Collaboration with artist Kiran Chandra
Duke University Press (2018)
Available at Duke University Press
Contributors: Amy Fung-yi Lee, Kiran Chandra, Jacques Ranciere, Thomas Schestag, Laura U. Marks, David Marriott, Thomas Laqueur, Alexander Nehamas, Courtney Sato, Jessica Ruffin, Simone Stirner
Duke University Press (2018)
Available at Duke University Press
Contributors: Amy Fung-yi Lee, Kiran Chandra, Jacques Ranciere, Thomas Schestag, Laura U. Marks, David Marriott, Thomas Laqueur, Alexander Nehamas, Courtney Sato, Jessica Ruffin, Simone Stirner
How do you draw a Frog? A visual conversation Amy Fung-yi Lee and Kiran Chandra I opened up this project to Kiran with a rather structured idea about process-- a blind drawing game whose rules resembled Exquisite Corpse. When I work on my own, I usually work within boundaries that describe the images and methods I believe suit me. With Kiran, I started simply by putting pencil to paper next to a friend I know who loves drawing as much as I do. After beginning, I soon learned about Kiran’s process. She expressed to me that she learns through doing. So we drew (and ate, and chatted). These pages came from that. Neither of us would have done this on our own. We swapped drawings, reached over each other to find new materials, marked over each other’s work, and tried weird imagery just to see what the other would do with it. We lost track. This collaboration forged an exploratory path. An unknown place. These pages feel laid bare to me. There are “mistakes” and vulnerabilities. I actually changed, and found that I am willing to bring imagery unlike myself into my own work again. ::: When Amy asked me if I’d be interested in doing a drawing collaboration with her, I was immediately interested. Another set of marks, another hand and mind at work, another set of decisions, another sensibility at play? Another way to dissolve into drawing. Another dialogue that can occur on the page. We gave each other prompts, such as which is your favorite Felix Gonzales Torres work? Or what is a drawing you made on repeat as a child? We drew on memories and witnessed each other’s first marks on encountering a blank page. These pages to me feel like a true collaboration of mark making, in which we are not so much individually present, as we have made space and allowed for that something else to happen. Drawings that we found personally hilarious or poignant, as they would not have been made by either of us alone. |