Stargates for Boundless Connections: Geneviève Wallen in Conversation With Shaya Ishaq

I met with Shaya on a Friday afternoon, at a café close to Concordia University Campus. The downtown core was buzzing with Grand Prix enthusiasts; it was noisy. Despite the luxury sports car noises and crowd chatters, we wrapped ourselves in a nourishing, vulnerable, and tender conversation. We caught up on some of her latest projects, such as the textile installation But there are new suns at Patel Brown Gallery¹ and the video piece soaring spirits, boundless love shown at the Khyber Centre² for the Arts, discussed Nick and Vanessa Lachey’s Reality TV empire; her residency at the Arquetopia Foundation in Mexico; our mutual longing to care for our non-art-related selves; and her recent ventures in creative writing and bringing life to her weavings in the digital realm. Ishaq’s multidisciplinary practice considers time as a spiritual, multi-dimensional and abundant realm wherein personal and collective expansion is possible. Knowledge sharing, ancestral connections, and collective growth are imbricated in her undertakings, contributing to a genealogy of works guiding conversations on collective freedom. In her work, Blackness is never static; it is a galaxy. Her textile sculptures and the physical and online manifestations of the Library of Infinities are portals connecting interiorities in an uninterrupted space-time folding; they are stargates to intergenerational and borderless interconnectedness. 

I left re-energized by our discussion, and I hope this abridged version instills the desire to connect with Shaya’s work and with her as a curious and thoughtful thinker. 

Geneviève Wallen (GW): Inspired by Neema Githere,³ a person who influences parts of your practice through their work on Afropresentism and choosing love, I wanted to start this interview with the question: whose care brought you here?

Shaya Ishaq (SI): There’s a deep fierceness in the matrilineage from both the fraternal and maternal sides that brought me where I am today. It is only when I go back home that I see how far the apple does fall or doesn’t fall from the tree. [Laughs] Even though I didn’t grow up there, when I show up in those spaces I am met with a fierce kind of love that is a part of my matrilineage, and it motivates me. It is inherent to what I’ve been exploring conceptually, and it drives me to do my best in pursuing my creative expression. It’s this fierce love and wanting to pursue that fire and knowing that it is connected to something bigger, not necessarily my bloodline, but that it can be a part of other weavers, writers, or makers within the ceramic field.

The love of my matrilineage helps in committing to myself, my work, but also my interpersonal relationships.

GW: Because we are working in a system of meritocracy with the perduring belief in embodying the “artist genius” paradigm, pushing many of us in actualizing our dreams alone rather than collectively. I appreciated receiving the invitation to participate in the Library of Infinities’ web platform, wherein one can recommend a book and reflect on the work of authors of the Afro-diaspora in the context of a growing database expanding the Black imagination on Turtle Island and beyond. That invitation asked us to create together. And after listening to you talking about the disparity between communal life back home in Uganda versus here, I wonder how our disjointed condition has impacted your work.

SI: In the year I was awarded a fellowship from Concordia, I got a studio in a big, beautiful space that was also extended to some Ph.D. students. In that whole year, for the most part, I only saw one person there working consistently. I was grateful that I could be the first recipient of this fellowship by the Black Perspectives Office, but at the same time, I thought I have all this space to myself. There should be more people here; they should give more scholarships to other people. It’s not only the benefit of not worrying about the financial reality of studio rent and tuition, but it can also foster a sense of camaraderie and community between more than one “exceptional black person.” You know? Even though I loved it, I felt torn, especially near the end. It can be a double-edged sword, which made me think about Esmaa Mohamoud’s piece A Seat Above the Table (Warren Moon) (2018),⁴ which echoed the loneliest time I felt in that studio.

Last summer when I went to Toronto, I was working on two big projects and one was specifically through TMU (Toronto Metropolitan University), which was a mentorship collective and research-creation type residency. I got to work with students at that school and we got to think and make together. And those moments were amazing because there was more than one of us and we don’t think the same. We could share this space of creative expression and realizing a concept, and that was so much fun and affirming.

GW: Yes, to have fun!!! [Laughs.] We don’t talk enough about having fun in the arts. How the arts have evolved as a career and with the economic reality we are now facing, there is a higher percentage of administrative tasks than making. And when you are making, you are pressured towards meeting deadlines. So, my question is: how do you instill more fun in your practice?

SI: To me what is fun is the flow of things. As somebody who works with process-based materiality, I love when I can be in the zone. If I can be in that space, those are really fun moments for me. I also love being able to travel and visit new museums and galleries without purpose. When I was in Mexico City, and I really think fondly of that trip, I visited different museums. I could take my time in them; I stood in front of artworks and drew them in my little notebook. I wanted to see it, not just snap it and reference it later. I wanted to be there, present, and take it in, letting myself take in art at my pace. I definitely enjoy connecting with other artists, for sure, but also, when we don’t have to talk about being an artist. [Laughs]   

GW: Oh my god yes! That’s a real question: how do we define ourselves outside of the arts?

SI: You know, that was a real question I had to ask myself last year. Who am I outside of making, outside of my hunger for creative expression by any means? I love the moments where you don’t have to posture yourself in ways where you give your artist statement. I want to know that I have value outside of that. Can I tell you what I had for lunch or talk about this trash show I watched last night?

