Perspective with Khari Turner

AE: What inspired your passion for art?

KR: My passion started with my grandfather. I would ask him to draw from a poster I had of airplanes. I would take the drawings he made and try to recreate them. Now my passion is internal. I couldn’t stop working if I wanted. I make work because it’s so closely tied to my happiness. I feel like my best self when I’m creating, so I create.

AE: Where do you draw your inspiration from for your pieces?

KR: I’m inspired by so much. I am pulling every day from life around me. I’m constantly looking at work on my phone reading, articles and listening to spoken word poetry. I’m always trying to expand and get better so I’m constantly searching for something, I never know what, but it comes to me.

AE: Many of your recent pieces have abstract imagery but clear illustrations of a nose and mouth. Why this duality? What do you want it to communicate to viewers?

KR: There is a lot that goes into the making of the work. The short version is the work involves ideas of negativity being overwritten by positivity and optimism. The nose and mouth have dual meanings and representations.

The nose and mouth have a positive aspect as a celebration of historical Black features with the wider nose and thicker lips.

The second is the negative aspect with a wider nose, thicker lips, and darker skin being connected to people and getting longer prison sentences.

The abstraction is me trying to replicate the energy that lives inside of Black history. The use of these negative and positive energies colliding to create the beauty of around and in Blackness.

AE: What has been one highlight since having to do social/physical distancing?

KR: I don’t know about highlights. Everything I’m doing is exactly what I would be doing if I could still use my studio. The life of an artist has its ways of naturally social distancing. Allowing time to think, process and reexamine my practice so often requires solitude and space.

KR: I don’t know. I’m so uncertain what the “new” will be. So many holes have been opened by this that the landscape is different. I don’t think these holes can be filled in and we continue as usual, but create new environments from the craters left behind. I will and always want to make work, so I know I will do that for sure, but other than that, I have no idea. I am optimistic though and believe a great change will happen after this.

AE: What role do you feel your art plays in the larger fabric of life? Art in general?

KR: I don’t think I have a role in the larger fabric of life or art in general yet. I want my role to eventually do multiple things, but the most important is giving black people artwork that can represent anyone and everyone in celebration. I don’t want to create work that elevates black pain, but our conquering of that pain and being better than it.

The best compliment that I ever got was from a woman on Twitter who said, “This is the kind of art I want my kid to see.”

AE: Complete the phrase “Art is...”

KR: Art is never clear or easy. It is filled with questions, and subjective, but is so important to living.