Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Meesha Goldberg. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Hi Meesha , thanks for joining us today. What’s been the most meaningful project you’ve worked on?
One of my more meaningful projects was “Equilibrium Rites” in 2016, a six-woman hundred-mile walk through part of California’s blossoming million-acre almond monoculture as 80 billion bees were brought in to pollinate. My friends and I crafted this performance to bear witness to this harmful agricultural practice, speak directly to farmers and beekeepers along the long rural roads, and honor our interdependence with this precious pollinator. Dressed in golden robes in the middle of nowhere, we were a surreal sight. It was a hard five day journey but we were able to realize an artwork entangled in the world, created through the body and the land, and done with a lot of love. The project culminated in a gallery show of paintings, a short film, and photography by James Stark at The Hive Gallery in LA.
Meesha , love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
My art takes inspiration from the spirit of the land with a yearning to overwrite oppressive mythologies and expand the realm of possibility. Rooted in painting and poetry, I enjoy creating performances in the streets, fields, and commons, from where I’m able to leverage a critique of power. Endurance, transcendence, care, risk, and witness are fore fronted principles in this experimental work centered around the empowerment of the human spirit and recognition of our interdependence as part of the earth.
I come from a family of artists and am proud to carry on their traditions. As a teenager, I created art to channel personal loss and have since evolved my practice to reckon with our collective grief. Over the past thirteen years I’ve exhibited my work in over 50 shows, painted murals, offered prints, illustrated books, had my poetry published in journals and in my first chapbook “The Seed Is Waiting in the Dark”, given readings and talks, organized a symposium on the role of public art, and developed public performance artworks that insist upon the re-enchantment of the world.
I’m presently based in San Francisco and am working on a poetry performance of the Korean shamanic myth “The Abandoned Princess”, entitled “Feral Princess, Sacred Waters”, presented through the Asian Pacific Islander Cultural Center.
Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?
Since I was a child, I’ve relocated many times during and since my upbringing in New York, to writing my first poems out in the desert of New Mexico, to starting out as painter in Oregon, to taking care of cows and horses in Virginia, to my present home in San Francisco. My rootlessness has had its personal challenges but nevertheless has fine tuned the way I do find connection to the spirit of place and seek to express that relationship through my art. Sometimes I feel I can relate to a place in a fresh or strange way, and see the poetry in it out of my desire to realize my entanglement and be in community.
In your view, what can society to do to best support artists, creatives and a thriving creative ecosystem?
As NEA funding is withdrawn, as DEI programs are being outlawed, as pro-Palestine artists are being censored, and as state sanctioned patriotic cultural agendas are enacted across institutions, it is essential we act with moral courage to uphold basic humanitarian values in the cultural sphere and beyond.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.meeshagoldberg.com
- Instagram: @meeshagoldberg
Image Credits
Kori Price
James Stark
Giulia D’Agostino
Kristen Finn
Jess Walters
Robbie Trocchia