Zoya Mothupi-Sarges
Zoya was born (2003) and raised in Johannesburg, South Africa and currently lives in Berlin. She has always had an undying passion for the arts, especially drawing with charcoal, as it’s smoky nature leaves possibility for early line marks and faded forms. She hopes to make a name for herself in the art scene, and is ready for the challenges that may come—a girl can only dream, right? “As an artist I like to be inspired by the seemingly mundane day to day. Having lived in the ever awake Berlin for 2 years now, I’ve started to take for granted the countless faces I encounter on the daily, each with their own thoughts, worries and means of expressing where they’re coming from and wish to go. I believe there’s much unnoticed beauty in the small detail, and a lot to learn from on a micro level which is easily transported to the macro. Afterall, the political begins with the personal.” Find her on all music streaming platforms under the name Uwineza. (Statement courtesy of the artist)
We met with Zoya on a Saturday morning in our apartment. She brought along her charcoals for us to use. We went in with no plan, feeding off of each other’s mark-making through a meditative improvisation.
Artist’s Linktree
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We met with Zoya on a Saturday morning in our apartment. She brought along her charcoals for us to use. We went in with no plan, feeding off of each other’s mark-making through a meditative improvisation.
Artist’s Linktree
Zoya: It's like a diary. It hops between music or art. It's been more music, but now maybe it's going to be more art again. I feel like it depends what thoughts you're having or if you need a different form of expressing it, you know? How would you guys describe yours?
RF: I think mine is kind of experimental and more process and material based, like playing with materials. I’m mostly a painter and I have a background in fibers, a lot of influence from textiles and pattern and color and texture. Feeling things out.
Maitreya: I'm studying journalism and so what I'm really interested in is learning about the world and people and taking pictures and like... I think I soak things in, input it, and then I process it in my head, and then I output what I've learned. It's like an input-output thing.
RF: Yeah, like you know what you're doing when you do it and it just feels right and it comes about.
ZM: Oh, just like a release, you know? Yeah. It's like taking a shit.
MR: Yeah! You don't have to think about it.
ZM: If you’re making a song and then you just suddenly start crying while you're like coming up with it because it's suddenly coming to the surface and then you get it out and it's like, "Oh, damn!" And now you're empty again.
MR: Yeah, it's interesting how you just have that natural intuition to just do it. I remember I watched a TED Talk once by [Elizabeth Gilbert] the author of "Eat, Pray, Love," and she talked about the creative genius. There's this concept, I think ancient Greek philosophers came up with it, The Genius. It’s this thing that exists outside of you and some people get communicated to by The Genius. Genius is a weird term to use but this idea that there's something out there and sometimes it suddenly possesses you and then you can output something and then it's gone. It's like where did that come from? How did I just know how to do that?
ZM: There's signs that The Genius is coming, you know? When you analyze your behaviors you’re like, oh okay maybe it needs to be let out in this form.
RF: A lot of the time I have some kind of vision when I'm starting of how I want something to end up.
ZM: But don't you find that that ruins the process?
RF: Yeah, then I kind of lose that and it goes in a different direction.
ZM: Right, because if you start with the vision, then you're not letting it out really. If you knew what you wanted to express, you wouldn't have to put it on paper.
RF: You wouldn’t have to make it if it’s just in your head. Because art should really just be for yourself.
MR: Do you think you return to the same themes or styles?
ZM: Oh yeah. Yeah. It's so annoying that so often it's about boys. I'm trying to have less of that.
RF: But if that's where it goes, that's where it goes.
ZM: Or sometimes what's been really interesting is if I listen to a song on repeat and then draw it. And then what's interesting now is I have my own songs, and then if I repeat listening to those and then drawing, I get inspired from the song. And then it's like a double layer.
MR: I guess we kind of talked about if creative practice be defined by one style, but do you think that artists are expected to define themselves by one style?
ZM: Oh yeah. Yeah. 100%. But I feel like that doesn't have to be the case. Like you can have your signature. My dream is to make a project where someone who listens to my music can see my art and think of my music. So I feel like if it has the same subject matter, the same way of telling a story, that's kind of your artist touch. Sometimes people might not 100% relate to my experience, but just the act of seeing that someone puts their vulnerability out there, even if it’s just slightly similar to what they're feeling, they can relate.
RF: My professor once said if you're working in multiple mediums, you have to be thinking about the same thing and you have to just immerse yourself into one idea, one theme, and approach that from different mediums, different angles. And people should be able to see this consistent theme through your work.
ZM: The emotions are the same.
