Feature: CASE Art Fund
Wilaiporn Hongjantuek, Amornchai, Bangkok, Thailand 2011 © Gideon Mendel
Andy Dion: Where did the idea for CASE Art Fund originate?
Anette Skuggedal: Cathy and I are in the gallery business and have had the fortunate journey where we've accrued a network of people around us. For a long time, we’ve seen how images are being misused; sometimes to the point where people just don't care. We are dedicated to good photography and want to bring that premise to everything we work with. So many stories have surfaced about refugees, especially children, that pop up one day, and then gone the next day. Cathy and I recognized that we have a strength within the market because we do understand photography in a unique way and want to bring it back to giving a focus to issues. This is when we realized, with our network, that it was time to give back to these communities.
Cathy Edelman: I represent an artist in my gallery named Omar Imam, a Syrian. He was a filmmaker who was kidnapped and tortured. [When he was released] he left with all ten fingers, ten toes, all his body parts — unlike many men who were castrated, etc. — and fled to Lebanon where he started making photographs with Syrian refugees in the camps. They would tell him a story and then reenact it. When I started showing the work, I realized people would listen to what was happening if they didn't see the torture. The work is extremely powerful. When Anette and I started talking, I told her, “Chicago has treated me very well, the gallery life has treated me very well — but I never meant to do this for my whole life, it just sort of happened.” I knew that when I turned sixty, I wanted to give back. I knew that I wanted to start something early and give it its legs. When we met, we had an instant understanding of each other. Even though we think differently, together we're more than two, which is really quite lovely.
When we came up with our cause being children's human rights, it was a reaction to Omar's work and to the photo of the bloody kid in the back of the ambulance in Aleppo — I was livid and kept saying to Anette, “look at this, this photo is on the cover of every single newspaper.” Within a week, it vanished, and nobody cared. We have to fight the fight because a lot of people don't care, especially in America. We've got a whole lot to accomplish and COVID set us back a little, but CASE’s mission is fairly simple in that we raise awareness about children's human rights through the support and exhibition of photography.
Ava, 5 yrs old, Chicago, IL, 2021© Jo-Nell Sieren
AD: I find it interesting and unique that CASE Art Fund primarily deals with fine art photography — not photojournalism. Could you explain that decision?
AS: Throughout the years that Cathy and I have been working with photography, we’ve found fine art photography that focuses on important issues more impactful than documentary. Today, a lot of documentary photographers have a major purpose, but they also have to sell themselves to the media. In documentary work, there’s more reason to keep moving, whereas for us, we will not leave projects so quickly because the work we do is still important ten to twenty years down the road. We want to be able to dedicate ourselves to the issue first. Fine art photography gives people an option to take part in it. Some people become very attracted to the beauty of the art, or to the different causes and then, all of a sudden, they invest themselves into the issues and the dialogue at hand. You're bringing totally different voices to the table. Documentary photography is meant to tell the truth, but I think we want it to be open ended. I've always believed that art is political, and that there is a purpose to art. We're using art as a tool, as it has for the last century, to fulfill that higher purpose.
CE: It goes back to the bloody kid in the back of the ambulance. I have great respect for documentary photographers, as I have friends in the documentary world, but they're fulfilling an assignment. These images are hard to stomach. People don't want to look at the bloody child and they turn away. If it's something more from the fine art world where the artist can seduce the viewer to talk about the issue, it’s more impactful. You can name numerous fine art photographers who seduce people through beauty to talk about harsh issues. That's what we're trying to do with the photography that we show and sell through our project called BriefCASE. 75% of the money is given away and that's our way of acknowledging that other people have been fighting the fight much longer than us and doing a great job. We are a small NGO and we try to make a difference one person at a time.
I Can't Sleep: Homage to a Uyghur Homeland [cards], 2018 © Lisa Ross
AD: Our previous issue was on curation. There's a Martin Barnes quote referring to curators as cultural producers. You are instilling a sort of culture in your work with CASE Art Fund. How has CASE Art Fund informed your other work?
CE: I am in the midst of redefining what the gallery model is. Within that, I am only now working with about twenty artists whereas I’ve had about thirty-five. I’ve decided that I want the artists to all have a stake in the gallery. I know that all comes out of the idea of collaboration, which is what CASE is all about. The typical dealer-artist relationship is artists make work, dealer sells work, dealer sends them a check and sometimes they're happy — sometimes they're not. But I wanted to establish a new dynamic in the gallery and that's completely based on CASE and the collaborative nature of how we work. It's been good for the artists. One of my artists who does video work found out that another artist's daughter is a dancer and put him in touch with a dance troupe in the city he lives in so that they could be part of their video. Little things like that. But I don't use the word curator. I have great respect for people who actually are curators, because that's what I wanted to be. So I say I edit.
AS: I think that we cannot close off the rest of the world within the gallery space. So it's about collaborating with musicians, with authors, with the cultural scene. The gallery that I have in Norway is a part of a culture house. There are ways to cross these cultural bridges and get something from each other. Collaboration is important within the art world and we need to be able to expand our spaces. A lot of my close friends have said, “you're in that little bubble world of photography,” and I’d think, “wait a minute, aren’t these things supposed to be more encompassing of each other?” There is a synergy of working within the arts. With CASE, we want to pull it back into the public arena. We pull it out of that space and open it up to someone else. Like Cathy, I'm not really keen on the curation thing, but I think producing experiences for people, they all of a sudden open up to a totally different side of themselves. We just want to invite people in to experience and hopefully get something out of these experiences.
Ishet, Ethiopia, 2012 © Floriane De Lassée
AD: I'm interested in the upcoming feature you have with Shahidul Alam. I think he's an incredibly fitting collaborator for CASE Art Fund. How did your relationship with him begin?
