I actually kicked off that project at Madden Museum in New York City, where I actually did make the physical pieces of that work. So yeah, and I do various work. So that's a current project that I'm working on. I also do a lot of work about immigration and history
00:03:12
Speaker
we've been with contemporary influences, speaking of my American upbringing, combined with my Colombian ancestry. Yeah, thank you. I do wanna say, I've seen all of your art and I'm really humbled. You're just an excellent artist and I'm very excited for this conversation. Habiba, El Sayed.
00:03:40
Speaker
Hi, everybody. Yeah, my name is Habib El Sayed. I am living and working in Toronto, Ontario. I rent studio space in Toronto's East End, and like a really vibrant, diverse neighborhood. So that's really awesome. Yeah, my work is, my practice is very diverse. I do everything from
00:04:01
Speaker
performance art to durational works. I do some sculptural work as well. And most recently, some design work and have been just finished up a commission of 650 mugs. So that was quite a task for me. But in my contemporary art practice, I mainly focus on perception and the way people of color view themselves, view the world and the way the world views them in return.
00:04:29
Speaker
Um, and yeah, I used to use a bunch of different techniques, some traditional, some not so traditional, um, yeah, to talk about my different things. I also do some, um, uh, pottery instruction as well, uh, which I would, I'm very excited to get back to once pandemic stuff has sort of blown over a little bit. Yeah. Abiba, thank you. Thank you for your art. And last but not least, Heidi McKenzie. Uh, welcome to the show. Thank you, Ken.
00:04:58
Speaker
So I am based in Parkdale in the West End in Toronto and I have a basement studio where I generate most of my work. I have been, I guess I'm kind of a, I call this a late bloomer in the sense that I came to Clay as a third career and I finished my MFA in 2014 at OCAD U. And I have been,
00:05:27
Speaker
I think I'm an abstractionist in my heart and in my soul. And I started working in sculpture before I even made bowls or cups. And so I have my whole practice has been kind of about expressing who I am autobiographically through art. And I have moved on, you know, more recently, I started working with photography on clay in 2014. And
00:05:55
Speaker
I guess in the last few years, I have moved on to look more closely at memory, race, migration, and ancestry in my own mixed Indo-Chinidadian, Indo-Caribbean, because I've found out more recently that my father's roots are Guyanese. And my mother's roots, which are Irish American. And I think it's just, you know,
00:06:25
Speaker
I've spent a lot of time during COVID doing a lot of genealogical research and uncovering a lot of facts that people in my family might not have known. Certainly people in my generation, both sides of my family might not have known. And I'm just starting to re-input that into the new body of work. Yeah. And thank you, Heidi. And about questions of identity, the process you describe, I've gone into that.
00:06:53
Speaker
myself just recently and quite honestly without specifics, encountering things that say I am not who I was and I might be something different and what does that mean? And that's been a daily experience for me. I'm comfortable with it, but it is a strange and different type of experience. Okay, so we're talking about the canon, right? And so, you know, for me, I went, you know, when I went to college,
Challenges in the Ceramic Art Canon
00:07:21
Speaker
I was I got I got the things were changing. I went to college in the 90s. Things were changing. But gosh, they were the the discourse was like, oh, that means you're getting rid of Shakespeare. Right. I was an English lit guy. Shakespeare is gone. You know, the cultural wars are are happening. But for me, I want to know, particularly in your field and for the listeners and in ceramics, which is something that you've talked about in addressing the canon.
00:07:50
Speaker
What is the canon in ceramics? Who's there and who is noticeably absent? I can start addressing that question. I'll just speak to my experience as a student and both in ceramics and the larger fine arts
00:08:20
Speaker
fields that I was studying and the canon to me, the story that was told of where the field has been and therefore where it might continue going, basically embodied the idea of white as default.
00:08:42
Speaker
Um, all the artists with maybe a few, uh, exceptions, um, all the artists I was being exposed to as examples of this is what an artist looks like. This is what a ceramicist looks like. Um, we're white and often they were men and, uh, it, um, it, it became really exhausting.
00:09:07
Speaker
to never see an example of someone who looks like me, a woman who is not a white woman, being held up as an example of expertise, an example of achievement. So for me, that's where I come in with the canon. I'm coming to it with a level of exhaustion of it being so limited. Yeah.
