®
QUEEN MA�Y REIGNS SUPREME
Legend. SEPT/OCT/NOV 2020
DISPLAY UNTIL 11/28/2020
– NAOMI –
Naomi Campbell
Self Shot Los Angeles, June 10th 2020
Bal Harbour, 9700 Collins Avenue (305) 867-1215 Design District, 140 NE 39th Street (305) 639-8851 valentino.com
Unity, Compassion, Kindness, Connection, Humanity, Intimacy, Strength, Optimism, Generosity, Creativity, Togetherness, Inclusivity, Empowerment.
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RIGHT Luminaire’s latest showroom in Los Angeles features a monumental stair which rises through the central atrium, creating a striking location for Living Divani’s Extrasoft Sofa, designed by Piero Lissoni. Living Divani has been a staple of the Luminaire offering for over 25 years.
LEFT Minimal for Luminaire emanates the philosophy of good design as a way of life with kitchens that combine an acute sensitivity to proportion with fine craftsmanship and sophisticated materials of exceptional quality. The Italian brand is exclusively available at Luminaire and is tailored to the exacting needs of each client by our design-educated, in-house, interior architects and sales and design consultants.
“Forty-six years ago, we dared to dream... to democratize good design, to create spaces that enhance people’s lives.”
Luminaire was born out of a vision to bring good design to the American public by being a resource focused on creating environments that affect people's lives. The component parts of this unifying philosophy – the necessity of design education, the desire for limitless inspiration and the requirement for impeccably detailed execution – affect every item in Luminaire’s collection, and reflect the company’s dedication to make good design accessible to all. This philosophy has allowed Luminaire to evolve beyond the walls of a showroom into a laboratory for contemporary design, hosting curated exhibitions, open-forum lectures and educational programming.
Since its inception in 1974, Luminaire continues to expand and respond to the needs of an increasingly receptive audience. With two showrooms and a state-of-the-art corporate headquarters and distribution center in Miami, showrooms in Chicago and Los Angeles, as well as temporary and experimental spaces like LuminaireX, Luminaire demonstrates a continual evolution as a pioneering force in the design world, reshaping the idea of what a design store can be. Boasting a collection of the best contemporary design in indoor and outdoor furnishings, lighting, kitchen, bath, and accessories, Luminaire continues to highlight the way good design can change the way people interact with their environment.
MANY OF THE THINGS OUR CLIENTS LIKE BEST ARE NOT FOUND ON THE SHOWROOM FLOOR
Luminaire has built long-standing relationships with an international roster of designers and the most important manufacturers of contemporary furniture, lighting and accessories. Many of the vendors we work with have been staples of our collection for decades, often exclusive to Luminaire, and several of which were introduced to the United States for the first time at Luminaire. Clients entering a Luminaire showroom become immersed in an environment that provides inspiration and sparks curiosity. These spaces exhibit a clear point of view, mixing the wide range of designers and brands together to offer the client an incomparable selection of pieces that exemplify good design. Luminaire's in-house team manages the entire spectrum of their clients' experience, from selection to installation, providing an unrivaled level of attention at each step.
Jader Almeida builds on the heritage of Brazilian modernism to create objects that capture a dynamic combination of lightness and strength in their shape, as evidenced by his Mad Lounge Chair, available at Luminaire.
Luminaire's clients benefit most from the company’s business intelligence. With a sophisticated centralized computer system, fast and accurate order processing is facilitated through direct shipments from Europe to Luminaire’s main warehouse, delivered by the company’s fleet of trucks and installed by Luminaire’s professionally-trained team, ensuring support at every step of the process.
The world of Paola Lenti is one of a harmonious union of color, craft, and form. The range of outdoor and indoor furnishings are available at Luminaire, including Outdoor Therapy at Luminaire Lab.
A poetic translation of nature, Davide Groppi’s Sampei resembles a blade of grass, effortlessly swaying in the breeze.
A SHAPER AND SHARER OF IDEAS
For over 36 years, Luminaire and B&B Italia have shared a special relationship. One of the world’s preeminent design brands, B&B Italia industrialized the manufacturing of contemporary furniture with their revolutionary development of cold-molded foam which allows sinuous forms like Piero Lissoni’s Eda Mame, pictured above.
Blending craft with technology, Porro creates systems that exude a sense of order through carefully studied designs.
Luminaire is committed to education and the company has annually sponsored and produced spectacular curated exhibitions and a series of lectures since 1979. Featured speakers have included design luminaries such as Marcel Wanders, Antonio Citterio, Piero Lissoni, Giulio Capellini, Philippe Starck, Ron Arad, Ingo Maurer, Konstantin Grcic, Massimo and Lela Vignelli, Patricia Urquiola, Naoto Fukasawa, Davide Groppi, and Michael Anastassiades among others. Luminaire is also passionate about supporting the next wave of great creative visionaries and has been a sponsor of prestigious design awards in the United States and Europe including the Salone Satellite Awards in Italy. This platform allows the discovery of young design talent and provides the opportunity to connect them with top industry tastemakers and influencers. Luminaire has further supported these emerging designers by exhibiting their works in its showrooms.
BELOW The unique designs of Shiro Kuramata verify their character as both art and design where visual poetry reigns over functionality, as seen in the Red Revolving Cabinet, produced by Cappellini.
BELOW Luminaire showrooms present the viewer with carefully curated vignettes that inspire discovery by using good design to change the way people conceive of, and interact with, their environment.
CREATIVE WAYS TO GIVE BACK
In the realm of philanthropic community outreach, the company has launched the innovative, fund-raising "Love" series by reaching out to luminaries in the design community to raise both money and awareness for cancer treatment. These efforts have raised over a million dollars for the University of Miami Sylvester's Comprehensive Cancer Center. Luminaire’s generosity also extends to local cultural institutions, including support of Miami's Wolfsonian- FIU in Florida and in Chicago, the Art Institute, the Museum of Contemporary Art and St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital initiative where Luminaire furnished the St. Jude Dream Home.
Through the medium of the puppy, and the vision and artistic expression of participating artists and designers - like this entry, from Konstantin Grcic PuppyLove, Luminaire’s first “Love” series of philanthropic endeavors, generated a significant contribution to a cause which touches millions of people every day.
Luminaire is committed to encouraging not only the extraordinary interactions with good design that occur in the showrooms, but also to a superior level of customer service and support that sets the company apart.
RIGHT With deep appreciation of his material, German sculptor Lars Zech uses his chainsaw to reveal sculptural forms hidden inside downed trees found in the Black Forrest. The limited-edition sculptures are available at Luminaire.
ABOVE Luminaire and Cassina share an extensive history with a unified mission of propagating good design. The brand’s collection ranged from icons of design, like the Utrect Chair, history to forward-thinking contemporary pieces. RIGHT A longtime friend of Luminaire, Ingo Maurer captures poetry in his unique and dynamic lighting, like the Zettel’z shown here. He has been prominently exhibited at Luminaire since 1984 and he has presented lectures in Miami and Chicago.
luminaire luminaire.com info@luminaire.com
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Contents MAKEUP BY PORSCHE COOPER. HAIR BY NEAL FARINAH; PHOTOGRAPHER ASSISTANTS: YOAV FRIEDLÄNDER, ROY BEESON JR., JULIANNE NASH
SEPT/OCT/NOV 2020
Mary J. Blige photographed by Gillian Laub, wearing Tom Ford, styled by Jason Rembert.
TABLEAUX VIVANT Beloved portraitist and breakout star Amoako Boafo celebrates his first solo show this fall at Mariane Ibrahim Gallery. CULT CLASSIC Louis Vuitton teams up with streetwear legend Nigo for a Pre-Fall 2020 collection of already historical merit. REMEMBERING LIFE IN TECHNICOLOR In a new solo exhibition at Casey Kaplan Gallery, rising star Kevin Beasley picks up where he left off. THE SHOW GOES ON Beloved biennial Made in L.A. returns for the fifth time this fall, with contributions from thirty Los Angeles–based artists to be installed at both the Hammer Museum and The Huntington. SO FAR SO CLOSE Rachel Lee Hovnanian has long employed multimedia installation to speculate on how technology is refashioning the strictures of gender and, with them, collective ideas and experiences of beauty, loneliness and motherhood. CARVING SPACE Artist Jefrë makes more than just public art. He makes places where you want to be. A NEW TEMPLE OF ART AND WELLNESS Compound is a unique nonprofit arts complex grounded in inclusivity and intersectionality. JUST DANCE Artist Konstantin Kakanias reconnects with the joys of creation through his alter-ego’s fantasy flashbacks. WELANCORA GALLERY ADVANCES THE AFRICAN DIASPORA Working with Black artists for nearly two decades, Ivy N. Jones’s gallery speaks to longevity and agency.
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Made in L.A.
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OPENING FALL 2020 FREE ADMISSION Mario Ayala Aria Dean Hedi El Kholti Buck Ellison Niloufar Emamifar Christina Forrer Harmony Holiday Patrick Jackson Larry Johnson Kahlil Joseph Ann Greene Kelly Jacqueline Kiyomi Gordon Nicola L. Brandon D. Landers SON. (Justen LeRoy) Ligia Lewis Monica Majoli Jill Mulleady Diane Severin Nguyen Alexandra Noel Mathias Poledna Umar Rashid Reynaldo Rivera Katja Seib Ser Serpas Sonya Sombreuil / COME TEES Jeffrey Stuker Beyond Baroque by Sabrina Tarasoff Fulton Leroy Washington (aka MR. WASH) Kandis Williams
a version Presented by:
FULTON LEROY WASHINGTON (AKA “MR. WASH”), POLITICAL TEARS OBAMA, 2008 (DETAIL). OIL ON STRETCHED CANVAS. 24 × 18 IN. (61 × 45.7 CM). COLLECTION OF JOEL LUBIN
Contents
Founded by Titus Kaphar and two partners, NXTHVN welcomed its second annual cohort of studio and curatorial fellows this year. From left to right, first row: Allana Clarke, Ilana Savdie, Michelle Phương Ting, Alisa Sikelianos-Carter; second row: Esteban Ramón Pérez, Jeffrey Meris, Vincent Valdez. Photographed by Jamel Shabazz.
THE BOTANISTS Rachel Korine and Maky Hinson launch Caraluce as a love note to the city they share. NEW WORLD ORDER Iconoclastic multihyphenate Daphne Guinness has long seen things differently. YOU COMPLETE ME Filmmaking duo Gerard Bush and Christopher Renz make work that everyone can learn from. BETWEEN THE LINES Multimedia artist Tomashi Jackson mines the manifold histories of systemic inequality. PRESENCE TENSE Chris Emile’s spatial improv riffs with the times. OUT OF THE BOX girl in red asks her fans to stay open-minded about where she is now and what might come next. BEYOND THE PAGE Journalist and critic Robin Givhan reset the boundaries of fashion writing by reinterpretating what clothing can communicate, while directly addressing the issues that define the industry. GOOD BUSINESS IS A FAMILY AFFAIR 3.1 Phillip Lim CEO Wen Zhou is rewriting the playbook for doing business on your own terms. TIME WARP A fall exhibition at Daniel Cooney Fine Art puts never-before-seen photographs by Christopher Makos into our line of vision. A WOMAN REINVENTED Mary J. Blige proves that staying power is all about reinvention, growth, self-possession and a little two-step. PAINTING EYES OPEN The prolific reach of Titus Kaphar’s most recent work considers art’s tangled relationship to history.
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MAKEUP BY EMILY CHENG VIA ZOOM; HAIR BY KERI SHAHIDI. LIGHTING BY JOHN COLLAZOS; SET ASSISTANT: EAMONN MCGLYNN
Contents
Yara Shahidi photographed by Munachi Osegbu, wearing a Peter Do look and Jennifer Fisher earrings, styled by Jason Bolden.
DANIEL LEE RESHUFFLES THE DECK The British designer seizes the opportunity to transform Bottega Veneta’s legacy into a way of life. NO INTERMISSIONS Janelle Monáe has forged a creative career as extraordinary as she is. PAY IT FORWARD Yara Shahidi redefines what it means to be exceptional, and we’re following her lead. THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS For the past four decades, Clayton Patterson has documented the communities of the Lower East Side. MAKING HISTORY Jeanne Gang transforms postmodern architecture and envisions a more sustainable future for the profession. BIGTIME OUTLAWS Two shows this fall cement the significance of OSGEMEOS’s approach to making art. LIVING TOGETHER Architects Marion Weiss and Michael Manfredi reimagine our built environments. BRITNEY, THE EYE OF THE HURRICANE: AMERICA’S SHADOW The conceptual and creative impact of Britney Spears. A DISCOVERY Hood Century’s Jerald “Coop” Cooper advocates for why preservation, specifically by and for people of color, is crucial. THE LONG NAIL GODDESSES OF NEWARK Maria Ortiz’s salon is where the goddesses come for refuge and to refuel. TWENTY-NINE DAYS OF BLACK CULTURE AND JOY WORTH REMEMBERING Writers Grant winner Kleaver Cruz illuminates the history and importance of the Second World Black and African Festival of Arts and Culture. HERE WE GO AGAIN Writers Grant winner TK Wonder interrogates and illustrates the realities of day-to-day racial microaggressions.
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NOMAD SHOWROOM 102 MADISON AVE NEW YORK, NY 10016
NEW YORK UES TOWNHOUSE 34 EAST 61ST STREET NEW YORK, NY 10065 NYC@LIAIGRE.US MIAMI SHOWROOM 137 NE 40TH STREET MIAMI, FL 33137 MIA@LIAIGRE.US LIAIGRE.COM
Jason Bolden
Marjon Carlos
WRITER
STYLIST
WRITER
Kleaver Cruz is a Black, queer Dominican American creative, writer and educator from Uptown, New York City. Cruz has worked and been in community with people across the African Diaspora in South Africa, France and Brazil, among other countries, is a member of We Are All Dominican—a US-based grassroots collective working in solidarity with movements led by Dominicans of Haitian descent fighting for inclusion and citizenship rights in the Dominican Republic—and is the creator of The Black Joy Project, a digital and real-world affirmation that Black joy is resistance. A winner of Cultured’s first Writers Grant with Parker Pen, for these pages Cruz shares an essay on the legacy of FESTAC ’77.
After working in luxury retail for fashion brands including Louis Vuitton and Oscar de la Renta, then opening a vintage shop in New York, Jason Bolden started celebrity styling in 2011, with close friend Gabrielle Union as his first client. (An outfit she wore to an Art Basel party garnered major media attention, boosting Bolden’s profile.) He has since gone on to style some of the most celebrated people of our time including Taraji P. Henson, Cynthia Erivo, Alicia Keys, Ava DuVernay, Ryan Coogler, Vanessa Hudgens and many more. In 2019, Netflix launched the series Styling Hollywood, starring Bolden and his interior designer husband, Adair Curtis. For this issue, Bolden styled our cover story with Yara Shahidi.
Marjon Carlos is a journalist, editor and public speaker living and working in Brooklyn, New York. She has written for the likes of The Wall Street Journal Magazine, New York Magazine, Essence and Aperture, and is the former Senior Fashion Writer at Vogue, where her work explored the intersection of style and culture. “I was prepping for my conversation with Mary J. Blige when two bottles of Sun Goddess arrived at my doorstep. I immediately poured a glass and went in the backyard to enjoy it. While I was sitting there, I was reflecting on this woman’s nearly thirty-year journey in the business—how she evolved from the Yonkers, New York projects to an awardstudded music innovator, Academy Award-nominated actress and, now, wine entrepreneur. When you speak to her, she’s genuinely warm, centered and selfpossessed. The woman has the range and you don’t understand how rare that is until you see it up close.”
Kleaver Cruz
Gillian Laub PHOTOGRAPHER Gillian Laub is a photographer and filmmaker based in New York. Her first monograph, Testimony, was published by Aperture in 2007 and her acclaimed documentary film, Southern Rites, premiered on HBO in 2015, alongside an accompanying book and travelling exhibition of the same title. Her upcoming book, Family Matters, will be released by Aperture in 2021. Laub contributes to numerous publications including TIME, The New York Times Magazine and Vanity Fair, and her widely-exhibited work is included in a range of institutional, corporate and private collections. “To me, there is nobody more fitting for the Legends issue than Mary J. Blige,” Laub says of our cover star. “Sometimes you meet your heroes and it can be disappointing, but MJB surpassed all expectations. She is a true, dignified queen. In person, she emanates the soulful energy that is her music.”
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STEFFEN POMPÉE (CRUZ); JAI LENNARD (CARLOS)
Contributors
©2020 WATERWOR KS IS A R EG ISTERED T RAD EM ARK OF WATERWOR KS IP COMPAN Y, L LC
Introducing
BOND
WAT E R W O R K S . C O M
Mouth2Mouth WRITER Mouth2Mouth is an artist collective based in NYC. Founded online by artist/choreographer Phoebe Berglund and artist/educator Chris Gartrell during the pandemic lockdown in March of 2020, M2M (@m2minternational) is a platform for cultural criticism, exhibitions and apparel design, with an eye to imagining radical futures for art production and collaboration. Of their thought piece for this issue, accompanied by original illustrations, they share, “We gravitated towards Britney Spears because of how relevant she is to our time, as someone who has seen the dark side of capitalism in America during her highly successful and tumultuous career as a pop star.”
TK Wonder
Munachi Osegbu
WRITER
PHOTOGRAPHER
TK Wonder is a writer, TEDx Talk speaker, rapper, singer, illustrator and model. An advocate for social justice and criminal justice reform as well as diversity within the fashion and beauty industries, her dedication to awareness and advocacy has spanned ten years. She is also cofounder, with her twin sister, of Arrested Voices Lifted, a new platform built to amplify the voices of the unheard with painful stories through the power of storytelling. A winner of Cultured’s first Writers Grant with Parker Pen, TK Wonder’s essay and original illustrations for these pages share her own personal experiences with racial microaggressions.
Munachi Osegbu is a Nigerian-American fashion photographer and director based between New York and Los Angeles. He graduated from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts in 2018. Reflecting on his cover shoot with Yara Shahidi, Osegbu shares, “I feel that such a big part of making a great product, and doing this job in general, is creative problem-solving on set. Knowing the rules of Murphy’s law, every crew member needs to be ready to work through anything, whether it be a simple time crunch or a global pandemic! We were working against both with this one, and I love the way we solved the puzzle and pieced everything together. I’m so grateful to be able to keep creating meaningful content during these trying times, and I hope that people can feel our dedication to what we do when they see the images.”
Juergen TellerPHOTOGRAPHER PHOTOGRAPHER For over thirty years, photographer Juergen Teller has been working with leading fashion brands. His photographs have been published in influential fashion, art and culture publications and the subject of solo exhibitions, including at the Institute of Contemporary Art in London, Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain in Paris, Martin-Gropius-Bau in Berlin, Garage Museum in Moscow, Bundeskunsthalle in Bonn, Galerie Rudolfinum in Prague and the Fotomuseum Winterthur. Teller has published over forty books, and from 2014–19 he held a professorship at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste Nürnberg. Of photographing designer Daniel Lee for our cover, he says, “July in Milan. It rained cats and dogs. We went to the park. I liked his freckles, his skin color next to the wet tree. I liked his muscles; I asked him to take his top off. I like his terrace too.”
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JHEYDA MCGARRELL (OSEGBU); TELLER/ DRIZYTE
Contributors
BOCA'S MOST DESIRABLE LIFESTYLE IS UNFOLDING NOW This private oasis is nearing completion and ready to reveal a vast array of indoor and outdoor amenities to enjoy from dusk until dawn. Each impeccably designed residence, villa, and penthouse at ALINA also features its own outdoor space to take alfresco living to an exciting new level. Be the first to experience this retreat just beside the greens of the iconic Boca Raton Resort & Club.
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Jamel Shabazz
Devan Díaz
Darnell-Jamal Lisby
PHOTOGRAPHER
WRITER
WRITER
Jamel Shabazz is known for his photographs of New York during the 1980s. A documentary, fashion and street photographer, he has authored ten monographs. His work has been exhibited in the permanent collections of The Whitney Museum, The Studio Museum in Harlem and the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture. Over the years, Shabazz has also taught young students at The Studio Museum in Harlem’s “Expanding the Walls” project and The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture’s “Teen Curators” program, and he is the 2018 recipient of the Gordon Parks Award for documentary photography. For these pages, he photographed artist Titus Kaphar and the current studio fellows at NXTHVN.
Devan Díaz is a writer from Queens,
Darnell-Jamal Lisby is a fashion historian, curator and one half of the Fashion Victims podcast. His core work delineates the impact of Blackness on and within the history of fashion. Of his cover story for this issue, he says, “After speaking with Janelle Monáe, it was extremely revelatory to listen to the hidden nuances that purport her as a premier figure in fashion history and activism for present and future generations.” And, of his words on photographer Christopher Makos:“Cultured is incredibly generous to allow me the opportunity to write about these profound legends who are guiding us to an equitable future. In this time, when we’re looking for art to be socially conscious, Makos’s work signals us to embrace our differences and similarities to create a better world.”
New York, where she lives and works with her partner and their cat. “I spent the summer reading instead of writing, and when the assignment to profile Yara came about I feared I’d forgotten how. It was a relief to know she’d also been reading and re-reading. Talking to another reader put me at ease. Although I miss in-person interviews, an hour-long phone call about books still hits the same as it always did.”
Jerald Cooper WRITER Arrest the cops who killed Breonna Taylor. Rip lil Tyler. We miss u. Contributions: Nick. Nicole. Daniel.
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GREG ADAMS (SHABAZZ); DAVID BURSTEIN (LISBY); CRUZ VALDEZ (DÍAZ); AARON STERN (COOPER)
Contributors
Open for Inspiration
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FOUNDER | EDITOR-IN-CHIEF SARAH G. HARRELSON Executive Features Editor KAT HERRIMAN Executive Editor ISABEL FLOWER Managing Editor JESSICA IDARRAGA Senior Editor MONICA USZEROWICZ Associate Art Director KATIE BROWN Architecture and Design Editor ELIZABETH FAZZARE Landscape Editor LILY KWONG Design Editor MIEKE TEN HAVE Architecture Editor ANDREW HEID Podcast Editor SIENNA FEKETE Contributing Creative Director CARLOS A. SUAREZ Contributing Editor MICHAEL REYNOLDS
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PAUL EVANS ARGENTE SERIES
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EXHIBITION AND SALE BEGINS SEPTEMBER 24, 2020
www.toddmerrillstudio.com Todd Merrill Studio and Design Miami present an unprecedented collection of rare Paul Evans “Argente Series” works from 19651975 directly from original owners. Featuring many unique studio works including a recently discovered one of a kind wall-mounted Disc Bar, which is arguably the most stunningly rare object to come out of the Evans workshop. An 80-page catalogue with essay by noted design authority Glenn Adamson is available in print or digital. Prices upon request.
Letter from the Editor
The Living Legends Issue SO MUCH HAS CHANGED SINCE our last print issue, when I wrote what I thought would be both my first and last editor’s letter from home. The COVID-19 pandemic has been compounded with a massive social upheaval regarding systemic racism and police brutality, leaving many in our community in even more precarious positions during an unprecedented time with a critical election looming. In this moment, my team and I feel a renewed urgency to support and celebrate the voices of individuals we believe in. As we turned our attention to prepare and present our second annual Living Legends issue, we realized our changing world called for new parameters regarding who we consider to be a legend. The artists we chose for our fall covers are not only immensely accomplished, but are redefining our expectations for their industries, identities and careers. We are beyond proud to have Mary J. Blige, Titus Kaphar, Daniel Lee, Janelle Monáe and Yara Shahidi as our 2020 cover stars. They are all leaders and role models in how individuals can affect change, not only in the ecosystems in which they thrive but in those outside the scope of their immediate disciplines. One of the most special additions to this issue is the inclusion of two pieces from the winners of our first-ever Writers Grant, in partnership with Parker Pen. Launched this summer in an effort to send immediate aid to the writers who make our mission possible, this grant brought us incredible joy to produce, and we are now seeing the richness of talent among our awardees manifest in their dream projects. I, for one, am ready for the long journey ahead. There are jobs to be done and stories to be told. And, if I’ve learned anything from those who fill the pages of this issue, it’s that consistency and resilience are the most important tools for creating real change. This includes voting. We urge everyone in our community to register to make themselves heard this November.
Sarah G. Harrelson Founder and Editor-in-Chief @sarahgharrelson Follow us | @cultured_mag
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From left: Working from home with my dog, Slim; MARY J. BLIGE photographed by Gillian Laub in New York. Styled by Jason Rembert. Blige wears Balmain; crown from NY Vintage; Simone I. Smith jewelry. Makeup by Porsche Cooper. Hair by Neal Farinah. Photographer assistants: Yoav Friedländer, Roy Beeson Jr., Julianne Nash. JANELLE MONÁE photographed by Texas Isaiah in Rogan Gregory’s Los Angeles studio with the artist’s Bronze (dark) and Plaster (white) Elysium torches in the background. Styled by Alexandra Mandelkorn. Monáe wears a Jean Paul Gaultier look and shoes; Jenny Bird earrings; Tuleste rings. Photo assistant: Tre’vell Anderson. TITUS KAPHAR photographed by Jamel Shabazz in his New Haven, CT studio in front of Braiding possibility (2020), on view in his fall exhibition at Gagosian. DANIEL LEE photographed by Juergen Teller in Milan. YARA SHAHIDI photographed by Munachi Osegbu in Los Angeles. Styled by Jason Bolden. Shahidi wears a Peter Do look; Jennifer Fisher earrings. Makeup by Emily Cheng via Zoom. Hair by Keri Shahidi. Lighting by John Collazos. Set assistant: Eamonn McGlynn.
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Photo Michel Gibert, for advertising purposes only. Flower arrangement by Thierry Féret.
In celebration of the brand’s 60th anniversary, renowned Portuguese artist Joana Vasconcelos imagined a line of seating and accessories for Roche Bobois. The Bombom collection presents her interpretation of comfort and interior design: playful, generous and resolutely optimistic.
Bombom, designed by Joana Vasconcelos. Collection of sofas with entirely removable slipcovers, upholstered in different shades of Stretch fabric. Sets of mobile backrests, can be positioned freely on the seats. Tutti Frutti. Rugs, designed by Joana Vasconcelos. Manufactured in Europe.
Tableaux Vivant
COURTESY OF MARIANE IBRAHIM
Beloved portraitist and breakout star Amoako Boafo celebrates his first solo show this fall at Mariane Ibrahim Gallery in Chicago, promising large-scale paintings made with a variety of compositional techniques.
Amoako Boafo’s Green Beret (2020)
“THE NEW WORKS ARE FUELED BY UNDERLYING themes of autonomy, self-reflection, integrity and the perseverance of independence—so relevant for how artists and individuals have been searching for ways to communicate during these current times. ‘I STAND BY ME’ will mark an important moment in my career; the large-scale works will further elevate subjects in my world, and for the future of the Diaspora.” —Amoako Boafo
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GLOBAL REACH | TIMELESS DESIGN FERNANDOWONGOLD.COM
Cult Classic
Louis Vuitton teams up with streetwear legend Nigo for a Pre-Fall 2020 collection of already historical merit. BY AMANDA WINNIE KABUIKU
VIRGIL ABLOH HAS PROVED ONCE AGAIN that his appointment as artistic director of menswear at Louis Vuitton is not to be taken lightly. His capsule collection with Nigo, Japanese streetwear pioneer and founder of Human Made and BAPE, is yet another leap towards what seems to be Abloh’s ultimate goal: transcending genres and trends, and thus redefining what it means to be classic. Bucket hats, crepe-soled suede boots, school uniforms, Canadian tuxedos and classic British military suits are each and all present; the collaboration, named LV², incorporates silhouettes that have defined generations. “It was important for me to create a complete look for this collection, not just an assortment of cool items. But, I feel there’s something in the LV brand that works with the Mod aesthetic—it’s a brand with history, of course, but it’s always had a progressive, modernist outlook to compliment the classic pieces,” Tomoaki Nagao, also known as Nigo, explains of the collection’s instrumental mix of countercultural references, for which he has become known. The designer is no stranger to prestigious collaborations and this is not his first shot with the legendary French house. “The reason Nigo arrived at his premise is that he was a curious Japanese kid in the nineties, and a passionate collector. The only way to satisfy your curiosity back then was to travel. He was going to London, listening to punk, buying records, seeing how Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood had been dressing. He’d come back with the fashion from London and wear it in Tokyo when he was DJing, creating this cross-pollination of fashion and culture. We wanted to tell that story,” recalls Abloh. LV² keeps the visual trademark from Nigo’s previous work with BAPE, which he left in 2013. The Damier pattern and LV monogram are reminiscent of BAPE’s all-over camouflage. Blue jeans are omnipresent, pants are well-cut and shirts are plain white. The Japanese designer’s signature ice cream logo, once sewn on the pocket of baggy jeans, is now melting on a bag and Mount Fuji is stitched to the back of a black bomber. “I am very conscious of my interpretation of what LV stands for and how it should look. My focus was on the shapes and things from LV’s history that I wanted to reinterpret. Considering his position, it’s logical that Virgil’s role is to change the rules. It’s hard for me to know what is ‘right’ in terms of graphics for LV, but Virgil pushed that and encouraged me,” he explains. Nigo is also the owner of NOWHERE, a small but hugely influential boutique in the Harajuku district of Tokyo that he co-founded with Jun Takahashi in 1993. By interweaving references accumulated over the years, even decades, the designer—who is also the current creative director for Uniqlo’s UT collection—has a uniquely complex understanding of the elements of meaningful style. Another thing that Abloh and Nigo share is multidisciplinary practices, which, of course, bleed into their fashion work. These two designers/stylists/DJs have circled around each other, and within the same creative circles, for over fifteen years. The collection’s ready-towear leather goods, shoes and accessories offer a mature interpretation
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A look from the LV² collection featuring designs by Japanese streetwear pioneer Nigo.
of many of their mutual inspiration points. “Collaborations start with conversations. We’re not so linear to be like, ‘Oh, we both love streetwear, so let’s do T-shirts and hoodies.’ That’s not where we’re at in 2020. We were interested in the dandy: how London Mods-meet-Tokyo in a reinterpretation in the likeness of Louis Vuitton. It strikes a chord with the essence of the house, which is travel and cross-pollination,” explains Abloh. Without denying each of their particular aesthetics, or the codes that give Louis Vuitton its stature, the collection ensures more than just a one-off (white).