RF: There's definitely pressure from the art world that you have to be recognizable and have your signature. But a lot of people don't want to do that and want to try out different things. And I feel like people go through phases too, your style really develops through time.
MR: It does make sense a little bit because if you want people to be able to recognize you, you kind of need to have something that's recognizable.
RF: I think about this with musicians. With every album someone puts out, it has to be slightly different or else maybe you'll listen to their new album be like, oh, we've already heard this from them.
MR: I think that's the same with artists too.
RF: It has to be slightly different.
MR: Yeah. You're constantly building up.
ZM: Yeah, very capitalistic.
MR: Yeah, getting better and better and better… So… Do we want to start making something together?
ZM: Sure. I've got colored charcoals and paint.
MR: Have you ever collaborated with people before?
ZM: In music, yes, but with art not really.
MR: What is it like when you collaborate with other musicians?
ZM: It's so much fun. When you're having a jam session, you have to listen to where [the other person] goes, you're not in their head. You have to be in your head, but also anticipate what they're going to do. And also just enjoy that sound that you're making together at the same time. You have to be in so many different places at once, but then it's so refreshing because you don't overthink. It's almost intuitive. Sometimes you pick up on what someone else does and you're like, oh, that's interesting. Let me try to implement that for me. Or sometimes I think it's easy to have your own repertoire of melodies that you kind of hear or pick up on, like a color palette that you choose. But then if you see someone else doing something else and incorporate it with yours, then it's just this beautiful little collaboration.
MR: Yeah, it’s interesting. I am drawn to a certain color palette, but then I have friends who have something completely different and I'm so drawn to that. It's interesting to think about how another person can bring out a side of yourself that you wouldn't let yourself bring out on your own.
ZM: A lot of the time it's like a therapy session or it feels like taking a shit. With a song, if I'm going to play it, then I'm going to tap into those emotions again. But if it's already recorded and it's been mixed and mastered, I'm so far removed from the process that it also just feels like that emotion, because it's such a fast release that it's like a timestamp of sorts. But in art, I feel like maybe at that time [of creation] I wouldn't have noticed a new thing that I'll notice a few months afterwards because of how my perspective on the situation has changed. It's so rewarding to have so many different mediums to be able to express it in. Because sometimes you need a fast release, but sometimes you're not close enough to figuring out what the emotions you're feeling are to have that fast release.
MR: Do you feel like when you're writing lyrics, you are scrutinizing over the perfect wording of things? Or does that feel more like a release?
ZM: The first step is brainstorming, getting out all of what you're feeling. And then the second step is sitting by the piano and looking at them and seeing the things that pop out the most are probably the root emotion or the feeling, what you actually want to say. It can be such colloquial words or colloquial sentences. I have this line, “The hardest pills to swallow might be good for you still.” And to say it now it's like, okay, but then if you hear it in a song, with the right pauses and the right emotions and the right chords, it's suddenly like, damn, and you can associate it to so many things. It’s so refreshing when you can distill all of your emotions in just one sentence.
MR: I feel like collaboration is so much more normalized with music.
ZM: Why do you think that it's the opposite for art?
RF: And I think music is rooted in like, oh this is my band. I guess it started in orchestras.
MR: And I also think there is something capitalistic. As a visual artist you get paid for your paintings. If it's a piece that a group of people have done together, that money is getting split between more and more people. And so I think with the more traditional 20th century art gallery buy-and-sell thing, it's easier if you're working alone.
RF: I've been thinking about how musicians and visual artists have such a brand. But then big fashion houses that are someone's name like Chanel –– it's like, yes, Coco Chanel started that brand. But then it gets passed on to other head designers. You still have to maintain the original designer's identity and brand and style. But then with musicians and other artists, your brand is going to die with you.
MR: That was a deep sentence.
ZM: I'm reading this anthropology book at the moment for class. It's about an anthropologist who's passed away now and an archaeologist and they are really good friends. They had similar writing styles and viewpoints. It's called The Dawn of Everything. They collaborated on this book and they had, like, a shared Google Docs I guess, and they’d each write in it but they didn't have separate chapters. They just flowed and co-wrote together the whole time. You can't really tell who's writing what and it just melts so organically. It's a collaboration in a way.
MR: And that's interesting too because then you're not getting credit for what you specifically wrote. I feel like that's special and I think a lot of people wouldn't be okay with sharing complete credit for something.
ZM: When artists are recording and there's even just a friend sitting in the room, they have a right to say, “Oh, I was there.” The argument that if they said one thing or if they laughed or coughed at a certain time, maybe that would have inspired the producer to do a certain kick or whatever. Where does the collaboration stop or end? Who has the right to what? Obviously there's always a chain of events, a butterfly effect. Maybe it's just having that external influence or inspiration. For example, now if one of us changes a color over here, then it's going to subconsciously inspire someone else to do something that maybe they wouldn't have done if that change didn't happen.
