Conversation: In Conversation:
Tavarus Blackmon Daniel Alejandro Trejo
Tavarus
What are your thoughts on the artist’s role in culture as it stands today? I mean, it’s always been debated, and it’s something that is basically taught in art school—artists being very much connected to cultural movements in their moment in time. What do you think of this heightened sense of immediacy, as an artist today living in this moment? I guess my question is, what do you think future generations will think, looking back on the work produced during this moment?
Daniel
I think one of the big questions I asked myself is: who is this work being made for? And who am I working for, if anything, and in a very specific context. In the ceramics field—like every other field—a lot of the artists are cisgender males who are white, and they just make pots or some other large scale works. To be clear—and to
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be making this—I feel essentially like a pioneer. I mean, many of us are starting to engage more with clay, with ceramics, and trying to subvert the expectations of what clay can and can’t do. I think that’s very exciting. I think it’s going to be very exciting for future generations to figure out, “Oh, this is the point where everything started to shift.” When artists started to realize, or at least things started to shine a light on, “Oh, these art institutions really had this hidden agenda, or this is tokenizing of artists.” This is when we’re becoming way more aware of it thanks to social media, especially with the whole shenanigans that happened in June and July. That summer was very, very intense. A lot of performative actions were taken by art institutions to where they started tokenizing these art shows and artists too, and they even started to bring some of them over. It was very insensitive and tone deaf to everything that was going on—particularly what happened at the Guggenheim. That was just a mess.
Tavarus
Yeah, to have a difficult conversation about this, it’s true, I made some really difficult work that I felt would be inappropriate for people other than BIPOC individuals to collect. And I really felt that way. It’s just complicated. Have you ever thought about things like that? Do you think that if you were to address a particular audience, do you feel like it’s only meant for them? Or do you feel like whoever really appreciates it, you want them to live with the work?
Daniel
Well, as an artist, and somebody who identifies as I feel like my work should be enjoyed by everyone. Now, I take it as a red flag when I start noticing that it’s only one particular group or demographic that starts enjoying it,
