NAVA: The National Association for the Visual Arts is the peak body protecting and promoting the professional interests of the Australian visual arts. NAVA: In Conversation is a series exploring the issues and challenges of working in the sector. We speak with artists, curators and administrators to gain insight into the experiences of contemporary practice and seek to propose ideas for change, progress, and resilience in both local and global contexts. Leya Reid: I'd like to start by acknowledging this conversation is recorded on the ancestral stolen lands of the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation and as a visitor, I pay my respect to Gadigal elders, past, present, and emerging. The Gadigal people are the Traditional Owners and knowledge holders of this land and I acknowledge the people of the wider Eora Nation as the first to resist and survive colonisation and whose culture and customs have nurtured and continue to nurture the land on which I live, learn, and work. Leya Reid: Welcome to NAVA: In Conversation. My name is Leya Reid and I am NAVA's communications and advocacy manager. Those of you who are perhaps unfamiliar with my voice, I indeed only recently joined NAVA back in March this year which, to say the very least was most certainly an interesting and unusual time to join a new workplace, making today my very first time hosting a NAVA: In Conversation podcast. Leya Reid: I am absolutely thrilled to be joined by our guest, curator, and arts writer, Sophia Cai. Sophia, where are you joining us from today? Sophia Cai: Thank you so much for having me. So I am speaking from Melbourne. I would also like to do an acknowledgement. I like to pay my respects to the Wurundjeri and Boon Wurrung people of East Kulin nations. I am an uninvited guest on their land. I would like to pay my respects to elders past, present and emerging. I didn't know. This was your first episode. Leya Reid: Yeah. Sophia Cai: I'm very thrilled to be your first guest. Leya Reid: Yes, I'm thrilled that you're my first guest as well. Sophia, I guess I'd love to hear more about yourself. Obviously, I've read your bio. Please tell me about yourself and your practice, what you've been busy with. Sophia Cai: So I would describe myself as a curator and writer. I am really interested in ideas and working with artists. A lot of my work has to do with arts writing. I also really enjoy putting together exhibitions and public programs, but at the moment I'm working in a freelance capacity, which was a decision I actually made at the end of last year. Sophia Cai: Like you, to enter 2020 with a new set of working conditions has been challenging. I have also recently started teaching as a sessional tutor at the University of Melbourne in the School of Art, which has also been a really interesting experience for me to think about some of the themes and ideas in my work through a perspective more in terms of engaging with students. Sophia Cai: I think, I guess, a good summary of what I do is just that I like to read and write and think and make, and all of those things become muddled together under the banner of what I do. I still don't really think my parents know what I do, but sometimes I don't know either. Leya Reid: That's a great bio. What are you teaching? Sophia Cai: I'm not trained as an artist, so I have a background in art history. The only thing I feel like I can really take in an art school is theory. So I'm teaching in the art theory department, which actually just means reading a lot about ideas about art and talking about artists, which is what I love doing anyway. Sophia Cai: That's been quite, what a fun experience. But of course education has been one of the sectors that's been hit really hard by the pandemic. It's also been a challenging space to navigate. I think it's very hard for students and for staff. Sophia Cai: A lot of the things that we talk about in the classroom, it's about critical theory. It's about philosophy. It's about social studies. All of these things are not just contained within the classroom setting. It's happening right now. I guess the relationship I have with academia is it's a bit funny too, because I also feel like I want it to become discourse that can extend outside of those walls. So how to turn that into, I guess, actions, if you're an artist or so forth. Leya Reid: That's really interesting. You mentioned when you were describing yourself that you would call yourself a curator and arts writer. I saw on the internet that on your website that you are particularly interested in community-based practices, what does community care mean to you and how does it influence your practice and curating? Sophia Cai: Yeah. Great question. I've been thinking a lot more also about how, for me, my work is like an ongoing process of learning as well. Sophia Cai: So in terms of what that means, in terms of community and my work, I think being a curator, the way that I was taught or the way that I was made to think about curatorial practice, I guess, for my education or in the early parts of my career was