IN CONVERSATION WITH VISUAL ARTIST LYDIA PANAS
Lydia Panas is a visual artist working with photography and video.
A first-generation American, she was raised between Greece and the United States. Through a combination of psychoanalysis and feminism, her work looks at identity and what lies below the surface, investigating questions of who we are and what we want to become. Exploring the roles of power and trust on both sides of the camera, she describes what it feels like to be a woman, a human, and the complex range of emotions we have the capacity to feel. All her work is made in the fields, the forests, and the studio of her seventy-acre farm in Pennsylvania. The connection she feels to this land and her family is the foundation of her work.
Panas’ work has been exhibited widely in the U.S. and internationally. Her photographs are represented in public and private collections including the Brooklyn Museum, Bronx Museum, Museum of Fine Arts Houston, Palm Springs Art Museum, Allentown Art Museum, Museum of Contemporary Photography Chicago, Museum of Photographic Arts San Diego, and the Sheldon Museum among others. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, the New York Times Magazine, The Village Voice, French Photo, and Hyperallergic. Panas has degrees from Boston College, School of Visual Arts, and New York University/International Center of Photography. She is the recipient of a Whitney Museum Independent Study Fellowship and a CFEVA Fellowship.
I live on a seventy-acre farm in Pennsylvania. This land is the foundation of my work. It’s a place where I feel a sense of belonging and abandon, free to explore emotionally uncomfortable feelings and delve into the most vulnerable and human parts of myself. Here, I am motivated to risk failure, to disappoint others, and to work freely without constraints.
Tell us a bit about your greatest inspirations or influences?
I am inspired by the knowledge that if we work hard at it, we can make internal changes in our lives. We can work through difficulty to make meaning and beauty. I am an unwavering proponent of political change but alongside positive social progress, there must be internal evolution. My work is centered on this notion. I am also influenced by good fiction, painting, and dance.
Tell us a bit about your creative process?
My creative process focuses on acknowledging what I am feeling while I work. I am interested in relationships, intimacy, and belonging. I allow my unconscious thoughts to flow and respond to the feelings. Looking back on my early work, the same thread was already in evidence. I think all of us have one story to tell, and as artists we must keep finding different ways to tell it, to unpeel it like an onion and continue to find more depth in it.
How has the pandemic affected your creativity and how do you see the world changing?
The pandemic wasn’t as big a change for me as for many people, since I spend most of my time in my studio (and property) anyway. But it was a great excuse to not feel guilty about it. I became more focused and went deeper into my subject matter. I did miss seeing people however, and since most of my work involves models, the pandemic forced me to work differently, without people. It was interesting and altered my usual routines and borders.
How has the world changed?
Lots of things have changed in the last few years but I can’t really parse what is due to the pandemic and what is part of the downward spiral we were headed in already.
Who do you consider an icon of our time?
Probably everyone who has managed to rise above what they were given, with grace and kindness. Anyone with the courage to untangle the messy cards they were dealt.
What does wellbeing mean to you, and what do you practice?
Wellbeing means unraveling or disentangling from the fog to see oneself and others clearly. Psychoanalysis helped me see things I had turned away from as a child. It allows me to stay authentic and acknowledge the poppycock that is pervasive. I also work out daily. It keeps my mind and body in tune and feels amazing.
Anything else you would like to share?
Becoming an artist became a form of defiance for me. It was a way to say things I knew but would not allow myself to acknowledge. Combining the psychological and the conceptual, it helps me reconfigure and rewrite a complicated and difficult past. It’s a feeling of freedom and great joy.
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