In this Episode of Art is Awesome, Host Emily Wilson spends time with the curator at the Wattis Institute of Contemporary Arts, Daisy Nam.
Welcome to Art is Awesome, the show where we talk with an artist or art worker with a connection to the San Francisco Bay Area.
In this episode, Emily features Daisy Nam, the director and chief curator at the Wattis Institute of Contemporary Arts. Daisy discusses her journey from growing up in Los Angeles to her roles at prestigious institutions like NYU, Columbia, Harvard, and Marfa Ballroom. She shares insights on the significance of art spaces in cities, her love for art books, and memorable exhibitions, particularly the current 'Steady' sculpture show involving artists Esther Partegas and Michelle Lopez. Daisy highlights the unique aspects and challenges of working in the contemporary art world, emphasizing the importance of maintaining art spaces and building partnerships within the art community. Daisy also shares her personal experiences and perspectives on art and nature in Northern California.
About Curator Daisy Nam:
Daisy Nam is the director and curator of CCA Wattis Institute of Contemporary Art in San Francisco, which opens their new galleries on the expanded campus in Fall of 2024. Previously, she was at Ballroom Marfa, a contemporary art space dedicated to supporting artists through residencies, commissions, and exhibitions, first as the curator in 2020 and then the director and curator in 2022. From 2015–19, she was the assistant director at the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, Harvard University, managing the administration and organizing programs, exhibitions, and publications. From 2008–2015, she produced seven seasons of talks, screenings, performances, and workshops as the assistant director of public programs at the School of the Arts, Columbia University.
Curatorial residencies and fellowships include: Marcia Tucker Senior Research Fellow at the New Museum, New York (2020); Bellas Artes, Bataan, Philippines (2020); Surf Point in York, Maine (2019); Gwangju Biennale Foundation, Korea (2018). She holds a master’s degree in Curatorial and Critical Studies from Columbia University and a bachelor’s degree in Art History and Cinema Studies from New York University. She has taught at RISD, and lectured at Lesley University, Northeastern, SMFA/Tufts, SVA as a visiting critic. She co-edited a publication, Best! Letters from Asian Americans in the arts withPaper Monument in 2021.
CLICK HERE to learn more about Daisy.
CLICK HERE to connect to The Wattis Institute
CLICK HERE to get more info about the Wattis exhibition 'STEADY'
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About Podcast Host Emily Wilson:
Emily a writer in San Francisco, with work in outlets including Hyperallergic, Artforum, 48 Hills, the Daily Beast, California Magazine, Latino USA, and Women’s Media Center. She often writes about the arts. For years, she taught adults getting their high school diplomas at City College of San Francisco.
Follow Emily on Instagram: @PureEWil
Follow Art Is Awesome on Instagram: @ArtIsAwesome_Podcast
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CREDITS:
Art Is Awesome is Hosted, Created & Executive Produced by Emily Wilson.
Theme Music "Loopster" Courtesy of Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
The Podcast is Co-Produced, Developed & Edited by Charlene Goto of @GoToProductions.
For more info, visit Go-ToProductions.com
Host Emily Wilson: [00:00:00] Art is Awesome can now be heard on KSFP 102. 5 FM every Friday at 9 a. m. and 7 p. m. Please follow the show and rate us wherever you get your podcast media. If you like what you hear from today's artist, you can find links and information about them in our show notes.
But then I realized what I gravitated most towards and what stayed with me were conversations with artists and conversations with curators.
And I thought to myself, how can I do this forever?
Host Emily Wilson: That was Daisy Nam, the guest on this week's episode of Art is Awesome.
I'm your host, Emily Wilson. I'm a writer in San Francisco, often covering the arts, and I've been meeting such great people [00:01:00] that I created this bi weekly podcast to highlight their work.
Daisy Nam, the director and chief curator at the CCA Wattis Institute of Contemporary Arts, grew up in Los Angeles. She went to New York University, and afterwards, she worked at the School of the Arts at Columbia University, where she produced talks, screenings, and performances. Then she went to the Center for Visual Arts at Harvard, organizing public programs, exhibitions, and publications.
Daisy came to the Wattis Institute at the California College of Arts less than a year ago. Before moving to San Francisco, she was the director and chief curator at the Marfa Ballroom, an internationally recognized contemporary art museum. In a remote area of Texas. We talked about how she didn't go to museums as a kid, but [00:02:00] loved looking at art books, the importance of art spaces to a city, and the current sculpture show at the Wattis.
Daisy Nam: You're standing here in the exhibition on view at the Wattis. It's called Steady, and it shows the works of Esther Partegas and Michelle Lopez. And this is a sculpture based show. There are some drawings, there are 2D works. There's also an outdoor sculpture that you may have seen when you walked up the stairs.
