Carla Shen Talks to JiaJia Fei about Instagram, Mothers and Asian-American Legacy

JiaJia Fei: Carla, I’m so happy we’re finally able to have this discussion together. Something l always like to ask people in the art world about is their origin story: how did they got into art? I think everyone has a special story, which often starts in childhood.

Carla Shen: I was so thrilled when I found out I was going to be speaking with you. Okay, so one of the earliest memories I have is hanging out with my mother in her pottery studio that she had in Brooklyn Heights, which was just across the street from where I grew up. She shared it with a few other women, and the studio had a tiny storefront where they all sold their pottery goods. In the back, there was a long narrow space where all their pottery wheels were lined up. We would play with clay, and I would try to use the wheel or experiment with glazes. It really amazed me how my mom and her studio mates could turn these ugly wet lumps into these beautiful objects. It was magical to see that transformation.

JF: Do you still have an appreciation for ceramics because of your mother?

CS: Actually, I do collect a lot of ceramics. I just bought a Roberto Lugo vessel with an image of Nas on it, which I’m really excited about. And last week I got these two beautiful, colourful, 3D-printed ceramic works by Jolie Ngo. But anyway, it was a very formative experience for me, with my mother. The smell of wet clay… I can still smell it.

JF: That’s so amazing. I love that your mother was also an artist. Did she encourage you to study art and retain this creativity in your family?

CS: She was supportive of anything I wanted to do. She worked at the Brooklyn Museum for 35 years, which was a big reason why l developed my love of museums, and it clearly established my emotional connection to this institution.

JF: Is that why the Brooklyn Museum is the focus of your patronage today?

CS: I support a broad range of art organisations but it’s been a particular joy and honour to serve for over a decade on the boards of the Brooklyn Museum and also of Green-Wood Cemetery. I have very strong ties to both of them since Green-Wood is actually where my mom is buried. So that’s how I got involved there. It has a great art programme. Did you also see the Sophie Calle installation there?

JF: Yes, that was beautiful.

CS: Green-Wood just created a residency programme, so we have our first artist in residence, Heidi Lau. I want to do all that I can to support both organisations and the important roles that they serve in the community. I recently joined the advisory board of Arts Funders Forum, which is an advocacy media and research platform that wants to bring different groups of people together to develop new models of cultural philanthropy, especially targeted to younger generations. That’s something that I think about and care a lot about too: how we can cultivate the next generation of philanthropists.

JF: So much of the art world is comprised of an ecosystem of people mutually supporting each other. With younger artists – especially women artists, women artists of colour – we need supporters who can grow with them, alongside their careers. This is one area where technology comes into the picture, for me. By the way, what’s your technology origin story? How did you get on social media?

CS: I can’t remember how many years ago it was, but I first joined Instagram because my friends were all on it and they were sick of me not knowing what they were doing. But it wasn’t until about four and a half years ago that I started my ongoing project: I’ve created the hashtag #CarlasCamo, for which I dress up to match art. Now this art-fashion matching project has become certainly my favourite hobby, maybe even a slight obsession, and it’s been really, really fun. I love wearing colourful patterned outfits, and when I see an artwork, in real life or online, I’ll immediately be able to recognise if I own or have seen a piece of clothing that would match it. Occasionally, there are times where I proactively try to match certain artists or shows, and that takes a little more thought and planning.

I never take myself too seriously. You know, I’d be gallery or museum hopping anyway, and so it’s fun to add a silly challenge to a normal art day. Though I do hope that by sharing these images of artists’ work, I might either remind people about a show they’d been meaning to see, or even introduce an artist’s work to someone who wasn’t familiar with it. The best messages I get are the ones that say, ‘oh my gosh, I didn’t know about this artist’, or ‘I forgot that this show was closing. I’m going to go there tomorrow.’ #CarlasCamo is about celebrating the joy that art brings to people, and a way for me to pay tribute to the artists who make it.      

JF: I think what you’re doing, in trying to make art more accessible through this lens of fashion and design, is allowing a whole new audience to experience art. And remind people that you don’t need to have an art history degree to appreciate what’s in a museum, and that there can be multiple points of entry. We all wear clothes, so fashion is an entry point that everyone can relate to. I wonder, what other ways you think we can find to make the art world more accessible?

CS:  Education and technology are the two things that come to mind. What we’ve learned from the past year is that while virtual exhibitions and tours or studio visits aren’t always as good as real-life ones, they were definitely better than nothing – and in some cases, I think, really effective. All the tools that have been developed during this past pandemic year, for sharing artwork or live-streaming concerts or plays, can help to make art more accessible: for people who can’t physically make it in person and for the people who don’t have the means or the confidence yet to attend an exhibition or walk into a museum or gallery.

