VANESSA HOLYOAK

GM: How do you think society should steer conversations about diversity and safety beyond the #StopAsianHate Movement?

VH: Though I’m not a super active social media person, the idealist in me wants to believe that [the hashtag] would continue to have a positive ripple effect, but I do think there’s a lot of empty virtue signaling that goes on because of the ease with which one can regurgitate a hashtag without actually reflecting on the deeper structural issues that the initial message is calling for. That’s one of the dangers, this tendency to make virtue signaling without structural change really easy. We can’t settle for these easy, band-aid solutions that are often just really performative and don’t go further than skindeep in a lot of cases. You haven’t done the work if you’ve only shared the hashtag. You need to actually do the work, and that’s what will count. I think that work can happen or at least begin through education and exposure to diverse perspectives, through tough and empowering conversations, and through listening.

GM: What are you currently working on in your practice?

VH: A lot of my installation practice is now as an artist-duo with my partner, Antoine. We have a two-person show coming up in May at Au Pair in the Bendix Building, a space run by the artist Jason Burgess I'm also performing at Monte Vista Projects as part of the one-night show Irrational Exhibits, a durational performance event organized by Deborah Oliver, on May 27. My book is also coming out in May, so it’s going to be a crazy month (Laughs). We have another show at LA Art Core in Little Tokyo that’s opening in mid-August and will run through mid-September. For both of those shows, we’re going to be developing projects that were born out of different residencies that we had the opportunity to attend in recent years, as society begun to emerge from COVID. We went to Scotland in 2021 to attend this residency called Cove Park in the Scottish Highlands, and have been working on a new photo-based project born out of our time there. At Au Pair, we’re developing a project we started last year during a residency in Mexico City at a space called Casa Lü. I’m excited to have the opportunity to see these projects through!