 Hello everybody. Welcome to the Brooklyn Museum. On behalf of Arnold Lehmann, our director here, and Radhia Harper, our Vice Director for Education and Program Development, we are so, so, so happy to be hosting this talk between Mickalene Thomas, Carrie Wayne, May Wiens, and our curator of contemporary art here, Eugene Sizer. Anybody else who's excited about this? This first solo exhibition is on view here at the Brooklyn Museum. It's called Origin of the Universe. If you haven't seen it yet, I've already made you guys a video about how they use their work to challenge conventional ideas of beauty, race, and gender. Now before I introduce these fabulous artists, I want to point out this little, this camera, do you want to pick this up? So I don't know how familiar you guys are with the programming we've done for Mickalene Thomas, but we've done a lot of things. And we have one last program after this program tonight to really talk about her work and what the next step is. So this is going to be a round table that's entitled The Black Female Body. And we're going to be exploring such questions as how is a black female body being idealized and misread and visual culture? And how might these tendencies affect black women today? And that's going to be moderated by a deviless who's right here in the front row. So please check that out. That's going to be next Saturday, right here in the same space at 2 p.m. So now, Mickalene Thomas. Ms. Mickalene Thomas was born in Camden, New Jersey. She received a BFA in painting from Pratt Institute and her MFA in painting from Yale University, working primarily in painting, collage, and photography. Her work addresses art history, femininity, and notions of beauty, particularly in relation to African American women. Her work has been collected by many major institutions, including the MoMA, the National Portrait Gallery, right here at the Brooklyn Museum, and many others. And she has been exhibited extensively in both solo and group exhibitions. Her first solo museum exhibition, Origin of the Universe, was organized by the Santa Monica Museum of Art, and has been greatly expanded for its presentation here at the Brooklyn Museum. And this is only going to be on view until January the 20th. So come back and see it, because you don't have much longer. Okay, that's it. A fully illustrated catalog, the first monograph on Ms. Mickalene Thomas, is available downstairs at the shop. Currently, in addition to the show we have here, her work can also be seen in a solo exhibition at the ICA, the Institute of Contemporary Art, in Boston. And that's on view until April 7th. Okay, I know the introduction is a little long, but we want to make sure to give people their due credit and everything like that, right? Now to Ms. Carrie May Wings. Carrie May Wings, Carrie May Wings invited, and MFA from the University of California, San Diego, and continue to her studies in a graduate program in folklore at the University of California Berkeley. Working across a variety of media, primarily photography and video, her work is invested in storytelling, and the ways in which history, art history, community, and identity impact our lived experiences and the stories we tell. Her work is represented in the collections of many major institutions, including the MoMA, the MET, the Whitney, and right here at the Brooklyn Museum, and that's just to name a few locally. And she's been included in more than 150 solo and group exhibitions, both nationally and internationally. Most recently, she has been the subject of a major career retrospective, Carrie May Wings, three decades of photography and video, and that was organized by the First Center for the Visual Arts in National Tennessee, and it's on view until January 13th of this year. This year and next, exhibition will travel to Portland, to the Portland Art Museum, the Cleveland Museum of Art, and the Canter Center for Visual Arts at Stanford, and will be on view at the Guggenheim from January 24th through April 23rd. So that's not too far away, go check that out. It will be accompanied by a full color illustrated catalog published by the Yale University Press with essays by leading and emerging scholars. Ms. Carrie May Wings has been the recipient of numerous awards and many prizes. Most recently, in November of 2012, she was among five American artists awarded the Medal of Arts by the United States State Department for her contributions to the advancement of art and diplomacy. Can we give her a round of applause for this Dean Curator up ahead of her exhibition which showcases the work under the radar of the artist. Here they are, Mickalene Thomas, Carrie May Wings, Carrie May Wings. I wanted to tell you how this conversation came about, and the idea came from remarks made by Mickalene in a 2011 interview in Bomb Magazine. She, you, had just moved to Portland, Oregon in the early 90s, where you were going to school studying free law and theater, and you're hanging out with musicians and artists, and you had just started to make art yourself. And then you said, and then I went to see the show of Carrie May Wings' photography at the Portland Art Museum, and that was just an incredibly important experience for me in getting started as an artist. So could you tell us a little bit about seeing the show, that experience, and what it meant to you? Well, yeah, it was I believe 1994. I went to the show because actually a friend of mine at that time was, he's a photographer who's taken a photo class and said, you have to see this work. It's amazing. And so I went with him to the exhibition and was just inspired and sort of overwhelmed with familiarity of myself. It was the first time seeing images that called home. I was living in Portland for a number of years, or away from my family, and these images were so poignant and direct, and they felt like they were telling my story. Do you want me to show some images? Yeah, sure. And I think I saw the show probably like five or six times. I kept going back to the show and immediately learned as much as I could about Carrie May Wings, you know, she went to school in California and just read some books about who she was, and decided that at that time that I was going to make my own art, and went to the art store and got some really cheesy pastels, and actually... So these are mostly from Aimee Jocan and The Kitchen Table series. Yeah, these are all the ones that I saw that sort of really... One thing that I really responded to was the texts with these photographs, because they led to a sort of narrative and story, and they were signifiers to tell you the view of what was happening in the image, and I'm related to that. And the one that really struck me was the next one, I think, that's here. And so what I did, you can see here, here, I think that you're seeing this for the first time. That's actually an oil pastel that I did after seeing Carrie May Wings show. And I did these series of works on paper, all based from Carrie's work. And applied