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Curtis Talwst Santiago: Can’t I Alter
Curtis Talwst Santiago: Can’t I Alter
Drawing Papers 141
PL. 1 (opposite and following) Dingolay Estate Entrance/Portal, 2020
The Drawing Center
Curtis Talwst Santiago: Can’t I Alter
With contributions by
Claire Gilman Isabella Kapur Kenneth Montague M. NourbeSe Philip
PL. 2 Granny’s Purty Gal Trees, Trees, 2020
Contents
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Director’s Foreword Laura Hoptman 46
Curtis Talwst Santiago: Every Place Has its Elsewhere Claire Gilman 68
A Conversation Kenneth Montague and Curtis Talwst Santiago 94
Selections from Zong! M. NourbeSe Philip 106
Excerpts from “The J’Ouvert Knight’s Guide to the Exhibition” Isabella Kapur 118
Works in the Exhibition 122
Acknowledgments
PL. 3 Untitled Ancestor Drawing, 2016
PL. 4 African Knight I, 2018
PL. 5 He Knight, 2019–20
PL. 6 She Knight, 2019–20
PL. 7 J’Ouvert Knight, 2018
Foreword
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Since The Drawing Center was founded in 1977, it has made its home in Soho, a neighborhood in downtown Manhattan where artists lived, worked, and exhibited. Dedicated to drawing in all its forms, The Drawing Center was a local place where living artists’ drawings were showcased at an institution, often for the first time. That tradition of supporting the work of early career artists continues more than forty years later with projects like Curtis Talwst Santiago: Can’t I Alter. Working closely with Claire Gilman, The Drawing Center’s Chief Curator, Santiago—a Canadian artist of Trinidadian ancestry—has created an ambitious, room-sized installation in which drawing and its components (paper, pencil, charcoal) play central roles. Those who experience Can’t I Alter understand immediately that it is a special kind of exhibition for The Drawing Center; missing from our space are white walls, framed drawings under non-reflective Plexiglas, low light levels, and sober labels detailing the name, date, and medium of each work. Instead, visitors are surrounded by a joyful presentation of objects and structures in a diverse array of materials, with drawings pinned to temporary dividers, sketched on walls, or inscribed on slabs of cast paper made to resemble medieval ramparts. As Gilman eloquently explains in this volume, with this work, Santiago explores what has become a grand theme in his artistic practice—the many complexities of an ancestry that leads from the Moors in Spain to contemporary Carnival revelers in the streets of Port of Spain. With references that range from Renaissance paintings to Colin Kaepernick, Santiago deploys drawing as a kind of signage that pushes the exhibition’s narrative along as visitors wend their way through a Drawing Center that has been transformed from a gallery to a set where history, memory, and fantasy converge.
The hundreds of studios and galleries located in Soho from the 1970s through the 1990s may be a distant memory, but The Drawing Center is still a home for artists and those who love them. A recent grant from the Cy Twombly Foundation making our admission free over the next three years has encouraged us to imagine programming for an audience as diverse as the world outside our doors. At the core of every one of these dreams are the artists who inspire us. Curtis Talwst Santiago is one of them, and we are honored to have had the chance to collaborate with him. Exhibitions of this kind would not be possible without the generosity of our Board and those individual funders (listed elsewhere) who believe that projects like this one belong at The Drawing Center. In addition to Claire, ably assisted by Drawing Center Curatorial Assistant Isabella Kapur, I’d like to thank our Registrar, Kate Robinson; our Operations Manager, Dan Gillespie; our Deputy Director, Olga Valle Tetkowski, our Director of Communications, Allison Underwood; our Director of Development, Rebecca Brickman; and our publications team, Peter Ahlberg and Joanna Ahlberg. Together, these individuals can do just about anything, on time, on budget, and with a flair that is the basis of The Drawing Center’s renown. —Laura Hoptman Executive Director
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PL. 8 By Sea II, 2020
PL. 9 Candy Flipping (Boogoo Pouring the Spell in Sir Dingolay’s Ear), 2020
PL. 10 A luz (The light), 2018
PL. 11 Untitled Ancestor Drawing, 2016
PL. 12 Warahoon, 2020
PL. 13 Redface Ancestor Rock II, 2017
PL. 14 Red Face Ancestral Vision 1, 2018
PLS. 15, 16, 17, 18 (clockwise from top left) Untitled, 2019–20
PLS. 19, 20, 21 (clockwise from top left) Untitled, 2019–20
PLS. 22, 23 Untitled, 2019–20
PLS. 24, 25, 26, 27 (clockwise from top left) Untitled, 2019–20
PL. 28 Untitled, 2019–20
PL. 29 Untitled, 2019–20
PLS. 30, 31 Untitled, 2019–20
Curtis Talwst Santiago: Every Place Has its Elsewhere Claire Gilman
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What is home? What does it mean to feel safe? Who is my community? Where do I come from? Where am I going? These are the questions that have preoccupied artist Curtis Talwst Santiago since he left Canada five years ago and embarked on an itinerant path that has taken him from Brooklyn, New York, to Brescia, Italy; Geneva, Switzerland; Cape Town and Johannesburg, South Africa; Lisbon, Portugal, and back to Brooklyn, where he has set up temporary residence. They are also the point of departure for Can’t I Alter, an installation exploring the theme of ancestry and the struggle to access lost and tangled histories. Born to Trinidadian parents who immigrated in 1968 to Edmonton, Canada, Santiago has felt the disconnection unique to the diasporic experience since early childhood when he made his first trip to Trinidad during the annual J’Ouvert celebration that marks the beginning of Carnival. Among other aspects of the colorful street parade with its fantastic characters, Santiago was deeply impressed by the tradition of applying red clay to the faces of family members. Years later, as an artist working in New York, Santiago began using red spray paint to draw radiating faces on portraits of imagined ancestors. For Santiago, the color red served as a vibrant indicator of the figures’ uncertain identities as well as his own fraught effort to access generational knowledge. As he has observed, tracing family lineage is particularly difficult for people of African descent whose histories have been largely lost or rewritten, making it such that one “can only go back so far.”1 “My work is my way of yelling to 1
Curtis Talwst Santiago, in conversation with Magdalyn Asimakis, Gordon Snelgrove Gallery, University of Saskatchewan, December 2, 2017, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s8gcDiEGcYw.
the ancestors and my past that ‘I have not forgotten you, I have not abandoned you and I am trying to find you!’”2 Fast-forward to 2017, when, scrolling through a Tumblr page featuring representations of people of color in European art, Santiago came across an anonymous Northern Renaissance painting featuring a Moorish knight leaving a city square [FIG. 1].3 When Santiago saw the digital reproduction, he noted only the heroic central figure whom he identified as being of the order of Santiago of the Red Cross, concluding that the painting presented a surprisingly egalitarian take on racial dynamics. Santiago sought out the painting in person, only to discover instances of torture—many to African bodies—taking place behind this central figure. For Santiago, this 47
FIG. 1 Anonymous, Chafariz d’el Rey, c. 1570–80 The Berardo Collection, Lisbon, Portugal
encounter sparked an urgent desire to find alternatives to the violent depictions of people of African descent in European literature and art, and ultimately prompted his move to Lisbon, where he began researching and creating work around representations of Moorish knights and their relationship to his own ancestry. What followed was a deep dive into cultural mixing, appropriation, and erasure. Santiago visited architectural sites in which he discovered Roman columns atop Moorish bases and Gothic heraldic symbols interlaced with Moorish
2 Curtis Talwst Santiago, “Fictional Ancestors with Curtis Talwst Santiago,” interview by Annie Jensen, Nudapaper, January 24, 2019, http://nudapaper.com/2019/01/24/curtis-talwst-santiago/. 3 https://medievalpoc.tumblr.com/.
