Sofa Issues
What Does Safety Mean to You?
“If you don’t have the actual police force on the street, but you have privatized security, that’s still having a police state. I mean, the uniform is different. The ability to do certain things or enforce certain things are different, but the emotional feeling, the response that you get in the immediate, positive or negative, from the people that are seeing it, it’s the same.”
– Damian Bunting
When I moved to Portland this fall, I was immediately struck by the number of private security guards. Outside the Burgerville, the CVS, the shops downtown–they all had their guy (usually a guy) at the front door. While doing anti-surveillance work in New Orleans for a few years, I came upon the term “security theater”, used to describe the way the guise of things like cameras, uniformed officers, and the presence of policing allegedly add to the feeling of safety in a place, if not actually reducing harm. In fact, the root of the word “security”, transitioning from Latin “se cura” to English around the 16th century, literally means the absence of anxiety – not the presence of safety. I saw security guards as another prop in the theater of safety, and I was curious how they understood their role.
While researching private security in Portland, I came across Portland security guard Damian Bunting’s YouTube channel. He recorded and posted his day-to-day interactions, handing out cigarettes and pointing people to resources while on duty. I don’t believe that more police and surveillance make people safe, yet I was intrigued by the way he seemed to be an outreach worker as well as a security guard. I reached out to Damian and he graciously agreed to discuss with me the state of private security and policing in Portland, his vision of safety, and how change happens. I felt engaged but challenged while conversing about a topic that the two of us see differently–there are many things I wish I would have asked that I felt unable to at the time, and also many points of connection and agreement. I hope to speak with him again. This interview has been compiled from two separate conversations and edited for length and clarity.
Lou Blumberg: What kind of security do you do? What are your hours?
Damian Bunting: I do all kinds, everything from retail to patrol, anything from your run of the mill security all the way to a very law enforcement-esque type of security, which is what I’m doing right now. When I worked retail downtown, the shifts were 16 hour shifts. We would start at 7am and we would get off at 11pm.
Lou: That’s wild.
Damian: Yeah. I’m currently working for a company where I’m doing 12 hour shifts, generally 6am to 6pm.
Lou: That’s still a pretty long day. I’m really curious about your YouTube channel because, as I mentioned, I’m studying art and social practice and I see your YouTube channel as a work of art, in many ways. I wonder if you see it that way. What drove you to create that? It’s such a wealth of information and it’s so prolific. It looks like you post at least a couple times a week, right? I’m curious about that and about what drove you to share your experiences.
Damian: The reason why I started it is because I really enjoy what I do. When I would talk to other security guards, especially people who are working in a completely different capacity, maybe they’re just sitting in a parking lot at some sort of shack or something or maybe they’re handing out passes or keys or something like that, they’re not doing a lot of the stuff that we’re doing here in Portland. They felt really inadequate about what they were doing, and they would say, “I’m going to try and get a job with the police department so that I can do more.” Most people were working in security because either they didn’t have anything else to do or they just needed a job at the moment and they fell into it. And I heard that and thought, what a waste! Because so many people are good at security, and here in Portland, we have 30,000 of us, we have a huge, powerful voting bloc and a powerful aspect of the workforce, but no one gives security guards a voice. No one thinks of private security guards as first responders, even though they are. No one gives any credit or credence to what we do. Most people think of security guards like Paul Blart and they make fun of them and they make fun of the industry.
I wanted people to know, what you do matters. What you bring to the table is important. And the only way to do that was to highlight it. So I’m like, I’m going to start doing that. It’s been received well. And I hope that it gives people a little bit of pride in the industry, which is ultimately the goal.
The company I’m with, we’re working on a concept for a show. We’re talking about all the stuff that you and I are talking about right now on the street. It’s almost like an episode of Cops where I’m interacting with people on the street. I think that we have a great opportunity to kind of change people’s approach to doing security.
Lou: How did you get into the security field to begin with?
Damian: I was in the military. I did six years in the Air Force, and I’ve worked in various aspects of law enforcement. But to be quite honest with you, in a nutshell, how I interact with people like you saw on my YouTube channel and why you reached out, that more compassionate approach I take…that was not something that law enforcement wanted over the last twenty years. I worked in a county jail, I worked in a state prison. In every area where I worked, I was told, “Hey, you’re not these people’s friends. You’re not here to hear about their problems. If they don’t want to listen, you make them.” Every time that I got myself involved in a law enforcement position, it didn’t feel right. Because that’s just not who I am.
I tell people private security’s like being a nurse as opposed to being a doctor. You have a direct impact. You’re the one that’s there when something happens. You’re the one that’s there in the moment that people need help. And I don’t like politics and bureaucracy when it comes to helping people. I really don’t appreciate the fact that law enforcement officers, whenever they feel that they are being slighted or that people are asking too much of them, they can withhold service. And that happens here in Portland. During the whole George Floyd situation, they just stopped responding. They didn’t like [the progressive prosecutor Mike] Schmidt, they didn’t like [progressive city commissioner Jo Ann] Hardesty, and so the police took the stance, “if you want to criticize us and not give us more resources, then we just won’t respond and we’ll see how you guys like it.” That’s why private security exploded, because ultimately the people said, “we’ll just hire a private company to come out and deal with it and we don’t have to be involved in politics.”
Lou: It’s interesting to hear you mention that private security ballooned during the beginning of the pandemic and the George Floyd protests. I wonder sometimes if private security is more palatable to people in the city than regular law enforcement because of those protests.
Damian: When the George Floyd protest started, and the calls for transparency and accountability were getting louder, we saw a lot of police departments across the country who took their ball and went home, instead of them taking that bull by the horns and saying, “let’s hit reset and let’s change the way that we’re doing things.” So when you ask the question is private security more palatable, it is. Here in Portland, there are certain places where they say, look, we have to address the homeless issue, we have to address the mental illness issue, but we don’t want people showing up with guns and dealing with that issue. They can hire a private security company and say part of our contract with you, no firearms. And the private security company goes, not a problem. Here in Portland we have 3,000 police officers and we have 30,000 security guards. [author’s note: according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics there are 12,800 security guards and 881 police officers in Portland.]
Lou: Wow! That’s a big difference. I wonder if you see your role as also kind of social worker or community liaison. What do you think the role of a security guard is when interfacing with the severe homeless crisis in Portland?
Damian: Portland is so specific. You have so many competing demographics. You have the nonprofit industry. You have those who are suffering from homelessness and that demographic. You have the mental illness issue. You have drug addiction. And then on top of that, you have activism and intellectualism. So there’s all of these different dynamics.
It’s much easier, with the dangers and the problems we have here, to train a security guard up to a base level of outreach than to go in the reverse and take someone who is in the mental health field and train them up to a base level of situational awareness with the violent things that happen here. I think that the company I’m working for started off like most security companies–they were more of an enforcement model. They took a special forces approach to addressing situations. In order to address a lot of the issues overseas they have a hearts and mind concept where, when you embed in a certain area, you have to understand the people that you’re dealing with. You have to understand what they’re going through, understand their religion, understand their politics. And by embedding with that demographic and having an understanding of who you’re around, you can better reach them from a more compassionate place to try and change things. And that’s the model that they created in Old Town Portland. So private security here in Portland does more than a vast majority of law enforcement agencies in middle and small town America. I was up for hire in a small town in Missouri, and it would have taken me 15 years working for that police department to see the number of homicides, overdoses, the types of mental illness and mental health crisis that we deal with on the street in Old Town. And we’re seeing that all the time here in Portland as security guards. It makes it a necessity that private security evolves and develops into something more, given the issues that people are experiencing here in Portland and how that’s connected to all of these different demographics.
Lou: So what is safety in your ideal world? What does that look like for you?
Damian: I mean, that’s kind of a hard question to answer. I don’t foresee anything getting better in terms of there being less of a need for security in Portland. I think that if anything, it’ll get more privatized and more niche, like we were talking about before, how everyone can kind of tailor their service to what they want to see. If people don’t want a more dystopian police state… if we’re being honest, you don’t have the actual police force on the street, but you have privatized security, that’s still having a police state. I mean, the uniform is different. The ability to do certain things or enforce certain things are different, but the emotional feeling, the response that you get in the immediate, positive or negative, from the people that are seeing it, it’s the same.
So, in order to get away from that, in a perfect world, a lot of things would have to change. Number one, this esoteric idealism that we have in Portland where people want to facilitate a utopian type of existence, we need to realize that’s not necessarily feasible. Because you can have the greatest of ideas; we want everyone to live together and get along and we won’t have to worry about carbon emissions and everybody’s eating clean. But you know, people have free will and it’s America and you have free choice. So it’s going to always be very difficult to get people to push in the right direction. One of the things that makes America so great is the fact that everybody can be an individual. So, I don’t know that anything would really change here. I don’t think people here want to require more accountability and responsibility from people. So I don’t really see it changing.
Lou: Yeah. I guess there’s a philosophical question here about free will and what it means to live in a society together. And I wonder, do you think it’s even possible for there to not be property crime anymore or for there not to be homeless people anymore, if everyone got their needs met? Do you feel like those are just going to be facts of life?
Damian: It’s going to be facts of life because you’re going to always have bad people. And when I say bad people, I don’t mean the homeless are bad people. I just mean in general, there’s going to always be people that have evil intentions. There’s going to always be people that take advantage of a good situation or the system. There’s going to always be the people that are self-serving. So even in a society where there’s very little crime, I mean, you could find a city where there’s almost no crime. There’s still some crime, right? But the more you take the guardrails off in society, the more open you are to crime.
So like, for instance, if you say that no matter what drug of choice you want to use, you’re free to use it. If you take that guardrail off, then the people that want to use drugs all the time are going to be in this area. But it doesn’t just stop with that because someone has to supply the drugs. So that opens up an opportunity for the cartel. Once the cartel is here, now you have people fighting over turf. That creates an opportunity for gangs. Well, someone’s got to supply the guns. So now people that supply illegal firearms are now in the mix. There’s all of these things that happen in the periphery of a decision to just take the prosecution away from drugs. And it’s the same thing with homelessness. If you say, look, a person has a right to exist how they want. And if they want to live on the street, they can. Well, there’s a lot of things that come with it. There’s going to be sex trafficking and all kinds of other issues that are on the periphery.
Lou: I have an idealist side of me that imagines that if people were well taken care of, if people could find good jobs that paid them enough and places to live that were affordable, places that they weren’t getting priced out of, that having those basic things would solve a lot of the issues that people have of feeling unsafe or the property crimes. But maybe we see differently on that.
Damian: I think that that mentality and that idealism, it’s commendable, but it doesn’t align with a lot of different things. Number one, we live in a capitalist society. In order to just make that happen, you have to have a place where the people can go. You have to have the ability to facilitate the building and the maintenance of those areas. And all of that has to be paid for by someone.
And even with that, if you could get all of that to work out, at some point someone’s ideal of what they want might exceed what they’re able to get. And when that person thinks, “I’m working a job where I’m making $25 an hour and I’m able to pay for this one bedroom apartment. And from the idealist perspective, this is good for me. But now I want more. In order for me to get more, I have to make $35 an hour.” So now that person has broken out of that idealistic environment because they have the desire to achieve more. They’re going to want to do something different. And so that’s going to cause strife or problems.
Lou: How do you know when you have enough? How do you know when you’ve “made it” or when you feel satisfied?
Damian: You know, I grew up in Arkansas. My parents went to segregated schools. They came up under Jim Crow, literally eating in the back of restaurants, riding in the back of the bus, sitting in segregated areas. So I went into the military first out of high school. I never got my college degree. From the time that I graduated high school up until say 2016, the most I had ever made per year was probably $50,000. I have a couple of friends from high school who are famous Hollywood actors. Watching their success and seeing them on the runway and talking to them and hearing about the life that they lead, I always thought to myself, “Man, I wish I had more money. If I could just make $100,000 I would feel so proud of myself and my life would change.” In 2020 I moved here and 2021 was the first year I made over $100,000. I made that hundred grand and I was so excited, and then the next year I made close to $160,000, so I was like, “I’ve made it.” Well, I bought a house which is in a really bad neighborhood, with inflation and cost of living that’s what I could get. There’s drug addicts on my street, people literally camping right outside my door. I have not had one day–and I mean this with all sincerity–I’ve not had one single solitary day of peace in my house since I moved in.
Lou: That sucks.
Damian: I was much happier when I was in Missouri. I was paying $600 a month for a 1200 square foot apartment that had two full bathrooms, two full bedrooms, and a deck. It was amazing. I was making $35-40,000 a year. My wife and I went out every weekend. We ate out almost every night. My life was so much better! I think to answer your question, it’s not about how much you make, it’s about where you live, it’s about your experiences, the people that you have around you, what kind of job you’re doing, right?
Lou: That’s super hard to achieve your dream and then be like, “actually this isn’t as great as I thought it was gonna be.” Do you ever think about moving back or doing something different?
Damian: Yeah I mean, I really like security but I definitely think that my future is not in Portland. I’m getting older. I think in a perfect world I would live somewhere down South. I’ll be 50 in four years. I want to spend the next 25 years waiting for my grandkids to be born and just being grandpa and just living and being happy. But I do think I’ve never really been happy anywhere. I have social anxiety, I have depression. I don’t know that I’ve ever or will ever find a place where I’m really content.
Lou: I hard relate to that. This kind of makes me think back to my idealism and the importance of having imagination. I’m thinking about your parents growing up in Jim Crow–could they even have imagined what was possible for you or for their grandkids? I like to believe that if we’re able to imagine something better like we can we can get there one day. My family is Jewish, so I’m descended from people who were, generations back, kicked out of their homes. I don’t know if my ancestors could have even imagined what’s happening for me today. I like to think about that in terms of what the future could look like. We might not even know what’s possible.
Damian: And you have the ability to shape that, that’s what’s so amazing. Think about what your family came from and what my family came from. Think about where we could go.
Damian Bunting (he/him) is a Portland-area armed security officer, second amendment advocate, and digital training instructor looking to educate, motivate, and influence dialogue and communication.
Lou Blumberg (they/them) is an artist, facilitator, and educator with ties to San Francisco, New Orleans, and Portland. With a belief that a better world is possible, their deeply personal practice deals with conflict and its impact on our relationships and lives, surveillance and safety, and joy in despairing times. They are part of the MFA Art and Social Practice program at Portland State University. They’d like to mediate your next conflict.
Being Opaque: In Reality, Who am I?
“So no, I don’t really care whether they get it or not. You know, one out of, I don’t know, how many hundreds that I meet will really somewhat get it. But in real time, man, like on the ground, in the trenches, this art stuff doesn’t matter to me.”
– Ibrahim Ahmed
While spending a year in Paris, France, a mutual friend referred me to a gallery where artist Ibrahim Ahmed was showcasing his work. The wall was scattered with old archive photos of his family collaged with a collection of performance images. Most striking were the juxtaposed images of his father and his own body. I talked to Ibrahim briefly that day, and the conversation quickly turned from gallery based artwork to exchanging our own life philosophies. I’ve been looking for an excuse to continue our conversation and pick his brain so I thought why not now.
Dom Toliver: So, you were born in Kuwait and then you traveled a lot. Bahrain, Egypt, U.S., then all the way back to Cairo. What’s that like? Can you give me a little bit of insight on your experience? What was it like growing up as Ibrahim? What influenced you and your work?
Ibrahim Ahmed: Yeah, of course. I actually just had to do a prompt for one of my classes at the School of Art in Chicago about Eileen Gray. It’s interesting because they talk about how her first home was pretty much the compass that guides her through her practice. You see, for years the whole trajectory is based on this moment. The moment that the original home that she grew up in, which was simple, clean lines, et cetera, was demolished. And in its place they put this wannabe Tudor English home and she’s quoted in her journal saying, “Our family home was no longer a home.” So I thought it was this interesting structural rupture that then becomes what she seeks throughout her whole life. And replicated.
