African Violets Within
Unconscious motivation and artistic process.
Back in the late 1990s when I was a museum educator at the MCA Chicago, I was tasked with giving a collection tour to a group of high school students. The rowdy students were mostly uninterested in the collection, which comprised things like minimalism and post-war abstraction, mostly by American artists. One piece on view was by Jeanne Dunning, one of the most important contemporary artists of her generation in Chicago, and consisted in a video of Dunning herself sucking her toe. I did not want to include that piece in my tour, mainly because I did not know how to parse the piece for the students. However, as we walked into the gallery, the entire group gravitated like bees to honey toward that video. Even while I was struggling to speak about a sober Sol LeWitt in front of that piece, everyone’s eyes were stuck to the video instead, combined with whispering, repressed laughter, and nervous giggles. Finally, I gave up and decided to turn my attention to the piece that all of them were looking at anyway; I had to meet the group where they were at. That was the best decision: I was able to have them talk about why that image was funny/and or strange and why, and we were able to have a meaningful conversation about humor, art and the body, sucking as a primeval/sensual act, and more. But why was that the toe-sucking video was a better conversation piece than the Sol LeWitt in that particular instance?
Over the past few months, I have been in conversation with the Rumanian artist duo Laura Borotea and Gabriel Boldiș, also known as Monotremu. Them and I share a collective interest in the intersection of art and education (or, as we call it now, education-as-art). One of their initiatives is Minitremu, a multi-faceted pedagogical project that includes a nomadic camp of contemporary art. In a written conversation developed for a publication, Laura and Gabriel asked me about my motivations as an educator-artist — mainly, what inspired my empathy toward students.
Counterintuitively, I thought of Dunning’s toe-sucking video, as well as a story at the intersection of botany and psychotherapy involving the famous psychologist and psychiatrist Milton H. Erickson (1901-1980).
Erickson is considered a pioneer in the field of hypnotherapy and his work on studying the unconscious has had great influence in the work of generations of therapists. A posthumously published book titled My Voice will go with You: The Teaching Tales of Milton H. Erickson (1989), editor Sidney Rosen reunites many stories connected to Erickson himself, along with the insights and ideas that Erickson put forth in his practice, including the following:
Erickson was asked by a friend to visit his aunt in Milwaukee who suffered from depression. A wealthy woman who had no use for her money other than employing a housekeeper and a maid, she was mainly a recluse; her only social activity was to go to Church on weekends as a good devout Christian, but barely interacted with her co-parishioners. Her house was dark—all the blinds were closed— gloomy, lifeless. Erikson noted, however, that in a corner of the house there was a room full of light with three potted African violets in full bloom which the woman had personally grown and took care of.
Erikson then gave the woman a prescription: buy 200 flowerpots, and on each, grow an African violet on every color that she did not currently own. Whenever there was a sickness, birth, christening, or wedding connected to any family in her parish, she would give an African violet to that family as a gift. 20 years later, Erickson shared this story with a group of his students, showing them a newspaper clipping with a heading that said: “African Violet Queen of Milwaukee Dies; Mourned by Thousands”. In Erickson’s view, the African violets were the only thing that awakened this woman’s nurturing instinct and gave her a sense of purpose. His effort was to help her amplify both through his prescription, and he succeeded.
So, what do Erickson’s African violet story and the toe-sucking video have in common?
The common thread is unconscious motivation, a concept described in psychology as “hidden desires, drives, or impulses that influence our thoughts, feelings, and actions without us being aware of them”. The African violet lady, who in her depressive state did not see any point in life, nonetheless maintained a small spark within her: her desire to nurture a small flower. Erickson immediately noticed this spontaneous inclination within her and sought to amplify it.
The high school students’ case is a bit more complex: they were uninterested in conceptual art and monochrome minimalist drawings, but Jeanne Dunning’s fetish-like toe-sucking provoked their youthful sexual impulses in such a confusing way that they dealt with it through nervous laughter; in the best way that some great art works do, the video drew them to it to the point that they could not get their eyes off it. The unconscious motivation the work triggered in them resulted in that response.
