Meaningful Messages and Filtered News

Charlotte Eckler in conversation with Ilse Huber Craigher, Sabine Pusswald, and Jessica Maria Weber

“There’s a higher purpose to what I’m trying to say, and that purpose is to make a point, socially.”

For Charlotte Eckler, U.S.-American conceptual artist, delivering a meaningful message to the public is the goal she wants to achieve with her art. Police brutality, racism, feminism, war, sickness, are all present as topics in Eckler’s work. Whether she’s working with prints, collages, fabrics, or paintings, she always finds a way to weave in her political opinion.

Hands Up / Don’t Shoot is the name of one of her projects, a slogan she borrowed from the demonstrations in Ferguson, U.S. after the shooting of the African-American Michael Brown by a white police officer. This large installation piece made of wood and hardware, covered with silkscreen prints, drawings, and fiber art among other things, is a nod to the protests against police brutality as well as a historical reference to the feminist movement.

As a woman artist Eckler is very aware of gender inequality and everything that comes with it, although personally, she has never experienced gender discrimination at art shows. She has been able to steer clear of it, in part, by participating in shows where only women were involved. “So automatically, I was shielded from discrimination,” Eckler explains.

Another socially and political relevant topic that she focuses on is war. She refers to war in many of her prints, not only to actual war zones, but also to the domestic war against people of color in the U.S. The most recent group show that she participated in bore the title War and Peace. Eckler’s contribution was an installation of a public poster column of the kind used in Europe since the nineteenth century to announce events. Eckler made a collage of sorts on these columns, printing onto World War II headlines from the New York Times as well as mythological stories. As the installation is interactive, people can step inside and write something on a paper roll, therefore becoming part of the art piece. Her goal is to raise public awareness and promote freedom of speech away from censorship. Her piece can also be regarded as a counterpart to the mainstream media coverage since, as she states: “In the United States, the news is filtered. Everything’s filtered. You don ́t know what ́s going on. You can only guess by trying to see the larger picture, going back in history, and looking for what repeats itself.”

Despite being influenced by these negative events, Eckler doesn’t appear to be an angry or frustrated person. When asked about precisely that, she laughs it off,

but still admits, “There are certain things I get angry about. I get angry at injustice.”

Two points are crucial in her working process: time and space to work. Naturally, one needs material to work with, but Eckler seems able to go with the flow and turn an idea into an artwork with the materials she has on hand. However, when planning a long-term piece, “sometimes it’s an impediment if you have to go and buy things to even start the artwork. You have to think, ‘What’s gonna be the right material? What’s gonna work?’ What’s available?’”

In response to the question of how she knows when she’s finished with a piece of art, or the right moment to stop, Eckler simply says, “You have to say to yourself, ‘It’s done. I don’t have anything to add.’” That seems to be a problem with many artists—finding the moment when something is finished. Eckler also knows about this fragile moment of completion, which is why she recommends working in different media. For example, when working on a computer, every step can be reversed.

“Some people have an equivalent of writer’s block with art,” Eckler says. That is a problem she does not have. For her, the most important thing about creating art is that “you have to do it … yourself.” If you do that, Eckler explains, and if you don’t lose sight of the higher goal you’ve set for yourself, you won’t be bothered much by criticism. After all, inspiration is never too far away. All you have to do is go through life with your eyes wide open.