to Pratt Institute with them. You did? So how many... I did talk about 10 of them, and this is one of the slides that I could find, and remembered seeing this photograph and thinking, I'm going to try to interpret that as I saw it and would admit. And how I was feeling at that time living in Portland, sort of strange for my family. There was a lot going on between my relationship with my mother at the time, and just coming to terms with my own sexuality, my identity, and living in a predominantly white community, and dealing with my issues of beauty, and relating to that. And so this really spoke to me, and so I wanted to make an image of it. Friend, family friend, and mentor took me to your opening, Rahima Latif. And she introduced me to you at that opening, and I think she exchanged a conversation about how I saw your show, and how it, for me, changed my life. And I was thinking about, with that, would work, the power of work, how work can sort of, as an artist, why we make art, and how once you have these ideas and notions, and you're a creator in one space as your studio, but then you release it out into the world, and how it can really transform someone. So, you know, you always hear about if someone's sitting in front of a Rothfell, with that dust as someone for the hue of colors. I said in front of their photographs, and they're relaxing in front of a Rothfell. So, for me, it was that poignant and transformative of sort of me deciding to change my career, and not pursuing law, and becoming an artist. That's amazing. Yeah, so, and here I am today, sitting and talking about my first drawings, and it's basically a photograph. You know, I have to say that if it's possible, if it's possible, it's true that it's possible to have a certain kind of influence on someone like you, who is so absolutely extraordinary. Not yet then. I am. Completely. It's beyond flattery. It actually has very little to do with flattery. I think I'm humbled by it. And when I walked into your exhibition this evening, I was humbled by it. I was humbled by the power of the work, by the boldness of the work, by your ability to take this sort of sense of history painting, and these ideas about constructing images and bending it away, where you're completely playing the essence of yourself, and the magic of yourself, and the beauty of yourself, and the way that it spills over. I mean, the room was, oh, it's a character model. And so many guys, the power to make things happen, that you should say, ashe. Ashe. I mean, to sit here is phenomenal. I'm basking in love. Yeah. And it's, you know, some of my mother's friends here who know the story. There's, you know, one of the things that I find so amazing about the work, and I'm really thrilled to be here because I think that we have a ton of friends in the audience, people that we've known for years, supporters, friends, fellow artists, people who are making extraordinary things happen, making extraordinary work, who help us with our work, who make what we think possible of Eugene, who I've worked with for years, who have known for years, you have also known for years. So it's really a pleasure to be here. And I do really take this very humbly, because I think they're really a role, that our role in ways to, is to widen the path, is to make a way for those that are coming behind us. And in part, you know, one of the things that I really love about seeing the show is the role of Yamaha in the room. And the way in which she takes on a very particular space in the work. And I was hoping that actually you might talk a little bit about all of your mother in widening this path for you in making this particular kind of work possible. Yeah, that was a challenge, because that sort of space to navigate within that space is very personal. And it's personal, and it's very much a slippery slope, because you will uncover things about a person that you never knew, and that you learned, and you wish you didn't know. So you open this Pandora box, and you can't close it. And so you have to allow it to take its own course. And I think this film was, I don't like to consider it a homage to my mother, I think it's a celebration. It's a celebration of her own trajectory. From my viewpoint, my perception as not only a daughter, but a person looking at her life, and trying to comprehend who she is as a mother, a black woman, a lover, a divorcee, an abused woman, a drug addict, and looking at her and wanting to know who she is as a human being. Are you the only child? No, I'm black like one, but I do have one. I'd actually like to turn the conversation to you a bit, Kerry. We spoke a couple of weeks ago, and I, on the phone, I called Kerry and just wanted to chat a bit about this evening, and I said, mistakenly, in my evening, Mickalene Thomas, regard to as a role model. But I didn't say that. This was me speaking. And Kerry responded very strongly to the word role model, and I realized now that I will reframe my question. I was hoping that you would speak about your role models, how you got started. But now I was asking if perhaps you would tell us a little bit about influences. The road through the art world is not an easy one, and it necessitates talent and intelligence, which you obviously have, but also sometimes the help of other people and things and events. And I'm just wondering if you could tell us a little bit about that. I have some images also I could show. I don't know if they relate to inspirations, but there is a, you know, whether it's, you know, whether it's a sound detection or music, or you know, the last two weeks I've been completely absorbed by Rodriguez. I cannot get some music out of my head. But there is, you know, yes, there have been many influences. There have been many, you know, Lauren Simpson was one of my great influences, Mary Annemarie's meals, I'm really influenced. I'm sure no question it was a great influence. I mean, you know, I've just come from many, many different places. In terms of, you know, other artists that I've been really close with, you know, it's- Who was your Carrie Mae Wings? Who was your Carrie Mae Wings? I mean, I think that probably I didn't really have one in that way. But there was, I think, I think that Zoran and Hurston was very important for me as a young artist who gave me a sort of sense of possibility, a sense of scope and range. And it was probably in some kind of way really through my encounter with Zora and Zora's work that really helped me sort of tease out something that would become important in terms of the way I would work and think about work and think about artists in Red Forb or other states of being, right? You know, that it is that, I believe, you know, it's tangible, it's real, it's also a construction that is based on, you know, deep imagination. So Zora was very important to me, though, of an artist, of an artist that, you know, lingered with me and different ones do it at different times for other reasons. So, you know, I was looking at Gary