TRANSCRIPT

On the second floor of MCA Denver, we encounter artworks that touch upon the theme of spirituality and spiritual traditions. 

Throughout the American South, histories of spirituality which draw upon influences from West Africa, the Caribbean, Europe and indigenous influences have played a critical role in the evolution of how we understand American musical culture, from the history of drum beats from West Africa, to the importance of gospel music as creating a space of communion, to the deep histories of blues in the American South, and blues that inform jazz, jazz that informed rock and roll, and finally the influence of these beats and rhythms into how we understand hip hop and rap music. 

Spirituality provides a groundedness into how artists from the American South developed their work and have taken it to sublime levels.

The Dirty South - Sinners & Saints with Ellen Bruss Senior Curator Miranda Lash

The Dirty South - Black Corporality

Transcript

Hi, my name is Felandus Thames. I'm a visual artist originally from Jackson, Mississippi, working and living in the greater New York area. My piece in The Dirty South is entitled, Just Hanging.

My process of creating any work. I start by, initially, trying to find materials that articulate the idea that I'm trying to achieve. The work itself is made from black, fatlace shoestrings that were commonly used in sneaker culture when I was growing up and the shoes are found objects from the community in Harlem, where I lived previously. The configuration of the sneakers themselves, and the work appears to be two bodies hanging from a tree that attached to a spiderweb. And that's the aesthetic value that I was trying to create with this work.

The inspiration behind a spiderweb itself was to articulate this invisible system of capturing Black, male bodies in the prison industrial complex. When I make work, I try not to have a one-to-one relationship of meaning to the objects. I try to allow the work to be whimsical, even when I'm creating very serious work. I like to have just a little notion of kitsch or something that will allow a point of entry for someone to have their own experience. But also, once they find themselves inside of the poetry of the piece, I try to hit them with another layer of meaning.

I walk through the community and I collect materials and I photograph objects and I bring them back into my studio to inform my practice. With this particular piece, I saw pair of shoes hanging from a utility line, and it reminded me of two bodies hanging, an image that I saw from the 1920s.

The Dirty South - Felandus Thames: Just Hangin

Transcripción

Mi nombre es Nathaniel Donnett. Soy un practicante cultural. Al decir “practicante cultural” incluyo la idea de artistas. Es solo un paraguas. El título de la obra es Miré por encima de Jordan y qué vi; una banda de ángeles que vienen detrás de mí. La pieza existía antes que el título. La música es una gran parte de lo que hago, en términos de incorporarla a mi práctica. Dicho esto, para mí, esta canción es, me lleva a pensar en mi madre y mi abuela y en el hecho de que crecí en una casa de escopetas en el Tercer Precinto de Houston, Texas.

Crecer en una casa estrecha no es un gran peso como puede parecer, aunque lo es para aquellos que no saben lo que es. Una casa estrecha es básicamente una puerta delantera, puerta trasera, y un pasillo derecho. Todas las habitaciones están en una línea singular. Es una tecnología de África occidental. En Haití es donde la casa estrecha realmente encapsuló su propio tipo de identidad en Occidente, en las Américas. Muchos haitianos llegaron a los Estados Unidos y trajeron esa información junto con las personas esclavizadas que ya estaban aquí. Creo que allí es donde simplemente se consolidó en términos de todo lo que identificamos ahora en el siglo 20 y en el siglo 21 a la casa estrecha. También se conecta con la idea de no tener recursos, creando algo de poco a nada, que es un rasgo de carácter de la experiencia negra.

SPANISH - The Dirty South - Nathaniel Donnett - I looked over at Jordan and what did I see

Transcription

I am Valerie Cassel Oliver. I am the Sydney and Frances Lewis Family Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts.

Spirituality again, not really rooting itself in religious ideology, but rather notions around syncretic religious practices. Those who were brought in bondage also brought with them, their culture, their religious traditions, as well, and oftentimes embedded those traditions within the Christian model. So, their nods to syncretic religious practice. Naturalism, which is looking at elements of the land. And again, these are where some of the sections bleed together, understanding natural elements as modes of communicating between the earth and the heavens.

Understanding natural healing practices, ideas that are often seen as modes of traditional production that are imbued with spiritual ideology. So, you'll see a quilt from Gee's Bend. So even though it may seem very simplistic on the outside, it holds within it very complex ideas, that quilts were not just quilts, but they were talisman. They were meant to keep one warm, but also, they're imbued with the prayers, and the songs that people sing. It's almost like, in certain traditions, weaving how one speaks into the cloth itself. And there are elements of that within the work of Gee's Bends quilts. That is why you'll see work by artists who are academically trained, as well as works by artists who are not. And it's mixed together because they all emanate from a very similar rootedness.