Compound is a cultural and creative complex fostering the intersection of contemporary art, wellness, and community impact. Compound Commission by artist Tavares Strachan. “You Belong Here” (Blue #1), 2019. Photo by Laure Joilet.
Remembering Life in Technicolor
PHOTO BY JASON WYCHE. COURTESY THE ARTIST AND CASEY KAPLAN, NEW YORK.
In a new solo exhibition at Casey Kaplan Gallery in New York, rising star Kevin Beasley picks up where he left off.
Kevin Beasley’s Field VI (2020)
“A VIEW OF A LANDSCAPE,” ARTIST KEVIN BEASLEY’S 2019 solo show at the Whitney Museum of American Art, transformed a former cotton gin into a musical instrument unlike any we’d seen before, filling the Renzo Piano-designed galleries with a chilling hum that still haunts our dreams. An exploration of our historical roots driven by the artist’s own biography, the exhibition set the stage for a larger discussion about the contentious relationship between land ownership, power and race in the US, and how those dynamics reverberate through the lives of individuals. In “Reunion,” his third solo show with Casey Kaplan, Beasley picks up the threads of his Whitney show and takes them to a more personal place with a series of wall-mounted, raw cotton mosaics inspired by an annual family summer gathering in Virginia that was canceled this year due to the pandemic.
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#MOCAMasks
Limited-production, artist-designed face masks @mocastores to benefit the museum.
Virgil Abloh Mark Grotjahn Alex Israel Barbara Kruger Yoko Ono Catherine Opie Pipilotti Rist Hank Willis Thomas The Andy Warhol Foundation for Visual Arts @moca @mocastores moca.org/masks Image credit: Courtesy of The Museum of Contemporary Art. © Catherine Opie, Courtesy of Regen Projects, Los Angeles and Lehmann Maupin, New York, Hong Kong and Seoul; © 2020 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. / Licensed by Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; © Yoko Ono. Used by Permission/All Rights Reserved.
The Show Goes On
TKTKTKTKTK
COURTESY OF THE ARTIST AND NIGHT GALLERY, LOS ANGELES
Beloved biennial Made in L.A. returns for the fifth time this fall, with contributions from thirty Los Angeles-based artists to be installed at both the Hammer Museum and The Huntington.
SOME OF OUR FAVORITES THIS YEAR include, above, Kandis Williams’s Aristaeus Eurydice Hecate, (2018).
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Clockwise: A still from Sabrina Tarasoff Gail Kaszynski’s Fear of Poetry, (1982); Ann Greene Kelly’s Untitled (tire/wheel), (2017); Diane Severin Nguyen’s Malignant Tremor, (2019).
“LIKE PREVIOUS EDITIONS, THIS YEAR’S Made in L.A. is a survey of artists working in Los Angeles today, but it was also conceived as an exhibition with conceptual through-lines. Virality, alienated bodies, the estrangement of the everyday; horror as a social and political analogy; and “entertainment,” by whom and for what, are some of the threads drawn between the artists in the show. The artists may not directly address this moment, but their work—alternately oblique, poetic and with nested commentary—resonates with the peculiar conditions in which it has ended up being presented.” —Lauren Mackler, Myriam Ben Salah, Ikechukwu Onyewuenyi, Curators
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COURTESY OF THE ARTIST © GAIL KASZYNSKI; COURTESY OF THE ARTIST AND CHAPTER NY; COURTESY OF THE ARTIST AND BUREAU, NEW YORK
From The Curators
Patricia & Phillip Frost Art Museum FIU Fall Season 2020 Visit our website for more info.
Wendy Red Star, b. 1981, Billings, Montana, lives and works in Portland, Oregon Apsáalooke Feminist #4 [detail], Photograph, 2016, 42 x 55 inches, Courtesy of the artist
10975 SW 17th St., Miami, FL 33199 | 305.348.2890 | frost.fiu.edu This exhibition is made possible with support from the Funding Arts Network. Additional support has been generously provided by the Miami-Dade County Department of Cultural Affairs and the Cultural Affairs Council, the Miami-Dade County Mayor and Board of County Commissioners; the State of Florida, Department of State, Division of Cultural Affairs and the Florida Council on Arts and Culture; and members of the Frost Art Museum.
So Far So Close Rachel Lee Hovnanian’s latest installation continues her ongoing exploration of technology’s effect on intimacy. During a time when human touch has become rare and consequential, her prophetic work feels more poignant than ever.
Lucca, Italy, a very peculiar kind of dinner is taking place. Seated across from each other in soft white chairs, two guests’ heads bob on digital monitors; peering down an obstacle course of delicately wrought silver candelabras, they struggle to catch each other’s gaze. The piece, by conceptual artist Rachel Lee Hovnanian, was featured in the exhibition “So Far So Close,” curated by Annalisa Bugliani and Alessandro Romanini. Hovnanian’s work has long employed multimedia installation to speculate on how technology is refashioning the strictures of gender and, with them, collective ideas and experiences of beauty, loneliness and motherhood. Here, Hovnanian has temporarily turned away from her fixation with the feminine to look at how the very shape of our intimacy and interrelation with each other is being rewired in the virtual world. The work, titled Dinner for Two—also concurrently on view as part of “2020 Vision,” curated by Stephanie Roach and David Kratz at the Southampton Arts Center in New York—was completed in 2012. It undoubtedly read very differently then, as a defeated prophecy for a still far-out future in which technology’s total circumscription of our social lives would render real physical interaction perfunctory, if not obsolete. By now, nearly eight years since the work’s inception, the experience it depicts has become commonplace and universal, although under entirely different circumstances than it seemed to predict. The rise of Zoom dates, dinner parties, birthdays, funerals, weddings and even sex doesn’t demonstrate the growing marginalization of physical connection, but is instead a testament to a profound human desire for real communion that pervades against all odds. Even when touching one another might literally kill us, we still find ways to reach out to touch. Dinner for Two also finds uncanny resonances with the church in which it is situated. It recalls both the socially-distanced mass services carried out via livestream in St. Peter’s Basilica when quarantine began and Christ’s biblical charge to Mary Magdalene who, during an encounter after his resurrection, he tells to let go: “noli me tangere,” he says. Knowing that physical touch is useless, he establishes a spiritual contact based on belief. Like much of Hovnanian’s work, Dinner For Two employs the aesthetic conventions of hyper-produced consumer goods to depict a reality that feels eerily familiar, but is not quite ours. Her concern with the commodity became most obvious in Perfect Baby Showroom, an installation presented in the exhibition “Plastic Perfect” in 2016, which proposed a future where the internet is more interesting than sex and young couples will choose their child from a selection of genetically-modified infants, rather than waste any time away from the screen to copulate. Vacuum-formed baby dolls were propped up on pre-packaged bags of Fruit Loops in plexiglass cradles, each a cynosure of electrical cables that plugged into the room’s outlet-coated walls. Visitors were encouraged to swaddle these lifeless miniature mannequins.
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Rachel Lee Hovnanian’s Dinner for Two (2012) at the Church of San Cristoforo, Lucca, Italy.
Hovnanian’s highly participatory and deeply thought-provoking offerings reanimate conceptual strategies with incisive uses of hyperbole and the hypothetical. On occasion, her works even parade out of the gallery and into the world that they so ardently critique. In FMLMBD APÉ TRUCK (2019), Hovnanian repurposed an iconic Piaggio Ape truck, newly equipped with Wifi, a charging port and a neon sign that read “Fuck My Life, My Battery Is Dead.” (“FMLMBD” is an acronym for the phrase.) The vehicle roves around Tuscany offering pedestrians and passersby the connection that has become critical to even our most routine navigation of the outside world: access to our smartphones. Hovnanian’s work is nuanced. It doesn’t simply demand that we look up from our phones like the signs that have begun to appear in restaurants over the past few years, proudly announcing “no WIFI, talk to each other.” Instead, Hovnanian, at first at least, indulges our impulse to bury ourselves in our screens; but, paradoxically, the enthusiastic permission to do so reminds us of how alien that impulse actually is. Hovnanian is by no means a Luddite. In interviews, she is the first to admit that she is reliant, if not codependent, on all the same devices that her audience is. Her own relationship to technology, like her art’s, complicates rather than simplifies our understanding of it. In a world freshly reordered by an ongoing pandemic, Dinner For Two seems to ask the sign “no WIFI, talk to each other,” what happens when talking is suddenly too dangerous? What will we make of technology then?
PHOTOS BY IACOPO GIANNINI AND COURTESY OF THE ARTIST
IN THE CENTRAL NAVE OF A ROMANESQUE cathedral in
ICA MIAMI Allan McCollum / Tomás Esson \
IS NOW Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami Book Your Free Appointment icamiami.org/ welcome-back
OPEN
Carving Space Artist Jefrë makes more than just public art. He makes places where you want to be. BY ELIZABETH FAZZARE
THE MAGIC OF PUBLIC ART IS ITS ABILITY to engage. The magic of a public artist is their ability to placemake. For Orlando, Floridabased creative Jefrë, a background in landscape architecture and urban design means the latter comes naturally. In fact, the artist got his start at the Chicago office of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, one of the most storied architecture and design firms in the world. “My job was always trying to figure out how to bring in amazing artists and, from a placemaking standpoint, find where the moments are in a project,” he says. “As my career progressed, I began wanting to make these moments myself.” Now, Jefrë runs a studio that works globally, from Florida to his homeland of the Philippines. With his first solo show on the books at the Orlando Museum of Art this fall and his largest project to date currently under construction, the mononymous artist has made a name for himself doing just that. Some of Jefrë’s earliest forays into the world of public sculpture came while he was still working in landscape design at SOM. Ever fascinated by pattern-making and creating earth forms, he often yearned to create site-specific pieces for projects, rather than choosing from a catalogue. Soon, he began to custom make these elements himself: first, in temporary installations for luxury brands like Lexus and Tiffany & Co. and then permanently, for hospitality projects like the Atlantis Resort in the Bahamas. A little more than ten years ago, the artist suffered a heart attack and underwent triple bypass surgery, a “milestone moment” that led him to finally establish his own studio with a focus on “an art form for landscape,” he explains. In the first few years of his practice, he won eight Percent for Art program commissions, worked on projects with worldfamous architects like Santiago Calatrava and established his studio as part-workspace, part-pop-up gallery to support other creatives in Orlando. “When people ask me how I work, the biggest thing I learned really quickly is I know what I know and I know what I don’t know,” admits the artist. “With that idea in mind, I put together a team of the best in their industries to create something special versus me trying to figure it all out and have it be mutated.” The commission that put him and his expert team on the map contained two parts: Code Wall, an installation that wraps an Orlando parking garage in a binary code-punched skin, and the adjacent The Beacon, a sixty-foot-tall steel structure covered in 2,000 aluminum panels, onto which digital projections are made nightly. The 2014 project is located in Lake Nona Town Center, a mixeduse development of hotels, retail and offices and has since become a destination for visitors and events, thanks to Jefrë’s installation. Requests for hotel rooms that face the parking garage began flooding in, the space in front of it is now rented for events and last year a couple proposed marriage backlit by the digitally-mapped tower.
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Jefrë’s Heaven’s Gate (2019), Manila
Today, Jefrë’s work spans a range of scales, from the organicallyshaped planter-benches he designed for the Miami Design District to his most recent (and largest) commission, a twenty-four-story-tall figural statue with its fist raised that will welcome travelers across a bridge in Manila, Philippines. The Victor, as it is called, is a perforated steel structure that will serve as a colorful beacon of light and pattern, emphasizing the impact that Filipinos have had on the world, he explains. When completed at the end of this year, it aims to be the tallest projection art installation in the world. These large-scale sculptures have become the hallmark of his practice. “I’ve become known as doing these postcard moments,” says the artist, whose work in a variety of materials often pushes technological boundaries for fabrication. “My work has to be the postcard to your development, has to be selfie- or social media-worthy and, more importantly, it’s got to generate people traffic, which then generates buying power.” In his first solo museum exhibition, “Points of Connection,” which opens at the Orlando Museum of Art in late September, the artist will show his new “BÄKS” series of figural sculptures in various poses whose heads have been replaced by boxes. When seen together, the works form a sort of emotive skyline; each is inspired by a city to which Jefrë has traveled and the feeling he associates with it. As a placemaking artist, he often creates those emotions in others. Sums Jefrë of his work: “My dream is to create these memorable spots.”
Collecting Design: The Legends Collecting modern and contemporary design has become one of the most dynamic, influential, and inspiring territories in the international marketplace. For the first time, the program will be virtual, accessible to anyone across the globe. In celebration of this occasion, Dr. Daniella Ohad will explore several major areas of the collectible design world: With Rossella Colombari: mid-century Italian; with Marc Benda: contemporary design at Friedman Benda; with Michael Boyd: design connoisseurship; with Ulrich Fiedler: German modernism and the Bauhaus; with Evan Snyderman: Objects USA; with Jason Jacques: contemporary ceramics; with Ben Brown: Les Lalanne; with Libby Sellers: women and collecting; with Paul Jackson: Scandinavian modern. With David Gill, Ian Stallard, and Patrik Fredrikson: Fredrikson Stallard and the future of collectible design .F ULL PROGRAM – TEN SESSIONS
OCTOBER: 6, 13, 20, 27; NOVEMBER: 3, 10, 17, 24; DECEMBER: 9, 16 $500 FOR THE PROGRAM AFTERNOONS 3:30-5:00 PM EST TO REGISTER CALL: 212-358-6112 AIANY.ORG/COLLECTINGDESIGN2020
DAVID GILL
ROSSELLA COLOMBARI
MARC BENDA
PAUL JACKSON
LIBBY SELLERS
EVAN SNYDERMAN
MICHAEL BOYD
DANIELLA OHAD
BEN BROWN
ULRICH FIEDLER
PATRIK FREDRIKSON & IAN STALLARD
JASON JACQUES
From top left to right: Michael Byod Interior; Woody de Othello, Getting in My Own Way, 2019, Courtesy of Jessica Silverman Gallery and the artist; Jason Jacques Gallery - Aneta Regel, Red and Blue, 2018; Jacksons - Paavo Tynell, ‘Snowflake’ Ceiling Light, ca. 1950.; Rossella Colombari - Desk for the Lattes publishing house by Carlo Mollino, Turin 1953-54; François-Xavier Lalanne, Singe Avisé (Grand), 2005/2008, Bronze, Edition of 8; Claude Lalanne, Choupatte, 2014/2015, Bronze with green patina, Edition of 8 Copyright François-Xavier Lalanne and Claude Lalanne / Courtesy of Ben Brown Fine Arts; Fredrikson Stallard, Coffee Table ‘Gravity’, 2015; Libby Sellers - Cowbench by Julia Lohmann.; Ulrich Fiedler Charlotte Perriand, Swivel Chair, 1927; Faye Toogood, Maquette 270, Wire & Card Chair, 2020, Courtesy of Friedman Benda and Faye Toogood.
A New Temple of Art and Wellness
Opening this fall in Long Beach, California, Compound is a nonprofit arts complex grounded in the values of inclusivity, community and intersectionality. BY AARON PEASLEY
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From the street, announcing its emphasis on inclusivity and placemaking, the handsome whitewashed building beckons with a piece by Tavares Strachan—a neon text work, which elegantly exhorts: You Belong Here.
LAURE JOLIET COMPOUND COMMISSION; KAINO STUDIO
Left: Tavares Strachan’s You Belong Here (Blue #1) (2019) installed on the exterior of Compound. Above, Glenn Kaino’s Tidepools, (2020).
DON’T BE FOOLED BY THE NAME. Compound, a new cultural center located in California’s coastal city of Long Beach, is not your average big box arts development. In the words of its founder and director—longtime local, designer and philanthropist Megan Tagliaferri— the nonprofit’s mission is to “create space for dialogue, social justice, healing and transformation—all anchored by the arts.” As a port city adjacent to the patchwork metropolis of Los Angeles, Long Beach is one of the most diverse places in the world. Years ago, Tagliaferri envisioned an activated, physical space that would function as a beacon, emboldening community farmers, local arts and youth organizations and political groups. “It’s really about raising consciousness and creating a space for the community to coexist, learn and grow,” she says. Compound’s expansive and cleverly resolved space, which measures over 15,000 square feet, was designed by Tagliaferri in conjunction with local firm BOA. A masterclass in adaptive reuse, the space comprises two restored 1930s Art Deco buildings linked by a sculpture garden and public courtyard. Within, soaring ceilings provide abundant natural light, and minor decorative details channel Californian mid-century folk modernism and the rich craft traditions the city is known for. From the street, announcing its emphasis on inclusivity and placemaking, the handsome whitewashed building beckons with a piece by Tavares Strachan—a neon text work, which elegantly exhorts: You Belong Here. While there are plenty of ways to explore this compelling new project—from yoga classes, culinary experiences and bilingual performances—it’s Compound’s vital art program that sets it apart. Veteran curator Lauri Firstenberg, involved since the project’s inception, has been tasked with balancing museum-quality exhibitions with the evolving needs of the center’s community. “There are three key approaches to programming,” Firstenberg explains. “We will open with the first Compound Commission in the Laboratory space with artist Glenn Kaino. He has created Tidepools, a site-specific experiential artwork inclusive of a cloud chamber, a
sound element and a wishing well. It’s a project about both curiosity and hope. We are also working on an exhibition, project spaces and auxiliary programming around the notion of ‘radical empathy’—looking at artists’ approaches to the intersection of art and activism. And, we have been working overtime on an installation under the rubric of ‘chaos to cosmos,’ featuring works by Lita Albuquerque, Alma Thomas, Helen Pashgian, Fred Eversley and Billy Al Bengston.” Given its arrival in the midst of a pandemic and political turmoil, Compound’s cross-sectional mission feels more urgent by the day. The environment has been designed with an almost telepathic sense of the times; flowing, interconnected rooms and outdoor spaces are emphasized. Programming will also appear online, including Compounded, a digital editorial platform. Regardless of its medium, the center’s holistic investigations were designed to encourage optimism, galvanization and change. “The original intention was for education in the realms of both art and wellness to converge at Compound,” says Firstenberg. “And at this particular cultural moment, a space for belonging and solace resonates in no uncertain terms.”
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JUST Los Angeles- and Athens-based artist Konstantin Kakanias reconnects with the joys of creation through his alter-ego’s fantasy flashbacks. BY ALLISON BERG
“HAVE YOU EVER BEEN IN AN ART STUDIO when the work is finished and you just dance?” inquired my dear friend, Konstantin “KK” Kakanias, with his melodic Greek accent. Given the current cultural climate, I was initially taken aback by the work he created exclusively for Cultured’s fall issue. Was this fantastical drawing of the iconic JeanMichel Basquiat dancing with Mrs. Tependris, circa 1986, an anxious, end-of-the-world-like divulgence of the contemporary art insiders’ last closely guarded secret? “Yes, it’s true,” KK dramatically confirmed, after some coaxing: “Mrs. Tependris had a very small affair with Basquiat. I can’t say exactly what kind of affair but, in my brain, they shared a weekend together after meeting at the famous Mudd Club. On this particular night, when he completed two divine portraits of her, they didn’t even return to the Mudd Club. They danced right there, together in the studio.” I could feel the mischievous twinkle in his eye emanating through the phone as he ranted on: “I often wonder if Basquiat felt abused by the art system; maybe he felt forced to create? He was a genius, but I don’t know how happy he was. I mean, I never met him, but Mrs. Tependris adored him—not as a painter, but as a person.” Playing along in true Hedda Hopper form, I continued interrogating KK for more salacious details. Our evolving banter elucidated the fanciful composition. It is, in fact, not intended to suggest scandal whatsoever, but is instead a sensitive homage to the joy of creating in the studio and the everlasting value of the ephemeral. Mrs. Tependris, KK’s illustrated alter-ego, is a complex caricature of the artist, a society doyenne and a fearless superhero, but also the average flawed human. Originally conceived as his imaginary childhood friend when, at eight years young, he was taken from his mother and forced to change homes, the make-believe heroine compensated for the female presence KK desperately craved. Mrs. Tependris came out, so to speak, via a 1996 New York Times Magazine feature. Immediately garnering a cult following, she has been enduring hysterical adventures since. Along with other larger-than-life, colorfully depicted characters, she has headlined KK’s acclaimed publications, like Freedom or Death (1997) and Mrs. Tependris: The Contemporary Years (2002), and has inspired his numerous fashion-related collaborations with the likes of Yves Saint Laurent, Christian Louboutin, Frédéric Malle, and The
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Bergdorf Goodman Cookbook. Nai, Nai, Nai, a 1999 performance piece that overturned all of society’s accepted roles to reimagine a world based on love and acceptance, remains KK’s favorite. “After that, I felt done. That project totally fulfilled me as an artist,” he confides. When I ask him to articulate how he and Mrs. Tependris intersect, he repeatedly emphasizes, “She is me, but I am not her.” Mrs. Tependris is a figment of his imagination—he takes comfort being in complete control. “I have a whole separate life—I am a man, I am a husband, I drive a car. She has only driven a few times her entire life!” He laughs, and lowers his voice, “You know, when you become older, you start understanding things in a different way.” It is no surprise that Mrs. Tependris has re-emerged during the COVID-19 pandemic. “I got very scared in the beginning and she returned to remind me that we can get through this together,” shares KK. The result is “Mrs. Tependris: The Quarantine Diaries,” a whimsical yet sociopolitical exhibition of works on paper at Gavlak Gallery in Los Angeles, that is expected to travel to Palm Beach. Like most of us, KK has clearly spent recent months reflecting on the past, processing the present and reveling in the future’s possibilities. Flamboyant gouache and pencil drawings jet Mrs. Tependris to glamorous destinations like Venice, Morocco and the South of France, urging viewers to “travel with our minds,” while imagery of her protesting with her friends and vomiting on a White House “Economic Impact Payment” letter harken to current cataclysms. She is spreading a message that culture, curiosity, education and humor are keys to life. “Culture is essential,” proclaims KK. “I just want to make people happy—give them one crack of a smile.” For now, we’ll always have that Monday night, or was it Tuesday morning?
Konstantin Kakanias’s That Monday Night, 1986 (2020), created exclusively for this issue of Cultured.
COURTESY OF THE ARTIST AND GAVLAK GALLERY
DANCE
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Ivy N. Jones’s Welancora Gallery Advances the African Diaspora Working with Black artists over a period of almost two decades, the Bed-Stuy gallery speaks to longevity and agency.
ALMOST TWO DECADES AGO, IVY N. JONES FOUNDED Welancora Gallery in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn. Then and now, there is so much power in a Black gallerist showing and selling work by Black artists in a space that they own in a once predominantly Black neighborhood. The gallery is located in a cozy 19th-century townhouse that emulates Jones’s essence of elegance and grace. The building is reminiscent of the spaces where other institutions were established, including MoMA, Jack Tilton Gallery, Marlborough Gallery and the High Museum in Atlanta. In 2002, Jones made an intuitive decision to buy a brownstone. “At a young age, I always knew that I wanted to own my own space,” the Brooklyn native remembers. A few years later, when she was in her early thirties, she decided to transform the space into a gallery after taking a photography class with Roy DeCarava. “It made more sense to me to keep the gallery in a space that I already own, and to keep the gallery in Bed-Stuy, so that folks don’t necessarily have to leave to experience exhibitions.” Sticking to her roots, she named the enterprise after her father, older brother and mother. Five years ago, the gallery moved to its current location, at a larger townhouse in the same neighborhood. In July, Jones opened Welancora’s doors once again after temporarily closing due to the pandemic. The most recent show on view, curated by Jones along with artist Damien Davis, was inspired by a conversation she had with her good friend Deborah Willis and speaks to a question she is often asked when visitors enter the gallery. Featuring artists Zalika
Azim, Elliott Jerome Brown Jr., Colette Veasey-Cullors, Melvin Harper, Daonne Huff, Anders Jones and Deborah Willis, the exhibition, titled “How Did You Get This?: The Spaces We Inhabit,” highlights photographs, ephemera and a performance that are all in conversation with Welancora’s location, to unpack assumptions about spaces inhabited and controlled by Black people. Highly supportive of Black ownership, Jones pushes conversations around abundance and utilizing space to support diverse narratives concerning the African Diaspora in the US. Maintaining genuine relationships and developing a robust program of solo and group shows with artists and scholars such as Derrick Adams, Helen Evans Ramsaran, Tiffany Smith, Tajh Rust and more, Jones is a contributor to the movement of promoting the longevity of the careers of Black artists here in New York City and beyond. Along with placing art pieces with collectors, Jones makes sure to work with curators and writers of color as well. Since its founding, the gallery has published ten exhibition catalogues, which play an essential role in contextualizing each show and the participating artists. When speaking about her gallery’s development over time, Jones says, “My vision for the gallery is constantly evolving and becomes clearer each day, with each artist, writer and guest curator that I work with.” This month, Welancora Gallery will begin to release solo exhibitions featuring the works of Aisha Tandiwe Bell, Oasa DuVerney and Donovan Nelson. Its upcoming schedule will also include an exhibition curated by Derrick Adams, and another curated by Antwaun Sargent.
BY KIARA CRISTINA VENTURA PORTRAIT BY ELLIOTT JEROME BROWN JR.
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Ivy N. Jones at Welancora Gallery, the space she founded in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn. Makeup by Stephanie Bell.
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The Botanists
Rachel Korine and Maky Hinson launch Caraluce—a jewelry line meets floral delivery service—as a love note to the city they share. BY K AT H E R R I M A N P O R T R A I T BY B A I L E Y B E C KS T E A D
MIAMI’S REPUTATION FOR WORLD-CLASS art and design has always relied on the contributions of a small albeit outspoken circle. As a result, there are almost no preconceptions about the typical Miami creative, in the same way that Los Angelenos and New Yorkers always seem to fit so neatly into theirs. If they are anything like the few I do know, I can surmise an unusually glamorous yet down-to-earth bunch. Take for example, Rachel Korine and Maky Hinson, whose shared vision radiates an old world sensuality that reminds me of what it must have been like to be a fly on the wall of architect Dante Bini’s La Cupola, where a barefooted Monica Vitti walked down stone steps to drink coffee with her lover, director Michael Antonioni, on their terrace overlooking the Sardinian coast. I’m not too far off. Caraluce, Korine and Hinson’s joint creative venture, got its start in 2019 when the duo’s mutual admiration for historical design crystallized into a jewelry line. “I’ve always been attracted to antique jewelry with an emphasis on 1970s Italian pieces and that Miami yellow gold thing,” Korine says. “The pieces we design for Caraluce come out of that tradition, but with a focus on something else we both love: flowers.” The Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden in Miami provides an endless mood board for the friends, who not only share an appreciation for
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gemstones and florals, but also the experience of motherhood and a central role in the city’s contemporary art scene as collectors. You can see all these influences coalesce in their bold settings: big seashell earrings with pearl-tipped tongues and diamond pendant necklaces made to look like a glistening slice of star fruit. The Caraluce mood is gaudy yet delicate like the golden tremble that alights the surface of a Danish still life. Greenery has occupied an even more important role in Hinson and Korine’s work since the start of COVID, when Caraluce made a pivot to include a floral arrangement delivery service. “At the beginning of the pandemic, I was bringing friends bouquets as a way to stay in touch,” Korine recalls. “Then we realized we could do this to raise money for a cause we care about.” New to the florist game, Korine and Hinson are approaching the business more like a gallery scheme than the average petal pusher. The vases that Caraluce Florals uses are sourced by Hinson and Korine from around the world, from Murano to Mexico City, making the ephemeral gift of flowers more permanent. Next up, the partners plan to engage artists like Mark Gonzalez to create custom vessels for extra special deliveries.