so much connected to institutional values. Sophia Cai: For a long time, what I wanted to be was to be somebody who followed that path, I guess. Now, my thinking has really shifted. I think about curatorial practice more as an active thing, rather than maybe connected to any particular institution. Sophia Cai: For me, what's more important is the relationships. I know that sounds really abstract. But I guess for me, there's a part of my work that's about advocacy and amplification and thinking in particular about the communities that I'm part of. Sophia Cai: So for me, that might be support other artists of colour or supporting other women of colour. That's the kind of community that I'm part of and that I kind of want to locate my work increasingly more within, I guess. Sophia Cai: For me, it also means thinking about audience. So I think we often think about an arts audience or when we make an exhibition or something, we might have an idea of this general audience. I've been thinking a bit more about how maybe that neutrality has always assumed a white gaze. Sophia Cai: I can talk about this more with some of my upcoming projects, but some of that has also been about taking back that agency and thinking about who is this project for. Sophia Cai: Maybe selfishly, some of my work is for a younger Sophia or a past Sophia that didn't know or didn't have the confidence to think about these things in a really critical way, like race and gender and so forth. Sophia Cai: So I guess for me, community is an ongoing set of values rather than any specific kind of description, if that makes sense. It's probably something that I will keep on grappling with in terms of the audience for my work and also who I want to make my work about or for. Leya Reid: That's so interesting. It seems, in your curatorial practice, that you're merging the communities that you seek to engage, perhaps maybe represent in a very loose term and your audiences, but also perhaps the artists that you engage to do the work. So it's multilayered really. Sophia Cai: Yeah. Like I said, I think it's a process of, I'm still kind of working it out. I feel like I've been working in a curatorial and writing capacity for a few years now, but my thinking about what that mean is growing and shifting and changing. Sophia Cai: It's a really good question because I think I'm still working that out as well. But there is a kind of freedom, I suppose, in maintaining some aspects of being independent, because I do have sometimes the luxury of... Maybe not luxury. I have the element of choice of being able to decide or being able to be self-directed in a lot of my work, which gives me a lot of value. Leya Reid: Oh, that's amazing. Even though you've recently done a lot of freelance, but it sounds like you're, you're still finding that you're doing quite a lot of work. We were speaking earlier via email and you mentioned that you've got multiple deadlines coming up. I know that working in the arts can be often very incredibly challenging. There's things like creative burnout, fatigue, the balancing act of having different jobs, precarity of course. I guess my next question I'd love to ask is what nourishes or sustains you? Sophia Cai: That's such a good question. I think it's quite hard to answer. I've been having this conversation with burnout with a few of my peers who, like me, I think have now maybe been in the industry a bit long enough to have seen a lot of that exploitation, but endless work ethic and grind. Sophia Cai: Actually, I wrote an article earlier this year for Art Guide called Burnt Out Culture that was a reflection on particularly creative burnout within the arts and this idea of this exploitation of the self that we do because we are so emotionally invested in our work that it becomes very hard to say no, I guess. Sophia Cai: Also, we blame ourselves if things don't work out or something like that because of that... But then in the article, I kind of spoke about it, not as something we should put the blame on us, but really recognising that we're working within a structure that doesn't really value creative labor enough. Sophia Cai: I kind of wrote that thinking about once again, Sophia, you should listen to your own advice and say no more. That's really the solution, I think, in terms of sustaining yourself. Sophia Cai: In terms of your question about nourishing, and I'm very lucky to live a partner who I love very much and two amazing greyhounds. So I have my family and they ground me. They make me feel seen in a way that isn't linked to my output. Sophia Cai: I think that's something that's shifted in my thinking where my value, while I can be proud of what the work that I do and really put a lot of care into what I put out into the world in that respect, my value as a person does not stem from that either. That maybe is a reminder for myself on days when I do feel that endless grind or the fatigue. It's so incredibly difficult for artists or freelance workers just to make ends meet, I guess. That's why we often are in these positions where it's hard to