An introduction to jill moniz by Iva Gueorguieva and jill moniz
Iva Gueorguieva:
jill moniz came into my studio/my life on November 2, 2020. jill is a curator, a thinker, writer, and activist. I met her years ago at artist Todd Gray’s house and was struck by her grace. And I had witnessed for years her community and support for many artists like Alison Saar, Mel Edwards, April Banks, Edgar Arceneaux, June Edmunds and Kyungmi Shin, among countless others. So I was very excited when she asked to come and see my tapestry paintings accompanied by Deb Klowden Mann, her partner at Transformative Arts.
It was a rather remarkable day in many unfortunate ways. We were wearing masks reminding us to maintain a distance; a noisy fan circulated the air heavy with sud and heat from wildfires burning brutal and near; and the pandemic lingered, scarring our very core. But jill walked into that space, into the noise and awkward uncertainty, and I witnessed immediately the connection between us: she recognized them. jill kept looking around, squatting, sitting, touching… and I felt her elation. It was clear that somehow she had always been my companion and understood these worlds of beings and events that revealed themselves to me through the paintings. I didn’t have any need to speak. I just felt pleasure, the pleasure of being with another who could instantly see the same as me. And so it was suddenly us amidst them.
Granted, “them” sounds vague and a bit spooky. But that’s how we were – “them” filling my studio, the mostly monochrome tapestry paintings on raw muslin which hung from the ceiling, which sat sprawled on the floor, which stretched across every inch of wall space. And “us”, jill and me, connected by “them” in washes of black, gray, and brown, amidst big breasted beings that populated these undulating worlds, who towered, slouched, propped or were being propped throughout.
It was and remains a deeply felt knowing that painting grants access to a shared subconscious unbounded by logic, space, and time. We have various words that help but never quite name it: trance, dream space, ancestral knowledge, vibe, energy, etc. jill was born in Turkey and perhaps we both once dwelled in the underground cities of Cappadocia. Perhaps we were siblings or just neighborhood buddies. It’s important to consider the possibility of ancestral connection despite one's present circumstances rigidly defined by nationality, gender or race. But as we stood across each other that day amidst the pandemic, amidst the paint soaked muslin, amidst them, we both knew that some other way of being and communicating was both accessible and possible.
Jill has been to my studio countless times since, and we talk and look and talk and talk and look some more …and in it all we find these points of connection, insight, shared memory, the reverie of thinking and feeling immersed in simultaneity and synchronicity. I bet that’s how jazz musicians vibe with each other and know how to come back to “it”, to “them”, over and over ….
jill moniz:
I had admired Iva’s work long before I met her. I used to sit in front of her large painting at Merry Norris’ house and imagine I knew her. I had to know her because her visual language resonated so powerfully within me. Merry would say, “Of course, you know Iva,” and I would say, “I must!” It was a question, a longing and an affirmation… Years later when Deb Klowden Mann asked me if I wanted to join her in a studio visit with Iva, I practically knocked her out of the way as we went up the stairs. I felt something, someone, many things were calling me that day, a day I had already known or imagined. When I entered I felt a home coming and texture and depth and understanding and arrival. Iva had tapestries on the floor and I got down on my hands and knees to meet them.
Art work always talks to me. People don’t understand it, but the reason I curate the way I do is because I look, but more importantly I listen. I hear the work’s desires, how it wants to be heard, to be considered, to resonate with other stories and energies that can make its life more meaningful. Sometimes it’s a whisper, sometimes work shouts, demanding representation. Iva’s work sounds like the sea and wind through willow trees. It’s both a deluge and a kiss a mother gives her newborn baby. For a moment, I felt alive in a way I struggle to give words to, but these paintings knew me and were waiting. They finished my thoughts in a way that all of Iva’s work does from that day to this one.
I remember when Iva and I finally stood together, across from each other, we actually started walking around the works, talking as we kept our radius points equidistant. Inside I felt heat, like we were conjuring something – a story I’d long forgotten, an experience I never knew I needed until that moment. We were locked into one another, to the work, to the land of our births, to color and light, to the absence and the longing and grief. The world’s grief and a mother’s grief after childbirth that exists at the edges of exhaustion and elation, a knowing that the intimacy of giving life to another is so intense but so fleeting before they become themselves without you. I feel that with Iva and her work– we were birthing something that belonged to the world, yet in the moments of our conjuring, I experience temporality in a different way. I want to hold on to it, to be changed by it but I recognize, too, my responsibility to help the language live and work for the greater good.
After that day, Deb and I brought Iva’s work into Transformative Arts for an exhibition, that morphed into more studio visits and conjurings and world building, and exhibitions and performances. What began that day continues. Iva stirs and gives life and visual language to narratives and portals, the past colliding with air, water and rooting in alchemic phenomena that welcome us, challenge us to hear, feel and be shaped by their stories. For me, it’s an ongoing recognition of a twin spirit, a collaboration that I know can be shared with everyone who encounters Iva’s work.
Iva:
For my upcoming show, Seascapes/Snowscapes/Kukeri at Night Gallery jill wrote the press release for my upcoming solo exhibition at Night gallery which opens on June 22nd. It can be found here, along with additional information about my show
I have also participated in multiple group shows jill curated at Quotidian and Transformative Arts Now. Additional information can be seen here
In September 2022 jill supported the Intersection project and rented a grand piano for the live performance at Transformative Arts. I used the tapestry paintings and projected Intersection films to create an immersive installation where multiple experimental sessions with dancers took place over the course of a week. The public live performance on September 10th featured: storyteller Tonya Anderson, dancer Jasmine Albaquerque, martial artist Svitlana Zavialova, electronic musician Matt McGarvey and pianist Phil Skaller.
Above is a prelude to the live performance of Intersection on September 10, 2022 at Transformative Arts. A link to the prelude footage in the minutes prior to the improvisational live performance, which features a glimpse of film I made with Tonya in my studio earlier that year, can be seen here. In the film Tonya sits amidst my paintings and folds and straightens them as thow sitting in a bed folding laundry, while recalling a dreadful story of saving her sister from drowning in the ocean.