Collectors and designers Maky Hinson and Rachel Korine wearing jewelry from their joint line, Caraluce.
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Iconoclastic multihyphenate Daphne Guinness has long seen things differently. Her latest album, Revelations, lives up to its name. BY KILLIAN WRIGHT-JACKSON PHOTOGRAPHY BY STEWART SHINING
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PHOTOGRAPHY BY STEWART SHINING / TRUNK ARCHIVE; HAIR: LARRY MCDANIEL; MAKEUP: TERI TOEUNHAIR
NEW WORLD ORDER
The enigmatic Daphne Guinness on the red carpet of the Beverly Hills Hotel.
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DAPHNE GUINNESS IS POETRY IN MOTION. EVEN THROUGH ZOOM, HER EFFECT CAN RAISE A VIBRATION. Wearing a swan-necked blouse and her signature Gibson Girl bouffant, she looks like a Giovanni Boldini portrait come to life. Regal, with fierce intelligence, Guinness has one of those dazzling personalities that is itself art. Inspiring a bevy of imitators and admirers, she’s lent superstars their style and philosophers their confidence. On lockdown at her home in Los Angeles, the artist-philanthropistdesigner-luminary is putting the final touches on her third album, Revelations. Inspired by the final book in the New Testament, the lead single of the same name premiered two weeks before the global pandemic. Crafted last year, it’s an aptly titled record reflecting the age ahead. “It was the most incredible thing,” she says, leaning forward and smiling at her desk. “It was a stormy day in Ireland and the lyrics just flooded me. Everything came all at once and I had the song done in less than two hours. For the times we’re in now, it’s very prophetic. I sort of wish I’d been wrong.” The song’s accompanying short film was captured by David LaChapelle and offers a glimpse into a crumbling society. Elderly couples fight in a trash-strewn parking lot. Schoolgirls pray as men stumble through glass, drunk and adrift. Others, enthralled by some imminent end, make love. Guinness strolls casually, wearing blood-red gloves, a tan duster and an Iris van Herpen gown. What it all means is left for interpretation, but the threepart film feels more sensible than otherworldly. Guinness is coy regarding her exact frame of mind, but her intention with every project is to reflect the world she sees. “When my family got involved in politics a century ago, it didn’t turn out well. I’m an artist and I’m just commenting on the world around me from a human point of view. We’re living in a deeply polarized world. There’s a lot of things that have to change. Unfettered capitalism. Selfishness. Greed. People are dying. People are still being marginalized. People are losing the few rights they may have had. There’s a lot of things going on. And people are finally waking up.”
The themes of Guinness’s third album, crafted in 2019, feel prescient today.
One of the biggest personal revelations in Guinness’s life coincided with her 2016 debut album, Optimist in Black. She took a “big looking glass” to her life and moved from New York City to Ireland. “It was one of the biggest realizations to remember that I’m me, that I don’t ever have to succumb to someone else’s idea of me, and that I won’t ever allow myself to be victimized. Before that I was in a really dark place. Obviously images and media can make it seem like I have a perfect life. But underneath it all there’s always been these kind of seismic earthquakes. Art has been the one thing that’s kept me going. It’s kept me sane.” Often called an “avant-gardist” and an “eccentric,” the current shift in consciousness reveals how stunningly sane Guinness is. Upon closer inspection, from as early as 2008, her sartorial choices mirror today’s latest trends. From veiled hats and laced masks to Tatehana boots, Guinness has left a trail of unerring taste. Revelations is no different. Collaborating again with Tony Visconti, the project is an amalgam of bombastic art-rock and ’70s French psychedelia. With nods to her godfather, David Bowie, it’s “looser” and less “dark” than her previous albums. But don’t expect her prophetic pop to lessen. On records like “Blow Up,” Guinness lays waste to generations blinded by screens, stuck on a loop inside an artificial world. “People don’t congregate anymore. Even before COVID. It’s extraordinary to me how in the last ten years people will share their innermost thoughts on the Internet yet won’t tell their close friends. It’s a whole new world.” Still, Guinness remains hopeful. “You know, the world may be falling to pieces, but we can all dance—well, not now—but we will at some point. We can have a common humanity with music and sometimes words get in the way.”
“YOU KNOW, THE WORLD MAY BE FALLING TO PIECES, BUT WE CAN ALL DANCE—WELL, NOT NOW— BUT WE WILL AT SOME POINT. WE CAN HAVE A COMMON HUMANITY WITH MUSIC AND SOMETIMES WORDS GET IN THE WAY.”
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YOU COMPLETE Filmmaking duo Gerard Bush and Christopher Renz make work that everyone can learn from.
ME BY DOMINIQUE CLAYTON PORTRAIT BY RYAN DEFOREEST
THE DEFINING CHARACTERISTIC OF THIS YEAR has been trauma. From the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic to the ongoing uprisings surrounding racial injustice, everyone is witnessing, processing or recovering from trauma in real time. Writer/director duo Gerard Bush and Christopher Renz channel affliction, as well as hope, in the most poignant and unconventional way in their feature-length debut, Antebellum—a horror film about a literary star played by Janelle Monáe. I caught up with the pair through Zoom—our new normal—to learn more about their past work in music videos and shorts, and their new film, meant to be released earlier this spring but pushed back to a domestic on-demand release and international theatrical release this fall. While a traditional Hollywood theatrical release won’t happen, the pair added that, in this social climate, that might be for the best. “We’re not interested in creating anything that doesn’t instigate or catalyze a dialogue,” Bush asserts. “Art for us is meant to trigger, to a certain extent, and we would prefer that triggering for now happens within the safety of your home.” Taking on the heavy topic of America’s ongoing problems with race and inequality is no easy feat, but Bush and Renz may be the perfect team for what appears to be the perfect film for this year. Creative collaborations and romantic relationships don’t always come easily, especially when cultural differences are involved. The two are partners both professionally and personally and, as we get to know one another onscreen, Bush jovially describes himself as “super Black” and Renz as “Connecticut white.” Though coming from different ends of a spectrum, the two have put in the work to
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build trust and understanding. It didn’t surprise me to hear that, at the core of that understanding, are Black women. Bush shared that, as the relationship was building, “Black women like my mother and my sister, who’s a Spelman alum, enveloped Christopher; he’s a part of our family and he has to play audience and be active in conversations around us as Black people and our experience in a white America.” Black women are not only central to the couple’s family life, but also to their work, which amplifies the Black nuclear family, Black maternal health and Black female agency—each historic and ongoing issues that everyone needs to acknowledge and address. When I asked about their creative process and if there are ever issues or conflicts, both completed each other’s sentences, further proof of how synced they are, so much so that the phrase “two directors, one vision” became a tagline on set. “We’ve been together for twelve years and because we spend every waking hour together, there is a telepathic shorthand and a respect and an understanding of being able to read each other’s body language as it relates to a particular thing that we have to do on set,” Bush shares. If only our leaders exhibited the same level of sensitivity that Bush and Renz have with each other, perhaps we’d be a little closer to active listening, war prevention and cultural healing. Conscious confrontation has to be the next step for everyone, and Antebellum offers a roadmap for what this might look like. According to Bush, “we are constantly working toward a correction; until white people can confront the ugly truth of the past, which is this country’s founding, we can’t heal.”
Filmmakers Gerard Bush and Christopher Renz use horror to incite action.
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BETWEEN THE LINES Multimedia artist Tomashi Jackson mines the manifold histories of systemic inequality. BY VIVIAN CHUI
TOMASHI JACKSON FLIPPED through pages of notes inscribed into a sketchbook during a virtual studio visit that took place at the height of a sweeping pandemic. She had just planned to move into fellow artists Elle Pérez and Matt Saunders’s shared Cambridge studio to develop work for a new exhibition at Harvard University’s Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, when large swaths of the world suddenly ground to a halt. Up until that point, Jackson’s practice had taken her on a whirlwind journey that matched her artistic fervor. In little over one year, various exhibitions and opportunities had relocated her studio from Brooklyn to Skowhegan, Richmond, Athens, Los Angeles and then, finally, Cambridge. When we first spoke at the tail end of March, the artist had been dedicating her time in quarantine to three overlapping projects—one would have been a month-long residency at Southampton’s Watermill Center, intended to culminate in a solo exhibition
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at the neighboring Parrish Art Museum. Since postponed to Summer 2021 and reconfigured with a series of public programs, the project, titled “The Land Claim,” seeks to address the racial and economic inequalities that persist throughout the famously privileged enclave of New York’s Eastern Long Island. The Houston-born, LA-raised artist first set her sights on Long Island after Corinne Erni, the Parrish’s Senior Curator of ArtsReach and Special Projects, expressed interest to her gallerist, Connie Tilton, in 2016. Soon after meeting one another, Erni invited Jackson to mount a solo exhibition within the museum’s light-filled expanse, upon which the artist took up an immediate interest in the Hamptons’s political and social dynamics. Having little prior knowledge about the region, she initiated a deep dive into the history and contemporary realities of a locality that has long
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COURTESY OF THE ARTIST AND NIGHT GALLERY. COURTESY OF THE ARTIST AND TILTON GALLERY. PREVIOUS SPREAD: COURTESY OF THE ARTIST.
Temple for Bakari (Shady Grove Church Bombing) (2020). Previous spread: Self Portrait As a Cambridge Domestic Worker (2013).
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been regarded as a geographic status symbol for the well-heeled elite. Through conversations with people who lived in the area, Jackson quickly became aware of ICE checkpoints and raids, which brought to her mind similar occurrences of violent oppression in the past. Of these exchanges, she recalled, “I closed my eyes and started thinking about Alfredo Jaar’s descriptions of secret police snatching people off the streets in Chile, of the Panthers being kidnapped in Oakland and Houston. I saw, in my mind’s eyes, scenes of Black children being twisted into pretzels by full-grown, white police officers; images of Black people being attacked by police dogs and hit with water cannons.” Guided by meticulous research, Jackson has long been concerned with, in her words, the “global history of abuses of power.” For her concurrent solo exhibition at Jack Tilton Gallery and presentation at the Whitney Biennial during the spring of 2019, she created large compositions that delved into the displacement of Black homeowners in a neighborhood once known as Seneca Village; in a bid for urban renewal during the 1850s, the area was razed by city officials to make room for Central Park. These projects were soon followed by an exhibition that opened at LA’s Night Gallery in January of this year, which featured works that bonded the crack epidemic of the 1980s and the suppression of Black votes in America. Combining recent election ephemera with images of figures such as Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush, these compositions placed democratic ideals in dialogue with the painful realities of systemic inequality. Such bodies of work not only projected Jackson’s anxieties about the ramifications of white hegemonic power, but also made bold visual statements for a thoughtfully developed style. Early on in her MFA program at the Yale School of Art, Jackson was reintroduced to Josef Albers’s Interaction of Color (1963), which provided the basis for a new understanding of color as a mutable, subjective entity. According to the instructive text, humans’ perception of color changed depending on its chromatic context. This concept—that the inherent value of a color could not be objectively determined—deeply resonated with Jackson, who saw a conceptual link between Albers’s color theory and the systemic racism that permeated so many parts of the world. She decided to expand upon the idea, by reducing compiled photographs into halftone lines which are then rendered in vibrant hues on transparent materials such as mylar and vinyl. Layered atop one another, snapshots of individual occurrences become collapsed into larger narratives about the discrimination, exclusion and suppression that have prevailed throughout human history. While some images are starkly highlighted, others register as barely legible when confronted with other overlapping colors and patterns. By arranging visual symbols in this way, Jackson excavates our collective photographic memory and makes a compelling case for the interconnection between seemingly disparate episodes of racial and social injustice.
In keeping with these methodologies, Jackson travelled to Long Island at the end of January to conduct oral interviews with key individuals whose stories shine a light on communities that one seldom hears about. These figures include Minerva Perez and Bonnie Michelle Cannon, the executive directors of two important local non-profits that provide resources for Latinx immigrants and seasonal workers; Kelly Dennis, a Shinnecock tribe member who previously worked at the Watermill Center and is now an attorney specializing in Federal American Indian law; Georgette Grier-Key, who helms Sag Harbor’s Eastville Community Historical Society; and Richard “Junie” Wingfield, a descendant of a Black family that migrated from the Carolinas to Long Island during the 1800s. Although Jackson was not acquainted with these people prior to her research, she spoke of them with an intuitive sense of compassion for their histories and respective causes. Even over Zoom, the artist’s warmth and knack for listening felt striking. Reading from notes diligently taken during her interviews, Jackson relayed powerful accounts of the oppression that continues to unfold across the Hamptons. There is the incessant threat posed by ICE—disturbingly, she learned of a checkpoint set up next to an elementary school where immigrant children are known to be enrolled— in addition to the many hoops that migrant workers must jump through in order to access education, housing and public transportation. There is the seizure of Shinnecock land, which gave way for an invitation-only golf club that does not pay any property taxes and therefore further starves local schools of resources. Lastly, there is the historical exclusion of Black farmers and workers from white-dominated spaces, which has created great disparity by rendering this community “land-rich but cash-poor.” Rather than framing these accounts as isolated incidents, the artist draws connections to similar narratives across the United States. She mused, “There is no place in this country that is untouched by the historic presence of Indigenous, Black and brown people. It’s part of what makes an invitation like this—an opportunity for research—so rewarding.” Jackson sees a glimmer of hope in the way that current circumstances, dually defined by rapid digitization in the face of a pandemic and widespread outrage over the systemic racism of America, may pave the way for more inclusivity within the contemporary art world. Inspired by the new direction that her Radcliffe Institute project has taken, the artist hopes to compile audio recordings for a publicly accessible oral archive of the histories that her project strives to uncover. As of this article, the first segment had already taken place, in the form of a virtual conversation between her, Erni, Dennis and Georgetown Law professor K-Sue Park, centered on the issues surrounding land rights in the United States. Further dialogues with other research participants, as well as a publication and other pedagogical materials, will follow in the months to come. Ever resolute in her mission to shed light on “the narratives that already bear the burden of being exploited, overlooked and neglected,” Jackson marches onward.
Layered atop one another, snapshots of individual occurrences become collapsed into larger narratives about the discrimination, exclusion and suppression that have prevailed throughout human history.
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Presence Tense Chris Emile’s spatial improv riffs with the times.
FORCES HAVE ALIGNED FOR LOS Angeles-based choreographer, performer and director Chris Emile recently, amplifying his protean, movement-based practice’s already prescient tangents since COVID-19 upended normality—and brought deep fissures to the fore—in midMarch. Earlier that month, just before lockdown, Emile opened his first solo exhibition, “AMEND,” at the MAK Center for Art and Architecture in LA: an Afrofuturist cosmos woven with performances spread across the landmark Rudolph Schindler-designed bungalow and backyard. “AMEND”’s choreographies unfold around a young Black male character, performed by three dancers of different ages, as he metamorphosizes into adulthood, alongside partly archival sonic montages telling of precarities and systemic injustices long endured by Black families. In this cosmos, movement becomes catharsis and conduit for Black healing, while Emile’s reconsecrating takeover of the house subtly critiques the limits of Schindler and his circle’s idealized notions of frequently white “bohemian” living—a mode of existence, Emile articulates, “that people of color have been living for hundreds of years out of need.” Though the exhibition would soon be suspended due to COVID-19, Emile had plans to translate it into a short film anyway, of movement sequences apace an incantatory, voice-lush score by Keane Nwede. “I wanted it to feel like how dancing and rhythm feels,” he describes, evincing the film’s highly gestural, haptic camerawork and cuts. “These quick, textural changes in the body—you can feel that on screen.”
The translation, from live performance to film, is archetypal of Emile’s choreographies, more often performed in museums, outdoor urban environments and warehouses—the California African American Museum, LA MOCA and gallery Hauser & Wirth, among them—than on proscenium stages, out of a desire that publics, sometimes without dance-going practices, feel “surrounded” and absorbed. Migrating dance into art world spaces also proffers “a higher regard” for performances, Emile perceives, where conditions help frame their site-responsive constructedness. Emile’s profoundly spatial approach to choreography takes form under the guise of No)one. Art House, too. When he returned to LA in 2014, after stints dancing in Christopher Wheeldon’s Morphoses and Alonzo King’s LINES, he cofounded the collective with friends to experiment with “new ideology” for dance-making and diversifying publics through installation, experiential media and educational workshops. (Solange is a fan.) That COVID-19 is leading to a “hyperaware[ness] of space,” in response to social and physical distancing, may produce the kind of attentiveness to gestural vocabularies that Emile seeks to effectuate in viewers by osmosis—as well as new categories of vacant spaces altogether that beg activation. In a smart adaptation in September, Emile plans to stage an event, “all about love,” in a parking lot, where a public can drive-in to attend. His MAK Center exhibition, “AMEND,” will reopen for a period of days then, too—but for those distanced, his film version of the same name, launching here, gives cause to immerse in its timely waves from afar.
BY EMMA MCCORMICK-GOODHART P O R T R A I T BY K YA LO U
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Out of the Box
As singer-songwriter Marie Ulven, better known as girl in red, prepares to release her first LP, she asks her fans to stay open-minded about where she is now and what might come next. BY ZACH SCHLEIN PORTRAIT BY ISAK JENSSEN
WHEN MARIE ULVEN PICKS UP THE PHONE, she apologizes for not answering a FaceTime call just minutes earlier. Although it’s become near-second nature to communicate via video chat in the age of social distancing, the Norwegian singer-songwriter is forthright about not being all that into it at the moment. “I’m having a bad face...time this year. Well, that wasn’t intended as a pun about bad FaceTime, but my face is not having it this year,” Ulven says. We both agree no one’s had much of a great anything in 2020. Ulven is as candid in conversation as she is in her music. As girl in red, she’s built an international following on the back of plucky, guitardriven songs grappling with depression and navigating sexual politics as a young queer woman. Though her debut album hasn’t yet been released, singles like “we fell in love in october” as well as EPs chapter 1 and chapter 2 all carry the bearings of a fully-formed artist. Listen to chapter 1 standouts “say anything” or “4am” and you’ll hear the clever, sullen storytelling of Morrissey and the jangly guitar playing of Johnny Marr, all emanating from one singularly talented performer. Comparisons to The Smiths’s powerhouse duo never come up in our conversation. Even if they did, it’s possible Ulven would balk at them; when asked about the artists that drive her crazy, the ones she follows with the utmost devotion, her answers are unapologetically pop-skewed. “I literally said two days ago ‘I want to be the next Taylor Swift’ as a joke,” she laughs. “She has gone perfectly from being America’s sweetheart country girl to making banging pop music and then sliding a little bit back over to country vibes. And now, she’s like fully indie!” Ulven also name-drops Justin Bieber and indie songstress Phoebe Bridgers, but Swift is a particular focus of her enthusiasm. She’s grown smitten with the pop star’s latest record, Folklore, during quarantine, calling it “the indie album I didn’t know I would love,” or expect. “I wouldn’t say I am the next Taylor Swift because that’s obviously a joke,” she clarifies. “But I am really inspired by her way of evolving and
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keeping her feeling. You can always hear that it’s a Taylor Swift song, even though the production and the composition can be completely different. It still sounds like her. And I just think that’s so cool.” If anything, Ulven is reverse-engineering Swift’s sonic trajectory. She’s known for guitar-centric music—although she resents how she’s so often described as “bedroom pop”—but is fully cognizant of her capacity to move beyond it and flex her creative muscles, beginning with her forthcoming LP world in red. “There’s a lot of piano on the album,” she says, citing the lead instrument on recent single “midnight love.” “I really love piano songs and I like the instrument, so it’s fun to include to also show that, ‘Hey, I’m not just a guitarist,’ or ‘There’s actually more to me, so please don’t put me in a box just yet.’” It’s impossible to say when she’ll be able to tour world in red. Ulven spent much of 2019 traipsing around the world, with sold-out shows across the US and much of Europe. 2020 was slated to be even more ambitious, with appearances scheduled for some of the world’s most prominent festivals, including Coachella and Primavera Sound in Barcelona. “I felt like a superstar for a year; it was great,” she jokes. She admits to going through the same routine many have endured in lockdown—a wash, rinse, repeat cycle of fruitful creativity followed by profound depression and boredom—but remains steadfastly committed to making the most of her newfound free time to work on world in red. Paraphrasing a book she recently finished, Ulven says, “Amateurs work when they’re inspired, but pros, they work when they’re not inspired. I want to be able to still deliver shit when I’m not in a good place, also.” For someone who’s barely scraped the surface of their twenties, it’s an awfully disciplined perspective. “I just want to plant some DNA for every single direction I can go and be like, ‘Yo, I can do all this stuff. I hope you don’t know what I’m gonna do next, because I think it’s going to be lit.’ If that makes sense?”
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BEYOND
THE Journalist and critic Robin Givhan reset the boundaries of fashion writing by reinterpreting what clothing can communicate, while directly addressing the issues that define the industry. Now, she’s taking on an even larger role in its radical transformation.
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PAGE BY EUGENIE DALLAND PHOTOGRAPHY BY BRIGITTE LACOMBE
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People seem always actually to know, with a degree of pain that has required the comfort of fairy tales, that when you are dressed in any particular way at all, you are revealed rather than hidden. —ANNE HOLLANDER, SEEING THROUGH CLOTHES (1978)
“How did you develop your observational skills?” I’m speaking on the phone with renowned culture writer Robin Givhan, fashion critic for The Washington Post, in late July. I’m so curious about her methods that I don’t realize I’ve presented a question that sounds rather like something a student in Journalism 101 might formulate. She doesn’t miss a beat though, and speculates that her skills were perhaps the natural result of a shy demeanor. After a pause, however, she adds that they were also first cultivated as a pleasure, by means of a wonderful, unusual tradition with her father. “He and I used to have this ritual of going to the mall on Christmas Eve day. It wasn’t to go shopping. We’d come up with a random excuse to go—‘We need more ribbon to wrap presents!’— but actually it was just to sit in the mall, have a cup of coffee and watch the chaos. My father is a great people-watcher.” No individual can be defined as the product of one single experience, but sometimes there are anecdotes from our past that feel symbolic, synthesizing many strands of our pursuits or personality into a sort of archetypal narrative. In a way, sitting patiently in a crowded place defined by furious consumerism is exactly what comprises her work today: Givhan has been writing about the meaning of appearances, particularly in the political sphere, for over twenty-five years. I could easily picture that young woman sitting, drinking coffee, silently pondering a stranger’s mad gestures, another’s frayed overcoat, a businessman’s untied shoelace. Clothing provides us with the subtitles of whatever story it is we’re being told (whether it’s authored by a politician, celebrity, influencer or your neighbor) and Givhan is an expert reader. She joined the Post in 1995, where her fashion reporting expanded from seasonal collection reviews to the analysis of cultural events, public figures and social phenomena through the lens of clothing. The Detroit-native did not set out with the specific goal of fashion criticism in mind and an early interest in biology nearly guided her to
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medical school. After receiving her masters in journalism from the University of Michigan, she joined the Detroit Free Press (deferring law school for two years), where she covered the burgeoning techno music scene. When a colleague who covered menswear reporting resigned, Givhan applied for the position, despite having no formal knowledge about the fashion industry. Sometimes an initial lack of acquaintance with a field can serve you well: in the absence of knowing what you’re supposed to do or think, you fill in the blanks with your own intuition. Today, Givhan’s name is spoken with a kind of whispered respect, and not just by those who work in the rag trade. By fashion insiders, she is appreciated for her straightforward, unapologetic reviews of shows, and by readers from all other backgrounds, she is a welcoming interpreter of a world that sometimes seems to pride itself on not making sense to anyone outside of its glittering, archaic walls. She is known particularly for her analyses of political figures based on their attire, which zero in on the small, seemingly mundane details and transform them into layered, complex social commentaries—a feat which earned her a Pulitzer Prize for Criticism in 2005. (She is the only fashion
writer to ever receive the award.) Equipped with highly refined tools of observation, Givhan draws conclusions that feel not only preternatural in their critical acuity, but also remarkable for the transparency of their logic. I ask her why she thinks such clarity of method is important for the critic. “If you are offering up an opinion, the greatest gift that you can give to readers is, as they used to say in math class, to show your work. If people can understand how you came to your assessment, then whether or not they think your assessment is correct, they will at least understand why you got there. They might quibble with some of those steps, but if you don’t show them, then you’re sort of giving people this tyrannical rant, that if they disagree with, all they can really do is rant back at you. You create a situation in which you’ve eliminated all the tools that you need for thoughtful conversation or thoughtful debate, and it gets reduced to emotional yelling.” You might attribute this modus operandi to the simple fact that Givhan writes for a general interest readership; her readers are not necessarily fashion-savvy individuals who already know the key players and are familiar with the context, and therefore more explanations are,
naturally, required. But relegating this journalistic standard to mere populist appeal could even be described as hazardous, because it sanctions the desire to rely on one’s personal opinions and emotions for critical analysis without questioning where they come from. Showing her work doesn’t weaken her delivery: it strengthens it. Givhan talks about our current president’s proclivity not to hire people, but rather to cast them like actors based on whether they look the part, “as in the stereotypical idea of what that part is,” she explains. “It tells you a lot about how the administration values people, and who the administration values. So much comes through when you start talking about the aesthetics.” Givhan’s analysis of the fashion choices of political figures brings into sharp focus the similarities in logic between the industries, namely that reality can very easily be warped and manipulated by perception. Politicians and fashion executives alike make use of the fact that the public is often not able to differentiate between fact and appearance, which is something that the Trump administration—as well as most major luxury fashion brands—have exploited to disastrous effect. We buy into brands, for instance, based on what the brand represents to us, not for the quality, beauty or functionality of the physical product. “Appearance doesn’t change fact,” Givhan explained in a 2018 interview, “but it certainly can alter the way in which we perceive the fact; sometimes, it alters whether or not we believe in it.” In the early 20th century, political critic Walter Lippmann wrote in his book Public Opinion that “for the most part we do not first see, and then define, we define and then see.” By no means should this be passed off as a platitude: most of the time, we really do fail to acknowledge how much of our understanding of the world around us is based on perception and assumption. Many of the very metaphors in our language urge us to avoid what is characterized as superficial judgement, and to see substance and image as completely unrelated. Givhan correctly argues that they are indeed not the same thing, but that their relationship is far more interdependent and complex than we think. It’s worth asking whether the injunction against judging a book by its cover really has more to do with the judge’s prejudices than with the cover itself. The link between analysis of someone’s clothing and a heightened ability to understand something is made plain by Givhan’s writing. “The muscles I’ve built up over the years covering fashion—having to really look at things, very closely—are helpful when I’m looking at and writing about other situations.”
Givhan’s reviews frequently present rich, razor-sharp examinations whose point of origin is clothing and appearance. Her brilliant article about the “Wall of Moms” protest in Portland, published in The Washington Post Magazine in August 2020, featured a probing, personal rumination on the concept, and problematic terminology, of the white ally. “This modest, bland word feels inadequate to the breadth and complexity of what it means. It’s a burdensome yoke that presumes a desire to be identified and acknowledged. To be self-congratulatory when all most people want is to be helpful.” The tone of Givhan’s writing often strikes me as novelistic: human nature constitutes the nucleus of her stories. The people who populate her articles, as well as their settings, are described in language that is blunt and economical yet intimately detailed (even her headlines read like aphorisms: “Trump’s rally looked like his vision of America: Limited and pitiless”).
“It taps into every aspect of human nature. It’s an industry that no one’s really immune to, which gives you the ability to write about a huge range of people. Fashion is an entrée to basically everything.”
