collage — Blog — Foundation for Asian American Independent Media

Mita Mahato is a Seattle-based cut paper, collage, and comix artist, whose work explores the transformative capacities of found and handmade papers. Using collage and paper-making techniques, she builds multivalent images and stories that center on issues related to loss—including loss of life, identity, habitat, and species. Her cut paper poetry comics are collected in In Between (Pleiades Press 2017).

Mahato is one of the participating artists for the ON/OFF Grid art exhibition (April 6 - June 3) at the Gene Siskel Film Center in conjunction with the FAAIM 23rd Annual Asian American Showcase, 2018. We asked her a few questions about her work and artistic practice!

Does your identity or personal story inform your work? Who/what inspires you?

My identity as a daughter of immigrants from India (Bihar and Bengal states) informs my perspective on my art, teaching, and pretty much everything. Growing up in suburban Milwaukee in the late 70s and early 80s, I never felt exactly on the "inside" of anything. I was surrounded by people—friends—visually unlike me. You try to buy the trendy clothes or style your hair after the popular kids, but you never exactly fit in. I take that outside/inside dilemma into most of my art. I try to create space in my work to communicate silent or silenced voices by using collage and cut paper techniques that suggest hidden or layered narratives and perspectives.

What do you think about AI?

It fascinates me! Because much of my recent work interrogates the anthropogenic causes of environmental degradation and species extinction, I'm interested in the potential of AI to help us deconstruct the human-oriented narratives and perspectives that shape the ways in which we act in the world. I love that you can feed a data-set into a machine learning program and that it can output, say, images of faces that are just left of what we'd recognize as a human face. It's creepy!—but not wrong. AI in a way reminds me of the collage work that inspires me and it challenges me to reconsider my place in the world by imagining how "others" might see me (or totally disregard me!). I like the idea that there are forms of animal or other intelligence and emotion beyond human understanding and control.

What are you working on right now?

I'm working on an experimental comic book loosely based upon my experiences during an artist residency in the Norwegian Arctic. The trip challenged my approach to using art to raise awareness about climate change issues. The work will consider how to represent the Arctic in a way that doesn't contribute to its further mystification. I'm also hoping it will advocate for the environment in a way that inspires people to bring wonder to their everyday actions and surroundings. For the background pages in one section of the book, I've been making handmade papers in which I've embedded plastics that I've collected from my produce purchases (potatoes in plastics bags, tangerines in those stretchy nets, etc.). Since starting the project, I've drastically reduced my plastic consumption. Change begins at home, right?

See more of Mita Mahato's work on www.theseframesarehidingplaces.com // Instagram @mita_mahato // Join us at the ON/OFF Grid art exhibition running Friday, April 6, 2018 - June 3, 2018.

Jay Cabalu is a Filipino-born, Vancouver-based collage artist with a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Kwantlen University. His practice includes a growing list of private commissions and, more recently, self-portraiture. In this digital age, Jay is interested in how social media and popular culture have informed our identities and perceptions of our world. Jay has exhibited in numerous spaces in Vancouver, such as the Federation Gallery, the Roundhouse, Hot Art Wet City and Ayden Gallery. In the Fall of 2015, Jay appeared on Season One of CBC’s Crash Gallery.

"Krash" by Jay Cabalu. Image courtesy of artist.

Cabalu is one of the participating artists for the ON/OFF Grid art exhibition (April 6 - June 2) at the Gene Siskel Film Center in conjunction with the FAAIM 23rd Annual Asian American Showcase which runs April 6 through April 18th, 2018. We asked him a few questions about his work and artistic practice!

1. Does your identity or personal story inform your work? Who/what inspires you?

Absolutely. As part of an immigrant family growing up in Canada, it was very clear to me by the age of four that I was displaced. Both my Filipino and Canadian identities seemed foreign to me. Popular culture became a refuge from alienation and much of it has grown up with me. Over time, I came to realize that it was problematic. I invested a culture that didn't reflect me and that created a lot of angst. By incorporating the evolution of popular culture in my collages, I try to speak to my cultural fixations as a boy, an adolescent and an adult.

I am inspired by social media and different forms of popular culture, whether high or low. I've been able to participate in social media as its transformed and grown into different platforms, inevitably altering the perception and presentation of myself. Those shifts can make for subtle changes in identity, for better or worse, and part of adapting to different forms of social media entails silliness, insecurity, and some stupidity. My work tries to both overcome and embrace all of that.

"Godfrey" by Jay Cabalu. Image courtesy of artist.

2. How has technology affected your creative process? Does this affect how you view or choose to interact with the world?

Photoshop and social media have come to play a big role in my work. I use Photoshop to play with different colour palettes and compositions before I get to the physical work, allowing me to lay out my options and quickly decide on aesthetic choices.

Sharing my work on social media has allowed me to approach people from a different place of vulnerability. Of course, much of what gets posted on social media and much of what becomes art is about showing off. In both cases, the worlds I create in my art and through Instagram or Facebook are not really grounded in reality, but merging these worlds allows me to expose myself in new ways. Whatever the audience's view of my work—brilliant or senseless, innovative or mundane —I hope that being vulnerable through my art at least prompts people to consider being equally vulnerable in and outside digital life.

"Vortex" (detail) by Jay Cabalu. Image courtesy of artist.

3. How do you think digital formats impact your field and your audience?

In the medium of collage, a big part of the piece is lost in a condensed Instagramable file. The impact is much greater in person. Previously, I've been told that my collages look digital when viewed on a screen. As a result, I've started to embrace and enhance the tactile nature of what I do. I am tearing a lot more and carving onto the surface to reveal how fragile the material really is.

4. What do you think about AI?

It makes me anxious! Whenever you see artificial intelligence being explored in movies or television, it never seems like a good idea, but I guess we are going there anyway. I've started to be nicer to Siri.

"A Tension" by Jay Cabalu. Image courtesy of artist.

5. What are you working on right now?

Currently, I am working on ways to exaggerate different social media tropes. I wanted "Reconciliation" to be an overblown selfie. I took the intentions behind that sort of post and really tried to push it. I've been inspired by artists who use themselves to comment on cultural movements and I want to participate as much as I critique. I think this is a fun and relevant way to explore identity and vanity in this era. I'm also interested in finding ways to show things that we don't necessarily want to share online. To me, social media profiles are these highly polished, idealized, untouchable alter-egos. We don't often show vulnerability on the internet and when we come across it online, it's awkward—we don't want to look at it, yet, we all have fears and insecurities.

See more of Jay Cabalu's work on http://jaycabalu.com // Instagram @jaycabalu // Join us at the ON/OFF Grid art exhibition running Friday, April 6, 2018 - June 3, 2018.

Artist Interview // MITA MAHATO

Artist Interview // JAY CABALU