Simmons' work this afternoon, really beautiful, those eraser paintings are just fabulous, you know. So there are many people that are on my radar. But I am interested in, you know, this idea of how one refers to the historical, refers to those who have come before, and these ideas about using kind of historical narrative, historical drama, historical painting to make, to make history photographs or history paintings. I think that was actually part of it was given to me by Denise Merrill. I think we have three of your images here. And this is, that's the series of not, you know, it's like not Monet's type. It's not Monet's type. It's not Monet's type. Right. There is, it's a series of five, actually. And of course, let's look at the, do you read it for us? It's standing on shaky ground. I pull this myself. Our critical study was no longer certain of the questions to be asked. It was clear that I was not Monet's type. And Picasso, who had a way with women, only used me after Jean never even considered me. But it could have been worse, I imagine, I think, at Pooning time. But I think, you know, the thing, I love that, you know, this, this, this. So how do you think about using Monet and your, I mean, I have a similar space, in a similar space, that, you know, these women aren't Monet's type, are Monet's type, are Corbett's type. Any of the men that I sort of pull from to reclaim a space. So for me, I'm interested in reclaiming that space and transforming it, as far as the image of how we see beauty. So are you, is this in any way an homage to? No, I don't think it's a, I think, I think it's, it's a discourse, it's a conversation. For me, it's a conversation to, to have people to create a dialogue with. And when they see images, and hopefully my goal is that, you know, they will never look at meditation in the same way after seeing this movie. Right, I think more than here though, you have to, you seem to be working, especially in the show with a very specific body, you know, 19th century iconic white male artist, Monet Corbett and Monet. And, and it does raise the question of what is, what is your enterprise? It's a conversation, but is it a friendly conversation? Is it a, is it an attempt to revise the canon? Is it, it doesn't have to be one or the other, I don't think it can be one or the other. I think to say that it is one versus the other is to sort of close down the conversation, because it's very open. And I think just like beauty itself is very complex, you know, we live in a very complex world where we, you know, the idea of beauty provides, you know, perceptual, you know, pleasure and satisfaction. What does that mean? You know, what is providing perceptual pleasure and satisfaction and images? And so for me, I'm taking these sort of iconic images and sort of reclaiming the, the space of how you would sort of see black women and beauty. Because in history, even though they had sort of their, sort of moment like La Deshaunet when it was created, that was a particular space for Monet. And reading it in our history now, it's, it's a new sort of idea to really think about what that painting means today. And to remake that painting as these three black women in the window of mama is to sort of transform the idea of these iconic images. What about you, Carrie? What was your, your impetus to making this particular series? Well, I mean, it's really sort of interesting because I think that, you know, I'm not sure, like, if we can, you know, like in a sort of sense of, sort of history painting, like, you know, reclaiming and the such. Because, because of a way, because of a way they're not really quote hours to claim. It simply, it simply is what it is. But, but I think that the part that I think is, is critical and really most interesting is that there is a way in which you can have, that you can begin to create alongside of that space, something that is equally dynamic and something equally powerful, equally charged and in a way which you don't normally see black women position. And so, and so for me, what the work has a lot to do with the work that motivates me, the thing that gets me up every morning as I was telling my girlfriend, dad, what was this morning? Was how do you negotiate this space where blackness and black women are not to be seen? I didn't do that. I didn't do that. Right? And that every morning I get up and I know that I have to deal with being an invisible being. Yeah. In my presence. I still don't do that. This is invisible to some people. And so, same space. This is 380 spaces. Yes. And that becomes the challenge of your everyday. Yeah. Is how do you assert that we have a right to be here? And not only do we have a right to be here, but our beauty is here and it's being simply denied. But we are struggling to say no. I won't allow you to strip me of my humanism in this space. Yeah. Not reclaiming it, reclaiming it. Okay. Yeah. And it's purposeful and it has really deep meaning. And so, you know, and I think that there's something really interesting and dynamic that's going on because I'm sort of thinking about these sort of saying things in the same sort of way and also thinking about the way in which that I had to come to grips with the fact that, you know, I am not an A.S. guy. I'm not. And if you didn't create any of this shit for me, to myself as an artist, is to make it for me. Is to make the space for me. And it becomes the most difficult thing that we do with the truest thing, the most oddest thing that I think that we do with our work. So, it seems to be simultaneously critique and active existence and celebration. Celebration is a strange word, but I understand what you mean. Celebration in that sense is strange to me. It's more about just trying to get close to the bone to being real. And then it's not so much a celebration, but rather a meaning of possibility and the breath of possibility. Because I think the way in which we are often looked at is through such a narrow band, such a small sliver of soul that becomes really impossible for the width and the breadth of you to really be seen and understood. And so that, I think, is the thing that gets me really excited about seeing the work that I've seen in contemporary by people like McLean and Hank Wilson and other people that are working in contemporary, Gary Simmons. I mean, they really, they really charge me with a great sense of possibility. It's really quite comfortable. So, in the future editions of the Art History, the guard here, our history survey, we will have Manet, Kerry May, and McLean together. Sounds like a nice show. Yeah, and you guys especially. Absolutely. And universe is just the wrong word, but run them side by side, please. Well, I mean, you know, there is a wonderful discourse that's going on. And I think that, you know, one of the things that happens when you allow for multiple voices and you allow for multiple possibilities. And I think, again, you start to get closer to the possibility of what is true. That's why I've chosen