article The Future is Fatoş
The Future is Fatoş
For Volume 2 of the Artiq Annual, Fatoş Üstek
speaks with Patrick McCrae about the necessity for
change and what we must do collectively to get there.
speaks with Patrick McCrae about the necessity for
change and what we must do collectively to get there.
For Volume 2 of the Artiq Annual, Fatoş Üstek
speaks with Patrick McCrae about the necessity for
change and what we must do collectively to get there.
Lindsay Seers, No Money is Included, 2022 (video still). Courtesy of the artist.
Patrick I wanted to start this conversation by thinking about the narrative arc of this interview and aligning it with the narrative of your personal story. Some things I have gathered from reading about your professional life, from judging the Turner Prize to the 4th Plinth, chairing the New Contemporaries, and lately, curating Frieze Sculpture - it's quite the list of accomplishments! Then, there's this interesting twist with your background in mathematics, you studied maths in Istanbul, Turkey, and were on a path to a career in engineering but eventually found yourself in the arts. Your journey is almost the opposite of what we often hear: many study art and aim for a career in the arts but end up working somewhere wholly different. This early influence came through in your curation at Frieze Sculpture, for example, in how you spoke about the lines of sight between artworks. So, can you take us through your journey? What is the Fatoş history?
Fatoş We can all craft various narratives from our history, so I don't have just one. There's my so-called professional journey, with what people refer to as milestones—projects I've been part of or initiated. But I believe there's another story, which is more about character. So, ask me again: what do you really want to know? Because like you say, the facts about what I've done are already out there.
Patrick I'd love to hear about breaking through [into the art world] rather than the accolades. As you say, the accolades are already out there, and they speak for themselves; you don't get to curate at Frieze Sculpture without already being somebody. What was your breakthrough moment?
Fatoş One thing that has been very prominent in my journey is passion. I discovered my deep love for art in college, and that was something I didn't know about myself before. It led to a sort of double life for a while - I was a maths student but also working for and being involved in newly forming initiatives and platforms, like the first contemporary art gallery in Istanbul. It was a passion I did not know I had in me until I exposed myself to it. It started with photography, then film. I was so intrigued by the creative force, which felt much less controlled than the maths I studied; the contrast was so interesting. I sometimes reflect on whether I could have become an artist, and I think the answer is no. Early on, I believed I lacked the creativity that artists had, but now I think it might have been more about lacking the courage. Coming from quite a traditional family, the breakthrough moment happened when I started building trust in arts as somewhere I could realise myself. So, my journey started with self-realisation. I needed to learn who I was, and visual arts became lenses through which I could proliferate my worldview.
Two decades in, I've become less important in my journey. My focus has shifted towards being there for and supporting artists and aiding the birth of artworks. The recent Frieze Sculpture edition showcased things that had never been done before within that context, and that excites me!
There's a beautiful Derridean concept called 'the Unthought', in which he refers to philosophy exploring areas that have not yet been considered or given thought. Successors will identify the gaps, add to them, and change the outcome. This is how I approach curation. And this is another connection to mathematics: I was always interested in topology, what you mentioned before as sight lines. When things are placed in new constellations, what does it create? They come together to contribute to a larger conversation - a dialogue instead of a monologue. This conversation can extend to the site itself, which is why I find the public realm more interesting than a white cube space. It's less controlled and more agile. That's what curating is about for me.
Fatoş We can all craft various narratives from our history, so I don't have just one. There's my so-called professional journey, with what people refer to as milestones—projects I've been part of or initiated. But I believe there's another story, which is more about character. So, ask me again: what do you really want to know? Because like you say, the facts about what I've done are already out there.
Patrick I'd love to hear about breaking through [into the art world] rather than the accolades. As you say, the accolades are already out there, and they speak for themselves; you don't get to curate at Frieze Sculpture without already being somebody. What was your breakthrough moment?
Fatoş One thing that has been very prominent in my journey is passion. I discovered my deep love for art in college, and that was something I didn't know about myself before. It led to a sort of double life for a while - I was a maths student but also working for and being involved in newly forming initiatives and platforms, like the first contemporary art gallery in Istanbul. It was a passion I did not know I had in me until I exposed myself to it. It started with photography, then film. I was so intrigued by the creative force, which felt much less controlled than the maths I studied; the contrast was so interesting. I sometimes reflect on whether I could have become an artist, and I think the answer is no. Early on, I believed I lacked the creativity that artists had, but now I think it might have been more about lacking the courage. Coming from quite a traditional family, the breakthrough moment happened when I started building trust in arts as somewhere I could realise myself. So, my journey started with self-realisation. I needed to learn who I was, and visual arts became lenses through which I could proliferate my worldview.
