#primajalichandrasakuntabhai

[correspondencearchive]

4. Yujin Lee & Prima Jalichandra-Sakuntabhai (part 2)

Yujin Lee and Prima Jalichandra-Sakuntabhai continue their discussion of Paul Chan’s article, “What Art Is and Where It Belongs,” choosing the context for one’s work, assigning monetary value to art work (and whether or not artists can be free from capitalism), and who we are accountable to as artists. Read part 1 of their conversation here.

Yujin Lee (YL): Ok, so last night, I was on Clubhouse [laughter], in a Korean speaking room that was organized by an art lawyer and the director of Arario Gallery, which is a pretty established gallery in Korea. I’m currently preparing for a collaborative exhibition in December with an artist (Jo Ahra) who stayed at my residency in March. It’ll be at a gallery at a good location in Seoul. The gallery is known for putting up new exhibitions every week. It’s kind of crazy, like they never not have a show up, even during COVID. It’s like quantity over quality, and a lot of younger artists go through this gallery because it’s a good opportunity to have a solo exhibition early in your career. They offered me a new smaller space for two weeks for free. But last night’s Clubhouse conversation made me question whether I should wait for a better opportunity with a better gallery, or even an artist-run space that is more highly regarded in the Korean art scene. But then again, should I forgo this opportunity just because the gallery doesn't have that much of a name, when I know that I would have total freedom to make a good exhibition? Is this the right move? When I was in this self-doubting mode, my boyfriend asked me, hypothetically, if a gallery like Arario that is obviously the gatekeepers of a system that I bash all the time, that “grooms'' or let’s say support the younger artists with their collectors in mind, if they offered to work with me, would I refuse? Honestly, I don’t know… even though I still believe that by not having that opportunity, I actually have more freedom. But then… in some ways does choosing freedom make my art/gestures less important? It’s a bit of a pickle. 

Prima Jalichandra-Sakuntabhai (PJ): It makes me think of the different conceptions of value between Western and Eastern and by Eastern, I am thinking specifically Buddhist. The Buddhism that I appreciate and subconsciously follow is the one that is focused on the present. It has helped me make the decision to not be worried by the question of where my work is going to land in the future, if in the present, I am having the conversation I want to have, with the people I want to have it, and still being challenged by it and able to produce the work that I feel is necessary for me to produce. That being said, I also face a challenging position in this moment in my life where in the past week or so, I purposefully decided I was going to quit this one job. I don’t think I can keep on hustling, doing random art handling gigs to go by and have enough energy and time for my work. And so that, not having institutional support, or commercial galleries supporting you, or making an income from your art, is a trap in itself obviously. In this capitalist world, you’re not able to then fully dedicate your time to your practice.

Yujin Lee, Drawing Conversation 2.0, Nov. 29, 2019, collaborative live drawing performance with artist Thanachai Ujjin, 108 minutes, Gallery VER

YL: It’s true. The reality is that not everybody can “be free in it” if you don’t have the means to. So in some ways what Chan is saying is almost elitist. Is it that one has a choice to be free in it and is not choosing to do so or is it that they can’t choose it because of the (financial) reality. I had multiple jobs in New York, but I also got so much help from my parents. Whereas some of my friends had to pay for an apartment, a studio, and all the extra cost of living in NYC. When I was contemplating whether or not to leave New York, I thought about my very talented artist friends, who simply didn’t have enough time and energy to spend in their studio. Despite it all, we all believed that it is all worth it because in New York there is that hope that one day either your work will be picked up or your art will be recognized, resolving all your problems.

PL: It sounds like the American Dream!

YL: Exactly! In New York, the American Dream amongst artists is a real thing! I mean no one would phrase it that way, but it’s a real ideology that is embedded in the system. Honestly, I was privileged enough to have a choice to leave because I had a place to go back to, but for many New York seemed like the only hope. Maybe Paul Chan’s text struck me more because of my position and it may not necessarily ring a bell for other artists. I’m just realizing that now, talking to you...

PJ: You bring up this personal sacrifice that capitalism demands of you especially when you strive to live off of something that you’re passionate about. I feel like that’s when it holds you the most because you’re going to be willing to sacrifice so much. But at the end, whether or not you have it, you’ve already lost that much time and energy by fueling this machine. 

