all right now welcome everyone I am Heather bendar adun lecturer in Visual Arts and it is my pleasure to welcome you today to our third visiting artist lecture of the 2023 2024 season and um this is our final um visiting artist Talk of the semester tonight I'm pleased to introduce Derek Adams an inspiring multi-disciplinary artist who has grown as practice publicly and exponentially in the last decade but for several decades he's been known by many as not only an artist but a supportive Arts adm
inistrator a DJ and an advocate for artists before we go any further I'd like to begin with a living land acknowledgement Brown University is built on what is now called College Hill part of the unseated ancestral homelands of the narraganset Indian tribe indigenous people from many nations near and far live study and work in Providence today the amplification of native voices and histories is crucial to rectifying the many violent legacies of colonialism and we gratefully acknowledge the ongoin
g critical contributions of indigenous people within this University and across our state region and nation in addition I'd like to acknowledge that we are connected by a campus that relied on the African slave trade in the Americas and that there are buildings on campus constructed by enslaved people we recognize that land acknowledgements are not a replacement for necessary decolonial work but a reminder of place of the legacies of dispossession and enslaved that sustained and enriched the sto
len land we're speaking from today these acknowledgements and much more commit us to a lifetime of decolonial and anti-racist work um now I'd like to thank Ed Osborne the chair of Visual Arts Christine Dodd Winnie guy CJ Lou and Media Services for facilitating this evening's event a few more things to note before we start first please do not record this event we value and respect the IP of our visiting artists and we will post our recordings on our YouTube account only with their permission stil
l shots are great but just please tag Brown Visual Arts and at Derek Adams NY second after Derek's presentation there will be a Q&A that I hope is really active there are two microphones in the room that will be passed so just raise your hand as soon as you have a question it's expected that everyone be kind and curious and respectful in their questions and that each person asks one question okay and now for our fabulous guest DK Adams Derek Adams was born in 1970 in Baltimore Maryland he's a a
multi-disciplinary artist living and working right now in Brooklyn New York he received his BFA from Pratt University and graduated with an MFA from Columbia University in New York in 2003 Adams has held numerous teaching positions and is currently a 10e assistant professor in the School of Visual Arts medium Performing Arts at cuni Brooklyn College he also holds an honorary doctorate degree from Micah in Baltimore um Derek celebrates and expands the dialogue around contemporary black life and c
ulture through scenes of normaly and perseverance he's developed an iconography of Joy Leisure and the pursuit of happiness within a practice that encompasses paintings sculptures collages performances videos and public projects so hopefully that covers a lot of what you all are working on today um Derek synthesizes representational imagery with planer cubis geometry to produce multifaceted figures and faces that address the richness of the black experience in 2022 um Derek established Charm Cit
y Cultural cultivation an organization to support and encourage underserved communities in the city of Baltimore through events conducted conducted by three entities first The Last Resort artist Retreat which is a Residency program that subscribes to the concept of leisure as therapy for the black creative to the black Baltimore digital database which is a collaborative counter institutional space for collecting storing and safekeeping the data of local archival initiatives and three Zora's Den
an online community of black women writers started in January 2017 which has since expanded into in-person writing workshops a writer circle and a monthly reading series that strives to promote instruction support and social engagement Derek has been the subject of so exhibitions at institutions that are so numerous to name I will name a few uh the Cleveland Museum of Art is one in 20122 the monument um momentary at Crystal Bridges Museum in Bentonville Arkansas the Hudson River Museum and Yonke
rs and Museum of Art and Design those are just a few and he's mounted public installations commissioned through ART and Amtrak at New York Penn Station which many of the students saw last spring um the MTA Art and Design at the norn Avenue LR station in Brooklyn and RX art at New York City Health and hospitals in Harlem which is ongoing his work has been featured in many many many group exhibitions including the culture hip hop and Contemporary Art in the 21st century at the Baltimore Museum of
Art in Baltimore that's um this year and packaged black Derek Adams and Barbara Earl Thomas at the Henry Art Gallery in Seattle there are many more he's also in a lot of different Collections and including um the met the studio Museum in Harlem the Whitney Museum of American art the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond and the Birmingham Museum of Art among many others his resume is clearly impressive and his engagement with the art World students and underserved voices is very inspiring so
please join me in welcoming Our Guest Derek [Applause] Adams thank you everyone um so happy that everyone in made time to be here to hear me talk about some of the things I'm doing and it's so funny you know always the reason why I started the last res artist Retreat is because you know sometimes I think a lot of cultural workers primarily a lot of black cultural workers working in within the inner city do so much is that we actually need to hear people read it out to know exactly how we're doin
g because we do so much that we don't we forget how much we do because it's so necessary we don't do it necessarily all the time because we want to do it and a lot of things that I've done in Baltimore and other places not because I want to do it it because it's necessary and someone has to do it and I think that um ends up being you know how you see and how you read and how we see Legacy building but it kind of starts out of seeing necessity and filling in the blanks where it's needed but when
people always ask me um you know when I do things like why do you do it if I didn't have to do it I wouldn't do it honestly I would just paint in my studio or do whatever I'm doing in my studio I just feel like when I'm you know one of the reasons why I started a lot of things I've started Community wise is because you know when you become more um International with your movement and you see all the opportunities happening for people around the world and you're from a city where opportunity is n
