Janelle Iglesias on Art Identity and Collaboration

So, in terms of maybe like topically what you're addressing in your art, how do you sort of look at our current social climate and translate that into a reaction in art?

Yeah.

You know, so much is happening right now so fast.

There's been just the speed in which current events are changing, and both both simultaneously kind of acute crises and long-term kind of chronic crises within our culture that are happening.

So I'm thinking about climate change, right? And sort of environmental destruction and the kind of overall sense of that, but things like the LA fires, you know, and these, you know, specific kinds of storms that are impacting people, right? So we have both these kind of like ongoing things, but also these acute instances happening.

And then right now with ice raids, which I really think are, you know, kind of, we're having this moment in time where Our neighbors are being attacked and sent to detention.

And we have, it's just sort of an unprecedented time of also cultural clash happening within the country.

And there's been, the war in Gaza, there's been so much happening all at once and such a huge sense, I think, for so many people of what do we do? How do we rise to this moment? How do we, how can we contribute? But we're also coming out of the pandemic, you know, we're coming out of this really huge like disconnection with each other as well.

And so, I think in the during COVID and like 2020 was also when I had my son and was becoming a mother and really thinking about also labor and thinking about that literally in terms of giving birth to children but also thinking about labors of care.

essential labor with the pandemic, thinking about also essential labor in terms of who's doing what work where and whose work is valued and who is valued and who is forgotten, whose lives are maybe considered more important than others.

The 2020, you know, kind of that realm of the pandemic, I feel like opened up both and kind of highlighted these different kinds of cracks within our cultural systems, but also as a time where I was becoming a mother and really some of those systems were really becoming highlighted for me in particular.

And so, the most recent work that I've been making with my sister are really around care and thinking about how we can sort of form new connections with each other to care for each other and what that might look like in different ways.

And so, we've seen such a huge rise in kind of grassroots community groups coming together through mutual aid.

through, you know, in order to help each other, and so really thinking about how to contribute to that conversation, and also about all of the sort of overwhelm that many of us are feeling at this moment, too, and questions about how we can contribute, and feeling at times like our hands are tied, or feeling like our stomach is in knots or not quite knowing what to do next.

So I feel like the work that I've been making in the studio by myself and also with my sisters is very entangled with both a sense of hope and hopelessness, you know, like the times that we're feeling like we don't quite know what to do and don't know how to reach out to other people, but also a sense of hope and hopefulness and trying to get through that and over that towards a sense of extending our arms and hands towards one another and working together towards a more equitable and just future.

There's been such a rise in authoritarianism around the globe And so a lot of it is also trying to find ways to not necessarily yield to those forces, but to also be as open about all the injustices that I'm sensing and feeling and witnessing around me and let those things shape the work that I'm making and simultaneously also try to be true to like kind of the emotional toll and the day-to-day activities of You know, sort of like checking the news, but then trying to figure out what to make for dinner, and you know, trying to figure out the right organization to funnel and support, and then trying to figure out how to figure out a carpool, and you know, all of those things all at once.

Yeah, I don't know if that quite answers the question, but there's so much happening all at once that I feel like a lot of those entangled threads of all of our kind of chronic and acute crises are actually very connected and something that I think that we can do as artists are sort of build those connections between things and also build those connections between each other so that we look at these things not as completely separate things that don't affect us or only that one does or only this one does, but think about those things and how they are all affecting us and all connected and also really build up that sense of connection towards each other as well.