🌼 April Studio Vlog 🌼

Video transcript is available by clicking “read more” below.

“every modern artist who has chosen to labor with a gift must sooner or later wonder how he or she is to survive in a society dominated by market exchange. And if the fruits of a gift are gifts themselves, how is the artist to nourish himself, spiritually as well as materially, in an age whose values are market values and whose commerce consists almost exclusively in the purchase and sale of commodities?” Lewis Hyde, The Gift

Being an independent artist, it’s necessary to exist in both the creative and capitalist spaces at the same time. To me, these are separate identities that are often at odds with each other. I don’t expect my work to be for everyone, but rejection does seem to hit me harder when it has become both my creative expression and my supposed financial stability.

I often struggle with being understood in the way that I intend. My life experience is not a “safe for work” story, so it can be difficult to know when is the “right” time to talk about certain topics or display certain aspects of my art. I don’t think my particular style of expression fits into any singular category or genre. And still, despite not quite knowing who my audience is, I still have a strong desire to make art that reflects my emotions and experiences. I definitely have an idea of who I want my audience to be – ideally queer punks who love weird shit – So, how do I get people to understand the value of what I have to offer? How do I obtain the audience that I desire? I think a lot of it comes down to the language I choose to use and how I use it.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the language that I must use to communicate effectively in these separate spaces, and how to navigate the world while existing in several, sometimes opposing, communities at once. I often write in poetry or prose because I feel limited by the constraints of formal English. I write in English, Spanish, and Portuguese because some concepts are more beautifully understood in one language or the other. “Como bruxaria” or “like witchcraft” “no te juré nada” or “I didn’t swear anything to you”

And sometimes I even accidentally combine two languages in something that is totally not just a typo (shot of poem with typo)

“Our glamour is not superfluous to changing the current order, it is instrumental. Our Glamor, our joy, our magic, are not commodities to be ripped off and sold back to us by corporations, they are ours. When they try to steal our essence, we slip away like snakes and leave them only the shedded skin.” Larry Mitchell, The Faggots and Their Friends Between Revolutions

Another language that I am often required to speak is that of the capitalist. The kind of language that’s used in offices to indicate how well or how poorly someone is doing. KPIs, B2B, SaaS, conversions, RFI, paint points. Literally all of this is gobldigook that intends to convey if we sold big number or small number. I believe that language creates community. This language can be visual, spoken, written, etc. But the community of the “business man” is not one that I have ever felt is genuine or one that I’ve had any interest in belonging to.

The words we use and how we use them indicates our validity within certain groups. I am perceived as a more “professional” and “competent” business man if I use incorporate some of the previous words into my vernacular while on the job. However, this attempt to participate in a culture ends up feeling very hollow because the language used has the main goal of excluding others and making sales. I saw an video recently where Saturday Night Live did an ad for Tmobile. It incorporated aspects of Black and Latin culture & language in order to appeal to those markets. Because this ad was done in partnership with SNL, it is easier to place that “cringe” feeling on the fact that the video is a parody. It gives a plausible deniability to the instinctual question: “is this authentic?” The ad uses the language of those groups, but fails to make an authentic connection.

And I know this is an old example by now, but Postmate’s “Bottom-friendly” menu ad campaign is also guilty of using culture and language to shame its audience into a sale. It’s like a trojan horse, disguised as something that you’re familiar with, but inside it actually contains something much more insidious. It’s outsiders attempting to take the “cool” parts of identity and turn them into a product. It’s a surface-level attempt at making a connection. They’re using the right words, but the goal isn’t connection or integration into the community. It’s to sell a product.

This had me thinking back to when I was a kid, how important it was for me to go to Hot Topic on the weekend to get those little pins to put on my messenger bag so that everyone would know exactly who I was, what I liked, and how I moved through the world. So I learned from a very young age that my identity is, in some regards, a commodity whether I like it or not. I didn’t want to be left out or misunderstood, so I covered my bag in tiny pieces of myself that I bought from the mall.

“Cyrus paused for a second. He felt a flash of familiar shame– his whole life had been a steady procession of him passionately loving what other people merely liked, and struggling, mostly failing to translate to anyone else how and why everything mattered so much.” Kaveh Akbar, Martyr!

Speaking again on the feeling of rejection being stronger when it’s connected to my livelihood, my vendor application was rejected twice by an organization that I really admire. One of the markets was for Pride month, so that rejection really made me question where I belong. My immediate reaction was that I took it as a personal rejection, rather than just a missed opportunity for my business. This is something that I’m learning to take in stride and use as feedback. To make matters worse, about a week after that rejection email, my account on Scruff was suspended. If you’re not familiar with Scruff, it’s an app that’s similar to Grindr. Though, I find the culture of Scruff to be more friendly and connection-based, compared to Grindr’s more aggressive hookup culture. Most of my closest friends now are people who I met on this app! So to see that I was suspended felt like another attempt to push me out of a community that I was trying so hard to exist in. After some back and forth with Scruff support, I learned that someone reported my account for impersonation. Scruff suspended me with no questions asked, and I had to send in verification in order to get my account reinstated. It really felt like one of my own people wanted to see my downfall.

Like I mentioned at the start of this video, I self-published a zine this month. It’s available in my Etsy shop now, and I’m really proud of it. Content warning if you do intend to check it out, it contains some content that is only appropriate for adults 18+. As I was creating this listing, Etsy hit me with the “description” box. Describe this product. This thing that I have been working on for months, this small archive of my emotions and experiences, what really is it? Why did I make it? Why do I want anyone else to see it? As it turns out, this was probably the best challenge that I received this month. I was required to create a summary of something that I, at the time, felt was too complex to summarize. Too expansive to shorten into keywords and hashtags. And I had to do it using words that made my art appeal to people as a product. It was a very uncomfortable experience, but it actually helped me reframe the idea of “capitalist language.” Of course, ideally, my work would speak for itself and people would show up and love it and I’d get a million dollars a year and I’d be naked on a beach somewhere. Or something like this.

Once I had finished writing the product description for my zine, I genuinely felt like I had a better understanding of myself as an artist. Often, ideas seem to flow out of me, through my hands, into reality. I hadn’t spent much time trying to understand why I express myself the way that I do. This process helped me write a new artist statement:

Nico Stuart is a writer & miniaturist located in Atlanta, GA. His work explores the state between decay and rebirth, examining the death that is required before an idea, project, or relationship can become its fullest and truest form. Through his poems, dioramas, and collages, he seeks the answer to the question: “what must be let go to make space for something new?”

Maybe it will change in the future, but for now, it feels good. A few other revelations I had during this process are:

That’s a message to myself, and to you if you need to hear it. Thank you for watching! I still have April prints & stickers available for the Scary Mail pack in my Etsy shop. They’re on sale until the end of the month, so now is a great time to buy one! I also have a couple market days coming up soon. Check my linktree for more details on those events. And finally, I will put links to all of the books and articles that inspired me this month in the description below.

Bye!