Welcome to a new episode by Articulations from Itterate.
My name is Laura Edgerson. I'm the editorial director of Itterate. And with me today are
the Sinistri. I'm delighted to be sitting in a beautiful garden in North East London
to the Sinistri who were founded in 2017 in London, a visionary collaboration between
artist Burt Gilbert and Iset Erz, transcending traditional boundaries to engage in creative
and emotional dialogue. Gilbert's energetic artwork decodes layers of subtext within conversation
while Erz responds with meticulous stitch work and applique. Together they draw inspiration
from Jungian psychoanalysis to explore the union for male and female, a so-called SIGI.
Inaugural project, a series of genderless liberation suits, which I just have the pleasure
of looking at here, offer both the wearer and viewer visceral emancipation from conscious
and unconscious realm. This collaboration exemplifies an amalgamation of mediums driven
by shared commitments to proving human connection and self-discovery. So what I really want us
to all get out of today is to unpack the ways in which you work together, what draws you
together and really what you want people to come away with from seeing your work. So let's
start with where we all start with how we're named, with our very beginnings, our origins.
So the sinistry, myself being left-handed, I've always had a real connection with the
sinister, with the left-hand side of the brain, with how we work. I know there's many different
levels in which you came upon this name. Do you want to talk a little bit about that?
I think that the left-handed thing is always we have this work play with our work. So it
started with that and then sinister turned sinistry, which is not an existing word, but
it's kind of felt right. I don't know what do you think about it?
Well, also we discovered after the fact that in astrology there's a sinister where two
people's charts meet. So I think it was again started with this idea of the subconscious,
which I would sort of associate with the left and then essentially that idea of something
that's hidden beneath. A bit like the shadow as well, because people
with the right hand, the left hand is your shadow. I think we wanted to look darker.
We were just kind of consciously looking. And then there's a genderisation of that,
I think as well. Sinister feels more feminine than male to me. Weaker somehow in some sense.
I think it's kind of multi-layered. It's quite difficult. And also there was something that
was humorous in it. Also in politics, like left, sinister means
left in Latin. So it's like it comes from there probably and all the meanings in different
parts and in different languages is kind of felt right.
And also it was a kind of wordplay on ministry. Yeah, as well.
There's something that's vaguely evangelical about it.
There was a religious overtone to it. I know.
Which I quite like. Yeah.
You know, there's something that's slightly self-engrandising in it.
And also down with, we decided to use it as our point of view, like the finistry of something,
like the finistry of music, of fashion, of this body, of this self-elected body.
Yeah, exactly. Like professionalism.
Exactly. So there was that as well. And then subsequently,
I think I was kind of fascinated with the fact that there was an astrology connection,
even though it's felt differently. I just like the fact that there is this intersection
like a viscous crisis of where the two things meet and how at those points, how they complement
the masculine and the feminine. So it's a union as well.
Yeah. So balance and symmetry is there.
And crossover and overlap. And perhaps without being again over the top,
like a sort of divine union of something. Like the idea of it, I don't know if pure
is the right word, but like alchemical. It's the origins as well.
Yeah. It's going back to... I mean, I use that in my practice separately
about crisis, but I would just think that this is how it works together with those two
things meet. I mean, that takes you back to Jung, of course,
between the unconscious and the conscious mind. And then that's where the scissor...
So that's why he talks about scissorgy of divine masculine, divine feminine. He talks
about that kind of meaning. What made you become an artist? Was there
a particular work or cultural experience that made you think I've got to make work?
Did it come at some level? For me, yeah. For me, it started different
obviously to Barth because I studied in Saint Martins. I did foundation and I did BA in
fashion, but I was always interested like in drawing, making stuff, all this. But I
just used it in a different medium. It was like an emotional take mainly. And also I
worked quite a long period in fashion. I just needed to have a break. It was kind of, I
took some time off and then I met her at around the same time.
