In December 2019, Iranian-American artist Roksana Pirouzmand created a performance and installation piece titled Open Studio at the UCLA Margo Leavin Graduate Art Studios.
The work is first and foremost a chair and table that is mounted perpendicularly on the gallery’s wall. Pirouzmand then proceeds to strap herself to a harness from the ceiling and begins working on a clay sculpture, all while she watches BBC Farsi playing from a laptop that’s been fixed to the table.
The piece becomes a profound investigation into the often seemingly impossible working conditions that artists are subjected to: everything from low pay to societal stigma and even institutional barriers. These barriers are tripled and even quadrupled for individuals like Pirouzmand also navigate additional discrimination as women and immigrants in the United States. Open Studio is a nuanced piece which reflects the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal of Decent Work and Economic Growth, Reduced Inequalities and Gender Equality.
Open Studio's title refers to the art terminology of the same name, which means an event where general audiences are allowed into artists’ workspaces. The piece finds Pirouzmand having strapped herself onto a perpendicularly mounted chair to work on a clay sculpture. Her clay constantly slips out of her reach, and after a while, she gets nauseous from being in a gravity-defying position, to the point where she has to step down from her impossibly placed working station.
With Open Studio, Pirouzmand has visually shared with her audiences just how impossible working conditions are for artists. So impossible that it often feels like they’re working on their pieces while defying gravity, something that’s especially more true when you’re a woman and an immigrant like Pirouzmand.
The Art Newspaper has reported that the pandemic had exposed the poor working conditions within the US and the UK art systems. They have charted everything from paltry pay-offs, long unpaid work hours and even stringent non-disclosure agreements that keep workers from speaking out and force them to stay in unhealthy work conditions.
One former employee of a big-name Los Angeles-based gallery even shared how the art system typically leverages “working for the greater good” as an excuse to get away with unfair and illegal work practices.
To top it all off, in 2024, Nubia Magazine shared that today’s top 5 earning living artists are: Damien Hirst, Jeff Koons, Jasper Johns, David Choe and Andre Vicari. Not a single one of them is a woman. Even if the list is expanded to a top ten, still not a single woman or gender non-conforming artist shows up on the list.
This reality is supplemented by how the 2023 Women Artist Market Report by Artsy found that women artists accounted for just 9 percent of art auctions. It’s fitting that Pirouzmand says that making a living as an artist, especially a woman artist, feels like defying gravity.
And finally, the UCLA Center for Health and Policy Research has found that between 2019-2021, a rising wave of xenophobia and anti-immigration sentiment has caused American immigrants serious psychological distress. A percentage which increased to 140 per cent from just 12 per cent.
When Pirouzmand desperately tries to keep her clay from slipping off her perpendicular table, in an almost comedic manner, she is not playing around. She is conveying that as a woman, an immigrant and an artist, the odds are stacked against her when trying to make a decent wage.
She is also trying to make audiences understand that now that they are aware this problem persists, when they have the power to do so, they can try to take whatever actions necessary to help balance the scale for artists and people like her.