Intermission: MFA Ceramics Class of 2020 Graduate Work

intermission

Master of Fine Arts Ceramics Class of 2020

essay by glenn adamson

E. Saffronia Downing Reva Kashikar Devon Sullivan bio and contact information colophon

For an MFA student, a graduate show is like a runway.

You approach it, accelerate, and with luck your career takes off. For the class who planned to finish their degrees in spring 2020, that flight – like so many that were supposed to depart from real airports, all around the world – has been delayed until further notice.

Students fully realize that this disruption pales in comparison to the wider tragedy of the coronavirus pandemic. Yet it’s also something they have to cope with, in their own ways. This publication – which documents the work of three graduates from the ceramics program at SAIC – offers a view into that experience. In the future, perhaps it may seem an unusual relic of an anxious time. Hopefully, it provides insight not just into a trio of talented individuals, but also the ways that art can be repurposed in extraordinary times.

03

What to do, when you work in clay and can’t even get into the studio, much less fire a kiln? How to sustain and complete an intellectual arc, when your interlocutors are inaccessible, except by email and chat apps? Most perplexingly, how to make narrative sense

of an unplanned interval – like an actor whose performance is stuck, for who knows long, in intermission?

As it happens, the three artists featured here – E. Saffronia Downing, Reva Kashikar, and Devon Sullivan – were well positioned to answer these questions. All had incorporated aspects of contemporary practice that are free of the traditional ceramics toolkit: archiving, performance, and conceptual art. Though extremely different from one another, all are supremely flexible thinkers, willing to take this most unwelcome situation and shape it to their own purposes.

In the process, those purposes themselves have shifted. Downing, Kashikar and Sullivan will all be different artists than they would have been, had they emerged from graduate school in any other year. But then, we will all be changed by this experience. Young artists like these show us how: with inventiveness, intelligence, and grace.

—Glenn Adamson

04

E. Saffronia Downing

All over Chicago, if you know where to find them, there are old clay pits – remnants of a now-disappeared brickmaking industry, which built the very architecture that eventually obscured it. Saffronia Downing discovered the pits’ locations in an 1891 industrial atlas of the city. It’s a typical example of what she looks for: stories and connections, lying just beneath notice. Her work is evolved from procedures that have little to do with conventional ceramic repertoire. She is a professional noticer of things.

05

Downing habitually walks the urban fabric, keeping a sharp-eyed lookout for objects of interest, textures, configurations, juxtapositions. This magpie-like, opportunistic methodology eventually eddies and pools into sculptural situations, which are composed of found detritus, fabricated ceramic elements, and sometimes photographs. There is something vaguely occult about these works; they suggest magical thinking in full flow. Yet they are also map-like, an oblique cartographic allegory of Downing’s own wanderings. One could say they are located where the mind meets matter – conceptual rubber hitting the recalcitrant road. Or that they are like archaeological findings from our post-industrial present, evidence of life in the anthropocene.

Recently, Downing has changed the physical orientation of her psycho-geographical sculptures. While they were previously held in low vitrines, echoing the ground from which her findings were scavenged, she has now been propping them up on metal armatures, as if to say: look at this. The rigid steel architecture of these mounts suggests a scientific framework – the display cases in a natural history museum, perhaps – while the amorphous sculpted elements instead evoke the trajectory of Surrealism, extending from George Bataille’s explorations of the informe through Jean Dubuffet and Jean Fautrier: an emotionally evocative, materially intense, nearly abstract type of figuration.

Pit Fire Rock 3 (2019) 1’ 6” × 1’ 5” Chicago clay, earthenware, porcelain, waste glaze, epoxy resin, curbside debris, photograph

I asked Downing what she might do with the unstructured time she suddenly had on her hands; she responded that she could still take her walks. She also has at her disposal a backyard – and a shovel. She’s an artist who doesn’t need much to build a world.

