10 Questions with Naomi Even-Aberle

​Naomi Even-Aberle is a multi-disciplinary artist living in South Dakota (USA) who uses performance art, digital technology, and martial arts practices to explore female roles in contemporary society. Even-Aberle's solo and community art practice involves performative elements, interdisciplinary media processes such as sound, video, projection, and are embedded within her martial arts philosophy of understanding and establishing learning strategies for the body, mind, and spirit. Throughout her artistic explorations, Even-Aberle has utilized and experimented with various media and forms making use of the media that best fits the subject matter, content, themes, and collaborations.

In the past two years, Even-Aberle has moved away from a skill and medium based approach and instead embraced a conceptual and research-based approach which brings together her martial arts community building practices and her personal artistic practices. Both practices address public and social practice, inherited histories, and the physical and emotional states of the contemporary body and identity. Even-Aberle explores the body as a site for action, conflict, power, and resistance; working to navigate a third space between personal and communal. This body appears in the work through methods of masking, personating, costuming, and manipulation of the site which calls attention to tension and social understanding of both personal histories and identities, but also inherited social and cultural histories. This avenue asks the viewer to see both histories as present in the physical body simultaneously and to question how one considers both as a transformative element. 

www.evenaberle.studio | @naomievenaberle

Naomi Even-Aberle, Welcome to Al-Tiba9. In your youth, when did you realize that you were going to become an artist? 

I believe that all young children are creative. Playing games, using their imaginations, and daydreaming about what they will do, be, and see when they grow up. Pinpointing the transition between being a naturally curious and creative child to when I intentionally believed and identified as an artist is elusive.

In middle school, I vividly remember my mother took me to one of her pottery classes and encouraged me to get my hands dirty and make something out of the clay. Looking at the brown lump on my wheel, I thought, "a real artist can make anything they want out of nothing, and I intend to be a real artist." From that moment forward, I worked hard at being involved in art-making practices.

How would you define yourself as an artist? 

I struggle with selecting any one term or concept that completely encapsulates my identity as an artist and my artistic practice. Generally speaking, I feel like my work sits within three categories; martial arts/movement, community-building, and interdisciplinary practices. 

First and foremost, I am a martial artist, and movement has always been and will continue to influence my identity and artistic practice greatly. Secondly, as a martial arts gym owner, part of my artistic practice is playing a community organizer and connector. Engaging, connecting, and supporting my community through martial arts has helped me develop my creative philosophies. Lastly, I fully embrace interdisciplinary practices; research, writing, curation, video, sound, performance, and any other strategy will help create the artistic content I want to share with the world.

What is your intention behind My Dakota Body?

My intention with the performance video My Dakota Body was to develop a method for me to come to terms with the inherited cultures and histories that I engaged in. Specifically working to acknowledge, embody, and reconcile the contentious whitewashing United States history about my inherited Korean martial arts traditions.

Please, tell our readers about the method of masking, costuming, and manipulating the body. 

My Dakota Body uses the method of masking, costuming, and manipulating the body to call attention to the tensions between navigating personal histories and inherited social and cultural histories of space and geography. Working from the statement, "I am a white American woman teaching Korean martial arts to Lakota indigenous children in South Dakota," My Dakota Bodyworks to create a short visual narrative of the internal struggle of living in and among multiple cultures and inherited histories. Asking one's self, "where do I exist within these narratives?"

What can you tell about the dressing code of your performance, My Dakota body?

The costumed figure draws parallels between the American "whitewashing" historical practices by physically covering the artist's body in white paint. As the artist moves through the performance, the paint begins to deteriorate in places while simultaneously adhering to the skin in other places. The paint represents the embodiment and acknowledgment of inherited white culture, the good parts (like privilege), and the bad parts like (racism and sexism) and the struggle to reconcile one's identity within the narrative.

The colorful Hanbok (traditional Korean wedding dresses) calls attention to the juxtaposition between western ideologies and Korean ideologies and the often fetishized orientalism within the martial arts practice. Clad with gold glitter boxing wraps, three overstuffed hanboks, five-layered martial arts uniforms, My Dakota Body harnesses the power of layering and costuming as a symbolic performance to draw parallels between embodying a practice and losing oneself within the traditional ideologies of that practice.

What is your creative process like?

My creative process involves research, movement, a drafting phase, and then a presentation phase. For me, research is specific to each project and can include reading, writing, listening to podcasts, sketching, talking to other artists about a topic or project idea. From this foundation, I develop three keywords that I feel embody the concept and emotional impact that I want to explore in my project. 

Once I have grounded my mind in researching a topic, it is time to develop a level of understanding kinesthetically - or with my body. Usually, this phase is extremely experimental and directly tied to my martial arts philosophy of understanding and establishing learning strategies for the body, mind, and spirit. Sometimes the movement is directly related to the project - practicing choreography in costumes; other times, the movement is more subtle - walking with intention.

Once my mind and body are grounded, I move towards clarifying and building up the project's spirit. This phase involves creating a draft of the project - including performance details, presentation ideas, and a physical walkthrough. All the last minute, important details are reviewed, critiqued, and adjusted during this phase. 

Finally, the presentation phase is where the performance and documentation of the performance take place. This phase is usually the shortest, but the one with the most audience impact.

What is the most challenging part of being a performance artist?

As an artist, I believe that all creative practices have their benefits as well as their challenges. The most common challenge that I run into as a performance artist is the use of my body as a tool. Sometimes my body is not the right body to use for a specific purpose, concept, or project, and collaborations with other artists involve a lot more energy, organization, and communication. These collaborations can be fruitful but require a different approach and intention. All movements and behaviors are communication. I often start by asking myself, "what does the image and use of my body communicate with this project?"

As you know, art is very subjective. What some people like, others do not. I'm sure you've received both positive and negative feedback in your career, but what I want to know is how you handle the negative criticism, especially when it hurts deep down within your soul? 

I have a mantra, "Stay here, in this difficult place. Stay here actively. Breathe through the discomfort and pay attention to what it's telling you". 

Honestly, criticism is such an integral part of being an artist. Finding strategies to maintain your confidence while maintaining your emotional connection to your work is a constant balancing act. I allow myself space (usually accompanied by my favorite comfort food) to sit and reflect on the emotional responses to negative feedback. This reflection time is important because the emotions react to fears or insecurities brought on by the feedback. If you can identify those issues, you can logically work through them and move forward.

During the lockdown, how did you express your body as a performance artist?

During the lockdown, I focused on two new projects that utilized the body in different ways. In my ongoing project Bytes & Bites I explore how a virtual landscape and still images change the understanding of movement and the body. The performance combines a kinesthetic approach to engaging with the land while the photograph disrupts the three-dimensional space by flattening and subverting the physical body. The disruption produces a new body, a new landscape that exists only in the virtual space. A space that often must be decoded and recreated - collaged together to create a new ephemeral understanding of connection.

In my project, The Labour of Joy, I explore the complex relationship we have with joy and the creation of joy within our everyday lives. The series utilizes photographs and text to present how we utilize our hands to make and engage in different acts; small, mundane, intimate, or communal that lead to joy. 

What do you hope that the public takes away from your work?

I believe that once you do work and present it to the audience that you have given up control over its interpretation. Therefore, creating clear, focused, and intentional work is extremely important because once you display it, the audience will perceive and interpret it in many different ways. 

Overall I hope that my work encourages growth and understanding of how integral movement is to our identities and cultures.