Interview With Nona Faustine

Tell me about the title of your show.

The title Reconstructions comes from the Reconstruction Era a period in our country after the civil war that focused on the transformation of the Southern States. It was a significant chapter in the history of civil rights in the US, so the title lends itself to that term, and ideas that are reflected in the work. In many ways it is a snapshot of my life. On one level I am doing my own reconstructing by interpreting if you will events and ideas around slavery, and history. I’m putting myself in places of New York City’s colonial past. Events that we still have to contend with, so there are many reconstructions going on. On the other side I am playing with the family album recreating what that means for my daughter and I.

Don’t Air Out Your Dirty Underwear in Public

photo by Jamie Liles   (Nina inside a water bucket – vintage photographs printed on underwear)

“Los Trapos Sucios Se Lavan en la Casa” is a very popular saying in my Puerto Rican Culture, and for my family a very present one. My mother has always said this phrase to me and my sisters, and still does.

Preparing for SlideFest and my actual performance during SlideFest was all very cathartic. It was a place within and a space around me that I finally felt comfortable rebelling against this phrase that I have always found annoying. I understand that secrets within the family should stay inside the home; but sometimes secrets need to be let out for them to be able to be resolved.

In this process I took some old photographs from my mothers closet at home. I wanted to find all the pictures of my family before I was born. When they were five. My mother had a complicated birth with my twin sisters, where she almost died. They told her she could never have anymore children. And then there were six.

I made six dirty underwear, representing my core family. Then transfered the vintage pictures onto underwear (front and back) and wrote all my family’s secrets on them by hand. It was very hard for me to do this, but with a big sense of relief with a great weight off my shoulders. My Mom would punish me if she knew what I did. I am almost 30 years old and still dealing with this childhood rebellion. Why? I don’t know maybe it is because I am the youngest in my family and the secrets were always kept from me, as if i wouldn’t be able to deal… slowly but surely I found out every dirty little secret…and now is when I am dealing with them. Art, Photography, Writing and Performance is my way of coping – hence my performance for SlideFest.

I started out inside a bucket of water – I had to clean myself first. I have been a dirty girl. Then I get on to angrily and fearfully clean each underwear one by one. Rubbing the underwear hard against the washer, i would stand up to be able to be more rough, I even cleaned them with my feet, because they are so dirty.

Exposing myself and my family like that was a real challenge, especially when the audience came up to get a closer look. I got embarrassed and didn’t know what to do. Finally, I decided, “enough of this! No, never mind!” Maybe I don’t want be that vulnerable in public. So, I decided to take back my dirty underwear, my washer and my water bin and go home.

Photo by Jamie Liles        (translation: Apartment Garden Street – no chairs, no plates, no silverware – Rug covering stains – written by my Mother in the late 70s)

Amazing, AWESOME, love it!!

I would like to thank you Marvin Heiferman for his patience with working with us as a group. I want to congratulate him not dying of a heart attack. I admire his responses, great sense of humor and respect for all of us. I surely have to admit that we did great job! Laura working on the publication, Aline on the production, Juana and Nina on the videos promoting the event, Kory and Kathy on the social platform tumblr etc.,Xavi on installation, Emilie on fighting for the title of the show related to straightforward interpretation of the shoe. Wait, I am supposed to write about SlideFest experience, not Group Show.

I am not a fan of formal talking in front of people next to the microphone with all public speeches saying basically one thing just in other words – thank you for all your support you put in our education that actually costs me a lot. I would rather say it was nice experience to step out and respond from the other point of view thinking about our working process. The format of SlideFest pushes us to explore other boundaries of our work and collaborate with others. I explore the possibilities working with my partner in crime, Marina vs Bonnie. Being sarcastic and yet funny (which I always believe is a success), we design the set related to our countries and background, exploring American language of expression that questions the absence of meaning.

Do we really think how are we responding to others or we just talk to talk and say something which actually doesn’t change anything but to be accepted in the social norms of behavior? Yes, I question it, like many other things at this time of my life. At some point, maybe I will come back and be politically correct but at this point I wander and wonder. Coming from the European society we obey rules we don’t talk just to say something, we usually say what we mean and we rather make it happens than just create illusion for other people to make them feel comfortable.

Amazing, AWESOME, love it!! ENJOY

The Yellow Brick Road to Slide Fest.

3 o’clock
Photograph by Kim Weston

Marvin Heiferman is, without any doubt, an excellent instructor but more than that, he is a man full of grace. He has a disposition that’s just cool and copasetic. I’d say he’s a “brotha from another planet”. He posses the perfect temperament to deal with the demands of artists and help us navigate into looking and understanding the photographic image. Marvin’s  clearly understands photography’s traditional form, and knows it’s changing. He brought this concept to the critical practice course. His appreciation for various art techniques and art management made me look at photography from another prospective. I learned to apply those accounts into my own photographic practice and appreciate the my work, and that of my fellow peers with new eyes.

