We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Nadia Tahoun a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Nadia , thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. What’s been the most meaningful project you’ve worked on?

There are two projects I consider to be the most meaningful for me: the work we do at Flower Shop Collective and my personal creative practice, which I rekindled last year. The support and community we have cultivated at our collective has inspired me to create again. I spent so much of my time and energy building up Flower Shop Collective that I completely neglected my personal practice, so I am excited to be back in the studio.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

I have quite a few hats that I wear! I am a producer, curator, artist advocate, founder and artist. I am the founder of Flower Shop Collective (FSC), a Brooklyn-based art studio + educational hub that cultivates the ideas of emerging artists working towards more equitable futures. We offer membership-based studio access and other artist-tailored services with a focus on Black, Brown, Indigenous, minority ethnic, and immigrant artists. We remain in service to artists of color, and we remain determined to cultivate stories of diaspora and home, wherever home may be.

Something I am working on currently is a project entitled, “there are many ways to be silent” which is an ongoing project that explores grief as data and collects both my own and others’ grief, resulting in a piece that becomes a collaborative creation between me and the audience. I premiered it this past year at Focus Art Fair in New York City.

Do you think there is something that non-creatives might struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can shed some light?

First, I will say that I believe all humans are inherently creative. We have told stories since the beginning. So, I don’t believe in the term non-creative. What I will say about being an artist within capitalism is that it is incredibly nuanced. There are so many ways that inequity seeps into our field. For example, low paying jobs that require master degrees create a structure where those with generational wealth tend to thrive within the art field.

I consider that those of us in the art world are cultural workers, and if the culture we operate in is mostly white and wealthy then immense erasure occurs. So I would say that my journey as an artist and as an artist advocate is something I am drawn to on a deep and personal level— to me this is not just my job within the system but a way I can cope and understand my past, present and future.

What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?

I want to uplift myself and my peers. A majority of my work is a coping mechanism. It is what I am most interested in. How can I cope? How do you cope? What are the differences and similarities there? There is a quote by Miranda July that I absolutely love about her process. She says, “all I ever really want to know is how other people are making it through life—where do they put their body, hour by hour, and how do they cope inside of it”. That is exactly how I feel too. Life is messy and hard and I no longer pretend that everything is okay all the time. I have had to let that part of me go, to get anywhere good.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.flowershopcollective.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tahoun/
• Other: https://howtodismantleapomegranate.substack.com/

Image Credits
Flower Shop Collective