24101 Special Issue experience as realistic as possible when reviewed inside onto the outside v.s. Invisible. There is no way of pure objecitve view but there is a realistic way. In the way I perceive and view it. Jackson Pollock remarked that every good painter paints what he is. I like the world inside of me and the world outside of my head, I’m kind of combining them and go in a poetic way through nature. I don’t want to mark but think about what is necessary. What do I necessarily need for what I want to do or say. Sometimes the object itself says more than a picture of it and sometimes the object itself is troubling. To be honest, I can spend hours of watching a spoon agitating in a glass of water. Have you ever really noticed that subtile movement and what it has to offer? Reality is also something what is made. Another interesting work of yours that has particularly impressed us and that we would like to introduce to our readers is entitled lat. copiare, a stimulating experimental film that questions the theme of originality and that has struck us for the way you sapiently created such unique ambience, manipulating human figure: in a certain sense, lat. copiare seems to stimulate the viewer’s psyche and consequently works on both a subconscious and a conscious level. how did you structure your process in order to achieve such brilliant results? Oh, I didn´t structure at all. I was fascinated by the aesthetics of a copy. I made a picture, then a second one, a third and so on. In the end the film was an installed floating graphic work in an interactive copying-machine. The only structure was in-between two images and the next one. I can´t cope with structures, I would like to because I am fascinated by them but it just doesn´t work for me. I didn´t know the end but I knew every step I did in order to see what I desired in a blurred way. I am interested in this area of conflict between the movement of automatisation and conscious drawing. As you might have noticed I’m rooted in figure and go through the classical subjects like body, portrait, still lifes, movement studies, room. For lat. copiare – the animated installation in the copy machine was called animareprostalladuktion – I found it interesting to point out the specific characteristics of a subject - for lat. copiare it was merely a portrait in a certain architecture and in motion. The work is a stop motion film, every still is made by hand but there was no specific flow chart or storyboard beforehand. Rilke once said that there are great seductions in life and it takes strength to follow them. I´m always on the way trying not to get lost. With their unique multilayered visual quality, your artworks seem to invite the viewers to look inside of what appear to be seen, rather than its surface, providing the spectatorship with freedom to realize their own perception. Austrian Art historian Ernst Gombrich once remarked the importance of providing a space for the viewers to project onto, so that they can actively participate in the creation of the illusion: how important is for you to trigger the viewers' imagination in order to address them to elaborate personal interpretations? In particular, how open would you like your Claudia Ungersbäck ART Habens
Special Issue 24113 works to be understood? Oh, do you think so? I focus on the surface, the form, the sound. I don´t want to reveal something. I try to see things as they are, without meaning, things as they appear to me, without judgement. I don´t think much about a specific audience while working but I am also not ignoring the fact that there is an audience. I am maker on one level and viewer on another and there is the viewed and viewing subject. I think from myself to myself, corresponding. Viewers of my artwork should be free in their perseption and so I just share what I do with hints in which way I was thinking for example in title or texts. I think of myself more of a poet than a painter so I am also or maybe more interested in the figural aspects of a subject and what surrounds it. Art aspects are a means of both the maker and the viewer, the viewed or, ontological, myself and the other in a certain relation. Of course I am happy if somebody gets the intendend meaning out of my work, but it’s not a nessessity. Max Imdahl for example says that the true hero in art is the viewer while pointing out his action retracing the artistic point of view. I am often surprised as to what people see in my works, things I never thought of. I see this as an enrichment as long as I can stay free and open as well and it is not a shortening, blocking attribution to myself. Kathy Acker wrote once that people can do with her work whatever they want. I find open views fascinating, it opens up a variety of possible worlds. Like Gobrich remarked, it´s more a physical thing, I don't want to write out accompanying texts in full, give instructions, answers, telling stories or make clever art - I want a poetic space for what I do, myself, the subject and the viewer, providing a room of intellectual freedom but this is nothing I ART Habens Claudia Ungersbäck
