Field Notes

This page is not about theory.
It is my thinking — inside a living art practice.

I Like Knowing How Things Work (8/26)

This Field Note is not about email, despite the graphic.

At least, not really.

This morning began with a simple realization. The email address in the catalogue I created for museum shops and my forthcoming book, Looking at Art with Yoko Oh No, should be hello@yokoohno.com rather than amy@yokoohno.com.

One hour later, I had recovered my Google Workspace administrator account, reset passwords, created an email alias, verified the system, changed my default sending address, and learned far more about how Google Workspace works than I ever expected to know. I asked ChatGPT to walk me through the process, sending screen grabs every step of the way.

For years, I told myself a story about moments like this: I have to learn because I can't afford to pay someone else.

There is some truth in that. I am careful with money.

But today I realized it isn't the whole truth.

I don't just like solving the problem.

I like becoming someone who knows how things work.

That is a different motivation entirely.

I don't want to know how to rebuild a transmission.
I don't need to understand the inside of an HVAC system.
I am perfectly happy to let someone repair my shoes.

But I do want to understand the systems that carry my work into the world.

Not because they are mysterious.

Not because they are difficult.

Not because they are boring to me.

But because someone else can do them better, or because they no longer belong in my practice.

That feels very different from outsourcing because something seems inaccessible. Or challenging. Or even, for that matter, a bit tedious. Take social media, for example. It can be a bit tedious, I suppose, to create and manage and post and respond to my IGaccount (@amy_selwyn). BUT…it’s my voice. It’s my work. It matters to me.

When it comes to my work and my understanding of what I am doing, I want…and need…to know how things work.

The satisfaction this morning wasn't that the email finally worked.

It was that I now understand the system. The website, the email account I am using for the book, the ordering system, the fulfillment (and, yes, I’m doing that myself because I am not in the business of selling books; I am looking to place this book where I believe it belongs).

Once I understand a system, it stops feeling like infrastructure. It becomes another material I can work with.

The Organizing Principle 7/26

Every meaningful body of work is organized around a persistent human question.

Finding that question is rarely the beginning of the process. More often, it is the result of it.

At first there are only fragments: ideas, images, books, conversations, observations. The work feels scattered because the organizing principle has not yet revealed itself.

Eventually something changes.

You stop asking, What should I make next?

Instead, you begin asking, Does this belong?

That shift changes everything.

The organizing principle doesn't tell you what to make. It gives you a way to recognize what belongs to the same conversation—and what doesn't.

The work becomes less about invention and more about discovery. Eventually, it begins to tell you how it wants to be made

People often talk about sequencing as though it were a mysterious gift—something you either possess or you don't.

Working on the Grid has taught me otherwise.

Sequencing isn't the arrangement of things. Sequencing is the arrangement of relationships.

Every new addition changes the meaning of everything around it. Not only what follows, but what came before. Context is never fixed. The sequence continually rewrites itself.

That's why moving a single image, inserting a block of text, or disrupting an established rhythm can transform an entire body of work. Nothing has changed in isolation. The relationships have changed.

Sequencing isn't voodoo.

It's the deliberate shaping of relationships until the work carries the rhythm, tension, and feeling you want it to have.

Social media has invented its own language for announcing success.

By using this language, artists aren't simply describing success. They're performing the socially acceptable way of having success.

The vocabulary is remarkably consistent.

Honored.

Humbled.

Grateful.

Surprised.

Pinching myself.

And the unwritten rule is: Rearrange as needed. Add one or two exclamation marks.

Of course, the artist may genuinely feel every one of those things.

This isn't a question of sincerity.

It's that gratitude has acquired a recognizable public script. Success now seems to require a ritual disclaimer:

Please don't think I'm proud of myself.

Please don't think I'm bragging.

God forbid.

I believe we can be delighted, grateful, aware of luck—and proud.

Those things are not mutually exclusive.

Finding the Throughline (6/26)

Cover to my MFA Thesis document, “Something Wrong About the Mouth,” about the shortcomings of portraiture. May 2025

Over the last year, since graduating from my MFA program, I've wondered whether my interests as an artist—my preoccupations and obsessions—had changed.

Thirteen months ago, I was making a performance and audio portrait piece built around the idea that the stories from my life were the only way to see the real me.

More recently, I began to suspect that the throughline in my work was an interest in systems: evaluation systems, classification systems, institutional systems, systems of judgment.

Today I realized that the systems were never the subject. They were the mechanism. The question underneath the work is much older.

I wrote my MFA thesis on the limitations of portraiture. I became interested in audio portraits because they offered the possibility of representing a person with greater complexity and nuance. At the time, I thought I was asking a question about portraiture.

