Speaker 1: Pushkin. This is Talk Easy. I'm Sam Fragoso. Welcome to
Speaker 1: the show today. I'm joined by Toyen og Odetola. Toyen
Speaker 1: is a Nigerian American visual artist known for her multimedia
Speaker 1: drawings and works on paper using black pen, ink, charcoal,
Speaker 1: and pastel. She explored are the themes of socioeconomic inequality,
Speaker 1: queer and gender theory, and notions of blackness as a
Speaker 1: visual symbol. Of course, she does a whole lot more
Speaker 1: than that, and has for over a decade now. As
Speaker 1: you'll see, the people in her work often appear to
Speaker 1: have just done something, are just about to do something.
Speaker 1: They're not in transit, but in transition, unable to be
Speaker 1: pinned down, located, understood, or defined. Toyn says, that's my
Speaker 1: way of fighting that expectation that people have about blackness,
Speaker 1: about black people and black stories. To see the work
Speaker 1: discussed in this episode, visit Talk easypod dot com, or
Speaker 1: simply click the link provided in the description. You can
Speaker 1: do that on your phone to scroll down a little bit.
Speaker 1: You'll see a link click that. The virtual gallery accompanies
Speaker 1: this episode starting around the thirty five minute mark. We
Speaker 1: hope you check it out. My sense is that upon
Speaker 1: hearing toyeen you'll want to do so. Most of the
Speaker 1: pieces in this conversation come from her new seminal monograph,
Speaker 1: The umo Esa Amara Clan in the House of Obafemi,
Speaker 1: which is now available to purchase. But before we get
Speaker 1: to the work itself, we unpack her story moving from
Speaker 1: Nigeria to America at age five, how she found her
Speaker 1: way in the world growing up in the South, the
Speaker 1: influences of Zadie Smith, Elizabeth Peyton, and Tony Morrison, what
Speaker 1: it really means to be a visual artist in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty one, and a whole lot more For now Here
Speaker 1: is toyeen O g Oditola. Yes, sir, thank you for
Speaker 1: being here. Thanks for having me. How does your mother
Speaker 1: feel with you being here? She's always excited whenever I
Speaker 1: get to have in depth conversations, and she likes programs
Speaker 1: like this that are really educational and also about humanity,
Speaker 1: so she's gonna be lit. I think you're the first
Speaker 1: guest to ever come in here and say, my mom
Speaker 1: loves your show. My mom really likes this show. She
Speaker 1: likes everything that I show. I was like, you should
Speaker 1: check this out. She's like, okay, okay, and she's really
Speaker 1: good with that. She'll like go back and do to
Speaker 1: the dark catalogs, like the dark parts of something, and
Speaker 1: she liked it. Yeah, let me ask you. A few
Speaker 1: days ago you posted something on Instagram. Yeah, and I
Speaker 1: felt like, if we didn't start there, we may not
Speaker 1: be able to move forward. Right right. It struck me
Speaker 1: as potentially an interesting precursor into the work itself, but
Speaker 1: also in me trying to understand where you come from.
Speaker 1: I mean, the opening line this is written Sunday, August eighth,
Speaker 1: twenty twenty one. I learned from my parents not to
Speaker 1: trust memories. If they're not useful as and if they
Speaker 1: are not a warning, they must be disregarded. What were
Speaker 1: you trying to unpack in these? I mean, I've been
Speaker 1: reading a lot of amazing memoirs lately. I was just
Speaker 1: always struck by how detailed they were about streets and
Speaker 1: you know, parks, and I don't have that. Like when
Speaker 1: I look back on my time coming here when I
Speaker 1: was five, it's a blur from like five to nine
Speaker 1: and then nine to fourteen. It's just snippets. It feels
Speaker 1: very much like memories unreliable. It's always been unreliable to me,
Speaker 1: and so that was what that came from, is that
Speaker 1: I don't have an anchor. I don't have anything to
Speaker 1: say who I am, what I really am, aside from
Speaker 1: what other people have told me, you know, like family
Speaker 1: and friends and stuff. So the thing that it's been
Speaker 1: for me, what memory is is useful? Can I learn
Speaker 1: from it? Which is a very immigrant way of looking
Speaker 1: at things, And so that was what memory. How memory
Speaker 1: functions in my life. It's very sad. It's like I
Speaker 1: can't really give you specificity, which is why I invent
Speaker 1: in my work. It's like that's my way of having specificity.
Speaker 1: That's why I meant by a lie, it's a lie
Speaker 1: to cling to because art is illusion, so you lie.
Speaker 1: Drawing and creating stories was my way of giving myself
Speaker 1: something to cling to. And even though it's invention, if
Speaker 1: it's very real to me because it's an interiority that
Speaker 1: I'm exploring in the work. You said to learn from
Speaker 1: memory is a very immigrant idea. What does that mean exactly?
Speaker 1: I guess I might be speaking very specifically from my experience,
Speaker 1: but you know, Nigerian household I grew up in was
Speaker 1: like do it right, you know, if you messed up.
Speaker 1: Better learn for it quickly, because you're not going to
Speaker 1: get another chance. This is it. I can see a
Speaker 1: lot of anxiety coming up, exactly. I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: it's like pans. You know. My parents are actually amazing.
Speaker 1: I mean the older you get, the more you appreciate them.
Speaker 1: But as a kid, I was terrified. I mean there'd
Speaker 1: be moments where I do something so outlandish and my
Speaker 1: parents were like, do you want to leave? Do you
Speaker 1: want to live your life? Because you could die tomorrow,
Speaker 1: really could die tomorrow. And it wasn't like no, because
Speaker 1: you're thinking that's crazy to say to a child. But
Speaker 1: I think what they were saying is like, we don't
Speaker 1: have anything here to back up. There's no net for
Speaker 1: us here. We left that, so if you start fucking up,
Speaker 1: we cannot help you. We don't know this country that well.
Speaker 1: So figure out where you can stand and like, you
Speaker 1: gotta do that on your own. We can help you
Speaker 1: as much as we can. But from there you can
Speaker 1: take risks, but they're gonna be real with you. It's
Speaker 1: not gonna end well where people like us to take risks,
Speaker 1: So you gotta do the safe route. You gotta keep it,
Speaker 1: you know, keep afloat. Before we get to the work
Speaker 1: you're talking about, I want people to understand how you
Speaker 1: got there and where you came from. You're born in
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty five, and I fan Nigeria at age five.
Speaker 1: You and your parents come to America, settling in the
Speaker 1: Bay Area. By age ten, you moved to Huntsville, Alabama.
Speaker 1: From the onset, you've said that I didn't speak English well.
Speaker 1: When I finally conquered the language, it came at a price.
Speaker 1: I lost my native Yoruba tongue, and in doing so
Speaker 1: severed a personal link to my homeland. From that moment,
Speaker 1: I moved through the world as if I was trespassing,
Speaker 1: never certain of my place, and always feeling as if
Speaker 1: I was an impostor. Most of that is correct. We
Speaker 1: came in nineteen ninety. I was five, and it was
Speaker 1: my mother, me and my younger brother, Agiola. At the time,
Speaker 1: my father was already in the Bay because he had
Speaker 1: to leave early. The economy Nigeria had tanked by that point.
Speaker 1: I mean, it was really desperate times. And again, memories unreliable.
Speaker 1: So I have these moments where I see just poverty,
Speaker 1: just abject poverty, And I remember one night my mom
Speaker 1: wasted up at like five in the mornings, like we're
Speaker 1: going to America, and like in your mind as a kid,
Speaker 1: you're thinking Superman, You're thinking beaches, La. So I was like,
Speaker 1: I'm going to pack some bathing suits. Like my mom
Speaker 1: was just like, oh my god, this child. We fly
Speaker 1: over and we meet up with our dad in Oakland
Speaker 1: and we were staying in a house with this other
Speaker 1: woman and her family. So we were living on the
Speaker 1: top floor. So from the get of being in the US,
Speaker 1: we were poor, you know, like my dad was working
Speaker 1: multiple jobs, my mom was saying. And then we finally
Speaker 1: got a chance. My dad did of a professorship in
Speaker 1: Alabama when I was nine, and that was the first
Speaker 1: time I felt like I can't go through this again.
Speaker 1: I already lost yurroba. I've already lost any memory or
Speaker 1: of my past self in Africa. Now we're moving to Alabama.
Speaker 1: I don't know if I can handle this. What us
Speaker 1: am I going to lose? So I took to drawing.
Speaker 1: Even as a kid, I knew I had to preserve
Speaker 1: something of myself and so that was my salvation in
Speaker 1: a way that line you wrote. I moved through the
Speaker 1: world as if I was trespassing. I think the moment
Speaker 1: I landed in the States, there was a look you
Speaker 1: get as immigrant. I can't describe it. It's like disgust almost.
Speaker 1: It's like, uh, you know, another one of you guys,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. It's just like and when
Speaker 1: you're young and you feel that so deeply, you're like, oh,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry. You know, I didn't know I was such
Speaker 1: a problem, and you don't know because you just arrived.
