In Conversation | Toyin Ojih Odutola and Zadie Smith

Ning welcome to the drawing Center I'm Laura Hoffman the executive director and I'm excited to invite you to this wonderful event this evening that is done in conjunction with this great show called for opacity curated by our chief curator claire gilman and without further ado I'm going to ask Claire to come up and introduce our two speakers thank you Thank You Laura it is my pleasure to welcome you here today on the occasion of for opacity Elijah Berger Twain ogod Tola and nathaniel mary quinn and in organizing this three-person exhibition it was very important to me that each artists voice be present in the show and to that end each artist authored a text for the catalog and each artist participated in his or her own public program so in october i did a walkthrough with elijah berger of his work in the show and that was followed by a performance by his good friend the artist gordon hall and in december 13th - next thursday i'm going to be doing a conversation with nathaniel mary quinn on his work included in the exhibition and tonight i am thrilled to have twain ogod Tola in conversation with the acclaimed novelist and essayist Zadie Smith so there are several reasons why I approached ZD to have this conversation with Twain and first and foremost because when I asked Twain who she might like to be in conversation with she immediately said without hesitation oh I've always wanted to speak with Sadie Smith so who hasn't I might ask but in any case fortuitously I had also been thinking about Sadie because I had recently read her essay an essay that she wrote untwine in British Vogue as well as some other essays that she has written on artists such as Lynette yadam bought back a watch a watch a the painterly net you don't botch a the photographer Tina Lawson and the painter Henry Taylor and I in my opinion Zaidi's writing on art and culture is among the most has expresses a depth in candor that is rare in art writing these days and I felt that there was no better person to address the ferocity and honesty or sort of equally fierce and honest aesthetic that is Twain's artistic vision so happily zadie agreed or agreed to participate at least and I want to mention that some of lady's outstanding athletes on art are included in her recent book feel free which was just named one of the 100 notable books of 2018 by the New York Times Book Review and who knows perhaps this conversation will find its way in some form into a future book so without further ado I am honored to welcome Tony ogod Tola and Zadie Smith hi um can you hear me yeah I'm really thrilled to be here and and very nervous for some reason we were talking earlier but I just it is not my normal context the gallery and I yeah I am aware of not talking art speak but I'm gonna do my best I don't do it okay cool I I wanted to start with a quote of yours which is actually in this beautiful program I'm gonna be referring to a lot Wayne said drawing for me is investigative and I'm always investigating the real subject is the exploration of the materials and the mark-making yes there's the subject but what I'm really asking myself is what can I do to make the I dance um I thought about that a lot when I wrote about your work I was transfixed on the subject and I think I missed a lot so I wanted to make up for that tonight I wanted to talk about how you make that I dance and as impossible as it is to you know generalize about the art of the Diaspora I do think one thread what Lisa is interested me is this idea of rhythm with music rhythm in pain rhythm in language so I wanted to talk about how you make the I dance aesthetically politically geographically existentially we're going to do that I wanted to start with a particular painting Paris apartment which is here and I think was going to go how do you want to do I mean I can tell you what I think I see and then we can talk about how I'm wrong you're never wrong well you know what I was thinking of when I was looking at this above all is a line of the Buddha's that probably someone in Washington Square told me once that there are no two things there's something about it which reminds me of a almost like a van Gogh know that all marks are in some sense equal the way your eye moves fluidly from material to fabric to this under the arm and of course at the subatomic level there are no two things but maybe the great block 2 objectification difference between saying this table this person this black person is white person is this idea of oneness so the first thing I see is an incredible amount of texture passing from object to think and then these wonderful I was thinking about Renaissance painting you have some of this the head in the mirror and so those seems to be references to a completely different tradition and yet there's something perverse in them because nothing is frame abbu whenever you make frames somebody's always escaping the frames that saying no frame fits everybody is just a bit above or just to the side determine not to be boxed in exactly it's really like you're noticing the things that I hope people didn't know I think one of the things that when I started working you mentioned when we first talked about my pen and ink drawings and how very early on that was and you can see them back there with the treatment series that was my work for about I don't know maybe four to five years in my professional career and I just thought what would it be like to extend this language into a surrounding and again it's a rhythm it's a pattern it's a texture and give that same tactility that I really love that ballpoint pen ink does and the only medium that I could see that would translate that in a way that was really interesting to me was pastel and charcoal chalk pastel and so this is comprised of that and color is always very tricky for me I actually don't like color that much and in pieces like this I'm always trying to balance it out but also have a site like a symmetry in the composition like the the fact that the frame behind her it was supposed to be a fireplace but I changed my mind and it's like barely visible but it's that jut out that makes the it peak the piece interesting because I don't want her to be centered I think whenever something is too centered it gets a bit boring right it gets better predictive and I like these things where they're just cut off from the frame and so you're kind of like almost happening into the picture it's not quite as tight and the thing that really intrigued me about this piece was I actually was gonna give up on it truly it was a completely different like look the skin was actually made completely of matte charcoal and I had a visit in the studio which I don't normally do and I will not do but this person was really clear voyant and they said you need to finish that like something's there and and basically I only had her skin done of her face and the bodice the shirt turtleneck that she's wearing was black it was just completely black and in some insane moment I just said all right I want to go ham and I just I just said if I'm gonna make this worth you know not being in the trash bin let me really again make the eyes dance and that quote when I say that it's from me I mean I I think a lot of times people ask you as an artist who's your audience and I'm like me but not in that is narcissistic way but it's like I when I look at an artwork I'm interested in those things I'm interested in the choices that an artist makes and so the fact that this was so heavily laden on her bodice I knew that the background had to fight with it it happen to be something that was worthy and so that's why you see the the leaves in the back of the wallpapered panels there I think this kind of chinois Zuri this like prison decoration has been reinstalled into her you know you go to fancy prison apartments first of all maybe not these days but not so long ago you could find a black or more usually with their head tilted in that position yeah in a very similar form absolutely and some of these the hair which is you know classic frizzy and chic you're reminded well this is also classic West African she yeah yeah and then a tiny Chanel like pearl in here is also prison and West African Lee has like a double heritage I wanted to inject elements or at least I like to inject elements in my work that don't quite fit but somehow in my working through the picture you would look at them as if they always were that way like that arrangement has never ever been questioned and so that's like kind of my aim it's like I'm gonna put as many random thing I mean there's so many ridiculous patterns in here like what is that well to me like but I'm in my mind I'm like make it work and like it's like topography right like a landscape so banana leaves or to me from thinking of Jamaica immediately banana leaves here and this kind of