Stacey L. Kirby
Civil Presence
Stacey L. Kirby
Past Performance: Ackland Art Museum, UNC Chapel Hill
Exhibition:
The Future Is Female
Gallery:
21c Museum Hotels, Durham, NC
On Display:
January 2020 – December 2020
Admission:
Free
I first met Stacey at the end of 2016 when she invited me to coffee to discuss performance and installation art. Stacey had hoped to get my thoughts on how such artists could gain more matronage/patronage, being that their work was “harder to collect.” And, although it soon became clear that Stacey’s knowledge on the subject far surpassed mine, she planted a seed that day which inspired me to learn more and expand my thinking.
Though she lives in Durham, Stacey and I do not get to see each other as often as I would like— her life is full with the art she loves and the work she believes in. Yet, every time we visit, it is as if we pick up right where we left off... a continuation of that first coffee (though I have now shifted to tea).
Four years later, Stacey’s thoughtful and purposeful words and art continue to impact the way I see and interact with the world.
Elizabeth Mathis Cheatham: How about we start by you just telling us a little bit about yourself, your practice, your history, and your art?
Stacey Kirby: Oh geez.
EMC: I started with an easy one!
SK: Where do I start with that? That’s a big question—Well, I do performance and installation art; I create what I call “performative interactions.” I build art installations and I perform within them alongside community performers as we interact with the public about identity, citizenship, and human rights. Recently I’ve been moving into issues of race and immigration in the United States. I started creating this type of work in the early 2000s, and have continued building a body of work that I call The Bureau of Personal Belonging. More recently, I’ve also moved into object making, drawn from the performances, to support the performance work.
EMC: One thing I really respect about your practice is your ability to create environments where people from a lot of different stages in their life and with many different viewpoints feel comfortable to address difficult topics.
SK: It’s really fascinating because a lot of my interactions with people and the performers that I’m working with are very different based on where we’re doing the work. So when I performed VALIDnation at the Anti-HB2 Mass Sit-in in front of the legislative building in Raleigh led by Rev. William Barber II, most of the people that were surrounding us were in the transgender community and participating as— I don’t really like the word “allies”—but, in support of the transgender community and LGBTQ+ rights. These are the people who needed to feel validated and wanted to be part of that conversation. But we did have protestors next to us waving American flags, yelling religious chants at us and whatnot. But in that situation, we just acknowledged their presence as we both are allowed to hold space in that area—on the grounds of a public building. That is how I approach my work: everyone is welcome and everyone’s perspective is welcome. It’s important to hold that space and invite everyone in, because I find that when people come in—and I always offer people spaces to sit in my larger installations—that they might just dive a little bit deeper. And perhaps you are sitting alongside people that may not have the same opinions as you and may be feeling it energetically, but yet you’re all in the same interactive artwork together… yet can have different experiences. It’s kind of how we’re all in this country. We forget that. It’s easy to live in our silos, right? Especially right now when things are feeling so divisive. So it’s a way of me flipping the bureaucratic process and bringing people together to share the same space.
EMC: When you put on your suit for a performance, it’s like you embody this specific character. How does that look and feel for you, and has there ever been a situation when it was really hard not to ‘break character’?
SK: It’s funny that you point that out, because it’s as if I’ve been doing this work for so long that you’d think I’d see all of the connections. I love these interviews because this is when the magic is revealed. So my mom was a court reporter, and as a court reporter, your goal is to be an unbiased documenter. So that’s essentially what I feel like I try to do, but there are times when, for example at the Anti-HB2 Mass Sit-in, when there are people yelling at me— and I’m part of the LGBTQ+ community—that who I am, how I live my life, feel supported and loved is in opposition to their opinion, as if they don’t believe I should have rights. That’s when I want to stand up and yell back at them. But what I find is that taking this sense of anger and frustration and channeling it into the work is the best way for me to deal with that.
