In Conversation: Nour Jaouda, Gal Leshem and Emily Moore

A conversation between artists Nour Jaouda, Gal Leshem and Emily Moore in advance of their exhibition Thought Threads (San Mei, 8-31 October 2020).

Thinking about visual language, spoken language and written language as some ways of sharing information in story-telling- Is language or text important to you?

Nour: I have always been interested in translation - the space between different languages and the place for art within this. I grew up in Egypt but I consider Arabic and English both as my first language. For me, making is the secret space between the two languages. The physicality of the material expresses what is absent in words, so for me it is the absence of language that drives me. I do read and write but the main driving force for ideas is in the actions. I think that language and the written text have a complex relationship to culture. A lot of the time when titling my work, there is a gap when referencing something that a certain culture, language or space doesn’t have access to. It feels like sometimes there is a conflict with words. I think about Arabic typography a lot, because visually the way Islamic script is written, whether it is my mum’s handwriting for her shopping list, or something more formal, says a lot about the content too.

Emily: For me, the distinction of visual, spoken and written language demonstrate various ways to articulate things to an outside audience. I feel that visual language carries a vibration, which makes me think back to prehistoric art. Before there was written or spoken language, everyone could articulate outside of their tribes through these visual vibrations, of images, symbols or action for example. The energy of the visual language has always translated and held its weight, beyond articulating something through words. My practice goes back to the idea of visual language having authority. I think there is the idea of the ‘maker spirit’ which we all have. It is internalised and so we are able to articulate our thoughts through the action of making. Personally anyway, it is easier to articulate feelings through material and a visual language versus a written or spoken one.

Gal: I was thinking about the struggle with being split between two languages. I live in a country that doesn’t just speak my native language, and a lot of my work has to do with the place I’m from. For me there is a lot of frustration with language because of the idea of translating and what is translatable. In terms of textiles for me, they can make something that is really specific in terms of culture or history, more relatable, because everyone has an intimate relation to material. In terms of our bodies, we are able to bridge the gap of relatability through the materials that we come into contact with. In terms of titling, I tend to use Hebrew but written in the English alphabet and sometimes with the translation in English in brackets. Sometimes when I leave it untranslated, it might be unrelatable for people who can’t understand the meaning of it, but I wouldn’t want to put a translation just for the sake of it. This is the exact place where I would only want to put the translation if I felt it was accurate.

Emily: I’ve always hated titles and I always left things untitled but ever since I started at RCA I was forced to title my work. Still, my titles are always literal. There is hardly any depth to them! I think I got into trouble for not having depth to my titles, but I mean, at least there is one.

Nour: Yes at the RCA, maybe especially with painters there seems to be so much emphasis on titling and I find it really challenging. In the crits and in viewing or analysing the work, it takes up a lot of the conversation. Personally titling is not really intrinsic to my process of making, it is more a natural result of it.

How important is the choice of material (e.g. natural or synthetic, colour, texture, source) and the process of making in the purpose/narrative of your work?

Nour: I collect stuff and materials around me, canvas, yarn and embroidery. My work forms its own biography and context according to what is available at the time. Moving studios to different locations really informs the work. Materiality is essential to the meaning and feelings I want to construct within the work. The way I embroider, layer or stitch; the way it inhabits the space, are all essential to the feelings I want to express. Using material and also depicting an image creates a tension for me between the visual, fictional image and the physical, tactile object. It brings in the question of whether it is a painting or an object. All of this is inherent in the process of dealing with material.

Gal: In the last couple of years, I have been working with natural dyes a lot. This started as just a way to get the colour I wanted, but more recently I started researching the history of the dyes, so everything became about the material. I almost feel like the image is taking over when what I actually want the work to be about is the material. I don’t really want it to be in any specific shape or form, but of course it needs to take some shape. Sometimes it feels like it’s more about the framing. I feel my process is to identify the shapes that this specific material has taken in the past and expose them.

