Interview: Soheila Azadi

Muted Uprising, installation detail

In the midst of social, environmental, and political unrest, two of our most important resources are care and creative thinking. Artist-parents play a critical role in both, mindfully raising the next generation while also activating public imagination. Cultural ReProducers explore this intersection through a series of conversations with artists about the future our children will inherit, and the work we’re making in response. 

Soheila Azadi is an interdisciplinary visual artist and lecturer based in Chicago and Iran. Azadi uses performance and participatory installation to explore intersections of race, religion, gender, sexuality, and ethnicity within womens’ everyday lives. Born in the capital of Islamic cities, Esfahan, Azadi absorbed storytelling skills through Persian miniature drawings as a child, and her inspirations come from her experiences as a woman living under Theocracy. As a new mother her recent work creates spaces for cultural dialogue and addresses the barriers she has found as a mother-artist.

Cultural ReProducers: First, briefly tell us a little bit about your child: age, name, general temperament…

 Soheila Azadi: My baby’s name is Ario, and he’s 6 months old. He’s a very happy and curious baby.

CR: Before you had a child, what kinds of expectations did you have about how parenthood might impact your life as an artist? And how do those expectations square with your experience so far?
 
Soheila: I remember I had an interview when I was pregnant and I was like, “yeah, once I have the baby it’s not going to impact my work, my life that much.” (laughter) But once I had the baby everything was like, for three months, on pause. After he was four months old I started coming out of my cave. I think my expectations were that it would be easy, it would be like anything else. I consider myself a strong person, and I can do whatever I want to do, and although I had the same ideas once I had him, you are dealing with this fragile human being. He became my first priority, basically. There were times when people contacted me and asked me to collaborate with them and I had to say no. I was in shows while I had him, but I had to pause everything else.

CR: Do you feel like motherhood has affected your relationship with the art world?
 
Soheila: It has affected it, big time. I used to go to lectures every Friday night, I would go to openings, I was really active. Once I had Ario it was a matter of now my partner being able to accompany us. We are going to openings as much as we can, the three of us, but lectures, it’s just so – that really doesn’t happen unless I’m teaching and I take my class with me. I remember the first time I encountered the idea of motherhood within the art world was this panel discussion on motherhood, and I remember even then, there were people who came with babies, and they were talking about motherhood and one baby  started crying… and everybody looked back like (makes a surprised face) “Whoah, what?… there’s a baby here! Why are you crying?” So I think that was my first introduction to this whole idea. Once I became a mom, this became reality for me: I’m not going to be able to do some of the things that I was planning to do. In Europe you see babies walking and playing in galleries, and in the US … you barely, barely see that in the US. So that made me feel upset, thinking, “My child doesn’t really have a place here, you know?” But one thing to note is that even before I became a mother I always assigned my students a reading about motherhood in the arts. I always assign my students part of “Feminist Art and the Maternal” book by Andrea Liss. Although I was not a mother, I always felt it is my duty to contribute to raising awareness about mother’s challenges who are artists.  


Ario plays on the gallery floor during installation

CR: You bring up a good point here, which is that the conversation is very different in places where there is more support for mothers, where kids are more naturally welcome in the gallery scene. I say “the Art World” but really we’re talking about “this art world over here in the US,” where it’s part of a larger culture that tends to prioritize the needs of the individual over the community.

Soheila: Exactly – that’s another thing that I’ve been finding, especially in Chicago. In the US we hide babies. They are not visible. We hide older people. And I think that’s really problematic.

CR: What kinds of changes would you like to see that might better support artists raising children in the United States?
 
Soheila: As you mention, it’s the system of support. Maybe if the system was similar to Europe, for instance. If there was some support from the government… I mean, financial support, oh my God! It’s a real thing. It’s about survival. So that’s a systematic thing. But also I would say as educators we have a huge role in this. As mothers, as fathers, as human beings – I think it’s everybody’s responsibility to help each other, to come together to shape this.

I don’t know so much about the art world in Iran, because I never go there as an artist. But I know as a mother you have so much support. I went to a baby shower of a friend who is Iranian. I wanted to get food, and this lady came up to me and offered to hold my baby so I could get something to eat. I didn’t want to trouble her, and she was like “No, just relax.” It was something I had never experienced here. Nobody ever in this last six months… I mean, several times in the past I was struggling with the stroller, too many things on hand, my baby having explosions (laughter), and nobody even offered to hold the door! And now I am finally able to hold my baby and my food at the same time and you are offering to hold my baby so I can eat?  That’s the difference. It’s much easier because of the support you get from family, and people have a certain understanding of how family works, the support that you have to give. I have a friend now in Iran, she is pregnant, and I asked if she will be quitting her work or continuing, and she said -- and this is a saying there -- “With the help of everybody, I will make it happen.”

Soheila Azadi and Liz Cambron, Witch Hunt (video still)

CR: Your work explores issues of identity and division through your experience as a Muslim-born Iranian American. For any parent, there’s always the question of what kind of world our children are growing up in, what challenges they might face, and what we hope for the future.  How does the current political climate impact your approach to raising a child in the US?
 