Earlier in our interview, I ask about books that made an impact on her as a child. “I had this fantastic English teacher in high school who pulled me aside freshman year and handed me Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye. It wasn’t on the reading list for class that semester, but she handed it to me and said, ‘I think you should read this book.’” Similarly to the way in which Givhan’s people-watching ritual seemed like a precursor to her future career, the influence of a book like Morrison’s 1970 debut novel also seemed notably foretelling. One of the main themes of the book is the tremendous (and devastating) power of appearance on our perceptions, especially on how we see ourselves and how we wish to be seen by others. Her fashion show reporting is no less focused on the human element, and often this vantage
point yields deeper insights into a brand’s collection or identity than do standard critiques of the clothes themselves. “I often find that the most telling detail is not on the runway. It’s that little sliver of the backstage that you get a glimpse of if you happen to be seated at the top of the runway, or it’s the look on the audiences’ faces, not in the front row, but the fashion students standing in the back.” Due to the pandemic, critics now base their reviews on livestreamed videos, a development that has shackled Givhan’s roving point of view. “You can only look where the camera is focused, and obviously it’s focused on the action on the runway, the center of the centerpiece. Not being able to take in the entirety of the room is really frustrating.” When I ask what has kept her interest in fashion fresh after so many years of reporting, I’m fascinated to hear that it has a lot to do with human vulnerability. “It’s an industry that feels like it’s always in the throes of existential angst. Certainly now with all the incredibly consequential issues about its path forward! But it’s always been insecure in many ways.” She points out the irony between the fashion industry’s “sense of insecurity in terms of its place in the world, compared to the fact that [many believe] the industry’s prime objective is to make consumers around the world feel insecure,” enough to buy products that they believe will improve their lives. “It taps into every aspect of human nature. It’s an industry that no one’s really immune to, which gives you the ability to write about a huge range of people. Fashion is an entrée to basically everything.” In a way, Givhan’s example makes a strong case for the generalist’s approach over that of the specialist. “I’ve always wanted my writing to be accessible to as wide a range of people as possible. Since I write for a general interest publication and not a fashion publication, part of my job is not to put unnecessary barriers to enter into a fashion story. I want those stories to be readily inviting, even to someone who may be incredibly disengaged from fashion, or resentful of it.” This positioning allows her to draw clear and substantiated connections between disparate industries, events and social figures—abstract leaps between cultural phenomena that might not be as readily accepted in more specialized criticism. It’s not that more targeted writing about changing hemlines, celebrity sponsorships and the latest trends is unimportant; for fashion designers, stylists, merchandisers, etc., such technical details are vital for staying afloat. But fashion criticism that weaves bigger issues into its fabric seems to better reflect the changing reality of the industry—and of our world.
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Wen Zhou is not your average fashion executive. The 3.1 Phillip Lim CEO and maverick entrepreneur is rewriting the playbook for doing business on your own terms. BY KAREN WONG
IN 2012, 3.1 PHILLIP LIM CEO Wen Zhou bought her parents a brick house in the Forest Hills Gardens neighborhood of Queens, New York. Her mother, Shan, promptly dug up the flowering bushes and decorative vines and replanted her yard with a vegetable garden. The Chinese variety of eggplants, mustard greens, edible Chrysanthemum and long yard beans are fodder for Shan’s home-cooked lunches that are then packed in Tupperware and deposited in a canvas tote. Wen’s father, Xin, carries the mini feast aboard his daily subway ride to his daughter’s offices in Lower Manhattan. Conversing in Mandarin, Xin and Wen lunch together before dad departs on the fifty-minute return commute. This family ritual informs Wen’s simple business philosophy: treat your employees and customers with love and respect and set a framework where creativity goes hand-inhand with sustainability. At 3.1 Phillip Lim, Wen famously interviews and hires every single employee from part-time sales associates to accessory designers to pattern cutters. Her doggedness to make sure each member fits in the familial structure has, for many years, resulted in a majority staff of immigrants who together speak twenty-seven languages. Early in her career, Wen founded Aegis, a textile sourcing business. Visiting famed mills in Italy, France and Japan, she became obsessed with the craft. “It’s quite nerdy, but I love the process of plant to yarn to fabric resulting in a garment—when I touch a material, my fingers can trace its journey,” she explains. Aegis remains an underpinning of Wen’s portfolio. Personally, it’s a valuable reminder of her roots, while professionally, its profits provided the initial investment to kickstart the fashion label. It was a mutual admiration for Japanese double weave cotton and Italian high-twist jersey that bonded her then-Aegis client and soon-to-be creative partner, designer Phillip Lim. The pair, who refer to each other as brother and sister, has mastered the ebb and flow of the fashion world by parking their egos in neutral and approaching decision-making with openness and respect for each other’s expertise. When it comes to defining a strategic goal, Wen says, “My true north is Phillip, and Phillip would say the same of me.” Wen’s internal compass is guided by her teenage kids and life partner, Esteban Gomez. Most weekends, the foursome forage Chinatown and the Lower East Side for weird, tasty snacks and challenging contemporary art. They often pause at the corner of Suffolk and Delancey Streets, where Wen regales her “Coming to America” origin story; when she was their age, having arrived from the port city Ningbo, China, she lived in an apartment at this corner with her sister, mom, dad and grandparents. “Yes, that’s six of us in a studio!” she chimes. She wants her children to have everything she didn’t, yet, concurrently, is vigilantly aware that their privilege has to be “checked at the door.” Several years ago, during one of these weekend treks, Wen’s daughter Ming spotted Boba Guys, a purveyor of quality bubble tea. A self-professed
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expert on the Asian beverage phenomenon, she declared the combination of milk tea and silky, chewy tapioca balls rendered by Taiwanese cofounders Andrew Chau and Bin Chen near perfect. Ming encouraged Wen to invest in this burgeoning brand. Weeks later, Wen cold-called, soon becoming a silent partner focused on their global expansion, and Andrew and Bin became part of Wen’s extended family. Family and friends have always been a source of inspiration and partnership. Recently, Wen and two close friends created a digital platform for Asian American women. The website is aptly named i-see, inspired by activist Marian Wright Edelman’s declaration, “You can’t be what you can’t see.” The project grew out of long-running, intimate conversations around identity and representation that she was having with Bifen Xu and Dora Fung, both accomplished fashion and beauty editors. In a society that lacks purposeful outlets for consistent storytelling for the Asian American community, the trio launched the site in late 2019 and hopes that i-see is part of a growing ecosystem to bridge that gap. From storyteller to subject matter, Wen is currently collaborating with Diana Son, a playwright and Emmy-nominated TV writer and producer who has created a pilot inspired by Wen’s life. “Growing up as a teenager in NYC’s Chinatown, Wen had, in many ways, a prototypical experience, but unlike many aspirational immigrants, her parents had simpler expectations: a stable life and a steady job,” Diana explains. “Wen had an entrepreneurial spirit and a natural assertiveness that told her she could aim higher. I don’t think she hides in a bathroom stall before important meetings and practices the power pose. Wen has a natural power that enables her to be a leader while being totally authentic to herself.” 2020, Year of the Rat, was going to be a big one for Wen and Phillip. According to the Chinese zodiac cycle, the animal symbolizes wealth and surplus—an auspicious sign for the fashion label celebrating its fifteenth anniversary. Instead, like most of their industry peers also assessing the pandemic’s damage, they are facing debt, fewer staff and dwindling customers. Cup half full, it’s an opportunity for renewal; cup half empty, it’s plainly about survival. Since launching their company, Wen and Phillip have kept investors at bay and remain fiercely independent. For the first time in their careers, they are weighing outside investment; the immediate and substantial cash flow would stabilize the brand—they could pay their vendors and rehire staff. However, their quirky and instinctual style of collaborations and far-flung projects could no longer reign as ROI would become their new north. Alternatively, they can continue to shrink and bootstrap while controlling their brand equity and enjoying the creative freedom that has been a core value of the label. Whatever lies ahead, there is no laugh track or Hollywood ending. Wen will approach a new day like yesterday: tending to her family of businesses and basing her next move on love and resiliency.
Wen will approach a new day like yesterday: tending to her family of businesses and basing her next move on love and resiliency.
Wen Zhou’s partner Esteban Gomez uses the iPhone to take her portrait in Kent, Connecticut.
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TIME A fall exhibition at Daniel Cooney Fine Art in New York puts never-before-seen photographs by the seminal documentarian Christopher Makos into our line of vision. Makos’s timeless style evinces a vulnerability that feels perfectly of the now.
WARP BY DARNELL-JAMAL LISBY
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Christopher Reeve, Superman (1982).
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THE 1970S AND ’80S WERE A TIME of transition in America like no other, creating a trajectory that enabled even creatives of today to build from a place of inherent authenticity. This period represented a sense of freeness, abandoning traditional approaches to artistic process. The careers of some of the most prolific creatives in history catapulted during that time, from Halston to Nam June Paik and, of course, the renowned photographer Christopher Makos. This September, Daniel Cooney Fine Art presents the exuberant “DIRTY”— an exhibition showcasing a range of Makos’s unseen photographic
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work from the course of his resilient, multi-decade career. Setting the tone for our phone conversation this summer, Makos explains, “So much of these photographs is a moment in time; an experience, a memory… each is almost like a personal diary.” Makos is known for his dynamic friendship with Andy Warhol; almost a walking documentarian, he created countless snapshots of that liberated period. This latest show starts with photographs of notable personalities: Liza Minnelli kissing Warhol, Warhol kissing John Lennon and a striking series of Debbie Harry portraits.
COURTESY OF DANIEL COONEY FINE ART
Left: Cigarette Butts (1976). Below: Boy With Braces (1978).
Conversely, despite the presence of celebrity, what these works reveal is Makos’s artistic agenda to capture the essence of vulnerability. Makos is an equalizer in terms of his subjects, famous or not, and is known to “look at everyone the same.” He took pleasure in depicting everyday life outside of the bubble of celebrity, and the quotidian ways people emanate vulnerability. Describing the young subject with his arms folded, signaling a bit of unease, in the 1978 Polaroid Boy With Braces, Makos says, “I photographed that kid because he had braces, and anyone who would look like that, you wouldn’t normally photograph.” Even in his portraits of notable figures, like the unique silver gelatin print of Christopher Reeve, Makos stripped down the actor’s heralding façade, offering an emotional and accessible dialogue with the viewer through Reeve’s eyes. It is, as Makos alluded, a moment in time—but with a narrative waiting to be unpacked. Throughout the show, this theme continues to blossom through the exposure of the nude body. Snapshots of male models in various poses and states of undress, from crouching to sitting wide-legged, like the 1981 photograph of Michael Kenny, display this range of comfortability from the subjects. Some models elicit a high level of confidence, while some of the works convey timidity. Sexual innuendos aside, the scenes evoke the personal questions we all face in terms of how we present ourselves and our insecurities. Especially in our current age of social media— as heaps of images of “perfect” bodies are thrust into our daily lives—many of us, me included, sometimes fall into rabbit holes of self-consciousness. Through these images, Makos highlights that embracing oneself paves the path to inner liberation. “I love working with artists and finding things that will surprise people,” Cooney says of working on the show. “Christopher’s work may seem flashy on the outside, but when you get to look at it, you begin to realize it’s very sensitive. I feel there is a bigger story to Christopher as a person and an artist. I want people to realize that he was not just taking pictures; he was a part of something.”
In this present moment of cultural revolution, I thought it remiss not to ask if Makos saw any messages in his work that correlate with what is happening today, as protests for social, economic and political equality ensue. “I appreciate all the colors, and I appreciate all the diversity. It pisses me off when I see a little Black kid running away from police and they shoot him three times in the back,” he replies. “My work speaks to a much a freer time when there was less tribalism, and people could be nutty.” Moreover, “DIRTY” represents a perspective of sexual, racial and gender freedom that we have
regressed from in recent decades. We have an immense amount of work ahead of us if we intend to build a fruitful future for all of society. Still, Makos’s photographs offer a chance to look introspectively, forcing us to embrace the vulnerability that will be necessary to imagine a liberated future.
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Hugo Crosthwaite, A Home for the Brave [detail], stop-motion drawing animation, 2020, 3 minutes, 25 seconds, courtesy of the artist and Luis De Jesus.
10975 SW 17th St., Miami, FL 33199 | 305.348.2890 | frost.fiu.edu This exhibition is made possible with the support of the Miami-Dade County Department of Cultural Affairs and the Cultural Affairs Council, the Miami-Dade County Mayor and Board of County Commissioners; the State of Florida, Department of State, Division of Cultural Affairs and the Florida Council on Arts and Culture; and members of the Frost Art Museum.
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09. 17.2020
A Woman Reinvented Painting Eyes Open Reshuffling the Deck No Intermissions Pay it Forward Through the Looking Glass Making History Bigtime Outlaws Living Together America’s Shadow A Discovery Long Nail Goddesses of Newark Twenty-Nine Days of Black Culture Here We Go Again
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A Woman MARY J. BLIGE HAS ENJOYED A NEARLY-THIRTY-YEAR CAREER AS AN ARTIST, SONGWRITER, ACTRESS, By M A R J O N C A R L O S PRODUCER AND NEWLY-MINTED WINE ENTREPRENEUR. BUT THE SINGING LEGEND REMAINS JUST AS RELEVANT AS ARTISTS HALF HER AGE, PROVING THAT STAYING POWER IS ALL ABOUT REINVENTION, GROWTH, Photography by G I L L I A N L A U B SELF-POSSESSION AND A LITTLE TWO-STEP.
Reinvented Styling by
JASON REMBERT
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S Blige’s makeup by Porsche Cooper; hair by Neal Farinah. Photographer assistants: Yoav Friedländer, Roy Beeson Jr., and Julianne Nash. Previous page: Blige wears a Brandon Maxwell cape; Chanel pants; Lorraine West earrings; Sterling King cuff and ring. Left: Alexandre Vauthier dress; Christian Louboutin boots; Simone I. Smith jewelry.
enator Kamala Harris was making history. Standing at a podium in a plum pantsuit and flanked by American flags, the Black-South Asian politico was speaking remotely in Wilmington, Delaware to millions of Americans at last month’s virtual Democratic National Convention, where she officially accepted her Vice Presidential nomination. The first Black woman to do so, Harris used some of her twenty-minute remarks to credit the Black female suffragists who paved the way for her to stand squarely at the center of American politics nearly a century later. It was a testament to the enduring and unrecognized influence of Black female political resistance and, when Harris closed, she seemed to double down on her point. Rather than the sound of rapturous applause, what was immediately heard were the brassy vocals of none other than Mary J. Blige. The R&B siren’s 2007 “Work That” was the soundtrack to this momentous occasion, the anthem preaching the value of self-worth, female empowerment and self-actualization. “There’s so many-a girls/I hear you been running/From the beautiful queen/That you could be becoming…” the inspirational lyrics went on as Harris waved to the small, socially-distanced delegation assembled before her and a gaggle of supporters beaming in via Zoom. A campaign song, as we know, is a thoughtful measure, a rallying cry meant to incite the audience, appeal to would-be voters and send coded messages to one’s opponents. By centering Blige’s “Work That” in one of the biggest game-changing moments in American politics, Harris seemed not only to pay homage to Black womanness but also to unite the culture’s two proverbial favorite aunties. Immediately, Black Twitter erupted in celebration. “Kamala Harris. It was the Mary J. Blige ‘Work That’ at the end of her speech for me...,” radio host Charlamagne Tha God declared. “We heard Mary J. Blige at the end and we heard a Divine 9 shoutout at the beginning,” activist Brittany Packnett tweeted, referring to the Queen of Hip Hop Soul and Harris’s AKA sorority affiliation. “That is certainly never something that many folks in our community thought they would see.” That a mere snippet of a deep cut Blige track would rouse such visceral reactions (Blige’s name quickly began to trend alongside Harris’s on social media) says so much about the polymathic force’s unflagging twenty-eightyear reign and relevance in the entertainment industry. Rising up from a traumatic childhood spent in the Schlobohm projects of Yonkers, New York, where Blige endured abuse and a broken family, the young creative would go on to be signed by late music executive Andre Harrell of Uptown Records at just eighteen and mentored by a young Sean “Puff Daddy” Combs. Entering into the cultural imagination in 1992 as a soulful tomboy with platinum locks and combat boots, Blige’s trailblazing debut What’s the 411? changed Hip-Hop, as she melded the thumping beats of the genre with the earnest, pleading lyrics of R&B on her hit single, “Real Love.” This amalgamation of the raw and vulnerable would become her oeuvre; like a pained but streetwise Nina Simone, Blige swiftly entered into the pantheon of moody chanteuses who
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could pull on one’s heartstrings with just a few notes. Superstardom would follow, along with fifty million albums sold, nine Grammy wins and, eventually, two Academy Award nominations. But turmoil ran alongside her massive fame, with Blige publicly battling drug and alcohol abuse, rocky personal relationships, a brutal divorce from her ex-husband and former manager and dizzying financial problems. These challenges fueled her work, with Blige filtering her pain into the diaristic lyrics she penned across her thirteen albums. The singer never shied away from her feelings; she was a tender artist who could pierce through the emotional center of a moment with absolute and stunning clarity. Whether she’s declaring she’s “Not Gon’ Cry” on the ballad of the same name from the seminal 1995 Waiting To Exhale soundtrack, shrugging off the haters in the “dancerie” or giving herself completely over to a relationship on the transcendent “Everything,” Blige easily makes plain ineffable feelings. But while being in touch with such a raw emotional space is how Blige became a legend, it’s a knowingness that surprises even her to this day, she tells me last month over the phone from her New Jersey home. Recounting how she recently sat down to listen to the title track off her timeless breakthrough sophomore album, My Life, which celebrated its twenty-fifth anniversary this past July, Blige says wistfully, “I’ve performed it so many times. But one day I was listening to it, and it’s the part where it says, ‘Take your time, one day at a time. It’s all on you, what you going to do?’ I just started crying because I’m like, ‘Who wrote that?’ Back then, I was messed up and I wrote that.” Talking about this revelation now stirs up goosebumps for her. “It’s crazy because I keep listening to myself like a fan almost. Like, ‘Oh snap, I didn’t even know I even said that.’” But, learning about her writing methodology, it would seem that nuggets of truth like these pour out of the artist. While waiting out the quarantine brought on by the international COVID-19 pandemic these past few months, she tells me she would wake by 3AM to write, then drift back to sleep and eventually rise at 8:30. Poetry, letters, even commencement speeches flowed from her in these early hours and onto the Notes section of her iPhone, where she compiled her thoughts. “I wake up in the morning writing and praying— I’m in that whole spiritual thing in the morning. So when I’m there, all types of things are coming. It’s just amazing. Especially when there’s so much quiet. When everything got still the writing went crazy.” The quiet of lockdown and her dedicated meditation practice brought her a rush of clarity and ideas, manifesting ten songs that speak to the current state of the world. “I hope a lot of people could see that, at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter what your status is; we have been broken down to understand that we are all in this together and we should never look down our nose at anybody or say that we’re better than anyone just because we have more money or we have more this, because COVID is the great equalizer,” she opines. Quite honestly, a new album from Blige couldn’t arrive at a better time: Who else to provide a life raft for so many hurting in this present moment of civil unrest? In fact, there is so much creative output, the singer reveals, she may have enough to produce a book, or even a TV show. Always a scene-stealing performer (in Blige’s evocative live performances, the singer embodies any number of alter-egos: jazz diva, gospel chorus leader, Hip Hop MC), the singer in recent years has shape-shifted into an arresting and commanding screen star. Dubbed one of the industry’s top Black leading ladies by T Magazine last spring, she joins the ranks of behemoths Angela Bassett, Halle Berry and her best friend, Taraji P. Henson. That evolution may seem swift, given that Blige came to acting success later in her career, but, as she explains, landing feature roles was something she had been working towards for years. Getting her start in a 1998 appearance on The Jamie Foxx Show, followed by a lead role in Prison Song with Q-Tip in 2001, Blige quietly racked up screen time and
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steadily perfected her craft. “I always wanted to look and be somebody else in that acting role, not Mary J. Blige,” she explains. “So I just kept working at it, and every time a job came I took it seriously, worked hard, and here I am, where people seem to really like what I’m doing.” That is perhaps an understatement, considering her breakthrough performance in 2017’s Mudbound would garner the attention of Hollywood and earn Blige two Academy Award nominations—Best Supporting Actress and Best Original Song for “Mighty River.” It’s one of those career-defining depictions wherein the artist simply slips away and subsumes the role. Gone are the Mary J. Blige signifiers—golden-hued tresses, glittering hoop earrings and come-hither thigh-high boots. Instead, the singer fully gave herself over to the character of “Florence,” the wife of a sharecropper in post-World War II Mississippi. She appears at home here, with preternatural instincts for the dramatics, but Blige confesses the shift from concert stages to a film set was daunting. “I definitely feel like I had to work harder because I am a singer. People give things to singers because they’re singers—it’s like throwing them in a music video. I didn’t even want to look like I was just thrown into a music video. I wanted to make my sisters like Queen Latifah and Taraji [P. Henson] and Angela Bassett, and all the women who had been in the film business and suffered and gone through so much to get these acting jobs, see that it’s not a game for me.” Henson and Latifah were easily convinced of their best friend’s prowess. “I was shooting Mudbound and I went to Queen Latifah and Taraji because I was so petrified that it was such a big responsibility,” Blige recalls. “I was number three on the call sheet or something like that. And I was in the movie carrying it, as this mother. So I called Taraji and I was like, ‘What do I do? How do I just fall into this character?’ And she was like, ‘Mary, you always had it, baby. You got it.’” Falling into character, as she describes it, is becoming increasingly more the norm, with Blige now poised to grace the smaller screen as “Monet,” a steely drug queen-pin who lords over a family narcotics operation in Power Book II: Ghost, the widely anticipated spinoff to 50 Cent’s mega-hit, Power. Blige tells me she knows this character well, having grown up with and befriended women in her native Bronx and Yonkers neighborhoods who, out of a will to survive and withstand their impoverished surroundings, had gotten caught up in “the life.” “I have my girlfriends today—they don’t do it anymore—but they did it to survive, they did it to raise their children. They were Monet. And now they’re women with regular jobs and their kids are big. But some of them have lost their children to drug gangs and for some reason, when I was younger, I always hung out with older women. And those women were Monet.” In advance previews, I admittedly gasped when Blige arrived on camera, swinging a mane full of red hair and a convincingly ruthless presence. It’s a role that she can add to her growing CV, which also includes executive producer (Blige opened her own company, Blue Butterfly Productions, last year after signing a first look deal with Lionsgate) and, as of late, wine entrepreneur. Blige becomes audibly excited to discuss the launch of Sun Goddess, an original duo of a pink-hued pinot grigio and a sauvignon blanc that will most likely become constants in the fridges of aunties everywhere. Two gilded bottles appeared at my house a few days before our conversation and I quickly imbibed the collaboration between Blige and Fantinel Winery CEO Marco Fantinel. The two met by chance one night three years ago after Blige performed on tour with friend and fellow artist, Maxwell. The wine impresario asked Blige if she had ever considered creating her own line; the singer, something of a connoisseur, hadn’t, but she didn’t hesitate in taking the proposition seriously. Soon she was traveling to Friuli, Italy for an immersive three-day experience of tasting and pairing with Fantinel, and Sun Goddess was born; the moniker is a nod to the nickname Blige’s sister gave to her passion for soaking up rays
Miu Miu coat; Isabel Marant belt; Sterling King choker; Jennifer Fisher hoops.
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whenever they vacation. True to form, Blige posted images of herself enjoying a glass poolside this past summer, the sun drenching her incredible physique and reflecting off her wrap-around shades. With authenticity always front of mind, Blige assures me that this isn’t a product she simply slapped her name on (the bottle boasts her signature “MJB” branding on the cork). “I don’t play those games. Let me tell you something, and I know I might sound crazy when I tell this story: Someone came to me years ago with a deal for some kind of beauty product. It was a lot, a lot of money and I turned it down. I said, ‘Because I don’t use it.’ I love my fans, I love women, I love us too much to act like I’m using this for a whole bunch of money and then they get it and then they break out, or something like that.” Even as Blige evolves—singer, actress, executive producer, vintner—authenticity remains a mainstay and a business principle. She had to learn quickly, after her divorce left her financial future uncertain. It was a devastating blow. “I felt like I made the biggest mistake of my life. I’d seen my life in somebody’s hands—not just my life, but my business. Just my whole entire life entrusted to someone who just didn’t care about it at all. And it showed, and the world saw it. So, when it was done, it was like, ‘Okay. I’m responsible for that. I’ll take that. That was my fault, I created that monster. I put my whole life in somebody’s hands.’” Dumbfounded by having to pay out a significant sum of money in alimony (“I got hit with all the alimony, which just had me like, ‘I can’t believe this happens to women, I just can’t believe this’”), Blige began meeting with business managers until she found the right team to help guide her towards prosperity. Rather than running her business like a large conglomerate, she tells me she wanted to scale down so that she could have more control over the everyday. She also learned the ins and outs of every facet of her business. “No matter who’s working for me or who does this and who does that, I’m going to know some of what they know.” She never wanted to be in the dark again. The term “survivor” gets thrown around so much to describe Blige, but how else to relate her staying power? That earnest drive to rebuild for her future is what ultimately makes Blige’s successes all the sweeter now. Take the BET Lifetime Achievement Award she won last year: before performing a nearly twenty-minute medley in front of a room of industry peers and visionaries (including a leather-clad Rihanna, who presented her with the honor and thanked the artist for paving the way for her own career), Blige held back tears. “People always ask how I sustain and stay relevant in this industry. It’s because, although I am a leader, a queen and a living legend… I’m a servant as well, and I’m here to serve. Being a servant is not always glamorous or popular, but it’s the job and the assignment that I was given.” Moments later, Blige wailed, bopped and famously two-stepped (her signature move that has produced thousands of memes over the years) through a survey of her career for adoring fans—a feat that left her young successors, such as Lizzo, slack-jawed in the audience. When I bring it up now, Blige is still sizably moved. “That was an incredible moment. I mean, I needed it for so many reasons because I was coming through such a heavy time trying to get my life together, trying to do all of that, divorce. And to have that moment just to say, ‘I’m still healthy, I’m still strong, I’m still Mary, I’m still hot, I’m still fly, I can still dance my ass off, I can still sing my ass off,’ in front of my people—that was God.”
Brandon Maxwell cape; Chanel pants; Alexander McQueen boots; Lorraine West earrings; Sterling King cuff and ring.
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Painting TITUS KAPHAR AND JACOBA URIST MET FOR THE FIRST TIME IN 2017, WHEN SHE VISITED THE ARTIST’S NEW HAVEN STUDIO— LESS THAN A MILE FROM HER CHILDHOOD HOME— ON ASSIGNMENT TO COVER THE SCULPTURE HE WAS PREPARING FOR PRINCETON UNIVERSITY AS PART OF THE SCHOOL’S PROJECT RESPONDING TO ITS TIES TO SLAVERY. THREE YEARS LATER, IN THE THROES OF MULTIPLE CRISES, THEIR PATHS CROSS AGAIN. FOR OUR LIVING LEGENDS COVER, URIST CONSIDERS THE PROLIFIC REACH OF KAPHAR’S MOST RECENT WORK AND ART’S TANGLED RELATIONSHIP TO HISTORY.
Eyes Photography by
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Open
Titus Kaphar poses with The Distance Between What We Have and What We Want (From a Tropical Space) (2019) in his New Haven studio.
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As soon as I agreed to do the TIME cover, I immediately started to regret it. I didn’t think through how accessible I would feel,” Titus Kaphar confesses while seated on a stool, applying swift, careful strokes to the unfinished crowd in a basketball-related tableau titled Ascension IV on his studio wall. “I did not regret making the painting that is on the TIME cover or writing the poem that accompanies it,” he clarifies, eyes trained on the composition before him. “Those are real. I did regret how vulnerable I suddenly became, public in a way I’ve never been before.” Based in New Haven, Connecticut, Kaphar has long ranked among influential and in-demand contemporary artists. A recipient of a 2018 MacArthur Fellowship, he surfaces racism by subverting the Eurocentric tradition. Colonial and Renaissance portraiture underpin Kaphar’s practice, with a restorative twist, reflecting the voices of people suppressed over and through those centuries of art and history. Famous for excising figures from a painting to focus on other characters in a composition—or to heighten absence—Kaphar’s work hovers between the second and third dimensions. Aesthetics, he’s said of his approach, often function like a Trojan Horse, beckoning viewers to open their hearts to difficult conversations about America’s racial past and present. One of my favorite of his paintings, Behind the Myth of Benevolence (2014), reinvents a Rembrandt Peale portrait of Thomas Jefferson from 1800, to tantalizing effect. Forcing two images together through the motif of a drawn curtain hanging from its stretcher, the likeness of one of the most mythologized white men in American folklore is literally pulled back to reveal the partial image of a Black woman, leg and shoulder bared. Behind the Myth of Benevolence depicts Jefferson and Sally Hemings, he’s explained, and yet not; the woman also symbolizes all of the Black women erased by the founding fathers. Indeed, throughout his career, Kaphar has unpacked the complexity and horror of American history. His works have entered the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art and the Yale University Art Gallery, among numerous others, and the National Portrait Gallery highlighted him in a twoperson show in 2018. This fall, Kaphar celebrates two exhibitions: his debut with Gagosian, proclaiming a rare form of commercial success, as well as a show at Maruani Mercier Gallery in Brussels in October, for which he recasts classic religious motifs in his language of folded and crumbled canvas to defy viewers’ expectations of material space. In Jesus Noir, for example, a portrait of a young Black man is duct-taped over the face of Christ. But Kaphar is right—the June 15th TIME magazine cover that presents his portrait, Analogous Colors (2020), vaulted him into another stratosphere of exposure and—though he would never say this himself—significance within wider culture. Analogous Colors depicts a grieving Black woman cradling the absent silhouette of her child, a harrowing reference to George
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Life imitates art. Kaphar’s Jesus Noir (2020).