ot always accessible you have to be you know you have to have a kind of a realization that if certain things will happen sometimes you have to make it happen and so a lot of the things that has happened in Baltimore where I'm from is based on my desire to push uh opportunity forward for my hometown so when I come home I won't be the only one at the head of the table because I don't really think of myself as being that type of person so a lot of the things I've done is just because I don't want t
o be the center even though I'm the center right now but normally I don't want to be Norm most of the time so anyway without further Ado um I do a lot of different things and um I decided to condense a lot of the things I've I've done into a particular theme for tonight because I remember I did this talk at Scout heagan maybe like 2013 2014 and I did Scout heagan in 2012 and I was invited to come back in 2015 and I showed like all of my stuff I remember took like two hours or whatever and I reme
mber someone said to me that was a lot of stuff you didn't have to show one of the one of the participants came up to me and said that and so I always remember that because you know I felt like I had to kind of like go back down memory lane because I was a participant and I was invited to come back as a visiting artist so I was kind of like showing out a little bit so now you know I'm kind of streamlining things to start based on the theme uh which was a body of work that I started in two in 20
10 was called living in color and so you know growing up in a city like Baltimore where you know the city is primarily uh the demographic is probably 70% maybe of black people the other 30% um other people and most of the people who live on the outskirts of Baltimore the idea of like otherness did not really exist for me in my my years of growing up it was more about critiquing each other and you know things like how you know how people kept their house or you know or who went to church and who
didn't so my reality was not based on like comparative uh comparative uh understanding of other non-black people and so moving into New York and although I had like a lot of experience with you know tra traveling and being a family that travels I never really thought about my culture as a black person as it compares to other things because I was seeing products of of of accomplishment happening around me so my work as you know as people see it is really based on my personal experience of being a
black person exposed to certain things and so a lot of my work is really not about at the idea of Joy per se is about normaly that's transferred to the idea of Joy because the work is is being seen as something of an anomaly when you think about what's being made in the art world so the idea of joy is something that I'm not saying that my work doesn't project but I think that normaly for most people who are like me joy is something that you have to take it's not something that's given and so wh
en you hear about my work in Black Joy yes it's being taken is not something that's being offered and so when you look at my work it's political in a way that you think about Blackness because I purposely decided from graduate school that I'm going to make the work that I'm making and that's why you see my work that's created is this whole idea of Joy or black Joy but it's really just me wanting to mirror my experience and my my community is the way I feel and the way that I experience them in m
y work so um that said I'm going to move right into the work um so I want to start with uh the idea of media so you know growing up I always thought about media in a representation of black uh the figure in media was always very complicated to me because I enjoyed some of the kind of the representation and exaggeration of the black characteristics that would exist on TV it happens now it happens before there are people who actually mirror some of the things that you see on TV in real life and th
ere's always like this conversation about stigma about different forms of like exaggeration and things that we as black people experience in our own community and sometimes we see it mirrored on television and so my work really kind kind of came out of that kind kind of came out of that idea um starting like right after graduate school I was thinking about TV I was thinking about the way uh black people represent are represented in media and the way we represent ourselves and those two things to
me are very interesting because I actually like to see forms of exaggeration of black characterization on TV it's something that within the Black Culture we laugh about we talk about in a very particular way and so I became really interested and fixated on that so at one point in 2010 I started looking at all sitcoms and shows that I was I grew up on um and looking at it more critically because you know at that point I went through Columbia I went through the critical theory I started thinking
about representation from a very analytical way from a very uh aesthetic aesthetic way thinking about as it relate to our history and the representation of the black image and just the idea of media and media influence and I started really thinking about the nuances of representation with the black figure and so this particular piece is called uh box head and so it kind of came out of this idea of the talking head and thinking about representation on the media I don't know if people most remembe
r but in Baltimore is where uh opra Winfrey got her first start as a anchor and she's also one of the first anchors to wear afro and the idea of representation or black representation on the media is so profound and so critical and also so um visceral the way that people actually respond to it and um and so I really started thinking about it and even as an artist now when I'm looking at like a news like I have a lot of humor when I'm thinking about my work and sometimes when I'm looking at news
anchors on TV I'm looking at their accessories I'm like why she got this necklace on and this all this like statement jewelry she's doing the the weather why she doing all that you know I think about the Aesthetics of certain things when I think about representation and it plays a really major part in the way I construct images that even mirror those things or project those things out or amplify those things and so for me the talking head sculptur really talked about kind of angularity of the wa
y that we present ourselves because I think that we're are really as black people we're we're very involved in symmetry we always think about like Parts in the middle of our head how they have to be a certain way or the braid has to be the same on this side as that side is an idea that very mathematical when you think about the culture that we represent and so I started to think about that in a very analytical way and so these sculptures in the cubis structure that I've started to uh form in 200