I say this to say, because of that transient upbringing, I was always being questioned whether I was enough of a Bahraini, an authentic American, authentic Egyptian. Am I enough of this? Can I belong? What are these very finite indicators? As we say in Arabic, “like a huff huff”, not even a breath. If it hints towards this one finite thing, suddenly you don’t belong to us. You’re different. So, yes. Of course that upbringing of never really being enough of something, even though I felt I was an amalgamation of all these things, I wasn’t pure enough. This influences my practice. This becomes my whole practice. This is really the core of my questioning the nation state, its identity, and aesthetics. The visual language that surrounds these ideas, even how these things construct gender and all this, right? How deeply embedded in that are colonial projects, this is all that really informs my practice.
Dom: Saying that puts words to a lot of things that I think about and am trying with my own practice. In a similar way, I felt like I was a part of so many cultures but never belonged to one. Or like you said, never authentic enough. Never really having an identity because you’re waiting on people to point out those indicators that you so much as huff toward.
So with that being said, I’m wondering what it’s like having your work appreciated by the capital A Art World in places like Australia and France. Do you think they’re really seeing what you’re putting out?
Ibrahim: (smiles) No.
Dom: (laughs) Isn’t that crazy? That’s crazy.
Ibrahim: Yeah it is, but you know, that’s not even who I’m talking to. That, for me, is a market. That is just income. First of all, I’m not even interested in belonging to anything at this point. I know some people are like, I’m quarter this, and that. I’m like, how do you quantify these things? Because within Egypt. There’s a thousand codified things within me alone. Thousands. It’s been the center of the world, the middle passage between Asia, Eurasia and the West. All the trade that came in from there into the continent of Africa and back out. So, I can’t even quantify what I am an amalgamation of. These nation states that we identify and quantify are no more than a few hundred years old. They didn’t exist, then to racialize the ancient Egyptians. It’s just the most absurd thing to me because racializing things is a colonial legacy. It is a colonial tool.
So I think for me to go deeper into that, you said what you’re saying about markets and markets are very different from my actual audience and who I’m actually speaking to. Who I’m speaking to, my longest project, my opus operandi, the one, the project that I will never exhibit, is the stuff I do within my community. The visual language, that’s like the tip of the iceberg of when I talk about decoloniality, or decolonization as an actual thing. But in real time. That work to me is behind closed doors. It’s not something I’m going to write about. It’s not going to be an exhibition. That to me is the real meat of my practice because as you see in Europe and the United States, we see where they are right now, the mask is off. And the art world is the center of the empire. The CIA funded the abstract expressionist. It’s deeply embedded in this stuff.
So no, I don’t really care whether they get it or not. One out of, I don’t know, how many hundreds that I meet will somewhat get it. But in real time, man, like on the ground, in the trenches, this art stuff doesn’t matter to me.
Dom: Wow. I’m speechless, honestly. So now I gotta know: have you seen Kara Walker’s A Subtlety?
Ibrahim: It’s like the big sugar baby? Oh, no, it was sort of a mammy or something fucked up, right? And then it dilapidated over time?
Dom: Yes, exactly. So to me, it’s like to exploit the exploiter, you got to be exploitive. What do you think about representation?
Ibrahim: I mean, that’s one way of doing it. There are many ways. Have you heard of Edouard Glissant?
Dom: I haven’t, actually.
Ibrahim: Okay, he talks about opacity, the right to opacity. I think I might have said this to you before, but in a world of hyper visibility, to be invisible is power. Especially if we’re talking about photography, and that photography was a weaponized tool within the colonial, it is at the forefront of visualizing the other. The Africans, the Egyptians, the Arabs, the Slave, you know, we look at the world in the 19th century, 20th century. The propaganda is literally centered from the white gaze. We look at everything around that. So representation, when you handle photography, you have to contend with that history. They’re very specific choices. And maybe we had alluded to this last year, but you know, the first image on the continent of Africa is in Egypt.
Dom: I remember you saying that!
Ibrahim: Yeah. And it’s a deeply orientalist image. There’s nothing there, but the fantasies. I believe in… opacity. Being under the radar. I don’t believe in representation. In a late capitalist, neoliberal world, representation is actually very dangerous. It gets co-opted and then used against you. Right? They say “look, we allow them to sit at the table with us. We’re actually quite democratic.” And then when the real stuff happens in Palestine, you understand what they really want. How they really look at the other, it doesn’t matter. It’s all expendable to them. So that representation to me is a very tricky thing. I understand it.
But at the same time, my own practice, like my latest body of work, is completely about collapsing ideas of representation. Collapsing, as a means to decolonize the lens. I’m removing the whole body. Absence as a form of presence is more potent than my presence in the image. It’s a very specific thing of fantasy versus imagination. If there’s too much information, the person projects, especially if you’re talking about a North African Muslim Arab body that has a long history in photography of being eroticized and demonized. If I’m removing all that information, then there’s this idea of imagination and imagination is about engaging. I’m creating certain levels of opacity that forces the viewer to approach the image in a very different way than all the information being there and they say “oh look at his body, oh look all these things.”
Dom: I like that! Now they’re forced to ask questions.
Ibrahim: Or one hopes, right? But yeah Kara Walker’s practice is in a very specific context also and coming from a very specific generation. But yes, I think Glissant’s idea of the right to opacity is very, very interesting.
Dom: The right to opacity. It’s got me thinking.
Ibrahim: Especially if you’re handling photography, right?
Dom: 100%. So earlier you were saying, working with the community is the real work, the real opus operandi.
Ibrahim: Yeah.
Dom: So, would you consider yourself a socially engaged artist?
Ibrahim: I’m really thinking about this, man. This is a really delicate question. It is.
No, and I think there’s a very specific thing about it. One operates possibly as a form of art making? Maybe at least that what I’m understanding is it’s a part of an artistic practice?
A curator came to my studio about a month ago, and said something really interesting. She’s like, Ibrahim, you know, there are artists who use politics. But you’re a politician who uses art. I don’t know how much that’s true but I think it’s very interesting because I would say first and foremost I am a very politically charged person who happens to enjoy creating visual vocabulary, vernacular, language, what have you.
But what I’m doing locally within my locality, that’s different. How are we practicing decoloniality or decolonization? That’s the theory and then there’s the actual practice. I think of it as, show me what you’re worth. When nobody’s watching you. What do you do? How do you treat people? Somebody who doesn’t have your same cultural capital, you’re not in the same class structure, doesn’t use the same language, doesn’t have the same views as you, how do you interact with these people on all levels of stratas, how do you negotiate those power dynamics in real time? I’ve heard a lot of people who are like “decolonization”, and then there’s nightmare stories about how they treat art handlers during their museum installation. Just doesn’t make sense to me. So what I do in my community, it’s not about art practice. That’s why I would say it’s not about my practice as an artist. It’s about my fucking humanity. Really. I mean, it’s that simple. How human am I, regardless of accolades and cultural capital. How do I engage with the world that’s very different from mine? Egypt is a neo colonial state. It’s not an independent state. So you’re dealing with hardcore colonized minds. Hardcore, man. Like they’re deep in it. So how do you engage with that and say, come up here. You’re not inferior. What does that look like without sounding condescending or self righteous or, thinking, you know, it all.
Dom: Yeah. Yeah. That’s the struggle.
Ibrahim: You know, I don’t think that’s art practice, right. That to me is how can I take all that information and actually apply it in real time?
Dom: So that separation is good for you? Instead of bringing art and that practice together?
Ibrahim: Yeah, because I mean, my conversations about decoloniality in these spaces are all in English. All in English, my art. Then my Arabic is actually that of a high schooler. I have to keep it real simple because that’s all I have. I only have simple tools. It’s interesting to have to decompress into the limitations of an 18 year olds vocabulary. So that’s a very humbling experience. In recovery, there’s a thing, they call it K.I.S.S., Keep It Simple, Stupid. Just keep it simple. It’s not about grandiosity or art and this canon and what am I doing by deconstructing power dynamics. No, in real life its simple. This is wrong, there’s a history here that makes us feel this way. We are not this. Why do we treat people like this? Let’s do better.
Dom: Uh huh. Okay. I like that. I never saw it like that.
Ibrahim: Am I making sense?
Dom: Yes, yes you are. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about making art within a community. But when you make art, you put your name on it and there’s some things in the community that you just don’t put your name on. You don’t want to own it.
Ibrahim: Nobody knows I do anything here. Yeah, not a single fucking person knows that I do what I do.
Dom: And that’s always how I’ve been, you know, it’s always how I’ve lived. So, you know, you do it because that’s what’s right. It’s not because you want other people to know that that’s what you’re doing, so it is very interesting. I really like that answer.
Ibrahim: Well, yeah. I mean, even the people within my community don’t know what I do. It’s like that thing about your left hand doesn’t know what your right hand is doing. Because it’s sincere. I think the only thing that is very clear to me is that I’ve fallen into good graces with very powerful people in my neighborhood and powerful meaning, they come from a very specific family that has a reputation. Not for their money. It’s about their word, their ability to negotiate conflicts between neighbors because there’s no police that governs my area. It’s the elders that govern the area.
Dom: Sounds amazing!
Ibrahim: Also can get ugly. Don’t get me wrong. It’s not all pretty. This particular family that I’ve become very close with, they’ve adopted me. They are the kids of one of the elders. One brother who is my chosen brother. This is my chosen family. We relate on a very spiritual level. We’re both sort of, lovers of Sufi path. Followers of Sufism, or the path, as we would call it. He never knew what racism towards the East Africans was like, he didn’t see it. I slowly started telling him, open your eyes, man, look around you. He has a restaurant on the corner, literally not even 15 meters away from me, it’s an open air restaurant, well not a restaurant that you think, it’s like a dive bar, but it’s good food. That place is an institution. And that place went from me hanging out there, to four years later, the whole East African community comes to the local bar that also belongs to his family, anything they need, any issues they have, they come to him. They call him Baba, like father. He is a protector. If this was in any other context in the West, you would say he’s a radical, anti, abolitionist slash anti racist. He’s hardcore. I see guys leaving their belongings with him. These are the things that I do talk about in which, you know, there’s these dialogues that happen, things shift here. I somehow have in this working class neighborhood, the equivalent of diplomatic status and I’m in the good graces with a certain person that has a lot of power to actually make physical changes and everybody that looks up to him. They start to have conversations with him and he’s doing, you know, God’s work. Community organically doing what it’s doing. Is that Art practice? No, that’s A practice. That’s not something you’re going to exhibit in a show, right? It’s something that’s just about humanity. How do you, actually, within your locality, effect change? I don’t believe in the system, voting. I don’t believe in any of that. Go to your locality. That’s where the work is. And actually, actually, doing something.
Dom: That’s powerful. Seriously, thank you for that. Okay so now going back to art and getting back into your work.
When do you think you were like, this is what I want to do. I want to make things. I want it to be visual and I want it to say something like. When did you have something to say?
Ibrahim: When I wanted to be an artist, I was about 18. I didn’t know what I wanted to say through my art until 2012. Actually right about this time, October, November, 2012, something clicked. Finally, some level of consciousness came to me at like the age of 29 or 28. And I actually had something to say. I knew I wanted to be a visual maker. 18. I had something to say, 28, 29. When does that language become something very grounded and discourse and all these things? When I came to Egypt. And then you can see it in the work. I think probably 2015, 2016 shit really hit the fan. I really was in it. Because everything I was reading in books about colonialism, sort of colonial projects and this and that. And Black Skin, White Masks by Frantz Fanon, readings by Edward Said.
Dom: And when do you know you have the right photo or the perfect title, when you said, it will always come back to you, that’s what this is called. This is what it’s going to be.
Ibrahim: I’ll tell you this. I’m from an English lit major background, right? I dropped out of college. I never got my bachelor’s degree. But I was always fascinated. That was my first love. I wanted to write.So looking at my life sometimes in third person, for example I’m sitting and talking to my father. And he says, “you know Ibrahim, no matter what I’ve done, all I’ve done, all I know is that it will always come back to you. It always comes back to the self.” And I said motherfucker!
Dom: Oh he was spitting?
Ibrahim: Yeah, hell yeah! I mean, a lot of my titles come from conversations. I’m just talking, and I’m making work, I’m just talking about the work to a friend. I don’t know what it’s gonna be called or nothing. I’m not even thinking about a title. It’s like this. My father was just chasing a dream. Like he left home because it was about this dream, but what is a dream? It’s not real. You wake up from a dream. I’m like only dreamers leave, you know, and that’s the title there. Only dreamers leave.
Dom: Wait. That’s how you got that title?
Ibrahim: That’s the title! So it’s just like that to me, it’s like those moments and something encapsulates for a title. I do know that it’s really, really important for me to allow the work to do what it needs to do. So I don’t have that, “what is it” moment. I don’t know what it is, actually. But I know that I step away from work, leave it alone for a day, a week, come back to it, stand with it for 45 minutes. Maybe I’ll work on it that day. Maybe I won’t. As I got older, I realized that you can’t force a seed to become a tree overnight. Patience is just about watering something and you water it by looking at it. It’s when the thing feels like it’s saying what I feel it needs to say. For me it’s about calmness. I try my best not to think too much. It’s about sensation. For me it’s, I feel, therefore I am. Not, I think therefore I am, or as Audre Lorde once said. “I feel, therefore, I can be free.” It’s about a different canon of existence.
Dom: Nice. So it’s more of a feeling for you. That makes sense to me. So, I do like to ask, if you looked in the mirror and saw little you, what do you think you would think of you? Would you be proud?
Ibrahim: I never thought of that, man. I generally haven’t. Geez, you know, I think it would probably have to be a little older, like 17 year old me that started wanting to be an artist and dreamed of traveling the world, doing what I do. But I would be really blown away. When I think of it, I’m just like, holy shit, how did I pull this off? I think about the trajectory of my life, I am very, very, very, extremely lucky. Extremely blessed. Like I see it. I see the hand of the creator, moving things for me of the creative source.
But now with so much that I’ve received, how do I then offer back? So if I was young, I saw him in that mirror, wow, a moment of a lot of gratitude, but also searching. There’s a very important question. How do I offer back? So that would be my two part answer. Beautiful stuff but more work to do.
Dom: You’re doing the work. I think little you would be in awe. That leads me to my last question. What’s next? Not only in the art world, not only what you’re working on now, but what’s next in life, in your community?
Ibrahim: Teaching. 100% I’ve been doing art in galleries and different tiers of galleries and exhibitions for almost 20 something years. I’m over it. I am. I am really over the market. I let my gallery do what they want to do. I’m very, very grateful. I do have a solo show coming up in Australia in March. I got to go to that. But, I’m hands off with it at this point.
I’m interested in what I’m doing in my studio, pushing my practice, questioning things, new material, different processes. There’s one project that I’m taking images of rugs, collaging those images, and then going back to the factory to then reproduce them. That’s a whole project about histories and contamination of cultures and borderlessness, something I’m very interested in.
