Sue Coe
From Provisions
Contents |
Questions for the Artist:
Provisions Library: What early memories or experiences motivated your engagement with social change?
Sue Coe: As a child, I grew up seeing the bombed out buildings of WW2; my parents survived being bombed, and my friends lived in tin huts that were quickly put up in the 1950’s to give shelter to the homeless. We lived next door to a factory farm, and a block away from a slaughterhouse, so with that environment I could not help but start to question why life was considered expendable. I witnessed that the really poor children at school were humiliated and demeaned, and that children who were Black, Jewish or Irish were bullied. I saw that being born female was a lifetime prison sentence of costuming and being silent, and that there was an unjust class system that was perpetrated to gain profit for a minority. I realized that our problem, as human beings, was not that we were all warlike and greedy, but rather that we were too cooperative with the bully.
PL: Who are key influences in your life and why?
SC: There are so many... My sister who is a poet, Mandy Coe, is the main influence, and then my friends, who are all intense and interesting, challenging and curious, which is my favorite word.
PL: What books, artworks, films, music, etc. have been essential to you?
SC: There are so many, but a drawing that I always have nearby is one by Rembrandt that depicts a young girl who was garroted - hung by wire. He obviously saw this, and saw it up close. The young woman had a hatchet tied to her waist, and was executed for killing her employer. The compassion and accuracy of this drawing, and there are two views of the same scene, fly through centuries with a voice as clear as a bell.
PL: What are you working on now?
SC: I'm researching elephants and the electric chair. Which was tested by Edison on an elephant who killed her trainer. He fed her lit cigarettes, and she killed him. Previously elephants that fought back, were lynched, or executed by firing squad.
PL: How has the art world reacted to the content of your work? Do you feel that your work has been depoliticized/overpoliticized/exoticized/misinterpreted?
SC: I would say that the art world has ignored my work, but that is not quite accurate. The art world is interested in newness of form. I work in a traditional way, while it's the content that is radical. Being ignored can be a positive survival mechanism. It could be more accurately stated, that I have ignored the art world, since my work essentially has been created for the printed page and mass distribution. My only real contact with ‘the art world’ is the gallery that represents my work (Galerie St Etienne). They have always supported my work and its content. They have given me a safe space to keep on working without painting by the numbers. Without them, I don't think I would bother with museums and galleries, as it's a nightmare of paperwork, packaging and insurance forms, contracts, and general Stuff.
The misunderstanding about social political art is that the most political art is the art of avoiding reality, not revealing reality. It is always shocking that context and content are deemed ‘political’ or ‘propaganda’ and neutrality or irony is perceived as high art. My dream as a child was to have art in the day old newspaper that wrapped up chips from the fish and chip shop... and that dream was realized! I saw my drawing soaking up salt and vinegar. It was an image of Nixon in the London Times, I was aged 17, and I actually got paid for it too! Ending up warehoused in the Museum of Modern Art, or being gummed over in art magazines, was never a dream of mine, but as my gallery has rightly pointed out to me, with no 'art world' there would be no Rembrandt for me to look at, so someone has saved that work, and carried it forward.
PL: Terms like "artist" and "activist" are subjective terms. Where do you see the overlap, if any? Do you draw strict separations between the two, or do you see them as inseparable?
SC: From my perspective, making art is very labor intensive: the research, the travel to locate the subject, getting access to places that are normally inaccessible, observing, listening, and interpreting it into visual journalism, or reportage, then returning to fact check, and the deadlines - is a lot of work. For social political art to be useful, it first has to be art. My art is ‘activated’ by activists who help me gain access to situations that are not normally inaccessible, and then hopefully it's useful helping those social justice workers bring to light what is being concealed. I would liberally say that being an artist/activist is interwoven, but both are art forms in their own right that take immense thought and an unraveling of all the inherent contradictions. Both are full-time jobs. Being an activist involves the concept of taking two steps back to take one step forward, it involves patience and discipline, using diplomacy, legislation (the average time for a bill to pass through Congress and the Senate is 15 years, unless of course it is related to the profits of the corporations, which case - it passes within hours) and working with the system to shift the system, making allegiances with disparate entities to achieve change. An artist does not have that burden, and can posit the reality in a much more black and white way, which is as it should be. If there are any limitations which are self imposed on my work, it is that I work in a traditional figurative way, to make the content more apparent. I have seen many things, that lead me to the mental state of hopelessness and despair, and recording those traumatic events, is therapy for me....and re-traumatizes people who look at the work! Art and activism does not happen until the viewer makes it happen. No one has a crystal ball telling them which step leads where, which action will lead to change. An artist, by nature in our culture, is individualized by the degree of isolation it takes to make art - an activist takes into account all the strands of the struggle and evaluates momentum based on so many factors, the primary one being working as a team. In the social conditions that exist now, ‘activist’ art is perceived as a fund-raising tool, the artist as a commodity, and ‘activism’, as a charity that works within the corpocracy - neither are desirable. The constant frustration is that we have all the information, the science to make a more humane world, and it's not happening because our system values profit over life. Information is mutated into a political tool used to oppress, not educate. The pendulum can only swing so many times before our world is irretrievably damaged. As social conditions will inevitably worsen, because our political system is set up for short term gains and is not responsive or pro active to the urgent challenges that face us, NGO's and non profits will take on a greater role. Unlike politicians, they are educated about the issues, and equipped to attempt creative and humane solutions.
About the Artist
"Coe is committed to her beliefs and to the artistic process as the means of exposing realities in a way that stops us dead in our tracks. Sue Coe’s powerful spine and her own claim that "every dollar I get drips with blood too" gives me hope.
There are different types of blood. There is blood spilled cruelly and selfishly for gluttony and profit. Then there is blood spilled for revolution. A stockholder in slaughterhouses could buy 20 of Sue Coe’s prints. It’s hard to imagine any dollar as an innocent one. We know there is at least one underpaid, uninsured, exploited worker along the way from raw material to the product we consume. Sue Coe’s work exposes these contradictions, the complex dilemma of conspiring, however involuntarily, with a corrupt system. But I do believe any blood-soaked dollars in Sue Coe’s wallet are ultimately soaked with blood for the cause, not against it, and if some stink of conspiracy and profit, she will make them smell of graphite, oil paint, and paper."
– An Interview with Sue Coe by Elin Slavick, Mediareader
"The word Propaganda comes from the Roman Catholic Church. In the 15th Century, they had Offices of Propaganda. The word merely means to propagate ideas. It fell on evil days during the First World War, when the cannon fodder (the masses) heard how many young men were dying in the trenches and started to object. The government retaliated by saying they were being affected by ‘enemy propaganda.’ I think propaganda (let us say political satire, etc.) has its place, and I have done my share of it, but as an artist, apart from the aesthetic, it’s quite tedious to do.
After a while, the Bushes and Thatchers and Reagans are all the same—just good puppets. For the politician, it’s more ‘face time’ for them, and they usually want to own the artwork. It appeals to their ego. So not only are they not crushed, they are quite pleased with the attention. Therefore, I do not plan to waste the next four years making portraits of George W. Art is anything that the onlooker takes into their heart; it could be a billboard, or a cartoon, or a fresco."
– Sue Coe, from An Interview with Sue Coe by Elin Slavick, Mediareader
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More Images from Sue Coe
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| Greyhound Bus Station, 2006, Private Collection, © Sue Coe |
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| Party (Renee), 2006, Private Collection, © Sue Coe |
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| Ten Year Old Floor Worker Putting on Labels, 1994, Private Collection, © Sue Coe |
