Sell Out, A Series: 5 Questions with Aileen Bahmanipour
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Sell Out is a series by interdisciplinary artist Angela Fama (she/they), who co-creates conversations with individual artists across Vancouver. Questioning ideas of artistry, identity, “day jobs,” and how they intertwine, Fama settles in with each artist (at a local café of their choice) and asks the same series of questions. With one roll of medium format film, Fama captures portraits of the artist after their conversations.
Aileen Bahmanipour is a visual artist and art educator. Aileen is currently exhibiting It Is Meant To Be Read at the Burrard Arts Foundation (March 31st to June 3rd, 2023). Follow them on Instagram @aileenbahmanipour, or visit their website at www.aileenbahmanipour.com.
Location: Kranky Cafe
What do you make/create?
Drawing is at the core of my practice as a medium, but I like to explore other mediums as well – be it installation, 2D animation, or collage. The research and subject matter that I have been working on for many years has to do with dysfunctional systems; systems that are very insufficient, that don’t work very well. To be able to survive they consume their own parts, their own bodies. I’m interested in these sort-of self-destructive systems. On the surface, they try to pretend that they’re transparent as a system but as soon as you try and unfold or understand them, it’s just nonsense, chaos.
What do you do to support that?
I try to do that through writing grants. I have received grants so far from Canada Council for the Arts and BC Arts Council. Along with that, I teach part-time at Burnaby Art Gallery and at Emily Carr University of Art and Design’s Continuing Studies.
That’s what I do to support what I do because I don’t really sell my works, maybe a few of the drawings, but most of the bodies of work I’ve been working on for the past couple of years have been installation. Installations are uninstalled, unpacked, so they’re not very sellable.
Describe something about how your art practice and your “day job” interact.
If I get the chance to design my own teaching syllabus that directly reflects what I’m doing at the time. For example, when I teach Drawing, Collage and Drawing, or Ink and Pen courses for Emily Carr, what I’m doing at the time will influence the syllabus because what I’m doing in my practice is close to my daily life.
It happens often that the job is just given to me; I need to deliver it to the school based on their expectations, that’s also part of it. Sometimes working can be a distraction from what I’m doing in my practice; it's very time and energy consuming, and very little is coming back.
When thinking about how the two interact, a few things stand out: How to be a teacher? How to be open-minded and democratic as a teacher, to accept there are a variety of different approaches to one practice. How to make myself clearly understood – especially when we talk about art. Sometimes it’s very hard to talk about visual art and expectations for practices. Being a teacher was very challenging for me, and it’s through the process of doing it that I learnt how. It’s an enjoyable process. It’s made me more open minded and made me work on my sense of judgement.
I used to have everything pre-planned with my art practice. I had very neat and clear expectations of what I want to happen and that has changed since I became a teacher. My work has been process-based – something I encourage people who work with me to pay attention to. Another aspect is working with material, being aware of what’s happening on your paper, in your work space; that has a higher priority than the expectation you might have in your mind before starting in. There’s more awareness of the moment, of what’s happening right now in my practice. What’s the logic of the material? What can the material afford you? Even if you don’t like a technique, or material, what can you get out of it? What can you learn from it?
What’s a challenge you’re facing, or have faced, in relation to this and/or what’s a benefit?
In 2020, when the pandemic happened, my partner had a dream to start a new lifestyle. Long story short, we purchased a farm in Bella Coola. I have all this work in Vancouver, so I’ve been back and forth, “part-time”.
A challenge in Vancouver is of course affordability. The studio that I have is under a lease, and the lease is coming up. I’m not sure if I can find another affordable studio in Vancouver. I may move my artist studio all the way to Bella Coola.
Another thing is work. I have jobs in Vancouver. I don’t have similar jobs in Bella Coola, but the jobs that I do are taking away my time and energy for my art practice. My sense of community, catching up with my friends, the conversations – even having this conversation with you – is because I’m here in town, but if I have to work every day, I won’t have any energy for socializing, or being in network with my friends.
These days I’m dangling between these two thoughts: on one hand, I could have all the time that I want somewhere very isolated, and on the other hand, I feel like when I’m there I’m missing out on a lot in Vancouver. When I’m in that isolation, I feel like I have to find new purpose for my life. You teach for so long – I’m not going to say it’s addictive, but when you don’t have that opportunity, for me, it’s like: Ok, what else can I do? It’s a little bit of an identity crisis. What do I have to contribute to the community there?
Sometimes it’s easy to tell people: Be Playful! Do this, or that! But I know in practice, when I have to do the same kind of thing, it can be hard. I graduated from the Art University of Tehran, a school that approached visual art very traditionally: Practice in the studio! Practice in the studio! Part of me knows now that that system can be limiting for someone who wants to become an artist. I did my Masters at UBC, and it was interesting for me to experience something quite non-traditional. It opened me up, helped me think about things differently. Most of my assignments, or recommendations, are coming from these experiences: to practice both. I learned something from both experiences. It’s easier to assign something to people that I think is sort of hopeful… more like a prescription?
Sometimes, especially in small classes, the assignment or project is too challenging for a student – they don’t get it by just talking about it–so I do the assignment myself and try to document what’s going on in my mind, my body, and try to share it with them. That’s been very helpful for them when I share my process, and it’s been very inspiring for me, often creating new ideas.
Have you made, or created, anything that was inspired by something from your day job? Please describe.
What is interesting with collage, for me, are ideas of figuration and refiguration. I was teaching a Collage and Drawing class where I asked them to draw something figurative, something knowable to us, that has a name. Then, I asked them to tear or cut it into pieces, and reassemble it in a way that the pieces have a new relationship to each other. The aim wasn’t to make something figurative abstract or something abstract figurative, but that’s how the students understood to do it. That was challenging for them, so they just made something abstract from something figurative.
For me, the takeaway was that from a figure you could establish a new figure, with new relationships between the pieces that could possibly produce new meanings. I ended up doing that assignment myself, thinking, “Ok, this is not about figuration to abstraction, it’s about figuration refiguration, and refiguration is just a process…” I had this drawing from a 2016 work where I was making collages and drawings, and the subject matter was just paper; the quality of the paper, the tear of the paper, the fold of the paper. I tore these old works apart, used a section of that drawing for different works. I have had these leftovers in my studio all these years. I came back to these left-over works, and it became about the relationship to time, and how I think about work I made many years ago, and I can bring it back, give it a new figure.
I found that very inspiring. It’s speaking to me in the body of work I’m doing right now. It was interesting because this assignment inspired me to go back to work I thought I was done with, and through this refiguring of it, new ideas are being produced.
Angela Fama (she/they) is an artist, Death Conversation Game entrepreneur, photographer, musician, previous small-business server of many years (The Templeton, Slickity Jim’s etc.). They are a mixed European 2nd-generation settler currently working on the unceded traditional territory of the Coast Salish xʷməθkwəy̓əm, Skwxwú7mesh and Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh Nations.
Follow them at IG @angelafama IG @deathconversationgame or on their website www.angelafama.com