But mainly teaching. I can’t wait. I do private lessons now for artists. I go and mentor younger artists in Egypt and Cairo and the greater region. For me, it’s really important to start countering a lot of these, very specific canons in the global North. All the people that are doing contemporary work. The only place they can get educated is predominantly in the Global North. You have Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology in Ghana, which is pretty damn good. There’s definitely some institutions on the continent and in the global South, but they tend to be, Western based. I think Ghana has created their own canon. In Egypt, we don’t have that. Everybody has to leave and go over to the West. That’s a problematic dynamic. I’m getting this thing just to validate and actually create a pedagogy that is really thinking about locality. The West, the U. S. is about locality that’s framed as universalism, but it’s not. So I’m interested in using that as a way to teach and say, wait a minute, let’s look around us. So teaching for me is fucking important. That’s really what I want to lean into. Art is always going to be there. It’s something I’m always playing around with.
Dom: Amazing! Seriously, thank you for your words. Everything that you got going on, I see my own work and my own self in it. So this has really helped me. Hearing your philosophy, your practice. You’ve mentored me in this little hour that we’ve talked. Thank you!
Ibrahim Ahmed Born in Kuwait in 1984 , and spent his childhood between Bahrain and Egypt before moving to the US at the age of thirteen. In 2014, he relocated to Cairo, where he currently lives and works in the informal neighborhood of Ard El Lewa. Ahmed’s manipulations of material, especially textile, are informed by research into the histories and movements of peoples and objects. His works in mixed media, sculpture, and installation engage with subjects related to colonial legacies, structures of power, cultural interactions, and fluid identity, generating discussion around ideas of the self and notions of authenticity within the parameters of the nation-state. His work is held in many private collections and was recently acquired by the Museum of Old and New Art in Hobart, Australia, the Kamal Lazaar Foundation, Tunis and the Kadist Collection, France. Ahmed is currently completing an MFAat the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Dom Toliver (he/him) He is a photographer and performer from Long Beach, CA with an BA in Sociology/Criminology and an MA in Film. His works explores identity, emotion, and the overlooked stories of everyday life. Using a variety of mediums, he aims to capture raw, candid moments that reflect the complexities of the human experience. His work often focuses on marginalized individuals and themes like masculinity, grief, and the common threads that bind us all.
Between Art and Play, We Can Figure It Out
“And to me, there’s something kind of insect-like about this process. The body of the caterpillar dissolves inside of a chrysalis in order to transform. I think art has to be pulled from someplace like this, quite intimate, and then shared.”
Lillian Davies
While studying at Paris College of Art, Lillian Davies was my professor in a class called Marketplace for Art and Design. She developed the entire class curriculum not just for us, but with us, creating a non-hierarchical, lateral environment. Throughout the class, we explored contemporary art venues in Paris, meeting curators, artists, and directors, and I watched how Lillian genuinely connected, listened, and cared for all of the people she came into contact with.
Her approach as an educator and community member was inspiring and collaborative in nature, and I have been eager to catch back up with her to learn more about her unique perspective on contemporary art and her thoughtful outlook on life as an writer, professor, and researcher.
Gwen Hoeffgen: I’ll explain the project to you briefly– we have this ongoing publication led by the students in our program. We interview artists, community members, and educators, and we publish the interviews quarterly. It sounded familiar, because we were able to do the same thing in our class last year. I appreciated the “give and take” from you. We had an assignment, but also you then spent so much of your own time editing the thing. That really resonated with me, being a collaborative project between all of us.
Lillian Davies: We met when you were doing your MA in Drawing at Paris College of Art.
Gwen: Yes. It was interesting for me because my experience studying Contemporary Art in Paris was very individualized and I felt a little isolated from the community within my practice– I started wanting to do more work relating to my background in social work. But, I really got a lot out of the MA and I still have an active studio practice because of it.
Lillian: And now you’re doing an MFA in Art and Social Practice at Portland State University? A two-year MFA?
Gwen: It’s a three-year program, which hopefully will allow for a variety of short-term and long-term projects.
Lillian: Learning about your program makes me think of Relational Aesthetics by Nicolas Bourriaud. That was the first time a critic identified social practice. It makes sense that now 20 years later, schools are offering programs concerned with this way of working. When we look at what’s happening in the world now, collective action is urgent. And with the exponential and under-examined development of AI, it is imperative that human brains come together.
Gwen: Exactly!
Lillian: And in Portland, maybe there’s still hope? In Houston, Texas, more than two dozen public school libraries have been closed this year and converted into disciplinary centers. It’s George Orwell happening.
Gwen: Oh wow, I didn’t realize the extent of that. It sounds too strangely dystopian, but at the same time it’s sad that I’m not very surprised. I’ve just recently moved to Portland. There seem to be more social programs and accessible art organizations here than what I’ve seen in other cities. Hopefully it will be nourishing to build community with.
Lillian: Well, I’m excited about your program.
Gwen: Me too. The first question I have for you is really broad. What do you define as an artist?
Lillian: Oh, that’s such a good question. I love that. It’s a hard question to answer and I’m not sure I have an answer. I love Raymond Williams’s Keywords. His project defined terms chronologically, as definitions always change over time. I think if I’ve learned anything from Raymond Williams’s project it’s that what we define as art, what we define as artists, what we even define as writing or literature, is constantly evolving. These definitions change depending on who’s speaking and from where and with what life experience, body experience, and what experience they have with art making and art makers.
What is an artist? Who is an artist? You asked, what is an artist, or who is an artist?
Gwen: What. What is an artist?
Lillian: Right. That’s great. Because a definition can extend to an object, a plant, a stone, or a body of water. I’m teaching Art History this fall and Gardner’s Art Through The Ages, basically, the Bible of Art History, nearly 1000 pages long, begins in a Paleolithic site in South Africa (Makapansgat), where people picked up a pebble from the bottom of a riverbed that had been worn by the water because it looked like a little face. It wasn’t carved by people, but seen, and recognized by people. Someone looked into that body of water and not only saw their reflection on the surface, but saw themselves reflected, or maybe their friend or their child, reflected in this little pebble, whose surface was worn to look like a face. So, I’ll propose that idea and I’ll think about the “what” because that brings in the possibility of a non-human artist. And then I think I’ll also lean on someone else to answer the question. Recently I took my class, Writing Art and Design, to The Joyful Revolution, an exhibition of the fabulous Sister Corita Kent at Collège des Bernardins. She was an artist and she was an art teacher and she was a nun. But then she left the church because the church thought that she was being sacrilegious. Comparing the Virgin Mary to the ripest of tomatoes. Anyway, at Collège des Bernardins, the artistic director, Pierre Korzilius, giving us a tour, explained “There are three things that we do here. First, the seminary, the theological course, and then there’s a scientific research wing and third” and this is what he said, “everything that cannot be addressed in theological studies or scientific research– That’s art”. So, how’s that for a definition?
Gwen: It’s fascinating to hear about who or what an artist can be, and I’m also interested in what or who defines it. Pierre Korzilius’s response makes me think of the magic art evokes– it’s a beautiful definition.
Lillian: Right. And also the art of trying to figure things out. People try to figure things out through religion. People try to figure things out through science. If it can’t be figured out in those two areas, Korzilius is saying, the third option is let’s try to figure it out in art.
Gwen: I recently read art being described as something aesthetic. That was a piece of it, but also something that is communicated or transferred. So, what would you define art as then?
Lillian: I think part of the definition includes communication- an interface. Is it art before it’s shared? And then does it have to be visible or aesthetic? You mentioned the word magic. I’m thinking of a beautiful text by Sheila Heti, in the book, Motherhood, where she debates with herself whether or not she should have a child. Ultimately she decides not to. In the book, she describes the process of creating as an artist, and as a writer. And she talks about going deep, deep inside of herself, to the mush. I’m paraphrasing terribly, but basically, the idea is she has to go into the mush in order to come out of it and make something from it. And to me, there’s something kind of insect-like about this process. The body of the caterpillar dissolves inside of a chrysalis in order to transform. I think art has to be pulled from someplace like this, quite intimate, and then shared.
Gwen: What you said relates to what I’ve been thinking about recently in my work. Social Practice is strange because it’s technically non-object-based, right? So it’s understanding art as just that: The Mush being shared. If we take the object out of art, but we’re still sharing, and building community, is that as powerful? Is it doing something? Is it art? I don’t know. Do you consider yourself an artist, Lillian?
Lillian: Do I consider myself an artist? It depends on what I’m doing. I think I appreciate communicating with artists. I’ll say that. And don’t we all aim to be artists– isn’t that the goal? For me, it’s an intention, a goal, to live artfully and understand an artful approach to life.
Gwen: I wanted to talk to you a little bit about your book and workshop, Playgrounds (Drawing is Free Press, 2023). Could you tell me a little bit about how you and Chloe Briggs developed the idea for Playgrounds?
Lillian: So, I have been spending a lot of time in playgrounds during the last decade and a half with my children. It was a difficult thing sometimes because I was also writing for ArtForum, working as an art writer and as a teacher at an art school, and doing doctoral research at the Ecole du Louvre and EHESS. So when I was in the park with the kids, I felt like I was a bit out of the professional loop. And then I’d go to openings, and I remember some curator saying, “Where have you been? I haven’t seen you. Do you even live in Paris anymore?” I recently started to answer these sorts of questions with, “I’ve been at the playground.” I finally realized it was a place where the Venn diagram of motherhood and Art History overlaps. It was a long process for me because I had separated my work as a writer and my work as a mother, and, especially before the MeToo Movement, women didn’t communicate about their family life in the professional sphere. But, then things changed, and I changed. And what got me was when I started seeing all these male colleagues making a big deal about being dads. So I felt a little bit more comfortable speaking about maternity in my work, and the knowledge and experience this brings.
Anyway, I started researching the history of playgrounds and artists working with playgrounds. Many different artists have designed playgrounds, or painted or photographed playgrounds, and I cite Isamu Noguchi as one of the first. So when I was starting this research, I saw on Instagram that Chloe Briggs was making drawings of playgrounds. At the park with her son, she’s making drawings of the playground. So I said, we have to talk! And then we started looking at this place together. How do we make sense of this place? In addition to the art historical story of the playground and motherhood story of the playground, it’s also a place to consider play as a method for working and making art. A brilliant artist and scholar Mary Flanagan published a book Critical Play that talks a lot about play theory and play in the digital space, in video games. And I just read the beautiful new novel by Gabrielle Zevin, Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow, and in her story about video game designers, there are some very very smart passages about what play is and how intimate play can be.
And then we also looked at playgrounds as an alternative space for working and making art. Because where do you make your work if you can’t afford the Virginia Woolf “Room of Your Own”? Another important part of this project was when I saw a canvas by Elene Shatberashvili, a young painter from Georgia, the former Soviet Bloc. At the moment when Russia began its invasion of Ukraine in 2022, she’s painting a playground in Tbilisi. She’s not a mother. She’s looking at the structure of the playground, these fixed metal structures, the slide, the monkey bars, the whole thing, as an existing political infrastructure. And then the question is: How can young people, flexible bodies, and creative minds, move around this place in a new way?
Chloe and I are continuing with Playgrounds in different ways now and proposing the playground as an important third space, where you can meet other people and interact, maybe, playfully. A French curator Vincent Romagny, in partnership with Gabriela Burkhalter, published an encyclopedia of artists’ playgrounds, which is great. My project with Chloe is not that. It is about the lived experience of female and maternal users of the playground. And I’m hoping that what we published last year is the first chapter of a longer project.
Gwen: It sounds like you’ve already developed so much into this project, but I’m excited to see how the idea of the playground, and play as a method of working and creating, will evolve within this workshop and publication. I am intrigued by the users of the playground, specifically seeing the playground as a third space where caregivers dwell, socialize, and create work. I wonder about the many types of shared relationships that exist due to playgrounds. And it’s also fascinating to think of a playground as a political space, and of how the infrastructure is created. I’ve never thought about playgrounds in that way.
Lillian: Well, yes. The way playgrounds are set up is completely based on belief systems. In the United States, there’s the current belief that parents should be very present and interactive with children. So playgrounds in the U. S. are bigger than they are in France– they’re big enough for an adult to climb up on the structures too, right? Whereas in France, the play structures are much smaller. Adults can’t really fit in all of them. And in French parks, there are benches everywhere for parents to sit down and watch the children play because there’s a belief following the child psychologist, Francoise Dalto, of letting children go and explore. If you go back and look at some of the first playgrounds that Roosevelt’s Playground Association of America built in the early 1900s, those were created as public health projects. Society was being transformed, and playground equipment was imagined as exercise machinery so that the children (no longer working in factories) could physically build muscle. Then there was a change in playground design post World War II, when Europe and the UK developed adventure playgrounds. It was a sort of a free-for-all pile of junk. The kids were meant to build their play areas because the thinking was that we needed to rebuild and reimagine. But then by the time the 1980s arrived, capitalism was cocaine-fueled, the obsession was safety, and playgrounds were no longer for adventure, but containment. There’s padding, fences, and there’s this idea of the safety threat. So it’s very interesting to see how belief systems have shaped playgrounds.
Gwen: It’s interesting to think of how structures like the playground change due to how our society is shaped. I wonder if we can see changes in other spaces, like the grocery store, or the “office”, which is now reimagined due to remote capabilities. The playground seems to be metaphoric for our understanding and perception of society.
Lillian: Yes, maybe so. Anyway, that’s where I am right now. Of course, most of us had playground time as kids. But I look at the playground differently now, returning there with my children. What do we believe about play in France in 2024? What was Noguchi’s experience with playgrounds? There’s a story that he had a traumatic experience in a playground in Japan as a kid, and I think he might have wanted to fix that by returning to playgrounds, in design and art, his entire life.
Gwen: I can imagine that someone would want to repair something where there was a traumatic experience. Maybe he wanted to exist within the playground again but in a different context, similar to how you did.
Lillian: You ask about art and artists, right? I mean, we all can agree that Noguchi is an artist and I don’t think we should consider his playground designs separately if it’s coming from Heti’s mush-place and intended for another to experience life in a beautiful way. However, beauty is complicated too. I’m writing now on Miriam Cahn for ArtForum. And her work, as beautiful and painterly as her canvases can be, is essentially about violence. Do you know the work of Miriam Cahn?
Gwen: I do, yes, I researched her when I was studying artists who investigate trauma.
Lillian: It’s tough. Some of her paintings are truly terrifying.
Gwen: Well, there’s a question of the sublime. It is possible to find something beautiful that also instills a sense of terror. It’s contradictory, but I experience that a lot with art.
Lillian: You’re right to bring up the sublime. It’s like Noguchi’s process of going back to trauma, using it as material or site, or a proposal for a resolution through play.
Gwen: Yes, and to fully close the circle- Back to the question of what is art. If you can’t figure it out by science, and you can’t figure it out by religion, you have to figure it out through art. I think those questionable places most times exist within our memories, perception of experiences, and emotions. Sometimes I think our brains are just too small for our hearts. Using art as a language allows different processing, and maybe an ability to find truth.
My parents moved last week from New Orleans, Louisiana up to the top of Maine, where it borders Canada. During my road trip with them, my dad (who isn’t an artist) told me that artists are good at seeing and expressing the closest possible truth.
Lillian: That’s beautiful. Good for you for driving with them.
Gwen: Well Lillian I enjoyed talking to you. Thank you so much for making time to chat with me.
Lillian: Thank you. Big questions. I hope something made sense.
Gwen: It did, it did! It was a phenomenal conversation. Thank you.
Lillian Davies
Art historian and author of multidisciplinary artist Mounir Fatmi’s first monograph (Suspect Language, Skira, Flammarion), Lillian Davies writes for Artforum, Flash Art, Interview, Numéro, and Objektiv. Guest lecturer at École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, Paris; Ecole W (Université Paris-Panthéon-Assas); and Parsons Paris, Lillian is an Advisor for L’AiR Arts and Atelier 11 at Cité Falguière and Adjunct Professor at Paris College of Art and Sciences Po.
