Nothing off the Table

I was first introduced to Amalia Ulman through our mutual friend Fiona Duncan, who invited me to join Ulman’s private book club. One day, I found myself added to an anonymous email thread led by someone known only as The Bookmaster, accompanied with shared PDFs of avant-garde literature. The year was 2021, and Ulman had just released her first feature film, El Planeta, a dark comedy about a mother and daughter that was partly based on her own life. Every few months, a small group of us gathers at various sites around Manhattan—always the unassuming ones—to discuss a book, often a translated novella, chosen by Ulman for our “secret” salon-like meetings. These selections have ranged from Leonora Carrington's 1972 memoir Down Below to A Little Lumpen Novelita by Chilean novelist Roberto Bolaño, each book offering a chance to extract and exchange psychological truths within recurring themes of the political, social, and spiritual.

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When it comes to style, Ulman is structured and elegant. Beneath her worldly poise lies a deeply grounded awareness of our messy, individual realities. For the Argentinian-born, Spanish-raised, New York-based visual artist, nothing is off the table. Her work consistently explores personal values surrounding class, gender, and social dynamics. After she received her certification as a water sommelier at Doemens Academy in Germany last year, Ulman organized an intimate tasting with Adam Leonti, head chef of Cucina Alba, a posh Italian restaurant on West 18th Street. Whether she is hosting gatherings, directing, filmmaking, writing, or curating, she exudes true generosity and knowledge. For the artist and director, visual expression is not just a skill but a calling. Born to anti-traditional parents who were part of the punk and skate scenes in the ‘80s, Ulman has nurtured a keen understanding of subcultures and the unconventional from a young age.

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While curating her film series “Fascism: Desire & Punishment” at Roxy Cinema—which runs through September 1 and features a lineup of The Holy Girl (2024), If… (1968), The Piano Teacher (2021), and The Executioner (1963)—Ulman curated a selection of bottled waters for “Pop Life,” a group show at Zodiac Pictures Gallery in Los Angeles. Earlier this summer, she and her partner Nick Irvin co-curated a group show titled “Micasa” at their newly purchased, yet-to-be-renovated Upper West Side apartment. Between projects, she recently wrapped her upcoming film Magic Farm—a dark rom-com starring herself, Chloë Sevigny, Simon Rex, Alex Wolff, and Joe Apollonio, set in Argentina, and slated to release next year. For an artist who’s always juggling new ideas, Ulman remains surprisingly down-to-earth. On the eve of her film series debut, I met with her outside the Paris Theater to talk about fascism, clowns, and cliques.

Vivien Lee: Hi Amalia.

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Amalia Ulman: Hi.

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VL: What was the idea behind “Fascism: Desire & Punishment”?

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AU: I've been complaining privately a lot about how the culture in New York has been kind of rotten for the past few years. The “Micasa” show was an attempt to do something about it in a fun way, as well as this film series. As I mention in my essay, the series is tied to someone I had a relationship with who represented this idea of Spanish fascism. There’s a certain romanticization of Nazism that I’ve been seeing a lot lately. My dad was a contrarian edgelord and anarcho-capitalist libertarian punk in the ‘80s and '90s. Many of his friends were Hell's Angels with a weird interest in Nazi culture. Contrarians, provocateurs… So the discourse around what's happening in New York right now, it’s something I've seen before, and I find it boring. I just tried to move on with my work, and ignore what I consider to be stupid, but it’s been too long—that's why I’ve started curating more, to be more active.

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What fascism means to me, or how I perceive it, is it's such a killer of the arts, like a wet blanket. Even when there have been attempts of “doing arts for fascism”—like futurism, etcetera—they don’t last long because once there is actually a fascist in power, that art stops.

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I started the idea for this series when we read The Piano Teacher in our last book club. The relationship between the mother and daughter reminded me of people I knew while growing up in Spain. Films like Holy Girl aren’t necessarily directly related to fascism, but they represent the claustrophobic nausea of it. Maybe people don't think too much into that in relation to The Piano Teacher the film, but definitely in relation to the book; it was always a book about fascism in Austria.

VL: Holy Girl seems to contain a few parallels with you and its protagonist, starting with the name, of course.

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AU: Yes and no. “Amalia” is a very common name in Argentina. Aesthetically, I feel very attuned to the film because I love theremin music. But also the weird affair. I don't want to spoil it too much, but there are certain things, like her sexual awakening and the type of conversations they have, being Catholic schoolgirls…

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VL: Did you grow up religious?

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AU: I grew up Catholic, culturally. My parents were never full-on atheists. My mom sang songs to me about little angels and things like that. Latin America is very religious, even when you're trying not to be. My other best friend from school was from a family of socialists, and they were very hardcore atheists. They hated the church. In Spain, it's very hard to be a leftist and religious. When I was 14, I became an atheist and a clown apprentice. That whole world is very lefty.