Nour: When the work is on your floor as you’re making it, and you can see the textures and fibres, you can obsess over this. For me the struggle comes when it comes to bringing it to life and letting it inhabit a certain space. The questions about what form it can take or what I want to tell using that piece straddles the external space it is being shown in and internal space of the material.

Emily: These textile pieces are just a glimpse or snapshot of my larger practice. I made these pieces during Covid lockdown, and the relationship I had to them was a bit less intuitive. They are more personal because of the experiences we were going through. Tabernacle has a real emphasis on the idea of what it means to be in a safe space; Black Woman and Child is to do with the Black Lives Matter movement; and All Or Nothing is more about coming through the lockdown. These particular pieces and the specific way in which I approach them is more intentional. In general, my practice is not restricted or fixed upon certain materials and the way I use them. If I find a material I want to use, I will use it. All this depends on my surroundings and what is available. The idea of finding, reusing and reclaiming materials as well as bringing in new materials is really important to my practice.

How do you feel about your work and practice in relation to the word ‘sustainability’?

Emily: When I first started my artistic journey, I used to think about sustainability a lot. It used to freak me out, going to a gallery and thinking about how these things weren’t going to be used again. Going back to my terminology ‘wildness’, I feel like that is where my legacy will live on as an artist. A lot of the materials I use may not last 100 years, but my terminology will probably stay. I do try to reclaim materials because I feel it’s important to use what’s a round you rather than always bring in new materials. There are so many artists in the world and not every single thing we make will be able to be kept forever, so it’s very much about the archival process too. The process of knowing that a piece lived and existed in a time and space is much more important than sustainability in terms of lasting forever. I would prefer to use the work again in another piece and to be sustainable in that way.

Gal: Reusing the same thing is interesting to me. I always want to do it, but I feel like there is something about the way the art world operates, that restricts this. For me, the thought that a finished piece of work needs to be wrapped and kept apart is where it dies. I am in the mindset that I dyed this material myself and I want to use the same thing again, maybe as a background for something else. At the same time, there is always a push and pull with these things too.

Nour: I think sustainability is about respecting and embracing the history of the fabric. A lot of the fabrics I use have existed in previous experiments in the studio or previous works. I like knowing that it belonged to a different piece in another context. For example, the piece I’m showing in the exhibition, part of it I hand embroidered 2 years ago, but it has been folded in my cupboard because I just couldn’t resolve it. Bringing it into a new context, I have to embrace the creases and marks of history on it. If you use the same fabric again, the sense of its history is present whether you like it or not, because it existed somewhere else. It can’t be born new. That’s what I love about fabric, it endures a lot. It’s folded, carried from a market years ago covered in dust, put in a suitcase and reused. There is an honesty and authenticity of dealing with things that have their own biography. Sustainability becomes essential in this way, by acknowledging that everything comes from somewhere and it will live on. The boundary we have to cross in the art world is that once a monetary value has been put on it, this very human and intimate thing will be made into something that you can’t touch.

Gal: There is also something about the disintegrating that undoes the boundary between art and material culture. The nature of this material means that it will fade, it will disintegrate, it will change, even just over an exhibition period. I feel this brings it back to the rawness.

Emily: At the same time I do want my work to live on too. I understand that it wouldn’t exist forever, but I have an urge to mark that we were here, and I worked in this period. I worked with a scientist back in the RCA exploring the properties of fence paint which I use a lot in my paintings, to see if it would last, like oil or acrylic does. It gave me so much joy to find out that it is light safe and so that in 100 years’ time, even though I won’t be here, my work will. Even though we make so much stuff and not all of it has to stay, there are some things which carry more importance for whatever reason. They are sustainable in the sense that they will live on.

Does time play an important part in your practice? What about memory? Does space, interior or exterior, have an effect on your work?