On education, and this is obviously not a new thought: but exposing kids to art at a young age and continuing art education through childhood is just so extremely important. It’s critical for developing their creative minds, helping them find visual or performative ways to express themselves, and normalising art as a means of communication and helping to understand each other.

JF: I completely agree that so much of early childhood exposure to art makes a difference. In the same way that we teach kids to read, we should be teaching them how to look at images. There’s equal power in visual literacy. Actually, related to the Brooklyn Museum – and related to Green-Wood Cemetery! – my favourite fact about Jean-Michel Basquiat (who’s buried at Green-Wood) was that he used to go to the Brooklyn Museum as a child because his mother would take him there. During the 2015 Basquiat show at the Brooklyn Museum, I even remember seeing his junior membership card on view. It all made perfect sense.

CS: You’re absolutely right.

JF: Thinking again about your mother and her legacy in terms of leading a path for you in art: what is the legacy that you hope to leave behind, as a collector?

CS: I’d be thrilled if, in some small way, I could have a positive impact on the careers of some of the artists I know or collect. As much as I can, I do try to meet the artists in my collection and get to know them and help spread the word about their work and make introductions. But really, I’m just trying to build a collection of works that inspire me, that I love to live with and look at, and that represent the diversity of New York City and the world. It’s important to me that my daughter grows up surrounded by diversity. The majority of my collection is by female artists and artists of colour, and I have a lot of figurative work; I want the figures in the art we live with to reflect a really broad range of narratives. And then, maybe one day when I’m gone, a museum might be interested in some of the works that I own, so more people could see them.

JF: I think that’s something that probably motivates the work that you and I both do. To support the institutions that collect artists whose stories should be told is the long game of legacy. It’s Asian American-Pacific Islander Heritage Month, and I I’ve never been so conscious of this month until this year, because of the violence that been happening to the Asian-American community, especially to our Asian elders.

CS: I agree.

JF:  Are there any Asian-American artists personally important to you? And how are you processing what’s happening in the world with what you do?

CS: Certainly, there are a lot of Asian-American artists both who I’m collecting and who I would love to collect. I just bought a painting by an artist named Tidawhitney Lek. She is Cambodian American, and her paintings are beautiful, lush colours, and mostly figures in domestic spaces that portray Asian experiences of first-generation Americans. I also have to mention Susan Chen, who is fantastic and has a real sense of humour in her paintings. I also recently bought a work by Sally Han. She paints with such precise, detailed strokes, and I love how she portrays Asian women. I should also mention Maia Cruz Palileo. I met her five years ago when I went to her studio and have been collecting small works of hers through the years. There are so many other Asian artists whom l admire and am proud to collect: Monica Kim Garza, Stephanie Shih, Do Ho Suh, Xu Zhen… and I would love to own works by Dominique Fung and Anna Park one day. They’re so fabulous.

Recently, I have been focusing on intentionally collecting work by Asian or Asian Pacific Islander (API) artists and buying books written by Asian-American writers. And I think, somehow with all of the attacks against Asian-American elders in the past few months, it has made me want to educate myself more about our shared API history and really figure out ways to support the API communities, both the neighbourhood communities as well as the artistic communities.

JF: I feel, both in New York and also nationally within the United States, there just aren’t that many organisations specifically dedicated to contemporary Asian-American artists in the way that we immediately think of institutions like the Studio Museum in Harlem or the Jewish Museum in New York. I believe there should be a dedicated organisation (or organisations) focused on supporting the Asian American artists of our time, to provide resources for a community around this specific experience, which is also so varied.

CS: I recently talked about this with an artist friend of mine, about creating a gallery space dedicated to contemporary Asian artists and/or some kind of artist in residence programme specifically for the API community. We had that discussion right before the pandemic, we should take it up again…

JF: Definitely! Maybe we need to start this new space together… Okay my final question for you is going to be a fun one. Can you tell us two truths and a lie?

CS: Yes. I did plan this one ahead of time because I had to think about it. Here are my two truths and a lie. Yesterday, someone stopped me to ask if I was Yayoi Kusama at the New York Botanic Garden. The next one is, two days ago, I stood naked in the Brooklyn Museum for three hours, and the last one is, three days ago, I sold my first NFT that was a portfolio of my art and fashion #CarlasCamo matches.

JF: I think the NFT one is a lie. You don’t have to tell me, but I’m pretty sure. Wait, I can’t get over the Yayoi Kusama... Were you…? I assume you were obviously dressed accordingly on that day.

CS: I was wearing a lot of polka dots and a lot of colourful things, and my friends were taking pictures. An older woman stopped me to ask if I was the artist, if I was Kusama, and I said, no, I am not a 90-year-old, petite woman.

JF: …who has been living in an asylum in Japan since 1977!

CS: It was very cute, nonetheless.