- What is your material philosophy? As a creative practitioner, do you prioritize physical properties (properties such as material performance, density, texture, flexibility, sustainability), conceptual meaning, sensory qualities, emotional response, cultural history, processes of fabrication, or accessibility when selecting materials?
My material philosophy more often has to do with conceptual meanings over the physical properties of the material. While I do prefer to use materials that are light and less difficult to work with, I don’t often consider factors such as their longevity or performance. If anything, most of the time the materials I use are more fragile than strong and run the risk of being damaged during the creative process, or soon after I finish. I’d say this ties back to how I prioritize conceptual meaning. Much of my creative practice has to do with childhood/aging/change, and so by incorporating materials that can be changed easily (whether that be through damage or some other form of change) I am able to explore this idea of growing/always evolving. Aside from physical properties, I enjoy using materials associated with childhood such as crayons, stickers, and any 3D materials to make the artwork pop out more in a way.
2. What responsibilities do artists and designers have in ensuring the ethical sourcing of materials? The use of materials with complex histories tied to labor, colonialism, and extraction prompts a reevaluation of material ethics.
As someone who prioritizes being socially aware of the world around me, this conversation is of high interest to me. I understand that it can be quite easy to get caught up in your creative process and not consider the ethics of your practice, but I think art itself is inherently political in a way, and ethics more often than not tie into politics. While it can be hard to sometimes pinpoint the origins of our materials, with proper care and dedication, I wholeheartedly believe it is possible to put more effort into researching where our materials come from. This conversation itself helps to spread awareness on the potential exploitation we are normalizing if we ignore conversations of ethics in the art world. It is our duty as artists to ensure that we are doing the proper research into where we source our ideas/materials, and if we are to use something that is ethically questionable, the least one could do is acknowledge this and take the time to have discussions on it.