I feel like I have such a different mentality from the artists in New York. Ok, I am also paying a lot for rent [laughing]. But I am not in LA because I hope to be picked up. I think that if LA was a smaller city, I would have been fine. The thing that attracted me here and that made me stay is that there is a diversity of art communities that exist simultaneously and sometimes they overlap. There are frictions and movements. Which in a smaller town, it would be hard to find. And also I am able to make the work that I want to make here and I have the support of the community. So I don’t feel like I need more recognition right now.  

Prima Jalichandra-Sakuntabhai, 1973, 2019, performance, 3 video projectors on tripods

YL: I think that’s also why people choose New York, too. What I miss most is the artist community that I was part of. We supported each other because we were all trying to persist within the same inequitable system. In Jeju, I have so much space and time, but no community. Though I have to say, COVID really impacted this concept of communities. A lot of people left NYC not because of the cost of living but because they could not be part of the community in the same way they did pre-COVID. So, going back to Paul Chan’s text [laughter], maybe one way to “be free in it” is to resist within as a collective rather than as an individual artist. More like a community of artists forming a collective wave, envisioning something alternative to...

PJ: Yeah and I see a lot of that happening, not just in terms of art but art workers unionizing and voicing their concerns within the system. I don’t know whether it is because I am a part of it that I am now more aware of it or it’s been happening before. It seems like before, people had their heads bowed down and not a lot of concerns or visibility was pointed towards art workers. There’s a form of solidarity that I see that got picked up in the general movement towards more equity in the workplace. 

YL: Are you part of this art worker’s union?

PJ: I am an art worker but I am not part of a specific art worker union. I am part of a union through my work for the city. But I am close friends with the person who started the union at MOCA. So I saw that sprouting. 

YL: This word union, it sounds archaic but it’s kind of new in the art world. We’re so far behind because people have this ideal image of the art world, even though it’s just another industry. 

PJ: It is very hierarchical. You brought this up before, right? That art has always been in service of power and capital. 

YL: Yeah, you know in Korea, the government recently funded a workshop/seminar around artist fees, releasing a thick book about all the research and new policies around it. I am actually surprised how Korea is far ahead in this issue than the US. Here, most curators now accept that when you invite an artist you have to pay an artist fee and even production fee, and not be a snob with the whole, ‘you should be thankful to be part of the show.’ But when I was in New York that kind of sentiment was still very strong.

PJ: It is still like this in LA.

YL: So the US is weirdly more resistant to this idea.

PJ: I think it is coming along though. I’ve only had shows in artist run spaces most of the time and of course, it’s hard for them to even have money to make their rent. So I understand. But it is weird that it's something that artists have to swallow in order to have an opportunity. 

YL: Right. I think a lot about the structure of the art world, because in Korea, there's so much government fundings in the arts that institutions, curators, artists all rely on. With government funds, you have to pay the artist fee by law, so this culture was able to spread more effectively. Whereas in the US, grants mostly come from private institutions or foundations. There are pros and cons to it. Even though the fund is supposed to allow you to spend more time and energy in creating art, with government funds, half of that time and energy goes to doing paperwork. When the government gives you tax money, they basically treat you like a potential thief, who needs to be closely monitored. This system is definitely not based on trust. Whereas in the US, a lot of the grants are no-questions-asked type of money. They give you money, they trust that you’ll use that money to be creative and make work.

Prima Jalichandra-Sakuntabhai, Monuments of Ratchadamnoen, 2020, performance, video projector and Elmo Visual Presenter, printed black and white images on photocopy paper, books

PJ: In a way, maybe we shouldn’t think of it in terms of freedom or bondage. But more like networks of accountability. Especially in terms of government funding. Who then do you owe your accountability to? These systems are also under construction and there’s so much room for progress in the way that we should function together. That is the key: to find ways for these things to function well within one another and how they can serve one another instead of thinking of art as an independent sphere.  

YL: Hmmm

PJ: [laughter] That is the plight of the artist, right? You’re always caught between very contradictory desires and reality check. Even if it isn’t capitalism, it will be something else. 

YL: True. Like… I have a certain vision and my art practice strives towards realizing that vision. So, it’s inevitable that I have a conflict with reality, right? Since I’m striving for something that is not yet a reality...

