Interview: Marie Smith on her practice and Whispering for help

Marie Smith is a visual artist who lives and works in London. She graduated from Birbeck, University of London in 2017 with an MA in History in Art with Photography. Her art practice “incorporates text as a form of visual language that addresses concerns around identity in relation to memory, death, and environment. Marie also utilizes her experience as a case study to create a dialogue about mental health in order to counteract the invisibility that Black and women of colour face within this subject.” 

Website(s): marieesmith.com and whisperingforhelp.com 

Instagram: @marie_elaina_

Twitter: @marie_elaina_

The following is a conversation shared between Vanessa Leroy and Marie Smith over Zoom.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Portrait of Toni, from the series Whispering for help - March 2021. Black and White Digital image with handwritten text by Toni.

When did your interest in art begin, and what led you to pursue that interest in higher education?

I sort of grew up in a creative background. My dad was an artist, so he would take us to galleries and museums - me, my brother, and sister. We would be the only black people in most of these white spaces in London. This was in the mid to late eighties. The artwork was very much, you know, of a certain type of demographic. It wasn't as open as it is now. That was my first introduction to art. We had art around where we lived in our flat [...] so, I was always surrounded by creativity, it's kind of in my family, from my dad's perspective. He died when I was 12, but I carried it on through school.

I really liked art, and I really liked literature, so I’ve always had this tension in my work between writing and the visual, trying to kind of merge the two together. At my university, I studied fine art and I did bits of photography as a part of my fine art degree, but I wouldn’t say it was the main medium for me. It was photography and sculpture and bits of painting, but there were elements of text in my work as well at that point. So, I think photography has sort of worked out to be the best medium for me in terms of communicating.

I did an M.A. in History of Art with Photography, and because I was just writing about photography, I got really embedded into the history and the canvas. I started reading work by Deborah Willis and other black academics writing about photography. That kind of gave me some confidence, inspiration, and knowledge that I can go and make the art that I'm making now. The text element is my way of trying to get into the subconscious a bit more because I think the image can only do so much relaying as someone's kind of vernacular or someone's identity.

What did you take away from art school that still remains with you now in your current practice?

I think it’s kind of the element of space and time. I'm dyspraxic, and I didn't know I was dyspraxic until about six years ago. So, I went through my life, not knowing I had this learning disability. That really kind of hindered me in some ways, especially with writing essays. [...] I learned ways of how to work around that and how to work with it. So, I did my M.A., and it was kind of to prove a point to myself that I could write despite having this learning disability. 

When I graduated from uni the first time around I actually stopped making work for years and years and years, I just stopped. I just didn’t have the motivation. I think I was a bit lost and I think I wasn't ready to do the work that I'm doing now. I think I kind of lost my confidence a bit, really, and it took me a while to find it. It was only after I went to therapy and started to do my M.A. that I got that confidence back. So, my B.A. was kind of good, but I think I was just too immature. I didn't really benefit from it. I think with my M.A., it was a bit different because I was a bit older in my mid-thirties at that point. I think that kind of gave me a sense of structure, time management, and also an imprint of what I want to do, where I want to be, and where I want to go. I don't think I necessarily had that when I was younger.

I think all these bigger issues around race and identity, I wasn't processing that in my work. As a person, I was, but I didn't have the vocabulary at the time to really talk about it with some conviction. I think that came later on. I think it's been a massive learning curve. I think there's this pressure to finish your undergraduate [degree] and be this complete person when you're 22, 23, 24, and it doesn't work out like that sometimes. I think people should be allowed to have the space to grow, because as you grow, your work will grow.

Who are some of your artistic inspirations?

I would say I’m a culture vulture. I kind of consume culture more than anything. I wrote my dissertation about Ingrid Cologuard from a fine art photography perspective. Her work is really influential to me. It’s the same for Carrie Mae Weems as well. I really love Zanele Muholi’s work as well. [...] Their exploration of blackness has really informed me and developed my understanding of non-binary and queer communities. [...] I love Audre Lorde, bell hooks, and I recently got into Tina Campt’s writing and Saidiya Hartmann’s [Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments]. [...] I do like Zadie Smith and Andrea Levi as well.

Portrait of Nans, from the series Whispering for help - September 2020. Black and White Digital image with handwritten text by Nans.