to be an artist, is to get closer to what is true to myself. Because, you know, making an artist an extension of yourself. You know, and you can only put what's true of yourself out there and to make it truly authentic. I wouldn't love these little rooms upstairs. But you're both so interested in interiors, and you use interiors as these, and often domestic interiors as, I think, almost a stage set for creating a narrative. And I was fascinated by that overlap in your work, as well as your interest in family or creating a sense of family and creating a sense of a narrative of drama within the confines of these small rooms. Can you talk about your mind release? Well, yeah, you're both drawn to the two interiors, and it's interesting. Similar, but slightly different way, I think. Perhaps the same. But, you know, your domestic interiors as a setting for your photo shoots and your actual creation of rooms. But so many things happen, or have the potential to happen within your rooms, within your interiors. And each, everything in the rooms seems to be so deliberately chosen. And, you know, people arrange, set up. You know, it's a totally interesting movie. You know, you think about, you know, I thought about this for a while, for, you know, for a few years, about the way in which women often work in interior spaces. That a lot of women work in interior spaces. And a lot of women work alone in interior spaces. And they create, sort of, you know, you know, spaces of domesticity. Often, I mean, many, many women, artists have done this from the paintings, photographers, so it's sort of, you know, I think that there's something about really the sort of ongoing examination of the place that we are the most familiar with. It has to do with a kind of a deconstruction and a problematizing and looking at and analyzing of the home space, which is the space that women are for the most part confined to. And you, right, to decorate, to play out, to fantasize around, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So, I mean, so I think that, you know, there's, there was a wonderful, wonderful exhibition, actually. I think maybe the Whitney a few years ago, maybe ten years ago, called Dirt and Domesticity. It was, you know, also looking at, you know, sort of like the deconstruction of family, family space, household space. So, I think that, you know, for me it also comes out of, out of that, out of, you know, this, and also out of the way of like looking very privately, you know, very privately and very much alone. For the most part, I use my own, you know, sort of ricketing cameras and I photograph in my living room and my kitchen and I did that for a long time. I haven't, actually, in a number of years, but I used to work that way very much. But, you know, the interior is, definitely relates to, you know, you know, being a woman and domestic, domesticity and sort of like that little sort of confined space. But for me it's that way of, you know, really understanding like nostalgia and memory and really thinking about when did that have come before me and created these spaces and how they created these spaces and the layer of history that is within those spaces that have come before me. You know, I was really, I'm really interested in sort of the fabrication of the space and how they're made and how they become sort of these artifice for signifiers of memory and storytelling and narrative and just perception of time and how we are, who we are, become individual through pictures, through fabrication of the materials. And I say that because, you know, my grandmother used to have a poster for furniture and sort of those ways of how you decide to decorate a space in sort of these formulas. But the wood paneling is always mentioned in terms of? Well, the wood paneling is, you know, when you think about sort of these fabricated spaces that I work out of from the late 50s and 60s and sort of when, you know, new materials have been introduced into, you know, construction. Wood vinyl. Yeah, wood vinyl and how, you know, was this idea of masking and layering or covering up a sort of wall. And once you pull that wall there may be some wallpaper behind it or, you know, or paint and layers of wall paper, which is this history of time of stories that people who've lived there before. So I'm interested in that. The spaces upstairs were all spaces, narrative spaces that were telling a story from the different models that I worked with. How I felt about them, leaving just sort of signifiers of pictures or addressed that they wore during the photo shoots or a wig that I used for the photo shoot, because my spaces are these faux spaces that are just put together for the photographs, you know, and they're not real, but they're meant to be looked at as real when you look at the images. They're very, it's really, you know, they're also tabloids, just thinking about, you know, theater and props and how we sort of think of performances and creating... Is it a background in theater? Oh, yeah. But it's, you know, it's about really capturing a particular time that I remember growing up in space, whether it was my grandmother's home or my mother's space. Well, they're beautifully articulated spaces. They really are. There was a woman walking past me. She was looking at like the cigarette in the ashtray, and she said, yes, yes, yes. And I was listening, I was listening to the A's, and she was doing this really wonderful, wonderful interview with Marcellus. And this play, it was all around the world. And they were asking about, you know, playing in different cultures. He said, you know, I can always get the understructure. I can always get the understructure. But learning them a lot of the line is much more complicated because that's where the culture is. You know? And so when she saw that cigarette in the ashtray, right, and she said, yes, yes. Because it means that residue is sort of the residue of time and space that someone was there. You know, it's the re-sort of walls. It's the footprint that I'm interested in that leads you from one moment to the next. That tells a whole different story. And so I'm interested in sort of those clues and connections. When you look at the streets, that every aspect in a room is contained by someone who is there. The record playing and the background. Or just, you know, a book that was open. Because I'm not interested in sort of having the spaces be as if they were going to be in a window or a window display. Because I want the viewer to feel that they're residing in this space or that they can. They work. Yeah. They work. It has a beautiful resonance. It really, really does a very, very, very power. You know, I was just, there's only one other thing that I wanted to ask you about. Because both of us are having major retrospectives right now. We're major exhibitions right now. I'm doing one. It's traveling around the moment. It closes next year. But it will be this time. So hopefully we'll see many of you there. But working on it