The Un-Private Collection: Kara Walker and Ava DuVernay

guild theater for the 9th program in the broad museums art talk series the unprofitable and filmmaker Ava Duvernay I'm Joanne hilar the director of the broad Art Foundation and founding director of the Broad Museum and you are the lucky ones or at least you're all type-a and very deft at refreshing your browsers the tickets for this talk sold out in less than 8 hours after their release seats have been selling out faster and faster with each of our programs and we thank you for your enthusiasm our own private collection conversations are designed to present to LA and to online audiences unique cross-disciplinary dialogues between artists and our collections and cultural leaders they're a preview of the type of experience we'll make available when our museum the broad opens on Grand Avenue in downtown Los Angeles next year we'll continue to create innovative programming and engage you in a variety of dialogues around the 200 artists and 2,000 artworks in our collection as well as temporary exhibitions Eli and Edythe broad have created their art collections over the past almost 5 decades with the intention of making them widely available to the public and that's why when we open our doors next year general admission will be free and we hope and we hope you all will be with us to visit within those first few days and weeks now on to our speakers who are waiting patiently you have to wait through a little praise here I'm afraid our conversation today is between two incredible women two artists who are right now reaching heights of recognition and accomplishment Kara Walker is one of the most noted artists working today her pieces fearlessly examine race sexuality violence and the legacies of colonialism and slavery she became known first for her large scale cut paper works made in the manner of 19th century silhouettes but she took this well-worn decorative technique into entirely new and charged territory depicting harrowing scenes from the antebellum South and earlier this year Kara pulled off a rather extraordinary feat she staged a sculptural installation inside the enormous 130 year old abandoned Domino Sugar Factory in Brooklyn her monumental 35 foot tall sculpture with the amazing title a subtlety or the marvelous sugar baby depicted a 75 foot long Sphinx like african-american female figure coated in 30 tons of crystalline white sugar in a tour de force moment that many New Yorkers are still talking about she took the occasion of the decommissioning of this iconic factory on the East River to make spectacularly visible the less known disturbing violent and exploitative history behind centuries of production and consumption of sugar over 130,000 visitors lined up to see this amazing work in the two short months that it was on view the broad Art Foundation helped support this project and the broads and I were among the first to see it in May we've acquired Kara's artwork since early in her career our collection of her work is the largest on the west coast and among the deepest in the world we're looking forward to including key pieces in the broad museum's inaugural installation next year and I'm also happy to announce two acquisitions both showing here an intimately scaled piece by Kara a set of cut steel cell silhouettes titled burning African village playset which recently became part of the Broads personal collection and a large powerful charcoal drawing called Palmetto libretto as with so many artists whose work we collect and depth through the broad art foundation we plan to keep tracking her through her remarkable progression today's discussion brings Kara in dialogue with the amazing celebrated film director Ava Duvernay Ava's feature film middle of nowhere put her firmly on the map as a new and distinctive voice in film it won Best Director award at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival the 2013 John Cassavetes Independent Spirit Award and the Tribeca Film Institute 2013 affinity award and the best is yet to come she is currently in post-production on the highly anticipated feature film Selma which chronicles the historic historic 1965 Voting Rights Campaign led by dr. Martin Luther King jr. due to be released by Paramount this December Selma is produced by Oprah Winfrey as well as Brad Pitt's production company Plan B no pressure still somehow she has managed to take time away from the editing bays and production meetings to be here today we are honored that she has done so and also that she's so enthusiastically accepted our invitation to reflect on art with Keira avis films ask us to question our conventional thinking about the lives of others and instead see complexity about dr. King she said I always knew King was a badass but no one really wants to talk about that he's been homogenized to a speech and a statue Kara Walker likewise animates of world of paradox of struggle and joy the broad museum is delighted to be able to bring these two groundbreaking artists together for the first time for this afternoon's conversation and now a couple little details that I'm responsible for telling you about first please silence your cellphone's and note that today's talk is also being watched by an online audience via live video stream at the broad org will also have a QA at the end of the program audience members and online viewers are invited to tweet questions for both Kara and Ava using the hashtag Walker Duvernay and with that is my great pleasure to welcome to the stage Ava and Kara hi Kara hello I'm good how are you good I don't think we should handle this as a primer or an overview I think that I was astounded by the number of thesis papers and articles and posts essays I mean 20 years worth only deep dive into every movement you make so the folks are interested in that it is at your fingertips I invite you to Google and the world of Kara Walker opens up everything you want to know about where she's from and how she got here but what we were talking about was just really interested in now this moment right now post your first massive mammoth public large scale work a subtlety and just really examining you know a lot of the questions I have is just curiosity about this moment for you okay yeah that's okay okay good so why don't we start with just showing people a subtlety yeah I'm walking them through a couple images very professional clean clean images of the facility before the crowds should we tell people what a subtlety is because I was fascinated by that and it was and I'll sometimes I have a long meandering way to getting to a subtlety has a name but a subtlety is a sugar sculpture let's say and it's a kind of medieval term from medieval England I guess the equivalent would be I don't have the language you know any other kind of decorative item you know nowadays subtleties would you know current form of like wedding figures at the top of a wedding cake or hearts in chocolate hearts at Valentines Day there's so they're representative sculptures they're a they they have a the carry meaning with them and and then in an earlier day several centuries ago they carried a lot of power as well because sugar was substance that was really only available to the very very powerful so that's a subtlety and the term a subtlety of course is somewhat ironic but I think we should tell you the fool because naming and your work is so important I mean so you know if you're familiar with their work the names are legend so this what is the full name of this well like that no no I already as we did the sound check I said I'm notorious for forgetting the entire names of my work because okay so it's a subtlety right yeah the marvelous sugar baby somebody out there probably knows it faster than I do an homage to the well part of it is the