Interview #120 - Eugenia Lim
by Cher Tan
Eugenia Lim is an Australian artist of Chinese–Singaporean descent who works across video, performance and installation to explore how national identities and stereotypes cut, divide and bond our globalised world.
Her work has been exhibited internationally at festivals and venues including the Tate Modern, Dark MOFO, ACCA, Melbourne Festival, Next Wave, GOMA, ACMI, firstdraft, the Museum of Contemporary Art (Sydney), FACT (Liverpool) and EXiS Seoul. She is a studio resident of the Gertrude Contemporary studio program, co-director of APHIDS and co-wrote and hosted ABC iView’s Video Becomes Us, an artist-made series on Australian video art.
Eugenia speaks to Cher Tan about the power of ambiguity, how motherhood demands differently from artists, and using art to both destabilise expectations and provoke deep thought.
Eugenia’s latest work, On Demand, is currently showing at Gertrude Glasshouse until November 9.
How did you first begin to think about incorporating personas in your work? Exactly how do you think injecting your own corporeality into the artwork makes for a stronger statement, particularly when thinking about nationalism and globalisation (two themes you tend to circle back towards)?
I love the work of Tracey Moffatt and wrote about her work when I was at uni. In works like beDevil, Moffatt’s 1993 feature film (the first feature made by an Indigenous Australian woman) and her exquisite photo series Something More (1989), she spoke back to racial stereotypes, presenting an Aboriginal, Irish and multicultural “personal mythology” that resonated with me (and many, many, many others) deeply.
At the same time, I took photos and 16mm film, using friends as my subjects—shooting on location in places like Timezone or on the streets. At art school, my work was both imitation Godard and wannabe Moffatt; lots of New Wave-inspired east-meets-west hybridity, pretty heavy-handed! It wasn’t until I was at the Rhode Island School of Design while on exchange in the States that I started experimenting with performing on camera, making work that began to be my own.
Even though I was in an English-speaking country, I felt acutely out of place—never more “Australian” with my accent and self-deprecating vernacular (Americans thought I was depressed!) than at keg parties in Providence, Rhode Island. The work I made then wasn’t so much about nationalism and globalisation, but more about the possibilities to reveal, conceal or self-represent through the medium of video itself. Over time, I’ve continued to insert myself into the frame, and have also increasingly performed in live contexts—as a way to destabilise what’s “expected” of me as a woman, as Asian-Australian, as a political being; and to challenge myself. I’m introverted by nature, so performing live pushes me outside myself.
I can feel the time will come where I no longer need to be in the work, because what I’m interested in is becoming more and more about finding solidarities and porosity of experiences across class, borders, gender, cultures and age. I really feel that we need solidarity and collectivity in this time of crisis, and the language of my corporeal body is only one (limited) way to explore this.
Over time, I’ve continued to insert myself into the frame, and have also increasingly performed in live contexts—as a way to destabilise what’s “expected” of me as a woman, as Asian-Australian, as a political being; and to challenge myself. I’m introverted by nature, so performing live pushes me outside myself.
Some of the underlying concepts in your work also include hyper-realism, precarity and the tensions surrounding an “authentic” identity in a globalised world. I’m curious as to how these topics have made their way into your work, both separately and collectively. What informs them?
I’ve never really thought of my work as “hyper-real”, but I guess it does fuse so-called “reality” with fiction or simulations of the real. I’m interested in the intersection between aesthetics and ethics, and that drives my work. I don’t make documentaries or cinema verité-style stuff because—and this must come down to the “hyper-real” notion you identified—I think art can reveal the “realer than real”, those “truths” or experiences that are usually overlooked or undervalued.
As a result, my work presents those voices or experiences: of the gig economy worker or the Foxconn factory worker, as perspectives we need to hear. It tries to give form to the interconnected nature of “us” and “them”—that what we eat, wear, buy, export, extract or burn over “here” is connected to the labour, politics and living conditions of what’s over “there”. Probably one of the first times this hit home for me was when I went to the first HAWAPI festival (then called Afuera) in the high Andes of Peru. Cerro de Pasco is a town of over 250,000 built around three major open-cut mines; the town is literally being eaten alive by mining and resultant poison and pollution from lead, cadmium and arsenic. Blood tests show that around 91% of local children grow up with heavy metals in their blood—the water, the food, the air is poison, and you can feel it.
I spent one week there and it really challenged me as an artist. I realised that every residency, gallery or site I’d responded to before then was so safe, so clean, so privileged in comparison. When people who are dying a slow death over generations show you their resilience, humour and hospitality, you have to harden the fuck up and consider the role of art and the artist in a new way—to say and do something. Since this point, my work has become a kind of process of questioning: figuring out how to live with myself, understanding but not subscribing to complicity; revealing the absurdity, inequity and stupidity in systems of global capital, power and control.
I also feel uncomfortable with the notion of an “authentic” identity. Fundamentally, I see identity as a constant negotiation between inner and outer worlds and the constraints of our physical, sexual, economic and cultural situation(s). Also: there is infinite difference within the experiences and politics of an “identity”, whether that be women, the queer community, Chinese people, Muslims or artists; no individual can speak for the whole, nor should they be expected to.
So my work deals much more in ambiguity and uncertainty than the “authentic”. And actually, my position is that there is great hope and optimism to be harnessed when we remain open to ambiguity; that nothing is written or certain. We need alternative visions and possibilities and I strive to present these in my work. If we give up on our imaginations, all is lost. The planet is (and will continue) burning.
