IMIN YEH

The DIADEM Interview

Collector and DIADEM contributor Michael Cavendish (DD) interviewed artist Imin Yeh(IY) on October 17, 2014.

DD: This fall, you are doing an invited residency at Recology in San Francisco. What do you understand in advance about their Artist in Residence Program, and what do you want to work on during your residency?

IY: I’m currently in residence at RecologySF. Only one week in, I can tell that I am in love.

Follow my Instagram (@iminyeh) to see what kind of mischief I will get myself into, and I plead the fifth on discussing my plans at this embryonic stage.

This is such a unique program. What it entails is a four month residency with full access to everything that is disposed into the Public Disposal Area (aka the Dump).

The sheer amount of raw materials would provide for work of hugely ambitious scale, but what is stunning is the amount of useable merchandise, electronics, cookware, clothing, toys, and furniture that is also thrown away.

The other thing is, it shows that we have filled our lives with so much single-use and cheap furniture and stuff. Those things, materially, are at a really nasty and base level, and I’m finding it overwhelming to try to imagine a second use for these materials beyond artwork that is about trash.

My projects recently have all been about transforming simple, humble materials (paper for example) through labor, and creating them into something much more precious and considered. I do know I want to transform the materials and stories that I find, through the Dump and the people who work there, into something finer.

DD: The bio Recology did for you on their website focuses a little on the humor, the parody, that peeps out from some of your work. Are there times when you have an idea that really tickles you, that you think is really funny, and but then the process of rendering the art of it is not as engaging to you as the moment of conception was, when it was a private joke you were telling yourself? Do you think of things that you find so satisfying in the thinking of them, but then drawing them out you feel less satisfied, or you find the end result less hilarious.

IY: Yes, all of the time. In fact I just wrote a note in my book (that I drag everywhere with me with all my ideas and to-do lists) that said, ‘Produce Slower.’

I have a background in printmaking, I’ve worked as a graphic designer, and I am fast. What I mean is that any stupid idea I have, I have the tools and technology on hand to make it come to life and then multiplied exponentially.

It’s a scary thing because most bad ideas should die as bad ideas, and not get overproduced.

I think the work is going to benefit from the Recology residency for that reason. Here you see the product of humanity’s over-production and consumption. It’s overwhelming to see and it is making me really think about the kind of objects I want to make.

I am less interested in producing objects that are riffs on consumerism. We already produce enough novelty, ironical things, and so I want to ask a lot more from myself.

DD: Another bio someone did on you details that you have done something like three other AIRs, and you’ve done two grants, everywhere from New York to India. Do your artist friends look at you like the Jeff Goldblum character in The Life Aquatic, you know, the one who “hogs up all the grants?”

IY: You don’t have the list of things I have been rejected from! Also there is a world of commercial gallery success, and also opportunities in other cities and countries, which I am really not a participant in (though not by choice). As they say, everybody wants to be asked to prom.

DD: But seriously, you have also been selected as a Eureka Fellow in 2016 by the Fleishacker Foundation. This sounds complicated and prestigious, and it must be, because it starts in 2016, and you know, we don’t even talk about who will be President in 2016 two years out. What is the Eureka Fellowship and what are your plans to take that additional very large pile of wood out and chop it up; what are you expecting?

IY: The Eureka Fellowship is, I believe, the largest individual artist fellowship in the Bay Area. Local curators, orgs, et cetera are asked to nominate people, and the nominated artists submit an application which is juried by non-local individuals in the Arts.

It is juried without your name attached to the application which I think is amazing because of how much knowing someone sways a decision. The winning Fellows are randomly lotteried for which year they will get the money, so by luck of the draw I got 2016.

At first that made me stressed out, as I’ve only been out of grad school five years, and it feels a lot like ‘who knows if I’ll still be an artist in 2016!’ But judging by how activities in 2015 are lining up, it looks like the award will still have relevance!

Whew. I have no idea what I’ll do with the award, but I’m sure it will be exceedingly practical.

