Adam Nathaniel Furman: “I feel locked out of a magic world of communities”
The artist on searching for roots, then creating your own
Credit: Gareth Gardner
Hi, welcome back to Mixed Messages! This week, I’m speaking to Adam Nathaniel Furman, who is of Argentine and Japanese heritage. When I first saw Adam’s latest installation, Proud Little Pyramid, and read that it was a “celebration of being odd, loud, mixed, in-between, and fabulous,” I knew I wanted to get inside Adam’s mind. Read their story below.
How do you define your ethnicity?
My father’s side were Jewish gauchos, the cowboys of Argentina with a wonderful culture of song and poetry. My half-Japanese mother was brought up in the mountains of Japan, because her father was a stateless refugee during the war. My parents met in Israel. I feel like the middle of a Venn diagram with so many overlapping things, but never part of any of them. I’ve never felt rooted strongly enough to be able to say I’m any one specific heritage except for British, although I ground myself in London.
My story is a lack of roots, and the cumulation of that passed down through generations. My parents weren’t part of the Jewish community in England, so ended up making friends with other people who felt like they’d lost their homeland.
Have you found your own community?
I’ve struggled to connect with the word ‘community’ because I feel locked out of this magic world where everyone has them. Those groups seem happy and speak with one voice, whereas I’ve never felt ‘enough’ to be part of a community that fully accepts me.
Communities tend to have strong opinions, and those opinions can sometimes contradict other parts of your identity. I couldn’t go to synagogue after I came out at 16, I had to pull away from Judaism.
After being bullied at school for my queerness and gender identity, not fitting in with a funny accent (my parents, too), being dyslexic, the first time I found my group was in the gay community in London. But even then, there were body ideals that caused issues for me
Did you talk about your sense of identity with your family?
When I was a teenager, not being able to fit in affected me very intensely. My parents told me to just ‘carry on’ and reminded me that they never complained, because that’s what that generation was taught to do. My mother avoids the question of her background as much as possible, and my father rarely talks about his life. I think it’s because they’ve gone through genuinely difficult experiences.
I remember before COVID I’d excitedly wait for weekly dinners with my grandmother at her favourite Japanese restaurant, hoping to hear about her life, but it’s impossible to get stories out of her.
How do you bring your heritage into your work?
My work has been a funnel for all the confusion and distress caused by my mixed identity. While there’s not a direct extrapolation of techniques, I construct my own sense of taste which includes every single aspect of my background. It snowballs into the final pieces. I’ve loved reading Kwame Anthony Appiah lately. I’m currently readingThe Lies That Bind and have just finished Cosmopolitanism. In it, Kwame explained that we are not just where we come from, but what we do with that and what we construct for ourselves. I’ve also been carefully scrutinising Amin Maalouf’s On Identity.
I think my love of colour comes from the kitsch trinkets and over the top aesthetic I was immersed in as a child. When foreigners feel like they’ve lost their home, they rebuild their own safe space in their new home where nobody can ridicule them. In my work, I construct my own little worlds to feel safe.
A new work by Adam Nathaniel Furman, Mixed is Magnificent
How do you think the conversation about being mixed needs to develop?
I think hearing other people’s stories is so important. I would love to read stories from people who are also from confused, messy backgrounds. Hearing different perspectives honestly and openly, in environments where they don’t have to feel shame, makes you feel less alone. There’s never just one answer.
What’s the best thing about being mixed for you?
I can see from the outside to a certain degree, can see artificial constructs for what they are and question things. Instead, I construct things from the ground up – that’s hugely powerful and important. It can make you feel alone, but it will make you feel more strongly attached to the things you eventually do build. You own them fully, not just because someone told you too, or because you’re born into them.
Can you sum up your mixed experience in a single word?
Mixiness. ‘Mixed-heritage’, ‘mixed-race’, none of those words cover culture or personal journey. So for me, mixiness is imbued with all the positive things about being mixed.
Visit Proud Little Pyramid in Granary Square, Kings Cross. Shop more of Adam’s collection for KIOSK N1C here, with profit going to LGBTQ+ youth charity AKT. Next week, I’ll be talking to Raurie Williams, best known online as @nohun. Subscribe to get Mixed Messages in your inbox on Monday.
Enjoy Mixed Messages? Support me on Ko-Fi so I can continue to grow this newsletter! Your generous donations, which can start from £3, help me pay for the transcription software needed to keep this newsletter weekly.
Mixed Messages is a weekly exploration of the mixed-race experience, from me, Isabella Silvers. My mom is Punjabi Indian (by way of East Africa) and my dad is White British, but finding my place between these two cultures hasn’t always been easy. That’s why I started Mixed Messages, where each week I’ll speak to a prominent mixed voice to delve into what it really feels like to be mixed.