Gal: Time plays a significant role for me in two ways. First of all, dying fabric is a really slow process, so there is something about existing with a work in an extended way. The many-staged process of dying is drawn-out and I really like this. I had a conversation about pricing work and in terms of calculating how many hours you put into the work, for me there is no clear number. Where is the demarcation for the start and finish. There is something about the whole process including the preparation that is very much a part of the work. Also, the dye fades and there is something I like about this but also that frustrates me. The amount of time you put into making it is almost never ‘worth it’ somehow. A lot of what I do is about memory. There is all this intense research into the history of specific objects. For the piece in the exhibition, it is about me looking into oriental rugs in Turkey and Greece. I have a process of excavation of specific bits, shapes and images from these ‘digs’ that I do. The piece hangs from floor to ceiling, but all my making happens horizontally, and so there is something really strange in relation to the space. You see it on the table or floor as I’m working on it. There is a weird moment for me when hanging things up, because I’m so used to seeing it take up my whole living space and a lot of the time. Putting it up, the piece seems a lot smaller. With this specific work, I wanted something quite commanding in terms of the scale, presentation and how much space it would take up.

Nour: My work also starts on the floor and I agree, the process of moving it from the floor to the ceiling, completely transforms it. It’s like the difference between your relationship to the ground and your relationship to the sky. You can sit cross legged on the floor and interact with the material in a more intimate and personal way than when it starts to occupy gallery wall space. That’s where time plays in for me. The notion of time in making is so essential to me. The amount of time you spend embroidering, sewing and dying, informs the piece and gives it a story. It slows down the way we see things, rather than when looking at something photographed. I feel that the sense of time involved in hand crafting something can’t really be replaced by anything. Seeing each thread and the labour of intentionally placing it is tactile. My piece in the exhibition also involves a metal structure. This structure and having control over the way the fabric is hung, becomes part of the work. The metal is a mediator or translator for the way the work occupies the space, through informing the weight and nature of the fabric. I try to create a visual aspect to it too so that the metal is a practical structure but also carries a narrative image.

Emily: Specifically for these textile works I am showing, there is an agency and a real urge to push and pull through the material. You see in this work that although it was done with care, it was done with a fast pace. For me the making of these pieces has been quite a rapid process and you can see that in the threads left dangling. It’s important to me though, that the way and speed that I make them is not necessarily the way and speed I want them to be viewed. The way I envision the audience engaging in the work is much slower. There are different ways the work could be negotiated in terms of time.

Nour:  I really relate to that because the handling of threads and craft is slow and tactile but it can be disrupted. You can cut through it or let the thread hang loose, or make a violent decision to distort it somehow. This way of playing with time can really disrupt how a viewer sees the work.

What are your thoughts on the language of textiles and materiality within painting, sculpture and media? Are you painting/sculpting with textiles as a medium?

Emily: The way I use yarn still has a very painterly foundation to it. Thinking about the Abstract Expressionists, these pieces specifically have figuration but you can remove that and think about process. Some of those artists were using paint to work so quickly, and a lot of my tropes, language and foundations come from these underlying painting languages. The time of bringing in certain points of history into my work is important. It is made in today’s time but there are thoughts of my predecessors and their thinking. This history is more important to me in terms of the story of making rather than a narrative figurative story. We are constantly bridging conversations that predecessors have had and bringing those or the rejection of those into our current body of work and our language.

Gal: I relate but in a different way. For me this history is more part of ‘the story’ rather than the gesture and way I made it. A lot of the time I am more interested in how specific visual forms develop and tracing their development from place to place or along time. I wouldn’t necessarily use or reference those exact gestures but I want them to exist in the story, almost in more of a contextual space. I am interested in the lineages.

Emily: That’s interesting because once you go to art school, you are now not just talking about art from the position of just a maker. You are also meant to be a master of this particular craft. You no longer just speak about it from a position of ‘I kinda like it’ but you actually know the reasons you enjoy something. This might bring in certain histories and movements and other artists which may not be related to what you’re doing right at that moment, but you know where they come from. When I talk about Abstract Expressionists, it’s not enough to say that I quite like something about that movement, I have to say it from a position of knowing and understanding of my body of work and the lineage I carry.

