Amanda Ba

Why, why, why? This word echoed throughout my mind after a conversation with artist Amanda Ba. Three simple letters strung together in an attempt to find solace in the questions of our daily existence. Why would I look up the definition of “why,” a query that feels as intuitive as breathing, so natural that the smallest of children utilize the word as a weapon? And thus, here it is, the Britannica Dictionary definition of WHY: “The cause, reason, or purpose for which.”

 

When speaking with Ba, it’s quite clear that she’s a person with an inquisitive nature. Her interests in philosophy, economies, society, and the questions they elicit were front and center in Developing Desire, her exhibition this past fall at Jeffrey Deitch in New York City. In guiding me through her works and intentions, our conversation became a bit more reflective upon the “whys” of art making. Why do artists choose to center their works on specific themes? How do these intentions inform us about how they visualize the world? What do they tell us about how they visualize themselves? And why do we, as viewers, ache to find ourselves reflected therein? It often comes down to our innate desires and the frustration that dwells within all of us in our aim to satiate such never-ending, unanswerable questions. Ba is incredibly self-aware in these thought exercises, especially for someone who notes that this is not how she often approaches the world. But I couldn’t shake her wisdom. Keep reading and I’m sure her words will give you a new cause, a reason, and renewed purpose.

Amanda Ba: I think it went really smoothly. I mean, I was really busy taking pictures with people. And then I would duck outside and hide and have a cigarette. But two hours goes by really quickly. It's basically like an intense two-hour trial of extreme socialization. And because it's not regular mingling and chatting, people will come up to you and you have no idea what they're about to say or do. People will be dredging up stuff that they thought about you from years ago. You're like, Oh! Okay!

 

I was most concerned about my video piece. I wasn't sure if people would A: know that there was a video that you could go watch. And B: have the patience to watch any of it during an opening. I totally don't blame anyone for not having the patience to sit down for a 15-minute video in the middle of an opening, but I recognize the real ones who do have the patience for that. I never went up to that room, I didn't have time, but there ended up being a line up the stairs to see the video. People would come out when one cycle of the video ended, and another batch would go in, so I was very happy to see that.

 

I always have an afterparty after a solo show. I am always like, let's fucking party. Because I'm so pent up from months of working… I will blow a bag on an afterparty, honestly. I hadn't spent money on myself in seven months. I've been living in an extremely disciplined way, and I'm spending money mostly on materials and paying my assistants. So I guess self-care is blowing a bag on an afterparty for myself. But this year, I actually booked a room at the Chelsea Hotel where I've always wanted to stay. And it was fab. Check-in was at three, so I pulled up and took a bath in this super big clawfoot bathtub. It was kind of rushed, because I had to leave at 5:30 to make it to my opening on time. Two and a half hours is not exactly a super long time. But we ended up going back to the same room and having the after party there. So, buying a room at the Chelsea Hotel was my self care.

I'm excited to see what other things it leads to. You have to sort of put one thing under your belt before something else comes. It feels like a rite of passage for someone who moved to New York after high school and wanted to make the city their home. But I feel like it probably is a rite of passage for all sorts of artists. You know, like musicians performing in New York City. Having your first solo thing in New York City is affirming.

 

My first solo was in London, actually, which is cool because I'm not from there, and had only been living there for a couple years. So it's cool to know that I'm supported and recognized by the British art world. But I'm American, and I love New York, and so it definitely felt like another rite of passage. But I don't know, some people say that it's harder as an American to get solo shows in Europe, versus being a European and getting solo shows in America. Hearing that makes me grateful that my first show was actually in the UK.

 

A lot of people thought, from afar, that I was British!

 

Exactly, thank you! [in a British accent]

 

The titles are always really last-minute. I feel like Developing Desire… well, alliteration is always nice. It's catchy. And it's sort of a play on the research topics that I was focused on. For a lot of my show, the grounding concepts were economies of desire, or libidinal economies, with a focus on Chinese modernity. And sort of interrogating the cultural, social, and political formation of modern China, a lot that had to do with development. Urban development and industrial development has been a known hallmark of China's focus and concern for the last 20-30 years. It's so rapid, and people have all sorts of different extrapolations for what this means. But I was trying to loop that in with an economy, or thinking about it from the perspective of an economy of desire, which is a theoretical framework that I was looking into. So Developing Desire is just a little bit of a cute play on words, where it's like, you are developing this desire, but also the concept of development in the industrial or infrastructural sense.