say no. Leya Reid: It's very difficult to say no, but very important. Especially saying no to unpaid work where you're being paid in the dirty word of exposure. Sophia Cai: I was saying to my partner the other day, I was saying to him the only way I think we can really address inequity in the arts is to actually just have a basic universal income because of the- Leya Reid: Oh, interesting. Sophia Cai: Actually, I'd love to talk to you more about this since this seems to be some of work that you are working in as well. But I think, maybe we focus so much on the output aspect of creative practice. We don't actually think about things that are necessary for that kind of thrive and survive, you know? Leya Reid: Yeah, totally. We don't have an official position on the universal basic income, but it is something that we have been discussing a lot recently because there are lots of people in the arts that do support it. I obviously have my personal opinions about it. It does seem like a very good step in terms of addressing the impacts of COVID-19 and other emergencies, which is obviously mostly having one of the biggest impacts on artists that we've seen in a long time. Leya Reid: But I will just go back to some of the topics we were talking about. This is a question that came up when I was reading a lot of your work was that I believe that cultural safety is something that's closely connected to health and wellbeing. I do understand that you're currently working on a second reiteration of a group exhibition that you originally curated in 2018 called Disobedient Daughters. In relation to this project about to launch, well, I guess in 2021, what are the kinds of conversations that are being heard around cultural safety in the communities that you work and engage with? Sophia Cai: I think that's such a tricky question as well because what my be cultural safety to one person might not be the same to another. I think about this in terms of what kind of values or working kind of relationships I can maintain. Sophia Cai: There's this kind of power dynamic between artists and curators inevitably because you are working in a capacity where you are... Also, curating is also a form of gate keeping as well in terms of who is shown and who is not shown. The visibility, the politics of that, it's really deeply ingrained and, I guess, that as a kind of form of work. Sophia Cai: But in terms of cultural safety, I think for me, it comes down to agency and it comes down to offering artists or those that I work with the platform slash space to really show up for their full selves or whatever they want to be. Sophia Cai: The way I work, sometimes I feel like I don't really give people that many directions. It's more like this is a framework, how do you want to respond within that. I'm also really aware that I am limited in terms of my lived experience. So I will not be able to know what somebody else's experience might be or what their notions of cultural safety might be. Sophia Cai: But speaking to Disobedient Daughters. In 2018, this was a group show that I curated in Brisbane at Metro Art. Basically, it was looking at stereotypical images of Asian women in a global context, a lot of photo media and video and photography works predominantly. Sophia Cai: For the second iteration in 2021. I see it not as the same show, but as almost like a continuation of that same thinking. The main shift with this, I guess, iteration is that there's a publication outcome. As part of that, I've invited 10 writers to respond directly to the artists in the show. It's like pairing them up one by one. Sophia Cai: The brief was very open. It was like, you don't have to write a curatorial [inaudible 00:00:14:19]. You don't even have to write about the work. I want you a voice in it. I try to think about potential connections, I guess, between writers and artists, but also really wanting to leave that up to interpretation. Sophia Cai: I'm in the process now of editing them, which is why I've been saying to you, I have a lot of work on my plate there. It's been really wonderful to see the responses that have come in. I'm really blown away by the diversity of, I guess, the format like this poems and personal essays, but also I guess more. Sophia Cai: I think for me what's more important is that if I'm working in collaboration with an artist or a writer, that they feel like they can really do what they want within their project space, I guess. Maybe that's a way of ensuring cultural safety, but also maybe having clear boundaries about what's acceptable and what's not. Sophia Cai: But I feel like at this point, people who hire me know what I'm about. So maybe I guess I'm quite firm with my values. I try to be. I try to put that care into my work. But whether that's always a success or not is up for debate, but it's an ongoing process. Leya Reid: Yeah, totally. I think it's really important, but in a very interesting conversation, because I feel like best practice around cultural safety, there hasn't been enough research into it. So there's no way of really determining