The following is the complete edited transcript of an artist interview of Xochi Solis that I conducted during September 2022.
Gina Dominique (GD): Okay, so we'll, we'll jump right in. Things may come up about your life story because I’ll start with the first question…is there an autobiographical component or motivation or inspiration for your work? It could be underlying, or it could be more literal…
Xochi Solis (XS): Yeah, I think my practice and my process has developed over the years, and I definitely have better understanding of how the process of my creating these layered collages works. You know we just talked about it briefly, is like me being able to better understand the complexity of my both physical and cultural, and my place in the world.
I was born and raised here in Austin, as was my mother. My maternal grandparents immigrated here from Northern Mexico, which is a state north of Mexico City. My father grew up in West Texas, and his family is also from Northern Mexico. Durango is the state, and isn't very far away from here proximity wise…the line is defined by this imaginary border or an imaginary line that exists in people's minds differently, especially throughout time, especially currently… in…the concept of a border, which is political.
… It is always shifting, and you know it wasn't too long ago that people were crossing very fluidly through the southern border. And they still do in some ways… to work, to access um medical resources, to access other resources. So, that fluidity, the borderlands that we exist in here in the Southwest, and those of us who have ancestral routes and heritage on one side or the other, and in the in-between space. That kind of gets layered and discombobulated in our minds… as children within that process.
So, for me, working in layers, and in collage, and specifically with found images… with paper ephemera, printed media in general, is a way for me to siphon through this…to find myself within it…to create a narrative of myself within these abstract collages. And, working on several exhibitions, most notably, the group exhibition at the Denver Art Museum in 2017…
GD: What work did you have in that one?
XS: Collage work. It was a show of artists who I actually recently reunited with. This is an exhibition that just opened last week in New Mexico. We're in one of the larger museums, in a show of specifically Latinx artists. Both are places where I am being asked very pointed questions about how I perceive my work…and if it is as an extension of my cultural identity and my ethnic identity.
The Denver show was an eighteen month long commission process. So, it gave me a lot of time to work really with the curators. Since, it’s been five or six years, and I have really become more aware and conscious, as I like put words to my practice… there's are a lot of intersections…between color and shape and form, and raw materials… old books and magazines…but in so working with ephemera that speaks or has images, or a visual identity, is just one aspect of it.
GD: …You have come to understand this by doing the work, and especially by exhibiting it? Are you saying that you've come to understand your work as abstracted self-portraits? Is that a fair statement, or it is an element of what you're telling me?
XS: Yeah, that's it. I think like using these key museum shows, the that I was in in Denver, and the one that I just opened in the New Mexico State University Museum… there that are specific-to-Latinx-artists, with Mexican or South American or Caribbean culture heritage, connections. To get to interact with people that are looking at your work that have similar shared experience is just really beautiful.
And there's a lot more things that I’m not able to vocalize, but by looking at color and form…that’s a conversation that I can have… I went to school for art, and it's a formalist, strictly formalist conversation, which I equally enjoy… So, to the question you asked, what in my work is autobiographical?… these are the opportunities that are really special to me.
It wasn't until my adult life that I really got to talk about my cultural identity. I am a child of the eighties, and we are told that we're all the same… that nobody sees color. Nobody is different from one another, when we know how harmful that can be… to not be able to celebrate our differences, and to be able to, like, you know, flourish in our own nuance, right?
So, it wasn't really until… after school, after my college education, and during my career that I really got to dive into these topics. And, it was because of exhibitions, curators, and having those connections, which let me take my guard down. I didn't necessarily have to code switch so much. What do you want to hear about…why I’m really making this work?
GD: Yes. So, you touched on this a little bit, and I just want to give you, if you want to follow up on it…what is the evidence of that in your work? You've talked about the layering, and could you just go a little bit deeper into some examples of how color does or doesn't necessarily relate to formalist vernacular of color theory. You’re definitely aware now of the sort of autobiographical element of color. Will you talk about that, or where you find the ephemera? How and what can you point to in the work that is part of that autobiographical element?