an homage to the underpaid and overworked artisans who were find our sweet tastes from the cane fields to the kitchens you can do it for something we can do it I'm just adding to it embellishing it's all about embellishment at a certain point I want to jump into just a deeper conversation about it but just the logline of you know and we can we can go through the images 3839 if we can scroll yeah there as we talk so 38:39 delicious can you walk us through just just the overview of what we're looking at here well what we're looking at what we're looking at is a you know what are we looking at she's looking at an ass looking at a big ass a big ass and a big vagina and and and very big toes and you know in the initial that there are many stages to working on this project but as I started to kind of realize that this was going to be a sculptural form and that was going to have to be gargantuan and have to be mammoth in order to include the ideas and situations and histories that I wanted to include and I don't have to be full of contradictions of contradictions about power and where does power where where do we possess it or where we dispossessed of it I realized that this this form as a Sphinx couldn't be a mythological you know lion figured woman headed body it had to be a sort of woman figured body and and then in my sketches and notes there were questions about how full-figured how woman figured would she be and and it became really necessary I think to to not forget about what's going on under there I did get asked by one of my helpers who was built one of the builders was carving out this thing she said well I know what hole like it's not censorship at that point I think it's just kind of editing you know so so so so this work some of the specs that I know that I will just share before we dive into it 75 feet long 35 feet high yeah right it was sugar coated with just a granulated sugar and I think some of our 40 and let me see if I can go through 40 41 42 we start to see the boys the children yeah talking a little bit about about these gentlemen 45 always breaks my heart but a bit about the attendance right so so as as this piece was coming together and it was kind of at a stage of running out of time which just seems to me how it always happens I'm running out of time and it it gelled and I felt that the space as a gargantuan figure is one thing but a figure that has has to be in relation to something beyond just the audience and this figures and really is relating to the space this this sugar factory but in my initial stages of trying to understand how to do what is sculpture like not how to do sculpture but what does it mean sort of right now what does it mean in a sort of domestic say African American specifically context where you know where does where does it lie and so I started kind of uncovering all these kinds of sculpture like you know tchotchkes and figures and you know bookshelf items that that are somewhat laudatory or they have a kind of like a promise of a sort of positive representation of african Nisour african woman this and so I started collecting those and then as I went down the line I found these much more ambiguous figures lurking out there and sort of giftshop sites and I was like what are they supposed to be you know like it's clear when you have the the the the beautiful African goddess that she's there for to serve a very specific desire or need but who are these for who are these subservient little boy workers they sold on the internet you know being and why don't you know with their cheerio big faces and they're very very sweet and so they have although they contain some of that longing that that sort of pre-exists you know this moment mice longing for you know black representation and yet they're still holding bananas and they've got weirdly splayed animal like toes which we only discovered upon blowing them up to human scale you know these are so much smaller item soon and then when i found those well they they could be the subtlety or they could be rendered in you know multiple i wanted to only work with sugar so granulated sugar brown sugar molasses all byproducts of sugar i was really thinking about just all the processes that go to turning this the substance into this white granulated powder and a hard candy figure was what i hit upon and you know when you work as I was with the creative time or an organization that says we will try and help you do whatever you want it's very liberating and at the same time full of rife with frustrations because sometimes what you want is what nobody knows how to do including yourself so this little figures is cast out of out of sugar and corn syrup and heat and was melting and and throughout the yeah there were they were intended to be about twelve or fifteen of them and I managed to cast six and we managed to show three because they were disintegrating and no actually think we cast seven the first one completely melted and it was all like trial and error you know experimenting was something that even sugar sculptors didn't really want to touch yeah so going back a little bit and talking about you know creative time and the canvas and you know this is you know uh I won't say a leap because I don't know if it's I don't think I don't say it's a leap and I think it's an extension of your existing storytelling just on a larger you know a larger canvas so it's kind of negotiating is it a leap or is it you know just a natural next step progression I'm not sure but I know that your entry point into it was by invitation which I saw a bit of a kindred or kindred spirit of connected connectedness to because my current project is something that also did not come initially from my brain that was very different from any way that I'd worked before you know I was offered a film hey one do something about dr. King okay yeah you know so this was the same thing it was we've got this this sugar factory and it's about to be torn down and is there anything you want to do with it yeah that's a very different it is very work than what you've done before and I wondered how you negotiate that and found your own way there well I think you know this kind of I don't know if you experienced this but it's it's it's well I can't say it completely spoiled me it might have spoiled me for future large-scale projects public work projects because it went so smoothly but see if I can find a concise answer when a team at creative time approached me I we had two things happen one was I had resisted for a while you know I'm just doing my own thing and then at some point they said well just come and see the space and I saw the space and I was like I felt like this was it this was a moment but you know what I was gonna do but I felt it was a moment and as we continue to talk one of the curators nado Thompson said well we know we're thinking we could do a series of projects with a lot of different artists and you know we've got all the space and I was kind of like one of those moments where you know you have to face your face you're a mission or your ego or something or some combination I was like yeah totally can do this I totally can do it I don't know what I'm gonna do I totally can do this you know no doubt no room for doubt until after you know eight months after but it's it's interesting to have something sort of thrown on your don't have a challenge thrown at you and particularly if there's you know half of it is sort of built already I don't know if that was the case with you if you had a script or something that was already kind of present and you're like okay now how do I make this mine how do I understand this space and what I do and the history of this base in the history of my work and the difference and audience you know like there's something about when