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arabesques, and also began to research the troubling eradication of Moorish facial features from ancient and Renaissance artworks.4 At the same time, Santiago became interested in the world of seventeenth-century capriccios—landscape paintings where the real and the imaginary, and the contemporary and the anachronistic, share the same fantastical space. For Santiago, the capriccio served as a paradoxically vital corrective to orthodox histories, modelling an alternative to colonial narrativization in favor of multiple, nonhierarchical temporalities. “Capriccio means imagination,” Santiago has observed, and imagination is what allows us the “possibility of stepping out of time. Preserving the past and also altering it.”5 If characters from history were being repainted as entirely different races or otherwise reimagined, he asked himself, why couldn’t he create his own alternate reality? If those artists could substitute newly-imagined pasts and futures, why couldn’t he?6 Back in New York, Santiago conceived his answer to these questions with Can’t I Alter, an immersive three-dimensional capriccio built from scaffolding and medieval-style walls using casts of stones from his immediate surroundings, including Brooklyn brownstones, new construction, and his own rough-hewn, circa-1860 studio wall. In its scenic effect, the installation finds its origin in Santiago’s earliest artistic enterprise, an ongoing series of miniature dioramas built in reclaimed jewelry boxes containing scenes ranging from real-life traumatic events, such as the murder of Michael Brown and the global refugee crisis, to more poetic motifs reflective of Santiago’s current research. Santiago has noted that the Infinity Series is motivated by a desire to force people to stop and look closer while confirming “my sense of the vastness and the fragility of the world which I inhabit; and my fleeting memories of this world.”7 The Infinity Series, in other words, is a way of gaining perspective on
4 One example is the widespread practice of removing noses from Egyptian sculptures. For more on Santiago’s exploration of this phenomenon, see Nomaduma Rosa Masilela, “Remediating Defacement,” exhibition handout on the occasion of Curtis Santiago: Constructing Return, University of Saskatchewan College Art Galleries, Saskatoon, Canada, 2017. 5 Curtis Talwst Santiago, in conversation with the author, October 17, 2019. 6 Curtis Talwst Santiago, “Black Passages: Curtis Talwst Santiago interviewed by Ayasha Guerin,” Bomb Magazine, June 12, 2018, https://bombmagazine.org/ articles/black-passages-curtis-talwst-santiago-interviewed/. 7 Curtis Talwst Santiago, quoted in Paul Ardenne, “Curtis Santiago, searching for Oneself @ art on paper,” Analix Forever’s Blog, March 10, 2018, https:// analixforever.com/2018/03/10/curtis-santiago-searching-for-oneself-art-onpaper/.
history. The tiny reliquary-like containers conjure other universes, complete in themselves yet removed by virtue of their being of a fundamentally different order from that of our own world. They are Santiago’s way of stepping back and beginning to alter. By their very nature, however, the boxes are limited. For all their intimacy, we remain intentionally separate from the scenes they depict, reflecting on their contents rather than actively engaging with them. At The Drawing Center, Santiago brings the boxes to life. Upon entering, the viewer is confronted with a central archway and an abandoned, brightly-colored suit of armor made using traditional South African beading techniques. Metal scaffolding and construction netting gives way to cast-paper walls bearing layers of pigment and embellished with hand-drawn motifs of varying familiarity depending on one’s cultural point of reference. Progressing further, one passes individual drawings and fabricated artifacts scattered throughout the installation until finally arriving at an inner chamber where one encounters a film. In it, Santiago, dressed in the abandoned armor, celebrates. It seems that he has returned home.8 References abound in Santiago’s installation and their relative accessibility is part of the point. Looking closely at the cast-paper walls one might recognize a Jab Jab—Carnival’s infamous blue devil and a potent symbol of the connection between Africa and the Caribbean, where he assumes various and manifold forms—alongside images of Benin statuary, South African and medieval Europeanstyle armor, as well as contemporary imagery such as stock images of palm trees from tourist websites. There are the anchoring red faces, Santiago’s signature reference to Carnival and the ancestral spirits. And there are frequent images of boats—not the slave ships that are often rendered in stories about the migration of Africans, but simple vessels that for the artist indicate other ways in which his ancestors “arrived.”9 Dark moments punctuate the fantasy space as in Red Face Ancestral Vision I, a canvas in which a kneeling knight bearing a number seven on his breastplate conjures Colin Kaepernick
8 In the film, Santiago is cast as the knight Sir Dingolay, a whimsical reference to a Trinidadian dance form characterized by lively hand gestures. The word “dingolay” lacks an explicit translation but can refer to any activity undertaken with spontaneous, joyful, and carefree abandon. 9 Santiago references a history that is not often told in accounts of the migration of Africans to Europe and the Americas—a history involving people like Mansa Musa, the legendary ruler of Mali, who embarked on a religious pilgrimage to Mecca in 1324, supposedly traveling as far as Mexico.
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and the lingering trauma implicit in his gesture [PL. 14].10 Santiago describes the drawing I Apologize as being about his conflicted desire to celebrate ancestors who were themselves colonizers and conquerors [FIG. 2], while Saint Monix Mumala to the Lost and In Need is a beggar image in the tradition of Rembrandt and Frank Bowling, two of Santiago’s core influences [PL. 37]. “When I see a person in
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FIG. 2 Curtis Talwst Santiago, I Apologize, 2019
that situation,” the artist has observed, “I can’t help but think that, with one small turn of events, I could be them.”11 Some of the stories Santiago depicts are true and some are fictitious, but the difference is immaterial. Can’t I Alter gathers recollections and projections, and disorientation is an inherent part of this process. Assisting Santiago in this endeavor is his eclectic, unorthodox approach to image-making. His three-dimensional work incorporates materials traditionally used on two-dimensional surfaces, while his works on canvas and paper include spray paint, pastel, charcoal, and acrylic. Line and color function together to create distinct pictorial moments which, according to the artist, offer portals to different temporal and sensorial realities. It is not incidental that the installation is anchored by four monumental drawings on cast paper or that the first glimpse through the archway is onto a wall drawing of two graceful orange trees executed in a pale, hesitant
10 Just prior to the exhibition opening, Santiago changed the number on the chest of one of the figures in the cast-paper panel Road March [PL. 34] from a seven to an eight in honor of legendary basketball player Kobe Bryant and his daughter Gianna, who died tragically in a helicopter crash on January 26, 2020. 11 Curtis Talwst Santiago, in conversation with the author, December 27, 2019.
graphite outline with bursts of orange color [PL. 2].12 In the words of renowned Renaissance scholar David Rosand, “Drawing is the fundamental pictorial act. To make a mark or trace a single line upon a surface immediately transforms that surface…[translating] its material reality into the fiction of the imagination.”13 It is the realm of the imagination that is Santiago’s playground. Whether working on paper, canvas, or cast surfaces, Santiago exploits the ambivalence that Rosand terms the “essential and functioning aspect of drawing….Between its reality as material mark and its mimetic responsibility in the creation of the visual fiction of an image… the drawn line exists, like the surface on which it is applied, in potentia.”14 Santiago has explained that for him different materials serve different functions. Charcoal, the oldest material in the world, represents a kind of anchor or grounding, however tentative. By contrast, Santiago terms spray paint a performative medium—one that registers on his surfaces like a shooting star, leaving dusty traces of its forward motion. In The Four of Them Made a Promise, the charcoal that defines the figures against the black-painted ground floats above the color like a distinct, parallel entity fading in and out of view depending on the spectator’s position, while the glowing pink, blue, and yellow of the J’Ouvert Knight’s armor conjure an alternate reality that defies containment [PL. 41]. When paint encounters charcoal here, as elsewhere, it resembles two different moments of time intersecting. On the layered wall panels, Santiago exploits this clash quite literally, as blocks of color push through the opaque, white-gessoed surfaces like an “acid flashback [or flash-forward].”15 To make the cast-paper pieces, Santiago created multiple panels, which he then cut apart and rejoined to form new configurations. In the panel Candy Flipping (Boogoo Pouring the Spell in Sir Dingolay’s Ear), the dominating charcoal outline of a hybrid knight dressed in 12 Santiago’s relationship with oranges is intense and manifold. As a child, he hated the texture of the fruit until his Trinidadian grandmother forced him to eat an orange from one of the trees in her garden. From then on, the fruit has been indelibly associated with Trinidad and family lineage, even as Santiago has become interested in the presence of the tree in Renaissance art. He was recently welcomed to eat from an orange tree while visiting a monastery in Portugal. 13 David Rosand, Drawing Acts: Studies in Graphic Expression and Representation (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 1. 14 Rosand, 2. 15 Santiago, in conversation with the author, December 27, 2019.