Soheila: The more tangible it becomes, the more it affects my life. I think about… how will I tell my son that Grandma won’t be able to come, because of this government? Or we will travel there, but with the fear of losing what we call home. I cannot imagine how even a 4-year old kid would understand these things, but they sense your fear, from young age. Now more than ever, it is my duty to raise a feminist, for sure… but also to raise him an Iranian. Now it’s about pushing back. How does this impact his life down the road, but also how does this impact… millions? It’s about also my friend who has a 9-month-old child who doesn’t have any support here, and she won’t be able to exit the country to see her family. It’s about being landless. In summer I’m planning to go home. If something happens, I told my husband, I won’t be coming back here. I would rather deal with – it’s basically the same politics, as of now – and be with my family.  Being here, what am I gaining really, at this point? I’m still struggling with all these questions and ideas now. It’s still shocking.

Knife, installation view

CR: How will this shape the kind of work you put out into the world?

Soheila: I was interviewed for a year-long residency, and they wanted me to propose a project. I could not not think about what is happening now, and the place of Muslims in this country. I’m thinking of using fabric and glass, different densities of mirror – so in some places there will be crisp mirror where you see yourself, and others will be mirror where you can see through it, and drawing inspiration from Islamic patterns –- turning them into a quilt that is made from glass. People will be seeing themselves and seeing the other simultaneously.

I haven’t exhibited my work in Iran because of restrictions there, and because I talk about religion in
my work. My work situates itself on this edge that could fall on either side, and that could become really dangerous for me. When I go to Iran, I take down my website. I take any documentation of my work off my laptop, I just empty it out. I don’t want to risk anything. All my family lives there and I have to be able to go back. I’ve been away for fourteen years now, and at that point I was not making socially engaged art. I’m really hesitant to do that in Iran. On the first page of my website,  the image is sort of separating me from the viewer but also it says “this website is highly censored.” Highly public, highly private. 


I had never thought about reaching out to Muslim communities, which I was told I should – but for the first time I told my husband “I think I should do this.” So for the first time I am. I am working on a music video with my collaborator Liz Cambron, called Hijabi Mermaids, going back to this situation in France, where the government said you may not go to the beach and wear this thing [Hijab]. I started writing the lyrics and we are working with a musician in Ohio. The other thing was another music video called Witch Hunt which we made in 2015. When the Muslim ban happened we decided to upload it to Youtube and make it public as a way to protest the current loss.

CR: Has the current situation changed your relationship with the religion?



Soheila: It hasn’t changed anything. My practice is about raising the question of what happens when we separate people based on their sex and their race, which is the result of religion. In grad school what became very frustrating for many people is that I keep them in this space where I don’t say it’s a bad thing or a good thing – and for many people who were anti-religion, they were really frustrated by it. I was saying “I actually identify as a Muslim and hey, this is what it was like for me growing up, and it wasn’t too bad for me. It was bad for certain things you see on TV, but there are things that you don’t know about. Let me introduce you to those realities”. I think my work was actually more for religion than against it. It still has backlash, especially from Muslim-born people who do not identify as Muslim anymore. They absolutely hate the work -- they think that I beautify being Muslim. My work is more about creating spaces where dialogue happens – about sex, race… religion has always been a part of it. And the new work is creating a space where we can talk about motherhood.

Artist is on Maternity Leave, installation view

CR: Your recent piece, Artist is on Maternity Leave, was a manifesto installed on the floor of a group exhibition, with a spotlight to hold the space. Could you talk about how that expands on these ideas?



Soheila: This time I’ve placed myself within the work. Oftentimes before I would create spaces and then exit from them, which allowed for conversations for and against the whole idea. But for the first time I realized that this work was really personal. So yes, there was this space I was holding within the gallery – because I had to do that to survive as an artist and a mother…and for my child. The way I held the space was through my manifesto. It talks about how my identity now is torn between being an artist and a mother, and now my first priority is my child, Before it was my work, and where does that place me now? I was forced… to push people away to keep my space within the art world. Recently I was offered the chance to teach two classes at the School of the Art Institute. I had waited for one year for that offer.  I worked hard for it, but I had to turn it down because I was pregnant. I went to a few meetings without having any contract, so that they don’t forget me. I felt like I’m battling with the world, with all the people in front of me. So in Artist is on Maternity Leave, I was holding my “space”.

CR: You wrote about the experience of watching visitors pass over the piece without seeing it. You didn’t put the manifesto on a pedestal, or on a wall: you put it on the floor. It seems an apt metaphor for the lack of visibility many women artists find on having a child.
 

Mother is Present, detail from Skype performance

Soheila: Yes, I was talking about being a mother and an artist and finding your space within the artwork literally and metaphorically. At the opening, people came up to me and they’d say “I see your name here, but I didn’t see your work.” So they had to go back again to that part of the gallery to see it. This happened to almost all of my friends who came to see the work. A week ago, I went to the gallery and I realized that most of the text was ripped off, which showed that people literally walked over my work. It was black vinyl on gray floor, and there’s the light that hits that spot. So it’s hard to miss it. But they missed it. I know that happens within galleries. I thought, okay, this goes parallel to my idea of being unnoticed as a mother artist.

One week afterwards I was scheduled to do a Skype performance. Skype is very much a part of my practice, and now, being a Mom – I mean, we are Skyping now, and it’s great. So I wanted to do the Skype performance, and the day of they said, “We need to cancel. We have things happening here.“ I knew that they hadn’t even advertised for my performance ahead of time, where they usually do when a performance happens in that space. The work was called Mother is Present, drawing inspiration from Marina Abramovic’s work, The Artist is present. Basically they would be able to see me interacting with my child the whole time, without me being able to interact with the audience. I had to push for it, and one week later they said they had to reschedule. So we rescheduled. And again, it was supposed to happen on Saturday, and on Friday at 3pm I said, “are you not going to advertise this at all?” And they said “Yes, we will do it,” and finally Friday night it seems they did advertise it. I see that I have to push for this. I have to say “You must realize that this is an artwork, even if you don’t see it as art.” Later on, the person who runs the space said “why didn’t you come here with your child and do the piece here?” Which would have been a completely different piece. I was thinking about the space of home and the space of the gallery, and the space of being a mother and the space of being an artist, bringing those two spaces together. So I thought, “Maybe you guys fell short and now you’re thinking about changing my piece.” I was not expecting that from them. With performance art, whatever happens becomes part of the work. So they could have added to the piece by responding like that.

