Interview with Ilana Harris-Babou
Interview with
Ilana Harris-Babou
Following her solo show, Tasteful Interiors, at the ICA Chattanooga
A conversation with Jules Jackson and Will Sutton, of Mineral House Media
Jules: Here we go. Will, do you want to start with some of your questions?
Will: Yeah, thank you for jumping on, I loved the talk yesterday.
Ilana: Thanks!
Will: In class today we, me and Stephen, couldn't stop talking about it, we really enjoyed it. So my first question would be, what have you been listening to recently and would you recommend anything?
Ilana: Hmmm… What have I been listening to lately... I've been listening to a lot of Motown music. I went to my first ever musical for my mom's birthday. It was Ain’t Too Proud, the Temptations musical. Very Catchy. So listening to a lot of catchy Motown and great Temptations hits. And the audiobook version of The English Patient by Michael Hagee.
Jules: OK. So the play was based on Motown?
Ilana: It's basically just this sort of straightforward accounting of the history of the Temptations, interspersed with song and dance interludes. But it was interesting to be post COVID, or maybe, during COVID Broadway.
Will: A better time than COVID Broadway. Thank you. Jules, did you want to fire one off?
Jules: Sure. So I was curious, what was the beginning of your interest in DIY or taste making media in terms of art making practice? What made you initially interested in exploring that realm?
Ilana: Well, I think it's just what I was spending a lot of my downtime looking at. I think at first it was that I was looking at music videos, but I started to get bored. When bringing that mode of image making into my own practice, I got a little bit bored of certain dichotomies that I felt were more common. Talking about art back then, it was high-brow versus low-brow, hip-hop versus fine-art. The conversation would go to those pretty quickly. That was kind of boring. And so I was thinking about what I was really excited about when it came to cameras and objects. The goings on in my studio turned to the way studio lighting and these prosumer cameras can transform even the most mundane material and make it look, you know, exciting, delicious, seductive. So I started thinking about other forms that did similar things, and that's what led me to thinking about all the cooking shows I had been watching and the lighting in those. Then I just hop from whatever I'm looking at the most outside of the studio. One thing to the next.
Jules: That's really interesting because one thing that I noticed just walking through Tasteful Interiors was the use of lighting. Light bulbs and some of the sculptures that the lighting seemed to be very warm in some environments and very deliberate.
Ilana: Yeah, the lighting in the show, too, is very much a collaboration with curator Rachel Reese.
Jules: Absolutely.
Will: Just thinking about one part of the show that I was really drawn to, and I've seen this in other exhibitions that you've had, what do you think that painting the walls colors other than white does for the work?
Ilana: I think I initially imagined the work sitting in this kind of world, their universe. I think that, you know, we can't really take the white walls for granted or as a given because they aren’t. Even if we talk about them as neutral, we know that they aren't really, and that they come with their own set of associations. That this is a rarified space, or clean space, or space for viewing art. So I think that the walls allow me to sort of add another element to this story. To give a ground upon which to read the objects and videos.
Will: I was really drawn to how you talked about how that also allows for a tension between installation and object. I'm thinking more about the stacked painted pedestals, and having kind of a store display enacting the same effect. Maybe that enacts a different effect than if it was just the white pedestals stacked up against each other. Like it seems a little bit more like a commercial space, like a more comfortable space. I agree with you, the White Wall has its own sort of sterile connotations that sometimes can really limit work.
Ilana: Yeah, I think about the desire that's generated in these retail spaces for the objects that are there. How we can covet them. In that familiar form we imagine them in our own lives, or how they fit into our own lives. The particular sort of stacking nature of the pedestals and stuff in the center of this show at UTC was Rachel's idea, and it's really cool to see how it could come together in the space.
Jules: I was watching one of your interviews on your website and you talked about this thin line existing between something being disgusting and delicious, kind of a line between grotesque and beautiful. And it made me think about these food videos that I see on Instagram or Twitter, that walk that line very closely. There's this particular genre of food videos where it's just things covered in cheese. Just like an inordinate amount of cheese. They call it the “cheese bomb” in some cases. I was just curious... Are there any examples that stand out in your mind of things that you've seen, unironically, in this kind of taste making media that really push against that boundary between disgusting and delicious?
Ilana: I think that idea of some things have evolved into irony because most of us have access to making videos. Even since I started looking at cooking videos five years ago, it's hard to name which things aren't self-conscious, self-aware or ironic. You know, it feels like almost all media is ironic, even if it frames itself just as a sincere cooking show. You could even go on Netflix, right? And you'll see that one, Nailed It, or the one with Paris Hilton, where they're all kind of making fun of themselves while they're doing it at the same time. When I was first looking at it, I was thinking about that channel on YouTube “How to Basic” that started out as a sort of standard tutorial and then went off the rails. But now it seems like so many things we look at online are already halfway off the rails intentionally.