So it kind of... When you were wanting to do your own thing
as well. I wanted to do something, my own thing, but
it had to be something different with creativity. And I thought that was the right medium for
me. I don't know.
Yeah, but I think it's quite lonely to start with. It does require a degree of self-belief
or delusion.
I know. Also, obviously you carry what I was before, the whole ego and the titles. You
have to everything. For me, it was a change. I went through change psychologically. I
just got who I was, who I thought I was and all these things. You need to kind of, it's
more like knowing yourself, go a bit more deeper. And I think I just realized who I
was. I can use in art, which I kind of sometimes, I don't think fashion necessarily reflected
exactly who I was. I think it's more of a medium that I kind of, when I do things people
see, they will have an idea who I am now. And that makes me, I think I'm happier with
myself.
It's the emotion side.
Yeah, exactly.
It's mental. I mean, it's one of those forces that pulls you towards it.
Yeah. I mean, I personally have conflicting relationships. I think it's difficult. I think
it's not something that you choose. I think it's something that you had a compulsion to
do and that is, I find that it can be quite lonely. So it's nicer to work with somebody
because it is extremely existential. I do think that, yeah, it's given to you rather
than you choose to do it.
How old were you when you knew you were going to be an artist?
I mean, from very little. Like, I mean, I also, I got into medical school at the same
time I got into art school. And there was this conflict because I think I am a frustrated
surgeon in here. And I come from like my father, a great grump, but they were all dentists
and they all wanted me to go into medical school. And I kind of did it, went to St.
Martin's originally just to piss it off. So, you know, there's a weird tension in it for
me.
Yeah, but I think it's quite similar similarities, I think, the idea of the surgeon. Like I think
to be a doc and artist, I think it's kind of-
Well, they worked-
I think it's kind of fine, but I think there is definitely similarities.
Well, they originally, the artists were brought in to draw the body in order to communicate,
you know.
There was always a relationship there. Interestingly, I did work as a medical illustrator for a
while, but I was always-
So I think for me, there's always this angle of the investigation of looking physically
at the body and then looking at its interior and exterior, like on many different levels.
So we very much focus on storytelling and narrative kind of within that. And I feel
we've already gone through many different kind of climatics throughout history and psychology
within your work. So I wanted to ask you a little bit about your subject matter, I suppose,
in a way. And let's get back to manifesto, because obviously crucial to your work when
you launched with these fantastic liberation suits, it was all based on a manifesto. We
just had a recent essay in our magazine about surrealism. There's obviously connections
going back to Andre Breton, 1924, that time. So can I talk to you a little bit about why
you felt it's important to have a manifesting and then how it manifested itself in your
work?
I think because between us, all of the work really comes out of the conversations on a
personal level. And that's how we met this kind of interplay and a lot of jokes. I think
there's something about distilling something down in words that can be-
With humor.
It's like the humor meets the conversation, but then you're distilling it with like a
very sharp humor, which kind of doesn't need too much to talk about it because the minute
you laugh at something, it kind of brings the light into it. It kind of opens. So I
think it helps us, a lot, both of us to go-
Well, you can go dark and some of it is quite cutting, but there's a darkness and a lightness
at the same time. And I think there's something about humor that is sort of arrow through
things. It can get a point across a lot quicker than a massive text. And there's the point
of cliches. There's something in cliches. There's an ancient or inherited wisdom to
them. Because if you can distill something down to a line or a word, it's like a symbol,
isn't it? It kind of pups-
A way of saying it is, like, because we use certain phrases and like certain patterns
and all the things is almost like, as you talk, like the words, they become somehow
the sequence of it, makes it, brings the humor out and kind of almost ignites the whole,
oh, okay, this is what he means. And it's kind of-
And it's another part. You know, I do think it's like, I mean, what someone told me, it
was the lowest form of wit. I think it's, I don't know if I agree with that. I just
think it could cut through quite dense topic. So the idea with when we create these manifestos,
which again is essentially quite pretentious on some level, but I kind of like that pretension
because it's also, if you read what we're doing, it's meant, there's a lightness and
there's levity in there, but there's also light and dark in there.