Lillian earned a BA in Art History and Comparative Religions from Columbia University, a Masters in Curating Contemporary Art from Royal College of Art, and recently conducted Doctoral research in a Troisième Cycle at the Ecole du Louvre, presenting her work on modern and contemporary art in the Arab and Muslim worlds and their diasporas at conferences hosted by EHESS, Université de Genève and Akademie der Künste der Welt, Cologne. Lillian is a recipient of AICA France’s Bourse Ekphrasis.
Gwen Hoeffgen
Gwen Hoeffgen is a visual and social practice artist investigating the perception of psychological trauma and dissociation of the mind and the body. Previously, she had experience working as a social worker in the mental health, addiction, and cognitive health fields, and she currently uses mediums of painting, drawing, performance, and conversation to explore how to find stories within pieces, creases, breaks, and bends.
Letter from the Editors
As the year draws to a close for us at the Art + Social Practice program, thoughts on time and its passage weave its way into our current interests, as expressed by the interviews in this issue.
For the graduating third year students, the end of their time as students brings about an interest in exploring time on a more personal, even familial, scale. Olivia DelGandio interviews their mom, Lauren DelGandio. Luz Blumenfeld interviews Hollis Blue Hawkins Wood, a 5 year-old currently growing up in the house Luz also spent significant time in throughout their childhood and life. And Gilian Rappaport meets with Midnite Seed Abioto and LaQuida Landford to learn about their work curating an exhibition of artists exploring the complex relationships that change over time between BIPOC communities and plants.
Looking back through time proves to be a generative exploration. Midori Yamanaka discusses with Amanda Larriva The Timeline, an important art installation which shares historical moments of interest in the history of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Elementary School in Northeast Portland. Nina Vichayapai’s conversations with Monyee Chau explores the many ways ancestral and familial history influences their work. Meanwhile, Manfred Parrales sits down with Israa Al-Hasani to speak of the mental health impact of an immigrant’s experience of living simultaneously in the past and present.
And of course, with summer break nearing, time for friends is critical in restoring ourselves. Clara Harlow and Katie Shook discuss the importance of carving out time and space for play, rest, and connection within the capitalist grind. For friends and fellow classmates Simeen Anjum and Lou Blumberg, their interviews with one another provided a chance to deepen their friendship while also reflecting on what helps them get through difficult times as activists.
We hope you enjoy reading our reflections and find some time to clock out this season.
HAGS!
Your SoFA Journal Editors:
Nina Vichayapai, Lou Blumberg, and Clara Harlow
Microscopic Puddles and New Pen Pals
“I already made like, I don’t know, a million pieces of art.”
Hollis Blue Hawkins Wood
I recently became pen pals with my friend’s five year old. My friend, Shelley, her partner, Josh, and their kid, Hollis, all live in the same house I lived in at two different times in my life. I lived there from infancy to age three, and again as an adult from ages 24-30. The house sits kitty-corner from a school and a church, whose bells ring every hour on the hour. It is walking distance to the city park my mom used to take me on stroller walks to when I was little. Now, Hollis also visits that park with their family.
I visited Shelley and Hollis over my winter break and when I went by their house to say goodbye, Hollis was so excited about the letter they had written to me, they actually showed it to me right then and there and read it aloud instead of mailing it to me.
*A note about gender and pronouns: Shelley has raised her child in a way that Hollis feels free to determine their own gender and change their pronouns whenever they feel like it. In this introduction, I refer to Hollis with they/them pronouns (although, in the interview, Hollis tells me they are currently using she/her pronouns).
Hollis’s first letter to me. It reads: “Luz, I love and miss you so so so so so so much and thank you so so much for the idea of sending each other cards! I hope we can experience a sleepover and I, myself actually use actual scissors! Real scissors! –Hollis” 2024. Photo courtesy Luz Blumenfeld.
When I returned to Portland, I wrote Hollis a letter back about the crows here. At the time of this interview, I was still awaiting her next letter.
I wanted to interview Hollis because I love hearing how she navigates life as a five year old and what is important to her.
This interview took place over Zoom in January of 2024.
Luz Blumenfeld: What have you got there?
Hollis Blue Hawkins Wood: An orange, and a pear.
Luz: Does your shirt say “hummingbird” on it?
Hollis: Yeah.
Luz: I saw a hummingbird today.
Hollis: Really? I think my shirt is spelled backwards a little.
Luz: I can see it the right way on my side. I can read it.
Hollis: Yeah. This is from my old school.
Luz: Is that the school where your mom works?
Hollis: Yeah, I used to go there. And [my friend] Amiri goes to the school I used to go to.
So Luz, wanna come over or sleep over today or maybe tomorrow?
Luz: I wish I could come for a sleepover today or tomorrow, but I’m all the way in Oregon.
Hollis: Oh yeah, I forgot that you’re there. Right now, I’m wearing some new boots that just came today.
Luz: Can you show me? Oh, wow. Look at those rain boots. Have you splashed in a puddle with them yet?
Hollis: No, well, these are new.
Shelley: They’re like, super new.
Hollis shows me their new boots on Zoom. 2024. Photo courtesy Luz Blumenfeld.
Hollis: Can you see how shiny they were, how clean they were? Maybe that could answer your question.
Luz: What question?
Hollis: The one– Have I splashed in puddles with them yet?
Luz: Oh, so not yet.
Hollis: Yeah, that’s right.
Luz: Yeah, you’ll have to look for a big one.
Hollis: Yeah. I have lots of big puddles at my school so I don’t need to worry about that. I splash in every single puddle. In microscopic puddles, gigantic puddles–
Luz: There are microscopic puddles?
Hollis: Yeah, microscopic ones.
Luz: How can you see them?
Hollis: I just splash in them– I splash in microscopic puddles every rainy day. (laughs)
Luz: I don’t think I would be able to see a microscopic puddle… Unless I had a microscope.
Hollis: Aah! Pear emergency!
Luz: Pear emergency? (laughs)
Shelley: Want me to put them up so you can have them tomorrow?
Hollis: Yeah. Bye-bye. (laughs) I just said goodbye to them. About the questions, are we ever gonna do that?
Luz: (laughs) We can do questions, yeah. I was gonna ask you first, what are your words lately? What are your pronouns lately?
Hollis: She and her.
Luz: Okay, thank you. I just want to make sure I have that right because there will be a little section of the interview that introduces you, and I want to put that in there.
Hollis: Wow. What’s the second question?
Luz: Well, when we finish the interview, I’m gonna put it in a book and then we’re gonna publish that book.
Hollis: A book?! (gasps)
Shelley: Do you want to show Luz your book?
Hollis: Oh, yeah, I’d love to show you.
Luz: I’d love to see it.
Hollis: I made a picture book.
Luz: Wow!
Shelley: There was a publishing party at school.
Hollis: Let me show you inside.
Luz: Yes, please.
Shelley: Maybe pick a couple of pages.
Hollis: I’m gonna pick all the pages!
Luz: Can you hold it up to the camera?
Hollis: Yeah, see the words?
Luz: I do see the words! I see “daddy,” and “mama.” And it looks like a sand castle. Is that a sand castle?
Hollis: Yeah.
Luz: Is that a picture of the beach?
Hollis: Yeah.
Hollis shows me their beach drawing over Zoom. January 2024. Image courtesy of Luz Blumenfeld.
Luz: What’s the green part?
Hollis: The green part is the tent.
Luz: Oh, the tent! Cool.
Hollis: Are you wondering what this is?
Luz: Um, that person?
Hollis: Yeah, that’s me.
Luz: You’re really tall in that picture.
Hollis: I bet you can’t even see the eyes. The eyes look a little strange. It’s like you can only see one eye. Did you notice this part at the top where I wrote my name?
Luz: Yeah, it looks really purple. It’s almost like camouflage. It’s hard to see but I think I can see it. What’s going on in this next picture?
Hollis: (laughs) Well, I’m relaxing outside. This is my house and this is a tree. This is a tree trunk, and this is me relaxing outside like, 🎵la la la la la la 🎵(laughs)
Luz: (laughs)
Hollis: And this is my house and I’m walking over by my house to say, “hi mom, how you doin’?”
Luz: Is that the house where you are now? It looks like that house.
Hollis: Yeah, it is.
Hollis and Shelley hold up Hollis’s drawing over Zoom. 2024. Photo courtesy Luz Blumenfeld.
Luz: Did you know that I used to live in that house when I was a baby?
Hollis: Whoa.
Luz: I know you knew I used to live there before I moved to Portland, when I was already grown up. But did you know I used to live there when I was little? They brought me home from the hospital to that house, and then we lived there until I was three.
Hollis: This is the first house you ever got?
Luz: Yeah, actually, I have a picture of my dad holding a very tiny newborn baby-me in the kitchen. And it looks different from the way the kitchen looks now because we renovated it at some point. We kind of redid the kitchen before you guys moved in. But this picture is taken about where the fridge is right now. If you look where the fridge is in your house, can you see that at all?
Hollis: I can’t see the fridge.
Luz: No, you won’t be able to see the fridge in the picture. I mean, the spot where he’s standing is basically where the fridge is in your kitchen right now.
Hollis: Oh, I see.
A picture of a photograph from my dad’s memorial. In the photograph, my dad is holding a newborn baby-me in the old kitchen of his house. Oakland, CA, 1992. Photo courtesy Luz Blumenfeld.
Luz: Right there. Maybe I can send the picture to your mama’s phone and then she can show it to you.
Hollis: I’d love to!
Luz: I think that picture is when I just came home from the hospital, so I was really tiny.
Hollis: Yeah, like maybe this tiny (holding up her fingers).
Luz: (laughs) I mean, maybe I was microscopic at some point, but by the time I was born, I was not microscopic anymore.
Hollis: (laughs)
Luz: I remember when you were in your mommy’s belly and your mommy had something on her phone that told us what size you were at certain months. And at one point it said that you were the size of an avocado.
Shelley: Do you want to show them another drawing from your book?
Hollis holds up their drawing of a holiday house with a beam of sunlight to show me over Zoom. 2024. Photo courtesy Luz Blumenfeld.
Luz: Ooh, this one looks like a Halloween house to me, maybe a haunted house. What’s up there?
Hollis: This is actually a bathroom.
Luz: A haunted bathroom?
Hollis: And then there’s the smoke coming out of the chimney, and there’s Santa in his sleigh.
Luz: Oh, so it’s more of a holiday house and a holiday bathroom.
Hollis: Yeah. And then you see this yellow? That’s the sunlight.
Luz: That’s beautiful. That’s so cool. I love the way you drew this out.
Shelley: That’s the last page. Maybe we can make some copies of it and send a copy to Luz.
Hollis: I made that in, like, 2023 but it’s 2024, so it’s old.
Luz: You could make another one.
Hollis: Yeah, I want to make copies of it. And I’m gonna send it to you. I’m gonna send one to everyone on this continent, even people I don’t even know.
Luz: Wow, they’re going to be so excited to get that as a surprise. I would be really excited. Even if I didn’t know you and I got that in the mail, I would be excited. I was just gonna ask, if you wrote a book, what would it be about?
Hollis: My favorite Pokémons.
Luz: You want to make a book about Pokémon?
Hollis: Yeah, I’m doing that. I already made the book cover. I want to show you something.
Shelley holds Hollis’s Pikachu book cover drawing up to the camera on Zoom. 2024. Photo courtesy Luz Blumenfeld.
Luz: Okay. Is this for the cover? Whoa, you already made it.
Hollis: I tried to make a Pikachu.
Luz: It looks just like Pikachu! I love it.
Shelley: It’s so good, Bubs. This is my first time seeing this actually. Wow, I could tell right away that it was Pikachu.
Luz: That’s great. What will be on the inside of your Pikachu book?
Hollis: Well, a lot of things about Pikachu.
Luz: Is that what you want me to put in my book? You want people to know all about Pikachu?
Hollis: Yeah.
Luz: What do you want them to know?
Hollis: That Pikachu is a mouse Pokémon, but it can generate electricity and– Luz, do you see those red parts in the cheeks? That’s where the Pikachu stores electricity.
Luz: Really? I didn’t know that.
Hollis: They can do a move called Thunderbolt. It’s an electric move that Pikachu does when angry and when it’s in a Pokémon battle. That’s only one of the moves.
Luz: What do you think you want to do when you get older?
Hollis: I want to be an artist!
Luz: Yeah? That’s awesome.
Hollis: I already made like, I don’t know, a million pieces of art.
Luz: You’ve made so many pieces of art and you keep making more.
Hollis: Yeah, I feel like my whole house, or my whole room, is covered with art and toys. (laughs)
Luz: What’s your favorite toy right now?
Hollis: Toys with wheels. I have many toys with wheels. Oh, I forgot to show you something. Be right back!
Luz: Ooh, what is it?
Hollis: It’s a clay pot I made.
Luz: You made a clay pot?
Hollis: And there’s money inside. Let me show you.
Shelley: What does it say? Tell them what it says.
Hollis: It says, “We Accept Tips.”
Luz: (laughs) It’s a tip jar?
Hollis: Yeah, look at the money inside of it. Let me show you some dollars. They’re real dollars.
This is just an ordinary, boring box. But inside–
Luz: Whoa, look at that.
Hollis: –I have one dollar.
Hollis shows me the clay pot they made over Zoom. 2024. Photo courtesy Luz Blumenfeld.
Luz Blumenfeld: One question I had was, what’s something that you learned recently that you’re excited about?
Hollis: About Martin Luther King Jr and his birthday.
Luz: That’s cool. What did you learn about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr?
Hollis: Well, that he did good things in the world, and fighted against– What was that word, Mama?
Shelley: What word?
Hollis: That Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was fighting against. Segregation.
Shelley: Okay, yeah, that one.
Hollis: Yeah. He fighted against segregation. And segregation means people get treated badly because of their skin color and how they talk. But Martin Luther King Jr. stopped that.
Shelley: He changed a lot of people’s minds. That’s definitely true.
Hollis: Yeah, but he got arrested a lot, which I don’t think should be good. Some white people didn’t believe him because he was Black.
Shelley: Okay. (laughs) So, yes, there were people who were unkind in those times. And Martin Luther King Jr. wanted kindness for everyone. He wanted people to have what they need. A lot of people really believed in the things that he was saying. And some people who didn’t believe in it before even changed their minds–
Hollis: Woah.
Shelley: –Because he was such a good speaker. And so we celebrate him because a lot of people really liked his ideas. People changed their minds about things because of hearing him speak.
Luz: And his ideas are still important today.
Shelley: Yeah, they are.
Hollis: Yeah. That’s why we still celebrate his birthday, even though he died.
Luz: Yeah, definitely. Thank you for sharing that. Do you have any questions for me?
Hollis: Oh, yeah. Some questions like, what’s your favorite color?
Luz: Blue. What’s your favorite color?
Hollis: Purple. And yellow. Yellow cause Pikachu– almost its whole body is yellow.
Luz: Do you have any other questions for me?
Hollis: Did you hear my fart sound?
Luz: No, no I didn’t.
Hollis: These are some more questions. Um, do you have a toilet?
Shelley: Okay, no more potty humor.
Luz: Okay, I can answer that question. Yes, my house does have a toilet. Most houses do.
Hollis: (giggling) Is your toilet in the bathroom or in your room?
Luz: It’s in the bathroom.
Hollis: Do you have a TV in your room?
Luz: Nope. No TV in my room. Do you have a TV in your room?
Hollis: No cause I’m only five. No one lets me have a TV. But I do have it in my living room.
Luz: I think there’s a TV in our living room too.
Hollis: Um, sorry Luz, but we have to go soon. We have to stop this conversation soon. Because the computer has a low battery.
