corner of an alleyway on the Rue de
commerce in Paris my all time favorite
artists sheila hicks had accepted to
meet running formal discussion of her
work unreasonably intimidated nervous
and filled with excitement I was
speechless at how instead of working me
directly to her studio she was taking me
to her local bookstore the bookstore
owner was keen on the artists work and
she had positioned her book right by the
window showcase the artist Sheila she
was really reluctant to talk about
herself and she insisted that I read
this book if I wanted to know more about
herself her life and her journey we sat
in a boulangerie and with discussed and
compared the travels she had been to
cambodian weaving towns and so had I and
she felt saddened for the exploitation
of the textile industry in China so did
I we talked about my upcoming trip to
India and her own personal experience in
that country and also previously in
Latin America we visited several
exhibitions and we slowly made our way
to her studio which was located inside a
mind-blowing alleyway that led to an
inner courtyard where I couldn’t hold
myself from taking this photograph as I
realized I was standing right where her
piece target had been photographed
inside her studio Sheila stress the
importance of sensing the artwork rather
than questioning in and she set me free
to understand the idea that art was a
unity of sensations come to work while
listening to her speak I began to sense
a deeper understanding of not only her
practice but of her inspirations and I
began to see art as the channel to not
only understand an artist but a person’s
whole life journey as I translated this
knowledge my own personal passion for
materiality social relations and travel
became worthy and relevant areas of
Investigation her warm heartedness
wisdom and her disinterested advice were
the guiding light for me to embark on a
personal trip understanding the meaning
of my practice so before I go any
further I would like to take a moment to
appreciate the value of this encounter
being an artist is something that comes
deep from my heart but if I’m honest it
is just a small part of who I am there
are so many other areas of life that I
enjoy that if I had to separate who I am
and my practice my art would definitely
feel empty this has made me feel very
insecure at times like what I’m doing is
not really hard or that I can never be
able to focus at one thing at a time but
what can I do if my ideas only spark at
this personal unexpected and creative
crossroads I don’t want to sound as
someone who’s too in love with the idea
of what they’re doing right now I am
young and I’m aware that my ideas on
life changed radically from year to year
I thought I would like to talk in a way
that I will be able to look at my young
self in time and still feel moved like
most of us here today I also feel lost
when I visit an exhibition of
contemporary art and even though I
practice this crap daily it is really
hard for me to understand what’s
happening inside my colleagues minds
when i visit shows with family or
friends it is likely that we exit with a
look in her face that suggests i had no
idea what was going on in there as much
as I try to or as much as I would like
to I I cannot understand contemporary
art it’s weird I cannot relate to it and
I agree I wish art were more
approachable less autonomous and they
separate from its surrounding this is
why I like to place so much importance
in the story behind things in the
experience in the people involved in
turn
of making and in what we actually go
through as human beings while creating
our masterpiece how can we expect
someone inside the gallery to fully
relate to a work of art when they have
no idea of what was going on in the
artist life and in history running at
that time so I guess my question today
is how can art become a more humane
experience for people i could start my
journey today by talking about spain
where i come from or talking about the
UK where i first moved to when i left
home but i believe my true artistic self
began to expand and develop when i move
to beijing in such a consumer society as
china buyers are not only interested in
obtaining new products but also in
discarding the old technological
developments have made quantity and
quality become serious problems and it
is therefore why my practice became an
ongoing performance searching and
collecting every day discarded materials
I question what was bound to happen when
a foreigner is exposed to an unknown
object and how he or she would adopt it
in contrast to someone who uses it daily
for example I used to brew my floor
using these brooms made of dried flowers
and dried corn and to be honest they
didn’t really do a very good job so i
decided to transcend them into art a
similar thing happened with this
installation which is made of no more
than putting mobs together these mobs
are made of beautiful strips of colorful
clothes but again they don’t really
clean people’s floor so i decided to
transcend them into art again doing this
was allowing me to look through
materials as a way to understand my own
personal experience of being in china
and while having to look for these
supplies i was having to go to the
city’s most uninviting material
our kids where I was both breathtaking
at the variety of stuff but also furious
at its unwelcoming vendors I had to
carry my supplies in the back of a
motorcycle that was driving on the
opposite direction of traffic and of
course on the way home we had to stop to
say hi to the drivers cousin who had a
shop where I eventually met another guy
who’d wanted to take me to the city’s
cheapest bamboo store when I was there I
met the shopkeeper and his entire family
who happened to live at the back of the