The more we strive for absolutes and essentialism, the more closed off we become to other ways of being or seeing. And that’s how, in the 21st century—when we might have by now learnt to live together as equals—we get Brexit, or the almost-weekly shootings in America, or Trump. These horrors are symptoms of a much larger structural sickness that blames poverty or violence on immigrants or refugees, rather than on the self-interested ruling class who fuel racist fires to keep themselves in wealth and power.
Fundamentally, I see identity as a constant negotiation between inner and outer worlds and the constraints of our physical, sexual, economic and cultural situation(s).
In a piece you wrote for Art Guide, you note, “Since becoming a mother, I am almost never alone. But rather than diluting my work, this shift has made it stronger. I fight harder for the things I want to say or do.” Can you speak more to that? Especially in a landscape that still pits art-making against motherhood in a way that privileges patriarchal ideals of self.
I had huge anxiety in the lead-up to becoming a mother, worried that I would lose the motivation and hunger to make art. I don’t begrudge any parent who decides to look after their kids full-time as it’s a more-than-full-time role (hi mum!)—but as an independent artist used to forging my own way, I didn’t want that. And it turns out that once my daughter came along, I needed art more than ever—as an outlet and for my sanity.
Art is my identity. That really crystallised for me when I became a parent and my daughter’s primary care-giver; it’s the part of myself that is truly mine alone. But yes, the art world speaks of progressiveness and equality, but in practice, is a brutal and unforgiving place for parents and carers, particularly women. I see the biases and barriers more clearly now that I am a mother, more than I did when I was in my 20s. Back then I was so concerned with what others thought of me that it overshadowed my work and got in the way. My life is now made up of multi-tasking (making school lunches, doing washing, editing video, installing a show) and I have adjusted the way I work to be iterative (lots of bursts over long periods of time, to fit around life). I don’t want to settle for the way the world is—that’s not fair to my daughter, or to the generations to come. So my work has become more angry and more urgent; it wants art to talk back to the world. Now I largely avoid openings and booze-schmoozing unless I’m supporting friends or really interested in the work. Come 6PM you can usually find me feeding my kid before putting her to bed. I jump on the laptop after she’s asleep to keep working (like now!).
How do you avoid burnout?
I get twitchy if I don’t exercise, so during the week I try to practice yoga or swim, to get some space in my head and feel more “corporeal”! And I need to be a sponge sometimes, so I go to see exhibitions, live music or a film. I’m lucky to have a family who need me to keep my shit in check! Weekends are largely for family, and my daughter keeps me laughing and sane. I’m also lucky to have a community of fellow artist friends whom I can swap horror stories and wild dreams with, including my APHIDS co-directors Lara Thoms and Mish Grigor.
…the art world speaks of progressiveness and equality, but in practice, is a brutal and unforgiving place for parents and carers, particularly women.
In one of your major video works The Australian Ugliness (2018), you invoke the image of the “Ambassador”—a gold-suited figure which performs multiple identities across various sites in so-called Australia—to interrogate space and place. In what way(s) do you think historically marginalised people can use art to mark their territories, while at the same time reckoning with (the potential abuse of) power?
My Ambassador persona is hugely influenced by the East Meets West series by Tseng Kwong Chi, who first donned a Mao suit to take his self-portrait in front of Euro-American monuments. Everyone assumed he was a Chinese dignitary, not a punk artist with a lanyard that read “slut for art”. In this way, he revealed racial stereotyping through this prolific series that outlived him (he died in 1990).
Art has the power to both challenge and prop-up the status quo. So that’s something I think about carefully—less so in the making of my work as I often can’t explain what something “means” when I do it, but more in the presentation and reception of the work. Where it is seen, the language around it, being conscious of not wanting to speak for a marginal identity, but as an artist who witnesses and observes things.
I don’t want my art to be co-opted by the powers-that-be, so I always want it to be framed, read and experienced as I intended. I think of the powerful and utterly personal work OA_RR (2017) by Kamilaroi artist Reko Rennie, which debuted at the Venice Biennale, where he drives a hand-painted 1970s Rolls Royce (a symbol that represents pastoral landowners and the suffering and trauma inflicted on his family—not to mention generations of Aboriginal families—through colonisation) into his Country. The work is beautiful and raw and was shot in a totally guerrilla, “illegal” fashion. This was deliberate and defiant. No film permits or permissions were sought, because as he says, “no one ever asked my Nan for her permission to be taken away”.
Do you have any advice for emerging multi-disciplinary artists?
Never be afraid to ask. Find a mentor whatever stage you’re at because you never stop learning. Keep your eyes open. Engage in art that is not just your own. Support each other and be generous. The world is brutal, so find your allies and look out for each other publicly and privately.
Find a mentor whatever stage you’re at because you never stop learning.
Who are you inspired by?
I never got to meet her, but my ultimate hero is Agnès Varda. The work of Mika Rottenberg is so funny, wild, savvy and weird. And of course, I’m inspired by my APHIDS ladies.
What are you currently listening to?
I let the algorithm drive sometimes, and very occasionally it unearths some gems. I’m listening to Ross from Friends at the moment a bit on repeat.
What are you currently reading?
Just started Lucia Berlin’s A Manual for Cleaning Women.
What does being Asian-Australian mean to you?
Always never being at home.
What does being Asian-Australian mean to you?
Always never being at home.
Find out more
Interview by Cher Tan
Photographs by Leah Jing McIntosh