the best approach to it. Leya Reid: Do you know if these sorts of conversations are happening in, I guess, the curator community that you engage with? Do you know if other people are having these conversations and if they talk about the different approaches that they work with? Sophia Cai: Yeah, I think so. I think working as a person of colour in the arts in Australia. There's two things that you're dealing with at once. One hand, there is the work that does nourish me, which is the solidarity with your peers. Sophia Cai: Then making a project like Disobedient Daughters is very much led by our community, I guess. It's about that. Then on the other hand, there's the grappling with institutional powers or with whiteness. So whatever you want to call it or the status quo. Sophia Cai: So I think the way that we practice cultural safety is going to look different depending on which context you're working in and who you're working with. I think it's completely fine for... I don't know, I think that conversation is very nuanced because there's also things like lateral violence and things like that that can happen within communities as well. Sophia Cai: I'm not really sure where I'm going with this. I guess my answer to your question is, yeah, you're right. It's very nuanced. It's like anti-racism work. There isn't a one size fits all approach. Maybe the way we think about it is that the multitude of approaches, different ways to tackle this one thing. Sophia Cai: I am very conscious about how my goals might be different or how I might center or decenter certain values or voices from my work, depending on trying to match to those goals, I guess. Leya Reid: Yeah, totally. Well, I guess it's such an important conversation to have and hopefully to spark a whole bunch of new conversations around this. Hopefully, we will see a lot more research into it so that, for example, NAVA can look into having those sort of examples of these approaches in our code of practice as just one example. Leya Reid: I guess now that we are talking about anti-racism in the arts, I do sort of want to flip it because when we talk about anti-racism, we focus on topics such as cultural diversity, identity, and we very rarely discuss the importance of joy in our work, something that I am personally very guilty of myself. So Sophia, I'd love to know how do you infuse your creative practice with what makes you happy? Sophia Cai: Thank you for putting this question in. I feel like even the fact that we talked about this in our initial exchange and we both felt like it'd be really nice to flip that conversation because so often it is framed around trauma or it's framed around identity or these things that are very important and valid. But if that's all we see, it's really heavy, I think, on the people who I guess doing that work to continuously perform that in a way. Sophia Cai: So thank you for hearing me and putting this question in, because I think this is a really important part of the anti-racism work that... I guess the thing is it's interesting because I feel like when people think about my work, they don't really know where to put me because I do do shows like Disobedient Daughters, and then I do a show about dog and then I do a show about kind of artistic labor and money. Then I do a show about BTS. Sophia Cai: But to me, that seems to be a genuine way in which I make sense of the world or ideas through art, I guess. I feel like the way we talk about race in the arts in Australia, it's still so often centered on this idea of diversity. I think that word or this idea of representation, I think those words on their own don't really do enough because it's basically boxing you in or putting you in a place as you are this diverse thing or [inaudible 00:19:45] person rather. Sorry. Sophia Cai: So I've been trying to think more about how I can find joy in my work and that might mean leaning into my nerdy hobbies, leaning into non-arts spaces as well, like fandom or I also knit a lot, so knitting. Just bringing all of that into my work. Sophia Cai: I guess in terms of what makes me happy, it changes because it's a constantly evolving set of interests. I think I have quite an obsessive personality and I joke to people that once I'm into something two years later, there'll be a show about it. Actually, so far it's happened. I adopted a dog and then a year later, Kathleen Linn and I curated a show about dogs. Leya Reid: I actually do want to hear more about this dog show. Sophia Cai: It was fantastic. It was called Every Dog Will Have Its Day. it was like a tour powerhouse in 2017, I think. It was really fun to work on that show with Kathleen who's a dear friend of mine, but also we wanted to collaborate together. Sophia Cai: What I remember about that was also the opening and the public programs. We had a dog-friendly opening. So the artists who had dogs brought them to the opening. The gallery decided to have a hotdog stand, which I thought was kind of funny. Vegan hot dogs? Leya Reid: Oh, okay. I was like, bit cannibalistic. Sophia Cai: I just remembered