00:09:37
Speaker
One of the things I want to mention, I had seen your presentation on Disrupt in the Cannon. And one of the things that was so frustrating for me was there's so much to go into here. And obviously, we've got a podcast to do. But there's so much to get into here. And the wonderful examples that you would show of women who traversed the sea, made it over, held the family together, and all these stories. And it's like, well, I've got a couple minutes to tell you about this amazing artist that you don't know about.
00:10:07
Speaker
I understand that frustration because even myself looking to see it as a viewer. Natalia, oh, I'm sorry. Heidi, about the about the canon, your thoughts. Well, I just wanted to build on what Magdalene was saying, which is for me, it started or the seeds of me wanting to work around race and redress and putting women of color
Art and Systemic Racism
00:10:36
Speaker
forefront on the stage started 25 years ago. And I started working in arts policy and I did my first graduate degree in arts policy. And so so more than exhaustion, it was outraged because at that time in the arts councils in Canada, artists of colour were were literally being shuffled and funneled into folk arts, community arts and multicultural arts. And we were not
00:11:06
Speaker
you know, encouraged to, although we were not denied, we were certainly not encouraged to be applying in mainstream visual arts, theatre, dance, literature, etc. And I mean, that just ignited outrage, like rage, actually rage, let's just call it rage. And so then, you know, I did go and study about the first, you know,
00:11:33
Speaker
settler communities, the largest immigrant communities in the UK and France and where their arts policies came from and how systemically racist they were and trying to understand where we are in Canada. Anyway, I did end up briefly working in arts policy, but things have obviously shifted enormously in the last couple of decades, but I think
00:11:58
Speaker
For me, that was the genesis and that when I became an artist or I came to clay as a medium, it just has fueled that passion because again, as Magoon had mentioned, the stage has been largely white dominated and specifically Eurocentric settler dominated. Yeah, I feel that my work has always been filling a gap that I've been feeling
00:12:28
Speaker
in art history and academia and in research. So, you know, it started looking at Central and South American ceramics because in academia, those were like the glanced over histories that we were looking. It was like Africa, South and Central, and Ameridian art was all just one chapter freaked over. Other countries got their whole chapter. China got a whole chapter.
00:12:58
Speaker
England. And I remember in my history class like correcting the teacher because a lot of the information he just didn't know as well. So it started with that of like wanting to fill this gap that I was feeling. And then eventually it turned into the women of color in contemporary ceramics that that I was not seeing. So
00:13:28
Speaker
I started researching myself as well to fill that gap for myself and for academia and the field. So, you know, as I was going through Mad Museum's collection, they only have 11 women of color in their ceramic permanent collection. And that's 11 women to their 11 locust pieces. So there's definitely a huge gap. And I'm hoping with the work that I'm doing that I'm bringing attention while also celebrating.
00:13:58
Speaker
what a lot of these women have already done and have been here doing. Yeah, thank you. Thank you so much, Natalia. Habiba. Yeah, just to add to those things. I mean, I think I had very similar experiences in my education experience of not feeling represented or not just seeing just one side of the coin. What I also thought was,
00:14:26
Speaker
really bizarre even at that time was just how so much of our narratives were being told by the white gays, by white men, and how often there was a lot of appropriation of our techniques, of our ideas, of our stories, and that being presented as like some new and amazing thing coming from a white artist.
00:14:53
Speaker
while never actually learning about the artists who actually develop those things or if we did very, very briefly. So that was something that always stuck out to me and something that I'm really glad that we are beginning to shift.
00:15:11
Speaker
Yeah, on the question about getting into, you know, part of the in this big topic is establishing and then disrupting or deconstruction, you know, of the canon and.
00:15:26
Speaker
I wanted to mention one thing that I heard in your comments about whether it's the artist of renown, white male, whether it's the professor, whether it's this dominant. I work in K-12 education. That's such a huge issue of going to school and not seeing anybody who has inflections that you do or movements or language.
00:15:50
Speaker
And then I talk to folks and say, well, imagine going to school and never encountering any literature that resembles you and never encountering topics, and not even to mention math or science and some of those biases, but the canon is the canon and that's the frustration you're working in now. So in disrupting the canon, do we have to start again?
00:16:18
Speaker
Or is the disruption to break pieces in to create space into what's there? I think the canon is not the canon. It's not some unmovable permanent structure. I think that's where I'd like to start. Thank you, by the way.
