Interdisciplinary Practices: Photography and Writing - Part 1
María José González Ares & Wuchao Feng
April 6th, 2023
By Fiammetta Duke @fiammettaduke
This is a piece of research on artists taking their practice beyond juxtaposition—of words and images flowing into a dimension in which they coalesce into one another, becoming entangled and inseparable entities holding a special meaning. Speaking to a few artists that make this juxtaposition the center of their practice and manner of expressing themselves through their artistic discipline—I explore how to surpass the sphere of multidisciplinarity—landing within the territory of ambivalence. The relationship between the Arts of Photography and Writing can be used to bend the boundaries between the visible and the imaginable. To create unforeseen combinations and amplify messages.
Not Confirmed, María José González Ares (aka Creares)
Recipe, María José González Ares (aka Creares)
Fiammetta Duke: Why and when did you start mixing images and words?
María José González Ares: In quarantine, I did a workshop with a collective called ‘Creadores de Imagenes,’ I had to answer different questions with images, another exercise was to narrate our self-portrait and I wrote a poem. Later, for my master’s course, I created a series, La palma de mi mano, it wasn’t putting words into an image but creating both of them at the same time, that was always my thought: how can words and images walk together and what’s their relation? It was long exposures of myself and during those 15 seconds, I was writing stuff.
That was the first time that I was beginning to understand the word and the image as one. I think about that a lot because it relates to philosophy and even to psychology also from the point of view of creating something; like why one thing and not another, or why the two of them, or how can I treat them as one, or as two, what’s the difference?
“How can words and images walk together and what’s their relation?”
Wuchao Feng: Photography and text are very important for me in the early stages of a project, to record my thoughts, even if then I gradually develop into other mediums. A reason I'm looking for a sort of language in my work is that some say its missing. I always want to enlarge my images, to get much closer to the details. There is a voice there, and I want my audience to also hear this voice.
It's really tricky for me because it's transcultural, sometimes my work makes sense to people from my culture but sometimes the audience requires to have a similar life experience to mine, like living abroad for several years, to understand the contents. So I searched for a language that was neutral. I felt nature was actually a very good language for me to convey this voice. I was lost until I started to use this natural, fluid language in my work to develop series about nature and identity.
“There is a voice there, and I want my audience to also hear this voice.”
The Pearl is about expressing trauma, pearls hold such a powerful meaning. Their story is about trauma. The clam takes the intruder and makes it into a pearl. So I started using pearls as metaphors, as a natural language to spell the things I cannot talk aloud.
Certainty, The Pearl, Wuchao Feng
FD: Do you consider yourself an interdisciplinary artist?
MJGA: Yes. I think I cannot treat the text or the image as individuals, when I have the work done, I cannot just split them—it’s a complete work. It happens a lot with different stuff, with recordings or other disciplines, once I combine them. But it’s difficult.
Once I was assigned a photography project and the only thing coming out of me was a narration in words. Understanding the fact that whatever comes out is fine is difficult because, as humans, we tend to compartmentalise everything, so if carrots come out, then where do I put them?
WF: Absolutely. I feel I'm more of a concept-driven artist rather than medium driven. Whenever I have an idea, I’ll start with a concept, a little piece of writing, and a few images as I mentioned, and then I will pick the medium that works better for the concept. I'm so fascinated by different mediums. At the moment I'm building fountains, I also experiment a lot with bio art, performance, textile, 3D printing, everything... There are so many ways of expressing yourself. And it makes no sense to really stick to only one medium.
By María José González Ares (aka Creares)
FD: María, If you were thinking of images but words came out does it mean they are the same thing in your mind?
MJGA: When I arrived in Barcelona I met a couple of poets that were treating words as images, putting them in a canvas like visual poetry, like a picture of a word, so maybe that’s the question: are words images? In the last works I have with this relation, I try to adapt the letters to every part of the image, not disruptively, simply as a continuation of the visual line.
FD: The pairings that you make between images and words may seem random but the more you stare at them the more they make sense, is it like a game of connections that comes from your experiences?
“I walk in the street and find myself taking pictures but without physically taking them, I try to imagine the pictures as words.”
MJGA: For some, it’s a game of pairing, for others somehow the union comes from the moment I think about it, other times there is a text I really like so I accompany the image with the text; but I see it more as a thought—whether I have the image first or the text—the union comes from an observational point of view. It’s a very intuitive thing, and I am most interested in these intuitive pairings that don’t have a visual or meaningful connection. Sometimes it happens in a weird way, I walk in the street and find myself taking pictures but without physically taking them, I try to imagine the pictures as words.
FD: Wuchao Feng, differently to María, you use words as the subject for your photography in The Pearl, highlighting them in the images, do you think this transports the words to another dimension other than the written?
WF: When I did the brainstorming for this project, I pictured a very calm, clean space, like the pearls. Whenever I have to deal with really difficult emotions, I write them down, to really look at them, the way we look at a mirror, and we see our own reflection. The images of pearls make me feel calm. That's why the medium of photography works for me, it's a clean slice of time and space. And it's allowed me to enlarge the details to really look closely at my traumas. Look at my reflections, look deeper. It's a solution. It's a process. It's therapy. The image is only a result. It’s the recording of the process of me spelling quietly alone, on a white space. Reorganising everything.
Beyond Skin, The Pearl, Wuchao Feng
Part 2 of “Interdisciplinary Practices: Photography and Writing” will be released next week. In which artist and writer Fiammetta Duke speaks with Felix Pilgrim, Rafael Vencatachellum, and Agnese Carbone, about their work and the relationship between images and words.
About María José González Ares
María José Gonzáles Ares is a Mexican photographer who goes by Creares, formed as a graphic designer. She began her path with the light with a pocket camera in her teenage years and after working around Mexico, she went to another continent to continue her studies. Photography as the main point of her practice converts her routine in a continuous observation of humans and our intimate relationship with nature. Creares, intuits the place she lives in, and using her dreamlike trip she generates scenarios of everyday life. She takes in consideration the quality of a hot sauce, the constant watering of plants and the ability to open walnuts by hand. Collecting pencils, she resides in her shoes, which are sized 23.
About Wuchao Feng
Wuchao Feng is a Chinese artist who is currently studying at the Royal College of Art. She received her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2020. Through the use of natural metaphors, particularly water, in her art practice, she advocates for a new definition of identity as a fluid state. She finds solace in the tranquil embodiment of water, a form of oceanic therapy that soothes her soul and helps her recognise the unbreakable bond between herself and nature.