In a text on Dana Schutz's bio, The Saatchi Gallery described Schutz's paintings as "teetering the edge of tradition and innovation." I don't think it will be too much of a stretch to designate the now Toronto-based artist geetha thurairajah’s works in a similar accord. It’s really no wonder Canadian Art Magazine included her as part of a group of creatives making “Forward Thinking Practices.” Like Schutz, thurairajah’s forms call to mind other weirdo painters like Philip Guston and even Nicola Tyson. Unlike Schutz’s deceptively whimsy worlds that tend to be filled with beach orgy scenes and self-eating characters thurairajah’s seemingly makeshifty loose airbrush surfaces (each matched with curiously unexpected titles) can range in explorations around her own hybridity –sometimes via good ol' Bugs Bunny and/or pop icons like Drizzy—to her relationship with alternate virtual landscapes and anything in-between. It almost makes sense that thurairajah finds the late Annie Pootoogook as an admirer, they both have that ostensibly surreal at times wonderfully awkward or even naiveté handling of their pictorial space but manages to punctuate it at the same time. Although thurairajah is just starting out and sees her work expanding outward, she is slowly shaping out her own unaffected space within painting’s legacy. We were lucky to catch some of her time as she shared with us a bit about her current body of work, her personal and creative background, and where she sees here creative output going in the future.
thurairajah:
"i was too scared to touch identity in my work while in school. Part of it was not knowing what story I wanted to tell and another part was the feeling of already being visibly othered and not wanting to project those anxieties onto my mostly white peers. Once I left school and started really reflecting on why painting mattered to me but that I had no artists to model myself after or look to, I decided to just do it on my own and be okay with speaking my own language. It’s not that I am dismissive of painting’s history, it’s actually quite the opposite however there is a real strength in reclaiming parts of its history in order to rewrite it."
LK: How was your 2016?
GT: It’s was a good year- lots of changes. 2016 was the year that I moved to Toronto from New Brunswick which also coincided with my first solo show in the city.
LK: How are you doing existentially and emotionally?
GT: I created the works for Boons of Another over the month of September in New Brunswick which meant working full on days for a few weeks straight. It was only after finishing that work that I was able to find a studio space in Toronto. This was such a fortuitous situation, however I didn’t give myself enough time to recover from that show. For most of October and November I was feeling quite unsettled in my work, I think I was pushing too hard and not letting things just flow. I took some time off [in] December for the holidays and I’m feeling excited about the studio and my ideas again- relief!
LK: Congrats on your Boons of Another show! Can you tell us about the write-up Fan Wu wrote for your show at AC Repair CO. what did you tell him about your work and how do you see that text as relating to your work?
GT: Fan was amazing! Jess Carroll actually recruited him to write the piece which he agreed to since he knew my work from my 8-11 show, Goodbye here, no matter where. I sent him images of the partial works for the show and based on what he knew of my work he ran with it. It’s an amazingly nuanced piece that I feel successfully grounds the work.
2016, Boons of Another, Installation View at AC Repair Co., Toronto, CA
Make It Rain, 2016, acrylic on canvas, 48″ x 36″
It Wasn’t The Right Kind Of Performance And Now We Are Not Friends But I Just Heard From Your Sister, 2016, acrylic on canvas, 48″ x 36″
A Kind Of Existence After My Own Heart, 2016, acrylic on canvas, 48″ x 36″
A Kind Of Existence After My Own Heart, 2016, acrylic on canvas, 48″ x 36″
LK: What kind of a kid were you growing up? Did you do any extra curricular activities?
GT: I was really active and craved being around friends all of the time. I was really into snowboarding, soccer and just being as active as possible. Art became a more serious interest during my last year of high school.
LK: How did you first come to painting? Where did the initial interest to work through painting come from?
GT: I went to NSCAD in Halifax and really struggled with painting. It’s a conceptual minded school and I just kept leaving the painting program until I went to RISD on exchange. It was shocking to go from a conceptual program to a really formal painting program. I went to RISD thinking I would make Conceptual Paintings which the school successfully bullied out of me. I was able to finally accept painting after realizing that I could create the impossible through painting- set up and explore situations that just cannot exist IRL.
LK: Does painting's history and its relation to you as a female and poc something you think about or matters to you or your work at all?
GT: I was too scared to touch identity in my work while in school. Part of it was not knowing what story I wanted to tell and another part was the feeling of already being visibly othered and not wanting to project those anxieties onto my mostly white peers. Once I left school and started really reflecting on why painting mattered to me but that I had no artists to model myself after or look to, I decided to just do it on my own and be okay with speaking my own language. It’s not that I am dismissive of painting’s history, it’s actually quite the opposite however there is a real strength in reclaiming parts of its history in order to rewrite it.
LK: With the compositions you make, how improvised are they...how much of what ends up in the pictorial space is something you were purposefully after?
GT: I’m a very intentional painter and at times it really frustrates me. My thumbnails are digitally created to scale but I try to work without a projector on the actual painting. There are decisions and changes that are made in the translation of the digital image into a painting but as I continue to experiment with my process I am starting to translate the digital imagery in more expressive and painterly ways.