Tell us about your project, how did you get started on Whispering for help?

The project was about me looking for community and representing these experiences based on my own experience that made me work at my mental health and wellbeing, and kind of developing a conversation myself. I wanted to broaden that out and to learn about how often we were feeling that, and I just tried to pick holes in why certain stories are not being told in the media. There are stereotypes and myths told about certain women of color. Like “Asian women are kind of pious” and “they only speak to their community” or “they don't seek help from people”. There's a high incarceration of black people in mental health services. At a point in crisis, we get entered into the system. What about those people who go out before they get to a point of crisis and they get help from their doctor or a therapist? What are those experiences as well? We’ve got some people from mixed heritage, so how do they negotiate the system if they're, you know, part white or part-something else, how is that treatment different from somebody else? The goes for queer people as well. 

I did a lot of research and read a lot, and I did a proposal which I wrote for probably six months. I kept writing and sending it to my friends to look at, just to get their feedback in terms of the wording and content. Then when I was ready, I did a test shoot with myself. Then the writing, because I was looking at the image - and there’s only so much I can represent with an image - especially an image taken by me of somebody else. Am I relaying enough information in this image of them? Is there more that can be done? Is there more that could be said? Could this be a way for me to think about the power dynamics with the photographer and with a participant? [...] So, I thought the writing was my way of allowing women to have agency. If I can create some space for them, literally in the work, to write about their experiences, that will be my way of enabling them to feel some sort of control over the process.

What types of prompts would you give the participants?

Have you been diagnosed with a mental health condition? What's been your engagement with NHS professionals as a woman of color? Do you think your culture, your identity affect how you process your mental health? What type of support do you have? Then, I kind of amended the questions slightly for COVID. How has COVID affected your mental health? How has COVID impacted your sense of self-worth and how you engage with other mental health professionals?

How did you find the participants for this project?

I did a call-out on social media. I emailed the proposal to some friends who circulated it amongst their networks. Initially, that was my way of working, but I'm changing the process slightly because I've got some arts council funding from Arts Council England. So, I was able to build a website and pay myself as an artist. Then, scheduling some workshops in May through September, which will be a mixture of me and an assistant. Then, six people come to participate in a photo engagement workshop with Polaroid cameras and can take pictures of each other. They get used to being in front and behind the camera. I would take them aside afterward and take their portrait and get their texts and that'd be part of the series. I'm trying to find ways of reaching out beyond social media so I can mix with people who might not be used to social media and people who are slightly older, so that way meeting and talking to people will be slightly different. That's what I hoped to do.

Portrait of Maryanne, from the series Whispering for help - June 2021. Black and White Digital image with handwritten text by Maryanne.

What was your process like? Can you describe the experience of sharing time with these women?

I would spend time with them before even taking a portrait, because, to me, I thought it was important for them to get to know me, to kind of build up that trust, and sort of relay any concerns that they might have. I didn’t want to rush the process and not give any aftercare [...], I didn’t want to exclude them or make them feel like they had been used. I thought from an ethical point of view, it's important that I actually spoke to them before. So, we meet for coffee or I'll talk to them through the phone or email exchanges. I would do this at least twice before I would take their portrait or some people I would talk to them for a month or two or maybe slightly longer, depending on if they were in communication with me or not. It was a slow process, but I think it helped in establishing that bond with the women.

I love the collaborative aspect of this project. 

It’s always surprising when people trust you with their thoughts. I’m a stranger, but I have good intentions, and they take that.

Portrait of Sian, from the series Whispering for help - October 2019. Black and White Digital image with handwritten text by Sian.

How does your mental health impact your work and what has it meant to you to create a body of work around this topic?

With what's happened with the pandemic, everyone has [varying] mental health. It’s just that people have a spectrum of how bad and how your mental health affects you on the daily grind. For me, I have anxiety and depression, and I've had it probably since [I was] a teenager. I'd been on medication on and off. I've had therapy for it. [...] My dad's mental health was not great and deteriorated as I got older, so I was brought up in a situation with a little understanding of it, although my dad’s mental health was never spoken about. Even after he died, it was never spoken about that much. [...] It took me a while to understand and I think there were lots of residues of trauma that were kind of quite prevalent until I got counseling therapy in my late twenties.

