Kristina Chan — Studio Visit
Kristina Chan | visual artist, based in London
MA Print from the Royal College of Art London
In your work, you often mention your interest in the history of feelings and emotions, the felt history. When did you start working with this concept?
Whenever someone asks me about my work, I always start by saying that I tell stories. I think it's a cultural imperative. I come from a very mixed background and I've also travelled a lot, which made me collect these stories. Wherever you go, you take them with you; you hold onto them and let them define you. Stories are so individual, but at the same time they are also universally relatable. I am interested in the idea that you feel a place or a landscape in a way that’s much more immediate and intimate, even before you apply words to them. This is what I try to evoke. A lot of the times it’s something quite vague – stillness, nostalgia or even a pause. There is a literary term “in media res”, which means starting a story half-way through. I think it’s a similar feeling when you are confronted with art – no matter what culture you come from, you always tend to have a flashback to something that feels familiar. To me, this feeling of familiarity is very important, I often try to reference it.
Dream in Blue, Cyanotype, Kristina Chan & Itamar Freed, 2019. Photo by Damian Griffiths
I noticed you frequently reference different styles, Western and Asian, whether in terms of style or format. For example, in your recent series of works, Lucid Dreams, you draw inspiration from Japanese prints and Impressionism. Could you tell me more about your influences ?
I work primarily in photographic print and what’s beautiful about print making is that it has hundreds of years of development behind it. You can play with it, use obscure techniques, draw on top of it. And it all happens within the incredible chemistry on the plates.
I’m all about the mix. I think it comes from both my personal background and interest in different artistic mediums. I came from a background in sculpture and installation. When I made the shift towards photography and print, I enjoyed the immediacy and intimacy that print allows. I started paneling from a practical point of view, but it did allow this kind of narrative or almost storyboarding to happen. With regards to Japanese prints, they also use paneling to signify the change in seasons and a change in time. There's an incredible kind of ephemerality to it. And memories are like that too. – not entirely clear. You can’t help but change them, because you are the one interpreting it.
Kristina Chan, Studio profile, 2020, courtesy of the artist
In lockdown you started your podcast Horizons. Why did you decide to work on a podcast and how does it connect to your printmaking practice?
It's quite an interesting project that I started thanks to an initiative with the Canadian Arts Council – a digital originals innovation grant. The Council is looking for a way to help traditional crafts – art forms that aren't intuitively digitalised – and to shed light on them by creating a creative community with a focus on the audible.
My practice includes a lot of artists books, so I proposed to read the stories of travels and record different experiences to offer a bit of escapism, if you will, and talk about my practice in a much more casual or approachable way to a wider audience. I think about my artist books as auxiliary to my big prints. This was a way to try and change that and just see if there's a way to present my art differently, more accessibly.
How did you solve the challenge of putting images into words?
I treat it more as a research diary. The podcast looks at the places I’ve been, and the histories that struck me. In other words, it explains why I made the prints or why an area provided the inspiration that would lead to prints. What was interesting is that a lot of galleries I work with now that listen to it, write me and say, “you know, we've been working together for years, but it’s coming from a completely different angle, enriching it”. I thought this was really nice feedback.
How did the limitations of the current situation affect your work?
I've definitely discovered I’m slightly more resourceful than I thought I was and, luckily, I also received some funding during this time. And because of that, I was actually able to source a bit of the equipment I would need to kind of augment my own studio. I have a private studio, but nothing like a print workshop, but I've been able to re-adjust and continue making. There was this one project in particular where I was working on the set of bronze sculptures to go along with a new series. I had just picked them up from the foundry before lockdown, and then I was staring at these things trying to figure out how on earth I was going to clean and colour them. I ended up feeling a bit like a mad scientist – I found household equivalents, which I found out are a lot more corrosive than they probably should be. But the process taught me there is always an alternative.
Collage has also come into my work – because of course, you can't quite go into the main studio and make things the scale you would normally like. I wouldn't say it's been easy, but I think I'm very thankful to still be making.
Understory II, pigment print, Kristina Chan, 2020, courtesy of the artist
Ferns, etching, Kristina Chan, 2020, courtesy of the artist
What are you working on at the moment?
I am currently finishing the residency at the newly established Vault Project in Trafalgar Square, just opposite the National Gallery. It's a new art ~~~~space – what they've done is create an exhibition format that aligns to any restrictions by using retail spaces that haven't been hired out as artist studios. And it is incredible space – an old bank vault. During the residency, I’ve set up a space that is both an exhibition and studio space. On one side is a formal exhibition and on the other is a studio. It’s interesting as it brings the studio, which is usually behind closed doors into view. And because it's a retail space, it's on ground level, it's completely covered in windows. It’s a bit of a fishbowl – people on their daily walks can go by and can see what's happening.
The idea is to put light on what normally happens behind closed doors. And of course, by the end of the residency, the work that has been made in situ will also be displayed. The whole time, there are finished works alongside the ones being made. It highlights how we often don’t consider the process of something being made – it just appears on the wall, finished. Whereas there's a lot of blood, sweat and tears, self-doubt and remaking involved behind the scene and I think that's what is really different and interesting about this format.
I’ll also be exhibiting in NordArt this year. It is an art fair in Hamburg, Germany that is due to take place live from June – October. It will be with work created in collaboration with photographer Itamar Freed. This series, Lucid Dreams, (debuted in October 2019) was exhibited at Litvak Contemporary in Tel Aviv, Edinburgh Printmakers, Royal Scottish Academy, Photo LA and Photo IS:RAEL, Beers London, Vault Projects and the Royal Academy Winter Show. We are really excited to resume physical shows – also I am pretty sure the work has travelled more than us in the last year.
Words by Polina Chizhova