GW: Right! Or simply asking how was your day? In thinking about what the current art ecosystem expects of you as an artist, do you have any comments or perspectives on self-preservation?

SI: I had this moment last year when I thought: I need to figure out another way to work, in a fulfilling way with my best interests in mind. I need to practice another level of discernment if I want to live a long life beyond the arts. I felt a need to re-adjust. What does success mean to me, and what does sustainability mean to me? I think self-preservation is wanting to believe that there’s more or having more of an abundance mentality around time and what I have to give. And it is important to be surrounded by people who see me beyond my labour because those reflections sustain me. And being in touch with mentors and peers who cultivate this sense of abundance.

GW: Can we tie this desire for abundance around time to your weaving practice?

SI: Yes, in the last couple of years I have been thinking about the warp as a way of recording time and learning how to create multiple layers. I remember reading an article by Rasheedah Phillips, one of the Black Quantum Futurism⁵ collective members, reinterpreting the idea of the Grandfather Paradox into the [Black] Grandmother Paradoxes.⁶ In this case, characters are able to time jump and reconnect with one’s matrilineage. At that time, I was thinking a lot about my late grandmother, who was also a weaver; it just made a lot of sense to me. And with this instrument that I am using, I can weave one layer, but I can also introduce a second. If I’m thinking about the idea of time not being linear and being multiple dimensions, how can this other layer be a gateway to thinking about that? And when I interweave these layers or create pockets within those layers, how does that open other temporal surfaces?

That has been something that I am interested in investigating, both technically and in making the connections between the ideas that I have been introduced to. I can also add coiled rope that interlaces within those pockets that then creates these new dimensions that extend beyond the rectilinearness of weaving, embodying the different temporal realities that we may or may not be aware of.

GW: As we are discussing and from what I know of your practice, I can’t help but notice how language is omnipresent in your work. And so, I wonder about the words that carry your dreams at this moment. 

SI: I learned the word “epistolary” last weekend when Whitney French led a creative writing workshop as part of the CP Spacetimes: A Library of Infinities Screening.⁷ I thought: if I can write to someone who had an impact on me as a way of dreaming out loud to someone who dedicated themselves to their practice or a cause, what would I say? An unfiltered form of epistolary as the gesture of dreaming. I wonder about what that hypothetical exchange could look or feel like. I also really value the people who show up to be in exchange. Epistolary and exchange are important words for me.  

GW: These are great words! Who would you write to?

SI: I want to write a hypothetical epistolary to Maya Angelou. Maybe it is cheesy, but she is such an incredible being. I sometimes get emotional just thinking of how much this person left to us, what she wrote when she was alive, the ways that she has been, and how supportive she was of other people throughout her life. When I was still living in Halifax, I read her book A Song Flung Up to Heaven. And in that book, she briefly talks about this TV show that she produced in Britain. It was called Blacks, Blues, Black!⁸ Which, to me, feels like one of the most underrated things she did. This miniseries was about the impact of African American culture on American society. It made connections between certain gestures and traditions that made it through the Middle Passage to America and informed how Black Americans live today. Watching that show inspired me for the Library of Infinities TV series which launched in December of 2022.

GW: Lastly, I am curious about what skills you would like to learn or deepen.

SI: I would want to get better at throwing clay, not necessarily with the intention of adding that to my commercial practice. But it’s nice to be a beginner and to keep learning the formal technical knowledge of a medium, then you can play with it. I want to consistently find ways to always be a beginner even as a weaver because there’s so much to know that may inform my practice. I would love to embrace throwing more and see how I can get better at that. Maybe that can be a hobby. [Laughs]

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Geneviève Wallen is an award-winning independent curator, writer, researcher, and workshop facilitator. Her curatorial and administrative work is informed by intersectional feminism, intergenerational dialogues, and alternatives to neo-liberal definitions of care. Wallen is the creator and host of the curatorial podcast The Conversations that Carry Us/ Ces conversations qui nous soutiennent.

Instagram: @wallen_curates

1. https://www.patelbrown.com/shaya-isaq-but-there-are-new-suns
2. https://visualartsnews.ca/2023/06/tropical-gothic/
3. The artist and guerilla theorist Neema Githere asked the beautiful question: “Whose love brought you here?” as part of their presentation Afropresentism: On Incantation and the Machine during the screening event CP Spacetimes, organized by Shaya Ishaq. I thought it was such a profound way to think through how we related to one another and the inner knowledge and technologies we carry within. For more information about Githere’s work, please read this recent interview with Ethel Tawe “Neema Githere and Ethel Tawe,” BOMB Magazine, https://bombmagazine.org/articles/neema-githere-and-ethel-tawe/.
4. “Please Be Seated,” Art Gallery of Ontario, September 3, 2019, https://ago.ca/agoinsider/please-be-seated.
5. https://www.blackquantumfuturism.com/
6. “Black Grandmother Paradoxes,” Black Women Temporal Portal, https://www.blackwomentemporal.net/black-grandmother-paradoxes.
7. https://www.instagram.com/_libraryofinfinities/
8. “Maya Angelou’s Blacks, Blues, Black! Episode 1 | KQED Arts,” YouTube, February 17, 2017, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9UDb8VtKLM&ab_channel=KQEDArts.

This article is published in issue 40.2 of BlackFlash magazine. Get this issue