almost rural topographic map I can see ladders apps trees railways branches it's you feel like you're passing through something like everything is moving I remember I was asked really early in my career is like why do you draw the skin this way why do you have this sort of textured mark-making and I was like because I see mark making as a language I see it as a landscape that your eyes traverse through and for me that is what drew me to art making in the first place it wasn't about this sort of flat matte surface like I'm not interested in those kind of pictorial arrangements or ideas like I want it to feel like it is weathered like it is storied but when you were a child starting I wondered about this like seeing the early work and and the almost doodle like element where you were doodling what were you in that cartoon mode interested in going deeper and deeper and deeper into the mark I was obsessed with anime and that didn't really but I know that's the doodlee aspect but I I was interested in this idea this magical transformation that happens when you look at something and then somehow transpose that on paper but that moment between you're looking at something and the paper there's a translation of you and I you know I always tell this with students like don't get so caught up in exactitude because that's not the point I want to see your filter we're in that translation and so what really got me and what hooked me around high school I wasn't one of those five-year-olds it's like I'm gonna be an artist my parents were like no I have African parents but it was that and I remember being 14 and thinking wow I just drew this thing but I drew it weird the perspective is through the filter yeah but that filter is interesting right and you know when you're awkward and you're trying to figure your life out when you see that translation and it happens and you actually like what you see you like the mistakes you like those moments that don't quite fit that was what I want to do with every drawing like I could easily draw a person perfectly but that would be the most boring thing like I'm not a I'm not a camera right it's it's a filter of all my experiences as a filter of my view of the world and I think that's what art should really be about that's what I want to see when I look at Ricky now in the age of the camera I mean it's been the age of a camera for a while but I think fair to say now is the age of the non-stop permanent camera at all times everywhere so it's quite hard looking at a frame to think outside of a photograph like now when I look at paintings and drawings I'm very aware that my subconscious scent is always the framing of Instagram the framing of a photograph and I think when I first wrote about you all the things we discuss in this painting all the way this body is imprinted onto the prison Department and Paris imprinted onto it you miss all of that if all you see is the photographic import that is so I interpreted these paintings basically my gut has started from the bottom now we're here right wonderful glamorous beautiful people the kind of aspiration in a dream and a fantasy that's there too I think but it's it's only one element of what's going on in these kind of complicated markings yeah so I apologize for my you know I mean but that read I think is very common and I'm not averse to these reads I think I always try to tell people like there's no wrong way to read a piece you know to read a drawing or a painting or what have you it is your experience and you are experiencing it it is valid I think what I get caught up is when people say that's what you want it to do and it's like hold on right now calm down and what one thing that I've always been interested in in these kind of pictorial sort of explorations was how do I make fun of wealth how do I mess with it because one of the things that and I guess we can move on to another piece okay I was gonna say compound leaf yeah this is also around the same time that I was doing this and when I started this and I was just really you know was 2016 when I started working heavily in these materials and as we know mr. 45 was you know coming into the to four and I just remember just thinking to myself this is wild like your wealth is a sort of like unquestionable 'ti right like you don't have any experience but because you are wealthy you are allowed so much like it's almost you're given this sort of space that doesn't make any sense to me and as an immigrant I mean I don't want to get too political but that has been my life like I have to completely constantly make myself small question in the space I occupy you know because in any moment I am going to be deported you know that's since I was first came here so you know to live a life where you know you're not really meant to be here even though you claim it and you fight for it it's still there in your head like a nugget and I just thought you know what race is one thing being others another thing or foreigners nothing but wealth is the same it's as much of a trap and it makes you your it limits the parameters of movements right you can't really think widely and with various you know the diversity and so I thought all right let's put some folks that look like me and people I know who are wealthy in a variety of ways in these spaces but make it like I really couldn't care less so every way often in trap don't mean things just look a bit like sales right there in like who are still kind of in it but there's also this very nonchalant right you know like like I couldn't really care and a lot of that has to do with this idea of like occupying space and if you're looking upon a picture of a person or a character who does not care what you think of them who does not he's not there to entertain you who really couldn't care less if you are there looking at them it really gives it a different read and it takes a lot to build the picture into that to get the gesture right he they are talking like a novelist is so unusual this this idea of interiority and paintings I mean I can't remember the last time I mean apart from Lynette really that this was a concern of a painter but it or draw excuse me in this image the reason it seems to be separate from the photographic frame is that obviously she's not posing for the camera but it's more than that a lot of your people are facing forward in one way or another but they're not offering themselves to a camera as in look how I look you're trying to present something or aspire to something they really are just existing absolutely but also interesting with the sort of like and it's because you know I'm thinking about John Bergere when he talks about the gaze and just that whole idea of the gaze is immediately masculine right very much so I am a woman creating these images so my gaze is paramount and what I'm more interested in when I'm looking at a picture especially if it's a female subject but it could be regardless is I don't want you to be a spectacle right like that's not my aim that's not what I want to see and so how do I fight that urge that is so easy to fall into an image maker is that you can easily make but she a subject of color be spectacle and completely go the opposite direction and that's every piece in here that I've done is to push back on that and to show nuance to show subtlety at the same time I'm hacking and layering the surface with so many marks so much material that you don't know what you're looking at it's a bit disorienting which is the point but then as you actually sit with it and you enjoy it and you really kind of get that this is a story right you're in a story you lose yourself in that and then it doesn't become why is this black person here taking up space stops occasion which is so much a part of being like an artist of color is the first thing it's like justify why you drew this black person there's there's a few pieces which like if I were there's like 50 white people in MoMA there's a there's like why do I have to have those conversations instead have a story right I there's a few pieces a bit later and if we can get them here they don't seem to me about that complicated sense of guilt about looking and being this that one in particular it's the guilty-looking yeah which seems to me to fold something something about the fear of objectification of something that is other to other people but not other to you it's your brother your cousin your family whoever it is somebody close to you but being aware also of this external eye but then at the same time in this boy I saw I mean I don't know about you but in in the classrooms of my childhood that face was so familiar where you were picked out and and the child shut down because I've been picked up by a teacher who is either afraid of them or about to say something I remember that face is familiar to me right both like psychologically but also from the point of