MR: When you collaborate on music with people, do you guys typically –because I know you have an album coming out?
ZM: Right.
MR: So like in the song credits, are you going to write, like, lyrics by ZM, production by…?
ZM: Yeah, absolutely. The credits are the most important part. You want to carry on those connections and you want to carry on collaborating together. If someone doesn't give you the credit, then you don't feel valued, your intellectual property is stolen in a sense. What message do you guys want to share with this project?
MR: I think a lot of what exists in journalism in general, like news brands and companies, is that you're given an assignment to go get a specific story. And so when you go and you talk to people, you are asking them kind of leading questions so they speak to this preconceived story. And I feel like that's not cool. I think it's so important that if you are spreading people's voices and helping people's voices get heard, that that should be on their own accord. And they should be able to talk about what they want to talk about. If you have the ability to give people's voices an audience, then they should be able to choose what gets spread to people, they should be able to choose their story. Because that is going to be what helps benefit the world, if people are able to talk about what they want to talk about and not what some boss wants, when more people listen to each other and work together and compromise and figure things out and collaborate.
RF: Being an art student, I love the community spaces that I have in studio classes. I've gained so much from working in the same room as other artists. And yeah, while we're not necessarily working on the same piece together, just the conversations and seeing what other people are doing are really inspirational. And I think that's hard to get outside of a school setting; artists are just working alone in their own studio space. I'm interested in trying to introduce and welcome this idea of collaboration, and talking and working with artists because I think that introduces completely new ideas.
ZM: I feel so silly identifying as an artist, but one thing that I have trouble with is that it's such a self-orientated field.
RF: It’s so individual and can be isolating.
ZM: And most of the time artists are more well off or from more privileged backgrounds, and you have the privilege to sit there and just think about your emotions. It’s really weird that there's a self-righteous aspect of being an artist that I just don't really want to be a part of. It makes me unsettled. Like you just want to wallow in your own emotions, but there are people dying. There’s this quote, “I want to be a poet to write about the birds, but to hear the birds, the bombs have to stop” or something like that. We're all like the poets writing about the birds and thinking that we're like so aware of everything. There’s this weird feeling that to be an artist, you have to be so in touch with yourself. But then also you're trying to connect with others. You're trying to send this worldly image, but at the same time the act of doing it is so selfish and self centered. And it's just so strange to just sit in your studio doing your art and being like, I’m a suffering artist.
MR: Yeah, you can write or express yourself in profound ways individually, but how is that going to get read and communicated to people if you aren't working with others to spread that.
RF: Because I feel like in every other discipline, you're always in conversation with others and you're always hearing other people's ideas and perspectives and that's going to influence you or make you think about new things. And so why isn't that the case in art? That just doesn’t make sense.
MR: What do you guys think of what we're collaborating on right now?
ZM: There's a lot of spirals.
RF: Like smoky, wispy wind.
MR: I really like the colors.
ZM: Oh, it's interesting because you're seeing it from a completely different perspective.
MR: Should we flip it upside down and then keep working?
ZM: Should we mix them around? Okay, this is a game changer. Okay, that makes such a different thing. Oh, that's crazy. I think maybe if you're working alone that dynamic thing doesn't happen. If you're hanging a painting up it's just there the whole time. Okay, damn, horizons are opening.
MR: Do you guys feel like it's done?
ZM: I feel like we should mix them up one more time.
MR: Do you guys see your own creative style in this or is it just one big mesh of us all?
ZM: Both… It kind of feels weird identifying with it… because it’s all three of us and it’s always going to be my interpretation of what you guys do.
MR: Did this feel similar to jamming with people?
ZM: 100%. I’m a bit confused but that’s maybe a good thing, you know? What do you guys see?
MR: It feels very naturey, what’s going on in nature that we can’t see.
RF: The hidden forces.
ZM: Very 4th dimension.
RF: It’s interesting because I obviously know what we were talking about when we were doing this but not what you were thinking or feeling.
MR: Is there anything else either of you want to talk about?
ZM: I feel like we should all sign it.
MR: Thank you for doing this with us.
RF: It was so much fun. I'm happy.
ZM: It was fun. A good Saturday morning.
- He makes me feel... (photo courtesy of artist)
- Himalayas (photo courtesy of artist)
- Marianne (photo courtesy of artist)
- Border artwork our collaboration
- The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity by David Graeber and David Wengrow [book]