Click here to listen to a conversation between the artist and co-curator Giulia Calvi on the artwork’s materiality, queerness, and representation of Black women in the media and in the history of art.

Miranda Forrester uses her practice to address the invisibility of women of colour in art history, challenging conventional and heteronormative narratives that are traditionally oriented towards the male gaze. In these three paintings, she portrays a queer Black body in a safe space of intimate relaxation. The Three Graces is a triptych of the same woman in different poses. Instead of using traditional canvas, the artist has painted onto a layer of PVC stretched over a wooden frame. Forrester has said of her work that she hopes this transparency encourages viewers to ‘step into the painting and really identify with that body’.

Click here to listen to a conversation between the artist and co-curator Giulia Calvi on the artwork’s materiality, queerness, and representation of Black women in the media and in the history of art

Conversation: Miranda Forrester and Giulia Calvi by Courtauld MA Curating the Art Museum

Giulia Calvi: Hi, I'm Giulia, I'm one of the curators of 'Both sides of Here'.  I'm here with Miranda Forrester, who has very kindly agreed to a brief interview.  So, let’s get into it. One of the artworks in our show is 'The Three Graces', which is also one of the new acquisitions of the ACC, very excitingly. 
 I was wondering, Miranda, if you could talk a bit about your approach to art, in particular, the materials that you use, as we were all quite intrigued by the use of PVC in The Three Graces, and how it creates this transparency, that lets you look through the bodies in your paintings? 

Miranda Forrester: I'm really interested in using transparent materials and use materials that allow me to play around with layering and exploring that kind of three-dimensional space. From painting on these materials, then when I move them into different spaces, they look completely different, and I can really put them into any kind of context, and it'll really change the meaning of the piece or the way that it feels and how it communicates with the viewer. I started painting on glass initially, and Perspex, and then discovered this PVC material, which is quite supple, and allows me to stretch it in the same way that I would with canvas. I really liked the flexibility of the material and the delicacy of it. It's quite fragile, but I really loved that nature and that sometimes, maybe, especially from a photo, you're not quite sure what you're looking at and where the surface is and how the layers kind of interact with each other.

GC: Thank you so much. That's so true, and I guess it really spoke to us of almost a threshold to, through this body, and as our exhibition is about thresholds in general, it is about those pivotal and transitory spaces, where things change and are transformed. 
 As a queer woman myself, sometimes I find that there is an intrinsic freedom, almost, in deliberately staying neither here, nor there, and in carving out all these alternative spaces for ourselves and to thrive and survive - and that is pretty much how the queer community in general has existed and thrived for so long. All these queer subcultures are sort of emerging for grids of our cities and the gaps about history, particularly also thanks to the people of color, mainly. So, I was wondering how do queerness and blackness intersect in your art and practice? 

MF: In my work I'm really trying to look at exploring these intersections, particularly because I feel like it's so, so hugely underrepresented everywhere: in the media, in the arts, in painting. I'm exploring those kinds of dual aspects of being part of minority groups and this grasping for representation. I feel like, as queers growing up, you sort of learn to grab hold of any kind of semblance that you can relate to, that’s maybe even not intended for a queer audience. It’s drawing out all these perspectives and trying to combine them into one, one visual aspect that people can really relate to, and feel like they understand and empathize with the sitters, and with these communities, which just seem to have been ignored historically and erased from history. I like what you were saying about the inclusivity of the word ‘queer’, and the idea of these identities being as [having] room to fluctuate. I think it's important that, as a community, it’s less divided. I think sometimes, when you have the categories and the labels, it becomes a bit more exclusive and there are certain ideas and feelings about certain types of identities, that I feel like ‘queer’ is, is a nice way of encompassing all that. 

GC: For sure. I think there's all that fluidity that one can explore, and definitely in terms of representation and looking at, as you say, trying to find representation everywhere you can find it. Is that something that you've always been interested in and in your practices, has it developed through the years? 

MF: That’s something I've always been interested in my work. It's funny, my subject matter has pretty much been the same for years, it’s just the way that I've been painting, my technique that's obviously changed and buying different things. But that's always going to be a main priority of mine, with painting. 

GC: I think talking about thresholds is also talking about access, and access to space and ownership of space and narratives. A thing that we've been trying to address in our exhibition is this idea of being in charge of one's own narrative, in a way. Clearly, there's such an invisibility of history of people of color, but especially women of color within art history, so I was wondering: in your art and your practice, what does it mean to explore Blackness in that sense as you sort of try and target that invisibility?

MF: My main priority with making these images it to represent these communities from their own perspective, as historically, lots of these images come from images of Black women in the Western history of art. It's often coming from colonial imagery, and situations where the Black women are not the author of the image. So, it was important to me to just represent myself and people I know, and the communities that I've been a part of from a genuine, authentic, point of view, trying to avoid this kind of male gaze, this white, cisgender, straight viewpoint. That's really my main priority with making these paintings.

GC: I think looking at The Three Graces, it really feels looking into this intimate space, that is the space of the woman represented in the paintings. It's not your space as a viewer, but you're almost looking into it, as peeking into a window in someone’s home. You definitely don't feel like you're taking charge of a space that is not yours, which is something I really appreciate in that painting. These were my questions and, as I said, it was going to be a very sort of brief interview, but thank you so much. 

MF: Perfect. No, that was no worries at all. Thanks so much.

The Three Graces, 2019

Miranda Forrester (b. 1997)

Click here to listen to a conversation between the artist and co-curator Giulia Calvi on the artwork’s materiality, queerness, and representation of Black women in the media and in the history of art.