Interview with Artist Amy Saikia Wilson

Julia Kooi Talen
January 2025

At this moment I am free

Amy Saikia Wilson is a visual artist whose work mostly lives as sculpture and installation. Her practice is an act of sharing inconclusive narratives with themes that span instinct and the unconscious, the body and complex trauma, human connection and suffering, and the rewilding of the human being. While she often employs ceramics, woodworking, fiber arts, plaster, resin, painting, found objects and natural materials in order to construct her sculptures, many of her works can exist only through the assemblage and installation of their components.

1. When did you know that you were an artist and what influenced you to choose sculpture specifically?

I don’t know how to say this without it sounding grotesquely pretentious, but I don’t think I had a choice. Art has been a possession since I entered my body, I presume. I’ve always cared about being surrounded by pretty things and uglier but also potent things. I think the genesis showed first through fashion, though. My mother claims I was incredibly stubborn over what I wore since before I could talk. I would apparently burst into tears over certain onesies she would dress me in and I would give way to smiling dressed in others. She quickly gathered what in my wardrobe I approved of and what I rejected. I believe once I was two nearing three years old, I was already curating my outfits everyday. It sounds kind of dumb, but in a way I think I was already trying to harness control over the ways I can express myself.

Like many artists, I started out as a painter because that’s what’s valued and what’s given most recognition and what is the epicenter of fine art’s reputation. I did oil painting in high school, and then enrolled in oil painting classes my first year of undergraduate. I was restless and bored. To tamper this, my paintings started getting more and more three-dimensional. I was layering paint, embroidering into the canvas, smearing air-dry clay into surfaces, embellishing them with objects. Obviously I now find all these paintings so humiliatingly hideous and obnoxious in this coming-of-age sense… But the accumulation kept happening until the works being on a canvas made no sense, the canvas is a very limiting thing sometimes. So I felt like I was on this very dark and narrow path with no alternative paths branching off of it. There was no turning back allowed and I was obliged to follow this invisible thing I didn’t know I was following.

In less woo-woo terms: I just pursued making three-dimensional forms, and here, I have found a home and a pride. It all happened pretty unconsciously. Art is a slow evolution that throws itself like a drawbridge to the next future I’m already in.

2. What inspires your pieces? Dreams? Nightmares? Earth? Sky?

Many things, I’m sure. Certain mythologies, girlhood in the 2000s (when I was a girl), gems and jewels and other things I find pretty, birds and their songs, violas, amber perfume, the veins on a leaf, night-blooming jasmine, acacia trees, medieval armor, primates and horses and fish, mothers. But in an attempt for brevity, I’ll expand on just one thing I am continuously inspired by, which is Neptune. Neptune (my dominant planet in astrology) and its symbolism is quite elusive and difficult to figure out, and I am enchanted by it. Wherever Neptune is, it blurs everything it interacts with, planetary objects and houses of the natal chart alike.

The nature of this planet is to melt, to commune with the outer world, and to amplify the entire human emotional structure, which brings about assets such as inspiration, fertile imagination, empathy, compassion, self-sacrifice, creativity, affective intensity, and the possibility to live through dreams, spirituality, and faith. But it also implies dangers such as dependence, fears, “impressionability”, weakness, escapism, forgetfulness, confusion, deception, delusions, perversion, neurosis, addiction, illusion, and despair.

Neptune’s vocabulary is that of water. It is moist. And water in the myths of every culture in every epoch symbolizes the source of life.

3. What is your process like? Do you plan out your sculptures? How do you decide on the scale of your pieces?

The plans for my sculptures are not sketches because I never end up following them or even referring to them once they are made. My plans are instead a vague sentence written somewhere in a disorganized manner. Here is an example of one that I have written as a text message to myself: “Woman riding centaur sculpture she’s half mermaid and the centaur’s face is half donkey and half man and add antlers to the woman and put everything on wheels, have all four elements, navel piercing and chanel bag.”