Events: Multimedia Time Machine, Family + Friends

Multimedia Time Machine
Saturday, October 22, 2016
10 AM - 12 PM
Gallery 400
400 S Peoria Street, Chicago

For a lot of us, 'family' events are a whole lot more interesting when they're not designed just for children. That's why Cultural ReProducers is partnering with Gallery 400 to present Multimedia Time Machine, a truly intergenerational workshop and live video performance next Saturday, October 22nd. Bring your kids, your parents, your college students, and yourself for a collaborative live animation with artists and musicians Ben LaMar, Selina Trepp, and Christa Donner. We'll transform Gallery 400 into a multimedia time machine using electronic and acoustic sound, overhead projectors, shadow forms, and transparent materials to create layers of past and the future. The resulting projection and soundtrack will be documented as a realtime video collaboration.

Families and Friends Matinee Series
Sunday, Oct. 23rd, Nov. 20th, and Dec. 17th 
12 PM - 2 PM

Township

2200 North California Ave, Chicago

If you'd rather enjoy live music than make it yourself, check out Township's live concert series for all ages, continuing its second season thanks to musician, artist, and father Thomas Comerford, who started organizing the series for Township in the Spring. Families and Friends Matinee Series kicks off for Fall on Sunday, October 23rd, with the trancey, visual electronica of Spectralina and openers Son Monarcas, who combine Mexican roots with South American cumbia and tango. Bonus: you can order some excellent food from the Township kitchen if kids get hungry between sets. I'm pretty sure the cover is still $10 per family. Here's their full Fall lineup:

10/23, #7: Spectralina + Son Monarcas, noon
11/20, #8: Glass Mountain + Girls of the Golden West, noon
12/17, #9: Tselanie Townsend + Wes Hollywood, noon

Interview: Jess Dobkin

Jess Dobkin, The Magic Hour (photo: David Hawe)

Canadian artist Jess Dobkin has earned acclaim for her boundary-pushing performance work, drawing from queer identity, personal narrative, and the female body. The first time I had the chance see her perform in person was this past Spring, as part of the exhibition New Maternalisms Redux at the University of Alberta, Edmonton, and the weekend-long colloquium that followed. Though I didn’t realize it at the time, it was also the first time her daughter, Yael, was a part of the audience too. It’s been eleven years since Jess became a single mother, and while she has performed around the world she now focuses much of her considerable creative energy within the vibrant arts scene of Toronto, where she lives with her daughter and partner. We caught up recently for a candid conversation about the challenges and choices in raising a child while taking on provocative content in her work, and the practicalities of parenthood in an increasingly professionalized art world.

Interview by Christa Donner

Cultural ReProducers: I'll start off by asking you to briefly describe your daughter in your own words.

Jess Dobkin: My daughter’s name is Yael and she’s eleven. It’s already an interesting question for me in terms of describing her and how she might define herself, the ways I set up boundaries of when and how I talk about her, and the hesitance I have about having her image up on the interwebs and such. I find I’m protective of her identity in a way that’s almost kind of a … joke in these times, as if any of our identities can be sheltered from an online presence. But in terms of how I would describe her, she’s… just very “Yael” (laughter).  She has her own Yael ways about her. I’d say that she is a pretty sensitive, intuitive person, and she’s a Gemini. But it is funny to me how I overthink this. I can also answer your question by simply saying, "She loves reading, math, ballet, and all things Hogwarts."

Cultural ReProducers: Your performance work often deals with pretty challenging, and sexually explicit content. How do you talk about what you do with your daughter? And related to that sense of protectiveness you just talked about, how does that conversation change as she gets older and more connected to the internet?

Jess: Yeah, it’s funny because it is changing. I knew there would come the day when she would learn how to use Google Image search. Like a lot of things with parenting, conversations happen so gradually, and organically… it’s not like you suddenly sit down and have ‘The Conversation’ about sex or drugs or like, “where did I come from?” It’s an unfolding process of integration depending on their age and what they’re ready to absorb -- and that has definitely been true around discussing my work. When I was growing up, the boundaries in my childhood were so… murky, that if anything If anything, I feel like I’ve kind of swung the other way to set clear boundaries and protection around sensitive issues and images.

The Lactation Station Breast Milk Bar (David Hawe)

I’m so aware that everything is now an archive - even this interview is an archive in the making. It might be something that Yael doesn’t read now, but all information is just being compiled into the burden of our archives, where there really are no closets anymore, and your audience isn’t just looking at news of the now. There’s this sense of performing all the time, and that information is always accessible. Sometimes I’m future-thinking. I'm in the present moment but considering,“is this something she will access later?”

