Following our recent story on artist David Elsea, “Eye on Small Business” looks to another artist with specific ties to our area, the multimedia and multidisciplinary artist Monique Allain to understand better how art can – indeed nearly always must – be commercial without compromising the integrity of the artist.
Of French and Mexican heritage, Allain grew up in São Paulo, spending vacations in France and Mexico with family. In 2018 she moved to Brooklyn and two years later, when Covid hit, she and her husband decided to live full-time in their country house in North Salem. In March, the couple moved to Waccabuc.
Allain started drawing portraits when she was 5 years old, asking friends and relatives who came to her house to pose for her, but “let it go” in her teens, thinking she did not have enough talent to continue. With a degree in biology under her belt, her next artistic awakening did not occur until she was 41, and going through an unhappy period of her life.
“I realized that being an artist is not a matter of having talent but of vocation, of having the need to produce visual things to communicate with the world, to express my voice,” she recently told Westfair’s Westchester Business Journal.
A Brazilian artist friend had started flourishing after going through similar difficulties, and Allain asked her what was going on, what was her secret. “She said she was taking (art) lessons… and I went and started having group lessons with other artists and dancers. I did not know what I was doing, but I was enchanted by the approach, by the practice, by the interaction with my colleagues.”
It was around this time, too, that she discovered the Feldenkrais Method – a type of movement therapy devised by Israeli Moshé Feldenkrais in the mid-20th century – completing the four-year trainee program in São Paulo and eventually graduating as a certified Feldenkrais practitioner.
One of the important things she felt while practicing the method, Allain explained, was how important it is to be connected with ourselves, to listen to ourselves, “so we can be aligned and in harmony with the world and contribute with it in a positive way.” This in turn led to her first video installation, in which the image, technically a video, is something between a moving image and a static one, or photograph.
Moving towards the commercial value of her art, Allain said this was the most difficult and challenging aspect for her.
“The art that makes sense to me is unfortunately not commercial. In fact, for me, there is an antagonism between producing genuine art and commercializing it.” She added, “If my priority were to sell, I would do what people want to hear, not what I want to say.” Refusing to compromise, in terms of selling, she said, she would prefer to give her work away to people whom she cares about, rather than sell it cheaply.
That said, she makes full use of social media to promote herself, while gallery shows are another commercial outlet. At “SOS,” a recent show at the Katonah Village Gallery, Allain presented her “Archaeology” series, a project she started when she moved from Brooklyn to North Salem. To “ground” herself after moving from Brazil, then to Brooklyn and then to northern Westchester County, all in a relatively short space of time, she decided that everything she used in her artwork, videos and installations would have to have come from within a five-mile radius – developing her own specific term,“A(r)tivism,” along the way. The show was deemed a success.
Still, she cautioned, “We artists need very good financial advisers to help us to administrate and make our money grow, so we can dedicate our time to produce our works” – adding that she had a very good one.
Allain works from a spacious studio in her home. She said her dream is to build a separate studio in a place surrounded by nature, where she will invite artist friends, dancers and musicians to produce together.
She is also involved with “Art For a Change,” a participatory volunteer project with breast cancer patients of the Metropolitan Hospital in Manhattan. For more, click here.
