Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to SLiNK Love. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
SLiNK, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Can you tell us about a time that your work has been misunderstood? Why do you think it happened and did any interesting insights emerge from the experience?
I think being externally misunderstood/mischaracterized comes from misunderstanding yourself first. I used to get lumped into identity politics art and like re-flattened into the black woman experience ALLLLL the time, and that just is not the totality of me and has never been the sole, or even primary focus of my work. I used to get so angry about it and my work was violent, a lot of dismembered body parts and since i never used “normal” skin colors – always greens, pinks, reds, blues – I was so confused why i kept getting lumped into conversations that were too shallow for me. I realized as i got older, around 22/23, that constantly defining yourself off of what you’re not – always being rebellious – is how you re-establish whatever it is you’re challenging – you affirm it as a thing that much more. Basically I mean that the deviant and the law enforcement are forever entangled constantly creating stronger versions of the other. So i took off and left the States and immersed myself in things I couldn’t understand with my mind, and I slowly decolonized myself through rest and introspection. I’m 27 now and still working on it. I dedicated all my frustration and desire into myself – noticing everything and asking myself questions, giving myself time – like years – to answer the questions, or ask better questions that are more applicable. And i got to understand myself. Now i don’t worry about saying “no this isn’t this it’s that” because i’m simply more true to myself naturally. So what is born from me in my practice is simply more authentic and can stand on its own.
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, SLiNK love, am a daydreamer and compulsive mark maker. I’m completing my MFA this April 2024. i am a conceptual artist who works with any and all media. In 2020 i founded and became CEO of SLiNK.love LLC where i rework preexisting garments and discarded tech into size-fluctuating wearables. Although i identify as a nomad, I take great pride in my multicultural, swampy roots and channel that aesthetic into every piece/garment/writing. i am most proud of my collaborative works that have taken me around the world and provided opportunities for creatives previously excluded from the Art world. You can follow my journey and find past projects at: www.slink.love.
My art practice is concerned with personal accountability – toward collective liberation. The lowercase i is important to me and intentional because i’m very interested in reframing individuality. “I am we, we are you, you are me”. I quote a lot of Sylvia Wynter when i deep dive into academic conversations about “the overuse of Man” but this Indigenous American saying is better for this format: “Humankind has not woven the web of life. We are but one thread within it. Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves. All things are bound together. All things connect.”- Chief Seattle, Duwamish . Toxic materials are the primary medium and my experiences are the POV in my living body of work – the starting perspective not the subject matter. My subject, right now, is most easily summed up as social critique. Specifically critique of the Western thought and all its colonizing institutions. The “finished” works themselves are constantly being reworked back in and out of new projects; incorporating traditional art materials as well as the residue from the making, i.e: used cans, containers, wrappers, food stuffs, hair, fluids, loose threads, even floor glitter – aka dirt. SLiNK describes the works aesthetic as “something like a hairball” – being that the works often start off as “trauma dumps” – regurgitating events, memories, feelings, materials, and previous works. The physical material used is chosen by what’s around – something like a caddisfly. The techniques converse with Indigenous pasts and potential futures, rejecting empirical data in favor of poetry. SLiNK works with (and at) the piece, as they both (me and my work – aka SLiNK) play and struggle to balance embodying a love for creation and taking accountability for the current global crisis. i invite the viewer into the piece with small notes giving consent to touch, or little sound bites that can only be heard from a close proximity. i use mirrors to make the viewer complicit in and also part of the work – joining in my perspective(s). The work serves as ritual research into what value, use and ultimately – love – really is. SLiNK believes research is a form of love. i explore deep into my psyche while in the studio to give form and “active space” to all of me – no matter how small or contradictory. My goal with the works is to find some way to give back to the Earth of whom we’ve robbed so much – but not in a performative way. I’m uninterested in “earthy aesthetics” i dont like tie-dye and dirt collages. i love toxic shit man, like glitter for instance is WILD and it’s such an awful material harvested by small children and it’s everywhere. I want to talk about that, i want to show everyone how responsible and complicit we all are and greenwashing is just not the way.
Are there any books, videos or other content that you feel have meaningfully impacted your thinking?
absolutely! anything and everything by Audre Lorde, bell hooks, adrienne maree brown, and Legacy Russell to name just a few. There is nothing quite like Indigenous and Black knowledge. It fills a void that is pervasive in Western society and affirms that small nagging voice in you that just KNOWS – there has to be more than this Capitalism bullshit. And there is – there is SO much and it’s everywhere. These women in particular through: emergent strategies, pleasure activism, glitch feminism and the uses of the erotic have changed my life by encouraging me to follow my gut. To prioritize my healing and relationship with self, spirit and earth first and foremost. Then everything else like money and romance and friends have just fallen into place. Healing is divine like that. It’s absolutely messy and terrifying and every single bit worth it. In general, I look alot to poetry and fiction – Michelle Cliff, Octavia Butler, Tom Robbins, Kamau Brathwaite, Maya Angelou, Ursula Le Guin and Czelaw Milosz are some of my favorites and have been for a few years now because they weave so many threads together and build a world so uniquely theirs, but it’s accessible to a little swamp rat like me. I chase that feeling in my installations and event curation. The feeling of being deeply familiar yet never experienced quite like that before.
In your view, what can society to do to best support artists, creatives and a thriving creative ecosystem?
More collective introspection. I believe scarcity mentality is the largest threat to a creative ecosystem or society. Scarcity mentality is simply thinking there isn’t enough. Which is so unfounded since the Earth has always – always – provided. It is STILL providing – in spite of all of our abuse and degradation. People can have this one small idea of what it means to be creative and an uncomfortable amount of people just say stupid shit like “I’m not creative.” Which is just a pathetic lie in my opinion, and also quite selfish. You’re human – you’re creative. It’s that simple. Why would you do, not only yourself that disservice, but also your fellow humans? Holding yourself back is the selfish part to me. Creativity is boundless, even the word adds a lame bias to itself where we think being creative means “making a thing” or “from scratch”. That’s just not true. Introspection – internal listening – will reveal wonderful colors and beautiful darkness within. This color and darkness is something that unites the human species, it’s what we call consciousness. I think spending time with your consciousness and just allowing the body to safely engage with the ‘mindless’ impulses that introspection brings up – is what starts the foundation of a creative practice. Sketching starts as non-descript marks on a page, writing is the same. Singing, cooking, cleaning, dancing, laughing, breathing all of this can be cultivated into a practice. The creativity “happens” when you let go of shame and societal “shoulds”, and you allow flow. I think creativity is the amount of space you have, or capacity to experience flow. It can be developed just like any other muscle or skill. It should be developed – regardless if it’s your “profession” or whatever other bullshit category we’ve been conditioned to divide ourselves up into. Make bad and ugly things! Love them! Listen to them! Make space for them! Remove comparative and binary narratives from your primary ways of being. There’s a difference between critical thinking and judgement. Sure comparison is a useful tool but you don’t build a house with just a hammer – and even if you did, you’d have to get creative with that limitation – and thus you’ve broken out of the “traditional” hammer use. Boom. Creativity. I think if we acknowledged that everything we do is creative then we would support our dreams and goals better, and thus be more supportive of others – instead of always competing. This is the difference between Indigenous relational knowing and scarce Capitalistic thinking.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.slink.love
- Instagram: slink.love
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/slink.loveee
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/slinklove/
Image Credits
Catalogdad Hannah Grace & London team Nataly Dwyer champagne_enema