Working with community performers, specifically with students, I’ve had to sit down with them before performances and share that this work can bring up a lot of intense emotions and discomfort for people. It’s okay for that to happen; it’s just not okay if it starts infringing on their sense of safety. I am clear with them that they can get up and leave at any time. They can ask for help; they can tell someone to leave at any time. These are the insights that I’ve had to figure out for myself to embody within my own practice.
EMC: Every time I have experienced your work, I find I am still reflecting on it days and weeks later…your work plants a seed.
SK: Yes, I hear this often and that’s why, for me, it’s not about telling participants what to think. That’s so easy. We do that in our society over and over and over again. We need to learn as individuals to think on our own. That’s how we manifest change in the world is looking outside of yourself while also within yourself. Then, how are you contributing? And that’s kind of what I’m talking about in the new work, CIVIL PRESENCE. How are you contributing to society? What is your civil presence? How are you affecting your community or your relationships or your work environment? That’s kind of what I’m digging into a little bit more because I’m contemplating that for myself. My work always starts with a question or a series of questions that I’m unpacking for myself. Then I can see that these questions are just a reflection of what’s going on around me or what’s going on in the media or in our communities.
In my performances, I always give people a physical take away—a slip of paper, button or sticker—because when they come across this item in their belongings from the interaction that they experienced, then immediately it elicits a thought or a reaction or an emotion about going through that interaction. I often receive this feedback from people over the years. So I’m planting a physical seed as well by giving people something to walk away with. Which, by the way, is actually really challenging—to integrate a take away into the design and cover the cost for materials for each performance. Over 10,000 people have participated in my work at this point and that involves a lot of printing of paperwork and stickers. But when I’m out in the community and see an ‘I AM VALID’ sticker on someone’s laptop or in a friend’s car, then I am reminded of the daily impact of that choice.
Civil Presence
Stacey L. Kirby
EMC: On January 30th, The Future is Female opened at 21C in Durham. You were one of the artist chosen to exhibit/perform… tell us more.
SK: Alice Gray Stites is an incredible curator who is supportive of my work and whom I’ve been connecting with since my involvement in ArtPrize 8. She’s curated an exhibition called The Future is Female honoring the influence of Second Wave Feminism in contemporary art. As someone who is queer and questions the limitations of the binary gender system, I have to say that the future is female and yet also complex. This is Alice’s point with including artists and works in the exhibition, such as Zanele Muholi, who does not use gender-specific pronouns and creates incredibly powerful photography in support of the South African LGTBQ+ community and beyond. I don’t know the gender identity for all artists in The Future is Female and I love being reminded to not make the assumption even if “female” is in the title.
Alice has invited me to install and perform Civil Presence. I’m very excited because I think that while this work isn’t seemingly about gender issues, there are so many underlying layers —a lot of my work is about gender and identity. I feel really excited to be a part of this exhibition because for me, it’s celebrating a lineage of women— women that have influenced women. There are intergenerational influences that I have within the work that I’m creating and who I am as a person and a woman. My aunt and my mom, for example, were both court reporters and business owners. It’s kind of amazing. My grandmother on my dad’s side owned her own hair salons and florist businesses. She managed to convince a bank to give her—a woman— a small loan to start her business in the 1930s in Wake Forest, NC. So I have these amazing women that are part of my family that I grew up around and didn’t even know that I was being inspired and influenced by them. I also know that my grandmother, who is no longer in the physical realm, sends me messages and support through events that happen in my life. There are so many more women in my lineage that I’m learning more and more about. Being included in The Future is Female is also celebrating the longer lineage that we may be uncovering while also looking towards to the future and the evolution of gender identity.
EMC: And for people who haven’t been in the space, it was an old vault, right? There’s this wonderful downstairs area within the vault that’s pretty prime location, I think. It’s very cool. That’s where you will be.
