Watch & Listen: Anna Tsouhlarakis

Look above for a video with Boulder, Colorado based artist Anna Tsouhlarakis, in which she discusses her work on The Native Guide Project from conception to its presentation in Columbus. And look below for an extended audio version of the interview, as well as transcripts for both items. 

We're happy to share that Tsouhlarakis's exhibition has been extended: works in the lower lobby will be on view through October 15, and works on and around the Wex's exterior grid will be viewable through December 30.

Transcripts

Video transcript

My name is Anna Tsouhlarakis. I am an artist that works across disciplines: video, sculpture, installation, performance. The name of the exhibition is The Native Guide Project: Columbus. 

It starts in the lobby of the Wexner and goes on the exterior, on the gridded structure, and then is down High Street on IKE monitors, which are kind of the small little digital billboards that you see as you're walking down the sidewalks. And then there's a final large digital billboard at Broad and High Street. The idea of extending this project out into the world, I think, is what gives the whole project power and meaning, that it isn't just relegated to an exhibition space or kind of this stated area of "this is art" and it's really seeping into everyday lives of people, and utilizing advertisement slots like the IKE monitors and the digital billboard are what I think make it that much more interesting, that it's just text and words that kind of invade people's world. And it is confrontational in that it's very bold and very blunt, and that it's out there without excuse. It has no name on it. It has no title to it. It has no link to anything else necessarily.

There's one piece that'll be... that's on the outside of the Wexner that says something like, "I really like how you smile when you see an indigenous person." And just the thought of that, I think, I notice makes people smile when they hear that. And then I just think how many more smiles that's going to bring to like, when they see that, and then again, when they are out in the world and they hear something about like, Native issues or meet a Native person, they're gonna remember that and that they'll make these connections throughout their life about these kind of small pieces of text. And I'm excited about that, about how it will live on in the memory of people. And it's nothing tangible and nothing I'll ever know about. But I think to me, those are the most important parts of it. 

The first and foremost thing I want people to take away is that Indigenous people are still around and thriving, and that we're complex, multifaceted people that smile, that laugh, that have fun. And I think if people realize that these pieces were made by a Native artist, it really flips their idea of what Native art is and that it has no aesthetic link to the stereotypical Native American art. And that's why I love making it: because I love expanding and redefining those boundaries.

Podcast transcript

Melissa Starker: This is WexCast, the podcast series from the Wexner Center for the Arts at the Ohio State University. Today we continue with words from the artists whose work has been presented as part of the Wex's Winter-Spring exhibitions, focusing on Anna Tsouhlarakis. Based out of Colorado, Tsouhlarakis aims to create dialogue and break stereotypes around Indigenous art. For her presentation at the Wex, the artist continued The Native Guide Project, a series of text works that have also been seen at venues including the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art and the St. Louis-based triennial Counterpublic. Here, Tsouhlarakis speaks specifically about the Columbus edition of this project, how it's taken over outdoor spaces around the Wex and how it's spread through the city through a partnership with Orange Barrel Media. She discusses the origins of the project and the unique way she first shared it with the world, as well as why she chose to expand on it in Columbus.

Anna Tsouhlarakis: My name is Anna Tsouhlarakis. I am an artist that works across disciplines: video, sculpture, installation, performance. The name of the exhibition is The Native Guide Project: Columbus at the Wexner Center for the Arts. 

The Native Guide Project is a body of work that I started in 2019 during an artist residency at Colorado College. I was there for the academic year from 2019 to 2020. And while I was working at the museum, I was in close proximity to the museum educators. I always got to see interactions with viewers and visitors and school kids, and I started thinking a lot about relationships between the museum and the audience, and the ideas of what the museum was trying to get across through the different texts that they were providing, but also through the tours that they were giving. And I was really interested in thinking about how you cultivate your kind of expectation of visitors when they're in a gallery space. I think we do that in some ways as artists, but I really wanted to kind of think about more directly because during that time was also the beginning of kind of more fraught race relations in the US and I started thinking about approaches that were very pointed to talking about race and relationships within different people and different communities, but also how do you get the desired outcome? 

I actually taught K-12 for a while, and one of the teaching theories that we learned about was called Responsive Classroom. And it was about the idea that if we can encourage good behavior and have positive reinforcement in the classroom, then other children will follow the kids that are doing kind of the right thing. And so I started thinking about that on a grander scale and how I'd never necessarily seen that in the world before, just out in the world.
And I decided I wanted to put these text pieces out in the world and have people interact with them without knowing what they were about, about who they were. And so I knew that I wanted them to be anonymous. I didn't want this to be about some dark-skinned Native woman saying these things. I wanted it just to be words in the world that people had to kind of confront internally. 