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Benin head-gear, medieval-style mail, and contemporary sneakers is interrupted by a vibrant, neon red-and-orange scene of an interracial couple embracing [PL. 9]. In By Sea II, the knight appears with mythic ancestors, including the Dogon water god Nommo, in a composition jigsawed into the center of a white-washed plain that bears the graceful charcoal arc of a boat at sea [PL. 8]. What is the fiction and what is the reality? Is the scene of the couple embracing a memory or the projection of a world that the protagonist would like to inhabit—a space where his composite identity finally makes sense? Indeed, this image is more vividly present than his own figure, which is executed in stark, hieratic profile. In both panels, moreover, the knight figure is physically doubled and split. In the former, his lower half is visible both in charcoal and in the spray-painted scene where he stands, cut-off at the waist, observing the couple. In the latter, the knight’s face has been cut and the dissected portion shifted right, where it is in turn bisected by Nommo’s swelling belly. All these figures exist in a state of in-betweenness, both incomplete and “in potentia.” And in this lies the possibility for integration—not integration as fusion but as a kind of harmony in non-cohesion. An image of what this might look like can be found in the quiet composition A luz (The light) in which a robed female figure, executed by scratching into spray paint, emerges out of an archway suffused with hazy golden light, which itself hesitantly materializes from a black ground [PL. 10]. Barely there, the etched lines are nonetheless a mooring within the dissolving, golden glow—a fleeting articulation within an awe-inspiring, ungraspeable whole. This is the state that defines diasporic existence. It is the condition that theorist Stuart Hall refers to as “difference” understood not as “a radical and unbridgeable separation” but as the inevitable complexity and diversity that defines all, especially Black, subject positions.16 It is likewise what Caribbean writer Édouard Glissant terms “circular nomadism” or “errantry.” In Glissant’s words: “One who is errant…strives to know the totality of the world yet already knows he will never accomplish this—and knows that is precisely where the threatened beauty of the world resides.17 Since,
16 Stuart Hall, “New Ethnicities,” in Critical Dialogues in Cultural Studies, ed. David Morley and Kuan-Hsing Chen (New York: Routledge, 1996), 446. 17 Édouard Glissant, “Errantry, Exile,” in Poetics of Relation, trans. Betsy Wing (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1997), 190. Originally published as Poétique de la relation (Paris: Gallimard, 1990), 20.
Glissant asserts, we cannot know the truth of the world or of our own identity—since, indeed, this holistic knowledge does not exist— “we imagine [this totality] through a poetics: this imaginary realm provides the full-sense of all these always decisive differentiations.… There is no place that does not have its elsewhere.”18 Can’t I Alter presents just such a poetic space. It is a space that renders palpable a longing for totality and resolution, while refusing closure in its very structure. In this, Santiago’s knight errant channels that famed literary knight errant Don Quixote, who steadfastly pursues his impossible dream despite reality’s obduracy. The space that Santiago has created is a ruin built from rusted scaffolding and paper walls. Moments of trauma (aka Kaepernick and Bryant) erupt amidst an array of patchwork images, just as, in the wall panels, brightly-colored fantasies come up against the opacity of the white-gessoed surfaces into which they are inserted. But mostly, there is joy. The joy of having the opportunity to step outside of time, create alternate memories, and imagine possible futures. The joy, magic, and wonder that is art’s domain.
18 Édouard Glissant, “The Black Beach,” in Poetics of Relation, 153–54.
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PL. 32 Untitled, 2019–20
PL. 33 Whatever Lay Ahead He Had Already Accepted, 2018
PL. 34 Road March, 2020
PL. 35 Origin as Tanty Told Me, 2020
PL. 36 Semente (Seed), 2019–20
PL. 37 Saint Monix Mumala to the Lost and In Need, 2020
A Conversation Kenneth Montague and Curtis Talwst Santiago
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Kenneth Montague We’re up and running on the morning of Friday, November 29, 2019. I am Kenneth Montague of the Wedge Collection in Toronto, and I’m sitting across my dining room table from Curtis Talwst Santiago, artist and friend, who is preparing for his upcoming show at The Drawing Center. Without further ado, let’s talk about our family histories, our Caribbean ancestry, what we have in common, and what Canada means to us. Let’s take it far back. Tell me about your family, Curtis. Curtis Talwst Santiago My parents came to Canada from Trinidad in ’68. When my dad arrived in Toronto, the immigration guy said to him, “When work dries up, you people are going to be the first ones to lose your jobs out here,” meaning Black folks, Caribbean folks. He told my dad, “There’s less of you in Fort McMurray, Alberta.” So my dad went and worked in oil in Fort McMurray. That’s how we ended up in Edmonton, and later Sherwood Park. It turned out the immigration guy was right. My dad made a good amount of money, and with the exception of the recession in ’87, he was never without work. That’s how our experience in the prairies began. How did he hear about this opportunity out west in Canada? There couldn’t have been many Trinidadians heading to the oil sands in 1968. Texaco is Trinidad’s connection to oil and there was a lot of talk about going abroad to Canada as they were really beginning their oil exploration. My dad’s buddy had the idea. He said, “We’ve got to get out of here. We’re not going anywhere.” They were young and saw opportunity. My dad was working for an Englishman in Trinidad. He never went to school for pipe fitting, but he was really
good at it. He was so good that his boss lied and said that he had the qualifications to do the job. He was in his early twenties when he came to Canada. Later he brought my mom. I’m a generation ahead of you. I was born in the ’60s and my parents came from Jamaica in the ’50s. My dad is one of nine kids from a rural farming town on the southern coast called Southfield. My mother is from a family of professional people from May Pen, one of the island’s larger urban centers. She was a home economics teacher, and my dad was an industrial arts teacher, though they didn’t have any formal training in Jamaica. They worked together in a little school building. My mom had the opportunity to go to New York University, where there was maybe one other Black student in her program. She had to work as a housekeeper in New York—a complete change of life for her, but she prevailed and managed to get a degree from NYU. She married my dad in New York in 1955, and then he made his way up to Canada and got a teaching degree from the University of Toronto. As a Black teacher, he was not going to be hired at that time by the Toronto school board. So he went to Windsor—a smaller city that was desperate for teachers— where he was hired as one of the first Black high school teachers in the system. Then they went looking for a home: a teacher, a dietician, and their three young children. We sure looked like the ideal nuclear family. Those should be the ingredients for, “Here’s your loan.” Yet one rejection after another: “No sorry, can’t rent to you”; “Landlord says no.” They stayed at the YMCA. In the end, it was the same story as that of many Caribbean immigrants in Canada. When they tried to move to a nice suburb, the neighbors petitioned, saying a Black family would not be welcome. I relay this story not to elicit a woe-is-me thing, but to point out these synergies and similarities between our parents’ struggles. They came from a place where everyone in their community was Black, to one where they were completely on their own. Knowing the challenges of their journey and what they achieved gave us everything—confidence, perseverance… …a visual of the work needed to succeed in this system, on this side of things. And also the understanding that you can be qualified for something and you still might not get it. Life isn’t going to be fair. I remember moments of my mom being treated so poorly, but holding her head high.
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My immigrant parents were the type that insisted, “Be a doctor. Be a lawyer.” Indeed my older sister is a now a judge, and I’m a dentist with a busy practice in Toronto. It was only in the last ten years of his life that my dad was finally able to see the value of my passion for contemporary art. The mantle that was over me while growing up was, “You’re going to be a professional, and that stuff is on the side.” And in fact I turned out to be a dentist who collects art. Did you experience that same attitude from your own parents? Were they concerned about what you were doing with this “art thing” or were they always fully behind you?
