L – Luxiders Magazine

JDC – Jacopo Di Cera

L: Your works “Fino alla fine del Mare” and “Il rumore dell’assenza” evoke powerful traces of photomaterism, emotion, brokenness and memory. Tell us more about them and what other themes come to mind when picturing these works?

JDC: “Fino alla fine del Mare” is a work born from the urgency of migration. It’s composed of close-up images of migrant boats abandoned on the shores of Lampedusa—objects that have carried lives, fears, hopes. Through the language of photomaterism, I integrate fragments of real material—salt, rust, wood—to transform documentary traces into abstract compositions. In this way, matter becomes testimony, and abstraction becomes memory.
“Il rumore dell’assenza” speaks of another kind of trauma: the devastating earthquake in Amatrice. The works are fragile, fractured, intentionally incomplete—each piece an echo of what was lost, and of what remains in silence. Both projects explore themes of rupture, survival, and the invisible residues of human presence.

L: The eco focused piece “Retreat” is not only a piece of art that ensures zero environmental impact with it being presented across 40 completely sustainable, upcycled monitors, it’s also a digital, infinite video loop of the events surrounding the tragic decline or “retreat”—if you will—of one of the world’s dearest glaciers, Brenva Glacier of Mont Blanc. Please describe the narrative and the motivation behind. 

JDC: The narrative unfolds vertically, like a glacier itself. 40 monitors, stacked and aligned like ice layers, show the slow collapse of the Brenva Glacier—a visual symphony where ice turns to water in endless loop. The structure itself becomes a metaphor: every monitor sold removes a segment, just as each year melts away a piece of the glacier. The motivation was to translate scientific data into an emotional language, to let people feel the loss, not just know it. It’s an elegy in pixels.

L: “Retreat” contains themes of sustainable awareness, tragic decline in association with the Brenva Glacier, and a sense of nostalgia. Is nostalgia always a recurring theme in your works?

JDC: Yes and No.—nostalgia is a lens that sometime is filtering the reality once I observe the world. But not in a romantic sense. It’s the nostalgia of what’s vanishing while we watch. A nostalgia for the future we’re losing. Retreat generates this kind of emotion. In my other social research, the lens are different: in “Sospesi,” in my zenithal photographs of summer and winter’s breath, there are more than 10 years of works so the “oldest” one are creating this kind of effect differently to the most recent. But I think it is a natural evolution of what a historical photo can generate vs a contemporary one.

L: If you had to share with the world words of wisdom when it comes to caring for the environment, what would those words be?

JDC: Don’t wait until something disappears to realize it was sacred. Learn to see the invisible before it’s gone.

L: In addition to sustainability being a powerful and inspiring part of your artworks, are there other mediums of art (such as film or literature) that also inspire you to create for sustainability?

JDC: Absolutely. Literature like the writings Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities remind me of the fragility of worlds, both real and imagined. Films like Leviathan or Anthropocene offer sensory experiences of ecological tension. But the more inspiring content is the reality.

L: What is one word that comes to mind when creating an artwork that brings together the worlds of art and nature?

JDC: Interdependence.

L: If you had to share with the world another set of words of wisdom when it comes to caring for the environment, what would they be?

JDC: Protect what we can not recreate. Not only for us but for all the generation will follow.

Playing with the spheres of art is exactly what artist Seldon Yuan is successful at. Deriving from his personal history; Yuan has formed his art on enhancing the spaces to create art and blended the elements of absurdity and surrealism with a unique way of using words to reflect them on the visual plane. As a New York-based artist, Yuan has been educated in various art schools across the world, such as Carnegie Mellon University, Hunter College and Beaux-arts de Paris l’ecole nationale supérieure. With a greatly multifarious portfolio, including a scale of arts from poetry to furniture and performance, he presents an inspirational example of a multifaceted artist. As Luxiders Magazine, we wanted to discuss Seldon’s stimulating perspective and experiences on art in detail and we conducted a galvanizing interview with this valuable artist.

L: I am looking at your visual poetry works and coming across the one saying “This is success.” on yellow paper. You also mentioned the theme of “perfect” in the same series. As an artist, how do you define success and perfection in art? Do you derive from the reflection of viewers and readers, or from the inner satisfaction when producing your art?

SY: My mindset has changed over the years. I used to not care as much and I was focused more on being innovative and had more formal concerns. Now I’m happy if people laugh because I know it is a more honest reaction to the work than “It’s nice,” “It’s beautiful,” and “I really like it.”

As for how I define success… Success at this point is just having the ability and time to continue to make something that interests me and nothing else. Doing it is the reward. However, that being said it would also be nice to find more financial success with the work!

With regards to “perfect,” I’ve tried to embrace the imperfect more and have more humanity visible in the work. With the work “everything is perfect” it could be interpreted in a few ways. One could be that the more you say it the less truthful it sounds. Another is that it is so messy and imperfect that that is what makes it perfect. Or it could be that this is a falsehood because it is rendered so sloppily. It’s up to you to interpret it.

L: Let’s talk about some messages we liked, let us know what exactly would you like to mean with them.

