Tamara Kostianovsky is a Latinx artist whose work amalgamates ideas about the environment, violence and consumer culture, often employing discarded clothing to create visceral and intricate sculptures and installations.
Her work has been exhibited at venues such as El Museo del Barrio NY; the Jewish Museum NY; Nevada Museum of Art, NV, and many others, receiving distinguished awards such as a Guggenheim Fellowship and grants from New York Foundation for the Arts and from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation. Her work has been reviewed in the New York Times, Boston Globe, Village Voice, Marie Claire, La Repubblica, El Diario New York, Colossal, and Hyperallergic, among others. Residencies include Yaddo, Wave Hill Gardens, LMCC, Socrates Sculpture Park, and Franconia Sculpture Park. Kostianovsky received a BFA from the National School of Fine Arts, Buenos Aires, Argentina, and an MFA from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia.
In March 2021, the Fuller Craft Museum will open Tamara Kostianovsky: Savage Legacy, a solo exhibition of her work, and Smack Mellon will feature a solo installation by the artist in September 2021.
For more information, please see: www.tamarakostianovsky.com and on Instagram @tamara_kostianovsky.
Tamara Kostianovsky, Carcass with Tropical Landscape, 2021. Photo Credit: J.C. Cancedda.
Tamara Kostianovsky, Carcass with Tropical Landscape (back view), 2021. Photo Credit: J.C. Cancedda.
Tamara Kostianovsky, Carcass with Tropical Landscape (detail), 2021. Photo Credit: J.C. Cancedda.
First, and most importantly, how are you doing? How are you navigating the highs and lows?
I’m doing well. Like everyone else, I’m adapting daily to the reality of a pandemic which seems like it’s here to stay for a while. I’m excited about the new political scenario we will be looking at in 2021 and hopeful for a future of national reconciliation, where minorities stop being criminalized and we can accept, develop, and understand a rich, multi-ethnic future for the United States.
Tamara Kostianovsky, Abacus, 2008. Discarded Clothing, Metal Hooks, Chains. 96 x 36 x 45 in (Each section). Photo: Sol Aramendi. Private Collection.
Tamara Kostianovsky, What it Once Was, 2011. Discarded Clothing, Metal Hooks, Chains. 61.5 x 23 x 20.5 in. Photo courtesy of the artist.
Tamara Kostianovsky, Bound, 2008. Discarded Clothing, Metal Hooks, Chains. 61 x 39 x 15 in. Photo: Sol Aramendi.
Tamara Kostianovsky, Heal the World, 2020. Photo Credit: Roni Mocan.
It's my experience that most artists engage with some level of self-isolation in their day to day art practice. Has this been your experience? And if so, have you found these innate rhythms to be helpful during this larger, world-wide experience of isolation?
I think that for artists, writers, or creative people involved in some type of craft involving regular periods of self-isolation, things have been easier than for others who look for stimuli in the outside world, or who absolutely need the closeness to others to work or live. I am used to being alone, and to a certain degree, I crave the calm outside in order to concentrate and make work.
That said, I have suffered economically due to postponed and canceled exhibitions, closed museums, etc. Ironically, this has also removed the urgency of the immediate deadline, giving me more time to reflect on what’s next, plan for a sustained practice, and work at a pace that I actually enjoy more.
Tamara Kostianovsky, Cow Turns into a Landscape (back), 2020. Photo Credit: J.C. Cancedda.
Tamara Kostianovsky, Cow Turns into a Landscape (front), 2020. Photo Credit: J.C. Cancedda.
It would be great if you could briefly talk us through your practice. Understanding it is integral to appreciating the multivalence of your work.
I’m a mother, and also teach sculpture at CUNY, so I maintain a studio practice which follows the regularity of a normal workday. I mostly work alone, rarely on multiple projects at the same time because I need all my energy to concentrate on one work at a time to build the intensity of all the texture, color, and emotion that I want my works to carry.
Tamara Kostianovsky, Rosewood Root, 2020. Discarded Clothing, video screen. 80 x 82 x 36 in. Installation Children’s Museum of Manhattan. Photo Roni Mocan.
