” I see all my work as abstracted self-portraiture” – Heather Benjamin
What storylines or themes are you examining in your artworks for the ‘NOISY REALITY’ exhibition?
Heather Benjamin: These paintings are a continuation of the world I’ve been building in my larger body of work for the last few years, which is an otherworldly desolate zone populated by my creatures. I’m obsessed with the desert, and oddly have been since before I ever actually visited one, I was already drawing them before that. Especially more so now that I spend as much time as I can in them. The desert is this very mystical, epic, spooky place. The vastness of space and the insane silence, both of which really mess with your perception of reality – from your literal depth perception to the way you perceive your own thoughts – creates this perfect like, mindfuck-y blank slate for me to work on and with. I’ve been populating my version of that zone in my work with my creatures which I use as avatars to represent and explore different ideas about my experience of womanhood. In these paintings, I’m bringing those characters to life size proportions for the first time, which I hope lends them even more goddess-like stature and magnitude, as well as making them even more confrontational.
Can you describe your creative process in crafting these pieces?
Heather Benjamin: These are the biggest paintings I’ve ever made. I always start with a smaller study on paper with pencil and then scale it up. The source material for my original drawings that turn into bigger paintings is pulled from a lot of different source material – lately usually some combination of vintage porn, pre-Raphaelite paintings, and reference photos I take of myself.I try to have a lot of these smaller drawings on hand, which aren’t so much sketches as fully finished compositions, and then when I want to make larger works I choose from those drawings to reference and scale up, sometimes combining them.
Could you elaborate on the autobiographical aspects of your art?
Heather Benjamin: I see all my work as abstracted self-portraiture. Sometimes my women are all different characters, sometimes I see them as all facets of the same one, but all of my women are always me in some sense. Sometimes that means she’s more of a literal representation of a feeling or experience that I have, sometimes that means she’s a representation of a woman I aspire to be. In my work with multiple figures, sometimes I look at them as all different characters or facets of myself interacting, sometimes I see it as a representation of one characters moving through time. Most of the time these things are all true at the same time. My work is my diary, and I use it to work through my own trauma as well as try to visualize and manifest new versions of myself, usually simultaneously.
How do you interpret ‘NOISY REALITY,’ and in what way do you think your artworks in the exhibition encapsulate the lively spirit of New York City?
>Growing up around New York City, it’s always been my blueprint for what a city is, ever since I can remember. I remember the first time I visited another major city as a kid and how much quieter and less lively it seemed. Looking back on that makes me realize how much I internalized from a young age the noise level, the visual stimulation, the being up in everyone’s business and everyone being up in yours, the grime, the drama, the hodgepodge of so many things existing at their highest energy level simultaneously. I think my being drawn to environments like the desert as I got older are a direct result of that, needing some yin to the yang I have lived in or around my whole life, but I think that internalized high energy sensibility comes through in my work regardless, if not necessarily in the environment that I’m rendering, then in the hyperactive emotion of my women and the density of my visual fields, and by virtue of my work being autobiographical. Internalizing New York as I grew up meant becoming intertwined with the emotional landscape of this city, and I think that will always come through in my work.
