I cannot escape who I am, even if I do not fit the values of the contemporary art world. This world is a power structure that decides what is to be valued. I can only truly value what is really me. Even if I am left out in my lifetime.
-Natacha Sochat
I am an expressive, figurative, multidisciplinary artist who creates complex work that involves science, social issues, my complex ethnicity, beauty and philosophy. I use visual art as a language that can be interpreted in several ways; not only what I as the artist am saying, but also leaving room for what the viewer may see with their own personal experience.
I may explore ideas that may be contradictory or complicated and have no easy answer. My work is personal and yet relevant to contemporary society. On the simplest level, my work is created with the aim of a creating a positive public health experience. On a conceptual basis I view that we live in a NeuroMorphic Universe and that ‘the Actual Experience’ as the work of art.
I use various mediums in execution of my work: painting, sculpture, crocheting, ceramics, printmaking, photography, performance art, and video. Each of these processes have different sensibilities and may reference specific metaphors. For example: the use of crochet as a reference to the hand, to the value of labor, to female handcrafts, to our connections, to our networks, to spiders/nature, to imprisonment, etc. etc. (and this is just the metaphor that crochet brings to the table). References to being female, human, sister, wife, mother, healer, scientist, and multicultural, all influence the work. My bias is that found objects that I use were really part of my personal life and not just bought at a store to make work with and outside of my actual daily experience.
***I want to emphasize that this site is an archive of my work and it is hard for me to update it frequently while creating new work***.
Important ideas in my work through the years are:
Chaos, Complexity, Emergence, Intuitive, DNA of Memory, The Actual Experience, Saxa Loquuntur, Construction-Deconstruction-Reconstruction, UpRooted, Making Roots, DNA of Memory, I am Witness, Americana Hispana, Patterns, Germs, Words are Seeds, the Hand is the Mind, in My Garden, Networking, Grid, Connection, By Hand and by Machine, the Hand is the Mind, Face as Icon, Fractals (micro to macro), NeuroMorphic, Paintings for Children, String theory, Ethics.
Initially self-taught in art, I was influenced by my exposure to Jerry Uelsmann’s beautiful imaginative photographs and Arthur Polonsky who taught at Boston University. I had a wonderful mentor at SMFA Boston named Don Sibley. I attended the Paul Ingbretson Atelier in Massachusetts, not to improve my drawing skills but to improve how to see objects in the light of reality/perception. I then went on to do two post baccalaureate programs (Brandeis University Graduate School and School of the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, so I could be ready for an MFA in art). I have an MFA in studio art from Tufts University/School of the Museum of Fine Arts Boston. I also have an MD from Boston University School of Medicine, as well as a BA in Biology (summa cum laude minor art history). I had a wonderful mentor at Boston University while I was an undergrad in terms of life – Professor Lynn Margulis, she changed my entire life view.
I practiced Emergency Medicine as well as Public Health Emergency Preparedness in the past in order to raise my family and contribute in an additional manner to society. My biological and medical knowledge allowed me to realize how art objects are a part of a society’s public health. I have always viewed art objects as having the ability to contribute positively to the lives of viewers. Art objects are not simply made for the shock value and superficial notoriety, or the spectacle that dominates some of the art world. Regardless of the conceptual underpinnings of my work, my mission has always been to be a positive contribution to public health while at the same time hopefully creating something to think about.
My knowledge of the brain and other biological sciences has made me aware that the hand is the mind so conceptual practices must include my hand and not someone else doing the work to have integrity and meaning.
I have taught painting, drawing and printmaking at numerous places in the United States.
One more aspect needs to be presented here before you experience my work. An important purpose of my website is to for you to directly understand what the substance of my work is (please visit https://natachasochat.com/ to read more) . In this vein I will further elucidate why I create work, and how I now understand why my work is what it is. First I will describe some global parameters that artists have existed within.
Art through the centuries has been dominated by powerful institutions and artists create in this type of milieu.
Hundreds of years ago it was the church that dominated the discourse in art, or the extremely wealthy who wanted work that gave them importance. In contemporary history, the discourse has been taken over by powerful critics or institutions or governments, that although they are not religions, they function in the same manner. For example, I will cite Clement Greenberg and his dominance over the American art scene in the 20th century. He dictated what painting should be, and artists scrambled to create work that would receive his blessing of acceptance. There is no wrong or right in this matter, it is simply what existed. Since Greenberg there have been many other critics/curators who dominate the discourse on art and decide what should be valued. This is currently on a national scale and will vary from decade to decade depending on what these institutions prefer to be said by an artist. There is no right or wrong in this as well. It simply is what exists globally.