But as she’s getting older and with the mix and mingle of my art life and my home life she is learning more about the content of my work. So much of my work comes out of my own lived experience, so she’s also learning about who I am and my history and communities. I’m really enjoying being able to share that with her. And because I’m her mom, anything I do is embarrassing to her. We’ll be in the car and I’ll be singing a Joni Mitchell song and it’s so embarrassing. I can just be walking down the street with her and I’m so embarrassing, so I’m like, “oh my gosh… it turns out I might be a really embarrassing mom.” (laughter)

"There's all the energy and focus on the making of the artwork, but there’s also the work of figuring out grocery shopping and laundry and childcare and getting her to her piano lessons! That invisible production that’s always going on... the production of parenting."

CR: So on that note, I was thinking about your Lactation Station Breast Milk Bar, which came directly out of your experience of motherhood. Could you say a little bit about that piece for those who aren’t so familiar with the project?

Jess: When I first imagined the piece it was when I was pregnant with Yael. The concept was that it was going to be a breast milk tasting bar, and it would be my own breast milk and the milk of other new parents who were lactating. But when Yael was born I did not have success with breastfeeding, which is its own story - a story that is kind of woven into the performance. I had to find donors who would donate their milk for the performance, and these donor relationships became integral to the project. As part of the piece I interview the donors while I’m collecting their milk, asking them about their experience of breastfeeding, about their diet, about if they’ve tasted their milk, and if so, what they think it tastes like. And then as part of the performance I impart that information to the audience as they are sampling the milk.

CR: It’s an amazing piece to experience. I was lucky to be in the same audience with your daughter when you performed it at New Maternalisms Redux. I know you’re both pretty removed from breastfeeding at this point, but I’m so curious how it was for both of you to have her to participate … and if there were any interesting conversations that came up.

Jess: It was such a pleasure to have her there, because she hadn’t really had the opportunity to see much of my work before. Part of what feels challenging for me about having Yael present at a performance isn’t always about the content of the work but in my energy as a parent and as an artist. Bringing her to Edmonton was an experiment for me, because I find it really challenging to balance those two identities,  and to focus. So even at a gathering that was all about art and motherhood where we were digging into those particular issues, on the sidelines I was trying to just manage these different energies, these two different parts of myself.

In terms of what conversations she and I had, some of that happened as I was preparing for the performance, and speaking to her questions about our shared experience of her as a baby. It's exciting to have kids participate in that performance because of their perspective and their language, and how they are closer to the experience of being a baby. I’m always curious about how they relate to it, how they consider and frame the same things that we’re considering.

The Lactation Station Breast Milk Bar (David Hawe)

CR: Who have been your role models for artist parenting or parent artisting?

Jess: Some of that I find among my peers. I feel lucky in Toronto to know so many queer parents -- and not necessarily just artists. When Yael was a baby, a few of us started this queer single mamas group that met quite regularly for a few years. The women in that group really inspired and encouraged me. Single parenting presented a particular set of issues and questions and challenges, so I found a lot of inspiration and support from knowing other fantastic, creative amazing women doing that. I also know some artists here in Toronto who have grown kids, and it’s been really important just knowing that they are still practicing artists who’ve managed to find themselves on the other side of that, having more time and autonomy and energy for their practices. As Yael grows I am finding those things getting easier… I mean, do you find that too? That balance of … I do feel like my art practice is another kid, where it’s this thing that I want to put time into and nurture and be with. There are times when there’s a synergy there, and other times it feels competing. It’s such a paradox of how parenting has really inspired my art practice, and then also in some ways it has made it very challenging, just in terms of my time and energy and resources. … eugh!

The Artist-Run Newsstand, Newsies the Musical (Nathan Hoo)

CR: It’s so incredibly complicated! Well, and to expand on that you have this intense performance practice that means you have to create, rehearse, and travel a lot… I’m sure there are things I’m leaving something off that list. You’ve somehow done all this mostly as a single mother. How have you made that work? 

The Artist-Run Newsstand, Safe Space Exhibition by Cecilia Berkovic and
Karen Frostitution (photo: Toni Hafkenscheid)

Jess: It has been challenging, and I still feel the frustration that ‘the village’ isn’t there. In some
ways yes, people have networks of support, but I am also aware that it’s not really like … we’re not living on the kibbutz or within a communal structure or something. I think for me as a parent there have been times that it’s been very frustrating. I try to frame it as it being my choice: I choose not to do certain things because I am choosing to parent. And while that means that I’m not in a position to apply for some opportunities or attend events or have a more expansive social life, I remind myself that I am very content in the things that I am doing. It has certainly limited my traveling and… yeah. But being a parent has also connected me to these incredible creative spaces and so many fantastic folks, and it’s been really, really wonderful.

This past year with the Artist-Run Newsstand project, part of that was to do something that was really local. Like, okay – at this point in my life I’m not really in a position to be traveling around a lot, and I'm questioning my artist carbon footprint. I have to ask when and why I choose to travel with my work. Sometimes it is and sometimes it’s not a priority. So it felt good to act locally and to do this project in my neighborhood, something that Yael was often a part of, a place where she could stop by and hang out – was really a working solution for me this past year.

When Yael was younger and I would travel to perform... There’s the production of the performance, but then there’s always the other "production" of parenting. I still feel that now. I’m doing a long-term artist residency at The Theatre Centre in Toronto, where I’ll be performing for two weeks in January. I’m already trying to sort out many months ahead what that will mean for Yael and her care during the run of the show when I’ll be performing each night. So there's all the energy and focus on the making of the artwork, but there’s also the work of figuring out grocery shopping and laundry and childcare and getting her to her piano lessons! That invisible production that’s always going on – the production of parenting.

