Issue #04
A conversation with artist Michelle Nunes
This is an interview with Michelle Nunes, a multidisciplinary artist and maker based in Portugal who we have had the pleasure of getting to know over the past couple years. Michelle is one of our favorite people for many reasons, including her warmth and generosity, her unique style and her beautiful beaded art. We had the privilege of collaborating with Michelle on a limited edition of t-shirts in our first capsule collection called “New Natives”, featuring Michelle’s signature hand beading technique and designs. To learn more about Michelle’s practice we sat down with her over tea to hear about her inspirations. But we were so excited to talk with her that we forgot to start recording until we were deep in conversation (rookie mistake hehe). We have edited this interview for clarity and length. The recording starts just after Michelle explained to us that she had just started some “dense reading”…
Michelle…back to the book, a dense read I’ve just started, it’s by an Italian, his name is Federico Faggin, and he led the design of the first commercial microprocessor, and was involved in technology and computers.
He got to this point where he had all this success in life, I think he was in his 40s, and he just felt depressed despite all the success and accolades he had. Everything changed for him after he had this experience one night, where he woke up, and he felt this explosion of energy coming out of him, out of his chest. He had a mystical experience, and all he could describe it as was love. After that, he dedicated his research and his time to exploring the nature of consciousness.
And that is what I’m interested right now, that’s what I find so interesting and so compelling. And I’d love to eventually, somehow incorporate it into what I’m doing, but right now, I feel like this sponge trying to learn as much about consciousness, because it almost feels like reverse-engineering God. Reverse engineering this force that we all know we sense. It’s hard to describe, right?
But now with what’s happening in artificial intelligence and consciousness research, and quantum computing, there’s this big question: what is consciousness? You have scientists on one side, and then you have people who are spiritual, psychics, and mediums… same mystery from different angles. Scientists are still trying to find its physicality, like is consciousness really localized in the brain?
EsugaRight. What cell does it reside in?
Michelle Working on her studio.
MichelleYeah. And it doesn’t, you know? So my friend, Nidaa, my best friend and I, that’s our ongoing conversation. We’d love to collaborate on something together about this.
EsugaWhat’s the book name?
MichelleIrreducible. It’s about consciousness and the nature of reality.
LisaThis is making me think of somebody adjacent to these ideas, Dorothy Sayers. She wrote “The Mind of the Maker”. She was a theologian and a contemporary of C.S. Lewis. This book relates artistic creativity to major concepts of theology, and I heard it was influential to one of the men who created the computer processor. It’s about how we’ve structured consciousness and what we decide is interrelated. She plays a little bit with that. I think it’s very cool that you’re also finding it in other spaces. I love it when seemingly disparate fields come together. And, do you find that those questions influence the work that you’re creating right now? For instance, I noticed on your Instagram, you had a screenshot of somebody writing out their existential crisis as a comment. And then you embroidered it.
You can follow Michelle’s work here: Website + Instagram