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At first they were skeptical and warned me to get an education, because artists don’t make money. My dad was not convinced it would work out. At times that felt like they didn’t believe in me, even though I knew for sure that they did. You might say they were gas lighting, but really they were asking, “How much do you want this?” They wanted to be sure I was committed and willing to make sacrifices. By putting their energy behind me, they let me know that I wasn’t on the wrong path. I think we both had the unique and wonderful experience of watching our parents socialize with their community in their homes. In my case, when I was ten years old, I was—I wouldn’t call myself a DJ, but I was the guy who changed the records. My parents being Jamaican, I’d play ska, rocksteady, and early reggae music. I remember the guests in their ’70s outfits, dancing in the basement. I saw these hardworking people letting loose. Living in that bubble in Windsor, and being the only Black family in the neighborhood, those nights were my first and most powerful experiences with my own community. I had exactly the same experience. Every second weekend, when dad was in town, my house became a Black space. I can still conjure that feeling, the smell of the bodies, the cologne. And that music. My parents weren’t smokers or drinkers but people could come and be themselves. I remember being frustrated because I couldn’t hear the cartoons on TV because Calypso was blasting. It could be isolating living in a community where the libraries— this is pre-Internet—do not have books or records for you. Those Saturday nights were so important because the rest of the time, I was the only Black kid in my school. Even now I’m not used to being in Black-only spaces. I get into a Black space and think, “How do I code
shift?” Then I know. You just fall back into that rhythm, no matter where you are on the diaspora; the music, the food, the lights down— it’s all familiar. Growing up in my hometown of Windsor was almost a tri-cultural experience. I was in a border town right across from Detroit, Michigan, so I was very heavily influenced by its music: Motown, funk, Detroit techno, and early hip-hop. But I was also into a completely different thing in Windsor, where Rush, The Tea Party, and other Canadian rock groups were popular. Whereas in the sacred space of my home, it was Jamaican music and jazz. In Windsor, I played Jimi Hendrix and Led Zeppelin in high-school guitar bands but I’d spend every summer in Jamaica and bring back a bunch of records—Bob Marley, Horace Andy, Yellowman, and 45s featuring music from the burgeoning dance hall scene—and ultimately formed a band called Contradance that was a hybrid of these various influences. When I heard The Clash, the idea of rock paired seamlessly with reggae completely spoke to me. I saw their inner London working class community as no different from my own in Windsor—a car town, a factory town with a lot of people pushing back in terms of creative spirit. Black folks—relatives—would come over and ask, “Why are you playing that White music?” And I’d say, “This is my music.” This hybrid Canadian, American, and Caribbean experience served me well, but it wasn’t easy being an island. I’m always very excited when I meet someone like you, Curtis, who shared that experience. I look at my class photos, and from kindergarten to grade eight I’m the only Black kid. One year a Black woman arrived, also from Jamaica, and of course everyone insisted she had to be my girlfriend. The sad fact is that we purposely kept away from each other because we didn’t want to play out their fantasy. I was also frustrated by my relatives wondering why I was listening to “White music.” I didn’t know or have the language to explain how it was all tied to Black music. I was ostracized for my taste, but those tastes are inherently African. That’s where the roots are. I’m glad that we live in a space now where these things are known. Those in the generations after us may not have to feel so alone. Tell me a little bit about your career in music. Many people who know you as an artist don’t know that you first had a very successful career in Canada as a musician.
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Music was my first love. I had always written songs, or poems that would turn into songs. I thought music was going to be the catalyst that would take me throughout the world but as I started to enter the industry, I found myself on an island again because of the mix of influences. I wasn’t doing traditional rap. Mash-up culture wasn’t prevalent at the time so I always hit these roadblocks with record labels and music executive folks because they didn’t understand the diasporic experience. Did your career in music morph into one in contemporary art or are those modes separate in your mind?
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The nuances within the industries are so different. There’s a language within each one. I didn’t want to be Tony Bennett, and have people say, “Oh and he also makes paintings.” I wanted to be taken seriously because visual art is very serious. So I put music aside. I felt a certain sense of urgency from watching both musician and artist friends pop because they were doing one thing a hundred percent of the time. Meanwhile, I was recording from 9am till 2pm, and then going to my studio and trying to make art from 2pm till midnight, only to go back to prepare for the recording session the next day. You needed to immerse yourself. Yes. Also, at that time I also got my first bad review, which was incredibly difficult psychologically. I knew deep down that it was because I was spreading myself thin. The album was good, but what if I had given twenty-four hours a day to the creation of it? Now I know that. I started to paint by myself, and I met my girlfriend, who is a great painter, and she brought me one of the early editions of the Vitamin P book. As I looked through it I realized there were so many styles—that there was space for me. I knew I wanted to get my visual art to a place where I was respected solely for that. The possibility of music filtering back in was not in my mind yet, because my knowledge of the canon was limited to artists who drew very classical forms. I was not yet thinking about sound installations, or Brian Eno, or Philip Glass, or how musicians could fit into the contemporary art landscape. Now I see it as one. Having synesthesia, I know that if I put on a particular album, I’m going to see certain colors, and it’s consistent. If I listen to Christian Scott aTunde Adjuah, there’s
a certain type of drawing I’m going to make because of the rhythm, the sonics. Now I know how to use these little superpowers. My voice can be like charcoal. I’m in a space now where it is all one thing, but first there was the need to establish myself, to be respected as a visual artist only. I want to talk a bit about us growing up Black in Canada, and about the similarities with and differences from the African American experience. This is something that was very apparent to me in Windsor, growing up with this pervasive popular culture coming at me from right across the river in Detroit. As a kid I watched television shows like Sanford and Son, Good Times, and What’s Happening—a lot of googlyeyed foolishness that reinforced my sense of outsiderness. Our family would watch these shows and laugh, but we had nothing to do with this culture. I did not understand what was so funny about a guy living in poverty in a junkyard. It wasn’t my experience on our suburban corner lot, with parents who always made sure I was well-presented when I left for school. I recognized that difference on an even greater level through my childhood experiences at the Detroit Institute of Arts and the Detroit Historical Museum. My father was doing graduate work in downtown Detroit, and after dropping him off at school my mother would take the kids on day trips to art institutions. We saw the beautiful Diego Rivera murals and, occasionally, work like Jacob Lawrence’s Migration Series and photography by James VanDerZee. An incredible light bulb went off for me when I saw the Black folks in VanDerZee’s Couple in Raccoon Coats. I still remember being ten years old and seeing this Cadillac with white wall tires, the mink coat, the proud gaze. There’s no pimp affiliation. They are dressed in their Sunday best in front of their Harlem brownstone, saying, “This is how we live. These aren’t props for a photo.” That was a vision of Black Americans that I did not see anywhere else. It was also a watershed moment because I realized that I wanted to spend more time with the image than I could in a museum. As a collector looking back, that was probably the first time that I thought, “I want to live with this.” It was a really thrilling thing for me twenty years later to buy that print from the late artist’s wife. It was an amazing thing to see the many ways that we can be as Black folks, rather than this monocultural thing that we’d see on television. On the other hand, it was always very apparent to me that the Canadian experience for
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Black folks was essentially different. I want to throw it over to you now and ask, do you feel a kinship and a sameness with your African American friends, and if not, why?