L: “I am the ocean”

SY: To me, the drawing seemed initially seemed funny: a cup of water with a child’s crazy straw in it that says, “I am the ocean.” The cup of water considers itself a huge almost limitless deep powerful body of water. I play with the idea that we could be or want to be bigger than we are. Whether that is justified or just delusional is open to interpretation.

L: “Not enough time”

SY: For me, this drawing of an analog clock face with a slice removed with the word “not enough time” refers to the lack of time I have in my life and where it goes. It reminds me of the old video game character Pac-Man that must eat all the pellets, but instead, there is some allusion to eating time. But there is also the idea of chunks of time that are literally missing and do those missing chunks of time even count anymore if there are no numbers there?

L:“There is no end to hunger”

SY: I wrote this phrase long ago for a poem but somehow thought it was funny to pair it with a line of snakes eating snakes for some reason. Obviously, the idea is that while we are alive we will always be hungry at some point. When will any of those snakes feel full even as there are snakes inside snakes inside snakes? Would they ever stop eating the one in front of it? Do the snakes stop eating as they are being eaten? Is there a point in eating while they are being eaten?

L: “I need your touch”

SY: I often like to use plants and other things in the natural world as stand-ins for people and emotions. Clearly, it is ironic that a cactus with sharp spines would say “I want your touch.” But is the request a trick is it sincere? Or is it some subconscious self-sabotaging behavior?

L: “For never winning an award”

SY: I thought it would be funny to have an award for never winning an award, which of course has the award fallen over onto its side.

L: Do you have any projects that are upcoming in the future and what will be your main focuses and sources of inspiration for them? 

SY: Yes. I have a few completed book projects I am looking for publishers to put out: a novel, an illustrated children’s book (or maybe it’s more adult?), a poetry book, and a map book on the urbanization of NYC, as well as other book projects in various states while also continuing to make art. I’m also working on putting a book of the drawings together. I also have a tote bag/backpack company called SSCY for which I am also creating new products for. I’m always trying and get out as many ideas as possible.

VISIT THE ART WEBSITE OF SELDON YUAN

FOLLOW SELDON YUAN ON INSTAGRAM

+ Interview:

Tolga Rahmalaroglu
Luxiders Magazine Contributor

The Los Angeles-based multifaceted artist James Gilbert might be one of the purest transformative talents in art: What the artist takes as an inspiration to produce an artwork always comes from a merger of ‘everything’. Merging the moments gets more and more fascinating with Gilbert’s touch, as he interprets the materials to use in a way that matches Gilbert’s sensualistic, natural, and meaningful process of creation. On the other hand, what James Gilbert presents is beyond an artistic flux, but a milestone, a witness, and a commenter to the times we have been through and currently experiencing. The artist states “For me, the role of art is only powerful in shaping collective consciousness if we are actively engaged, paying attention and willing to think deeply and then behave accordingly,” when he is asked about his perception of art. Here is a heart-stopping interview with James Gilbert about his art and societal aspects of it.

L – Luxiders Magazine

PD – James Gilbert 

L: Your work is often described as transcendent, forging a connection between the visual and the intangible. Could you shed light on the sources of your inspiration?

JG: I don’t question what interests me. I want to combine as many potentially dissimilar ideas as opportunities for discussion in my practice. That is how I move through my days – collecting as much information as possible and basing my thinking and actions on them. I believe my work has to behave this way too – moments and clues that deserve conversation. If I can sort out meaning too quickly in a work it does not interest me enough to make it. However, ideas that linger and require more investigation – those are the ones I pursue visually.

L: How did you meet with art? Do you remember an exact moment or affair that made you realize that you will choose the path of art in your life?

JG: I wasn’t aware of the term “artist” or the concept of what that meant. I just recall distinctly thinking that I wanted to make things and that I had an interest in building objects, environments to occupy within, music, and a good narrative story. By the time I went to university, I’d realized I could make work about topics that were important to me, combining ideas and philosophies that I wanted to discuss and explore. That is when it got exciting. Letting go of compartmentalizing individual journals, some just for drawings and others for conceptualizations and writings. When I merged everything into one journal I could see the emergence of an exciting ricochet of topics.

L: As a multifaceted artist who produces art from sculptures to performances, installations to videos; were there derivatives that made you explore your interest and talent to create art in different disciplines?

JG: I like moments. I like the moments that shape ideas, actions, and behaviors of people and communities. I’m not necessarily referring only to significant life events; there can also be small and swift interactions that have impactful meaning. Sorrow, joy, laughter, agony – nothing feels off limits, if it is worth thinking and talking about, it is applicable to my work. The time spent studying music and literature and working in theatre and film, made me realize the value of tangible results, grounded by history, science, and the observation of human nature. The work has to be about something.

L: We observe that material selection holds quite a vital place in your art. You state that you prefer raw materials due to their metaphorical meaning. Can you tell us more about your perception of the relationship between artwork and materials?