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Floyd calling for his mother as he was suffocated by the Minneapolis police. The issue included a special report on the nationwide protests over police brutality and systemic racism; and, in a first for the publication, TIME’s classic red border displayed text—the names of thirty-five Black Americans who were victims of racist killings. To accompany his illustration, Kaphar included a poem titled “I Cannot Sell You This Painting.” He writes, “This Black mother understands the fire. Black mothers understand despair. I can change NOTHING in this world, but in paint, I can realize her… This brings me solace... not hope, but solace. She walks me through the flames of rage. My Black mother rescues me yet again. I want to be sure that she is seen. I want to be certain that her story is told. And so, this time America must hear her voice. This time America must believe her.” Even before it hit newsstands, the cover ricocheted far beyond the art world, striking a chord on social media and news sites unlike any painting in modern memory. The number of participants suggest that the recent Black Lives Matter protests are the largest movement in the country’s history and
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Kaphar’s TIME painting, as it will likely come to be called, indelibly profiles America’s reckoning. It’s been just over three months since I visited Kaphar as the first journalist to view his body of work “From a Tropical Space,” an apocalyptic series of images of Black mothers (including the original version of Analogous Colors) that unfolds in a surrealist Afro-future. Kaphar carves the children from each canvas by razor blade—a physical gesture of Black mothers’ enduring anxiety and trauma. Only weeks into lockdown, wearing masks and latex gloves, this in-person meeting felt like a minefield, as we were both unsure of the risk we were taking for our families. Early April seems like a different era: Derek Chauvin hadn’t murdered George Floyd; the country hadn’t yet erupted, millions of people taking to the streets with sorrow and rage at the incessant violence towards Black citizens. Now, I am back in his studio for this interview and to behold Analogous Colors in its current historic context. Of course, we are still social distancing, but a beleaguered normalcy has settled as the pandemic grinds on.
“MY PROCESS ALWAYS BEGINS LIKE THIS: ME TRYING TO FORCE MY WILL ON A PAINTING THAT WON’T SUBMIT. FOR SOME INSANE REASON, I MUST GO THROUGH THIS AGAIN AND AGAIN, BEFORE I REALIZE THAT THE ONLY WAY FOR ME TO REACH SOMETHING TRULY ARTICULATE AND POIGNANT IS TO LET THE PAINTING SPEAK.”
“Analogous Colors was already here when you came in April, but I was at the stage where it was still wrestling with me and I with it,” Kaphar tells me. “My process always begins like this: me trying to force my will on a painting that won’t submit.” He adds with a slight laugh: “For some insane reason, I must go through this again and again, before I realize that the only way for me to reach something truly articulate and poignant is to let the painting speak.” I suddenly grasp that the woman in the painting was someone else last spring, her anguish now deeper, eyebrows more angled, creases at the bridge of her nose like folded fabric. Observing her visage alongside the other paintings, she now expresses the sharpest pain of any mother in this series. “I was going through this process when George Floyd happened,” recalls Kaphar. “There were many sessions where my furrowed brow was mirroring the furrowed brow on this mother. I felt like she was going through my frustration and anger with this country beside me, or I was going through it with her.” Then he got the phone call from TIME, requesting that he make another “hands up, don’t shoot” painting in response to the nation’s convulsion, similar to Another Fight for Remembrance (2015), the piece he created for the magazine five years ago, in his signature whitewash, to capture the impact of the Ferguson protests. He has since characterized this work as not not about Ferguson, but also not not about Detroit or Minneapolis. The title speaks to the repetition of police violence against Black men and women. “I told them absolutely not,” Kaphar says of TIME’s initial concept. “I don’t want to repeat myself. I’m not going to take my brush and articulate your idea.” He did, however, have a painting he’d been wrestling with. The rest—perhaps never truer than here—is history. I ask Kaphar about how it feels to join those rare artists—like Ai Weiwei—whose work captures a seismic moment in time and compels such a deep reimagining of a country’s injustices that it transcends art history and manifests a larger collective consciousness. “Let’s be honest,” he answers. “The reason you’re making the distinction between history and art history is because by and large, what happens in art history doesn’t have a direct impact on real people’s lives. Picasso’s Guernica is an important work of art about a serious event. But if you stopped people on the street, how many of them would know the painting?” In contrast, he details the vast scope of art in the internet age, particularly amidst a social revolution—emails he received about the TIME cover from young people in Syria and Iraq. A single message stands out: “A woman, whose name I won’t share, emailed me this beautiful text about her Black son who was murdered,” he describes softly, his voice laden with respect and compassion. “She said, ‘I’ve been looking for an image that represents my loss for years. I didn’t find one until your painting.’” When a work of art generates that kind of emotion, he says, a kind of alchemy or sorcery transpires; the two have corresponded quite a bit since. “Even though I feel like I was way too vulnerable, even though I feel too much on display,” Kaphar explains, “that one email made it clear to me: this was what I was supposed to do at this moment. Nobody else really matters.”
Kaphar at work on Ascension IV (2020).
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Class of 2020: The Artists are Present TITUS KAPHAR, JASON PRICE AND JONATHAN BRAND FOUNDED NXTHVN AS A NEW KIND OF EXHIBITION AND EDUCATION SPACE BUILT TO UPLIFT ARTISTS AND CURATORS OF COLOR. JACOBA URIST PAYS A VISIT TO NXTHVN’S SECOND ANNUAL COHORT OF STUDIO AND CURATORIAL FELLOWS, WHO ARE CURRENTLY TAKING UP RESIDENCE IN THE DIXWELL NEIGHBORHOOD OF NEW HAVEN, CONNECTICUT. Photography by
DURING HIS TIME AS AN MFA STUDENT, Titus Kaphar recalls skepticism he encountered about his subject matter: “Why are you painting this?” a Yale professor once asked him—“Glenn Ligon and Kara Walker already had this conversation.” Fifteen years later, the exchange reverberates in his vision for NXTHVN (“Next Haven”), the 40,000-squarefoot arts incubator he’s created in New Haven’s largely Black and brown Dixwell neighborhood, walking distance yet worlds away from the University’s arched entryways. “That is verbatim what was presented to me,” he explains of his professor’s misconceptions and the hesitation it caused him at the time—another sign of how overwhelmingly white and insular the ivory tower still is. “My revolution is for freedom,” Kaphar says. “When it comes to Black and brown artists, that means the freedom to tell the story that you want to tell and to make the work you feel compelled to make.” A former ice cream factory transformed by Yale School of Architecture dean Deborah Berke into a modern landmark, NXTHVN’s light-filled industrial studio space rivals any I’ve visited on either coast (a lifesaver for the class of 2020 fellows during lockdown, as they, unlike so many artists, were able to access the building and continue making art through the pandemic). Kaphar’s vision for its curatorial and artist fellows program is a testament to his younger self, who he wishes he could encourage to, “in the most clichéd way, follow your heart.” But his experiences did provide a curriculum for surviving the art world as an artist of color. “NXTHVN is an opportunity for me to go back in time to when I was having conversations with faculty,” he says. “I’m able not only to see these young artists’ work from a formal perspective, but to get into the weeds of its social, political and emotional impact as well.” Core to NXTHVN’s mission, fellows are paired with area high school students—a paid apprenticeship, endowed in part by Kaphar’s gallery, Gagosian—who get to work side-by-side with an artist or curator and learn from their practice. “Creativity is an essential asset,” says Kaphar. “In order to be successful, you have to be able to imagine something you don’t see. That’s the power we want to impart to the young people with us.” Yet to appreciate NXTHVN, you have to get to know New Haven. I grew up a mile away, but had never been to Dixwell before I visited the building, a construction site, on assignment in 2017. “The way New Haven is laid out, a mile is another city,” he says as we enter the glass atrium and street gallery, which has just reopened to the public (in late July) post-COVID shutdown; Tavares Strachan’s neon yellow You Belong Here glows on the
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brick wall, visible from the sidewalk. Executive director Nico Wheadon and I meet to tour NXTHVN’s inaugural exhibition, “Countermythologies,” which mines archival memory and oral history. Organized by the previous year’s curatorial fellows, artists include Firelei Baez, Bethany Collins and Jarrett Key. September programming showcases “Pleading Freedom,” a collaboration between Kaphar and poet-memoirist Reginald Dwayne Betts, and Kaphar’s TIME magazine cover painting, Analogous Colors, displayed for the first time in the flesh. “When we started, people told me, you should build NXTHVN downtown or over there,” Kaphar says. “After several conversations like this, I began to realize what people were saying is that communities like ours wouldn’t appreciate ‘high architecture.’” On my initial trip, when NXTHVN still seemed more ambition than reality, we drove to visit his oil painting Shadows of Liberty (2016), a reimagined portrait of George Washington, in Yale’s permanent collection. “To say that the Yale University Art Gallery is only a mile-and-a-half from here is not to understand this city,” he explains. “To say there’s a place in your neighborhood, around the corner from you, where you have a job, showing international-quality art, that means something. I’m not talking about gentrification, the way it always ends up happening. I’m talking about bringing lasting value for this neighborhood.” At the same time, Kaphar emphasizes how essential it is for Black and brown artists to generate a broad range of work. “I’m not fighting for folks only to make representational work about social issues in this country,” he told me, after I visited with each fellow in his or her studio. “God, that would be awful. We need artists of color to make minimalist squares that stand as modernist totems as well. We need to make all of it.” NXTHVN’s 2020 fellows, named here, are artists and curators poised to make an impact on their fields. We will be keeping an eye on their creative journeys this year and in the future. Alisa Sikelianos-Carter Allana Clarke Claire Kim Esteban Ramón Pérez Daniel T. Gaitor-Lomack Ilana Savdie Jeffrey Meris Michelle Phương Ting Vincent Valdez
From left to right. Front row, seated: Titus Kaphar and Jason Price; second row: Allana Clarke, Ilana Savdie, Michelle Phươ ng Ting, Alisa SikelianosCarter; third row: Esteban Ramón Pérez, Jeffrey Meris, Vincent Valdez; top row: Nico Wheadon (executive director), a sculpture by Daniel T. GaitorLomack, Terence Washington (program director). Not pictured: Daniel T. Gaitor-Lomack, Claire Kim.
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K AT H E R R I M A N
PHOTOGRAPHY BY
JUERGEN TELLER
Daniel Lee Reshuffles the Deck
BY
THE MEDIA-SHY BRITISH DESIGNER SEIZES THE OPPORTUNITY TO TRANSFORM RAREFIED LEATHER GOODS HOUSE BOTTEGA VENETA’S LEGACY OF EXPERTISE AND IDIOSYNCRATIC DESIGN INTO A WAY OF LIFE.
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he gravity of Daniel Lee’s arrival at Bottega Veneta didn’t hit immediately. But, a few short award-filled seasons, skyrocketing sales and two It Bags later, it’s impossible not to feel the tides of fashion tugging at your ankles. The Céline protégé, who trained under Phoebe Philo, has shifted the waves from the baroque fantasy of the early twenty-teens towards a more refined, lucid vision of Eden, where the private pleasures of detail trump any need for outward showmanship. Lee is not only piloting this approach with his collections, but through the way he lives and works. And what does that look like? Not much, to an outsider. The young British designer has drawn an opaque curtain up over his personal life; all we are left with is the work, which, up until now, has comprised an unending parade of tightly edited, well-constructed garments and accessories that reveal very little about their maker, accentuating, instead, the style of their wearer. At first blush, his unanimous popularity might feel like fashion tightening its belt after too many years of rampant excess—but my hunch is that Lee isn’t as interested in sobering up his industry as he might be in reminding them that there are plenty of joys and successes to be celebrated behind closed doors, watching. Here, Lee offers his take on privacy, what sexy means to Bottega Veneta and how he’s navigating virtual fashion under COVID.
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Previous spread: Daniel Lee photographed in July in Milan.
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You joined Bottega Veneta to strengthen ready-to-wear. A flood of awards and sales all say you’ve made it happen. Do you feel like this success has made you keener to take risks? Dare I ask what the next item on your agenda is? For me, pushing boundaries and taking risks are crucial to creativity. We make bold decisions and I suppose that you become more confident once your instincts are proven, and there’s proof that the direction is working. We are focusing more on establishing menswear—the home collection is a focus too—and then bringing the store network in-line with the vision for the product is also a massive and exciting project. Your first profiles painted you as shy. As you’ve acclimated, have you begun to feel more comfortable with the public parts of the role? I don’t think I’m shy, but I want the focus to be on the work, not on me. I think about Martin Margiela—he was silent and everybody remembers the collections, but how many examples of contemporary houses can you recall where you remember the work before the person? In interviews, you often refer backwards to your design team. What are the ingredients that make an atelier work? I’ve always been a people person and I like to be surrounded by world citizens from a richness of backgrounds. Passionate and hardworking individuals are important to the Bottega family. Daisy Butler is described in past profiles as your right hand. What is it about your friendship and professional rhythms that work well together? Our work relationship is an extension of a ten-year, real-life friendship. We met at Central Saint Martins and after all this time, she understands me. We can speak in an abstract way and disseminate from it, which is useful because the collection often starts from an emotion or a feeling. We inspire each other and build the ideas together over countless conversations. It’s so crucial to have that back-and-forth. Where do the garments begin for you? It’s an attitude and an approach to dressing that informs the kind of garment I am creating. I don’t really draw; we talk about a feeling and work on the model and on the body. The process is more a collage—I liken it to sculpture rather than drawing. The idea of the wardrobe is often referenced in regard to your work. I’ve always struggled with that term. Is it a container? Is it a philosophy one must adopt? Is it an aesthetic? I think wardrobe is an overused word in this context, but, personally, I like to design with boundaries so the concept of the wardrobe gives a sense of parameter to the process. For me, it’s about categorizing clothing and then working within each category to design garments with purpose, functionality and use. You live a relatively private life given your relatively public persona. As we all reconsider our social interactions, I’m curious to get your thoughts on the benefits, and maybe the pleasure of privacy. Privacy gives you a valuable sense of freedom. In my role, it’s important to be part of the real world, to be on the street, to make sure you don’t become disconnected from what feels relevant and what is happening. If you can stay private, you can blend in with the crowd. I know you don’t have a personal Instagram, but do you ever look at the app? I look at Instagram and social media sometimes, but I think too much can be quite dangerous and detrimental to the creative process. Everyone
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seeing the same thing is not healthy or productive. It doesn’t breed individuality. I have a designer friend who always describes her looks in terms of stories. For instance: the woman on the way to brunch who’s about to tell a friend she slept with her boyfriend. When you are constructing garments, looks or ideas, do stories or movies appear in your head? Movies and stories are an important part of the narrative, but, for me, it’s always about the attitude of the person—we start with the attitude. We based the last collection around an attitude of comfort, coziness and being at home: the fabric, the fit, it was all built around this attitude. I was watching the TV series Euphoria during lockdown, all that youth and free spirit; you have to stay quite open—anything that comes your way has some kind of unconscious influence on the work. Thinking about films, I enjoyed Men. What was it like, stepping into the role of director? Do you like the cinema? Do movies ever serve as sources of inspiration? What did you watch last? The most inspiring part of stepping into the role of director was seeing the full circle of those who inspired the collection wearing the clothes. The beginning of the Bottega journey was about the audience, understanding how the new Bottega would look. With the film, I wanted to add a further layer to that, to explain what the Bottega person thinks and feels. Of course, I love movies and films are a big inspiration. In the very early days of Bottega, we immersed ourselves in the rich heritage of Italian cinema by watching Fellini and Visconti and we were obsessed with Monica Vitti and Ornella Muti. It gave such an insight into Italian culture—the life, the warmth of spirit and sexuality—which we have since channeled into the work. The last thing I watched was the 1978 film adaptation of Agatha Christie’s novel, Murder on the Nile, on a friend’s projector on their terrace on the Amalfi Coast while I was on holiday. We rarely watch each other get dressed unless it’s after a romp. What made you want to focus on this private aspect of fashion for Men? I feel like the act of getting dressed and undressed is an intimate part of everyone’s life. It’s something we can all relate to and, as a designer, you have the power to help people feel better about themselves when they get dressed in the morning. A designer for the opera and movies told me that the reason costumes are so detailed is not necessarily because the audience will notice, but because it helps the actors get into character and really believe in their roles. I’m curious to get your thoughts on this idea, as it applies to the work of the Bottega Veneta team. When we are making garments, we really like the idea of details that the wearer will discover; it could be a contrast button or a special stitch, perhaps it’s a secret patch or pocket on the inside. Detail and a sense of discovery are really important. It goes back to the idea of dressing for yourself, which is the philosophy of Bottega. I was very enchanted with your resort collection. The colors were a favorite and reminded me of painting right now. How did the team arrive at this palette?
“PRIVACY GIVES YOU A VALUABLE SENSE OF FREEDOM. IN MY ROLE, IT’S IMPORTANT TO BE PART OF THE REAL WORLD, TO BE ON THE STREET, TO MAKE SURE YOU DON’T BECOME DISCONNECTED FROM WHAT FEELS RELEVANT AND WHAT IS HAPPENING. IF YOU CAN STAY PRIVATE, YOU CAN BLEND IN WITH THE CROWD.”
Strangely, I was in Rome over the last few weeks and I saw the Raphael show at the Scuderie del Quirinale—it’s the 500th anniversary of his death and his color palette reminded me so much of Bottega. Color is massively important; it is so inviting and it is definitely the first thing I notice when I walk into a room. How we arrive at the palette is an organic process. It comes to us through found objects, material research and even the research process itself forms its own palette. We are always searching for this delicious, edible, glossy, rich color. The work of Ellsworth Kelly is a big reference that we look to, and one we consider a core reference for the Bottega world. Have you ever seen Hannah Wilke’s gum portraits? They’re what I first thought of when I saw The Pouch. I like them, I saw them last year–I love the design sensibility. The purity of material, spontaneous and immediate. That’s how I try to design at Bottega. Do you collect art? Yes, I do. I love ceramics and the most recent thing I bought was an elephant sculpture by the Finnish artist Jasmin Anoschkin. One day I dream of owning a Hockney, and Amoako Boafo’s portraiture was my standout at Art Basel Miami Beach last year. In February, Vanessa Friedman speculated about who your table of Met Gala attendees would be. Can you share a dream list, if not the real one? Maybe a mixture of both.
My dream dinner table would include David Hockney, for his wisdom and humor; Sister Nancy, simply because she is so cool; PJ Harvey for her singular femininity and endless inspiration; Rudolf Nureyev for his elegance; Lauren Bacall for her unparalleled beauty; Snoop Dogg because I love his unique sense of style; the dancer Pina Bausch for emotional, raw sensuality; and, of course, Rihanna. It’s a dream for Rihanna to wear the clothes because she is so contemporary, and what she stands for is exactly what society needs right now. And then, lastly, me and my partner. You must have been pleased to see Rihanna wearing your orange shearling coat on the September cover of Harper’s Bazaar. Were you thinking of her when making it? I often think of Rihanna, and to see people who inspire you wearing the clothes gives the work depth. With Bottega, there’s always an inflated boldness to the design and with that coat it’s the weave exploding, bringing movement and expression, and I love that picture of her. I’ve asked for a print of it for my office. It’s great to see someone stylish, whether they are famous or not, in the work—it makes me feel humbled and privileged. It makes sense to me that Rihanna is in the ether at Bottega Veneta, especially because she represents, at least to me, the empowered sex appeal that I feel like is now synonymous with the house. Sexy can mean so many things. Being a leather house, skin is important to Bottega. We want to give the wearer possibilities and the choice to dress however they feel. Personally, I don’t like to be too heavy and weighed down in fabric. We design for real lives on the go. It’s an attitude, too. If you can’t afford a piece of Bottega to wear, then you can enjoy our images and our messages. These are intended to make people feel part of the world, whether they are making the purchase or not. You’ve been called radical. Do you feel that way? I’m not sure, but we do make bold decisions and we are brave enough to go against the curve. In terms of pushing it further, I’m interested in exploring the idea of going off the traditional fashion calendar, finding new formats to present and finding different ways to communicate without social media. What else can you tell me about the future and upcoming season? How is COVID affecting those plans? I tried to focus on the positive and I found that to be a freeing moment, because it presented an opportunity to redefine what feels right. It’s a moment to be incredibly personal, to think smaller and more meaningfully, to be more human and tactile. I didn’t think much of the digital presentations. They felt empty and took so much effort in such emotionally turbulent times, yet in the end the concepts lacked depth. So, what else can be done? How can we speak to our audience in a way that works for them because, ultimately, they are the most important in all of this. That is what I’m asking myself.
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Intermissions NOT ONE TO ABIDE BY THE RULES, JANELLE MONÁE HAS FORGED A CREATIVE CAREER AS EXTRAORDINARY AS SHE IS, MAKING HER MARK ON MUSIC, FASHION AND FILM WITH ALTER-EGOS TO MATCH. DARNELL-JAMAL LISBY MAPS THE ASCENSION OF THE GENDER-BENDING ICON. TEXAS ISAIAH S t y l i n g b y A L E X A NDR A M A NDE L KOR N Sculptures by R O G A N G R E G O R Y Photography by
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In
1836, a New York court convicted Mary Jones of grand larceny, but an even more surprising element to Mary’s life shook the city. Not only was Mary a Black person, but she was also, in today’s term, femmepresenting. Mary was born Peter Sewally and found work as a domestic in a brothel; her story highlights profound bravery at a time when it was legal for the state to eradicate queer identities. When the courts sentenced Mary to five years in prison, Henry R. Robinson published a lithograph titled The Man-Monster. It depicted Mary wearing a voluminous dress, presumably cotton, in the large leg-of-mutton sleeve style of the day, coupled with the most fashionable accessories from her gloves to her reticule bag. We cannot presume Mary’s quotidian style, but for it to inspire this illustration highlights the power of fashion to question antiquated social ideologies and potentially evolve how we create a society that allows all people to live freely. Although Mary did not experience this equalization in her life, and may not have considered herself a rebel, her story helped to ignite cultural revolutions beyond her time. Building on Mary Jones’s bravery, there is a history of individuals and communities who used fashion as a vehicle for social and political change in regards to promoting gender nonconformity and civil rights for all. The romantic perspective of fashion history championed by the mainstream tends to overlook unconventional views and overshadow their impact. Still, the stories of brave souls who shifted global culture through fashion to create spaces that represent everyone’s voice are vital to the present and future. When I think about individuals at the forefront, pushing this cultural shift, there is one person who stands tall above many—the incomparable Janelle Monáe. Fashion is a vehicle in her artistry that continues to evolve, incorporating a broader and broader base of inspirations to convey powerful messages that work to unify our world. Monáe is a part of a lineage of artists, specifically Black artists, who built onstage imageries that forced people to have tough conversations, breaking boundaries many could never have imagined. Before Monáe, figures from Josephine Baker, Little Richard and Grace Jones to Prince developed public identities that strategically used fashion as an extension of their activism and progressive purview. Monáe is one of the notable voices of this generation to use style to continue the dialogue around gender nonconformity, queer and civil rights, feminism and Black empowerment. Even though these causes are far from mutually exclusive, Monáe’s ability to use her onstage image to highlight them concurrently makes her one of the most prolific fashion figures of this time. Within the first moments of my phone call with Monáe—in anticipation of the release of the film Antebellum, in which she stars—her humility radiated and her words illuminated power. Monáe plays the lead role
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of Veronica Henley—a successful author whose work revolves around women’s empowerment and intersectional feminism. Much like Monáe herself, Veronica is emotive, dynamic and convicted in her beliefs. “I come from a strong group of Black women. My mother had seven sisters and I grew up around Black women,” she tells me. “I am because of them. I am because of the nurturing and the strength they gave to me when I felt weak. The encouragement—all of it is a reflection of Black women and I think that is the same with this character.” This film speaks to the burden that Black women carry to deconstruct systemic racism and white supremacism every day, she explains. “A few of the Black women who do this and inspired me to say yes to this role are Maxine Waters, Brittany Packnett, Patrisse Cullors and Angela Rye.” As impressive as her character, the film’s costumes were also a critical extension of Veronica’s powerhouse persona. Monáe was wholly involved in the costuming. Working closely with the film’s costume designer, Mary Zophres, they found ways to elicit the character’s integrity and celebrate design from the African Diaspora. Monáe commended Zophres’s willingness to listen, learn and collaborate. “The top priority for me,” she says, “was getting as many Black designers for Veronica’s costumes as possible. We felt that it would be true to her character; she was all about supporting Black creatives and putting money back into our community. We wanted the clothes to be strong, graphic and bold. We got an opportunity to work with Black designers like Ozwald Boateng. The jewelry is by a local New Orleans designer, Dr. Sophia Omoro, who is from Kenya. Veronica’s handbags are from Zaaf, created in Ethiopia. Working with these designers was key—I felt that because this movie deals with various Black experiences, it should highlight Black designers.” Without giving away any spoilers, Monáe also plays an enslaved character on a plantation. Hollywood has become more tolerant than previous generations of film that delineates the real horrors of slavery and the reality it created, specifically for African Americans and the Afro-diaspora at large. There is still work to be done in terms of rectifying its discriminatory system, but we have come a long way since the days of Gone With the Wind (1939), which romanticized slavery and ignored the real suffering Black people endured. In any event, when Monáe was acting as an enslaved character in Antebellum, she felt an innate strength that transcended to her role. True to the period, the costume’s constricting silhouette and rugged texture
Previous page: Monáe wears a cape, shirt, shorts and boots by Gucci; Jean Paul Gaultier gloves; Chanel hat; Jenny Bird earrings; Tuleste rings.
Below: Jean Paul Gaultier dress; Adeam shoes; Jenny Bird earrings; Tuleste rings.