Luz: Well, I’ll let you go soon because I think it’s almost your bedtime also.
Shelley: Can you say thanks? Thanks for talking, thanks for calling–
Hollis: Thanks for talking, thanks for calling me. And I have one more question for you. Do you have chickens? (laughs)
Luz: Do I have chickens? Like pet chickens?
Hollis: Yeah, And if you do have them, do they lay eggs?
Luz: I don’t have them, but I think if I did, they would.
Hollis: Do roosters lay eggs?
Luz: I don’t think so.
Hollis: I knew that.
Luz: Do you have chickens?
Hollis: We were thinking about it.
Luz: You’re thinking about getting chickens?
Hollis: Yeah. My mom said maybe we can get them tomorrow.
Luz: Tomorrow?
Shelley: I don’t think so. (laughs)
Luz: Thank you for talking to me, Hollis.
Shelley: We’re gonna say good night now, okay,?
Hollis: You’re welcome to have a sleepover anytime you want.
Luz: Thank you so much. I am so happy to have that invitation–
Hollis: Or a movie night together.
Luz: Will you keep writing me letters? Will we keep being pen pals?
Hollis: Yeah.
Luz: Cool, can I put one of your letters in my book?
Hollis: Yeah.
Luz: Thank you. All right, Hollis. I’m gonna let you go to sleep.
Hollis: Okay, I’m gonna miss you though.
Luz: I’ll miss you too. But I will talk to you again soon. If you want, we can hang out on the computer, or we can hang out on the phone another time.
Hollis: And write messages.
Luz: Yeah, and we can write letters to each other.
Hollis: (making chicken clucking sounds)
Luz: Good night little chicken.
Shelley: Bye, love you.
Luz: Bye, I love you too!
Hollis: That left me cracking up.
Hollis Blue Hawkins Wood (they/them) is a 5 year old kindergartener living in Oakland, California. They are a budding artist in many mediums; from handmade (and teacher stapled) picture books to clay pottery and original songs on the ukulele. Hollis loves the earth and often volunteers to pick up trash at their local park. They love playing with trains, and reading and snuggling with their pets (Okra the dog and Huey the cat). Hollis was the recipient of the Student of the Month award in January of 2024 for cultural and ethical leadership in their school community.
Shelley Hawkins (she/her) is a mom, teacher and 4th generation Oakland resident. Shelley has a background in permaculture design, urban food systems and food justice. As a teacher to Black and Brown kindergarten and first grade students, she brings these skills into the classroom to promote empowerment and push back against the status quo. Shelley lives with her partner, her beautiful child and raucous pets in Oakland’s Dimond district.
Luz Blumenfeld (they/them) is an interdisciplinary artist, writer, and educator with a background in Early Childhood Education. Third generation from Oakland, California, they currently live and work in Portland, Oregon. They hold a BA from California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco, California and are graduating in June this year with an MFA in Art and Social Practice from Portland State University. Luz published a book of poems entitled More and More Often in 2023. They taught an undergraduate class called Practice Practice, which focused on exploring methodologies of an art practice. In April, Luz curated a show about ephemera at AB Gallery in Portland, Oregon. Their work explores themes of play, site, care, and memory through research as lived experience and materials such as sound, sculpture, and publications.
THE WISDOM LEADERS OF AFROVILLAGE
“We are not a physical place, we are a movement.”
Vaughn Kimmons, photo by Intisar Abioto, Feast of the Tide: a performance art short film screening, AfroVillage At Lloyd Center Mall, November 2023
Midnite Abioto offered me something to eat when I first entered the AfroVillage, but I knew very little about her then. From an invitation in an Instagram story, all I knew was a rough assembling of information: Vaughn Kimmons (of Portland-based music project Brown Calculus), short film, performance, and Lloyd Center Mall. After my grandmother and mother died of lung cancer, I’ve been interested in the tobacco plant and all the healing that it can offer beyond the disease with which it has become so identified. Thinking of a sacred ritual that a beloved Kiowa elder shared with me in the wake of grief, I often wonder What miraculous healings can take place spontaneously through our collective prayers? I had to know the stories of the women who made this powerful exhibition happen, who brought all these people together and fed everyone warm food and art as the days got darker. I felt very lucky when I ran into the painter Kyra Watkins: she introduced me to Midnite, curator of AfroVillage’s exhibition Healing Our Roots, who then connected me with AfroVillage’s Lead Visionary and Executive Director LaQuida Landford.
Gilian Rappaport: What is your vision for Healing Our Roots?
Midnite Seed Abioto: Healing Our Roots: Our Relationship to Tobacco, Hemp, Sugarcane, and Cotton is a multimedia exhibition in which we explore tobacco, hemp, sugarcane and cotton within our community. These crops formed the basis of the trade of brutal enslavement, trafficking, colonialization, and genocide. In this exhibit, we center the history of our communities within ecology from a full cultural spectrum. The artists were not chosen simply because they have specific plant representations in their art, instead, they were chosen because they present a broader perspective of the culture as a whole centered on ecology. The media historically leaves out BIPOC communities in the deeper conversations around ecology and environmental justice. We push back against that narrative for ourselves and the world as we explore our birth, our life, and our death in the relationship among all living organisms and the physical environment. This exhibit explores deeply our relationship with tobacco, hemp, cotton, and sugarcane beyond the ideologies of pain, suffering, and disease.
YAWA, photo by Intisar Abioto, Feast of the Tide: a performance art short film screening, AfroVillage At Lloyd Center Mall, November 2023
Gilian Rappaport: What programming is upcoming?
Midnite Seed Abioto: AfroVillage has convened an extraordinary group of artists, healers, herbalists, thinkers, musicians, and Afro-futurists to exhibit their arts and articulate their evolving thoughts throughout November and December. In December, our workshops will expand the relationship and reframe the narrative around tobacco, hemp, cotton, and sugarcane beyond that of death, mass incarceration, disease, and despair to explore the power and efficacy of true liberation through the lens of diasporic culture with reference to community, history, the spiritual world and the natural law which emanates from this evolution. Our programming will include deeply nourishing conversations, sound baths, plant meditation, movement, and music which centers us in the ecology of Afro-futurism. The diverse group of artists whose works will be on display includes Adriene Cruz, Bobby Fouther, Kathy Pennington, Latoya Lovely, Chris McMurry, Carolyn Anderson, Cole Reed, Chris Morillo, Nia Musiba, Kyra Watkins, Cole Reed, Alice Price, Medina Abioto, Intisar Abioto, Yawa Abioto, Sahara Defrees, Bridgette Hickey, Kalimah Abioto and our youngest artist, Ceriya Stewart, and myself.
The event that you attended on Saturday, “Feast of the Tide,” was a performance art short film screening production by Vaughn Kemmons. They connected the work of their grandmother paving the pathway for women in the ministry—at a time when women were not allowed to stand in the pulpit—and the defining works of bell hooks. They also included several artists from the community as performers. It was a grand and glorious opportunity for AfroVillage PDX to give a sneak preview of the Healing Our Roots exhibit and engage the community. My family is a group of artists. I have five daughters and all of them are artists. One of my daughters, YAWA, performed on Saturday. My daughter Intisar Abioto curated Black Artists of Oregon, currently on view at the Portland Art Museum (through March 17, 2024).
AfroVillage at Lloyd Center is a short-term pop-up, open through December 31st on Wednesdays, Fridays, and Sundays. Current information is at @AfroVillagePDX and AfroVillagePDX.org.
Jacque Hammond, photo by Intisar Abioto, Feast of the Tide: a performance art short film screening, AfroVillage At Lloyd Center Mall, November 2023
Gilian Rappaport: Where is the funding coming from for this project?
Laquida Landford: AfroVillage is funded by the Oregon Health Authority, from a commercial tobacco tax from the state which the fund is re-distributing back into the community. It’s operating as a smaller organizing group to provide mutual aid to the community. The project is also funded by RACC.
Healing Our Roots exhibition (detail), photo by Intisar Abioto, AfroVillage At Lloyd Center Mall, November 2023
Gilian Rappaport: What is the mission of AfroVillage?
LaQuida Landford: We are not a physical place, we are a movement. We empower futures for black and brown and unrecognized communities. I’ve always been curious about how black and brown folks can have safe spaces, especially within pervasive gentrification.
Community and art installation, photo by Intisar Abioto, Feast of the Tide: a performance art short film screening, AfroVillage At Lloyd Center Mall, November 2023
Gilian Rappaport: What is your relationship with the Lloyd Center Mall? How did the AfroVillage end up there, and why does it feel like a good place for this work?
LaQuida Landford: I worked in the mall in 2000. A lot closed, businesses didn’t succeed. Amy, the current acting manager, leased us the space amid a lot of changes happening in the next 12-18 months. It’s important that we have visibility in the next era of Lloyd Center to help mend the pervasive history of displacement and gentrification in Oregon, and especially in Northeast Portland. In the past, people who didn’t have larger businesses could not lease space to do something at Lloyd Center. I appreciate the opportunity to be part of reimagining the space. I would like that this exhibit and us holding space will allow us to be part of those conversations.
Map of AfroVillage at Lloyd Center Mall (lot 982)
Midnite Seed Abioto is an emerging multimedia artist who spent 40 years practicing law in the Mississippi Delta. She sees her work as magically transformative with an arch towards justice and liberation. She has exhibited at Building 5 (Portland, OR) and the Reser Center for the Arts (Beaverton, OR), and performed at the ASHÉ Cultural Center (New Orleans, LA). Her curatorial process is centered on addressing environmental injustice through a cultural and spiritual lens. studioabioto.com.
LaQuida – “Q” – Landford is Lead Visionary for the AfroVillage Movement. She is a community health worker, community activist and organizer, and a community navigator with roots in Los Angeles and Belize. She serves on the Climate Friendly and Equitable Communities Rules Advisory Committee for the state of Oregon. She is the founder of the “Green In The Hood PDX“, an initiative based on flipping the historical stereotypes about BlPOC communities. LaQuida’s work focuses on housing, food and environmental injustice, policy advocacy and restorative healing.
Gilian Rappaport is an artist, naturalist, and designer working in social and visual forms. Their interdisciplinary practice is place-based and often in ecological contexts. | art projects: www.gilian.space | design projects: www.gilianrappaport.space | @gilnotjill
The Mother-Daughter Connection
“It all comes back to the human condition, you know, searching for home, searching for belonging.”
Lauren DelGandio
When I was thinking about what I wanted my final SoFA interview to be, I decided to take time to reflect on how my work and ideas have taken shape over the years. I thought back to where my work started and immediately thought about my family. Often, my work is literally about my family and when it’s not, it revolves around the values growing up in my family left me with; connection, vulnerability, and support. So for this last interview, I decided to talk to my mother about my relationship with her, the relationships we have with our family, and how it all finds its way into my creative practice.
Olivia DelGandio: If you could do life all over again, what would you change?
Lauren DelGandio: I would have stayed in school and gotten a Masters and Ph.D. in sociology. I would love to research and teach. Every sociology class that I took lit me up, I couldn’t wait to read more. But I don’t think I saw staying in school really as an option, financially. And it seemed like a pipe dream.
Olivia: What was Meme’s (my grandmother’s) part in that?
Lauren: It’s interesting because she says she always told me I could be anything but I recently said to her, “I know you said it but I didn’t believe you.”
Olivia: Why do you think you didn’t believe her?
Lauren: My self-esteem was incredibly low. I felt unimportant. Invisible. Meme and I were talking about this recently and I said I always let you find your way and Meme said that she told me the same things. I said to her, “but the difference is that Olivia believes me when I tell her she can do anything.”
Olivia: It’s interesting how those things are passed down and how they change and shift the way because I did believe you. I do believe you.
Lauren: Words are one thing, right? But action and example are a completely separate thing and that wasn’t there. My father did not show me that he loved me. And I knew that Meme loved me but I felt like my voice was not important because of the situations and the life we were put into. So the words were, “you’re incredible, you’re talented, you’re smart” but the environment did not show me that.
Olivia: Totally. I mean, it’s so interesting to think about how, like, we were both told the same things, but because our growing up experiences were so different, the result was so different. How did this all translate into you and Dad’s relationship?
Lauren: I mean, getting together at 16, I wasn’t even a person yet. I’ve told you I thought he was so hot and so desirable. If you ask me, like, you know, on a scale of 1 to 10 where we each were, I’d say he was a 27 and I was maybe a 5. I remember thinking, why would he want me? And I see it so clearly now, I was just reliving this dance of, if I’m good enough, my father will love me, if I’m good enough, this man will love me enough to marry me. I was always trying to prove something. So I accepted being treated very poorly because I didn’t see any value in myself.
Olivia: You would never know that he used to treat you poorly by looking at how he is now. What changed?
Lauren: Well, we didn’t see each other or talk for almost two years when I was around 19. That was the beginning for me, I couldn’t believe I had accepted what I accepted. And for dad, he says he always knew he wanted more for himself than the hand he was dealt. Obviously a lot of how he treated me came from how he was raised. He says he knew that I would get him to grow and that we could grow together. And in that time we were apart, he realized he wanted to make that growth happen with me.
Olivia: How do you think all of these relationships fit into how you mother me?
Lauren: That’s really interesting. First of all, I think that I made a really conscious decision probably before I even knew it, to not be like my mother. And, you know, there are so many ways that I’m very much like my mother, but I made the decision to not parent like my mother,
Olivia: In what way?
Lauren: In terms of my relationship with my mother, the mother daughter connection and struggle for individuation, I still sometimes question if I’ve individuated completely. There was just so much codependency.
Olivia: I question that too.
Lauren: I look at our family tree, our family connections, I think about my own friendships or lack of friendships and I realize that family filled so much of my life. I often wonder and question, you know, did I not maintain strong friendships because my family took up too much space? Every weekend was going to Miami to spend time with not just my mother but this whole extended family. It was such a special thing but I also wonder if it was a deterrent. And I think the whole dynamic also makes it so hard to explain to other people. It’s impossible to explain what losing these people and these connections meant for us because our family relationships were so different from most families.
Olivia: Totally agree. I remember being 18 when Poppop (my great grandfather) died and I was absolutely devastated. People didn’t understand how I could feel so strongly about someone most people don’t even get the chance to meet, let alone have and see so often for my entire childhood.
Lauren: Right. I can’t say that I regret the emphasis we had on family because the ties, the relationships, the memories, I wouldn’t trade them for the world. But there have been times I’ve wondered, how come I don’t have any close friends? What is it about me? And it’s sort of like I don’t need friends, I talk to my mother every single day but is that how it should be?
Olivia: It’s such an interesting question. Now that we live so far away from each other, I’ve thought a lot about our relationship and how we are so connected. I talk to you way more than any of my friends talk to their mothers, I probably talk to my grandmother more than my friends talk to their mothers. And if a whole day goes by without at least a text from you I’m like hm, I should check in with my mom. I’ve definitely had moments where I have to remind myself that it’s normal to not talk to your mother for a day.
Lauren: Exactly. And I always want you to have your life separate from me, it’s an interesting thing to have to learn.
Olivia: And I am so much like you in so many ways and I wonder how much of me is just you? Who am I without my mother?
Lauren: Well I think there’s a distinction between who am I without my mother and who am I without my mother’s approval/opinion? And I think it is an ongoing process probably for the rest of our lives. For me, just the fact that you live 2500 miles away means I’ve succeeded in letting you know that you can go out and live your life without me. It’s cliche but I’ve always wanted to give you roots to come home to and wings so you can fly away. And I don’t know that Meme ever meant the same for me.
Olivia: I could see that.