JG: I consider raw materials in the context of the way we would describe the work itself. That is the very reason I feel it is necessary for me to be able to move between materials – there is not any one that I would hesitate to use if I felt it added to a work, conceptually. The materials serve the idea, which is always the most important. Raw wood, for instance, has flaws and imperfections. It also has history and age. When I make a wood carving that is about ancestry or heritage, I feel the words I use are equally appropriate – who among us does not have flaws or history that define our behavior? When I sew plastic soft sculptures, words like manufactured, artificial, and mass-produced resonate. If I am dyeing and sewing textiles, that is a descriptive physical labor. When creating a rammed-earth wall, one of the oldest building techniques, I want there to be an option for the viewer to really think what the material means and how it imposes certain interpretations on the work. For instance, if that same wall was made of stone or chocolate bars, it would have an entirely different meaning, conceptually.

L: Your art includes issues like racial injustice, historical issues, political divisiveness, and more…How do you envision the role of art in shaping individual and collective consciousness?

JG: First of all, I bravely hope that audiences would want to engage. We easily live in a time where TLTR [too long to read] takes precedence over the completed novel. I value research and feel a responsibility that my work asks the right questions without exposing the hand of the author. I believe that cultural heritage, artifacts, and art (in all forms) exist because we want to better understand our time and perhaps leave lessons for future generations. This requires a historically reliable interpretation to understand the context in which those objects were created. However, there can be danger in interpretation too. For me, the role of art is only powerful in shaping collective consciousness if we are actively engaged, paying attention, and willing to think deeply and then behave accordingly.

L: In today’s tumultuous times, do you believe artists have a responsibility to address pressing societal issues?

JG: Yes, and I also believe that no one wants an opinion thrust upon them. I utilize something that I call my visual defense mechanism, meaning: I allow myself to take on difficult and complex topics but present them in a way that softens the entry point of the conversation through the use of lighthearted color palettes, form, and humor. Look at my titles too, I do spend time writing them, in hopes they reflect a balanced perspective.

L: “Honoring the sorrow” and interpreting it with humor is such a characteristic way to perceive the world. Looking at your works, it is also visible that you have a strong, characteristic style of your own. How did this personal style develop for you and did you have any inspirational figures or elements when it was developing?

JG: I like this question because it is a difficult one to answer. Perception is all we have. I always like thoughtful artists who are also playful or respectful in their approach. I think of honoring the sorrow with humor in terms of an imagined conversation with someone I don’t know – I wouldn’t start it with closed-ended statements or heavy facts, I would lose the audience too quickly. Instead, I lead with an anecdote or story that organically builds and develops, inviting a reciprocal exchange of ideas. For me, sorrow and humor come from the same place, they are both emotional responses. Though, their perception is an outlook determined by the person that you are and the world in which you aspire to live. Style is how you move through the world. I allow my work to be perceived as full of contradictions. It is precise but intentionally imperfect. It is complex, serious but efficient.

L: A Mystery, Fetish, Neurosis and Fragmentation of Ourselves, 2017

JG: When I was around four or five years old I was always happy to find full-length mirrors in clothing department stores where I could position myself to one side of the mirror with half of my body in front and half behind the mirror. Moving my arms in legs in front of the mirror would have a deceptive but playful symmetry similar to a marionette dancing or riding an invisible bicycle.

I liked the perception of reflecting a movement and behavior. I see this as a duplication of self, a reflection of personal trust and identity – of who we are or perhaps who we present ourselves to be. It was always meant to be shown on the ground, hidden in a corner of an exhibition space.

L: Kneel, 2020, wood, stain, metal, pigment, wax, 20 x 22 x 22 inches

JG: This one started with a different intention. As I was working on the feet I turned them to have the bottoms facing upward. It was at night in my studio and there were only two small lights on in my studio a street light shining in through a window. The upturned feet felt so vulnerable. At this time there was so much going on politically, racially, and with worldwide health. I recognize that there is not much difference in posture between a moment of quiet contemplation or a gesture of compliance and surrender. I made a new sketch at that moment and left my studio for the night.

L: “One Blank Round”, 2015

JG: I don’t question what interests me so everything I read in the news, books or listen to on podcasts can become ideas to explore further – even complex and difficult topics. I had been reading about a man who was sentenced to capital punishment. Where he lived utilized lethal injection but he wanted a firing squad which had been outlawed. His choice was to draw the most interest in his case as possible. One account I read about firing squads is that multiple people with guns fire with only one gun containing a real bullet and the remaining will have blank bullets which do not cause harm. This leaves some ambiguity of who fired the fatal shot. While on appearances this could only be about the debate surrounding capital punishment but I also think it is the harshest discussion around human psychology and how we try to construct justifications and methodology for our behavior.

L: What are the struggles that you face the most when creating art?

JG: Patience. But I am hopeful for a larger conversation.

L: Do you have any upcoming projects that you would like to share with us?

JG: I am working on a project based on ancestry that incorporates sculpture, kinetics, and sound. Another project in the works for the late fall will be an installation also about ancestry, a re-interpretation of heirlooms and their associated meaning in the context of quickly disposable retail.