Last year I participated in a group exhibition centered around a new terminology in Korea, “untact” (un + contact), to promote social distancing. The curator invited artists from different regions of Korea, sent them a package of art materials by post, with which the artists created new work and sent it back to the curator by post. The exhibition can be visited by appointment only, and the key is that the curator, artists, and visitors never physically meet (i.e. keep their social distance). I wanted to do a conceptual piece around sending physical posts, which is so archaic but has made a comeback because of COVID. So I made 33 postcard size works on paper (I call them “drawing cards”) and sealed each of them in a separate envelope. With it, I placed the same size papers and the art materials I used to make my drawing cards. If the visitor wishes to open one up and keep it, they have to leave their own drawing cards for me. All of my drawing cards were taken, and I am now left with drawing cards made by people I don’t know. Since I don’t know the whereabouts of my drawing cards, the work exists in the form of a documentation (scans of my work and the participants’ replies). When I told my parents about this project, they were so shocked that I was just “throwing” away my work like that, in exchange for not money but for some meaningless doodles by strangers. It made me think about how deeply capitalistic the art world is, to the point where my parents’ (the non-art audience) gauge for “valuable” art is its monetary value. I tried to convince them that I was challenging this idea of art as an object of exchange for monetary value. I totally failed, and they just thought that it was a bad project. [laughter]

PJ: It is funny to think that on a very basic level material objects still carry more value than ideas. The core of your project is the idea and the idea is pretty successful if everyone took your artwork.  

Yujin Lee, Be My Pen Pal, 2020, mixed media on paper, each 13.5 x 18.5 cm, Left: 1 of 33 drawing cards (with images on both sides of the paper) by the artist. Right: 1 of 33 reply cards by an anonymous participant

YL: Yeah. But the curator was happy, since many visitors engaged with the work. I mean who’s going to say no to free art? Not even free art, just something free. [laughter] Little did they know, it wasn’t really free since they had to work for it!

PJ: If you shook their capitalist conscience, then I think that is good! Another victory!

With your work in particular, the thing that is at stake is more about the connection that is established between the giver and receiver. But I guess in both cases, you are receivers and givers at the same time. You’re the initiator but there is a reciprocal relationship. 

YL: It’s a conceptual piece, but then it’s also an archaic idea of exchange. My personal reference is the Joseon dynasty’s ink paintings which were more like letters, as they often had short poems written on the margins. Back then, the aristocrats, many of whom also painted themselves, thought of paintings as gifts, and never a product to be sold. I find it so intriguing that it’s the complete opposite today. To bring back this idea of “high art” from the Joseon dynasty, art had to be offered as a gift. This concept may also sound quite elitist, I’m not sure...

PJ: The English word “priceless” is confusing for me in that way. Because it’s supposed to be something that is of such high value that it has no price. Which is antithetical to capitalism: the higher the price tag, the more valuable the object is.

YL: Right. I try to take this elitism back to the non-art realm. I’m not saying that I’m giving away my art because it’s priceless, but because I feel like “price” shouldn’t even be part of the conversation. I want art to be a medium to engage and connect with others. Unfortunately, this mostly occurs within the art world. Though recently, my college friend, who’s not an artist, visited me in Jeju and wanted to draw with me. So we sat across from each other in my living room and drew each other’s portraits. This modest experience was very compelling to me, as there was no competition, no expectation. There was only a silent dialogue, a relationship. In that moment, I felt like I didn’t have to be the artist. Sometimes in major exhibitions I see works where the artist takes on this role of, let’s say, the philosopher from Plato’s Cave, who is the one that escapes the cave and sees the higher levels of reality. I’m not sure how I feel about this kind of position of the artist.

Yujin Lee, Muse, 2021, color pencil in sketchbook, each 15 x 21 cm, Left: portrait of Eunji by Yujin, Right: portrait of Yujin by Eunji

PJ: There is another side of art labour that goes into intellectualizing an artwork and thus giving it its value by having other laborers support it. It’s so beautiful the way you put it: in that moment when you both were drawing you can cease to exist as an artist and that is the thing that I was envying the shaman paintings too...

YL: But what does that mean, Prima? Do you think it means that I think art (and artists) should just be gone with? [laughter]

PJ: Well, I think that’s what Paul Chan means when he says “art would rather belong to the world.” To blend in versus try to stand out. The privileged position I feel as an artist and people who do care about art all share, is that we have a pleasure in observing things that other people don’t. That’s something that is very precious and a powerful tool to assess what actually is this world that we’ve been thrown in. Even if we’re part of it and shackled by it, we also have the distance from which we criticize it. 

