ENVIRONMENT MAKING Malaya Malandro on Collaboration

INTERVIEWED BY EMMA CHRIST

Created by Francis Kanai and Malaya Malandro, Everything Is a Self-Portrait is a collection of photographs and poetry produced from years of phone calls and emails between their respective homes in Japan and the US. More than a simple display of two artists’ works, the book is a glimpse into a larger conversation— one that is ongoing. While the book is separated into sections by medium, the visual and written work is fluid. In fact, it’s not even clear there are two artists until you turn to the final page. Kanai and Malandro have formed a shared language, reflecting one another in their work. The result is a beautifully rendered book that allows readers to be voyeurs to their conversations about the world. I had the pleasure of sitting down with Malandro to speak about the book and the process behind it. The following are excerpts from our discussion.

CHRIST: How did you and your collaborator, Francis, meet?

MALANDRO: Through mutual friends on a strange but fated visit to Japan almost seven years ago now. We’ve stayed in touch and fostered this friendship. Our similar, or really complementing, philosophies made fertile soil for a synergetic, creative partnership.

How did this project begin?

We began talking about working together in late 2019, early 2020—exchanging phone calls and texts about things that interested us. Originally, we just had the desire to work on a project together, but we didn’t have an endpoint in mind. We didn’t know it would be a book. We were just communicating. One of us would say something like, “Oh, I’ve been thinking about

7-Elevens recently,” and then for the next few weeks we’d just be responding to that idea. Through all these conversations I guess we began building these bodies of work, just amassing materials from archival to new work. We were digging through a mass.

When we first met, you were introduced to me as a visual artist. Why this shift to writing, or at least for this project?

I’ve always written poetry, but it was my first time sharing this part of my practice. I think visual or written, there is a sense of time, embodied time—a physical feeling I’m drawn to. With poetry, I feel like I can explore this embodied time and open it up to the creation of environment. Environment making?

I like that phrase, “environment making.” You can see it in the book. You set a scene that is reflected in these photos. I know it wasn’t intentional that you two did that; there was something there, a shared notion. I think the benefit of having those conversations was that it brought a natural affinity for one another, an affinity for one another’s work and what you’re creating. I think there was an unintentional intention—like where perhaps you don’t hear the music and dance anyway. And when it starts playing somehow the choreography matches up; that our work reflects a similar spirit or ghost that haunts the world, guards the world, has visited both of us and that visit is reflected in the sensibilities in our practice. Maybe! I think we do see each other in our work. In Everything is a Self-Portrait, there is that sense of recognition, that what you see, or maybe better how you see, is your reflection—a portrait you’ve made.