Speaker 1: So then also you're five at that point exactly. So
Speaker 1: I just remember like seeing the way my mother was treated,
Speaker 1: you know, carrying my brother and me, you know, and
Speaker 1: just the way that the customs agent were like another
Speaker 1: aff you know, like what are they gonna do, take
Speaker 1: jobs or whatever, and they don't know us. They just
Speaker 1: have this idea of what we are. And that always
Speaker 1: stayed with me. And it was like it happened in
Speaker 1: the parts of Alabama, it happened in parts of California.
Speaker 1: It was just this feeling of like you should be
Speaker 1: so lucky to be here, you know, as a five
Speaker 1: year old, you're like, well, okay, I guess I gotta
Speaker 1: be a good person because everyone already thinks I'm shit.
Speaker 1: So that's what I meant by the impostor I'm trespassing.
Speaker 1: I felt like every ground I occupy felt like describe it.
Speaker 1: I had to apologize to be there. It's a feeling
Speaker 1: that's deeply traumatic, like I'm so sorry I'm here, that
Speaker 1: kind of feeling, and it stayed with me since I
Speaker 1: was five. Did it get worse in high school? Yeah,
Speaker 1: it got worse as I got older, which is why
Speaker 1: I just leaned more into art, because it's like the
Speaker 1: one place I felt like I could do anything. Anyone
Speaker 1: can enter that space, like if you're skillful and you're good,
Speaker 1: that's yours. Like you can make me feel like shit
Speaker 1: in every other context, but if I'm drawing, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: flex and I'm gonna be so good. No one else
Speaker 1: can do this thing but me. So I earned that space.
Speaker 1: When did you first discover that you could flex? I mean,
Speaker 1: I think it's just the magic of seeing like something
Speaker 1: and then translating it on paper Like that was wild
Speaker 1: to me, Like, you know, look at a cup and
Speaker 1: then I drew the cup. It's like, what that's crazy,
Speaker 1: you know, But it's simple like that, And you know,
Speaker 1: there are people nowadays in the age of everyone is
Speaker 1: an artist, just fine, or you could just be an accountant.
Speaker 1: It's fine. It doesn't seem like it's fine. I just
Speaker 1: think it's funny. I just think that some people want
Speaker 1: to do things that I think they have an impression of.
Speaker 1: Like just because someone can draw a cup, that's fine,
Speaker 1: that's actually really beautiful to create something. You should hold
Speaker 1: onto the magic of that as it is and stop
Speaker 1: making it bigger than it needs to be. There's something
Speaker 1: very precious about that, the fact that you can use
Speaker 1: your faculties to create an illusion in another surface or
Speaker 1: in another place and have a stranger look at that
Speaker 1: and completely understand. That's a beautiful skill to have. And
Speaker 1: yet you seem skeptical of this sort of new system
Speaker 1: where everyone wants to be an artist. I think it's
Speaker 1: very misleading. It's misguided. Why is that because it presumes
Speaker 1: that being an artist is so great and it's not.
Speaker 1: It's actually a tough job. If you're really in it.
Speaker 1: It means that you have to spend a lot of
Speaker 1: time thinking. You have to spend a lot of time
Speaker 1: looking and observing things and again patterns. You have to
Speaker 1: find patterns in society and forms and conversations, and then
Speaker 1: you have to find an art form to translate all
Speaker 1: of that to a stranger and to have it be
Speaker 1: powerful and to have it be useful to them. Oftentimes,
Speaker 1: what I see is just someone saying like, I'm just
Speaker 1: good at pretty pictures, and that's fine. Beauty is strong,
Speaker 1: beauty is great. But there's a lot of beauty in
Speaker 1: the world, So why should we pay attention to your beauty?
Speaker 1: To have someone spend time with your work, you have
Speaker 1: to like say like, I want to give you this,
Speaker 1: you know, I don't want to just flex, you know.
Speaker 1: I want to give you something you can hold onto
Speaker 1: when you leave the space, and just like a peace
Speaker 1: of mind. I feel like what art I always like
Speaker 1: to do is give someone peace of mind. There's a
Speaker 1: lot of horror in the world. There's a lot of
Speaker 1: information and pain in that and trauma. I'd rather just
Speaker 1: give you something that you can in the interior, that
Speaker 1: you can go back to and say, oh, that was nice.
Speaker 1: I wonder if this sort of light inside of you
Speaker 1: that blossomed into this career, if it kind of began
Speaker 1: in two thousand and one, because it's the year you
Speaker 1: and your mother make a trip back to Nigeria. That
Speaker 1: was a significant trip. I think I got to see
Speaker 1: a side of my mother I'd never seen. I got
Speaker 1: to go to where I was born, my hometown. That
Speaker 1: was really intense because you know, I saw my house
Speaker 1: that was burnt down, and all of my cousins houses
Speaker 1: and everybody else houses was burned down, my school and
Speaker 1: all of these things that were so intimate to me
Speaker 1: and that were like completely strange and otherworldly. And just
Speaker 1: like you go to a museum with your mom in
Speaker 1: the very university where your parents met and you see
Speaker 1: an efe head and it's a replica and you're like, whoa,
Speaker 1: what is this thing? And it was the most beautiful
Speaker 1: thing I'd ever seen. And I didn't know about Benine
Speaker 1: Kingdom or any of that, and my mom was like,
Speaker 1: this is art, you know, this is part of your heritage,
Speaker 1: and I had no idea. I don't know. I came
Speaker 1: back from that trip really affected by what I saw
Speaker 1: and experienced. But that was also just a strange trip
Speaker 1: because I felt very American, so just you know, obviously
Speaker 1: I talk, I couldn't speak the language. I you know,
Speaker 1: it was very much like oh, what's that, which is
Speaker 1: a very American thing. To do, to just be adventurous,
Speaker 1: and they're like, you can't just be out here. I
Speaker 1: was like, let's go on an Okada. And my mom
Speaker 1: was like Jesus Christ. That's why I meant by Braddy,
Speaker 1: everything she said not to do, I did. The trip
Speaker 1: was just I just felt really like sad seeing my
Speaker 1: past and you know, like the burnt house stuff like
Speaker 1: I remember that house so into meate, like the corners
Speaker 1: of the house, like I have a mark on my
Speaker 1: forehead when I fell down the stairs, and so like
Speaker 1: I was like looking forward to seeing the stairs, you know,
Speaker 1: stuff like that. Like I remember we're like in the
Speaker 1: living room when I heard the Thriller album for the
Speaker 1: first time, and I don't remember like which room, like
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, like what was in the room.
Speaker 1: But I remember being in a corner somewhere because I
Speaker 1: was scared of the voice. I think it was Vincent
Speaker 1: Price at the end, and I just like huddled in
Speaker 1: like this corner because I was so scared of the place.
Speaker 1: That's what I mean. My memory is strange and unreliable. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and yet here we are who we are revisiting some pieces.
Speaker 1: When I do fully accept the path of being an artist,
Speaker 1: and it seems like you make a clear decision. Yeah,
Speaker 1: in two thousand and eight, you graduate from the University
Speaker 1: of Alabama. As someone wrote, you had an initial adherence
Speaker 1: to ballpoint pens and monochromatic palette. Oh yeah, not the
Speaker 1: kind of writing I would produce, but I think accurate.
Speaker 1: This is so awesome. Sorry, it's so true though, because, like,
Speaker 1: can I just say, though obviously you've had other people
Speaker 1: in the arts who've done these interviews. You notice how
Speaker 1: people talk about their creativity and then how art world
Speaker 1: people talk about it. It's like dissertation. It's like, why
Speaker 1: am I responding to this language? It makes no sense
Speaker 1: at all. I apologize to anyone who tries to access
Speaker 1: this language, because it's impossible. We can't even understand it,
Speaker 1: and we're in it. We're doing the best mechanics. Okay,
Speaker 1: you said of that time right after college, when I
Speaker 1: started this whole thing around two thousand and nine, it
Speaker 1: was just a means of making me not go crazy. Honestly,
Speaker 1: it was so immersive that I would never pay attention
Speaker 1: to the fact that I was homeless and I had
Speaker 1: no job and I was really depressed. Yeah, that was
Speaker 1: a crash it was a recession. You know, you come
Speaker 1: out with an arts degree the middle of a recession.
Speaker 1: Good luck, It's already good luck in general. But it
Speaker 1: was like, you know, and I think I worked at
Speaker 1: a law office as a runner tragic got fired expectually
Speaker 1: after that. I mean, of course it did. I was like,
Speaker 1: I'm ship with authority, and also like, I mean it
Speaker 1: would be like, so you had a guy to the cardhouse,
Speaker 1: I said, do I again? I mean, I was just
Speaker 1: I was terrible because I felt very disillusioned. Like a
Speaker 1: lot of people. I loved art, but I also knew
Speaker 1: that no one needed art right now. They needed a job.
Speaker 1: And I had gotten fired, and I was too scared
Speaker 1: to tell my parents, and so I slept on the
Speaker 1: couch of a friend. It was a dark time. I
Speaker 1: was like, I weigh like ninety pounds. Was stupid. My
Speaker 1: dad ended up finding me and he's like, we're getting
Speaker 1: you food, and he's as it every time he sees me.
