Art Under Empire: Alyssa Rose Rumrill

The Art Under Empire series explores the importance of staying engaged with our artistic/creative endeavors in these precarious times, and why art matters now more than ever! Each featured radical creative answers the same ten questions about the intersection of art, politics and the personal, sharing insights on how and why they stick with it...and why you should, too.

1.     Name, pronouns, location, creative medium

Alyssa Rose Rumrill (she/her), Santa Rosa, CA

Photographer, Sculptor, Craftswoman

2.     Why is art important during times of political upheaval/community in crisis?

Creating has been one of the only places I've found solace since the pandemic. To create art is to leave my analytical brain behind and just try to capture what is in front of me moment by moment. 

3.     What are you currently working on?

The last few years I have focused on photographing my beautiful community of queer friends and witches on film and Polaroid. I am inspired by archives of cruising photography of the 1980's and have a series of photos that I took this Spring that I am putting together in a similar style as a photo zine. 

4.     What do you want to see more of from the art/creative world?

I enjoy photography that feels like a conversation and relationship between the artist and person they are photographing. I find photos where the "subject" is being treated as just that, a subject, noticeable in the work and uninspiring. I have been in many rooms where cis-men are shooting photos of people, often women, and barely interacting with them because they are so in their own head about their vision or equipment and it seems to have very little to do with the person they are shooting photos of.  I can see that in the end result of their photos and there is nothing exciting about that for me.   

5.     How has your work been impacted or influenced by this particular time we’re living in?

Photography has brought me so much closer to my queer and trans community, to the women in my life and to other artists, during a time when I think joining together in art and revolution is the most important thing we can be doing. It feels like a deep form of resistance to create records of the people and places that fascism is trying (and has tried for decades) to erase. 

6.     Re: the intersection of art and activism: can good art be nonpolitical?

I think the term "good art" is difficult in general for me as most of the art I love and make would likely be considered "bad" by the 'art world.'  I have often joked that I make trash art. I use cheap or free cameras, I use natural or inexpensive lighting rigs, I have my amazing friends as my subjects. When I make sculptures, which is another passion of mine, I use what I already have lying around to create the shapes and forms in my head come to life. This, of course, comes from not having the funds to buy the best equipment, but it also comes from that scrappy-ness of knowing that art and beauty doesn't have to cost anything at all and for me, it is more valuable when it comes from nothing. This type of art lives outside of capitalism and therefore is not a commodity and so inherently political. Most of the 'art world' is still very much based on commodifications. Making art that costs me next to nothing and that I make little-to-no money from, is not valued by galleries, art critics, etc., feels freeing.