DD: A lot of the copy on you refers to you as a printmaker. Not an artist, but a printmaker. Is that caution? Did you do some research and find out that Eugene Delacroix introduced himself as a printmaker, or something? Because you are such a ‘Capital A’ Artist. It’s so obvious.

IY: I am not the person who always refers to me as a printmaker, and similarly, I also never describe myself as a Chinese-American artist.

Once I had an art organization refer to me as a Chinese-American printmaker and gallery veteran.

A lot of my work is very project based, and lately they have been sculptures and installations, or participatory/interactive events.

But at the root of all of these projects is a love and interest with print media, paper, ink, ephemeral, exchange, books, multiples, knives, chisels, et cetera.

The social history of print media and the conceptual tenets of exchange, visual communication, and how it is a perfect medium for faking things is why I consider myself a part of the extended printmaking family.

Learning printmaking and utilizing those skills is how I see possibilities in the world. But yes, I’d rather just be called an Artist.

DD: One of the things that struck me when I first saw examples of your work was how “done,” how “finished” a piece is before you let go of it. I saw your orange crates installation and, I mean, if I came around the corner at The Whitney and it was sitting there I wouldn’t blink. The execution is big league, but you keep the textures where you want them, the pieces don’t become so nice, or over-nice, to lose the edge, the cultural meaning and the message you put into it. Why are you so good at this? Do you have instincts about the level of craft an object needs to be art not kitsch and also art not bland luxury goods?

IY: That really is way too kind. I choose the materials at the very beginning that have only a certain limitation to them to begin with.

Paper is never really going to look like the real thing; it will not look like fruit skin, or leather or wood, so there from the beginning stops it from ever being a luxury object. Paper is utilitarian object in its flat form, but as a paper sculpture, it’s pretty much useless, tying it to the world of Art.

I’m grateful every day that I can apply technical skill and craft to objects that serves as a catalyst for thought.

DD: The discipline of anthropology really got started the last century because the researchers figured out that allowing, for example, a white American to study a culture completely unknown to them, like the Yanomami of Brazil, was a highly effective way of teaching the researcher, and thus the researcher’s audience, about humanity, about the universals, with the interesting or exotic aspects of the studied culture just being the needle that brought the serum of understanding home. In many parts of the U.S., Asian cultures and Chinese cultures are still not very well comprehended. Has it ever occurred to you that, out of some of the work you have done that either imports, exports, or riffs on a theme of the Chinese cultures, you might be setting up a giant laboratory to teach your audience a lot more than just visual ideas in 21st century art?

IY: In order to do something as crazy as be an artist in the 21st century, you have to really be obsessed and care about what you want to make.

The initial voice that I found as an artist was to process and work through what it meant for me to be a Chinese-American, and how that identity frames my relationship to the world.

That got me riled up enough to endure the discipline and work it takes to make art. But it isn’t my job or interest to teach other people, and that didacticism or expectation that your artwork must teach others is what gets a lot of artists of color who make work about identity in a lot of heated debates and crits with their non-identity based artist peers and teachers.

We could go on forever about this, but what I want to say is: it is important as a young artist to find the thing that gives you the natural impulse to work, to make something.

DD: You have been able to pull off pieces that initiate a conversation, like your alternate animals for the Chinese New Year, and you have been nimble enough to put out work that reacts to something that is trending, like your White Boyfriend Pillows that were parry/riposte to Urban Outfitters’ Asian Girl patronization. That means that good ideas come to you quickly and frequently. What is your process of triaging these things in your head. Is it painful? You only have two hands, and so many work hours. Have there been ideas you’ve left behind? Have you ever tried selling your ideas you don’t have time for on Ebay?

IY: I love the idea of selling ideas on Ebay. I’m going to steal that idea from you, and have that be on the top of my list of ideas that I sell on Ebay.

I once had a teacher tell me that I needed to write down 100 ideas, which I felt was an impossible feat. His criticism of my work was that I would jam 50 ideas into one work on paper, and that was because I didn’t have a release valve for my ideas.