Speaker 1: He's like, I went home and I cried on the
Speaker 1: way after seeing you. He said something about like I
Speaker 1: didn't work so hard to see my child like that
Speaker 1: in this country. We cried and it was a lot
Speaker 1: as a parent, you don't want to see your child suffering.
Speaker 1: And also as a parent, you work very hard and
Speaker 1: you help your kid get an education, which I was
Speaker 1: very fortunate to have. And just to see me that way,
Speaker 1: I think he saw that I was very unhappy. And
Speaker 1: it was around that time I moved back home and
Speaker 1: I started working on going to grad school. I can
Speaker 1: hear the guilt and your voice. Survivor's guilt is real,
Speaker 1: but you know it's it's something I'm working on every day,
Speaker 1: and I know how hard they worked. I remember, I mean,
Speaker 1: my dad's left on the floor. My parents come from
Speaker 1: another generation of just like wow, like how did you
Speaker 1: make it? You know, like I look at their lives
Speaker 1: and so when I have what I had, I don't
Speaker 1: really I know there's degrees and there's levels to it.
Speaker 1: I'm very aware of that and I try to be
Speaker 1: give myself perspective on it. So when I look at
Speaker 1: that time, it was very very dark, but I also
Speaker 1: understand that my parents had it worse and them seeing
Speaker 1: me that way was a wake up call for me
Speaker 1: more than them. And everyone has that moment, you know
Speaker 1: where you're like, Okay, I really love this. I love
Speaker 1: this so much. And I'm going to find out a
Speaker 1: way to do it. And so grad school was the end.
Speaker 1: It was like, all right, if I can get a scholarship,
Speaker 1: which I was so fortunate to get, I can teach,
Speaker 1: I can still draw my own time. But at least
Speaker 1: I can get health insurance and I can get a
Speaker 1: salary and stuff. And so that was why I went
Speaker 1: to grad school. It was not to become what I became.
Speaker 1: You went to grad school to get out of the
Speaker 1: hole that you were in. Exactly what did that transformation
Speaker 1: look like? Dude? Grad school from what was it twenty
Speaker 1: ten to twenty twelve was trash garbage. The conceptual thing
Speaker 1: was big, a lot of planks on the wall. I
Speaker 1: didn't know what was going on, a lot of performance
Speaker 1: are I just felt very lost in that, and so
Speaker 1: I did ballpoint pen drawings of black people. I was
Speaker 1: one of two to two black students of fifty four
Speaker 1: grads coming in that year. It was me and another sister, Sanaka,
Speaker 1: and she was from Panama, and we both did representational
Speaker 1: work in an age when no one was even touching that.
Speaker 1: So you can imagine the critiques we had. It was hard.
Speaker 1: I mean I remember just feeling like I was working
Speaker 1: three jobs and keeping to myself, just thinking, I don't
Speaker 1: know if I want to be this kind of artist.
Speaker 1: I don't want to be just kind of like, oh,
Speaker 1: you know the theory Latin language that no one talks
Speaker 1: like that. I was also from the South. I was like,
Speaker 1: you have to speak normal English to me, because this
Speaker 1: sounds crazy. The situationalists are nice, but I also want
Speaker 1: to know about the Chicano movement. Why are we spending
Speaker 1: like three weeks on a situationalist walking through Paris, but
Speaker 1: like two days on the Chicano movement in this city,
Speaker 1: Like you know, they didn't know how to talk about race.
Speaker 1: They didn't know how to talk about blackness, and I
Speaker 1: had to figure it out myself in my work. I
Speaker 1: had to learn the language of it, which is why
Speaker 1: my thesis was called alphabet. I was literally learning a
Speaker 1: language of how I defined blackness for me and how
Speaker 1: I wanted to continue with it with that language. But
Speaker 1: the way I was treated by teachers, some of my
Speaker 1: fellow classmates. So I was very fortunate to have friends
Speaker 1: who I'm still friends with now from that time, but
Speaker 1: I felt very isolated and there was a lot of
Speaker 1: things they were said to me that, yeah, you couldn't
Speaker 1: say that shit now, like why do you draw black people? Literally?
Speaker 1: I was a genuine question from a teacher, like why
Speaker 1: would you draw black people? And I'm like, it's the
Speaker 1: strangest thing to ask me. And I had to answer
Speaker 1: it and a critique and justify why they were black
Speaker 1: figures on the wall of my studio. How does want
Speaker 1: to answer that? You don't? I mean, it's sadly it's
Speaker 1: continued throughout my career. People often ask me, in some
Speaker 1: form or fashion, why do we care about these black figures?
Speaker 1: Why are they black figures here? And it's like, I
Speaker 1: don't think that's a question I can answer. That's a
Speaker 1: question you need to answer for yourself. And was she
Speaker 1: wondering why there weren't more central white figures? Yeah? You
Speaker 1: know it's that typical Tony Morrison thing. How insulting is
Speaker 1: this question? Right here? Come correct? The should watch it.
Speaker 1: This is Tony Morrison in an interview from nineteen ninety eight.
Speaker 1: You have in your writing certainly marginalized what why are
Speaker 1: they of no particular interest to you or seemingly no
Speaker 1: particular interest? Well, I was interested in another kind of
Speaker 1: literature that was not just confrontational black versus white. I
Speaker 1: was really interested in black readership. For me, the allegory
Speaker 1: or the parallel is black music, which is as splendid
Speaker 1: and complicated and wonderful as it is because its audience
Speaker 1: was within its primary audience. The fact that it has
Speaker 1: become universal worldwide, anyone everyone can play it and it
Speaker 1: has evolved is because it wasn't tampered with and editorialized
Speaker 1: within the community. So I wanted the literature that I
Speaker 1: wrote to be that way. I could just go straight
Speaker 1: to where the soil was, where the fertility was in
Speaker 1: this landscape. And also I wanted to feel free, not
Speaker 1: to have the white days in this place that was
Speaker 1: so precious to be which is the work. And you
Speaker 1: will maintain this safe place for yourself for your art.
Speaker 1: You don't think you will ever change and write books
Speaker 1: that incorporate white, white lives into them substantially. I have
Speaker 1: to be in a substantial way. You can't understand how
Speaker 1: powerfully raised this that question is. And you because you
Speaker 1: could never ask a white author, when are you going
Speaker 1: to write about black people? Whether you did or not,
Speaker 1: or she did or not. Even the inquiry comes from
Speaker 1: a position of being in the center and being used
Speaker 1: to being in the same being used to being in
Speaker 1: the center, and saying, you know, is it ever possible
Speaker 1: that you will enter the mainstream. It's inconceivable that where
Speaker 1: I already am is the mainstream. I mean, I'm very
Speaker 1: grateful to grad school. Obviously, it gave me the tools
Speaker 1: to understand whiteness within art and the figuration and had
Speaker 1: to understand that. But I also was given time to
Speaker 1: develop my own thing. And I had an amazing teacher.
Speaker 1: I had rannew Mark Gee, I had Alison Smith. There
Speaker 1: was some great teachers, you know who really were in
Speaker 1: my corner. Often they were women of color. Often they
Speaker 1: were queer women, so you know, like Cheryl Dunnet, like
Speaker 1: there's so many. But like at the same time, it
Speaker 1: was like the institution, like so many where like didn't
Speaker 1: have the capacity for an expansive and generative blackness that
Speaker 1: just wasn't in their per view until like maybe very recently.
Speaker 1: And they had amazing alumni. But what I experienced there
Speaker 1: was alarming. You said, I had to go through that
Speaker 1: to get where I am now, which is a very
Speaker 1: freeing place where the black figures that I can make
Speaker 1: can be various. The work isn't limited to that history anymore.
Speaker 1: And I think it has to do with the time
Speaker 1: that we're in, whereas before you had to represent blackness
Speaker 1: so much and you had to sacrifice a little bit
Speaker 1: of yourself to do that. Absolutely, it's such a strange
Speaker 1: thing to say because it's been said by so many
Speaker 1: creative black people throughout time. You know, Tony Morrison obviously
Speaker 1: famously it's like this center. The fact that you're saying
Speaker 1: that black womanhood and my voice in that center, you
Speaker 1: would never think it various. You would never think it
Speaker 1: expansive and genitive. Like I said, so, I just knew
Speaker 1: it coming out of grad school that I was so
Speaker 1: not interested in pain. I couldn't do it. I couldn't
Speaker 1: do trauma and reality. My work it was easy. It
Speaker 1: was speculative and alternative futures. But that didn't mean it
Speaker 1: wasn't real. This is just a space where you maybe
Speaker 1: hadn't accessed in a while or didn't know you could access.