00:16:40
Speaker
I mean, you brought up the idea of earlier, you said, well, do we have to throw out Shakespeare? And no, we don't have to throw out people who have been held up as experts. But I think we could we could think about the idea of biodiversity in our canon.
Diversity and Representation in Art
00:17:02
Speaker
We know like scientifically, we know biodiversity helps the strength of ecosystems. So how is that not applicable?
00:17:09
Speaker
to the stories we tell about what art counts and what art should be looked up to, which artists we should be looking up to. I think biodiversity in our canon can only help to fuel our field.
00:17:24
Speaker
I think it's also like, I mean, you don't need to throw the baby out with the bathwater, so to speak. It's important to look at our history. And part of that history is the canon and the way it's been used to sort of suppress the ideas of people of color in this field. And I think looking at that can actually help generate some new ideas and some new really interesting work as well.
00:17:52
Speaker
But I think it's important to constantly be looking back and seeing where we can build. And as you mentioned about, you know, maybe breaking it into pieces or making space, I think that's kind of exactly what's happening, that BIPOC have sort of made their own seat at the table. They, you know, whether or not they were invited just came on in and said, like, we're going to disrupt the structure a little bit. And that's kind of exactly what you see happening right now.
00:18:24
Speaker
Yeah, you know, just again, I don't feel that we need to throw out the canon again. So to come back to your question, Ken, you know, something that Natalia said, I was thinking about, you know, when I studied ceramic history, and it was actually a fairly significant section on South American and Latin American ceramics, just because my professor had particular interest in it.
00:18:50
Speaker
But the point is that it was taught from the perspective of the white archeologist who discovered and it wasn't taught from a sense of cultural ownership. And so what I think we've been seeing over the last year, since the Black Lives Matter sort of broke apart internationally, this awakening around
00:19:19
Speaker
race and racialization in all sectors, not just the art sectors of the world. I think what we're seeing is people starting to say, hey, we're not going to have systemic change unless we break those glass ceilings, unless we put people of color in positions that can make decisions and that aren't making decisions for us. So I've been really heartened.
00:19:47
Speaker
Just in the last few months, I follow all the arts listings, and there has been a number of curators of color appointed across Canada. And it's really exciting to see an Indigenous curator. So those are the shifts that have to happen to really, I think, disrupt the canon in a sustained way.
00:20:18
Speaker
Natalia? Yeah, I talk a lot about authority. And, you know, I guess I'm, you know, I've curated a few shows, and I'm doing archiving and research. And it's been a long journey of taking the authority to say that I'm a researcher, I'm a curator, and this is what I'm doing. And I think the canon for so long has made me feel that because I'm not a professional or
00:20:46
Speaker
you know, has given me what's that complex of imposter syndrome. So I've been fighting against that of like saying like, yeah, I could be a curator, historian, archivist and telling younger artists as I visit schools, like you could do this too, like you have to take this authority upon yourself and do this work because
00:21:16
Speaker
This is what has been done for so long. But now it's our turn to take that authority. I see the work. I wanted to ask a question in general. I see the art and what you're doing as an artist looking to disrupt and to engage in this. But I also look at all of you as having another kind of face as intellectuals, as intellectuals of color
00:21:46
Speaker
engaging in the issues conceptually around the canon. So there's also that, I see that within the academy, having gone to the university and college and all the space that's there. So when you speak to this as well, it sounds to me that you have another front or another presentation, like my professor looks like this and is presenting this. Do you encounter that just like in the circles where you have in these discussions, the intellectual circles?
00:22:17
Speaker
I think so much of this topic and the canon is based in institution and systems that have been around for so long. And I think it's really hard to have this conversation only within the context of the work I make and not think about the institutions that I'm a part of or that I've come from or that I hope to be part of. So yeah, I think that
00:22:44
Speaker
oftentimes I'm talking about this with other students or when I'm giving an artist talk or something, there's a lot of other academics present. We are thinking about this beyond just the arts, but we're thinking about sort of these structures and how we can disrupt them. And as Heidi mentioned about putting people of color in roles that are decision making roles,
00:23:10
Speaker
that are at other levels in these institutions as well, that we're not just talking about at the showing art. It's also about who is deciding what art is being shown, who's deciding what these shows are about and what's happening in our residencies and happening in our courses and stuff like that. So I don't know if that answers your question at all, but that's kind of where I go with it.