2016, Goodbye here no matter where, Installation View at 8-11 Gallery, Toronto, CA
LK: What do you think you can get from painting the compositions that you paint that you can't necessarily get from working straight through digital means?
GT: It annoys me to say this but relying on the tactile quality of paint really does make it worthwhile to me. My paintings are usually done in first-person perspective which is a way for me to bring the viewer in as a performer and while the images are intended to bring you in, they remind you of their pictorial quality through an emphasis on the boundaries of their surfaces and moments of expressive brushwork.
LK: Did you have a computer at your home growing up?
GT: I did, I remember my Dad getting an IBM when I was in grade 2 I think. I would just hang out in chat rooms in the early days and play Doom or the Microsoft Flight Simulator.
LK: How would you describe your current relationship with the internet when it comes to the work you do?
GT: The internet can make visual connections for me that wouldn’t be possible otherwise. I can broadly enter a concept, for instance- Gauguin’s Tahiti which all of a sudden allows me to arrive at his history as a painter, womanizer, orientalist...it ends up being a network of ideas connected to Gauguin which I can then adopt within my work.
2016, Goodbye here no matter where, Installation View at 8-11 Gallery, Toronto, CA
LK: How do you see yourself, your selfhood being developed/informed by the digital space?
GT: The internet gives you the privilege of being able to search for your ‘selfhood’ anonymously. So ideas, questions, opinions you might have (for better or worse) can be confirmed. In my case, the internet gave me the tools to be a painter in other cases it gives people the power to ruin lives. It’s a curious, vast system that I believe in for myself but I do also recognize the implications behind its utility.
LK: What's your favourite youtube channel?
GT: I’ve learned a lot about airbrushing through car detailing videos.
LK: So you have a couple shows already lined up for this year...how are you approaching the body of work that you are collecting for the shows.
GT: I’m sticking with the 3 ft. x 4ft. Dimensions. Conceptually, I am approaching it in a similar way as my show at AC Repair Co. I am sampling language from painting’s past and colliding it with my own symbols and narratives. There will most likely be sculptural elements added to both shows but the installations usually only come together once I have the paintings finished.
2016, Goodbye here no matter where, Installation View at 8-11 Gallery, Toronto, CA
LK: Can you talk about your compositions you have on New Hive...how do they relate/continue from your traditional painting works...they seem to be amalgams...can you talk a bit about all the elements you are bringing together to form what you end up with and the soundtracks you accompany them with…
GT: The New Hive compositions came together in a much more intuitive and illusory way. Each composition began with a scan or found image of sites related to Sri Lanka as my homeland. These images were essentially digital collages made of digital scans, drawings, found images, etc. The music is the soundtrack for Zelda’s Ocarina of Time. I really don’t work in this manner anymore. Unfortunately, there was a one year delay on releasing them so by the time they came out I felt like they were pretty irrelevant to my current practice.
LK: In past interviews you've talked about how your heritage comes in your work alongside pop cultural references... how/when did you become conscious of your own hybridity so much so that it became something you couldn't deviate from when it came to making artwork…
GT: The first coherent body of work that I made after graduating was at the Banff Centre as an Artist in Residence. The paintings were based on the African folklore tale of Br’er rabbit- the tale of the trickster who later became Bugs Bunny. He was especially interesting because Br’er and Bugs are tricksters who alter their identities to survive. It felt like such a breakthrough- it was the symbolic anecdote that I had been looking for to describe myself. In my own you, I was so used to shape-shifting in order to avoid feeling othered. It was what affected me the most as an adolescent and especially as a teenager. To be able to channel that from a character so ubiquitous as Bugs Bunny felt like a miracle. I was interested in how these old stories, which often came from these racialized beginnings could become something so easily consumed as a Loony Tunes character. I was fascinated by how time and context could alter cultural histories.
2016 Boons of Another, Installation View at AC Repair Co., Toronto, CA
LK: Also, that yellow knife in the middle of your Boons of Another show...tell us about it…
GT: The first Sri Lankan symbol that I took on as my own was the Kastane sword which appears on the Sri Lankan flag. This symbol is meant to be the universal symbol for a country that I’ve never been to but is part of my heritage. To rely on the symbol of their flag and to make it my own was this process of accepting my shallow understanding of the culture and my heritage but still claiming it as my own. The sword can be read in a number of ways but the most obvious is a reference to the The Sword and the Stone.
LK: What's one thing that annoying about contemporary art nowadays?
GT: Having to be in the know to get work
Ajay Kurian, Welcome to World Peace, mixed media, 1.7 x 1.7 x 1.1 m
LK: Who is a new-ish creative that you are currently excited about?
GT: Ajay Kurian
LK: Where would you like to see your creative career go given unlimited resources?
GT: I would like to work on larger surfaces and really dive into sculpture as part of my installations.
2016, Goodbye here no matter where, Installation View at 8-11 Gallery, Toronto, CA
2016, Goodbye here no matter where, Installation View at 8-11 Gallery, Toronto, CA
LK: What do you think of the tooth fairy as a concept?
GT: I wish I could lose teeth for the rest of my life.
LK: OK, finish this: it is never too late to…
GT: Start.
Find more on Thurairajah Here