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Fm: There is a violence that permeates throughout The Nincompoop series that didn’t exist in your earlier works. How would you speak to that suggestion of physical violence within this work? Does it actually exist or am I imagining it?
KN: Really, violence? Can you tell me which pieces you think reflect that?
Fm: Well, almost all of the images in The Nincompoop series! There is an angry, violent edge to that series. Was that intentional as well?
KN: Oh definitely, I thought you meant the latest works. I wanted the drawings from The Nincompoop series to almost look like battle scenes.
Fm: Well I definitely think you’re successful there.
KN: Oh good! Yeah, I liked the idea of transforming the feeling of helplessness. I always felt surrounded, even cornered when I was younger. So a lot of the grabbing and pulling you see reflects those feelings but also the pushing back. I wanted to exploit the idea of being bullied but taking it to a more sophisticated level by creating the Super Senses Stalkers who are the bullies. Even the characters’ name, which if abbreviated, are a series of “S’ that represent a hissing sound. I wanted to make it as believe as possible for the audience as it was for me. I wanted people to be able to see that there was a deeply felt terror that I experienced. So basically this entire series represents what I was feeling that couldn’t be seen and wasn’t tangible, but in my mind it was all real and convincing. It turned into representation of what I was fighting everyday that nobody else could see, hear, smell, taste, or feel.
Fm: Nor would they want to! If this is what was going on in your mind…
KN: (laughs) Yeah and thank god it doesn’t happen anymore.
Fm: Oh really?
KN: I don’t consider myself to have the disorder anymore, which is the first time I’ve ever said that out loud. I think I’ve pretty much overcome it. A lot of the things I used to do to protect myself from people I don’t do anymore. I certainly don’t feel like an outsider anymore or a minority.
Fm: Well you live in the greatest, most diverse city in the world so that probably helps.
KN: (Laughs) Yeah.
Fm: If that’s the case, that you’ve overcome your Social Anxiety Disorder, how do you think it has changed you – artistically?
KN: One of the questions I was asked when I was leaving grad school was now that I seem to be all better will I stop making artwork? What will I make work about now?
I’m still the same person, unfortunately, deep down inside. It leaves a scar. It never goes away. It’s something that is still a part of me that shaped how and what I am, but now I feel I have harnessed it. In my works within The Nincompoop series and my earlier works, I am sharing my mind and body’s history concerning my social life growing up. In my newer works such as, What Is Mine Is Yours And What Is Yours Is Mine, I am beginning to showcase my mind and body’s history concerning my sexual life and my personal phenomenons with sex and sexual relationships.
Maybe when I was creating the earlier works I was returning to the life of what I perceived to be my childhood life during my teen years, and now I am representing an adulthood life, making notes and observing that and translating it into metaphor. I generally make work about stages or stories of my life that have passed.
Fm: Do you mean you are now commenting on becoming an adult in a generalized way or specifically about being an adult woman?
KN: That’s a really good question, I think….
Fm: You’re all grown up now?
KN: (Laughing) No. I think it’s more about observing the body in a different way. It’s not necessarily about becoming a woman, less about gender and more about people.
Fm: Your work has always been highly psychological…
KN: …and autobiographical.
Fm: Yes, that as well, but it seems like you have managed to remove yourself from your current work. You, and what you’re feeling, aren’t necessarily the focus anymore. Do you believe that to be true?
KN: That’s interesting because I just dedicated a piece to my best friend who just lost her husband and it is all about her. I don’t know when I’ve ever done that before so maybe you’re right, maybe I am moving toward becoming an observer of other people’s experiences instead of focusing on my own.
I think it’s become more evened out maybe. Even when borrowing from other people’s behaviors or happenings, interpreting them and creating metaphors from them, I always relate them back to myself, and what I’m experiencing, or interpreting them through my own experiences. Besides it is always about people I know and love or hate, which goes right back to the autobiography. It’s all the things I talk about in my work: life, death, sex, what it all means, personality, energy, all that stuff; we all go through similar, if not the exact same things, but because of the details of your life in connection to the cosmos, because you are the only one of you, that’s what makes it unique. I hope that when people see my work that they can make the connection – that what I am commenting on is something they have experienced as well, and maybe upon viewing my work one will feel relieved they are not alone with their depressed, dark, dirty, and despicable side.
Fm: Let’s talk about life after grad school: You seem to have had some pretty decent success in New York City with obtaining residencies and getting into some group shows. But one of the ideas that was drilled into us as graduate students was that obtaining a tenure track position at any university is the yardstick by which we measure our post graduate success. Is that something you buy into or want to pursue?
KN: Oh my god! Yes! I had a teaching job in the city a couple years ago that was amazing. I loved it. It ended up that I couldn’t become full-time. I was working two other jobs at the same time. I couldn’t afford to take on teaching full-time because it didn’t pay. I had to go back to waitressing because I made more money. But my dream for my adult-life job, and would love to do, is to teach full-time, university level of course. When it comes down to it though, you know, I’m not going to get a job at NYU or Yale. So I am going to approach the community college angle I think.
Fm: You know you may have to move out of NYC to get a decent job with benefits. Are you willing to do it?
KN: I don’t know. It depends on where we end up.
Fm: O.k. Final question: What if you were offered a tenure track position, in say, Green Bay, Michigan (It’s very, very cold there!), would you take it?
KN: Yeah, you know what, I would take it. Honestly I feel like if you’re offered it, and especially because we’re so young, I think I would take it just for the experience. But it would be very hard to leave New York City because I love it here so much.
Fm: Kymia thank you for participating in the May/June edition of FLABmag. Good luck to you.
KN: Thank you Maria.
Kymia in NYC / Photo courtesy: Devin Yalkin
Biography:
Kymia Nawabi is a first-generation Iranian-American born in San Diego, CA and raised in Durham, NC. Nawabi is a multi-disciplinary artist working in drawing, painting, sculpture and stop-motion animation. She received her MFA (2006) in drawing and painting from the University of Florida, and her BFA (2003) in drawing and painting from East Carolina University.
Nawabi was recently invited as a visiting artist in support of her work in the group show, Tragic Sense of Life, at The Fine Arts Gallery of Westchester Community College, in Valhalla, NY. In 2009, her work was also exhibited at the Queens Museum International Biennial, as well as at Aljira during her Emerge Residency in Newark, NJ. Kymia also received a New York Foundation for the Arts grant for drawing and was awarded her second Swing Space Residency with the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council last year. A selection of her drawings can be seen at the Drawing Center’s Viewing Program in NYC.
She currently lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.
For more information please visit www.kymianawabi.com.
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