Two decades in, I've become less important in my journey. My focus has shifted towards being there for and supporting artists and aiding the birth of artworks. The recent Frieze Sculpture edition showcased things that had never been done before within that context, and that excites me!
There's a beautiful Derridean concept called 'the Unthought', in which he refers to philosophy exploring areas that have not yet been considered or given thought. Successors will identify the gaps, add to them, and change the outcome. This is how I approach curation. And this is another connection to mathematics: I was always interested in topology, what you mentioned before as sight lines. When things are placed in new constellations, what does it create? They come together to contribute to a larger conversation - a dialogue instead of a monologue. This conversation can extend to the site itself, which is why I find the public realm more interesting than a white cube space. It's less controlled and more agile. That's what curating is about for me.
Patrick Listening to your story - initially steering towards mathematics but discovering art and the self-actualisation that happens when you do - that moment feels similar to the work you're engaged in within the public realm. For instance, at Frieze Sculpture in the Regent’s Park, there's an audience like me, eagerly joining a tour at 8 in the rain, discovering exciting new artists like Amy Stephens. However, there's also an audience strolling in the English Gardens on the weekend, not anticipating encountering art but possibly stumbling upon a work by, let's say, Yinka Shonibare. Are you trying to light that same spark in all of us?
Fatoş You always bring your character traits to everything you do in life. I am never satisfied with what's given. If someone says, 'This is it,' my response is, 'Is there anything else?' In college, they taught mathematics as if it were a given, so I became intrigued by incompleteness theorems, essentially proving that 'this is not it.' The same approach applies when I am curating, and it's becoming my curatorial signum of sorts. I like pushing the envelope, discovering new things, and incorporating them into the equation. But I also love to grow things, seizing their potential and ensuring they are nurtured and nourished to evolve into something else. If I had stayed in mathematics, I would have been less able to do this. The fact I can play and push boundaries is my foil.
Patrick Staying on the theme of not being satisfied with the state of things, what you are doing with FRANK is very much in the same realm - challenging the status quo. Only in the last few years has the conversation about fair pay for artists risen to the top. I'd love to know more about FRANK, how it came about, and the work you all are currently doing.
Fatoş The conversation started organically with Anne [Hardy] and Lindsay [Seers], the two other co-founders of FRANK. And my interest in fair pay culminated while I was still working at the Liverpool Biennale and had engaged a few trustees to re-work the artist payment terms. I was unhappy with a flat fee for all artists that didn't consider whether they had spent nine months creating a new commission or showing an existing work that might just have been slightly altered. It didn't seem fair. A crucial aspect for FRANK is that today, everyone talks about the need for diversity, inclusion, and equal opportunities. Economic parity is a significant part of this that often isn't addressed. It's not just about class but also the opportunities you provide. If you want to showcase a single parent or an artist with caring responsibilities, they can't afford to give up a paid job for a poorly paid exhibition project. Without addressing this, you can't really talk about diversity. Another essential aspect is the need for a mindset shift across the globe to start recognising artists as professionals.
Currently, the sector in general positions artists as workers, justifying a minimum or living wage. For instance, Arts Council England recommends minimum living wage fees for artists; in other places, artist rates are equated with teaching rates. While artists teaching in a school should be equated to teachers, if they are invited and contracted as artists, they must be recognised as professionals and receive professional rates. Some countries and organisations are well ahead in this, like Finland and the Netherlands where artists receive a professional wage (at times in alignment with designers and architects). FRANK is not developing a new rate scheme, but we are creating a conceptual fair pay calculator to unpack the process of commissioning an artist or showcasing an existing work.
Fatoş You always bring your character traits to everything you do in life. I am never satisfied with what's given. If someone says, 'This is it,' my response is, 'Is there anything else?' In college, they taught mathematics as if it were a given, so I became intrigued by incompleteness theorems, essentially proving that 'this is not it.' The same approach applies when I am curating, and it's becoming my curatorial signum of sorts. I like pushing the envelope, discovering new things, and incorporating them into the equation. But I also love to grow things, seizing their potential and ensuring they are nurtured and nourished to evolve into something else. If I had stayed in mathematics, I would have been less able to do this. The fact I can play and push boundaries is my foil.
Patrick Staying on the theme of not being satisfied with the state of things, what you are doing with FRANK is very much in the same realm - challenging the status quo. Only in the last few years has the conversation about fair pay for artists risen to the top. I'd love to know more about FRANK, how it came about, and the work you all are currently doing.