one of the funniest things I had to do so far in my curatorial career is write a list of guidelines for dogs entering the gallery. Leya Reid: What are the guidelines? Sophia Cai: If you were in the gallery, not outside the building, but in the building, only five dogs at a time and they had to be on leashes and you have to clean up after your dog. Which I thought it was very reasonable. Any dog owner would be okay with that. Leya Reid: Yeah, general guidelines for how to own a dog. Sophia Cai: Yeah. So that was a really fun show. Then recently, I've been obsessed with this K-pop group called BTS. I recently curated a show that took a song of theirs as the title inspiration and explored themes to do with maybe a more optimistic exhibition in terms of thinking about lockdown in time and what do we want in a future that hasn't come yet. Sophia Cai: I think that's been one way that I've been able to try and sustain some of that joy because I think the anti-racism work while really important, it has also brought up a lot of traumas and triggers for me. It's also hard to grapple with, I guess, not wanting to put yourself into a label or a box. Sophia Cai: I'm always really happy when people reach out to me, to work with me in any capacity. But I do want to, I guess, think more now about what kind of work I'm doing and whether it's helpful for either myself or for the work I want to do or whether it's going to change something or, I guess, thinking about that a bit more critically as well. Leya Reid: Yeah, totally. I think as well when people want to hire you and they see that you're not white, there's almost an expectation that you are going to bring your commentary on culture or race or structures and that sort of thing. It's very rarely are you asked to just bring your opinions, your interests, your quirks, all the things that make you unique, not just perhaps where your parents were born or whatever reason. So that's absolutely lovely that what makes you happy is working on projects that don't necessarily have to relate to anti-racism, but in a way, making its own comments on that. Sophia Cai: Yeah. I actually had a conversation this week with my students about a similar topic, because this week's class was actually very timely. This week's class was delivered by Andy Butler and he spoke about institutional whiteness change within museums and galleries. Sophia Cai: With my students, especially when I speak to my white students, I was like, "So what does this mean for you as an artist? How do you carry this work and your practice?" A lot of my students were white was saying like, "I can't make work about these things. These are not my lived experiences." Sophia Cai: I'm like, "Yes, absolutely. You don't have to make work about it, but it can be the values that inform the way you make your work." So if you're in an exhibition space, have a look at who else is exhibiting alongside you. Or if you're offered an opportunity, think about who is not offered an opportunity. Sophia Cai: I think for me, the anti-racism isn't just the visible part of my output. It's also the invisible part of my labor, which is more about things like that, like decisions that I make or when I decide to call in someone for something and say, "Hey, I just want to pass on this feedback to you." That's the stuff you don't see that happens behind the scenes, I guess. Leya Reid: Yeah, totally. All part of anti-racism, it's fighting the institutional racism as well as the art that is the output. Thank you so much for that really interesting answer. Leya Reid: I am going to move to a bit of a more broad question, which should allow you to be flexible, to pick things that maybe you're passionate or interested in. But what are some of the challenges that you faced in the Australian arts landscape and what are some changes that you'd like to see? Sophia Cai: Wow. What a big question. Well, firstly, I feel like this year, in particular, it's really forced a lot of us to confront maybe some of these niggling doubts that we've had for a long time working in this industry about its elitism, its whiteness, its sexism, its exploitation. Sophia Cai: I've told to a lot of my peers about this. We are so tired, but cautiously optimistic that maybe now shit has truly hit the fan that, I don't know, maybe change is coming. I'm not sure. Sophia Cai: But without maybe going to that, I think the challenges in this industry, they're all interconnected. It's really about who has access to these spaces and who is given a platform to share their voice. Sophia Cai: I'm very institutionalised actually. I studied art history at age 18, did a master's overseas. I've worked in a lot of different institutions in Sydney, Melbourne, overseas, et cetera. If you look at my CV, it's just like a typical... Sophia Cai: So I have to also acknowledge that I'm very much entrenched within these very values and these systems as well. But I guess the things that I've grappled with throughout my career, it's tricky because when you work for the world as a woman of colour and you experience certain