—click on any image for accompanying text—
As a trained architect, I am dictated to by laws and codes but, as an artist, I believe in subversion and perversion; decay and decadence; and the downfall of manmade development and the insurgency of the natural and disordered. I have a desire to portray the mesmerizing, but also painful claustrophobia that comes with being controlled by one’s perception as it moves through actual and corrupted spaces.
Here, the majority of the pieces are from my so-called Spatial Portrait Series. The work consists of non-normative, conceptual drawings of rooms, or rather interpretations, of individuals’ “spatial memories.” To obtain these memories, rather than asking individuals to show me images, I instead ask them to use only their language to describe a combination of physical descriptions, narrative story-lines, and emotional states.
Through these pseudo-psychoanalytic interviews, I visually translate their architectural melancholia into reimagined drawings. Each piece is often displayed with either its recorded interview or poetry that I write based off the original verbiage. The result is a queered, unseen image of personal stories, bitter relationships, hate, love, and mental associations–all of which are attached to color, pieces of furniture, architectural objects, walls, etc.
The idea for this series partially grew out of my own frustration as an architectural designer–a job that often lacks imagination–and partially stemmed from the feeling that by reinterpreting memory, changes can transpire. My core medium is drawing and painting, but I often employ digital images, audio, and poetry when my hands are simply not enough.
The general opinion goes: Zazu Swistel is a lurking criticism in the built and fake environment. Zazu is a born and raised New Yorker currently working and living in their native metropolis. They graduated stoned with a liberal arts degree from Oberlin College; later received a politically charged master’s in architecture from the University of Virginia; then worked for a number of years in the architectural office profession; and now, remain an ambiguously gendered, half-Ukrainian, transdisciplinary artist, economically-fueled designer and high school history teacher.
Zazu’s work has been shown in galleries in Europe, as well as New York City. They have received fellowships from the Ellis Beauregard Foundation and A.I.R. Gallery in Brooklyn, which concluded with a solo show entitled, “In a Vulgar Language: When Your Childhood Wasn’t Invited.”