Noorann Matties

SIM: Who or what are some of your biggest influences in your creative work?

NM: I have a lot of different interests so I try to pursue anything that sparks my interest and follow it to its natural conclusion. Growing up I was really interested in Nan Goldin, Sandy Kim, and some of the other photographers I was coming up with on the internet – people whose work spoke to this slice-of-life narrative that I was interested in. Outside of that, I’m really inspired by people with varied art practices and who don’t put themselves into one specific box.

SIM: Was there a medium you started with that trickled into other projects?

NM: I started out drawing and painting and when I was sixteen or seventeen I picked up film photography more seriously and it took off. I started to get eyes on my work online and honed in on this documentary practice that I’ve kept up with. I get into a ritual of shooting, scanning, and archiving that I like to keep consistent because I find it soothing. But that process started feeling slick and the work needs to be engaging for me to follow through long-term. I challenged myself to do a show where I made pieces in totally different mediums to see what I could make and if I could excite myself. It was at a friend’s gallery, so I felt comfortable trying things that were brand new, and I feel that it opened some doors to other art forms I had been interested in but didn’t know how to bring into my practice.

SIM: Do the different mediums you pursue fulfill different creative needs?

NM: The process makes up so much of a piece for me. I almost value the process more than the outcome and I ‘make’ to experience flow. Most of the time I’m making art to be energized by it. I think beading, crocheting, knitting, and film archiving all feel similar for me because they get me to the same place. Repetitive, process-based, mathematical mediums are what I’m most drawn to because that’s where I achieve flow state.

SIM: Which makes sense for film photography and developing film.

NM: I haven’t always developed my own film but I have always scanned and archived it myself, which is my favorite part of the process. When I do scan my own film I usually blow it up to 100% and I go through every inch of the negative. It’s very meditative and it’s interesting to think about memory versus image-making versus what the narrative is that you unconsciously give to the record. It’s important for me to have somewhat of a scientific method to art-making.

SIM: Is beading the newest venture for you?

NM: It’s brand spanking-new. Interestingly, it came out of my fibers practice. I think personal style is the crux of everything for me, and I try to lean in if I have a visual inclination. I wanted a really specific piece of knitwear that I wasn’t going to be able to find so I designed and knitted it myself. Through that process of learning how to knit imagery I realized that the math could be applied to anything with a gauge.

SIM: How does that math work when planning out pieces?

NM: First I taught myself how to turn photographs into pixel art to to streamline the imagery and the colors. From there I started using software that I use to grid my knitting patterns and I basically figured out how to make the rods that I hang them on, what the spacing needed to be, and what the gauge was from there. I treat the pieces like they’re knitwear. There is some improvisation that I have to do while I’m beading. I mostly use pony beads which are made of plastic, but eventually I’d like to make my own beads. I think that would be the next step. The way that they’re made is not so uniform and sometimes there are such small variations that I do have to freestyle. It’s a bit of an interruption when mindlessly beading, which keeps it interesting.

SIM: With some of your more detailed pieces – are those based off of your own photographs?

NM It’s the most recent iteration and for me that’s answered a lot of questions about image-making that I didn’t even know I had. My photography practice has changed in the time that I’ve had it but I can still look at images I made when I was sixteen or seventeen and images that I’ve taken now at thirty and they’re not all that different. When I was going off to college, I found Nan Goldin and fell in love with her work. She is definitely my blueprint and my end-all-be-all. I realized that in order to take photos like hers I was going to have to live a very adventurous life. I would have to say yes, I’d have to go out and do things, and meet people to take these photos, which I did. At the same time I have always had a terrible memory. So I started taking photos because I was inspired, but the reason I’ve sustained the practice for so long is because I don’t think I’d have a record of those experiences otherwise. When I was nineteen I had a medical event and lost two solid years of memory and the only thing I had from that time was the photos I’d taken. That cemented the practice for me. What I find interesting is that when I take out my camera and shoot, I am unknowingly canonizing that moment, and why that moment? Because it looked cool, because I was having a good time? It’s sort of arbitrary why I’ll take the images. I process, edit, scan, and archive everything, so I will stay with an image that I took on a whim at eighteen for years. It makes me think about the difference between memory and narrative. Is that a true recounting of my life? Is that my style or my take on things? For me, beading has become reliving a moment again cell-by-cell-by-cell. It’s maybe the most accurate way for me to articulate that moment because it is so exhaustive. My images come across as snappy, quick moments, but for me, I’m spending so much time with that split second moment over the course of many years and I really wanted a way to articulate that.