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VL: Leftist clowns? Like… actual clowns?

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AU: Yeah, there’s a big crossover between punks and clowns, especially in Argentina and Spain. When I was younger I really wanted to go to this one famous clown school in Paris, École Philippe Gaulier.

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VL: In your essay, you talk about fascism as being gloomy and monotonous, which is the opposite of how I would describe your recent show as well as your upcoming film.

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AU: In Magic Farm_, I am also playing up stereotypes of how Latin America looks in film—where someone goes to Mexico and, suddenly, there’s an orange tint over everything. The film had a lot of references to American Apparel, which is also a very colorful world, and we wanted to incorporate that. It was funny because I called [actor] Joe Apollonio over to see my apartment before the show, and he was like, “This looks like the set of Magic Farm.” Maybe that's why I felt attracted to it when I first saw it, because it felt very familiar. The previous owners were Gen-Xer alt gamers. My dad is a Gen-Xer tattoo artist. So when he got some money to decorate the home—I'm saying a little bit because not everything was done properly, it was like half renovated, with cheap materials—there was a lot of leopard print and yellow and purple walls. One of the first thoughts I had when I visited the orange room in my new apartment was, I'm going to have a child here. I'm going to give birth to something here. I don't know if it's a child or something else, because I'm also writing a new script there, but it was that feeling of like, My family will live here. Nick is a curator, so that was a way to involve friends for the exhibition, which felt more like a celebration of having a place to live, a housewarming.

VL: Are there any crossovers between the “Micasa” show and your solo show at Jenny's last year?

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AU: Well, kind of. Maybe my hatred of cliques is one thing it has in common. For “Micasa,” I put a lot of effort into curating something where people were from different friend groups and ages, curating because of the art, not because of a friend group. It's funny because a lot of people, especially nowadays, are very literal. The literalists are everywhere, especially online. If you don't explain something, they take everything at face value.

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And one thing about the show at Jenny’s that I think people took the wrong way, is that they thought the portraits were of my friends. Instead, it was a portrait of a scene. There are people that I like and respect as artists who are very talented, but among them are also clout chasers, people with money that are buying their way into a scene, lovers and ex-lovers, and so on… Scene fighting, people that hate each other, placed next to one another. People who are funding things from the shadows and don't want to be seen were portrayed, too.

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VL: Oh, yes…

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AU: That has a lot to do with my practice in general; about social dynamics and how people understand each other. Since I started as an artist, this has been a scene that I've heard gossip about, with infighting and incestuous relationships. When I was at Sardi’s [restaurant] one day, I saw the portraits of Broadway people who also all knew each other, and I thought about all of the drama that might have gone on between them, because at the time I was in a fucked up love triangle.

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VL: Yeah, there's more to tell than just what's shown. I’ve been thinking about how trite the term “chosen family” has become and what community means with America’s loneliness epidemic. The topic of friend breakups is trending quite a lot these days.

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AU: This is particularly hard in New York, because so many people in fashion and the arts are so transactional that it's really hard to meet the right people. I feel like there are still pockets of neighborhood-like areas that allow for that, but I wish there was more of a real sense of community around things like raising kids, because that's something I've seen in other countries.

VL: I saw you curated some waters for a gallery in LA?

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AU: Yeah, I've been doing the water thing as a hobby just tasting different waters and whatnot. It bothers me when work is produced with little research on a subject. I remember during the post-Internet era, when there were suddenly all of these personal trainers and nutritionists, but none of them had gone to school for anything. Once I learned there was an actual course taught by a chemist, I was like, Okay, I want to go study, get my degree, and then I'll call myself a water sommelier. But only after I have actual knowledge.

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VL: How long was the course?

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AU: It's a month intensive, from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. every day. So far, I've already done, like, 10 water tasting events this year. I’m doing a seasonal water curation for Dimes Market. It’s been fun, but it’s a lot of work between sourcing items, making videos, and putting it all together.

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VL: Do you have a selection of bottles you like to keep stocked at home?

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AU: Yes, I have a personal collection of bottles I have brought from different places. One of my favorite sensations is to quench my thirst with perfectly chilled water, especially because it’s a pleasure I can share with my animals.

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VL: I ordered some Borjomi after your tasting, which I recall you saying was Stalin’s favorite water. My batch was so bitter. I couldn’t drink any of it.

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AU: Once I tried a batch of Borjomi that tasted crazy. I'm not going to name names because I got it at this bodega near my place, but it was a bad batch.

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VL: You should start getting commissions from these brands some day.

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AU: I’d love to do something with Big Water. If you ever see me advertising Smart Water… then you’ll know I’ve sold out.