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prompted her to reminisce on the struggles of her ancestors. “I could not imagine what their experience was like, being restricted in clothes, or in life—being held against their will,” Monáe expresses. “When you think about my ancestors who lived in the South—the women in terms of their menstrual cycles and wearing all of that fabric, or the sweltering heat—it’s infuriating. It also helped me play into the role.” Throughout the film, the essence of Monáe’s performance and role felt integrally her—the artist we have come to adore. In her public onstage style, Monáe is known for her signature black-and-white palette. But beneath the surface of her minimalist uniform lies a wealth of understanding about her creative process and the artistic extension of the social and political messages she champions. “My style has evolved. When I’m not in black and white, I have my spurts of color where I’m pushing back against others’ limitations of where I can go as an artist, especially with fashion and clothes. When they see something long enough, they’ll say, ‘That’s her thing?’ And if you do anything outside of that, it will feel foreign to their eyes and they’ll say, ‘She’s trying to be something else.’” Of subverting the use of color in her style, she affirms, “Using fashion, not really words, I rebel against respectability politics and those who want to stop my evolution.” Leaning more into the way she incorporates gender-neutrality in her onstage style, Monáe goes on: “A lot of what you see is me expressing my evolution and starting in a place rooted in community, making sure that the Black LGBTQIA community feels free to come to a show where the person onstage gives that permission, if they already don’t give it to themselves.” At a time when Black queer and trans lives are continuously endangered by oppressively heteronormative systems, Monáe’s style is a guiding light. The relationship of the tuxedo to her artistry is widely known; with a history rooted in 19th-century menswear, its adoption into her onstage appearance consistently highlights a dialogue of gender nonconformity. “Early on, I always felt my feminine side, my masculine and everything in between. I really consider myself a gender-bender when it comes to fashion. I support gender-neutral clothing and love being able to live outside of that binary, both in fashion and in how I live my life in general.” Monáe’s alter-ego, Cindi Mayweather, also gives clues as to how science fiction and Afrofuturism have influenced her worldview and style. “Afrofuturism is so important to me because it lets me dream what we can be as Black folks. How we see ourselves is so important, and the future that we create for ourselves is paramount. We’ve been limited for so long in various ways, and I would love for us to soar in film, in fashion, in music, in literature and in politics. We’re not monoliths; we don’t all think the same and we don’t all dream the same, but I think through Afrofuturism, we get options around how to survive. We can create a world where we are the heroes of our own future.” A recent example of Monáe’s Afrofuturistic vision is her 2018 video for “Django Jane.” The colorful tailored suiting and kufi-like accouterments spoke to the sharp contemporary style of many Left: Jean Paul Gaultier look; Jenny Bird earrings; Tuleste rings. Photographer assistant: Tre’vell Anderson.
metropolitans across the African continent. “My queerness was being erased; my Blackness was being erased,” she says of what compelled her vision for the video. “I needed to access the part of my mind and brain that is a survivor. When you see ‘Django Jane,’ the visual pulls from my ancestors, and there’s me in the middle of so many Black women who have my back and whose back I have. You see a tribe that refuses to assimilate and stays focused on liberation. That’s what Afrofuturism does.” One of the steps in cementing a figure as a fashion legend is when something they wear becomes integrated into the canon of fashion history. In the fall of 2018, the Museum at FIT opened “Pink: The History of a Punk, Pretty, Powerful Color,” curated by director Valerie Steele. Included in the exhibition were the ingenious “vagina pants” Monáe wore in her video for the song “PYNK,” featuring Grimes, the same year. Highlighting the evolving attitude toward the color pink in contemporary fashion, the vagina pants’ surrealist form functioned perfectly to amplify the exhibition’s theme of how various designers use the color as a vehicle for women’s empowerment. The cotton, sateen and nylon trousers, designed by Duran Lantink, were conceptualized in collaboration with Monáe and her stylist, Alexandra Mandelkorn. “We wanted the pants to be iconic,” she says. “I wanted something that moved and represented a time portal. Babies come out of vaginas kind of like they’re time-traveling. I wanted a cool-looking shape that blurred the lines, but also felt erotic.” The way Monáe blurred lines intangibly through the song while synchronously conveying her message in the clothing demonstrates the genius behind her artistry. With regard to the future, Monáe hinted at aspirations to one day execute a fashion line of her own, creating a space for those who desire to dress beyond the binary traditions of the industry. “I’m a good observer of what people want and what could be useful to them. I’m super excited for that next step in my career, whenever that happens.” Through those words, I felt the power of the legendary Willi Smith of WilliWear, who designed gender-neutral clothing at accessible price points and collections that balanced functional and fashionable styles. This approach made him the most successful Black designer of his time, despite his untimely death, and that shared mode of thinking may have the potential to purport Monáe on a similar trajectory. In her parting words, Monáe added a final but crucial thought about how we can build a better future. “If you’re White, it’s important that you have conversations with other White-privileged individuals: that you have the conversation around dismantling White supremacy and systemic racism. I appreciate everyone out there protesting, screaming ‘Black Lives Matter,’ and the folks online who are also screaming ‘Black Lives Matter,’” she says. “If you are Black, queer or part of a marginalized group, I hope that you practice self-care. To my trans family, your lives matter, and I will do more to be a better ally. I hope that we can figure out ways to check our privilege and show up for those who need to be taken care of.” To cap off her response, she proclaims, “Wear your fucking masks!” Monáe’s ability to merge consciousness within her onstage style and creative output surely canonizes her as legendary, and will undoubtedly make her a symbol of hope and enlightenment for present and future generations.
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IT MAY SEEM IMPOSSIBLE THAT YARA SHAHIDI’S LAUNDRY LIST OF ACHIEVEMENTS B y D E VA N D Í A Z AND ACCOLADES COULD BE ATTRIBUTED TO SOMEONE WHO HAS JUST ENTERED THEIR THIRD DECADE OF LIFE, BUT THE ACTOR, Photography By M U N A C H I O S E G B U PRODUCER AND CURRENT HARVARD UNDERGRAD HAS ALREADY PROVEN TO BE IN A LEAGUE OF HER OWN. THE YOUNGEST EVER OF OUR LIVING LEGENDS, SHE REDEFINES WHAT IT MEANS TO BE EXCEPTIONAL, AND WE’RE FOLLOWING HER LEAD.
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Styling By
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ere is some of what Yara Shahidi has read in lockdown: One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez, The Stranger by Albert Camus, the Tao Te Ching and selected works by her beloved James Baldwin. She started with fiction, a safe medium when logic has dried up. For these days that run on a loop, Márquez’s magical realism and Camus’s absurdity seemed to fit right in. The twenty-year-old Harvard student has been auditing classes— ranging from sociology to psychology—for which the assigned reading is full of headers and subsections. Fiction was an escape, a place to make
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Shahidi’s makeup by Emily Cheng via Zoom; hair by Keri Shahidi. Pictured: Peter Do look; Jennifer Fisher earrings.
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BLACK LIVES HAVE ALWAYS MATTERED, BUT WE’VE REACHED THE LIMIT ON WAITING FOR SYSTEMIC RECOGNITION AND RETRIBUTION. HERE, YARA SEES AN OPPORTUNITY. ALREADY AN ACTIVE COMMUNITY MEMBER PRIOR TO THIS MOMENT, SHE HAS TAKEN ON A GLOBAL POINT OF VIEW.
Left: Alberta Ferretti look; Jennifer Fisher earrings; Ruslan Baginskiy hat.
sense of the aspects of reality that can feel unknowable. “If I ever needed any proof that time is a construct,” she tells me over the phone one August evening, “this is it.” She’s in Los Angeles and I’m in New York. Yara’s voice settles into my ear, disappearing our three-hour difference. In the absence of touch, sound has become tactile. In 2020 terms we’re sitting side-by-side. How’s she doing? “Good,” which, we both agree, means having a healthy family. It’s hard to call anything “good” amidst a global pandemic, social upheaval and an openly negligent government. She tells me about “immanent critique,” a term she’s just learned in school. It means to hold something up to its own espoused standards, to expose contradictions. In this case the subject is America, who once again finds itself up against some difficult questions. What are our beliefs? For whom were they intended? When can we get rid of them? Some days Yara feels close to an answer, before it slips away again. It’s the attempt to understand that makes the difference. In a recent interview Yara conducted for TIME magazine, Dr. Angela Davis had this to say: “It’s an extraordinary moment—and when conjunctures like this happen, they happen almost serendipitously.” Like, has she ever been wrong? If we weren’t all unemployed, would we have had the time to protest over a period of months? Life has become too unpredictable for the algorithm, leaving open a window for a different future. Black Lives have always Mattered, but we’ve reached the limit on waiting for systemic recognition and retribution. Here, Yara sees an opportunity. Already an active community member prior to this moment, she has taken on a global point of view. Black Trans Lives Matter, Black Immigrant Lives Matter, Black Creativity Matters; 7th Sun, a new production company she is launching with her mother, Keri Shahidi, is the latest in Yara’s commitment to Black stories. Along with fiction, she’s been reading scripts, meeting with writers, plotting for the time when she can be on a set again. As the star and now executive producer of the sitcom Grown-ish, Yara is preparing for Zoey’s junior year as she enters her own. “She’s a year older than me,” Yara explains, “and my complete opposite.” She took on the role of Zoey seven years ago, on the NAACP Image Award-winning show Black-ish. In this closeup look at a modern Black family, Zoey was the cool and ambitious older sister. Grown-ish is Yara’s spin-off, recently picked up for its fourth season. We see Zoey stumble through her first relationship, develop an Adderall habit and learn how to apologize. Having spent time getting to know her, Yara readily comes to her defense. “She messes up a lot, usually about the same things. I think that’s what makes her human.” It’s true, Zoey is a unique protagonist. Her friends constantly drag her for not listening or spending too much time talking about herself. What’s exciting is that her narcissism isn’t glazed over. It is a new portrayal of
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young Black adulthood, where there’s room for mistakes. In a context of constant social cancellations and the accompanying paranoia, seeing a young woman bounce back from being wrong must be a form of hope. Along with simply growing up, we see Zoey deal with real 21st-century dilemmas, like the pressures of being an internet prodigy, biphobia and how a game of telephone can result in a murky sexual assault allegation. Grown-ish has all of the emotional cues of a sitcom; personal problems seem to have a beginning and an end. But they also pile on top of each other, as she parses through hard truths about race, class and guys who don’t text back. Our conversation, like most, drifts back to Black Lives Matter. A native of Minnesota, I ask her what she makes of the country following her home state’s lead. The murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis and the riots that followed kicked off a summer of protesting that has still not let up as new abuses continue to surface and killer cops walk free. Why? “Minnesota, in a lot of ways, is a microcosm of what’s happening in the nation.” She brings up the murder of Philando Castile and the moratorium placed on Somali refugees, who account for a large percentage of the population. “When I think of my Midwest upbringing, I remember our values of tidiness and politeness. But that isn’t true for everyone. The place I call home has not been home for everybody.” In the show, Zoey gets fired from her internship at Teen Vogue. In real life, Yara was on the cover. Prince pulled her up on stage for a dance at age twelve and Oprah Winfrey hopes to live to watch her become president. If you were to split the American dream down the middle, its two sides might be starring in your own TV show or attending an Ivy League. Yara has both. A seemingly charmed life would be enough for most, but she seeks to extend it outward. In 2019, she launched “Through Her Lens,” a program that gives women filmmakers a chance to learn from industry insiders and experts. While the world is ending for the highly privileged, a new one is taking form for everyone else. Yara is building a creative coalition in preparation. “I can’t think of anything more fitting. I believe deeply that when the most vulnerable populations are building these future worlds, we all become liberated.” Yara’s been re-reading, enjoying the intimate process of seeing the annotations of a past self. In confusing times she’s returned to a lodestar, James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time, first published in 1963. The book is divided in two parts: the first, an essay to his fourteen-year-old nephew on the 100th anniversary of the Emancipation. Baldwin has his fists against the wall, pushing for a moment that he has no reason to believe will come, but continuing anyway. Yara, too, was fourteen when she first read it, beginning an ongoing relationship with the book. “I must’ve read it 100 times by now,” she tells me, “and I think I’ve just grasped the meaning of the title.” Now she is embarking on her twenties, a decade designated in our culture to be a time of transformation. As she undergoes her own metamorphosis, Yara’s taking the world with her.
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“I CAN’T THINK OF ANYTHING MORE FITTING. I BELIEVE DEEPLY THAT WHEN THE MOST VULNERABLE POPULATIONS ARE BUILDING THESE FUTURE WORLDS, WE ALL BECOME LIBERATED.”
Right: Peter Do look; Jennifer Fisher earrings. Lighting by John Collazos; Set assistant: Eamonn McGlynn.
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THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS For the past four decades, archivist and photographer Clayton Patterson has documented the ever-changing communities of New York’s Lower East Side. For our Legends issue, he reflects on the importance of recording the past, present and possible future with former intern and mentee Monica Uszerowicz.
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Three young women in front of Patterson’s door at 161 Essex Street, 1992. Photograph by Clayton Patterson.
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Clayton Patterson in the Lower East Side, 2008. Portrait by Monica Uszerowicz.
A GIGANTIC CARDBOARD TUBE OF TOOTHPASTE. The vinegary miasma of aging film, percolating in a cramped closet. Grapefruit skin—a common canvas for tattoo apprentices—inscribed with ink. My memories of working as Clayton Patterson’s intern over a decade ago are sparse but vivid. The day we met, I’d been given the unenviable task of photographing my then-boss’s art-world friends at his first opening; blessedly, Patterson was one of them. Spotting my Contax T2 and visible confusion, he offered to guide me, suggesting I photograph first Jeffrey Deitch’s date, then Deitch himself, so as not to appear too starry-eyed. I felt, suddenly, briefly, purposeful and confident. Perhaps it’s the ceaselessness of Patterson’s work that prompts the flickering of my memory—I’m compartmentalizing, or trying to. Nicknamed the Godfather of New York’s Lower East Side, the photographer and archivist, born in 1948, and his partner, artist Elsa Rensaa, are now the caretakers of his archive: an extensive historical record containing decades’ worth of documentary footage (nearly 3,000 hours), photographs and physical ephemera gleaned from the Lower East Side’s varied communities, beginning around 1980 and ending never. Laminate binders of heroin bags, each with their own stamp. An audio interview with Angel Ortiz, also known as LA II, the Puerto Rican street artist with whom Keith
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Haring collaborated and from whose style he often borrowed. Videos of drag shows at the Pyramid Club and Bad Brains at 1018, straight from the mosh pit. Artwork by the city’s gang members, side-by-side with the work of their rivals. Footage of East Village community meetings to support the neighborhood’s houseless population, circa 1989. Videos of the 1988 Tompkins Square Park police riots that caused Patterson to be jailed and blacklisted by the NYPD (the instances of police brutality caught on camera got several cops indicted or fired and Patterson, who began working actively with his community to fight gentrification, became their target). The crux of it all: thousands of portraits of neighborhood residents— punks and cops, gangsters and grandmas, skaters, schoolkids, friends and strangers—snapped in front of Patterson’s building, a collection now known as the “Front Door Photos.” In Clayton Patterson: Outside In, a catalogue for Arturo Vega’s 2015 project Howl! Happening, Ai Weiwei, Patterson’s longtime friend, recalls: “He has devoted himself to recording what is really going on, to giving his true account.” The archives were also featured briefly in an episode of Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown, where Patterson reminisced about the New York of the 1980s. Patterson reminisces often. We’re on the phone, and he’s recalling the Deitch photograph—“In those crowds, everybody’s watching everybody else,” he laughs. “Assuming everyone is defensive anyway, you can roam the room.” Patterson has a preternatural comfort with in-betweenness endemic, I think, to many photographers, though he doesn’t refer to himself as a photographer: the ability to sit on a moment’s fringes while remaining fully immersed within it. “When you delegate it to a profession, you’re separate from the larger population. Part of my message is that anybody can do what I do.” We travel back in time to his first years in New York; he and Rensaa visited as art students before moving to the city from Calgary, Alberta in 1979. In 1983, they moved into 161 Essex Street, where they still live today. “It was possible to live here because there was cheap rent,” he says. “They used to have 99-cent breakfast. People could sit there, smoke their cigarettes and talk all day for 99 cents.” Ease is what he’s getting at—a lifestyle that made room for spontaneity. Eventually, folks were coming to get their portraits taken at 161’s door. And to hang out. VR1, a scientist who was once one of many street artists tagging the entryway, was fourteen when he met Patterson. “It started with taking pictures at the door and catching tags, but there was always small talk,” he tells me. “It developed into decades of friendship.” In the images, kids laugh in front of the door’s numerous markings, mothers hold their new babies, artists point to their tags, flaunting. There is no specific demographic—Patterson documented everyone, for a long time; through the portraits, you can watch children grow up and have kids of their own. There’s a feeling that doesn’t abate through the years, photo after photo: a claiming of the space as something that once belonged to everyone who chose to make it theirs. If you don’t know, now you know. “Not only are you capturing a moment, you’re building a human connection,” Patterson says. He recently sent one woman her portrait from the mid-’80s, when she was a teenager; it brought her to happy tears.
“NOT ONLY ARE YOU CAPTURING A MOMENT, YOU’RE BUILDING A HUMAN CONNECTION.” Since the early aughts, Patterson’s archives have been utilized for different media: Captured, Dan Levin and Ben Solomon’s 2008 documentary on Patterson’s work; The Front Door Book, an oral history published by OHWOW press in 2009; 2012’s Jews: A People’s History of the Lower East Side, an anthology edited with Mareleyn Schneider; and, in 2016, The Street Gangs of the Lower East Side anthology, edited by Patterson and José “Cochise” Quiles and catalogued in full on the website for NO!art, an arts collective founded by Holocaust survivor Boris Lurie alongside Sam Goodman and Stanley Fisher, and of which Patterson is an integral part. This past summer, Patterson became the subject of Clayton: Godfather of Lower East Side Documentary, a graphic novel written by Julian Voloj and illustrated by seventeen artists. Photography, arguably, often creates a hierarchal separation
between photographer and subject, but Patterson always defers to everyone else. I hope his archives make their way into an academic institution or library, where they can be utilized and explored forever. “People should have access to the reality of what came before,” says Patterson. “Everybody knows about ‘the king,’ and I don’t really get that. It’s important to see the life of the people.” His next project is the Lower East Side Tag History Project, for which VR1 is decorating the front door with hand-styles from eras past. “We looked through all the archive photos; we’re creating a matrix to put on the door,” says VR1. “These graffiti artists are part of Lower East Side history. Even if they came from outside the States, they came as far as Clayton’s door.” Clayton’s Door: an ever-changing altar, a literal threshold between past and present. It feels eternal.
A group of kids in front of Patterson’s door in 1986. Photograph by Clayton Patterson.
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MAKING With twenty years of reuse design under her belt, architect Jeanne Gang transforms an important piece of postmodern architecture and envisions a more sustainable future for the profession.
HISTORY BY E L I Z A B E T H FA Z Z A R E
IN THE MIDDLE OF A REDWOOD FOREST in Santa Cruz, California, pops of primary colors live among the trees. These colorful supergraphics and arched doorways greet students, faculty and wildlife at the Charles Moore and William Turnbull Jr.-designed Kresge College at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Built in 1973, the College was an experiment in placemaking; driven by student engagement, it rejected the postwar trend of the megaversity and its corporate-style architecture. Instead, its design prioritizes togetherness. Human-scale academic and residential buildings
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surround a central pedestrian street and meadow with views of Monterey Bay, dormitories are planned with ground-floor rooms to encourage social interaction and white stucco and bright detailing paint on the inner façades reflect light into communal gathering areas. Located on an ecologically sensitive and topographically complex site, the residential college, which resembles a Mediterranean hillside town, is one of ten at UCSC. All were shaped by pioneering California landscape architect Thomas Church, a consultant for the university from its foundation in 1965.
PHOTO WHITTEN SABBATINI
Architect Jeanne Gang, founder of Chicago-headquartered firm Studio Gang.
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“I want architects to start thinking more about how we express the ideas of today but using this base that is already there.” Now, like many fifty-year-old structures, Kresge College needs a bit of a facelift, accessibility compliance and an expansion. Facing a myriad of design complications, the University team needed an architect who could sensitively restore, rebuild and reimagine—so they called Jeanne Gang. The founding principal of Chicago-headquartered Studio Gang has led her architectural practice since 1997 and never shies away from a challenge. “This project is a dream,” she explains, precisely for its difficulties and the necessity to create a place that is both ecological and architectural. With San Francisco-based associate TEF Design, Studio Gang is designing five new buildings—a 36,000-square-foot academic building, three new residential buildings and a town hall—and working on an overall renewal of Kresge College, all to be completed by 2023 (the first phase is the academic building, on track for a 2021 finish). The site, which has a forty-foot change in elevation from one end to the other, is a forest grown on top of a marine terrace and incorporates a nature reserve that the school’s ecology students use in their studies. Mapping redwood families and preserving as much of the existing landscape as possible was key and so was reuse, an architectural strategy that Gang has long championed. Restoration and ADA compliance were required of the buildings by Moore and Turnbull, partners in the now disbanded studio MLTW, which was arguably best-known for its design collaboration on the Sea Ranch community in Northern California. Kresge College is also an important milestone project for the firm, particularly as an example of its efforts in community engagement and placemaking—architectural buzzwords, albeit important methods, that have reappeared at the center of discussions about design and planning today. (And doesn’t it make sense that the people who will occupy a space might have a say in it?) While Gang’s additions follow the “prompts of the postmodern architecture”—new pathways connected via those colored framed archways, the materiality of stucco and wood, the way the buildings slope down into the site’s natural ravine and the discourse with students during the extensive planning process—“we are creating this dialogue with the historic architecture, not trying to mimic it,” she says. The new academic building, which contains two lecture halls, laboratories and faculty offices, has distinguishing curves and a series of lobes, akin to the mushrooms that might grow up a redwood tree, that allow access to the outdoors. The dormitory buildings are rectangular bars, bent at an angle around sensitive redwood clusters. As Gang explains: “Understanding both landscape and architecture was very crucial to this project.”
An axonometric diagram of Kresge College, highlighting its existing pedestrian street and Gang’s contiguous extension.
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This year marks the fiftieth anniversary of 1970s postmodernism, an era of architecture whose worth to the canon is highly contested in some circles. A reaction against the rigidity and functionality of modernism, the movement valued ephemerality, whimsy and sometimes obsolescence, and was imbued with populist social values to equalize taste and humanize the built environment. The practitioners of this school of thought argued that good design doesn’t need a higher degree, and thus any unspoken rules associated with siloed architecture styles were thrown out the window in favor of a historical mix and oft-aesthetically whacky placemaking—think Moore’s Piazza d’Italia in New Orleans or Robert Venturi’s obsession with the pleasuredome landscape of urban Las Vegas. Meanwhile, the decade saw the United States in the midst of an energy crisis and ripe with economic instability. As a result, many of these historic ’70s structures were not built to last; they simply didn’t have the budget. So what postmodern structures, then, are worth preserving? Buildings account for forty percent of the world’s annual greenhouse gas emissions. The number of natural disasters our world faces is steadily increasing each year. At the time of writing this, some of the largest fires in California’s history are sweeping the northern part of the state, caused by extreme heat, dry grass and lightning strikes from atypical summer storms, and a category four double hurricane is threatening landfall off the Gulf of Mexico for the first time ever recorded. It is clear that adopting sustainable building methods to curb global warming is more important than ever. What Studio Gang proposes is that we use what we have first. “I think that in general we should be reusing as much as we can anywhere,” says Gang. “Even if the building is not of the caliber of Kresge College, how can we use parts of it and mine it for the materials to reduce our carbon footprint?” She imagines a future ecosystem of recycled building parts that can be specified for new construction, additions or renovations. Until the rest of the building world catches up, reuse is a design challenge that Gang embraces in her own work. As highlighted in her firm’s recent monograph Studio Gang: Architecture (Phaidon, 2020), it is a thread throughout twenty years of practice. Among the earliest examples is an unbuilt project from 2004 for an environmental center in Chicago, envisioned to be designed from materials salvaged from near the site. In the last ten years, Gang has completed several adaptive reuse projects: a 20th-century power plant turned student center in Wisconsin; the renovation and transformation of a historic Chicago hotel into a contemporary residential tower. In the decade to come, she will finish several more, including an addition to the Arkansas Arts Center that revives its existing 1937 structures and the undulating extension to the Museum of Natural History in New York. As a professor at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design, Gang also challenges her students to create contemporary design with structures from decades past. “I want architects to start thinking more about how we express the ideas of today but using this base that is already there,” she insists. At UCSC’s Kresge College, both the spirit and structure of postmodernism remain in Gang’s transformation. With sensitivity, community engagement and intelligent planning, even the most stark preservationists should be satisfied. “Charles Moore and William Turnbull Jr.’s Kresge College is a masterpiece of American architecture, but that places change, adapt and grow is a reality we all face,” says Kevin Keim, director of the Charles Moore Foundation. “What I hope is that the changes intensify Kresge’s already wonderful sense of place and add to what Charles and Bill made with such gusto. Most of all, I hope that Kresge continues to be a place for people.”
STUDIO GANG
In Studio Gang’s Chicago office, a scale model of the Kresge College project at the University of California, Santa Cruz maps existing and future buildings, topography and the exact location of every tree.
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BIGTIME From the streets to the Pinacoteca, Brazilian artists OSGEMEOS find meaning in creative expression across contexts and disciplines. Two shows this fall cement the significance of their approach to making art.
O U T L AW S
BY VANESSA THILL
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PHOTOGRAPHY BY IGNACIO ARONOVICH
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BRAZILIAN TWINS, OTAVIO AND GUSTAVO Pandolfo,
OSGEMEOS has left their mark on cities around the world, and in their studio they are constantly experimenting with new kinds of mark-making. Previous spread: OSGEMEOS outside their studio in the Cambuci neighborhood of São Paulo.
who work under the joint moniker OSGEMEOS, have been mainstays in the graffiti game for nearly forty years. They got started young, growing up in the Cambuci district of São Paulo, where they were part of the first generation of Brazilian Hip Hop. Since their early days breakdancing, throwing up tags and doodling in their childhood room, the brothers have become internationally known for their whimsical style of figurative painting that depicts a variety of yellow-hued street characters climbing through dreamlike scenarios. Their subjects have a signature deadpan expression, with small squinting eyes and tight-lipped mouths caught between a grin and a grimace. Inspired by everything from ancient folklore to current events, the artists rummage for modern truths, painting otherworldly figures who may hover on spindly legs, but face the viewer with a defiant look. As active graffiti writers as well as full-time studio artists, they have inhabited a grey area when it comes to official respect for their work; just three years ago, a large freeway mural they created in São Paulo was buffed over by an “urban beautification” cleaning crew. But they will soon enjoy a major retrospective in their hometown, at the Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo, a show that will survey their life’s work and, in some ways, vindicate their outlaw status. Titled “Secrets” or “Segredos,” the exhibition will include several rooms of largescale installations, paintings, sculptures and sound pieces, as well as archival materials such as sketches and other historical objects. They chose this title because “we are going to show things we never showed to anyone before,” says Otavio—“well, some of them, but not all,” Gustavo interjects, smiling. I spoke with the artists via video from their studio brimming with pens and notebooks, where they were leafing through old books with an air of nostalgia. The pandemic has given everything a new context, and the artists’ process of sorting through their archive and reflecting on their trajectory has given them some insight into the future. “Brazil has changed a lot,” says Otavio, “but it also looks like it never changed. We still see a lot of hungry people, kids in the streets.” The installation of the Pinacoteca show ground to a halt due to the COVID-19 crisis and, meanwhile, the artists have been involved with mutual aid efforts as Brazil experiences one of the worst outbreaks of the virus. The museum’s reopening date remains unknown.
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OSGEMEOS drawing side-by-side.
The artists have seen the government go through many changes, from the end of the military dictatorship in 1985 to the current far-right presidency, but graffiti has remained a constant. When it comes to graffiti in Brazil, Otavio explains, “the laws are made by the police who catch you. They can put you in prison right away or they can let you go. But we keep doing this—it doesn’t matter if they change the government or if they change the laws, we are going to continue to do it. We need that to talk to people. So we will find a way.” When they first opened their archives to prepare for the retrospective, they reconnected to the power that art and graffiti had for them as kids. They found drawings on crumbling paper, a huge volume of sketches, even toys they made to play with and clothing they had painted. They recall listening to Grandmaster Flash with their friends, as well as opera and classical music with their grandfather and Led Zeppelin and heavy rock with their brother—a patchwork of different influences sparked their creativity from a young age. They hadn’t seen many of the items in their
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archive in decades and when they pulled everything out and organized it, they realized that “we moved through more than thirty or thirty-five different styles,” says Gustavo. “We produce a lot. If you are drawing something now, you are really going to see it in a few days or years, to realize connections, because it’s too deep inside,” he reflects. “We created a world,” one that continues to be elaborated in their works on canvas, through large-scale installations and in street paintings— sanctioned and unsanctioned. A fateful visit from Barry McGee in 1993 changed their relationship to their creative work. At the time, they had little contact with other subcultures or ways of living as artists. McGee was the first non-Brazilian they met, and he introduced them to American graffiti handstyles, as well as the idea of developing a serious studio practice. Otavio remembers wondering, “how did he come from California to do an exhibition in Brazil, and they paid him to come and stay for six months? We thought it was impossible to do anything here because the market was very closed. He
“Tags are talking about the time we have now. Graffiti is for people who like it and people who don’t like it. But we try to communicate everywhere, to be strong, especially now. We need to be more strong and create more art. We really believe that art has the power to change things.”
showed us the possibilities.” Since then, they have found a tremendous market for their works on canvas, which often sell for six figures, as well as the support of a massive international fan base. They hold the unusual position of having mainstream influence as well as elite credibility in the art world. Now that OSGEMEOS have made the big time, they are excited to see a new generation of artists in Brazil taking their own work seriously, too. “We opened the door and now it’s open,” says Otavio. “A lot of people have a lot of talent and it’s time to show it.” Yet despite their many accolades, including recent solo shows at the Frist Art Museum in Nashville, the Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin, the Mattress Factory in Pittsburgh and the Pirelli HangarBicocca in Milan, they keep a humble outlook, maintaining their street writing and reverence for authentic graffiti culture. “Situations that belong to the street,” says Gustavo, “you don’t see inside private places.” When creating work for a gallery space, he explains that “the universe is the same, but the spirit is different.” Otavio continues, “tags are talking about the time we have
now. Graffiti is for people who like it and people who don’t like it,” he says mischievously. “But we try to communicate everywhere, to be strong, especially now. We need to be more strong and create more art.” With eyes downcast, he says sincerely, “we really believe that art has the power to change things.” OSGEMEOS will present a new body of works on canvas this fall at Lehmann Maupin in New York. With this exhibition, the artists further cement their status not as “street artists” but “artist artists” who use vibrant geometric patterns to create optical effects and delicately rendered characters to conjure surreal worlds. While these paintings hold their own in Chelsea, I think the artists would be just as happy if you visit their show as if you look closely at the tags on cargo vans and storefront grates, scratched into bus windows and sprayed in dark subway tunnels. Their reason is simple yet potent: “Someone is speaking there. There are a lot of poems in the street. Stop to look,” Otavio says. Even while their work has evolved over the decades, one truth they hold has remained clear:
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LIVING
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As the expectations and allowances of social life transform, our built environments must too be reimagined. Architects MARION WEISS and MICHAEL MANFREDI are up to the task.