view of the artist like am i recreating that moment where the person has picked out isolated displayed and also beautiful I use duty as a sort of everyone's gonna think I'm a jokester but it's not I just I find the things that are sort of knee-jerk reactions things that are sort of the quick kind of go to read or thought whatever you call it a bit suspect even my own and so whenever I create any kind of drawing regardless this material this is you know pencil on black board very layered and I just wanted to completely you know this is toy in her studio mode forgive me but it's like make this as difficult to look at as possible right like I want you to really make it hard and make the viewer work to see this picture and anyone who sees that work it's around the corner and there you got to spend some time with it and I was I told my mom I was like you got to do some yoga moves to see it you know because it is and it's like you're moving in order to see it you're the one who has to adjust yourself right to see it which is often the other way around adjust yourself for me and again it's that's why it's called the guilt of looking and this idea of like being conscious of what you're looking at it to bring back berge or one of my favorite lines he's ever said is it's one thing to be seen to be looked at and it's another thing to be seen right and how those two can can play and then that experience that you have isn't a projection it's valid right it's real again and it's just also this idea of be aware of what you see be aware of why you feel those work that way I think for me almost the opposite of this picture is if I can find it yes um is this one like how the question here this boy seems to me perfectly aware of how he is seen all time by many different people different situations he's conscious of he has to be hmm the question with this picture is how do you make to me whiteness strange to itself that was the best how do you make whiteness strange celebrity but I can't tell which one but but it's it's really made alien yeah this thing which is always portrayed to it as as the neutral subject everybody is a variation on a theme I'm so glad we're having this conversation exactly that was exactly why I used this material too white charcoal and one of the things that we always notice of course when any artist works on any surface it is a white ground right that is the default even could be off-white if you're being a little European I don't know but it's the same surface and what I thought is like how do I make black a black surface a black ground neutral right how do I do that and that's tricky because immediately when you put a black anything suddenly a room gets smaller right suddenly things get a little bit contentious you know there's so many reads to blackness so we can get into and we don't have time for but it's the idea the idea of blackness and how this how it overcomes and envelopes and to me that's kind of reassuring it's like an inclusiveness it has to take and everything like the biggest joke the I had a big moment in grad school where I almost got kicked out of a class shocker but basically it was color Theory class you know whiteness and blackness include all colors but whiteness excludes it refracts that's the point you see the colors when it is reflect refracting it and I thought well ain't that peachy right whereas blackness is just like it's in me man yeah it's they ain't going ok clues all mixed in there and it's like this muddied thing and I thought no that's actually really great as a ground right to start from you know as a catalyst for something and so when I put white on top of it yes it's a very contrasting element that the opposite ends of a spectrum but how do I make that whiteness so other right that you know it's no longer this black mark on a white ground it's the other way around and in that the read is the same right as that black ground on that white paper and it's something we're so used to we don't even question it but it is there and so why that piece is so layer and it's just so packed in is because I want it to be as other as possible if you were to invert this image on your phone and I'm sure there's plenty of apps to do that you would see in the face right but you know that's not the point it's that back again I'm just going back to the what I mentioned earlier it's like pay attention everything has a reason why you think that way right it's surprising to me how a rhetoric an inversion like that seems quite simple but to me that's a visual version of for example sometimes I I go and talk to young black students who want to go to university in English try and encourage them to go and one of the things I hear most often is but if I go when I be you why don't you become less black in some ways and I always Satan the most simplest rhetorical inversion is can you imagine any such thing that a white person does making them less white it's a noble concept I why anymore and I play some basketball in it I just didn't feel that way anymore it when you reverse it you see how bizarre that it you could in some way lose some part of yourself by going to college or listen to a certain kind of music or wearing skinny jeans or whatever it is how is it possible the blackness is such a vulnerable thing that can be destroyed by going to so once you've in revert the rhetoric you see somebody is trying to take something away from you it's wild crazy crazy rhetorically it's crazy in logic too it's also this idea that we find ourselves in right now right there's a lot of conversations about you know we need to preserve whiteness and it's like whiteness has never needed any preservation it's constantly being preserved in fact it's been more purified over time and the thing that I am really fascinated with in applying that to a material read right to the actual work is I need you to understand that all of this not only is conscious is a construct right but it is also convenient for a lot of people right like it's very convenient to look at whiteness that way it's better as a material not just as a societal tool and in position but as a material it's very convenient to look at blackness is this you know I need to darken this surface I need to do something like those terms those applications are you can call it socialization but I think it's also convenient for triangle and I'm whenever I I talked to anyone who you know is we're in a weird time where people are like yeah let's preserve it but look at the term like miscegenation and how people say the one-drop rule that to me is the stupidest thing I've ever heard of in my entire life because when you think about that concept and how its applied not only in society but also in like how a drawing is made it's like suddenly this surface is tarnished there's nothing it can do it's done and it's like how do you know that whiteness wasn't darkness to begin with right like I have no idea where this came from what is this idea of purity you know and I want to mess with that and so with you know like I don't know if you can tell with some of the marks like some blackness is showing and some whiteness is really caked on it's right the surface of the skin is fighting with it and those kind of elements are my way of applying those ideas right I mean I you know look I don't expect the average viewer to experience that or to feel that but it's there for them right to to really think about again why are you thinking that this is right right or wrong I think that the most effective thing it does even if you're not think bringing it to consciousness is that it messes with the binary of what your ideas of black and white oh it just stabs and distorts them for a moment you said yourself it's a very simple thing to do but it's amazing what happened to the idea of whiteness being lost by any any action because it is that simple to disturb or touch a computer that's why that's what happened speaking of whiteness I do think I recognize a few of these guys do you recognize maybe two only two damn I went through so much work right I may be wrong though I didn't want to spoil it like just throw out some I see you Tom Cruise yeah I think I might see Nikko know downtown I can see it how yeah I can see it no then the rest I don't know all right I'm only doing this once um are you gonna tell us I've never revealed it but I won't do it for y'all it's Tom Cruise the guy who played Luke's no not Luke Skywalker Darth Vader the younger version in the Star Wars movies you all know what I'm talking yeah Ryan Gosling no David Bowie Francesco Clemente Woodrow Wilson Woodrow be particularly upset to find himself in that getup I am question about the your decision sometimes if I can go well here's a good example this is self portrait so the question isn't really apply there okay oh yeah this my daughter saw his picture when I was working on this at home and she