CuriousWorks’ last Fat Chats of 2024, led by Jenny Trinh, was all about the following question, “What is the role and/or responsibility of the artist?”

Like every other year, it’s been a very busy one for CuriousWorks – from Tender to the SSI Homelands Regional Arts Tour 2024.

This session was a nourishing moment to take a great big breath together especially amidst the heaviness of global events. It allowed us to come together as co-workers, peers, and artists to reflect upon how that question intersected with our own lived experiences and shared values.

It was the opportunity for us to ruminate on how we can build and sustain ecosystems of care for ourselves and each other. What does our responsibility to ourselves and each other look like? What values are embedded within our responsibilities? How does this resonate with us?

Throughout the session, we took time to read, watch, and listen from various artists addressing these very thought provocations. We wrote down our responses to what they posed on pieces of papers and shared our reflections with each other. These strips of paper acted as ‘seeds’ that filled up our collective friendly Frankenstein flower vase, which we were simultaneously decorating with spooky stickers. (With this Fat Chats being held in October, of course, we had to get into the Halloween spirit!).

We were in absolute awe of all the artists we looked at during the session – how they challenged us and stretched our thinking on how art and care go hand in hand. How they acknowledged the toughness of it all and offered us seeds of hope at the same time. All culminating in a vibrant Frankenstein flower vase full of all of our reflections.

Here are all the artists that we looked at and reflected upon throughout the session:

• • VIDEO – Nina Simone’s interview: “An artist’s duty, as far as I’m concerned, is to reflect the times”
  • PODCAST – FBi Radio’s Race Matters: Liquid Homelands podcast interview with Aaliyah-Jade Bradbury – full podcast here. We specifically responded to this excerpt of the interview. Transcript below:
    • “Space is sacred. We often think that space is related to the physical and tangible but also the metaphysical. To hold space for someone is a great gift. In today’s world, we all have these pockets of existence, but we rarely and genuinely hold space for others that is more than just superficial. To hold space for another is to exist with them at that moment – to share breath and existence. If we want to build the bridges between ignorance and discrimination, we must share breath.⁠ Aus Indigenous culture is defined by how we are connected. Even before we are born, we have already been given a song- a story. We were born with a place in this world and, with that, a legacy.”
  • INTERVIEW SNIPPET – Alok Vaid-Menon interviewed by Laud Magazine
    • “As artists our job is to make people feel in a world that constantly and ruthlessly tries to desensitize us to everyone and everything. Good feelings and bad feelings are a false binary just like boy and girl – they fail to capture the deep complexity and fluidity of all of the things that we are and feel. So I don’t just use makeup and hair color to feel “good,” I use them to make me feel – period. Sometimes it’s joy, sometimes it’s nostalgia, sometimes it’s even sadness. I want to create a reservoir of feeling.”
  • PODCAST – Alok Vaid-Menon Podcrushed interview – full interview here & snippet here
  • VIDEO – Brian Eno interviewed by BBC Radio 6
  • VIDEO – Ocean Vuong interviewed by PBS News Hour
  • QUOTE – James Baldwin: “The role of the artist is exactly the same role of the lover. If I love you, I have to make you conscious of things you don’t see.”