The 100 idea thing is great too, because you put your ideas on a list so when you are stumped of what to do, you can return to the list. Or you had a terrible idea, and it is written down so you don’t forget it was stupid and accidently produce it for a show.

Now I have over 250 ideas, and in the one week at Recology, I’ve already added about 20 ideas!

Creativity is an exercise just like running. You don’t get up and run a marathon. You could say that I’m very fit at art making right now.

DD: You did some guest curating awhile back, kind of a museum within a museum called SpaceBi? What effect did that have on people’s perception of you? Did they stop thinking about you as a 100% hard-charging artist? Did you ever notice whether taking the hardcore ‘I make art’ hat and putting on this other cap, let’s call it, for a time, or wearing two hats together, really is more accurate maybe, did that have any effects on your perception of people’s perception of you?

IY: The SpaceBi project was actually an artist project that mimicked a curating job, a strategy you could trendily call “social practice” but what I like to call “make-believe.”

SpaceBi was not authorized by the Asian Art Museum, I just did it with grant money.

If you do not have certain opportunities (at the time, there was no real exhibition opportunities for local artists or Chinese-American artists at the Asian Art Museum) you should just do it yourself, and so SpaceBi over the course of one year invited over 60 local artists to show work in the museum.

That was an exercise in freedom. Do or make what you want. The only thing that changed people’s perception of me during the project was that I was bisexual. This was unexpected, but it kind of makes sense.

DD: In contrast to the bigness of what appear to be your major works, the work you put up for collectors or fans on your iminyeh.info site is dizzyingly small. The God of Signal Strength? I mean, I need that one five feet square on an aluminum panel! What people can collect of yours at present feels like the little items they offer at the cash register at checkout, whereas your big works are like ‘all of Aisle 3,’ ‘the entire Bakery,’ ‘the parking lot.’ You know? Is it a time and assistants thing? How can larger Imin Yeh pieces get out there to be bought?

A lot of the works are interactive and site specific projects, so that at the end of the show all I have is sort of project ephemeral to sell.

The nature of these works opens up doors to things like institutional commissions and residencies, but necessarily for commercial galleries or cultivating a fancier donor base.

Then at the same time, none of it is hip enough for an actual store or non-art audience who wants cool stuff.

There is something liberating about not being a part of a commercial dialogue, but also it is something that I need to improve upon with my work. Again, always asking a lot more of myself.

DD: Speaking of wanting more of something. You conceived in 2012 a fictional local politician, someone running for elected office in California. Juan-Ton. And, I mean, the power of words has never been more evident. You didn’t have to explain anything else. No backstory necessary. Juan-Ton. You did a commissioned installation in San Jose, CA about this, and you made two prints that are like Juan-Ton’s campaign flyers. But you must know, that is not nearly enough of this idea. We, and I mean we as a nation of 300 million, America, we need more Juan-Ton art. Could there be press conferences? A fictional campaign? Can I host a fundraiser?

IY: That project was actually based off a real life email I got for a graphic design gig. At the time, I made the decision to not take that gig, because it was so ridiculous, even though I needed the money.

A few months later I was asked to submit a proposal for the SJMA show and had this real-life idea at my fingertips.

The best part of this project is that it is an example about making your idea list, keeping the world and your experience within it as a constant source material, and having the agency to do work as an artist, and nothing else.

DD: You did another print of a Bay Area Rapid Transit ticket. Whatever else the piece achieved, it was very nicely rendered realism. What part of making things look completely real, completely authentic, feeds back to what part of your composition as an artist? The impulse to achieve something to the exacting standard realism requires must come from a very different pocket of you than the humor.

IY: A lot of that comes from finding beauty, design, or something iconic in the everyday. That comes from just a general curiosity and real observation that is cultivated through an Arts education.

One of the things I like about printmaking is that it is easy to copy things (well printmaking is how things like BART tickets are even produced) It makes it a tool perfect for slowing down things in the world that catch my eye and recreating them.