00:23:35
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, well it's just in the sense that engaging in these questions too. Like first of all, I know, like I do a philosophy podcast, right? So you either have to be drawn to discuss in philosophy or asking, you know, why is there something rather than, you know, like you have to be within that. And I work, I've trained in like, look at me, my education philosophy, it's all white men, all white men. My philosophy and stuff, everything's self-taught as far as anything else. So that's what the canon is.
00:24:04
Speaker
what the canon is to me, so there's all that additional work. I wanted to ask you about your experience and identification, this large issue as far as identifying persons of color at this time and place.
00:24:27
Speaker
The power structures that exist kind of being like moving to appropriate. What I'm getting to is the possibility of like identity driven work being used to exoticize or to get back into the same power dynamic that already exists.
Identity-Driven Art and Its Challenges
00:24:48
Speaker
Do you fear that? Is that an active issue in doing identity driven work or disrupting the canon?
00:24:58
Speaker
I can jump on that question. I mean, for me, I've never really felt driven to make work about my experience being a second generation Egyptian. I've never felt that that was the
00:25:15
Speaker
driving energy behind my work. And I used to think, oh, well, is that is there something wrong with me? Because when I look around, especially now at this at this particular moment, work that deals with identity in whichever form is being really eaten up right now. And so for me, I went digging in
00:25:44
Speaker
in art history. And I went looking for other artists who felt similar pressures and responded in a way that is similar to how I'm responding, which is I am not just a brown woman. I am not just a second generation Egyptian. My identity is much broader than that. And so
00:26:05
Speaker
And with that, that comes through in my work in terms of, particularly with my finger paintings like it, they are, they're composed with my imprint, right so in a way they're very much about my identity, it is my fingerprint composing those works.
00:26:27
Speaker
There's a level of abstraction and opacity between me and the viewer. Like, yeah, it's my fingerprint, which contains very personal information, very, very specific information to me, but it's not easily legible. It could be anyone's fingerprint, right? Unless you have some police scanner or something like that.
00:26:55
Speaker
Yeah, so for me, that is a question I'm asking in my work. It's a question that I'm asking myself as I make my work is what I should say. I wanted to ask each one of you about politics. Natalia, are you a political artist? Are you forced to be a political artist because of your position?
00:27:19
Speaker
I think I never thought of myself that way until like 2016-17 where here in America when Trump started running and then was elected and it was very much in the media and this climate of being patriotic towards hating immigrants and hating people from Central and South America or countries of brown people immigrating over.
00:27:49
Speaker
my work started to shift then. I've always made work about identity and it wasn't necessarily where I came from. I would talk about experiences of what it is to start a family, to be a mother and have a family. So different aspects and just navigating the world as well, like as a woman, but it shifted then as I felt like a responsibility to talk about immigrants
00:28:18
Speaker
and immigration and talk about the cultural richness that immigrants bring to America. So I started talking about that and about the hardworking people that come over to America to pick your food and gather your food and serve your food and kind of help the whole structure of America. So I started making work about that and show what
00:28:48
Speaker
having a family here brings to America. So it shifted from that. So I think the politics at the time really made it like I had to address that because it was threatening my way of life and my family and my culture's way of life. Absolutely. Habiba, you forced to be a political artist or how do you view it?
00:29:18
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I don't really think of it as being well, I guess it is kind of forced in a sense. Because I think as as a Muslim woman, and you know, for most of my adult life, I was, as I said, visibly Muslim is how I often term it. Because I was covering my hair and people could tell
00:29:37
Speaker
Um, I felt like my, my existence was politicized. Um, the, the way I choose to dress and the decisions I choose to make were often, you know, part of politics and policies that were being, um, you know, put out, um, especially like there was, we know about like the, the hijab ban that, you know, was
00:30:03
Speaker
I guess recently passed in France but had similar similar debates over that here in Canada and Quebec. So oftentimes I kind of thought about it that way that how my very existence is political and therefore the work that I make ends up being political sometimes
00:30:23
Speaker
you know, that's a little bit more direct with the type of work that I make where I'm directly, uh, talking about policy. And then there's other times where, um, you know, I'm more talking about identity, but there is still, I think politics within that, that I can't really shake even if I want it to. Sure. Sure. Uh, Magdalene, political, you forced to be political. Um,
00:30:57
Speaker
That's such a hard question. I want to say no and responding in that way and saying no, I refuse to be forced into a certain definition is a political stance. I mentioned earlier, I looked into art history for my own permission givers to make work that wasn't overtly political and
00:31:24
Speaker
I've chosen Alma Thomas as one of my art moms. Similar to what she did in continuing to use abstraction as a layer of opacity in performing my identity. So not letting the viewer have everything about me.
