A Femme-Safe Place Cecilia Vicuñas Purpose for Art

alianna kendall-brooks Correspondent

A smooth and funky baseline echoed off the green walls of NC State’s Digital Media Lab last Thursday as students listened to “Boogie Oogie Oogie” by A Taste of Honey. University Library Specialist and 2020 NC State alum Tim Mensa shared how the iconic female duo has inspired him as a fellow bassist at Femme Beat-Making Night. Maurika Smutherman, a Graduate Extension Assistant and second-year Ph.D. student at State, also shared early-2000’s hits produced by her inspiration none other than Ms. Missy Elliott. The inclusive event hosted by Mensa and Smutherman centered on women and non-binary changemakers in the music industry whilst introducing students to the process of beat-making.

Enticed by the dazzling purple poster that read “Femme Beat-Making Night” on Jan. 26, students began streaming into the Digital Media Lab ready to learn. After a quick listening session of various femme artists, students began talking about the intricacies of music-making and the true meaning behind music production.

Maurika Smutherman: At what point does music making become producing? For example, can Tik Tok mashups be considered producing?”

After a small pause for thought, we shared our opinions on the controversies surrounding the art of sampling. At what point can you chop a sample enough for it to be an original production and do animal crossing mashups on Tik Tok constitute authentic music production? We arrived at the consensus that most music-making is production but there is a fine line between the two. Regardless, music-making and production are complicated art forms. However, “Femme Beat-Making Night” made it clear that resources exist for those interested.

MS: I feel like it's something anyone can do but not a lot of people venture into it. I'm trying to put myself in the space so I can produce more and also get other people to do it. So many people are interested in it, but don't know they can come in here and get help step-by-step.

Many of the attendees were unaware of the library’s resources or intimidated by a lack of experience, which is what inspired Smutherman and Mensa to host a “Femme Beat-Making Night.” During the event, students learned about the library’s free and accessible software for music production – the most popular programs being Ableton Live and GarageBand. At the far side of the Digital Media Lab, there are four music booths fully equipped for creating music, recording podcasts and editing digital media.

With everything at our fingertips, the event operated similarly to the youtube series Rhythm Roulette by Mass Appeal. The series follows well-known producers, such as WondaGurl, as they pick through vinyl crates and randomly select a few to sample and produce a beat with. However, instead of digging through vinyls, Mensa and Smutherman kept it digital by curating a femme playlist for students to shuffle through. From neo-soul to alternative pop and everything in between, the playlist represented the diverse expressions of femininity in music and accompanied us as we ventured into the booths.

The array of slots, buttons and whistles was intimidating at first, but with help students began experimenting with Ableton Live and GarageBand to create their beats. While my beat definitely won’t be making it to Billboard, Femme Beat-Making Night was an invaluable experience. A door at the back of D.H. Hill’s Learning Commons that once felt closed and intimidating was always open, and it felt more welcoming than ever.

Nubian Message: What inspired you to have a Femme Beat Night?

Tim Mensa: We thought of it in a meeting and we were like yea – why haven’t we done that before?”

NM: Have there been events like this in the Digital Media Lab.

TM, MS: No. We are trendsetters

And trendsetters they are. In many conversations about influential music production, women and non-binary artists are often left out despite their undeniable impact on the industry. How often do we hear about WondaGurl, Missy Elliott or other Black femme producers? According to a report by USC Annenberg in 2021, across 900 popular songs from the past decade, only 2.6% of producers credited were female. Furthermore, according to the Annenberg Inclusion Initiative, only eight out of 1,093 total producing credits went to women of color between 2012 and 2019. The numbers are staggeringly low, but events like “Femme Beat-Making Night” create a femme-safe place for aspiring producers at NC State.

By the 1970s, Vicuña sought asylum in England after the elected president lost his position to a military coup. While in England, Vicuña helped in the formation of Artists for Democracy. An organization designed to create art inspired by the lived experiences under dictatorships.

What is the purpose of art?

Humans find themselves consumed in this perpetual infinity of abstraction. Some assume the purpose of art is to orchestrate some grandiose societal change, others suggest art serves a utilitarian purpose, thus waiting room art is born. Among the vast amounts of ideologies, Cecilia Vicuña gives the world a unique perspective. As an individual who dabbles in film, poetry, painting and sculpting Vicuña presents as a modern artist in every sense of the word.

Raised in Chile, she uses her native heritage as a source of inspiration for her work. In a video interview titled “Decolonizing Myself”, Vicuña recounts a pivotal anecdote in which she realizes an intrinsic tendency towards otherness. After leaving a childhood community of creative minds, Vicuña’s family placed her in a more traditional classroom. Her family placed her in an entirely English-speaking school where she was bullied for struggling with English. She found strength in understanding the outsider's perspective. As a result, Vicuña fell in love with poetry and connected with the natural environment on a deeper level.

By the age of nine, she began to write, framing this gesture as her very first act of decolonization. By fifteen, Vicuña had her own studio where she created many of her earliest works. At the time, abstract paintings were her focus. Using a pallet of bright colors and intricate lines to formulate shapes lay the foundation of skills for her later works. She continued her passions while developing a style that echoed a similar political message to her contemporaries.

The following year she traveled to Bogotá, Colombia. In total, she would spend five years in Colombia honing in on her talents as a poet. Beginning in the art sphere of set design La Corporación Colombiana de Teatro hired Vicuña to create elaborate scenes for shows produced in the theatre. She then developed workshops in the Guambiano Indigenous community— a native population located in Cauca, Colombia. The purpose of those workshops was to collect local art produced by a unique community.

Two years later she directed her first documentary in the streets of Bogotá titled “What is poetry to You?”. That same year, she went to New York City and became a member of a political activist organization devoted to producing feminist art called the Heresies Collective. The following year the Museum of Modern Art asked Vicuná to join in on an exhibition named “Latin American Video."

After this exhibition, Vicuña’s career became a tour of the globe attempting to answer the original, timeless question: what is the purpose of art? Traveling to every corner of the world, she used a wide variety of media forms. Once she became based in New York, she was enveloped in a new world of inspiration. Vicuña used Christian iconography as inspiration for one of her most famous series. Her installation “Santos al Reverso” blends historically famous political icons into a modern portrait of saints collection. This series was exhibited in the Guggenheim Museum in the summer of 2022.

Currently, as a professor at the School of Visual Arts in New York, she focuses on instructing writing seminars at the graduate level. With a lifetime of diverse experiences, she devoutly works to convey that intrinsic wisdom to a whole new generation of creative minds. Constantly in a quest to answer the question: what is the purpose of art?