Maybe I can address your other question. You asked me if I can expand my thoughts on art giving shape to the unknown in relation to language. Maybe that is connected to what we were saying before. For me, the privilege of the artist is the ability to see things that other people don’t. That can be just observing things that people take for granted and finding ways to make those situations uncanny. Because the reality we live in is purely arbitrary. And I think that knowing that those rules can be changed, is a powerful asset. In my work I try to bend the knowledge that is embedded in academic language or research language particularly. Even my writing practice itself is more of a searching. I would start with an idea of where I want to go, but I don’t really know what I’m talking about until I start writing. That too, is the beauty of art. Because if you already know the end product that you are going to make, then why are you making it in the first place?

Yujin Lee is a Jeju-based visual artist working with drawings, performances, videos, and audience-participatory projects. Interested in the Buddhist concept of yuanqi (interdependency), Lee have pursued collaborative projects with artists Emi Hariyama (108 Bows, 2013), Nicole Won Hee Maloof (Same/Difference, 2015), Aracha Cholitgul (im_there_r_u_here, 2020~ongoing), and Jo Ahra (Untitled, 2021~ongoing). Since 2019, she has been running an alternative artist residency at her farmhouse, Next Door to the Museum Jeju. Lee received her MFA in printmaking from Columbia University and a BFA in painting from Cornell University.

leeyujin.com @jejuanarchist

Prima Jalichandra-Sakuntabhai is a transdisciplinary artist, working across performance, video and installation, based in Los Angeles. Born in Thailand in 1989, they were raised in Europe before moving to the US in 2011. They received their Visual Arts Degree from the Ecole des Beaux Arts de Nantes Metropole and a License in Film Studies at the Sorbonne Nouvelle-Paris 3. They earned BFA at the School of the Arts Institute of Chicago and MFA at the California College of the Arts, in San Francisco. Featured in the 2015 Arizona Biennial at the Tucson Museum of Art, Arizona. Recipient of the SOMA Summer Award, Mexico City and the emi kuriyama spirit award.

Recent projects include: Fieldnotes for Useful Light, The Prelinger Library (San Francisco), Irrational Exhibits 11: Place-Making and Social Memory, Track 16 (LA) and The Anthropologist As Hero, in collaboration with Linda Franke, Justine Melford-Colegate and Jessica Hyatt, PAM Residencies (LA), Chloropsis Aurifrons Pridii, Fulcrum Press (LA). They curated the MAHA Pavillion for the Bangkok Biennial 2020.

www.primasakuntabhai.com @prima_jalichndrsakntbhai

[correspondencearchive]

4. Yujin Lee & Prima Jalichandra-Sakuntabhai (part 1)

Yujin Lee and Prima Jalichandra-Sakuntabhai discuss Paul Chan’s article, “What Art Is and Where It Belongs,” artistic production and its relationship to capital, making art for (or not for) a Western art audience, their interest in collaborative/process oriented projects, and whether or not one can be free as an artist from the intersecting systems of global capitalism and white supremacy that make up the art world. Read part 2 of their conversation here.

Yujin Lee (YL): Hi, Prima! First of all, thank you so much for accepting my invitation! I see that you received my email with the link to Paul Chan’s article, “What Art Is and Where It Belongs.” I suppose I will start with this obvious question. What is art to you and where do you think it belongs?

Prima Jalichandra-Sakuntabhai (PJ): Hi Yujin, thank you for sharing the Paul Chan text. It was indeed an interesting read! To your question as to “what is art to me and where I think it belongs”, my job as an art handler has deeply affected how I view art. I can no longer see art as a product of a singular mind but rather, an object that exists in relation to multiple networks. Paul Chan is generous in giving art the definition of a “more than” an object by the way that it expresses what an object desires to be. I would argue that art is only “more than” an object because it’s value is not intrinsic to its material properties and use-value but the cultural value assigned to it by a number of actors. When I was in undergrad I came across this book called, Worlds of Art (Les Mondes de l’Art) by Howard S. Becker. Anyway, he was one of the first authors to place art and artistic production in a chain of labour production from administrative works of post-production and marketing to intellectual works from universities and curatorial work. That vision of art is more true to me in my daily life than the art that is heralded for its poignant inquiry into humankind’s psyche and advancement of what we call “civilization”. So the simple answer to your question may be that art belongs to capital and serves those who can afford its production and consumption. But at the same time, while I serve as a clog in this system, I also want to make an art that can exist outside of the system and truly be moments of disconcert with the real. My current show is up at a gallery that used to be a storefront in a shopping plaza in Chinatown, Los Angeles. The interface with a non-art audience is inevitable. The projections attracted attention and the occasional passer-bys waiting to pick up their food would stop and talk to me. But the conversations remained fairly surface. None of them have yet made an appointment to intentionally see the work. Not to mention the heightened tensions caused by art’s complicity in gentrification. So, even in a public-facing space, art can only rely on its existing structures and those who already have access to them.

