Blog – Art in Odd Places

By Curtis Carman

Requiem Warm Up in the lobby of El Museo del Barrio (Photo by Asuka Goto)

AiOP: Hello Zachary, I understand you will be participating in the Art in Odd Places event AiOP 2012/MODEL in October. It’s shaping up to be an exciting event. I love when art gives voice to people, helps to build community, and encompasses the breadth
of the city.

Fabri: Yeah, I’m really excited about it. A lot of the participating artists are friends and a lot of artists I don’t know, too. But, it’s like a big family. Hold on to your puggles! It’s going to be great.

AiOP: You recently did a performance for El Museo del Barrio in conjunction with this year’s Museum Mile Festival for the opening of the exhibition, Carribean: Crossroads of the World. I was very intrigued by the performance, which took place not only in the public space of El Museo del Barrio, but also on the street and in several other participating institutions. So, I would like to begin by asking about your thoughts on public art. What is public art?

Fabri: I don’t know, exactly.

Braving the elements on Museum Mile (Photo by Asuka Goto)

AiOP: What was that performance called?

Fabri: That work is called “Fortunes Bones.” An existing story about the bones of a supposed pirate, named Fortune, that are kept in a museum in Connecticut was my inspiration for creating this work in which I was metaphorically collecting bones from
some of the museums along Fifth Avenue, I began at the El Museo del Barrio, then went to The Museum of the City of New York, The Jewish Museum, and also The Metropolitan Museum to “collect” or reclaim some of their cultural “acquisitions.”

AiOP: I had a number of thoughts about that work. I was wondering, where is the public in that? Are there different facets to the public in that? For instance, is the story you mined part of the public? There were people that you interacted with, but there were
also people passing by who just watched for a bit and kept on going. Are you concerned with these different aspects of the public when you perform?

Fabri: Yeah, this work was a many sided performance. I liked the idea that it shifted, that it kept changing in space and in place. The people would change. The audience would change. Some of the viewers walked with me along Fifth Avenue and also followed me into the different institutions, also. So, they were experiencing the piece in a kind of whole way, but their experience was changing from space to space. The people who had no idea what the piece was about, people on the street who maybe waved because I was carrying a colorful banner or people in the institutions that were looking at art looked at me and tried to figure out what it was I was doing. Either they liked it or didn’t like it. Maybe they were confused, or intrigued, or entranced.

I was interested in all those complexities; like that it’s not just one place, one space, one audience, one performance at one time because that’s what normally happens at performances a lot. So when someone curates a show, they often say, “Can you do a performance at this place, in this space, in a very specific context?” I’m fine with doing that, but I wanted to change it up a little bit because lately I create my work to be site responsive within a specific context or physical space. I’m more interested in that very specific context and you can call that context a space. So, within the very ideas surrounding that space I try to extract the work or build the work. That space of ideas surrounding the Museum Mile event is a large space and within that it breaks down into the various cultural institutions along there. There is also the road, the public strip on which these spaces live. So I thought that presented a challenging and kind of daunting problem to work with in terms of placing myself inside the space and activating it.

Bone Collecting performance in the African wing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (Photo by Asuka Goto)

AiOP: When you are being responsive to a space does that include the people?

Fabri: Yes, I’m responding to the people, the audience, and the place and that changes during the course of a performance. With this piece it started in the lobby of El Museo del Barrio with a warm-up. I actually got people involved, people I hadn’t anticipated,
strangers I didn’t know, and friends I did know. Then that space changed to being on the street and people maybe stopping us or asking questions. And that’s part of the deal; that’s why I had flyers to give out to encourage others to join us and come along.

AiOP: I noticed people seemed intrigued by the element of surprise.

Fabri: Well, It changed though. I was responding differently to the various institutions we went in and the people inside, viewers and employees of the institutions, were responding differently to the performance. It was like; up to this moment my whole life has been training to deal with these kinds of things. I guess it’s about dealing with people on some level.

It’s kind of funny, when I went in the Jewish Museum I asked a security guard where the Kehinde Wiley exhibit was located?” He responded, “Oh, it’s on the second floor. I love that artwork. You’re going to love it.” So, I answered “Well, I’ll take a look, I think it’s strong work, but I have my own ideas about what his work means to me.” And he was like, “No, no, you’re going to love it. It’ll blow you away.” It was nice how we ended up in this friendly conversation. Then, upstairs in the room where the paintings were there was an actual fireplace and you could look up inside it. I went up to one of the security guards and pointed to the fireplace and whispered, “Are there any bones in there?” He was silent at first and looked confused which seemed to turn into anger. He said, “No, there aren’t any bones in there. Please step away. There aren’t any bones anywhere in the museum. Please, if you have any questions, go downstairs and ask at the front desk.” And I was like, “Okay I’m going to look at the exhibition in the other room.” And he’s saying like, “Please, don’t look for any bones in there.” So, my exchange with him was very different than my exchange with the guy downstairs. The interactions with people are always different.

