Q+A with Caitlin Hargraves
N- During this period of time you seemed to be searching for pieces of yourself through your forum pieces, and I think you found a lot of interesting voices that came very close to characters, like the virgin on the cross, and the sailor, and the lion deconstructed version of yourself…can you talk a little about these characters/voices? Do you have any plans in the future for them?
I wouldn't say that it was my intention to be creating characters with those pieces but they definitely became something in the vain of personalities. Madonna on the cross was inspired sort of by the Kardashians and plastic surgery and drag queens all imposed onto a canvas. I can't really do much to alter it but I wanted to be able to look at it and know that it's no longer my body in those pictures. But I could really only see this character in a symbol, not as a full personality like with the old man dreaming at sea. I could see what he looked like and it was appropriate that he was a puppet and as 2D as possible, but more than that I could really hear what he sounds like.
TS- When do you first remember in your life recognizing a work of art?
This is tough and I’ve been meditating on it a lot. I have a very clear memory of the first time I felt an intense appreciation, maybe obsession, with a work of art…it was the Gauguin: Tahiti exhibit in Boston when I was 11 or 12, but that’s not the question. I was a pretty dreamy kid. In retrospect I think I regarded and interacted with a lot of things as art… fireworks, what happened to the sky when I spun around a lot and fell down, The Lion King.
The first time I can remember visiting one of Pablo Neruda’s houses in Chile, I remember mostly this sensation of being immersed in art. I was in a house but it’s also a museum so you can’t touch anything. I understood that everything in this place was delicate or sacred, from the hairbrush on the vanity to the glass bottle collection, and that this man-whose poems I had heard from birth-had surrounded himself with so much art that his life was not separable from it. So I suppose really two things happened: I recognized the house and everything in it as a work of art and I recognized what it looks like to be an artist. Maybe I was 4?
M- I think there is an important and fascinating examination of the physical body happening in your work. Is that something that you’re doing consciously? If so, how would you like to explore the body? If not and I’m totally delusional, what kind of ideas or feelings would you like to investigate in your work?
Yeah, it's conscious. I would say that my first impulse to create something is most often a physical one, I usually want to get up and talk or move, etc. to express something rather than write it down.
EM: For someone who I think of so strongly as a physical performer, I would like to know what your experience was of making work for publication on the internet? I am struck by how many different mediums you explored in this cycle and I wonder what discoveries you had in trying out a multitude of forms and how you think they will affect your working methodology going forward?
It was a little difficult at first to adjust my perspective in order to create work for this platform. I think at first I maybe rejected showing much physicality because it felt easy and a little flat in this form. But as I grew comfortable with it and saw how the rest of you made certain things work it got easier. I think my best work involves my body/voice so it was an interesting thing to play with stripping that away and seeing what I liked and what I didn't. So I guess that's kind of how I navigated my way through different mediums. At first I wanted to work without really using my physicality so it was figuring out what mediums work for that and using other people, and then it was fun blending mediums and adding myself in little by little. Going forward, I think I now have a confidence in the part of my work that doesn't rely on physicality or performance, which hopefully will make the physical aspects stronger as well...or not?
EF- How do you cross over from mediums but still inhabit a sense of similar exploration? Is there a medium you used this cycle which helped you explore a certain question better than another medium?
I suppose that sense of similar exploration, whatever that quality is, is something innate about my artistic expression and maybe that’s why it’s evident in my work across mediums. There were certain themes I was really exploring throughout the cycle and so the theme became the control and the mediums were the variables in the science experiment metaphor of this cycle. Each medium i used taught me something and offered new information. Writing was the most challenging, because I don’t do it enough, but I found that I was more willing to dive into ideas deeper and that more questions would come up when I used writing. I used a lot of photography this cycle because I was and still am very interested in how much or how little you can capture and fill in a single frame. Also the idea that you can manipulate the context of each frame by putting it next to other frames-that was a big focus in the pieces conversations con otros, if I were natebiT knoM, and Madonna on the cross.
A: Do you think all of these characters you have created are different reflections of a constant or totally separate entities?
Well I would say these characters are highlighted or concentrated areas of my own personality, so they would reflect the single entity of me.
H: Although you depicted and explored a variety of characters/identities, in each I found there to be an inherent strength -- somewhat of an unshakeable core. Are you conscious of this quality? Is it something you’d be interested in shaking up a little bit? And, if so, how would you go about doing it?
I don't think I was conscious of this quality but looking back through work I can definitely see it. I think shaking that up would be important going forward with this work but I'm not sure how I'll go about it. The characters/identities were all extreme/different facets of myself so perhaps i would start by shaking my own strength as an artist. In some ways I was trying to explore that in this cycle by using mediums or subjects that I felt weak in or unsure of but I think it will take putting myself in a more vulnerable position or actually confronting or revealing something on a more personal level to expose a more shaken core.
W- Caitlin, can you speak to your process for 3 studies on predictability’s "Chaos"? How did you move from a realist narration to fantasy? Did you know that that was where the piece would go from the beginning, or did it take you there itself?
Well it started with an actual event that happened to me. A Russian woman on a crowded train said that to me and on the bus ride home her voice and character stayed with me, but not in a way that bothered me or made me upset toward that woman. For some reason I couldn't shake her. I sort of meditated on the fact that it was a pedestrian everyday occurrence that could have led to a number of reactions and so I explored it in a sort of stream of conscious way what would follow each event through the narrative. I didn't know where it was going to end or what the next step would be but accepted that it would escalate and find an ending. I have never really written in this way, free of my own judgements and not questioning an outcome, I found it to be very freeing and hope to do more work in this direction.
JF-Your work is interesting. Do you ever think about singing? You have a very full voice.
Thank you. And yes, I do sing. I sang in my piece Empty half glass is a glass half full, but slowed both songs down so much so it doesn’t sound like me…maybe I’ll do something more recognizable in the future.