9 2008 was really based on my interest as a black American and the idea of African sculpture how to kind of push it forward to talk about like popular culture traditional African forms and kind of talk about uh um um art history so um the Box heads became part of my show at Jack Tilton in 2 20 20 2012 it was called live and in color and it was really um highlighting the amplification of the black of the black figure in media and so all the images that I made that related to that theme were reall
y like very brightly colored and I actually used the color balance of the color bar to um to create the work so the color bar and the colors that existed within the color bar was the structure that I use to compose all the images the only to tones that I did not use that were uh added were the tones the brown tones of the of the skin everything else were mostly the colors that exist during the color bar um um structure uh for TV um so a lot of these things were like really I was looking at shows
that I grew up on like I grew up in the 70s 80s I I watch shows like what's happening Good Times um The Jeffersons uh Different Strokes you know like I had no in my time growing up representation was not something that was uh I felt denied I felt like it was a beginning of seeing differentness in within Black Culture and thinking about what I experien personally being mirrored and also being interpreted through television so being a grownup now and being an artist now I went back to those place
s and watched these things on YouTube looked at them very carefully looked at some of the characteristics of the representation of the figures and realized how American it was to me I felt like when I start looking at cinema and start looking at different things that you start to compare africanism and American americanism I saw a very particular reference and fractured of africanism within Black Culture in a very unique way that's very influential and for me that gave me a whole sense of motiva
tion to really talk about the idea that even within this kind of transition you cannot really deny either one you know and so for me it actually released me out of this idea of representing or the idea of representing my work is really more about what I care about and what I want people to see when it relates to Black Culture from a global standpoint so I actually look at my work solely um as an aesthetic uh exercise because I believe that aesthetic aestheticizing Blackness is very also very imp
ortant because there's elements within the culture that that are very influential and we don't really think about it when we think about art you know and even when we're in shows as artists A lot of times if you read read the labels they never talk about the aesthetic principles of our work and so for me it's important to for me to really stress this in my work because not only my work relates to other non- aesthetic issues I think about aesthetic Aesthetics when I'm making everything in my stud
io because when you go do an academic experience and you learn the basic principles of making work you cannot unknow those things but the way that you present those things in art is something that you have to as a black person you have to be very deliberate in making sure that the work is framed that people can understand that you're not only interested in a subject or a theme or an idea you're also interested in presenting an object that is comparable to any other object being made and put in t
he museum so that's my interest as an artist this is another version of uh the work within um that series um this is part of an exhibition um at Pioneer works if anyone knows that space that's in Red Hook I was invited to do a piece there I I continued that was in 2020 2016 I was invited to do an installation in the museum I mean in the space and for that for that installation I really just thought about um the ideas of of Television media in a very different way I started to think about the mat
erial as the ingredients to build the body of work so these particular pieces are called uh constellation color bar constellation and I started to fuse because when I think about Black Culture I think about color you know color is such a significant part I think of Black Culture when you think about all the things that represent the way we step out of the house you know like if you grew up in like a southern baptist format you follow color all the time it was a you wear certain colors on a certa
in certain days what whatever reason I grew up in a family with mostly uh strong women um I as a kid we would drive around to numerous malls to find the right stockings to go with the right dress because it had to be a certain blue to go with a certain blue dress and they would call each other and say girl if you at the mall um they would show each other they would and my family women would come to each other's houses with their outfit and say if you're going out to the mall today I need this an
d so if you can find something to match this let me know and my mom and her sister would call each other from outside in the mall and say I found those that that shirt you were looking for of that royal blue is here I found those tights this tone of blue I grew up in a space where color was very significant to representation if it was a day that you were in church and you had to wear a white shirt and a black skirt you cannot wear off-white shirt it had to be a white shirt if it wasn't it was of
f-white they be talking about you you know what I'm saying it had to be white so the idea of color became very prominent in the way that I started looking at art and looking at uh representation as a as a person so it really seeped into the way I started making art because I was very aware of tones and certain things that tones did because I was brought up in a space where colors represented certain celebrations so in these works I uh infused different representations of things that I also was v
ery interested in and media and a cover of the magazine Jet Magazine pref uh or TV guy and magazine and these but they were also uh images that represented um I guess main cast figures who were black and so the works in this particular uh body of of Works um really was more about the explosion of color it was about the explosion of the personalities that existed and I you know in my work I always think about things that I care about and things that I think that are important and you sometimes I
don't have evidence how they affect people but I had this really interesting conversation one time with um someone who told me a non-black person told me that when they were a kid they were forbidden to watch moisha and I laughed I was like why why would you my parents would not let me watch moisha I was like that show with Brandy but that but but that really made me more aware of like the influence that black representation has on T on people on TV and that there are parents who believe that a
