Photos by Portia Iversen
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Shoebox, Los Angeles
November 17 – December 8, 2024
Written by Portia Iversen
We gather at Shoebox, a small project space located at the Brewery Artist Lofts in Los Angeles. Many of us attending know Ruby personally and love her artwork and Ruby herself as an artist and friend. A highlight of this opening is Ruby’s performance, the experience of which I describe below followed by Ruby’s own experience of her performance. Chatter gives way to a quietness that fills the room as Ruby unfurls a large canvas and situates a red plastic bucket filled with something that looks like blood. A large figure has been outlined on the canvas and also a heart.
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My experience of Ruby’s performance:
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Ruby is the color of blood
scarlet raging
spreading pink
black stitches
hold together
the heart
handprints marooned
in oxblood
trace the body
hair paints
arms, legs, belly, breasts
until blood rushes from the soul
I feel like I am witnessing someone giving themself to me. Their body and soul. Pouring it all out in front of me. Only a few feet away. I can almost smell the dark, dank odor of the rich blood there, oozing out on the canvas in front of me. For me. For us. For me to witness the existence of this other being. She is giving herself to us. Emptying herself out of all that is visceral, all that is real. I expect to see actual organs begin to slither out from her body cavities. A liver, a heart, a womb. She has already drawn a heart on the canvas before she started to unleash her worldly and otherworldly existence upon us. The canvas. She has drawn a heart there. Is it actually beating? I notice there is also a large silhouette drawn on the canvas. And lots of illegible words are scribbled there. Maybe this place where there is already an illustration of the heart – maybe that is where she will place her own, still-beating heart, on the canvas, the canvas of her.
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I am gripped with something in myself. What is it? The feeling of being poured out, stained, the smell, the color, the life force is right there spilling out before me. Like her, I am in some mysterious way also being born. She is giving birth to her own body. For us. She is being born. We are together in being these life-carrying animals of blood and bone, pain and joy and feeling, the feeling of skin, ripping, tearing, then healing and remembering itself.
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All at once she stands up and it turns back into some kind of narrative again. The familiar. We realize it is over. I look around. My throat feels like I am about to cry, I am surprised as I blink back tears - afraid to show that much emotion in public. The contrast between Ruby’s performance and what I am willing to show of myself does not escape me.
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Now she is sweeping, clearing up, cleaning up – after her self – has been utterly dissolved, given over, exposed on the canvas. She is crouching, wringing out her blood-soaked hair into the small red bucket. She is restoring the canvas to a static artwork, a place we can better understand with our everyday minds and emotions, and yes our bodies too. We are safe again and so is Ruby. Left behind is the art thing, the canvas bearing her bodily and soulful mark making, the newly born image is composed of deep black-red handprints, like someone clinging for their life, or being dragged away, the ragged brushstrokes of her crinkly hair dipped in the life-blood, the bright red remains of her movements, that she so willingly gave to us, and the partial imprints of her body – a record of those motions, are all that remain behind in varyingly dilutions and shades of red from deep almost black of clotting, to smears of oxblood, cherry, iron oxide, deep maroon and every shade of watery pink like afterbirth, and we can all breath one collective deep breath again. We have witnessed Ruby Vartan give birth to her self. And now having experienced this vivid, live birth, we too become born again. Thank you, Ruby.
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Ruby’s experience of her performance:
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Me: What lead you to the creation of this performance?
At the time I got the idea I was feeling so dark and so sad.
I was avoiding that darkness.
I was using charcoal, but it was overpowering my skin.
White. I used it to cover the darkness – back to white.
Covering, uncovering. Back and forth.
Then I thought, the female body - it is strong, deep.
Blood is what’s flowing inside me.
Blood is so true, it colors the skin.
I loved Marina Abromavich.
I started tearing the canvas.
And sewing.
I didn’t know how to sew.
My parents were tailors.
They didn’t allow me to sew.
I wanted to put the body inside of the art.
Working on surfaces in the normal way was not enough for me.
I want to go further.
I want to open up something new.
Like a new world.
I could draw my arm and make it look like my arm, but why?
I started tracing my hand, my arm, my whole body.
I started printing myself, using my body.
I want to actually be part of the art.
The truest way from the heart is through the skin.
The direct contact.
We are in a physical world.
But I can’t reach there. The art.
I only have the body to reach there.
Opening the layers into the truest, the truest, the truest.
The performance - I created it at that moment.
I will give the heart.
Every inch of me.
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Me: What was it like when you did the performance?
I didn’t see anybody, it was all dark.
Peripheral vision was black.
I felt a power coming in me.
I thought: I am courageous.
Fear has been a part of me.
Since the war.
I’m not scared when I’m doing the art.
I was listening to myself.
At that moment I was understood.
I want something big.
I felt this was the time.
Put the fear away.
Put the language barrier aside.
The heart came to me again.
Kristine’s body was on the canvas.
I was holding hands with her.
I have to protect my love.
I have to protect my body.
My body is carrying my pain.
My heart is there.
My emotions.
I don’t know what will be left of it.
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Me: How did you feel afterward?
Different after.
I gave birth and something really came out from me.
I want to just sit with what happened.
Photos by Monica Marks
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Ruby Vartan is an artist working in many mediums, she lives in Los Angeles and has participated in numerous exhibitions and had several solo shows. If you are very fortunate you will get to see Ruby’s extraordinary performance at one of her upcoming exhibitions/events.
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Notes:
The performance took place on November 17, 2024 at Shoebox located in The Brewery Artist Lofts in Los Angeles, that is home to over 300 artists. Kristine Schomaker is the Director of Shoebox, she curated Ruby’s Solo Exhibition Presence and has been a supporter of Ruby in the development of her career as an artist. On the canvas where Ruby did her performance there was a tracing of Kristine’s body and it is with this drawing that Ruby held Kristine’s hand for confidence during her performance.
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Please go to these links to learn more about Ruby’s art and life:
IG: @rubyvartan
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Portia Iversen is an artist and writer living in Los Angeles. She writes occasional short pieces about her firsthand, personal experience of artwork and the experience of the artist while they were creating that same art. The idea behind this format is to bring the actual experience of creating art and experiencing art to the reader. This was inspired by the concept that art is only alive while it is being created by the artist or experienced by the viewer.