The Art Magazine June 2020 | Page 5

Hello Michael and welcome to NotRandomArt. The current issue is revolving around the problem of communication and identity. Is there any particular way you would describe your identity as an artist but also as a human being in dynamically changing, unstable times? In particular, does your cultural substratum/identity form your aesthetics?

It took me a while to discover my identity as an artist. I have always tried to use my artwork as a reflection of my experiences throughout life, but I found that my earlier work conveyed a message that was too confusing for the viewer. I would also try to make the subject matter personal to myself, like it would be a reflection of how I was feeling. By making it a personal reflection, it sort of alienated the audience from the work. These days, I try to focus on making artwork intended for the audience. I subtract myself from the equation and think about how the audience would feel when they see it. I mean, obviously there is still a part of me that can be seen, but once the work is finished, I prefer to put it out there for the audience to make their own interpretation.

Since 2007, I have painted around two hundred pictures, all different styles and subject matter. I was going through a period in my life where I was contemplating, my intentions as an artist. All I could see around me in the media, was consumerism, capitalism and corruption. This was further amplified with technology and social media, people using the internet to argue about unimportant issues. I eventually got to the stage where I had to segregate myself from everything. I moved into a small apartment in Edinburgh, Scotland and just cut myself off from the rest of the world. At first, it was difficult to adapt to a life where I spent most of my time alone. I come from a large family of five brothers, so I wasn't used to being alone. I found solace in painting and would spend hours painting or reading about art history. I did this for over two years without any serious contact with anyone. I have always been quite an extroverted person, so it was quite out of character for me to live alone without contact from the outside world.

In April '10, I got a call from my Mother, saying that my Father had passed away from a heart attack. I was only twenty five years old, but this really impacted me hard. My Dad, from a young age, had the ambition of becoming an artist and studying at art school. My grandfather, refused to let him follow a career, which he considered had no money and instead encouraged him to join an apprenticeship to become a Butcher. He worked as a Butcher for forty five years before he died, achieving a mastery qualification. You could tell that his choice of career made him miserable, which lead to alcoholism and addiction. After he died, I decided to take the path of becoming an artist, as this is something that he never got the opportunity to do.

In Mar '13, I decided to travel across to Japan, to teach English. My interest in Japan started when I was in secondary school, where I learn't about Thomas Blake Glover, the first white samurai. He was given this distinction as he played a large part in the industrialization of Japan, helping found the ship building company which later became the Mitsubishi Corporation of Japan. Whilst I was in Japan, I discovered the religious philosophy of Daoism. Daoism, emphasizes living in harmony and simplicity through nature. They call this philosophy 'wabi-sabi', which translates as imperfect nature. It basically means that nothing lasts, nothing is finished and nothing is perfect. Inspired by Zen-Buddhism, Wabi-Sabi is a way of life that is simple, modest and in-tune with nature. This was a new and refreshing outlook for me, finding beauty in imperfection and living with simplicity. The philosophy explains that a loss of self conscienceness and a new unity between self and its environment, will help a person to ignore their trivial issues and derive pleasure from simplicity. We worry about who we are and what defines us, when in fact we should be admiring the qualities of who we already are. Daoism teaches us that nature is there when we are in danger of attacking ourselves with an overly stern lifestyle of ideas that don't fit the demands of the world. I decided to incorporate this aesthetic into my artwork and highlight these beautiful moments, as they pass by so quickly. Nature does not hurray, but yet everything is accomplished. It's a glimpse of something small that can provoke you to imagine something even bigger.

The subject matter, of my artwork comes from a reflection of this moment in time, the journey that I am on and the experiences that I've had. I came back from Japan and wanted to show the things I'd seen but also reflect the narrative of what I'd experienced. Every spring the Japanese celebrate the blooming of cherry blossom trees with an event called Hanami. During the Hanami festival, everyone will visit local parks and botanical gardens to enjoy the temporal beauty of nature. Even in a densely populated metropolis like Tokyo, the Japanese still find time to appreciate nature. Rather than attempting to portray nature as a faithful copy, my artwork tries to find the nature within the subject matter and surrender to its cause. It's not about reflecting its true surface, but rather the spirit of the subject. I am a strong believer that paintings contain their own spirit, which is something really powerful. Seeing artwork in person, portrays a more powerful message and has a much more lasting effect. I try to make the viewer reflect on their own experiences, by having subject matter that the audience can relate to.

Would you like to tell us something about your artistic as well as life background? What inspired you to be in this artistic point in your life when you are now?

I am a design student from Mumbai, India. I have been travelling to different parts of the country to volunteer at Art and Music Festivals. This is how I discovered the beauty of performance arts. After interning at one of the biggest Performance Art Spaces in the country, the HH Art Spaces, I soaked in energies and understood many artists at a personal level, their personalities and their styles of working. I was a mere obse

Until others see it, artwork is not truly finished. A dialog about a painting brings it to life for both the artist and the viewer. These conversations allow me to see more deeply into the work, to realize the subconscious elements I may have added. For instance, I painted a barren gray landscape with strange, colorful plants growing in clumps on the surface. I thought it was just a scene from a dream. But, my husband looked at it and said it reminded him of middle school. As soon as he told me, I could see it too, the image resonating so much stronger for me than a simple alien-scape. I can remember that day, at eleven years old, starting at a new school, feeling so alone and alien in a gray world, while the other kids huddled together in their social groups.

Each person who looks at "Middle School Cliques" will have a different reaction to it, a personal story or experience that describes the painting for them. I don't want to define it for them, but instead, have each of us share our ideas with the other.

ht one. Once I have the pose that strikes me (YES!) I take it from there, drawing up a rough sketch adding patterns and geometrical shapes which contrast the lines of the main silhouette.