Since you work a lot with the public and collaborations, I wonder how the experience has been for you and whether you believe art can belong outside of the art world itself?

Prima Jalichandra-Sakuntabhai, Chloropsis Aurifrons Pridii, 2021, performance and multi-media installation, 2 video projectors, 2 overhead projectors, transparencies, colour filter, printed black and white images on photocopy paper, books

YL: I completely agree with everything you said about the complex networks that build up a work of art (and the artist’s career). Come to think of it, when has art ever been outside of that system? One example comes to mind that relates to how Paul Chan began and ended his article. Chan begins with a very “kitsch” painting that he purchased for thirty dollars in the streets of New York and an unexpected challenge in finding the right place to hang it in his home. And he ends the article with, “For art to become art now, it must feel perfectly at home, nowhere.” This beginning and ending reminds me of the Korean shaman paintings (portraits of the indigenous gods). Even though the tradition goes far back in history, not many of these paintings remain. They were either burned or buried because people believed that the painting is a physical dwelling (or a seat) for a particular god served by a particular shaman. In most cases, the artist is also unknown and unimportant. Moreover, up until the late 80s, art collectors refused to collect shaman paintings as they are not merely powerful paintings (as an art object) but empowered paintings (as sites of divine presence). Despite it all, if it somehow falls into a collector or enters the museum, it is believed to become what Marx called the commodity fetish, losing its power, thus losing its value. In this case, the art object, artist, and collector all have no place! This may be why shaman paintings have not been considered “art” for so long by its creators, users, and admirers. So for me, it’s not a matter of whether art can or cannot belong outside the “art world,” but that “it must feel perfectly at home, nowhere,” or that it must feel perfectly at home, everywhere. I test this theory by experimenting with process-oriented, collaborative, performance and relational art.

I watched the video documentation of the performative lecture installation that you’ve mentioned, Chloropsis Aurifrons Pridii, at The Fulcrum Press. The collage of your voice with the light and shadow of texts and images created by multiple projectors choreographed by the subtle gestures of your hands… It was a sensorial and immersive experience, even through my computer monitor. The occasional sound of the machines turning on and off took me in and out of this poetic narrative. I was also compelled by the intricately untangled individual journeys of your family members crossing three generations, and your re-interpretation of the overarching macro history that wolves together three continents. The most memorable moment was when you said, “... Both view history as driven by cycles of reincarnations. Within one body, one consciousness, are contained centuries of all earthly desires, unquenched. History thus progresses as a movement of return. For the last five years, I face the Pacific and the fear of a return.”

Having said that, I wonder why contemporary art often appears to be disparate from the rest of the world. Sometimes even alienating and elitist. Judith Butler actually defends this position quite eloquently:

“Who devises the protocols of ‘clarity’ and whose interests do they serve? What is foreclosed by the insistence on parochial standards of transparency as requisite for all communication? What does ‘transparency’ keep obscure?”

This statement may sound like art gibberish to the non-art audience and support your disappointment of the disinterest displayed by the non-art audience in Chinatown. But I wonder, what does it mean to desire the interests of the “non-art audience”?

PJ: First of all, yes to process art works! I think our two approaches to art practice staunchingly demarcate us from “the commodity fetish” that most high art/internationally-recognized art ends up becoming by the very fact that we care less about the end product and more about the creative process themselves. The process can take shape as a form of knowledge or a set of techniques that in my case, takes on a certain shade based on my personal narrative. But taken up by someone else, the combination of voice, body movements and layering of images that you noted, would express something else entirely. That is what I am interested in in achieving: rather than creating an original product, I want to redefine techniques and processes of thought. I think the relationality and collaboration in your work that I’ve seen at VER and what you continue to do at your residency in Jeju strive for a similar balance between the creation of processes and the specificity of the people you engage with.

