Alia Shawkat has always doodled, in private. Now, she’s sharing her drawings with a live audience for the first time
Photo: Samuel Morgan Photography, courtesy of SPRING/BREAK Art Show Alia Shawkat has always doodled in private. Now, she’s sharing her drawings with a live audience for the first time. In Los Angeles this week, her debut solo show opens at SPRING/BREAK — the oddball kid sibling to the glitzier, blue-chip Frieze Art Fair.
I don’t usually start right away. It takes a second of either smoking cigarettes or thinking about smoking cigarettes and then plugging my phone into the speaker and dancing. I’ve been listening to this guy Syl Johnson, who recently passed away. His music is kind of bluesy. Also a little bit of cleaning always helps; it’s a good transition.Every place felt too big or too small or too industrial.
I went on a trip to Italy — and my partner and I would go into every church. We were really into the crazy weird murals in these small medieval towns. They’re so allegorical. There are drawings that are like “here is Jesus helping people” or “here is when he got killed.” You’re overwhelmed by the craftsmanship.
I want this to feel like a real studio, so sometimes we might be eating. Sometimes we’ll be smoking a cigarette out the window. I’m not, like, faking it. I’m not pretending to be someone else. I’m gonna just be myself, but there is a performance aspect to it. Drawings might be kind of scattered, people can walk on them. The idea is that it doesn’t feel too precious. Our playlist will be reminiscent of stuff we’d listen to growing up in the desert: Sublime, Lead Belly, Mance Lipscomb.
I’m usually hesitant to use purple because it’s a hard one with other colors. Me and Maria got into picking a color for the year, like, What is gonna be my color? What does it represent or bring? Blue is definitely my last year; it’s warm and muted. And then this year, I’m going for a kind of goldish color. Yellow represents newness, something bright and fresh.I tried a nude figure-drawing class once, and I just didn’t like the teacher. He was judging a lot.
I can’t tell you for how many years I would go to galleries with my portfolio of drawings. I’d be like, “Do you want to look at my drawings?” They’d be like, “Email us,” and then never get back to me.
There’s this crazy Tarot Garden, by Niki de Saint Phalle, that I visited. She made these large-scale, building-size works you can walk inside of. I admire artists who make so many different things and yet you can still tell it’s them, you know?
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