Breaking the boundaries of conventional art with Abbas Zahedi

Abbas Zahedi is an artist who grew up in Shepherds Bush, West London. He works with sound, installation and performance art.

In this episode, Abbas will be talking about his route into art after first studying to become a doctor, how he maps spaces and captures feelings through his artwork, and we will also learn more about the many different aspects of his art practice.

Instagram: @abbzah
Website: https://abbzah.com/

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Transcript

Matt: Hello, and welcome back to the Teach Inspire Create podcast. I'm your host, Matt Moseley, Chief Examiner for Art and Design at UAL Awarding Body. Joining me today at the UAL offices in London, my guest is Abbas Zahedi. Abbas is an artist who grew up in Shepherds Bush, West London. He works with sound, installation and performance art. I'm going to be speaking to Abbas about his route into art after first studying to become a doctor, how he maps spaces and captures feelings through his artwork and learn more about the many different aspects of his art practice. There is a transcript available for this episode, please click the link in the episode description so you can read as you listen.

Matt: Hi Abbas, thank you ever so much for joining us today on the Teach Inspire Create podcast. We normally [00:01:00] start things off by trying to understand a little bit about people's journey into creativity or art. Do you have any particular memories or stories about how, kind of, creativity came into your life?

Abbas: I think when I was younger, like most people, I was just doing stuff intuitively. I liked drawing, I was into, like, watching Art Attack and stuff like that. And I would often just create little areas in the house where I had my little [00:01:30] experiments and stuff. I guess as I got older, I was sort of pointed in a different direction to, like, do things that were more responsible and were a bit more like directed towards having a career or profession. My family migrated to the UK from Iran and I was born here, but, like, that kind of first generation transition, there isn't really much people that you know in the society. Like, you live in a very small, kind of, insular community and so we didn't really have, kind of, exposure to, like, art [00:02:00] or culture or literature. There weren't many books in the house, like, most of the artistic or creative stuff that I would come across was more decorative or, like, devotional. Like, my family were quite religious at the time, so I would be exposed to, like, calligraphy and, like, abstract patterns like geometric stuff or, like, Persian rugs, for example, that were everywhere. So, like, things like that, kind of, was what I would experience as my, kind of, first art exposure, let’s say.

Matt: Yeah, so you were sort of developing a creative voice or an appreciation for those aspects, but it wasn't in a, sort of, structured capacity at that time?

Abbas: Yeah and I think as I got older, my curiosity to study contemporary art or modern art, it became trying to get to terms with my own reality of being in a place where I'm not from and also trying to make connections with people in different ways and understanding that, like, on a cultural level, this is an important part of being social.

Matt: Yeah. So was there a moment in time where you, sort of, actively decided to start making art?

Abbas: Yeah, it's actually… I was at medical school, so I trained to be a doctor at UCL. During that five, six year period, there were, like, a few units within the medical school where you could combine with Slade, the art school. So, I was going back and forth, and so we would do things like anatomical drawing. We would go to the National Gallery and learn how to look at paintings and, sort of, describe them, like, as a way of learning how to describe lesions and rashes and things on the skins of patients. And it was in that process of, like, studying medicine and and looking at paintings or doing drawing, like, in this very kind of focused way trying to really look and understand the relationship between even how the eye works.

Abbas: So it was a sort of whole circle of activity that really reinforced my understanding of art [00:04:00] as part of this, like, system of learning and understanding which has, at times, practical application, but also at times, it's further ahead than philosophy or other, kind of, disciplines of trying to understand the way that we see the world.

Matt: In the education and education systems, there's a lot of energy put into, kind of, separating these things out. Like that's art, that's science and that's maths. But actually what you were finding is that these things are all part of the same sort of [00:04:30] ecosystem.

Abbas: Yeah. I mean, for me, I was curious about history. I was curious about, like, how, for example, in medicine you have to learn languages. You know, like, you learn the equivalent of like three language degrees if you study medicine, because you're learning Greek words, you're learning Latin words, you're learning all these medical kind of technical terms, just that in and of itself makes you have to kind of pay attention to a lot of like subtlety and nuance. And in a way that for me, that idea of being conceptual, even as an artist, language is a conceptual domain. And so that kind of opened up my way of understanding even like poetry, literature, and all of this really fed into, like, a more personal and shared experience between my friends and I, who were also studying medicine, not medicine, but sciences, some were medical, but it was broader than that. We wanted to get more into this, kind of, other side of like… the humanities around what we were learning. So it wasn't sufficient for us to just learn science. We wanted to know of philosophy of science, history of science, critiques of science from other kinds of disciplines. And that was when we set up this kind of reading group in a fish and chip shop in my local area, and that ran for like six, seven years and we would meet very regularly, like, often weekly to sit down and we just read books and shared, kind of, our summaries of them together, and used this sort of like, almost seminar format to understand [00:06:00] in a more holistic way what each of us was doing in our individual disciplines. And then from that, most of us transitioned out of science into other fields.

