Illinois College Contemporary Art Gallery

Brendhan G.: Should art have an interaction with the world and serve a greater cause, or is art solely an interaction between the artists and their attempts to understand the world?

Annique Delphine: I expect art to act as a bridge between different worlds, different mindsets people may have and their different realities. Helping people understand each other. I've always made art in an attempt to reach out to the world, hoping somebody out there would understand me because I felt so different from everybody else. Always like I was looking at everyone from the outside..., but even if an artist’s driving force is egocentric it can still serve a greater cause. Someone out there will feel less lonely because they relate to it, and others who can’t relate can be rattled enough to question their belief system. 
 

BG: With capitalism and consumerism as driving factors behind the oversexualization of women, how can art fight back against the driving factors without becoming a part of them?

AD: Maybe everything is fluid. I think it's impossible to not be a part of capitalism unless you leave all modern civilization. As an artist I'm trying to fight and dismantle the very things I am inevitably a part of, so maybe I have to accept that and believe in the fluidity of things and just always push against the texture of what I currently feel is wrong and needs to be changed. But the more I push the more I can sometimes feel like a hypocrite, because as an artist I’m selling my work and I’m trying to make a living from it. I’m trying to succeed in a capitalist society, so I’m feeding into it and as a woman I also often sexualise or objectify myself so I’m feeding into that as well. But for me to find out where I stand I need to explore my own internalised misogyny.It’s hard to separate everything. Maybe it can't be separated. Maybe the process of fighting something is actually a cycle. And you fight by pushing back against something until you become a part of it and then you have to separate yourself from it again and start pushing up against it again.
 

BG: In your piece, The Last Supper, you commented on the nature of food as a fleeting medium, in a world where everything is becoming more and more permanent, especially online, should art play a role in centering people back into the present moment?

AD: Being in the present moment is not an easy task. There’s so much distraction around us. I'm usually either daydreaming or worrying about the future, or I'm obsessing over the past. What pulls me back into the present is connecting with nature and art. I do have that expectation of art: to help people be present and to connect. 
 

BG: In the art world, a world saturated by white male artists, how can artists go about acknowledging the limitations of the past and dismantling the colonization of museums and galleries for the future and increase representation of underrepresented artists?

 

AD: I think the first step is always raising awareness. There’s some great things happening already like Micol Hebron’s Gallery Tally Project for instance which is a collective work of examining gender inequality within the art world (http://gallerytally.tumblr.com). And there just needs to be a lot more diversity inside the system: curators, museum directors, art critics and also more diverse artists having a voice and being seen. Social media has been great for that. 

BG: As a follow up to that question, what role do artists that come from privileged backgrounds play in the future of the art world?

 

AD: At the very least I hope they will use their voice and their platforms to raise awareness and at best they will try to make space for underrepresented artists by turning down spaces and opportunities which are offered to them.  

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BG: In a world ever more connected, yet where the politics are leaning further right and the world seems to be becoming more divided, how does the art world fit into this picture?

 

AD: Art should reflect the zeitgeist. I love how much political art I see on Instagram and Tumblr and in the streets. And the Spring Break Art Show (for example) this year was very political. It was really amazing how charged it was. I’m hoping that the big art fairs will take note and follow. 

BG: Finally, which piece was the most challenging to put out into the world?

 

AD: That was probably my first solo show „ABUNDANCE“. It was a very personal and intimate work for me and I felt incredibly vulnerable putting those photos up on a wall and making them available to be interpreted by everyone else. They were still lifes of flowers but to me they were like pictures of the inside of my soul. On my way to the opening of the exhibition I was crying and screaming, wanting to turn back around and quit being an artist all over the fear that people wouldn’t understand what I was trying to express.

I was certain people would laugh at me. 

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I have since decided that being an artist for me means being vulnerable and taking risks and just standing back up and doing it all over again if people don’t understand.