you're kind of in it in the art world and maybe in even an indie film world you kind of have an idea or you have sort of set responses or set histories that you know you're working within and then when you break that open and you're like oh this is for everybody potentially you know you know everyone in New York or everybody in the world but it's hard to find the limits of what kind of viewers going to you know people don't understand my work they're not familiar with you know public sculpture you know there's a lot of open-ended question marks I mean I think that there is a lot connecting the idea of making small independent films which I did or do still and and you know the cutouts the silhouettes the intimate handcrafted kind of you know very detailed work and then kind of this leap or next step into well you know it's just short of a lot of time to see it just short of an assignment is what it was which is a completely foreign of working for me I mean it was the framework was there do something in this building yeah the framework was there for me this is the guy you've got to follow right which is completely foreign to the way in for you and it can be I actually found it this time around was the time that it worked it hasn't happened often but you know one or two times in the past somebody said well we have this sort of space or this sort of public venue and then it's sort of this weird vetting process where you know a thousand other people have to get involved maybe like producers in your case and I say oh no we don't like that oh that's not like the work that you usually do and then I say something rude privately under my breath and say you know it's not supposed to be like the work I usually do because the work I usually do I mean there isn't really a usual but there are the you know cut paperwork's and there's a there's a way of trying to find my way into an idea or location or subject matter or a character or something but you know you make space for that we're gonna work together so you're there you've said I got it I'm gonna take the holes give it all I can do it they say okay you're like holy snacks I gotta do it and and all of a sudden are you working with forklifts and cranes and just the toys a lot of times for me I've and it was the same thing on on on Selma my last film was two hundred thousand dollars this film is and so at some point I said do I even need all this stuff like I know how to tell the story like this you know what I mean and I feel like it's just as effective and then I think wow that type of storytelling her that way of telling the story was born out of a lack or a limitation I've come to like it mm-hmm you know but do I force myself to break out of it which is what I've done on this what was the experience like scaling up directing a crew of did with hard hats definitely a challenge for me coming out of you know I mean I have a studio space that's a decent sized studio space it's but it's just me and you know I have a studio manager and a studio assistant now whose you know came on in February and you know like people who come in intermittently to help with small projects but never a a crew never I was never in a place where I felt comfortable like directing people I wanted it to be sort of small and intimate even with these sort of cut paper puppet videos that I've made when there was a crucial scene that I didn't want anybody else to be a part of I would just do it on my own you know that's fantastic ya know just it's just kind of like I don't know how I'm gonna show this with other people nearby so all right actually what what I found is I couldn't arrive at that scene with the other people around because it was just like Who am I doing this for so having the the team amassed I was still kind of hiding you know and even as we were progressing you know I was like I might notice in my sketches and then there you know here's the team builder here's you know art Demonte comes and he's the facilitator and he just likes to make things happen physically in the world and he knows the right engineer to bring in and you know and some sculptors to bring in and they were the nicest people you ever met you know nobody you know when pushing their agenda just you know we want to make this happen for you and here's and then it started to it started to build like gradually over maybe a you know we really only had like six weeks lead time before we actually to get into the space maybe eight and how are we gonna apply the sugar you know we melting the sugar we boiling the sugar is the sugar raw what what happens and and that moment when we got into the space and it was March and it was cold cold cold and you know and I just I felt guilty I felt it was you know making these people suffer it was like yes 28 degrees and the forklifts and as it started building I realized oh it's actually happening but I did have to be kind of directed to direct you know because I thought oh these people are really skilled you know they they can work the forklift and go up on the cherry picker and you know and I'll just hang back over here and you know just do it all you know she's been looking like like no you know really this is yours I was like it's much bigger than than my thing so you know was there a moment where you actually stepped into well yeah and stepping into it was it's always collaborative you know so can we do this in this way and you know yes or no you know this isn't gonna make sense and you know because we've got you know the sugar boy the sugar boy fabricating team over you know working over here and you know they're figuring things out on the fly so you know it it's always collaborative you know it's like can we add a little bit of this and so you step into the moment you're collaborating you've said yes to the whole space you've stepped into the moment you directing the guys the engineer there was never a moment that I ever thought that this was really gonna happen even as it was happening and just I can't believe you know especially when the ass was going up and I was just like I can't believe they're letting this happen and it's here and it's big and it's still getting bigger you know say well we're only at level D you know there's another thing like putting it on the body of the Sphinx like look at that what is she doing yeah exactly yeah yeah I think that uncanny like what what what was I think maybe what still kind of exists for me yeah you know what the piece is gone yeah it's like this amazing weird uncanny moment happen echo over that's still there so it's that weekend it's opening weekend I mean that's movie terms was it a weekend there was a lot of openings a gala first and then there was the opening week alright so the idea of opening weekend so it's the opening and it's 8,000 people people were lined up around the block the first weekend was more like 4,000 which was a lot okay yeah yeah at that time I was like wow you know that's a lot of all people just come out to see shows now you know and they were only open on you know Friday Saturday Sunday and then there would be some like little VIP things thrown in and during the week yeah so that that moment where because the number of things were going on there you have you know large crowds of people the pictures of the lines snaking around the building that moment of wow it is happening you know doors are open and people are about to walk in and also this idea I wonder of it not being it being people like me who are not who are not like art literate I'm not art world literate I am art world illiterate just walking in and you know negotiating their own feelings with this and your decision not to have placards not to have any interpretation just letting people walk in and deal with it who are not used to you know interpreting that