I make sculptures and installations using discarded clothing which come mostly from textiles I find in my home, like old t-shirts, kitchen rags, and worn-out sweaters. I got started with this unusual material through my own experience of immigration. After arriving in the U.S. from Argentina where I grew up, I found myself with limited financial resources to make art and purchasing traditional art supplies was out of the question. My first instinct was to look to my own clothes for their materiality, as there was something familiar, nostalgic, and “soft” in these garments. Within a few years of being in this country, I had cannibalized my wardrobe for the creation of naturalistic sculptures of butchered animals which spoke about violence to the female body. These works were informed by my upbringing in Buenos Aires during the Military Dictatorship, an era of state-sponsored criminality which overlapped with my own political awakening. In my view, these clothes were my surrogates and by transforming them into sculptures of butchered cattle I was including myself in the pervasive architecture of violence that seeded both Argentina’s and Latin America’s history since colonization.
Making artwork about wounded bodies in the era of climate change took my work into other directions over time. In recent years, I have used clothing belonging to my father, who passed away not too long ago; to make naturalistic sculptures of tree stumps which spoke about feelings of loss, of the cyclical integration of the body to landscape, and of violence to the Earth. The tree stumps are made with a palette reminiscent of human anatomy as a way to anthropomorphize the landscape and highlight a common materiality amongst all living things. My father was a big garden enthusiast, so those works are also a way of memorializing his life, as well as his influence over mine.
Tamara Kostianovsky, Red Wood, 2018. Discarded Clothing. 59 x 40 x 62 in. Installation Wave Hill Gardens. Photo Roni Mocan.
Has any of your imagery shifted in a reflection of what is currently happening?
The political climate of the last few years in the United States has definitively impacted the development of my work. As a Latinx artist, I started seeing my work as a synthesis of two distinct cultural traditions: integrating the history and sensibility of Latin America, and contemporary U.S. themes, in order to tell fully American stories of violence, consumer culture, and environmentalism.
Tamara Kostianovsky, Apotropaic, 2015. Discarded clothing, discarded upholstery fabric, meat hooks, chain. 33 x 34 x 18 in. Photo Sol Aramendi. Private Collection.
Tamara Kostianovsky, Bird Skin, 2015. Discarded Clothing, Upholstery Fabric. 25 x 52 x 22 in. Photo Sol Aramendi.
What research or writing are you doing that you find compelling?
I’m currently studying antique European wood block wallpaper designs and the history of wallpaper in general, which I find fascinating, as it brings together domesticity, craft, colonial histories, and image-making as political propaganda. I’ve been researching how European 18thCentury decorative designs of idealized American landscapes contributed to creating an idea of the Americas as land with resources ready for consumption, which invited abuse and exploitation of its territories and peoples into contemporary times. Focusing on natural life in the Americas during the time of colonization, I am starting to work on textile artworks that contrast idyllic natural landscapes with visceral images of native dead birds, showing the complexity of this particular history from to opposing perspectives—from the view of the colonizers and one of the colonized. At a time in which immigrants’ rights, nationalism, notions of belonging and territory have been at the center stage of national politics, I believe this research taps into the current discourse. Although I have been thinking about these issues for a long time, the research and the making of these time-consuming works came out as a direct result of the slowing of time during the pandemic.
Tamara Kostianovsky, Wall Paper I, 2020. Discarded Clothing. 20.5 x 24 x 6 in. Photo courtesy of the artist.
What is bringing you solace, or even joy, in this moment?
The company and support of family and close friends have kept me sane these past few months. I have also reconnected with the quietness of reading fiction which has been a real joy and an escape from the solitude. I’m reading “The Overstory” byRichard Powers, a fascinating novel about unique life experiences with trees which bring a diverse group of Americans together to address the destruction of forests. I am also reading “Latinx Art, Artists, Markets and Politics” by Arlene Davila, a real time examination of complex issues of cultural identity, race, and representation for the Latino community in the visual arts, the community that I identify with as an immigrant from Latin America who has been working in the U.S. for over 20 years.
Tamara Kostianovsky, Alchemy (back detail), 2018. Collaboration with Arcadia Earth. Photo Credit: Roni Mocan.