Being creative has helped, using my photography as a physical way of making work. You have the physicality of taking a picture, setting it up, loading the film, the camera, getting the composition right. Framing it, making sure it's in focus. All those things take a lot of time and energy that can be quite a good distraction if you're feeling a bit anxious or a bit depressed or a bit down. Then, the mental aspect is me going through and editing the work and trying to cut and make sense. I see myself in my work. I always see myself as a third person. I don't see me, I see a representation of me. So, I had that sense of attachment, which means I can push the narrative a bit more and feel as if I can be open. I definitely think it's been beneficial for me to have that conversation, and to normalize talking about mental health from a black woman's perspective as well. 

[...] I've explored certain areas and want to find different ways of talking about mental health in a way that is not so personal, but more about how I fit into this bigger nucleus of talk about identity and mental health, which is why I made Whispering for help. I'm getting into nature and air pollution, trying to think about how that impacts people's mental health and communities in particular, because we're going to want to go there, [to talk about who] is at the forefront of being affected by these things. So, it's really important that we start having these conversations now.

Portrait of Nyome, from the series Whispering for help - December 2019. Black and White Digital image with handwritten text by Nyome.

How does your identity shape the work that you’re making?

I've had this kind of burgeoning interest in nature for a while, and I live in London, and we have a really nice green space of parks and woodlands. There are ways to escape to find nature and to feel anchored to the land. My family is from Jamaica, so this is a secondary country in some ways. Everyone was scared to make it or be seen as being English, so I fit in this flux of nowhere. So, I had to make due where I am and use it to try and create some agency how I can. 

I've seen some initiatives pop up recently, there's a black women's walking group that came up. There are these different initiatives that black women are using to go into nature and have these conversations about the environment. I had been quite inspired by that to think more about how I negotiate with nature. I think with some of the work that I've made, it's been kind of there in the background, but it's kind of coming to the forefront a bit more now.

[...] I'm looking more at environmentalism, the impact it has, because there was a young girl who died in London, a nine-year-old black girl, she died of air pollution. She was the first person in the UK to have that recorded as a cause of death. Her mum fought for years and years for it to be acknowledged as part of her daughter’s death. [...] How do we start having these conversations about how air pollution and climate change are affecting black people’s mental and physical health? I'm trying to find ways to address it in my work, but I need to do more research. So, I think that's where I'm heading.

What other societal issues impact your mental health?

So, I did write in a series called The fog is lifted and I can think clearer. I was writing about the BLM movement in the summer last year and how that's impacted how I think about myself, but also how race really affects black people in general. Our mental health is at a detriment because of physical and mental pressure. That ages us. It makes us feel not well in ourselves. That’s going to be the case with environmentalism, climate change as it gets worse. As the decade goes on, it will get worse.

Portrait of Roshni, from the series Whispering for help - April 2021. Black and White Digital image with handwritten text by Roshni.

What inspires you to keep going in the arts?

This is what I want to do, I'm just going to go and do it. That’s my attitude, really. With COVID, it's felt a bit more [like] an impetus to do more for myself and to make sure that I'm mostly making myself happy, because I think if I'm doing something as an individual, surely it will impact the greater community as well. [...] I like to think that I'm working not just from the individual perspective, but also from the perspective of fitting in this bigger cannon, this bigger arch of ideas and ways of thinking that can hopefully help and provide an archive for people to reflect on later on when I'm dead. I think that keeps me motivated, and I enjoy it.

What does the future of Whispering for help look like?

This is an ongoing project, so I don't have an expiring date or endpoint yet. I'm not thinking about that. I'm just thinking about how I can maintain the project, how I can continue to get these stories out there, which I think is the main thing and most important thing for me. [...] I anticipate this to be a long-term project, you know, minimum of five years, let's just say four to five years.

I think ultimately I would like to make a book. I would have to think about how I curate the text, but I think a book would be the best format for it. I definitely think it will be a hardback book, probably A4 size so that the portrait can be blown up quite big, and the text will go with the portrait. You’ll flip through and you’ll keep reading all of these different stories. [...] I'm going to give myself more time to get more portraits, get more stories first. My main aspiration is to speak to older women, women my mom's age and my grandmother's age to get their understanding and get their thoughts on mental health.

Portrait of Tina, from the series Whispering for help - March 2021. Black and White Digital image with handwritten text by Tina.