SK: Yes, my work is in the vault gallery on the bottom floor of 21c. It begins with the title wall upon exiting the elevator. You turn the corner and see wood paneling where a vintage punch clock and time cards are installed. You are lead into the vault gallery, where there is a more complex installation with furniture, office equipment, and paper ephemera that often pops up in my work to create the bureaucratic environment. One of the challenges with my work is: What are people experiencing when it’s not activated by performance? The installation stands on its own. When installing in a specific location or exhibition, I start unpacking my personal collection of objects and thinking, ‘What elements can I add to this to make it to convey certain messages to visitors?’ or, ‘How is that going to work within this space?’ I plant little seeds for thought visually.
Unfortunately, due to departmental budget cuts, the Civil Presence officers are on furlough, meaning the office is not activated. But once funds are unfrozen, we will be opening the Civil Presence Department with community performers. We will be announcing these dates through 21c. I’m really excited about this opportunity. In the meantime, there is a monitor in the hallway leading to the vault gallery with a loop of CIVIL PRESENCE performance playing. People can envision the activated work before entering into the installation when the Civil Presence Department is not actually staffed. When the work is activated, Civil Presence Officers on duty will be conducting ‘civil presence assessments.’
Participants fill out civil presence tags, submit to various kinds of measurements and meet with officers to discuss their sense of presence in society. After taking part in the work, participants display their written responses on a bulletin board in the office for others to read. When The Future is Female exhibition closes, all responses are mailed to public officials who impact immigration and citizenship policies in the United States.
Another unexpected amazing part of exhibiting with 21c—I don’t know if Alice told you this—is that they will be running a loop of my performances on the 21c Channel in the rooms of the 21c Durham Hotel. Anyone staying in the hotel for the entire year can watch. It will be on their feed. That kind of exposure is really great—getting exposure to people in their hotel rooms who are coming to stay in 21c are most likely not from Durham or even North Carolina. That is an unexpected benefit to this exhibition.
Civil Presence
Stacey L. Kirby
EMC: As we have spoken about your art, one thing that tends to be woven throughout is this idea of activism. How do you see the relationship between art and activism, and do you identify more as an artist or an activist or both… How do you think about that?
SK: It’s interesting because I grapple with this a lot. When I first started this type of work earlier in my life, I didn’t feel like I was doing activist work because my work wasn’t overtly political. I wasn’t engaging specifically in political conversation. However, more and more I have people that want to call me an activist—an artist activist, but honestly I don’t feel like I am an activist. I am an artist, and I think activists are people who are on the front lines of protests and movements who are out there physically putting themselves on the line for things that they believe in. I have so much admiration for this commitment and I have friends that are activists. Taking the label of ‘activist’ on makes me really uncomfortable because I don’t feel like that is necessarily the best way to describe what I do. I am part of an artists/activists movement in terms of—I want my work to help people unpack and contemplate what the activists are doing on the front lines and the issues they are dealing with. But I don’t think I am the person that’s being the activist. It’s tricky.
What I love to do, though, is have self-identified activists perform in my work.
EMC: Perfect!
Civil Presence
Stacey L. Kirby
SK: And that’s what happens! They’re performing; they’re bringing their energy, and I show up for their events and support them. My friend Marie Garlock is the reason I was at the Anti-HB2 Mass Sit-in. She’s worked closely with Rev. William Barber II, and she is an activist! She is also an artist but she is an activist and her mom was an activist. She comes from a long line of activists. I think I am taking part in activism in a way, but I don’t feel like I am an activist. That’s so not clear.
EMC: Labels are tricky, right? I think that either we make them so big, then we feel like we don’t measure up to them; they feel too heavy, like we’re not doing enough. Or we’re like, ‘Hmm I don’t want to be put in a box. Let me have freedom.’ I get that.
SK: It’s really an interesting question. And labels are so intense.
EMC: For a long time you worked as a full-time conservation assistant at the NCMA, and then in 2016, something big happened that shifted some things for you. Talk a little bit about ArtPrize and what it meant for your art.