yeah why that decision and what was going on at the moment that you let that go down okay I let that go down because okay we had a couple of conversations around this as I was working I find as an artist I I you know sometimes I spend time writing some things in kind of already way sometimes I can write things that are more concise and sometimes I I found myself working on this project visually almost exclusively I was reading some stuff but also like trying to respond to things and trying to find the images that would suit and what happened was you know I would meet with the curators creative time it was like this is what the piece is and it was like okay so it's this PowerPoint and I was like no no no the PowerPoint is just images with words so that you understand what I'm thinking about but it's not that's not what the pieces okay so the pieces you know it contains you know you know this set of ideas that starts at molasses because this building is coated on the inside with molasses and raw sugar so it starts with molasses and then it moves dovetails with you know environmental destruction and and you know commodities and commodifying of bodies and then it you know and it's about like distilling it's about you know boiling you know and then you know as I kept coming back to like this this like this physical kind of like process of like processing this thing so it would become this product that's still kind of a waste product in the end and it's still and it's still kind of contested sugar isn't contested but it had this you know if there was there were these moments when I just I didn't have a thing but I had these ideas that I wanted a thing to contain and okay so I'm getting to your question so the the sort of moment the reason that a subtlety happened as a subtlety was you know after doing some reading and realizing that you know there are ways that sugar was used to employ ideas right okay and I also realized that who you know who is the who who's viewing this work who is the public and this public is again not necessarily aren't viewing audience but also a sophisticated audience an audience that may be able to get some of this but not all of this and I assume that with all of my work that but I make these cut paper silhouettes and these shadow puppet movies with a kind of a view towards the broadest possible audience so they could you know imagine not just an art audience but with a you know fully cognizant of you know things that have come before me in art and responding to that as well so what is a location right before this was a sphinx it was like what is an idea that can what is something an object that contains the idea of ruins and spectacle and civilization and slavery that everybody knows you know and it was just like a little glimmer of an idea it seemed kind of silly it's actually seem still seems pretty silly and why not his Fink's and and so I I played around sketching it for a little while when I was Fink's and the more I thought about it the more I thought this is something that you know it is legible on so many levels and what I adore in a way about art experiences is that it's a nonverbal experience and what I abhor a lot of the times the way that you know museums and institutions have to educate and I know that's that it's their mission but there is something that gets lost sometimes when there is too much information at the outset and I wanted if this thing was going to be mammoth then it was going to overwhelm even you know the faintest possibility of like a descriptive you know it's like why I couldn't write it down like why why I kept having to kind of like explain it in you know in storytelling or in you know these kind of other sort of media that that would kind of like get to the heart of it but it would never I could never arrive at the heart of the thing through through placards or language so that said there was a lot of stuff that got put on the website through creative time and there was a lot that and a lot of other conversations about well should we integrate the you know the PowerPoint that you made or should we you know have a space set aside that you know has the explanatory text or should that you know and they were there are moments when I thought yes yes it starts to feel didactic and it waters down this like the boom experience now what happens after that you know so by not giving it that context or not you know kind of clearing any kind of specific intention or and you have people that are walking in that are that are that are coming from all kinds of different walks everyone everyone everyone was in there and reacting to it with their own set of you know some some some some things vile some things yeah their own socialization and it was it's alarming and so so what happens with that choice is that there's a phenomenal outpouring of inappropriateness some people see it as inappropriate and some people maybe this is what you were going for I don't know this is my question but it's this you know New Age 2014 kind of call in response in some ways I think yeah of the selfie so you have I wish I wish we had yeah I have a lot of em you have you know people from all walks of life that are posing that are I mean it was a it became the story at some point right um and so it was a hashtag Carol Walker Domino and it was an Instagram someone created a selfie generator did you know what this I heard about this selfie generator where if you were in another state and you were not there you could still insert yourself into the picture and do something with it you know what I mean it became this this other thing and and so do a what was going on with you as that was happening B was any of it expected or contrived in any way it was with any of it manufactured by you and no and and you know four months later looking at that specific part of people inserting themselves in the work in that way where you left let's see so a couple of thoughts sort of maybe moving backwards into it back into the piece like right now and the last day of the the last couple of hours of the last day of the piece I sent my team of video video artists to record the audience interacting with interacting with the piece and I'm working and looking a lot of this footage right now and figuring what to do with it and and in that footage you'll see just the sort of sea of humanity doing what humans do somehow families with children posing people doing lewd gestures being really offensive actually some people enabling others to like okay no you know sending a girlfriend sending their boyfriend closer now do this you know and we've got like that and guys embarrass like now don't make me do that you know just and so there's like this kind of like these waves of all types of response that you know people are uncomfortable around big bodies and you know black women black women bodies and the voluptuousness and the sort of the earth-mother and then the you know the the concubine like all of that is like embedded in this body and there's that feeling yeah people people always misinterpret artwork I mean every interpretation that we make that is not that of the artist is another person's misinterpretation but the 5000 psi and dissertations of my work which I can respond to so I actually find that kind of thing fascinating and part of our human story and then you know the the sort of icing on top of that is the the sort of essays and you know complaints and tweets and blogs that come out responding to this kind of like parade that happened because of this piece and how that how this piece kind of activates its own history somehow activates the history static it contains it sort of shows something up about us you know we've met the enemy and he is us and that's my modus operandi and most of the most of the time so