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I was listening to a conversation with [the Guyana-born British artist] Frank Bowling and he said it best. He said the difference was that he paid for his ticket. There was always this sense of knowing that we are Trinidadian. When you start to dissect what that Trinidadian is, it’s quite complex. I have a great-grandfather who was a White Frenchman, who they say married my great-grandmother because they were in love, and they lived together for many years. There are times where I can feel so close, but then in the blink of an eye, I’m reminded that my experience is so different. When I’m in America, I can feel the same pressures, but then I come here and have an experience like this, for example: I was in Cabbagetown and walking in front of me was an East African mother with two boys—let’s say eight and five years old. Right away I felt the East African community energy. The boys were wrestling so I grabbed one of them, and I started playing too. And the mom looked, and she was laughing. That’s not going to happen in the United States. No. You wouldn’t even think to grab one of those kids. But that’s how I want to interact. If we understand the nuances in each other, that can allow for a closer community and dialogue. Right now I often find myself feeling on the outside of the African American experience because I can’t fully identify with it. I try to because it will help me better understand the work of my friends who are using certain tropes, and I wonder, “Why do you want to re-traumatize yourself?” I often feel like it’s not my space, because I grew up with certain privileges. Every time I come to the States, it’s more and more apparent how different my experience has been. Since you mentioned Frank Bowling, I’m also thinking of others from the Commonwealth, where there was that colonial stamp, the heavy weight of colonial violence and exploitation, and yet at the same time, there’s that “God Save the Queen” thing, and the weird respect that my parents, for instance, had for the British monarchy. I remember having to watch Princess Diana’s wedding on TV, and struggling to understand why it was so important. They were our caretakers, but they were also exploiting us. It’s hard to move past it. It is part of us, and in that way, I feel more kinship with a lot of my Black
British friends, especially in the art community. We have a mutual understanding of a lot of the ideas and concepts within Black Canadian art and Black British art, and we have a certain kind of synergy that is not always there with African American art. There’s a different story to tell. The legacy of slavery is just as strong in Canada, but there’s a different quality to it because of the experience that we had with the British and the different timing regarding abolition. It’s a difficult thing to talk about because we are so in love with the powerful tales of the Underground Railroad. It’s true that many runaway slaves made it to Canada, but then we also have the myth of the “land of freedom” here. The idea that all of a sudden they were farmers and had land, which is untrue. 75
We had slavery here, wicked slavery. Even post-slavery, there were harsh conditions for those Black folks coming up from the States. They were given the worst pieces of land in Canada, and lived in unbelievable conditions of oppression. The KKK was in Canada. But it’s very important to recognize the historical differences because they really made us who we are. You’re a particular kind of artist with a sensibility and a way of seeing that’s been influenced by something radically different than your American brothers and sisters. Yes, and I think we need to acknowledge that because I find myself in conversations that have moments of discord and tension. When I talk about painting with artist friends who are British or from the Commonwealth, we talk about paint. We talk about the actual practice of painting. When I went to the Henry Taylor show with four or five African American artists, afterwards I thought we were going to talk about brushstrokes, about the hues of green, and how he got that brown. Instead there was a discussion about how the White visitors were viewing the work and consuming the bodies. Eventually I got so frustrated. I said, “Why are we centering this conversation on the White gaze?” We’re artists. Let’s talk about the images we saw. Now we’re talking about race, and we’re talking about the pervasiveness of that weird construct of race, and how it overshadows everything. Sometimes necessarily, but it is a very difficult thing to be a part of those conversations while feeling in some ways apart from those conversations. That’s a strange thing, the feeling apart, because while I know my history internally, visually, when I step out in my hoodie I’m often
met with irrational fear—people clutch their bags or cross the street. It’s only in some contexts that people will see the complexity; that they will look at the hue of my skin. These people will ask, “What are you mixed with?” They can pick up the nuances. So here I’m this, and there I’m that. Thinking about how you self-present, I’m compelled to talk about your particular fashion sense, which is unique and beautiful, and in some ways intertwined with your artistic practice.
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You touched on something earlier about the presentation of self in the community, which made me think about how before I was born, my brothers would be put in little-kid three-piece suits just to go to Zellers. We had to present the antithesis of Redd Foxx. So yes, I’m constantly a representation of what it is to be a Black man. In your case, it’s like a personal armor. Which has become this major trope in your practice, but it is something you’ve always lived with—this skin that you are in and that you put yourself in. It’s a deliberate act— coming correct with your dress, which desperately needs to represent who you are. I don’t think that’s true for a lot of people. And how will it be read? We were talking on the phone about the idea of being taken seriously. “Can he be a dentist and really into art?” Well, I’m an artist so I can mess with your perception of me by wearing Wrangler cowboy boots, hot combing my Afro in the morning like Andre 3000, but wearing this dashiki that is a hockey jersey that I’ve sewn using Dutch wax fabric. It became this way of playing with people. I’m going to fuck with you. You’re going to think about my gender. You’re going to question my identity, but only I will know. Then I realized that it was setting me apart and drawing attention. If I walked in wearing a hoodie, you wouldn’t even look at my art, but now I’ve signified to you that I must be an artist. It was a way to get in the door. The hardest part of experimenting with fashion is when your expression is rejected by the people you view as your own group, and again—as with music—not having the tools and language to explain that we’ve always adorned ourselves differently. I wore an outfit that is taken from a Moorish image and heard, “Nigga, why are you wearing that dress?” That hurt. I’m expressing us and our heritage. Fashion has always been something that, again, allows me
to move through different spaces, to code shift. Watching Okwui [Enwezor] taught me the importance of putting on a suit. In Kassel for Documenta in 2002 I remember having something to eat with Okwui in a casual restaurant, late at night after the opening event. People were looking at us and whispering, “Who is this brother who is dressed like this?” It was definitely with respect and the assumption that he was someone important. I thought that that was a very subversive act for him to always be wearing the best suit in the room. It precludes a certain conversation. We see you for who you are. We’re not putting this other thing on you. Let’s talk a little bit about the Canadian art scene. I’m very proudly a collector with a focus on contemporary African diasporic work, but my focus has increasingly been on work by African Canadian artists. There’s a certain difference that we talked about earlier, with the Black Canadian experience, that I think comes out in a multitude of ways, so this isn’t about trying to define a particular Black Canadian style, rather an array and diversity of artistic vision—which is incredibly wide given such a relatively small community. I want to nurture their ideas and make sure that we become a part of the contemporary art conversation internationally. I don’t want to stay in a silo. Do you consider yourself a Canadian artist? Your roots, as for all of us, are in Africa, and then we have this very interesting and important heritage from our parents, from the Caribbean. Your growing-up experience was in Canada, and specifically western Canada, which is another thing altogether. Now I’d say you’re a person of the world who travels a lot and maybe doesn’t know where the future lies. It might therefore be a hard thing when I ask you if you think of yourself as a Canadian artist first, and why. The cliché answer is simply that I’m an artist. Sometimes I’m a Canadian artist. Sometimes, when I’m working on landscapes, I think, “Oh God, you’re so Canadian. You love those Group of Seven works.” Then I think, “No, I’m Canadian-Caribbean.” It’s a moving target that for so long I wanted to firmly locate, but I’m no longer trying to call myself anything, Ken, because when I do, I alienate another side of myself. For now I hope that my work begins to show an international artist who has worked all over the world. The central character in The Drawing Center show is this guy who initially went out on the road headed to Portugal to find this African ancestor knight, who took all these detours, and is now a little
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bit confused. It’s OK to be confused. My work does not give some definitive answer about what race is, or what my ethnicity is. Sometimes I get so angry when I see shows that are just Black, Black, Black. Connecting it to my Moorish research, I see that this word was constructed to divide us. I’m not Anti-Black. I just hate the word. “Black” doesn’t capture who I am and I want my work to capture who I am. Some days I am a Canadian artist. Some days I’m a Black artist. Sometimes I’m just an artist. That journey is lifelong.
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I think we have gone around the world now, but before we end, let’s talk about the future. Where do we go from here? I’ve told you a little bit about my Wedge Collection and my non-profit initiative Wedge Curatorial Projects, which started with this gallery in my home in a wedge-shaped space. The name turned out to be a double entendre because we’re wedging artists into the mainstream. We’ve been moving more and more toward bringing Black Canadian artists into the fold to reflect more about the African Canadian experience in contemporary art. What’s your future move, artistic and otherwise? Where are you going now? I want to become better at my craft, technically. That’s all that really matters to me when it comes to art. The story I’m telling doesn’t matter because when I look at a great Caravaggio, I don’t know exactly what he’s talking about. Those codes, those languages, and those objects have been erased. They’ve disappeared from our current dialogue, but I can still see that this person mastered his craft. I want to master the craft of visual representation. I’m very open to whatever form that takes. I want to be a whole person. I want to have family. I want to have my practice. I want to be able to give back. I want to be able to help bring forward artists that were forgotten, especially Black artists. It’s important that older Black artists get the shine over me in my forties. Something that happens to a lot of Black people who are isolated is that you feel alone and you feel special. You feel so special that you think there might not be another person like you. Like you and the little girl from whom you remained separate for fear that together they might eat you up. To remove that feeling of being so special in a room, that when you’re in a room of other Black brilliance, your Blackness, your you, still shines. Coming here today and seeing the work you have makes me again consider how I represent Black faces and the importance
of showing the beauty in them. A writer once described my work as crude, and that pissed me off to no end because I don’t want to make anything that feels cartoony or gives the impression that I’m poking fun. A focus for me now is, if I’m doing facial features— even my red faces—that you’re able to really see the beauty in them. It’s precise. I feel a pressure, which maybe other artists don’t, to be very clear that I am not making light of the past or of how we’ve been represented. I have to allow myself to simply express and know that if it’s coming from the right place, those who see it—mainly faces that look like ours—will feel proud and feel seen. You know?