Abbas: So I went into art. Some people went into ethics. Some people went into sociology Some people went into, kind of like, more social work and eventually, when I left medicine, like, that was the trajectory that I took. I'd started doing community projects and, sort of, continuing my own learning within this vein. And then [00:06:30] eventually, that led to an art practice, but in hindsight, a lot of people refer to these conversations in the chip shop as, like, my first proper, like, contemporary artwork.

Matt: Yeah, absolutely. Whether it's active observation or you're just… the way that you observe the world and the way that you interpret the information. Yeah, that seems to have set the foundation, hasn't it, for your kind of creative practice and that wasn't necessarily at that time, you know, ring fenced towards a traditional creative arts education.

Abbas: I think it's got pros and cons. There is a benefit to arts education. I think like, you know, pun intended, like, a foundation degree does give you a foundation in many ways. And it exposes you to a lot of things where you can intuitively go in a direction that makes more, most sense to you. And I think, actually, like, looking back on it, it would have been helpful to do something like that before going to medical school. It's important to not glamourise or, like, fetishise any particular position. Like, some people do well not having gone to art school, but I think a lot of people struggle.

Abbas: Like, I teach now in different places at UAL as well and sometimes I find people in a similar situation where they've come to art school from a science background or a maths background or something a bit more, like, structured and cohesive. And they really struggle because no one's really explained to them how this is different to what they did before. And no one's telling them that, like, over here there isn't really a right answer or there's often this, like, implied [00:08:00] idea that there is, like, proper art or, like, there's a correct way to do art. And so people often struggle when they haven't had a platform into it and I think, for me, somehow I was able to compensate for that quite quickly… and not necessarily I would say even quickly, but, like, when I did my master's at Saint Martins, it was a two year course that was in photography, fine art, and philosophy, and it was, like, all three at the same time. So it was [00:08:30] a really intense two year course where we were producing artworks, we were reading, we were writing essays, like, really dense kind of stuff, but for me that was really important because the course leader at the time, Daniel Rubinstein, his kind of main aim was almost, like, how to turn a scientist into an artist. I found, like, almost like a conversion course.

Matt: That's interesting, isn't it? And is some of the work that you do with the students now, sort of, trying to open them up to the idea that all of their [00:09:00] experience is good source material for creativity and that things aren’t ring fenced, you know, that’s worthy, that’s not?

Abbas: 100%, yeah. It's jarring because, like, I don't necessarily make traditional artworks. Like, I don't do painting, I do sculpture, but not in the kind of very, like, commercial way, like, it's more around installations and I just work that way because that's naturally what I tend to do. If you put me in an empty room, I'll fill it with sound and various structures and try to open up more of a non-visual, emotional dimension in the space. And, and that's just, like, naturally what I'm attuned to doing. But, like, other people might work in a similar way, but when they come across paintings, like sometimes in crits, you'll have people that, kind of, really go for the painters because they're just like, “oh, this is just painting, it's commercial, it's very defined, it's not so, like, critical or, like, intellectually that interesting”. And it's like, no, you can't dismiss a whole body of art-making just because, like, in this current moment, we may not understand its criticality or how it's like opening up some extra intellectual, like, academic dimension, which is fetishised.

Matt: You’ve been actively fostering that sort of approach in yourself, haven't you? By looking at medical diagrams, information like that, and then seeing the artistic value in that, you've been opening [00:10:30] yourself up to everything as a reference point for your whole, kind of, career and education preceding it.

Abbas: Yeah. No, I mean one of the teachers I had at medical school, he was a consultant, a renal consultant, like, he worked with the kidneys and he took us to the National Gallery and he was showing us, like, Impressionist artworks and teaching us, like, how the impressionists were more advanced in their understanding of optics than physicists and medics [00:11:00] at the time, who were working with trying to understand how the eye works, because the Impressionists understood that if you stand at a distance your brain kind of fills in the blanks, but up close it's just like blobs. And, like, that understanding of how we project reality onto the world. So, like, our brain often just fills in things around us without, like… we don't actually access reality for our eyes, a lot of it is just filled in by what we imagined to be somewhere until we look properly. And I think that's what I was learning as a doctor is, like, to look properly as opposed to just letting things fill in.

Abbas: And so learning art in that way and understanding painting in relation to, like, the optics and things like that. That's one way to understand the value of painting.

Abbas: I think sometimes the frustration in art where people criticise more visual work is because, like, the infrastructure of art spaces is built towards, like, prioritising a visual expression as opposed to sound or smell or other senses that we have, whether that be touch. And, I think it does take, like, some effort from our side to show people how to work in those other ways and maybe the, kind of, resentment towards like painting or other formats can come from like this fact that they are privileged and prestige, but but we but we shouldn't have to take our frustration out on this in order to open [00:12:30] up a different way.

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Matt: It was so interesting listening to your experience at medical school. I wanted to talk to you a bit more about the idea of the action of looking. You talk about looking a lot in your work, in your practice. How important is it for a creative person to actively look?