CR: If you were to imagine your ideal creative community, or maybe community in general – what do you feel like needs to change to make the art world a more inclusive context for artists who are raising kids?

Jess: Oh my goodness, I think childcare for starters, not just for artists, but the world needs inspired and affordable childcare. People have asked me about bringing Yael to the piece I’m working on now and I’m like “Oh, no. This piece is NOT for children.” I don’t believe that kids belong everywhere -- there need to be adult-only spaces. But so many things need to change. The horrible misogyny in the world. When I became a mom I felt the inheritance of this whole other form of woman-hatred. Already as a woman artist feeling like my work is not taken seriously, but being a mom? Ugh. I think attitudes absolutely need to change. The understanding of the labor of parenthood needs to change, the valuing of what that is, what that requires.

CR: So you just finished the Artist-Run Newsstand project, and you mentioned this residency with the Theatre Centre. What are you working on now? 

The Magic Hour (photo: David Hawe)

Jess: The newsstand was envisioned as a one-year project. It ended in May, and there was a question
of whether it would continue, which then brought up these interesting questions of “When is something over? When do you move on?” I see this with festivals and even artist-run centres -- sometimes there’s this real need to question the expectation that something continue -- knowing when it’s time to take what’s learned and transform that energy into the next thing.

I’m working on a couple other things right now, one of which is this performance called The Magic Hour that’ll premiere in January at The Theatre Centre. By the time it’s presented I will have been developing it for almost three years. It’s been such a pleasure to have that span of time to develop a work, mostly due to support from The Theatre Centre. The piece is not about parenting, it’s not about Yael, but the experience of having her certainly has informed the work. Even though it’s not a piece she’s going to see anytime soon, she is seeing props and elements of it because it’s all here in our home… like the tiger head she was trying on this morning before school.

I’ve also been co-curating a project called MONOMYTHS with Shannon Cochran, who’s a performance artist and the director of FADO, an artist-run centre here in Toronto. It’s a year-long curated project of fourteen stages, a feminist revisioning of The Hero’s Journey. Not everyone presenting these stages necessarily identifies as a performance artist – one person did a lecture, and one offered an arts and activism workshop, so they’re all taking on these different forms, partly to raise questions about what constitutes a performance, and this interest in where performance art butts up against a larger narrative structure, to see what that brings. For me the project has also been about performance art as something that’s recently been more integrated into the mainstream capitalist art market system, and along with that, seeing this kind of lone hero, art star mentality. In my mind performance art is so much more about collectivity and community, and a practice of resistance and rebellion -- and a sort of interdependence, too. We’re looking at the exquisite corpse structure for MONOMYTHS, where each presentation impacts the others, and there is this connectedness among them. It’s not like a festival where one person presents their work and then this other person presents -- though even in those structures, whatever one person offers, it ripples and impacts our experience of the other things we’re seeing. I’m interested in all of that right now.

CR: That also seems like a metaphor for family, the way you just described it. It’s not like these characters operate as completely separate entities.

Jess: Yeah, that’s so interesting, these questions of how we might all be connected. One of the things I found to be so affirming and sustaining about the event in Edmonton was to have the opportunity to meet up with other people and find these points of connection. Yael had the time of her life there because of meeting Chloe [daughter of participating artist Courtney Kessel]. It was so cool for her to meet another kid of a performance artist. Not many of her friends in Toronto have moms who are, you know, lesbian performance artists (laughter). One thing that was so great about the queer single mamas group was that it was also a space for the kids to hang out. It was so valuable for Yael to be with other kids of queer single moms, to have that shared recognition. And Edmonton was an important experience for Yael to be around other mom artists. It gave her a frame of reference.

Yael behind the counter at the Artist-Run Newsstand closing party. Exhibition by Zanette Singh (photo: Tania Anderson)

The Institute for the Art and Practice of Dissent at Home: an interview with Lena Šimić

The Institute for the Art and Practice of Dissent at Home protesting with UK Uncut in London, March 2011, photo: unknown protestor who was asked to take a snapshot

For artist / mother / academic / activist Lena Simic, art-activism and parenting are inextricably linked.  She and her family (partner Gary and children Sid, Neal, Gabriel and James) make up the artist initiative The Institute for the Art and Practice of Dissent at Home, which is based in their four-bedroom house in Anfield, UK.  Envisioned as a place where artists and activists can meet, study, protest, and perform, the Institute has hosted a number of events, residencies, and conversations since 2008. Their activities as an initiative are numerous and vary from participating in demonstrations to organizing reading groups to most recently presenting at the Playing It Up  Symposium at the Tate Modern in London.  In 2015 the Institute joined with 12 other families to form the Family Activist Network in order to discuss family life and climate change.  The Institute joined with other members of the Network in North Wales this May for a performance including a reflection on The Paris Agreement on Climate change.  We are so grateful Lena was able to take sometime out of her very full schedule to share some of her thoughts on motherhood, art and activism.    

Lena and James at Time to Act Climate Protest
London, 2015. Photo: Gary Anderson

 Cultural ReProducers: As an artist, mother, and academic, in which areas do you face the most challenges, personally or professionally? Are there any strategies or advice you’d pass on to new parents struggling to maintain a creative practice while raising a family?