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PL. 38 (opposite) A morte do cavaleiro prateado (The death of the silver knight), 2018
PL. 39 Great Great Great Great Great Great Great Great Aunty Monix, 2018
PL. 40 (previous and opposite) Sir Dingolay, 2020
PL. 41 The Four of Them Made a Promise, 2018
Selections from Zong! M. NourbeSe Philip
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M. NourbeSe Philip’s Zong! uses poetry to exhume a traumatic diasporic history trapped in legal records and to address the absences in those texts. The book takes as its subject the Zong Massacre, named for the slave ship on which, in 1781, one hundred fifty Africans were murdered by drowning so that British slavers could collect on the insurance policies taken out on the captives. In her book, Philip blends silence—the histories and emotions of the people murdered—with fragments of the extant records on the massacre—in particular, the Gregson v. Gilbert court decision regarding the insurance claim. Like Curtis Talwst Santiago, she is attuned to the gaps and vagaries of historical record, spaces that can only be filled by artistic recombination, if at all. —Isabella Kapur
Selections excerpted from Zong! published by Wesleyan University Press in 2011. Reprinted by permission of the author.
Children come, Tanti has a story to tell. I deeply admire M. NourbeSe Philip’s sharp mind and ability to push the boundaries of language. Her material is language: She bends words and their meanings, cuts words from different contexts, and arranges them with a poignant, pulsing rhythm that resonates with the way in which memories continue to shape us. I identify strongly with the practice of appropriation that Philip so masterfully executes in her epic, polyvocal poem Zong!, selections from which are featured here. Their inclusion in this book gives me a deep sense of closure, providing voices to ancestors that have not yet been heard, especially that of the great wise Tanti. —Curtis Talwst Santiago
Zong! #4
this is not was or 95
should be this be not should be this should not be
is
Lipapwiche Aziza Chipo Dada Nomsa
Zong! #6
question therefore the age eighteen weeks 96
and calm
but it is said . . . —from the maps and contradicted
by the evidence . . .
question
therefore
Zuka Tuwalole Urbi Femi Chuma
the age
Zong! #7
first: the when
the which 97
the who
the were
the throwing
overboard the be
come apprehended
exist did not
Wemusa Ilesanmi Nayo Odai
Zong! #11
suppose the law is
not 98
does not would not be not
suppose the law not —a crime suppose the law a loss suppose the law suppose
Nomble Falope Bisuga Nuru Chimwala Sala
Zong! #14
the truth was
the ship sailed
the rains came
the loss arose
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the truth is the ship sailed the rains came the loss arose the negroes is the truth was
Nkrumah Ato Nobanzi Oduneye Opa Fagbulu
Zong! #18
means truth means
overboard
100
means sufficient means
support means
foul means
three butts means
necessity means
provisions means
perils
Toyin Sipho Adelabu Lisabi Fayemi Eki
means
evidence means
mortality 101
means
policy means
voyage means
market means
slaves means
more means
dead means
want
water means
water
Okeowo Sonubi Modele Madoda Chenzira
Zong! #19
drowned the law their thirst & the evidence 102
obliged the frenzy
in themselves in the sea
ground the justify in the necessity of
when who & which
Gbolade Ololade Mapfumo Ngunda Dayo
there is no evidence in the against of winds the consequence of currents 103
or the apprehension of rains the certain of value or the value in certain
against the rest in preservation the save in residue negroes exist for the throwing
Musa Baba Olufemi Muata Iyabo Noxolo
Zong! #24 evidence is sustenance is support is the law
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the ship is the captain is the crew
perils is the trial is the rains is the seas is the currents jamaica is tobago is islands the case is murder Kenyatta Mesi Nayo Yooku Ngena
is justice africa is the ground is negroes
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evidence is sustenance is support is the law is the ship is the captain is the crew is perils is the trial is the rains is the seas is currents is jamaica is tobago is islands is the case is murder is justice is the ground is africa is
negroes was Oluyemy Esugbayi Adubifa Ogunlesi Akua
Excerpts from “The J’Ouvert Knight’s Guide to the Exhibition” With texts by Isabella Kapur
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Works in the Exhibition
PL. 1 Dingolay Estate Entrance/Portal, 2020 Cast paper and pigment 72 x 76 inches (182.9 x 193 cm) Courtesy of the artist Photograph by Martin Parsekian
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PL. 2 Granny’s Purty Gal Trees, 2020 Charcoal and paint on board 144 x 120 inches (365.7 x 304.8 cm) Courtesy of the artist PL. 3 Untitled Ancestor Drawing, 2016 Spray paint and charcoal on Arches paper 30 x 22 inches (76.2 x 55.9 cm) Collection of Gregory Fox PL. 4 African Knight I, 2018 Wire and beads on steel armature 82 x 24 x 24 inches (208.3 x 61 x 61 cm) Courtesy of the artist PL. 5 He Knight, 2019–20 Spray paint and charcoal on embossed tin 97 x 25 inches (246.4 x 63.5 cm) Courtesy of the artist Photograph by Martin Parsekian PL. 6 She Knight, 2019–20 Spray paint and charcoal on embossed tin 97 x 25 inches (246.4 x 63.5 cm) Courtesy of the artist Photograph by Martin Parsekian
PL. 7 J’Ouvert Knight, 2018 Mixed-media diorama in reclaimed jewelry box 2 1/4 x 2 x 2 1/2 inches (5.7 x 5.1 x 6.4 cm) Courtesy of the artist and Rachel Uffner Gallery PL. 8 By Sea II, 2020 Spray paint, charcoal, oil, acrylic, and pastel on cast paper mounted on Baltic birch 96 x 96 inches (243.8 x 243.8 cm) Courtesy of the artist Photograph by Martin Parsekian PL. 9 Candy Flipping (Boogoo Pouring the Spell in Sir Dingolay’s Ear), 2020 Spray paint, charcoal, oil, acrylic, gold pigment powder, and pastel on cast paper mounted on Baltic birch 96 x 96 inches (243.8 x 243.8 cm) Courtesy of the artist Photograph by Martin Parsekian PL. 10 A luz (The light), 2018 Spray paint, oil, charcoal, pastel, and acrylic on canvas 27 1/2 x 19 3/4 inches (69.9 x 50.2 cm) Courtesy of the artist and Rachel Uffner Gallery PL. 11 Untitled Ancestor Drawing, 2016 Spray paint and charcoal on Arches paper 30 x 22 inches (76.2 x 55.9 cm) Courtesy of the artist and Rachel Uffner Gallery Photograph by Martin Parsekian
PL. 12 Warahoon, 2020 Glass 5 x 4 1/2 x 3 inches (12.7 x 11.4 x 7.6 cm) Courtesy of the artist Photograph by Martin Parsekian
PL. 19 Untitled, 2019–20 Ink on sketchbook paper 5 x 3 inches (12.7 x 7.6 cm) Courtesy of the artist Photograph by Martin Parsekian
PL. 13 Redface Ancestor Rock II, 2017 Spray paint and hard pastel on found rock 68 x 28 x 24 inches (172.7 x 71.1 x 61 cm) Courtesy of the artist and Rachel Uffner Gallery
PL. 20 Untitled, 2019–20 Ink on sketchbook paper 10 x 7 inches (25.4 x 17.8 cm) Courtesy of the artist Photograph by Martin Parsekian
