Artist in Residence: Ashton Attzs
In celebration of Pride Month, Artist Ashton Attzs creates a signature colorful mural for Ralph Lauren in London’s Notting HillArtist Ashton Attzs reckons that people should feel pride—in the lower case—all the time rather than for a prescribed temporary moment every year. “I think it’s important all year round to celebrate identities,” they say over Skype. “And pride isn’t something that should just be limited to one particular week or month.”
Despite being only 22, Attzs has already built a steady career of making colorful, emotional works that often touch on issues affecting the LGBTQIA+ community, like mental health, intersectionality, the murder of trans people, and the normalization of queer identity. The latter played a role in the Luton-born Attzs’s initial splash into the art world as a student at Central Saint Martins, when they entered into the prestigious Evening Standard Art Prize. Their piece, “Don’t Stay in Ya Lane”—featuring rows of transmasculine and genderqueer people wearing chest binders in a swimming pool—shone a light on the gender dysphoria queer people often feel in situations many cisgender people may find commonplace. The piece won the Prize, and Attzs hasn’t looked back since.
There are echoes of “Don’t Stay in Ya Lane”—which was part of a series of paintings Attzs made called “Queering the Quotidian”—in the mural Attzs has created in Notting Hill for Ralph Lauren during Pride Month. It’s a collection of characters gathered together, simply celebrating themselves. “They’re all sitting on the sofa, dancing and voguing and chilling out, having a good time,” Attzs says. “It’s about the importance of Pride as a community, but in a more organic sense that Pride isn’t just this parade that happens once a year, but it’s something that you can find in everyday settings, you can find it on your own, with friends, and with chosen family.”
Attzs feels that it’s particularly important, after the global COVID-19 pandemic, that people find time to celebrate themselves. Especially, Attzs points out, during the lockdowns, a lot of people found themselves in environments where they might not be accepted for who they are. “That can feel quite oppressing or suffocating,” they say. “And that’s something that I wanted to remind people of, that even if you have been in that kind of environment the last year, there’s a community of people out there who will love you authentically for everything that you are.”
It’s a pretty nuanced subject for an outdoor mural in the middle of London, but Attzs purposefully imbues their work with a bright pop playfulness. Because though mental health is a longtime concern for Attzs within their work, they feel like the colorful, streamlined aesthetic is an important entryway into the work. “Something that I feel quite strongly about is identity-focused artwork that centers around activism or social issues,” they explain. “And often people think of political art as being sometimes quite visually dark. But I’ve always felt that just because you’re dealing with things that might have deeper meanings, they shouldn’t necessarily have to make people feel heavier emotions. You can spark joy in people whilst also having more intricate and serious conversations.”
Fittingly, Attzs has attracted the attention of the world for the past few years with their intricate acrylic paintings and digital illustrations. Despite their young age, Attzs has partnered with companies like Instagram, for whom they created a pair of digital stickers for Pride last year. And they created an installation and the visual identity for the 2020 Brit Awards. But a quick glance at their Instagram reveals an artist who loves to create work for themselves, whether it’s a simple reflection of passing time (a piece they titled “Changing Seasons (The Man in the Yellow Coat)”) or devotional images of animated character Avatar the Last Airbender or K-pop group BTS.
“It’s a way for me to connect to the character or the music,” Attzs says. “And it’s a bit of escapism as well, because that artwork, at the end of the day, is something that I love.”
That’s what makes Attzs’s work so special—that mix of joy and intimacy that evokes something deep, whether the subject is as escapist as a portrait of a pop group or as introspective as a piece about mental health. Or as Attzs sums it up: “I think it’s just about making artwork that people can relate to, and that can resonate with however they’re feeling.”