Fatoş The conversation started organically with Anne [Hardy] and Lindsay [Seers], the two other co-founders of FRANK. And my interest in fair pay culminated while I was still working at the Liverpool Biennale and had engaged a few trustees to re-work the artist payment terms. I was unhappy with a flat fee for all artists that didn't consider whether they had spent nine months creating a new commission or showing an existing work that might just have been slightly altered. It didn't seem fair. A crucial aspect for FRANK is that today, everyone talks about the need for diversity, inclusion, and equal opportunities. Economic parity is a significant part of this that often isn't addressed. It's not just about class but also the opportunities you provide. If you want to showcase a single parent or an artist with caring responsibilities, they can't afford to give up a paid job for a poorly paid exhibition project. Without addressing this, you can't really talk about diversity. Another essential aspect is the need for a mindset shift across the globe to start recognising artists as professionals.
Currently, the sector in general positions artists as workers, justifying a minimum or living wage. For instance, Arts Council England recommends minimum living wage fees for artists; in other places, artist rates are equated with teaching rates. While artists teaching in a school should be equated to teachers, if they are invited and contracted as artists, they must be recognised as professionals and receive professional rates. Some countries and organisations are well ahead in this, like Finland and the Netherlands where artists receive a professional wage (at times in alignment with designers and architects). FRANK is not developing a new rate scheme, but we are creating a conceptual fair pay calculator to unpack the process of commissioning an artist or showcasing an existing work.
Yinka Shonibare CBE RA, Material (SG) IV, 2023, Stephen Friedman Gallery. Frieze Sculpture 2023 Photo by Linda Nylind. Courtesy of Linda Nylind/Frieze.
Patrick That sounds intriguing! How will it be applied, and what exactly will it calculate?
Fatoş It will demystify what it truly means when you want an artist to create a new work for you. The calculator will break down exactly what you're requesting from them. It's about breaking the barrier of not fully understanding what an artist does, the time required for a commission, the research involved, the labour, and more. Without recognising these factors, we can't make the shift towards fairness. Fair practice isn't just about remuneration; it also involves fair working conditions, fair contracts, and fair representation. FRANK addresses all of this in our founding principles and in the artist questionnaire we're developing with Canvas Art Law. It's not a contract in itself, but it can serve as the foundation for one. Artists and whoever they are working with - whether curators or directors - can use it when initially agreeing to work together. Everyone will understand the terms: timelines, production budgets, expectations from each party, payment schedules, and so on. When translated into a contract, it should build more trust and leave less space for abuse.
Patrick One of the things we touched on earlier is that the art world doesn't talk about money. For young people leaving school in their late teens or early twenties, they compare the pay brackets and career trajectories in the art world with other sectors. Many end up following the money, causing a significant issue in terms of representation for the sector, not only among artists but also among art professionals. In the UK, over 90% of the creative workforce comes from advanced socioeconomic backgrounds because of the perception that creativity doesn't pay. How can we attract the next generation of talent to the art world?
Fatoş We started as an organisation focusing on artists, but it needs to extend to all creative practitioners. Due to the low salaries, only a specific group of people can afford to take these jobs. Suppose we think of systems as pools. When you swim in them, you get used to it; eventually, you don't see, feel, or think outside of it. We need to change the system; we need to change the business model. Currently, it's a dependent business model relying on external funding with many strings attached. It might be a radical suggestion, but we need to strip away from that lineage of power dependency, and from that, more autonomy and agency will follow. But before we can change the model, we need to change the mindset. Most of our institutions operate with a degenerative mindset (borrowing the term from economics), expecting to invest the minimum but gain the maximum output. We operate in a very precarious sector. Compared to other industries, business or entrepreneurial models, the art sector is operating with much emotional and financial precarity.
Fatoş It will demystify what it truly means when you want an artist to create a new work for you. The calculator will break down exactly what you're requesting from them. It's about breaking the barrier of not fully understanding what an artist does, the time required for a commission, the research involved, the labour, and more. Without recognising these factors, we can't make the shift towards fairness. Fair practice isn't just about remuneration; it also involves fair working conditions, fair contracts, and fair representation. FRANK addresses all of this in our founding principles and in the artist questionnaire we're developing with Canvas Art Law. It's not a contract in itself, but it can serve as the foundation for one. Artists and whoever they are working with - whether curators or directors - can use it when initially agreeing to work together. Everyone will understand the terms: timelines, production budgets, expectations from each party, payment schedules, and so on. When translated into a contract, it should build more trust and leave less space for abuse.