Speaker 1: And like the black figuration I'm creating is again, it's
Speaker 1: just a respite from the reality. You know what the
Speaker 1: reality is as a black person. I don't need to
Speaker 1: regurgitate that to you. I'm just giving you something else
Speaker 1: to think about and to feel like you could exist
Speaker 1: in this plane and your blackness is not an assault,
Speaker 1: is not an apology, It is not a compromise. I
Speaker 1: just thought, like, what are the people we don't know yet? Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's reality, but every time you do reality with blackness,
Speaker 1: it's just it's limiting. People tend to like stamp it
Speaker 1: and walk away. I can't tell you how many shows
Speaker 1: I've been in where it's like black portraiture. Today, I'm like,
Speaker 1: I can't do this. Whereas if you just say, there's
Speaker 1: these two guys in a garden and they decided to
Speaker 1: have picnic, let's follow them for the day, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean. Their blackness is not implicit in the title,
Speaker 1: but it's like it informs how they move through it,
Speaker 1: and it's so much more interesting when you leave school,
Speaker 1: you say, the thing that infuriates me is that I
Speaker 1: can't be Elizabeth Peyton painting and drawing people in my
Speaker 1: life who aren't famous and who have no significance besides
Speaker 1: my connection to them. But I draw them in this
Speaker 1: way where I'm full on adorning these people, and all
Speaker 1: the public has to do is digest them as pretty.
Speaker 1: You say that in twenty twelve, and yet I think
Speaker 1: this monograph is the promise, the actualization of that desire.
Speaker 1: It's so weird looking at that book right now. I
Speaker 1: originally wanted to call it three years because it was
Speaker 1: just three years of my life, but it was also
Speaker 1: just three years of dealing with what I said then
Speaker 1: in twenty twelve, it was like, can I create black
Speaker 1: characters who are just beautiful? And that's it? Did? Nothing
Speaker 1: bad happen to them, nothing to justify the bank. It's crazy.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's like just the simplest premise, and you
Speaker 1: would be shocked at the response from that premise. Like
Speaker 1: the brief is these two men fall in love. Their
Speaker 1: families are aristocratic. It's like any fantasy novel you can
Speaker 1: imagine from some Eurocentric view of things, but you know
Speaker 1: it was coming from that space. They weren't subjected to
Speaker 1: slavery colonists' views. They just come from these two families
Speaker 1: and they have wealth of their own from those families,
Speaker 1: and in that this whole story happens. I didn't think
Speaker 1: that that bar would be such a world as low
Speaker 1: as that bo was. It was it took three years
Speaker 1: to explore it, and I never had a chance to
Speaker 1: do that with my work before. In light of like
Speaker 1: Elizabeth Peyton, I mean, there's a lot of my circle,
Speaker 1: if you will, in these characters. You know, my brothers
Speaker 1: are in there, My mom and dad are in there,
Speaker 1: They're all over it. My friends Joanna is in there,
Speaker 1: all of them. They're all in there. The specificity in
Speaker 1: the blackness and the beauty just enhanced the story better.
Speaker 1: It wasn't like an aside or a disclaimer. It just
Speaker 1: was like, no, this is what makes it better. So
Speaker 1: on the website you'll see the selections we've made together.
Speaker 1: Some of them are mine, some of them ma yours.
Speaker 1: For some context, I want to read a little bit
Speaker 1: of writing that you wrote on the queerness of the work.
Speaker 1: There's a sense of threat with queerness still, most likely
Speaker 1: due to its unknowability in the mainstream understanding. It isn't
Speaker 1: regarded as fertile ground. It can only be a place
Speaker 1: of demise. Ironic, considering how much queerness has birth and
Speaker 1: expanded movements, beliefs, and help shape spaces of inclusivity in
Speaker 1: the black community, not just in America, but in the
Speaker 1: global pan African diaspora. I look at this work now
Speaker 1: and this is a solid body of work, But the
Speaker 1: cost of that is in this book. You see what
Speaker 1: it took. And queerness had always been something I wanted
Speaker 1: to explore my but I didn't know how to do
Speaker 1: it in a way that wasn't overwrought with my own
Speaker 1: ideas and blind spots around queerness. I wanted it to
Speaker 1: be something that surprised even me and left room for
Speaker 1: quinness to just be in the ether. It was just
Speaker 1: in the air of these pictures. You didn't even have
Speaker 1: to say it. It just was I'm looking now at
Speaker 1: New Luwed's on Holiday, just one of my faves, and
Speaker 1: you know it's it's the two title, you know, the
Speaker 1: main characters, and they're wearing hater Akerman because I was
Speaker 1: all about that when I started this. And you see
Speaker 1: different fashions. There's like Valentino in there and like Dreux.
Speaker 1: This was like, how do I show these two men
Speaker 1: who are so confident and so self possessed, and they're
Speaker 1: also kind of giddy that they just got married. So
Speaker 1: there's this little like pinky moment in the picture, or
Speaker 1: they're just hands intertwined, and I remember doing that even
Speaker 1: in my studio and feeling such a thrill, like, oh
Speaker 1: my god, I just dar that because I've never done
Speaker 1: anything like that, and so I was like, oh, I'm
Speaker 1: really going to lean into this later. And like all
Speaker 1: these different scenes, every character is fully comfortable in that queerness.
Speaker 1: I mean, even you know the different members. You know,
Speaker 1: there's always something that plays with presentation, plays with performativity,
Speaker 1: plays with being a couple. You know, who's allowed to
Speaker 1: be a couple. With the last dance at the annual
Speaker 1: County Gala. What a title, good one, It's a good one.
Speaker 1: I also wanted it to feel very matter of fact,
Speaker 1: which is what the title of the first was. It's
Speaker 1: like a matter of fact. It's everything but that, but
Speaker 1: yet it is, it is a fact. I made it
Speaker 1: real for myself. It was like I had to see
Speaker 1: it for me. These are people you hadn't seen before,
Speaker 1: not really, you know, what kind of people are you
Speaker 1: talking about? Wealthy queer Nigerians who do not care what
Speaker 1: you think of them at all? Which is very specific
Speaker 1: the experience that I've had of Nigerians in American of course,
Speaker 1: going back home, it's very much about presentation. You think
Speaker 1: politics representation here is rough. I mean there, it's like,
Speaker 1: you know I have tattoos, you know, I'm like, I've
Speaker 1: had so many aunties and uncles tell me that I
Speaker 1: am disgraceful in my presentation. So to have these characters
Speaker 1: who are very open and you know they have piercings
Speaker 1: and you know they dress rather unorthodox, I guess, and
Speaker 1: they're fine, They're protected. In my world, I love people
Speaker 1: who take the reality and make it better, not better
Speaker 1: in the sense of like we should all do this.
Speaker 1: It's like it could be this, Like the could be
Speaker 1: so exciting to me. This should be sucks, but could
Speaker 1: be Oh, that's sexy, Like that's a nice, big world
Speaker 1: to get into. This whole books could be your words
Speaker 1: or could be. Zadie Smith, in writing about this, said
Speaker 1: if only, if only are the two words she has
Speaker 1: much more gravity and looking at these opening chapters one
Speaker 1: and two, she writes, if only slavery had never happened,
Speaker 1: if only African families had never been broken and serial traumatized. Instead,
Speaker 1: the past six hundred years of dispersion and displacement have
Speaker 1: been magically replaced by consolidation of wealth, of heritage, of
Speaker 1: privilege itself you have to understand when you leave your
Speaker 1: country at five, that's part of that displacement. I think
Speaker 1: why I made this was because I was like, I
Speaker 1: want to belong somewhere in Nigeria. I want that for me.
Speaker 1: It sounds very selfish now, but I think that's why
Speaker 1: I made this. I would love to live in this world.
Speaker 1: And what was such a joy and a gift was
Speaker 1: seeing other people say I want to live there too,
Speaker 1: Like we want to live there. Why doesn't this exist?
Speaker 1: And it was around a time, you know, it came
Speaker 1: out like Whitney Shaw was twenty seventeen. You know, Trump
Speaker 1: was in office, but it was a weird time for
Speaker 1: black figuration. Suddenly there was a lot more of us
Speaker 1: and it was exciting and it was like, wow, look
Speaker 1: at all these different ways we can express ourselves and
Speaker 1: this could be us. Why don't we you know, the
Speaker 1: Year of the Return was around that same time, where
Speaker 1: a bunch of people went to Ghana. A lot of Americans,
Speaker 1: African Americans were like, no, why don't we go back
Speaker 1: to the continent. Why don't we reconnect to that. We
Speaker 1: are a part of that community. We're not separated. Slavery
Speaker 1: doesn't define this we've always been there, so that was
Speaker 1: all kind of happening, and it was beautiful to witness that.
Speaker 1: It was beautiful to be a part of that conversation.
Speaker 1: We'll be right back after a quick break. And this
Speaker 1: story that you're weaving together through four chapters, it's fascinating
Speaker 1: that the world you're depicting it doesn't exist. This is
Speaker 1: Representatives of State, which is all women who are politicians
Speaker 1: in Africa. Not to say that that doesn't exist, it's
Speaker 1: there could be, though. I don't want to shut it down,
Speaker 1: like it might not exist right now, but it could.
Speaker 1: There could be four women who represent different regions of
Speaker 1: a country. Yeah, I totally see that. And they all
Speaker 1: look flies. Fuck like I'm gonna make them look like, Yeah,
Speaker 1: she has our seat through legs. Why can't a woman
Speaker 1: wear thought high boots to work? She's still getting stuff done.
