Nick Van Zanten (he/they) is a Chicago-based artist who works with fabric, photography, and performance, but mostly fabric. Born in Chicago (’88), Van Zanten received a BFA in painting from Pratt Institute (‘11) and an MFA from the University of Illinois at Chicago (‘18). Nick has been an apprentice at the Fabric Workshop & Museum, taken part in residencies including Yaddo and Wassaic, has appeared in Art in America and been LVL3’s Artist of the Week, and has exhibited at Roots & Culture, Paris London Hong Kong, Shoot the Lobster and elsewhere.

Question:

You are exploring wearable pieces and performance, and the inclusion of photographic prints in your fabric assemblages. Are these two new directions competitive or do they exist together happily, in parallel?

Answer:

Both these new elements in my work show me inhabiting and animating the wearables, focusing attention on my feeling the fabric and understanding it in relation to my body. The garment is thus presented through my experience of it, in a way that is objectifying and masochistic. And right now I’m still very much figuring them out, because they lead me to question what exactly is my relationship to my audience.

Performance still of “Substrate (Formfit XX),” 2021; Performance for video and artist-made dress, straps, metal and plastic hardware.

My work starts from my pleasure in the tactile and visual experience of myself in these fabrics, which are shiny as if they were wet, colorful like neon, so wonderfully smooth that you just want to slide around in them, and so utterly unnatural that they put me outside my normal body. This same artificiality also makes them strange and abject, offering a promise of transformation that they can’t fulfill. There is a revulsion and an embarrassment to the garments, and to myself in them, because they are costume fabrics, really, only meant to be seen from afar. I like their touch but they don’t necessarily like mine – they’re easily creased, and they can get damaged by my sweat. They don’t breathe well, leaving me uncomfortable wearing them. This simultaneous attraction and revulsion is tied to my desires. Dressing up I become someone that I’m not but want to be, for the viewer’s eyes as well as my own. By setting up a scenario of pleasure for myself that requires others, the audience, to be the prime movers I’m asking to be objectified, which is where it becomes sado-masochistic. I’m a puppet but also a puppet master, instructing the actors in my videos on what to do with me. This is why I use straps so much, most obviously in Formfit XX. They hold the piece in place and limit my movement, and so they render me more of an object. This loss of control is obviously and ironically false because I designed the situation. These contradictory relationships of desire and disgust, ambivalence and pleasure are what I’m trying to put language to, but I’m still far from doing so as effectively as I’d like. Using photography and video/performance gets me closer, each in a different way, according to the nature of the medium.

“Bedroom/Sea Change (Formfit XIX/Bodysuit),” 2021; Artist-made bodysuit, inkjet prints on cotton, used bedsheets, foam, metal and plastic hardware; 36x73x5″

Until recently my work was more abstract, made up garments that only implied my body’s presence, nestled into sewn wall pieces. Incorporating photography and performance changes it dramatically. With the photos, which show me posing in the clothes and which are printed on fabric and sewn into the wall-mounted portion of the piece, my body, still physically absent, appears as an image and aestheticizes the garment even further, presenting the multiple possible, partial appearances of the it as worn alongside its actual unworn presence. Performance, on the other hand, takes the whole piece apart and allows me to give it an entirely new dimension. It transforms the experience of the work by my being inside of it looking out, feeling it on me and myself being a part of it and reacting to that.

I didn’t start working with performance until the pandemic, and my first show to feature my body in this more direct way was one that I couldn’t physically attend. I had wanted to perform for a while but I’m quite shy and I was very reluctant. I think in a strange way the isolation of the pandemic spurred me to finally overcome this hesitation and finally put myself out there. I wasn’t comfortable with my presence in the work until my presence in general became forbidden, at which point I could include myself.

Performance still of “Formfit XV x Formfit XVI,” 2020; Performance for video activating two separate artworks, comprised of: “Formfit XV,” Artist-made poncho, sewn fabric, metal hardware, lasercut cast acrylic, with additional artist-made costume garments, and “Formfit XVI,” Artist-made dress, metal hardware, sewn lycra and vinyl-coated fabric over panel, with additional artist-made costume garments.

Between these two new tools and world opening back up there is a lot that I want to try, such as in person performance. But I also plan to carry on working in this direction, taking into consideration the settings of the photographs and performances. It seems obvious to start making the work such that it can also serve as a backdrop for photos and performances. Posing for photos and performing are also collaborative endeavors. If the garment is restrictive, and they often are now, I need help getting into and out of it. With these photographic media I’m bringing my body directly into the work if at a distance, while bringing others in as well. This makes explicit and unavoidable the tensions that drive my work. They allow me to maintain my control over everything even as the work is about my losing control.