Nicole: Wura, I love this: “reveal an uncanny
beauty in the underside.” This is such a part of what I admire about your stitched works, and it’s something that I explore with my impressions and study of negative space. Is this merely about seeing what’s not to be seen? I’d love to think about this with you and the rest of the group, because it can resonate as a much larger theme – not just formally, but in terms of existence, our existence. Similarly, the phrase “a deep respect for all that they don’t know” makes me think of humility, which I love, but I think we’re also curious about audacity. I’d love to imagine how this fits in. ruby: Echoing Nicole here, I’m also very inter-
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ested in the dichotomy of audacity and humility which I think is present in all of our work. The word humility, to me, feels in line with subtlety as a visual, a way in which one’s hand marks a surface… something about the physical pressure of making the mark, or the surface area a mark holds, or the choice to omit or reserve. But not in a way that feels soft or shy, which is perhaps where the audacity comes in. For us, I don’t think we view these ideas as contrary. So how is it that something can be audacious and humble simultaneously? Do they coexist when there is an outward expectation put on the maker to be a certain way or make a certain type of work? For example, in my work, choosing to leave half of the space on the paper blank when there is a cultural expectation of me as a person of African descent, to saturate space… is that when subtlety becomes audacious? Or Nicole… filling an otherwise forgotten and walked-upon fissure with shining brass? Wura, what is an underside when there are two otherwise equal sides? When the drawings hang in space, is there still an underside?
Nicole Vlado Wura: I’ve always felt very moved by your rela-
tionship to architecture and the city, New York, where you grew up. And how that relationship is shaped by the prominence of the front stoop as a place you made your own. Can you talk about your thinking and process for this upcoming work and specifically your relationship to the particular space of the Niemeyer Pavilion? Nicole: I have a beautiful memory of being in the Bienal alone working and seeing what seemed like a dance that was being made accidentally or secretly. There were six, maybe ten, although it felt like dozens, of women and men dressed in black with dust brooms walking throughout the space, around me, carefully avoiding me. Their steps and voices echoed through the space. I was nervous that I was in their way, but they seemed not to be bothered by me. It was as if they did not see me. A few days earlier we saw men in the park sweeping the grounds with their wide palm brooms – I remember the sound of the dry fronds scraping against concrete. It was spring and there were petals everywhere. I became very interested in this effort to preserve perfection both in the Bienal and the park. This served to remind me that architecture is not just experienced, but it is made (built by laborers) and maintained (cleaned by laborers). The modernists, like Niemeyer, add a challenge of often relying on the pristine: the polished black concrete floor shows dust. It shows cracks and patches, sweaty palm prints, shoe marks. It appears like a chalkboard that has been laid on the ground, always showing the marks of what has been erased even after it has been cleaned. I love scarred surfaces and the worlds they form. I spent a lot of time in my apartment as a child. I didn’t explore the woods, the wild, instead my imagination and small fingers explored the nail heads rising from the top of parquet floors, the curling vinyl in the kitchen, the topography of the decades of paint along the walls, the old dumbwaiter door, braided electrical cords. Once outside, I touched the smoothed granite treads in the stoop, stared in wonder at the dark splatters of old chewing gum on the