Abbas: Yeah, I think, I think for me, the word look has kind of been replaced now with the word witnessing. Cause I think actually in an art space, what I try to do now is to really witness something that was not apparent to me before. Or, for example, trying to facilitate a space in which witnessing can occur. And I think, for me, really a lot of the need and desire to make work and to present work is around this need to be witnessed. And I think the society we're in today is much harder for people to feel seen to feel heard, for whatever reason whether it's just because we're overwhelmed and overstimulated or, we’re more segregated and atomised. And [00:13:30] arts education for me really puts structures in place to help people witness one another. And I think just, like, just the idea of a crit. Like, if you speak to anyone from a different discipline, like, crits are completely something they wouldn't understand how to engage in. The years that you have to put in to, like, be comfortable opening up and being vulnerable in a crit situation is actually quite a strong skill set and it's a way of holding space, almost like a support group or a therapy group or, like, something [00:14:00] where people really help each other to feel seen and heard and and to understand what's motivating them and how they can improve their ability to communicate. So, for me, that space is very precious and actually I don't think we make enough of a point of, like, how much of a skill that is for people to have once they've graduated.

Matt: Yeah absolutely. It's so expansive, the idea of looking to witnessing and that, you know, witnessing and looking at things isn't [00:14:30] necessarily a visual activity and that through that approach, there's just so much more available, isn't there, to people? I was looking at an exhibition that you had at the South London Gallery Fire Station, and in that is a kind of collaborative experience that you're creating between yourself and the viewer. How important is it for people who witness your work to interact in some way or invest in some way?

Abbas: I like situations where people can decide if they want to engage or not. Often, the invitation for [00:15:00] someone to engage with my work is tacit. There's no instruction other than something that looks familiar in terms of like, you could normally engage with this. And in that case, if you do, I think it says more about you. Like, it's another opportunity to, like, understand yourself, like, if I'm the kind of person that if I see something in the gallery that looks like I can touch it, I'll touch it…

Matt: That inquisitive nature…

Abbas: Yeah, until someone tells me not to, I'll feel like I can. A lot of people don't feel like [00:15:30] they can touch anything in a gallery because they've been trained to think that way. What I'm trying to do is, like, in various ways, set up situations where the things that we take for granted in art spaces or in general are, kind of, like, exposed and made visible so that we can become more aware of them and decide, like, how we want to proceed.

Matt: You use quite a lot of, as you mentioned, sort of, familiar materials. Does that, sort of, follow some of that, kind of, Dadaist idea of the, sort of, readymade and the repurposing of some of [00:16:00] those materials for artistic purposes?

Abbas: Yeah, I really enjoyed, like, studying that part of art history and learning about readymade and especially like assisted readymade where you make them do things that are unexpected or present them in ways that are unusual. And I guess, for me, like, that work that kind of operates in that way offers me something of a way of, like, entering a gallery space, but not as a way to escape reality or, like, [00:16:30] the other parts of my life, but it's more a way of, like, learning how to tune into something that's more… maybe you could say poetic or sensual or affective or something that teaches me how to be in the world in a more sensitive way, in a more observant way.

Abbas: So I think when that, kind of, bridge of familiarity is crossed within the art space and the art space becomes more of a space of attunement, almost like a laboratory for aesthetics and [00:17:00] expression, but with a, kind of, emotional component that helps you to navigate the world in a more interesting way or in a way that, kind of, allows you to feel things more deeply and more presently and able to communicate them more directly. So, for me, the relationship of an art space with the outside world is one that should be very porous and very open and so this reliance on familiar objects helps me to navigate that.

Matt: Yeah, cause the traditional [00:17:30] gallery space can be quite intimidating. Some people, they can feel that they don't fit in and they don't belong there, but you're trying to create a, sort of, comfortable environment where they feel at home and they've got some agency in there, they've got some equity in the experience.

Abbas: Yeah, I think It's really hard to make art democratic. And I'm not saying this as a quote statement, it's more like the experience of going to a gallery in and of itself is something that, kind [00:18:00] of, prepares you for a, sort of, level of unfamiliarity and it takes you out of the kind of normal registers of how you're supposed to, like, be socially. And and you need training for that. It's not something you can access directly, it’s not common sense. Already, there's a, kind of, obstacle there for people to engage and there's a lot of work that takes place in arts institutions, for example, around accessibility and, sort of like, exhibition design and how to [00:18:30] allow people to engage with the work.

Abbas: And so the way, the way that I work, when I'm trying to make exhibitions is actually… I'm not just trying to bring the familiarity through the objects in the artwork. I'm also involved in the exhibition design, in the accessibility around the work, in terms of, from the conception of when someone enters the gallery or the institution to the point that they're with the work and then there's a chance to engage with it. Like, all of that is stuff that I'm working on with the staff. 

Matt: Right, so it’s a fully immersive experience.

Abbas: It’s a journey, [00:19:00] like, I see it as. And I'm constantly trying to put myself in the shoes of, like, whoever's walking into that space and I'll often start from outside the gallery, like, on the street walking and I pay attention to the various ways that things change, whether it's sound, whether it's lighting, whether it's the amount of people around and, like, how you navigate all of that.