things, you don't know whether it's you, whether it's racism or whether it's sexism or whether it's something else. Sophia Cai: Over time, experiences start to connect in my head, like being passed over for opportunities for a man who's less qualified than me. Or sitting in the audience of a panel that's about feminism and all the speakers are white. Sophia Cai: These things are small things really. But then over time, I guess they make a picture of what kind of industry this is. I think in Australia we have so much more work to do in terms of really building genuine relationships with both first nations people and also people of colour. That is also like a bigger conversation as well to be had. Sophia Cai: So these are ongoing things. Then the other issue is also of course, to do with the exploitation and burnout and mental health. But they're all interconnected, which is why I said earlier, basic universal income might be a solution to a lot of these. Because it's really about access, I guess. Sophia Cai: I don't know. I feel like I just went off on a wild tangent there. Leya Reid: No, lots of interesting things to think about there. Thank you so much for your response. I guess just as a last, very fun question, Sophia, are there any books that you've been reading recently, any fun things that have caught your attention? Sophia Cai: I've actually become obsessed with this book that I recently read by an academic called Silvia Federici called Witches, Witch Hunting and Women. Have you heard of it? Leya Reid: Oh my gosh. Yes. Sitting in my bookshelf and it's the next one that I want to read. Sophia Cai: It's so good. Leya Reid: It's a thin one, isn't it? Sophia Cai: Yeah. I finished it in one day. You can definitely go through it really quick. I'd never heard about this author's work before, but I was actually- Leya Reid: She's great. Sophia Cai: I actually came to her book because my friend, we're in Melbourne lockdown, so we can't really see anybody. My friend and I, we sent each other a book in the post recently. She sent me that one and then I sent her one that was a memoir by Ariel Gore called something about witches as well. So we like witches book. Leya Reid: Oh good. Sophia Cai: Yeah. Leya Reid: Silvia Federici, she's this old school, Italian, feminist and socialist. She's really radical. She has really amazing things to say about women and unpaid labor. What does this book cover? Sophia Cai: Well, I think it's like a collection of different essays that she's written. And even though she's academic and she writes some of them with them quite academically, I found them really accessible and really easy to read. And because it's a collection of essays, it's on different things. One of the essays was about the idea of the gossip and the history of that word and what that means. Sophia Cai: But I think that thing that really changed my thinking in her book was the connection between capitalism or the beginnings of capitalism with witch hunting. Basically, it just blew my mind in terms of all these things being connected. Sophia Cai: Now, knowing me and turning anything I get obsessed into into a project. What's next? I think this book really was quite eye-opening in terms of thinking about the continuing history of how women, I guess effectively which hunted, for various reasons just because of the fact that society wants or doesn't want something from them. Sophia Cai: That is an ongoing, drew on that historical context and knowledge and then also applied it more contemporary things and thinking. She also made me rethink about some of these things about, for example, I visited Salem as a tourist in the US. At the time, I was so excited to go and get into the witchy paraphernalia and all of that. Then in the book, she was talking about how problematic it is that we are consuming these objects, these pop objects, I guess. But really so many people died because of the witch hunts. Sophia Cai: That really made me rethink a little bit, because I feel like there is a kind of easy pop feminism sensibility to witchcraft or thinking about witchcraft. This book really pushed me past that point into thinking about it really critically and thinking about these connections I had in me before. But in the book, there's more. It's incredible. I am raving about it because it's great and you should definitely read it. I'm excited to hear what you think. Leya Reid: Yes, it's next on my list. I'm so excited to read it and such a coincidence that I actually did have it on my list. Honestly, thank you so much for sharing your thoughts, your knowledge, your ideas, your research with our listeners. I know that our conversation today has given me a lot to reflect on both in my work with NAVA or in the art sector generally and, I guess, more broadly in my life. So thank you Sophia so much for your time. Sophia Cai: Pleasure. Thank you so much for having me. NAVA: Head to our website, visualarts.net.au for more information on NAVA's advocacy and campaigns for improving the working environment for Australian artists and arts organisations.