From there I sketch my plan on to a blank canvas (always making changes and additions to the new layout). Once I am happy with that I start to add colour. My fine lines are all executed without masking; using a small brush, even hand, and steadfast concentration. Then I apply layer upon layer of colour until I achieve beautiful unyielding saturation and impeccable print-like quality.

How do you see the relationship between emotional and intellectual perception of your work? In particular, how much do you consider the immersive nature of the viewing experience?

The emotional and intellectual relationship of my work always begin as two very seperate things. At first glance, my art may seem frivolously aesthetic .The colours are vibrant, and deliciously arresting. But then you look a little closer, even through the simplicity of the block colour and basic lines of geometry and pattern, there is always a story within… and that is when the emotional and intellectual perception of my art merge and the true beauty is discovered.

olted by the Thought of Known Places… Sweeney Astray” by Joan Jonas was one of the first performance installations that really made a huge impact on me. I was living in Paris during this time, in the early 90s, with a lot of influences from different cultures. It became the starting point of my own work. Joan Jonas practice has explored ways of seeing, the rhythms of ritual, and the authority of objects and gestures. Jonas continues to find new layers of meanings in themes and questions of gender and identity that have fueled her art for over thirty years. She is a great inspiration still today.

It is impossible to avoid the topic of body consciousness, embodied emotions and the image of body and personal identity that we see in your practice. What is the function of the identity appearing in your artworks – is it a canvas used to present your ideas or rather the subject of the art? What inspired you to use this as a theme in your practice?

I have been developing my visual imagery since I began studying art and film - from conceptual thinking, composition, using light and colour in different ways, through all the different techniques I've utilised over the years in my work and in my collaborations with stage artists such as dancers, musicians and actors. My approach is always developing through exploring these things. Visual imagery in essence is your way of experiencing what you see and transforming it. This is my world that I want to share and express through my art. The body consciousness, embodied emotions and the image of body and personal identity is part of this visual imagery, the emotional essence in my practice. Always present and always developing in different themes and projects.

Marina Abramovic stated: You see, what is my purpose of performance artist is to stage certain difficulties and stage the fear the primordial fear of pain, of dying, all of

which we have in our lives, and then stage them in front of audience and go through them and tell the audience, 'I'm your mirror; if I can do this in my life, you can do it in yours.'Can you relate anyhow to these words?

de-identify myself, by losing my roots, my culture, I would be very happy. Unfortunately the human being does'nt choose the place where he is born. He grows up in a society that automatically identifies, through education, culture, family... More than ever I think it's more important to go on a way of self-knowledge with the aim to meet “the other”.. This other without which we can not exist. It's the same for the artist. It is more important for me to be focused on my practice than to try to define it according to esthetic criteria of identification. It's probably the reason i like to remember the painter Matisse who said or wrote that an artist must never be prisoner of himself, prisoner of a style, prisoner of a reputation.

Would you like to tell us something about your background? Could you talk a little about experiences that has influence the way you currently relate yourself to your artworks?

All my way is influenced by encounterings.

It began by the meeting with my professor of literature at school. More than giving French or Literature classes, she brought us to discover texts, movies, plays, visual artworks and to think about on what we saw or read.. Thanks to her that I met Pierre Vincke, a theatredirector who was worjink in the tradition of Grotowski ... Both of them have led me to go to theater school. In this school I had meetings. Meetings with artists but also and especially human beings that made me discover. I always need o discover rather than to master a practice. It's probably the reason my encounter with Monica Klingler and Boris Nieslony was decisive for me and led me on the path of Performance Art which is a form still difficult to define. Each performance artist has a different definition of what it is...

Could you identify a specific artwork that has influenced your artistic practice or has impacted the way you think about race and ethnic identity in visual culture?

No I don't have a specific artwork that has influenced my artistic practise but many.

I'm influenced by some philsophers as well as poets or musicians or dancers or visual artists but also by some places or landscapes or atmospheres ... For some years, I was used for example to go to India where I was used to follow some traditionnal muscians or to learn bharatanatyam and practice vipassana meditation... Of course this experience has impacted my art work.... This brought me to think and work differently... My experience in India brought me to discover traditionnal strong art and paradoxally to the way of Performance Art. But there I see one common point: to make no separation between art and life and to be here and now, without projection on the future.

It's difficult for me to speak about race and ethnic identity. But I can say that today we miss more and more this notion of “to be here and now” which is more present in some cultures ... By practising Performance Art, it's my way to be connected to this way of thinking. And even in this field actually it's more and more difficult. The society and the art world brings us more and more to plan in advance, to define our work, more than to do. Just to do. To do what we deeply need.

And of course, my encountering with Black Market International and later the notion of Open Source or Open session via PAErsche have also a big impact on my work. When we go on that, each of us perform by sharing time and space but without trying to convince each other on some common way. This is for me a wonderfull way how we can meet each other, regardless of our origin, our race or our “identity”...

Many of your works carry an autobiographical message. Since you transform your experiences into your artwork, we are curious, what is the role of memory in your artistic productions? We are particularly interested if you try to achieve a faithful translation of your previous experiences or if you rather use memory as starting point to create.

My memory is clearly a starting point to create. I don't have any autobiographical message. I use my personnal experience ( what I feel , what I see, what I learn, what I ear...) to work. It's a motor or a material. I'm not able to paint, so I can't do something with red or white or yellow or black colors. All I have is life, a body alive. And I need to do something with that...

My sensation about life sometimes is too intense then I need to transform this intensity in some action. Some artistic action... If people can take something from this action this is great... but I don't want to give them “a specific message” or to control the translation of my experience.