We recently connected with Zeinab Saab and have shared our conversation below.

Zeinab, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. We’d love to hear the backstory behind a risk you’ve taken – whether big or small, walk us through what it was like and how it ultimately turned out.

The biggest risk I have taken was choosing to be an artist. I think there doubts among many people surrounding me, but something told me that nothing else would satisfy me in life. It look a long time to get where I am at. I first started out as a photographer when I went to college. I dropped out after my first year and transferred to a community college to reassess what exactly I wanted to do with art. After I finished community college, I re-entered into a four year institution as an art education major, and two months into that I knew this isn’t exactly what I wanted to do. I remember having a conversation with a friend who started off on a similar path and decided to pursue a fine arts degree. She said, ” you’re going to pay 80k for this anyways, so why not put that money towards a risk rather than a safety net.” That statement still lives with me. After graduating with a BFA I ended in Chicago working in a Mortgage Finance company of all places, and of course knew that this wasn’t for me either. After a year of doing that, I decided to go back to school and pursue an MFA, and that felt more like a risk than my BFA for some reason, but knowing that it was a risk going back for another three years was my biggest motivation; that I needed to really set myself up for something big better after this chapter in my life. I am so grateful that I took that risk, because today I’m a gallery director and full time professor at Portland Community College, and still working full time as an artist, receiving opportunities I never thought would be given to me.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I got into the position as a professor back on 2019, right after graduating with my MFA. I did not expect such a big life shift so quickly after graduating, but I took on the opportunity because I was fresh out of college with a lot of uncertainty as to where I would be post-grad. But that’s just one role that I take on, I am also a full time visual artist exhibiting work nationally and internationally. I started to take on my career as an artist seriously once I entered graduate school. Like I had mentioned, it was a big risk for me, not know what the outcome would be, so I used those three years to apply to exhibitions, grants, residencies, etc., even if it means I would be rejected to 10 shows, I’d still see it as a win if I got into one. This was around 2016, so roughly 8 years ago. I work mostly in painting these days, but my background is in printmaking and bookmaking as well. I guess what I am most proud of is surviving this tough industry. There’s a lot of competition, and it’s not fun having to compete with fellow artist friends for opportunities, but I’ve learned that if they receive something I didn’t, that’s a win regardless. We all work so hard to get to the next step in our careers as artists, so when friends in the field get opportunities, I’m just as much excited for them as I would be for myself. There’s definitely ways you can navigate this industry without competition being your main focus. I think, if anything, creating community is more important than anything. Having people in the field support you is worth more than anything the art world can provide you.

How can we best help foster a strong, supportive environment for artists and creatives?

I think what society can do to support us as artists is to take what we do seriously and showing that by paying fairly for the labor we put into our work/practice. Art isn’t just an image on a wall, it’s a reflection mirroring back to society. Art isn’t created in a vacuum, it is in response to the world we live in. It’s a language that words can’t describe. I think about art through this lens- a language responding back to the society it is participating in.

Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can provide some insight – you never know who might benefit from the enlightenment.

I think it’s hard for non-creatives to understand that what we do is beyond monetary purposes. Is it a good feeling to sell your work to help pay for life expenses? Absolutely, but when I am making work, the last thing I am thinking about is if this will sell or will people “like it”. Artists, at least in my opinion, don’t make work for people to like, they make work that is meaningful to them and hopefully to the audience that sees the work. I know that my own family asks if I am selling any work and often I say no, and even though they are confused by my reasoning, I have learned to let that go because I know they ask from a place of love and care, and see money as the main way we can care for ourselves because that’s how capitalism operates. For myself, what we make is more than just monetary, it’s intimate, it’s personal, it’s political, and there’s no price you can put on that.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.zeinabsaab.com
• Instagram: zeinab.saab

Image Credits
Headshot- Courtesy of Agnes Fischer Smelling the Sound of Color (the large image of all the color gradients)- Image Courtesy of Noah Mateucci Can’t a Girl Just Spiral in Peace? (the green and violet spiral piece)- Image Courtesy of Filip Wolf You Wanted Femininity but All I Have is Fire (the gridded painting with the red to yellow gradient)- Image Courtesy of Filip Wolf So Happy I Could Die From this Watermelon Sugar High( the pink circles that spiral to the middle)-Image Courtesy of Filip Wolf Visual Decadence (the image with the giant grid on the wall and all of the paintings bouncing around the grid)- Images Courtesy of Noah Mateucci