In a capitalist economy, artists are simply products that need to be ‘branded’ and sold. Hence, what artists create needs to be singular and immediately recognizable so artists can continue to sell as that specific ‘brand’. That is how many commercial private galleries view artists and that is how most of the current art world has been indoctrinated to believe (they call branding ‘consistency’). There are artists who have taken this branding into their own hands by creating work specifically to appeal to interior decorators, or mugs or other functional objects. This is good for them and I respect their choices.
Another phenomenon when a contemporary artist becomes very famous but then has died, that galleries will go after other artists similar to them that they think will enable them to sell work to collectors. For this example, I will give the artist Jean-Michel Basquiat. Tragically Basquiat died at a very young age. You can actually find current galleries that have gone out of their way attempting to create another Basquiat. These gallery owners have gone to great lengths in trying to recreate this lucrative market for collectors to buy into. Again, I am simplifying this world for you
Nationally, museums generally exhibit the same artists and are constantly trying to figure out how to make money from the general public. They emulate each other and in the recent decades have gotten into exhibiting clothing by famous designers, cars, etc. to bring the public in. They exhibit the same artists that are dead, such as Monet etc. The museums also exhibit what they decide that the public needs to be told politically or sociologically in terms of contemporary works. They have good intentions, but the problem is that it becomes an overriding hegemonic principle that is more important than the art itself. If an artist does not fit into any of their categories, then the artist is never considered for an exhibition. A contemporary artist must in some way be saying what the institution wants to promote, or be in a group that they are now allowing/promoting as gatekeepers. I will not expand on this topic further, but brought it up so you as a lay person may comprehend what the reality is for an individual visual artist. This is what I have had to live within and still create the art that I needed to create. I will not expand on this topic further, but brought it up so you as a lay person may comprehend what the reality is for an individual visual artist. This is what I have had to live within and still create the art that I needed to create. This is my perspective as an old seasoned contemporary artist.
When I was very young I did not understand how I chose what to create or why. I just made work with my hands that I felt I needed to communicate. Now I understand myself fully, so it is beneficial for me to explain how my work has turned out as it has.
I view creating visual works in the same manner as if I were writing a symphony. A symphony has many movements within it. A musician does not have to write the same style symphony over and over to be accepted as a consistent ‘brand’. They can have great variations in the style or substance of each symphony. This analogy is helpful for me to explain and for you to try and understand my overall work. I have many symphonies. Each is comprised of numerous movements (movement equals painting or other singular piece of individual art). Each symphony may say a different thing. However, each symphony’s movements may be singular but work together to create the whole.
For the symphonies you can look at my Art menu on this site. All the individual topics are a symphony with many movements within them. If this analogy does not work for you, then perhaps you can use the analogy of writing a book, with it’s chapters. Or perhaps look at Elton John and see his albums as the equivalent of a symphony with the individual songs being singular works that fit into this whole.
I could not be any different than what I turned out to be. I did not want to be dictated by the discourse that someone else’s bias decided for me. I did not wish to be chasing curators so they would accept my work. I have to admit that ironically I was influenced in this trajectory by an American critic named Dave Hickey (link here) when I was young. Hickey validated my perspective.
I will find the video or audio file that I have of the Dave Hickey lecture at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts Boston when I was an MFA candidate and link it here.
In summary, I create work that is truly me and not what I think will please a curator, or other institution and their current values. That is how I have been all my artist life. I want to create work that resonates with the individual viewer and has space for their interpretation. Work that adds to the public health of society while at the same time makes people think (as well as have visual pleasure). Much of my work is created to capture the child and the adult at the same time. It has been influenced by my being in the sciences as well as my philosophy, my gender, and my complex ethnicity.
I hope this helps in some manner for you to understand the nature of my work.
For my new business site please visit SimpleVida Contemporary Art
For more information and explanation on my work please visit my other site: Natacha Sochat
Here is a link on that site to my exhibition history and art CV.
2012 Graduation Speaker part 1 Part 2
Litmus Interview 2019
Art of the Mind Interview Raleigh NC 2019
Herencia Group Exhibition 2019
CMAC Interview 2020
2021 Arts and Culture Award
MFA Thesis Aidekman Gallery Tufts University Boston, MA
MFA thesis video
SugiPOP! Portsmouth Museum of Art Snowboard
NeuroMorphic – Beland Gallery Essex Art Center Lawrence MA
NeuroMorphic – NKG Boston MA
Between Presence and Absence: Making Roots -The Carrack Modern Gallery Durham NC
Retablos – Waterworks Visual Arts Center Salisbury NC
Making Roots – CMAC Gallery Raleigh NC
Litmus Gallery Group exhibition interview
Eye am Witness – Paintings for Children, Waterworks Visual Arts Center Salisbury NC
Face and Pattern solo exhibition 2021 Duke University