This reflects the other side of our art practice: although it is defiant of consumerist art, it is still bound to the Western art canon. Even a working against or criticism of Western art canon asks the audience to be aware of the canon to understand our respective positions. I respond strongly to you raising the example of the Korean shaman paintings (of which I know nothing of!) as being uncollectable and therefore, not considered art. In this case, its power operates in a culture that is closer to the non-art audience. It doesn’t need to invent value for itself but its symbolic code is embedded in the culture that receives it.

That is why I am saddened by not being able to touch the “non-art audience”. I believe that I envy the power of the shaman paintings, a power that can touch anyone without necessary prior knowledge. That is what I lament in operating in the current art world that I am in. At the same time, I do deeply agree with you that the demand for clarity and the parochial is a form of holding back of thought and the need to plunge in the mystery that is sometimes too specific for the artist themselves to put words to. That is perhaps why I still value art over other forms of knowledge: art can give shape to what is previously unknown. I also don’t mean to juxtapose the shaman paintings versus the inaccessibility of high art, as if one holds more intellectual value than the other. What I simply want to highlight is the different levels of reception that each form allows for.

YL: It’s true that the non-art audience (who may not necessarily understand the painting’s aesthetic value nor its symbolic meaning) are likely to succumb to the power of shaman paintings because of its deep-rooted history that vibrates within the culture. Do you know about the Swedish artist and mystic, Hilma af Klint? I think she didn’t give two cents about the art or non-art audience. Af Klint considered her experimental paintings (the first Western abstract art known to date) too avant-garde for her contemporaries and rarely exhibited them in public in her lifetime. Meanwhile, her so-called Theosophical art, which was heavily influenced by Buddhism and Hinduism, interestingly brings us back to the Korean shaman paintings. Before creating a shaman painting, one is to take a good bath, wear clean new clothes and oftentimes chant a prayer. Af Klint did something similar. Before starting a new series of paintings, she dedicated many months of “purification” by adjusting her lifestyle, like practicing vegetarianism. It may sound like a frivolous formality, but it demonstrates a belief on how the creator’s (artist’s) personal life cannot be severed from their creation (art), even if the admirers (public) may never know or care about the creator to begin with.

I’d like to go to your comment on how art “can give shape to what is previously unknown.” Chan also states that “in art, the only ideas worth realizing are the truly untenable ones.” I seriously weighed this concept (of art giving shape to obscurity) during my exhibition in Bangkok at the end of 2019, especially through the work you mentioned earlier, Drawing Conversation 2.0, a series of collaborative live automatic drawing performances created with local Thai artists. The obscurity for me at the time was the uncomfortable reality of having a solo show at a place where I did not understand its native language, culture, nor history.

A smaller room attached to the main gallery was dedicated for this work. The walls were painted black, and the floor laid with a dark grey carpet. A square table (around 30 cm in height) was placed in the center of the room where a blank sheet of paper covered its entire surface. A large scale drawing titled, In the beginning was___, was hung along with 5 other blank sheets of papers ready to be conversed upon. Drawing materials such as graphite, charcoal, eraser, and pen (no colors) were provided. For each session, a local artist was invited to create a drawing with me in silence for 108 minutes. A timer was set on my phone. The audience could freely enter and exit the space, sit, stand, or walk around us. The first ten minutes or so felt highly performative. But as more of our marks, gestures, breaths, and bodily heat crisscrossed, I experienced a kind of a (collective) trance. And when the timer went off and broke the silence of the room, the familiar ringtone of an iPhone sounded like the Korean shaman bell, bringing everybody in the room back to the present time and space. I think maybe this was my closest attempt in creating an “empowered painting.”

Yujin Lee, Drawing Conversation 2.0, Nov. 29, 2019, collaborative live drawing performance with artist Dujdao Vadhanapakorn, 108 minutes, Gallery VER

YL: Back to Chan… He asserts that “art and life would rather belong to the world than be free in it.” That is a bleak outlook for art, don’t you think? So, my question is, can we imagine art to be free in the current world (of capitalism)? I wonder what your thoughts are on this last point, and could you expand your thoughts on “art giving shape to the unknown” in relation to how you use language/text in your work?