was, I think, you know, I spent, but the last three years of my life working on this exhibition. It's worn me out. It's worn me out. So I wanted to ask about this exhibition and how this exhibition took shape. It's very good. How do you feel about what's here and what it means to you to have this exhibition at this point in your career? I think it's, it was very important for me to have it. And I think, you know, you know, I just want to back up a little because when I was inviting to do a show, the idea was to use works that were loaned from collectors. I think we talked about that. It was a traveling show, but how this show came about was initially we were going to do two separate shows. One at the Brooklyn Museum and the one at Santa Monica. And then we decided to... Well, we decided the Brooklyn Museum decided to take a show organized by Santa Monica, which consisted of 16 works, but because Mikalina is our hometown girl and a very important artist, we decided that we would enlarge the show greatly. And we did borrow about 50 collages and those were in those rooms. Then, of course, you made the floor installations and paintings and, you know, a lot of you worked the film about your mother for the exhibition. And the focus, as it was at Santa Monica's, of the article the past couple of years. But it really allowed us, I think, a window into your process and the way that you made it. Yeah, but for me, I don't think of this show as a retrospective or sort of an, I think, an artistic view, a sampling. Well, because I think, you know, I still consider myself a very young artist. You know, my career is, I think, maybe just above emerging artists, but, you know, I haven't really been exhibiting that long, so I think this is a great opportunity to have. And I haven't had that many museum shows. So, for me, it was really important when I did both these shows, Santa Monica and the Brooklyn Museum, that they were going to be new works who challenged myself, my own practice, and what I was thinking about at the time. And I didn't feel like, as the artist that I am, that it was fair to myself to just put work out there that people have already seen. I wanted to sort of push my own boundaries, something that I was making in my studio, and show some different aspects of what I'm working on. Because, you know, so many people at the time were just used to a particular body of work, which were the portraits of most of the women, where a lot of the landscape paintings were not shown, and a lot of the interior paintings were shown. And my studio practice consists of not just painting, but also the installation and photography, that the viewer doesn't usually get to see when they go to an exhibition. So it was really important to show a full scope of who I am and what I do as an artist. One thing I did notice, an interesting coincidence in both of your work, is where you were doing the Kitchen's table series, Carrie, and your next series moved out into the world, the Sea Island series and the Afrofile project. And you, too, were working largely in interiors, and then one of the new directions you took, and one of the new genres you decided to explore was landscape. I was curious about that. I'm wondering if you would comment on that. Oh, I think for me it has a lot to do with like, you know, running around the world. So you're tired of being at home? I'm loving being inside. It does have a lot to do with what I'm interested in, and I've been thinking about architecture for a really, really long time. Really long time. And so it was important to do that work. Work happens because you're in a certain space, a certain frame, certain things that you need to work at. Kitchen's table, which was a wonderful piece to work on, and I worked on it like, you know, every day for months and months and months until it was done, and then it was done, and then it was time to move on. And so for a long time I've actually been outside, I've been outdoors, and trying to figure out ways to be outdoors, and trying to figure out what my real interests are in architecture. So on one hand I'm really interested in colonial architecture, I'm interested in architecture of slavery, I'm interested in material culture and the way in which Southern material culture has articulated itself in its own particular express of utterance. And so the Sea Island series came about in the architecture of slavery, the architecture of, you know, the sexualization of space has been something that I've been interested in too for a really long time. So worked in that area, trying to understand that, and then of course power of architecture and architecture, and its power has been, you know, endlessly interesting as well. So those things sort of keep me kind of moving, kind of moving around, you know, kind of keep me moving around and moving to space in a very particular kind of way. And that, you know, recently I've been doing a lot of work in Rome and photograph museums, photographing myself standing in front of things, that's what I'm doing now to run around and stay in front of stuff. So, you know, museums and thinking about what museums are and how museums function. So, yeah, so I've just been doing that actually for a really, really long time. I think I've been made, like, the interior is kind of an exception in your work. The interior was an exception in your work, as opposed to, although the kitchen table series also was not my name's type, which is another kind of studio. Yeah, and you know, and interestingly enough, I just have to tell you this, interestingly enough, not my name's type came about because I was working with Robert Colescott. Robert Colescott, the painter, asked me to photograph him for the Venice Biennale when he was representing the United States. So he called me and he asked me if I would like to make his portrait. I said, that's an interesting request, he's got a lot of black eyes to photograph. He must have something else in mind. And so, you know, so I flew out to see him and I made these photographs and it was very funny, it's a great story actually, photographing Robert Colescott in his house. But I started thinking about painting. I started thinking a lot about painting, photographing Robert Colescott in his painting studio. And so it was really actually through going back to this earlier question, this first question about an essay on influence on influences, it was really in photographing Robert Colescott in his painting studio that I really started thinking about painting. And then I started thinking about him more, I started thinking in paintings more, I started looking at sort of the people that he'd been influenced by more. And then that led me ultimately, I think, to Manet and then that led me to Julie, not Manet's type actually. And so it was really interesting, I mean that sort of journey, right, you know, that again you sort of work on things and you really need to work on them because you're moved by something when you're introduced to an idea