00:31:50
Speaker
I think is a political stance, but it's a political stance that puts forward my right to self-determination as an artist. Like just because I am a woman of color, I do not have to make work to satisfy a hunger that has awoken right now for identity-oriented work. So my answer to your question, am I forced to be a political artist?
00:32:18
Speaker
is no, I choose to make work that adopts a political stance by saying, I don't have to do what anyone else is telling me to do. Yeah, Heidi. Um, yeah, I think it is a good, it's an interesting question and, and, and I've been listening to the others and thinking about what I want to respond it, but you know, it, it's so personal.
00:32:45
Speaker
I really started thinking about this responsibility of an artist to be political in their work when I have worked and shared the stage with Jeffrey Thomas, who is a Six Nations photographer, senior decorated photographer, and his son, Bear Witness, who is the lead in A Tribe Called Red. And both of those individuals have spoken at length around
00:33:14
Speaker
the responsibility that they have as Indigenous peoples and artists to be political in their art. And that really started me thinking about my own art, which again began as sort of self-portraits. And as I'm moving through my career, it's extended to my ancestral roots. And I think
00:33:43
Speaker
as I've started to write and research and uncover more of my family's history. And, you know, within the last five years, I lost both my parents, but I have been learning more about them and their history that and things that they never told me. So I don't want to be long winded about it, but I can't help but think how I found out
00:34:07
Speaker
you know, after my father died, that he was integrally involved in the race riots and protests in Canada in 1969 in Concordia. What was then, yeah, Sir George Williams. And that, you know, in 1966, he was working in at Laurentian University, and his lab was burned down.
00:34:34
Speaker
you know, in bricks thrown in their apartment and human excrement left on their doorstep. And that he never spoke of these things to me. And I grew up in this white bubble on the east coast of Canada, where really, honestly, there were so few people of color that people didn't, I don't think people really even knew how to be racist. I didn't understand my otherness until I moved to Toronto at the age of 19 and immediately
00:35:05
Speaker
became a focal point for racial slurs and on the receiving end of the kind of negative energy one can experience around race and color and racialization in this country. So I mean, that's a long-winded answer. And I think that it comes back to my early statement when we started the conversation that there is a rage, and there is an outrage, and there is a sense of,
00:35:35
Speaker
These stories need to be told because they're underrepresented. And they can be told through art. Yeah. I wanted to just bring up a general, just get your general impressions about the question of hope or thrill about what's going on. I personally am thrilled about the potential for discourse. And I believe that the younger generation
00:36:05
Speaker
is deeply and radically calling out bullshit on a way of interacting with humans, that is racism. I think there's an aggressiveness to younger folks that are saying, this bullshit narrative doesn't
Youth Advocacy and Institutional Change
00:36:19
Speaker
hold. And that feels different to me. So that gives me hope because I feel that. But for all of you, a lot of stuff here
00:36:34
Speaker
But what's going on, whether it's your art or what you see in response to your art, what are you seeing that's hope, us moving us forward, disrupting the canon, granting space? What are each of you seeing that gives you that? For me, it's actually what you said just a moment ago, Ken, that young folks aren't waiting anymore.
00:37:04
Speaker
they're demanding, they're taking their own authority and taking action to make sure that they feel safe in the spaces that they are moving through. Like students, for example, are demanding that the staff, faculty, the community in their schools, they're demanding that
00:37:32
Speaker
that the people around them make them feel, allow them to feel safe. And that behavior that isn't, they're calling out behavior that is no longer acceptable. They're calling out the patterns of white as the default. And I think the fact that this is such a,
00:37:56
Speaker
multi noted sort of a multi noted resistance like it's happening in so many places. It's a strong momentum because of that it's it's a whole network pushing in a better direction.