Lauren: It’s interesting because you have to look at who raised you, who raised me, and who raised Meme in order to understand it all. Meme always says that GG (her mother) was not affectionate and I think she wanted to be different from that. And me – I grew up watching Meme stay with a husband that treated her and us so wrong. She had to have such low self esteem to accept that for so long, which brings it back to my self esteem growing up. I didn’t know I could want more for myself.
Me with my mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother, 2013, courtesy of Lauren DelGandio.
Olivia: So she didn’t want to be like her mother and you didn’t want to be like your mother but, the thing is, I want to be like my mother.
Lauren: That’s an honor. That’s a true honor.
Olivia: I mean, we talk about how you and dad decided to break the mold and I think it’s proof that it worked because I want to be like my parents. It’s interesting to think about all of this in relation to the work that I make and want to make and how so much of it comes down to connection and conversation and family.
Lauren: That’s interesting, it all comes back to the human condition, you know, searching for home, searching for belonging. And I think a lot of what you explore is the idea of belonging. Belonging physically as compared to belonging as a feeling, right? You know, what does belonging mean in a modern and post-modern, apocalyptic world?
Olivia: And when I think about it, home and belonging, I think of sleepovers at Meme’s house and all our weekends there together and walks on the beach with you and Meme and you and Dad, you know, the home that you made for me and my brothers. It all comes back to this connection and what that feels like. Like waking up at a sleepover at Meme’s and she’s in the bed next to me. No matter how old I got, she left Bompa (my grandfather) to come and sleep with me. Not because I needed her to anymore, but because it was this special thing, right?
The beach where my mother and great-grandparents lived during my childhood. We’d often walk this path together, Bal Harbor, FL, 2019, photo taken by Olivia DelGandio
Lauren: Exactly. This sense of connection, it’s everything to us and it’s also what’s made death so much harder in this family.
Olivia: It’s all coming full circle. It’s also making me think about how we started this conversation with you saying you’d be a professor if you could do it differently. I’m thinking about how I’m going to be teaching my own class soon. What does that feel like for you?
Lauren: I feel thrilled. I’ve told you a zillion times, I’m so proud of you. I love you but I also just like you so much and you’ve really created this life that you truly dreamed of. You chose it. This is all I wanted for you.
Olivia: I really feel like this was only possible because you told me it was. And because of the true belonging you and Dad raised me within.
Lauren: Yes and I’m so proud of me and Dad. We’re a miracle from where we both came from to have created this. It makes me think of GG and Poppop (my great-grandparents) sitting at the head of the table on Thanksgiving and Poppop saying, “Ida, look at what we started,” while our whole family is running around them. That’s how I feel when I look at you and your brothers.
Liv DelGandio (she/they) is a socially engaged artist focused on asking intimate questions and normalizing answers in the form of ongoing conversations. She explores grief, memory, and queerness and looks for ways of memorializing moments and relationships. Through her work, she hopes to make the world a more tender place and does so by creating books, installations, and textiles that capture personal narratives. Research is a large part of this work and her current research interests include untold queer histories, family lineage, and the intersection between fashion and identity. Her medium is often changing and responding to a specific place and context that she’s in.
Lauren DelGandio (she/her) is a feeler and a thinker. She’s spent a lifetime working in the nonprofit world and is currently creating community in Orlando, FL. She loves mango ginger tea, a good book, and the family she’s created with her husband. (she/her) is a feeler and a thinker. She’s spent a lifetime working in the nonprofit world and is currently creating community in Orlando, FL. She loves mango ginger tea, a good book, and the family she’s created with her husband.
Bridging Time and Perspectives: The Transformative Role of The Timeline at KSMoCA
“To me, history is a lens through which we can view and interpret past events to enhance our understanding of the present and to forge a path towards a more equitable future. It’s about recognizing the multitude of perspectives that make up the tapestry of America’s past, not just the predominant white narrative that has been long emphasized.”
Amanda Larriva
The Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. School Museum of Contemporary Art (KSMoCA) is a contemporary art museum and social practice art project located within the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. School, a Pre K – 5th grade public school in Northeast Portland, OR. It was founded in 2014 by Portland State University professors Lisa Jarrett and Harrell Fletcher.
Laura Glazer, program manager at KSMoCA, explaining PSU students about Timeline at the entrance of KSMoCA in Fall 2023, photo taken by Midori Yamanaka, courtesy of KSMoCA.
One of the standout features at the entrance of KSMoCA is The Timeline, a dynamic exhibit that greets visitors and community members with the rich history of the school community. This piece, part of the permanent collection at KSMoCA, was collaboratively created by Ms. Amanda Larriva, a dedicated kindergarten teacher, along with students and other community members. Ms. Larriva, with her profound understanding of educational dynamics and historical narratives, emphasizes the significance of this installation. She believes that grasping the continuum of past events is crucial not only for understanding human interactions, but also for recognizing our collective potential to shape a better world.
Dr MLK Jr School was the first school in the nation to change its name in honor of Dr. King. This timeline tells the history of the student-led name change initiative and major events in the history of the school.
Midori Yamanaka: Could you tell us about your role in creating The Timeline at KSMoCA and who you collaborated with on this project?
Ms. Amanda Larriva: The Timeline was a collective effort. Alongside Melody, who was a teacher here at the time, and Nancy, our school secretary, we spearheaded the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Celebration. This project began serendipitously when we discovered an old photograph from the time our school was renamed, which inspired us. Armed with a large box filled with numerous historical materials, we saw an opportunity to narrate our school’s legacy through The Timeline. It was a meticulous process of selecting events that reflected the diverse history and the evolving identity of our community.
Ms. Amanda Larriva kindly accepted my interview offer and talked about her passion with a smile, photo taken by Midori Yamanaka.
Midori: What does history mean to you, and why is it particularly attractive?
Ms. Larriva: To me, history is a lens through which we can view and interpret past events to enhance our understanding of the present and to forge a path towards a more equitable future. It’s about acknowledging the multitude of perspectives that make up the tapestry of America’s past, not just the predominant white narrative that has been long emphasized. In my classroom, we delve into various historical narratives, which helps my students appreciate the complexities of history and its role in shaping societal norms and values. We discuss the importance of diverse viewpoints, such as those from Black, Asian, and Indigenous communities, to enrich our understanding and appreciation of history.
Midori: It’s impressive that even kindergarteners are able to engage with these complex concepts. How do they react to such discussions?
Ms. Larriva: It’s truly inspiring. We often talk about similarities and differences, especially regarding people’s backgrounds and cultures. This opens a space for the children to comfortably discuss and embrace diversity. They learn to appreciate and vocalize their thoughts on race and culture in a supportive environment, which is crucial for building empathy and understanding from a young age.
Students working on their art piece collaborated with a guest artist, Mr Richard Brown, in Fall 2023, photo taken by Midori Yamanaka, courtesy of KSMoCA.
Midori: What are some key strategies for discussing history with young children?
Ms. Larriva: The approach varies significantly with age. For younger children, history might appear more abstract, yet they are incredibly receptive to stories and are keen observers of their surroundings. We encourage them to ask questions and express wonder about what they see. This method helps them make connections and begin to understand the broader narratives. As students progress to higher grades, they engage more concretely with timelines and the chronological order of historical events, which helps them gain a clearer understanding of how past events influence the present.
Midori: How do you decide what events or stories to include on The Timeline?
Ms. Larriva: There have been many significant events in our community over the past few years. For instance, in 2022, the school was on the verge of being shut down, which prompted community protests. Last fall, we experienced our first-ever district-wide teachers’ strike, followed by a school closure, among other events. Selecting which events to include requires a thoughtful process that considers which narratives will most effectively convey the lessons we aim to teach. We prioritize stories that are not only engaging but also prompt deeper inquiries into historical events. Interactive elements are crucial in this process, as they allow students to engage more thoroughly with the material through multimedia presentations or hands-on activities.
Midori: Is there another way to encourage students to engage with history?
Ms. Larriva: Absolutely! One effective strategy is ensuring that educators are equipped with the necessary tools and ideas to integrate the timeline into their teaching effectively. Regular updates and active participation from community members who have witnessed historical events provide authenticity and enrich the learning experience.
Midori: What are the challenges and rewards of updating The Timeline?
Ms. Larriva: The challenge lies in ensuring that The Timeline remains relevant and reflective of our community’s history and diversity. The reward is seeing how this tool helps foster a deeper understanding and appreciation of history among students and community members alike. We envision a collaborative process, perhaps involving regular meetings to review and catalog significant events with contributions from those who have firsthand knowledge.
A PSU student as a mentor, and a Dr MLK student as a mentee during mentorship program in Fall 2023, photo taken by Midori Yamanaka, courtesy of KSMoCA.
Many of the permanent collections at KSMoCA are collaborative works between nationally recognized artists and students of Dr. MLK School. Recently, three artists have been invited to KSMoCA every year. They collaborate with the children to create art and hold exhibitions. Through this process, the children get real exposure to art and artists, and over time the collection continues to grow. The students attending this school are truly living within the history of art that emerges from their community. Additionally, a mentorship program links PSU college students with elementary school students in one-to-one partnerships, fostering relationships and mutual learning through collaboration.
KSMoCA serves as a crossroads where the elementary school, the university (PSU), and the community intersect through the medium of art. This Timeline adds a new dimension of ‘time’ to this intersection, enriching and enhancing its appeal. Moreover, the activities of KSMoCA itself continue to become part of this new Timeline.
Ms Larriva, the interviewee on the left and Midori, the interviewer on the right in Ms. Larriva’s classroom in March 2024, photo taken by Midori Yamanaka.
Amanda Larriva : (she/her) is a kindergarten teacher at Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Elementary School in NE Portland. She has spent eight years at Dr. MLK School and has consistently worked in Title one schools, which are designated for improving the academic achievement of the disadvantaged. Inspired by a historical photo of students celebrating the school’s renaming, Larriva, along with Nancy Rios-Araujo, the school secretary, and Melody, a teacher at the time, orchestrated the 50th-anniversary celebration of the school’s name change. This event led to the creation of the Timeline, now a permanent exhibit at the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. School Museum of Contemporary Art (KSMoCA) in 2018.
Midori Yamanaka (she/her) is an artist and educator based in Portland, Oregon, with roots in a unique Japanese town by the Okhotsk Sea. Her early life, devoid of local art museums but rich in cultural uniqueness, sparked a deep interest in community and creativity. A graduate of the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California, Midori has pursued a career marked by socially engaged projects and cultural exchange, leading her into the field of Art and Social Practice. Now advancing her studies at Portland State University, her work bridges cultural gaps and fosters community engagement, reflecting her ongoing exploration of art’s role in societal connection.
A Place to Be Human: A Conversation on Play and its Environments
“There’s research that says when people experience something that strikes them with a sense of awe, they are more compassionate with others afterwards and feel more connected and less isolated….We have to make places and time when we can have that sensation.”
Katie Shook
Large-scale block set designed in collaboration with Katie Shook and Sophie Smallhorn. Image courtesy of Katie Shook.
Artist Katie Shook and I are two people who are serious about play – theorizing about play, facilitating play, and building tools and environments for play. But what happens when you’re in the business of play? As both of our art practices are centered around making accessible, community play offerings in the world, Katie and I are familiar with the tension and duality of trying to make a living through public art projects that can be pricey to manifest and challenging to find funding for in a country that values profit over community dreams and desires.
During my time working in a Montessori school, I also noticed an overlap between work and play. In the Montessori vocabulary, the lessons themselves are even called “works.” These “works” are where children learn chores like flower arranging, washing tables, and sewing in addition to more traditional lessons of reading, math, and geography. I was surprised to find these were often the tasks the children enjoyed the most. Observing their enthusiastic sweeping, I would wonder when that work crosses over to something dreadful and obligatory rather than empowering and delightful? When you’re a kid, is play your work or does work get folded into all things play when your survival isn’t dependent on it? As an adult is it ever possible to access this contextual learning and wonder in our daily life?
As an artist offering a range of play spaces situated within local parks, public schools, and now the mall, Katie operates within many fascinating play intersections. I met with her to explore this tension of work, play, and practice, along with other dualities like pop-up versus industrial play structures, the commercial nature of the mall and the artist neighborhood developing within Portland Oregon’s Lloyd Center Mall.
Katie Shook at her Mudland Moon Garden playspace in Lloyd Center Mall, Portland, Oregon, 2024. Photo courtesy of Clara Harlow.
Clara Harlow: I’m curious about your own play history. Where did you have your best play experiences as a kid and with who?
Katie Shook: I went to Montessori school, so I think a lot of my experiences are formed in that environment. I remember the pouring activities where you get a pitcher and a bowl and practice pouring water. I also really loved playing in the mud and making mud pies outside. I remember doing that a lot, digging in dirt and mixing mud and putting it in pie pans and setting it out. My dad was really into organic gardening and compost and stuff, so I’d spent a lot of time playing with him in the dirt and with plants and we had chickens. They were kind of hippies, like homesteaders. My mom would make cheese and yogurt and we had chickens and ducks.
Clara: Did you help out with some of those tasks around the house?
Katie: Yeah, definitely. We started washing the dishes after dinner and even cooking really young. By grade school we were supposed to cook a meal once a week. I don’t know how that informs play, but we definitely were helpers around the house.
My favorite Montessori toy, the Long Red Rods, where children build and navigate through different spatial constraints. Photo courtesy of Battery Park Montessori.
Clara: Yeah, that definitely feels Montessori-adjacent to me. Teaching kids that they actually do have agency over care of self and care of community. That these things aren’t just passively done for you or to you, but you get to be a part of it.
Katie: And you’re capable of pitching in, like you can sweep and wipe a table.
Clara: Yeah, I used to co-teach an after school program at a Montessori and I feel like the kids would take a lot of pride in the work that they would do too and that was cool to see. So I’m wondering how you got into the work of making play spaces for children?
Katie: Well I was making art, theater, and performance for grown ups in college and in grad school, but I have always worked with children, babysitting and at schools and stuff. I guess it was once I had a child, because I finished grad school at age 30 and had a kid a year later, that it just felt natural to be exploring open, creative kinds of art environments for kids and at the same time practicing my own art.
The Notting Hill Adventure Playground is one of the first junk play sites that popped up in English cities after World War II when many children constructed their own play spaces in bomb sites. Photo courtesy of The Guardian.
Katie: I was really into the adventure play movement, my dad had a book about it and would talk about it growing up. There’s an organization in the US called Pop-Up Adventure Play where you can do training to be a playworker in the vernacular of adventure play. In England and Northern Europe there are PhD programs where you can study play theory and become an expert in play theory and play work. In the US we have folks who’ve trained over there and then do this kind of certification for people. So I was studying that and then I helped start a non-profit in Portland called Portland Free Play where we would do pop-up play with scrap materials at parks through the Parks and Rec program. And we started a few programs at public schools to bring scrap materials and train the staff at the school to bring the materials out during recess for kids to use.
Adventure Play Pop Up in Portland, Oregon. Image courtesy of Portland Free Play.
Katie: I started Mudland [Katie’s pop-up play environment project] around the same time with more of a focus on design materials and intentional themes that are a little bit more aesthetic and designed than the adventure play environments.
Clara: Yeah I know we both have an appreciation for adventure playgrounds and non-directive design for kids where the objects and environments that the kids are utilizing don’t dictate only one way you’re supposed to engage with it, but allow for lots of different possibilities and agency within that. With that in mind, I’m curious what you think traditional American playgrounds are missing. How do you think they could be improved?