or a concept that you know you can swing the door open just a little further if you go down that path. And so it's been really wonderful working alongside that and thinking about what other artists do, because other artists in their imagination help me to come to groups with my own. But I can't read the New York Times on Sunday without getting up and going to my studio. No, I can't read his accent. You know, like I have to go work. You know, it's like, if these people are working, I need to be downstairs in my studio. But I think it's just listening to you talk about how Robert's thinking about Robert Colescott, how you were thinking about painting, then you're really looking at who he was influenced by maybe today. I think that's what led me to menaing myself by looking at when we were bearded and teased, you know, by looking at those artists and really sort of looking at their performances. I see who they were looking at to develop their own. And I think it's as an artist it's important to do that. I think it's important not to just stop at, if you're interested in a contemporary artist, not to stop at that artist, but to look at who they're really influenced. Because it tells a deeper story of where the work is coming from, whatever the work is called. And also, you know, there's this sort of really beautiful span of play. So that, you know, again, when I think about the canvases that I've just seen upstairs, I love these references to, you know, to matisse, you know, in this, but also the thing that excites me most is not only the play with matisse or the play with menaing, the play with beauty, but it's you're bending those notes, again, back to something that is really totally, absolutely your own. And so it's like being completely aware of history, completely aware of the historical context which you come out of, and that you have this sort of really wonderful sort of kiss to, and yet making you completely around simultaneously. It really is your work with a knot in that direction. Or, you know, taking the best of their work, I think, and playing around with it and this is where I'm going to come up with. Yeah. I think that's important in looking at artists and why you're looking at them to sort of make work that's your own. Because I think, you know, thinking about what does a painter make in 2012? How does a painter sort of look at history and decide that they're going to paint in a particular way? You know, why should we make that decision to say that I'm going to sort of, you know, be this abstract painter or conceptualist or sort of our abstract expressionist or figurative painter? Like, I think it's really important to look at art and pull from it. So categories are irrelevant? I think so. It's good. Yeah, we mean this question of, you know, what is painting? What does it matter? Doesn't matter. So you're known as a photographer, but your photographer uses text and makes installation and you're a painter who has a hybrid practice that includes collage and painting and film. And you are both filmmakers and have been... Well, I wouldn't call myself a filmmaker yet. You're a filmmaker, so I'm making films. And I was curious about that. And we both work with a fantastic person. You know, working with Tanya, I think she's... Oh, yeah, Tanya's here. We love Tanya. Tanya's always helping us with our worship rate. It's your fabulous act, so she's like... Yeah, I mean, you know, but I actually, I'm sorry to interrupt. I actually started working with Tanya on my film because I knew she was working with you. When Tanya sent an email out to everyone, she had a list of artists that she was working with at a particular time. And I saw that she was working with Carrie Maywebs, and I said, that's great now. On film, I started a long, long time ago. They don't really get shown very much, but because I don't do enough about that. And we'll see what happens. At this point, I think you should do whatever makes you happy. And if it's making paintings, little paintings, little drawings, little photographs, little photographs. You know, I'm just trying to figure out a way through my life and really trying to understand what the journey is and how to make the important work on the journey that is meaningful to myself, first and foremost, but certainly to the people that I love and that I care about as well, that has a depth and a breadth to it that asks tough questions of itself and of its audience and of me. And trying to figure out a way that I can make a space for myself and for Black people that is rich and powerful and whole. And if I can do that in photographs or text or in films or if I have to tap dance myself, I think we would all agree that you have done a magnificent job of seeing all of this from. No, I was just going to say, you know, film for me, it's just really wanting to experiment with another medium. And I think it's important to just, you know, have fun with whatever comes to mind and find the best medium to execute your ideas, you know, and just do it. And I would love telling people what to do. You do. But which is how you do it. Yeah, I love the community of filmmaking, you know, because I work so much on my little world in such a, my little world, my little stuff, and my little time. So you like directing? Yeah, I enjoy directing and I love bringing people together in a certain kind of way to make something happen. And so it's in film and in video that I actually get a chance to stretch out in a way. And I love working with composers, so I love a lot of composers as well, who are usually doing my music for me and it allows me to use voice in a very particular kind of way that I know of ordinarily get a chance to use it as well. So those are the things that I really like about making film. You know, every time I finish making one, I said, well, not going into a governor because it's too difficult, but invariably I go back to the end of it and I'm happy about that. Maybe we'll do one together. That would be great. All the experience with filmmaking is the editing process because, you know, just learning about the editing process is sort of that collaging of the images really take out sort of the smallest filming seconds and make it into a story. So did you edit yourself? I actually, in this film, I edited it with a fantastic editor, Tony, Alice and Tony. And so I learned a lot about it, but I finally got my own Final Cut Pro and we'll be editing it. I love editing. That's like the fun part. And putting it together, that structure, you know, the structure. So, yeah, it's so, you know, for me, that's, I think, where the magic happens. You know, it's like the painting part. And so working with the editor on this film, who's like sitting there with him, was like, you know, that sort of dialogue was like, no, this, that. I think editing for me, I think, is one of the parts that I want to change. Thank you so much, both of you. Hi. I want to kind of go back to when we started about race and gender and beauty. And I will