XS: Well, I’m really drawn to nature. I grew up in my family home, and now my husband and I are renovating our home, and so we can't live there while it's being renovated. So, we have a studio space, and, I’m living in my family home as a forty one year old. It’s very interesting being here, you know, on an acre of land, in the hill country of Texas.
We are a little bit outside of Austin…on land with three miniature donkeys, and chickens, and giant live oak trees. And really it's sort of an isolated experience from an urban environment. And this is where I grew up. And so being here, albeit very strange for a variety of reasons, since I grew up here, and in a tree house that’s still here.
My mother has an incredible green thumb, and you my sister and I grew up in mostly a childless street, so like we played outside all the time with one another. Also, just like outside all the time, and so really I’m drawn to biomorphic shapes… it’s like a meditation, for me on this very satisfying shape. It's reflected in different aspects of nature. The color and form of nature, and those observations are always going to be the first thing that I know.
GD: This specific organic shape you're talking about shape so interesting.
XS: And the particular color I’m using, like the greens, and then the natural organic colors that
can be subdued if you're just looking at the forest. It is all green, but when you really start to look, when you do a careful study, you see shades of green, shades of brown, and shades of colors within these colors… are nature.
This land will always be my first, and favorite place to look for color and form inspiration. And then taking that lens, and using it as I’m looking through books and magazines, or paper for these moments within the photographic surface… these nuanced greens. But if you really look through the printing process, this is like blacks mixed with blue… I am loving the raw material of the found ephemera. The paper and glossy magazines, and books that are in somebody's gross basement, and in a state sale… I love the material nature of paper.
I studied painting in school, and so paint is always still a part of the process, a part of all of my compositions. I just love pigments, and, again the material nature of that. But then I started using paint on mylar… a clear acetate.
GD: Are you using acrylics on those?
XS: yeah, I use acrylics, and some washes. If I want… more of a matte finish, which is durable, but also a little bit more delicate. And those are the tools of making gestures, the brushes give me that satisfaction of moving paint around, which is what painting is… I love that part, too.
I usually use just one color per layer of paint. I’m really most interested in the process, for me, I create from all of these materials, different sections of my work, and that process of composing it…putting it together…the picking and choosing. So, there'll be a day where I’m just like painting on plastic and have music on…and really getting into the energy of using that particular medium.
And then the next day, it'll just be like ripping pages out of books or magazines, or even the process of going to estate sales, and looking for books and magazines. That's more of a literal collection. You know the books and magazines that I look for are more literal a lot of times.
GD: You mean you pull them into you abstract world?
XS: Exactly, I pull them into a relationship to a color palette that I’m using… or if it's a more thematic a project that I’m working on, it becomes the more fixed and literal within the layers of my collage. If that makes sense.
GD: It does. I did my uh BFA in painting and drawing at Carnegie Mellon, then I went to the Corcoran College… then I got married, had a baby, and we lived in Seattle for years six years. Then I moved to New Mexico to do my MFA. I did that in print making and art history at the University of New Mexico and Albuquerque.
So, there are many connections I have to your work… because of the paint, the combination of painting and printmaking, and due to your palette...so, I feel connected to many different things in your work. And what you're saying just brings it that much more to life for me.
I want to ask a question about you existing in this space that that you're in now, in your adult life, and not just making work, but exhibiting too. Are you're more aware of…how did you refer to it…as a kind of fluid border? There's a fluidity in the border… and then you also mentioned in between.
There's this in-between, I mean part of my underlying theory…I also avoid the word ‘liminal.’ I don't know why, maybe because it seems pretentious or something, but I honestly, like at the deepest levels, I feel like, as a female, as an assimilated white person in this generation, which you know, my ancestors were not white, not considered white, not treated as white.