shop we spend the evening drinking tea
and hanging out in their backyard and I
got convinced to buy some of their
bamboo I was also given some leftover
Hey and that story translated it to this
installation this is what I mean how can
we expect anyone else to know and we
forget that these are precisely the
stories that move people and that really
makes art relatable when I came back to
the UK I started collaborating with a
hairdressing salon a place I totally
didn’t belong to we collected customer
hair for over a month and we wrote down
the customers names and their
nationality there wasn’t much reasoning
for me doing this it was just a new way
of feeling inspired by doing things that
I wouldn’t usually do however doing this
made me curious of what would happen if
I start stitching hair onto fabrics
which made me interested in how fabrics
actually made which eventually open up
the doors for me to get funded to travel
to India I not only wanted to learn
about the weaving process itself I
wanted to learn weaving in terms of the
experience of the person who weaves that
fabric so only in a weaving workshop in
a materials country of origin would I
really be able to understand the root of
textiles
while being in India I spent almost two
months living with local weavers in the
jungle and it was once again through
this deep self in motion that I began to
focus on the intensity and on a
transformative effect of the experience
rather than on the art object itself I
also realized how much possession I
claimed over my work and also how hard
it was for local people to relate to
what i was doing these people couldn’t
care less if their name remained unknown
and i must say that without their help
my work would have failed terribly after
weeks of living there I really became
part of this family and so when I look
at my work I not only see a well-crafted
and beautiful tapestry I see a
vulnerable object with human qualities
and stories to share it has my
accomplishments my struggles and also
every moment that I shared with this
community it’s embedded on it and so it
marks a key moment in my life and
hopefully also in theirs when I came
back to London I felt very uninspired by
the art world I couldn’t deal with the
idea of living in a comfortable city
making art in a comfortable studio being
surrounded by students who lived
comfortable lives it felt really
dishonest and also listening to people
speak about my work was deeply painful
they thought this tapestry had been made
in london in a conventional art studio
by someone who happened to enjoy weaving
and fiber art they had no idea of what I
had gone through in order to make this
and so I started to feel a really big
distance between my art and my life it
is then when I realized that most of us
today we like to separate who we are on
a personal level
and who we are on our field and I
realized this really doesn’t work for me
if I want to be creative I first of all
have to be inspired by the way I live
and by what kind of impact I want to
have on the world I also realized that
the way I was making was really
incompatible with this obsession of
constant production of objects and so I
became more interested in the production
of experiences it all started when I
moved into this house boats with a crazy
Cuban chef that I had never met before
from that moment I lost every sense of
self we went from him sleeping in the
sofa I was sleeping on the bed we were
sharing a wardrobe we were sharing
clothes I could hear him snore every
night he could hear my farts if I got it
and really I started to question where
is home and it became my motto for the
past year and since then I’ve lived in
over 35 different habitats in april i
went to Joshua Tree to live in the
desert in these wagon stations that be
artists andreas detail has set up
together with 12 other writers thinkers
musicians artists we question how
everyday actions could be transformed
into art together we explored every
aspect of how we lived from how he slept
how we ate how we socialize with each
other and for the first time in my life
everything was art as you can imagine
this trip really changed me and when I
was so excited than on my return i
convince my classmate to transform this
ikea bandwidth into our home for the
next two months this was in kingston by
the way we slept there for almost two
months every day we cooked for others
and we received so many donations so for
the first time in my life the question
of the
this was art with a capital A or not
stopped worrying me because during this
time I met more people than in my entire
three years of VA and I witness how
powerful and positive things can be when
we work together as people these
lifestyles really really changed me and
they’ve had a really big impact in my
life and who I am today and who I want
to be and these are the donations you
are receiving for the market people in
Kingston and also all the people that we
were meeting during the time and then
when we were kicked out and we donated
the bed to a little boy in Brighton
called George and I took off again this
time I went to teach art to tamil
refugees in India after we finish the
project I went to live in the world’s
largest experimental city which I
recommend everyone to go I wish I had
more time to talk about all of these
experiences as well but what I’m really
trying to get across today is how
important it is to fight for an art that
is humane down-to-earth an approachable
our creative drive should be the highest
medium for personal motivation
self-discovery and change in the world
it should make us listen clear open our
eyes expand our minds and push our
hearts to love in a different way only
then will we be able to sit in a gallery
of Contemporary Art and still feel moved
you [Applause]