There's definitely a departure. I think I personally approach every solo show as a departure from my previous work because I have opportunities in between with group shows to sort of continue exploring the tail ends of whatever ideas I was working on. But for a solo show, in order to produce a fairly large body of work, I have to turn my attention to something new. The well be runnin’ dry sometimes. So I approach it as a big body of research, as well as a mini-thesis or an essay. It's like all of the works should be cohesive and surround that topic. I mean, I don't know if that will always be the way I work. It's not my hardcore motto or my code to live by. But I do feel like it helps me to produce new work, and work that is interesting and exciting to me. 

 

I also sometimes have a hard time just coming up with images purely from imagination. I think I'm a pretty realistic person, so I like to attach it to things that are happening in the world. It’s also affirming and validating to read what other people are writing and just feel like my work is more connected in that way—something beyond my personal attitude towards something. 

 

I think it's all stages. Across the paintings, the environment portrays all different stages of construction development. There's some in which the city is fully formed and it's shiny. And then there's some where it's all rubble, which is a really big motif in this show. It's all rubble, or sort of old, dilapidated buildings. And then there's one painting in particular that is tapping back into the red palette that I used to use. It’s of three red women standing in this cityscape, and actually within that, every stage is portrayed. There's one figure sitting on top of a pile of rubble, and then sort of layered in between is an old dilapidated building that's about to be torn down. You have a building with scaffolding that's about to be constructed. And then you have shiny high rise apartments in the background. So you have all different stages of construction. I think part of what I was looking at was, you know, an erotic aspect of the construction developing these apartment complexes—erotic, not necessarily in purely sexual mode, though I mean, of course it can be interpreted that way; but more as a theoretical eroticism in which desire is this frustrating entity that can never be fully satiated because what we desire is this amorphous feeling inside. The way we attempt to make sense of that is by attaching objects or people or things. But those are not representations of our desire, you know what I mean? 

 

Like, a cookie that your mom makes for you is not the thing that satiates your inner desire for a mother's love or approval. That's just a representation. It's like a momentary object that gives you a little bit of affirmation, and you can form attachments to those things. Like, “Oh, I need my mom to give me more things. I need her to buy me stuffed toys.” But that doesn't necessarily represent or satiate the inner desire. So if desire is always in this frustrated state in which it's sort of manifesting false representations all the time, then I see there being something erotic about attaching these desires to, say, a house.

In China, there's a lot of desires bound up with housing. Like, if you were a woman in China, your family would prefer that you not marry a guy who was broke and didn't already have a house and a car. Across economic strata, it is somewhat expected for the groom's parents to purchase and prepare a house for him if he is about to get married. So there's a lot of desires bound up in real estate, marriage, love, futurity and your children. And also your ego and your stature, just a lot of things. So tearing these buildings down constantly, and rebuilding them back up to be better and newer I feel is like a representation of frustrated desire.

I think I cut out a lot of desires. This totally makes me sound like an American Psycho-type person. I just feel that if it wasn't pertinent to my goal of just completing the show, then I would have to sacrifice it because it would be a distracting desire.

 

Psychologically or psychoanalytically speaking, my desire was some amorphous blend of validation, success and greed. But then my manifestation of it to myself, and my mind was, like, “I'm an artist. I should make art.” You know, the first layer. But who knows? Like, Freud would maintain that no one's desire is to make good art, so what do you really want? What you want more is recognition or attention, so that the verbal manifestation is like, “I should make art.” And then, the physical manifestation is like, “I need to complete these deadlines and I need to produce these objects.” That's not necessarily my code of how I think about things in this world. I’m not battling my inner greed or something. It's really just right now, with you. If a Freudian psychologist were to do it, that might be what they say. 

Honestly, it's so funny… Juxtapoz was probably the first arts magazine that I cared about and paid attention to. I feel like when you're younger, you're really drawn to illustration. And Juxtapoz featured a lot of digital illustrators or people who were more leaning in that direction. I loved James Jean. I was obsessed with him and he towed this line between professional artist and illustrator who would do collaborations and side projects. And Juxtapoz was always covering him, and I was like, I'm gonna remember this! So before e-flux, before Artforum, before Hyperallergic, I feel like I knew Juxtapoz first.