by Marisa Malone
When you walk down a busy New York avenue, or commute on a crowded subway car, think of all the faces that pass by and all the information filtered in and out of your perception. Now consider how much of that information is already stored within you as assumptions or projections. The exhibition Anna Ostoya: J M Z at Mishkin Gallery is a challenging and urgent invitation for us to grapple with not just what we see but how; exploring what informs identity, how we perceive others, and why that matters in today’s democracy.
In our interview, we discuss painting as a form of critique, how history and major world events have influenced her work, the relationship between writing and art, and so much more.
Marisa R. Malone: I’d like to begin by acknowledging that the paintings in this exhibition are a translation, or reproduction, of a series of digital collages you composed in collaboration with political theorist Chantal Mouffe on her essay “Politics and Passions.” Why did you decide to recreate these collages as paintings?
Anna Ostoya: The collages, actually digital photomontages, were based on drawings of anonymous people I saw once on the subway. I wanted to give more value to these portraits by creating oil on canvas paintings; I see the series partly as a monument to the people. It was also an experiment to see if I’d be able to paint from a digital image as if it were a model, and to complete a traditional painting up to my satisfaction. It was a test for my eye and for my hand. I liked the idea of reversed chronology, to translate the new medium of a digital image into the older medium of oil on canvas, again as a test of what image I’d arrive at. And I liked the idea that all these different renderings will end up in the digital universe of the Internet and coexist creating a sense of déjà vu. To create photomontages, I used reproductions of my earlier works which were either collages, photomontages or paintings based on found images or my yet earlier works. The idea of playing with different techniques, of appropriating and of translating the same image in a few media has been part of my work for a long time.
MRM: So, there’s a repurposing element within your practice – old forms taking on new ones and vice versa. Can you tell me what your process was like in translating these digital images to oil on canvas? And how do you think that has altered the subject/s of the work?
AO: After transferring the general outlines to keep the proportions exact, the process was about looking back and forth between the digital image and the canvas while painting, towards the end looking mostly at the canvas. It took a long time to paint these as it’s a layering technique. With each layer the colors get better, more intense and more synced. Painting becomes addictive and intoxicating as it holds the promise of seemingly infinite improvement. But at the same time the longer you look, the more acutely you see what’s wrong. It’s often a humbling process but exhilarating when all parts of a canvas seem finally to correspond well with each other.
MRM: This is a great segue to my next question as I read somewhere you referred to “painting as a vehicle of critique.” Can you expand on this? How do you use painting, versus other mediums that you work in, as mode of critique? What makes this medium particularly effective?
AO: Painting is particular. Like a tombstone, it has its concrete meaning and its price, yet it also makes one wonder about the non-material, often existential questions. In different forms, it’s been with us from the beginning and I believe it will stay with us forever. Now, more than other art mediums, it’s a functioning commodity and for those involved in art it’s hard to see it outside the tradition of grand masters or the tradition of anti-masters, those who have tried to destroy or challenge it in diverse ways.
The painting is made by an artist. It’s automatically a subjective expression, unlike a photograph or a video which implies more objectivity. Because of these contradictions and constraints painting’s critical potential is limited or at least less immediate. But then it gives more agency to a viewer, more freedom, to decipher as what got encrypted on its surface is less obvious. Also, painting is a familiar medium to general audiences so it can be viewed by more people without a feeling of being intimidated or manipulated.
MRM: This idea of giving the viewer agency or more freedom makes me think of another quote of yours: “The experience of looking has always been connected with a political, historical, and personal reflection.” I think this applies to these paintings in that they are portraits of people you sketched on the J M Z line and include references to art history, political events, and work from your personal archive. Can you expand on what the “experience of looking” means to you? How, as an artist, do you use the power of looking as a tool to challenge/critique/inspire?
AO: To me, to truly “look” means to decode, to analyze, to question. In my work I have often staged juxtaposition of materials, mediums and styles or I visually cut an image into fragments, to provoke a reflection about what one is looking at. In J M Z the medium is the same – oil on canvas but then the different fragments of various types of visual images, from realistic photos, to ornamental metallic leaves, paper-mâché, geometric abstractions or expressionistic brushstrokes, all rendered in careful paint application, create a mosaic of different universes brought together within a shape of a headshot. I’m told the paintings are intense to look at and that they create an experience of visual pulling and pushing, of seduction/immersion and of reflection/questioning, which I find desirable in art. The “plinths”, which I painted on the walls under the paintings, take this idea of questioning what one is looking at further as they have a trompe-l’œil character.
Personally, “looking” also has been often painful to me as it is connected with a reflection that something isn’t right or that something will disappear. But I also enjoy the seductive way of looking, when immersing myself in colors and forms; feeling pleasure on my retina.