00:38:15
Speaker
And before there's chime in, I wanted to also say, since it's an open question, I don't mean to disclude an option. You can be not hopeful. That's a reasonable response to the situation as well. Others, hope. What are you feeling as far as moving forward, Habiba? Yeah. For me, it's like,
00:38:40
Speaker
after you know after giving a talk or having students reach out to me through social media or email to just let me know that they feel seen like to me that is one of the most hopeful things to see and and it's such a rewarding part of this career because I remember being exactly in their spot where you know I would go to we have these big ceramic conferences and just seeing you know
00:39:08
Speaker
all the presenters are basically white artists and feeling so, so not represented not only in the presenters, but in the work that I was seeing in the exhibitions, especially the main exhibitions for that conference. And having students tell me that they feel seen and they feel like they can do this,
00:39:30
Speaker
is something that is so incredible. But also seeing organizations, Natalia definitely should speak on it, like the color network that are creating space for artists of color. And then organizations like POTLA based in California, obviously, who at the beginning of this pandemic, like I've been following them for a while and I was just so inspired by the way they approached it
00:39:58
Speaker
of putting their staff first and making sure that, you know, people of color have, you know, study jobs in ceramics and also that they're providing instruction to students of color as well. And organizations like that that sort of are run and led
00:40:21
Speaker
by BIPOC and are making space for them to me is so incredibly hopeful and exciting to see and seeing them get traction is incredible to see as well. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I have hope and you know, and I feel like I'm hoping to do my part.
00:40:42
Speaker
in the community. And I'm an organizer for the color network, which is a networking database mentorship place to ask. And we curate shows and it's run by just people of color. So yeah, and we've been, you know, curating a few shows. And I think what is important is like thinking about multi generational artists of
00:41:09
Speaker
you know, older artists to not forget the work that has been done and, you know, has been done for us and current artists and then the younger artists that are coming up. So, and I think that gives me hope and then just developing these really rich relationships that have come from running that organization and organizing and, and seeing other artists, you know, creating
00:41:37
Speaker
really great relationship from that has been has been really hopeful. And, and I think what what we're doing, and like, I think it's important to look at organizations like that to see where the future, you know, how to approach shows in the future or how to go forward, you know, right now, we're really pushing to have non identity, you know, make sure that we have some non identity shows, because right now the, it's very popular with a lot of
00:42:06
Speaker
places across, I think the, I'd say for the Americas of having shows about specifically just identity. So we're making sure to have shows all about that, like within the umbrella of identity to non-identity. And then as well, we're looking to take out artists of color from titles. So we can just have shows about different topics. And it's where, yes, we happen to be artists of color, but we're making shows about different
00:42:36
Speaker
and various topics. Yeah, Italian, thanks for the word organizing. I'm a union organizer, so I always think of what we're talking about here. And oh, yeah, the organizing component of it is just exciting to me. Thank you so much. And Heidi, hopeful? Hopeful? What you feel? Yeah, I am hopeful. I think having maybe been around longer than some of the others, I've seen
00:43:04
Speaker
things come full circle. And what I'm hopeful is that the circle has come around and it's going to continue. You can't see me because I'm on radio. But we're not going to continue the circle, but that we're going to continue on an upward trend. I think what Natalia is saying, again, it goes right back to my first statement about the outrage of not being kind of generally accepted in a main stage, excellence for excellence sake.
00:43:34
Speaker
and creating exhibitions that are not identity themed, but include artists of color and are putting them on the main stage is part of that. It's a huge part of that. And I have recently stepped into a role on the board of the National Council for Education and Ceramic Arts that Habiba was just mentioning, because I also have been going to that conference for over 10 years. And I'm very hopeful.
00:44:03
Speaker
that the organization is setting in place the kind of systemic change we need to sustain change. And I'm hopeful, as I talk to other curators across the country, yeah, I'm hopeful. I'm hearing good vibes. I think that there's a lot of will and good energy. And I think this time we might not just be
00:44:33
Speaker
passing through, but, you know, shifting really the paradigm. Yeah. Yeah. I'm hopeful. And then, but, uh, Magdalene, I get to remember that when the pandemic started, you had an installation, raw clay at the story after that was the, just so I was like, just thinking about like that.
00:44:57
Speaker
having to leave an installation that's active in live, that is virus pulling in, in a building was such a ghostly haunting piece right at the beginning of the pandemic. It was such an odd sort of, I don't know,
00:45:20
Speaker
It felt oddly prophetic, but obviously I'm not a prophet. It's not like I knew what was coming, but it was just this strange linking up between what was going on in the world and what had come out of my studio, what was going on in my mind, and therefore came out of the studio. Yeah, it was bizarre.