XS: … I exist in this liminal world, and I cannot be alone here. Like a significant part of the population is here. I am first generation American. My father’s father is Austrian, and his mother was Spanish, and they came in the sixties to teach at university. He is a white man, but he spent most of his time, our time, in a Spanish speaking home. We never spoke English
I went to Spain like for three or four months out of the year. As soon as school was over here, I would go and be with my cousins in Spain, and I just feel like a weirdo in the United States…and I thought, ‘what's that all about?’… a factor is my skin color, another is my name, which keeps me more obviously separated too.
My husband’s name is George Right. It translates in many languages right because he is of many different cultures… I find him to be a such great partner and conversationalist… in my parents' generation, and more specifically in my grandparents generation, when they immigrated here… You came to this country, and you made a choice to be here, not there, and like it wasn't that you could keep going back and forth…we're not that close to the border…maybe four or five hours away for the border. So that's not an everyday presence for us…
The borders there, and we can cross whenever we want like. It's near, but not near enough that it's a daily reality… Well, I left there, and I’m here, and my grandfather never went back. I mean he immigrated when he was four, and he never went back to Mexico. And he didn't teach his children Spanish. And it was just very much like there is no going back… only forward…
GD: Well, it's just how it happens right. One of my maternal grandfather's... same thing, I mean, he came when he was like seventeen, with his older brother, who was maybe nineteen or twenty, but nonetheless they just never went back. And he then married my grandmother, and they had five kids, and none of them speak Italian. They understand it because he would speak it to his brother and various other relatives; but they weren't ever encouraged to speak it.
XS: So, if you're passing as white, or…part of a different community, that's more acceptable, then you just keep that going because it's safer. And so... I have definitely come to terms and… I think there are moments where you know you oscillate between being angry at not having this huge like benefit…. it's still going to be part of you…(it’s) your ancestral knowledge, at the core of your body…the way the food you enjoy and love. The taste of these things. It's part of you whether it's like overtly seen by others. It’s a gift given, passed along.
I like to think more about the nuance and fluidity now, and especially when I talk to you. You know students and folks that are younger than me, that I’m in conversation with about my work or my practice… That's not a chapter, and that's not a book that's closed. It can still be open, and a reference to us right.
Well, I think that's an advantage of not being fully assimilated, being able to hang onto my liminality… But I’m one generation after, you know, like my mother, uh my mother's experience, because your grandparents are the ones who immigrated.
GD: Yeah, same with me, some of my grandparents and some of my great grands immigrated here (several from Italy, and one from Eastern Europe.)
XS: But in any case, somehow, and I don't know how, maybe because the border is still alive, still active, and this is still happening. So, I mean, I just think it's a great advantage. It might be a ridiculous perspective. It just seems to me like it's still alive, and again, that liminality means I’m able to think more creatively or, solve a problem.
These things can exist at the same time, whereas… maybe the way people's brains… analyze…the world is different. I’m able to hold space for… imaginary realities. So…having a different perspective, or a different language is a tool…and it’s your life’s journey to figure out what tool you want to use at any given time. And, don't discount that…some have the potential for being powerful or life changing…
GD: … Do you see your painting, or your collages, or installation pieces as continuing and existing art historical, or abstract genre, or even as part of a specific cultural painting tradition? Do you want to add to anything to what you've already said?
XS: … I just have a BFA, and I also worked at the University of Texas for eight years, as an art administrator…I was director of public programming for an art space at University of Texas, Austin’s Art Department. So, for years after I graduated, I worked with professors that used to be my professors. So, I was in an academia…as a young person. There were maybe one or two other Latinas in my courses…and we never talked about our cultural identity. That was never part… of the work that we made.
I remember there was a print maker… and she was uh she was Mexican American faculty member. I don't know if she was an Adjunct or an Associate Professor… there were very few at that time, tenured women professors in studio art. She was using print making techniques that she learned….a Mexican print maker is fairly popular… she was tapping into that. And, the other faculty members like made fun of her, or discounted her as being like a real. They viewed her more as if she was making folk art… versus like fine art, which was…something to the end of fucking time that people want to talk about…the difference between folk art and self-taught artists… as if…there is an aesthetic difference. But I remember thinking… that it's… real art, you know.