Speaker 1: It doesn't matter how she looks. This one is surveying
Speaker 1: the family seat. What does it mean to you? I
Speaker 1: just thought, Wow, look at someone who looks at his
Speaker 1: own land like all of that land is his. This
Speaker 1: is also a really interesting conversation about the could be
Speaker 1: why don't we own land? It's not just with the
Speaker 1: contentious history of the US in Africa, there's a lot
Speaker 1: of issues with landownership all over the continent. Nigeria is
Speaker 1: no different. We're one of the most populated countries in
Speaker 1: the continent, Nigeria, but like when it comes to landownership,
Speaker 1: a lot of it is foreign owned and they own acres.
Speaker 1: I'm debating this man who owns valleys and and like biodiversity,
Speaker 1: and it's like very manifest destiny. He's providing for his
Speaker 1: family through that, and the family is gaining so much
Speaker 1: wealth from that which has been deprived of so many.
Speaker 1: But it doesn't mean that there haven't been black families
Speaker 1: who have owned land, you know what I mean. I
Speaker 1: guess what I was just trying to do is to
Speaker 1: show that this is here. It's always been here. We
Speaker 1: have to just believe it in ourselves and sometimes you
Speaker 1: have to see it, even if it's an illusion, even
Speaker 1: if it's a picture. It helps you feel like I
Speaker 1: have a wealth in me, it's there. It's a powerful
Speaker 1: feeling because I felt it in making it. After this show,
Speaker 1: I was like, you can't touch me so on high
Speaker 1: like I was. Sometimes I look at these pictures and
Speaker 1: I was like, that's right. When you're making this work
Speaker 1: and you're on high like that, walk us through what
Speaker 1: a typical day of yours looks like. I usually sketch
Speaker 1: a lot, so a lot of it is just like
Speaker 1: I have a sketch in my head that I just
Speaker 1: want to get down, and after maybe one or two
Speaker 1: or three sketches and I'm like, this one looks like
Speaker 1: remotely usable, then I'll start on that drawing. And every
Speaker 1: series quote unquote is like a diary for me. It's like, oh,
Speaker 1: that's what you were going through at that time. I
Speaker 1: can see that in the marks, I can see that
Speaker 1: in the compositional decisions you made. They're very immediate. And
Speaker 1: now I'm much more like, no, you can take your time.
Speaker 1: When you're in the room. Do people come by during
Speaker 1: the day? Do you not see anyone? I'm always alone.
Speaker 1: I don't have assistance, I don't have anything, and it's
Speaker 1: just me alone in the room playing music sometimes just
Speaker 1: sitting in my chair and looking at something for a
Speaker 1: really really long time, trying to figure out what to
Speaker 1: do next, trying to figure out what the picture wants
Speaker 1: to do, because you can't force it. That's when the
Speaker 1: work is bad, is when you're trying to impose yourself
Speaker 1: into it. It's like, Okay, what's I made these decisions?
Speaker 1: Let me solve this puzzle. And then the picture also
Speaker 1: has its own ideas. And that's when it's so powerful
Speaker 1: when you encounter art that just speaks to you on
Speaker 1: a level that it's it's own autonomous entity. It's not
Speaker 1: this artist flexing. It's like this exists in another realm.
Speaker 1: I like that, and I try to push my work
Speaker 1: into that place, and also in doing that, I open
Speaker 1: myself up to me not quite getting it there, but
Speaker 1: that stumble makes the work, you know. It's like I'm
Speaker 1: the work that I've found that people respond to. The
Speaker 1: most of mine are the ones where I was very
Speaker 1: much figuring out. It was like a battle to make.
Speaker 1: And usually it's when I'm in this weird trance and
Speaker 1: I become completely subsumed in the act that activity of
Speaker 1: the making that I forget where I am. It's like
Speaker 1: I disappear. It's the most beautiful experience. And so whenever
Speaker 1: I present the work in the show, I always say,
Speaker 1: disappear into the picture like it's really beautiful. Like I'm
Speaker 1: trying to invite people to have that experience as well,
Speaker 1: you can be a creator in thinking. The act of
Speaker 1: creating is in the thinking, it's in the looking. And
Speaker 1: because you learn so much about yourself, your proclivities, your
Speaker 1: ideas and principles, they come up when you see something
Speaker 1: and you're triggered by an image, and you should focus
Speaker 1: on that, figure out why you have these ideas, why
Speaker 1: you feel that way, because that's indicative of something, it's
Speaker 1: indicative of your humanity. And yet you quite literally do
Speaker 1: a disappearing act in this monograph as the role of
Speaker 1: the Private Secretary. What was the purpose behind this? I
Speaker 1: think initially I was really nervous about how my work
Speaker 1: was being regarded at that point when I started in
Speaker 1: twenty sixteen, there was a lot of discussions about my
Speaker 1: Nigerian ness that I didn't understand. So I had to
Speaker 1: try and find that, and so I also needed to
Speaker 1: remove myself again at my expectations from that as well.
Speaker 1: So what the Private Secretary affords is this non space
Speaker 1: and I exist as a sort of communications liaison between
Speaker 1: the work and the viewer. It's no longer like this authorship.
Speaker 1: It's more of just like, I'm part of this story
Speaker 1: and you can be too, like you know, I'm figuring
Speaker 1: it out with you. Well, then why don't we figure
Speaker 1: this one out together. Here's a piece called by her design.
Speaker 1: I love the slim I mean it's kind of self portuity.
Speaker 1: But I'm that stereotype. I cannot swim. And I remember
Speaker 1: when I drew this, I was like, I haven't drawn
Speaker 1: anyone at the time in water, and I knew why
Speaker 1: because I have an aversion to it. So I was like,
Speaker 1: let's put a woman in short shorts just out here
Speaker 1: with the boat. She's not only comfortable, she's posing for
Speaker 1: you as if she's like, Oh, I own these waters,
Speaker 1: I own everything. And this was also a really fun
Speaker 1: picture to make in terms of the skin, the luminosity,
Speaker 1: the skin luminosity, the clothing, the landscape outside of it.
Speaker 1: It's a very rich picture. It's very wealthy picture. Did
Speaker 1: creating these bright universes brighton your disposition? I mean they
Speaker 1: made me less jaded, I feel after doing Whitney, I
Speaker 1: was very hopeful. I really was. And then something happened
Speaker 1: around twenty eighteen that made me go oh no, oh, no,
Speaker 1: no no. Because the white gays, as Tony Morrison says,
Speaker 1: it's it's a sneaky sneaky thing because when this started
Speaker 1: getting very popular, because this is also when my success
Speaker 1: took off, that means more white patrons, white collectors were
Speaker 1: purchasing this work, were acquiring this work. Part of the
Speaker 1: successes who purchases it, who acquires this work? More and
Speaker 1: more white people were acquiring it. It's fine, you know,
Speaker 1: it's it's helping me sustain my practice. It's also putting
Speaker 1: me in rooms and having conversations. They're deeply uncomfortable. What
Speaker 1: are those conversations? Like, like someone walking up to you
Speaker 1: in a party and saying, Hi, I own you, like
Speaker 1: as an opener, you know, not as much anymore. But
Speaker 1: that was, you know, twenty seventeen, twenty eighteen, it was
Speaker 1: a differ time. People would just like, you know, or
Speaker 1: can you stand right next to your picture like it's you?
Speaker 1: You know, like you know, or they'll say like they'll
Speaker 1: point to a character in the story and say, oh,
Speaker 1: that's you, right, I mean this one so obviously that
Speaker 1: But there was stuff like that, I'm looking at it
Speaker 1: unclaimed estates now, which is a picture modeled after my brother,
Speaker 1: and they say, who's that? That's you, right, And it
Speaker 1: would be the strangest thing it was almost like they
Speaker 1: wanted to pin it down. They didn't want to give
Speaker 1: it that expansive space that it was existing, and they
Speaker 1: wanted to close it up and restrict it. And because
Speaker 1: I'm dressing them in very nice clothing and putting them
Speaker 1: in very nice environs, they recognize that in their own
Speaker 1: environs and their own clothing, and so they thought, all
Speaker 1: these are just like us. They want to be us.
Speaker 1: It's not what I was trying to do. I didn't
Speaker 1: want to make these characters be like white people. I
Speaker 1: just wanted them to exist separate from you. You're not
Speaker 1: even in the pictures, You're not here. But somehow that
Speaker 1: still happened. There was still this injection of the white
Speaker 1: gaze into my work, and I couldn't stop it. It
Speaker 1: was so just demoralizing after a while, like I just
Speaker 1: felt like, God, we can't escape this shit at all.
Speaker 1: Like I'm creating the whole world, Daddie, separate from y'all,
Speaker 1: and you still figure out a way to make it
Speaker 1: yours or about you. It's not only that there was
Speaker 1: the white gaze intruding on this, but there was also
Speaker 1: white ownership. Yeah, and how that reads, you know, can
Speaker 1: I ask you, when that person came up to you,
Speaker 1: how do you sit with that? How do you respond?
Speaker 1: It's really difficult to answer, I think because there are
Speaker 1: people who will say, like, you should be so grateful
Speaker 1: you're successful, that kind of energy. And then there's also
Speaker 1: just like I owe you nothing though I mean, I
Speaker 1: understand this system, but I am not grateful. They make
Speaker 1: it a sport, some of these collectors when they get
Speaker 1: your work, like oh, I just got your piece or
Speaker 1: I own you, and it's like good for you, Like
Speaker 1: I don't know what I'm supposed to say about that,
Speaker 1: I just made a picture. Some artists are involved with that.