Lena Simic: I try to think of myself as artist / mother / academic / activist. My arts practice, activism, pedagogical and research work are all interconnected. The Institute for the Art and Practice of Dissent at Home was set up in order to facilitate and name my and my partner Gary’s art-activist practice as well as our parenting practice. We are concerned to bring up our children critically and lovingly. This spills into our pedagogical work at university. As far as I can, I try to work across all of my roles/identities. However, I do find myself ‘having a break’ from one activity whilst doing another. I am currently on the train, having just been to examine a PhD practice element of a doctoral thesis which has to do with birth story telling and deep listening. I am away from the children, I miss them. I am still wrapped up in guilt for being away from them, but I am also grateful for this ‘time alone’ when I can be more focused and uninterrupted. I went for a run by the sea down the Aberystwyth promenade this morning and that felt like a real treat. My academic self allowed for this run. My personal life, if I choose to call it that as the Institute is about blurring the boundaries of the private and public and allowing them to infiltrate one another, is harder. Professional, institutional, academic life has its rules and regulations. No matter how committed you are to the role, you are on someone else’s time. You are a worker, and you are a member of a union, which gives you a sense of protection and security. Personal life is tougher. You are much less prepared for the challenges, which partnership and parental life throw upon you. The same can be said for friendships and artistic collaborations, with all their unpredictable demands. There are no rules, no guidelines, no contracts. Children are very demanding and in my case, having four of them, I also have to deal with the dynamics between them. They are each specifically positioned in our family, and therefore have very different needs and requirements of me, and their father, and each other. Family life is chaotic and erratic. Having our Institute for the Art and Practice of Dissent at Home helps us frame it, contain it and sustain it. The Institute is a foreign element, a shock/surprise/visitor/guest, who intervenes into our nuclear heteronormative unit and helps us be nicer and better and more accommodating. We act for it, with it.

As for advice to new parents who are artists, I would advise them not to be scared of having (more) children whilst young. There’s never a good time to have a baby. If you have them young, you will have more energy and fewer inhibitions. I loved having children in my 20s and just getting on with it. I grew up together with my children, and my career was always in line with my being a mother. There was no before the kids/after the kids divide in terms of my career as an artist. Having children has been transformative and the most creative thing I have ever done. Children and creativity are interconnected. You will have to learn to manage your time differently, but that’s a part of the experience. Embrace the challenge, enjoy it, work with it and all its ambivalence. And remember that you don’t have to do it all now.

Friday Records: A Document of Maternity Leave, 11122014
Photo: Lena Šimić

CR: How has the newest member of your family changed the structure or activities of your creative work?

Lena: James was born when I was 39. He is my last baby and he is my fourth boy. We tried for a girl, and instead we got another gorgeous, determined and strong-minded boy. Being the youngest (he’s now 2) he’s loud and willful; he needs to be heard amongst us all, he’s fighting for his position in the family. He’s just learnt to play us off each other – my dada, my mama. He understands his cute baby-boy power, probably not intellectually, but emotionally. James is our limit. He’s stretched us to the limit of what we are capable of as a family. We are beyond the comfortable now. Having two teenagers, a toddler and an 8 year old is hard work. Having four kids is on par with having one, I feel. Two and three was easier. That’s my experience. James brings us so much joy, intensity, love and chaos. It’s as demanding as it was at the beginning of parenthood – really intense.

James threw me back into my ‘maternal arts practice’. This was another chance at ‘doing-it-right this time’. With James I engaged in a blog project called Friday Records: A Document of Maternity Leave (2014). The project was year long, invisible and enjoyable in its loneliness. Even when I was recording my maternity leave online I never advertised it much. I wanted to experience it – semi-privately, semi-publicly. Now, once it’s finished, it’s a document. This was the development of a work I did with Sid, my third child, and which took the form of a journal, photographs and the text Contemplation Time: A Document of Maternity Leave (2007/2008).

I’ve noticed that, in the style of Mary Kelly’s Post Partum Document (1973-1977), many contemporary artists engage in a kind of durational maternal arts practice, for example Elena Marchevska, Helen Sargeant, Lenka Clayton, Lizzie Philps, Natalie Loveless, Paula McCloskey to name but a few. This arts practice contains a certain kind of ‘laboursome aesthetics’. We are all working so hard as mothers and artists, proving our creative work, intense, repetitive and everyday.

Medea/Mothers’ Clothes performance at Studio 12, Bratislava, 2016. photo: Jakub Čajko

Labour and repetition have always been present in my ‘maternal art’. When I first had Neal and Gabriel in the early 2000s, my arrival to ‘maternal arts practice’ was through the live art event Medea/Mothers’ Clothes (2004), in which I engage in the act of washing mothers’ clothes on stage in a baby bath. I juxtaposed Medea, the archetypal anti-mother with images of contemporary Liverpool mothers whom I photographed and who each gave me a piece of their clothing for the performance. I recently revived this performance in Bratislava, Slovakia – a jump from 2004, when it was made and my first two boys were 3 and 1, to 2016 when they are 15 and 13.

With James, I feel I am in a completely different stage now artistically. I am more interested in contextualizing, theorizing, writing, networking and organizing research events. Hitting my 40s has propelled me into a much more academic and facilitating – or should I say mothering or maternal – role.

The Institute boys, 2007 Photo: Gary Anderson

CR: Your practice exists in physical space that is expanded and disseminated online. As your sons get older has your approach to the virtual world of the internet changed?

Lena: I haven’t really thought about this much. When the Institute first started in 2007 and when we got out first website in 2008, the kids were 7, 5 and a few months. They weren’t using the internet at all. Now, all that has changed.  The Institute website is an important part of our identity, but the Institute has also thrived on being a real physical space where people meet, talk, perform, discuss, drink and have a domestic row. The children are happy with the online content of the Institute website and their representations on it, and at times I sense that they are kind of proud of the Institute, its difference and eccentric character. That changes all the time though.

