Rabiya Choudhry on solo shows and Edinburgh Art Festival

“I’m better at technology now. It’s because of smartphones – I don’t have to go to the computer room or fire up a really ancient laptop. The world was totally different 10, 15 years ago. Most of us didn’t have computers in our flats. Laptops – were they even around?”

It’s in a somewhat nostalgic mood that we meet up with Rabiya Choudhry to discuss what promises to be a busy season for the Edinburgh-based painter. Contemporaries at Edinburgh College of Art in the early 2000s, and both Glasgow natives, it’s with shock that we realise we have now lived in Edinburgh for more than half our lives. Traitors. As Choudhry gears up to launch the first of three high-profile Scottish exhibitions in the coming months, it’s an opportunity for reflection. How far have we really come from the useless art students hanging around K Jacksons?

“The reason I think I was slow at communication was that communication was slow. So the reason that I didn’t email for a couple of months was because I never had my own laptop,” explains Choudhry. “I was queuing up in the computer room! The computer room at college was the best place to be. There was a feeling about the place. It was a good place to connect with people from other departments.”

The comparative inconvenience of queuing up to use a shared PC provided an opportunity for natural cross-fertilisation between students of different disciplines which may not have a space now. There were advantages to our pre-smartphone education.

It is Choudhry’s first planned exhibition of the summer, Ambi, which has sent us down this reminiscence about technologies past, after she successfully sent in an image of her work for the exhibition in marked contrast to former technologically-inspired panics. The group show was scheduled to take place at Glasgow School of Art in mid-June before the devastating fire at the Mack led to that corner of the city being closed off indefinitely. But it will be staged at a later date, and it is a project which forms the genesis of a new branch of Choudhry’s work which we will see playing out across the country over the next three months.

Ambi is a collaborative exhibition, conceived by Jenny Brownrigg who invited three artists – Choudhry, Hanneline Visnes and Fiona Jardine – to make new work exploring the GSA archive. The name came from the material Choudhry, Glasgow-born of Pakistani heritage, was initially drawn to. She explains: “Ambi is the Punjabi word for the boteh, which is the Paisley [pattern's] comma form. But it also means both, so there’s a duality.

“Looking through their archive it was the Paisley pattern that really jumped out because I’ve been thinking about that shape for a while, and how it is related to fertility…” Looks like sperm. “You said it, I never said it. So initially I was thinking about a small textile that could be produced and through research ties really jumped out as both a sort of symbol of power and also like an arrow pointing down to your ‘love bits.’” Sperm.

The boteh is a fascinating subject for Choudhry to focus on, acting as it does as a weird cipher for the post-colonial tension of multicultural Britain which has formed the basis for much of her previous work. A Punjabi form appropriated and brought west reproduced in textiles manufactured in Scotland to such a degree that the form became identified with Paisley. Then re-exported as the cheap labour markets shifted back east so that Paisley print has returned to its birthplace without shedding its imposed Scottish name.

It’s picked up a slew of meanings along the way as well. Says Choudhry, “I was looking at the fact that Paisley was quite a bohemian sort of emblem, and I wanted to do something that was a bit darker (obviously because I’m a bit dark) and a bit more punk with it. Because I don’t think we live in a bohemian time. I wanted to do something that was taking a more fascist palette.” The contemporary darkness also seeps into her choice of product. “Initially I thought of the ties as sort of throttling devices or nooses, to get really depressing. I thought about uniform and the fact that it really is a conformist thing. Initially, they were men’s ties but now they’re more gender fluid. There are three ties, and ten of each, so thirty ties produced.”

Following Ambi, during Edinburgh Art Festival there will be another foray into textile design as Choudhry has created a flag for Rhubaba, the Leith studio-gallery where she’s based. “The Rhubaba flag is military tanks going round in circles, with an R in the middle. For Rhubaba. And also Rababa... I was tempted to rebrand it.” The tanks are a common motif in Choudhry’s work, imagery of war linked to her experience as someone born into a Muslim family, living in a post-9/11 Britain.