start to carry about your really direct statement about how it might disavow, but also you sense a possibility. And I guess absolutely the kind of fracturing that Colleen does in her work at Steer is incredibly stunning. And how you, Brian, made your role to certainly kind of mask her narrative. Separate from my naked, with all the kind of European masters, I'm more than quite directly and deliberately trying to understand Black female figuration, racial figuration, in the contemporary world. Could you talk a bit more about that accent, the kind of specter of the great masters? The acoustics are here, are kind of, are bad. So if you could perhaps short and... What I'm going to take, basically, is a more direct question about how the... How you guys produce your work outside the conversation with the great masters. How you understand Black female figuration. Black female figuration is being, you know, some of the most least protected folks on the planet. And how you understand, separate from the conversation with the masters that's been dominating the conversation, this evening, Black female figuration in your art contemporaries in the current moment. That he actually spoke to... I mean, yeah. No, you didn't. No, you didn't. What I was thinking about is a sense of possibility and internal possibility, self-generated possibility, which is, you've spoken about too. But I'm asking, I guess, a very local, deliberate question about Black female figuration that has no, is not so preoccupied by the masters themselves. You know, like, some more of that. You haven't spoken about that so much, but I'm wondering some of that conversation to be separate from the master narrative so much. Well, I think the... I'm just trying to understand all of it, but it's kind of just a little muffled from this. For me, thinking about a contemporary Black female figuration was actually really interested in a new type of Black female body that's a little more masculine, and what that means in the idea of femininity and masculinity, of sort of androgyny. So that's something I want to explore, I think, as far as if you're thinking of a contemporary Black figuration. I guess to put it in that terms, you know, I'm a Black woman and I paint Black women as simple as that. So I guess those categories become a little, I guess, they become a little boxed because I think there is sort of, you know, White figuration, Asian figuration, Black figuration. What does that really mean on the Black body? And I think there's, for me, a new type of Black figuration, which is female masculinity. Happy to be here. Worked really hard to get in here. My name is Imarbe, I'm a photographer, and I simply want to ask you, what were your few points in terms of media influence on Black women and the ideas of beauty? Because that's an area that I'm exploring also in terms of film and interviews and speaking to other women artists. What's the, I just heard, idea of beauty. In terms of media influence, because through your art, you're exploring the female figure and you mentioned, you know, the different influences in terms of different body types and how you portray and specifically you also look at Black women. So what I want to know is, what is your viewpoint in terms of what pushes ideas of beauty for us as Black women? Do you think it's media? Is media made strongly or is it culturally or what develops, what, what directs that? For me, I think, I mean, all this of you. Because you both work in different forms. Media? Yes. I think for me, it's the models that I work with that draws the notions of sort of variates, what I'm interested in. But you also select models. Sometimes. Yeah, I think it's, I think for me, I see it more of an element of myself in them. And I see myself portraying them and I want to sort of, sort of emulate that sense of who they are in portraiture. Sort of the desire of their beauty and sort of capturing anything. It's this notion of, you know, the perceived seduction that I'm interested in. Of how one walks into a room and sort of enters a space. I'm interested in beauty in that level. A sense of beauty as power, I think. And I think that's why I have a new fascination with female masculinity right now. You know, I was just thinking about, and again, Deb Bullitt's here and has just been, her exhibition on beauty has been moving around the country for the last couple of years. He did a conference on beauty, I don't know, maybe a year ago. I think of all those things and in doing another exhibition, we're rather a conversation that's going to take place in Paris this month. Right? They really sort of target this and look at this, you know, critically. You know, I mean, this word, I think the word itself in a way is so kind of loaded, sort of sends us, you know, onto, you know, onto, you know, platforms that are kind of cheeky. You know, but, you know, but there is something about, I think, the way in which I sort of process this is that there's something about the beautiful. And there's something about misplaced design and wholeness. And that for me, the thing that is cracked, the thing that is broken within our culture is a refusal to see the wholeness of brown people. And so to the extent that we refuse to see the wholeness of ourselves is the extent to which we are also then made not, quote, beautiful, but made ugly and unsightly, right? Which is why then the media doesn't really carry us very far, which is why we don't really exist anywhere outside of the work that for the most part Black women make. It's a really complicated, complicated problem. It's beyond the question of beauty to really the way in which this thing, this disease mind has really corrupted our surface. And that becomes our challenge, how to make us whole, how to make us complex creatures. Because we are complex. Therefore, how to reveal that. And the other thing that I want to say about this for me, this is, I think, a very, very important thing. So I am turning 60 soon. And I'm so excited. I'm turning 60, so it's about women turning 60. But it occurred to me, it occurred to me a few years ago that for the most part Black women did the Black women. And that very few people are interested really in dealing with Black women. And I was talking to Deb this morning about this horrible thing where this dynamite of young directors come along. She's made a film called In the Middle of Nowhere. It's sort of breathing on things. And it makes two dollars. It makes two dollars. And before, you know, it's been, you know, given, you know, it's sung there, it's like best director, best actor, and best film, and best, best. You know, anything just goes on your nightclothes is before it opens and it generates two dollars. Right? And so a part of the sort of difficulty then of being a woman and being an artist, and being the woman who is interested in brown bodies and presenting those bodies in their complexity, which I believe what we're doing. It means that we are also distanced from something. So this