Natasha Matila-Smith’s contribution to SCAPE Public Art Spring Season 2020 is a wordy number influenced by internet culture. Cityscape messages her to find out more.

Can you describe the artwork for us?

I’ve created a series of text and graphic works for SCAPE titled Frank, Love and the Apocalypse (2020). My practice addresses themes such as unrequited love, limerence, modern intimacy and online identities; it’s also littered with pop-culture references and nostalgia for things that may not have ever been real like the perfect French boyfriend. Consisting of six still billboards and a short time-based work, they sometimes read like a diary entry, sometimes like a conversation, and yet other times, because of the scale and location, like an advertisement.

How will people view or interact with it?

There is no particular order, but hopefully people get to literally sit with the work or stop to read it. I like to play with ambiguity in the text. What I mean by that, is there is often a lot of room for the imagination with short-form texts, like who am I talking to, whether or not what I’m saying is true or embellished, how society might put pressure on us to be a certain way, and does the internet liberate us or does it exacerbate our anxieties? There is also this accessibility with text-based art that I enjoy playing with. I want it to be accessible to people, whether they are arts educated or not. But also, hoping that they won’t take everything at face value and can come to some of their own conclusions and fill in the quite literal blanks. Because I never present a full story, more of an excerpt, I like that the viewer can choose if they are a voyeur or an active player. I enjoy the spectrum of audience interpretations of the works.

The theme of this SCAPE season is Secrets and Lies – how does your work fit that theme?

In previous works, I typically write about my experiences and there is usually an aspect of questioning the reality of this account, whether it is how it really happened or just a matter of skewed perspective, or even fictionalised. As a maker, I think of myself as an actor while making. So, while I’m making, I might be somewhat removed from myself. In these works, however, I spend a lot more time ruminating over what could be, and romanticising a pre Covid-19 idea of intimacy. I think that secrets and lies, with my work, become more like confessions and delusions, vulnerable and not vulnerable, it’s kind of a matter of perception. Is the escapism and disassociation a problem or are they just coping mechanisms in a world of social, political and environmental turmoil?

Your work as a whole seems to fit perfectly with this theme. Your work is influenced by internet culture – how does that relate to secrets and lies?

My life is intertwined with internet culture. It’s there when I wake, when I’m awake and when I go to sleep. It has also been an interesting tool for those that don’t have the best social skills, but also can be a place where the worst of you can become much more intensified. With that said, I’m not commenting on whether the internet is a positive or negative space, it just is. Internet culture is just a space that has really challenged the idea of intimacy and confessionals as just about everything from people’s lives are shared, but it’s also a very curated space, and it shocks people sometimes when I write things that they would consider to be vulnerable, but I wouldn’t necessarily. My works, too, are curated and intentional, they are active storytelling tools. I mean, the internet is a hotbed of secrets and lies, but I’m not sure I intentionally connect those two things using the internet, but the internet is in my everyday life and I make work about my experience, so it’s a logical pairing to me.

You confess a lot about yourself in your work – is that cathartic? Is it anxiety-inducing?

Well, I do and I don’t. What I consider personal is different to what the next person considers personal. I find a lot of viewers feel personally connected to my previous works because while my experiences and feelings belong to me, they’re universal. I am trying to communicate and connect, but I think the point is that intimacy is hard to achieve this way. There’s no easy formula to intimacy. So, the compulsion to post online is born from a desperation to be intimate, but ultimately futile.

What’s your favourite meme at the moment?

I’m enjoying satirical political meme accounts like @diet_prada and @politicalediting and things like @nickcaveandthebadmemes which pokes fun at 80s goth bands. A lot of the meme accounts I follow and really like I don’t even know the names of. I like the thin line between funny and sad or pathetic. I’m a product of my time, Gen Y and Millennials, basically.

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