After Rhubaba, the tentpole event is a solo exhibition in Transmission entitled Coco!Nuts! in a reclamation of the pejorative which also aims to underline its essential absurdity. Nearly hobbled by Creative Scotland’s withdrawal of regular funding from the iconic Glasgow gallery, the show is back on after Choudhry received project funding in a fresh application. But the second application nearly didn’t happen. “I wasn’t going to do it – I was a bit depressed when I found out about the RFO thing. I found out at midnight, so I couldn’t sleep that night. It was like Creative Scotland doesn’t care about Transmission. But there were a lot of people they didn’t care about.”

The Transmission defunding felt like a particular blow (and a fairly baffling move) because this is a gallery which is, right now, specifically representing people of colour. “For the first time as well,” says Choudhry. “It’s a really groundbreaking space, it’s one of the most groundbreaking spaces in Scotland for visual art.”

It always has been in different ways, but right now the battle lines that Transmission are drawing and representing are around race and gender and sexuality. “At one of the most important points in time as well,” says Choudhry. “It’s so important that we do hear these stories and have that perspective right now. So it made me feel really depressed, I felt that Creative Scotland doesn’t value that. People keep telling me it’s not about that, but what is it about? It seems there’s a focus on advocacy. I don’t want to start saying ‘Why did they fund that,’ because ideally everything gets funded. But what’s the focus on?”

It’s the eternal debate around public funding, where the ability to fill in forms often seems to trump creative vision. Visionaries are frequently messy and disorganised, and it’s undeniably difficult to justify handing out buckets of public cash to people who might not be able to tell you what they did with it afterwards.

We turn to the solo show, a rare privilege in an era when the rise of The Curator has seen an explosion of group shows (something particularly noticeable in this year’s Glasgow International programming), where the artists can feel like quotations used to justify The Curator’s thesis. An individual work will be selected or developed to fit within a broader narrative contrived by The Curator, but that often doesn’t offer a space to really engage with the personal vernacular that each artist is developing, that they are afforded more of an opportunity to develop through a solo show facilitated by a more publicly neutral voice behind the scenes.

Choudhry considers this. “So we become props. Am I quote mark anyway?” It depends what your context is. “I dunno, I just sort of… sit on my own. Trying not to think too much and letting it flow, you know?”

Transmission provides an opportunity for a solo show. “I’ve done a lot of group shows, and I’ve not really had the opportunity to go ‘This is the way I want to do it,’ and not have someone else going, ‘Wellllll this is how you fit into it.’ A solo show is the way to start to develop our own vision and I guess try to inspire other people to do the same. I think it can tell enough of a story independently, without other stories around it. But then I think ‘is that really self-indulgent?’ Me Me Me.”

It remains incredibly difficult to start and then sustain a career as an artist. Over a decade post-graduation, it’s become clear that even those who are apparently established and successful are not able to make a living from art and art alone. Choudhry says: “I think there’s a lot of assumptions [around artists’ perceived financial success] and the reality is you can be really visible and doing really well but not able to pay all your bills.”

There are financial barriers (and they're getting stronger – can you justify a degree without a clear job at the end when you’re going to be accruing £36,000 of debt in tuition fees alone in the process?) and there are psychological barriers. Continued self-motivation and the concerns about the narcissism of art-making Choudhry has touched upon are not easy, and have hobbled many a promising career.

“Maybe artists would be better off just getting a job in Lidl,” she ponders. “You get mega bucks, comparatively. It seems like quite a romantic notion that we just need to make, but for years I’ve been trying to resist doing this because I think it’s a bit of a shite life. This year’s good, but it’s not sustainable… this is where I start to moan a lot.”