00:45:44
Speaker
Yeah, and on that too, and with all your work, I mean, I think of the environment,
Environmental Considerations in Art
00:45:51
Speaker
right? I think of Earth too, because I can't have the conversation that we just had about hope and not think about Magdalene's virus, but the encroachment, the ecological issues that we're seeing.
00:46:06
Speaker
Like, in a certain sense, I'm less hopeful about that. It is an emergency as well. But there's also rising awareness in that. Do you find yourselves as artists grappling with those questions as well, as far as the environment, your use of materials? And is that a large piece in what you do?
00:46:35
Speaker
I guess what I'm saying is here's what here's why I want to get into and I'm not going to make an assumption here. There's an idea within ethics and like the ethics of care and a feminine ethics theory that bring into the fact that you have to.
00:46:53
Speaker
Consider people you have to consider the environment you have to take pause and create space for that I don't want to make the assumption is that is that part of Do you see it as part of your work that you're doing? I? Mean for me absolutely That is one of the major reasons that I leave a lot of my work unfired is the idea of
00:47:20
Speaker
not firing, not using the energy that it takes to fire the work and not creating more permanent sort of leftovers from me being here. So with my unfired work, I reuse those materials over and over again. I've been using the same clay since
00:47:48
Speaker
2017, I want to say. So for me, absolutely. It's a major consideration in the way I work. Yeah, I'll leave it at that and let other folks chime in. I don't think like it's been super conscious for me. And if anything, it's been more about like, community, like in the sense of the care of, of
00:48:12
Speaker
other people being able to benefit from the materials that I use. And so usually like I don't fire a lot of work either. So often that clay gets donated to an institution and to a school so that they can reclaim that clay and use it for mold making or whatever other processes that they'd like.
00:48:35
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I yeah, but I don't think that it's been a super conscious decision, but it's just tends to be a way that I work anyways. Yeah, it's not part of my work either. But it's something that I do think of because I'm here in America. The communities that are most affected by pollution.
00:48:59
Speaker
you know, tend to be brown and black people. So I do think of it and that, but it hasn't been part of my work yet, not to say that it won't. But I do, I think that I live my life at where I, I'm not the best at it, but I try consciously to do things. And I do think about my, my practice and the materials and, you know, the process that, and the resources I'm using. So I do, I'm a low fire. So I do think about how,
00:49:28
Speaker
I don't want to take resources and I don't partake in a lot of the or have ever the wood firing or some of the soda or salt firing just because I mean, I'm not interested in that, but I'm also not interested in the things that use the most resources. I do think that I want to use the things that are less least impactful. Yeah, Heidi is active consideration for you.
00:50:00
Speaker
It's not an active consideration in my practice. I kind of make minimally. I'm not like profuse. I don't make a lot. I make targeted things for specific things. But I think more generally in my life, it certainly is a part of my life and my life values and values of the people around me. And I think globally, like just
00:50:28
Speaker
to get philosophical about it, Ken, for a second. Globally, if humankind can't kind of get it together and share vaccine recipes so that we can solve COVID internationally, how can we even possibly imagine that we might solve climate change because of the corporate greed
00:50:56
Speaker
individualism that is sort of taking over. So that's sort of a philosophical statement. But yeah, I think I'll leave it there. That'll leave me. Everybody promised me my big question, why is there something rather than nothing? So you promised me that. So it's a good segue for the philosophy.
00:51:24
Speaker
Heidi, why is there something rather than nothing? Is that an existential question, or are we talking about art? I think I'm going to take that in the context of why make art and why am I, 20 years ago I was pushing paper in an office.
00:51:55
Speaker
Why is there something rather than nothing? I think that we have the opportunity to make people think and change and shift. And every artist in every medium has that opportunity. And it's just so important. I mean, and I've recently finished a piece about, that tells the story of the Belfast Irish
00:52:25
Speaker
London production factory. But it also, if you can read the fine print or you get to see the video that I made about the work, then you'll understand that it's about a lot more. It's about, you know, industrialization and the potato famine and the mass exodus of Irish immigrants and their marginalization in the world. So
00:52:54
Speaker
You know, an opportunity and an invitation to make art for an exhibition is always a chance, it's always a chance to say something to the world and to ask people to think about something they hadn't thought about, which I'm gonna take one more second and say, I didn't get to your question around the fear of exoticization. And I think, you know, that is something that I- Please do that. Yeah, I have grappled with that
00:53:22
Speaker
somewhat because I am working with images of some of my work around beautiful exoticized images of Indian Caribbean women. And I am I am fearful that putting them out there will be misinterpreted. And so that's when the kind of the creation and the messaging it's so important to have people who understand it communicated properly. Yeah, thank you.