Matt: Controlling that experience or influencing that experience from the street to the access point with the work. With that particular exhibition, how did you achieve that?

Abbas: Yeah, so the work at the Fire Station, South London Gallery, was a sprinkler system that was installed in the room and in the middle of the room there was a small pumpable vessel which had a lever on it and a red handle so, like, it stood out and if you pumped it, it contained rose water and then like sprinkler heads would sprinkle into different vessels that were placed in the space. Some of them ceramic, some that were brass and the rose water would have a smell and then there were, like, [00:20:00] these vibrational speakers called surface transducers connected to various access points, like the shutters and the doors and the glass and they would vibrate and emanate sound.

Abbas: So, in terms of physically what's in the space, it's very minimal. Most of the work is actually above you. It's this sprinkler system. But, there are these, kind of, clues that connect something on the floor with, like, a hose that goes above. So your eye is drawn to this, kind of, upper structure. And then the sound that's coming out there… there's no speakers in the space, so it takes [00:20:30] you quite some time to figure out where it's coming from. And maybe it's not intuitive that, like, a vibrating door can emanate a whole sound work. It's on ground floor level, it's by a main road and has these big beautiful doors with windows. And what I had done is, kind of, set the shutters at a certain height and and use this privacy film on the glass so that during the day you can't see into the space and only [00:21:00] at night you can see into the space. So, like, during the daytime when the gallery is open, from outside you can just see some shutters and there was, like, a few just clues that there's something in here  but it's not clear what it is.

Abbas: And that was for me, like, a way of really giving people this sense of walking into the space and not having a sense of what's in there beforehand and coming across a room that looks almost empty. And that kind of questions your expectation of walking into an art space, because I think [00:21:30] it's interesting that when we walk into an art space, we all expect to see something and it's almost a form of entitlement that, like, there should just be art. Like, it should be what I want, or, like, it should be in a way that I'm comfortable with. And when you walk in and there's nothing you can really lay your eyes on immediately and you're forced to look up and then try to decipher whether these pipes are from this room or were they put here? But like, why are they installed in such a weird way, and what's [00:22:00] this hose and the pump? So it's like constantly trying to work out what's going on.

Matt: Well, you're sort of, I mean, you're flipping so many aspects of the traditional gallery experience in that way, aren't you? When I was looking at the work, I was thinking about… I was listening to your narration, and I was thinking about the conversation that you're creating between yourself and the person participating. Do you think that you're always accessing some of those, kind of, earlier considerations that you mentioned about the conversation work and [00:22:30] about growing up in that, kind of, small community and then growing outside of that and experiencing new things?

Abbas: Yeah, I think for me that any act of looking at an artwork is a dialogue. Even if you're doing it passively, that's just you, like, being quiet in a conversation, like, it's not different to this. So, there's this consideration where, like, if someone is engaging with the work, I want to give them the option to have more of a dialogue with themselves, more so than with [00:23:00] me. Because I think it's… for me, I go to art to get a deeper sense of myself as well as the work that I'm coming across. We can only be seen and understood often through the eyes of others, you know? And that's why people go to therapy or they join support groups or they join communities, or even go to art school, because you feel like a weirdo, a misfit, so you go to this place where there's other weirdos and you find a sense of who you are. And that's something that helped me. The way I work is often referred to as conceptual. And then that's seen as elitist because it requires you to have so much, like, presumed knowledge about the way that conceptual art functions, et cetera.

Abbas: But at the same time, for me, I don't consider it conceptual. Cause I'm offering a lot in the space, like in terms of sound, in terms of touch, in terms of smell, in terms of, like, actual space for people to move around in a way that they want. I'm actually offering this opportunity to dialogue in a way that relies less on a visual language, but, like, opens up every other language as much as possible. And then also it doesn't give you a right or wrong. And I think, going back to the point between medicine or science and art, like, in medical school, you have the grand rounds when all the medical students go with the consultant around and look at different patients and you present patients. So it's similar to a crit, but instead of presenting a painting, you present a patient with liver disease or some kind of, like, I don't know, condition. And depending on how well you present the patient, you either pass or fail or people ask you questions. But that becomes quite adversarial, and also there's a right and a wrong answer in that context. So, what grand rounds is doing, in a medical environment, or in a science degree, like, you have 500 people for example, they've all gotta get the same answer at the end.

Matt: But their journey to it is completely unique.

Abbas: Yeah, so everyone's, like, coming from a different place, but, like, if someone walks in with, I don't know, an irregular QRS complex on a ECG scan, you're meant to put them in for heart attack treatment that [00:25:00] you're meant to give them nitroglycerin and put them on a bed, et cetera.

Abbas: But it's like, if you say a different answer, you’ve failed. You don't have the option of being creative in that context because there is this kind of, crowd sourced right and wrong approach to things in an art and that's a convergent approach. Whereas in an art school you've got hundreds of people who are all coming from different places and, at the end of this process, have to increase the level of difference between one another and become more and [00:25:30] more divergent, so it's a very different way of working.

