Artist Spotlight: Paradise Khanmalek
Please note that this interview was made before the pandemic of COVID-19, and as such, it is not a focal point of this article.
Our spotlight series features one of the Intergenerational LGBT Artists Residency alumni We discuss their practice, projects, and experiences. This is a behind the scenes look at how queer artists are working today!
We sat down with Los Angeles based artist Paradise Khanmalek, who participated as an artist in the 2015 edition of the residency.
Artist at the Intergenerational LGBT Artist Residency, 2015. Photo courtesy of Tobaron Waxman
ILGBTAR: What did you get out of the residency?
PK: I had a very pleasant time making art and making friends on Toronto Island during the residency. I enjoyed having time, space, and support to make new work and explore new concepts.
Leili, Digital illustration, 11x17 in, Photo courtesy of the artist
ILGBTAR: Why should people apply to the residency?
PK: People should apply to the residency to enjoy the un-interrupted time to make art in a tranquil and truly pleasant environment with a stimulating group of people to bounce ideas off of.
ILGBTAR: What was your favourite part of the Residency?
PK: Hmm, honestly, I had many good moments. I loved meeting Shimby and becoming their friend. We are still good friends. I loved going to the nude beach on Toronto Island. I love nude beaches. I also love the work I made at the residency. One of the pieces I made is hanging up in my room now (the piece is called Sun Eyes)
ILGBTAR: You had a studio visit with Nalo Hopkinson, can you tell me about this experience and how the residency help looking at your work critically in a few sentences?
PK: Having a studio visit with Nalo Hopkinson was legendary because I love her work. It was a stimulating meeting. We talked about sci-fi and race and my responsibility as a non-black person of color to be inspired by but not appropriate my favorite black sci-fi authors. It was a really helpful conversation and just super cool to talk to a sci-fi author who I admire and laugh with her and hear her feedback on my work.
ILGBTAR: Where did you learn or study art? How long have you been making art?
PK: I learned to make art and be creative from an unnamable and endless list of influences, community members, and personal driving factors but, academically, I studied fine art at Emily Carr University in Vancouver, BC. I have been making art since I was a child.
ILGBTAR: So studied fine arts and then later moved into a successful career in digital illustration and graphic design. How do both ways of thinking about work influence your practice?
PK: Graphic design is how I make a living and it definitely bleeds into my art. My work as a graphic designer has taught me to think about what I’m making as having a central message with supporting ideas and indicators arranged in a hierarchy of information. It’s fun to come home and make art that engages that way of thinking but then intentionally confuses and breaks those strategies.
Majnoon, Digital illustration, 11x17 in, Photo courtesy of the artist
I feel that graphic design has helped me pay even more attention to the most subtle semiotics present in every letter, colour, composition, and shape. In graphic design, everything means something and everything is intentional. In my art practice, the whole point is to be free and intuitive. To allow whatever is brewing inside me to emerge. Then, I can use my design mind to break down and analyze what’s on the page and what I want to do with it. In my design work too, it has been helpful for me to utilize my more intuitive stream of consciousness art mind.
ILGBTAR: Tell us about your practice, what are your passions for creating?
PK: My art practice primarily consists of poetry, digital illustration, book media, and photography. I make digital illustrations that explore science fiction concepts, color theory, and sensuality. I combine an intuitive stream of consciousness approach to content and composition with an analytical editing process that gives special attention to the semiotics of shapes, images, and figures. Within my poetry, I write what I like to call “experimental sci-fi” poetry. I love to experiment with the sensual sound and texture of words, interweaving the experience of saying and reading particular letters/words with the cultural and linguistic signifiers within my storytelling. I also write non-fiction essays, primarily on gender, race, and visual culture. I sometimes publish my work in zines that I layout, print, and sell independently. These zines range in content from photography to digital illustration, poetry, and essay writing.