24121 Special Issue intend actively, I don´t want to trigger something in a viewer of my artwork or provoke something, an artwork needs to breathe for unrolling virtue as well as a body does and then it realizes freedom. So I don't want to speak too much about or for Claudia Ungersbäck ART Habens
Special Issue 2413 an artwork but rather more within it. Art is something experienced and I offer certain pieces of paths but nobody needs to follow. The performative and the physical act of art play a relevant role in your work. New York City based artist Lydia Dona once stated ART Habens Claudia Ungersbäck
24141 Special Issue that in order to make art today one has to reevaluate the conceptual language behind the mechanism of art making itself: do you create your works gesturally, instinctively? Or do you methodically transpose geometric schemes? In particular, how do you consider the role of chance and improvisation playing within your creative process? Yes, Frank Stella said something similar, even he however draws different conclusions. He noted that it is important to know what a painting is and then you can try to make one. I start instinctively and my line is clear, confident and easy. I am still working in small steps and experiments while visualizing and composing, searching to find the perfect place for every line or piece of material. I do this without a conceptual approach but wait for the right mood and beat to begin and then everything comes from within and sort of its own. Of course there are some methodical styles I developed and which I repeat and combine anew in order to find something new. But it starts gestically, yes. I find chance and improvisation interesting, because it comes close to music and dance what I love. It makes you think wider, helps to keep moving and opens new horizons. Improvisation is something more physical and spontaneous as well. I like that. The next step is organizing. You are an established artist and over the years you have had group and solo shows including gesTrues - with dancetheatreperformance NEGOTIOATIONS by Alexander Gottfarb Tanzquartier Filiale, in Vienna: how do you consider the participatory nature of your relationship with your audience? Direct relationship with the audience in a physical is definetely the most important one, in order to snatch the spirit of a work of Art. However, as the move of Art from traditional gallery spaces, to street and especially to the online realm Claudia Ungersbäck ART Habens
Special Issue 24153 increases: how would in your opinion change the relationship with a globalised audience? I always miss sitting accomodation, a lack of appealing ambience to linger in gallery spaces and art places. If there is an artwork that fascinates me I prefer to sit down for a while and balance while viewing and talking about it. I like what Patti Smith does on Instagram for example. Sharing her moments and thoughts in her unique way. She has direct contact with her audience via mobile and vice versa. As long as you can define borders that’s great. Internet is a huge artistic machine, a library, a cinema, chatroom a concert hall and yet an unwritten story. Question of trust pop up when it comes to digital images and bodies which doesn’t happen in this way in reality. I don’t think that a direct physical relationship with the audience is decisive for an art experience except a life performance or music. I often visit museums or galleries without the presence of the artist. Sometimes real life can be disappointing as well ART Habens Claudia Ungersbäck
24181 Special Issue or it deviates from the work itself. Artists and viewers have “bad hair days” like everybody. Ingeborg Bachmann pointed out that she only feels true when she is writing, Maria Lassnig wrote something similar about her life and work. What doesn´t mean I wouldn’t have liked to chat with both or don´t want to talk with viewers of my work in person. Internet makes independence from physical space possible and maybe art becomes something different through it, maybe art is morphing generally into a more adressive and narrative form in comparison with artwork in a gallery space or in the streets because of the awareness of a globalised audience. The audience has the possability to watch an artist think and work in social media, that is something new. It comes closer to theatre and performance. NEGOTIATIONS took part in an old shop with shopping windows and I drew in front of the audience close to the performance of the dancers. I found it great when people stopped and watched while I was drawing. People could join, sit down and watch the performances eight hours a day, seven days a week for one year. It was an important experience. Virtual reality can’t substitut reality and it is Claudia Ungersbäck ART Habens
