Life and Work with Lucia Fabio

Today we’d like to introduce you to Lucia Fabio.

Thanks for sharing your story with us Lucia. So, let’s start at the beginning and we can move on from there.
I am the daughter of Sicilian immigrants— the firstborn in the United States. My parents are from a small village nestled in the mountains near the north coast of the island. I grew up in Burbank speaking Italian and English and always felt like I had one foot in each country. My mother cooked virtually every meal from scratch and as descendants of farmers, they grew the majority of the produce we ate in the backyard.

As the first person in my family to attend high school, pursuing an education was a priority. I attended the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and studied painting, drawing, and sculpture. Chicago has an amazing DIY alternative scene and shortly after graduating, I became involved in three walls— a non-profit artist-run space and started a gallery in my apartment called mini dutch, where I showed works in progress and site-specific installation. As I became more immersed in the Chicago art scene, my making practice began to subside and I found myself spending more time curating and working with artists to realize their projects. I had even started a food-based program called “walk-in pantry” where I invited different Chicago artists into my home to cook and share recipes based on the economic impact we were experiencing after the 2007 recession. During this time, I also worked in museums and galleries installing artwork and was exposed to many major artists.

I eventually moved back to Los Angeles and continued to install artwork at our local institutions including MOCA and The Hammer Museum. I was beginning to become very interested in artists who used food as part of their practice and wanted to expand my theoretical knowledge. In 2013, I decided to attend the Art and Curatorial Practices in the Public Sphere Program at USC. I met many wonderful people at that program and those experiences have led to me where I am today.

Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
The road has had many bumps relating to illness. When I was twenty-two, my boyfriend at the time (my now husband) was diagnosed with a rare auto-immune disease six weeks before we were to graduate from undergrad. We both took incompletes for several classes as we navigated the healthcare system (this is when insurance companies could deny you care for having a preexisting condition and he was a few weeks away from losing his student health insurance) and long intravenous treatments at the hematology department. Several years later, my mother was diagnosed with stage IIIC ovarian cancer — the reason why I left Chicago and moved back to Los Angeles. After enduring surgeries, chemotherapies and radiation, she lived for seven and a half years after the initial diagnosis.

My life revolved around both of these illnesses. More than several times, I had to drop everything due to emergency hospitalizations and have experienced long breaks in my practice. I’ve adjusted expectations and let opportunities go by because caring for my mother was my priority. I think very real and personal matters such as illness, death, and birth are almost never mentioned as possible stumbling blocks to ones’ profession. If I never had to deal with illness in my 20s, I would be in a very different place in my career. It has taken me a long time to accept that I am more empathetic curator and person because of my experiences. I am working with artists whose practices incorporate their illnesses and am beginning to incorporate grief and death into my research and projects.

Please tell us more about your work, what you are currently focused on and most proud of.
I am an independent curator- I put together exhibitions and research and write about different topics which range from illness, food and the every day, with an emphasis on women artists. It is one of the reasons why my home is a domestic exhibition project space. Along with my husband, I invite artists into our 1910 California bungalow to produce long-running projects for us to live with. “The Homer Project” is an intentional resistance to the fast-moving pace of gallery exhibitions and it slows down the pace of viewing. The current artist’s installation is active for two years and includes multiple iterations during that time period. I am interested in creating projects in non-traditional art spaces where two or more diverse audiences and topics can emerge and researching lesser-known histories. For example, I co-curated an exhibition titled “FUCK! Loss, Pleasure, Desire” at ONE National Gay and Lesbian Archives. It was a historical look at a club called “Fuck!” that operated in Silverlake and Hollywood from 1989-1993 during the height of the AIDS epidemic and embraced industrial music, tribal tattoos and extreme performance art, including live piercing.

I am also a garden volunteer and educator at the Ford House Kitchen Garden at Heritage Square Museum. Heritage Square Museum was the site of my graduate cohort’s thesis exhibition. I became friendly with the head gardener and as an unemployed recent grad student began volunteering and brought home amazing organic produce. I have been a part of the garden for four years and am using the site for community building and outreach. Regular volunteer days are Thursday mornings and we host a community garden day each month. We have a wide range of volunteers from different backgrounds, ages and gardening experience. When we have enough of a surplus, we donate to either the Downtown Women’s Shelter or Recycled Resource- our local homeless organization in Northeast LA.

I have been struggling to call my time spent in the garden part of my practice, though at the moment I believe it is. I am able to share my family’s garden traditions with a greater public, while also educating both young and old about the importance of planting, tending and composting. I see the joy it brings to have people tend the earth and connect with the food system. In the garden, you are bound by its schedule — waiting for things to mature slowly and with intent. It has been a tremendous lesson in patience. Additionally, it connects me in a very physical manner to the artists who I am interested in who use food as part of their practice and those who produce “social practice” art. I get to interface with a public who I wouldn’t have access to otherwise, while also sharing delicious produce grown with care.

Often it feels as if the media, by and large, is only focused on the obstacles faced by women, but we feel it’s important to also look for the opportunities. In your view, are there opportunities that you see that women are particularly well-positioned for?
I think the women who are presented with an opportunity should take it and bring another woman with her. I often think of the women in my life who have advocated for me, and those who continue to advocate for me. We have the power to create opportunities for each other. At the same time, we can change the systems that we participate in by being empathetic and incorporating a more holistic view of life. Also, don’t pass up small opportunities or give more importance to grandiose gestures. Sometimes a very small token will have a monumental impact on someone- do not disregard the importance of the everyday.

Image Credit:
Robert Andrew Mueller, Christopher Wormald, Paul Salverson, Bridget Batch, Lucia Fabio

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