July 2021 Artist in Residency: Vikesh Kapoor
Our second resident at the lab is Vikesh Kapoor! We sat down with him to discuss his practice, influences, and what he hopes to accomplish during their month long residency.
Q & A
Interviewed by Lucy McDonald
At what point did you start making work about your family? What interested you about working with personal narrative?
I started making work about my family during a trip to India with my father -- fifteen years ago. I hadn’t been since I was a child, and it was my father’s first time in sixteen years. It was an important for both of us. Notions of family, identity and personal history were born out of that trip and continue to permeate my work up to the present.
These themes are complex, especially as a first-generation American. Often I’m making work as a way to understand place, the South Asian immigrant experience, family trauma and aging. So, personal narrative allows me to break free from a traditional documentary practice and make photographs that are more allegorical. These are the most interesting images to make because they allow me to explore and uncover many of the quiet, slippery and emotionally-based themes of my experience.
My first body of work, See You at Home, works with all of this in mind.
How do you approach working from a family archive? What are some challenges or surprises that arise during that process?
It’s intuitive -- if an archival image intrigues me, I’ll try to find a way to work it into the project. But I’m still in the early phase of working with family archive.
Last year I was an artist-in-resident at Center of Photography for Woodstock. Before I began, I stopped in Pennsylvania to grab every single family album along with boxes of photographs that were in no particular order. The bulk of my residency at CPW was spent going through these, scanning things, and considering the ways in which they can create dialogues with the photographs I’ve made.
The most exciting moment during that process was discovering an image of my father floating in our swimming pool, twenty years earlier than one of the leading images from See You at Home.* The similarity of blues and reds in both photographs was kind of eerie. Then you consider the obvious juxtaposition: the archival photograph shows him younger, floating in a clean pool, smiling in his swim shorts. In contrast, the contemporary image shows him older, standing in a deteriorating pool in his winter hat, gloves and bathrobe.
This was all very exciting because I had never seen the old image before making my own! These resonances tell me that I’m following the right path.
I also discovered an image of one of my aunties, wearing a silk sari, while flipping burgers on the grill. It’s an amazing image.
Where do you feel most at home?
My adult life has consisted of traveling as a songwriter to perform concerts around the world, and since focusing on photography the last few years, I still find myself looking for ways to travel, whether for workshops, festivals or residencies. Home is nowhere specific -- and I think many first-generation
Americans struggle with this -- a foot in each culture. It’s confusing. Perhaps working through this project will bring me closer to defining what home is for me.
You grew up in a small area of Pennsylvania. Is there anything you miss about that now that you’re living in LA?
Through the years I always miss my family and the smell of the woods.
How would you describe the photo community in LA?
I’ve built a small community through volunteering at our own non-profit photo center, Los Angeles Center for Photography. There I’ve had the opportunity to assist amazing photographers and mentors like Aline Smithson, Richard Renaldi, Miranda Penn-Turin, and Gus Powell. It’s been great.
Whose work do you most look up to?
The poet Philip Levine is a mainstay for me. Nine Simone and Bob Dylan. Leonard Cohen and Milton Avery. I love the photographic work of Weston, Soth and Carolyn Drake. For photographic books: Hidden Islam by Nicolo Degiorgis hits all the right notes.
Here’s a stunner of a poem from Levine.
What will you be working on during your residency at LATITUDE?
I’ll be completing a set of artist proofs for See You at Home, a few prints for acquisitions that have been made, and a limited-edition exhibition in a box that can be used for education in universities.
What are you currently reading, watching, listening to?
Listening: Joan Armatrading, Twain, Boyz II Men
Reading: Mary Ruefle’s erasure poems
Watching: Anne with an E
Who does your hair?
Mostly the bed, sometimes the wind
Besides coming to LATITUDE, what are you most excited about doing while you’re in Chicago?
I haven’t been to Chicago since performing at Schuba’s many years ago. I’m really looking forward to visiting the Poetry Foundation, Filter Photo and museums.