Jules: Yeah, I absolutely agree with that. It's like you never know how aware the person making the video is. So there's a lot of boundary breaking in that way.
Will: Jules and I are both seniors at UTC. We've been thinking about when we leave undergrad, and how to maintain a good studio practice right after school. When the rug is pulled out from underneath you. How do you define a good studio practice? How did you work to keep a studio practice right after leaving school?
Ilana: Yeah, I think I used deadlines, sometimes arbitrary, as an excuse to work towards something. So I applied to lots of different fellowships or residencies and stuff. Even if I didn't think I would get it, it gave me some excuse to finish some body of work or something like that. I think it probably would be helpful, and more healthy, to be able to keep some sort of crit group going with your friends to keep the conversation going. I have a lot of work, and I'm proud of a lot of the work that I made, but I also can't say that I have the most healthy studio habits. I kind of rush towards deadlines, and I just kind of tumble from one thing to the next. “Oh crap, I have two weeks. I have to finish this thing.” From one moment like that to the next. You have to generate it. If you're going to have unhealthy studio habits like I do, you've got to generate those deadlines, too. I think it depends on where you live, too.Whether or not you can afford studio space in a place that you live. So if you could do that in Chattanooga, that's a great place to give yourself to keep working. But if you're like me and you've always lived in expensive places, well… My schedule is often based on if I get a residency and someone gives me a studio, then I'll try to finish a project in the amount of time that I have space because I've never been able to rent my own studio that I pay for myself.
Will: That's a similar thing that I think happens to a lot of students right after graduation. It's like, “Oh crap, there's not a lot of stuff available.” The thing at the end of the day, you know, is just making work and just trying to do it for yourselves. I really appreciate the idea of just applying to things to keep it as a motor, or making arbitrary deadlines just to keep yourself in check. A great group, too. Those things would definitely be things I will try.
Jules: Yeah, yeah, I absolutely agree. And I have to say, I also relate to the tumbling from one deadline to the next. I feel like that's something that happens to a lot of artists in general. That's just kind of something that happens. I wanted to ask as well, kind of going back to the lifestyle and taste making media, do you think that the effects of social media differs from the effects of conventional media when it comes to how taste making impacts our identities?
Ilana: I’ve heard some folks say what it could mean to create a subculture or a counterculture or something very different, like even the idea of counterculture is hard to name. That kind of rhizomatic, dispersed sort of culture that we have now, where we're producing it on our own. You know, you’re watching a commercial on cable TV and it says you want to buy this thing, every family wants to do this, we're doing this or that. You could see that pretty quickly and identify like, “That doesn't speak for me. I'm not this wholesome family with this Kellogg cereal, I need to come up with my own community or conversation to keep me going.” But nowadays you see so much targeted advertising that at first glance looks like it's personal for you, or you can't tell who's your friend or who's not. Like, I get ads that are really specifically for people in Brooklyn who like dachshunds and gold jewelry or something, you know? So it has this illusion of being personal, even though it's still just as equally arbitrated by these big companies. It's very confusing to know how to step back and step out of the realm of advertising and reclaim your own material experience when almost everything you do while living your life is in some way an ad.
Jules: Yeah, I think that's very insightful. the way that social media is really more than being a social experience, but rather a kind of advertising experience. My follow up question was, what do you think of like slime videos and ASMR? I associate those in my mind with some taste making videos on Instagram or Twitter. And I feel like they also push that boundary between delicious and disgusting, or grotesque and satisfying.
Ilana: Some folks have told me that moments in some of my videos can have an ASMR type vibe. I personally have never had that experience. My brain, I guess, doesn't tap into that sensation of ASMR, but it seems so fun. I wish I could. I'm really sensitive to, and invested in, texture. I'm disgusted by certain textures that maybe other people aren't disgusted by, and I'm attracted to certain textures that maybe other people would be disgusted by. Strangely, even though you might think from my work that I would look at these things, I just kind of don't. Maybe I'll spend some time looking at Slime and ASMR videos.
Jules: Thank you very much. Will, did you have a question that you want to ask?
Will: Yeah. I remember in the artist's talk yesterday, you mentioned starting undergrad as a painter. I can kind of see a connection there with the collages you were making and also your ceramic practice. Things like painting and ceramics have a lot of things in common. You mentioned the best part of painting being the part where it's messy. When it's gooey and things seem fresh before it's fully dried. Is any of that interest in painting informing your collage or sculptural practice?
Ilana: I like the alchemy of painting. You turn something solid into a form of light, or something on the surface. I often imagine different shots in my videos in a similar way. It’s different color worlds, and placing images within them. I still like the discourse around painting when I get to talk about my friends' work. And yeah, I guess it’s still there in some ways, but then in other ways, I feel a little hemmed in by two dimensions. I find myself moving outwards or away because I think I'm more invested in texture and color than line, for instance, or depth of field.