As parents we try to emphasise ‘the now’ as opposed to an abstract ‘the future’, which can make you feel paranoid and overwhelmed. As technology advances we will find ourselves in different realities and in different human relations, but the Institute is interested in combating the immediate conditions and providing a living, breathing alternative. As things stand we haven’t really worried too much about face recognition software developments or any other spying/tracking devices, even when there’s a massive inquiry underway at the moment into unethical undercover policing techniques used by the British police force to infiltrate activist groups.  We are all less and less free and further restricted, but we live in the present and try not to obsess with the dystopian future. It’s so seductive to obsess about a bad future.

CR: Who have been your models for artist-parenting / parent-artisting?

Lena: When we started I genuinely didn’t know many artist-parents as we were in our mid-twenties when we had babies. We were trying to make our careers as artists and trying to manage new responsibilities as parents. We didn’t really have any friends who were parents as well. We seemed to be the first ones with babies in our group of friends.

When we felt settled in Liverpool and started attending toddler groups, we found a new group of friends who were also parents and activists (not necessarily self-identified as artists). We used to talk about alternative, anti-capitalist and cooperative structures of living. We dreamt of setting up some kind of utopian autonomous spaces which would include home schooling/education, leisure, shared labour and lots of organic gardening. These conversations in toddler groups were really formative and important.

Once we had set up the Institute for the Art and Practice of Dissent at Home, our children were 6 and 4, and I was pregnant with a new baby. The Institute’s first year of residencies was primarily concerned with unpicking relations between art and capitalism and issues of financial transparency. Our children were around, but we weren’t necessarily focused on ourselves as parents/artists. We identified ourselves as anti-capitalists, activist, anarchist and feminist.

The Institute boys, 2015 Photo: Lena Šimić

In 2009 we were invited by Townley and Bradby to join ‘artists as parents as artists’ weekend at Wysing Arts Centre near Cambridge and whilst this was a memorable experience, we also realized that we weren’t necessarily interested in fitting in with a group of artists just on the basis of being parents. We identified with the art activist scene in the UK much more strongly and later on engaged in research around historical alternative pedagogical practices with children such as The Liverpool Anarchist Communist Sunday School and a number of similar schools from the beginning of the 20th century in London. In 2011 the Institute organized ‘family residencies’ in order to hold conversations about art-activism and the upbringing of children. We hosted Helena Walsh, Kevin Biderman and their daughter Ella from London, a place of their own collective from Sheffield, Townley and Bradby from Norwich and Reverend Billy, Savitri D and their daughter Lena from New York who were touring the UK.

In 2015 we set up the Family Activist Network in order to discuss family life and climate change. We initially invited 20 families across Europe into the project – they all got a letter and a post card asking for slow-mail correspondence on the issue of climate change with a view that we all meet together in Paris for COP21, as a part of the social movement for ecological justice. 12 families responded and 24 of us, parents and children, went to Paris in December 2015 for demonstrations and actions around COP21 and climate change. Unfortunately some of the families dropped out of the Paris trip due to terrorist attacks in Paris last November, but for all of us who went it was a wonderfully memorable experience. All dressed in red, with toddlers and prams, with primary school aged children, with teenagers, joining in the Redlines march at The Arc de Triomphe, playing with Inflatable Cobblestones, eating croissants, feeling empowered by belonging to the social movement for ecological justice, travelling across Paris by metro, eating together in a brasserie, walking around Père Lachaise Cemetery. 30 of us from the Family Activist Network will now meet again for a weekend in North Wales in order to create a chaos-filled performance about climate change and family life, reflecting on our slow mail correspondence, Paris trip, The Paris Agreement on Climate Change, future generations and the dying planet.

Family Activist Network at Père Lachaise Cemetery, Paris 2015, Photo: Townley and Bradby

CR: Every year the children decide if they want to continue being a part of the Institute. Would the dynamic of your family change if someone opted out… or if the Institute ceased to exist?

Lena: One of our favourite lines, when presenting the Institute for the Art and Practice of Dissent at Home, is to say that the Institute is always in the state of collapse. Whilst this is true, the Institute has also become too precious to all of us (except of course James). The Institute is our critical space, and a kind of political consciousness, but it’s also lots of fun. As I have already mentioned, the Family Activist Network are meeting soon to try to figure out a strategy on how to create a performance about family life and climate change. Our children are looking forward to meeting other artists/activists’ children again. This is effectively a working holiday.  Protests and demonstrations are fun family days out. Visitors to the Institute bring newness and excitement into our household. The Institute room is a space for weird kind of activities but also a spare room where one can lie down and, whilst looking over all the changing banners, leaflets, correspondence and post cards blu-tacked on the wall, reflect on one’s life and activities. Neal (15) recently said the Institute was his favourite room in the house.

Gary and I have had a few conversations about finishing the Institute – making it extinct, ‘selling it’, passing it on. We might invite a residency one day where we commission someone else to run it for a year. We were invited to Tate Modern to deliver a talk on ‘Beings and Things’ as a part of the Symposium  Playing Up: Live Art for Adults and Kids. Whilst it’s great to see that big cultural institutions like the Tate are becoming more open and interested in children as artists, this might also be a sign for us that the Institute for the Art and Practice of Dissent at Home has become too easy to commodify. Therefore, we must remember to engage in ways that help us to stay real, radical and challenging because the world we all inhabit is itself radically unjust.