MRM: It’s interesting that the act of looking is a way to analyze and question what’s going on around you. I am curious about your childhood and what it was like growing up in Poland. What experiences led you to become an artist? And are there moments that stand out which (re)shaped your artistic practice?
AO: I remember the weight of history and world events surrounding me since I was little: an image of an old framed newspaper entitled Czas (Time) dated 1914, which hung above my bed; debating in kindergarten the pros and cons of freezing to death in the gulag versus being burned at Auschwitz; the general enthusiasm about the Round Table in 1989; the subsequent repainting of the walls in my elementary school from sandy ochres to aggressive greens. I also have a faint memory of the fear Chernobyl caused and the fact that I dug in the ground and played with mud when it was considered dangerous.
There was a feeling of living in a place worse off than West Germany and my cousins living there having lots of candies. My mother would send paintings, jewelry and beautifully embroidered tablecloths bought cheaply in Krakow to our western relatives to thank them for parcels of groceries – Philadelphia cream cheese, oranges and bananas! – and colorful, secondhand, clothes. Then there was my father, unable to stop talking about wars, the Second World War, the Napoleonic wars, the Mongols. I guess art, drawing especially, was an escape and a way to process what I couldn’t comprehend. I rejected visual art for a while as a teenager, preferring theater, literature and history instead, only to return to it when I was 17. Still, I see art as I saw it as a child, as a vehicle to approach what’s incomprehensible.
MRM: It’s powerful that you see art in this way, as a means to approach what we cannot otherwise comprehend. I can see that in these paintings, they resist any simple narrative in part because you incorporate so many artistic styles, such as modernism, cubism, and suprematism. These styles break an object down to its most basic elements or they render a figure from every angle, which feels like a metaphor to engage with complex ideas about identity, or the polarized political climate, or even the experience of encountering many people while commuting in New York City. What do you find most interesting or effective about these artistic movements?
AO: I feel lucky to live in a time when no single style in art is predominant, if not obligatory. The obligation to follow a certain aesthetic or to oppose it, as linear type of art historydemanded, always felt claustrophobic to me. It presupposes the supremacy of one narrative and displays a blindness to others. In my work I like to use different styles as material to express the clash or congruence of ideas or feelings. Particularly in the J M Z series, as it’s about diverse people, including fragments of different styles seemed a fitting way to make work about social and inner complexities.
MRM: With all the different layers and styles, these paintings are so sharply rendered and solidly composed. I’m wondering when you approach your work, do you have clear themes or ideas in mind at the start or do you let things emerge throughout the process?
AO: Both. But with each work I do it’s an experiment and a challenge to myself. I never repeat what I already know how to make. I distinguish between a delivery mode of making art, more market friendly, and then that of experimentation and I’m on the latter side.
MRM: Writing also appears to be an important part of your practice. You have incorporated your own writing and collaborated with other writers such as Ben Lerner and, as mentioned, Chantal Mouffe, as well as the many writers who contributed creative responses about these paintings for the exhibition booklet. Can you talk about the role writing plays in your practice?
AO: I love to read. I love words, which allow us to believe we can make sense of the world or at least express ourselves. Visual arts and writing should intertwine and they have, too often with an aim to establish the value of particular art works or artists. But they should intertwine as experiments to imagine that which is beyond the horizon of our knowledge. My book with Ben Lerner, “The Polish Rider” is very much about this relationship between the visual and the literary and the gaps in communication and translation.
MRM: Who are some other authors or texts that you are inspired by?
AO: Among many inspirations, an early one is Virginia Woolf and the character of Shakespeare’s sister, the idea that “if we have the habit of freedom and the courage to write exactly what we think … she would come if we worked for her, and that so to work, even in poverty and obscurity, is worthwhile.”There is hope in her essay and a sense of obligation to challenge things as they are. There is also hope in Chantal Mouffe’s writing as she insists the dominant order can be challenged, that it just wants us to believe it’s invincible. That’s both inspiring and reassuring. It’s easy to fall into arid despair.
MRM: That’s a great quote, it marks the importance of the work of artists as change-makers, as the ones who “look” and question and challenge. With that in mind, I think there are many angles from which one can view this exhibition. I appreciate that you chose to title the show J M Z as it gives precedent to the anonymous individuals that are central to the work, reflecting the diversity often seen in the subway while leaving room for infinite possibilities of interpretation on the part of the viewer. As portraits, these paintings undercut the traditional expectations of who is portrayed and how. Thinking of what you said earlier about agency and freedom, by painting strangers and abstracting their identity, the viewer is asked to create a narrative that reveals more about themselves than the figure in the painting. Is this something you intentionally set out to achieve?
AO: I’m glad you’re seeing J M Z this way. Yes, I’d like this exhibition to be an invitation to create an explanation, a story, oneself. It’s also a proposal on how to approach others, and on how to think about those we don’t know and realize that our view of others is a projection of our own experiences and stored memories.