Special Issue not easy to compare, you are independent in a way but also leaving traces. Virtual reality is not a white cube and piece of paper but it seems to be like one. Everybody can participate, from everywhere and anytime. Life itself becomes more artistic in a way. And maybe it appears more artificial as well in a way. We have really appreciated the originality of your artistic production and before leaving this stimulating conversation we would like to thank you for chatting with us and for sharing your thoughts, Claudia. What projects are you currently working on, and what are some of the ideas that you hope to explore in the future? Thank you for the interesting questions, it was a pleasure chatting with you. I am working on a series of “music images and text bodies”. I am interested in the artificiality of texts in relation to nature, the original, and am also looking for a form which doesn´t represent something. Something that doesn´t exist or just exists like a now of music and dance and a future of poetry. I try to get away from figure into something fugitive but essential, pure. Using just my fingers as pen, objects, material and light for example. With GesTrues I came to a point on which I wrote off figure into gesture and also what I can identify as real, as effigy, as copy and what can I say about truth titled in a wordplay. Figure seems to be necessary for a narrative and this provokes a question about truth. I am now rethinking picture as a fact, language as an instrument and art including writing, spoken word, music and text physically as act as well as in digital.. That´s the point I´m at, at the moment. 24193 ART Habens Claudia Ungersbäck
24201 Special Issue Claudia Ungersbäck ART Habens
Special Issue 4012 Madonna alone Lives and works in Severn, MD, USA
2 Special Issue Arit Emmanuela Etukudo ART Habens video, 2013 024
Self Portrait After A Deep Sadness
Arit Emmanuela Etukudo (photo by Tracy Gnoan) Hello Arit and welcome to ART Habens. Before starting to elaborate about your artistic production we would like to invite our readers to visit https://aritemmanuela.wordpress.com and we would start this interview with a couple of questions about your background. You have a solid formal training and after having earned your BA in Cinematic Arts from the University of Maryland, you nurtured your education with an MFA in Fine Art, that you received from Nottingham Trent University: how did those formative years influence your evolution as an artist? Moreover, how does your cultural substratum direct the direction of your current artistic research? Arit Etuduko: My earlier years as a film student/filmmaker definitely influenced my current work, where I learned different methods of storytelling and was also able to refine my skills. I currently create moving image installations and find myself using some of those same techniques that I learned in undergrad. 404 Special Issue An interview by , curator and curator I use my body as material as a way of retaliating against spaces that have tried to control black female bodies in both past and present histories. In my art, I place my body in positions of power and authority to let viewers know that it is possible for this body
Special Issue 24053 to exist without constraint. The second thing I do is use my art to create my personal mythology, I tell stories of my origin, my experiences and my beliefs as a means of giving authority to my existence. Marked out with such unique visual identity, the body of works that we have selected for this special edition of ART Habens, and that our readers have already started to get to know in the introductory pages of this article, has ART Habens Arit Emmanuela Etukudo Emptiness has no sidess
24061 Special Issue at once captured our attention for the way you use your visual language in such strategic way to counter-balance subjectivity, offering an array of meanings. When walking our readers through your usual setup and process, would you tell us how do you usually develop your initial idea for your portraits? Do you create your works gesturally, instinctively? Or do you methodically transpose geometric schemes? Arit Emmanuela Etukudo ART Habens
ART Habens Arit Emmanuela Etukudo Special Issue 24073 Arit Etuduko: In broad terms, my work is mostly instinctual. I often begin with capturing photos of myself while meditating on my current physical, mental, emotional or spiritual state. I then create the final work in the same manner. It is not until the end of the work that I discover the idea and meaning behind it. I prefer working this way as it brings forth a sense of honesty from my work, where I cannot allow fear or shame to stop me from expressing my stories. We have particularly appreciated the way its thoughtful nuances in The christening creates tension and such sense of dynamics. How does your own psychological make-up determine the nuances of tones that you decide to include in an artwork and in particular, how do you develop your textures in order to achieve such brilliant results? Arit Etuduko: The goal I set for myself as I create work is to be as honest with myself, my feelings and my experiences as possible. Whether it be pain, joy, fear and so on, I make a decision to express it fully. It’s as simple as that. My work is as much for the viewers as it is for me, telling stories such as the one in The christening is a cathartic journey. I have a diverse background in the arts,
