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.

Yvonne Chew (queer, she/her/they, Chinese Canadian) is an artist, dancer, photographer. Follow her on Instagram @yvonnechewdancediary, @yvonnechewart, @whydontchewdance, @yvonnechewportraits, or @yvonnechewphotography.

Location: S2 Cafe House (874 E Hastings Street) @s2cafehouse

What do you make/create?

I make a lot of different kinds of art but I’m known for taking pictures of artists and connecting dots in community, and more so as an outlier. I’m always questioning where I sit in community. I feel like an outsider still. Even though I jump from circle to circle, there’s a lot of feeling in-between.

I’ve always loved dancing. I did a lot of just dancing for fun when I was a kid. So, naturally, I went into photographing dance. I meet a lot of artists in music and music improvisation. I’ve also met a lot of artists through Vancouver Fashion Week. While there, somewhere in like 2008, I started asking people randomly if they wanted to take pictures. I just reached out to a stranger and asked: “Do you want to do a photo shoot with me?” It was like the first time I’d ever done a photo shoot with anybody in the art world – in my life! I was so excited. I couldn’t sleep all night. I had all these ideas; it was going to situate it around the Wizard of Oz theme; the queen.

Funny thing is, it was actually a fashion blogger that I met, Shallom Johnson – she was working under the artist name Indigo. I was at fashion week, saw her, and asked her to do the shoot, we did the shot, and then, somehow, I got into fashion week through her and I’ve been randomly going in and out of that area since.

I guess I have a love/hate relationship with what I do, because I didn’t start as a professional. I was curious. I wanted to connect the dots between all these people I was meeting: “How does everyone connect?” I was a newbie. I didn’t know anyone. It didn’t bother me that I didn’t know anyone because I really had no experience at all, I was just curious about community. It’s sort of an excessive hobby: “I want to connect the dots here! I want to connect the dots there!” I was in the dance community a little bit, and everyone sort of crosses over, but they’re also separate at the same time. It’s been an interesting journey.

I’ve been more or less jumping from one discipline to another: dance photography, or I’ll do some dancing, because I love dancing, taking classes… I had a spell of being really depressed – I have clinical depression – and I thought: “How about you find a hobby?” and I thought “Ok! I’ll do some dance classes!” and from there it became a passion as I got to know people.

I have a bit of social anxiety and I can start being really anxious, but I like meeting people, so I overcome it. Sometimes I’ll be sweating buckets when I talk to people, even when I’m doing photo shoots. I’ll be like: “Oh, it’s so hot in here!” and then realize no, I’m just naturally pouring sweat because I’m so nervous (said with a chuckle). I’ve always wondered if photography is really a thing for me because I’m not really that much of a people person. I always bounce between wanting to quit and wanting to go on. I’ve done a lot of photography with different artists and that kind of puts me in the genre of being a ‘photographer.’ When I’m introduced as a photographer, I’m like: “I do dance!” “I like painting! Drawing! Singing! And improvising!” So, it’s hard to tell, because I’ve sort of been identified with being a photographer and now, I’m trying to transition into being interdisciplinary instead of just one discipline.

What do you do to support that?

It’s been hard to support it, financially I went pretty broke. I had done photography as a hobby for a good several years before I started taking pictures of artists. I did it for free out of passion, so I couldn’t really support myself. I found it frustrating. For two years, I was so passionately saying: “Do you want to do a shoot with me? Do you want to do a shoot with me?” Then after a while I was like: “Oh I am not making anything, and I’m getting frustrated. I’m not supporting myself!” I was getting pretty broke. The love/hate relationship started showing up. At the same time, I was fighting, and I still have the fight in me, with the dualism between non-professional and professional, amateur and expert. I’m very vocal about saying: “Every human being is an artist! We are creative beings! We are all artists! That’s what we did in the caveman era before ‘profession’ was created. We’ve got the caveman drawings and paintings. What did they do? Make a living out of them? Nah! I think they just did it because they wanted to document their day-to-day life, be creative, because humans are creative beings. We really are.”

I know for the purposes of making an income many artists have to separate themselves from hobbyists and say: “We don’t do this as a weekend hobbyist, art is making a living, a career!” I’ve always fought the idea of art/artist as being work, seeing it rather as a lifestyle, a choice, even as therapy. It is a therapy. Sometimes I say it’s what I do for therapy - which is true. I really started it for myself, for my own therapy. Lately I’ve been wondering if it’s really that therapeutic because it’s frustrating too! Especially when you start taking yourself more seriously and want to apply for things. When I get application rejections, it’s not as fun as I thought it would be.