said oh he's hot [Laughter] question about desire in the in these put it does appear someplace but anyway first I wanted to ask about the choice about skin color and shade when in certain portraits you go back to this obsidian black that we see in Carrie James and I wonder I mean maybe it's just you feel it a certain moment but is there a rule in your mind about when they appear in what seems to be almost I wouldn't say more naturalistic because in fact no one looks quite like that and no one quite like the obsidian right but but what is the choice in your mind the reason that I went into the chalk pastel with the skin tone was that I actually had been doing work to the piece back there with that so that's the matte charcoal and that piece was what I did for about a couple years or so and it's again like very similar to Kerry James Marshalls work and so I just kept thinking that I I need to have a picture and it's you saw it in the Whitney show of multiple tones in a picture because I think when you have just that one read that it gets some monolithic and it also becomes very problematic for people because then they're like well of course that is visa vie blackness and it's it's not the multi tonality that is the reality of blackness and the beauty of it and so what that provided what chalk pastel provided was that option and also a world of that because I combine different colors to create these skin tones they don't exist straight from you know the stick it's me mixing and trying to create new colors because again the blackness is infinite and infinite to me like I don't see it as just this one read or one different definition and with this character that's when I was starting to test it out that's not the material and yeah he's sexy for today Tim my daughter's point he is fine yeah I mean he's got like the coils on the chest right a little bit but the thing that I really wanted to show was also a mixed person who is black right so he's okay and black his eyes so like this idea again but first read you would think I mean I've had people say he's Indian he's Latino doesn't matter but then these are all-inclusive things they're not exclusive and he's smoking a cigarette sorry mama and it's called taking chances for that reason and because I know so he's smoking on this picture what is this about what is it exactly okay okay and so that was kind of what I was aiming for him he has freckles if you if you get into it there's freckles in there which I love I love like adding those kind of details to it because it adds to the narrative of the picture and you know like many of the pieces I made around this time around like 2017 to 2018 I was also trying to get the character to look just beyond right the pit like they're not looking at you like even if it is it's very direct but and there's a reason for that too but what I really wanted to still have it hold your attention to captivate you even though they're not directly looking at you and again that's it's you have to work at that you have to play with color and composition you can see with this piece and that one I tend to make them lean a little to the left right I don't know why it's like a thing maybe it's because I grew up in the south and it's like and so he's leaning a little bit towards that way and I I'm really also wanted to give a lot of the highlights and the details a little bit more work because I was still figuring that out later on I soften that but it's it's very distinct from the later works I did do you think about I wouldn't say as kind of historical revenge but do you think about being a rapacious desiring female eye on a male object are you much nicer than that it's interesting it's new in the world you know I think men would love to hear that like yeah this is revenge and it's like you ain't that important like calm down in the sense that like you know I'm thinking about color I'm thinking about composition I'm thinking about you know why did I choose that orange right because it it pops really well with his skin tone like I'm thinking about a lot more material things a lot more logistical things and the reason it's a man is a choice but you know I think it gets really slippery when you start making men sort of objectified in the same way because of the same person right because I don't get free that way right it's like why would you even try but at the same time it's um it's really dull right because I don't want to see anyone objectified in that way it's not interesting to me at all concern with this granular data which makes him in his kind of subject hood so relaxed like all they all this kind of what would be from the extent of your racial question about him where exactly is he from where exactly are those palm trees what color is his eyes is he completely DeHoff at all these questions he is unconcerned with this categorization absolutely and that's beautiful in itself and the only powerful thing like that's something that we so rarely get to experience and why you know I fight again those like preconceived notions that even they find its way into the studio and me right like there are times where I'm like God if I could just do this or maybe adjust it this way and I have to stop myself because those things are again not just convenient for others but it's also like have you ever had this experience where you feel like I really want to do this thing but if I do it I'm revealed yes but we're living in a country that thinks is racialized in and it's very bones I mean if you come from the Caribbean and from West Africa you have a different view on the world you come here and you entered into a racial system what this painting remind me more than anything is spending time my mother married the Ghanaian guy for a while and we spent some time in Ghana and it was a first time not that there isn't a process for classification but it wasn't the one I'd grown up with it was different so when you enter into a different culture and suddenly the rules of definition we would we were being discussed me and my mother and our friends as we're missing off certain tribes certain people's I'd never heard these distinctions I'd heard light-dark you know the language of London one way or another or the language of Jamaica so when you entered into a new system of classification it's kind of extraordinary because you're trained in one mode well I see with your characters of people who are somehow freed of that external pressure they are in themselves they kind of ruled their roost their corner even when they're cornered they're not cornered so it is it is like a fantasy in one sense right because in life we are cornered yeah absolutely but I would hesitate to say fantasy because I think that this is a reality that has lived amongst black folk right we're together and it's often that when we go into spaces where we are of course the minority or there's less of us around yes so we feel like we have to do that and so what Chimamanda said about in Americana coming from Nigeria to here yeah suddenly you become a black person of a certain type in America you're suddenly defined in a new way that was completely different from what she'd been raised in there's a thing I always tell my brothers I'm like you know to kind of I don't know it's very reassuring I'm not really very reassuring and sibling but it's always say there's a cloud that precedes you and it's tough you know it's like you're trying to fight through it and you can't but the cloud could be rain or it could be a rainbow and that's kind of what I have to fight against when I create these pieces is that I can go into a very tragic narrative yes I can go into a Raymond yeah and I've always wanted to go against black struggle and pain because I feel like those stories are so prevalent already almost becomes like the default right and every character that you see in especially here in this in this show but also in most of the works that I've done as of late is that we're fighting against this wanting to say like yes we have a lot of pain but we also have a lot of joy and a lot of nonchalance and a lot of just like being which is a concern a disapproving mother beautiful I mean I all extraordinary but not all of them are is incredibly rhetorically amazing as you are you write like a writer you also talk like a right to no offense to visual artists in the audience but it's really I was usually I'm trying you know you're trying to translate and you know most of what you've said is better than I could ever say and on this this line is so beautiful I am NOT this narrative that has been written about me flattened an archetypal I am my own person is my favorite portal and that I now wish to take back here I will show you do not omit me or render me invisible I'm here I will not be erased or smudged out I'm as vast and wondrous as the night sky there's so much joy in that refusal of flatness