ART Habens 24081 Special Issue Arit Emmanuela Etukudo Self portrait at times when I must bring myself peace
Special Issue 24093 ART Habens Arit Emmanuela Etukudo Self portrait thinking about loss
24101 Special Issue where I have at one point tested out mediums, genres and techniques. The results of my work is from allowing myself to access any of these facets when they come up. As you have remarked in your artist's statement, your work is for people who want to look beyond the present physical and explore the dissection of the life experience and we have really appreciated the way Self Portrait After A Deep Sadness: how do you consider the role of memory playing within your process and how does everyday life's experience fuel your artistic research? Arit Etuduko: My memories have always seemed like a dream that I keep waking up from. Multiple continuous inceptions one after another. Trains and buses and airplanes have become portals linking one dream to the next. Every time I wake up I am in a new place, in what seems like a different world and the last world immediately feels like it no longer exists. Once I have woken up, no matter how captivating the dream was, it will immediately begin dissipating. The way that I experience my memories have a deep impact on my work and visual style. Where I create my work based on these dream states that I experience. Selfportrait after a deep sadness is an Arit Emmanuela Etukudo ART Habens
Self-portrait thinking of all that has left me
Special Issue 24113 example of one of these memories that immediately feel like a dream, where even after experiencing such a deep emotion, the moment the feeling has ended it no longer feels a part of this world. We have appreciated the way your artworks unveils the connection between the lyrical and the spiritual, drawing them to such dreamlike visual experience. Scottish painter Peter Doig I once was held for 1000 years ART Habens Arit Emmanuela Etukudo
24121 Special Issue once remarked that even the most realistic paintings are derived more from within the head than from what's out there in front of us, : how do you consider the relationship between reality and imagination, playing within your artistic production? Arit Etuduko: I think reality and imagination go very close in hand. We are constantly by ourselves in our thoughts and having experiences Arit Emmanuela Etukudo ART Habens
Special Issue 2413 from the outside world intrude on these thoughts is what leads us into imagination. Imagination can only exist when placed alongside reality. This plays into my artistic production where I take the outside “real” world ART Habens Arit Emmanuela Etukudo
24141 Special Issue and explain it with the “imagined” world. With their unique multilayered visual quality, your paintings — as the interesting I once was held for 1000 years — are often blurred and merge into their surroundings and seem to invite the viewers to look inside of what appear to be seen, rather than its surface, providing the spectatorship with freedom to realize their own perception. Austrian Art historian Ernst Gombrich once remarked the importance of providing a space for the viewers to project onto, so that they can actively participate in the creation of the illusion: how important is for you to trigger the viewers' imagination in order to address them to elaborate personal interpretations? In particular, how open would you like your works to be understood? Arit Etuduko: Although I am giving recounts of my own history, it is my goal to push viewers to understand and form ideas of their own existence on a level deeper than they already know. I want people to look past their physical bodies, analyze what traces life has made on them, discover the worlds these experiences created in them and reflect on their relationships to one another. I want my work to inspire viewers to undergo processes of self-exploration. In pieces like, I once was held for 1,000 years, viewers have full reign over how they want to Arit Emmanuela Etukudo ART Habens
Special Issue 24153 understand the work. They are given an image, a dialogue and freedom yet it is me that they are looking at. They have the freedom to interpret the work as they need to but not the freedom to fully detach me from the work. ART Habens Arit Emmanuela Etukudo Save me father for I have lived
24161 Special Issue You create work that uses your body as language and you feature yourself in themes of divinity, religion and authority as a way of negotiating yourself into spaces that your are not welcomed in. Mexican artist Gabriel Orozco once stated, "artists's role differs depending on which part of the Arit Emmanuela Etukudo ART Habens
Special Issue 24173 world they’re in": does your artistic research respond to a particular cultural moment? In particular, do you think that artists can raise awareness to an evergrowing audience on topical issues in our globalised and everchanging society? Arit Etuduko: As a black female artist, it is almost impossible for my work to not I found myself yelling at God in the mirror ART Habens Arit Emmanuela Etukudo