VISIT THE WEBSITE OF JAMES GILBERT
FOLLOW JAMES GILBERT ON INSTAGRAM

All Images: © James Gilbert Studio

Interview:
Tolga Rahmalaroglu
Luxiders Magazine Contributor

The idea for her series “Outside the lines” came from her need to look at the positive side of her panic disorder. “I was in a dark place and wanted to get out. So I forced myself to look at it from a different perspective. What did it bring me? My senses were heightened because of my condition and although it was hard to deal with, it also seemed to make my life more beautiful. Everything was more intens, and this has impact on how I perceive my surroundings now.”

“Outside the lines” has a story as a hole, not every single photograph has a story on it’s own. With this series Anne Nobels shows that negative things that you can’t really controle can have positive effects if you are willing to look for them. “What you see in the images is the positive side effect my disorder has on me. It literally makes my surroundings look other-worldly”.

For this series she drove around in a 20 km radius from her house and looked for (mostly) untouched nature. Most images are made with a 10second timer, for some she used a remote control. When walking around she really listened to her gut and emotions and tried to translate what she was feeling into an image. The poses came naturally. Most of them are linked to an emotion. She hopes this series inspires others to see that what makes you vulnerable is what makes you human and if you are ashamed of that side, you are oppressing a big part of yourself. “That shame stands in the way of our happiness. We can’t be perfect, we can’t do everything we want and we certainly can’t do everything right. We all have boundaries and that’s ok. It’s good to test those boundaries and fail. It’s how you grow”.

Conversations with nature by Julian Charrière

In his artworks, Charrière introduces the mediums of performance, video, sculpture and photography. He travels to remote locations – from volcanoes to ice fields and radioactive sites – and questions the relationship between humans and nature.

“My work revolves around the concept of encounter – an intimate dialogue with places, biomes, and the environment. These moments are more than mere observations – they are a living exchange in which landscape and the present intertwine.” – Julian Charrière.

In his works, Charrière developed a series of photolithographs that depict coral reefs, a tribute to the Lutetian Sea which covered Champagne 45 million years ago. The photolithographs were colored with pigments from local limestone and ground color to intrinsically blend the past and the present. In another installation which will be on display at the Galerie 4 Rue Des Crayères in Reims in the summer of 2025, Charrière produced a work that reflects the early geological history of Champagne up to the threat of today’s coral reefs.

Between art and nature

Ruinart is addressing climate change challenges with novel approaches to viticulture and oenology. Their new Cuvée Ruinart Blanc Singulier is an example of this change, a sustainable expression of the Blanc de Blancs, a wine which combines tradition and modernity. The Champagne House is also committed to sustainability by building on the introduction of resource-friendly and second-skin packaging in 2020. Since then, Ruinart has dispensed with traditional gift packaging, using significantly less material.

Ruinart’s close connection to art also remains an integral theme. It collaborated with artists such as Tomás Saraceno, Nils Udo, and Eva Jospin to portray the relationship between humans and nature. Additionally, with the new Ruinart Brand Home that opened last year in Reims, France, located at 4 Rue des Crayères, visitors can also experience tradition, art and innovation up close.

The artworks created for Ruinart by Julian Charrière will be on display for the first time during the Berlin Gallery Weekend from May 1 – 4 of 2025 at the Ruinart Champagne & Art Bar in the PalaisPopulaire (Unter den Linden 5, Berlin). It will then displayed at Art Basel and Frieze Seoul.

At the opening night of the Ruinart Champagne & Art Bar, around 200 guests – many of whom were renowned actors and figures from the art world – experienced the unique combination of art and champagne culture. In this dazzling culinary scene, in addition to the impressive works of Julian Charrière, guests can also expect exclusive champagne masterclasses that bring the savoir-faire of Maison Ruinart to life.

Poets are cultural workers who have made the writing of poetry his or her life project, passion, vice or tool of struggle and communication. Poetry is a weapon for liberation and the poet is a person that exudes sensitivity and uses their words as instruments of exaltation for all of the most beautiful things in the world. But they are also a vindicating force for justice when things start to go wrong.

A poet’s role is to raise awareness and to make human beings more humane and understanding of the injustices people face. Perhaps the power of poetry will one day become part of the exercise of power. In books, poetry can often be seen and felt in the streets, in murals, in trees, in newspapers—wherever. Any place can remind us that poetry and poets still exist.

Hilda Raz, a writer and teacher, is a poet well-versed in raising awareness for social issues. With her work, she has inspired younger generations to create and use poetry as their best weapon. Her work is marked by important events in her life such as the transition of her son, which was documented in Trans and What Becomes You, mother-son collaborations consisting of a poetry collection and a memoir, respectively.

Raz started writing when she was just a child. Her mother put a pencil in her hand (she was and remains left-handed) and she remembers the tactile pleasure of pushing and pulling it across the paper. While drawing wasn’t her strength, the letters and words she knew were more than enough to keep her enthralled.

Despite her vast experience in writing, Raz does not believe she is in a position to judge whether her writing has matured over time or not. “I’m a critic, but of other writers’ work,” she states. She finds inspiration in the most mundane things: news, nature, direct and observed experiences, reading, the life of our bodies, human folly, cultures, change. Her students have also continued to be an inspiration: “Their lives offer me hope as they go on, each one—in the classroom and out—to engage others: new life. A continuum.”