absolutely I think one of the things that I love about the medium that I use but you know through drawing through pastel and charcoal is that it has variety multi tonal variety I mean I wish I could paint I love that you're calling them paintings because like I used to hate it but now I kind of love it I'm like yeah that's right yeah do you think they're painting with chocoiate I know and the language is problematic because I want a grand word for these grand and the only one I have in my mouth is paintings but then listen to this I started out with pen and ink and now I'm working with dry media chalk pastel and charcoal these are rudimentary tools in a way these are like basic you know foundation courses of what you use in art school but yet I made it something more I put it beyond the capabilities of what you assume that salt could do which is very similar to the projections that we have about people right in that way and also diaspora instinct right give me a little make a look exactly but it's that idea and it's like how do I you know again challenge the assumptions not only of persons and characters and historically oppressor narratives but actual materials like how'd that be a narrative to you know God ever will I want to do yourself portray it it was a very satisfactory night sorry mom but this is a portrait to me of satisfaction I'm getting it right back for I know your format we will discuss this later today no it was again I you know as you do you take a selfie and one of the things that fascinates me about selfie culture now is the lie of the selfie in that it feels very immediate it feels very whatever people want to call it like raw but it's a very performative how you need to see people in the street how much thanks to get the fake angle on your face has nothing really good it's so much and and the thing that I always love is you know the auto portrait right the history of the auto portrait are historically and how so much of that is posed but of course if they were to don't know if we even survived that long but you know years down the line if someone were to look at you know a selfie how is it any different from Rembrandt's sketches of himself in a studio it's just this idea of the performance and what we feel is our enhanced self our true self or whatever we want to sort of portray and in that moment I looked raggedy like really ragged good yeah you felt like like almost feeling myself in a type of way right and I just thought all right as you do you take a selfie and but what I loved about the picture it was like the lie was revealed to me of that and I thought I want to preserve that line away in a picture I don't know if that makes any sense you know and so when I was drawing this the eyes are you know the most engaging part for a reason because it's almost like you know as I was working on it they were looking back at me like girl what do you do and and so the title is the many ways to work it out is the fact that I really labored over that surface of the face I really wanted to get it took a while this piece is it depending on the piece of time so very variable but this piece I felt like at the time I spent on the skin was a lot longer than I normally would and I think it was because I was trying to create what I thought it should be and it kept fighting back and saying no this is what it is because of the materials because of the picture the per you know this is the outline this is all you know this is where you're going to go in the end that's why it's very compared to the other pieces here it's it's a lot more marks you can see on it it's a lot more um exposed in a way my hand is revealed a lot more and in that I actually hated the piece for a very long time and now that I look at it I'm kind of just like actually I'm really glad I did that because it was the beginnings of this relationship that I had with this material but it's also beginning of my understanding of the lie of the self the lie of this projection that we often put because people always expect you to you know show yourself in that way like you know you are so many you know that I'm like that is fact and so when you think of those Rembrandt portraits I'm sure you know them right moving through his life kind of continual very laborious selfie the the midlife ones like they were in his version of midlife 30-something I like this they're kind of satisfied yeah self-contained proud because you should be proud to be Rembrandt as you should be proud to be toying I believe there's a certain amount of pride and as he gets older you get these some shapes in the background circles as if he's kind of knows he's moving out of his life they're like marking time so my question about these things here is are they in the selfie and what do they mean to you the Haas window or mirror the wall the shadow I don't know what this is it's like to know what does it mean that because to me it looks like the instinct of someone like like a cartoonist like Robert Crumb that every it is something obsessive about it every inch has to be covered and redone and redone I always um I play with shadow play and light a lot I think shadows are I'm going with you am I crazy but I think that shadows are the real right in the picture so if there's not a lot of shadow in the piece it's because I'm fully invested in the fantasy of the making of that work but the the piece that here I'll show the other piece if that shadow is the real yeah and the pick the person is it but that's me between thought you know like I always like to play with how shadows are presented and the elements that I add sorry I'm adding the elements that I add in there are purely for composition like there's the yellow is there because the blue is on the other side you know I want it to have a gray background you know those are all just kind of like logistics calculations but how do you make those elements interesting you can just put a block of yellow or block a blue and all that stuff you have to make it work you got to make it look like again like those arrangements have to have always been that's how they have are meant to be but again that was kind of what I struggled with with this piece is that everything wasn't working it was like I'm constantly fighting with what I wanted to be and what it was becoming and I have to kind of I rarely relinquish I'm a bit of a control freak when I draw but this one I did and I'm glad I did but I won't do it again but it's it's the textures of the of this the sweater and how that is like has to be calmed by the brick wall behind it like these are decisions that are made you know when you look at a picture and I and I don't blame anyone for not being aware of this but every decision that is made by the artist was intentional right I really get annoyed when artists say like I just winged it I'm like you know like complete control because I intend things but I just don't control them at the other end true there is there is a there's you can't always be in complete control but I think that what I I do want people to at least I hope people to see is intention right to see that everything that is there is been thought over over and over again and is meant to be there it's not an accident that was there I don't know that might be a very controlling instinct but I think a lot of artists a lot of artists share that and I'm very like I don't want to get too revealing but I always feel as if the decisions that I make I have to make sure in my head that I would be happy with it regardless of whether I like the picture or not right so if I'm putting you know that green sweater which I regret it at the time I know that when I look at this this is still a very interesting and strong picture yeah and I'm satisfied with that because I know that it still has the intention there it's still strong I don't know if that's beautiful and I like the idea that the shadow is the real in your world and thinking about the history of the shadow I mean Cora Walker's shadows and and the compound leaf yeah it reminded me a little bit of the derailer types and just the idea of when you are a minority in the world being rhetorically considered a shadow of something else but also how shadows take up more space to along side with the subjects right that's why I don't know if you've seen some of the earlier works that I've done or the works at the Whitney it was like there was shot off from a character that's just gonna sprout it out you know it was like almost taking over and it could be an absence on a wall in absence of anything an object or what have you but the shadows populated those spaces and that to me was presence as well and it was valid but in this pieces case it I wanted to add further was that I also wanted to show a very satisfied woman yeah that aside black woman right just that's a very unusual image in the keys like I'm perched right well