Notes: Rick Lowe, Julie Mehretu and Shahzia Sikander in Conversation Rhode Island School of Design Auditorium, November 10, 2016 4:30 PM
Rick Lowe, [RL] Julie Mehretu [JM} and Shahzia Sikander [SS]
Paraphrasing...commentary to follow.
Imagination- the way in [SS]
Imagination found in the gaps [JM]
Connecting to the tradition around oneself; exploring how to take that tradition into something else...connecting the dots… being driven to do something else with it, with other stuff [SS, JM]
What drew her to abstract painting...not to be tied down to a single way of deciphering meaning. Openness that allows the tradition of abstraction as well as room for the social engagement that is and has always been a part of her life. [JM]
What paintings can do in the studio is limited, we have to engage outside of that space. [JM]
How do I get the experience I am experiencing in the studio out of the studio? [SS]
[JM responded that SS seemed to do this thru the events around her work when when she was first exhibiting in the late 90s in NYC]
The ‘gatekeepers’ of the art world determining identity and category...what and how things ‘should be’; example: local does not make something more authentic...we can’t talk about that in this art world, locality=authenticity, which is not true. We are discouraged to go outside the given parameters…(but this is the searching that is part of her practice) [SS]
[JM response that she does not see SS work as having a location other than where SS is in that particular moment...she does not appear to try to translate in/thru her work, instead she is inventing from within the place she is at.]
Shift to recent US election events...JM led into this topic.
Quote from Toni Morrison making the rounds on Facebook:
“This is precisely the time when artists go to work. There is not time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear. We speak, we write, we do language. That is how civilizations heal.”
[RL described his take on this as the natural flow of life progress requires bumps in the road, and these bumps are what causes us to creatively engage, take the next steps]
JM paraphrasing another Toni Morrison quote (try to find quote) on the denial of the not me as a means of enabling the development of the other
JM recommend The Weeds podcast
In times of crisis going back to the studio is essential [JM]
SS on 1990s emphasis on identity...it is still there, but now it's a matter of how to bridge the identity issues of then to those of now.
JM asked(rhetorically) How to determine what breaks occur by the pressure of the limits placed by the other? It is a matter of paying close attention.
SS states identity is not about a singular category, but about fluidity...local but human (world scale?)
JM- (in response to RD’s (local RI painter) question about challenges still faced by gender) the key to abstraction is that it is opaque re: the artist. This opacity allows (in JM’s view) the artist’s gender to be overlooked...to the point that the artist conforms to the category they’ve been placed in (true in other genre, ex. Black figurative painters like Kerry James Marshall)...but once you try to step out, look out...they’ll write, that’s been done before. (I think a nerve was hit, unintentionally based on what I know of the person whose question triggered the response).
‘The gatekeepers’ [SS]
JM advises ‘find the breaks and take it on’
SS poses the question she asks ‘How do I get outside of my immediate comfort zone’ and implies RL seems to have found a way/developed a system, a method in his social practice begun with the Row houses project….opening it to all. RL responded it is about simply having a curiosity beyond the core of your practice...looking elsewhere, beyond, and bringing back...that’s what feeds it.