In the first case (growing African violets) the action was unconscious and needed to be formalized and redirected with a concrete purpose; in the second case, the instinctual laughter and discomfort needed to be unpacked. In both cases a productive action (a conversation in the galleries, and an altruistic project) results from supporting the spontaneous behavior. It is, in some ways, the most important aspect of socially engaged field work: the ability to identify previously unexamined motivations, that is, the issues that collectively concern, occupy, inspire or otherwise dominate the collective mind— and work with them to attain a productive goal, be it an action or the furthering of knowledge.
Speaking of knowledge, there might be a cognitive asset underlying the uncovering unconscious motivations: Erickson believed that there was an inherent wisdom in the unconscious that allowed us toward problem solving. It is resonant with Platonic epistemology, which argued that we are born with an inherent knowledge, and learning is mainly remembering what the soul already knew but had forgotten. Social engagement in the production of artworks or conversation is thus best served when we have the disposition (as previously mentioned, sometimes misidentified as empathy) to help others find their respective African violet.
Going back to the question of empathy that I was posed by Monotremu: this is a term with which many artists, including myself, feel certain unease. The unease stems, partially, from the perception that engagement with publics is primarily altruistic, one where the instigator is only a listener and not a dialogue partner; the term thus denotes a paternalistic relationship. The artist Shaun Leonardo, with whom I have talked about this, told me: “By mistaking empathy with sympathy one removes their own proximity to “suffering” by maintaining a distance—resisting an analysis of their own world view and therefore relationship to the “other’s” experience.”
I am partial to the Spanish term “compenetración”, which is similar to “rapport”: the ability to attain a level of mutual understanding that allows each party to comprehend each other’s interests and motivations.
Another interesting example of uncovering and amplifying collective motivations involves the project Casa Gallina, an experimental artist residency project created by the nonprofit In/Site, known for producing important artists project alongside the Tijuana/San Diego border. Casa Gallina was an iteration that took place in the colonia Santa María la Ribera close to downtown Mexico City. The idea of Casa Gallina was to invite artists to create projects in dialogue with the neighbors of the working-class neighborhood of Santa Maria la Ribera, which is one of the oldest neighborhoods in Mexico City and has a very unique character of its own, with historic 19th century architecture and a park with a famous Moorish-style kiosk that served as the Mexico Pavilion during the 1884 World’s Fair. The director of Casa Gallina at the time, Osvaldo Sánchez, did a thorough job of studying the demographics and socioeconomic landscape of the neighborhood. It was a part of Mexico City that lacked art galleries or museums, nor was art —let alone contemporary art— something that would appear to have interested the neighbors. In addition, as newcomers to the area, Sánchez perceived that there was certain unease toward the arrival of an unknown entity, so they needed to find ways in which they would connect productively with this community.
At some point Sánchez and his team observed that there were plenty of pet shops in the area, which indicated that there was a particular fondness for pets. Casa Gallina then launched an initiative titled “El libro de las mascotas” (The Book of Pets) where neighbors were invited to bring their pet to be photographed for a publication. The participating pets included loads of cats and dogs, but also iguanas, rabbits, turtles, roosters, ferrets, guinea pigs, parakeets, even a tarantula named “Juanita” and a duck named “Chiquis”. The publication was so successful because it gave a chance to pet owners to both share an important aspect of themselves and their families (i.e. their pets) and strengthen a community around a shared interest.
There is a mystery and a thrill in uncovering unconscious motivation. It might be the same mystery of what makes a trope, a meme, or a simple resonate with a group, and the thrill of uncovering that previously unidentified leitmotif, which, once it has been uncovered, there is a delight and a puzzlement about how we did not see it before. For this reason, the work of the artist and curator that respond, or keeps their fingers on the pulse of a cultural moment, demands that one becomes interested in whatever others are interested in. While it might be interpreted at times as insincere obsequiousness or absence of personal opinion, it is instead a necessary disposition to activate responses, and sometimes, if we are successful, facilitate large and small catharses.