TOGETHER
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IT’S THE FIRST TIME MARION WEISS AND MICHAEL Manfredi have seen anyone in a while—anyone not in their immediate work and/or family orbit, at least. Certainly it’s the first they’ve seen a journalist, save perhaps a few fleeting glimpses via Zoom. Come to that, it’s the first time anybody has seen anyone in months, live and in the flesh, sitting in a real meeting room to talk about architecture. “We’ve been kind of adrift,” says Manfredi; cut off from the usual social stimuli, the two have continued to come into their Tribeca headquarters, even though most of the chairs are empty. The situation has been singularly weird for these particular architects, whose entire practice has grown, over more than thirty years as both professional partners and husband and wife, into a decidedly social enterprise. Among designers of highly sensitive, technically complex projects for major American institutions, the firm of Weiss/Manfredi is in a class of its own: their client list features heavy-hitters in government (including the City of New York and the US State Department) and academia (Columbia and Cornell Universities), as well as cultural organizations large and small, from coast to coast. Now, Manfredi says, “it’s like we’re driving in a fog.” As they make their way through a radically altered professional landscape, these eminently civic-minded architects must reckon with a civic sphere that has suddenly become a hotly contested, not to say a dangerous place to be. Even as the COVID-induced health crisis slowly abates and some semblance of normalcy returns to the global economy, the designers’ outlook has shifted irrevocably. “The whole thing shows you that these institutions that we all kind of took for granted need to be rethought,” says Weiss. Yet the change in perspective has been less wrenching for the duo than it likely has for many of their colleagues. As the firm’s upcoming and recently-completed projects bear out, Weiss/Manfredi is surprisingly well-positioned to adapt. While the world was still in lockdown, the pair were readying for the re-
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launch of one recent project in New York City, while tracking the reception of two others completed within the last three years. Each, in its own way, is a subtle exercise in civic values that reaffirms the possibilities of urban life at a crucial juncture for American cities. The first is the Robert W. Wilson Overlook at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. A landscaped passage that operates as an extension of the firm’s 2012 visitors center, the Overlook officially debuted late last year, but is only now reaching its true potential, its foliage fully grown in and ready for the crowds; its reopening in August marked the culmination of a fifteen-year-long collaboration between the architects and the beloved outer-borough standby, which has undergone a dramatic transformation under Weiss/Manfredi’s direction. “We were really following the inspiration of Frederick Law Olmsted,” says Weiss, referring to the famed designer of the adjacent Prospect Park, whose romantic vision is evident in the new addition: winding uphill above the garden’s scenic Cherry Esplanade, the Wilson Overlook features smoothly curving footpaths set among lush plantings with low concrete precinct walls undulating between them to create a kind of artificial geology. The overall effect—a surging wave of earth frozen mid-crest—makes for an alluring invitation to the surrounding gardens. Next on the list, the Tata Innovation Center at Cornell Tech officially opened in 2017, though the broader scheme of which it’s part—a high-tech campus on Roosevelt Island in the middle of New York’s East River—is still ongoing, with new structures and initiatives bringing to life the school’s ambitious program of education and business incubation. The Tata Center has continued to evolve in recent months: “It’s a very COVID-friendly building,” notes Weiss, with its capacious lobby, landscaped front court and generously-proportioned classrooms and meeting rooms all proving ideal for socially-distanced learning. The interior, crisscrossed by stairs and ramps,
Left and Right: Two different views of the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. Previous spread: an overlook at Hunter’s Point South Waterfront Park.
gives the building a free-flowing procession with a minimum of circulatory bottlenecks, just the kind of thing the world is likely to need more of in the wake of the pandemic. Third, the now two-year-old Hunter’s Point South Waterfront Park sprawls across eleven-and-a-half acres on the eastern bank of the East River. Designed in collaboration with SWA/Balsley, the park is one component of a broader transformation of western Queens and it gives the sprawling residential mega-development next door a stunning front yard with breathtaking views of the Manhattan skyline, especially from the prow of its cantilevered walkwaybelvedere. “Other city parks closed down,” observes Weiss, “but this one stayed open”—albeit with less than its usual share of routine maintenance. Its native grasses may look a bit shaggy, but the park is still a welcome refuge for nearby residents desperate to get out of the house. Performing that kind of essential social function—and doing it with ample seating, a generous sense of space and easy-to-clean materials like steel, metal and glass—has allowed all of Weiss/Manfredi’s recent New York projects to thrive even in a season of plague, civil unrest and economic dysfunction. “We’d love to say we looked into a crystal ball and knew this was going to happen,” jokes Manfredi. In some ways, the designers have beaten 2020 to the punch on luck alone, but there are deeper values articulated by the projects—values that seem even more important to assert today. As Weiss puts it, the firm’s view has always been focused on “engagement,” a clear-eyed social vision based on direct interaction with architecture’s audience. That approach feels all the more relevant now, in a tumultuous cultural moment when institutional authority is being questioned as never before and everything appears in flux. Whatever public pressures come to bear on Weiss/Manfredi’s clientele, the designers’ ethos will be an invaluable resource, able to be poured into whatever mold the moment requires.
For the time being, Weiss/Manfredi can afford—almost—to rest on their laurels, with a slew of projects around the country and the world that promises to tide them over for at least a few more months’ worth of economic and social turmoil. In New Haven, Connecticut, the firm is about to debut the Tsai Center for Innovative Thinking; the all-purpose think tank on Yale’s campus is housed in a narrow wedge of glass and sits cheek-byjowl with Marcel Breuer’s celebrated Becton Engineering building, giving the concrete megalith a light-as-air counterweight. In Naples, Florida, the designers are set to debut their revamp of the Baker Museum, a sprawling cultural complex long confined in a sub-standard (read: very damp) facility now transformed into a gleaming ensemble of textured stone. And most excitingly, however still far off, is what may prove to be their most ambitious project to date: the expanded United States Embassy in New Delhi—a stunning combination of new structures and landscaped corridors surrounding Edward Durell Stone’s classic 1959 Modernist pavilion. For this project, the architects faced a daunting question: “How do you represent America at this moment?” Their answer, however tentative, is a hopeful one. Amid so much uncertainty both at home and abroad, the typical imponderables of the architect’s trade—how will a designer’s ideas square with the real world? What unseen obstacles will they face before their building is complete, and after?—are kicked to an unprecedented pitch. “There’s this sort of unplugged feeling,” says Weiss; even as the firm forges ahead, the territory before them is uncharted. Practically the only given for Weiss/Manfredi is that whatever the future holds, the future will need spaces to hold it. And that might just be enough for now. “It’s like when we first started out as architects,” Weiss muses. “Everything seemed so fragile and odd. But in fact there were so many possibilities.”
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BRITNEY, THE EYE OF THE HURRICANE : America’s Shadow Britney Spears, though among the most influential and recognizable entertainers of the 21st century, is also drastically understudied in terms of conceptual and creative impact. PHOEBE BERGLUND and CHRIS GARTRELL of the artist collective Mouth2Mouth unpack her overlooked professional and personal trajectory.
ILLUSTRATIONS BY CHRIS GARTRELL AND PHOEBE BERGLUND
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A center of attention (Can you feel them?) Even when we’re up against the wall You’ve got me in a crazy position —“Gimme More”
CHRIS GARTRELL: Britney Spears has been a household name for over twenty years. We all hold her in our consciousnesses, whether as the eager teenager bursting through our screens on TRL at the dawn of the new millennium, the fallen star gracing every supermarket tabloid in the later 2000s or the stalwart Vegas icon and recluse of recent years. Though it goes without saying that Britney is a living legend, her accomplishments only scratch the surface of what makes her important. Her star has burned so dramatically that it can be hard to see the profound cultural significance hidden in the shadows of her life and work. But, to look closely is also to hold the mirror up to ourselves, especially now. PHOEBE BERGLUND: To take a closer look at Britney, we must first take her seriously as an artist and trust that she is cognizant of the messages in her lyrics, images and movements. What happens when we analyze Britney on that level? I think of the moment in 2007 when she attacked a paparazzo’s SUV with an umbrella: Britney as Viennese Actionist! What if the umbrella is to Britney what the urinal was to Duchamp? I live in New York City and I work in the contemporary art world, the biggest urinal of them all. Due to COVID-19, my exhibitions have been cancelled. Time and space as we knew them have collapsed and, like many, I am unemployed and home for most of the day. While scrolling through my iPhone, I find myself thinking about Britney, a cultural figure who has been in isolation for most of her life. The videos on her Instagram remain the same—a repetition of dance aerobics performed in her Rococoesque living room and outfits modeled in her Grecian garden— because her cloistered existence is essentially unchanged by quarantine. On March 23, however, Britney posted something remarkable: a text piece by internet artist Mimi Zhu that called for a “general strike” and the “redistribution of wealth.” Britney’s caption read “communion goes beyond walls” and was accompanied by three red rose emojis. The roses could simply refer to her love of flowers, which are a central subject in her painting oeuvre (sometimes a rose is a rose is a rose), but the rose symbol has also been used as a logo by socialist political parties since WWII. The internet was shocked by her post, but I wasn’t. CG: Running with this image of Britney as revolutionary catalyst, in April she posted a video on Instagram about burning down her private gym (“I had two candles and one thing led to another”); though I’m sure the fire was accidental, there’s something wonderful about Britney burning down the gym as an analogy for Britney burning down the whole system, perhaps even brandishing her favorite Yankee Candles in an act of creative destruction.
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Chris Gartrell’s Umbrella (2020). Previous spread: Gartrell’s Oh the Horror (2020)
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PB: It reminds me of when John Baldessari burned all of his paintings in 1970, an inferno titled Cremation Project. The gym is really Britney’s artist studio. As a performer, the body is central to her practice and in order to maintain her physique she spends several hours a day sculpting it. CG: Britney’s life-as-practice is articulated entirely within the home and on Instagram. Her experience of isolation goes beyond that of a typical celebrity because she has essentially been held captive for the past decade-plus. She is under a legal conservatorship, which gives her father control over her affairs and finances, hence the increasingly visible #FreeBritney movement. This arrangement likely would not have been imposed if she weren’t rich and famous: in other words, if her family and management hadn’t wanted to continue making money off Britney-the-brand in the wake of the nihilism that she enacted around her Blackout album cycle in 2007-08. We don’t know all the
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details of Britney’s mental health struggles (nor are we entitled to), but many have questioned the ethics of pushing her to continue working as a pop star following her public breakdown and involuntary hospitalization. Since late 2008, Britney has seemed different, like a visitor in her own skin and image. I think of the “other side” in Twin Peaks, especially in the recent third season, and the representation of a kind of awful American subconscious that shatters people, leaving them hovering between the shadows of suburban Las Vegas and the towers of Manhattan. Britney returned from the abyss and was pulled back into the unstoppable machine of her own iconicity. The MTV News special Britney: For the Record, released in November 2008, offered a rare and candid assessment; Britney stated for the camera: “Even when you go to jail, you know there’s the time when you’re gonna get out. But in this situation, it’s neverending. It’s just like Groundhog Day every day.”
(New theories emerge with each new Instagram post: is Britney’s interpretive dance to “Never Ending” by Rihanna actually an ingenious way of quoting herself and commenting on her conservatorship?) Hits from this latter phase of her career, like “Till the World Ends” and “Work Bitch,” take on a sinister tone when considered as anthems for the relentlessness of her fame and the pressure to keep working (and dancing), no matter the personal cost. Everyone can relate to this type of pressure on some level. Most of us have had essentially no choice but to keep working and spending in order to ward off whatever abyss or utopia might await us on the other side. We are kept so busy that we don’t even have time to imagine what else could be. In this sense, Britney’s life and career reflect a more widespread experience of existence under late capitalism. Her trajectory mirrors the last twenty years of American culture almost more than anyone’s, and I think we see a lot of ourselves in her, as an archetype for burnout.
“NO OTHER POP STAR HAS BEEN QUITE AS INGRAINED IN THE WORLD OF AMERICAN CONSUMER CULTURE,
Phoebe Berglund’s Sometimes you just gotta play!!!!!!! (2020). Left: Chris Gartrell’s Before and After (before) (2020)
I’m also thinking about how shady music industry labor practices, especially the questionable involvement of family members and unscrupulous managers, have been many a pop star’s Achilles heel. It took years for Beyoncé to sever business ties with her father, Mathew Knowles; Colonel Tom Parker arguably ran Elvis’s career into the ground and, notoriously, Joseph Jackson was an abusive patriarch who forced all nine of his children into the entertainment business at very young ages. Michael and Janet Jackson broke free of his grip as they became superstars in the 1980s, but both spoke out about carrying the pain of that relationship well into adulthood. Janet’s breakout album Control (1986) was released as a statement of independence at the same time that she fired her father as her manager. In the spring of 2019, Britney posted images from a photoshoot in which she is styled after the Control album cover: red background, angular black dress, facial expression all business, big hair draped over one shoulder. I think it’s worth considering that Britney is Janet’s pop heir in many ways (in her dance technique, her vocal stylings and her fashion sense), though most people think first of the Madonna/Britney succession, an all-too-convenient lineage of whiteness and blondeness that was publicized in the early 2000s. The work of Black cultural producers is so often erased that even someone as hugely influential as Janet gets overlooked in Britney’s story; but, here—as at several junctures in Britney’s career—Janet is the blueprint, in this case for symbolically breaking free from the confines of a paternal work trap. A few months prior to this Control-inspired post, Britney had announced an “indefinite work hiatus,” canceling her latest Vegas residency, “Domination,” before it even began. While the circumstances behind these events
WHETHER IT’S TEENAGE BRITNEY ON HER L’ORÉALSPONSORED ‘HAIR ZONE MALL TOUR’
remain mysterious, I do wonder if Britney is happy to be free of work. Does she feel emancipated from the Britney machine? Has she gained a new perspective? I wonder what the world looks like to her now that the concept of indefinite hiatus is basically global. Has Britney been anticipating collapse? PB: Blackout could actually be read as an accelerationist manifesto of sorts. “Gimme More,” the lead single from the album, is, among other things, about Britney’s own endless desires in late capitalism that can never be fulfilled. She turns this disturbing reality outward to the audience, telling them that they always want more from her and that she has no escape from the cycle of unfulfilled desires. To understand how she ended up falling over while performing this death-drive anthem at the 2007 VMAs—one of her most iconic moments—we need to look at her formation as an American subject. Born on December 2, 1981, Britney grew up under President Reagan’s economic policies: austerity for the poor and unrestricted
free market activity for the rich, sold under the deceptive banner of prosperity for all. These policies unleashed the dramatic wealth gap that exists today, with the white billionaire class benefiting at the expense of the working class, especially poor BIPOC communities. Britney’s formative years were spent in a marketplace flooded with fast food, fast fashion, manufactured homes and all other things built not to last: disposable goods made for disposable workers. At the same time, her life was shaped by the belief that riches and fame were within reach. Rich and famous since 1999, Britney has steadfastly remained a trendsetter in everything lowbrow for two decades. She has unapologetically basic taste, an all-around Kmart sensibility. She helped popularize the lower back tattoo, otherwise known as the
OR TWENTYSOMETHING BRITNEY DRIVING AIMLESSLY AROUND SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA, STOPPING FOR MARLBORO MENTHOLS AND DRIVE-THRU FRAPPUCCINOS.” -Chris Gartrell
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“tramp stamp.” Grocery shopping lists leaked a few years ago revealed Britney’s penchant for Wonder Bread, Velveeta, SpaghettiOs and Red Bull. In 2004, her bridal party wore hot pink velour tracksuits for her wedding to backup dancer Kevin Federline. For that decision and many more like it, she has been mercilessly ridiculed. Yet, if America had a cultural attaché, Britney would be an ideal candidate because of the unique way in which she is an ambassador for the (white) American dream in all its discontents. Britney’s aesthetic emerges from growing up poor in the Bible Belt, in Kentwood, Louisiana (population 2,419). Her dad ran a homemade gym in a repurposed barn, where she worked as an aerobics coordinator beginning at age twelve. Britney’s formal education ended in the ninth grade. The Spears family put all of their limited resources into Britney’s early dance and vocal training, which led her to the Mickey Mouse Club, the first stop on her road to stardom. In a 1992 MMC feature, she was interviewed in her great-grandmother’s seafood deli; later,
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on Primetime Live in 2004, she talked about being afraid to fail in life and go back to selling crawfish, while at the same time reminiscing about the simplicity of her childhood, telling Diane Sawyer it was “very nice.” I can draw parallels between Britney’s childhood and my own. I also grew up in a white working-class family in a small American town. My relatives are in the fishing industry and my mom runs a seafood market. I also grew up onstage and my parents had very little money. They paid my dance teacher with clams and salmon. I started ballet at age five and from that point forward was constantly performing in dance productions and beauty pageants. I am familiar with the psychological dimensions of an existence in which the value of your person is placed on your performance. Alongside fleeting victories, there is enormous pressure and crushing disappointment. That existence can be vapid and simultaneously have so much depth within the heart of the individual experiencing it. The desire to be somebody, to be more than the
seeming nothingness of the small town that you came from, is all-encompassing and will, in most cases, destroy you. The high-risk, high-reward capitalist model is unforgiving. CG: There’s a lot to unpack when we think of Britney as both a consumer and an object of consumption. Maybe the same thing could be said of any celebrity, but with Britney there is a particular maximalist American consumer aesthetic that has been such a big part of her identity (Uggs and Juicy Couture, Starbucks and 7/11). “Outrageous, my shopping spree,” she bragged on the track “Outrageous” in 2003. It’s probably worth mentioning that much of Britney’s fortune comes not from record sales but from her perfume line, which has released nearly thirty fragrances since 2004, including “Believe,” “Prerogative Rave,” and “Sunset Fantasy.” No other pop star has been quite as ingrained in the world of American consumer culture, whether it’s teenage Britney on her L’Oréal-sponsored “Hair Zone Mall Tour” or twenty-something Britney driving aimlessly
around southern California, stopping for Marlboro Menthols and drive-thru Frappuccinos. The recently-launched The Zone: Britney Spears, which is marketed as an “immersive retail experience,” actually occupies an abandoned Kmart in LA. (This big box initiative was organized by two Britney superfans in collaboration with Spears herself.) There’s this feeling that Britney is America, and that she embodies the actual texture of the American shopping landscape in a singular way, even as that landscape decays into irrelevance. PB: What happens in The Zone? What is this otherworldly retail experience? “The Zone” is also the name of a mystical site in the 1979 scifi film Stalker by Andrei Tarkovsky. To get to this other realm you can only be taken by the Stalker, which translates to “guide.” Today, Britney is our Stalker, the guide taking us into her Zone. We are on her Radar. It’s interesting to situate Britney’s Zone within relational aesthetics and consider it alongside the evolving participatory pop-up museum world. The Museum of Illusions on 14th Street in Manhattan has a line wrapped around the block at all hours. With advertising slogans like “New York, the place to experience illusions,” I think they’re onto something. After all, how many lives in NYC are tethered to the illusion that “making it” is within reach? In reality, pizza is more within reach and the Pizza Museum was the biggest happening in Brooklyn the weekend it opened in 2019. Paid for by DiGiorno, it had product placement throughout and plenty of opportunities for selfies. It was a sales trap, known within the industry as a “marketing activation.” Within a similar nexus, Tino Sehgal constructs museum experiences in which performers use a script to interact with guests. Unfortunately, when I experience a Sehgal piece, I feel like I just walked into Uniqlo and my subjectivity is being emptied out—what little I have left. My new companion takes me for a ride, performing sympathy under the guise of art-world pretense. Where does the ride go? Straight to the cash register. The Britney Spears Zone gives us more: nine interactive rooms with fully reconstructed set designs from Britney’s music videos where visitors are given the opportunity to perform reenactments of her works. To visit this
abandoned Kmart is a pilgrimage. I imagine the experience to be ceremonial and full of rituals, like a séance: to enter into the choreography of Britney’s work, to dance until the world ends, to become Britney for one moment, in her absence. One of the rooms resembles a chapel with stained glass where fans might pray, whether to god or to Britney. (Britney is referred to as “Godney” by her fan base.) CG: I love the way you interrogate relational aesthetics through the lens of consumerism, thinking about how the art world has been hollowed out by the market. Given the state of the art world, and our aim to position Britney as an artist, is The Zone any less legitimate as a cultural site than the Rothko Chapel? Might it be more relevant than The Shed? It is at least transparent in its presentation as a spiritual retail experience, priced at $59.50, with content that is designed to be reproduced on Instagram. A visual analysis of the Blackout Room inside The Zone (the “chapel”) reveals something of a post-minimalist shrine, its neon palette and floating mirror fragments recalling works by Dan Flavin and Robert Smithson, albeit with a floral twist. The glowing yellow-on-black motif of spiraling squares within the altar would be at home in any museum’s postwar art collection. Taken from the Blackout album cover, this graphic reads as a portal, a time warp and a careening subversion of the grid, all at once. Moreover, the occupation of an empty Kmart is not unlike contemporary art installations set up in abandoned factory buildings—take Dia:Beacon and Mass MoCA, both sites transformed into art spaces after globalization emptied out the American manufacturing sector. For now, COVID-19’s ruthless shuttering of brick-and-mortar businesses, which were already imperiled by online retail, enables Amazon and Facebook to loom ever larger in our lives. The parallel between Britney’s journey and retail blight is perhaps an even more compelling story than the conversion of industrial spaces into museums; she has followed American shopping down the drain like Orpheus following Eurydice into the underworld, and we enter The Zone almost like walking into a tomb. Britney offers a way to visualize the simultaneous collapse of capitalism and whiteness, these twin mythologies that have been so central to her story.
But it’s important to reconsider Britney’s class consciousness—emerging from a working-class background to become a troubled embodiment of the American dream and, now, the arbiter of the incredible Mimi Zhu re-post, and maybe even… a Marxist? I’m thinking of the discussion in recent years about the political destiny of white working-class voters, who are largely experiencing diminishing fortunes in latecapitalist America. We’ve all read about how the American dream is dead, or at least slipping out of reach for the vast majority of people. It’s incredibly seductive to imagine that this is where Britney has arrived as she approaches forty: exhausted by the American dream and the ways in which it has impacted her life; on hiatus, reflecting on the forces that have led to her isolation; interested in the possibility of a radically different America (and maybe even a radicalized Britney) emerging from our current state of crisis. Her legal state of non-being is, in many ways, now our state too. Where might she lead us?
Chris Gartrell’s The Blackout Room (2020). Left: Gartrell’s Before and After (after) (2020)
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A DISCOVERY, A THOUGHT, A JOURNAL ENTRY, A THOUGHT, A RESEARCH PAPER, A JOURNAL ENTRY, A DISCOVERY. 154 culturedmag.com
Jerald “Coop” Cooper’s design studio, Things We’ve Made, focuses on such projects as Black Archives, a multimedia platform created by Renata Cherlise that brings a spotlight to the Black experience through visually curating stories of the Black past, present and future, and HOOD CENTURY, one of the
internet’s first looks at the relationship between architecture, built space and Black culture—both of which center Black identity by way of art, design, film and architecture. For the pages of our Living Legends issue, Cooper advocates for why preservation, specifically by and for people of color, is crucial today.
ILLUSTRATIONS BY JACK OLEVITCH
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Before I knew it, spending time in THE NATI started to fuel my creative, spiritual and professional focus. By utilizing what I know moves my culture and makes my culture feeeeeeel, I use my platform, Hood Century, to encourage the youth to become active in protecting it by penetrating the sometimes boring, dry and dense world of preservation. That big ol’ interest in the connection between arts, culture, housing and my family history turned into a real DISCOVERY for ya boy. I even found out that Cincinnati was the first city in North America to actually adopt a city plan. How f****** ironic is that? That discovery inspired me to dig into the origin of North America’s CITY PLANNING, given my family’s roots in the West End, and where our cultural development, identity and connection to housing come from in the US. I hate when people say “it’s all by design”... even though it kinda is. In this case, LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION. The year is 1935, right smack dab in the middle of the Great Depression, and my grandmother is twelve years old and living in the Laurel Homes, one of America’s earliest public housing developments. It was considered luxurious for its time with a ten-year-long waiting list. It was also home to a young Bootsy Collins, and my pops. She’d just arrived from Georgia during the very beginning of the Industrial Revolution to the city’s West End, a
COURTESY OF THE COOPER FAMILY ARCHIVE.
WHOSE CULTURE GETS PRESERVED IS BASED on the “importance” of that culture to the preserver... Ain’t it? Be real! And still, despite all of the intentional obstacles placed in front of us, we became the most influential culture in the world. An influence that, in the digital age, is growing more rapidly than that of any culture in world history. Woww. I spent the better half of the year quarantining in my hometown of Cincinnati, Ohio. Cincinnati is home of Nikki Giovanni, The Isley Brothers, Bootsy Collins, Funk music/culture, Union Terminal and… the busiest stretch of the actual Underground Railroad (safe houses and the National Underground Railroad Museum)...it’s wild! Fifty miles east of Cincinnati is the sleepy river town of Ripley, Ohio, where I’ve stayed most weekends since Juneteenth writing, creating and exploring… haha. Rosa Washington Riles (aka Aunt Jemima) is buried in this town and the John Rankin House, where Harriet Beecher Stowe found the inspiration for her 1852 novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin (America’s first bestseller and perhaps the pop culture catalyst that freed the slaves) is also in this town.
And still, despite all of the intentional obstacles placed in front of us, we became the most influential culture in the world. An influence that, in the digital age, is growing more rapidly than that of any culture in world history.
period that planning experts consider to depict the worst living conditions for African Americans in the history of the nation at the time. Neither my grandmother (nor Bootsy) knew anything of the plan to clear the slums that would later set the stage for many others of its kind. That clearing would slowly begin to erase the new identity she was building in Cincinnati, along with 137 food stores, 118 bars and restaurants, eighty-six barber shops/beauty parlors, eighty churches and over 11,535 total units. The first place that my grandma and her family went to in the city was Revelation Baptist Church. Y’all know how much the church means to the Black community… now put that in the 1930s and of course it’s even more amplified. The church would go on to be bulldozed twice in its ninety-sevenyear history. The second time was in April of that year. That’s crazy, I actually just put that together as I was writing this. Whoa. During the formative years of the Laurel Homes, Revelation, located right across the street, was the “home base” for this community and Sundays were packed with Laurel Homes residents. In the early 2000s, when the Laurel Homes started to be torn down by the city, along with the community as we knew it, so did the congregation’s attendance. Now, ain’t no projects, ain’t no community and the Major League Soccer team needs your land for a stadium! “ALL OCCUPANTS OF THIS PROPERTY MUST MOVE”-type shit.
The efforts to wipe out the slums through comprehensive planning made sense in the context of the University of Chicago’s sociology department. The Chicago School of Thought was the authority on city planning at that time, and its members proposed the sociological theory that the slums were hopeless, and that its residents were “so demoralized they could never become good citizens.” Cincinnati’s planners would standardize this philosophy at a federal level, dooming neighborhoods across the country for years to come. It wasn’t all bullshit, though—they also claimed that cultural groups derive their identity, behavior and characteristics from their history and experience in a particular place. What identity, behavior and characteristics come from years of displacement, fam? Less and less with each move. So much less, that when I drive by my church now, nothing is there—it’s a parking lot for that stadium I just mentioned. So, what now? The Nati was the first place in America to offer public housing to low-income families via Jacob Godfrey Schmidlapp’s Cincinnati’s Model Homes Co.—and it actually worked! At that time, landlords gobbled up a
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residential Italian duplex built in 1886. It’s a symbol of our family’s purpose: a big “F U” to our housing conditions in the same neighborhood almost 100 years earlier. With home ownership becoming even more difficult in today’s economic climate for people who come from where we do, buying real estate is a major step. Brands are finally starting to put their money where their mouths are, especially now that millennials and Gen-Z kids are renowned for being socially conscious. I wonder who will be the first to make a huge, trendy “yes, pop culture” drive at housing reform, while supporting the preservation of the Black family and its identity. And, even if they do it, how can we guarantee that they’d use the same care and diligence that we would for our own people? Whose job is it to preserve our culture? Especially when the people and organizations meant to do it don’t (always), or have even been part of the deliberate hiding, the silencing, the destruction of it?? It’s our job, my Gs. And I’m not one to tell you how you should feel, BUT, you should be happy about that, because nobody can preserve what’s ours quite like us. —COOP
COURTESY OF THE COOPER FAMILY ARCHIVE.
third of a worker’s wage, while this model’s method was one day’s wage = one week’s rent. It also gave early social impact investors a 5% return on their investment and operated a co-op grocery store that paid back its profits to tenants through dividends. One of the things that I was hesitant to write about, but I also feel is necessary to address, is knowing the desires of the “other side.” Is it beneficial for us to partner with them when their goals have nothing to do with preserving and protecting our heritage, and more to do with profit, even when it yields decent results (aka home ownership for us, etc.)? It’s a tale as old as time: the wealthy use the disadvantages of other groups to generate and offer “solutions” that fill their pockets under the guise of philanthropy and ethics. These people weren’t saints! A big reason Lincoln ended slavery was because America needed more manpower to drive its economic ambitions—but shit, that “freed” us. Just like Lincoln, Schmidlapp created Model Homes Co. because he believed that doing so would “remove a potentially disruptive force” and promote social stability. Would you partner with Lincoln or Schmidlapp now? In June of 2019, my brother and I closed on a historically preserved
Whose job is it to preserve our culture? Especially when the people and organizations meant to do it don’t (always), or have even been part of the deliberate hiding, the silencing, the destruction of it?? It’s our job, my Gs.
