In the past few weeks, you may have seen Nina Katchadourian’s work in your Facebook feed and paused to view her her Flemish-style self portraits. Her work might be the most famous thing to come out of an airplane bathroom, so we sent Ben Moroski to learn more about the artist and her inspiration.
For most travelers, the prospect of a long flight is met with gritted teeth, a stiff drink, a sleeping pill – or some combination of the above. For artist Nina Katchadourian, however, these mind-numbing hours are rife with limitless creative potential.
Over the past 2 years, Nina Katchadourian has logged thousands of in-flight artistic creations, all under the umbrella title “Seat Assignment,” using only her camera phone and materials she finds around her on the plane. The most notable of her projects, thanks to their viral appearance on the internet in recent weeks, are her “Lavatory Self-Portraits in the Flemish Style”, self-portraits taken in airplane lavatories in the style of 15thcentury Flemish paintings.
If the concept sounds odd, take a look for yourself and you’ll begin to get the idea. For a pop culture ballpark, think “Girl with a Pearl Earring” and you’ll start to catch the flavor of the project.
In the beginning, even Katchadourian herself was caught off-guard by the nature of the pictures’ resemblances. “I was on a domestic flight,” she remembers, “and I went into the lavatory, pulled a toilet seat cover over my head and took a picture. When I took a look at it, I thought, ‘Strange. I remind myself of a Dutch painting.’”
And so began the creation of the aptly titled “Lavatory Self-Portraits in the Flemish Style.” While the project began on a shorter domestic flight, the bulk of the photos were taken on a 14-hour long haul from San Francisco to Auckland, New Zealand, where Katchadourian was headed to display some of her work in an art gallery.
“There were hours during that flight where I was literally the only one awake,” Katchadourian says. “I would lock myself in the lavatory, sometimes for 15 minutes at a time, and take more self-portraits.”
When asked why she thinks this set of pictures has so captured the public’s attention, Katchadourian cites their “double-take” quality.
“I think people are amazed that these pictures could be made under these circumstances – in anything but a high art location,” she says.
And that is what really appeals to Katchadourian about the entire “Seat Assignment” project. “I really enjoy responding specifically to specific circumstances,” she says. “It’s a challenge – to think on my feet. To use what I can find around me on an airplane in order to create something that both transcends and makes use of the situation.”
To that end, Katchadourian finds herself using anything from complimentary snacks to in-flight magazines to sweaters, scarves and even the faces of her fellow passengers to help create her art. And all of the projects are recorded on her camera phone.
“It’s an efficient little device,” Katchadourian says of her iPhone. “It’s something economical that’s definitely in the spirit of the project. Once you pull out a real camera, it screams, ‘I’m making art!’ The camera phone is my camouflage. I want to look like any other bored traveler just trying to pass the time away.”