Katie: I think what a lot of people who work in early childhood education would say is loose parts, right? Like when you’re on a playground and there aren’t loose materials to interact with there’s less for kids to invent and have agency over. Even when there’s just bark chips or twigs or pebbles. And you collect those things and incorporate them into imaginative play.
Clara: I love that because yesterday me and my collaborator, Luz Blumenfeld, were helping teach a class for undergraduate art students in the amphitheater of the Rose Test Garden where everyone made a score to sort of explore and measure the space. All of these 20 year-olds came up with the most amazing, playful scores once they were able to give themselves permission to go there. The scores were like: “Climb into trees with all your friends and don’t come down until everyone’s ready to come down together” and “make hopscotch with sticks and play”. It felt very much like that sort of activated non-directive playspace and it was really cool to see adults accessing that part of themselves in relationship to a new space. That’s something we’ve been thinking about with our workshop Preschool for Adults too.
Katie: Yeah that’s so cool, there’s so much play potential and materials outdoors.
The Imagination Playground designed by Cas Holman and the Rockwell Group. Photo courtesy of Imagination Playground.
Clara: Do you have a favorite toy designer?
Katie: I love Cas Holman. Do you know her? She did the Rigamajig and was part of the Big Blue Blocks. Have you ever seen those? They have them at a lot of children’s museums, those giant blue foam blocks.
Clara: Yeah, they’re like giant tinker toys! I remember watching the Netflix design profile on Cas and was like, “Oh, man, I wish I came up with all of these ideas!”
Katie: You can build big stuff and make ball runs. There’s a lot of cool stuff people made in the sixties and seventies too. And there are so many neat playscape designs and playground landscape designs that didn’t ever get built.
Isamu Noguchi’s Playscape in Piedmont Park in Atlanta, Georgia. Photo courtesy of Herman Miller.
Clara: Yeah, like Isamu Noguchi’s Play Mountain. I want to go to that one in Atlanta.
Katie: There’s the playground in Atlanta and then there’s a big playground in Japan that he designed, that maybe was built after his death. I want to do more International Playground research. I have a friend who works in the film industry in L.A., and we were trying to put together a pitch about play around the world, a Netflix show or something where you can watch how kids play in different parts of the world.
Isamu Noguchi’s Kodomo No Kuni Playscape was built outside of Tokyo, Japan in 1965 for the Japanese Children’s Year. Photo courtesy of Herman Miller.
Clara: That needs to be made because I need to watch that! So what materials are you drawn to in creating play spaces?
Katie: Well, cardboard is big. I love painting cardboard and it’s cheap and lightweight, so it’s better than making pieces out of plywood, you know, so kids can move them around. I love the soft forms and upholstery projects, but they’re really expensive. It’s either time intensive or expensive to hire someone to produce them.
Clara: Yeah, the materials are very influenced by certain constraints and limits. Like when you’re thinking about scale and also the size of children. What can they carry? But also durability, safety, affordability, all of those things. You think about those things too when you’re making any kind of installation, but the stakes are a bit higher because you want to make sure the kids can really interact with them in a way that’s safe and fun for them, you know?
Katie: Totally, yeah. You want it to be open-ended enough, and it’s kind of not possible to build like structural, sculptural elements because you need a lot of money for that and you’re constrained by the playground safety regulations. Technically there aren’t regulations or rules around indoor play spaces. When I’ve worked on those projects, we design according to playground safety code just to make it easier.
Clara: Yeah, it seems like it can’t hurt.
Katie: Yeah, but then it’s hard to make this sculptural piece that kids can climb on or go in or through and you start needing to really check that it’s safe in every way. And you need an inspector and engineers and then it just gets way too expensive to invent a cool one-of-a-kind thing.
Clara: Mmm yeah I feel like we’re coming up against some of that in my first year cohort. We’re in this class right now where we’re creating an artist collective and we are doing a project together that has to do with making a space or furniture that encourages adult play but also rest. What is it like to rest with people together in public? It’s actually something that’s pretty rare. Like we actually don’t do it so often outside of a movie theater, beach, or park. We were thinking about the eclipse and were all very excited about this big collective pause where everyone stops what they’re doing and goes outside and looks up together, just experiencing awe and slowing down together.
So right now we’re trying to create some objects that encourage that kind of collective wonder for adults and figuring out how to make armature, but also make it mobile and things like that has been an interesting design dilemma.
Katie: That’s awesome. I want to hear more about what you are landing on. That made me think of a couple things. One is design for public spaces and then the other is the studies relating to the kind of social emotional benefits of feeling awe – have you seen any of those?
Clara: I don’t think so.
Katie: I looked up some of the studies about it recently and apparently being struck by a sense of awe is one of the things that resets your nervous system when you’re overwhelmed or in fight or flight. Some different things that cause that for people are looking out over a view or landscape or watching a bee gathering nectar. There’s research that says when people experience something that strikes them with a sense of awe, they are more compassionate with others afterwards and feel more connected and less isolated. They feel more feelings of love for others, so it’s a cool reason to do that, right? We have to make places and time when we can have that sensation.
Clara: Yeah that’s so beautiful. I feel very invested in how we can create more opportunities for that in our daily lives.
Katie: Yeah. I mean, I think about that in doctor’s offices too, like if you have pictures of trees or a waterfall or something, it soothes people. It’s that sensibility. But another thing I was going to say too, is that I’m really fascinated by the design of public space and how the architects and developers in charge of it design them to either be together in rest or not. Like so many places don’t put out benches because they don’t want houseless people sleeping or sitting or lingering and then that limits us from being together in public spaces and chatting or resting there.
Public contribution to British artist Stuart Semple’s Designs Against Humanity digital campaign against hostile architecture. Photo courtesy of Hostile Design.
Clara: Yeah, exactly, the hostile architecture! It’s something that in New York I’m noticing all the time with all of the pigeons spikes even on a random little pipe or something that you could sit on and smoke a cigarette. There’s always something there to prohibit that public pause. And it’s sad because there are just like so many people who are really needing to occupy public space in a big way to rest and eat and live their lives because we’re all stacked on top of each other in the city and we all need those third places. A place to be around beauty and a place to peoplewatch or have a good think.
Katie: And just be a human and not only a consumer or worker all the time.
Clara: Yes exactly. I was curious about your play space being situated in the commercial space of the mall and if anything has surprised you about this site? I know in the past you’ve had pop-ups outdoors in different parks in Portland and New York, and in an apartment building lobby. How does the mall inform the playspace and how has that been different from other projects you’ve done?
Katie: Yeah, that’s a good question. There are a lot of people who see us because we’re in the mall, like families who are going through the mall anyways and then are like, “Oh, it’s a playing space!” So we get spotted because of the location versus other times where we’ve invited people to us. I just love the way the Lloyd Center right now is so open and flexible and not corporate. It just feels like this really grassroots, hand-painted, weird art installation and there aren’t corporate rules about how it has to look and function. And all the spaces around us are doing the same, it’s fun to be part of that.
Clara Harlow’s Mall Mania puzzle page from Kye Grant’s Planet Lloyd publication made in collaboration with the PSU Art and Social Practice MFA Program and the Lloyd Center Mall community in the fall of 2023. Photo courtesy of Kye Grant.
Clara: Have you made any good neighbor buddies?
Katie: Yeah, all my neighbor buddies are very friendly and helpful and we’re getting to be more collaborative. The toy store across the hall, Tada!, is run by a man named Ali and he has brought over toys to give to me as a gift to use in the space. And then my neighbor right next door is Jason, who started the Pinball Museum. He’s really awesome. We’ve talked about collaborating on a new offering of family-friendly group events so if they want to bring kids, a group could come and have open play in our space and bring food. And then a smaller group can go over and have a roller skating class across the hall at Chickpea’s space, and some of them can go next door and play pinball, and there’s Bricdiculous a few doors down doing reused Legos.
Clara: I love that. It’s so cool to hear this because it really feels like the mall is kind of returning to a real local neighborhood space. You know, it really feels community-oriented.
Katie: Yeah, there’s another game place down the hall that has Pokémon Cards and group game activities and the guy who runs that brings his son over to play. He also loans me chairs and tables to use for our workshops.
Clara: That’s incredible. It sounds like such a utopia for children and adults. Hit up your rollerskating, go see some art, go play Pokemon.
A new era of Lloyd Center Mall is marked by local, independent shops and pop-up art projects. Image courtesy of Cabel Sasser.
Katie: I know it’s really fun and people come through all the time who haven’t been here in a really long time. People are like, “It’s so sad here. It’s a dead mall. There’s nothing going on. What a shame.” And I’ll be like, “Look around because there’s actually a lot going on, like all the big box stores left and now there’s all these awesome art projects!” I learned recently it’s a third occupied, so there’s like about 300 spaces and about 100 that have organizations in them, just a lot of them aren’t open full time.
Clara: Man, It’s just calling for a neighborhood block party! We gotta get everyone together who runs these local spaces for a potluck to meet each other and hang.
Rolling backdrop puppet show at Mudland Moon Garden. Photo courtesy of Clara Harlow.
Katie: My background is in puppet theater and I’ve been really wanting to make a puppet show in our space, you know, like a weird alien plant with moon people and creatures because our space is called the Moon Garden. When I was at CalArts in L.A. for grad school, I helped with a project called The Sunset Chronicles, and it was a group of people who make puppet shows based on buildings and real people that lived on Sunset Boulevard on the eastside of L.A. There were different episodes that had several characters in their stories. And the puppeteers wore blue aprons with palm trees on them, so they became the background, like the sky. And there were all these models of buildings that are real buildings along Sunset, and they would slide along and then the building would open up and you’d see the person inside who lived there.
Clara: That is amazing.
Katie: There was one puppet based on a Silver Lake walker who was a retired doctor who would walk around in shorts, no shirt, super tan, always walking around Silver Lake. I think his wife had died and he just walked all the time and would be reading the newspaper, but everyone knew him and he was in the puppetshow. And he died like not long after they were doing the show with him in it. I was talking to Michelle [Illuminato] about how I want to do a series of puppet shows based on the people who run shops at the Lloyd Center. Like there’s a coffee shop that’s across from us Keia and Martyn’s. And I heard that the couple who started that coffee shop met in high school working at a mall store together at the Lloyd Center!
Clara: And like, what’s better than that?
Katie: It’d be so cool to interview them and have them share their story.
Clara: That’s fabulous, you gotta get that puppet show out to the world! Let me know how I can help.
Katie Shook (she/her) is the director of Mudland, a play design studio based in Portland. Known for creating outrageously fun pop-up play events and designing beautiful playrooms, Mudland focuses on using open-ended materials that allow children to guide their own explorations. Katie has 15+ years’ experience studying play theory, the role of play in early childhood development, and facilitating children’s events. She is a co-founder of the non-profit Portland Free Play. Katie holds an MFA in theater from Calarts and a BA in studio art from Whitman College.
Clara Harlow (she/her) is an interdisciplinary artist, designer, and preschool teacher from Omaha, Nebraska. Her work operates as an invitation into themes of intimacy, play, and alternative ways of measuring time through experiential events and interactive objects. You can most likely find her at the local swimming pool or making pigs in a blanket for her next themed party.
A Thousand Hands Behind Every Practice
“You’re always going to be a mosaic of all the people and thoughts and research and conversations that you have.”
Monyee Chau
Monyee standing in front of Of Salt and Altars (left wall), 2024. Tacoma WA US
Photo by Nancy Mariano.
I first met Monyee Chau while we were both working at the Wing Luke Museum in Seattle’s Chinatown-International District. As we got to know one another, we discovered the parallels between our lives, becoming strangely humorous for the many coincidences that existed. We had both grown up in Kirkland, Washington, a suburban neighborhood outside of Seattle. Both of our families owned restaurants. We had attended the same middle and high schools, although we didn’t know each other then. From there we both went to different art schools– Monyee to Cornish College of Arts in Seattle and I to the California College of the Arts in San Francisco.
As we became friends and later collaborators on a mural, we’d find even more evidence of our parallel trajectories; yearbook photos of one another and the realization that we had admired each other’s art even as young teenagers.
Nina Vichayapai, Monyee Chau, and Jae Eun Kim in front of Fruits of an Imagined Geography, 2021. Facebook campus, Bellevue, WA, US. Mixed media.
When our paths crossed at the Wing Luke Museum, a museum dedicated to the art, history, and culture of Asians, it would be simplistic to call it a coincidence, as these interests also run strong in both of our work. As I got to know Monyee, I grew a deep appreciation for their vibrant art and impassioned community work. For us to be drawn together again seems to only have been destiny and a testament to the underlying values that forged us. I continue to be deeply inspired by Monyee’s work that puts Asian American stories at the forefront, especially in Seattle where their art, murals, community work, and so much more can be seen all across the city. As an artist with many fascinating socially engaged processes embedded in their life and work, I was eager to speak to Monyee about some of their latest projects.
Nina Vichayapai: It’s such a treat to know you as a friend. We’ve collaborated together and also went to the same middle and high schools. Could we start by talking about what your experience was like growing up on the Eastside of Seattle?
Monyee Chau: So much of my work really began when I was able to think about my family’s restaurant as a location and space that really rooted me to my identity. What made that so strong was the complete cultural juxtaposition with where we lived and where we grew up. Growing up in a place where I felt like my grandparents were picked on for coming to my school events, where I felt really out of place, and really uncomfortable in my skin, helps me really appreciate what it meant to grow up in my family’s restaurant in the city of Seattle. I think growing up on the Eastside allowed me the ability to sit back and reflect on how much it meant for me to have that experience, because I feel really lucky. And I know that we also have a lot of parallels in having a family restaurant.
Monyee Chau and grandmother Noi Chau, 1998, at Chau’s Family Seafood Restaurant. Seattle WA, US.
Nina: Yeah, and a lot of my work is also influenced by growing up on the Eastside and feeling out of place. So your family had a restaurant in Chinatown-International District (C-ID) in Seattle. What was the name of the restaurant?
Monyee: The name of the restaurant was Chau’s Family Seafood Restaurant. It was on the corner of 4th and Jackson and had been around for 20 or so years and was just a very special place for my family to be able to thrive and have a community within the neighborhood.
Photo of grandparents and father and family friends in front of Chau’s Family Seafood Restaurant sign, on Jackson St. Circa 1980’s. Seattle WA, US
Photo of grandfather, grandma, and uncle at a restaurant in Seattle, WA, US. Circa 1970’s.
Nina: How did your family end up in Kirkland?
Monyee: My grandparents on my mom’s side live in Kirkland and my grandparents on my dad’s side that had the restaurant lived in the city, in Beacon Hill. I grew up in Bellevue, but when my parents split up they both went to live with their parents, so that also meant that I split my time living between Beacon Hill and Kirkland growing up.
Nina: So it sounds like you were bouncing between Seattle and the greater Seattle area for your childhood.
Monyee: Yes, that played a big part in recognizing that contrast – going to school on the Eastside, and then every weekend being in the city and just seeing the vast differences between the communities there.
Nina: They’re so different. I feel like it’s hard for people to conceptualize, especially if they weren’t around the Eastside back then, just how different it is from today. Today it’s so much more diverse and also so much more wealthy.I’m wondering, what were some of your early experiences with art or community work since both are a really big part of your life?
Monyee: Growing up I started taking some art classes with a friend of mine who ended up becoming my god sibling. They were taking art classes from this teacher in Newcastle. That is where I really built up a lot of technical skills, because he comes from Shanghai and there’s a big culture of replicating works as best as you can. And so a lot of technical skill was born out of that.
