Project Spotlight: Tatiana Vahan + Los Angeles Artist Census
In the spirit of Rhizomatic Arts, TATIANA VAHAN’s art projects, which include the Los Angeles Artist Census and the bar-fund, function as community-based activism, uplifting the entire art community in which she lives and works, through projects “organized on the principles of direct action, cooperation, and self-determined power by artists. They […] create a space for local artists to work together in the spirit of mutualism and community care [and] tap what resources exist in our community, and divert them to artists.”
Tatiana Vahan in the Los Angeles Artist Census office at the ICA LA.
Tell us about your creative and/or professional practice(s). What do you do in the world?
I’m an artist and a bodyworker.
As an artist, I’m interested in looking at social and economic systems, especially within the artworld. Currently I’m focusing on the lack of infrastructure supporting the basic needs of artists. Asking questions like—Do artists have healthcare? Affordable housing? Sufficient grant opportunities? How do we realize these needs and collectively re-imagine a framework that supports us?
My work reflects my interests in how economic and cultural value are created, how these processes create systems of power and hierarchy, and how these systems affect our bodies as well as our individual and collective consciousness. As a massage therapist I think about how labor and privilege affect our mental, physical, emotional, and spiritual health.
The practice of touch and feeling in my bodywork sessions allow a break from this kind of intellectual work. It allows me to connect in a multidimensional way with the materiality of my own body and another’s. This practice connects me to the process of the sensory, something that our culture seems to be moving further and further away from, but which allows us to more deeply feel a sense of collectivity and empathy. Connecting more deeply with others, allows us to connect more deeply with ourselves. And vise versa. All of my work—massage and art—is rooted in this.
What is the Los Angeles Artist Census and how can folks get involved?
The Los Angeles Artist Census is a socially engaged, data research project that I’ve been organizing since 2018. Right now, its an online survey that will identify and map the needs of local visual artists. This will help public and private funders to know where and how to allocate funding for artists and will provide public officials with the data needed to support policies responding to artists needs. Additionally, it will provide artists, art institutions, researchers, and the public with a clearer picture of what the current Los Angeles artist community looks like.
The survey launched in February and can be taken HERE!
The Census was authored with other local artists and contains questions pertaining to employment, healthcare, housing, and debt. Issues that are unique to LA-based artists, related to adjunct teaching, “no fault” evictions, student loan debt, and studio affordability, are included. With local artists participating in all phases of the research process, we can provide data that is often overlooked or misinterpreted by the institutions that ordinarily conduct this type of research.
A report, comprehensive data table, and data visualization tool will be published online and available as a public resource for years to come.
Interpreting data into the immensely varied, real experiences of artists will require continuing to work with local artist communities. To include artists in the data interpretation process gives artists agency over the data and affirms a more accurate and nuanced read so that it reflects the array of our real world experiences. This process will occur next year, through workshops held at art spaces serving visual artist communities around Los Angeles County. Artists will be invited to work with data analysts and technologists to interpret excerpts of the data related to their art practice, personal experience, demographics, or artist community.
You can get involved with the project now, by sending the survey to your artist friends. Or you can become part of our outreach committee by emailing info@losangelesartistcensus.com.
How does your work help artists thrive and/or support one another?
The Los Angeles Artist Census follows another art project I organized called bar-fund. bar-fund was an LA-based artist grant whose funds were generated through the collective labor of local artists bartending art events throughout the city. With the help of 29 local artists, and 27 art spaces/orgs, we pooled together a total of $17,635.24 in tips and distributed 15 grants to visual artists through an open application process, from 2017 until 2019.
Both bar-fund and the Census are organized on the principles of direct action, cooperation, and self-determined power by artists. They both create a space for local artists to work together in the spirit of mutualism and community care. bar-fund and the census are attempts to figure out how to tap what resources exist in our community, and divert them to artists.
A Los Angeles Artist Census outreach team meeting.
What would a sustainable career look like for you?
I am interested horizontal organizing methods. I want to build an infrastructure with artists that allows more of us to thrive collectively, rather than just a few. That could create a sustainable career for me, and for my peers.
Last question: What do you love about Los Angeles?
I love all the creative energy in Los Angeles. I love that so many baristas, Uber drivers, bankers, massage therapists, data analysts, receptionists, electricians, waiters, farmers, tinder dates, etc, identify as artists.