starring cast of of black people can have a negative effect on their non-black kid and so for me I thought that was really interesting because I know it has an effect on me but I'm also I also understand the idea of media representation versus reality and so I believe as a black person that a lot of representation of Black Culture presented in media is a large influence in the way that people understand black culture even if it's misinformation and so my work is really highlighting the things th
at I feel are very important for people to understand when it comes to the Aesthetics of black culture and the representation of it through ART so these Works uh which are colar constellation were were part of an installation at Pioneer this particular work was coming from my show Jack Tilton um it was called pilot it was you know when I was looking through a lot of images on YouTube of different shows I was looking at I was looking at like again like some of these shows I noticed that a lot of
the formulaic structure which exists throughout all television was happening in a lot of the shows that I watch growing up and I realized this is the reason why I may feel more empowered about looking at myself as a black person and also understanding the complexity and the diversity within Black Culture but also I realized the idea that archetypes were being created when I look at older shows from the 70s and 80s I realized that was the beginning of archetypes that represented this idea of amer
icanism with Black Culture so I would look at certain shows and see similar hair styles on some of the kids I will see certain things that were very important so this par these particular works that are um part of this particular series of collages these are all collage fabric cardboard um shelf liner this is like a composite of a a bunch of different characters this could be uh Rudy this could be D this could be many different characters from different sitcom where the little sassy girl sister
who um told people how how it is you know and for me I created this these images as a way of talking about the power of representation but also the the the power we have as AR artists to create alternative representations um through our understanding of how media works and so this word kind of came out of kind of like stretching my I try to I try to to to Really Flex my uh my imagination and my creative muscle when I'm making work I Believe In the words of you know like um one person that I love
uh B hooks she said you know it's not just about telling it like it is it's also about presenting other ideas for people to think about reflect on and I think that we have the power to do these things too and I believe that with my work I I think about the future I think about the future generations and what I want to leave behind for them to see this particular image also is also looking at the form of uh black gay representation on television and how you know it's presented in many different
ways as this kind of comic relief structure that also Al um is Empower empowering some way because usually those characters are the one who tell people off they're the ones who have the most attitude is a whole other thing that happens that they're able to do from this kind of persona image that's that they are able to um exist within within the you know the confines of media but also they leave a lot of they leave a great impression on communities they leave a great impressions on the ideas rel
ating to uh gender there and we know it when we see it like we I think in our culture when we see characters like this on TV or character we talk about this at home like we know what these characters are we understand we have relatives like this is if we exist in this space um where we we uh look at these look at these individuals as powerful figures in my community and where I grew up um and so when I'm making work and I'm presenting work I'm thinking about what I want to put in the world and w
hat I how I want to think about um iconic Muses that exist in the art and will exists Beyond me so this particular character is coming from um uh men on films and so this is a very particular scene that I use as a reference but this reference is very much common in a lot of Designing Women um you think about all these different shows they you know the characters exist another image I always think about this too when you look at like reality shows when they first come on all of the singers most o
f the singers are black women they all sound good but as black people know they're going to cancel each other out before the end of the season and only one is going to be left and we know this in Black Culture other nonblack people don't even know this we know when we watch American Idol and it's like 10 black women singing we know that only one of those women going to be left because if it was just all of them on the stage it would just be amazing but it can't be so we know these things so thes
e are things that again these are things that I know and I know within the culture and we talk about and I present it in my work and I don't have explanation for it I don't have like a like a script for it I just present it because these are things that I know are important for people to see and I put it in my work and so this image um sing it like you mean it is something that that has a long a long history is a kind of a side note a family thing but that's kind of where the title came from the
re's other images from a television Still Still that I kind of reworked um this is also this is from Good Burger you guys know good burger um this is from a uh a pacman commercial um black panther Pac Pac-Man commercial from the 80s it's a little kid with like a little B Beret he was eating Pac-Man cereal this was a presentation live um it was called on it was at Pioneer Works um it was a presentation where there were 13 uh stages where um each setup um was a stage of perform of performers and i
t it was created as a thare uh of infomercials so the people that I invited to participate they most of them were not performers they were people with like very unique personalities that I felt work really well for what I needed and I just think that just the basic um natural U personalities that I feel we possess sell a lot of stuff like a lot of things that are sold in the country in America when it comes to items are represented by black figures a lot of the things like if you want to sell cl
eaning agent it's like a black woman talking about how s how you can clean it this clean so good blah blah blah you know if you if it's a certain type of food that's a fast food a black wom talking about how good it tastes or if it's a pair of sneakers or something like that is a black athlete talking about it it's you know and it it goes way back to like the writing of the writings and and uh the documentation of the the the representation of black imagery on objects in America and around the w
orld to sell products and it exists now and within our culture we understand these things and so this work is really highlighting the influence um of that and so this performance which was live happened in the gallery everyone was miked up I had a mixer so I mixed everyone's voices together and separated them but it sound like you walking through a d in like a big Marketplace and so you can hear all these different people trying to sell things I created an object that was Anonymous object that h
