“I all the time thought being an artist,” Shantell Martin told me recently in her LA studio, “allowed you to do anything you wish. It is a freedom to create whatever you wish, wherever you wish, each time you wish.”
That’s actually true for Martin whose life and profession has never followed a straight line. Martin has found expression in a multiplicity of mediums, materials, venues, and in artistic collaborations and outlets everywhere in the globe.
Martin’s work is improvised, a spontaneous black marker line that travels from the ornamental to the meaningful, that includes words that challenge and strive to attain self-definition and healing reminiscent of her series installed in Latest York’s Calatrava World Trade Center Oculus Transit Station that asked, “WHO ARE YOU” and answered, “YOU ARE YOU” adding the query, “ARE YOU YOU.”
Martin’s work has been exhibited on the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, the Denver Art Museum, The Brooklyn Museum in addition to galleries everywhere in the US and everywhere in the world. She has taught at Latest York University, at MIT’s Media Lab, and at Columbia’s Brown Institute of Media Innovation.
Within the last decade, Martin has done collaborations with Kendrick Lamar in Miami 2017; Max Mara Eyeglass frames in 2017; a 2014 collaboration with Kelly Wearstler on fabric, home décor objects, totes, clothing and furniture; a 2017 collaboration with Momentum Textiles of 4 intricately women patterns in 30 colours which can be within the everlasting collection of the Smithsonian; a 2018 collection for Puma worldwide; an installation for Tiffany & Co., in Milan 2018; a 2021 collaboration with Adidas on the NYC MakerLab; a 2021 collaboration with The North Face (could possibly be my favorite); and a 2022 home products line with Hoek. Martin even did a collaboration along with her own grandmother Dot Martin of embroidered messages, which was eventually exhibited on the Brooklyn Museum.
Within the performance of her art, Martin has also found the inspiration to choreograph works for the Boston Ballet and done the backdrops for works on the Latest York City Ballet. Recently, she has turned to creating music and vocalizing as a part of experiential events. It will be easy to see in her lines the long path she has taken from her childhood but speaking with Martin one gets the impression that she has all the time been the artist and person present today.
“I even have learned to embrace my multivalent perspectives and double consciousness and to see strength and exalt in my personal and cultural in-betweenness…. My preference of working in black and white is an apt metaphor of my very own existence.”
Martin grew up in Southeast London, raised by a single mother and stepdad, living in a low-income housing project along with her half-siblings. Which may need been tough enough, but there was this added element: Martin was brown skinned with an Afro, a mixed-race child, while her siblings, mother, stepdad and everybody else within the housing complex was white.
“I experienced racism each time I left my house,” Martin recalled. Nevertheless, because she was, in her own words, “A weirdo kid,” Martin says there was a silver lining: “I didn’t have the pressure to slot in like everyone else… And that gave me a bit little bit of freedom.”
Looking back at her childhood, Martin reflects that “when you have got no control over your day, over your week, or over your future, you have got to seek out some sense of control in something.” Martin explains: “For me there have been two things: I became insanely organized… I controlled every thing. I collected posters, I collected stamps. I collected plastic bags, and I might consistently organize them to make sure that they were in perfect order,” Martin said. Her other coping mechanism was to put in writing and draw, “I didn’t understand it was Art. I just knew that if I wrote or drew, it made me feel higher.” Martin makes the purpose that drawing is something that is out there to each child. “Drawing is so accessible; I didn’t should discover it. It was a tool that was already there.”
Back then Martin was more concerned with running than art. “I used to be the fastest girl in the varsity, I ran for a neighborhood team within the 200 meters.” Martin assumed she would go on to check sports science at university, but after a number of weeks of prepping for exams in Physics, she decided to drop the category in favor of an Art course which she assumed can be easy. Which it was, for her. She did well on her A level Art Exams, but her teacher discouraged her from applying to Art school convinced she wouldn’t get in.
Undaunted, Martin applied and was accepted to Campbell College for Arts for a one-year foundation course which is a feeder path to more prestigious Art Schools.
At Campbell, for the primary time, Martin found herself amongst her people. “It was such a weird eclectic group of weirdos.” She said, adding, “Finally, the weirdos were multi functional place … and so they weren’t getting beaten up.” Martin excelled at Campbell and was accepted to the distinguished Central St. Martins, England’s premier school for Art & Design, with students following courses in studio art, or fashion, or industrial design. Among the many myriad graduates of Central St. Martins are George & George, Frank Auerbach, Leon Kossoff, Jarvis Cocker, P J Harvey, John Galliano, Stella McCartney, Alexander McQueen.
At that moment (2000-2003) Central St Martins was still in an old constructing that they were within the technique of selling. Martin specialized in graphic design and communication. Students in other disciplines reminiscent of fashion, jewelry and product designers were in a distinct constructing. Even the courses at St. Martins weren’t traditional art or design courses. “What we did learn is the way to check with people,” Martin said, “the way to speak about our work, , the way to be conceptual, the way to have ideas or expand on ideas.”
In 2000, Martin traveled for the primary time to Japan, which she found “incredibly refreshing.” In England, she explained, the minute you open your mouth, persons are making judgements about your upbringing, social class, education – all based in your accent and dialect. Whereas in Japan – you’re either Japanese or you’re a foreigner. In Japan, Martin was an outsider, but she found comfort in that “Because I wasn’t attempting to be the rest.” In England, the country she was born in, where her grandfather fought within the war, people were all the time treating her like she wasn’t from there. In Japan there was no must try to slot in. “That was liberating.”