satisfactions are problem in capitalism because if you're satisfied you don't want to buy anything so everyone's always discouraged from this kind of a ultimate pleasure this one is of my brother and it's so strange to show again a lot of these pieces I haven't seen in like it's like been awhile and so it was really I remember at the opening I came up to that piece and I had a bit of a moment because it was around the time when I was deciding to transition into pastel and I drew this photo of my brother and just I often use either myself or members of my family as what I call test runs which sounds very like like it's this experiment with your face and your features but you know essentially yeah you know in order to because I feel if I used anyone else I don't have permission to use anyone elses face but my brothers sure and in that I was just trying to see if I could push charcoal any further and I realize I couldn't like it was sort of like a failure fees but it not in like a sad way was kind of like all right you're ready to move on like you couldn't get the dip if you wanted I couldn't get yeah there was a lot of information I wanted to pack and there's only so much you can do with one patina right you know it's like it's OneNote and I want it to give it more I wanted to add more and I just knew I had to move on into another thing and one of the beauties again of like working with chalk pastel is I'm adding different chalk pastels together to get toys and to get all these different varieties and that to me is it's like it opened up a whole new language for me in the studio and so I just I look at this picture with like this bittersweet feeling like you this is this is toy in 2016 going hard like let's just do one last hurrah and then I just loosened up and and just like let go I'm amazed it's your brother I never would have guessed seems to me just the portrait of unknowability like he's so interior I love this mirror reflecting the back of his head again this sense of being in a cell and being cornered on all sides but free there was no mirror behind him I just added that I just thought it was like a really interesting element I loved the idea again the lie of a mirror it's like the same lie of a selfie you're looking at the flip of yourself right look in the mirror it's not you but we would lie on them so much the way we rely on our camera phones and I use mirrors it's like sort of motifs and a lot of my drawings as well just for that reason it's like you think you're looking at yourself but you're looking at an illusion you know and that's that's also in reality as well I mean sure I don't want to smudge my lipstick and look crazy but you know if you're looking for that for some kind of certainty I'm kind of like meaning it's not going to be there it's void right every drawing here I think is rejecting the idea that this is reality this is your evidence this is a person it's always asking questions about what a person is it's not definitive and the idea of that person and the idea of communities as well I think that you know the the greatest gift I was ever given as a kid was to was when a we moved to Alabama for the first time and a kid looked at me a black kid and said you're African man I can mess with you and I just remember thinking but you're darker than me right what the hell you know like it was a gift because I realize it oh you're you've got it too I thought I was the only one that was like really scared you're scared too so like you know once you realize the lie of that it as an image maker I want to completely attack it you know and push it further and and it goes into something much more you know our historical or in the marks and in the making the actual method and the compositions what comprises the work but it also goes into how its read right and like how I wish to present it how I wish to have it be seen I think you've already done that if I imagine being that child in my childhood seeing these paintings or hypsi having any opportunity see paintings like this how different my childhood would have been and probably a lot of people in this room I we're gonna open up to questions I think if that's okay first of all thanks so much for this conversation he's 80 I wouldn't hear a little more from each of you about what it feels like to be in conversation in a space like this across disciplines across mediums as you mentioned it's maybe unfortunately pretty rare that artists talk across disciplines in this sort of a forum and what's what else is interesting or bracing or peculiar about about this kind of interaction for you guys I think for me what was really why I really wanted to speak was ad was that there's and this is actually the quote I was talking about it was from your collection of essays changing my mind and I'm gonna butcher this in a paraphrase but it was basically you said that there are some writers who can work alone and they can just hammer it out they don't need any distraction and you use an analogy or metaphor of a Orchestra and there's some writers who need to hear the oboe or they need to hear the tuning and the soundcheck and that's like how you have books all around just strewn all around as you're writing so you get a moment where you feel like things are getting a little too meaty you need to cut back the meat so you read Nabokov or something you know and you know in other cases you would read Kafka and I remember reading that and thinking that's what I do with images I'll be in the middle of working on something for instance this piece right here and thinking I don't know if this green is right or I don't know if I should use this texture here and I would look at a Rembrandt or I would look at two so or I would look at Luis Mae Lee Jones and think oh someone else has already done that and it's like a permission it's like this like Oh someone has done that and it's not even like you're reacting to that it's like oh I'm allowed okay or oh not allowed you know like I can still make this decision and I'm not going crazy thinking that I'm wrong it's just it's like a reassurance in a way it's a bit of scaffolding that helps you kind of build up the picture and that was coming from reading you know her essays and thinking this writer completely gets how an image is made it's like all of the different references that come together to make it like all of these pieces are the sum of so many references and so many different elements and they are beautifully coalescing into this one singular thing and I thought that was so much of reading about how you build up a novel what goes into it the the process of that and the changing and shifting of method that I don't know it to me that we wasn't even like a far reaching kind of stretch I can immediately got what she was talking about and that sort of like again the fact that you said I can write it's just my mind right now that to me it was like oh Lee I called drew it's it's not fair exchange but it was yeah those those have elements very much inspired me oh thank you but for me it's just poorly it's just coming up against something that I cannot do in the simplest way Croft interest me and I can't when I say I can't draw I mean really mean I cannot draw a stickman anything in any context and I always felt they had no visual sense whatsoever to be honest but recently I guess I live downtown I live near a lot of galleries and I have felt I suppose as an addict quite alienated by a lot of photographic culture because of so much of its commercial you know I know stuff ootah gross I see people selling things or people selling themselves and I just I'm quite exhausted by that kind of image making us so much of it so for me it's just been a kind of revelation to be in front of drawings in front of paintings in front of Lynette Carrie James and also just personally this diaspora art which is was suddenly all around me or which I was attentive to it was just them it's just kind of a personal revelation you know I really didn't have much visual background when I was a kid I didn't really see much art and I was so focused on finding I guess african-american writing or writing I that wouldn't give me this permission or whatever to write so I realized a little part of me which wanted to know about more about black visual arts I want to see it and know it I've been so obsessed with the literary side and then exactly that art practice of taking from everywhere is something I find really inspiring like one of the few artists on my side of the fence who feel that way there's a wonderful quote by James Baldwin he says you know this is all mine the paintings of mine music is mine Mozart is mine he like just takes the whole world he's very he doesn't care that these people are hundreds of years distant from him a different color or whatever it's his to own chew up and even his writing is like a digestion of the whole