Resistance from Metropolitan Museum of Art security in the lobby (Photo by Asuka Goto)

AiOP: Do you let the public respond anyway they like?

Fabri: Yeah, I don’t set any rules or parameters. The public can do what they want. They can laugh, dance, or join in. No one usually joins in. I only create this rigid structure when I build the piece and the inside of that structure is totally open to improvisation.

AiOP: I was curious about the “warm up” in the beginning of the performance when you had a group, a cadre of friends around you. Did that situation protect you; did it give you more power? How did it affect your performance? Was it a positive experience?

Fabri: Yeah. It was totally positive. It was shocking. I am always surprised at the number of people who show up for anything I do much less follow me in the rain. I was beside myself with warmth, so it did provide power and positive energy. It kind of balanced me out because it was a tricky performance, going into those sites and doing those actions and going back out.

AiOP: What was tricky? Not knowing what was going to happen?

Fabri: It was tricky to be going in and out of those spaces and to be pushing the On and Off buttons so many times. I would be performing or doing something, a gesture, and then I go back onto the street and talk to people, my team, as it were. I had to turn myself off until the next space. At each site I make up some move or gesture and I’m in a certain mood or headspace. I’m affected, of course, by the psychological and emotional back and forth along with the actions I’m doing.

AiOP: So, those experiences changed from one site to the next?

Fabri: Yeah, that was one of the most dramatic things I learned from the piece. The character of the space is a living thing. It changes from venue to venue, space to space, exhibition to exhibition. So, in many ways you can’t prepare for that. You kind of just have to go there and respond to it. The second space was the lobby area of The Museum for the City of New York. That felt kind of neutral and classy in some ways because of the grand architecture. It was open and bright with a lot of windows. Then, at The Jewish Museum there were some prayer rugs and these large Kehinde Wiley canvases that worked together to create a kind of hushed space. It was a darker space. The lights were dimmer. So, it was kind of like a sanctuary. As soon as you entered that space you felt that.

AiOP: It sounds like you had a very strong response to that space. Where do you think that feeling was coming from, the art or the institution?

Fabri: Well, from that room. It was that room and how people were responding to the works, the prayer rugs and the paintings. That whole collective kind of mind was present in that room. You walk into that and it becomes apparent, you know? Like, it impacts on your brain. I’m like, “Wow!” and I responded to that. The gesture that I made was a different thing than what I just did in the Museum of the City of New York. It was a softer, more elegant gesture.

AiOP: I know it’s been a few of weeks since you performed this piece, so a little bit of time has passed. I was curious if your sense of the metaphor of “the bones” has changed since you originally conceived of the work? Like, now that you have collected “the
bones.” Did you come away with something?

Fabri: Yeah, yeah (laughter)…I did. I guess it’s to think about “these bones” as literal things, as objects. Everything else around the work was symbolic and ephemeral. So, “the bones” rooted the work in some kind of object. That aspect hasn’t changed. I tried not to focus so much on that because I didn’t want the piece to go too much into a dark place. That’s why I totally pushed the work into a more festive, fun, kind of direction, like with the vibrant colors of the banner. You know, like pirates, flags, a cartoony kind of place. But, there is also a darker place, the reality of the fact that “the bones” came from an actual slave that The Mattatuck Museum had on exhibit up until the 1970’s. That was my understanding of using the bones motif. That history is important to the piece, the performance of the work. It informs the work, but I didn’t want it to totally take over the work. I felt I had to make a piece of art, too.

A nice conversation at the Jewish Museum (Photo by Pierre Obando)

AiOP: So, what was your “take away?”

Fabri: Nothing physical. I just learned a lot. In some way, I took away the weight of how institutions acquire or collect artwork.

AiOP: Do you have any sense of sympathy towards these institutions and has that changed?

Fabri: Yeah, I do. I’m totally sympathetic in that they are educational. They share and display things so people can learn about their history. That’s really important for people of African descent. To know where they came from, to see where they came from through objects. But, I believe that process should be beneficial for all parties, not only for the museum, but also for the people whose history is tied to those objects. That hasn’t changed. I’m more interested in the larger institutions and how they acquire their artifacts. Who owned them before?

By Minji Lee

Desire is a powerful concept. Whether it is manifested in the pursuit of prosperity, stability, or beauty, among many other things, human nature begs the notion that we will never be completely satisfied with the way we are. Some people spend a thousand dollars on a designer purse; others spend ten thousand on a tummy tuck, nose job, or face-lift. Although there is no shame in lavishing ourselves every once in a while, how far would we go to alter ourselves through material pursuits? In her up-and-coming book, Singular Beauty, photographer Cara Phillips explores these very questions through her intimate, captivating work.

Discovering Her Love for Photography

Cara Phillips explored the concept of physical beauty via various professions, serendipitously translating them all into Singular Beauty.

“Previous to studying photography in my late twenties, I was involved in the beauty industry as a child model and a makeup artist,” she states.

