"Art for me is a calling and not just a business" - Helina Metaferia
Since your practice often involves talking to people and going places, and ATLT’s debut billboard installation took place during the pandemic, I was wondering—did you select an artwork you'd already made, or was this something that you produced during lockdown?
HELINA METAFERIA - I adapted something that I had made the year before. I've been making this work prior to the 2020 uprisings, and so it felt like a service of my work to utilize it for social justice and art spaces and public spaces. So yeah, I've been working at the intersection of art and activism with a focus on women and non-binary people, and thinking about ways in which archival research often doesn't fully encompass our labor within activist histories. I've been working with that theme for a while, and sometimes people are into it, some people feel like it might not be a pressing issue for them. But then, timing brings the work to the surface. Luckily, the work is there and accessible and ready for those moments. I mean, we're in another moment where the question of ‘Art at a Time Like This’ is very pressing. As artists, our job is to keep making the work. And we never know when we'll be called upon, but we should always be prepared and ready.