SK: ArtPrize was first of all, such an incredible journey to start on. I had no idea what I was getting into. As an artist, we have visions and we apply for things, and you have to have a bigger vision. That’s one way that Creative Capital has been really supportive… 21c was partnering with ArtPrize to offer Pitch Night Grants of $5,000 to get artists in other communities around the country to ArtPrize. Otherwise, honestly, I would not have gone. It was not in my financial realm at that point to take my work to Grand Rapids, MI for 18 days. It’s expensive to take part in the event if you aren’t nearby, given the transportation issue. Eighteen days is a really short exhibition period to take work across the country. Anyways, I received this $5,000 after going through this whole kind of anxiety-provoking process of standing in front of an audience of 120 people at 21c and pitching the work that I wanted to take to ArtPrize. That was a very minimal, very small vision that turned into a bigger, much bigger vision when I received the $5,000. Then I realized that to actually get there I was going to have to raise $10,000 on a KickStarter, which I had never done before. The actual timeline to make that happen was so short. If you’re ever going to do a KickStarter, you should have a 6-month lead time—I had maybe a month and a half before I had to get that shit happening.
So I’m speaking about this because this was all about community for me from the get-go. I brought friends together, and I thought, ‘Hey I have to do a KickStarter which means I have to shoot a video, which means I need someone to help me write a press release.’ I needed all of this help! So I asked my community to come together and help support me to get this KickStarter going. Then the community showed up to the KickStarter and this wave of support happened that got me to ArtPrize. What I pitched was basically taking this body of work that I call The Bureau of Personal Belonging to Grand Rapids for this 18-day art event and to interact, work with and perform alongside the LGBTQ+ community in Grand Rapids. Now, I am not living in that community in Michigan, so the question was, ‘This a vision I have for my work, but is it going to actually come to fruition? And how do I connect with a community that I’m not physically in?’ So I realized that I had to get this KickStarter happening, actually physically get to Michigan, and bring performers with me. So I brought a core team of people for the first weekend because I needed to create a bit of a buzz and get face-to-face with the LGBTQ+ community there. Once I started doing that, then the energy around the work just built on its own. It also had to do with the time in politics. This was an election year; it was intense. Trump actually showed up to Grand Rapids during ArtPrize while he was campaigning. I really wanted him to come interact with us in The Bureau but it didn’t happen.
Anyways, so there was all of this energy and the LGBTQ+ community in Grand Rapids really wanted to be involved. They have really deep strong roots in that community. I believe their center has been in existence for at least twenty years. The Grand Rapids Pride Center staff and board showed up and performing as well as other people in the community, like art students. I took this whole body of work there, and we just created a buzz! In the end, The Bureau received the ArtPrize Juried Grand Prize of $200,000!
EMC: Unbelievable! Unbelievable, but amazing!
SK: I know! It’s unbelievable. I received the $5,000 ArtPrize Pitch Night grant and thought to myself, ‘Oh this is great! What an interesting opportunity!’ …But I didn’t go to Grand Rapids to win money. Because there are thousands of artists that participate in ArtPrize, the likelihood that I’m going to win $200,000 was just ridiculous. I went there to do my work and connect with the community, you know? And of course you’re getting caught up in ArtPrize and how you make that happen, and how you possibly could win. But basically it was just about taking my work to another level and helping me move my career forward. I had to convince myself that I can make something that large come to fruition that I had envisioned. It was empowering. And the ArtPrize staff was so great to work with and the many ways that the Grand Rapids community supported me was incredible. The Dix family let me drive their car and stay in their home. We housed a whole performance staff in their home! Pete even helped install the work and Cheryl performed! They are my Grand Rapids mom and dad. I share this because I did not do this work by myself. I do not do this work by myself at all. It was a collaborative effort—totally collaborative.