GD: And did you study with her or no?
XS: … I didn’t steer clear because I was enrolled in whatever small offerings or history courses that were related to Chicano art or Latin American art. So, I was really tapped in… I’m not a printmaker, but I love print matter… I was eighteen or nineteen, and I remember hearing ‘don't associate with her.’ I mean faculty can be dicks. They're mostly dudes in my area, and they were just mean sometimes. So, I was just told, well, don't reference anything that has to do with your cultural identity. Because if it's not like European, it’s not real.
So, it really took me a lot… many people… in programs, in institutions that are still continuing to uphold that kind of thought. You have to reprogram yourself afterwards… I put myself through college with student loans and working. So, I never went to grad school, and ended up being just fine without it. In my particular instance, because I’m still paying off my student loans, and the Government may or may not choose to void it.
GD: It took me until age fifty, or fifty one. Now I’m sixty, and I look back, and I was just so done with it. I had been doing it for decades, and what I did was I emptied my retirement account to pay it off because I thought, I can't do this for the rest of my career. It is going to make me crazy. So that's what I did… probably unwise, but I needed to. And, I had a huge sense of relief and gratitude that I did it.
XS: Yeah, I'm with that… I feel you on this too, pretty much every step of the way so far. It's going to bring more light into this, I mean, I swear my room is lighter… The sun changed a little or something. So, I put myself through school. But it was the only opportunity that I had during that period of time. Because I had financial aid, I studied in Italy for a semester, and in Tuscany for another. Then, during my last semester, when I was supposed to graduate, I still wanted to travel. And I didn't think that I’d be able to afford it. You know, I don't have any rich and or uncles that are going to give me a free trip somewhere after I graduate.
So, I did a residency, in an exchange program in Mexico City. So, I was there my last semester, and I studied Spanish. Then because I learned Spanish as an adult, I’ll never be a native speaker, but, I had exposure to more than to one Mexican artist while I was there. To more than just Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo, who we're heavily promoted in the United States…
My parents didn't even really want me to go. They thought I ought to connect to some other city. They wanted me to go to one that's a little safer. But I wanted to go there, and said, I’m ready, you know… Of course I was scared, but I was so excited. It’s a colorful place. So, I went, and I got such an education there, both in color, and in history. It meant a lot being somewhere that I cared so much about. It's an important part of my family’s culture and history.
And then also, just like the weird mishmash of… Spanish and… all the influences there… a big Jewish population, a Japanese population, and I mean like it was just such a mish mash…
I went to Rome too. So, very briefly, I lived in Rome. Then I went to Mexico City… I lived there, in Mexico City, for four or five months, before I went to New York. I was like, ‘oh this place is tiny. It's like bustling, and it has its own stuff going on.’ But I was like, ‘it is not Mexico City…’ So, I really continued to study art history from a different perspective… from where I’m from, and from who I am. I guess I don't know if that makes sense totally.
GD: Yes. And since you discussed Mexico City, and having lived there for a short time, are you aware of some specific influence… maybe you were reminded by being back in your childhood home, and being so aware of the nature, of the organic shapes, and organic natural color palette there, or, can you see anything from either Mexican Art History, or Mexico City, or from that time in your life that shows up in some specific ways in your work now?
XS: … I lived there in 2004 for just a few months. At that time, I collected books and magazines… I was collecting them, and not knowing what I was going to do with them. That’s when I started with the… books and magazines that specifically spoke to tourists… I was… trying to learn about myself through these books written for tourists because I thought they were talking about that kind of in-between spaces. They were helpful for me to learn about my own history, which I was not taught before.
But, I was also seeing myself reflected in the images of the people, you know, either the facial features, or a person's coloring… and I saw myself in the food… and in things that were on the pages of the books and magazines. I’d think, ‘that's me.’ Not wanting to be a voracious collector of things, but, because it just made me feel closer to understanding or unlocking something about myself and my family, and my place in the world, I did start collecting these cheesy tourist pamphlets and things like that. So, that's kind of where it started.
