In Conversation: Tavarus Blackmon with Daniel Alejandro Trejo

In Conversation: 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 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,

because I feel like that’s when my work is starting to become limited. And in my own practice—and my own curatorial practice as well—I’m trying to immerse myself in the Spanish language when it comes to writing curatorial statements, just to make it more accessible to those who don’t speak English, and Spanish is their first language. This mainly came about by engaging more with the art world along with my parents, since they grew up in poverty essentially until they came here into the United States. You know that, but we all struggle, the immigrants struggle. I wanted to be an artist and slowly started engaging more with the art world. A lot of it was interesting, trying to explain to them a lot of contemporary theory and also the formal qualities of art. But I also wanted them to know, “What do you think of this?” Like, if you see a broomstick against the wall, what are you thinking? Like, “What’s going on in your head, Mom and Dad?”

I feel like if one specific demographic starts liking my art, I think that’s troublesome—I really want it to be versatile. I really want it to be enjoyed by everyone. Now, of course there’s this whole issue of equity to have collections. Like if a lot of white men start collecting my work, I would have to start asking myself, “Shit, how do I make that not happen? How do I make it more accessible without selling myself short, too?” And I think it’s just case by case. It shifts, and it depends on who’s viewing the work and who I’m engaging with at the time. And then also knowing the person as well like, “Oh, this is your first time looking at contemporary sculpture, or contemporary paintings, cool,”—then we could go from there. If it’s someone who’s very familiar with contemporary works, and they start name dropping artists and everything, then I start shifting my way of how I speak. It’s kind of like this art world code-switching that I do. Tavarus Do you reject art history? Do you reconstruct it? Or do you destroy it? And will that create healing, as we move forward—as practitioners of color, as artists, as individuals in the society?

Daniel That’s a very difficult one. I feel like we need all three, mainly because it informs us and informs where we are today. And, on a very personal note, I am very against rejecting anything from the past because if we reject something that happened, we’re invalidating that experience. And then that allows it to happen again. You know, we need to accept it; that even though it was very, very terrible—and I’m not even speaking about the past four years, I’m just talking about our history in general or politics, and our very existence in general—I feel like we just need to accept that amount of nastiness that just came with it. We need to accept it, validate that that’s what happened, and then take it from there so it won’t happen again. We need to hold space for memory. Now, the issue is, are we going to anchor ourselves with this? Are we going to anchor ourselves to the destruction? Are we going to anchor ourselves to the rejection? We don’t have to. We can get accepted and then after that keep moving along, and then just keep building from there. So, I think rebuilding is something that really would emphasize taking all the things that have harmed us and then just work with that. And then also knowing who to hold accountable. You know, whether it was just a demographic group where they could all be collectively held accountable. That’s also very important to know, so they’re aware of the privilege, or even just to recognize who was damned, who was fucked over. It’s very important. I don’t think that we should ever, ever forget anything horrible that happened. That’s how it occurs again.