For vanessa german, ‘Citizen Artist,’ Creativity Is a Matter of Survival

Art & Design|For a ‘Citizen Artist,’ Creativity Is a Matter of Survival

When I sat down to interview the artist vanessa german in her bright, airy temporary studio at the University of Chicago, she was the one who asked the first question. And the second, and the third. She wanted to know who I was and what motivated me in my work and life. She listened to my answers so intently that I was momentarily unnerved.

When I finally asked her how she became an artist, she said, “I might cry, but I’ll just keep going.”

The exchange with german (who styles her full name in lowercase letters) distilled much about her self-taught approach. Her beaded totemic sculptures, some modeled on African power figures, along with an installation on the National Mall, her community-based activism and her collaborative performances have lately been garnering art world attention and major awards.

One of the threads that connects her varied interests is a belief that art can restore our capacities to love ourselves and our communities — but only after we confront traumas and injustices, past and present, that stand in the way of such care. Another is her preternatural capacity for empathy.

Her friend and occasional artistic collaborator Deesha Philyaw, the author of “The Secret Lives of Church Ladies,” says that during their first meeting, she quickly learned: “No small talk. No bull. No nothing less than 100 percent genuine, 100 percent honest, 100 percent vulnerable.”

Since January german has brought that sensibility to the classrooms of the Gray Center for Art and Inquiry at the University of Chicago, where she taught a course called “Paraäcademia,” which sought to blur the boundaries between art, magic, spirituality and knowledge.