SPARK
SI-029, from issue 4, 2022.
Asking Yourself Deliberate Questions
Somnath Bhatt is an artist and designer with a practice that is deeply embedded with an alternative genealogy of images and their symbolic meanings.
SB That classic cut that bone turns into the spaceship! That particular work was about unknown and unconscious spaces, dark and deep. I am thinking about asking yourself questions in the form of self-reflection. How deep can we go to the inner self, not egotistically but honestly? My art is a tool to self-express after self-reflection. But everything I say is subject to change. I was thinking about that at that time but not necessarily now.
UDÖ Change is the only constant in the world, no? Your art is also symbolic and metaphoric. Are you trying to tap into a spiritual facet that we have forgotten with Tumblr, Tesla and Instagram?
SB It still feels current to me. We may think we have changed on the outside, but we are still the same species on the inside. Maybe life has just been modified with modern technology. A similar feeling but is slightly modified.
UDÖ This reminds me of your article on labour in Walker Art Center. You quote the French designer Pierre Bernard: “We didn’t behave like suppliers, slavishly following the instructions, but as equal partners working towards a common goal, which they had decided to share with us by offering the job.” How do you establish healthy and sustainable client relationships, as a freelancer?
SB Actively communicating how you work and where you are with the project is key. Even if you can’t meet a deadline, you can just ask for more time, and a client will respect that you articulate that. It’s something I got better at doing as I go along. If you are more up-front about your process, it stabilizes their relationship.
UDÖ What about work-life balance?
SB In wellness practices like yoga, they ask you to notice your breath. When does the air come in, and when does the air come out? I wish we also had similar intentional practices as artists to notice when inspiration comes and when it is leaving. That will help us not be constantly preoccupied. I wish I could feel when my brain is feeling productive and when it isn’t. When I take time off and come back to the creative task, my brain is more generative. There are many times that I don’t like what I do for a project, but maybe that is a good indication that I am stepping out of my comfort zone. I am going to let it be messy, and it is okay.
SB Firstly, many of our decisions are made directly or indirectly through how we understand the world aesthetically. What restaurant we pick is connected to the presentation of the restaurant. If you kill a cockroach, you are seen as a good person. But if you kill a butterfly, you are seen as the wrong person. The formation of that judgment is purely aesthetic. In fact, it doesn’t mean anything. What is beauty? That is the larger question. As artists, we get to decide what is worth attention or beautiful for the world.
UDÖ Our aesthetic judgment affects our behaviour. For instance, there is this tearoom on Broadway (Providence) called Shastea, but the decoration is so horrendously ugly that I am genuinely unappealed to go in. It’s purely an aesthetic choice.
SB I guess who you date? Or who you don’t date? It is subjective but also kind of not. Aesthetics have an emotional utility in our lives that we can’t always explain with simple scientific terms. I believe in striving for aesthetics.
UDÖ You are now Art-Directing for Bloomberg Businessweek, right? So you have a say in which visuals go into mainstream media, and it then affects the general public’s taste. In two years, the aesthetic decisions you make may affect which cafe is hip.
SB I’m excited to fuck it up. For example, I got assigned to work on this feature about Starbucks’s recent unionizing. The way it happened, though, is very Gen-Z. It happened over Discord, while a lot of the classic imagery on the subject matter is basically a 60s rally. I especially wanted to avoid that and depict unions in their current state. However, I also didn’t want to depict a bunch of text bubbles. But, the process was much different when I used to write articles for the Walker or AIGA because I would pitch a thought to my editor, and they would help me editorialize the idea. They often ask: “What do you really mean?”. Now I approach art directing at Businessweek with the same question in mind.
UDÖ If you don’t tell a story, it doesn’t mean anything, no?
SB I recently noticed that about myself. You are mostly making someone else’s story more compelling or more real.But, I also have many questions that I would like to find answers to myself, and sometimes the editorial process can find your answers. But, it’s so important to always keep searching for answers and know that your perspective will always be changing.
Follow Sasha Filiminov here
interview by Utkan Dora Öncül
Spark Interview-029