Throughout her life, Raz has found in writing a kind of therapy, especially during tough times. She reckons it has always helped her in mysterious ways. “Something about discerning patterns through the process of writing…” In her book, Divine Honors, we are introduced to her journey with breast cancer. She describes it as a collaboration between her body and her mind to heal. The poet wrote and wrote, again in an effort to document every external and internal event; to resist conventional scripts and find her own.

With only her words, she is able to express every little detail: “The sounds of words guide me, and the line breaks and form lead my words from one to another. Sentences in tension with syntax, too.” This does not detract from the fact that some things are simply difficult to write about: “I seem to write a book of prose with a book of poetry, so I’ll have to say that Trans and What Becomes You were the most difficult books to write. I was the parent of a trans son at the same time as I was a writer documenting and processing the experience. Not easy. Aaron was very generous and patient during this time.”

What Becomes You, written by Raz and her son Aaron, who began life as a girl named Sarah, is a conversation between parent and child. When writing the poems for Trans, Raz began to understand that the experience itself belonged to Aaron, but that she still had her own unique experiences as a mother, for she raised Sarah. This was the basis of their collaboration in What Becomes You: “We had to speak to each other, try to understand each other in new and challenging ways. The book took us 10 years to write. It has been reissued this year in a new edition—with new readers’ notes—from the University of Nebraska Press (2021).”

As a woman, Raz had to fight all the way. When she became editor of the literary quarterly Prairie Schooner, she made sure that their contributors were diverse in every way she could think of. “In those days, women writers were few and far between in the quarterlies. And I was one of a very few women editors of a major journal,” she states. Many women of her generation have documented that same reality and so she struggled and worked hard to make a place for herself and for other women in the lives of her colleagues, students and other writers, as well as within the industry.

In the near future she plans to continue with poetry; she already has the better part of a new book on her computer. Aside from that, Raz would like to collaborate with her son Aaron again on a new project. “He’ll be coming to New Mexico in a couple of weeks to discuss options.  And I’m an editor: part of the editorial staff of Bosque Press here in Albuquerque and Series Editor for the Mary Burritt Christiansen Poetry Series at the University of New Mexico Press. These editorial opportunities to bring unheard voices to new audiences make me happy.”

Sophie Kietzmann grew up in Berlin and in Brussels and identify as non-binary and queer. This freelance photographer and specialize in fashion and beauty photography, gives visual representation to underrepresented individuals and marginalized communities.

Interview with photographer Sophia Kietzmann

How has your journey with photography been up to now? What gravitated you towards photography as opposed to other forms of art?

Photography has accompanied me all my life. I became obsessed with photography when I was seven years old because I was an only child and my Dad was a hobby photographer so it became this purpose giving toy to play with, I guess. I think photography gave me a neutral room from which to observe the world around me and it kind of put me in a position of lessened expectations for who I would be when I was the observer. I think that’s why I gravitated towards photography specifically.

Body representation and diversity play a big role in your photography work, something which is often missing in both the fashion and photographic industries. Why do you regard this as such an important aspect to include in your work?

Well, when I was growing up I was consuming so much photography and only later on in life really realized that I didn’t identify with the imagery I was seeing. That was based on no diversity, gender expression or sexual orientation but also body representation, for sure. I think like a lot of female raised individuals I grew up extremely criticizing my body and nit picking at it and, watching my mother do the same, it was always a topic. I think I only realized how narrow minded the beauty standards in my industry were when I finally started to see them shift in advertisements and stuff that I was seeing. Like, I remember the first advertisement I saw where women actually had body hair in it. It really influenced me.

You choose models which represent the message of your photographs. How do you go about finding people who fit your vision and how do you help them to express the message you want to communicate?

I work very closely with a couple of agencies that I find are really pushing diversity and that I think are reimagining the way that the casting industry works. For example, not putting models purely on two boards, that is just men or women. But I love seeing gender fluid boards or duos boards as well where they have models with similar looks. I think a lot of agencies try to just tick every box once and then they turn down everybody else that they already have someone similar representing. I generally look for models that I can see a little part of myself in or whose story I think deals with identity or a lack of visual representation for people like themselves as well. I feel I really connect with those people on a deeper level. One of my ultimate goals is to provide a platform and to hold space for those individuals to really show up as their powerful selves. So, I try to go off of intuition there and by holding space for them I think that really helps somebody fully show up as themselves and show up recognising that that is perfectly good enough. I think that is one of the most powerful messages that we can create.

You also create a lot of work surrounding the themes of sexuality and identity. Has photography and the positive impact of your work been helpful to you in accepting and embracing your own identity as a queer and gender fluid photographer?

I think it definitely has. I think the themes of sexuality and identity in my work pull from my own personal story of coming out and my own relationship with my gender expression. But I think it definitely goes both ways : the more visual representation I see of a broad spectrum of gender expression, sexual orientation and identity the more I think I step into that myself and allow myself to reincorporate so many faucets that I had shut out earlier in life because subconsciously it was communicated to me that it wouldn’t be accepted. I think that journey has definitely been very healing for me as well.