In terms of process, I will speak generally. I often construct an armature out of wood, and then I will wrap the armature in aluminum foil to create the form, and then I cover that in a coat of pulp (plaster and paper mache) to grant it some durability. I will then embellish that layer with ceramic shards, paint, fibers, dried leaves and flowers, chewed up bubble gum, moss, seashells, pearls, charms, ect ect ect. I will just continue with the layering of various materials until I run out of time.

Often my works are done as separate parts and are then assembled together as means to create an installation. In fact, most of my work can not exist until it is installed. Installing is the step that elicits the most pleasure for me. There is something profoundly satisfying about having all the parts in front of you and you just get to situate them in a space. It is because I have to earn it. If I want the thrill of designing an environment (which is all I ever want to do with my work), then I must go through the grueling process of creating its components and inhabitants first. Creating is structure and the relationships of its parts and functions, the fitting together of sometimes strange elements in ways appropriate to a successful making. I find, once complete, the total springs an aura not visible in its initial parts. In becoming, it becomes more. It’s almost like a virus or a growing entity that comes through me but is a separate organism from me.

I emphatically prefer large-scale. I want to make an atmosphere. Obviously, to do such a thing demands various scales. As most environments are built of matter of all proportions. So naturally there are always miniscule gestures within the larger picture. I just find working small very frustrating and tedious. I do it because I have to if I want it to look the way I want it to, but I ultimately wish for everything to culminate to a semi-life-size scale.

4. Your sculptures use so many different materials and are full of texture and movement. How do you choose your materials/layer them? Is it intuitive? Do you find yourself returning to specific materials?

I would like to think it is mostly intuitive! But I am also constantly stopping and checking to see if what I’m layering and composing “works”? It is a process that is perhaps adjacent to the operations of feng shui – the achievement of balance and harmony, and how this occurs is through sometimes odd and unknown reasons. I have boxes upon boxes in my studio of materials I’ve gathered over the course of many years – seashells, hair, moss, plastic beads, doll-house miniatures, metal shards, spools of thread, wires and electronics, bones, fabric, jewelry, stones, ect. – I think I already wrote out a list of materials I typically employ in an earlier answer so forgive me. Most materials I return to because I try to refrain from purchasing materials – unless I’m absolutely hypnotized by something, I just try my best to use these things in ways I have not prior. Sometimes I follow through on this, other times I do not.

Neptune’s Daughter

5. When do you usually work on your art? What music do you listen to while working? Do you work for large chunks of time or in small bursts?

If I can have it my way and I don’t feel unadulterated by a day job or the other various egoic responsibilities that civilization often calls for while the sun is up – then nighttime, always. I love the night very much. Mind you, I will always love the sun, I love to feel it on my skin and it has a substantial and deep-seated position in life.

But as the sun sets and the moon rises, I feel my freedom returning to me. I prefer working late into the night whenever I can. I find that at night I am more daring in regard to my ideas and how I approach my work gesturally. The night has a silence and peace, an ambient darkness, a lifting of pressure, an overarching magic that I’d like to think I worship. I detect that when artists work at night, it comes through in the work. Same as in the day. Working early in the morning is a special and delicate experience, too. I just don’t find myself doing it very often. I can be pretty unpleasant in the morning.

If I listen to music when in my studio – my selections range from Argentinian tango, to industrial techno, to Erik Satie, to the “Blackout” album by Britney Spears, to some unidentifiable ambient mix on NTS Radio, to darkwave / doomer music, to Gregorian chant music, to very heavy and profane hip-hop music where the lyrics can often discuss incredibly objectifying things regarding women — and I find this so ironic and also a bit hilarious, because I think some of the themes I deal with in my art may fall into a feminist territory.

I treasure embarking on a journey, meaning: working for long durations of time. It sometimes takes a second for me to fall into a state of flow, to feel at harmony with the tasks I am carrying out. But once I am there, it feels very wonderful and I try to stay there for as long as I can. But like all humans, I have other responsibilities and sometimes I can only run into the studio for two or three hours. When that happens, I am just proud that I managed to drag myself there.