Nour: The artist can’t really escape their own gesture and mark. The fact you dyed it or made it means that your hand is present. You may have taken things from different contexts but it’s your take on it and so your presence is there. The more you try to hide your own presence the more it keeps showing. The role of the artist is to say something with the way you intervene in these movements from 50 years ago. When you physically respond to something it becomes yours. That’s why material is so important, because it tactility and it leaves a physical trace.

Do you think about your work in relation to the body or any sort of ‘scale’?

Nour: My process of making is like a puzzle and you don’t know what it will look like in the end. The work adapts to the environment it occupies and the body that makes it. Usually the work is a response to the context of where it is made. I think the question of scale will always have to do with the body and space. I have a very process based way of making, with collage and decollage. Different shapes lead into some form of composition based in the space I am in and my relationship to it. Here, external factors inform the work whereas, in paintings the actual composition forms an image which goes on to affect its surroundings.

Do you feel that what you read, watch, listen to etc.  informs your work?

Nour: I think the blending of life, art and making, is always a struggle to balance. These external things are all ingredients, like eating, socialising, reading and inspiration, but once I start making, everything becomes very internal and personal. I see these ‘life things’ as quite separate. Making and living are very interlinked but in order to stay sane I have to separate them, because the way I value myself can’t just be from my practice.

Emily: Separate from the pieces I am showing at San Mei Gallery, in general my practice is very open. Sometimes the work is just about me and my practice but sometimes it’s influenced by being at home, being an educator, looking after my son, studying and having zoom meetings. Especially in the recent textile pieces, my making was very influenced by all of these things. There are other times when I enter my studio and there is nothing apart from the influences I choose to bring in. I am always multitasking and so I have various exit and entry points I need in order to focus. That is how I find my sanity, by separating everything.

Gal: I find it really difficult to separate everything. It is a problem for me though. Ideas come to me during the in between moments, when I am not planning on making. When I know I need to go to the studio and it is planned, then I get a blank canvas anxiety. There is something about the thinking and dreaming happening in those intermediate moments that allows the making to just be quite functional and practical. Sometimes it works really well and sometimes it’s really shit because if you dont have dedicated making times, it might stop you from making certain things.

Nour: These lived experiences of everyday life will always inform indirectly. You can’t avoid it. Sometimes we unintentionally create a separation between art and life for the sake of comprehending what we are doing. In reality I feel you can’t separate the art you’re making from your life. It’s somehow all connected.

Gal: There are certain things I can do that I know will get me in the right mindset. Specifically books for example, they can help me open that space to make.

Emily: I suppose I don’t have that luxury because it’s always go go go. I literally have to switch into each different mode without even thinking what mode I’m going into. Now I have finished studying, maybe there won’t be such a distinction between these different modes.

Gal: There is something about studying that is really specific to this feeling.

Nour: Just being a part of an institution does that. Emily, did your relationship to your art change when you became a mother?

Emily: Yeah definitely. I had a break of 7 years after I had my son and I’ve only just come back in the last 3 years. I don’t think I would have been able to give him what I felt he needed and be an artist at the same time. So many people can have a baby and be an artist full time, but I didn’t even know where to start. That really helped me because I could negotiate the space of being a mum before I went back to art. I’m not putting any of you off though. I had so many ideas I couldn’t execute during those 7 years that I feel it has actually benefited me now. I had time to digest those.

Gal: I read an amazing book called Motherhood by Sheila Heti, and she talks about whether or not she wants to be a mum. She talks about the fear of whether she has enough to give to making and also to give to her child. You have to give so much to making.

Emily: I agree. Creating artwork is like giving birth. Every time you create a piece you are giving birth to something. Both motherhood and making are rewarding.