SIM: Do you find yourself reliving the moments you’re exhausting, or does the present superimpose itself?

NM: I think more than anything what I get out of it is how I feel about that moment or time in life now rather than how I felt about it in the past. You can only look out your own front window and you can never have someone else’s view. I spend a lot of time on perception – am I in the same reality as someone else and does it really matter? Through my photos I might have a totally different perception of my past than is accurate. I’m very interested in what is real versus what is narrative.

SIM: It’s interesting hearing you talk about saying yes to things and going out to live your life in a specific, concerted way in order to capture that – I find myself looking at your pictures and it all feels very natural, like being there with a friend.

NM: I got an Instagram comment years ago and I still think about it. They said ‘your photos look like a movie that I want to watch’. That’s really the crux of it for me, as far as the kinds of images I’m drawn to. I think it is ‘from the movie trailer’ snapshots. But I also think that it gives a stylized version of my life that I’m not even sure is correct.

SIM: Do you have a favorite photograph you’ve taken?

NM: I don’t know if I have a favorite, but I definitely have a favorite era, which was pretty early on in my photography when I was sixteen or seventeen and I started going to DIY house shows. I fell into this group of friends who were all film photographers and it was a really utopian experience. We were always driving around, didn’t have a lot of responsibility, and would just shoot rolls and rolls of film because it was cheaper then. All of the photos that I took around that time in my life informed the kind of work that I’m making now.

SIM: In your illustrative work you place a large focus on romance novels. How do you choose the ones you want to illustrate?

NM: I’ve been a romance reader since I was younger. I love the formula – I know I’m getting a happily ever after and the conflict at 85%. I’ve been known to pick one out for the cover but I love just sitting down with a mass market paperback. I think all of the reasons people tend to write off the genre is what I love most about it. I like to lean into things like that. Romance books and playing the lottery are tied for me because they’re both fantasy and wish fulfillment – self-soothing, repetitive things that we allow ourselves. Almost like putting the carrot in front of yourself over and over again. We romanticize these things we don’t have. These were concepts I couldn’t figure out until I made work about it. Most of the things I was interested in when I was young are things that define my life right now. Growing up I was very into visual art and then got into body modification. I was raised Muslim and so gambling, sex, love, tattoos…they were all a little bit taboo and that romanticization of the lack has been important to me.

SIM: When I think of being on the Internet in the 2010’s, the word “lack” really resonates. You bring in a lot of elements of Y2K culture in your illustrations that look like cyanotypes in those very bright blues.

NM: I grew up online in that era and it was just a completely different landscape. It was the wild west in a fun, crazy way. 2010s Tumblr…

SIM: It cannot be replicated.

NM: I feel like I deserve monetary compensation-

SIM: -For the traumas.

NM: Exactly. It’s both the reason that I’m here and also everything that’s wrong with me. I just felt like it was totally different online than what it is now and anyone that was on the internet then knows that it’s something that can’t be replicated.

SIM: You mentioned earlier that dressing yourself is really important to you. Does the way that you dress yourself on any given day impact the level of productivity you have in your creative practice or the type of art you’re making?

