I dream of Utopia

Hi,

My name is Noemi Gunea, I’m a neurodiverse migrant artist tossing and turning through Hackney, trying to make the best out of life while building a career in the arts. I’m privileged in many ways. I have had a great education, in my native Bucharest, Paris and London, for which I haven’t had to pay a penny. Because I grew up with free education and free access to culture (even going to the theatre was free if you were in the state run high school drama groups), I have become used to looking for scholarships everywhere, sure as hell I belong in any space that I can wrangle my way into. I now understand this to be a sense of entitlement that a lot of British people don’t have; growing up in a classist society that dictates what you should or should not access based on your social and economic standing. 

I am also lucky to be able to have a high paying job, although this comes with its own difficulties. My day job is being a fashion model, which pays about 3 times the London living wage per hour. I have to cast for every single job, I don’t factor that into the pay, because I like to keep depression at bay. This work enables me to dedicate more time to my art practice, and also puts me in contexts where I meet other artists that are relatively financially stable and interested in doing personal projects. My network has enabled me to participate in an invisible skill share economy that enhances the production value of my work. This makes it appear that I’ve had some great funding for my projects. For the vast majority of it, there was no funding, or barely enough to pay for expenses. My model agency gives me a free studio. People have filmed, photographed, edited etc in exchange for in kind work. And that’s tax free work, baby!

Because I can’t work as a model forever, I feel a ticking clock to make my art practice sustainable, so I’m always keen to do 10 times more than what is asked of me so that I have better work opportunities in the future. I also feel guilty, because I realise, I am part of the problem, part of those who set the bar too high for what we’re being paid. I don’t make a lot of money, I live with 4 friends in a big house with deliciously small rent in Hackney, and I am well known amongst my friends for being the one who can always figure out a deal, a cheap way of doing anything. I volunteer for my monthly yoga pass, cycle everywhere, I am an Offies assessor for my theatre fix, drink at vernissages and invite people over for dinner at my house. I use the food waste app Too Good To Go almost every day, eating like a queen on a budget. I’ve built a life around being a trickster, trying to have my cake and eat it. And it works, but I’m 32 and I’m scared I don’t have it in me to continue this rhythm forever. 

When the pandemic hit and I lost all my work, I was paralysed with fear that I would have had to go back home and live on my parent’s sofa. So, I tried harder with Arts Council applications. A consequence of being neurodiverse, is that my brain won’t commit to a single art form. I make theatre, performance art, film, a radio play, a novel, poetry, and now I’m drawing a tarot deck from Eastern European stories. I don’t know how to sell myself, despite having gathered big credits on my CV. 

This said, I want to share with you my view on application processes, first mentioning that I’m insanely grateful to all institutions that are slowly but surely changing the way they work so that they can focus on ideas and potential, rather than belonging to the self-selecting group of Intelligentia Illuminati. I’m being silly, but this is what it feels like to me. A glass ceiling where we don’t talk about the actual work that is being done, but decorate applications with complicated words and promise impacts that we actually have no control over. I remember reading a friend’s application that said she would help reduce knife crime in the area through culture. I don’t understand why artists have to prove impact. I don’t understand why you need to be a sociologist on top of a maker. Many complain of marketing as a burden, but to me creating content is way less invasive than having to step into the shoes of an academic when my brain just doesn’t work like that. It feels like a secret group with their own set of words – evaluation, investment principles etc and they just want to hear these words regurgitated back at them, to check if you’re part of their clique.

And then there’s identity politics. Migrant trauma’s all the rage at the moment, and after 10 years in London making surreal work about economics and quantum physics, I’ve noticed that trauma does pay better. And I put in the effort to steer away from the tokenisation and into something I believe in. Eastern Europeans have a reputation of being ‘white but not quite’, and this fluctuates a lot with time, of course getting worse since Brexit. So, there’s been more work for me recently.

I just want to be like Martin Creed. Funny, lightweight, walking my Chihuahua around London. Don’t worry, I would never be so financially adventurous as to dare to care for a dog. But I dream of a world where I can get funded for projects that aren’t just about identity politics, where I can voice note ideas, build relationships with venues, and have an average annual salary with holidays and shall I say it – a retirement fund? 

I dream of Utopia. 

Noemi Gunea is a neurodiverse Romanian artist based in London. She works interdisciplinary across performance, writing and social engagement, having shown work at places like the British Museum, Tate Exchange, Royal Academy of Arts, Arebyte Gallery and South London Gallery. She makes up half of performance duo Cheap Thrills, who were long-listed for UK New Artist of the Year by Saatchi and Robert Walters in 2022. Her burning interests are economics, quantum physics, comedy, contemporary dance, mental heath and all things Eastern European. She is  SEEDED artist in residence with London College of Fashion.