6. Who are some artists that inspire you/that have been inspiring you lately?

David Altmejd, Agnes Scherer, Tony Oursler, Trisha Baga, Tom Friedman, Anna Uddenberg, Candice Lin, Nathalie Djurberg and Hans Berg, Jiri Trnka, Huma Bhabha, Niki de Saint Phalle, always. I also find myself looking at a lot of set design and theatre design.

7. We met at an art residency in Nebraska…can you speak about the benefits of art residencies and how they have enhanced your art practice?

Artist residencies are a paradise, a utopia, a summer camp! They are a beautiful, worthwhile and transformative way to spend one’s time on Earth and I am thankful they even exist. I treasure the residencies I have done and hope to do because they afford me a feeling that I sometimes struggle to achieve in daily life – the feeling that I am a full-time artist. I don’t make work that sells and I don’t care to make work that sells. I personally would rather clock into a day job so I can have a stream of income, and then have my practice where I can make whatever inconvenient, spatially-driven thing I want and not have to worry about whether it will provide monetary means. Sure, selling one’s art can be an enjoyable lifestyle. I don’t wish for anything I say to come across as objective or black and white. I would rather claim things are inconclusive, gray and nuanced. I just maybe fear that if money drove my art, then my art would be a lot worse.

The caveat of this, however, is that sometimes I allow myself to feel like I am in a battle with time. I will easily build resentment towards the jobs I hold because I feel robbed of my time, and I lament over how I could and should be doing what I truly feel is my soul’s purpose. Nevertheless – I believe in free will, and I believe in destiny, I believe in karma, and I believe that our thoughts, feelings and actions create our realities. Whatever I pour into my art comes back to me, and this has been proven too many times during my life thus far to ignore it.

8. What is your favorite way to experience a sculpture?

Alone or in quiet. And there is not a heavy bag on my shoulder. I often find I am looking at art with a heavy bag on my shoulder and there is nowhere to set my bag down. I always like to remove my shoes if I am in a location where it is socially acceptable to do such. Shoes are cute but they also annoy me. So if I could go to a gallery and be the only one there, and I could put my bag down anywhere, and also remove my shoes, then that would be an outstanding time.

I also enjoy unexpectedly running into art that moves me. Perhaps an altar set up on a street corner, or a passionate tree carving of a heart or stick figure or something rudimentary of that manner, or a message written in the sand.

9. Would you like to be famous? Why or why not?

Of course. I am a bit suspicious of artists that claim they don’t wish for recognition on some level. My ego likes feeling important.

There is a limit, though. The Jeff Koons / Damien Hirst tier would be a little hard to reconcile with, I don’t think I need that much.

10. Cigarettes or wine?

Wine. Red wine and orange wine. Though there were many points in my life where I would choose cigarettes, and there will probably be points in the future where I will choose them again as well. My body just has been rejecting cigarettes recently.

11. Paintings or photographs?

I collect a lot of photographs that are scattered throughout the internet, most of them have unknown sources and reside on Tumblr and Pinterest. This brings me much pleasure….
I am not ashamed to admit that I am a bit snobby towards paintings. I love painters, let’s keep them — but I think they have it very easy for a plethora of reasons that I am too jaded to get into right now. Some paintings can really remind me of how judgemental I am. There will always be good ones though. Francesco Clemente certainly changed me.

12. New York City or Los Angeles?

New York City <3

13. Hand poke tattoos or tattoos with a gun?

Hand poke tattoos if I am tattooing myself. Tattoo guns if someone else is tattooing me.

14. Ocean or Mountains?

The ocean is a creature even more unintelligible than the human. Immersion in the ocean is a return to pre-existence. The “I” disappears underwater. There is a darkness to the water – no rules are here, but there is also something glistening and free of sin about it. Terrifying, full of enchantment, without form, I quite respect the ocean.