Matt: Absolutely. I mean, with your work you, really successfully, create so many different access points for people and there's so many layers, isn't there? The artefacts, the objects that are involved as well have got, you know, links to Iranian culture, haven't [00:26:00] they? Is that to do with creating that link between yourself and the person in the space at the time?

Abbas: To be honest, like, it's just what was available at the time. It's what I had to hand. And I think this goes back to this point of convergent, divergent, because in that show… I can summarise that show by just saying, like, I made a sprinkler system that sort of contains a ritual around rose water and grieving the dead, which is Iranian heritage, and there's these Iranian objects in there.[00:26:30] So, like, I can close down all the levels of access by saying, this is what it is. And at the same time, I can put those things in there, leave it quite open, people can access it in their own way and have these, kind of, divergent set of experiences. And then when they ask me, like, “why did you use rose water?” I'm like, I don't know, cause I grew up with that. Like, if I grew up and people are pouring Guinness when someone dies, maybe I'll put Guinness in the system. I'll put Rose water, you could put Guinness or someone else could put orange blossom. I don't really care. And [00:27:00] my point is to, like, try and get to that stage with the work. So, like, often the way that my work functions it’s like there's a platform that I create, so a system, in this case a sprinkler system, and then I fill the system with certain things. So I put rose water in the vessel, I put certain sounds on the speakers, I just gather certain, like, receptacles that can collect the drops from my home, whatever's to hand, or, like, make some ceramics based on something quite [00:27:30] personal. But those are just, like, where I fill in the, kind of, blanks of the system.

Matt: Whenever anyone engages with a piece of art, they're bringing with them all of their baggage, aren't they? All of their experiences, as you mentioned earlier, fills in the blanks about their interpretation of that thing that they're looking at. And there's that interesting, sort of, Picasso thing, isn't there, about how every child is a great artist and that a lot of the artistic journey is trying to get back to that moment of simplicity, isn't it, where you kind of unburden yourself of all of your stuff? Because you do quite a lot of [00:28:00] teaching, or you have taught children, haven't you, through the Tate? Can you tell us a little bit about that experience?

Abbas: Um, yeah, I've had a few projects where I've worked with young people. The Tate one, we worked with the learning department, which, I think Sophie Wakefield, she's an art therapist and when I trained in medicine, I was studying psychiatry, I've been personally in therapy now for, like, 15 years and dealing with kind of like my own issues around bereavement, [00:28:30] grief and complex trauma, which is a big part of the way that I work.

Abbas: And so for me, that therapeutic language and that, kind of, way of really accessing an emotional dialogue from a young age is something that I've been quite very preoccupied with. I'm a father as well. I have a son, he's six years old. And so I spend a lot of time trying to be on good terms with him and trying to make sure that we get each other, like, especially in terms of how he's feeling and understanding that [00:29:00] even me as his father, I have certain fragilities and vulnerabilities and that helps him to express his as well. So, I think all of this, kind of, really comes to the fore in the way that, like, I was able to create these activities for the kids where it was much more about trying to tune into what they feel around these different types of creative processes, whether it's taking photographs or trying to draw sounds that I was, like, putting through a [00:29:30] table with a transducer. So, like, I painted the table with chalkboard paint and then created this feedback loop with mics and speakers directly attached to the table, so the sound just comes out the table and it's not clear where it's coming from. And then the kids can draw with chalk. As the sound is playing, I ask them to draw the sound. And so every time they touch the table with the chalk, it creates sound that goes back into the feedback loop. So as they draw, the sound keeps changing and evolving. So they can never really…

Matt: So it's a [00:30:00] never ending game.

Abbas: Yeah. And then I'm there as a sort of conductor. Like, tuning the sound towards certain directions as well, and it's basically allowing different types of expression to come out and I think there's quite a poignant moment in that video where one of the kids, he starts drawing an ECG trace from a heart monitor and he says it makes him feel nervous when he hears that sound and that really got me, like, I felt quite emotional when he said that because I [00:30:30] was just like, yeah, I spent a lot of time in hospitals as a kid and I still feel very triggered when I hear that sound and the fact that this child at this age is able to express that… like, it's taken me a long time to be able to even be aware of this. And I think that, for me, that's the power of working with children is that they're ready to really experience things in such a direct way and in such an open way. All we can do is facilitate that, like, I don't necessarily think we teach [00:31:00] them.

Abbas: I think we just create situations again, like these platforms or these systems where naturally they bring their expression to it. And I think as we get older and work in an art space and the kind of work that I'm doing, like, with these systems and the ways that I work is, like, I'm trying to fill it with a form of expression. But I also would like there to be an opportunity for other people to express themselves through the work, but it's harder to do that once you get to a stage where it's, like, proper art and it's in the gallery and when you're doing workshops and things that are more, kind of, like, on a direct level There's just that space that exists. And working with children, I think they naturally know how to fill those spaces. I think a lot of it is to do with, like, being emotionally open. I mean, when you give someone a paperclip and ask them what to do with it, like, if they come back with just like the common sense answer it's because probably they're not in a place where they have time, space, energy to, like, look at this thing creatively.