And you're talking about bleeding between the lines and the pain you're seeing like
between a conversation somewhere. I think you need the humor to talk about it. Otherwise
it gets too much. Yeah. It kind of becomes too contained.
And also I think it's extremely visual. For example, that phrase is definitely how I would
view my own practice of bleeding. I think as artists, you do bleed between the lines
and read between the lines. What is said is not meant. Like you can feel, I'm always being
fascinated in subtext. And so both of us are, and that's the word play in it, because I
think some people say things and it's like, you could feel it's, well, that doesn't feel
right or so I kind of think both of us love that kind of play in like what is said is
not meant. And although what we're saying is meant, but it's also not. It's kind of
round and round it goes. It's like, if that makes any sense.
Yeah. I think just kind of in all these layers, how deep you can go through these layers to
understand what it means. And then you realize it is also psychology. We don't only have
one layer. You need to go deeper and you can work further. So I think it's just like a
continuous work, which we can't show it all in our work. So it's not just one direction.
It's not, we don't want to just say this or there is something else underneath that. And
also there is more underneath that. Well, it's a duality, isn't it? Of what?
Definitely duality. Two things exist. It's like either or, neither
nor. It's like there's a quantumness in it. It's not just yes and no. It's not binary
in it. It can be interpreted in a multitude of ways.
Yeah. And also they can be both, right? The whole idea of there can be duality and like
both opposite can be possible and they can exist without contradicting each other. I
mean, it can contradict by taking exist. There is a paradox in it. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And
that's like, again, goes back to you and your guy holding the tension, the tension of the
opposite and then you hold it. And then when you stay there long, a new option comes out
to as a creative like this, all the creativity comes if you stay long in that tension.
Fascinating. I mean, can we talk a little bit more about the kind of the eligibility
of the languages? Because, you know, language as we're hearing is so key, similar to your
practice, but you looked at some wonderful examples through manifesto using many different
types of scripts, which are ancient. Some of them maybe are lost. You talk a little
bit about specific languages and legibility and understanding and kind of clarity and
how you kind of either say, either stitch them or print them and what your experience
of these languages and text and alphabets, glyphs, symbols are in your practice.
I mean, I think again, it comes back down to the idea of words being incantations and
resonant on many levels. So when the word is spoken, it has its own vibration in that,
but then also that can be represented symbolically as another way to feel the words symbolically
as well as what's written. So to me, the symbol or the glyph, it's a simplification, but also
another way of looking at what we're trying to say. There's a bridge or a thread through
all of these different, I'd call them languages.
It's kind of, you use sometimes the same symbols, but it can be totally different, but then
you can separate them each and then they're visual, but also every language has a different
tonation and different word. It's like, it's so many things done and then kind of fascinating
and it's all about to understand each other. It goes back to connection, communication,
connection, all of the stuff, but also it's a major miscommunication and cut off the connection.
You use it in a way, it's again, like holding the opposite, like it's like duality, it's
a separator or connector. If you choose it while you go through it. And even like the
other languages like Hebrew and like totally different alphabet. And now we use like cuneiform
was one of the first like phonetic writing way. So it's like so many things in the history
and like different cultures are used. I think it's fascinating, but for us using it, you
can be, for me it's like the just that symbol and also the repetition of it.
I was going to say repetition.
The repetition of it.
In different examples of your work, in different mediums.
Yeah, the sequence and the repetitions of it in different sequences makes us understand
each other.
But also for me, the symbols are also ideograms. So they hold the whole concept in that one
symbol. I love that idea that you can reduce something down to a whole concept that can
help be held just in the symbol of an eye or the symbol of a snake that translates across
time and all civilized and like all different cultures of symbols. And they're in every
culture.
