Art in America’s Summer 2023 New Talent issue includes a series of interviews with five New York–based artists to watch. A.i.A. senior editor Emily Watlington and photo editor Christopher Garcia Valle visited each artist in their studio to learn more about their art-making process, inspirations, and influences. Below, in an edited version of the conversation, Amra Causevic talks about the “sensual and cathartic” feeling of pouring paint and soothing herself via her practice.
My current body of work deals with involuntary migration and materiality. A lot of my work is autobiographical. I was born in Bosnia, and came to the United States as a war refugee in the ’90s. The Balkan region has always been a place of war and empire changes. It’s never really had a stable identity, but it still feels like home.
My dad’s side of the family migrated from Turkey to Bosnia through multiple empire changes, and every time they moved from place to place, they were kicked out, usually for religious reasons. It made me think about the material baggage and the historical baggage that we carry.
I make sculptures out of objects I collect from the streets. Hauling materials in the city has always been a challenge. How do you carry lumber on the subways? I just walk around the neighborhood and find things spontaneously: maybe stacks of egg cartons, or some little yellow plastic thing that clearly belonged to someone. I find myself wondering where these things came from, what their history is.
I definitely have a weird obsession with objects. Lately I’ve been embedding them in vessels: you’ll see all kinds of materials, salt and pepper, glass, hair. I like to imagine people digging them up 1,000 years from now.
I’ve also been emulating objects of antiquity, specifically rugs and pottery. On relic (35.3658650, -10.1964504), 2021–22, I collaged a vinyl picture of Poseidon that I procured from the New Museum, where I work as an art handler. They were just going to throw it away, but I thought it was so beautiful!
I started making rugs after playing around with pouring paint on the ground, then peeling it off. I’ve used these kinds of paint skins in performances and nailed them to walls, but over time, they start to crack. So I started adding cloth to stabilize them, and they sort of turned into tapestries and rugs. Sometimes I draw inspiration from Slavic folk patterns.
When pouring paint, you don’t necessarily have control. It feels sensual and cathartic. Maybe, when I peel it off, I’ll decide the back should be the front. Then I’ll start incorporating the fiber and embedding garbage, and eventually ask, How do I make this less chaotic? Sometimes I start with a sketch, but my process is intuitive. It’s all about trial and error, and finding solutions.
The works are both heavy and humorous: I’m thinking about things like war, but also, how do I soothe myself? How do I create a future? For me, the point of making art is to fuel my endless curiosity and to get excited about the little things.