And then I really moved fully into collage after I graduated, because of the lack of access to the resources, since I didn't have financial aid anymore to pay for my supplies. But I was fortunate to get a studio space that I actually just moved out of. So, from 2005 to last year (2021) I had the same studio space. It wasn't huge, but I was working in collage, which was really a means for me to be able to continue to afford materials… I use house paint, more to access resources that help me tell the story that I want to tell through my abstract collages. But yeah, it's collecting those particular books and magazines that kind of started me on this road.
…I remember bringing back bundles of paper, and handful of magazines and books. And I just didn't know what I was going to do with them. And it snowballed from there. I have too many books, and as someone that just had to pack up my studio a year ago… until my house is finished.
GD: Do you ever think about color studies, formal color theory, or informally, maybe things from your childhood home and those surrounding colors. If so, do you ever think about it in relationship to your work?... Have you considered that it could be more inclusive of other voices, even those that were previously omitted from the canon? … back to the cultural aspect and specifically about color, and this liminality or fluidity existing in in-between spaces… you could have developed your own color theory.
XS: I mean, I think, in a way I do. But, you know something that I haven't mentioned yet was that my mother was a graphic designer. And, she also went to the University of Texas, Austin.
GD: … in the same department? …
XS: Yes. She was a graphic designer in the eighties and nineties, and that's like old school, before Photoshop.
GD: And are you coming to some kind of understanding of you and your work in a relationship to hers? It seems like it is maybe a corner puzzle piece of a large square puzzle. I mean, it's a big, important piece.
XS: Parents that are artists, or if you have a parent that's an artist, and you are too, (then) you are very distinct from them… they make things, and I make things, and they're different. But, yeah, it is a corner puzzle piece… just the fact that my mother was an artist. She was a graphic designer, and now she does stone carving, which is a whole other pivot, right?
But she's always been an artist… she’s always studied art. And so, being an artist too, was never like a radical concept. I wasn't like breaking anything. Nobody was disappointed in me for studying art. And… especially in a lot Mexican families… like mine, they ask, ‘What are you going to do?’ I mean, ‘what are you going to do with your art degree?’… And I’m very thankful that there was no ceiling as far as how I could use my creativity.
… I think that is where I really first started thinking about color… when… as a child, I was raised with a language that I really understood. It was just around me, all the time. I was like piecing together my own little art projects from materials that my mother had and used in her practice as a graphic designer. I don't think there was ever a moment where I was sat down, and told what color was.
GD: So, it was an intuitive knowledge because you'd been working with it through your mom's materials and design language?
XS: But, I love working with it, and being seen as an artist that uses color in more formal ways. What kind of pleasure that people receive, or is evoked by my work, and through these colors. They're just so pleasing. Or there's something like, you know, even in the gross browns. There's something very satisfying, and maybe pleasurable for people. And because most people who read these compositions like the shape of this, or like the repeated ovals, but the colors are what really hit people. It brings them…from these materials in the collages, like this painting or the paint itself, into an atmosphere… right?
…I love going to Mexico, I mean, like the city there is not just a boring, gray colored place, but it's painted… now it's true in my household too. Like every wall is a different color. And I really like embracing that construction of our environment, and our physical and architectural spaces.
And so, when thinking about…wall installations… I love site specific works… I ask myself, ‘how does this color shape the envelop for you as a viewer? And, what's the relationship to your body?’ And, if I can make larger pieces, a lot of the time… I kind of like doing all sizes…it's no too hard for me to scale up or down.
GD: I'm the same… So, the last question…Does philosophy of art, or aesthetics, or any kind of philosophy, phenomenology, either formally in terms of academic philosophy, or simply your own worldview… similar to Andy Warhol, who wrote ‘The Philosophy of Andy Warhol, from a to be back again,’ live in your work? And you can go anywhere with that.
XS: I mean, …I am like very curious about ways in which artists also have social responsibility. For, like a creative person that lives in the world, and interacts with other people, and lives with other people, is that activism or no? I mean, I don't think that there is a way to be cleanly removed from our environmental or political world.