Speaker 1: I'm not. I don't want to know who purchases my
Speaker 1: work because what I've had, unfortunately, is that you start
Speaker 1: to see that you become an investment. It's a different
Speaker 1: conversation than I'm having in my studio. And so when
Speaker 1: I see someone say I own you, they're talking about
Speaker 1: an investment. They're not talking about what I'm trying to
Speaker 1: do with the pictures. Every successful artist, you know, that's
Speaker 1: what it is. It's because some egregiously wealthy person or
Speaker 1: persons have purchased their work and put it in auction
Speaker 1: and do it all this other stuff, and it's something
Speaker 1: that no one talks about in the art world. I
Speaker 1: don't understand why I'm successful because I didn't really go
Speaker 1: into it thinking strategically about the art world. I was thinking,
Speaker 1: I want to create a space where I can breathe,
Speaker 1: and I hope other people can have that space too.
Speaker 1: And when you have collectors of a certain socio economic
Speaker 1: perspective see this work and describe it, I just knew
Speaker 1: right away. They were like, Oh, it's so great. So
Speaker 1: like all the stuff that we do and what we like,
Speaker 1: we just put black people in them and solves everything.
Speaker 1: And it's like, nut, it's not quite what I was doing.
Speaker 1: I started to see that happen with a lot of
Speaker 1: young artists coming out and figuration black figuration. I just
Speaker 1: felt so felt so bad because it's like that's not
Speaker 1: what they're interested in, but it's selling. So I'm like,
Speaker 1: I get it. I get that you want to put
Speaker 1: everybody in Gucci loafers, like I get that you want
Speaker 1: everyone to have really nice like interiors and clothes, and
Speaker 1: they're just everyone is an Anuay. It's amazing how much
Speaker 1: black Anuay is happening. It's kind of awesome. But also
Speaker 1: we do stuff though, right, We eat and we walk
Speaker 1: and we'd write things. You know, I didn't know that
Speaker 1: we all just lounge all the time, Like I don't know,
Speaker 1: I'm a little disturbed how much lounging pictures there are
Speaker 1: or something that just kind of deals with this like
Speaker 1: natural blackness. It's just fabulous, which it is, but it's
Speaker 1: like we could do something from there, you know, the
Speaker 1: stuff we can go to through that, because then I
Speaker 1: feel like the posing black beauty becomes that I own you,
Speaker 1: because if you're not doing anything but lying down, that
Speaker 1: makes you all the more easy to be consumed, all
Speaker 1: the more easy to be owned because you're just you're
Speaker 1: not doing anything, You're just being looked at. But you
Speaker 1: make a concerted effort to not know who's buying your work.
Speaker 1: I try to, but you know, these people make themselves known.
Speaker 1: It makes you feel like you're not a person, you know,
Speaker 1: it makes you feel like you're just a product. You're
Speaker 1: pushing a product all the time and producing, and so
Speaker 1: I try to keep a distance from my own mental state,
Speaker 1: like I don't want to feel like I'm an assembly
Speaker 1: line of work for people to consume. And I am
Speaker 1: alone in my studio. I'm making these pictures on the
Speaker 1: grace of God, you know what I mean. I'm just
Speaker 1: lucky that they look good and they get out. If
Speaker 1: I go into a mindset thinking I'm creating a product
Speaker 1: and has to be consistent, I'm in trouble. I don't
Speaker 1: know if I can sustain that practice. I like seeing
Speaker 1: mistakes and work. I like seeing the artist is learning
Speaker 1: through the work. So if you're going to go into
Speaker 1: my work, if you want to invest in it, maybe
Speaker 1: this is a moment to draw the line in the
Speaker 1: sand here, You're not going to see the same stuff
Speaker 1: for me. And I think that's a good thing. I
Speaker 1: think you want to see an artist evolve and try
Speaker 1: things and change. I just go into my studio and
Speaker 1: I'm like, all right, let's think for a bit. What
Speaker 1: do people need right now? And it's not going to
Speaker 1: like solve world peace. It's not going to help you
Speaker 1: with COVID, you know. It's just it's gonna give you
Speaker 1: peace of mind. It's going to give you tools that
Speaker 1: you can pull from from inside of you. It's going
Speaker 1: to give you a place to go. Before we close
Speaker 1: the chapter on these pieces, what are the pieces in
Speaker 1: here that you feel like people could need right now. Oh,
Speaker 1: one of my favorites is Picnic on the Grounds. It's
Speaker 1: a mother and daughter. Even now when I look at this,
Speaker 1: I love it so much. I just feel so good.
Speaker 1: This is my favorite one. Yeah. This is something about
Speaker 1: like seeing a mother and child unencumbered, all this greenery
Speaker 1: around them, nature and free. And so that one in
Speaker 1: the drawing room is really fun. I love I love
Speaker 1: that one page one thirty six. It's just the way
Speaker 1: he's looking out and the reflection behind him in the mirrors,
Speaker 1: his lover, and just that playful look he has, and
Speaker 1: there's like a detailed shot of it that I just ah,
Speaker 1: I love so much. Again, he's fully in his world
Speaker 1: in the picture, and nothing about his blackness is encumbering him,
Speaker 1: nothing about him being in that space is stifling him.
Speaker 1: He's just there looking at his man's butt and like,
Speaker 1: m that's man. There's a lot of stuff I did
Speaker 1: for the Palermo Manifesto that I really loved, the crown
Speaker 1: and house post in Congress. Those were the first time
Speaker 1: I leaned fully into having no figures in there, but
Speaker 1: there is black presence. How do you create a space
Speaker 1: where there's the presence of blackness, but you don't see
Speaker 1: black people. And that's what I felt that picture was.
Speaker 1: I love this picture because it's my heritage, my euroben
Speaker 1: heritage in there. And then there's just like foliage all around.
Speaker 1: And I mean, this whole book is a testament to
Speaker 1: a period of time that I'm very grateful that I
Speaker 1: had to explore a lot of things that I felt
Speaker 1: I was lacking, and from the process of making this
Speaker 1: I felt very full finishing it. I felt like I
Speaker 1: could do anything I wanted after this. As this book
Speaker 1: came to be, you said, not too long ago, I
Speaker 1: came across this quote by the author Edward Dantica. She said,
Speaker 1: the immigrant artist shares with all other artists the desire
Speaker 1: to interpret and possibly remake his or her own world.
Speaker 1: It floored me, you said, Through further research, I found
Speaker 1: the crux of her argument that the life of an
Speaker 1: immigrant the lands, cultures, principles, and beliefs we traverse as
Speaker 1: a methodology a form of art making. Everything about that quote,
Speaker 1: Even now being in New York, coming out of the
Speaker 1: train into Midtown in my old studio, and that energy
Speaker 1: I felt in that hunger felt but also completely like
Speaker 1: how much the city impressed on me, this feeling of
Speaker 1: like you have to conquer the world or something. And
Speaker 1: even then I didn't feel comfortable, even though I was
Speaker 1: at the epicenter of you know, all of it, in
Speaker 1: the center of the city, like there was this feeling
Speaker 1: of just like this isn't me, Like I don't want
Speaker 1: to be the center of the thing. I just want
Speaker 1: to be in the room with everybody, and I want
Speaker 1: as many people in the room as possible because I
Speaker 1: want to hear all the stories. And so that's kind
Speaker 1: of what I do in these roles. This is what
Speaker 1: I do in my work, is like I create it
Speaker 1: in order to understand all of that that tapestry. Then
Speaker 1: I step back from it and I'm saying, okay, here
Speaker 1: it is, guys, and what do you think let's discuss,
Speaker 1: you know. And that's really what I think I do
Speaker 1: with the work. It's just this city makes you feel
Speaker 1: like you can conquer it all, you know, which is amazing.
Speaker 1: But I also feel like this city is it's a
Speaker 1: perspective to because that's how I've been conditioned, that's how
Speaker 1: I've survived, that's how I've lived my life. That's why
Speaker 1: I create what I do. I don't want to have
Speaker 1: one perspective or a singularity of vision. That's so terrifying
Speaker 1: to me. And singularity of vision comes from knowing exactly
Speaker 1: where you are and where you maybe not knowing where
Speaker 1: you are is what gives you all of these varying perspectives.
Speaker 1: And it's a good thing at least, that's what edge.
Speaker 1: That's why I felt from that, it's not bad. You're
Speaker 1: creating art by the many places you travel. You know,
Speaker 1: through that you're seeing all these different ideas, different ways
Speaker 1: of being, and from that it collates into your work.
Speaker 1: We've been so hopeful about this text, and yet it
Speaker 1: seems to me that you're not particularly hopeful about it.
Speaker 1: Three years removed, I just saw what it became when
Speaker 1: capitalism took over, you know, this thing about like being consumed, commodified.