Do you think that issues such as gender fluidity and the beauty of imperfections are still taboo in today’s society?

I think we’re making great leaps towards that not being the case anymore but then again I also remind myself that, for example, my reality, my day to day life, the city I live in, where I come from are very privileged and kind of sheltered environments. I definitely do think I live in a bubble sometimes where it feels like oh I don’t need to incorporate my activism and these messages in my work any longer because everybody around me kind of is already so up to date and, you know, has incorporated these topics so seamlessly. Then I remember that the largest part of the world doesn’t look like that yet and that I could probably dedicate my whole life to that fight and that process and there would still be more work to do. I mean, I even see it in my own history, in my own background and my own family when I go back home. There’s still things that are such no-brainers to me that are still very foreign to even some of the closest people in my life. So, I wouldn’t say in my environment that I would title them as taboo’s, but there are so many places in the world where I would one hundred percent say that that’s the case.

When you first started taking an interest in photography, were there any artists or photographers who inspired you to take a more inclusive approach to your work? Are there any you look up to today or is this approach something that came naturally to you?

Well I think a lot of my approach was mainly influenced by my own personal story but the people that were a part of that experience really greatly influenced me. Starting with the queer, non-binary and trans people that I found myself surrounded by when I first moved to New York City. That is the moment that I came out as well and those were the people that really shifted my whole world perspective, I would say. I draw inspiration from so many different artists and photographers however, I think the inclusiveness of my work is more influenced by the community and also by the people in my personal life because those are the people that I hold the deepest connections to. They’re the ones that really make me go into depth when it comes to the bigger why of why I do what I do with photography. Those are the people that I think of and that I draw strength from in order to keep going.

Your approach to photography is fun, capturing true moments of happiness and confidence on set. Do you feel that your experience as a model yourself has impacted your approach when interacting with models on the set of your own shoots?

Absolutely! I’ve heard from a lot of my models that it’s really great to work with somebody that has stood in their shoes because it’s easier for them to trust me as I know what I’m asking of them. It’s also made it easier for me to guide them because I have an understanding and a certain vision and I think I’ve built some really great relationships through my modeling journey with some of the talent that I have in front of my camera as well. I think it’s given me an even deeper understanding of the nature of the position of the model and the perceived vulnerability from stepping into that position is something that you won’t fully understand until you’ve stood in it yourself.

INTERVIEW WITH Flora Li Thiemann

When did you first become aware of the sustainability and ethical issues within the film industry?

It began really early for me to grapple with environmental and social issues in our world, actually, as a child. As a private person in general. Since sustainability has always been an important topic for me, and I have been working in the film industry since I was 7 years old, of course, my view on it was always sensitive.

The film industry, in particular, has an immense impact on our environmental footprint since it involves a lot of processes across all the different departments from pre-production to the on-set work, which consume a lot of resources and contribute to carbon emissions overall. In the last few years, it has become a bigger topic to find greener alternatives for production, but there is still a lot of work to be done.

I think one of the main issues, not just in the film industry but in general, is that in our society, many environmental and social issues are normalized and ignored. Someone who is buying salami in the supermarket is probably not consciously thinking about it being an animal and supporting its suffering, how the salami was produced, and the impact it has on our climate. There needs to be more educational work and communication in general about these environmental and ethical topics in the first place to create awareness and responsibility in society instead of ignorance and avoidance. Change starts in the mind and in our feeling of responsibility and the will to do what is right. We should support that in society in the first place.

CREDITS

Art Direction & Styling: BELVIS SOLER

Photography: JENS WITTWER

Starring: FLORA LI THIEMANN @ RIETZ MANAGEMENT

Make Up Artist: KARIM SATTAR

Hair Stylist: ISABEL MARIA SIMONETH

Styling Assistant: SASKIA FRY

Courtney Mattison is an American artist and marine activist working with ceramics to raise awareness about coral reefs and climate change. Using clay as her medium, Courtney Mattison creates intricate ceramic sculptures on a large scale. These pieces are informed by her background in ocean conservation science and policy. You can find Courtney’s pieces all over the world, from Indonesia to California.

What is the state of coral reefs at the moment and why do they need help? 

Coral reefs are extremely important to the health of the ocean and they’re also extremely sensitive to changes. And for that reason, with climate change and more extreme temperature changes and weather events, coral reefs are increasingly threatened. A lot of marine scientists have stated that they don’t expect coral reefs to be a functioning ecosystem by the end of this century, which is really scary.

Is this a big topic of conversation where you’re based in San Francisco?

Yeah, definitely. I think climate change in general is something that people in the coastal cities of the US are really focused on. America is famous for having sceptics about climate change, but here in San Francisco, it’s much more progressive and a lot of the people here believe in science and understand what’s going on in the world. It’s something that I hear a lot of people talk about and people are extremely mindful of their impacts on the environment and their ways of influencing corporations and governments to turn things around with climate change. 

