Gloria Gaynor’s hit disco track “I Will Survive” is a well-known and loved song from the late ’70s, but for the remainder of August at Garver Feed Mill on Madison’s East Side, artist Jay Katelansky’s vision gives a new perspective to the song with her installation titled “S is for Survival.”
Katelansky is a painter, visual, and textile artist who went to UW-Madison to earn a Master of Arts (MA) and an Master of Fine Arts (MFA), and has spent the last six years in Oakland, California. While at UW, Katelansky used Gaynor’s song for her MFA show and after experiencing losses in her life, as many did during the years following the COVID-19 pandemic, the song took on a new meaning again.
“It was really hard to go through the last few years and just see everybody struggling and see how it was impacting our communities,” Katelansky told Madison365. “I really thought about that song and how it was used. It was a disco song, and it was supposed to be joyful. Then it was used for HIV and AIDS, and this song really spoke to a demographic that was dying. As a queer Black person, I really feel that. I wanted to repurpose the song, for the same reasons that when you break the song down into different parts, all the words are really powerful by themselves.”
Although Katelansky met many great people and was able to do amazing things in her program at UW-Madison, the experience revealed how difficult it can be for Black and brown students at the university. When being approached to do an exhibit in Madison, it was that reality that influenced Katelansky to conceptualize survival and all the things that go within or along with it.
“I wanted to create these banners of survival to sort of become portals that you can come and walk by or underneath and envision yourself into a better place,” said Katelansky. “Envisioning yourself into this affirmation that you’re not going to stand for this, that you will survive, and that you do have all your life. Then there’s a poem wall, a blank white wall that has vinyl lettering that says, ‘I want this for us.’ Then underneath it, it’s all these ‘S’ words that have to do with things that I want for us.”
The message to be sent is that survival can manifest in a number of ways. Katelansky stressed the connection to disco and what it meant for the communities where it first started its popularity, brown and Black often-queer spaces. Before disco reached mainstream attention, it often provided space for individuals to dance and express themselves outside of the confines of finding an opposite-sex partner to dance with.
“I thought that was beautiful,” Katelansky expressed, recalling her parents’ love for disco. “You don’t need anybody, and you’re not expected to be on the floor with somebody, you can just be yourself. I kind of like the idea of being able to create your own disco floor. You can just be out there on your own without another person. I thought that was really beautiful, that this type of music and dance allowed people just to be themselves by themselves, rather than having to rely on somebody else. That ties right back into surviving.”
As an artist, Katelansky was not unfamiliar with projects like this, but was also intentional about what would go in the exhibit given a recent diagnosis of a chronic pain disorder. The experience of pain in her arms makes doing artwork difficult. Katelansky spoke of being interested in rug tufting and other methods of artistry such as designing jacquard weavings to be done and then stylizing them to help keep the artistic drive going. With the tuftings, weavings, and signs all speaking back to messages of reaching out and checking in, Katelansky finds her passion mostly in making art that speaks in areas of silence.
“I’ve always liked text and banners, and the way that they function as spreading messages, or for business, or other certain things. I just love their function,” Katelansky says. “I love the different ways that they come. I’m obsessed with signs and advertisements, so that’s the direction that I’m going into. I already started a new banner and it says, ‘Everywhere hurts,’ and it’s about my recent pain diagnosis … because it’s an invisible disability.”
However, that does not mean that negativity is a focal point. On the contrary, Katelansky spoke on how feeling free to express feelings of pain, discomfort, fear, anxiety, and other emotions we often do not want to linger on or hear about can actually have the opposite effect. The optimism for Katelansky is in giving people space to take down the mask and instead feel affirmed in their feelings, something she hopes to manifest for the sake of those she met in Madison and those who are here now.
“I didn’t think I’d be showing again in Madison, but when I got this opportunity and had already envisioned the work that I wanted to make for it, I decided yes. I’m a ‘yes’ person, but also because I know how hard Madison is for us. I wanted to create a space that if you need it, it’s there. If you know about it, and you just need a moment of affirmation, it’s a space for folks to be able to go to.”
To learn more about the exhibit and register for the event, check out the Garver Feed Mill page here. “S is for Survival” runs until Sunday, Aug. 27.
