Chris Wilmott

Where do you live: UK
Your education: BA and MFA in Art are from the University of Hertfordshire
Describe your art in three words: My art is about being underwater
Your discipline: painting, poetry, prose and text
Website

Chris Wilmott, Fish & Scream

Your work often reinterprets Edvard Munch’s themes. Why did you choose Munch’s art as a foundation for your exploration of screaming and the human condition?

As part of my art training, I reinterpreted some old masters in my own style, to absorb classical techniques about how paintings are composed and made. As an emerging artist I continued with this method, turning my practice towards Edvard Münch, because he made paintings in series, so forming a collection.
Wanting to explore the same method, I investigated how Münch formed his themes, which often concerned women, and famously, screaming and cries of anguish and anxiety. Then I developed my own approach, which foundation theme is Underwater, since being underwater, I associate with screaming.
Underwater started with my painting about Fraümunster Church in Zurich, a building that once faced the possibility of being submerged, due to incessant rains, snow melt and resultant flooding. I thought this idea of an important cultural icon, such as Fraümunster Church, being Underwater should cause a scream of anguish in society. A scream at the loss of heritage to invading water.
This idea of a such a scream reinforced my choice of reinterpreting Edvard Münch’s ‘Scream’, as this is a symbolic icon of screaming. So, I built on Munch’s ‘Scream’ to narrate a story, to and about the women of Zurich, or women anywhere in the world. Who may scream, loudly or silently, at the thought of water permanently submerging their church or drowning their offspring.
Furthermore, I thought a scream should be a response to rising sea levels, and these are part of what is called the climate crisis. I imagined a scream of terror at the idea that climate change flooding or rising sea levels may put, not just cultural icons such as Fraumünster under water, but people, including mothers and their offspring. The notion also is that when they were underwater, drowning, short of oxygen, they would want to scream but they dare not open their mouths, for fear of swallowing water.
I had also an idea of a various screams of frustration. These at what seems to be our global political inability to take rising sea level matters seriously. Or at what seems a general political disregard for the lives of future generations, to whom governments bequeath the mess society is making of the planet. The resultant mess in society, is one that may be made by the planet’s oceans on the rise, invading coastal cities, submerging urban architecture Underwater.
This also led to an idea of a future scream of outrage, from those not yet born. Who after being born and maturing into adults, then scream in anger at their ancestors. Looking back at these prior generations, and realising these ancestors sat on their hands about being Underwater; their ancestors seemingly did not care about future generations, the climate mess these generations would inherit or what price these future generations would have to pay.
Nevertheless, there are a multitude of other reasons to scream and build on Münch. Screaming is part of the human condition; screaming is an emotion, and the human condition is basically, one of emotion. Art is about emotion, so art can be about screaming. These all are factors in my choice of Münch’s art.

The human scream is a recurring theme in your art, symbolizing both birth and existential fear. How do you see this primal expression connecting with modern into societal concerns, such as rising carbon levels?

A scream by a mother is a vocal emotion connected to her giving birth, and natural birth is a primordial event. Birth for the womb occupant is about leaving, migrating from a womb world, in which the body in the natural womb is underwater, the natural water of amniotic fluid.
The word body, for an occupant of a womb, I usually capitalise as Body to distinguish it from the mother’s body.
Bodies being born from natural wombs has been a constant across millennia and will hopefully continue to be so, unless humanity contrives its own extinction. Which would be another reason for future or current generations to scream or be fearful.
Natural wombs are smaller than 80cms in length. A newborn may not be much longer than 50cms. A birth canal against which women struggle in pain is typically smaller than 20cms. Within these dimensions are screaming metaphors and narratives, waiting to be found in art, for the condition of being Underwater in a womb, which involves dimensions of less than 80cms. At the same time, 20-80cms is insignificant when measured against the trillions of centimetres that define vast oceans.
Ocean science tells us that without dams to keep water out, increasing storms and 20-80cms of sea level rise will flood coastal cities, they will be Underwater. These city societies should be concerned; New York is already planning for walls to keep out the Atlantic. By 2050, land that is home to 300 million people may flood regularly; these 300 million should be concerned. Their future scream, not necessarily in cities, may be imagined.
Modern concerns of society include artificial wombs, falling birth rates, and couples who are unable to have children by natural means. Which inability may cause couples to scream, at what seems to be their loss. Thus, women resort to artificial IVF to mitigate their situation. Artificial wombs are intended to help women at health risk during pregnancy.
The occupant of an artificial womb is still Underwater but is under natural amniotic water. In artificial wombs the liquid is synthetic amniotic fluid. In this artificial womb space existence, the Body-not-yet-born is separate from and independent of the mother. The Body, an insubstantial thing perhaps in a natural womb, may be transferred to an artificial womb, to allow gestation to complete, without the mother’s participation. Who may scream at this separation.
Thus, fantasy technology advances culture, health care and so disrupts, and redefines what it is to be a woman or a mother. As women would no longer be essential to the act of birthing their Body and women may scream at this redundancy; the social and cultural house of traditional motherhood is on fire, being burnt by technology, which incendiary may evoke a scream. With no water on hand to calm the emotion or to put out the fire. The notion of gestating humans in an artificial womb may cause a scream.
Artificial wombs are artificial surrogacy for women unable to carry out their primordial role. This failure may lead to mental disturbance or cries of despair.
Sometimes in my images, alluding to touch, a female hand reaches, cupped, for an apple. This may be Eve’s hand from the garden of Eden, reaching for the fruit; and because of eating that harvest arise the masculine, historical, controversial, and theological opinions about women necessarily suffering the pains of childbirth. About which opinions there may be a feminist scream to be heard. Yet, the Body’s back is turned to the hand, protesting at being left alone, in an artificial womb.
Carbon levels in the atmosphere have continued to rise, inexorably for the last thirty years, during which time art, science and society have talked incessantly about how this carbon increase is bad. But nothing changes, atmospheric carbon levels continue to rise. Someone or something is not listening. The planet is not listening. That may be another reason to scream or be fearful.
A scream or a cry thus connects with modern society at various levels.