Abbas: If you give me a paperclip right now, I'll be like, oh, I'm busy, you know, like, leave me alone. Like, I’ve got things to do. Whereas a child doesn't have that sense of burden and responsibility to emotionally have to, like, just conserve and restrict what they give their focus to. And I think children show us how to have that curiosity, but also it's our job to help them have that space to be open and creative, because the conditions you create for someone will [00:32:30] impact their ability to just have the energy to engage. And I think it's not necessarily about creativity. It's more about how to, how do you be generous in terms of giving people energy?

Matt: I think it's something that's missing for a lot of people is the opportunity, that you say, the [00:33:00] safe freedom to be expressive and to be creative. Do you think it's important for the, sort of, human condition to access all the different elements of ourselves?

Abbas: Yeah, for sure. And I don't want to, like, glamorise art or offer it as this kind of panacea, because oftentimes, you can use art as a shield as well, as a way to actually block people from knowing you or accessing you. You can use it as this kind of…

Matt: Right, you can mask with it.

Abbas: Yeah, you can mask with it as well. So, it's not like art always tends towards a certain [00:33:30] truth or a certain expressive openness. I think what happens around the art in terms of how you access it, how you engage with it, how you're in community with artworks, it gives you this sense that you can be open. For me, it doesn't necessarily amount to the fact that, like, anyone who's making art has this amazing emotional openness.

Matt: Yeah, not all art is honest. An adult, you know, finding the, sort of, bravery, I suppose, to sort of say, “oh, yeah, this paperclip, it could be a [00:34:00] jousting lance for a mouse” or, you know, like, these are, you know, there's that fear, isn't there, that that will be ridiculed, or you’ll held up as being silly as a result of that.

Abbas: Yeah, I think, you know when I'm teaching, I often have to like come up with analogies to help people navigate the particular situations they're in and, like, recently I had this student who came from a design background and they were making a lot of sculptural work that was very design focused and it was drawing on architecture and they were trying to make toys for [00:34:30] children but, like, blow them up so that they're big enough for adults to play with in the art space, but it was very much still staying within that design language and, kind of, like, the language of children's toys. I was trying to explain to them that your art practice is now being subsumed by a design practice. And the analogy that I could think of in the moment to help explain this is imagine two people go on holiday and one of them is very determined to, like, do all of the checklist of things that you have to do. And you've got to do, within three days, you've got to see all these things, eat all this stuff, go to all these shows, etc. And like, the other person just wants to wander around. And they may or may not see anything. They may or may not have a good time. But they just, like, much more want to just experience things at, like, ground, like, grassroots level. 

Matt:Yeah, they're open to what what will be will be.

Abbas: Yeah, and maybe they'll come back and, like, it was a waste of time or maybe it was the best time because they just had one really good conversation or they just had one really good night somewhere. And I'm like, in that position where you're just like, wandering, if you're with this person that's got a strong agenda, they're gonna hijack your holiday.

Matt: Yeah, and they're also going to potentially create an environment in which some of those simple but most impactful things will become undervalued because you're on this conveyor belt of the big stuff, the perceived big stuff that really isn't necessarily the big stuff in life.

Abbas: Yeah, and like whether it's FOMO or whatever that's driving you towards, like, wanting to make sure [00:36:00] everything's done the proper way or whatever, you're really denying yourself of a lot of opportunity to be curious and to get to know yourself and get to know yourself in relation to these circumstances that are here.

Abbas: And so whenever, like, there's an art practice that I feel like is being subsumed into some other structure, whether it's design, whether it's to illustrate some sort of scientific principle, or whether it's even just to become very commercially viable. Like an art practice, like someone just really cares about how can my art make money? It's like, anytime you put [00:36:30] too much of an agenda or a kind of outcome, or a particular kind of methodology onto your work, I think there's a risk that you're just going to end up getting sucked into some other person's vision of what you should be doing or some other kind of discipline. And you block yourself from what art is able to offer you.

Abbas: And I think in a society that is becoming much more directed, like, towards outcomes, like, everything is outcome oriented.

Matt: Yeah, life is very curated these days.

Abbas: Yeah, things are solution oriented. [00:37:00] People go to university expecting to come out with a career plan or a path. And I'm not saying those things are wrong, like, those things are necessary to survive. But for me, like, the space that art opens up for us, it seems to be one of the last remaining spaces where this kind of more aimless, wandering, type of curiosity is possible. And if we lose that, I think we just end up all becoming, like, robots and slaves of ChatGPT. And that's the hardest thing to teach [00:37:30] someone, how to be comfortable in that uncertainty and that sense of feeling lost and the unease of not knowing what you're meant to be doing and still do anyways. And so much of life is about this. And I think, for me, the way my work is, like, these systems, et cetera, that I create, all these platforms that I then fill with my own work, but are also open that I would like other people to bring themselves to, is trying to really lean into that ambiguity.

Abbas: And the fact that, like, this [00:38:00] may not be an artwork. I'm okay with that. Like, I may not be an artist. I'm okay with that. I do art and I make work in these spaces because there isn't anywhere else to do this kind of thing. If I could do this in, like, a little community club in my neighbourhood, I wouldn't need the rest of it. Like, I'd be content if that existed and I could just get on with living a life.