PJ: Two big questions! [laughter]. I think it is a good question because we’re working towards agreeing that art is more often than not, not free in capitalism but can there be instances where they are…

YL: I thought that the last part of his text was interesting because when he’s saying “art and life would rather belong to the world,” it has a negative connotation... contrasting to what follows, “rather than be free in it.” Also you would think that he meant to say, “be free from it,” suggesting an escape from the world of inequity. But he’s sort of saying even within the system, art can be free inside of it, right? I thought that was an interesting, nuanced statement, and I want to pose this question to you, since you are still in the system, the LA art scene.

PJ: Are you saying that you’re not part of a scene because you are in Jeju?

YL: [laughing hard] That’s how I felt when I moved to Jeju, but with COVID I don’t think that’s true anymore because the internet in some ways amplifies the presence of the international art scene.

PJ: I think art has always been in network and in communication across borders and that capital gives more value to the kind of art that travels or is part of the international scene. LA or New York may have a very specific local scene but these major cities give the impression that if you’re part of their local scene, you’re somewhat seen internationally. So I think that art still depends on this kind of network. But the thing that is different with COVID is that people are more proactive in participating across countries and timezones.

YL: Yeah, that’s actually what I mean. I thought I left, by relocating to an island, a countryside, but COVID definitely brought me back to the network.

Yujin Lee, Painting Conversation, 2021, collaborative drawing performance with artist Jo Ahra, paintings completed over 4 sessions (March 19th, 21st, 23rd, 28th), Next Door to the Museum Jeju Artist Residency completed painting used as a costume for an improvisational dance video (work in process)

PJ: I want to also argue that maybe even if our locations are specific, that doesn’t mean that we’re not part of a larger network that has formed us.

Whether you like it or not, your context will always be informed by the experience you had in New York.

YL: You’re right. I thought, ‘physically leaving New York= leaving the art world.’ But the reality is, like you said, my experience as an artist is based on my time in New York. So, I’m probably going to carry that with me. So back to my questions on Chan’s statement… We’re all part of this world that is not very equitable... How can we be part of it, yet “be free in it?”

PJ: I want to believe that there is some sort of freedom.  When you give away a certain part of the bargain and that bargain being monetary or investment by some sort of institution to give value to your art, to me, by abandoning that, I feel much more free. And I’m able to have full ownership of decisions around my work, which would not be the case if I was trying to respond to a certain expectation.

Prima Jalichandra-Sakuntabhai, Seven Springs, 2019, Collaboration with Chris McKelway, 2 violins, 2 overhead projectors, images printed on transparencies, colour filters

Yujin Lee is a Jeju-based visual artist working with drawings, performances, videos, and audience-participatory projects. Interested in the Buddhist concept of yuanqi (interdependency), Lee have pursued collaborative projects with artists Emi Hariyama (108 Bows, 2013), Nicole Won Hee Maloof (Same/Difference, 2015), Aracha Cholitgul (im_there_r_u_here, 2020~ongoing), and Jo Ahra (Untitled, 2021~ongoing). Since 2019, she has been running an alternative artist residency at her farmhouse, Next Door to the Museum Jeju. Lee received her MFA in printmaking from Columbia University and a BFA in painting from Cornell University.

leeyujin.com @jejuanarchist

Prima Jalichandra-Sakuntabhai is a transdisciplinary artist, working across performance, video and installation, based in Los Angeles. Born in Thailand in 1989, they were raised in Europe before moving to the US in 2011. They received their Visual Arts Degree from the Ecole des Beaux Arts de Nantes Metropole and a License in Film Studies at the Sorbonne Nouvelle-Paris 3. They earned BFA at the School of the Arts Institute of Chicago and MFA at the California College of the Arts, in San Francisco. Featured in the 2015 Arizona Biennial at the Tucson Museum of Art, Arizona. Recipient of the SOMA Summer Award, Mexico City and the emi kuriyama spirit award.

Recent projects include: Fieldnotes for Useful Light, The Prelinger Library (San Francisco), Irrational Exhibits 11: Place-Making and Social Memory, Track 16 (LA) and The Anthropologist As Hero, in collaboration with Linda Franke, Justine Melford-Colegate and Jessica Hyatt, PAM Residencies (LA), Chloropsis Aurifrons Pridii, Fulcrum Press (LA). They curated the MAHA Pavillion for the Bangkok Biennial 2020.

www.primasakuntabhai.com @prima_jalichndrsakntbhai