PL. 14 Red Face Ancestral Vision 1, 2018 Spray paint, oil, charcoal, pastel, and acrylic on canvas 39 3/4 x 39 1/2 inches (101 x 100.3 cm) Courtesy of Racquel Chevremont PL. 15 Untitled, 2019–20 Ink on sketchbook paper 5 1/2 x 4 inches (14 x 10.1 cm) Courtesy of the artist Photograph by Martin Parsekian PL. 16 Untitled, 2019–20 Ink and graphite on sketchbook paper 5 1/2 x 4 inches (14 x 10.1 cm) Courtesy of the artist Photograph by Martin Parsekian PL. 17 Untitled, 2019–20 Ink on sketchbook paper 5 x 3 inches (12.7 x 7.6 cm) Courtesy of the artist Photograph by Martin Parsekian PL. 18 Untitled, 2019–20 Ink on sketchbook paper 5 1/2 x 4 inches (14 x 10.1 cm) Courtesy of the artist Photograph by Martin Parsekian
PL. 21 Untitled, 2019–20 Ink on sketchbook paper 5 1/2 x 4 inches (14 x 10.1 cm) Courtesy of the artist Photograph by Martin Parsekian PL. 22 Untitled, 2019–20 Ink on sketchbook paper 9 1/2 x 7 3/4 inches (24.1 x 19.7 cm) Courtesy of the artist Photograph by Martin Parsekian PL. 23 Untitled, 2019–20 Watercolor, ink and graphite on sketchbook paper 7 1/2 x 9 1/2 inches (19.1 x 24.1 cm) Courtesy of the artist Photograph by Martin Parsekian PL. 24 Untitled, 2019–20 Ink and watercolor crayon on sketchbook paper 10 x 7 inches (25.4 x 17.8 cm) Courtesy of the artist Photograph by Martin Parsekian PL. 25 Untitled, 2019–20 Oil pastel, graphite, and ink on sketchbook paper 10 x 7 inches (25.4 x 17.8 cm) Courtesy of the artist Photograph by Martin Parsekian
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PL. 26 Untitled, 2019–20 Ink on sketchbook paper 9 1/2 x 7 3/4 inches (24.1 x 19.7 cm) Courtesy of the artist Photograph by Martin Parsekian PL. 27 Untitled, 2019–20 Ink and watercolor crayon on sketchbook paper 10 x 7 inches (25.4 x 17.8 cm) Courtesy of the artist Photograph by Martin Parsekian
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PL. 28 Untitled, 2019–20 Ink and spray paint on sketchbook paper 14 x 11 1/2 inches (35.6 x 29.2 cm) Courtesy of the artist Photograph by Martin Parsekian PL. 29 Untitled, 2019–20 Red paint marker on sketchbook paper 14 x 11 1/2 inches (35.6 x 29.2 cm) Courtesy of the artist Photograph by Martin Parsekian PL. 30 Untitled, 2019–20 Graphite, ink, and charcoal on sketchbook paper 9 1/2 x 7 1/2 inches (24.1 x 19 cm) Courtesy of the artist Photograph by Martin Parsekian PL. 31 Untitled, 2019–20 Graphite, ink, and charcoal on sketchbook paper 9 1/2 x 7 1/2 inches (24.1 x 19 cm) Courtesy of the artist Photograph by Martin Parsekian PL. 32 Untitled, 2019–20 Paint and spray paint on canvas 28 x 28 inches (71.1 x 71.1 cm) Courtesy of the artist Photograph by Martin Parsekian
PL. 33 Whatever Lay Ahead He Had Already Accepted, 2018 Replica; original in spray paint, oil, charcoal, pastel, and acrylic on canvas 35 1/2 x 35 1/2 inches (90.2 x 90.2 cm) Image courtesy of the artist and Rachel Uffner Gallery PL. 34 Road March, 2020 Spray paint, charcoal, oil, acrylic, and pastel on cast paper mounted on Baltic birch 96 x 96 inches (243.8 x 243.8 cm) Courtesy of the artist Photograph by Martin Parsekian PL. 35 Origin as Tanty Told Me, 2020 Spray paint, charcoal, oil, acrylic, and pastel on cast paper mounted on Baltic birch 96 x 96 inches (243.8 x 243.8 cm) Courtesy of the artist Photograph by Martin Parsekian PL. 36 Semente (Seed), 2019–20 Acrylic, oil, spray paint, charcoal, and pastel on printed textile 60 x 60 inches (152.4 x 152.4 cm) Courtesy of the artist Photograph by Martin Parsekian PL. 37 Saint Monix Mumala to the Lost and In Need, 2020 Paint, spray paint, and charcoal on canvas 32 x 32 inches (81.3 x 81.3 cm) Courtesy of the artist Photograph by Martin Parsekian PL. 38 A morte do cavaleiro prateado (The death of the silver knight), 2018 Spray paint, oil, charcoal, pastel, and acrylic on canvas 35 1/2 x 35 1/2 inches (90.2 x 90.2 cm) Courtesy of Randolph and Susan Randolph
PL. 39 Great Great Great Great Great Great Great Great Aunty Monix, 2018 Spray paint, oil pastel, soft pastel, and charcoal on rock 12 x 12 x 24 inches (30.5 x 30.5 x 61 cm) Courtesy of the artist and Cooper Cole, Toronto PL. 40 Sir Dingolay, 2020 Video 1:00 minute loop Courtesy of the artist PL. 41 The Four of Them Made a Promise, 2018 Spray paint, oil, charcoal, pastel, and acrylic on canvas 85 x 76 1/2 inches (215.9 x 194.3 cm) Courtesy of the artist and Rachel Uffner Gallery
Not Pictured Untitled, 2019–20 Ink on sketchbook paper 5 x 3 inches (12.7 x 7.6 cm) Courtesy of the artist Untitled, 2019–20 Ink on sketchbook paper 5 x 3 inches (12.7 x 7.6 cm) Courtesy of the artist Untitled, 2019–20 Ink on sketchbook paper 5 x 3 inches (12.7 x 7.6 cm) Courtesy of the artist Untitled, 2019–20 Ink on sketchbook paper 5 x 3 inches (12.7 x 7.6 cm) Courtesy of the artist Untitled, 2019–20 Ink on sketchbook paper 5 x 3 inches (12.7 x 7.6 cm) Courtesy of the artist Untitled, 2019–20 Ink on sketchbook paper 5 x 3 inches (12.7 x 7.6 cm) Courtesy of the artist
Untitled, 2019–20 Ink on sketchbook paper 5 x 3 inches (12.7 x 7.6 cm) Courtesy of the artist Untitled, 2019–20 Ink on sketchbook paper 3 x 5 inches (7.6 x 12.7 cm) Courtesy of the artist Untitled, 2019–20 Ink and watercolor crayon on sketchbook paper 10 x 7 inches (25.4 x 17.8 cm) Courtesy of the artist Untitled, 2019–20 Ink on sketchbook paper 9 1/2 x 7 3/4 inches (24.1 x 19.7 cm) Courtesy of the artist Untitled, 2019–20 Ink on sketchbook paper 5 x 3 inches (12.7 x 7.6 cm) Courtesy of the artist
Exhibition photographs by Martin Parsekian
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Artist’s Acknowledgments
I would first and foremost like to thank my parents, Monica and Frank Santiago, and my brothers, Anthony and Frank Jr., for instilling the importance of a strong work ethic and ceaselessly encouraging me to follow my intuition and creativity. An ambitious project of this scale can only be accomplished with a great team. Bryan Humphrey, my dear friend, collaborator, and production manager, matched my energy and enthusiasm every step of the way. My studio manager Brenda Rains’s faith in my vision has never wavered in twenty-three years. Claire Gilman and The Drawing Center entrusted their space to me and together we created something dynamic. The Canada Council for the Arts made this exhibition possible with their incredible support of my practice abroad. The following names are in no particular order; each contributed in their own very special way over the last four years. I am grateful to: Joseph Segarra, Magadalyn Asimakis, Jimmy Nyaruwa, Todd Duym, Justin Tyler Close, Yorgos Liapis, Jessica Law, Débora Silva, The Mighty Sparrow, Kenneth Montague, M. NourbeSe Philip, Greg Fox, Becky Elmquist, Dustin Yellin, Pioneer Works, Simon Cole, Rachel Uffner, Rebekah Chozick, Barbara Polla, and Emilie and Henri of Afro Nova. —Curtis Talwst Santiago
Curator’s Acknowledgments