Matt: I wanted to just ask you about the relationship for you between art and education, and art and teaching, because for me [00:38:30] it felt like your work teaches a lot. There's an element of teaching practice in the work itself, and obviously you're actively teaching alongside your art practice. Do you see a separation between those two things, or are they inherently linked in some way?

Abbas: I think they're very linked, to be honest. All of my community work I did for 6/7 years between when I left medicine and started practising as an artist, most of that was, like, running community projects that were [00:39:00] often centred around learning, education, like, the chip shop symposium is one project, but there were many. We started a food bank. You know, like, there was obviously the, kind of, thing about collecting and distributing food to people who needed it at the time. But for me, it wasn't enough to just have something that's giving an immediate, kind of, help to someone. Like, it was more about like, okay, well, like, we can help them now, but then if there's children in the household, let's [00:39:30] create a food academy and teach the kids how to cook and then that way they can, that's another way to alleviate food poverty.

Matt: Like a legacy.

Abbas: Yeah, like, in the medium to long term, because actually, people who know how to cook are less likely to suffer from food poverty. For me, it was never enough to just address the issue at hand, it was always, like, how do we prevent this from happening again in these circumstances? So that educational element for me is almost a requirement [00:40:00] because whatever I'm talking about now or whatever the work is addressing now isn't going to just disappear.

Matt: Yeah, but it takes a higher degree of bravery and confidence to just say, “well, I'm just going to push everything in this direction, so the food goes in this direction, the teaching goes in that direction and I'll just trust that what's happening here will live on through these people that are experiencing it”.

Abbas: Yeah. And also, I didn't know I was making up. Someone [00:40:30] else told me that what these social projects were, like, socially engaged art practice. And I got into relational aesthetics from that and then understood that maybe there is something here and around, like, Dada and, like, the idea of being a flâneur or these kind of situationists, etc., like, understanding the kind of early 20th century relational works that were being made as a way of, in those times, it was a kind of dismissal of a certain conservative [00:41:00] approach within art that had taken place or later, like, with the Fluxus and these kind of happenings and stuff, it became more a kind of anti-capitalist stance to take.

Matt: Yeah, so there's no, there's no fiscal value here, this is about what's happening in this way.

Abbas: Yeah, but, like, the way that I work, often it's misinterpreted, like, people think I'm anti- capitalist, I'm not, like, super pro-capitalist, but I'm a, sort of, like, I'm not coming here with some big agenda or solution. No, I'm saying [00:41:30] we live in a society that is emotionally suffocating, and it doesn't allow us space to feel our own feelings, or when things happen we can't grieve, or we struggle to comprehend even, like, the ecological crisis, and now there's a whole branch of, like, philosophy and phenomenology called ecological grief, like, how do you deal with a type of grief that is, ever enduring and never going to end around the planet?

Abbas: So all of these, kind of, huge, like, hyper objects and catastrophes, which we face on a personal level, but also on a social level, even with the current wars and situations around the world, like, people can't find space to come to terms with this.

Matt:There's no release. There's no pressure release is there?.

Abbas: Yeah, and for me, I'm just like, okay, in an art space, I can try and do something that helps a bit, but it doesn't make money. It doesn't necessarily lend itself into the commercial system or the, kind of, visual arts system as it [00:42:30] stands, it gets labelled in different ways as, like, conceptual or post minimal or whatever, but I'm, like, actually, I'm just trying to create this space because I need that space and I want to share that space and I don't necessarily understand how it transpires and transitions into something more sustainable. But when I teach, what I understand is that there are many, kind of, people lining up to graduate and go into their own work who [00:43:00] also want to make those kinds of spaces possible. And the only thing I can say to them is, like, if we all do it, it has to become more viable. Like, whereas right now, like, I'm inspired by the people that did it before me. There's many artists who worked in this way before me, another Iranian artist called Abbas Akhavan, there's Ima-Abasi Okon, there's Lydia Ourahmane, Paul Maheke, Larry Achiampong, Adam Farah-Saad, who recently won the Frieze Prize. Like, all these artists who are working in this, kind of, more open-ended, affective way, like, they gave me the confidence to feel like, okay, this is valid. But at the same time, we're all trying to figure out how does it become something viable?

Matt: And so there's a responsibility there almost for artists to pay that forwards again, you know, you've received it from someone and so therefore you gift it to the next.

Abbas: Yeah, but also you need them to do it so that it's become more viable for you. Because, if I wasn't doing what I'm doing, it puts [00:44:00] a full stop on it. Whereas, like, if we keep going in this direction… it's like when all these hipsters in Hackney are making beer, like, craft beer. If there was only 10 of them doing it, it would never have been a thing.

Matt: It would just fizzle out.

Abbas: But there had to be, like, a thousand of them making the same thing, but with different drawings on the cans to make it a thing.

