We were lucky to catch up with Nature Shankar recently and have shared our conversation below.

Nature, appreciate you joining us today. Did you always know you wanted to pursue a creative or artistic career? When did you first know?

I kind of just fell into it. Everyone around me when I was in art school (including the professors) believed that an art career was a joke. Safe to say, I wasn’t in a very well developed program at the time. We never learnt about art history or appropriate material use––which in hindsight has been a blessing, because it is why I experiment and go about things in a makeshift manner (in other words, fuck around and find out type of manner). But I digress, despite an institutional education that hindered my practice more than it supported it, I somehow just moved along with a sense of naivety. The same naivety I had as a kid rubbing rocks into paper. And one day, that naivety grew into a practice and led me to get to know other creatives. I found community that valued the arts and the work they did. My professors’ chip on the shoulder attitude long buffed out from my psyche as I watched my peers grow their practice. It was inspiring. I was well out of art school in Singapore when I decided to pursue an artistic path professionally. And it was all thanks to the artist community that kept making, exploring and sharing their work.

Nature, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I am Nature Shankar, a Singaporean artist based in Brooklyn, New York. I have exhibited internationally such as at Gajah Gallery (Yogyakarta), The Esplanade (Singapore), Art Fair Philippines and Singapore Art Week; and have participated in residencies internationally such as: ChaNorth by ChaShama (NYC), OH! Open House (Singapore) and Studio Batur (Bandung, Indonesia). My most recent presentations include The Managed Heart at NTU ADM Gallery (Singapore) and Cartier: Celebrating Art Patrons Dinner with Yeo Workshop (Singapore). In the Summer, I will be starting a residency at the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council’s (LMCC) Arts Center on Governors’ Island.

A brief overview of my practice: My practice builds upon the belief that the body holds historic memory (ancestral, generational, personal). And, that the overarching experiences embedded in it consistently shape and re-shape the framework we build our sense of self and meaning-making narratives upon. I attempt to exercise agency over this framework by reclaiming embodied memory through my making process. Thus, I adopt touch-heavy/bodily craft-oriented techniques and materials – predominantly paper-making with paper and fabric, as well as embroidery – to reacquaint the self with the body as a cognizant entity that mediates our experiences. My experimentally driven process is an amalgamation of material manipulation and mark-making techniques that come together in the spirit of construction and destruction. From a more friction-full, intense: pulping, ripping, scratching, digging, rubbing, scorching, piercing; to a friction-less, meditative: embroidering, painting, tracing, drawing, dyeing, collaging. Each stage of marking initiates an intimate transformation. Stains, residues, scars and fragments find each other to merge and mend over undefined periods of time, where narratives and meaning simmer to the surface.

How I got into being an artist? I’ve been drawing and doing D-I-Y things since I can remember. I was lucky to have a childhood that valued experimentation and working with my hands – in most part it was probably due to me being an only child and having to entertain myself most of the time. I think I spent most of my days ‘foraging’ alone, not for anything in particular but as a ‘getting to know things around me’ type of exercise. I’d watch how the asphalt reacted to a stay cat’s paw prints, the texture of the catepillars skin, spread soil on different surfaces, rummage the kitchen just to rub different herbs around, dig into the closest to grab scarves to make into a skirt or to just feel. Everything was very tactile since I can remember. Its funny to see that I am still working along the same tangent.
I took my first professional steps to being an artist by first being rejected from art school at the age of 12, swearing off art for 5 years because of that rejection, going through the Singapore education system and having a ridiculous time in Junior College where 0 learning was actually valued and so I dropped out and tried for art school again with the help of my cousin who was studying fashion at the time. I was a painting major, but I never painted. Instead, my tactile nature came back to play–I was embroidering, dyeing, pulping…experimenting.

This instinct to experiment has carried me on through my professional career. I’m most proud of not losing that instinct because it has allowed me to surprise myself even after all this time. I have been tempted to stop experimenting because producing work would be much easier on my body and spirit–but I guess its just not in my nature to go according to a plan or a pre-planned route. haha.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

As mentioned before, my entire practice revolves around experimentation. With experimentation comes collosal failures. It takes time, and lots of trial and error to figure out if something works for more than just that moment. If it lasts. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve spent months working in the studio on large scale, hand-made pieces, pulling my back, getting scratched up and they all get torn down within an hour. I’ve went from a full studio to empty walls in the matter of minutes because an experiment just isn’t going where I need it to go.

It has taken a lot out of me to not just give up each time this happens. I’ve since started to view it as a rite of passage each time I start a new series, without it I wouldn’t have scraps to stitch together, new surfaces to unfurl or the intimate engagement with my body, hands, mind. The push and pull, tension with the material and my embodiment, that lulls me into a creative flow. Its hard, and sometime’s I hate it. But I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Is there mission driving your creative journey?

I am driven by the desire to know more about all of this–existing–beyond the overarching narratives we have now that are shaped by pre-existing structures. To pick apart the things we think we know. With a practice that has no pre-existing map, I get to find out/learn something new everyday, it expands my way of seeing beyond the surface and I enjoy that the most. I am informed by craft theory, embodiment theory, methods of placing the self (philosophical physics, eastern philosophy, Southeast Asian belief/myths and conspiracy theories) and the desire to weed out and decenter patriarchal and colonial ways of viewing existence. So, I guess I could say that is the goal. To try to see a bit beyond–to see the past with the present.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://foundwork.art/artists/natureshankar
• Instagram: @softslabs

Image Credits
2nd, 4th, 5th, 7th photos are credited to Frederico Savini. Rest of the photos are credited to the artist.