And this show really looks at the way that they kind of view the world and view materials and their process. I chose the word steady because it's kind of an act of balancing and counterbalancing and using all the different parts to hold each other up. And that's kind of a way of looking at the world as well, instead of maybe domination or having things so adamantly grounded and dominating.
So that's kind of the premise of the show.
Host Emily Wilson: Daisy described one of [00:03:00] Michelle Lopez's sculptures. Hemp dream made of steel and nylon.
Daisy Nam: The texture of it though, as you see, is quite fuzzy and really it almost looks like velvet. It's a process called flocking. And so what she does is to electromagnetically put particles on top of the substrate, on top of the steel, and so it's hard because of the steel, but it's also soft at the same time.
They look like pieces of rope or even noodles and just the shape of this it's it is a shape of a cube But when you look at it It's almost the outline of the cube and the pieces of rope kind of twist and bend and at one point They touch each other some points. They float above each other. So there's this really beautiful way that they hold their shape, and it's quite elegant as well.
I guess art historically, thinking of the cube and minimalist sculptors, mostly men, kind [00:04:00] of had this machismo thing going on, but Michelle offers a different way of looking at how to build perhaps a cube, one that floats and one that has this kind of elegant way of standing up.
Host Emily Wilson: In the same room, there's Twilight by Esther Partakis.
It's part of a series she made of laundry baskets. She often chooses materials on the verge of being thrown away, Daisy says.
Daisy Nam: You'll see on the right hand, it's cut off from the rest of the basket and kind of creates this shape of a laundry basket and you're meant to walk around it so you can also walk around the piece and there's a whole interiority inside and it's almost like shelter, you know, she always talks about her daughter, her young daughter always like hiding and her dog hiding in baskets and using that to almost build their world.
There's no Quote unquote front or back to the piece, but there are elements where you feel a little bit [00:05:00] more enclosed. There's also a tunnel as part of the basket. So you're meant to kind of like feel like you can go inside the piece. And in terms of the color, there's lots of bright colors and she Kind of talks about the use of color and having this vibrancy and but also she says she had this really beautiful quote Like I also want the colors to scream and so there is this tension of thinking about baskets laundry baskets Traditionally and still today women's work.
There's kind of the traps of society She said when I was an artist and before I had kids I can be outside. And a lot of my work was around public sculpture. But here, after being in the home, I felt trapped in my own house. And how do I build a world, you know, and my studio practice in that setting. And so there are things in society that I think people feel trapped by, but also liberated by.
So how do you contend with those things? And [00:06:00] even the exterior, there's these really cute little bows and little, it almost looks like sticks of gum or something like that, and those also are meant to be cute and playful, but when does that teeter into trying to be some, you know, extra feminine or like teaching young women how to be one way or another?
Host Emily Wilson: Before coming to the Wattis, Daisy worked at both Columbia and Harvard. She loved working with artists at the beginning of their careers.
Daisy Nam: They really absorb a lot and they're really moved by things, things that they learn along the way and seeing that. Actually, in their studios and how it plays out is really fascinating to me and that energy you really can't capture in any other setting.
As someone described it to me, it's like walking into a party and you know, they've been partying for a really long time and that energy is like really high and you're like, what's going on? And that kind of energy, I think it's just like nothing [00:07:00] I've ever experienced. After four
Host Emily Wilson: years at Marfa. Daisy realized that living in a place with fewer than 2, 000 people wasn't for her.The California College of the Arts appealed to her.
Daisy Nam: CCA, of course, has this amazing legacy and the Wattis has this incredible legacy of exhibition making and research that doesn't really happen in many other art spaces and non profits. Not a lot of art spaces have this research element to it. And so that was really exciting to me to have.
To kind of delve into, understand how that plays into exhibition making and working with
Host Emily Wilson: artists. The Wattis recently moved onto CCA's campus, and there's now an exterior space with gardens. Daisy is glad to see it expand beyond the gallery walls.
Daisy Nam: There's so much nuance and there's so much possibility.
It's not this kind of A to B thinking and it's not computational. It's not like this leads to that. [00:08:00]Art just holds so much more and that's actually what the city needs. If you want to reimagine the city, you need to have art institutions and you need to have an art school. And so that I think is really important.
So I'm holding onto that with dear life that art spaces in the city continue. But also I've been so struck by all the other art spaces and people who run those spaces are incredible people and so smart and brilliant and amazing collaborators. So I hope that we can build more partnerships and really have this network of institutions that lean on each other and work with each other.