DD: You have an exhibit up right now called Paper Bag Project. It is, to me, journalistic. Like your earlier major works and installations, it is perfectly executed in the visuals and it carries along some resonant questions about consumption and globalism. But the video that shows the process of how gift shop paper bags are made using this kind of cauldrony rag and pulp process in India reminds me of the show 60 Minutes. It’s expository. Is there a gradient from art to journalism this piece might get classified as moving along, from art to journalism? Because with video, with film, if you present things in a certain way, something is either high cinema, or it’s Warhol, or it’s a middle schooleducational reel. People classify moving images like that. Have you taken a massive risk here?

IY: At the Asian Art Museum (where the show was) there are already a lot of videos showing craftsman working.

This is an institutional educational strategy at a lot of folk/craft or ethnographic museums.

I’ve been thinking about the idea of how people like to see the traditional artist working in real life. This is way we like to explore other cultures, through traveling to factory tours and workshops, to even programming at museums (watching a traditional weaver, or traditional needlepoint artists, working in the lobby).

The Paper Bag Project is about the similarities of that labor and craft but placed upon a privileged body (me) in the context of art within an area like the Bay Area.

The video was in direct conversation to how museum’s already frame traditional and ethnic arts.

DD: What is teaching like? Is teaching going to lengthen or shorten your career as a swashbuckling avant garde artist?

IY: I am new to teaching and I think you fire a lot of the same synapses in the brain as a studio practice.

I believe in using contemporary artists and their projects as the method of teaching.

I mean, contemporary work that has to deal with relational aesthetics, participation, the internet for collaboration, et cetera, are awesome real life examples of how to run the classroom.

My peers and other artists are making work that actually illustrates to young people a different way of thinking and looking at the world. I’m very pumped on teaching.

The other thing I like about teaching is that it makes a deadline to get done more of the reading and studying that I should do even for my own practice. I like to learn, and I like to learn more to teach more.

DD: What’s it like to be Chinese in today’s America, in today’s California? Does heritage give you a, do you feel, strong platform, a distinct platform, but a strong platform nonetheless, to shape and push through your work the course that art is going to take in this new century?

IY: What it like to be an emerging artist with an upper middle class upbringing from two stable, highly educated immigrant parents?

An artist who was raised, thankfully, in an area and time that still supported an arts education and two parents who supported me and my involvement in band, the newspaper, student government, and also allowed me to go to the college of my choice, and even, with great hesitation, let me get a degree in Art?

What it like to be a young artist, but with some steady adjunct teaching work and opportunities to develop and exhibit new work?

I’m gonna go ahead and say that I have a lot more privilege, access, and a lot of luck that is systemically being reduced or taken away from a lot of young people from different economic backgrounds in this state and in this country.

DD: Is there an aggrandizing gene inside you? Do you secretly crave to see “Imin Yeh” projected by spotlight across the downtown office towers at night? Would you be disappointed if tabloids started discussing you generally, like they do with Damien Hirst?

IY: I would like to have the good fortune to be an artist who continues to push herself and her work, for the rest of my life.

Being an artist is the key to hacking life. If there is time and space to make the work, then everything else is worth it.

DD: What gets all that printmaking ink off of fingers? Can you save a really pricey piece of art paper that gets smudged the wrong way?

IY: I don’t. I just let it stay on. Never trust a woman with clean fingers.

DD: You allowed the studio ogling blog In the Make to photograph your place. You are pictured in their feature sporting rubber yellow boots and brown cords. Is that the uniform at Studio Yeh? I’m just kidding. Seriously, what is your routine. When can you work, how do you start, middle, and end it, and what is the environment you create for yourself while making art?

IY: I am a big fan of routine, and I believe in discipline being the number path towards creativity.

I wake up every day around 6 am. I have coffee. I solve all my creative solutions on weekly jogs.

I rarely go out or drink. I turned down a trip to the Bahamas to work in my studio and get ready for Recology.

I haven’t gone home for the holidays in seven years.

Imin Yeh is on the web at www.iminyeh.info.

N.1. this text courtesy of DIADEM Art Papers by Cavendish Projects.

N.2. all text copyright the author and the artist.

N.3. Cavendish Projects is on Twitter and Medium @cavprojects