Jules: That also connects to the object of sculpture as opposed to a painting. It's a different kind of relationship with a three dimensional object. I'm curious... What have been some of the books, articles and other readings that you feel have impacted your practice?
Ilana: There's a book called Shine by the Jamaican art historian Krista Thompson that's about light, and visuality, and surfaces in art history and hip-hop culture that influences me a lot. In “Cooking with the Erotic” I'm quoting the speech by Audre Lorde that's inside of the Sister Outsider collection of her essays. That definitely influenced me a lot. The writing of Christina Wilson, who is also an art historian, and writes about mid-century modern style, furniture, and race.
Jules: Absolutely. Are there artists or other colleagues that you would consider to have been influential mentors for your practice?
Ilana: Yeah, my friends have influenced me a lot, and taught me materials. I learned clay from my friend Hector Garcia, who is a really amazing sculptor. I learned a lot about how to use video and cameras from Peter Clough, a video installation artist who I worked for when I was a graduate student at Columbia University. My thesis adviser was Sanford Biggers, who was really great and also had great practical advice about how to be an artist. A lot of my classmates I really admired. That's the best part of going to graduate school, the other students.
Jules: That's awesome. I definitely agree that having a strong cohort of friends and colleagues is super beneficial for a practice.
Will: I think that's when we do our best work, when we have artist to artist, friend to friend interaction with the people around us. We all have skills that we can share, and when we work together, I think we can bring out the best in all of us.
Ilana: Absolutely.
Jules: Will, you had a really interesting question here about humor and the role of humor in some of the sculptural objects in Tasteful Interiors.
Will: Yeah, I was particularly interested in the ironic relationship between the ceramic tool and its functionality. I'm thinking of what it means to carefully construct a ceramic hammer, and then nail in nails with that hammer. It's breaking upon itself as it's doing that. It seems to be a really poetic move. You mentioned relating this to the demise of the United States in a way that I found was really poetic. Breaking itself down in its own function. I kind of just wanted to hear a little bit about how you use humor and irony to talk through your work.
Ilana: It just kind of comes out. Even when I try to be serious, things just list that way. I think sometimes with the most painful things, humor is a way to digest these really painful realities. When you look at that strangeness, it becomes funny. I was living in Richmond when I started thinking about a ceramic hammer. I was thinking about, you know, the Civil War, of course, and just how it felt at that moment. It's like 2016, there’s this set of ideologies that I think have so many different contradictions. You know, the historical plaques that will say weird things like, “The first people who came out with water buckets when the Union Army tried to burn down our beautiful city were African-Americans.” And you're like, “What are you talking about?” It's ridiculous. All of those contradictions are values that undermine themselves, and they are everywhere. I think even when I was installing in Chattanooga, I went to Ross's Landing on the river. There is some plaque there that was something like, “In 1834, the Cherokees departed this landing for points west.” or something like that. “And then our beautiful city expanded” or something like that. I was like, what? That's the most painful thing in the world they're describing, but you laugh at it because of the flippancy. It's hard to imagine that that would be described that way. As if they were heading off on a road trip or something like that, you know? So I think I see those things everywhere and these kinds of embedded contradictions are things you take for granted.
Jules: Actually, one of the questions I was going to ask originally was, what do you think of Chattanooga, broadly speaking? So I guess that kind of ties in with that because I do definitely think that, like many cities in the south, there are some very strange, surreal constructions of history going on in our public spaces. Will, did you have an additional question that you wanted to ask?
Will: One more question that I had about your practice. You often collaborate with your mother, and I'm curious to know more about how your collaboration with her began, and to hear your thoughts on what new perspectives she brings to your practice.
Ilana: I like working with her because it's like a nice controlled space to spend time together. We all have different relationships with our parents, but I live in that space of collaborating on art. It's like a sort of shared project and a controlled dynamic in that way. She just loves being in front of the camera and making up stories. That's kind of the way she's always been. I think she gets to be a more real, or truer, version of herself in front of the camera than on that day-to-day basis. She definitely comes to me with different ideas about pieces I should make and things like that. The process has become more collaborative over time, but I think she would still consider the videos to be my work rather than a collaboration.
Jules: That reminds me, Will has a running history of practice, he refers to it as the Critter World, and it's because of the characters that he'll draw. His mom calls them “critters,” so he got the name from her. Our parents can really give us a lot of interesting perspectives on our work. All right. I think that that's all of the questions we had written together. Thank you very much for joining us. It's been a real pleasure to talk to you. Thank you very much.
Ilana: Thank you. Have a lovely evening.
Jules: You, too
Will: Thank you.