And so it started with two billboards that were in Colorado Springs, and then I came up with more text pieces that went online on Instagram, and it was an account that I could push out ads from. And so I would push them out to all different areas of the country through kind of advertisements on the social media, on Facebook and Instagram. And I could target different people and say, I want this to focus on women between the ages of 50 and 60 that are looking at handbags in Florida. And this would just pop up on their feed. And that became so exciting to know that it was just interfering in people's lives. And to me, it wasn't important about whether or not I knew what their reaction would be, but that they would be forced to deal with it. And the cool thing about the social media analytics is you could see that throughout the month of November of 2019, when I was pushing these things out, they had about 35,000 different interactions. So some people clicked on it, some people hovered over it for a while, some people actually liked or commented on them. So I found it to be really successful. And I think it was interesting because there were people who really enjoyed the text pieces, but then there were people who obviously felt attacked by the text pieces, which I loved. And I think the great thing about them is that they can be read as being... I think people assume that they're meant to be kind of snarky, but they're actually meant to be just kind remarks in order to create positive reinforcement.

And so when I'm thinking about that, I'm trying to think about how to create sentences or just kind of words that come together that can be open-ended and read in multiple ways. And so I'm really excited that I was able to bring that project and create a different iteration of it here in Columbus. At some point in 2022, I was approached by Kelly Kivland at the Wexner about creating a piece, dealing with text in the lobby of the Wexner Center for the Arts. And we talked about different projects that I did. And this one specifically was one that I wanted to continue because I felt like it was very successful when it happened in Colorado Springs and kind of the online presence of it as well, that I wanted to see what else I could do with it and to see if I could relate it a little bit more to the locale.

So I was really excited to have the opportunity to create a different iteration. And the exciting part is that it really did evolve because the project starts in the interior of the museum and goes to the exterior and throughout the city, that it's going to have a really different life. And I think when I was beginning to come up with the text pieces, I decided to have the text change as it started from the interior and went to the exterior. And so there is a change of tenor in the voice. The placement of The Native Guide Project starts in the lobby of the Wexner and goes on the exterior, on the gridded structure, and then is down high street on IKE monitors, which are kind of the small little digital billboards that you see as you're walking down the sidewalks. And then there's a final large digital billboard at Broad and High Street that it's on.

And the idea of extending this project out into the world, I think, is what gives the whole project power and meaning. That it isn't just relegated to an exhibition space or kind of this stated area of, "This is art," and it's really seeping into everyday lives of people and utilizing advertisement slots like the IKE monitors and the digital billboard are what I think make it that much more interesting—that it's just text and words that kind of invade people's world. And it is confrontational in that it's very bold and very blunt, and that it's out there without excuse. It has no name on it. It has no title to it. It has no link to anything else necessarily. Hopefully as one's walking throughout the city, they'll realize that, oh wait, these things are kind of connected. They're dealing with similar ideas. And so I think there will be connection that people make, and then if they come into the art center, they'll see that, oh, this is all one part of a bigger project. But I think for me, the idea of just living in space and being kind of interspersed within the community is what I'm so excited about, that it just is enmeshed in everyday life. 

The first and foremost thing I want people to take away is that Indigenous people are still around and thriving, and that we're complex, multifaceted people that smile, that laugh, that have fun. And I think through the text, you see that there's one piece that's on the outside of the Wexner that says, "I really like how you smile when you see an Indigenous person." And just the thought of that, I think I notice makes people smile when they hear that. And then I just think how many more smiles that's going to bring when they see that. And then again, when they are out in the world and they hear something about Native issues or meet a Native person, they're going to remember that and that they'll make these connections throughout their life about these kind of small pieces of text.

And I'm excited about that, about how it will live on in the memory of people. And it's nothing tangible and nothing I'll ever know about. But I think to me, those are the most important parts of it, that those connections will be made, whether it be something they might not know about, and they will look up or Google because they don't necessarily know who Tecumseh is, or they look up mounds in the area because they're like, what is this text piece talking about? And so they might look and see, oh, these are great huge mounds that are in this whole area, and I never noticed that they were actually here.

So I think bringing attention to the different ways that Native culture is present and really woven into the fabric of this whole region and any region in the United States, that it just makes people more aware of that, and that one of my favorite things about this whole project is that it really... If people realize that these pieces were made by a Native artist, it really flips their idea of what Native art is, and that it has no aesthetic link to the stereotypical Native American art. And that's why I love making it, because I love expanding and redefining those boundaries of what concepts are of Native art.

Melissa Starker: That was Boulder, Colorado-based artist Anna Tsouhlarakis, talking about The Native Guide Project: Columbus. Her text works are on view in the Wexner Center's lower lobby throughout October 15th, 2023, as well as on the center's exterior grid. Those outdoor works are on view through December 30th. For more information on exhibitions and all things Wex, go to wexarts.org. For the Wexner Center for the Arts, I'm Melissa Starker. Thanks for listening.