24181 Special Issue Arit Emmanuela Etukudo ART Habens How Does It Happen
24201 Special Issue respond to cultural moments. As a minority, I am putting myself at the forefront of my work and forcing people to acknowledge me. I absolutely think artists have the ability to raise awareness on topical issues if they navigate their practice in that direction. Over the years you have exhibited your artworks in several occasions, including your recent solo Waiting to become: Images from a dream state, at the Attenborough Arts Center: how do you consider the nature of your relationship with your audience? Direct relationship with the viewers in a physical context is definetely the most important one, in order to snatch the spirit of a work of Art. However, as the move of Art from traditional gallery spaces, to street and especially to the online realm — as Instagram — increases: how would in your opinion change the relationship with a globalised audience? Arit Etuduko: My direct relationship with viewers is often limited to artist talks and workshops, where I am able to directly interact with viewers in a somewhat regulated space. Social media has the ability to remove most forms of regulation. My Instagram, which I use mostly to share my work and projects has become a place where I am easily accessible to my audience and we are able to have unregulated conversations on varying topics. I feel as though it is easier for viewers to get the “spirit of my work” and myself as an artist through our short interactions on Instagram than in inperson talks. https://www.instagram.com/arit_em manuela We have really appreciated the originality of your artistic production and before leaving this stimulating conversation we would like to thank you for chatting with us and for sharing your thoughts, Arit. What projects are you currently working on, and what are some of the ideas that you hope to explore in the future? Arit Etuduko: Thank you for having me! I’ve enjoyed our chat as well. I am currently in production of some new work for my next solo exhibition at the New Art Exchange that’ll be launching in September 2020 in Nottingham, England. I am also in the works of forming new ways to install and exhibit my work. In the future I hope to continue pushing the boundaries of ways that I can express my stories. Arit Emmanuela Etukudo ART Habens An interview by , curator and curator
Special Issue 4012 Lives and works in Rochester, Kent, UK
2 Special Issue Catriona Faulkner ART Habens video, 2013 024
ART Habens Jordi Rosado Special Issue 403
Catriona Faulkner Hello Catriona and welcome to ART Habens. Before starting to elaborate about your artistic production we would like to invite our readers to visit http:// catrionafaulkner.com and we would start this interview with a couple of questions about your background. Are there any experiences that did particularly influence your evolution as an artist and that help you to develop your attitude to experiment with different media and art disciplines? Catriona Faulkner: I come from a textiles background and worked within printed and constructed textiles but always struggled being categorised in a specialism. In hindsight I desired a broader more diverse creative approach, without boundaries or restrictions. Often without a clear intention other than curiosity I have continued to source methods and approaches which have enabled the invention and evolution of my process. This may seem like a clear linear journey that lead to my creative promised land, it really wasn’t. It has been filled with hurdles and obstacles along the way that have made me adapt processes and techniques to enable me to achieve what I needed to create. I have experimented with other processes along the way such as drawing and 404 Special Issue An interview by , curator and curator painting, methods of stitch, collage etc. The need to create has always been in me, I remember being quite young and needing to create, make or paint and that feeling has never left me, evolving into the artist I am today. Now I have a sketchbook in every handbag, a phone in my pocket to capture inspiration and collect objects such as a rusty discarded paper clip, these all facilitate and (Photo by Cathy Teesdale @ humansoflondon)