Hey, Digital illustration, 11x17 in, Photo courtesy of the artist
PK: My passion for creating is more of a personal love and need to engage my creative mind. I need to draw, sketch, and play at least weekly. It’s part of my mental health. I feel like it gardens my mind. I am also driven by a desire to make my voice heard. I think about and feel frustrated by sexism and racism often - writing and making art that taps into and exposes my juicy complex inner human core has been a way for me to feel like I’m complicating and expanding people’s notions about my identity, their own identity, and reality in general.
Sci-Fi Garden of Eden, Digital illustration, 11x17 in, Photo courtesy of the artist
ILGBTAR: Your practice uses multifaceted visual mediums: Digital illustration, and collage that includes photos and poetry. How do you combine these different materials?
PK: The different mediums I use and how I combine them is a product of accessibility, pleasure, and play. I like to go on walks and take pictures of shadows, flowers, leaves, textures, colors, cats, skies, etc. This is a fun practice for me that sprouts from an appreciation of architecture and nature and all the beauty I witness everywhere as I walk around!
Digital illustration is an accessible medium for me because it’s something I can do in various physical positions, with limited space, and on a computer. Although my means and my physical health have both increased in recent years, I first got into digital illustration as a way to relieve back pain from hunching over to draw and paint and to also get into an art form that doesn’t require a studio or lots of materials. I now really love and appreciate the medium for the endless possibilities it garners and the semiotic significance of digital visuals. v
Writing is something I have become increasingly passionate about and comfortable with since I first stepped into writing poetry 5 years ago in my last semester of university. I love reading, especially science fiction, and sometimes writing feels like the clearest and most fun way to externalize my creative vision or social/political angst. I also feel really inspired and excited about words and letters as visual shapes.
I combine these three mediums (photo, illustration, and text) within book making, collage, and illustrated poetry. I don’t think creativity needs to be separated into different industries and economies the way they are. I am a person who is excited by and has fun with the creative practice I use to make a living (graphic design) as well as the creative outlets and tools I have amassed and internalized throughout the years (drawing, writing, photography). It feels absolutely natural and fun to combine them when I am sitting in front of the computer with only the intention to play and experiment. The intuitive stream of consciousness approach I alluded to earlier comes in to play here. What I mean by that is when I’m sitting down to make art, I like to let my body and unfiltered mind direct what it wants to see. I may start a piece with one stroke or dot on the page and build from there, listening to what I’m craving to see. Sometimes I crave a letter, a poem, a picture, a color. And that’s pretty much how it all gets combined!
Left to Right: curators Stefan St Laurent. Andrew Hunter, and Paradise in studio visit at the Intergenerational LGBT Artist Residency, 2015. Photo courtesy of Tobaron Waxman
“I enjoyed having time, space, and support to make new work and explore new concepts.” - Paradise Khanmalek on the ILGBTAR
ILGBTAR: You mentioned that your work looks at a social analysis of visual semiotics and the loaded influence this has on the cultures of identity and gender. How are you visually unpacking this?
PK: I think a lot about the semiotics of EVERYTHING and how these loaded, painful, and powerful constructs like race and gender have wormed their way into an incredible amount of our visual, sonic, and lived culture. I like to break apart and twist language and meaning that has been coded with gender or race. For example, I like to complicate the semiotics inherent in the figurative work I make. I like to draw figures and faces that appear androgynous with the same kind of facial hair and ethnic features that I have. I see these figures as being non-binary and Iranian like me. I like to then overlay and collage colors, shapes, nature motifs, photographs, and digital graphics on to them. As I make each piece, I am constantly analyzing what all the different symbols and visuals mean, what they mean to me and what they mean in our greater western hegemonic paradigm. I like to complicate, expand, and assert a more personal, complex, and chaotic paradigm when it comes to my figures and what their apparent ethnic or gendered features might mean by drawing them in an artistic style unique to me, collaging them with seemingly unrelated and uplifting nature motifs, as well as futuristic, sci-fi inspired, digital graphics.