And comes back that cave, you know, we were last, they found in the caves, like the oldest
things and it still has very similarities because it's kind of this almost from the
unconscious probably. It's kind of an archetype. So we kind of go into.
They're archaic symbols. Some people say that if like when you kind of rub your eyes, there's
these, you can see these certain patterns when you rub your eyes and that these were
where the original kind of mark makings and cave's cave, these like archaic symbols that
first started out as lines, then developed into written language like the cuneiform and
then it kind of translated, you know, then it was started to be spoken. Though it's not
an accurate like history that I'm explaining.
This is what's interesting, isn't it? Because you're fictionalizing this. You're creating
fiction in some senses. Yeah. That's rooted in. It's rooted in things. Is it rooted more
historically?
I think it's a combination of things that are already inherent. I think it's like remembering
things that we've forgotten.
As human.
Yeah, exactly.
I think this remembering of a lot of different things, ways of being, ways of connecting.
Ways of seeing, ways of feeling.
And I'll tell you a little bit about the senses as well, you know, because I think the parts
of the body are vital as well in what you're actually producing in the subject matter and
that kind of basic human sense of sights, touch, how do they feed in as well? Do you
see that coming through?
Well, yes. We spent thousands of hours on that. Within that is all of the senses are
in there at some point. What you hear, see, feel, touch, taste.
We use them also as symbology. Obviously, see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil.
We just put down there's a lot of sensory organs and then again with the language, what
the phrases become and what was originally for. I don't know if I'm answering the question.
And it's a game too. I think it comes back to the games. I mean, the I Spy that we were
just looking at, the Snakes and Ladders.
Yeah. Our research was actually like all these old board games that no one remembers how it's
played as well. So I think it's kind of our attempt to kind of bring it and just like,
you know, see what happens if we created like.
Also, there's like rules to a game, but then some people are playing them and some other
people are playing them.
Yeah, there are rules almost not to have them.
We discovered this ancient board game called Menmere and they've forgotten the rules of
it. It's a coiled snake. You apparently used to throw sticks, but no one can remember how
to play it. And then, you know, it just became this wordplay. Yeah. Sort of lunacy wordplay
of which rules to follow and that really no one's really winning on any level.
Yeah. Yeah. I think it's again like social construct. Like, I know we play all that rules,
we talking about all the social constructs. We kind of on a daily basis going through
and then they become sometimes like social contracts and it's actually not contractual.
You just want to play it differently and you find yourself, oh, because I did it a certain
way. So I think all our sense is going back to seeing, hearing things. It is all part
of it because.
Of self, of others. Like I often feel like there is a game being played that I don't
know the rules to and that maybe I should, you know, take things less or less seriously
as a result. It's not a level playing field. Definitely not. So it's like, okay, if we
view it like that, then maybe that's easier to play along if you realize that nothing
is personal. Yeah.
I always feel when I think like that way and I also feel like they don't know the game
anyway. They're playing a game they don't even know. So it's actually more dangerous.
It's kind of a really, it's kind of a tricky way to see it like that. But I think it's
like what makes life.
Cool.
Life. When fuck makes life.
Yeah, I think that's the thing. If there's a game being played, then like, can everyone
follow some rules for a star? And if, because it feels like it's just like it's uneven on
some level.
If a game of life is the beginning.
A game of life.
Because it is.
No one knows the rules.
And who's setting the rules? Apparently, like the people in power, I'm not sure what they've
signed up to win. You know, especially if we look at it on a deeper level of like, what
power are you gaining when we're all living on the same planet?
Yeah. So the power of art of course is to, it's social commentary in the sense.
Yeah, there has to be another, essentially that is the role of an artist is to give another,
is to give it a different aspect on it.
Yeah. And also always you're looking from your own identity as well. And your identity
is always political, you know, just like it, because you're part of a society and you're
part of community and part of like, whatever you're part of is becoming, changing the meaning.