is where I mentioned this question about the masters. We're playing the masters and tap dancing around the masters. And having on the one hand to sort of play a respect to them, even as we forge the territory for ourselves. For me it's a much more dynamic question because it really has to do with how do you situate yourself within the discourse of modernism itself, within the discourse of contemporary art, even as a black woman, and even as you negotiate the black body and black subjects. So because for the most part to the extent that you present the blackness, is to the extent that you're pushed out of the field and out of the range of being considered a contemporary artist, which is really bizarre. But I'm simply an artist and make pictures of black people out there. I hope that you understand what I'm saying. You know, to the extent that you are pushed into this box, this racialized box, is to the extent that you're not considered a serious player in the field of contemporary art. And that your blackness then sets you into another category altogether. And so you're constantly fighting against that push to push you out and to make you a part of another kind of tradition, not of a contemporary painting, a contemporary photography, but that black stuff over there. And it's still relegated in a very curious way. But what's your take on that? I'm going to do the wrong thing. I look at the two of you and I see two incredibly successful contemporary artists. Were you around? Oh, you don't think so. There's so many things to talk about that you think that we all might be able to talk about something better than race. What you view this for, because there's something else that we can talk about other than race, right? And so he said, yeah, you know. So I get the review back and that's what it is. That's what it is. That's what it is. And so there's this way in which the work is often reduced, right? It's reduced in all kinds of ways, which is one of the reasons that I was asking Lee about the way in which this exhibition came about. Because I think it raises some really interesting questions. So this may not be your case. I trust it isn't, you know. And I wouldn't want it to be. But I do know that this is real. If this thing that we are fighting against, that we are challenged, is with this idea of what Black artists need, and what Black women artists need, and how they are perceived in a little larger world in a general sense. It's a goal to make Black artists to learn about making art. And I think, you know, it's, I don't really, for say, like to be put in boxes of one way or, you know, it's the whole idea of, you know, saying that I make queer art or something like that. It's for me, it's, you know, I'm, my goal is just for people to look at the work and respond to it. And it has all of these different layers. It has all of that because it's an extension of who I am. You know, and it is Black art. It is queer art. It is contemporary art, but all of those things, I... Yeah. Oh, did you think that I was saying that it wasn't? I was beginning to wonder if you were saying that it wasn't. No, she wasn't. Oh, oh, oh. You can hit me to understand it. Now, I'm really talking about the way I think in which the work is generally positioned in the larger world, and how it's discussed in the larger world, how it's reviewed, how it's written about endlessly. In the larger world, it is distanced from modernism, right? Because, because... I think that's something important. Yes, indeed. That's what I meant. Yeah. That's what I meant. And so, then therein lies the challenge that to bring that current contemporary part of your moment, but to bring this discourse into that arena in an acceptable way. I see three people who have been standing here very patiently, and I, please, I would ask your question. I know, but you should have my titties. She's famous, dad. We're going to start with a quick one. Do either of you teach? Yes. Okay, and the second question is education, undergrad, grad school, post-grad. How important was that for you? How important was education for you finding your artistic voice? Major. Absolutely essential. Absolutely essential. I mean, I think it's so important. It's really great to be with your, your peers and your friends, your colleagues, and to find out how you're going to be heard, to go to class, and to, you know, have your world dismissed. In terms of your art, I have to really quickly, you know, I don't really have a question about space. It's just like, it really identified with me today. When you know you're just like, you know, if you're rolling over and over, and if you just have, you have so, like for me as an artist, I'm really trying to find myself a painter with this and that. But just, it's a space where I can pull from all of these different mediums. And I really see that both of you kind of, could you just talk for us? I think that, you know, I just think that the work tells you what it needs to be done. Work really tells you what it needs to be done. And the best thing that, you know, the best advice I can give anyone is, is to go to your studio and to work every day. That's what I told. My friends and my students, that your work will tell you where it needs to go and it won't lie to you. It will beat you up when you're not nice and you don't go to the studio, you know. So, it's, uh... Thank you, that's just what I wanted to hear. Any more questions? You know, I just got up as soon as we started discussing or I guess coming into, you know, an African American woman, an Asian woman and myself as an African American woman, where we have pretty much the same struggles with identity with, you know, so many things. But I guess that will be too long right now to discuss. However, I have some papers where there were three questions asked and there were, you know, what we're supposed to post in or text are in thoughts about it. So, the three questions were, what is a woman? What is security? And what is not art? So, I was wondering, probably the last one, to me, it's probably very interesting because we have discussed women in general as artists. What is not art for you? What is not art? Maybe we should ask one of the assistant deans of Yale University, what is not art? It's just something I'm... Well, you know, I suppose you could be, you know, like, it's, you know, I, in the first fact, I really need to answer this question. But, you know, like Justin Boy says, you know, everything is art and everything can and everyone can be an artist. And, you know, we can take that into deeper places. But I think that everybody does have that possibility. And I think that, you know, as I move, really as I move over the course of my day, through the course of my day, I'm, you know, the pistons are just firing. What I'm looking at and what I'm seeing, what's happening around me is always inspiring, and dynamic, and artistic, and filled with infinite possibility. And for me, the thing is trying to contain my excitement.