As for doing community work, I was really interested in finding a community, but I didn’t entirely have one that I felt incredibly connected to. I first found that sense of community when I went to a town hall meeting at the Nisei Veterans hall that was about rezoning the Chinatown-International District (C-ID) to allow for taller developments.That’s where I found the C-ID Coalition. They were handing out culturally relevant foods and had signs for folks, making sure that there was advocacy for the elders as well. And that’s what really got me into doing the work that I do now. It really let me see the ways that we can engage with people that we might not always be connected to through our work or school. So I think that was the first of many moments that gave me a lot of perspective on what it means to engage within a community.
Ingredients For A Mourning Soup, From The Diaspora, 2021. Seattle, WA, US. gouache on paper. Painting of a Taiwanese street food cart. Photo courtesy of Monyee Chau.
Nina: Can we talk about the project you did in the neighborhood then, Medicine for the C-ID?
Monyee: This took place at an artist residency through Flower Flower, which was an all queer, all trans Asian and Pasifika artist collective. I worked together with Jaeun Kim, and our residency was very rooted in what it means to make art for a neighborhood and how oftentimes elders get forgotten in that conversation. Jae and I really wanted to make sure that we were making work about elders that supported elders.
It began with a workshop that we did with a local acupuncturist named Dr. Tamsin Lee. We did a workshop called The Spirit of the Lung where we talked about how to supply our community with tools to support ourselves during wildfire season.
Dr. Tamsin shared with us some of the current Chinese astrology as well as how to prepare for wildfires, using tools such as Qi Gong. Dr. Tamsin also worked with us to create a lung support tea for elders in the neighborhood.
In addition to elders, we had a range of ages of folks in the workshop that made this tea. We were able to make like 200 bags of tea that we gifted to share with the neighborhood elders through ACRS (Asian Counseling and Referral Services). And a lot of the students who came were also able to take that tea home with them.
This workshop was a precursor to Jae and I interviewing some of the organizing aunties, Auntie Sue Kay and Auntie Karen. We talked to them about what it was like to get into organizing, what their experience has been like in the city, what changes they have seen, and what kind of things they hope for.
We talked about the neighborhood and their own personal relationships with medicine including herbs. Auntie Sue would bring gifts to other organizers when they were feeling sick or after a protest. So that all culminated into Jae and I collaborating on a piece that were portraits of these two as well as frames that were printed with linoleum block prints of the medicine and herbs that they had mentioned during the interview.
Nina: That is such a sweet project. The portraits you painted and the block prints that Jae did on the frame are so beautiful. I love the way your art comes together. Can you tell me what kind of herbs were in the tea that you made for the workshop? And what herbs did you learn about for use after protests?
Medicine for the CID, 2023. Seattle WA, US. acrylic paint on wood, linoleum block prints on fabric.
Monyee: So it looks like there are strawberry leaves, roses and some sort of lily. I know a lot of them were specifically anti-inflammatory. Some of the herbs represented in the paintings that we talked about were ferns, which Auntie Karen would collect with her family at Seward Park, and there’s also Chinese yams as well as matsutake mushrooms.
It was really sweet because when she came to the interview she also brought a bunch of things with her. They brought Nin Jiom Pei Pa Koa honey loquat syrup. She says that she’ll bring that syrup to organizers because it tastes really good, is really good for your throat, and helps you recover from a sore throat, especially after chanting at protests.
Nina: That’s amazing. It’s so cool to learn about other people’s relationship with herbs and medicine. I’m really curious what the process was like for you to take an interview and turn it into a piece of art. How did you come up with that idea? I think it’s funny because we’re doing an interview and also talking about an interview that you used in making this art. Interviews can be such a great tool for making something collaboratively.
Monyee: It was really fun because Jae and I think really differently. It was just a great opportunity to get to know Auntie Sue and Auntie Karen better. A lot of the time when we’re working together it’s in response to what’s going on in the neighborhood and working towards that. I think not a lot of intentional time had been put into getting to know each other deeper and so this was a really special opportunity to do that.
When we were thinking about the art that we wanted to make afterwards, a lot of the historical icons who have done work in the neighborhood have been very patriarchal. We always have portraits and photos of a lot of men, so why don’t we take this opportunity to celebrate these two wonderful women who have been doing this work for a long time?
While listening to their stories and what they wish to see in the future,something that really spoke to me was, when we think about the city, there’s so many different neighborhoods, right? It’s all divided up into Japantown or Little Saigon. I remember from the interview they were talking about how it didn’t used to be like that. It used to just be that we were all together. And it seemed really strange and disconcerting when those labels were put on everything, especially with I-5 gutting the neighborhood as well.
So it was just really wonderful to hear these small details that they maybe wouldn’t share on an everyday basis. But being able to have that intentional time together was really special for us to experience.
Nina: What was it like for you to collaborate with Jae, who is also your partner?
Monyee: I love collaborating with Jae. The first time that happened to a lower degree was when the three of us were all working together. It’s been really fun because we’ve been really excited to work on new things together. And because we’re in a relationship, our communication skills have been really rooted in a lot of compassion and understanding and friendship with one another.
Finding the intersections of what we’re both passionate about is really exciting because there’s a lot of magic that happens in that little intersection. So it’s a really fun and exciting thing for us to do as a duo.
Nina: Do you have any other collaborations planned with Jae or that you’re working on currently?
Monyee: We have been talking about collaborating with Dr. Tamsin again who we did in The Spirit of the Lung workshop with. I think we were wanting to expand on that and really talk about different aspects of the body and which parts hold different emotions. The lungs can carry grief, the heart carries joy. Our goal is to bring in some of the knowledge of traditional Asian medicine as well as health and herbs. It’s been a goal of ours to do what we can to keep our communities healthy in a time of climate crisis and other scary things.
Nina: When you’re really deep in it, in your art projects, are there certain ways that you like to receive care from Jae or vice versa? Likehow do you like to support Jae while they’re really going through it in their own projects?
Monyee: I think that learning from art school has been helpful in how to really vocalize feedback or critique. I think that with Jae and I, a lot of affirmations and conversations are really helpful for the both of us, especially with an approach of compassion and care.
I think what makes things the most successful when you’re sharing any kind of feedback is that approach of being like, ‘I know you have the best intentions, but maybe this isn’t being communicated as much as you were hoping that it would be’, for example. And it’s always nice to not be in your own head, so collaborating with someone whose thoughts and mind I really value is wonderful.
Being with someone else helps bounce ideas back and forth a lot easier. I don’t think that the residency Jae and I did last summer would have been anything close to what it was if we were both working individually, you know? The chance to build off of each other has been really special and really exciting.
Photo of Monyee Chau, Karen Sakada, Sue Kay, Jae Eun Kim in front of Medicine For the CID, 2023. Seattle WA, US
Nina: I can’t wait to see what you two make. It’s so lovely seeing your work together. Do you have any tips for anybody who wants to collaborate with a loved one or someone they’re in a relationship with?
Monyee: Every couple is different, but something that works really well for Jae and I is to make sure that we have a specific time and place set aside for planning. Because when we live together everything melts into each other.
Sometimes if Jae’s cooking dinner and I’m just thinking and talking out loud like…”what if we did this for this project,?” But Jae needs a specific place, time, and mentality for us to talk about that, which is so reasonable. So being able to make sure that you have dedicated time so that you can bring your best self into that collaboration is my top tip.
Nina: That’s such a good tip. That’s definitely a boundary my partner hasn’t set with me yet, but probably should because I’m blabbing all hours of the day about a project!
So what happened to the pieces? Do Sue and Karen own them now, and how did they receive it?
Monyee: Yeah, they were gifted to them. We wanted to both honor them as well as give them these pieces. Right now the pieces are actually at the Wing Luke Museum in an exhibit on elders called Hello Auntie, Hello Uncle, which is going on until February 23, 2025. They’re going to be there for a year and then they’ll go to Auntie Karen and Auntie Sue after that.
Nina: I’ll have to go and check it out. I’m curious about your recent project at the Tacoma Art Museum which is opening soon and is on view until 2027. Could you talk about that?
Monyee: The show is called reFrame: Haub Family Collection of Western American Art, in reference to a collection of art at the Tacoma Art Museum with a very colonial perspective of Western expansion. So the Tacoma Art Museum invited all of these curators of color to respond to some of the works. Lele Barnett reached out to me, alongside Zhi Lin, to respond to these Mian Situ paintings that were a part of the Haub collection.
I have been interested in exploring the history of transcontinental railroad workers, so that’s what was cultivated in this project. There is a mural that consists of two walls that highlight the Chinese relationship with the Pacific Ocean, as well as the goddesses Mazu and Guanyin that carried them across. It was really important to me to bring those goddesses in because in one of the records a white person had written about these Chinese workers that “build altars wherever they are,” so that’s a big part of why those goddesses are there.
When you both enter and exit the exhibition, the mural of the ocean that I created is there. So this idea of crossing the Pacific Ocean is a big part of the layout of the work. There’s a lot of symbolism as well acknowledging the fact that the Tacoma Art Museum is on Pacific Avenue, which is the very street that Chinese residents of Tacoma were marched out of during the Chinese expulsion of 1885. The Tacoma Art Museum building itself, designed by Olson Kundig, also has a railroad feature in front of the windows. All of these aspects tie into the mural. Currently, Pacific Avenue has the link light rail which is a source of a lot of community issues and conversations, as public transportation is something that has continually been used to cut through communities of color.So there’s a lot of symbolism and layers to the work.
Of Salt and Altars (right wall), 2024. Tacoma, WA, US. latex paint and wood. Mural honoring Chinese Railroad workers and Guanyin. Photo courtesy of Monyee Chau.
Of Salt and Altars (right wall), 2024. Tacoma, WA, US. latex paint and wood. Mural honoring the journey of Chinese Railroad workers, depicting Goddess Mazu. Photo courtesy of Monyee Chau.
Of Salt and Altars (right wall), 2024. Tacoma, WA, US. acrylic paint and wood. Close up of mural honoring the journey of Chinese Railroad workers, depicting Goddess Mazu. Photo courtesy of Monyee Chau.
Nina: Wow, that’s so cool. Did a lot of those ideas come out of the research or did you have a strong idea going into the project of what you wanted to do?
Monyee: I think a lot of it was being able to see the space itself and what I was able to work with in the environment, like being able to look at that pathway that Chinese residents were marched out on running parallel with the mural. A lot of the information that I found came from the book Ghost of Gold Mountain by Gordon H. Chang. And understanding all of these details with the altars and with the goddesses.
I had learned that hundreds of thousands of letters went between the US and Asia across the Pacific during that time of heightened anti-Asian rhetoric and Chinese expulsion, yet we have absolutely no record of any of them due to the destruction and pillaging of Chinese property. So in the mural you can also see these letters that sort of fly across the sky.
I also found a record of Cantonese folk songs, sung by immigrants who had crossed the Pacific, and their wives and children’s songs about their fathers and husbands going across the water. I think about the way the ocean is so magical and holds all of these songs as well as all these lost souls of people thrown overboard. It gives me chills to think about.
I thought it was really incredible that there was this record of all of these songs. Actually, this weekend I’m bringing some other friends who are also of Southern Chinese descent to go and write more of those folk songs along the lines of the ocean in the mural which I feel is a really special aspect of the piece.
Nina: That’s amazing. It sounds like you do a lot of combining spirituality along with historical research in your work. What does it mean for you to combine those?
Monyee: Those are really important aspects of my own personal life. That’s how it comes out into the work itself because that’s the way that I can process things and also process really heavy topics and conversations. Being able to bring in all of those aspects feels really healing to me.
I get really interested in stories of spirituality or mythology, so I was excited to learn about the story of Mazu, who is a young, epileptic girl who had visions during seizures. During a seizure of hers, she appeared over the water in front of her brother and father guiding them out of a storm into safety. Thus, she began to be known as a protector of seafarers. I think those little things that you get to learn about are always really exciting. I think that’s why it finds its way into my work. I really enjoy overlaying all of those considerations when I work on a piece.
This is the first time that spirituality has been so straightforward in my work. I’m really enjoying it. And I also think it helps me understand what that experience might have been like for Chinese immigrants.
My family on both sides has also been very spiritual. Both sides of my family are Buddhist. As a kid I felt very distant or not incredibly understanding of it. Being with Jae has sort helped me nourish that part of myself more, which is playing a huge part in the work of me trying to understand my ancestors a little bit better.
So, it’s a newer practice, but it’s something that I feel excited to explore more.
Nina: What kind of spiritual imagery are you particularly excited about in this work?
Monyee: In the mural, there are these two groupings of arms and hands all doing different actions that happened with the folks working on the railroad, such as yearning for family, praying, making offerings to deities, or being in a place of solidarity across identities.
Those were based on depictions of the Thousand Arms of Guanyin, who has a thousand arms to offer mercy and compassion to all beings. So I feel like that’s something that has been really fun to bring into different aspects of the work.
Nina: I just love all these elements you’re talking about and how they come together. Is this the largest piece you’ve done?
Monyee: The largest has been our piece for Meta, which was 760 square feet. This one is just 620 square feet. But as the solo creator, it is definitely the largest piece. And I feel like this is one of the proudest works I’ve ever put out into the world.
Nina: I like how you’re like, it’s just 600 something square feet. That’s bigger than my apartment!
Monyee: I had so much help!
Nina: You would need it for sure. I feel like it’s never fun to do a mural or anything large scale on your own. I’m curious about where this project falls in the range of collaboration for you in terms of your other projects.
Monyee: I would say that this project specifically feels like I’m the creator of the work, but so many people came together to make it happen. I had two people, including Jae, help me paint the mural. And then two people who I’m bringing in to add their handwriting and their experiences into the mural. So if I’m to work on more solo projects, this is how I would like it to happen moving forward. Always having community input or letting the community have their hand in the work itself.
You’re never truly wanting to be just you in the studio. There’s always some component at some point for people to come into the project. I feel like that’s how all work is created too, right? Nothing that I create is solely from my own self. There’s always people that bring in so many different aspects or inspire me. And so I feel like it would be wrong of me to say that anything I create is only ever my own voice.
Monyee and Jae Eun standing in front of Of Salt and Altars (left wall), 2024. Tacoma WA US. Photo by So’le Celestial.
Nina: That’s beautiful. That definitely describes what it’s like to be an artist for real. Nothing is really truly just you.
Monyee: You’re always going to be a mosaic of all the people and thoughts and research and conversations that you have.
Monyee Chau (they/them) is an artist based on unceded Coast Salish land, and has graduated with a BFA from Cornish College of the Arts in 2018. They explore a journey of personal and collective healing through their lens as a queer Taiwanese/Chinese American, believing in the power of storytelling and breaking bread as a means of community building for the path to justice and liberation. Monyee’s work spans across mediums to speak to the multitude of themes of labor, diaspora, and collective community care.
They’ve exhibited in museums and galleries locally and internationally, including the Wing Luke Museum, Museum of Northwest Art, Mori Art Museum, and Copelouzos Museum. They have spoken at institutions such as Harvard Graduate school of Design, New York University, and the University of Washington. They have been awarded as one of the 100 Changemakers by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and of the 100 Taiwanese Americans, and rewarded the 2021 Arc Artist Fellowship. Their work is in collections such as the Museum of History and Industry, New York University, and Center for the Study of Political Graphics.
Nina Vichayapai (she/her) Nina Vichayapai is an artist who orients her belonging somewhere between the United States, where she lives, and Thailand, where she was born. Her relationship to the many disparate places that forged her sense of home has resulted in her interest in excavating the globalized world around her for signs and representations of belonging. Her interdisciplinary art practice weaves textiles, social practice, and placemaking as tools to explore these subjects. She graduated from the California College of the Arts with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in 2017 and is currently pursuing a Master of Fine Arts in the Art and Social Practice program at Portland State University.