Speaker 1: You know, I saw my work spoken about in a
Speaker 1: way that was really alarming, and it was just that
Speaker 1: shows you how much that work was needed and how
Speaker 1: we need to mind that now. Like, yes, we exist,
Speaker 1: Black people exist in wealthy spaces, they exist in natural spaces,
Speaker 1: beautiful spaces, they're devoid of all the bad stuff. But
Speaker 1: then it became this question of Is representation enough? That
Speaker 1: was what I was asking myself when I left us.
Speaker 1: Is this enough? Just seeing ourselves in these spaces? Is
Speaker 1: that enough? I don't know, And I had to answer
Speaker 1: that question for myself. Did you find an answer? I
Speaker 1: did in accountervailing theory that was it was this series
Speaker 1: was a series I did in twenty nineteen, or started
Speaker 1: in twenty nineteen and finished in January twenty twenty. It
Speaker 1: was that question is representation enough? And I thought the
Speaker 1: only way I could do that was to flip the script,
Speaker 1: which was the whole project, And so there's no color,
Speaker 1: it's all monochromatic. Power is matriarchical. It's women only, which
Speaker 1: not new, but it was in this world, same sex
Speaker 1: or same gender relations is the norm, and heterosexuality is aberrant,
Speaker 1: and there is a manufactured class of persons who are
Speaker 1: made by these women warriors. And in the world building
Speaker 1: that I was doing, I was answering that question that
Speaker 1: what is oppression? What does it really mean? And if
Speaker 1: we keep getting distracted with representation, you're never gonna get
Speaker 1: how insidious power is, how insidious oppression is. It's really
Speaker 1: nice to see us looking really nice and fully ourselves
Speaker 1: in spaces and beautiful, but everyone is capable of being
Speaker 1: an oppressor. There's a feeling I get. It's too simple,
Speaker 1: it's too easy just to say black reparation that which
Speaker 1: is such a project. It's still happening, Like black people matter,
Speaker 1: we just matter. Okay, we're there, not that we're equal.
Speaker 1: We doesn't matter. We're trying to get that part. But
Speaker 1: then it gets to a place where you're like, all right, equity.
Speaker 1: When we get there, are going to have this feeling
Speaker 1: which is totally justified. I want to be like a
Speaker 1: white man. I want to be that, and I get that.
Speaker 1: I get that feeling that people have right now, Like now,
Speaker 1: fuck it, I don't even want to try to be
Speaker 1: good anymore. I want to be like Basos. I want
Speaker 1: to be like you know, you want Musk. And it's
Speaker 1: like why though they're not good, it can be so
Speaker 1: much better And it's hard, but creating the story, seeing
Speaker 1: how oppression and power can seep into everything, it justifies
Speaker 1: everything and becomes this principal belief. You're so in it
Speaker 1: because you see yourself in these characters. You don't see
Speaker 1: how bad it is. I just think that just because
Speaker 1: representation is there, like Yeah, we're having a bunch of
Speaker 1: people getting to really high power positions. Are they doing
Speaker 1: anything in those positions? Are they moving the needle for
Speaker 1: everybody else? Are just exciting? But most of the time,
Speaker 1: it's just it's a trope, it's a token. You say,
Speaker 1: power is corrupting. I'm interested in power as a collective,
Speaker 1: not as power as a person. I'm not interested in
Speaker 1: power over people, no matter who's wielding it. Absolutely. I
Speaker 1: think whenever you can see someone who's really heavy about
Speaker 1: power and it's like likes to delegate others, I always
Speaker 1: like distance myself from that. I'm like, I'm not interested
Speaker 1: in that kind of power, even when it's a person
Speaker 1: of color wielding it. Just anybody like that's say, presentation
Speaker 1: is a trap, like get out of it. Bad people
Speaker 1: do bad things. It doesn't matter how they look, it
Speaker 1: doesn't matter what they come from. But that's really hard
Speaker 1: to say when we're all just trying to get to equality,
Speaker 1: Like we're all just trying to get there first. And
Speaker 1: I get that, but we should be thinking about these
Speaker 1: things now because what happens when we do get there.
Speaker 1: I want to believe we get there. I want to
Speaker 1: and I know we will but we have to think
Speaker 1: now about what that looks like. So many people got
Speaker 1: caught up in them being in the spotlight and being
Speaker 1: the ones who get all the energy and all the
Speaker 1: attention or whatever, and it's like, no, it's a collective thing.
Speaker 1: I've always felt that my art is about being in
Speaker 1: a conversation. I don't That's why I thought art star
Speaker 1: is so weird. Man. I'm like, oh, no, we're a
Speaker 1: group here talking about this stuff, all of us. We
Speaker 1: don't need art stars. We need conversations. And yet it's
Speaker 1: not like you're not in Vogue. I don't know what
Speaker 1: it means, though, I feel like it's a distraction. I'm
Speaker 1: not giving you grief. No, And hestand, Yeah, it's a
Speaker 1: curious thing because I think we're in alignment. And yet
Speaker 1: I would never say, oh, don't do an interview in Vogue.
Speaker 1: That would be insane. You've worked incredibly hard. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: will further expand your work and introduce it to people
Speaker 1: who would never see it. Yeah, but also the questions
Speaker 1: in Vogue are not the questions I need to be answered.
Speaker 1: That's also part of the thing, right, It's like, if
Speaker 1: I do this very amazing platform that I have to
Speaker 1: talk about my work, but all the questions are about,
Speaker 1: like what's it like to be black? It's justify why
Speaker 1: black people are here. That's been my entire career in
Speaker 1: terms of ress, like why do we care about these
Speaker 1: black people here? And it's like what? And then you know,
Speaker 1: you spend your entire energy just trying to exist, which
Speaker 1: is what we're in right now, and no one's talking
Speaker 1: about what we build with blackness, what we build with
Speaker 1: you know, bipoc movements, what we build with indigenous people.
Speaker 1: Like I'm just sick of the whole like isolating thing
Speaker 1: and categorizing us in a way that is so distracting
Speaker 1: because all of this it's a distract from the fact
Speaker 1: that it costs too much to live. So you're banking
Speaker 1: on a prayer basically when you make work, and there's
Speaker 1: a lot of overhead regardless if young people are struggling.
Speaker 1: I totally understand that, and I totally feel, yeah, do
Speaker 1: what you need to do. It's a hustle culture. But
Speaker 1: I just feel like in my work, I just want
Speaker 1: to show that there are ways to be still intellect
Speaker 1: actually and creatively rigorous. But I understand the costs as well,
Speaker 1: and there's a nobility, I guess, which is a very
Speaker 1: modern notion that the artist alone in the studio, working
Speaker 1: and not working to produce for a specific space or
Speaker 1: arena is really beautiful sentiment. But in a capitalistic society,
Speaker 1: it's just not possible. In any major city. You have
Speaker 1: to find out ways of networking, finding the right collectors,
Speaker 1: finding right institutions or curators, and that's a full time
Speaker 1: job in itself, and so the focus will inexorably go
Speaker 1: away from the work and the art making into that.
Speaker 1: To bring a full circle in that Instagram post that
Speaker 1: I started with, you wrote, a lot of exciting things
Speaker 1: are happening right now, but through the varying conversations I've
Speaker 1: been having with dear ones, a sense we're not alone
Speaker 1: and wondering what the fuck is happening for real? And
Speaker 1: how do the stakes get so high to live a
Speaker 1: fulfilling life? Do we really have to give so much
Speaker 1: of ourselves? Is money all the content that matters? What
Speaker 1: does cloud chasing and powerhoarding signify? How long do we
Speaker 1: go on sleep deprived and malnourished If everyone needs to
Speaker 1: be a billionaire in order to survive, to have choices
Speaker 1: to feel safe, then we are in trouble. You just
Speaker 1: hear young people just saying like, I want to be
Speaker 1: a billionaire. I want to be a billionaire, and I
Speaker 1: get it, but God, I would never wish that for
Speaker 1: a young person to feel like they have to be
Speaker 1: a billionaire, to feel like they can be safe, to
Speaker 1: feel like they have options to do stuff. That's crazy.
Speaker 1: What are we doing? There are more billionaires now, and
Speaker 1: I've been very blessed. I really want to lean into this, Sam,
Speaker 1: because this is serious, Like I'm very very blessed to
Speaker 1: have the life that i have to be successful, But
Speaker 1: I don't want to be even a millionaire, like I'm good,
Speaker 1: Like I feel like my boar was so low. I'm
Speaker 1: shocked I'm even able to pay my taxes. A sense
Speaker 1: that there's a lot of people right now who don't
Speaker 1: see the wealth within them. They don't see that they're fine.
Speaker 1: That we gotta fight for policies, We gotta fight for
Speaker 1: things that just make life easier for people. We gotta
Speaker 1: think collectively, because when you help the ones around you
Speaker 1: and the ones you don't even see behind you, you
Speaker 1: will feel so so good. And it's like what colonialism does.
Speaker 1: It imperialism does makes you feel like it's each her
Speaker 1: own and you're not. And that's where I'm at and
Speaker 1: the kind of work I want to make. Let's get
Speaker 1: out of that. You said, I didn't expect to be here.