NM: It totally does. The days when I stay in sweatpants and a hoodie it’s harder to get as much done. I like digging into the history of body modification and love how sure of yourself you had to be to have visible tattoos and piercings when that was not at all the norm. I respected the self-assurance that those people had and I resonated with that. Even at a young age I remember knowing exactly how I wanted to look. As I grew older, I realized more and more that a lot of people don’t experience that. If I don’t like my outfit, I’m not going to have a good day and I don’t fight that feeling. I just change my outfit. People can look at that as frivolous, but for me, it really impacts my art practice. I like to think about the self as a mind palace, a series of hallways and doors that you’re opening. I think when you lean into your own personal style you open doors within yourself that only go further and further into you and you might not be able to access those things otherwise. I feel like if you’re not choosing things because you’re drawn to them in some way, you’ll have to double back through doors to get closer to yourself.

SIM: That was a big struggle with the lockdown. I know like a lot of people I really leaned into no-effort sweatpants and stopped taking care of myself. It sort of feels like ego death. There’s something about dressing yourself in a way that feels true to you that feels like choosing your armor.

NM: That’s my biggest piece of advice – to follow your inclinations. If you want something to drape a certain way, go get some safety pins and make it exactly the way that you want it. You will have a way better day. It just works.

SIM: You had said that your precursor to getting into beading was knitting because you wanted a specific piece?

NM: I really, really wanted a cropped cardigan with Nancy, the comic book character on the back and I was never going to find it on eBay. I love vintage comics and I knew if I really wanted that specific sweater I was going to have to knit it myself, so I did.

SIM: You make many references to nostalgia and the things you loved when you were younger in your work – is that something you actively try to capture or negotiate your relationship with?

NM: Nostalgia has always felt a little bit tragic but when I turned thirty something in my brain chemistry shifted. I feel like I’m at a different vantage point and I’m more of a homebody now. Sometimes I feel sad about it, but I’m glad I lived like that when I was younger and I have those photos. The Internet felt simpler and safer at that time, but I don’t think we’re ever going to be able to go back. I feel nostalgic, but mostly I just want things to feel better.

SIM: I think that the next generation is trying to access that in small ways. Over the holidays, I saw a lot of kids getting CD players and Walkman’s. There’s definitely a yearning for anything that feels more simple, and without the risk of being clocked into the entire world stage 24/7 like we are now. There’s no going back to what we had though, because that landscape changed fundamentally.

NM: In a lot of ways I feel like we’ll be talking about Tumblr and ‘the old Internet’ when we’re eighty or ninety. All of the anonymous stuff I’m fine leaving in the past. My best friend and I met on Tumblr when we were sixteen, and we would get the worst, most articulate messages – things you didn’t even know to feel self-conscious about, sent to you randomly, without impunity on a Friday. Tumblr encouraged stalking behavior because of the anonymous feature and that hasn’t entirely changed today.

SIM: The surveillance that we all enacted on each other was concerning. We were in the trenches. But you’re right, that type of online monitoring hasn’t disappeared, and I think it is one of the curses of social media. I know someone who left all platforms and instead made her own website. I’m approaching that more and more every day because it feels more like you’re in charge.

NM: That’s why I miss sites like Tumblr and Gaia Online where you could really customize your profile. It said more about what you liked. In a lot of ways millennials grew up in the wrong time for a lot of things, but the perfect time for the online art community. We got the last gasp of a lot of things.

SIM: I’m really hopeful for internet archiving in the next ten years after watching sites like LookBook disappear. I’m hopeful we can start preserving things before we realize they’re gone.

NM: The artist, Molly Soda, who I also came up on Tumblr with, is one of the most interesting people in that space. She’s been making work about being on the internet and the digital landscape stuff for so long. I think it’s going to a really interesting place. She’s always been really into saving and archiving. Now that things are really disappearing, I realize it’s a very vital practice, and I wish that I had saved more. I always felt I’d be able to come back to it. There are things people yearn for like love or money, and those things are all accessible to a degree. But nostalgia? It’s tragically inaccessible.

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