But also I feel so hopeful, strong, and romantic when I look at mountains. I can not pick. I’m sorry.

15. Stars or clouds?

I am more drawn to stars. Everything is written in the stars. My birthday is on the 17th and the 17th card in tarot is The Star. I find the consistency of being able to see Orion’s Belt whenever I am outside at night comforting.

Jouissance

16. What advice would you give to your younger self?

Well I am not entirely sure how well she would listen to me, but: you are not in love – you are codependent / you are using relationships as vessels to escape yourself and your past / your emotional state is not dependent upon the approval of others / you can not bathe in the same water twice because the river is always flowing / you will be less hurt if you aren’t expecting an outcome / instincts are to be trusted, not doubted.

You are outrageously special and bizarre and arresting but you are also sooo irrelevant. We are floating on an igneous rock in a universe that we are all expressions of but also know next to nothing about. And sometimes the meaning of life may be to just simply enjoy it.

17. Describe your perfect day.

In no particular order: I move my body, I touch grass or maybe a tree, I drink a cortado, I put together a good outfit, I eat papaya and it tastes fresh and correct, I connect with an animal somewhere, I make art in my studio, I even perhaps cook a nourishing dinner with my girlfriends and we leave the terrace door open the entire time and we are talking about both our lives and life as a whole, I also do a blood-curdling witch laugh because we have concocted a ridiculous hypothetical scenario, I open up a random book to a random page and read a very insightful sentence and realize none of that was random, I breathe in various pleasurable ways, I dance like a bat out of hell, I stand barefoot on a beautiful rug, I express my love to my family in some form, I have delicious moments of silence, I am freshly showered and rearranging objects in my bedroom with candles and incense burning while listening to a song I find beautiful.

18. What does it mean to be in love?

Being in love is to look in someone else’s eyes and see yourself. Love is to know God is you and God is them. Love is to understand that we are evidence of the universe’s creativity. Love is a glistening, glittering mirror of divinity. Love is a moving sea between the shores of our souls. Love is the cessation of thought. Love is an emptiness that is full of everything. Love is to laugh and be joyous together. Love challenges our demons and shortcomings. Love mends our sores and wounds. But still, love must let each person be alone — for the pillars of a temple will always stand apart.

19. What does devotion mean to you?

Devotion, I love this word very much. Devotion is maybe an unwavering loyalty and commitment to something that feels right, abundant, and expansive to you – a purpose, perhaps. Devotion is an enormous care and love. But still, all things are temporary, all things rise and fall, paths contort unexpectedly and sometimes we may get sore and feel a bit dulled, cynical, hurt or frustrated. So that means devotion is also a trust, patience, and forgiveness.

20. Where can we find more of your art?

www.amygillianwilson.com
Instagram: @monkeyyrunner

Saikia Wilson has exhibited widely and internationally. These venues include Queens Museum (Queens, NY), Grace Exhibition Space (New York, NY), The Zhou B Art Center (Chicago, IL), Ivy Brown Gallery (New York, NY), Hairpin Arts Center (Chicago, IL), The Last Frontier (Brooklyn, NY), Defibrillator Gallery (Chicago, IL), Anima Mundi Gallery (Cornwall, United Kingdom), Cranbrook Art Museum (Bloomfield Hills, MI), NAVE Projecto (Quito, Ecuador), Pärnu City Hall (Pärnu, Estonia), Loovlinnak Cultural Center (Pärnu, Estonia), AZAN Contemporary Art (Lisbon, Portugal), among others. She holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a Master of Fine Arts in Ceramics from Cranbrook Academy of Art. She is currently based in Boston MA and was a recent visiting artist and guest lecturer at Massachusetts College of Art and Design.

Julia Kooi Talen is an essayist and poet based in the midwest where she teaches creative writing and composition. Currently a PhD candidate in creative writing, Talen lives with their cat, Otis and holds an MFA in creative writing from Northern Michigan University as well as an MSW from the University of Denver.