—Glenn Adamson

06

Pit Fire Rock 3 (2019) 1’ 6” × 1’ 5”

07

Chicago clay, earthenware, porcelain, waste glaze, epoxy resin, curbside debris, photograph

08

09

41.928425, -87.787270 Brickyard Mall (2020) Video, 2 minutes 36 seconds

10

11

Untitled – Backyard Clay Body (2019) 2’ 6” × 1’ × 5’ Objects found in artist’s backyard: foraged clay, waste glaze, discarded materials and steel

12

Backyard Clay Body (2019)

13

Objects found in artist’s backyard: foraged clay, waste glaze, discarded materials and steel

15

15

Bird Flowers – Backyard Clay Body (2019) 1’ × 1’ × 2’ Foraged clay, porcelain, waste glaze

16

Aggregate flower – Backyard Clay Body (2019) 1’ × 8”× 10”

17

Found concrete aggregate and porcelain flower

19

41.565269, -87.621872 Thornton Quarry (2020) Video, 3 minutes 47 seconds

20

Pit Fire Rock (2019) 1’ 7” × 1’ 5” Chicago clay, earthenware, porcelain, waste glaze, epoxy resin, curbside debris, photograph

21

22

Pit Fire Rock 2 (2019) 1’ 6” × 1’ 5”

23

Chicago clay, earthenware, porcelain, waste glaze, epoxy resin, curbside debris, photograph

24

REVA KASHIKAR

“You’re basically white.” It’s a phrase that Reva Kashikar has heard more than once, offered by a friend as a seemingly innocuous observation. Over time, it’s become clear to her how problematic such a comment is; how it undermines not only her Indian-American heritage, but the more complicated facts of her identity, which is (like everyone’s) always under construction.

Though Kashikar knows her way around clay, she has become increasingly involved with other genres of artistic production. Her interest in the self, as it is seen from within and without, has naturally led her to explore performance techniques. In Depend, Trust, Endure (2019) she staged a piece of improvised choreography, in which she and a partner interacted with one another and a group of five roughly built totems in unfired clay, arranged in a tight circle. Over the course of the performance, this miniature, wonky Stonehenge was gradually demolished, the casualty of the bodies moving within it, a test of “boundaries imagined and loosely defined.”

25

Kashikar has also explored the quintessentially performative medium of monologue video. One work, entitled GRWM,

riffs on an internet phenomenon known as “Get Ready With Me,” in which someone (typically a woman) narrates their own makeup routine direct-to-camera. Struck by the combination of vulnerability and conventionality in these short films – they almost always conform to mainstream norms of beauty – Kashikar decided to deconstruct the genre. In the video, she ornaments herself with cosmetic products including a foundation lighter than her skin tone, a bitter parody of self-lightening practices found across many Asian communities. This footage is projected on a wall inscribed with text – written out in skin-toned foundation: “You. Are. Basically. White. Continue to reinforce; discredit. You’re basically white you’ll tell me.”

Brand New (2019) Durational Performance Stoneware clay slip, sari, body Photograhy: Gerardo Marrufo

The lockdown has brought a sudden swerve to Kashikar’s path, as for so many artists. Yet the territory that she has been exploring is still available to her: countless YouTube videos, a collective expression of the internet’s diverse culture of performed selves. Though all she has to work with is her phone and computer, and her own body, it seems those are all the tools she needs.

—Glenn Adamson

26

27

Light Trials (2019) Stills from durational performance on 03-12-2019

28

Self-Portrait

2020: April

29

When I look at your face I see me. Then as I look around I am surrounded by a sea of unfamiliar features. Who. What.

Why. How. Where… Do you come from? I return inward. To you. Your face. My blood. My skin. My hair and eyes and nose. Your inflection and speech pattern.

But then I look behind you. And I am lost. Behind you lies the Peshwa, Kashi, and the Persian tile layers. A land and language far from here. Far from the portrait I look at in front of me. Who are you? And I guess now… Who am I? And What am I? In this context of identity I am your blood. Your lineage. In this context of identity I am the outsider trapped in my mind because of these barriers. Language. Space. History.