So, you know, that's why I work at one level. It doesn't start with your political, but
it is political because you can't separate certain parts of yourself. You are many things
at once. I think it makes a lot of like, it's your main tools, but those are the things
what you people think like, oh, I see something, I hear something like facts, but then there's
a total part of it comes from unconscious. You hear as a whole personality, as a sensor
thing, ready to waiting, like things coming from the unconscious and try to make sense
of it and maybe try to put into work. Like I think it's constantly like different parts
of us.
So I'm working on every evolving concept, influx back and forth. Actually, hence the
our work, the masks are part of that as well. There's a continuous, like a quantum persona
that we constantly react with different people, different locations, different circumstances.
We always change. Sometimes it did kind of helps us find our way in this game.
Yeah, but I do think as an artist that you're often quite objective though. There's enough,
you know, that you're outside of as well as in, you know, like that's the kind of, there
is a distance. You're kind of trying to consciously investigate your subconscious.
You can't do it with the persona. You can't do it with the mouth. You have to try to get
them off. It's existential, it's vulnerable and it's also, you know, it's not. I don't
think I've had a choice. I choose to be an artist. Well, no, I think it's for me, it's
a compulsion to kind of try and investigate something that I don't understand. But I think
it's a blessing and a curse because I sometimes just like to not be kind of trying to constantly
probe something to find out like, could I just relax over here?
Because the beauty of it is because you kind of questioned something unknown, but the problem
with it is as well, because it is unknown, so you don't know it. So there is fear, so
you're approaching with fear, but you have to let your fear, like the guard of mask,
to play a little bit, to have to relax a little bit so the things will come and show themselves.
But then also then bring it back to some form. No, and that's created to make it manifest
like somehow whatever it's coming to turn it into something. Which again, sounds slightly
grandiose, but I think it, you know, that's anyway, that's what it feels like. You're
basically taking things that are invisible and bring them down into a visible medium
of some form. Yeah. Can I go back to ask about how the partnership
helps in that sense? Well, I think it's quicker. It's much quicker to be in collaboration because
you can bounce ideas off each other rather than in my own practice, I can spend months,
hours, years dragging myself around with something, whereas in this, we can be yes or no with
it. And it's kinetics, there's an energy in it because you got, you know, and also somebody
doing something else. Like I think what that's taught me about the idea of doing and being,
because I'm always like, I kind of like to be doing something all the time. When I see
him do something, I'm like, I should be doing something. Whereas actually it's about being
able to relax and be like, okay, he's doing that. I can hold something else. I don't have
to always be doing something. Yeah.
And I think also when you're two people, you know, they trigger, like when you talk about
ideas, whatever is like you feel the tension and the trigger, I think that's the right
place to go. You find it so, you know, we almost like each other's radar. Like it's
like this antenna, like something is coming to me and like there is almost like bouncing
off and that bounce is very important. He can catch what I'm trying to say. Sometimes
it's like that and that is actually very difficult to do on your own. And in my own practice,
I can sometimes just not catch and then I'm like in some kind of whirlpool of unhelpful,
really various. It's just also normal. Sometimes you don't hear what you say. I'm like, oh,
did you just see what you said or did you just hear like, it's just like catching that
moment. It's like that balancing that like very.
I would say that with a between it's a high level of vigilance between in a positive aspect
of like we're listening and seeing and looking who the other's doing, but in a healthy way.
Yeah. You know, normally you would be looking like,
what are you doing? Whereas this is much gentler and it's like more inquisitive.
Yeah. I think the curiosity. I hate using that word. I think that word is overused.
I think it's for me, it's like curious. For me, there's just connotations of that specific
word and the way it's used in the wellness industry and.
Right. Okay. I don't know that connotation. I don't know the line that you have in your
work. I want to be you without you. I couldn't be me. I mean, there's this linking and threading
kind of between. And I just, I wanted to bring that back to the analog kind of nature of
your work, right? The actual kind of practical application of how you make what we see and
how you divide the labour between you. It's yeah. And that conversation.