I take those rejections pretty hard. I think one of my challenges is to be able to take rejection, to not take it personally. I’ve let a lot of it affect the way I am relationally with the artists I’ve worked with. I’ve taken it to the level of being bitter and resentful some of the time. I think that has affected a lot of my relationships over the years. I had this ongoing disability as well, and was in debt for a few years. Then I got some relief when my disability assistance got approved.

At the moment I’m working a seasonal job at a photography company. Not doing photography photography, just doing some data editing. It’s still a photography company even though I do nothing in regards to photography there.

Describe something about how your art practice and your “day job” interact.

I’m a bit of a detective when it comes to correcting or finding out missing data. I’ve always loved tic-tac-toe work. “Oh yes! Solved this one!” Part of my problem is I want to solve problems and then I get frustrated when I can’t solve them (said with a chuckle)!

A plus side is [that] I like connecting dots. In my day job, there’s a disparate system; transfering data from one system to another. It’s like how in photography I’m trying to connect this circle to that circle and help them join together. That’s what I do it for, even though it’s kind of a consuming thing. I pretty much think that is my nature: to want to see where circles are connected.

What’s a challenge you’re facing, or have faced, in relation to this and/or what’s a benefit?

Initially when I started, I thought, “Oh, this is curious! I’m loving it, all these new people!” When you’re new, people are also like: “Oh, she’s new, she’s interesting!” People like new things. But as you go on, it becomes about navigating people’s established relationships in their circle, not treading over the territory of other people in the work. It’s not as liberating as I thought it would be. It really depends on the circle or the group I’m working with, and the artist, how they are, if they want it private or if they’re open to go with the flow.

I’m trying to transition to see it from the other person's point-of-view. I always thought of this path as me going out into the world, documenting my journey, but now I’m also aware that it’s other people’s journey too. And there’s a lot of consent involved in it, a lot of learning to do with that over the years. Sometimes it gets messy. I’m learning! Conflict resolution is not my best virtue. I’m often like: “That’s it! I’m not doing it anymore! Cut this one! Cut! Cut! Cut!” I tend to isolate myself after difficult conversations. I ruminate, or I project my insecurities. I have a lot of insecure issues I have to work on within myself. It gets projected out onto the world at times.

Photography is both work and pleasure. I get so much information from other people’s processes. Everyone has their own experiences in life. I learn from a lot of artists' processes that I’ve come across; it informs my work, it informs separate disciplines, it informs one another within those disciplines, it’s all a little bit of information connecting… and, I don’t know, it’s that data mind of mine as well. I’m always curious. It’s really fulfilling and moving.

I’m always a little teary-eyed about things that touch me deeply and maybe that’s what keeps me going. I’ve always loved that there’s a commonality within the thread of other people’s experiences and that’s sort of kept me from internalizing too much – although I do too much of that – I’m trying to see where photography takes me now. I’ve always considered “What if I just stop photography completely, and see how this other thing (dance, painting etc) goes?” Yet at the same time, these separate practices are interconnected. They all inform one another and if I cut off one, I’m missing out on a little bit of everything. I can’t really just completely drop it. Maybe I just carry on the way it is. It’s beautiful to have everything intersect in a way.

Have you made, or created, anything that was inspired by something from your day job? Please describe.

My day job has been pretty separate from my art practice – except for that data connecting part – the only commonality I see is the way flow works from one task to another. Come to think of it, it is very interrelated! The way one task moves to another.. Data and art are not that separate, [like] the way people separate science and art, polarizing and dichotomizing things. There are crossovers.

Speaking of circles, and how everything is intertwined, I love that part of the integration of all these disciplines is my love of dance. How data, movement, and dance are interwoven is how data is interwoven, it is interconnected in the body as well. Things are cyclical [like] seasons, the connection to land, sky, [and] sea… Everything is data driven in a way in that there is an intricate connection in how information flows in the body, and how the mind and body are connected, and how that lends itself to the moment. With dance, the practice of Butoh has opened my mind to transformation, to the cycle of death and rebirth. I find that so intricate, so intimate. It’s wonderful! Just to see how everything is interwoven; like a web.

Angela Fama (she/they) is an interdisciplinary artist, creator of the Death Conversation Game, photographer, and musician. They are a French/Italian/Scottish/Irish/Unknown settler with unclear lineage currently existing on the unceded traditional and ancestral territories of the Coast Salish xʷməθkwəy̓əm, Skwxwú7mesh, and Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh Nations.

Follow them at IG @angelafama IG @deathconversationgame or on their website www.angelafama.com

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Sell Out, A Series: 5 Questions with Yvonne Chew