Training. In this context of identity I am the outsider on the inside. Privy to the “next big thing” because it is something I already know.

And then there lies what is in front of you. I look ahead of you and see the plains of confusion between us. The distance that I’ve chosen because I wanted to “find my own way” and “create my own identity.” But alas, what lies ahead of you is me. A new story that has little evidence to go off of. With only your face to inform me.

30

31

Depend, Trust, Endure (2019) Durational performance Performers: Reva Kashikar and Emily Holmes Photograhy: Ted Munyer

32

Again and Again, Lafayette

2020: May, June

Where are you from?

Ask, again and again Imposed by another the abyss of obsession.

A vague story relevant through bloodline or last name.

And crisis continues.

Never-ending questions leading to misery.

Deep and unforgiving the abyss of information.

Ask, again and again Where are you from?

33

Where are you from?

Ask, again and again Deep and unforgiving the abyss of information.

Never-ending questions leading to misery.

And crisis continues.

A vague story relevant through bloodline or last name.

Imposed by another the abyss of obsession.

Ask, again and again Where are you from?

34

Brand New (2019) Durational Performance Stoneware clay slip, sari, body Photograhy: Gerardo Marrufo

35

36

38

39

I perform as myself.

I perform as the expected self.

I perform outside of the expectation of myself.

I perform my knowledge and I perform my memory.

I perform and become brand new.

40

Poem Fragments (2019) Terra cotta paper clay

look through me and take what you must, look through me and assume what you will. look at me and judge as you shall, look at me and find what you want. look to me and learn if you can, look to me and see the shell I’ve become.

41

43

GRWM (Get Ready With Me) (2019–2020) Durational Video Performance Makeup products, cake decorating tube

44

A Color I Can’t Escape

2019: November, December; 2020: February

I think of the moments where I was made to feel bad about myself. My skin, my hair, my face shape, my proportions.

Unchangeable… things that are things that are things that don’t matter. But then I remember moments. “You’re like an Oreo!” Anything that was one color on the outside and white on the inside. “Sometimes I forget that you’re brown,” they’d tell me. Followed by “You’re basically white though anyways.” Is white better? Pure? Angelic? Why else would hell be dark? I’m dark… Am I hell? Evil? Terrifying? I’m 110 lbs. 5’4”. I can pull myself out of a pool fairly easily, but I’m not hurting anyone…

“You’re basically white.”

But what if I don’t want to be? At 14 or 15 it seemed so unexceptional and idiotic to care about. A microaggression that stuck with me longer than I ever could have imagined.

Its frequency was reinforcement. That there is something wrong with brown. “You’re so unique. So different! That’s what makes you beautiful.” Oh… Do you mean exotic?

Yes… I’ve heard it before.

Exotic.

45

Not from here.

Exotic.

Like your rugs… Reinforcement. “Shave your beard next time. Customs and immigration won’t pull you aside then.”

“Be unique.” But within OUR parameters. Exotic. Terrorist.

Exotic terrorists?

Be more American.

But also, be fine when we take your traditions, your practices, your styles. You’ll make them into “the next big trend.” You’ll show me how accepting you are. How progressive. “See! I have a brown friend.” Does this excuse the countless times you’ve tried to rid them of their color?

To shame? To isolate?

You’re basically white. You. Are. Basically. White. So reinforce, discredit.

You’re basically white you’ll tell me.

46

DEVON SULLIVAN

When I spoke to Devon Sullivan, earlier this week, he was in bed. He’d been spending a lot of time there – not because he was ill, thank goodness, but because it was just about the only place to be during a period of self-imposed quarantine. It’s a testament to the power of his imagination that, as with every other encounter I’d had with him, he seemed to be traversing a vast creative landscape.

Sullivan transitioned into art from an unusual background, that of a financial trader, with a particular interest in blockchain technologies. This experience, and his natural turn of mind, prompt him to see patterns and networks where others would just see… life. His prolific and multivalent work offers an experience by equal turns unnerving and exhilarating: it’s as if he has cracked the code of society itself, and is giving you just a few of his findings.