as it's happening what are you thinking I mean you're seeing you're seeing something I I really just wanted for folks that are not I mean how can we describe some of the stuff that was going on people like tweet the nipples they dive into the vagina lots of guys being dudes and in that way and and people getting angry about it too I think there was a friend of mine told me there was a argument some women had words on the on day one yeah that somebody was doing something with a nipple and some other women said don't do that you know don't you know because it makes black women feel uncomfortable in their bodies right I'd say I read that someone yelled out at one point on day two or three to the folks taking pictures you're recreating the very racism this art is supposed to critique and it turned into a a bit of a thing when great of time and like you know I mean so this this work is bringing out that kind of yeah I mean it's more of a I mean exorcism isn't the right word because exorcism supposes that it will dissipate somehow it's more like a drawing out there's a I don't know if this is true or not and somebody once was telling me about the way you get a tapeworm out of your systems so the lie the inflicted next to a bowl of hot soup and as they're lying there the tapeworm emerges from their mouth a little something like that is there yeah you know and I think it's it's more alarming I mean it's it's it's alarming anytime you experience re-experience racism and racist acts and it's alarming when you want to wish them away so problematic I do both of those things right but one of the critiques of folks I think you know I think there are a lot of kind of black cultural critics and just you know like black folk in a space who you know have throughout your career had questions about intention you know intention and and kind of black faces and white spaces you know and and how you're negotiating that and what you're playing with what you what's purposeful and what's unintentional just as a result and so with this specifically you know cuz I saw something early on where you had said and we talked about it a little bit that that when you when you approach it there was a feeling of reverence mmm that that that that some people felt but other folks felt just very comfortable around this black woman's body in this form to just be inappropriate and do whatever they wanted but when I see people being inappropriate I don't think of them as being comfortable but maybe that's because I was spying on them question Wow all this is happening your piece is there we've gone through the moment where you say I can do this I'm gonna occupy this full space you're directing you know you're the artist you're you're the center and you are directing all these people to create it and it's going up five six however many stories it is and 4,000 people come and you're in the moment and it starts to become this other thing where are you like literally are you where because you see they're coming around you stop you well I couldn't actually I tried you know like the first you know I mean first second day or something I went out there and it was it's like I can't be there in a way I couldn't be there because it was a distraction so now but on the other hand you know people came up to me Koval had questions people cried people people I mean and it happened in multiple times so I'm not calling anybody out but you know that I went there and then somebody was in tears and approached me and said their words and then took a selfie with me and it was all like well all of a piece and it has and so it's like it's not sort of any one thing it's kind of messy I like the floor of the space after the show so you're not so you so you fit you remove yourself there as the artists who would be kind of getting in a way in the way of what people are so I went a couple of times a bit a couple times but where are you in watching this a spectacle from from a distance as the creator of the work what was going on for you heart wise it's harder to that's harder to answer in yeah no it's definitely so processing I I the the slightly humorous not humorous stories that I took a small vacation like towards the end of May it was like press and then you know dalla and then my parents came in town and my you know I had a family member pass and my sister got engaged and it was just like you know life was happening and this piece was happening which was like trying to you know like eclipse life a little bit and then I went on this small vacation to a Caribbean island resort and then I said I wanted to get away from why why would I do this to myself like really miserable II on this island feeling this thinking about generations of people marooned there and you know this kind of like attitude of oh we don't see many african-americans coming here like you know how is it for you I was like I can't even tell you so that was like physically where I went and then I just kind of went deeper into this like I don't know how to how to be who to be what to be there were moments when I was at home on a weekend thinking no I should go there because this is where everybody is you know there's this thing happening in town and it's mine and it's interesting and I'm curious and then I would go and that would you know again it like it's like so weird toxin that goes into the space and like you know people want pictures people want to ask questions and then people get competitive and then they're like no I was here first and I'm just like she's not about that so so you know it's tricky it's tricky and it's because it's also it's a bigger wider more internet-savvy world than I actually want to admit to the the the architecture in which your work lives is something that I've been thinking about a lot just in in in in connection with my own stuff you know these these these these literal spaces the museum the movie house places that traditionally have not been welcoming to people of color and I think it's been a question a lot with with your work as to how much I think at one point you'd said something like early on in your career you struggled with the idea that people were projecting onto you of you saddling up to white power or these structures and and yet we're 25 years later and you're right and you know and the scale of the ideas are getting bigger and bigger and more complex and so I'm wondering you know cuz I watched a interview with you quite a while ago you were talking about this this was a struggle but this this is just kind of a central I think conflict somehow and and doing the work is like what it seems to be specifically a lot centered around you you know what I mean and you're in your work I think that there are other artists that are that are that it that this critique is bypassing them in somewhere and people don't feel it's applicable but just wondering I mean you've been taking that for a while and and how how have you seen that as nourishing you or or not because I just see the work and the ideas growing and becoming more and they're kind of blossoming from this place of this questioning or I don't know if that makes any sense like it does I you know speak in my circuitous way I you know I was thinking oh I kind of operate from this like the space of black privilege and just like you know like I don't I never thought about it as a thing till recently so everyone's talking about white privilege and I was like no no no I think because of you know some of the circumstances of me you know my growing up my father's an artist he's an educator you know he really put a lot of stock and a lot of faith in in people's ability to understand themselves and be free in that somehow and without a lot of you know instruction in a way and a lot of and certainly not a lot of chastising so