Marvin guided our class of eleven artists onto the yellow brick road to ICP’s  annual event, SLIDE FEST. This collaborative presentation with my peers brought out emotions in my spirit I’ve never felt before. My experience with other collaborative projects never felt as challenging. Excited at the idea of working with Marvin Heiferman gave me an overwhelming sense of joy to work with yet another great mind at ICP. I was equally excited with working with my peers. Then things turned, my excitement turned into anxiety and I wanted out at almost every turn. All the personalities talking all at once just became to much for me to handle. Focusing on creating my work for Slide Fest and the group show at our studios, increasingly became blocked by my approach and reaction to the class dynamic. My eyes were closed to the theme for the event, “Shoes”. Stubborn and set in my ways, I blame this way of approaching the project on being a Taurus. All I could think of was, who wants to photograph shoes and feet? Why? I just did not want to waste my time on this project that had not relationship to my personal. But of course Marvin saw my excitement and then my resistance. At every turn in my frustration he seemed to stick with me and quietly challenge my belief system. No matter how frustrated I got, he had this smooth approach that calmed me down. I began to question my stubborn position, and I was able to pull off a five minute presentation at the last minute with the help of my peers, and complete a project for the group show about feet.

As a group, my class is exciting and energetic. The idea of adding an exhibition in conjunction with slide fest was born out of that energy, potentially a new tradition. No matter how hard it seemed, the journey was painful until we reached OZ. Last minuted changes and letting go freed me. It’s always that moment just before the eleventh hour, things come to life. My peers had my back and  Marvin got us SLIDE FEST and the Group show. A big thank you to my ICP family.

Delis Fest

I wanted to make something that involved a presentation without turning into a performance.

I’ve always been told that my sense of humor is my best weapon. To stand in front of a 100 people (number of people that is expected to attend) feels, to me, like a menace. I can hardly speak to my 11 classmates without making 3 jokes in a row so I needed something better.

I could stand there and dance “El Meneito” or I could make a statement about mass media. I decided to do what I should do: show my work. But how? Just play my videos one after another seemed ridiculous. After some rides in the train (the second best place to come up with ideas. The first is the shower), I remembered that thing that Nayland tells us: “Things are already connected because you made them”. Ta-Da! I was the link. I had to speak and link the videos together by a narrative that will be, as everything I do, a joke about my self.

I hope it will work. My classmates laughed. Some of them, anyway.

AMAZING, AWEsome, love it!!!

Ed Stifles

When I first heard that I had a mere five minutes to present my work at Slidefest, I felt anxious. Every associative concept and tangential project I’d worked on felt too important to leave out. That five-minute time limit started to feel suffocating. I decided to narrow my options down. What was at the core of my recent practice? What would get across the soft, warm nugget at the core of my past year’s experience?

My work while I’ve been at ICP has circled around a number of things, from aviation pioneers to step-parents’ step-parents.  More recently, however, it has been focused on Nantucket. I spent many of my summers and holidays, most especially as a teenager, on the island. But I feared focusing on my personal relationship with the island would be a dead end, both in my work and for my Slidefest presentation. I wanted to be in collaboration with that place as a Place, not with my own teenaged remembrances.

Slidefest was a great success

 

 

Event was supposed to start at 7:00 pm. Just a few minutes before the room was not filled even to a third of it´s capacity. We were freaking out.

 

Ambitious, filled with energy and our eagerness to create, we took upon the mission to do it and have it all… we slid in a Group show and open studios the very same week end as Slidefest. ICP supported our enthusiasm and granted us our wishes, the deal was, that rigor was still the name of the game.

 

Papers and presentations were due to date, class was starting sharp with work hung on the walls, critique was still on. We juggled all our balls, and for the most part every one of my piers did it with incredible resource and creativity. It was the conclusion of 8 intense months of growth and discussion, and reflectivity. In a week we got it together.

 

The only missing link to our total enjoyment and full success, was that we forgot to take into consideration the incredibly hectic over the top busy Schedule that all new Yorkers have.

Edits Self

SlideFest has come and gone. It’s a relief really. I am not much of a performer, and somewhere along the way ICP-Bard’s annual event to showcase first year work turned from a slide presentation to full-on theater. It says a lot about the experimental and creative nature of this program.

Courtesy of Jamie Liles.

For me, I needed a work-around for the fact that I am awful at documenting my work. Most photographers have it easy—digital files or scanable negatives—my large-scale photographic chemical abstractions aren’t as easy to digitize. I also don’t feel like I have the right words yet to describe my process.  Or at least to make it sound more interesting than: something about photography, experimentation and the sheer pleasure of being in the darkroom (it’s sexy).

(THE SHOW IS ON) The Other Foot

Here’s a sneak peak of the show. Stop by this weekend!

ICP-Bard MFA Studios, 24–20 Jackson Avenue, 3rd Floor, Long Island City, Queens

Kathy Akey
Laura A. Gonzalez
Kasia Gumpert
Marina Leybishkis
Xavier Lujan
Emilie Lundstrom
Nina Mendez-Marti
Juana Romero
Aline Shkurovich
Kkory Trolio
Kim Weston
and featuring a recreation of Alison Knowles’ 1963 piece “Shoes of Your Choice”

The exhibition is on view during Open Studios on May 4–5 from 2pm to 6pm.

E and M trains to 23rd Street/Ely Avenue; G and 7 trains or the B61 bus to 45th Road/Court House Square.