I have also recently been experimenting with the pre-set pattern swatches on Adobe Illustrator. I have been zooming in, cropping, and adjusting these cheesy Word-Art-esque patterns in order to sample from their semiotics while distorting and collaging their energy on to my work. This exploration is very contextually digital and bound to the corporate entity of Adobe. I’m interested in exploring, experimenting with, and re-contextualizing the visuals created using this program with shapes, drawings, and words from my juiciest most authentic human core. My aim with this is to create an anti-capitalist hegemonic disruptor that is human and sensual by energetically, analytically, and materially exploring the intermingled worlds of graphic design, the corporate/digital/creative semiotic landscape, and my own personal ecstatic human essence
Paradise on the ferry to the Intergenerational LGBT Artist Residency, 2015
ILGBTAR: How does science-fiction influence your work?
PK: I adore and am obsessed with science fiction and have been since I was 13. I am a huge fan of Octavia Butler, Ursula K Leguin, and Samuel R Delaney. I love science fiction because it makes me see and discover parts of my paradigm and ideology that went previously un-noticed by making me consider completely foreign worlds that part from even the most basic assumption of my current reality. Already, being in a body that the mainstream world has considered non-existent (a bearded hairy brown femme), I am used to understanding that one’s reality is actually a precarious product of one’s context; age, country, culture, class, etc. Good science fiction writing pushes me to question even further and deeper the assumptions I’m making that I’m unaware of. I like to re-create this paradigm-busting science fiction magic in my work. This shines through in my writing but I also like to apply a science fiction inspired approach to all my work. I like to drop assumptions about what anything I make needs to be or look like or mean and play and discover what I can expand and complicate down to the shape of a letter.
Walkumentary (Cover), Book, 6.5 x 9.5 in, Photo courtesy of the artist
ILGBTAR: What else are you reading these days, and how does that influence your work?
PK: I recently have moved from reading science fiction to reading straight up science books. I listen to a science podcast regularly and sometimes get so enthralled with the concepts they talk about on that show that I look up books about it after. I recently read a book by Lisa Randall called “Dark Matter and the Dinosaurs”. In the book she hypothesizes that the way dark matter is dispersed in the universe and how dark matter particles function could influence a cyclical trajectory of meteors, thereby linking dark matter with the meteor that caused the extinction of the dinosaurs. It’s a popular science book written for the layman and I appreciated it. What I really like about it was that the majority of the book actually just explained everything the scientific community understands about dark matter and everything we know about meteors, including the history and general overview of discoveries. I also just started reading a history book called “The Invention of Yesterday”. This book has tickled more of my sociology loving brain. It’s a condensed history of humanity and civilization that attempts to connect the flow and movement of ideas and people globally. It’s fascinating but very much written from a male perspective. The book about dark matter deeply influenced my art and poetry because while I was reading it, all I could think about was subatomic particles, geology, and the interconnectedness of the universe. A lot of my poetry at the time mimicked the writing style of the author and featured some fun ideas about matter. The history book I’m reading now worms it’s way into my work because I find myself getting angry with how misogynistic and one-sided the author’s perspective is while also feeling fascinated and excited by the history he’s laying down. I end up channelling that energy in my work within my continued desire to show, complicate and assert the existence and complexity of a non-binary, non-patriarchal reality as well as fun, juicy, bits of insight I am playing with from the tasty history I’m learning.
ILGBTAR: You’re recently self-published. Tell us about that book!
PK: I recently created a book of essays called “Thoughts” and a book of collected photographs called “Walkumentary”. "Thoughts" is a collection of essays about entropy, the semiotics of art and architecture, the female object and male subject binary, and the ecstatic nature of consciousness. Walkumentary is a book of collected photographs primarily taken on walks over the last 5 years. My subjects of interest include the bold shadows and shapes of architecture, sparkling sun light and the moments of refraction and effervescence it creates, precious flowers and their juicy colors, the exuberant neon glow of Christmas lights, and the color and light passing vehicles cast on the landscape surrounding them. You can purchase them both on my website: www.Pardislili.com
Walkumentary (Excerpt), Book, 6.5 x 9.5 in, Photo courtesy of the artist
ILGBTAR:What other projects do you have on the go?