Patrick One of the things we touched on earlier is that the art world doesn't talk about money. For young people leaving school in their late teens or early twenties, they compare the pay brackets and career trajectories in the art world with other sectors. Many end up following the money, causing a significant issue in terms of representation for the sector, not only among artists but also among art professionals. In the UK, over 90% of the creative workforce comes from advanced socioeconomic backgrounds because of the perception that creativity doesn't pay. How can we attract the next generation of talent to the art world?
Fatoş We started as an organisation focusing on artists, but it needs to extend to all creative practitioners. Due to the low salaries, only a specific group of people can afford to take these jobs. Suppose we think of systems as pools. When you swim in them, you get used to it; eventually, you don't see, feel, or think outside of it. We need to change the system; we need to change the business model. Currently, it's a dependent business model relying on external funding with many strings attached. It might be a radical suggestion, but we need to strip away from that lineage of power dependency, and from that, more autonomy and agency will follow. But before we can change the model, we need to change the mindset. Most of our institutions operate with a degenerative mindset (borrowing the term from economics), expecting to invest the minimum but gain the maximum output. We operate in a very precarious sector. Compared to other industries, business or entrepreneurial models, the art sector is operating with much emotional and financial precarity.
Lindsay Seers, No Money is Included, 2022 (video still). Courtesy of the artist.
Patrick You talk about changing the funding model - one of the things that I have tried to demonstrate with Artiq is that you don't need external funding to run an arts organisation; you don't need venture capital or the Arts Council. But in the process, we have been party to certain snobbery due to our partnerships with the commercial world. To me, these forms of collaborations or partnerships are very obvious funding routes for the arts. Is there a future where the art world would work together with more corporate and commercial partners? Is there an element of needing to let down some barriers for that to happen?
Fatoş It's crucial to recognise that there are no public institutions left. In the 1980s and 1990s, almost all institutions received the majority of their funding from the Arts Council. That's no longer the case. Today, institutions are being pushed toward a mixed economy model, with most funding coming from private sources. A big problem for institutions today is the extensive efforts put into fundraising - around 60% of the labour force is dedicated to fundraising activities: gala dinners, funding applications, reporting to funders, patron events, merchandise, and more. It's a lot! The concept of a public institution in the West is yet to be viable. We are already pressed to become private operators within the framework of charities. This spring, I have a book coming out called 'The Art Institution of Tomorrow: Reinventing the Model,' where I suggest a new idea of a model that, in many ways, abolishes the current structures of institutions. But I'm not saying this is the model; it's just a model. For me, that represents the future—a space where many different models can develop or emerge.
Patrick Final question: how can we get involved - artists, organisations, institutions?
Fatoş They can become members. We've now opened it to all creative practitioners, from creators to critics. We've set nominal rates (£16 for artists; £32 for young galleries/organisations; £256 for public institutions per year) because we want to build a community. Workshops and online forums will be available, and the tools we're developing can be accessed through our membership platform. FRANK is not an artist organisation, and we're not a public institution. We are one approach to finding a solution, believing in rising up together to improve the practice. We want to create a space where everyone has a seat at the table - artists, directors of institutions, funding bodies - to collectively ask ourselves how we can all do better together.
Explore other articles from Artiq Annual Volume 2 or read the full annual online here.
Fatoş It's crucial to recognise that there are no public institutions left. In the 1980s and 1990s, almost all institutions received the majority of their funding from the Arts Council. That's no longer the case. Today, institutions are being pushed toward a mixed economy model, with most funding coming from private sources. A big problem for institutions today is the extensive efforts put into fundraising - around 60% of the labour force is dedicated to fundraising activities: gala dinners, funding applications, reporting to funders, patron events, merchandise, and more. It's a lot! The concept of a public institution in the West is yet to be viable. We are already pressed to become private operators within the framework of charities. This spring, I have a book coming out called 'The Art Institution of Tomorrow: Reinventing the Model,' where I suggest a new idea of a model that, in many ways, abolishes the current structures of institutions. But I'm not saying this is the model; it's just a model. For me, that represents the future—a space where many different models can develop or emerge.
Patrick Final question: how can we get involved - artists, organisations, institutions?
Fatoş They can become members. We've now opened it to all creative practitioners, from creators to critics. We've set nominal rates (£16 for artists; £32 for young galleries/organisations; £256 for public institutions per year) because we want to build a community. Workshops and online forums will be available, and the tools we're developing can be accessed through our membership platform. FRANK is not an artist organisation, and we're not a public institution. We are one approach to finding a solution, believing in rising up together to improve the practice. We want to create a space where everyone has a seat at the table - artists, directors of institutions, funding bodies - to collectively ask ourselves how we can all do better together.
Explore other articles from Artiq Annual Volume 2 or read the full annual online here.