The metaphor that I've been using is breathing, you like inhale and you take the oxygen inside and it kind of nourishes you inside and then you exhale and it's out into the world. And so I hope that that's kind of what the Wattis can do and be. D
Host Emily Wilson: Daisy wants everyone to feel welcome at the Wattis.
Daisy Nam: I never Was taken to museums as a kid.[00:09:00] My parents were working. They didn't feel comfortable in art spaces So I'm always slightly jealous of people who say oh when I was eight, I went to a Duchamp show You know, that would have never happened in my childhood But through art books that actually was almost a portal for me
Host Emily Wilson: She remembers the first book her mother gave her.
Daisy Nam: Mary Cassatt, which is a woman artist, which is very important. The first book I got was a woman artist, and I didn't know any different. So I thought all artists were women.
Host Emily Wilson: Since art books were so important to her, Daisy loves the Wattuses Publication Program.
Daisy Nam: Jean Garrity runs that and she makes really beautiful books with artists and that really can give another life to an exhibition or provide another space for an artist to explore.
There's this really beautiful Cecilia Vicuña book and she always wanted to make a book around these word weapons that she's done these series for, you know, [00:10:00] decades. And so it really provides another platform and I think that's really interesting because it circulates in the art world in a different form.
And even though, you know, we have social media, we have digital platforms, but there's nothing like opening an art book. And there's a lot of texture and there's a physicality to that that really can't be replicated.
Host Emily Wilson: This is three questions. I asked the guest the same questions to get to know them a little better. The questions for Daisy are, when did you know you were a curator? What's some work that made an impression on you? And what's the most creatively inspiring place in the Bay Area?
Daisy Nam: I think I wanted to be a curator when it was my first paid art job at the Guggenheim. And I was actually in development. So I was [00:11:00] in the fundraising department just because I was out of college and they needed a job and they hired me. So I said, yes, but I was doing a lot of organizing events for donors, doing studio visits, doing gallery walkthroughs, working with.
Curators to come up with fun programs for donors. But then I realized what I gravitated most towards and what stayed with me were conversations with artists and conversations with curators. And I thought to myself, how can I do this forever? And then I thought, okay, maybe I should be a curator, but you know, that world is so elitist and it was very.
Not for me in many ways, and I didn't see many models of how I could be a curator. I think the one person that I kind of looked towards was Christine Kim, who was at the Studio Museum, and my first paid internship was at the Santa Monica Museum of Art, and there was a Studio Museum show that traveled there.
So I was a high schooler, [00:12:00] and you know, the gallery guard for the show, and so she kind of I knew that that's what she did. Okay. She's a curator in this world. She kind of looks like me. She kind of has a similar background to me, but there weren't very many examples of people like me being curators.
Daisy Nam: I think the first show that really made a big impression is the studio museum show that Christine did. And it was part of. This F series frequency was the name of it, and I was a gallery guard. I was an intern at the Santa Monica Museum of Art. It was a group show of young black artists. That was really my entryway into contemporary art.
I didn't really know. what contemporary art was, but I saw these artists really using different forms, different formats, like really kind of pushing against a lot of boundaries, which I didn't know what the boundaries even were [00:13:00] because, you know, I didn't really have a sense of what contemporary art is.
And so that was kind of my first foray into contemporary art. You could feel the energy of that show.
Daisy Nam: I think the most creatively inspiring place is actually. Nature, and that's probably why a lot of people moved to Northern California and I didn't think I was going to become one of these Northern California people, but I am. But I love going to Fort Funston. I think there's something about being immersed in nature and seeing all the weather changing.
You know, there is the water, everything, all the elements really move you. And sometimes you get that same feeling when you see art. There's something tied in there and I'm sure that's why, you know, people have, you know, spiritual awakenings out in [00:14:00] Northern California.
Host Emily Wilson: Thank you for listening to Art is Awesome, and thank you so much to this week's guest, Daisy Nam. She's the Chief Curator at CCA's Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, where Steady is showing through April 12th. Please follow the show. Next time the guest will be Stephanie Robison, a sculptor and chair of the Art Department at City College of San Francisco.
Her third exhibition was San Francisco's Marrow Gallery, Incantations for the Average Person. It opens February 26th and it's on view through March 29th.
Art is Awesome is a bi weekly podcast coming out every other Tuesday. It's created and hosted by me, Emily Wilson. It is produced and edited by By Charlene Goto of Goto Productions. [00:15:00] It's carried on KSFP LP 102. 5 FM, San Francisco on Fridays at 9 AM and 7 PM. Our theme music is provided by Kevin MacLeod with Incompetech Music.
Be sure and follow us on Instagram at ArtisAwesomePodcast or visit our website till next [00:16:00]time.