Matt: That’s the momentum, the collective momentum. [00:44:30]

Matt: When we sort of talked about art, valuing the simple things, not to lose sight of what's available to you in the vicinity, and it was interesting that for me, that links back to what you were saying about the installation work about, you know, I asked you why they… if there was a particular significance to those objects and you said that they're just the things that you had at hand. There's something about encouraging people to just [00:45:00] look very directly at what is in your close proximity.

Abbas: Yeah, and obviously there's, like, aesthetic concerns and considerations and the skill is finding that balance in terms of how to make something interesting and it's not just, like, mundane and quotidian. I'm not encouraging people to be so ad hoc and haphazard and almost lazy, like, it's not a conspiracy theory in the sense that I can convince you anything is art, you know. I think we've got to a point where like the idea of [00:45:30] conspiracies and fake news and, kind of, that whole idea that we can't know the truth and it is what we make it to be, like, there is a tendency for art to go in that direction where it just all becomes this paracosm of like someone's inner world. That is an interesting thing to explore because we all have those, kind of, internal ways of relating to the world and it's often not until you encounter someone else that challenges your way of [00:46:00] understanding the world that you understand that, like, there's a lot of things here that may not be true. Or like, maybe I'm not really in touch with reality and wondering whether that's okay or not okay. That's how we all exist a lot of the time. We're not really in touch with reality, but we find a way to create an experience around that, that still enables us to communicate, be in dialogue, be in relation.

Abbas: And I think for me, what I'm trying to… when I talk about art in this day and age, like, where we [00:46:30] are now in terms of trying to figure out what is contemporary, is really this question of, like, what do people need right now? Because in the times when art was fluxus and it was just chaos and anti-system or whatever, that's what was needed then.

Abbas: Because the social conditions around that time, especially being post-war era, etc., there was this certain kind of, like, relief that came and a certain level of…

Matt: I was a rebirth, wasn't it?

Abbas: Yeah, like an emboldenment, a kind of cultural renaissance was happening at the same time. And I think right now, like, we're in a situation where people really need time and space to feel heard and to feel seen.

Abbas: And so actually an art practice really lends itself towards this more therapeutic dimension and many of the structures that we have in the art world don't enable this, like, if someone does that successfully they just try to push them towards the art market or they try to push them towards like working with an [00:47:30] institutional remit, wherein a lot of social work gets absorbed into learning, education and community engagement. And it works along the, kind of, funding system of how institutions survive, or there's, like, these more, kind of, neoliberal diversity type of ways of, like, social engineering and managing differences amongst people.

Abbas: And all I'm saying is that we can be aware of this and these are things that are happening, but how do we push back and maintain the integrity of what it [00:48:00] means to be an artist in relation to the conditions of your time? And that's really what I feel like I'm trying to do with my work and what I learned from the work of others who inspire me to feel confident enough to try and do this, because otherwise it's crazy, like in these conditions to tell someone “just be curious and feel what you feel”. Like, it's almost like the kind of things Diogenes would say, you know, like it doesn't make sense.

Matt: That's brilliant. I mean, when you talk about your work and you talk about art in general, it's a journey from simple starting points and ideas through complicated thoughts and processes back to a potentially a simple outcome or a very direct outcome that then in turn triggers some complicated conversations around it. That was brilliant.

Abbas: Oh, thank you, man. I appreciate the chance to be in conversation and to have the space to share because it's not always easy for me to talk about my work.

Matt: We always finish by asking our guests to set a provocation for our listeners. So, it's an opportunity if you have something in mind that can be a call to action or a reflection, a thought, a behaviour. Something that you might like them to do that could potentially bring out something creative from them. Do you have anything in mind?

Abbas: I mean, one of the best provocations I was given and I continue to give people is, I say make an artwork about nothing. Like, literally nothing. Like, whatever you define as nothing. You can understand nothing to be, like, space, like a vacuum, or you can understand nothing to be zero, like a mathematical thing, or nothing could be, like, the blind spot to your own consciousness, like, things that you're completely unaware of, whatever you think is nothing, make an artwork about that.

Abbas: And then that, kind of, will help you to understand things are invisible and how to then make them visible without actually making [00:50:00] them a thing. And it's so taken for granted, like, you might just say the word nothing, people use that word all the time, but maybe we're not even talking about the same thing. Maybe to me, nothing is just a dead conversation, but maybe to someone else, nothing really requires pure silence. Like, it's really hard to engage with that concept and you understanding what it means to you will say a lot about how you feel.

Matt: Brilliant. Thank you. Thank you once again for listening to this episode of Teach Inspire, Create. Massive thanks to Abbas for joining us today, for demystifying the world of fine art, for inspiring us all to think creatively in everything that we do and try and see the real value in small things. Such a brilliant conversation, I feel incredibly inspired as a result. If you want to know more about Abbas, you can visit www.abbzah.com or on Instagram @abbzah. You can find the link to these in our episode description. Are you subscribing and rating? Are you sharing with a friend? I hope so. If not, why not give it a go? Please do rate and review us, it really helps us to keep improving this podcast for you. So, thanks for listening and until next time, take care, bye bye.