An artist has to keep constantly finding their own opportunities unless they have representation and that in itself is problematic. “And where do you find the time?” asks Choudhry. “You need to pay your way. And the balance is so hard to find. Because the pressures of keeping down a part-time job in order to be able to pay rent kills your creativity. I did that for ages. The balance has changed now, I’m doing art more and I work in my part-time job one day a week – I like to still be able to realise that people are fundamentally awful. Also, it’s a bit of a security blanket. But it’s taken years to get to that point.”

On the subject of representation, we’ve both observed the sort of compromises necessary to enter into the commercial gallery system, be they financial or creative. Choudhry is unequivocal in her resistance right now: “I feel like art fairs are just banking in a way, which is why I try to avoid them. You can find a meal ticket as an artist, but that’s dangerous in itself.”

We discuss a Rachel Whiteread work spotted at the Armory Show in New York, completely outwith her usual practice but retailing for several thousand dollars due to her name. “When you get to that place, talking about representation and so on, you’re paying other people’s wages and the pressure there would hinder what you make. A lot of other people are relying on you and pushing a narrative that pays. And that is, I guess, slightly dangerous. It depends really on what you want to do – do you want to make work that really matters without financial influence, or do you not care? I dunno, I have no experience of that. Maybe they’re doing the art fair pieces and interesting things on the side.”

There’s also a difficulty in separating the meaning and creativity of the work from the external pressure to make money from it. In our capitalist society, it’s difficult to dodge the feeling that something is only valid if someone is willing to pay cash for it. “That question – ‘Do you make money out of art?’ You are in a way instantly important in people’s eyes. That’s always the one rude question because that’s how people judge it.”

In the past, Choudhry has addressed this by focussing only on the cold hard cash, in a series of drawings and prints where she made her own money. “Maybe I should just paint more money. Make large gold coins. Because then it would be worth the gold.”

For Transmission she’ll be pausing the cash and returning to textiles as she expands on her GSA fabric designs to create shalwar kameez in a range of new patterns. “I’m thinking of getting a tailor to make suits, more Asian style suits. I’m going to get four or so new repeat images and have them made into fabric. So if time works out, the idea is to use the windows as a place to have mannequins and give it a bit of a shalwar kameez shop feel.”

She’s also going to experiment with material she’s never used before. “I’d like to use neon, I’ve been thinking for a while I want to see more Asian names in lights.”

Choudhry has long documented her relationship with her family, and her father in particular, creating searingly expressive imagery which you would imagine might be quite difficult for her family to deal with, although apparently not. “At art school, I painted a picture of my dad with my mum’s legs cut off. My parents have got that up in the hallway.”

She documents the faultlines of cultural identity using her first-hand experience as the daughter of a Pakistani father and Glaswegian mother. It’s an ongoing evolution on both sides, finding a middle ground across the generations and worldviews around gender, sexuality, race – at times it has been incredibly difficult. Right now she’s reached a moment of calm, self-reflection, forgiveness. “There’s no point in looking back – you should only look forward. So that’s why my dad’s name in lights would be nice. I want it to always be on in the gallery, at night too.”

Alongside the neon and the shalwar kameez will be a series of smaller paintings currently in progress. Is she connecting with the miniaturist traditions of her Pakistani heritage? “Perhaps. I do think about that from time to time. But it’s mainly because I’m running out of room, storage-wise.” Downstairs there may be a series of screenings of films Choudhry has felt a kinship with, like East is East.

It’s set to be a perfectly formed exhibition, but it could have been grander had Transmission not lost its regular funding, says Choudhry. “I think the gallery does need more support, in order to be able to give exciting artists who haven’t been able to show or have a solo show, to be able to really ramp it up and do really ambitious work in the way that they might never otherwise get the right gallery to do it with. God bless artist-run spaces. We need them. But they also need help. And maybe they do need to think more about the day-to-day running of it. It’s hard though – I have to remind myself that these are people that aren’t getting paid. That care about what I’m doing.”

What are her final words of wisdom for any struggling artists out there? “Be a tortoise. Get there slowly. Do it with the right people.”