Meet Suni Mullen

We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Suni Mullen. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with SUNI below.

SUNI, we’re so excited for our community to get to know you and learn from your journey and the wisdom you’ve acquired over time. Let’s kick things off with a discussion on self-confidence and self-esteem. How did you develop yours?

My confidence has strengthened with each experience I decide to take on. I challenge myself to acquire new skills through participation. I volunteer myself to activities that will directly target weaknesses I have become aware of within myself.

Because I intend to spend my life meeting new people, what I do in my personal life, allows me to connect with others when I am out and about: honoring my own cadence, as well as how others decide to show up, I recognize what I need. My ability to surrender to my tempo when observing, learning, and exploring is directly connected to my show of confidence. My confidence also includes the lack of and my awareness of this, extends grace to myself in those moments.

The more I do this, the more comfortable I feel in my vessel as a human-being. This practice anchors itself to my self-esteem. For me, it is all about my mindset and ability to pivot when necessary; to consistently alchemize energies so that I may continue to forge forward and thrive.

Thanks, so before we move on maybe you can share a bit more about yourself?

As a conceptual artist, I challenge the way people receive and convey information, asserting my right to tell my story through my perspective. Rebelling against proposed static norms, I challenge myself to make room for innovative ideas, experimental thoughts, and radical practices, as it relates to blackness, and black womaness.

To articulate these ideas, I use the mediums that best articulate these observed or lived experiences namely through discussion, writing, painting, ready-made sculptures, and consistent conceptual idea-mapping.

Affording myself the time to think, play, and imagine, have been the biggest rewards on this journey back to myself. I have the opportunity to tinker and experiment; connect ideas, things, people, events, and places in a way that is unique to me. I add myself to the diverse canon of contemporary story-tellers and conceptual artists. With a background in painting, my Bachelor’s degree from Otis College of Art and Design set me up to realize that everything I created, did not have to be a painting. So, I decided to take it a step further by studying at the Royal College of Art in London, earning my Master’s degree in Contemporary Art Practice. There, I was able to compartmentalize and bring projects to life in the mediums that best articulated my ideas. This was essential for me, as it is quite easy to get stuck on paper and canvas.

Currently, I am in the process of increasing the vulnerability of my work which I feel more comfortable doing now that I am no longer occupying an academic space. I took the tools needed to sharpen my pencil in school, to be able to use that power outside of the classroom. I aim to create series of works that speak directly to the shadow in me. Oftentimes, this honest method, intersects with cultures that I am apart of, resonating with people like me.

I am in this space of using objects as elements of my ethos and thesis; using culturally significant things as metaphors, as shorthand.

Basically, these things signify: “I am an agent for Black Agency”.

There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?

One of the biggest lessons I have had to learn, is to trust myself. I listen to what my body and mind are guiding me towards, without any hindrance or distractions. This is something I submitted to having to do for the rest of my life.

Gratitude. Gratitude has allowed me to regulate my nervous system; to become aware of what I currently have access to while also taking the necessary steps to get to where I would like to go.

Planning. Planning is essential for me, as I am actively creating lists daily. These lists keep me on track and remind me on how far I have come, how much I have learned, and everything else I intend to get done in the future.

Curiosity. My rule of thumb, is to never be afraid being seen using my fingers to count. I am never shy of not knowing. I would rather not know for a quick moment than to sabotage a moment to become better, stronger, or aware.

As we end our chat, is there a book you can leave people with that’s been meaningful to you and your development?

These are an excerpt from a list of texts that I will always suggest:

The Autobiography of Malcolm X
– Alex Haley

Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination
– Toni Morrison

Teaching Practical Wisdom: Critical Thinking
-bell hooks

My Black Death
– Arthur Jafa

The Undercommons
– Stefano Harney and Fred Moten

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.sunimullen.studio
• Instagram: @sunimullen