Testament just kids he wanted everything and as far as I can tell from visual arts practice there is that rapaciousness only music - actually it's it's only in literature that people tend to be become narrow you know read what looks like them or read in an anxious way so I always feel a little closer to to music and and visual arts in the sense of that rapaciousness like that urge to get as much input as possible from as many places as possible the best thing I ever got less than I got from my mom was like you know I used to listen to all kinds of music and things like that and you know I would come home really like dejected and think like they said I can't listen to this music it's not allowed or whatever and she's like why wouldn't that why wouldn't you include that right you know because it's again it's like this idea of like we have to put ourselves into the thing but she was like this is all part of you it's just all to say it's it's going through you and it's a part of you as much as anyone that owns any culture you went all of it yeah it's it's human action so it's using hi thank you so much for taking the time to share your artistic practice with us I am interested to learn more about how you choose scale and what is scale mean in terms of your practice oh yeah absolutely I mean I used to work in as you can see with the pen and ink works very small I think the largest piece I ever did was like 30 by 40 and I was like I'm gonna die so you can just imagine what that's like and when I started working with charcoal and pastel I knew that one of the things I always hated in art school was that just big paintings for no reason or big pieces for no reason if you're gonna use that scale feel that scale have every corner of it intentioned and so I was a little daunted by scale at first but then I thought wait this could be a really interesting way to create narratives right to create a world and little vignettes and scenes and so the scale is really predicated to that like I'm really thinking a lot about what scene do I wanted to pick instead of just a person in a space in a time you know it's more about like what ideas what worlds do I want to explore and that of course has many layers from the material to the narratives and whatever whatever comes up but the scale for me is very intentioned like I that piece is is a very cinematic feel for a reason you know because I wanted it to feel that way whereas a lot more usually I do like a vertical alignment things like that are always something I think about because I'm interested in the potential of a large picture being more than just this big Hulk of thing which is often what we see sometimes the my favorite moment is little kids of museums and they're like just big and it's like I don't ever want anyone to look at my piece it's just such a this is a sad read it's almost shady you know like whereas if you're looking at it you're forget the scale it becomes immersive it becomes something you can kind of get into and lose yourself in hopefully so that's usually that's really why I wanted to go into scale but I kind of prefer small does that have anything to do with their wealth and is there a reason if this has anything to do with that if there a reason that you rather depict them as content than like happy you're elated or anything like that the wealth extra came very recently I was depicting the characters like that well before I started exploring that wealth idea and like playing with the family so I just wanted to see that for myself again going back to what people would think as a narcissistic idea is like oh yes here's a figure in a space and they're I'm bothered why is this radical and even I was like questioning that and else was just another added element to that because then when people it's funny when people you put dollar signs next to somebody suddenly it's like oh well of course that's what they're all supposed to be and it's like you realize that no that was before it's just your idea of the wealth placed on them change the read and that was what the wealth series was the show atmo ad and Whitney and the one recently Jack shamian were all playing with that idea but these pieces preceded that so that's what she why I'm really glad we did the show because I really wanted people to see actually the origin of that how that story developed was around these works I was thinking about it as I was drawing them but to me that the binaries always just been problematic to me from the get and if I were to show if anything black bodies not be bodies and be subjects and even further than that be stories then I'm gonna fight towards that and not have it still be this sort of how old were you when you first started drawing and where are you always good at it you pay me he's so cool you're like the coolest kid I there was a really interesting moment when I was um being asked an interview someone asked me like oh did you always know since you were little if you want to be an artist I was like no I was running around butt naked being crazy and my mom had to be like put your clothes on my boss can see I was a crazy kid I didn't really start loving art until the Lion King came out do you know the Lion King is the original Lion King not the not the new Lion King about to be filled and I was really interested in his character called Timon and I was obsessed with drawing him and we were moving to Alabama and my mama being the amazing woman as she is bought me a coloring book of Timon doing all these things and I copied and copied and copied em on every surface and that was how I basically got obsessed with drawing and I was like nine and then since then it's just been no turning back thanks mom for that yeah hi thank you for being here with us today it's been a really really wonderful talk and it's always great to gain some insight into how such amazing work is made so thank you my question is I was wondering how you would come up with the titles of your works and rap and and when you come up with the title if it's like something else to pick apart is it just kind of like an afterthought not that the title is not significant because obviously you know everything behind it like from the perspective of a writer like it's really really important to pack as much as you can into like the head and the deck of a title and it's supposed to give some kind of signifier of what is to come so obviously this this medium is different so I'm really really curious about that absolutely that's a really good question the best advice I ever got was never leave something untitled because you're leaving the piece at the mercy of the viewers read so titles are a framework you know they're the frame you know I'm giving you just enough room as if you were that you can enter that frame and do whatever you will with that it is it could serve a lot of purposes it can be a part of a story so or it can be its own isolated thing it can be something I heard in a podcast and I thought that's a really great arrangement of words I'm gonna put that as a title you know or a poem that I read and I really liked a phrase so it's it really doesn't matterr a little bit personal to me but for me that the purpose of them is the framework you know they allow for you to just get enough in that they're not having these wild ideas because I mean show of hands if someone were to you know you see an untitled piece you're like I have no idea what this is and it could be the most specific picture you've ever seen but again what do you where do you want the if you were to go is what I'm thinking you know what where what kind of process of thinking or thought experiment do you want them to engage with if you're just leaving it open it's not a rigorous activity I think looking at images is a very rigorous activity I want it to be and I find it that to be that way and so you know it's my way of engaging with an audience to have that experience for them hi um so you mentioned that you are a big fan of anime earlier oh snap I'm just wondering what your favorites were growing up and if at all it's influenced your art oh wow I'm about to really show my hand here I have to watch them every night [Laughter] really loved like 80s late 80s mid to late 80s 90s anime especially ghost in the shell' 95 good stuff I don't know yuria zero mana nation I'm gonna be really nerdy right now I don't even know there's an anime fans and your Venus Wars gal force I could go on I'm not gonna I'm not going to show my spots anymore but I was pretty hardcore and I don't know if anyone remember back in the day sci-fi China have Saturday anime does anyone remember that I guess not well I know you know that John but I'm saying like you know it was like a thing every Saturday and my brother my younger brother and I used to watch it every Saturday and that's how we learned English like through these dubbed versions of anime movies