SB2

Noah: Can you please describe a bit about your work formally and then maybe a little bit of what this piece is about?

Sunny: Sure. The piece includes three videos that are viewed in a chronological order and Then there's two photos which represent the documentation which add a little bit of elaboration to the ideas explored in the video.I approach the concept of Wait, pretty vaguely in this project. I Use it as sort of a starting point for where I wanted to go. In my piece I use the practice of finger knitting as a metaphor and a way to represent the physical manifestations of anxieties in situations where a person might be waiting. It basically focuses on the isolated action of finger knitting. I use the color blue in this video to kind of represent feelings of isolation and the color of the yarn throughout the piece is meant to provide sort of a symbolic context as to what types of anxieties are experienced or to sort of give more context about the setting and about what the artist is experiencing.The goal of the documentation photographs, photographs is to show the accumulation of each type of physically manifested anxiety by comparing like the sizes and lengths of different colors. There's also one where my body's wrapped in different places with those knitted chains represent how these anxieties as a binder to the artist physically, if that makes sense. Sorry. I'm kinds of words aren't coming to me.

Noah: Totally okay. You're working with really, a lot of complex things that are very hard to translate into words, which is a reason why this is such a successful piece. You're working with things that cannot be expressed verbally or written as easily.

Sunny: Yeah. The idea I had about this piece is less like I'm working towards something like a finished painting but rather these are elaborations based on this concept of binding anxiety. there's a couple of the shots, I use some techniques of a Shibari in order to represent being bound by that chain. There's one where I'm tying a bunch of handcuffs around myself and another one where I bind my chest with a baby blue chain, but then I make handcuffs out of a baby pink chain. This Particular part of the piece represents anxieties having to do with gender dysphoria and about the trans experience.

Noah: You've mentioned a couple things, but were there any other ideas or inspirations that went into working with this piece?

Sunny: The main thing that I was drawing from was trying to express the way that anxieties were felt within the context of isolation and the pandemic. It's an underlying theme that is explored. They are a little bit personal, but I think the one thing that was tying it together was the experience of the pandemic.

Sunny: The reason that I chose a finger knitting as it's the most simplified form of weaving. There's no real point to it. That's the thing that drew me to it because you can't really do much with finger knitting chains. I wanted to use that sense of uselessness to represent what it felt like to work during the pandemic? A lot of the times it felt like I was creating void space.

Noah: It's completely true! Productivity is now less about what you're doing and more about just doing something these days.

Sunny: It feels so much less tangible, almost less real when you're not in a room full of artists.

Noah: Thank you very much for joining me!

Noah: It's really interesting to me, because this is also then being put into a virtual space. It sort of adds this third layer. And virtual environments are so odd in that they are simultaneously public and private. Which is really interesting in the context of your work here.
Is this piece connected to your practice or is it a departure from your usual method of work?

Sunny: The work that I've done in this term, in general, is a huge departure from what I usually do, this is one of my first times working with film. I just started exploring it this year, so it's all very new to me. But it's along the lines that I would use to approach a conceptual project. However, there's a lack of a full arc to the work that my other work has in the past.

Noah: How do you feel about that feeling of leaving something incomplete?

Sunny: It's complex? Part of it's really relieving, but part of it also freaks me out. These are new forms of media that I'm exploring and because the concept side of this piece is something that I can keep elaborating on. there's just so much second guessing that I'm always doing when I'm working on it. But it's allowed me to breathe as an artist in a way that I haven't really before. Just having that lack of control is a little bit relieving as well though? It's quite complex.

Noah: You've mentioned a large connection to the themes time or dealing with anxiety through time. Do You have any other elaborations on this?

Sunny: I think a lot of what I was trying to explore. Time also feels different now, I guess, and I'm not sure what other people's experiences are, but experiencing time and sort of stresses around that is different.

Noah: Yeah, absolutely. It's feeling like there's both never enough of it, but also it's moving so impossibly slow.

Sunny: Yeah, exactly. I keep thinking that like I'm being dragged behind this boat. Then someone says that I'm doing terribly in school and I'm like, Oh shoot.

Noah: You mentioned several of these videos were filmed in public locations. I was wondering if you could touch on how the idea of public space fits into your work.

Sunny: The third video includes a shot of waiting outside a women's restroom and knitting one of specifically, quote - unquote, female gendered yarn. Then the video shows a lot of footage from a domestic space. I wanted to explore the way that anxieties accumulate when in those sorts of situations and how they're tackled in or percolated in domestic spaces and how they're explored because the Shibari focus shots we're both in assertive domestic spaces.