I am I think that some of the you know some of the ways that I work are kind of with the understanding perhaps incorrectly always always aware that it's probably an incorrect assumption that I can do what I want within my work and within and and that if I you know and and that something about my being here being a woman of color and experiences that I've had that's gonna be in the work when I was younger I didn't want that to be the case and he's wants mm-hmm yet moved away from all that was kid though you know this be metaphorical about it and when I got older I thought well isn't it funny or to just be completely direct about it because everybody hates that you know and and then of course the question is like what is direct you know in the direct address is always kind of predicated on these other preconceived ideas and stereotypes and notions and fallacies that I had incorporated into my psyche without realizing it so so there's a lot of you know the work that is you know apart self-examination as it is you know kind of like picking apart these like how do these images ideas get there how do I respond to them and am i responding to them in a voice that's mine or is it you know sort of universal or is a uniform you know things like that in I was just gonna jump to something earlier mm-hmm there was a this is not visually stimulating but slight number 23 24 22 23 24 just because we're talking about other people's perceptions and dissertations and things like that that have been circulated yeah I had a an artist colleague sort of yeah I mean she also pointed it out to me in that voice like there are so many people writing just about your work yeah and it's it's shocking and it's kind of galling in a way cuz there's so many other artists who were working so and in my effort to be the universal black woman artist as we all are as we all must be I end up doing a show that was just a series of drawings for potential book covers for other people's dissertations on my works just nobody's really taking me up on it but I just kind of like you know there's this and you know so each one was kind of my own dissertation but in the end and offering are you reading I can't no I don't think that would be completely I mean sometimes early on people send me things or like there's an article or something but it's I don't know I don't I don't mind I don't want to be defined been defined okay okay well you know that you're being defined you just want to participate well the how do you how do you defend you your heart from some of that stuff I mean cuz it's it's early on you know I don't know if folks are familiar but it was was it it was right so she won the MacArthur she's a MacArthur Genius and that happened she's 27 yes and so you were the youngest at that time and you know and there was a reaction to that from some elders in the in the art world specifically the black art world specifically the black woman world about the images that image making and storytelling that you were you were sharing and you know I'm just I'm just I just put myself in that position and I think I've never had that kind of I won't say negativity because I think some of it was about you know some of it is is valuable to to explore but there was not a vitriol but there was a hardness a harshness for sure it was a harshness there that could could break you know could it could break someone or there or could have someone you know passive-aggressively kind of going in the opposite direction what did it do for you and now 25 years later that moment of you know some some really beautiful elder black woman artists you know reacting you know violently in some way very negatively to what you were doing and yet carrying on to a point where we're now looking at 1/2 mammy half sphinx sugar coated in the sugar you basically kept running with it I guess so I mean I I you know there's there was sort of like two waves and then there's like my own you know yeah and my own wave initially you know I was you know a lot happened in 1997 my daughter was born you know the MacArthur hat that one MacArthur happened then the controversial you know like they they started getting wind of what was being written and sent around and then I had my daughter and then I was like okay well how do I you know my way of being in the world especially it at that time so they really didn't talk much just like well I'll just respond in like I always imagined like art you know like rap battle style like you know like art begets art somehow so I was responding to things that I had seen that came out of the Black Arts Movement that I thought didn't sort of take into account some a very particular aspect of one's relationship to these stereotypical figures I think that it's completely appropriate that of all the people Eddie saw would have been the most outraged by it and she probably cottoned on to that that you know you know I looked at yeah I mean a lot of work coming out of that movement my father you know sort of parallel but not doing the same sort of work and but I you know felt like I was familiar enough with the making and I was becoming more familiar with these stereotypical images to the point I thought that what happens when you yourself an artist claims some kind of agency over those images I mean I don't think that that's that different then being you know white toymaker in the 19th century making you know that toy in the first place like I just as an artist one of my kind of central conflicts is around the agency that I may or may not have to make something in the first place not whether or not I'll be seen but whether or not in you know plastering something whether assuming that this blank piece of paper is blank enough for me to just do you know be a master to it you know and and so I think that that that dialogue with my agency and those projected subjectivity of the paper is like the core like problem of like how how can I a person who believes in freedom make these figures do my bidding I think it's cruel and unfair and I don't think that it's right as an artist to assume that just making that mammy figure be a warrior assembly transforming her you're still making her do something that you wanted so that was you know maybe central and probably totally unspoken until this moment - let's do that so to that end it was completely necessary I guess that you know this you know thing opened up now the way it opened up was there was vitriol there was rage it was you know name-calling and some things like that and I just like I don't really traffic in that arena so much like you know retreated into motherhood and I did a lot of drawings and tried to respond in the way that I knew how to respond which is sort of writing and drawing and and eventually kind of arrived at a had a an idea that you said call in response earlier and I said well that's what this is is that when when you sort of besieged a viewer with this imagery it just sits there which i think is fascinating that's why I did this big piece it just sits there being and it's unsettling and a viewer needs to be able to talk back to it and they need some some response back from something and that thing just sits there so that's you know by understanding now is that it it's a part of that process of you know calling out and if it means calling out the artist who made it calling out the thing that it is calling out the culture that produced the circumstances for the making of this thing then I mean it it Frost's over sure it does do you do you feel like not not seeking it's the wrong word but as you're making things is there do you consider that the controversy around your work is actually has become a part of your work and are you incorporating that and and and consciously traffic not trafficking consciously incorporating