I wasn't.

I was asking whether it is possible to represent a person without reducing them.

I am still asking how a human being becomes visible, knowable, recognizable, audible.

The systems, evaluations, scores, classifications, floor plans, linguistic operations—and now ethical dilemmas—are all different places where that question becomes visible.

Why does a performance review belong in the same universe as a luxury real-estate listing?

Why does a credibility score belong in the same universe as a portrait?

Why does a linguistic operation belong in the same universe as a classification system?

Why does an ethical dilemma belong in the same universe as all of them?

On the surface, they shouldn't.

But underneath, they are all wrestling with the same problem.

A human being enters a structure designed to represent them.

The structure is inadequate.

Something gets lost.

Something gets distorted.

Something gets amplified.

And yet we continue trying.

That was true of portraiture.

That was true of audio portraits.

That is true of Under Continuous Review.

That is true of The Space You Deserve.

That is true of Under Continuous Review.

The projects have changed.

The question hasn't.

Perhaps the work has never really been about systems at all. It has been about paying attention to the places where representation—and recognition—begin to fail.

Open for Discussion (06/26)

Some choices are treated as personal preferences. Others are treated as invitations for improvement.

For reasons I have never fully understood, a predominantly black wardrobe often falls into the second category.

Over the years, people have suggested brighter colors, softer colors, more cheerful colors, more approachable colors. They have proposed florals, pastels, jewel tones, and seasonal palettes. The recommendations are usually presented as helpful observations.

You would look happier in blue.

You would seem warmer in pink.

How about adding a bright scarf?

What interests me is not the advice itself. It is the assumption behind it.

A monochromatic wardrobe is understood to require explanation in a way that other aesthetic choices do not. The person dressed entirely in black may be asked to justify the decision. The person dressed in coral, lavender, turquoise, and floral prints is rarely asked why they feel compelled to resemble an oversized marshmallow Peep.

One aesthetic position is treated as a preference. The other is treated as a problem.

This is curious because neither is accidental.

An all-black wardrobe is a deliberate choice. So is a wardrobe built around bright colors and patterns. Both communicate something. Both reflect taste. Both express a set of priorities. Yet only one routinely becomes the subject of public consultation.

The conversation is rarely about color. It is about personality.

The suggestion is not merely that the clothing should change. The suggestion is that the person wearing it should appear more cheerful, more welcoming, more emotionally available, more reassuring to others.

The wardrobe becomes a proxy for a much larger set of expectations.

What interests me is not why some choices attract commentary. What interests me is why other choices are exempt from it.

Could Anyone Else Have Made This? (06/26)

After Saul Steinberg. Intervention by Selwyn / Oh No Studio.

The question is not whether the work is new.

The question is whether it could have come from anyone else. Or is it unquestionably the work of so-and-so?

Genuinely personal work often contains recognizable influences, references, and borrowings.

"Is this new?" is almost always a dead end because it assumes originality means having no predecessors. That's never really been how art has worked. Picasso learned from Iberian sculpture and African masks. Warhol learned from advertising. Cindy Sherman learned from film. Greer Lankton absorbed fashion, dolls, drag culture, and lived experience.

Every artist enters an ongoing conversation. Instead of asking, “Is this new? Have I seen this before?” I believe we should be asking these three questions:

What conversation is this work entering? (No artist begins from nowhere.)

What does this artist contribute to that conversation? (The distinctive voice.)

Is that contribution unmistakable? (The work bears the artist's signature in the deepest sense.)

It’s the Same Book 6/26

The woman in these photographs purchased a copy of The Story of Art Without Men by Katy Hessel.

The book remained the same.

The text remained the same.

The reader remained the same.

Only the bag changed.

Everything else was interpretation.

“But What About the AI?” (5/26)

Painting, Smoking, Eating, Philip Guston, 1973, Courtesy of the Stedelijk Museum

People often ask me about the AI in my work.

I understand why. We are living through a moment in which the tool itself attracts enormous attention.

But AI is not the subject of the work.

If I had photographed every portrait in Under Continuous Review myself, the project would remain conceptually unchanged. The structure would be the same: a portrait, a fragment of human narrative, and a system of evaluation operating upon them.

The work is not concerned with how the images are made. It is concerned with what happens when systems decide what information matters and what information can be ignored.

Discussing AI in this context can sometimes feel like standing in front of a Philip Guston painting and spending twenty minutes discussing the brand of brushes he used.

The brushes are part of the production of the work. But they are not the subject of the work.

The portraits are fictional. The judgments are familiar.

The Mythology of Artistic Life (5/26)

One of the strangest aspects of contemporary artistic life is the gap between how it is publicly presented and how it is actually lived.