My thanks go first to Curtis Talwst Santiago, whose infectious spirit and unending fount of curiosity made this exhibition a truly joyful and exploratory collaboration. I am honored to have been able to dive into this new body of work with him and I cannot wait to see what lies ahead. My gratitude also extends to a number of individuals without whom this exhibition would not have been possible. At Rachel Uffner Gallery, I am grateful to Rebekah Chozick, whose insight and patience were absolutely crucial; to Grace Lerner for her responsiveness and energy; and of course to Rachel herself for her boundless support and enthusiasm. I would also like to thank Kenneth Montague, whose conversation with Curtis in this book does so much to enrich our understanding of Curtis’s work and the Canadian immigrant experience generally. Similarly, I would like to thank M. NourbeSe Philip for graciously allowing us include excerpts from her book Zong!, a testament to the many ways in which art can reconsider history and a crucial complement to the objects pictured in this volume. At The Drawing Center, the entire staff deserves my thanks, but especially Isabella Kapur, Curatorial Assistant, who brought her love of research, fantasy, and fun—not to mention her incredible writing skills—to so many aspects of this exhibition. In addition, I must acknowledge Kate Robinson, Registrar, whose flexibility, work ethic, and endless good humor make her a joy to have as a compatriot. Special thanks also go to Bryan Humphrey, whose handiwork can be found throughout the exhibition, making it a true collaboration. Special thanks also goes to the lenders who let us enrich this exhibition with works from their collections: Racquel Chevremont, Gregory Fox, and Randolph and Susan Randolph. And of course, I would like to extend my gratitude to The Drawing Center’s Board of Directors, as well as to the funders whose support was fundamental to the creation of this exhibition and publication: the Canada Council for the Arts; Rachel Uffner Gallery; William A. and Pamela K. Royall; Maxine Granovsky Gluskin; the Consulate General of Canada in New York; Cathy and Jonathan Miller; Barbara Polla; Carol Saper; Carla Shen and Christopher Schott; Isabel Stainow Wilcox; Anonymous; Cooper Cole, Toronto; Rashid Johnson and Sheree Hovsepian; Ruth Roberts; Liz Dimmitt and Piers Davies; Randolph and Susan Randolph; and Tiffany Hott. —Claire Gilman Chief Curator
Contributors
Claire Gilman is Chief Curator at The Drawing Center.
Born in Tobago, M. NourbeSe Philip is an unembedded poet, essayist, novelist, playwright, and independent scholar Isabella Kapur is Curatorial Assistant who lives in the space-time of the City at The Drawing Center. of Toronto, where she practiced law for seven years before becoming a poet Kenneth Montague is a Toronto-based and writer. Among her published works art collector and the founding director are the seminal She Tries Her Tongue; of Wedge Curatorial Projects, a non-profit Her Silence Softly Breaks and the arts organization that helps to promote speculative prose poem Looking for African Canadian artists. Since 1997 Livingston: An Odyssey of Silence. he has been exhibiting contemporary Her book-length poem, Zong!, is a art that explores Black identity, and conceptually innovative, genre-breaking showcasing these works in his Wedge epic, which explodes the legal archive Collection. Montague has been a as it relates to slavery. Her fellowships member of the AGO Board of Trustees include Guggenheim, McDowell, since 2015; he is currently Chair of the and Rockefeller (Bellagio). M. NourbeSe Education and Community Engagement Philip is the 2020 recipient of PEN/ Committee. Previously Montague served Nabokov Award for Achievement in on the Africa Acquisitions Committee International Literature. at Tate Modern, London (2012–15) as well as on the Advisory Board of the Ryerson Image Centre (2011–14), the Photography Curatorial Committee of the Art Gallery of Ontario (2009–12). He has been invited to lecture on contemporary art at The Studio Museum in Harlem; the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; and the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, Lisbon; among other institutions. For his ongoing work with emerging artists and young creatives, Montague received an honorary doctorate from OCAD University (2016).
Board of Directors
Staff
Co-Chairs Andrea Crane Amy Gold
Laura Hoptman Executive Director
Treasurer Stacey Goergen Secretary Dita Amory Frances Beatty Adler Valentina Castellani Brad Cloepfil Harry Tappan Heher Rhiannon Kubicka Iris Marden David M. Pohl Nancy Poses Eric Rudin Almine Ruiz-Picasso Jane Dresner Sadaka David Salle Joyce Siegel Galia Meiri Stawski Barbara Toll Jean-Edouard van Praet d’Amerloo Waqas Wajahat Isabel Stainow Wilcox
Olga Valle Tetkowski Deputy Director Rebecca Brickman Director of Development Aimee Good Director of Education and Community Programs Allison Underwood Director of Communications Claire Gilman Chief Curator Lisa Sigal Artist in Residence Rosario Güiraldes Assistant Curator Isabella Kapur Curatorial Assistant Kate Robinson Registrar Dan Gillespie Operations Manager Tiffany Shi Development Associate Kara Nandin Digital Content Coordinator Rebecca DiGiovanna Assitant to the Office of the Executive Director Nadia Parfait Visitor Services Associate Lucia Zezza Bookstore Manager Mark Zubrovich Visitor Services Associate
Published on the occasion of the exhibition Curtis Talwst Santiago: Can’t I Alter The Drawing Center February 20–September 6, 2020
This is number 141 of the Drawing Papers, a series of publications documenting The Drawing Center’s exhibitions and programs and providing a forum for the study of drawing.
Organized by Claire Gilman with Isabella Kapur
Editor Joanna Ahlberg
Curtis Talwst Santiago: Can’t I Alter is made possible by the Canada Council for the Arts.
Design AHL&CO
Generous support is provided by Rachel Uffner Gallery, William A. and Pamela K. Royall, Maxine Granovsky Gluskin, and the Consulate General of Canada in New York. Additional support is provided by Cathy and Jonathan Miller; Barbara Polla; Carol Saper; Carla Shen and Christopher Schott; Isabel Stainow Wilcox; Anonymous; Cooper Cole, Toronto; Rashid Johnson and Sheree Hovsepian; Ruth Roberts; Liz Dimmitt and Piers Davies; Randolph and Susan Randolph; and Tiffany Hott.
Printing & Binding Purital Capital, New Hampshire About the Type This book is set in Publico Text (Roman, Italic, and Bold). It is part of the Publico Collection, designed by Ross Milne, Christian Schwartz, Paul Barnes, Kai Bernau, and Greg Gazdowicz, and released incrementally by Commercial Type in 2009, 2013, and 2014. This book also uses Plain (Regular and Italic), which was designed by François Rappo and released by Optimo Type Foundry in 2014. ISBN 978-0-942324-34-1 © 2020 The Drawing Center All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form without written permission from The Drawing Center.
Curtis Talwst Santiago: Can’t I Alter This edition in the Drawing Papers series documents Curtis Tawlst Santiago’s Can’t I Alter, Alter, an immersive, drawing-filled installation that explores the theme of ancestry and the necessity of preserving the past while acknowledging the fallacies implicit in historical recollection. A speciallycommissioned photographic exhibition tour accompanies new scholarship by curator Claire Gilman, a revealing conversation between the artist and collector Kenneth Montague, and a powerful contribution by the 2020 PEN/ Nabakov Award-winning writer M. NourbeSe Philip.
Contributions by Claire Gilman Isabella Kapur Kenneth Montague M. NourbeSe Philip
ISBN 978-0942324341 52500
9 780942 324 3 41
$25