Intimate Justice: An Interview with Claire Arctander
“Intimate Justice” looks at the intersection of art and sex and how these actions intertwine to serve as a form of resistance, activism, and dialogue in the Chicago community. For the first installment, we visited visual artist Claire Arctander in her home studio to discuss her video, sculptural, and performance-based practice. S. Nicole Lane: Let’s begin with the general background questions. Where did you go to school? How did you begin working with film and performance? Claire Arctander: I am pretty much a Chicagoan through and through. I grew up in a suburb. My parents were artists when I was growing up, and my dad is still an artist. He teaches art at McHenry County College, so I was exposed to art. It’s just a typical practice and a way to express oneself. Then I went to undergrad at Northwestern. I always really loved writing, so that’s the direction that I thought I was going to go in. Writing is still important to me, but as soon as I started school there I pretty quickly veered …