Publicly, artistic life appears as a continuous stream of inspiration and momentum: exhibitions, grants, residencies, fellowships, publications, announcements, acceptances, invitations. Social media has intensified this effect in a big, big way. Artists are expected to maintain a visible narrative of forward motion. “Thrilled to announce.” “Honored to be included.” “Delighted to share.”

Over time, this creates a distorted picture of what a serious artistic life actually looks like.

What remains largely invisible is the administrative weather surrounding the work itself: applications, portals, deadlines, recommendation requests, submission fees, waiting periods, silence, rejection, recalibration, persistence.

The work develops inside this atmosphere. The work. That’s what’s missing.

What interests me is not rejection. Rejection has always existed and always will. And nobody, me included, loves it. But that’s not what interests me. What interests me is what repeated interaction with these systems teaches us artists over time.

Eventually, you begin to understand that institutional movement and artistic movement are not the same thing. A rejected proposal may still contain an important idea. A successful application may lead nowhere meaningful at all.

You also begin to understand how much artistic life depends upon the ability to continue without constant (or even frequent) external confirmation.

The portals change status. The work continues.

To me, that is the real ecology of artistic life: sustained attention.

Sequencing a Practice (5/26)
Instagram as an Artistic Space

I do not use Instagram for promotion or even visibility.

I use Instagram as a place to think visually — in public.

And that shift changes everything.

Social media encourages the idea of the single successful image. A post performs and gets likes, (or doesn't) and then it's on to the next one. But over time, I have become much more interested in what happens between images. Adjacency. Rhythm. Repetition. Interruption. Scale. Echo. Delay.

An image beside another image becomes a different image. A text piece interrupts visual momentum. A recurring object begins functioning almost like punctuation. Meaning accumulates slowly through sequence and return.

Screenshot of my Instagram account, May ‘26

Increasingly, I think of the Grid not as presentation, but as arrangement. And arrangement is never neutral. Nothing is unintentional. The placement changes the meaning.

What interests me is the evolving visual intelligence created by sustained sequencing over time.

The Grid allows thought to remain mobile. But the Grid remains unstable, revisable, alive. Images disappear. Others return unexpectedly. Certain ideas intensify through repetition. Others quietly fade away.

Looking becomes a form of editing.

The Instagram account itself becomes part of the artwork, part of the practice.

The account itself becomes an authored space.

Readers of the Work (5/26)

One of the hardest things for an artist to learn — and I’m learning it these days — is that witnessing is not evenly distributed.

Some people can accompany a becoming. They’re willing to look at work that is still in development and take the time to think it through, ask questions, and stay curious.

Others can only recognize outcomes.

Still others simply choose not to make room in their lives for sustained attention to another person’s work. That one feels crappy, especially when it becomes clear only after one person has spent a significant amount of time engaging with the other’s work.

It’s pretty natural to take the asymmetry personally, whatever the root cause. So we tend to think, If so-and-so isn’t saying anything, it must be because the work is lousy. It’s a very short distance between the lack of attention and the creeping self-doubt.

Back when I focused on photography, I had some readers: people who commented on individual images and said things like, Ooh, I love this one. Or, Great capture. (I hate the word “capture,” FYI!)

These days, however, my work requires a different kind of reading. I have very few readers. And, I’ll be honest: I wish I had more.

A colleague was recently commenting that she has so few people to talk to about her work. “I need to talk about my work.” Yup. I get that. And you know what I said in response? “Yes, you do. We all do. I’ve decided to make it a goal: to go out and find a real reader.”

Real readers — people willing to stay near the work while it is still becoming — are rare. But they matter enormously.

And the process must be mutual. I don’t just want readers of my work; I want to be a reader of other people’s work, too.

I want dialogue. And perhaps, too, a reputation for being the reader who stayed.

Restraint (5/26)

While working on a series of textile tape measures, I worried that viewers might not understand what was being measured. They wouldn’t “get” the concept.

My first instinct was to add wall text. Not a sentence or two, but the kind of explanatory language artists often reach for: body image, cultural expectations, sizing standards, social pressures, historical context.

In other words, a small dissertation.

Instead, I added one word:

(inches)

That was enough.

The viewer immediately understands that the work concerns bodies, measurement, and the judgments that inevitably attach themselves to both.

The experience reminded me that wall text should not function as a cut-and-paste excerpt from a catalog essay.

Its purpose is not to carry the meaning of the work.

Its purpose is to help the work carry its own meaning.

Restraint is often uncomfortable because it removes the easiest solution. Once explanation is no longer available, the work itself must become clearer.

The challenge is rarely finding more words.

The challenge is trusting fewer of them.