It's quite, the labour is, I mean, it feels like it's quite natural. Yeah.
You know, it's again, like a game. We often describe it as a game of exquisite corpse.
It can pass between us and there's a trust. That's ultimately, that's the difference is
there's a trust. I've been in a lot of collaborations where it's been uneven. This never feels like
that. It feels like, oh, I think that's for me the key is the trust between us.
I mean, how we go generally to create stuff is like beginning is like, you know, something
comes maybe energetic from that. And then I take it and I use something, maybe something
more contained, like a stitch or something on it. And then till we decide and it kind
of comes that we both know, oh, this is it now. And then from that point, if you're going
to do a series of them, then we can work from both, like whichever we can work on it together.
And the tension that because there's two people working on it, wherever they're working on
it, there's a thread that's pulled or loosened between us. So it's kind of quite subtle in
that there's this, like you kind of know it's something's going to come, but you don't know
what that is. And so there's a belief there as well that like, okay, which I think on
your own, you can often lose belief in something, you sort of, the energy goes around it and
it takes quite a lot to get back in. Whereas this is easier to kind of jump in and jump
out, you know, it feels like again, like an expansion and a contraction of something.
How about the aesthetic choices? I think we both have similar aesthetics on different
ways. Like, you know, we're, that's intuitive. It's like, yes, no, yes, no.
Yeah, we have very different aesthetics. What we're doing is it's own aesthetic. I think
it's a really good amalgamation and like mixture and like all chemical, like they can't go
back to me or to her. It becomes sinistry. And like, you know, like when you cook ingredients
and it becomes something else, you know that it tastes good when you know it. I'm like,
no, it's not for everyone, but it is for us. It's like, oh yeah, this is cooked perfect
now. We know that woman and they are ready to other people.
I mean, we have, it's rare that we have made some things that we just undercooked or we
just can't bring. We made this piece, a map of brilliance. It's not brilliant. And we
really tried, really tried hard on it. And it's like, also the title is ridiculous. I
think that you have to accept when something is not working as well. There's when you've
like, okay, let's give up. Also knowing when to give something up, like, okay, no. I think,
yeah, there's some kind of binary of the whole thing.
But yeah, I think it kind of evokes like emotions quite a lot. What the piece says generally,
like it's the end. In yourself? I mean, I mean, in me as well, I know it's all, it's
kind of when I see that. They're like children though, aren't they?
Yeah, I don't want to. You're like, oh, look at that. It's a physicality
to do that. An intention of physicality, right? In the stitching, the handmade. I think a
lot of the comments that we got were like that people were emotional. Yeah, emotional.
They were like, yeah, they could feel the work in there. Or like what had been, I don't
know how to put it, you know, whatever their emotions were.
Yeah, they were definitely like carriers of that emotion. It's going into like going back
again, all these conversations. So starting from the manifesto, all the conversation,
all these trials, all the games and back and forth, it's all actually embodied for that
piece of work. So even you see a tiny piece of art, you have everything. It's all like
they all keep. You mean like a fractal of the, it's like
a holographic fractal of something. Exactly. I mean, like from the big installations
even, we don't just give all like all this installation needs more work. I mean, we give
the same attention to everything. I think it makes more sense when you see the
work as an installation though for others. You know what I mean?
You then get an insight into your journey, into the initial.
Well then you can make the links. I think then you can make the links. Because the reason
of making stuff is sometimes you don't have to explain things.
Exactly. All of these are full of convenience. She's
like, did all this, going to be quiet over here.
Always my old inspirations, everything still came. I was connected, but then I think it
comes to a level I think when you, I think probably Bert was the right person and the
right moment. So it just kind of really evoke this, oh, I need to do this.
Inspiration. Yeah, I think she's my inspiration. Definitely
I'm an inspiring person. If she can't be an artist, I can't be as