explain so much I have a question do you have a background in fashion and what inspires it because like I want that outfit in that I know I think with any picture that you're making you you you and I think this is actually very much unless I'm missing something that you said it ties into literature as well and this idea that you create the things that you wish to see you know you you know this garment doesn't exist but I would love it to exist you know like the rules of you know making an image or there's no rules so for me I if I want to put a pink sweater and a white cap on best believe it's gonna look dope I'm gonna make it look dope because I want it to exist those kind of things are just kind of how I think about a picture back to again the machinations of a picture how do I make this green sweater work how do I make those things work because I want them to exist I want them to to look like that's dope I want to wear that or whatever else is in the picture but I have no background of fashion I wore a head wrap for over two years because of this woman looking so dope in it so I mean my ideas of fashion are just like what everyone else sees and you think oh I wish I could pull that off but now I'm just like I'm good-looking like Grace Jones I think that's gonna be my mode not a real question it's just a statement when I first saw in 2015 the treatment my fingers weeped for your fingers there's so much work that you put in and I just had a vision of piles of ballpoint pens it's actually I you should take them out for lunch no there's a lot of there's a lot of concern among family and friends about the state of my hands often but no I mean III like I enjoy labor I really do I I think there's something I posted on my Instagram recently and I believed in it a hundred percent I hate mediocrity so much I just find it disgusting like I want to see the labor like I when I like saying you want to see the Kroft right yeah until I mean when you were in art school that was not a popular idea it was like the age of conceptual like put a plank on a wall and call it my existential crisis like I'm just like it's blue I don't understand like what what are you doing I was at the Turner Prize the year the light switch going on and off yeah the craft is human rights it's beautiful for that reason do you know there was a there was this idea I read it somewhere where was like you know crafts is also it's it's cheap it's almost like Kitsch in a way like some people like sex right it's not the it's not conceptual enough it's not you know intellectual enough and you know craft is so easy because it's about skill right so it's something that can be acquired anyone can learn it thus it's not as elevated whereas if it's something like it's kind of slipping conceptual like a flicking of a light up and down then it's suddenly so genius it's like it's ephemeral in a way I don't even know interest me in the art schools and in in literary theory we're not too far apart in age and we were being told at that point that all these things craft the subject narrative were over it was done it's all you're like but wait we haven't even the emergence of black recently black cross hmm it's kind of about restating what it might be over as far as you're concerned in this particular timeline of of European art but not not over here but also like my favorite phrase from one of my teachers in school was like you know a person would paint or draw a picture of a window and call it the state of the world in in war times or something pretentious like that and then someone would have like a Rothko asked looking painting and say chair and but the faith in language they gave they gave up the primacy of the image for this faith in language and the language wasn't even good idea of like someone were to look at compound leaf and think oh this is only the sum of this very specific thing it cannot be more it doesn't have conceptual rigor in that and that was something that really was frustrating for me is that people would just see this piece and just literally read it in that way and not give it the conceptual rigor that's only give a freaking plank you know I mean I think it's really you know I'm giving you so much more information to dive into I'm giving you frameworks I'm giving you so much and yet you're not willing to do the work which is a very different thing full so ignorant between concept configuration because I think that can get like a depressing punch up but it is about the onus on the viewer to complicate what they see and a danger I think the pictures like this is people see only the subject because that's the only thing they see like when they won't kind of Street they see a tall black guy they see a tall black guy exactly but there's more going on in these pictures at every level craft there's stroke there's image there's a concept so it's partly being willing to the worst thing for me when figurative we're not affected fashion is people would stand in front of it and say there's no thinking here there's nothing going on here well that can't that depends very much on how much you bring to the table - it's a two-way street that relationship exoticism that's why I make them the most mundane but now scenes you can imagine to make it everyday something you can pay attention to all of that work and it's not just about oh let's exotic eyes this thing because we're not used to seeing it know they're sitting on a chair alright I think you've seen a person sitting on a chair so at this point now we can move past the person on the chair and actually like look at the picture and really get what's going on at least that's that's what I'm thinking about and in terms of the treatment um I just wanted to sorry uh kind of go into this idea of white male entitlement and remove it because now you're like all of us you're colored so what else do you have to offer right that was what that series was about and I did about like 50 of them so yeah my hand was because there was times I was like Leonardo DiCaprio's not this interesting I'm not going through the struggle just smush face it's no definition I hope no one named like who represents a never sees this video hi thank you for the talk I was just wondering when I was seeing your show especially a Jack Shaymin I noticed in terms of space and in terms of where the people are I can't quite pin down what time period they're existing in also in terms of space and this is something you spoke about Zadie in your essay that the pictorial space is kind of off I guess so I suppose is that intentional in terms of where their existing who they are where they're going and what does that mean to you I suppose absolutely I mean you kind of set it there was a piece and I keep mentioning which I don't know why but I was looking at this piece recently it's the first one you see when you come in and it's called overseeing the family seat and that piece literally has Tuscan hills Nigerien like jungles I believe the clouds were from Sausalito California and at some point there is a like a section of the mountain that is from Pride and Prejudice DOMA Keira Knightley in it which is on the cliff like that that's in there too literally like I I don't feel like I have to be sort of beholden to place and time because so much of what I experience the world as and this is also just how am i growing up has been is there is no sense of place there that's not reliable to me and one of the reasons why I was so attracted to portraits was that I could see a renaissance portrait or a Tudor poacher and I think this is the weirdest thing ever because it's like a place I can't picture I can't imagine it even if I'm in England even if I'm in wherever I can't picture it and I always thought like what a great not an escape but what a great opportunity for a picture to like create a world that looks very very real but is in fact comprised of nonsense the cool elements put together and that to me is a far more engaging story than something that's very grounded in a specific thing like I think portraitures is is very deceptive in that way you think you're looking at his person very specific person in a very specific place in time but that is just the starting point to me a portrait is a catalyst to something and to me it's my purpose right now a storytelling and the only way to do that is to put things in there that make no sense at all angles that are completely off because it that's how I see my world that I'm creating and it's it's far more interesting to me okay all right well thank you all for coming and thank you [Applause]

Channel: TheDrawingCenter

Views: 7,983

Rating: 4.884892 out of 5

Keywords: art, fine art, toyin ojih odutola, zadie smith, drawing, graphite, pastel, charcoal, artist talk, museum, The Drawing Center

Id: C8w4i3e953Q

Length: 78min 10sec (4690 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 07 2018