When she transitioned from posing in front of the camera to being behind it, Phillips found a refuge for self-understanding and exploration in her pursuit of beauty through her photography.
When we asked her why she decided to pick up photography, she replies, “I felt like the beauty industry, which I had spent so much time in, was not explored through the medium of photography.”
She goes on to explain her bittersweet relationship with photography. She believes that her exposure to the beauty industry prior to her experimentation behind the camera is a difficult concept to reconcile. Phillips admits, “I only experienced photography as a predatory exploitation of myself. It’s been interesting to be on the other side of the camera and to directly engage with the camera, though I will admit that I’m still reconciling myself with it.”
However, good things stem from difficult experiences. Phillips’ exposure to photography through different perspectives has shaped her work in a unique, intimate way.

“Photography came into my life at a time when I tried to understand my place in the world—through a camera lens,” she says. “Putting my energy into being an artist has helped me gain self-understanding through having a larger experience than myself. Taking something personal and shifting my gaze outside of it has helped me reconfigure myself.”

Singular Beauty

In many ways, Singular Beauty allows us to see the personal struggles with physical beauty that many individuals, Cara Phillips included, have undergone. Her distinct photographs of seemingly simple elements such as cosmetic surgery offices, liposuction machines, and silicone implants are doorways of insight for complex questions about beauty.

When we asked her how she became interested in the notion of beauty through cosmetic surgery offices, Phillips states that she was always interested in the perception of beauty because of its powerful, diverse influence on every individual.

“I knew that I wanted to document places where women go to seek beauty. After a year or two, I learned that cosmetic surgery offices are the ultimate expression of the desire of beauty. I spent three or four years documenting this experience all over the country,” she states.

One of the motives behind her documentation of cosmetic surgery offices is to shift attention away from judgmental notions or solutions that surround beauty. Rather, Phillips’ purpose behind Singular Beauty is to raise questions of what these offices mean for individuals. She states, “By manipulating the existing room and lighting, I created the psychological meaning that the spaces had.”

Cosmetic surgery is a controversial cross between our natural beauty and the materialistic pursuits that society encourages. With this said, Phillips’ work poses a question: “Would our same insecurities resurface in different forms even if we were to undergo cosmetic surgery?”

Beauty as a Multi-dimensional Concept

Cara Phillips used photography and Singular Beauty as mediums of reconciling her personal qualms with beauty. Reflecting on her days as a childhood model, she states, “Previous to pursuing photography, I was so immersed in a world that was based off of what I looked like. I distinctly remember myself as a 9-year-old child…being told that there wasn’t enough space between my nose and upper lip, so I might consider adjusting this when I got older.”

Furthermore, her career as a make-up artist allowed her to realize the issues that many women have with their biological features.

“When I was a make-up artist, the first thing that women would do was complain about their flaws…as if they had to confess that they weren’t good enough,” she explains. Singular Beauty is a means of uniting all of her previous experiences with an issue that we all face in extremely personal ways.

After experiencing beauty through the eyes of a child model, the foundation brush of a make-up artist, and the lens of a camera, Cara Phillips believes that beauty is, in many ways, a multi-faceted notion that we are all still trying to understand. Furthermore, her perception of beauty has allowed her to better relate to individuals who choose to undergo cosmetic surgery. Singular Beauty seeks to steer away from judging those who choose to have their physical features altered, but rather to raise questions about the larger concept of beauty. She states, “I think that the experience of photographing cosmetic surgery offices has helped me develop a larger sense of empathy for these individuals.”

Although the immaculate rooms of many cosmetic surgery offices that Phillips has photographed are bound by four physical walls, perhaps the more subtle, invisible walls we build up for ourselves as imperfect human beings can be addressed through Phillips’ work.

“I began to think about how we feel about ourselves and how much of our lives we spend trying to be different than what we are. Whether we try to make more money, have a different partner, or move to a different place, would we be happier?”

The desire to change certain parts of ourselves is a human need that none of us can escape. For this reason, Phillips humbly states, “It helped me develop empathy for myself and for other people.”

Moving Forward

Although her photography in Singular Beauty is not meant to be a judgmental piece, Phillips hopes that her viewers will adopt their own powerful opinions toward her work and toward this topic.

Whether or not you agree with the idea of altering one’s physical appearance through the means of cosmetic surgery, one thing is certain: you will not walk away from Phillips’ work without a newfound, strangely provocative, intuitive curiosity about this subject.

When we interviewed her a couple of days ago, Cara Phillips had recently returned from Europe in which she was able to showcase and publish Singular Beauty.

“It actually went to press this week and will be released in Amsterdam in September,” she excitedly says. Her book will also come to New York City and will be featured at The NY Art Book Fair at MoMA PS1 from September 28-30^th. For more information about Cara Phillips, her past and present work, and her upcoming displays, visit www.cara-phillips.com.

At the end of our conversation, she reflects, “Some people have the belief that an experience such as stepping into a cosmetic surgery office or praying at a church will transform them, but will they really feel different on the inside?” This is a bold question that Cara Phillips’ work seeks to slowly unveil.

A Conversation With Zachary Fabri

Singular Beauty Unveiled: The Artist Behind the Camera