that at all I mean almost everything you do is eliciting some kind of response but I don't yeah search you know it is going to no he's no I mean I I it's strange you know I do what I'm feeling and what I'm feeling is I think monstrous so I do it in the nicest possible way and I think that's what's unsettling you know it's cut paper and I and I I think that the the one thing that I can give that seems like a gift is the part that looks pretty you know and the other part that feels like a curse is the part that I was feeling in the first place we go to the image number 29 which is still from this sort of shadow puppet video called Miss Pippi's blue tail or fall from grace mr. Peppy's blue tail it was born out of conflictual feelings that were both personal and larger than me and political and historical and trying to and also in relation to the process of making so you know even in the process of making the thing I had to destroy the puppet watch that place what foot what can I mean you can't really show it it's about eight minutes oh oh no I'm sorry this one's 18 minutes it's my epic we've got a few minutes left before we go to questions five minutes and I want to ask things that no one asks Kara Walker man okay okay I mean okay the pedestrian thinks people want to know do you watch TV I put my TV in the basement of my house I'm just gonna be nails so I sometimes watch things but I don't know really what's on I sort of let's say sort of I used to watch more movies and I've been I live right down the street from BAM I could be going to the movie theater every week every weekend every day but I haven't been a little bit but you know my daughter's really interested in filmmaking now so she's kind of like doing like her own film study so I'm sort of catching up again so watching you know music music I listen to yes it's just like a PA system with my iPod dock Beethoven's moonlight sonata is over and over again when I'm working I had a phase where I listened to D'Angelo's many other state yeah yeah there's music social media you you are a lurker you know I'm not a twitter twitter I have a little little bit of incognito incog-negro yeah exactly an incognito Instagram Instagram and you'll never find me and I'm behind her and then yeah little facebooking but I've curbed the facebooking cuz you know my mom's on Facebook even my daughter doesn't even do you know Instagram anymore so once my grandma was on I was like you know what those were my questions I think the audience is gonna have some brilliance to ask and so this was you know the road is so high-tech I think it's pretty cool and cool um okay here we go how do you each view the evolution of from yo oh goodness how do you each view that ever get you answer this how do you view the evolution of American society where is the story going what Twitter is coming with the heat where is that going well you know like like the crowds I'm gonna use the crowd analogy for my piece like those stories going wherever it go yeah yeah gotcha um like I think it's it's a tall order to ask an artist to answer that question but because you know I make up stuff sometimes and I make up stories that are based on other stories and and I think the thing that you probably can speak to you too but you don't have to is you know storytelling is kind of like the basis of you know our art anyway indeed has your desire for sugar changed since you started using it as an art material well that piece was going up and while I was like putting my hands into a five-gallon bucket of sugar water paste I actually felt like yeah the reverence thing was very clear like I understand that this this substance is supercharged and am I using it in this quantity you know from you know where it's come from and how it got here all of that is really charged so anytime I you know have my little you know I don't use a lot but you know I have my coffee and my sugars and I'm just like yep this is a question for me has creating your own television series ever crossed your mind if so what it would be yes I am and wait till you hear what it's about few weeks you'll know let me see do you feel like your art is always being looked at as being made by a woman by an african-american and how do you feel about that um I feel hmm yeah sometimes those two seem to be mutually exclusive it seems like it was like one african-american artist and sometimes I'm a woman artist and I'm always shocked because I'm less frequently a woman artist than I am an african-american artist yeah not always how do I feel about it yeah it's okay you're very basic questions how do I feel feeling is a really big thing let's just say that feelings come and go they're hot and cold and various temperatures in between there are days when I feel completely resistant to it there it is like talking about controversies I had a piece up that became controversial and in Newark in the library and I had this feeling that nobody knew where it came from and it seemed really vitally important that these women in the library knew that it came from an african-american woman it wasn't just some random you know parade you know bearded artist who just came up with this thing so yes context so yeah but you know I always kind of feel like I'm I'm the little me that you know that I was when I was little and wanted to make art when I'm actually in the process of making it like the thinking about it and the fretting and you know what to do next and how do I get to do this all that stuff it becomes influenced by you know the who and what is it that I am and how is it that this work is you know going to be undermined by somebody who thinks that my blackness and my woman is so not valuable and then I have to override that and that's a lot of extra work that you don't really have to do you shouldn't have to can you see the physical sugar Sphinx separate from your explorations around the work can they be two works you have an MFA so I'm gonna let you I don't know but I for what have you read that one more time when I see the physical sugar Sphinx separated from your explorations around the work around my other work can they be too works I'm just gonna jump in there so the physical sugars Fink's is gone she's gone she exists as a digital file somewhere she's exists on 10,000,000 Instagram that's right pictures and conversations that people had and and memories that people shared from being in that space the space itself oddly enough doesn't seem to have been torn down yet I've been waiting for that and it's interesting because she's a missing like a memory now yeah yeah which I think I was kind of going for you as I you know I can't say I was unaware that there would be millions of pictures taken because we live in that world I just wasn't aware of just how many gazillions like it you don't know what that looks like until you see everybody go and it you know as far as you know my work and where that goes from here I mean I don't know I don't I know that things have this sets a precedent a new you know set of ways that I can think about working I don't know if it means it's a sculpture if it means it's about tackling the you know a challenging space in a different way and then finding my way into that space you know like finding a solution they say with filmmaking that once you get a big budget it's hard to go back and everyone tells me you'll never go back to make a film for a half-million dollars or a million dollars now that you've played with the big toys and tasted the fruit I so I posed that question to you do you think you would you be satisfied with juvie would you would you find satisfaction and not going back but but the more kind of handmade no I do find satisfaction even you know my my biggest shows before this were you know sort of Laura cut paper works that always