47

The pandemic came along at a particularly weird time for Sullivan. He was in the midst of completing an intense and provocative investigation of the School of the Art Institute itself: its recruitment patterns, the unstated (yet measurable) “values” it places on its own students through such mechanisms as financial aid, as well as other, less sensitive

topics like previous MFA shows and their configurations.

Salient data points are set alongside mere coincidences in an elaborate invented system. (For example the MFA show was meant to take place in the Sullivan Center, named for its architect, the great Louis Sullivan – no relation, but Devon likes to think of his famous namesake “as a conceptual patron to future generations”). The project is akin to the workings of an artificial intelligence, which pays no mind to the niceties of etiquette, instead following its own relentless logic, arriving at its own kind of truth.

Abruptly de-institutionalized, locked out of the place he’d been trying to map, Sullivan has had to set this research aside. But he’s kept working, kept thinking. What could he do in bed? Plenty. Among other things, he had constructed a little box-shaped frame and was making complex, overlapping vector drawings with embroidery thread. Each of these “bed objects,” as he calls them, is a microcosm made with his own hands. A way to continue. One of infinite portals to the new.

—Glenn Adamson

MI 16” × 12” × 0.5” Hyperdermic Needle (Global Medical Products Inc), Polymer, Cotton Serial: YTBN 3/28/20-6/21/20

48

49

50

51

52

53

54

55

56

57

58

59

60

61

62

63

64

65

66

67

68

69

70

Glenn Adamson

is a curator, writer and historian who works at the intersection of craft, design and contemporary art. He has previously been Director of the Museum of Arts and Design; Head of Research at the V&A; and Curator at the Chipstone Foundation in Milwaukee. Adamson’s publications include Thinking Through Craft (2007); The Craft Reader (2010); Postmodernism: Style and Subversion (2011, co-edited with Jane Pavitt); The Invention of Craft (2013); and Art in the Making (2016, co-authored with Julia Bryan-Wilson; and Fewer Better Things: The Hidden Wisdom of Objects (2018).

His new book, Craft: An American History, will be published

by Bloomsbury in January 2021. www.glennadamson.com

71

E. Saffronia Downing

www.e-saffronia.net saffroniad@gmail.com @_saffr0nia_

Reva kashikar

www.revakashikar.com rkashikar1@gmail.com

DEVON SULLIVAN

www.devonsullivanstudio.com devonsull@gmail.com ethArt.org Bank NFT #10

72

cOLOPHON Copyright Š 2020 School of the Art Institute of Chicago Ceramics Department All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without the explicit written permission from the authors.

Publication design by Nura Husseini* www.nurahusseini.com Typeset in Bison, a sans serif typeface designed by Ellen Luff in 2018, for headings and in DIN 2014, a sans serif typeface designed by Vasily Biryukov and released by Paratype in 2015.

Printed in Chicago, Illinois at The Graphic Arts Studio on White Cougar Supersmooth paper in an edition of 300 copies. Published by the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Images courtesy of each artist.

73

* About the designer Nura is a Chicago-based designer, curator, educator, and interdisciplinary artist from Ramallah, Palestine. Much of her work centers on the intersection of identity, memory, fantasy, and belonging, all stemming from a socio-political perspective. She explores her personal experiences while grappling with multiple identities, and attempts at deconstructing enforced neo-colonial ideologies through modes of archival storytelling. Her practice takes many different forms, including artists’ books, print, installation, light projection, textile, and sculpture. She explores and works with traditional crafts, motifs, and artistic customs, such as Palestinian embroidery, and how they are used in building cultural narratives.

She currently works with found family footage to discover a sense of belonging, and to understand the components of both chosen and imposed identities. Her investigations began with her family tree when she noticed that the names of women were excluded, and that document only included the names of her male ancestors. She explores the juxtaposition between reality and memory, truth and fiction, and space and time through rotoscope animation and light projection.

To learn more, visit her website at www.nurahusseini.com

74