00:53:52
Speaker
I'm realizing, Magdalene, that you're going to be in the position if you do want to answer. You could go rogue. You can give a contradictory answer to the last time. You could say, before the pandemic, this is why there's something rather than nothing. After the pandemic, now there's nothing rather than something. So what do you want to say, Magdalene? You've done it once. Yeah. I was trying to remember what I said last time. And I think last time we were talking together, Ken, I think I said something like,
00:54:20
Speaker
I make something rather than nothing to be seen. But I think it's broader than that. I think it's to be seen, but to look at things differently as well. To not only say, hey, here, I was here.
00:54:42
Speaker
but to also ask viewers to look at something from a different angle than they might have previously. So to be seen, but to reconsider what has been seen. Yeah. I had a guest, Ana de Rocio, a while back. She's going to be in a movie called Woman of Color, which is, by the way, market down, going to be a tremendous film.
00:55:09
Speaker
They got their Kickstarter passed but so I was like Anna I was like, okay, so why is there something rather than nothing? She said women and that was it so Habiba why is there something rather than nothing? I guess I think about it like we've already seen what nothing looks like in terms of the way we've been Not represented for a long time
00:55:36
Speaker
And I think there needs to be something not only for the obvious reasons of getting our narratives across and, you know, fighting back against oppression, but also just to like shake up homogenized aesthetics and narratives that have gotten pretty stale. And I think that adding something can only make
00:56:02
Speaker
make it better and make it more interesting. And in terms of in a personal way, why there needs to be something. I just I think I think most artists have that is the drive to make the drive to create. I kind of struggled over the years, but particularly last year with with COVID and considering like maybe even not making art anymore.
00:56:30
Speaker
I had that moment of thinking like, maybe I should switch careers completely. And what would that look like for me? And I had actually seriously started researching schools and, you know, other pathways. And as soon as I started making again, I got this commission to make the cups that I mentioned that even though that that's so not in my wheelhouse of what I usually do, just doing that, getting back into making started to
00:56:58
Speaker
make my brain work again. And that in those ways that are so exciting to me. And I really was quickly confronted with that, that that I am someone who needs to make even if I take breaks from it. It's like a weird relationship where it's like sometimes I need space. But after a while, I miss it. And I need I have the desire to think and to create things. So we'll always need to be something.
00:57:26
Speaker
I really appreciate it. It's just as far as me thinking as like the relationship bit of what you know, what you create with, I have a different relationship with each type of thing that I create. And I'm like, why? You know, the relationship and I always think it's healthy to say, should I be doing this? I remember when the pandemic came down, I'm like,
Philosophical Reflections on Art and Life
00:57:45
Speaker
Who the hell wants to listen to some dude talk about why is there something rather than nothing on their computer? Like seriously, I mean, it's a good legitimate question. Like, you know, people are dying. So great questions. Natalia, why is there something rather than nothing? To be heard, to share and to communicate and to let people know I'm here and connect. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you.
00:58:15
Speaker
We've been speaking with Magdalene Dijkstra, Natalia Arbelaez, Habiba El-Sayed, and Heidi McKenzie. I want to tell you, obviously there's a lot more to be said. I wanted to particularly and directly let you know that I've been honored by your willingness and bravery just to come out here, you know, come on here and talk about this.
00:58:42
Speaker
I love the work that you're doing. I saw the presentation you saw on Disrupting the Cannon. I thought it was amazing. The frustration I felt with it was what I assume your frustration with it is like look at this amazing person and let me do it for five minutes, but also let me talk about my work and also let me talk about the cannon and also let me talk about Disrupting the Cannon. So part of this is just like to like let's have the full conversation and I wanted to thank each of you
00:59:07
Speaker
deeply for doing that. I just wanted to let you know that directly. Thank you Ken. Thank you for having us on. This is something rather than nothing.