felt like too much and too you know too many different possibilities and anxieties presented in the work and so I I always wind up going back and sitting in my studio and finding the studio too overwhelming and then you know just trying to find an intimate understanding what it is it's interesting to me my writing or small it's trying to be an in touch with it yes really important yeah can we expect to see the woman mammy Sphinx in any of your future work is she gonna be recurring as the Sphinx I don't know about as a sphinx I mean I I have a show coming up that has a lot of preparatory notes and drawings for this piece that's probably it where she's gonna if she's gonna emerge out of my subconscious periodically would you ever switch it up in the future and move your art practice into a new direction if that's the are you gonna always make work about race I don't think that's a question that is really you know I think the work is doing some other things that are about power and it's filtered through a lens that I'm familiar with which is racialized in sexualized expressions of power and control and loss of control power subjugation dominance yeah white fur and then I can suggest other works that you can look at that are about other things but I don't do that I'm gonna get in trouble with the road I'm gonna get in trouble again yeah but I just I mean maybe she's standing up here okay you gotta shout it yo shout it we gotta shout it out go and I'll repeat it for the the streaming Thank You sirs what's your question I'm glad I'm glad you said let me allow me to reiterate or to repeat what you said because there are people watching online you just see us looking in the corner so so got it I'm gonna repeat it for the audience let me repeat it says so how was your work help me up how was your work dismantling ideas about the white power structure as it relates to bullying innovation how one might dismantle disabilities power structure that's right and then my long pause well it's it given where my head has been at the last couple weeks it's might not bring completely true but I know that when I began doing this work I I was thinking about ways in which one might tease out the evidence I guess or tease out and maybe we were talking about this a little bit with the selfies and the the problematic selfies that there's something about this work or this body my body of work like demanding that a viewer reveal themselves and reveal their true nature and then hopefully face it but not necessarily um in the case of sulfa gate there was a call tour for people to be more you know like the call came from outside like you know to look at yourself or don't behave in this way but but in you know in you know as an artist I think we you know sometimes feel a lack somehow of ability to really make positive social change but you know to sort of change of moments you know to change a question or to provoke a sensation that might alter history I don't know thanks for the question I got time for one more the broad is like see what you did so the question is so the question is that the Kara's work forces the audience to look at themselves in a in a critical way and whose work does the same for her okay whose work does the same for me that's interesting I mean and I feel like I'm sorry when I give my answer sometimes I feel like I go back to my like 15 years ago history or sever 20 years ago history but but works that that jarred me out of my sense of self and then made me angry about it was like a lot of German new expressionist neo expressionist and an early expressionist work and the noise the new Objectivists from the earlier part of the 20th century and it part of that was a you know show happened when I was in Atlanta and I was just like who are these you know and oh and and it's a lot of Germans to be honest with you and Austrians and Herman neesh and Otto mule and all those guys who we're doing really bloody debauch stuff in the 60s and 70s and it's just like this is it's like it's like going so deep into a cultural psyche that is so and and and being so invested in it at the same time like as artists they were so invested in the sort of sort of death cycle of German history recent German that that they just used it and were it and I find that so upsetting and so yeah I just it's it's something that I find really interesting because it exists it's not just that you know that it was a theoretical kind of idea what if we did something like this but like well why don't we enact this kind of drama and I had this situation a couple a year or two ago with with an artist formants artist who was doing a piece I scored a piece for William Pope L a few years ago it's just like a prompt you know giving him a prompt and the prompt was kind of along these lines like something so sort of provocative as to be extremely problematic you know way of engaging an audience which was a borderline rape basically but borderline like and pushing into this space that you know it was like a prompt that could never be you know enacted unless you know it was enacted so the other artist who's some reason he's really well known I've just blanked on his name his was given this prompt from William Pope l and wanted to use it in his retrospective and then this became a problem and I got a call from the press he's gonna do this piece and he's gonna take it all away and what do you think about it I was like what do you mean wait wait wait wait take it all the way and you know taking all the way so we had a conversation and got kind of heated for a minute and we sat down for a minute and I was like you know when you say take it all the way like I'm imagining termination you know at least autumn you'll and these guys from the sixties action is new action it's like you know just you know creating this traumatic you know violent act in the space are you serious you know and and I think maybe I'm I respond my feeling was that he didn't think that an audience would you know go all the way or the fact the audience was sort of playing along in a way that was also revealing and problematic and so all I did in in this case with the new artist was I changed the language of it so that it wasn't the kind of a universal I who was going to do this but it was like this artist is in this place and you know and it was just kind of like switching the context but it was like a weird art decision like do you you know where do you stand what is your responsibility for like putting the idea in the world we're putting the prompt or the action in the world so you have those German guys and Austrians really they really get my god good do I have time for one more time for one more question oh my goodness I did this this and now this sir hi you're the final question is this forever for me yes for you carry our thank you I'll repeat your question that was a little cool so that so it was a compliment to to a subtlety sugar baby and the question how do you see yourself as a chronicler a documented documentarian I have a bad memory asking her to identify herself well I think of myself as an artist and and you know that's weirdly open-ended somehow documentary is not really what I'm doing there's a lot of you know questions of being an unreliable narrator in my work and I revel in that and I think trickster maybe to some extent but you can never claim yourself as a trickster with though you know so ending on trickster I think it's a nice the subversive tricks burger thank you I enjoyed speaking with you thank you for coming everyone thank you

Channel: The Broad

Views: 19,114

Rating: 4.9024391 out of 5

Keywords: Ava DuVernay (Film Director), Kara Walker, contemporary art, The Broad

Id: AA1brfeJfaw

Length: 77min 38sec (4658 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 11 2014