I focus on this because climate change really is the biggest threat to coral reefs. I think there are other major threats like overfishing, commercial fishing, pollution and things like that. But climate change is what’s really devastating reefs around the world, way more quickly than anyone expected, because they are so sensitive to those temperature changes. Also, carbon dioxide dissolves into the seawater which makes it more acidic. So it’s a double whammy, dissolving them and suffocating them at the same time.

And has your art always been on coral reefs or climate change? 

It’s kind of my muse. I grew up in San Francisco and we don’t have tropical coral reefs right off the coast here, but I was always really fascinated with the sea and I started exploring tide pools and studying marine biology as a teenager.

As soon as I really dove in and became fascinated with marine life, I wanted to sculpt them. I felt like it was a way for me to connect with corals differently, and to understand the anatomy and structures of these creatures. Corals are animals, but they don’t have faces and they’re colonial and there are just so many weird aspects to marine invertebrates that I find fascinating. So to me, they seem really sculptural and it’s always been a natural way for me to celebrate and explore them. 

Was there a light bulb moment where you decided this was what you were going to do with your life? 

Yeah, I trained in marine science and art, so I was straddling these two disparate fields for most of my education. My formal education mostly focused on marine biology so I did think about becoming a marine scientist, but then I realised that if I was strictly a scientist, I would be throwing away a lot of this passion and the skills that I had developed in sculpture. I would also be throwing away my voice because scientists have to remain so neutral to collect data and publish studies.

I didn’t feel like I would have enough of an outward-facing voice to advocate for conservation. So that’s why I became an artist professionally. And now I work full time as an artist and I use that background in science to inform my work.

Can you tell me more about how your background in marine biology informs the work and how it influences what you do? 

I studied marine ecology and I focused on coral reefs. I did fieldwork in Australia on the Great Barrier Reef, and I’ve been scuba diving since I was 18. So I’ve been really lucky to go around the world to different tropical marine regions and other places and to see some of the healthiest coral reefs that we still have on our planet. And there are still some really healthy coral reefs that are possible to protect and worth saving. So all of that knowledge, both from the ecology side, the taxonomy side, but also the environmental kind of conservation world, that all informs my work.

I really want the people who see my work to fall in love with coral animals the way that I did because that’s what inspired me to want to act to protect them. So I really hope that my work can bring that alien exotic beauty above the surface for people to appreciate, even if they’re not able to put their faces underwater themselves. 

So is that the aim of your work? What reactions are you trying to inspire? 

I try to encourage people to protect the corals in a gentle and personal way. We protect what we love, and we love what we know and understand and feel familiar with.

The ocean is a dark, mysterious and scary place for a lot of people. I want to help people understand it in a different way and I think art has an immense power to shape how we understand the world. By portraying these coral reef ecosystems in kind of fantastical, colourful, beautiful ways, I try to celebrate them and invoke emotions and individuality so that people might become more curious. I think it has to be a really personal exploration because that’s the only way we’re going to feel truly motivated to make long-lasting change.

What’s the process behind your creations? 

A lot of my work uses similar themes. Because coral reefs bleach white, I think that’s a really stark way to visualise climate change. So that’s a theme that I explore in a lot of my work. Corals are not necessarily as colourful as what you see in my work. But I like taking an artistic licence and not being completely realistic because it’s more about evoking that sense of wonder. 

When I come up with my designs, a lot of them are swirly and evoke ideas of weather patterns or just changing places. The swirling forms are kind of anti-gravity, elevating the reef off the seafloor and putting it into space where its fate is up in the air. So conceptually, to me, the fate of coral reefs is in our hands, and we get to decide if they’re doomed or not. I think having work that swirls from colourful to bleached or maybe the other way around is up to interpretation for a lot of people. 

In terms of my actual sculpting process, when I come up with a design like that,  it looks very freeform, but it’s actually extremely meticulously planned out. I know where every single piece of hardware is going to go on the wall before I start building a single piece. So I map everything out first on the computer and then I create a full-scale map on the floor of my studio. I build each piece in relation to each other, so it’s really like a big three-dimensional puzzle. So it’s really meticulous, takes tons of planning and sometimes the installations that I do are many metres high or require a lot of logistical strategies to install them.

How does it change depending on the place where you’re going to show it or the exhibition? 

I do a lot of site-specific work that is commissioned for permanent installation and integrated into the architecture of an office building or a hotel or something like that. I like working really big because I think that gets people’s attention and it brings up this idea of one small person creating something really enormous which is a metaphor for the impact that one person can have. So I do try to focus on really large-scale stuff. But I also do some residential commissions.

I also show in museums around the world and things like that. It’s fun to do site-specific stuff because I can kind of integrate it into the architecture and respond to how the light moves through a space.

Do you get to see the way that people react to it? Have you had a response that really stood out to you and touched you? 

Sometimes I’ll go into a place where my work is installed and just pretend I don’t know what I’m doing there. But I don’t get to do that very often. There have been a couple of times when I’ve seen someone have a really emotional response, and maybe tear up. That has been really important to me as motivation to keep going.

You see a lot of cynical stuff when you’re in a museum show. You sort of overhear comments and you don’t know if it’s actually getting through to people. But seeing little glimmers like that is really, really lovely.