*  *  *  *  *  *  *   *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *    

Interview by Christina LaMaster: an artist and independent curator currently making her home in central Illinois. She is particularly interested in the concept of Maternal Gaze and the representations of motherhood within visual culture.

Residency Report: Family-in-Residence, Three Ways

Residency Report is an ongoing series of posts from artists undertaking creative residencies with their families. Find out about programs that support artists with kids, and see how other artist-parents balance the residency experience.

Sarah Neville is an Australian chorographer, theatre director, and multimedia performance maker whose current work examines climate change, the effects of which are rapidly impacting the landscape she calls home. Her recent practice incorporates an ongoing series of Family-in-Residence projects together with her two young daughters and her husband, scientist and musician Matthew Thomas, to creatively explore the environment, human impact, and the next generation. We’re thoroughly pleased to share her thoughts on family residency here, a process that continues to evolve and change.

Until recently I spent most of my time researching new projects, applying for grants and leading teams of collaborators in a creative process. Over the last two years I have been sustaining my arts practice through a ‘family in residence’ model. Having young children has changed my perception of work and life. I realised that this was not just a phase of life I needed to manage but that my life can positively inform my creative practice. My husband’s field is music and visual arts, but his primary work is in the science of Human Factors, and together with Miranda (now 6) and Florence (2) we have pursued research on the artistic project Weather Lore / Speculative Culture over a series of family-focused residencies.

'Changing the world will always require action and participation in the public realm, but in our time that will no longer be sufficient. We'll have to change the way we live, too. What that means is that the sites of our everyday engagement with nature - our kitchens, gardens, houses, cars - matter to the fate of the world in a way they never have before.' - Michael Pollan, “Cooked”

Family in Residence I: FoAM
How we live matters to the fate of the world. Our first residency was facilitated by FoAM in Brussels, Belgium, who explore ways of living and working as creative processes. They are also committed to the concept of the ‘family in residence,’ and so were a great fit for us.
Working as an independent artist means I can organize work around my own availability and creative focus. Thanks to FoAM and their very generous family in residence program, in 2012 I travelled to Europe with five-month-old Florence in tow. We spent a week in a mini castle in Istria near the legendary city of Motovun, participated in a futurists meeting at Time’s Up Austria, and ended by consolidating our residency at FoAM headquarters in Brussels. Throughout, Florence was great company.

The residency was structured to include our whole family. Collaborating remotely from our home base in Australia, my husband Matt experimented with sound and Miranda sent drawings and stories in response to the creative content generated there. FoAM founders and collaborators Nik Gaffney and Maja Kumonovic not only contributed creative ideas, but picked up the ‘hard to do with a baby in your arms’ tasks like note taking and documenting. I am not sure what I would have done without any of them.

In my experience, working in the performing arts cannot by design be a selfish pursuit, so there has been no giant shift in life perspective now that I am responsible for a family. It goes without saying that without a sense of others in the world then collectives would fail, partnerships dissolve and collaborations would bomb. During my residency, Florence’s smile, giggle and attentive observation of the world were a delight.

All in all we arrived home with much gained. For Florence, a sense of herself in a larger world. For Miranda, that wherever I am I cherish her involvement in my work. For Matt, that creative collaboration is part of the glue of our relationship, whether that is formalized in an artistic collaboration or the creative stuff of flexible parenting. For me, high quality artmaking takes fabulous teams of people working together seamlessly; the same goes with creative parenting and a workable family life.

Family in Residence II: Adhocracy 

The following year we trialled the Foam model at the art lab Adhocracy at Vitalstatistix in Port Adelaide, Australia. Here I found that my creative drive was by necessity directed into being active in daily life: cooking, playing with the children, caring for our plants and talking to our visitors. Whilst I was frustrated at not being able to focus on my work in a way I was used to, by bringing my domestic life with me and living the artistic questions that came up, I found a new method of working. We also had challenges with visibility. Our residency was the only event not reviewed, and there was little documentation taken of our presence by the arts organisation. This raised the question of whether a domestic space can be perceived as a public space and whether family life/ artistic work can possibly co-exist in the spectators’ expectations.  

Family in Residence III: Oratunga Sheep Station
Our most recent iteration of Artist-Family-in-Residence finished on the first week of November at Oratunga Sheep Station in the Flinders Rangers, facilitated through Open-Space. Here Matt, Florence and I were alone, without outside arts facilitators, at a large sheep station. Interestingly, though we were based in a house, domestics were not as in focus as the last residency, which was housed in an arts organisation. The home was not ours, and the landscape and weather immediately dominated our experience. Our presence as a family definitely softened our relationship with the larger community and, as in our first residency, Experiencing the world through Florence’s senses certainly heightened our observations of the world around us and fed into the richness and depth of our artistic enquiry. 

To Be Continued
I am still uneasy with my new method of artistic practice. Sitting alone researching, sorting, and speculating is an old habit to kick. However the Artist-Family model is similar to contemporary dance/ performance studio practice in the short time of practical creativity that comes after the millions of hours of planning, grant writing and imagining. Whilst you enter with a depth of knowledge and a handful of expectations, what happens ‘on the floor’ is what really matters. Managing energy, personalities, co-operation, and synergy of ideas becomes the main state of play. With a family this state of play is the full focus of the creative journey, and what is really exciting is that creative outcomes become grounded in family history.