ad a name on it and so the performers were not they didn't rehearse I just GED in the product that box the Box had a name on it they had to sell it and that was the performance and so um this is another image of it these are some steals from the performances this is the performance how you do that your product to the next level and let's face it your basic the we've been waiting all this time it's extra three installments two 99 the special is only here today for $2.99 three easy installments an
d if that doesn't work we'll package it anyway for you but you're going to get more for Less we'll make sure that the prings you haven't heard about extra you got to start listening start paying attention people are talking about extra I have everything I have three but now I only have one so what's better about one of a kind than three tell me everything I mean there's three ones of a kind three kinds I don't care about the the weight I've G colorful isn't a secret it is power I can use my oh h
ey so new improve is this magical box that you can just place anywhere you want and it does whatever you want for it I mean last time I was trying to cook and you know I in the room I was in the room while they made even better than before are you serious I mean everything was great great everything was just great and then I did not know that yeah I was I was with [Music] theat 100 2727 to get extra to get tickets to extra if you have extra tickets and you and you want to give them away you need
to call me cuz I will sell them on your behalf cuz everybody everything yeah I know you had you had the Barbe Everyone likes you know you like Moret we like more fet absolutely my life changed once I got more and I wouldn't be here if I didn't tasty are you hungry gosh I'm so hungry so I we're going to get the chef on and we're going to get you um a little bit of knowledge on recipes on things that we can do but is it filled with sugar well that's how I feel like you know it's like you don't [M
usic] [Music] really I love that performance it was great uh you know sometimes things that you like could be joyful you know and that particular performance performance and this is his excerpt the performance was you know liveaction in-person performance that's just kind of a condensed version of that um actual happening um at the at Pioneer um that was also part of installation this other room was a meditation room where the color bar um audio was uh at a pitch that was more of a meditation pi
tch and the image in the far back part of the room was um see hold up it was an image of uhit minut it's not going wait a minute it's not going oh the arrow is not going with this particular image right here I'll get to the next image but this particular meditation room was using the color the color bar audio is a form of relaxation but on the far far wall there was an instulation in the sculpture of nightlights and the NightLight images um that were on the sculpture was a portrait of Miss Cleo
and I if you guys know who Miss Miss Cleo is but Miss Cleo was a h a a woman from Florida a native from Florida who adopted a Caribbean accent to tell people their fortune and um she was very big uh I grew up with that in the 80s she was very prominent in the 80s um that she later found out when she wanted to go solo that she did not own Miss Cleo as the image representation um and I thought that was really interesting because she tried to do something she tried to take Miss Cleo on the road and
she was not able to so this particular piece was like homage to Miss Cleo that she actually passed away during the time of this actual opening uh this show was up um I think 2018 2017 um but that was I'm trying to go to the next image yeah I don't know why it's not going but that was kind of like the break between media yeah oh yeah that was you do that so that was like the break for me in in installation because everything else was very animated very active it was really more about um particip
ating this was more like the kind of wind down part of like uh just decompressing and really understanding and meditating on representation as it related to the projection of the image of media and Miss Cleo I felt was a perfect example of this idea of spirituality being projected through media you know the idea of a black woman guiding you on your life experience someone you've never met and the fact that have her having a caribbeanness about her this head wrap this kind of ancestral uh represe
ntation uh made her seem more authentic and to me I thought it was funny I grew up laughing at it and um and it also became like a tagline like you better call Miss Cleo or you know became like this thing that happened within the culture so for me as an artist a lot of things that I that I make work about or really just going back in it now thinking about it now as an academic thinking about it now as a a person who thinks critically about the influences about how do we get to where we are how I
am what I am now you know media is a big contributor to representation in the way that we see ourselves right now and some things that you think were very dismissive in media and things that you watch as a kid are some of the con the the biggest contributors to to self-representation in the way you feel in the way you feel empowered or less empowered and so that that this particular body of work was really focused on that and I really thought about that and this particular series um called lamp
ing and it was really this it kind of went the media rep the whole installation went from this idea of the output of media and the influence of selling ideas and belief systems and things like that which was the performance and then the the room of meditation was really trying to understand the representation from a more spiritual level if you can think about media in that way and then these particular uh objects that were the were these lamp sculptures that illuminated were really more about th
e idea of actually knowing um these things understanding these things for what they are and you know because media you you're not really going to change media because media is designed to sell things so the idea of understanding media is thinking critically about things that you see in media that's the only thing you really can change you only thing you really can change about what you see is understanding those things to be true or false and that's the only thing you really can teach people you
can't teach people to um like to not look at Media or to not be exposed to ads like that's impossible there's things that are all around us that we're looking at from our you know from um not even directly just from uh our peripheral view we're looking at things and it's impossible for us to really say that we only see things from one particular place we're looking and seeing things from all around all the time so these particular figures I call lamping are more like luminaries and so these par