You mention ambiguity as a prized feature of art. Can you elaborate on how ambiguity plays a role in your work, particularly in relation to embryos, IVF, and reproductive medicine?

The gender of the Body in my work is ambiguous. The Body in a womb knows nothing of gender. For the first year of its life outside a womb, a Body is just a foetus, and the newborn Body is a foetus outside, not inside, a womb. Thus, in my work the gender inside the womb is just as ambiguous as gender outside the womb, from the point of view of the Body. Even though mothers may point at a Body, bestowing on it a gender.
Gender is a construct of society which the Body only encounters after birth. A Body on maturity is free to choose its gender, not have it imposed by my work. Irrespective of a mother’s concerns or choices about imposing gender. Which imposition may in later life make a Body scream.
Society’s concerns may invade ethical matters related to embryos, IVF, and reproductive medicine when sex selection or other choices happen. Over which the Body has no voice, and no choice; someone else’s choices drown out a Body’s concerns for human life in a Body. My work is about hearing the voice of the Body, which can only be silent in the womb. Otherwise, the Body may scream at being denied its right to choose, a right gifted to mothers.

The concept of water seems central to your practice, connecting oceans to the womb. How do you use this metaphor to address the ‘disorderly relationship’ between water and the human condition?

The power of water can disorder the human condition. As Szent-György says, water is life’s matter and matrix, mother and medium. There is no life without water. Life left the ocean after growing a skin, a bag in which to take water with it. We still live in water, the water now inside.
I say that bag may now be an artificial womb. These womb bags disorder the human condition of mother and Body. Without water the fact is that humans, mothers or Bodies, die, and dying apart from seeming to invoke a scream, is a disordering event, as is being submerged Underwater. Except, ambiguously, water is an ordering material in the womb.
The womb water in which I once lived was natural amniotic water – not salty, ocean water or fresh water from melting glaciers, lakes, and rivers, all of which conspire to cause rising sea levels. The same womb truth applies to all mothers and Bodies of the past and those currently alive. From these ideas I derive metaphors for the discord in the relationship in rising sea levels, between water and the human condition, except there is no discord between the human condition and water in the natural womb.

Sustainability and the future of 3.5 billion newborns between 2025 and 2050 form a critical part of your focus. What message do you hope your art conveys to current and future generations?

To current generations of mothers, I hope my art conveys messages about screaming, as mentioned, that change how and what they think about oceans and wombs. Thinking that these are connected not separate.
I hope my art conveys to women, different tales about women and this connection. Water is after all associated with the feminine. Nevertheless, other tales await discovery in the imagination of female creative minds.
My work, as a man, is for creatives and is aimed audaciously at women, and my writing pseudonym is project fish. Rupturing and disrupting feminist womb boundaries by addressing, through mothers, those not yet born, who may cry on being born.
My art considers the next generation are a cultural institution. Between 2025 and 2050, Underwater expects 3.5 billion new-born-Bodies to arrive, globally, into a world of rising sea levels. With their mothers I hope they inspire the collective, cultural institution of Bodies to drive the creation of new images, and new stories about screaming, about being submerged and the avoidance of being under sea water.
Invisible emotional currents flow between mothers, between mothers and those not-yet-born – when they are united as one in a natural womb – and between those not-yet-born. The current needs to avoid the obstacles that block social education and literacy about the world of rising sea levels, wombs, and fish. These are currents of future urban life.

How does your collaboration with poet Robert Fred influence your creative process and the stories you tell through your art?

My creative process involves poems. Some Underwater poems I write. These poems are about Underwater images. I explore narratives about fish life Underwater. Other poems are composed by Swiss poet Robert Fred. Who expresses in short French poems an intimate dialogue, his response my Underwater images.
Fred seeks the voice of conscience and a change to perceptions of the world. Inviting the reader to look at himself, the responsibility of women and their role in nature, making a voice that sparks change, for a better world. These Fred stories influence in turn my creative process, and my process influences the creative process of Fred.
Female artist collaborators are welcome in project fish.

Surrealism is a strong element in your work. What draws you to surrealism, and how do you think it helps communicate the complexities of the human condition?

The Body in my work is Underwater. Curled in a foetal position as if in a womb, and this curl refers to the work of Mina Loy, a 20th century feminist, artist, futurist and surrealist.
Although I was first drawn to surrealism by Sean Theodora O’Hanlan in “The Shipwreck of Reason”. In this O’Hanlan links Surrealism and Andre Breton with the oceans, and these my art practice has linked with Munch. Thus, creating surrealist interpretations of Münch’s Scream. Shipwrecking the Scream in Underwater currents from rising sea levels, and the artificial.
My new directions were sprung from the O’Hanlan claim, that what the Surrealists took to the depths was ‘a coordination and tension between a sense of modernity as a shipwreck and the pursuit of salvage and renewal’. My art coordinates and tenses also but does so between the tension created by rising sea levels and artificial wombs affecting humanity and the tension of coordinating the sustainability of human life in the face of the power of water. About which we may scream.