…If you're you are a producer of our objects… I mean, I’m a visual artist, that's my full time thing. That's what I do. I'm also a vinyl DJ, and part of a collective. So culturally, which is, as a women of color, as an artist, and as a DJ, in the collective, I would say that's where I activate that space… with other folks. We share collections that have cultural reference, and cultural connections to ourselves, and our own politics… we're sharing things that brings us satisfaction, joy, and, we're creating a space for others to enjoy too.
GD: It's really social and participatory, and also back to the environment, too. I mean, in that way, maybe relates directly to your visual work…
XS: Yeah, and also, right now, I’m a board member of a nonprofit organization based in Austin. And, basically, it's a group of us that works towards providing resources and opportunities for women and queer creatives and entrepreneurs in creative learning spaces…we help them resource financial support, and things like that. It is specifically for women and queer folks in technology in Central Texas and Texas. And, in general, because we're the only nonprofit in Texas that's specifically geared towards creative women and queer folks in our mission and vision, there are social aspects about that that are very much a part of my practice.
But I am always going to be a visual artist, and I wonder, how I can create spaces for folks… in multi-generational or intergenerational relationships? I’m on the older end of some of the creatives that I work with. A lot of the people that we work with, and support are in their early twenties, or maybe just turning thirty. And they are freaking out. I'm like, it's really fine… I'm forty one. I may have gone to school, and had a career at a university doing curation, but like, I'm a still a curious citizen of the world… that's what keeps me feeling energetic about making my own work. It’s private and maybe done in isolation compared to this outward facing work that I do with the organization.
And, in relationship to the outward facing performance stuff that I do, which, really is the Vinyl Club, in thinking about my role as an artist, and being visible as a woman of color with a particular nuanced story to tell, to be part of the chorus of what's going on in Texas, you know…It's cringy for others when I start the conversation.
It's complicated, but like I feel like, the best prepared is somebody who is multi-cultural. I feel very prepared to be able to talk about the nuance, and how things can get complicated, because that’s what I've become comfortable with. It’s my own experience, and to be in support of other artists and other creatives that are figuring that stuff out is really important to me in my practice.
I don't think that I can separate them very easily…I don't know if I would make work that I’m as satisfied with if I didn't have these other outlets, or other connections to community, to conversation, to curiosity. When I sit down and think about the materials, and like what I’m trying to express, either with color, like that sensation, or by being informed by these experiences with community, with other people who are also trying to be curious and figure out their place, especially in a state that maybe is not open to diversity of thought, and/or always has accessible resources, for you know, inequity, and things like that, like it helps me feel more grounded.
In my practice, for my self-worth, I think it's important to keep making work and keep presenting myself as being present in an art world that isn't just made up of, like, you know, white guys…
GD: It is a social practice…
XS: Yeah, because I explained my experience as like a two year old, a nineteen year old, and I did not have these opportunities. I took me a long time to like, really unpack some of these things, and I think like, yes, I’m paying it forward. But also… anything's possible if you have the support. You need other people, right? Like you can't do it all by yourself…and then maybe that's the activist part… like my understanding of activism.
Um is like, you know, we're much stronger when we're together, and if I can be by your side in some way, like, even if it's, I don't know you at all, but like if you find support, and knowing that I exist, and I'm like doing my best living, then, like maybe that is enough support to have you feel like there's a place for you, that you're part of the conversation…
GD: Yes, that’s beautiful.…A really truly lived practice of your worldview, and a lot about inclusivity, and being... maybe you said it... a community member.
XS: Yeah, like the we are together living, working, you know, I mean I think it also comes with like a measured heartbreak. Because…we talk about this a lot in the organization, the nonprofit I'm part of. You're drawn to that kind of service because of this altruistic vision of like, what the world is, or it could be. And that always comes with like a little bit of disappointment, if not sometimes like the crushing blow.