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By Nichelle Dailey
MARIA ORTIZ LEADS the LONG NAIL GODDESSES of NEWARK MARIA ORTIZ IS A QUEEN. Her disciples come from near and far to be blessed, anointed, lacquered and uplifted. Maria, who has lived her whole life in Newark, New Jersey, has been doing nails for twenty-five years. Her intricate designs, reminiscent of the influential styles of the 1990s, have made her a legend in a community of people who wear their nails at notably long lengths and ornately adorned. She is motha. “When I came out as trans it was hard, because it was the late ’80s– early ’90s and it was such a huge taboo. I can identify with these girls being different. I wanted to be accepted in society, but society wasn’t allowing me in. I took my anger and frustration out in my work—on the canvases that are the nails. All of these designs are me, my inner self. Full of color and dots and lines and checkers and rhinestones! My first time doing really long nails was in the early ’90s. The client was a walk-in named Laverne, who has since passed away. Her regular nail tech wouldn’t do her nails because they had grown so long. She was desperate. I felt bad and wanted to help her, but I was also scared, so I passed her off to one of my coworkers. But no one wanted to do her nails. She started tearing up. I told her that I would and I made an appointment for the following day. I was so nervous I couldn’t sleep that night. I kept thinking, ‘What did I get myself into?’ But, I also knew that if I did mess up, I could cover it up with a good design. And that’s exactly what happened. I messed up. It took me hours and hours, but I patched everything up with designs and 3D. She was
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mesmerized. The feeling of seeing her so happy—right in that moment, I knew my life had changed. I loved the way her happiness made me feel. After that, Laverne basically became my walking billboard. She was always getting stopped and people would ask where she got her nails done. That is how I started getting recognition in the community. Then La Rue (my longest current client) and I found each other on MySpace. I noticed her nails and I kind of stalked her. Finally, once I knew my skills were strong, I hit her up and told her that I would really like to do her nails. She didn’t respond. I messaged her again and she still ignored me. So I just kept doing my thing and posting pictures of my work. It turns out La Rue was watching too, but had a nail tech and didn’t want to ‘cheat.’ One day she messaged me back and the rest is history.” Maria has created a safe space for her long-nailed sisters. They call themselves the “Long Nail Goddesses of Newark.” No one asks nasty questions when they are together and if people do stare, at least they are staring while the goddesses strut together as their onlookers’ jaws drop. There is strength and power in numbers. But more importantly, there is safety and love in their group. Maria is a true artist. Her salon is where the goddesses come for refuge and to refuel. They discuss their lives, their trials and tribulations, their next outing and their next appointment. A fill-in and fresh design can make any day a better day. In their words—“We were meant to shine, not to blend in.”
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Wanda Ivelisse fans out her digits. Previous spread: Matthew Ortiz, “The Puerto Rican Princess.”
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Maria has created a safe space for her long-nailed sisters. They call themselves the “Long Nail Goddesses of Newark.” No one asks nasty questions when they are together and if people do stare, at least they are staring while the goddesses strut together as their onlookers’ jaws drop. There is strength and power in numbers.
Above, left to right: Happy customer Janine Reed and Maria Ortiz. Left: Wanda Ivelisse.
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Twenty-Nine Days of Black Culture and Joy Worth Remembering Just over fort y years a go, in the winter of 1977, the Second World Black and African Festival of A rts and Cu lt u re took place in La gos, Nigeria. K LEAV ER CRUZ, a winner of Cultured ’s f irst Writers Grant, illu minates the histor y and importance of this world-changing event.
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These words, from the May 1977 issue of EBONY, are what famed journalist Alex Poinsett used to describe the participants of the Second World Black and African Festival of Arts and Culture, best known as FESTAC ’77. From January 15–February 12, 1977, more than 15,000 Africans and people of African descent from over fifty-five nations gathered in Lagos, Nigeria to celebrate, share and be in community around varied cultures and art forms. They convened to (re)claim space, significance and influence. Thousands came together to create and reimagine a Blackness that was defined by people of African descent on their own terms, and more expansively than ever before. FESTAC was originally scheduled to occur in 1971, as a follow-up to the much more narrowly defined First World Festival of Negro Arts in Dakar, Senegal, hosted in 1966 by then-president Léopold Senghor, who believed strongly in Négritude. In what would become an eleven-year gap between the festivals, a number of government upheavals occurred across the Black world: a three-year civil war in Nigeria was fought and a series of other setbacks transpired. Yet none of these deterring forces could stop this historic event from happening. The funding and staging of the festival was controversial as well; the justification for Nigerian head of state Lt. General Olusegun Obasanjo’s decision to spend massive amounts of money and resources was regularly questioned from within and outside of the country, a concern to which he continually remarked that there could never be a cap on the expense or value of bringing together African and African-descended peoples. We can talk about the politics of this event in terms of actions on the level of government, and that is an important discussion that a number of thinkers and students of history have engaged, but it is also worth focusing on the broader impact of art and culture for FESTAC’s participants and attendees, too. Are art and culture not often embedded in politics, and arbiters of it? FESTAC ’77 provided an opportunity like no other for African and African-descended creatives to congregate as a means of potentially working through difference and strengthening, as well as establishing, bonds where possible. How could new styles and fusions of music,
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fashion and art not emerge from such deep wells of creativity and imagination after the collision of so many Black cultures? FESTAC provided the space for Black people from many walks of life to make connections through the creative practices and traditions they had learned to honor and take pride in. From children to elders, those twenty-nine days were filled with back-to-back displays of some of the greatest forms of art, thought and performance ever known. Dance companies. Theatre troupes. Painters. Sculptors. Singers. Academics. Musicians. Photographers. A spectrum of Black artists and artistry. The participating national and diasporic delegations at FESTAC brought some of their most talented artists to show love for their Blackness, in the multitude of ways they’d come to cherish it. Black newspapers and media in the participating countries produced all kinds of descriptions, critiques and excitement around the festival in the years leading up, during and after. Stories of affirmation, and of being deeply impacted and influenced by experiences of the genuine diversity of Blackness within the delegations, were abound, as were critiques about the effectiveness of this gathering and how to rationalize, for example, the simultaneous occurrence of FESTAC with the other ongoing struggles such as apartheid in South Africa. Unlike the largely racist and diminishing reports from white media outlets, these Black publications, channels and stations offered more detailed, thoughtful, contextual and honest coverage. For the United States, it was the largest cohort, at that time, of African-Americans to travel to Africa since the forced migration across the Atlantic Ocean via the West African Slave Trade that had moved enormous groups of people in the opposite direction. Bonds were formed in ways that surely words cannot fully describe. In the era that FESTAC occurred, there were a number of Pan-African festivals organized across the continent in the name of promoting this worldview. It would be remiss not to place this event within that context and understand that FESTAC existed within a constellation of gatherings in service of promoting and preserving Black unity. Today, there are numerous festivals and gatherings that celebrate Black art and culture, with far reaches within Black audiences around the globe. None, though, have accomplished what occurred during those twenty-nine days in early 1977. And, of the thousands of people who participated in that global celebration, there are a few who we can take a closer look at, here in this written space.
PHOTOS COURTESY OF BLK MKT VINTAGE; EBONY.
Their testimonies marked memories that should not ever be forgotten. “For 29days, Black people from everywhere—from Africa, Europe, AfricanAmerica, South America, Canada and the islands of the seas—testified to the… presence of Blackness in the world.”
In May of 1977, EBONY did a full color, six-page spread covering the event—the only major publication in the US to do so. Previous spread: East African Community Zone Festival Program.
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UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH LIBRARY SYSTEM PHOTOS COURTESY OF BOB JOHNSON PAPERS, 1949-2003, CURTIS THEATRE COLLECTION. ARCHIVES & SPECIAL COLLECTIONS,
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Legendary musician Sir Victor Uwaifo featured in a newsletter from the festival. Right: The National Stadium where the festival’s main events were hosted.
Renowned artist, dancer and theatre instructor, Bob “BJ” Johnson (1938–1986) attended FESTAC as a member of the legendary jazz musician Sun Ra’s Arkestra. At the time, Johnson was a young faculty member of the then-emerging Black Studies Program at the University of Pittsburgh, where he taught dance and theatre arts workshops. Johnson also danced with some of the best companies of his time, including an international tour with Katherine Dunham’s company and under Alvin Ailey. It was through Sun Ra’s invitation to be a part of the US cohort that Johnson was able to join a delegation of Black artists and culture makers hailing from more than twenty states all over the US and ranging in age from young people to seasoned creatives in their seventies. Throughout his time in Nigeria, Johnson kept a sporadic journal and took many pictures to document his experience. What is clear from his personal writings is how profound of an impact FESTAC had on him, to be emerged in a place where he saw what he recognized as the “archetypes” of the faces and mannerisms he’d come to love and recognize as familiar back “home” in the US, amongst the Black communities he’d grown up in. From Johnson’s archive, it’s clear the experience left a deep mark on him and his ability to better understand what it meant to be in the African Diaspora, and how that all came to be. Through his career as an artist and as founder of the Pittsburgh Black Theatre Dance Ensemble, as well as his work with the legendary and now-retired Kuntu Repertory Theatre in Pittsburgh, Johnson situated himself firmly within the Black Arts Movement of the late ’60s and mid-’70s. His experience of FESTAC affirmed him in his dedicated artistry to promote Black consciousness and liberation. Johnson attended much of the festival’s programming (formal and informal) and spent time in community with artists from other delegations, as well attending additional local events in Nigeria to further extend his ability to connect with and understand Black people. Among him, also in the US cohort, was another young artist on her first trip out of the country, and with a big responsibility to maintain. A young Brooklynite and, at the time, a student at the Institute of New Cinema Artists in New York City, Marilyn Nance served as the US contingent’s official photographer. Nance was initially admitted to the cohort as an exhibiting artist, but was later uninvited as a result of a reduction in the budget and size of the contingency, after years of delay. But, being the determined person she was, Nance found a work-around and applied to be employed as a photo technician instead. She was hired and ultimately assigned to be the official photographer for the North American Zone (the festival was divided into world zones and the US was included in this one). Originally only slated to attend half of the festival, Nance decided to stay for the full month of programming; this once-in-a-lifetime experience left her with an archive of over 1,500 images, some of which can be found on her Instagram page dedicated to FESTAC (@festac77archive) today.
Like Johnson, Nance was moved by her experiences with so many parts of the African and Black world present for the festival, and her time in Lagos affirmed her values as they related to the Civil Rights and Black Arts Movements she emerged from. In a 2017 interview for Africultures, Nance illustrated the vibrancy of the atmosphere at FESTAC when she explained that because she did not have a telephoto lens, she was “right up in people’s faces… They were present for me as I was present for them… an intimacy—a strong desire to know more about each other.” Though there was no permanent organization or entity established to continue the work and legacy of FESTAC upon their return to the US, many artists like Johnson and Nance developed their artistry and shared their stories with the communities they returned to, as was intended by late Howard University Professor Jeff Donaldson, the North American Zone’s director and coordinator. A number of reiterations and spinoffs would be organized on much smaller scales well into the late ’80s. None of them would be on the scale of the Second World Black and African Festival of Arts and Culture. By no means was FESTAC ’77 perfect. With over a decade’s worth of delays and controversy leading up to and after it, there is still much to learn about the lasting impact of this event. Fortunately, entities such as Chimurenga, a Pan-African arts, media and politics platform based in South Africa, have taken on the task of preserving the legacy of FESTAC ’77 through their dedicated publication of the same name that chronicles the journey of this festival, as well as the platform’s public programming about this event in various parts of the world. Much of what is left to remember about this unforgettable gathering is still in the hearts and minds of the people who attended it, many of whom are transitioning into ancestral realms, as they have grown older in the over forty years that have passed since that memorable period of twenty-nine days, taking these stories with them. May we continue to connect and commune with the work and memories of Marilyn Nance, BJ Johnson and the thousands of African and diasporic artists and culture makers who convened that month in the name of many purposes, but most certainly, of Black joy. Where and how we exist, as Black people, is vast. There is no part of the world without us and yet we continue to be reduced in the public eye. What happens when, instead, we turn the cameras onto ourselves and each other? What happens when our art and culture are given space to be shared and cultivated, as we have inherited and innovated them? Black joy invokes a we—a collective experience that can offer inspiration, imaginative thinking and, at its best, healing. The type of healing that fortifies us and regenerates the ability to create a world that loves us back as much as we have love (in)to the world. Axé and deep gratitude for all that has been done and will continue to be done in service of preserving and cultivating our joy as a means towards liberation.
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Here We Go Again
TK WONDER, A WINNER OF CULTURED’S FIRST WRITERS GRANT, SHARES A PERSONAL ESSAY THAT EXPLAINS, INTERROGATES AND ILLUSTRATES THE DAY-TO-DAY RACIAL MICROAGGRESSIONS THAT SHE EXPERIENCES AS A BLACK WOMAN MAKING HER WAY IN THE WORLD. Illustrations by TK WONDER 172 culturedmag.com
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“EXCUSE ME, HUN. CAN YOU TELL ME WHERE I CAN FIND THIS DRESS IN THE STORE? I NEED A SIZE EIGHT,” A YOUNG WHITE WOMAN ASKS ME.
Let me start with the first thing that came to mind. Here we go again. Here we go again, being pestered by White women of all ages in the middle of shopping experiences with questions of shoe sizes or blouses in stock or dressing room locations or how much is something because the tag isn’t— Here. We. Go. Again. The first time this happened I was eighteen years old. I shrugged it off as a simple mistake, partly because the White woman emphatically apologized and partly because benefit of the doubt and me were such close friends. I thought it was a healthy relationship, like the butter substitute for my popcorn. As I had seen and experienced a great deal of racism by then, I thought, “Why not offer it?” I was unaware of the nuances of racism because I’d had been experiencing blatant racial transgressions for most of my life. Losing your flip-flops while being chased off the road by White men in a pick-up truck was a hell of a lot easier to recognize as racism than the subtlety of being mistaken for staff. I’m talking about the kind of if-Purple-Rain-Prince-had-gone-shopping-and-a-White-woman-asked-him-fora-size-eight mistaken for staff. Who in the heck would’ve mistaken Prince
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for a retail employee? Exactly. It would have been obvious that Prince didn’t work at the store by his attire alone, and I’m not calling myself Prince by any means but... well... it couldn’t have been more obvious that I wasn’t an employee, by my attire alone. Unbeknownst to me, I had been experiencing microaggressions from you-speak-so-well and you’re-so-tall-must-play-basketball purveyors of subtle and not-so-subtle racism for most of my life. Whether or not racial microaggressions arise from “good intentions” is beside the point when they are birthed from racial prejudices. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve been mistaken for an employee in stores, but after the fifth or sixth time I kicked coincidence’s ass out and benefit of the doubt and me don’t talk no more. What was once difficult to recognize is no longer such. Now, this is not to say that being confused for an employee is an issue only Black people face; however, the alarming reoccurrences towards those who are clearly not employees (being mistaken for an employee in a store where employees wear uniforms) or the refusal to believe one’s occupation (customers expressing disbelief that said person is a doctor or nurse or lawyer) are particular to Black and brown people, as these incidents arise
from either conscious or subconscious prejudices. Imagine a Black patron shopping in a shoe store while wearing her military uniform, adjacent to employees dressed in all-black uniforms, being asked to retrieve a size six shoe by a White patron. Did I mention the Black patron is wearing a whole entire military uniform and that this is a true story? With all this in mind, are the culprits aware that their confusion saddles comfortably atop of racial prejudices and biases? No. Does that unawareness, regardless of intentions, excuse their confusion as merely an innocuous mistake? No. It is imperative to point out that the issue wasn’t that I was offended at being confused for a retail sales employee because of the occupation. The issue is that Black people are never “confused” for or believed to be anything other than retail or domestic workers. Why aren’t Black people confused for a doctor or a scientist or a lawyer and so forth? Why does the extent of this White “confusion” cease at retail and domestic work, or jobs swirling around entertainment and sports? Tamika Cross, a Black physician, was turned away by an attendant on a Delta flight when she offered help to an unconscious passenger who needed medical assistance because no one believed she was a physician. The flight attendant told her, “‘Oh no sweetie, put your hand down, we are looking for actual physicians or nurses or some type of medical personnel; we don’t have time to talk to you.” Her story went viral. Shortly thereafter, The Washington Post did an article and was flooded with emails from Black nurses, doctors and pharmacists who shared similar accounts. During his commencement speech at Harvard University this spring, the inimitable Bryan Stevenson, a lawyer and founder of the Equal Justice Initiative, recounted one of his first cases. The White judge, assuming he was a defendant because of his race, instructed that he should not be in the courtroom until his lawyer arrived. What was at the root of this phenomenon? Was their incapacity to see Black shoppers as fellow consumers exacerbated by their limited interactions with Black people in a myriad of occupations outside of the ones that did not immediately aid them? As I look at this young White woman, who impatiently awaits my response regarding the size eight, the sudden urge to commence the mother of all eye rolls is overwhelming. I endeavor to eye-roll this White woman back to the 1950s. However, since racism is alive, well and thriving in 2020, my eye roll didn’t have to work too hard. I worked in a department store as a teenager and as much as I utterly adored waiting on a barrage of testy women yelling their shoe or dress sizes at me (I conveniently lacked a significant amount of effort in finding their sizes in the back storage room), I do not miss those days. A stampede of elephants being chased by a pride of lions followed by a cackle of hyenas seemed vastly less intimidating than a herd of women shoppers on discount days. It was an arduous and demanding job that dealt with numerous difficult temperaments and I had left those days behind me, or so I thought. However, not even wearing a hat the size of Italy with sunglasses the size of Jesus’s manger and a phone in hand could persuade these White women that I was not on the clock. Once my mother of all eye rolls had completed its journey, providing plenty of oh-shit-my-mistake-she-isn’t-an-employee-let-me-apologize time, I gave the woman the most saccharine of grins and wielded the most lethal weapons in my arsenal—sarcasm and humor—weapons I’ve deployed for
most of my life to combat hardships and the immediate invasion of racism in my midst. Without an iota of vacillation, I replied, “Just go up those escalators, make a right and keep straight until you see a sign that says, ‘All Black People Don’t Work Here.’” Aghast, she sucks in her cheeks and a small whoosh sound escapes. She has no clue how to respond and I can tell by the lack of “Oh, my bad” that she is the one who is offended. Sigh. Here we go again. My mom was almost ran off the road when my twin sister and I were babies in the backseat due to racism. Bricks were thrown into our home due to racism. As I mentioned, we were the targets of a hate crime at eleven years old when young White men endeavored to hit us with their pick-up truck while yelling racial epithets, yet no consequences ensued because one of the boys was related to one of the police officers at the precinct. As children, we would witness an unarmed Black man almost lose his life to two state troopers. (Our father, harassed many times by Baltimore County police while driving, testified in court as an eyewitness on behalf of the man attacked.) My twin sister was wrongfully arrested and incarcerated in 2015, then offered a settlement by the NYPD when she filed a lawsuit. In 2016, I was singled out—as the only passenger of color in a Macedonian airport— for a strip search by a male police security officer. I refused to do so until a female officer conducted the search, which afterwards led to my public complaint and the involvement of the US Embassy. Yeah, I know, a laundry list, but I’ve experienced my fair share of blatant racial transgressions. I’ve also had numerous encounters with its offspring, long before I realized the offspring even existed. Racial microaggressions routinely pop up in my life like robocalls and unwelcome pimples. “Excuse me, this is the priority line. Economy is over there,” a White woman standing behind me loudly announces. With a head swivel that could rival Linda Blair in The Exorcist I turned to look at this White woman while my body emanated oh-this-brown-skin-don’t-look-like-priority? energy. Aside from not-looking-like-priority-material, I’m apparently illiterate as well. Now I’ve been turned into some non-priority-blind-and-illiterate-Black-woman. She saw my brown skin and assumed I was not First Class. Yeah, yeah, I know, “First Class problems,” but it is a brand of racial microaggression I experienced often with my sister, as our work within the fashion industry resulted in companies flying us First Class. I’ve also been asked by flight attendants for my ticket, you know, because apparently I’m an illiterate and blind Black woman who can’t read her ticket, so I must be in the wrong section. Were any of the First Class White passengers presumed to be blind and/or illiterate? Nope. Just me. The following lyrics by Mos Def often come to mind: Like, late night I’m on a first class flight The only brother in sight the flight attendant catch fright I sit down in my seat, 2C She approach officially talkin’ about, “Excuse me” Her lips curl up into a tight space ‘Cause she don’t believe that I’m in the right place Showed her my boarding pass and then she sorta gasped… “Excuse me, how do I get backstage?” a White woman asks my Black boyfriend with the smell of tequila on her breath, giving those tall inflatable balloons at car dealerships a run for their money as she swayed erratically
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before us. We’d spotted her inebriated gait thirty seconds ago in the nearlyall-White crowd as she looked around in consternation until eyeing us. She nearly bumped into two White employees dressed in the festival’s employee uniform. In fact, she passed by everyone with the exception of two people. My boyfriend and me. The only Black people in the vicinity. Yup. Here we go again. Did she not see my leisurely placed limbs wrapped around my fine-ass Black man? Did she not see the gargantuan red cups of libations near our lips? Our mundane pedestrian wear amongst a sea of mundane pedestrian wear? I looked at her and without a scintilla of vacillation calmly responded, “Not all Black people work at the festival. There is an employee five feet behind you who you can ask.” She looks at me in that sun-in-your-eyes blinking sort of way and wails, “Oh my gawd! I’m not racist!” Ever hear of the photograph of the dress that went viral? The dress’s colors were up for debate because, through some perceptive fluke, some either saw black and blue or white and gold. Well, consider this a subsidiary case, insidious in nature, with racial microaggression written all over it. When looking at the color of our skin, some saw employees and others saw attendees. These racial microaggressions are nothing new. “You don’t sound Black.” “You’re so articulate.” “I didn’t know Black women could grow their hair that long.” “You’re tall. Do you play basketball?” My twin sister and I were always two of the tallest girls in our class in grade school through high school. I considered reading and writing as exciting as a field trip to the amusement park. I wasn’t half as insulted by that stereotype as a child as I was by the assumption that writing skills weren’t attributed to tall Black people. My twelve-year-old self thinking, “Wouldn’t it be great to hear, ‘You’re so tall. You must be a writer!’” “Sounding Black” or “sounding White” are stereotypes that even inundate Black and brown communities (as do backward ideologies revolving around colorism or stereotypes regarding Black women and natural hair, as if a Chupacabra is more realistic than a Black woman growing her own long inches). It’s as if rigid parameters exist for a person sounding Black and anyone who steps outside of those parameters is not deemed Black enough. Even words that are synonymous with Black communities such as “ghetto” and “ratchet” imply that good character and intelligence are lost in the Bermuda Triangle of misconceptions ensconced in racial microaggressions and racial transgressions. When taxis were a thing in New York, I was often passed by drivers looking for potential White customers. Assumptions that I sell drugs because of my hair and skin color by White male Giuliana-RancicPatchouli-Weed acolytes looking to buy marijuana. I-Only-See-WhitePeople baristas or salesclerks ignore that I’m next in line when a White customer is behind me. How one responds (or doesn’t respond, as no one is obligated to react) to racial microaggressions can be emotionally taxing because of their pervasiveness. As I demonstrated earlier, I’ve learned to combat them with a concoction of sarcasm and humor. Partly because who wants to be angry all the time (although warranted, incessant anger has physical consequences for the body and I’m not about to let anyone get in the way of my Black-don’tcrack magic). Partly to denounce their erroneous assertions and make it clear that, indeed, what they are doing or saying is racist, whether they are aware
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of it or not. I make these clarifications on behalf of myself, not out of desire for some teachable moment, albeit the mere act of doing so, if it prevents the person from repeating these racial microaggressions, could very well be just that. Sometimes I’m met with guilt. Sometimes I’m met with astonishment. Sometimes I’m met with anger, as if the very nature of calling out their wrongdoings is an affront to them and not me, which opens up the discussion for deeper conversations about White fragility and privilege. Any discussions about racial microaggressions must lead to bigger discussions about systemic racism. How we speak out when discriminated against, or on behalf of others, is imperative. As author Zora Neale Hurston once wrote, “If you are silent about your pain, they’ll kill you and say you enjoyed it.” What is also imperative is people’s willingness to accept their own culpability in enacting racial microaggressions and stereotypes, while endeavoring to learn and grow rather than taking offense. Even fame and wealth do not escape racism’s grasp. Oprah in a shop in Switzerland confronted with a that-bag-is-too-expensive-for-you saleswoman. A perfectly reasonable assertion. The sales rep was only telling a billionaire she couldn’t afford a $38,000 bag. A Sephora employee calling security to make sure SZA wasn’t stealing. Hey, reasonable assertion. SZA has only sold millions of records and made millions of dollars. Danny Glover unable to hail a taxicab time after time when drivers refrained from stopping for him to pick up White customers instead. Totally reasonable assertion. He’s only a lead actor in multiple blockbuster films with a bank account to reflect that. Selena in a high-end boutique, rebuffed by a you-can’t-afford-that saleswoman as she attempted to try on a couture dress. Again, a perfectly reasonable assertion. She only sold millions of records and was looking for a dress to wear to the Grammys. The fact that their fame and wealth were not recognized is beside the point. Though these are examples of blatant racial transgressions rather than racial microaggressions, the conclusion remains the same. These youcan’t-afford-that or you-must-be-stealing-because-you’re-Black acolytes are everywhere, as reliable in their frequency as seasons of The Simpsons. The last time I went shopping, I was in a department store contemplating whether a potential buy from a Black designer could accommodate the size of my derrière; however, I was also pondering whether the eradication of racial microaggressions is a possibility? Shopping at Black businesses is certainly an immediate solution for the racially-motivated mistaken identity crisis that is inflicted on Black and brown shoppers, however, it does not resolve the bigger issues. Is the eradication of racial microaggressions truly realistic? No. Could at least an understanding and desire to change subtle iterations of racism lead to viable reform within the many sectors faced with overt and systemic racism, not just in America, but anywhere racism thrives and is a detriment to marginalized communities? Yes. Overt racism and its expression via racial microaggressions inundates the workforce, education, government, healthcare, housing, banking and all day-to-day activities. Addressing these issues can seem like an ostensibly impossible task in the face of such slow progress in the fight for equal pay, good education, home ownership and generational wealth. Will we, as a country, eventually move forward enough that racial microaggressions are a distant memory? As I arrive at the conclusion that this potential buy will, indeed, fit my derrière, I hear, “Excuse me, ma’am. Can you let me know if you have any more of these shorts in stock? Here we go again.
IS THE ERADICATION OF RACIAL MICROAGGRESSIONS TRULY REALISTIC? NO. COULD AT LEAST AN UNDERSTANDING AND DESIRE TO CHANGE SUBTLE ITERATIONS OF RACISM LEAD TO VIABLE REFORM WITHIN THE MANY SECTORS FACED WITH OVERT AND SYSTEMIC RACISM, NOT JUST IN AMERICA, BUT ANYWHERE RACISM THRIVES AND IS A DETRIMENT TO MARGINALIZED COMMUNITIES? YES. culturedmag.com 177
Our First Digital Issue
This summer, for the cover of our first-ever digital issue, we commissioned this country’s youngest-ever poet laureate, Amanda Gorman, to write an original poem and invited our Young Artists List alum Miles Greenberg to illustrate her text with a work of his own. Amanda provided the words we couldn’t find while Miles engaged his own body to explore the complicated relationship between monument-making and performance.
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BRUJAS / SUE DE BEER
F R O M
T H E
H A N D
O F
W . P .
S U L L I V A N