Special Issue 24053 steer the creative process that happens in the studio. I think I was born with a punk attitude - always needing to explore and question and if I don’t know how, I will do it myself. A DIY ethos has always enabled me to create, be experimental and inventive through necessity. There wasn’t art equipment or materials around when I was young so the need to create lead me to use household paints and scraps of fabric, these materials became my tools of alchemy. It’s the same in my process today, I witness an alchemy that I’m party to but there is also a subconscious unravelling and emergence that happens. I remember being reprimanded at school by a supply teacher for using oil paint on paper as it wasn’t the correct method of use, obviously I questioned this, I just loved the way the oil bled out from the colour but i ended up with a detention. Thank goodness my art teacher soon returned to support my claims of injustice as to where did the art rules and boundaries lie? Her creative openness and passion most certainly fuelled my boundary breaking artist ambitions and got me out of detention. My school art teacher was undoubtedly a driving force behind my creativity at a young age, we are still friends today. Your artistic production combines personal aesthetics with such a unique conceptual approach, and the visual language that marks out your artworks seems to be used in a strategic way to counter-balance subjectivity and offers an array of meanings. The body of works that we have selected for this special edition of ART Habens —and that our readers have already started to get to know in the introductory pages of this article — has at once captured our attention for the way you explored the point of convergence between text and image, to invite the viewers to question the evokative power of symbols and patterns: when walking our readers through your usual setup and process, would you tell us how do you develop your initial ideas? In particular, do you create your works gesturally, instinctively? Or do you methodically transpose geometric schemes? Catriona Faulkner: There is an instinctive approach to my work that comes as I select objects for assemblage at the start of a piece, whether the objects just speak to me automatically or are symbolic in reference, their selection and placement are intrinsic to my whole process. My practice is my own unique approach, i use assemblage and objects to translate my ideas through an ethos of using what is around to create, as well as an appreciation in the objects life and its ART Habens Catriona Faulkner
Catriona Faulkner ART Habens 24101 Special Issue
ART Habens Catriona Faulkner Special Issue 24113
ART Habens 24081 Special Issue symbolic reference. My visual language takes form in my work as an amalgamation of inspiration research and conceptual thinking. Throughout my work objects are used strategically to explore subjects visually and symbolically that can also evoke a deeper sense of meaning and narrative. I use this instinctive approach throughout the process, I trust the feeling of knowing an object is right or when a piece is complete. It can take a long time to find the perfect object /element that I need to continue or finish a piece, so often I work across different pieces at different stages. I have a very visual mind and spend a lot of time in the creative zone, brain space considering my work and it’s development, considering possibilities and symbolic references that I can use and explore through further sketching and collecting. I’m naturally curious about the use of objects and symbols throughout different cultures and traditions finding inspiration in their use and meanings and often using these ideas to create my own multi layered works full of symbolic meaning and reference. I was brought up catholic and was always drawn to the opulence and ceremony of the church as a child, now finding inspiration across cultures, religions and traditions. The planning of a piece can be all consuming with my detailed mind exploring endless ideas and possibilities, these ideas are quite fluid, and eventually I have a loose idea of where to begin a piece and where it is headed allowing an element of a work to evolve and take its own natural form. My inate aesthetic and inspiration is undoubtedly woven into the work and my practice is how it comes out of me creatively, but perhaps there are too many elements to analyse that completely form my practice as a whole. For example there is a disruptive off balance symmetry I like to consider. Initial recognition of symmetrical objects to the viewer but on closer inspection provide an unpredictability, an intrigue, an interrupted golden ratio of what our minds expect, I find this interesting. I consider the evocative use of the objects and concepts throughout my work always wanting to develop and evolve them further, sometimes this can feel quite personally revealing especially through my new work and the unravelling it took to produce. I am open to the viewers own interpretation and contemplation and finding ones own meaning and symbolism. It’s curious to me how we all visually interpret the information we see. My own conceptual approach comes from an amalgamation of all the creative influences and inspirations my mind collects. I work instinctively and understand my own visual language Catriona Faulkner
Special Issue 24093 always striving for authenticity and unpredictability. There is a methodology that transposes throughout the creative process,an approach that allows me to get the ideas out. Constant sketching, considering and collecting allows me to be fuelled and present in my work ART Habens Catriona Faulkner
24101 Special Issue Catriona Faulkner ART Habens