PK: I am currently playing, drawing, and writing regularly! I am trying to stay in this incubation fertile place of creation and exploration for a while because I’m a little burnt out from trying to do big art projects while working full time. I want to play and have fun for a while and strengthen and sculpt my personal creative culture without the pressure of a big project that needs to be published or debuted.
Thoughts (Cover), Book, 11 x 8.5 in, Photo courtesy of the artist
ILGBTAR: What advice would you give queer folk interested in getting into Zines?
PK: I would advise people to have fun, to not be precious, and quiet any anxieties within themselves about the inherent or assumed value of any particular art object. I know it’s hard to divorce the perceived value, social capital, and monetary capital a book or piece of art we are making is as we make it - but I feel that value is so contextual and flimsy and constantly shifting and everything we make will mean something different to us and the world in a few years, maybe less. So we might as well stay present, have fun, and engage our community in healthy, creative, and varied mediums. Including art and book making!
ILGBTAR: What advice would you give emerging, mid-career and established queer artists?
PK: I would advise artists at all levels in their career to remember that reality is fluid, meaning is contextual, no human has more inherent value than another, and we need to be careful how our creative output is used and functions within the most sinister parts of capitalism, real-estate, and politics. This is something I am becoming more and more aware of as I navigate the LA art scene. Art and artists are truly used by developers, cities, and corporations to gentrify neighborhoods, sell homes, and create synthetic “arts districts”. I’m not sure what the solution is or how to parse out a lucrative opportunity from an unethical paycheck but I have started to research the funding body behind every opportunity I get. I have rejected opportunities since I started doing this and have been truly shocked by how weird and villainous different funding sources have been (real estate developers are evil - art-washing is the wildest form of manipulation and branding I’ve ever seen).
Thoughts (Excerpt), Book, 11 x 8.5 in, Photo courtesy of the artist
ILGBTAR: What other types of cultural work are you listening to or watching right now?
PK: I listen to a lot of music while I draw and I’m super passionate about it! I especially love experimental instrumental music that reminds me of nature. I have been listening to a beautiful album called “Galaxies like Grains of Sand” by Hampshire and Foat. Also “The Honeybear” by that same band is gorgeous. I’ve also been inspired by and moved by an Iranian music duo - Mahsa and Marjan Vahdat. Stunning voices.
Which artists impact your practice the most. How and in what ways?
Musicians impact my art heavily because I listen to music as I work and their sounds inspire me and fill me with visions and feelings. The books I read also heavily influence my work as I described in an earlier question. Visual artists that impact me vary widely. I love my friend Juli Majer’s work. She illustrates fascinating sci-fi creatures and landscapes with gorgeous outfits. I also feel moved by my friend Carolina Hicks’ work. She writes mini essays and poems accompanied by illustrations that describe the chaos and pain of life within our late capitalist dystopia in the most cathartic way. I’m very inspired by and delighted by the poster designs of Sonia Prabhu.
Left: Paradise / Right: Syrus Marcus Ware at the Intergenerational LGBT Artist Residency, 2015. Photo courtesy of Tobaron Waxman
A big part of The Intergenerational LGBT Artist Residency is cooking together, especially for the meal for guests and visiting curators who give studio visits. Could you share a recipe for anything you prepared during the residency?
I don’t remember any specific meals I made but I do remember a few meals and drinks that a fellow resident made - Myung Sun Kim. I remember they shared with us a rice wine they made that was truly stunning. I also remember them making a pesto sauce with chopped almonds and basil and greens from the garden. I still remember that meal and how yummy it was! I also remember how a different resident, Shimby (Hagere Selam Zegeye-Gebrehiwot) would infuse their big jars of water with different flowers and herbs they picked. Such a vibrant, botanical, sunny memory.
Paradise at the Intergenerational Artist Residency