But, you're not doing it alone, and I think… the best advice I ever got from a teacher, a professor…was you get to choose what kind of artists you want to be. And you know, I really, when I was a student, really tried to seek out professors of color because there were so few of them… Not until I started working at the University, and like really became more aware. To be in that space, where there's like maybe one or two… So that piece of advice came from a professor my name, Michael Ray Charles. He was very in demand when I was a student. He had just done art direction for the Spike Jones movie ‘Bamboozled.’ So, he was like me.
GD: Do you mean Spike Lee?
XS: Yes, and I had an independent study with him. And when he would show up, he was usually just eating lunch, and talking to me about the world, and not much about my work, which is fine, because, those things serve me more, and that made me cleverer about operating, right? But he was like, you get to choose what kind of artist you want to be. Don't get frustrated about it because you're twenty. You're frustrated about everything…that really sticks with me.
Because every time I’m presented with an opportunity, or a commission or something, I'm like, Okay, you're making a choice. What choice do you want to make? And that really is empowering instead of taking what's given to me because of my station in life, or, like whatever. I think, oh, no, I’m being given a choice, and I get to choose, and that's great.
GD: Yeah, it allows for empowerment. One more thing, just to conclude…I want to go back to something that you said when you were talking about your philosophy, your worldview, which was, how you really practice it in these more social settings with other creatives, both in the vinyl DJ work, and also then on the board of the nonprofit, where you make available resources to queer, and women of color… You said how integral they are to your own practice, your own private studio practice. And, I wonder, when you talked about going to Mexico being the time when you started collecting ephemera and books, and the kind of imagery or materials that I use in my work. What specifically, or is there a specific physical something that you bring to your work that integral to your studio work. Can you just … reiterate?
XS: ...Six, maybe seven years ago, I started doing both the work with Juliet, the Vinyl Club, and also Future Front Texas. Before that I was also part of a collective, and artist run art space in Austin. I was the longest standing women artists, and the only brown person in the collective… I just became really frustrated, and that was really affecting the work that I was making.
And because I was really frustrated because I didn't see myself reflected in the space, or my opinion, or my perspective, or my worldview being… valued, but also, (being) received… like it was, I was got a lot of gas lighting… I was… feeling just very depressed… where I was creatively at that time. Because I was giving a lot of space, because I was also at the University at that time, because I have a lot of skills that I value, and I also have a world view that's very different than yours… and I want to be able to talk about it… I was gas lit out of there.
Well, that's not important…that's not what we do…we're just looking for good work, and you know (they were) cringing and stuff. And condescending, and I was feeling really deeply affected… I felt where my voice was going creatively, and in my work, I was confused. I was not wanting to be heard in this one space, where I was actively giving my time to create an art space. I was also making work...I was confused.
GD: So, while I get what you're saying, we don't necessarily see it in terms of color or shape, or in specific materials or patterns or prints that you make, but we may feel it energetically? Are you saying that you're fed by your work, and that sustains you… that your studio practice supports you?
XS: I honed those skills over seventeen years that I've been working, and still do work in the arts administration and the like… So, at this point it's a light lift for me to be able to offer that service as a board member for this organization. Or, to offer that kind of organizational skill to be a booking manager of our DJ crew. But, what I’m benefiting from, what is very grounding, and enables me to feel like the world is not trash, like my voice is valued because it gives me a point from which I can make work and feel safe, and able to express myself… like I’m not alone, like I am rooted in potential, and like my work is important, like my voice is important… this is what keeps us all moving forward…wherever we decide to pour our energies into… that is the hope and potential that we have an impact…that we're going to be remembered.
You know, all the things that make us human. It's like you need to feel safe and grounded, and on good days, rested. In those spaces where I offer my skills that I've already honed over the years. What I received from those spaces is the ability to feel like I’m working within a world where I’m important and valuable.
GD: It's beautiful. Thank you so much. You were really generous with your time, and with what you shared. I loved meeting you.
XS: Thank you so much. Well, if you have any more questions, let me know.