So, after graduating St. Martins in 2003, Martin moved to Japan. In Tokyo, Martin, like many young people there, found herself going out dancing in clubs where giant visuals were being projected on the partitions. Martin had the concept that she could project on the club’s partitions drawings that she made live while playing music. By doing so, she became a preferred Tokyo VJ (Video Disk Jockey – a thing on the time in Tokyo), playing one night at some underground DIY space and the subsequent for five thousand people in a techno club with the best quality equipment and sound. As a foreigner in Japan, she became a part of a community of expats all of whom sought one another out within the nascent days of Facebook and MySpace.
Martins, who had initially planned to spend a 12 months in Japan, ended up staying there for nearly five years. She built a big fanbase as a VJ and a community of expats. She decided to depart when the social insulation of being a foreigner began to dissolve and she or he became aware of the darker points of Japanese society. She knew that if she desired to proceed to like Japan and the experience she had there, she would have to depart.
Martins ended up in Latest York (She first visited in 2008 and moved there in 2009), which she now says, with amusing, was “probably considered one of the largest mistakes I’ve ever made.” Martin had built a life in Tokyo, a living, a fanbase for her work, a community. In Latest York, she had none of those. “Once you move to Latest York, nobody cares who you’re.” There was no such thing as being a VJ in Latest York clubs. She considered herself as an artist, but no galleries were concerned with her. “Everyone’s attempting to be an artist,” was what she heard repeatedly in Latest York.
“I used to be starting all all over again,” Martin recalled. “That was the tough thing.” Martin slept on couches “for like two years.” After months of wishing her Japanese fanbase were in Latest York, or that her Tokyo friends were there or that she had money, a patron, or a gallery, Martin decided she needed to make her own opportunities.
“I used to be like, okay, what do I even have?” Martin said. “I even have this experience and skillset from Japan. I even have some friends. So let me like try to take advantage of that.” She began to ask friends who had an area if she could do a show there. Eventually a friend offered up a bit space in Williamsburg (Brooklyn) where Martin began to do these evenings where she invited a band to play while she drew her projections, like she had done in Japan, making line drawings that took on a lifetime of their very own. Word spread and more people began to come back. It wasn’t billed as art, or a performance, but just a part of the show and the experience.
There was no monetization. But then, in February 2010, someone who got here to 1 evening turned out to work at Latest York’s Museum of Modern Art. He contacted Martin and hired her for a family and friends event within the Museum’s large atrium. A couple of weeks later she got a call from the TV show Gossip Girl saying they were shooting a celebration scene and wanted her to make a cameo drawing her projections. That ran two months later. The next 12 months she did an event for the Museum of the Moving Image in NY and events and conferences in Florida, England, and St. Petersburg, Russia.
By 2012, it was now 4 years since she’d first arrived in Latest York and two years for the reason that MoMa event. Martin had rented a room in a brownstone in BedStuy where the owners asked her to be at liberty to attract on the partitions. So, she did: On the partitions and on the ceiling as well. Martin shared pictures of her room on Facebook and shortly got a call from an editor on the Latest York Times asking in the event that they could feature her room within the Home section. That article, “A Very Superb Line” by Liz Arnold, ended up being the front page of the Home & Garden section (Section D of the paper) on May 23, 2012, after which jumped to the within. Suddenly, Martin was an overnight success.
The Latest York Times “made a world of difference,” Martin said. In the last decade since, her projects have been many and varied. There have been museum and gallery shows in Brooklyn, Tokyo, Boston, Toronto, on Governor’s Island, amongst others. Major brand collaborations with Tiffany & Co, Flos, Kelly Wearstler, Vitra, Puma Select, Jose Cuervo/1800, Max Mara, Kendrick Lamar, Martone Cycling, WME IMG/Latest York Fashion Week, Interview Magazine, Saks Fifth Avenue, Canada, AmFAR, RED, United Arrows, Warby Parker, Amex, KCA Blackball.
Yet, in each work, and in each collaboration, the distinctiveness of Martin’s work – her line – stays recognizable. Martin explained that she has learned over time that if she approaches an establishment or a brand about doing a piece, it rarely works out. Against this, saying no to work, Martin discovered, “puts you on the trail where you’re just saying yes to the things you ought to do.”
Or put one other way, “I’m gonna draw what I wanna draw,” Martin said.
“I literally waft on the journey where the ink pen takes me,” Martin said in an artist’s statement. “I’m as surprised by the consequence because the viewer.” In our conversation, I remarked that while that could be true, it doesn’t account for her confidence, evident in her ability and in her work. Martin agrees: “It’s all confidence. It’s like one hundred percent confidence.”
Consistently, Martin has placed herself in situations where she is an outsider – outside of her comfort zone, outside of her experience or knowledge of specific forms – as a visible artist, as a performance artist, as a choreographer, as a product designer, decorator, whatever reductive terms one chooses that don’t contain Martin’s multitudes. In each instance, she makes the environment and the world and one’s experience of it, her own.
Martin agrees. As she told me: “I’m all the time like an outsider on the within.”