So, ArtPrize happens and I receive this award. It was overwhelming. ‘Okay, now that you are the Grand Jury Prize Winner of ArtPrize, what are you gonna do with this? You just going to go back to work? Go back to your 9-5 job and just go buy a house, and retire from art?’ I’ll be honest; I had kind of a freakout after that. ‘What am I going to do?’ It was an interesting dynamic too, because it’s so public how much money you receive. It’s a public process in this way, and so there were so many conversations after when people came up to me and would ask, ‘What are you going to do with this money?’ And I’d say, ‘I’m figuring it out, people, give me some time!’ It was a constant daily conversation—well, at least in my head.
One of the first things I did was sign up for a financial therapy course because I reached out to a couple of people and had emails come in from mentors in the art world that I met through Creative Capital. One person advised, “Be very conscientious about what you do with this money. Just a reminder.” Because I know as an artist this is a large sum of money to come into very quickly, and some people could just blow it. I wanted to be strategic with it, and that’s what I’m doing. I continue to do that. I want it to fund this work, but I also wanted it to fund some of my living. I realized that I wanted to wrap up some projects in my full-time job as an art conservation assistant at the North Carolina Museum of Art and move on to focusing more on my artwork—on what I’m putting out into the world. And I believe receiving messages from the larger universe is important. Receiving an award of this size was not about me just buying a house, staying at a 9-5 job and disappearing into the countryside. The message was, ‘Okay, we’re going to give you more support, and more notoriety, and honestly, more visibility to enable you to keep doing this work.’ I felt like it was actually a responsibility of mine to step into this vulnerable time.
Civil Presence
Stacey L. Kirby
EMC: We have spoken often about our love of yoga and meditation. How does your practice affect not only your quality of life, but also your art?
SK: I think it’s interesting when I have unpacked the timeline of how my life has been up to this 43rd year. The year that I started developing this body of work is the same year that I started therapy and started my yoga practice, including meditation. It’s the triangulation of the three. They all dovetail together. It’s been this kind of inner exploration of myself. I had to ask for help to unpack my own issues using different modalities combined with an embodied practice. I also had to trust within myself that there is a larger plan for me. I had to figure out when I was supposed to take action versus receive the messages. I’m still learning this. I talk about it daily. Are you in the flow or are you paddling against the current? —Or I should speak for myself. Is what I am trying to do in alignment with my values? What I should be striving for or growing towards?
I went through a 200-hour yoga teacher training in 2014, after practicing yoga for 6 years or so. I didn’t go through the program to go out and start teaching classes. It was more about understanding and unpacking the relationship between my creative practice and my yoga practice—attempting to understand how they feed one another. Yoga is a way to ground myself. My practice is about grounding and also receiving and clearing and moving through my emotional body—I am such an emotional person. That’s part of why—I was thinking about this on the way over here—being in therapy is about helping me understand my emotions, and then yoga is really about helping me move them through so I can continue to do the work. So I don’t get blocked and clogged, although we all do, and I go through that too. But the point is to keep the conduit open because if it’s not open, then I can’t do this work. I can’t support myself.
I’ll be honest, not having a 9-5 job, not getting a regular paycheck, I have to be even more conscientious about taking care of myself. I can get thrown off by things and pulled in different directions. The past two years have been about developing this protective sense of self where I know what I’m letting in and what I’m not and what affects me and what doesn’t. I’m an empath and being in a new relationship requires me to consider how being in proximity to another person on the regular affects my energy level. I think that you and I can probably share that, right?
EMC: Absolutely.
SK: A lot of what I’ve learned in yoga and just being in that community is about self-awareness. It’s kind of what we were talking about in the CIVIL PRESENCE project. It’s about having time to sit with myself and contemplate what I’m doing, what energy I’m putting out in the world. Am I contributing in a positive manner? Am I walking around with a bunch of negativity and blockages and not being supportive and not contributing? Am I doing my own work?
I feel like I am in a vulnerable space right now, but that’s where the best work comes from.