“I find the idea and study of monsters very liberating. It’s a great way to unpack and understand my own experience through a very different lens.” –Riva Lehrer
Best known for art focused on stigmatized bodies and gender representation, artist, writer, and disability activist Riva Lehrer’s upcoming solo exhibition begins Sep. 6. During the show’s run, Lehrer will be performing a public portrait studio, allowing viewers to experience the intimate exchange between artist and collaborator as they create work depicting their inner “monster selves.”
Windy City Times: Tell us about the show, “The Monster Studio,” and some of the invited collaborators.
Riva Lehrer: The show is in roughly two parts. Half of the space is going to be recent, completed work: large scale drawings, paintings, small works. One of the completed works is called “The Mutual Mirror,” and it’s a collaboration with Sky Cubacub, who is a Filipinx, queer, non-binary, disabled fashion designer that has something in Chicago called Rebirth Garments. We both work with people who undergo stigma. I do portraits and Sky creates garments that are meant to produce radical visibility. I did Sky’s portrait and the deal was that they were going to do a garment that was going to be a portrait of me.
WCT: The garment with the embroidered spine?
RL: Yes, with the embroidered spine. We just did a photoshoot that shows me in the garment. It’s pretty startling. The other side of the space is going to be a public portrait studio, like a miniature version of my studio in Uptown. [My collaborators are] a small selection of invited people – so it’s not a walk-in thing – some of which have strong connections to the field of monster theory, which I’m pretty involved with.
WCT: How does that play into this work?
RL: I’ve been thinking about what I perceive in current identity formation. A lot of the ways that we form our identity is based on what the world has done to us and to the tribe that we feel we belong to. A lot of identities have been formed that way in contemporary social structures if you’re someone who has dealt with othering, stigma, or social persecution. What I wanted to do was turn that around, turn it inside out.
WCT: Interesting.
RL: Instead of thinking about what the world has done to me, I ask myself, “What do I do to the world? What’s my effect on the world?” So, I’m asking people to think of themselves as agents, as actors—not in the theatrical sense—but acting in the world and producing change.
WCT: And how does that relate to monster theory?
RL: When you think about monsters, there’s no such thing as a monster in isolation. Because if you just have a monster alone on an island, it’s just a creature trying to survive. It only becomes a monster when it starts to affect the environment or the beings around it. I think as people, when we really try to affect the world, there’s intended effects and unintended consequences.
WCT: Some of the collaborators that you have invited have also been people that you consider to be kind of disruptors and change agents, correct?
RL: Yes, right, exactly. So, the people coming in, one is Stephen Asma, who is a professor of Philosophy at Columbia College, but he’s also a multi-published author. I met him because he wrote a book called On Monsters: An Unnatural History of Our Worst Fears, on how monsters operate, why we need them, what they allow us to do and see. It struck me like a giant bell.
WCT: And who else?
RL: Esther Grimm, who is the [still current] head of 3Arts, which has been probably the single most influential organization that changed how people give grants. They focus on women who’ve been under-recognized, people of color and disabled people. There’s also Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, who is pretty much the founding intellectual in the field of monster theory.
WCT: We see a lot about animals as mirrors, monsters, and golems continually coming up. Can you tell us about how that ended up so prominently in your art?
RL: Reading Stephen’s book gave me the structure for understanding my life. I’ve always sort of felt like a monster, thought of myself as that, been told that I’m a mistake. I don’t remember when, but I started thinking about the golem as the one that made the most sense to me. Originally it was Frankenstein, but the golem is actually the template for Frankenstein[’s monster].
WCT: That makes sense.
RL: In my book, I write about feeling like a construction. Feeling like my body has been altered and altered and altered and altered. In a certain way I don’t own it. It’s a body that seems to disturb and frighten people.
WCT: Many of your subjects have ties to Chicago/the Midwest, but they’ve ranged from writer Achy Obejas to actor Mat Fraser. How do you generally choose your subjects?
RL: I’m interested in what they do. I’ve seen them perform or I’ve read their work, been at a conference where they’re presenting. And it’s not about what they look like. I’m interested in the relationship between their form of disability and how it influences their work.
WCT: You’ve said that much of your work is “trying to understand embodiment through portraiture.” Did you start off knowing that disabilities would be such a large part of your work or did it naturally evolve?
RL: I started off [knowing]. My earliest serious portrait work was meant to…as Kerry James Marshall says, to misquote him, “place disability into art history.” That was what I wanted in the beginning, and slowly my work unfolded into other kinds of stigma, other kinds of experience.
WCT: Who are some of your artistic influences?
RL: Influences are tricky. Some of mine you’d never know in a million years. I’ve been very influenced lately by the field of Black figuration. I think some of the best figuration consistently in contemporary art has arisen from Black art, both American and African artists, working on representational identity. Like, Njideka Crosby, Bisa Butler, Jaleesa Johnston, Wangari Mathenge from Kenya…representation of the Black body, the Black family—I think that that work brought figuration back to life and has been tremendously invigorating and powerful.
WCT: What’s next after this exhibit?
RL: A couple of possibilities. I might be working with the National Portrait Gallery on a portrait—I don’t want to say who—but of a legendary disability activist. But mainly, I’d really like to get back to my book. I started to write a second book and this [show] has just completely taken over my life. I’d really like to get back to my novel, see if I have anything in me.
This interview was edited for length and clarity. “The Monster Studio” will be open for viewing at Zolla/Lieberman Gallery (325 W Huron St., Chicago) from September 6 to October 12. For more on Riva Lehrer, visit: https://www.rivalehrerart.com/.