ticular representation are mostly uh figures that are female and U again like I was saying before I have a large family of mostly women and they anybody that know me know that they rule if they're around my family the aunt my aunts are very strong U figures and this was directly influenced by them because when they come around they really talk about the past which most people and most families black and white a lot of the women are the ones who carry families history they come around together th
ey talk about like childhood they talk about different people who they grew up with they kind of carry this other whole history that I always love to hear even if I heard it more than one time I'll listen to it over and over again I never say I heard this before or you said this before I just let them say it over and over again because I like the girlish uh mannerisms and laughter that happen when people who mature talk about their history it it really uh enlightens me in a very interesting way
and really inspired me so these piece these particular pieces are based on that um just a closeup this is also you know getting into another series looking at emojis and this particular series kind of started like in 2018 2019 is when uh variations of tones of emojis actually started to exist it did not exist this work was really more timely before I made this work right before I made this work there was only one emoji color what happened is the influence of uh of Blackness made them add more co
lor that's what happened people just don't add other colors of emojis if people aren't using them the reason why is because black people using internet started making their own and they started actually doing things that were not monetized and so as a as a way to keep uh black uh viewership and participation they Incorporated other tones to keep people interested in using the platform and for me I really thought about that as a really interesting media uh Advantage um to think about in art so th
ese particular emojis I start to think about representation and portraiture and so these were really uh like thinking about language thinking about hieroglyphics I started putting two types of emojis together to represent figures in cultural uh history that I thought these two images kind of represent it this one was Whitney this was n great Tyson I mean if you see it you know it yeah it's like you just know it you know um and when I made this people were not feeling they were like what are you
talking about what is this mess and you know sometimes as artists you just got to make what you make you know like everything does not have to be successful to everybody when you make stuff I make many different types of things and I have to make it like it's not like it's like I'm not making a like I'm not asking people do you think I should make this I'm just making it to get it out of my system so I can make other things and sometimes you have to make certain things in order to get to other t
hings and so that's how I work as an artist I don't think of anything that I'm making as being successful or not successful I think it's all about getting things out so you can make space for more things and so this particular series was really based on me looking at an opportunity to talk about a contemporary topic through Visual culture and so these Works kind of came out of that and moving to like the the kind of more current um works I really I spent time during you know over the pandemic ag
ain looking back at like movie trailers and thinking about TV and thinking about things that again uh I thought represented represented me and so I started to kind of think about movies stills and media and things that appeared in like screen captures of movies and I don't know if you guys ever noticed like in '90s movies it's always like a scene where people walking past the billboard I don't know why it's like that's how they show that you're in like an urban street it's like someone beating o
n a drum outside like a plastic bucket and then they're walking past like a like a walkway billboard of a old movie that existed before the movie that was made to tell you that things don't change it's really that's what that's what they're trying to tell you when you see an old movie of a current topic or current theme and you see an old poster on the wall it's really saying things change but they stay the same and so it's like certain language that in film because film is also something I stud
ied at Colombia I start to really understand the way film also can really exploit certain understandings and lack of understanding of framing ideas that are real and made up so this particular series I you know kind of Infuse different things and so Soul Plane I don't know if people saw that but everyone should see Soul Plane it's not a good movie so don't look it for that for that reason but Snoop Dogg is in it and Mo'Nique so you can't lose with those two people in it so um this particular pai
nting was more of kind of representing this idea of like uh what is taste you know what is valued um those things I think I present a lot of things that may not be valued by other people but they're things that are valued by me and I remember a really interesting conversation um I had with my mother about tala Perry which I don't really watch only I watched it with her but she said to me um when there was at home with her she says uh you want to watch Halal Perry and I said not really she said u
h why I I was like I just don't want to watch she was like why I was like I'm just not into it she was like why do you think he's like too exaggerated do you think he's she start giving me all the thing that she thought that I thought that why I didn't want to watch it and I was like yeah that's it and she said well I like it huh that what she said she said well I like it and that's all that mattered you know so I thought so so I think about those when I'm making my work like the idea of being a
bout what you like and you know in the influence of knowing difference when you are at certain spaces and honestly you know when you think about people in different cultural communities they really don't they they really don't start to think about what they're missing until they start to engage with other communities that they realize have more opportunity or have more access that's when we really start to really think about what we're being denied and so without that we usually are able to thri
ve in our communities in a way that we feel successful and so this particular work right now that I'm showing um they call Motion Picture paintings were really more about composits of ideas that related to cinema as I imagine them to be and presented them as in an artwork this is uh SWA sister with attitude this also is a very important uh painting for me because it really highlights a very important uh um series that was on PBS that was taken off of CBS by uh during the Nixon administration bec
