Sustaining art work part II

As I write this at the end of 2022, I am (still, again) thinking about art work, burnout, privilege, work-life balance, and slowness. Tasked with responding to art programming for my writing on BlackFlash Expanded, I have also been questioning what makes an art event an art event. Does it need to happen in a gallery? No. Does it need to be associated with an institution? No. Can it be ephemeral, experiential? Yes. My mind goes to Francis Alÿs’ Sometimes Making Something Leads to Nothing, to Ana Mendieta’s Siluetas, even to a fleeting memory from a decade ago: a friend describing something to me as performance art, although they performed it without an audience. This last point was the earliest lesson for me that, as artists, we get to decide what art is for us. This means, ultimately, that anything can be art.

With various thoughts, observations, and experiences coalescing–as I touch on in part I–I came to Simon Fuh’s book For Now You Had To Be There, published in 2022 by Gravitron. In For Now You Had To Be There, Fuh describes and links disparate memories. For Now opens with an explanation of the method of loci and of the concept of a memory palace. Most of the memories Fuh recounts are positive, based on shared experiences, including organizing a series of underground parties in his hometown of Regina, time spent outdoors in good company, and memories revolving around wrestling mats. The book ends with a romantic, sci-fi vignette exploring sociality, sensorial communication, and limitations of language. Throughout For Now, Fuh ruminates on how affect colours an experience and by extension, the impression it leaves. His focus is not on nostalgia, but on exploring moments of “fleeting togetherness.”¹

Reflecting on all this, I realized I appreciate opportunities where we as artists can recognize non-art practices or actions as valuable to artistic practice. This brings me back once again to a conversation I had with BlackFlash Expanded Editor Christina Battle this past summer. We talked about burnout, taking care, and how an artist’s and an institution’s ideal outcomes for a project may not be the same.² We were sharing these thoughts in relation to an artist talk for each of us, beloved, where artists Wit López and m. patchwork monceros, and curator Sarah-Tai Black discussed self-care and care for others in relation to their artistic practices. Because the “professional” art world is part of our capitalist systems, productivity and tangible outcomes are prioritized over one’s rest–this is true of just about any field of work. As artists, many of us get burnt out from the pressure to produce, whether for the commercial art market, within a practice reliant on attaining grants, or behind a desk as arts administrators. Burnout may also be a result of interacting with oppressive structures–including but not limited to colonialism, capitalism, ableism, racism–embedded within all kinds of institutions. The impacts of these interactions are most felt by those who are pushed to the peripheries of these structures.

Without a doubt, it is a privilege to make a living as a settler artist here in so-called Canada. I am unsure that I would have become a “professional” artist (making income from my creative practice) had my parents not moved our family here from Mexico. I understand why many people pursue more financially-reliable careers. It is a privilege for art to be a career option, especially considering that anything can be art.

As I consider what has nourished me as a creative practitioner in the last year–or, as worded in part I, what may contribute to sustaining artistic practice for me–I recognize that the answer does not necessarily include attending official art programming. What I value most have been tangential, coincidental, and unrelated events and moments. I close my eyes and replay a memory: a friend and I arrive at another friend’s hotel room in Regina, Treaty 4 Territory, surprising her with a metallic dolphin balloon and flowers to celebrate her multiple projects premiering that weekend (a note on hustle culture in the arts). Incidentally, the memory of that road trip does include “official” art programming, programming which my friend planned with intentional care. Christina Hajjar’s opening for Don’t Forget To Count Your Blessings at Neutral Ground included commissioned playlists to set the mood, carefully researched catered food, and an area within the exhibition to sit and play backgammon together. A second highlight from 2022 that I recall less through specificity and more through feeling: going to Tkaronto at the beginning of summer for the purpose of installing my artwork in a group exhibition. This was exciting and significant for my career, but the best part of the trip was spending almost every day with my brother. This feeling of comfort was extra special since he had, until recently, been living in another country for several years. Another memory from 2022, this time from a non-art related trip: a serendipitous encounter with a stranger who happened to share one degree of separation with me. On our way to a delicious dinner, they recommended a residency program for me to look into. (Let’s be real, it can be difficult to fully separate personal interest from research and work as a creative practitioner–this person also happened to be an artist.) They had participated in the residency years earlier. As they recalled their time in the program, they didn’t tell me about their work–they told me about the good friends they met through the program and about the relief they felt when they took a more relaxed approach to the residency than they might have planned or felt expected of them. Their sentiment was something along the lines of: “I forgot it’s important to enjoy life!” I recognized a fellow workaholic.

For someone who does not normally get to travel often, I was privileged this year to have plenty of opportunities to do so–something that can come with art as a career choice However, it was not necessarily the travelling that made these occasions memorable and special—it was the people I spent time with, the energy we shared, the downtime, and the acts and feelings of leaning into care and intimacy. Or, as Fuh describes throughout For Now, the “textures, energies and excitements”³ that “become associated with [a] moment and leave impressions on the body’s living memory, reminding us that something must be done again and that being there can be felt again.”⁴

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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. Simon Fuh, For Now You Had To Be There (Regina: Gravitron, 2022), 60.
2. Christina Battle, conversation with the author, August 12, 2022.
3. Fuh, For Now, 27.
4. Ibid, 76.