Tavarus Blackmon Root Division Curatorial CuratorialFellow Fellow
think of A Portrait of the Artist As a Shadow of His Former Self by Kerry James Marshall (1980), and how inventing a new identity can be a way to claim authorship of self expression while living in a difficult history. But in our global and contemporary moment the artist must reconcile a way to deal with the history of art and injustice, all-the-while thinking green regarding the environment and the effects of climate change. Where is the joy in that? The artist Daniel Alejandro Trejo uses clay and stark mark-making tools, that depict unique, bulbous, and bodily forms, and to create installations and expressions through a curatorial practice. When asked about living with a difficult past—as a shared history of violence under patriarchal and colonial institutions—Trejo insists that the past should never be “erased” and that in order to move through toward a collective future of joy—albeit unexpected and in the midst of challenge—we must face our history to move forward.
Artists make themselves used to the unexpected; our present state notwithstanding. Artists must shift as the economy shifts, reinvent themselves— quickly reorganize their space, life, studio or business, and revise the image of self as the one true revision in a time of somber repose. Freethinking they may be, the artist as business has usurped the artist as freewheeling, and this new thought of identity, representation, and authorship is alive in the artists here. For example,
6
The artists in A Joy Unexpected had to face the unthinkable over the last year and move forward. They did not recoil but met the challenge with work, time in the studio, and an investigation of what their future may become while the world seemed to be changing around them. Political upheaval, environmental instability due to climate change, and challenges to voter freedom, had all been folded into the difficult year of 2020. How has the role of the artist changed regarding protest and demands for social justice? How can joy be achieved when the future and present are beset with racism, intolerance, and violence? The unexpected is everywhere, but the artist has a toolset meant to unravel the tide and wash of unknowing. In fact the artist’s question—the