ause of its political uh exposure and criticism of the presidency at the time this particular show called Mr Soul was a show that was really highly promoted on PBS it was a show that highlighted not only uh entertainment music poetry dance it um also brought in political activists to talk about things that were on topic within the community it was in Harlem it was a very popular show I think it was 59 episodes you should look at it on um Amazon Prime you will not regret it um the show was very a
mazing it was like a variety show um in New York at a very particular time and the way that it was taken off is that uh they had lobbyists join the board at PBS and when they took over um and numbers on PBS they decided that you know this show is no longer relevant because civil rights had been successful which was funny but anyway um you should look at the show Mr Soul this is another work again kind of looking at uh TV looking at sitcoms compositing images collectively to create an image and s
o you know again you know this particular by the way kind of going back to p PBS is a station I really look at a lot think about critically because it it it start off as a very political station it has some politics now but it's you know become like Mo many networks more corporate but um Sesame Street which most people don't know was created for inner city kids it was considered for it was created primarily if not exclusively to to heighten the literacy of black and brown kids in New York City i
t was created for that reason that's why the beginning cast of Sesame Street had a heavy representation of of diversity within the cast and when you watch Soul the documentary you will hear some of the you will actually hear the Sesame Street theme song played by a jazz musician prior to being Sesame Street so there's a lot of things that you will see watching this this show Mr Soul you will see the influence of this show on other shows that are educationally based um in uh on PBS and so this be
came the influence of this particular body of work is it was called uh and friends and um I kind of reimagine the idea of each kid had their own puppet and what would that exist at you know what that what would that look like I don't really make comparative things I'm not really concerned with how other people see um how I represent the work and the images as it relates to Blackness I'm in my whole like black little world when I'm making things and I'm thinking about the future of representation
for other kids and other people to look at my work in the future and the idea of representing figures that are primarily black within uh the context of my work does not is not exclusionary it's really to me I feel like it's evening things I feel like it's actually I feel like it's actually balancing things that were imbalanced and the reason why I make these things is because they are not out there and when they become um more dominant as in the way that people look at media and representation
across the board maybe I'll make something else but until then I feel that these images are very important to really think about and these are things that I ponder about or or have to think hard about I think about what I don't see and then I make what I don't see so it's not even about like me trying to be clever or me try to do something that I think is smart I'm making things that I don't see because I know there's a place for them and I know there are people who want to receive these types o
f things in their space and it's I've been fortunate enough to have uh support from collectors who also believe that these things are important thank you are there any questions I just wanted to ask you oh thanks um I just wanted to ask so given the history of this country and generational trauma do you feel like your work improves your own personal mental health when you're feeling the pressure of like Western colonialized America of course I mean I think that art could be therapeutic for so ma
ny people and I believe that you know as an artist when I go into my studio you know first of as a black person you're already vulnerable when you walk out of your space anything can happen to me I don't care if I'm a famous artist I could leave out of my studio I could be falsely accused of doing something that I didn't do which has happened to many people that I know I could be arrested I could be shot by someone within the community or outside so vulnerability is something that is just obviou
s for most black people so in my studio is My Sanctuary so I'm not going to bring anything in my studio that's not going to make me feel empowered and make me feel like I'm the center of the world so my work is really bringing back this idea of centering yourself even in your imagination because that's the most important part when you think about who we are as as humans when imagination is gone you're truly defeated you know and when you think about colonialism colonialism has most empowered whe
n people can no longer imagine themselves outside of the conditions that in which they live in and so for me I know that the work that I make and the way it's projected into the world creates an effect of empowerment to communities and individuals that I'm trying to connect witho hi can I oh hi thank you so much this is wonderful um and I I feel in my body just like vibrating from all the things you talked about Miss Cleo and soul PL so thank you just for allowing us to like walk through that an
d experience it I'm just curious about like what you're watching or listening to right now like what's your relationship with media in this moment um or like television movies yeah television movies social media I mean something that struck me about what you shared is that so many of these things were part of not mono culture but like moments when so many of us were watching the same things and the this the thing the moment on TV would happen at the same time and we'd be talking about it on Mond
ay because it happened on Saturday or Sunday so like just what are you watching right now and how are you watching how are you listening that's what I'm curious about thank you well music- wise I listen to a lot of things things um I'm not really into um well I listen to Everything I listen to you know club music rap music uh Jazz you know dep you know I'll go to my studio I'll usually listen to R&B when I first come in take you know I'm drinking my coffee I might turn up to a little bit more yo
u know something on by the end of the middle of the day by six o'clock I'm listening to some clubhouse music or something where when people start coming to my studio to hang out um media wise I don't want I I don't watch anything where black people are not empowered I don't watch any movie where black people are being arrested or shot or being uh like objectified or I don't watch that it is not that it's not happening but TV for other people is an escape for black people going to the museum or l