Do you find it difficult to stay positive?

Yeah, definitely. I’m not naive and I understand the science behind all of it so it is really hard to stay positive sometimes because things really aren’t looking good for coral reefs. They’re not going to disappear altogether because certain coral species are resilient and they’re going to persist like weeds in a garden. But the beauty and the value of the coral reef come from diversity and redundant species that help each other out or compete with one another in important ways. So if a number of those species go extinct or disappear in certain areas, they just won’t function in the same way. So it is really hard to know what’s happening.

I think the way that I stay positive is through interacting with people who are moved by the work and are using that to do their own things that can help. But also by visiting reefs that are still really healthy. I try to get back in the water at least once a year and see a healthy coral reef because they are still out there.

Why do you choose to show coral reefs through clay? 

It started out as a medium that was available to me. I had used clay before and there was a ceramic studio at my high school. But once I started working with it and really learned what reef-building coral does, I realised that calcium carbonate is what corals essentially sculpt their skeletons out of. That’s a material that’s limestone essentially, and that is really common in glaze materials so there’s sort of a chemical parallel between my work and real corals.

There’s also this sense of fragility that is really undeniable. So conceptually that sense of fragility is really important in my work. But you can imagine that porcelain and anemone tentacles are extremely fragile. Making something with clay is so difficult, it takes a lot of patience and troubleshooting. Ceramic is not a friendly material at first, because everything is so fragile. But if you handle everything properly and you protect it at certain stages of the production process, it’s actually pretty resilient. 

What’s the most difficult thing in the physical design process? 

I think there are certain challenges that are related to working with design-build teams. When I’m doing a big project for an office building in an earthquake country, for example, there is a risk with installing the work. I’ve had some really interesting experiences working with engineers and architects to fine-tune the attachment methods that I use and really make sure that my work is going on the wall securely in a way that’s not going to kill somebody. Packing and shipping artwork like this is also really challenging because it’s so fragile. I work with professional art handlers to pack all my work now.

Have you had any projects that you’ve particularly enjoyed or that have touched you in a certain way? 

There are a couple of projects that I’ve done that are in Indonesia that are extremely meaningful. There’s also a project that I did for the Coral Triangle Centre in Bali that is a community project. So I didn’t sculpt everything myself, we actually worked with a team of around 200 volunteers, artisans and marine scientists and everybody got together and sculpted ceramic corals. We ended up installing about 2,000 of them on a wall in an installation that I designed for the Centre for Marine Conservation in Bali. So that was a really fun one. 

The other, the biggest work that is also in Indonesia is at the U.S. Embassy in Jakarta. That was a commission that I created myself, and it’s absolutely enormous. It’s a big, swirling wall installation that is in the kind of atrium of the embassy building. And that one’s called Confluence, and it’s part of my Art Changing Seas series.

So you have exhibitions literally all over the world? 

Yeah, I just completed one in Capri in Italy. That one is a brand new one that I am hoping to be able to share photos of soon.

Can you tell me about the sustainability aspect of your work? 

Obviously, it’s coming from the environment and it’s a natural material. I try to be mindful of where my materials are sourced and I buy all my clay in the state of California. So it’s all made, you know, within the state. So it’s relatively local. I try to do the same with my glazes. I am very mindful of resource use in general. I think water and electricity are big resources that I have to think about because I have electric kilns in my studio and water is required for all kinds of steps of the fabrication process. So I try to limit resource use.

But, in terms of environmental impacts and climate change, there’s often an imperative put on individuals to focus on their own impacts, but that often distracts from the focus on big corporations and policymakers that really make the outsized impact on these environmental issues. A lot of the work I do is trying to remind people about the advocacy work that we can do to raise awareness and push for reforms on a bigger scale instead because it’s always the individual who gets the blame, not the massive companies.

If you could tell people what to do to help the situation what would you say? 

I think the biggest thing any of us can do is what we are uniquely skilled at. I got some really interesting advice when I was first starting out from an author and marine scientist named Carl Cicina. He said, do what you can uniquely do to make a difference, and I think that refers to the personal impact that I was talking about. Each of us has to feel personally inspired and motivated in our own way to do whatever it is. It could be advocacy, policy change, research, Marine science or social science. There are so many facets to the problem and to the solutions, and we need to come up with creative solutions in order to fight climate change and also reduce the other threats that are on coral reefs. So coming up with new ways to develop and promote renewable energy is a big one. 

I think there are so many exciting things that all need to happen at once. And so we need everyone to feel excited about doing their own part of that process.

And what do you think the situation will be in 10 years time? 

I think we’re going to see a lot more bleaching events. Every summer is the hottest summer on record now. But I also think there’s so much awareness growing really quickly among young people. So it makes me hopeful that there are a lot of young people who are becoming really passionate about demanding change.

I think technology is going to play a big part in it. I think we’re way more connected now than we used to be, and that’s only going to keep growing. And so I think it’s possible to hold people accountable in new ways, and I can only imagine where that’s going to go in the next 10 years. So I’m cautiously optimistic.