CE: One of our board members is very dear friends with him. We felt that we should honor somebody during our first fundraiser whose life work embodies the spirit of what CASE is about. It's been a beautiful relationship. We have incredible conversations with him and he has been supportive of CASE and understands what we're doing. He has done so much in Bangladesh and children's human rights are at the forefront of what he's done.
AS: He's also huge within education, which is part of what we're trying to push forward when it comes to children. Can you imagine how many kids do not have education in their refugee camps? He's always trying to find new ways to educate young women and kids in general. He's doing so much to be able to give back to his community and stays there because he wants to. We find that just fascinating. There are very few people that are really dedicated in the way he is.
AD: Have you seen any changes blossom from art that you have worked with?
CE: I'm learning about people who foster children, or who work for Refugee One, one of our partners in Chicago. Even one of my closest friends who didn't have much interest in the border crisis just sent me an article about Syria. I’m noticing people around me starting to listen closer to these things, and that's exactly what we hope to achieve. We don't see the effect, nine times out of ten, until people tell us. We have a couple of metaphors. One is an octopus, where we're the body and all of our collaborators are the legs. We also liken ourselves to a pebble in water that ripples. I find it exciting when I meet people for the first time who follow what we're doing. That means that we're succeeding — one person at a time.
AS: A percentage of sales goes to NGOs that the artist chooses. They're usually small but really do make a difference. So through sales, we support them financially. But the most interesting part of what we do is the collaborations because it becomes a way of reaching out to someone and talking to them about issues. A good friend of mine always said that I can't change the whole world, but I can create awareness to help. I think that is the heart of what we are trying to do.
CE: I just had a woman call me who wanted to set up an appointment to come in and see some work that she wanted to buy. Her sister who didn’t collect art was with her, but she saw all the CASE photographs and bought one of the pieces. That's exactly what I hoped would happen in the gallery. There's a great effect that we have — we just don't always know it until somebody tells us or we see it right in front of our eyes. It makes us very happy when we can have a direct influence. $1200 at a gallery pays a bill. $1200 for an NGO is real — it makes a difference.
Isaac, 15 yrs old, Chicago, IL, 2021 © Donna Baiocchi
AD: Have there been any surprising things that you've learned about the issues that CASE artists are discussing?
AS: Tons. We learn all the time. I think the biggest part of it is seeing the horrifying sides of what is really out there. They’re things many people just don't want to deal with. But I think art is a good way of getting people to focus on it.
CE: It's like when I saw Emeke Obanor’s work. I emailed Anette saying we needed to go for it. Then we went down the rabbit hole, looking at his work, and we ended up selecting the work that he did on the girls that were abducted by Boko Haram, who then ended up getting rescued and put in a safe house. You don't hear that story in America. So now we're immersed in what's happening with these girls, who still haven't all been released. It's not that we weren't aware of what was going on— we just didn't know what was happening on the ground in Nigeria. That's exciting for us. We're constantly learning and isn't that what one should do in life? Constantly learning?
Christine, Betty and Viola, 2018 © Nora Lorek
AD: It's incredibly illuminating how you’ve touched on the fleeting nature of our attention to these issues. I would assume that there is an advantage to being international. Are there any pitfalls to it?
CE: Yeah, we have a seven-hour time zone difference!
AS: We do meet up. We haven't been able to see each other in almost a year and a half. But yes, there's a pitfall. There's also a pitfall in thinking that we can encompass international worlds. We're not able to reach out to everything we would love to. Cathy's a New Yorker, and I grew up in Asia but have been living in Norway. We both have traveled considerably. A lot of CASE is about understanding this global world that we're part of, and how it does affect children all over. Our work is about finding collaborators that we can learn from, who know the different markets in different places, so that we can understand how things work in these areas of the world. Growing up in Asia during the Vietnam War is a totally different scene from today. But still, we need to go back there and learn more to be able to get that issue on the table again. Once we start this path, it's important that we stay on it and be as true as possible to what the situations are all over, not just in the U.S. There are pressing children’s human rights issues all over the world. We would love to clone ourselves.
AD: Like a double octopus.
CE: It's great because her contacts are different from mine. I started meeting more European curators, and festival organizers, etc. We started this project right before COVID and are still in the midst of gathering up enough images called “I MATTER.” We're fighting the fight as best as two people can. We've got board members all around the world, which is really important, so that they can tap into their resources and help. It's exciting, but I have to say the hardest part is the fact that we're not on the same continent.
Night Watch (Norris at Sunset), 20’ wide LED screen on barge, Hudson River, 2019 © Shimon Attie
AD: Tell me about CASE Art Fund’s upcoming events.
CE: We have a vibrant educational program called CASETalks for people that are interested in children's human rights, which is a free remote event. The Phillip and Edith Leonian Foundation sponsors it and it's the second Saturday of every month. You can find the lineup on our website. Our fundraiser is November 5. We are trying to make it a hybrid event so people can attend it remotely.
Due to recent Covid developments, the award presentation will now take place during CASE’s inaugural Photography Creating Change benefit on Friday, November 5, 2021, from 5:00-8:00p.m. CST at the Catherine Edelman Gallery, 1637 W. Chicago Avenue, Chicago. The event will also feature the premier of “Passengers” (2021), A Moment in Time/ Still I Rise Production. Executive Producer: CASE Art Fund, producers: Mimi Chakarova and Cesar Dezfuli. The short film explores CASE Photographer Cesar Dezfuli’s poignant and ongoing multimedia project about 118 young refugees rescued from a boat drifting in the Mediterranean Sea. Benefit tickets start at $100 per person. To purchase tickets and learn more about the event, please visit: CASE Art Fund’s Photography Creating Change Benefit.
