Sustaining art work part I

It’s the end of 2022, and I am (still, again) thinking about art work, burnout, privilege, work-life balance, slowness, and, for the purposes of this writing, what makes an art event an art event. I took on the task of crafting a response to art events, exhibitions, or other art programming for my writing on BlackFlash Expanded this year. I had been thinking about what I might want to write about for this piece and kept coming up short–on ideas and on energy. I began reflecting on tangential events: moments that are not officially “art programming” but that nourish and energize me as a person and, incidentally, as an artist.

When I came upon an online talk with artists Wit López and m. patchwork monoceros and curator Sarah-Tai Black, I was able to connect a few of the ideas I had been thinking about throughout the year in a new way. The talk was presented in conjunction with each of us, beloved, which was exhibited at the Dunlop Art Gallery from July 9 to September 7, 2022. Practices and acts of care and intimacy underpin this exhibition, which, in their curatorial essay, Black connects to liberation and refusal. Capitalism prioritizes production and marketability over rest and healing, and the curator’s aim is for this project to de-centre capitalist approaches regarding art and the lives of Black artists.

While the exhibition itself held physical space to celebrate the material artistic production of López and monoceros, the artist talk was, on its own, a treat to engage with. The interactions between López, monoceros, and Black made it clear to me that they are not only professional contemporaries but also friends. This type of relationship allowed for honesty, humour, and ease within their conversation. As an audience member, I felt like the three speakers were being themselves and speaking candidly–an act of generosity, this being a public event, that resulted in a rich discussion for the audience to engage with. Part of their free-flowing conversation that has stuck with me has to do with the question: What does making artwork that affirms you look like? What an invigorating idea to review one’s art practice in this way! Particularly for those who, as Black describes, are living at urgent intersections.

In their conversation, López, monoceros, and Black shared their reflections on how the art world often sees the artist–specifically, disabled, neurodivergent, queer, and/or Black artists, in the context of each of us, beloved–as disposable or “too much.” After all, the “professional” or exhibition-based art world is part of our capitalist systems. There is no art world without artists, yet the humanity of these artists, when seen through a capitalist perspective, is often treated as if it were valueless. Countering this perspective, López speaks about making art through mediums that not only affirm themself visually–López dives into play and exploration with identity and presentation through their self-portraiture–but that also respond to their needs outside of the production or work aspect. They describe how their approach to photography indulges their desire for performance and supports their boundaries regarding how they choose to physically exert themself. Additionally, monoceros speaks to the importance of having peers in one’s professional life who can relate to the structural limitations one encounters. I believe this can also contribute to an affirming art practice; those relationships can be what keeps us going as we come up against annoyances or more substantial barriers. These relationships can give us room to vent (shoutout to one highlight of the artist talk, where the three speakers laugh in dismay at accessibility information on gallery websites: “Here’s our accessibility information: we’re in hell!”),¹ to realize ways around barriers, and to create or involve oneself in ways of working and being that include fewer obstructions. For individuals who live at critical intersections and who often come up against systemic barriers, the internet can be another place to turn. López, monoceros, and Black talked about the importance of finding belonging and safety within various online communities that have been difficult to find in person, the impact that finding online crip/qrip communities has had on their artistic praxes (it is significant that the conversation spills into the impact on their personal lives), and the ability to share one’s artwork on one’s own terms through online platforms.

This takes me to a conversation I had with Christina Battle, BlackFlash Expanded’s Online Editor, while talking through ideas for my writing.² We touched on how the artist’s ideal outcome does not always equal the institution’s, which is often a material goal: to produce something tangible out of creative labour. In our conversation, Battle also brought up the phrase “supporting artistic practice,” which readers may be familiar with as a component of multiple grants programs offered by the Canada Council for the Arts. We talked about burnout in the art world and how casual encounters (with each other, with life) can be generative and enriching to creative practice. This conversation led me to another question: What about self-care and care for others as goals for our creative practices—as necessary components to sustain artistic practice? Los Angeles artist EJ Hill has made art-world headlines recently for “taking a break,”³ which points to how confusing the idea of valuing rest and healing is to capitalist societies.

I love the idea of approaching our creative practices with the question of what an affirming practice or process includes. However, there is the challenge of existing in and being financially dependent on the “professional” art world. While we can sneak acts of care into our grant writing (including gifts and plans to share meals for collaborators, and extra padding on our timelines for ourselves), these things are still tied to the production of something tangible from creative labour.⁴ We can take on the challenge to sneak care into our creative practice while working within the grants and exhibition system of the art world—we just have to convince the gatekeepers of various resources that these acts of care are legitimately part of a professional practice. These questions and challenges relate to Black’s conflicting sentiment on curating each of us, beloved within an art institution. They write:

I am wondering about the ethics and import of curating such a space for the public eye and contemplating what gets lost in the movement from curatorial intention and artistic practice toward attempts to materialize both in (as well as through) an institutional or otherwise bureaucratically organized space. I am wondering if there is truly room for the kind of community and politics I wish to make space for here or if I am just working in the exact ways I wish to critique.⁵

These approaches to our creative practices may not feel like the perfect solution, but at this point I don’t know what a perfect solution to working (sustainably) within the art world would be.

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Feature image: Promotion card for Artist Talk: each of us beloved, July 18, 2022. Courtesy of Dunlop Art Gallery

Image description: White text on a teal background reads: “Artist Talk each of us beloved / Jul 18, 6:00 pm CST, 8:00 pm EST Streaming Live.” Below are images of the three participating speakers from L to R: Wit López, m. patchwork monoceros, and Sarah-Tai Black. Social media handles appear on the bottom right hand side of the promotion card.

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Mariana Muñoz Gomez is an artist, writer, curator, and settler of colour based in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Treaty 1 Territory, which includes unceded lands of Dene and Dakota Peoples; ancestral territories of Anishinaabe, Ininiwak, and Anishininiwak Peoples; and the Homeland of the Métis Nation.

Their interests include language, identity, diaspora, and displacement, and these topics’ intersections with coloniality, temporality, relation, and place. They are a Managing Co-Editor of Carnation Zine. Mariana’s writing has been published through Akimbo, Public Parking, C Magazine, and Terremoto. They released a self-published artist book, mapping elsewhere, in 2022. [www.marianamunoz.ca]

1. Sarah-Tai Black, “Online Artist Talk – each of us, beloved with Wit López and m. patchwork monoceros,” Dunlop Art Gallery, July 18, 2022, YouTube video, 01:09:32.
2. Christina Battle, conversation with the author, August 12, 2022.
3. Scarlet Cheng, “After exhaustive performances and pandemic stress, EJ Hill takes a break to paint,” The Art Newspaper, February 18, 2022. See also Sarah Cascone, “EJ Hill Is One of the 63 Artists Participating in This Year’s Whitney Biennial. So Why Can’t Anyone Find His Work in the Show?”, Artnet News, June 22, 2022.
4. And, as the speakers note, the physical and administrative labour that goes into the upkeep of an arts practice.
5. Sarah-Tai Black, Curatorial essay for each of us, beloved and for those of us who live at the shoreline, Dunlop Learning, Dunlop Art Gallery.