ooking at TV is about reminding you of the trauma that already exists and you already know about it so the idea of going a museum was created for leisurely activities it was created for people who want to go out and look at Art and then go have lunch unfortunate side of the museum structure because there's so much limitations of what black people can show and where when we are in shows it's usually a darker theme a theme that talks about trauma a theme that talks about some level of of being um
like oppressed and for me that's not what my experience what I want to experience going to a museum it's just not what I want to experience not that other artists should make it and think and filmmaker shouldn't make these things they can make whatever they want but I also have the choice to decide if I want to go into that space what I think is a great show is Lovecraft country I think it's like one of the best and that's why they took it off that's why they only gave one season because it's su
ch a compelling uh series that really captures all the things that we think about as black people and the way that we imagine ourselves to be and the power that we take was presented in that show and that's the reason why it was not brought it back again and that's the difference when things are not when things are for us the chances of them being reoccurring are rare when things are made to describe us to other people they usually last longer you know so there's certain shows that are for us an
d I know certain shows that I watch that are speaking to me directly and there are certain shows that I know are for other people to understand me or the idea of it so those type of shows I don't watch one more question I first just want to say thank you so much for your presentation um I really appreciate it because I'm not from Baltimore but I'm from Maryland and I had to drive through Baltimore every day to get to talson where I went to high school so it kind of really hit home for me like gr
owing up in that environment and on that same note when it comes to impact like uh bringing black joy into the community specifically into the city of Baltimore I she gave all of like the many accomplishments that you've been able to achieve over the past few years and throughout your career but ultimately what type of impact are you aiming to leave on your community specifically well I one thing I learned a lot about looking at cities like Baltimore and Detroit and places where they're are deal
ing with challenges economic challenges first you have to really understand that those challenges are things that are imposed those are not in any way um representations of how people want to live that's number one number two I remember coming to baltim driving through Baltimore living in New York I moved to New York uh 1993 I remember visiting Baltimore one time and I was driving in the car with my mother you know who you know she works in most black people in Baltimore work for the state the g
overnment um or the city that's pretty much the economic structure of the city um and I remember we were driving through the city and the houses were kind of you know we drove through this neighborhood and it was boarded up and I was like oh man look all this look all this house brought up it's crazy my mother said to me don't be talking about my city they be like you moveed to New York you come in here looking all at these buildings um don't be looking at this don't come don't come home you kno
w don't come home and I understand that because we look at movies like History Channel we look at Rome and look at all those ruins and we look at all these other European countries where things are abandoned and we see these Recaps of what was so majestically happening in these buildings and how amazing things that happened in these buildings thousands of years ago and we don't look at those building when we go to Rome or Italy or Florence and say oh my God look at these buildings look at where
these people how they live in no we look at these buildings because the framing of it made these buildings come to life and the reason why we look at city like balore and Detroit as cities that are stressed in poverty is because we don't realize that people live there the histories were made famous people lived in these houses people who accomplished things people who had families people who made things happen in cities and that's how we need to start looking at cities like Baltimore and Detroit
a nothing wrong with the houses things happen people migrate people move around opportunities change people move to the suburbs because in Baltimore the reason why people live in the county versus the city because it's cheaper for taxes to live in the county in Baltimore there's more incentives to live out of the city to live in Baltimore the same with New York that's why people are moving from outside of New York back into Brooklyn there is there are things that are happening that are really p
olitical that people don't understand when you look at cities like Baltimore and Detroit they these things happen so the prices of property can go down so corporations can come in and buy a blocks and build what they want so when you think about cities like Baltimore and places where violence is rapid and things that are happening you have to look at the systemic structure of how things are built John Hopkins would not be in Baltimore if Baltimore was that dangerous University of Maryland would
not be in the heart of Baltimore city if it was that dangerous they're not in the county they're in the city and there's a reason why there's more money in the city than it is in the county when you think about economy so that's very important to think about when you think about cities like Baltimore and Detroit it's so much more complicated than an abandoned house or people getting shot because when I go to Baltimore my my family is pretty regular you know my family is not the wire my family is
a regular black family that work for the state and the government they send out porch we eat crabs we talk about different things and to me that's what my history of Baltimore is and I think when I go to Detroit which I was a couple of days ago that's what I experienced in Detroit regardless of the abandoned houses that I saw driving around and to me that's really important for us to realize when we go into cities like that and we look at blocks that are abandoned realize that history happened
there people live there important people live there and no longer exist because of systemic structures that have set in place for certain people and that's why I created the nonprofit that I created because I believe that someone has to do it and I love doing it so I love the idea of being an artist who is somewhat successful and being able to create spaces for other people in my hometown who can benefit from the things that I've achieved as an artist thank you thank you thank [Applause] you
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