Speaker 1: But I'm thinking now about you ten years ago, and
Speaker 1: you talked about being homeless. You talked about not really
Speaker 1: seeing a way forward, your father coming to find you,
Speaker 1: you going to grad school, and when you finish grad school,
Speaker 1: you do an interview and they asked writers do you like,
Speaker 1: and you said, I remember the first time I read
Speaker 1: a Zadie Smith book, who I adore. I think she's
Speaker 1: a female literary equivalent of me as an artist, because
Speaker 1: she's always questioning herself, and that's something I do when
Speaker 1: I work. My style is very much a reflection of
Speaker 1: people I read. If I were ever to meet any
Speaker 1: of these people, I think I would probably cry, yeah,
Speaker 1: oh God. And as we leave, I wanted to sit
Speaker 1: with the very portrait you made of Zadie Smith. I
Speaker 1: know you've made people cry on this program. I refuse
Speaker 1: to cry. That whole thing was like a I thought
Speaker 1: I was like not like alive, like when I got
Speaker 1: the news. I remember reading White teeth at sixteen and
Speaker 1: being blown away and just being like, wow, this feels
Speaker 1: so relatable, this feels so real, and not that you know,
Speaker 1: other literature and done that. It was just something like
Speaker 1: the collective. You know, it wasn't just one person. It
Speaker 1: was like a neighborhood. It reminded me of Berkeley, you know,
Speaker 1: Albany where I grew up in. Reminded me of Humpsville.
Speaker 1: Like I've always lived in odd places where it was
Speaker 1: like a collective. It was just a lot of people
Speaker 1: from different places, just the luck of the draw of
Speaker 1: my life. And so to read a book that felt
Speaker 1: like that, like I was like, oh, I recognize that completely,
Speaker 1: Like this neighbor is from China and this person is
Speaker 1: from Turkey, and you know, and that was the neighborhood.
Speaker 1: That's just how you you know, and that's London, that's
Speaker 1: all these you know, metropolitan places. But I also grew
Speaker 1: up with that from ife all the way now and
Speaker 1: you don't think you're going to meet a hero, but
Speaker 1: to meet her and to have her right what she
Speaker 1: wrote about my work and just that was enough. Just
Speaker 1: seeing that in Vogue was like, oh my god, I
Speaker 1: am happy. I'm good and then getting that letter from
Speaker 1: one of my favorite, not my favorite, but one of
Speaker 1: the coolest institutions I know, which is a National Portrait Gallery.
Speaker 1: That just was like too much to bear. I think
Speaker 1: I lost my shit when I got that letter. I
Speaker 1: just told Joe. I was like, this is dumb. I
Speaker 1: don't even know anymore. I don't understand my life. You
Speaker 1: couldn't make this up if I had told that to
Speaker 1: twint it, you know, two thousand and twelve. I mean,
Speaker 1: I just come back from the fast and just slapped
Speaker 1: the shit out of her, like you ain't ready, so
Speaker 1: let me just give me this right now, because this
Speaker 1: shit's coming, you know. She came to my studio. We
Speaker 1: were chilling, smoke some cigarettes. It was super cool, and
Speaker 1: then I took some photos and I told her to
Speaker 1: chill because she was nervous too. That wasn't made it
Speaker 1: so wild, And I just asked her one question. I said,
Speaker 1: what do you want. You've been to this space, you've
Speaker 1: been to this museum. What do you want? And she said,
Speaker 1: I've never seen an afro painted and that whole thing.
Speaker 1: I said, well that's true, let's do it. That was it.
Speaker 1: It was like that and just like Chow like Black London,
Speaker 1: you know, And that's what I did. I wanted to
Speaker 1: make her look so strong and so self possessed in
Speaker 1: her element. The whole time I was doing it, I
Speaker 1: just felt very I was emotional. But looking at that
Speaker 1: portrait and it's like it's a lot, it's a lot
Speaker 1: to look at that, But why is it so emotional?
Speaker 1: I just I never would have thought in my wildest
Speaker 1: dreams that I wouldn't meet her, let alone create her portrait,
Speaker 1: Like are you kidding? And I still can't believe it.
Speaker 1: She's such an amazing figure, an amazing mind, and a
Speaker 1: beautiful person. To be a part of her story in
Speaker 1: some way through this was really an honor. It was
Speaker 1: just like, genuinely, it's like going back to that time
Speaker 1: when you really thought you weren't shit selling your drawings
Speaker 1: on paper for two hundred bucks just to pay for food, man,
Speaker 1: like that was a life and then to this, you know,
Speaker 1: like you just kind of like, okay, okay, I just
Speaker 1: keep going. I just keep making pictures and telling stories
Speaker 1: and being really grateful for being here, not for people
Speaker 1: acquiring me in my work, but grateful that I get
Speaker 1: to spend time making things and exploring ideas and learning
Speaker 1: from that because that's what I do. I just kind
Speaker 1: of learned. I get to be a student for the
Speaker 1: rest of my life, and I have to learn a
Speaker 1: new language. Picture making is a language, and so I
Speaker 1: learned through making stuff, which is scary. My style, for instance,
Speaker 1: has changed since I started, and I know now that
Speaker 1: whatever comes next is going to be a whole new
Speaker 1: twin that I have to contend with. I don't know.
Speaker 1: For some reason, I've trying to kept her down, or
Speaker 1: I've kept her you know, she's not important. Now It's like, no,
Speaker 1: who are Who is she? Who is this person? You know?
Speaker 1: I think that's what I'm wondering. Well, so much of
Speaker 1: my life has been you are your function. That is
Speaker 1: why you're important. You are your function. That's what I
Speaker 1: meant by what's useful. And now I'm starting to ask
Speaker 1: the question of like, no, really, who are you? That
Speaker 1: might be a lifelong thing. I'm okay with that, but
Speaker 1: it took a while to get here. Well, then, as
Speaker 1: a time capsule, let me put it back to you,
Speaker 1: who are you today? What matters to you in this moment?
Speaker 1: The only thing that comes to mind right now is
Speaker 1: the beauty of quiet and slowness. I think the world
Speaker 1: is very fast, too fast, too overwhelming, and to be
Speaker 1: alive is to force a slowness and don't fill it
Speaker 1: with stuff. I keep thinking of that. Japanese philosophy of
Speaker 1: MA has been like my whole life. Wait, MA, is
Speaker 1: this idea that the space between objects, space between people,
Speaker 1: the space between forms is pregnant with meaning. That empty
Speaker 1: space quote unquote empty in a Western sense, but in
Speaker 1: a Japanese philosophy is full. It's a presence. And so
Speaker 1: I think about the quiet as a presence that I
Speaker 1: want to lean into, pregnant with meaning. I may not
Speaker 1: understand that meaning, but it's important, and I need to
Speaker 1: sit with it, even when I want to feel it,
Speaker 1: even when I'm comfortable with a silence, even when i
Speaker 1: feel like I'm not being productive or I'm not doing
Speaker 1: something I need to do right now, I need to
Speaker 1: sit down and let it happen and wash over me,
Speaker 1: because it means that I'm beyond my function in a
Speaker 1: society and I'm just a person here right now. Doyan,
Speaker 1: thank you for coming on, Thank you Sam, and that's
Speaker 1: our show. Special thanks this week to Johanna Belarado. Samuel's,
Speaker 1: Rebecca Chang, Brandon Fusche, Calvin Ready, and the Jack Shaman Gallery.
Speaker 1: I'd also like to thank Toyeen for coming on the podcast.
Speaker 1: To learn more about her, visit our website at talk
Speaker 1: easypod dot com. There, We've included links to her monograph,
Speaker 1: her upcoming shows, personal website, and a whole lot more.
Speaker 1: I'd encourage you to seek out her work if you
Speaker 1: haven't already. If you enjoy today's talk with Toyeen, you'd
Speaker 1: probably enjoy past conversations with people like Jenea Future, Khn
Speaker 1: Holland Taylor, Joel Meierwitz, Tyler Mitchell, Representative il Han Omar,
Speaker 1: and Claudia Rankin. You can find all those and more
Speaker 1: on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, and Stitcher. You can
Speaker 1: also follow us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram at talk easypod.
Speaker 1: If you'd like to join our mailing list, drop me
Speaker 1: a line at talk easypod at gmail dot com. Our
Speaker 1: executive producer is Janick so Bravo. Our associate producers are
Speaker 1: Caitlin Dryden and Nicki Spina. Our lead editor is Andre Lynn.
Speaker 1: Our editor for today's episode is Clarice Kivara. Our assistant
Speaker 1: editors are Caitlin Dryden, Eve Gershon and Joshua Siegel. Our
Speaker 1: engineer is Tim Moore. Taping out of York, recording here
Speaker 1: in Los Angeles, California. Illustrations by Christia Chenoe. Video and
Speaker 1: graphics by Ian Chang, Derek Gamberzach O'Ryan Wong, Ian Jones,
Speaker 1: Isabelle Primavera, and Ethan Seneca. Special thanks to Patrice Lee,
Speaker 1: Kaylin Ung and Callie Syringis. The show is produced by
Speaker 1: Caroline Reebok. I'm San Fragoso. Thank you for listening to
Speaker 1: Talk Easy. I'll see you back here next week with
Speaker 1: Julie Delpy. Until then, stay safe and so on.