Today we’d like to introduce you to Johanna Hedva.
Johanna, please kick things off for us by telling us about yourself and your journey so far.
I am a Korean-American who was raised in Los Angeles by a family of witches. My mother’s side has been in LA for four generations. All of the Johannas and Hedvas that I’m named after are buried at Forest Lawn Cemetery in Glendale, and I imagine I’ll be buried there too. I live part of the year in Berlin, which has taught me about forests and dark winters, but I always come home.
Can you give our readers some background on your art?
I think all of my work is different kinds of screaming. If there were themes that it tends toward, they’d be mysticism, how we are haunted, the slipperiness of identities, and how our bodies cope with various regimes of oppression.
I’m a writer, but my writing has always converged with performance, or visual art, or music, or other media, somehow. My degrees are in design and visual art, and I’ve never taken a writing class. To me, writing is language embodied, so there are many ways it can materialize. Performance is elemental to my practice, and I’ve played in bands since I was 15. I’ve written and performed plays, like the five-year project where I adapted and directed Ancient Greek tragedies (my version of Homer’s Odyssey was performed in a Honda Odyssey that was being driven down the freeway, for two audience members at a time). I’ve made books by hand in limited editions, like the book of poetry I wrote on SalonPas pain patches. I’ve published essays, poems, and fiction, and exhibited installations of text, video, and sound. In 2018, my first novel, On Hell, was published by Sator Press, and I was lucky to be able to draw the cover and do the art direction. While I was writing it, I printed it on a specific pink paper, and this color became important to the text itself. Whether it’s spoken or sung, or silent, or doesn’t use words at all, all of my work is writing of some form.
What would you recommend to an artist new to the city, or to art, in terms of meeting and connecting with other artists and creatives?
Introduce yourself to the place’s ghosts. Find your coven.
What’s the best way for someone to check out your work and provide support?
This year I’m touring a new performance of guitar and voice called Black Moon Lilith in Pisces in the 4th House. It’s a keening grief ritual of hag blues, animal droning, and moon hymns. It’ll be at Performance Space New York in April (info and tickets here: http://arika.org.uk/
My novel, On Hell, is available here (http://onhell.website/), and my next book, a collection of poems and essays called Minerva the Miscarriage of the Brain, comes out in 2020 on The Operating System.
My new EP, The Sun and the Moon, came out on March 16. You can buy it here (https://bighedva.bandcamp.
Contact Info:
- Website: johannahedva.com, http://onhell.website/
- Instagram: https://www.
instagram.com/bighedva/ - Other: https://vimeo.com/user1845185
Image Credit:
Pamila Payne, Laura Hindmarsh, Johanna Hedva, Ken Baumann, Emily Lacy
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