The Dirty South - Syncretic Religious Practices in Southern Culture

Transcript

Hello, I'm Marsha Mack. Pronouns are she/her/hers. Let's see. So I am a sculptor. I'm a ceramic artist, and I'm also a professor of ceramics at The Ohio State University.

I am interested in creating my own fantasy of paradise. For me, paradise, it's a state of mind, it's a feeling. I think it's very close to happiness. I think it's very close to love, and then it's also visually, for me is the jungle. It's like a place too. And so I'm trying to make these kind of jungle constructions where I imagine going to and imagine being, and that I kind of associate with, but that are really mostly figments of the imagination part of that jungle attraction, I think for me. So I'm half Vietnamese, and so my biracial identity is something that I have been talking about more and more, and just growing up, a lot of my understanding of my cultural difference, it was mostly white folks around me. It was always something exotic. It was always this jungle scene. It was like, "Oh, Vietnam, that's a jungle country." And so trying to connect with that and find this place of balance and ease often in my mind relates back to these images, which are repeated images across culture.

They're in movies, they're in advertisements. And so much that same way, I'm taking imagery from these places, pulling them together to construct that place of happiness and paradise.

Mobile Tour Guide: Breakthroughs - Marsha Mack

TRANSCRIPTION

My name's Anna Tsouhlarakis. I'm an artist based out of Boulder, Colorado.

Kind of from a couple of places. I was born and raised in Lawrence, Kansas and moved between Kansas and New Mexico a few times. And my family's also from the Navajo Reservation in New Mexico. I finished high school in Taos, New Mexico before moving out east for most of my life.

Growing up when I was younger, it was a lot about teasing and getting teased by your family and I mean, it still is, I think within native communities, big part of growing up was being teased by your aunties and your cousins, and that's where a lot of this work comes from is that idea of being teased about different things, whether it be your choices in life or where you're growing up.

And that's always been a big one for me because I grew up off reservation and so as an urban native, I was teased about so many different things about the way I spoke, about the way I rode a horse, everything. But there's a love in that roasting that happens and a connection that's created, and that's really what I love focusing on. I think I'm funny. I mean, I'm not like a comedian, but I think that I try to find the funny parts of a situation. I enjoy making people laugh. I think it's an excellent way to connect to new people and to make connections stronger within family, your communities. That's why I really wanted to explore this a little bit more in depth.

Artist Anna Tsouhlarakis explains how her childhood experiences influenced her sense of humor

TRANSCRIPTION

My name's Anna Tsouhlarakis. I'm an artist based out of Boulder, Colorado.

When I was really young, my dad would bring back scraps of wood. He was a contractor by day and an artist at night, and he would bring us these scraps of wood that my brother and I would nail together and create all these different forms and make our own toys. And as I got older and started making art a bit more intentionally, I realized that working three-dimensionally came really easily to me, that it was a language I understood. My work, worked across many disciplines. I'm a trained sculptor, but I work in installation video performance, and so I really try to utilize different media depending on the scope of the project that I'm working on.

I don't think there's a medium that I enjoy working in more than others. I think that it really depends on the idea. I get really excited about different concepts, and sometimes that's in sculpture. Maybe it'll be in video or in text. It just depends on the project. And I think that's why I love making work is that by being versatile, it's always keeping things fresh and exciting.

Artist Anna Tsouhlarakis talks about working in different mediums

TRANSCRIPTION

My name's Anna Tsouhlarakis, I'm an artist based out of Boulder, Colorado.

So I come from a long line of artists. A lot of them work in jewelry specifically as Navajo silversmiths, but there are also a lot of painters under ours in our family. I think that art and native culture interwoven a lot that there's not necessarily a differentiation between somebody who makes art and an artist, and it really took me a while before I saw myself as an artist because creating work was just something I did naturally and it really wasn't until college that I realized that I could be an artist as a profession. When I went to college, I was a double major in Native American studies and studio art, and I was really taking classes that I was interested in at the time. It turned out that the bulk of them were Native American studies and studio art classes, and when it came time to declare majors, that's when I realized that really at the heart of it were both of those things.

Before that, especially in high school, I was a math and I was a real nerd in math and science, and I did coding. I represented the US at the International Science and Engineering Fair, and so that whole STEM area, that was where my major interest was, and that's what I thought I was going to grow up to be. But I think once I went to college and started exploring more in depth other subjects, I really enjoyed the possibilities specifically within art and how you can tie together ideas that deal with mathematics and science, but also history and creating forms that speak to that.

Artist Anna Tsouhlarakis reflects on growing up in a family of artists

TRANSCRIPTION

My name's Anna Tsouhlarakis. I'm an artist based out of Boulder, Colorado.

All of my work is based in the foundation of Native American ideas, issues, philosophies, stories I heard growing up. It's all based in my native identity, but branches off into different sects within that. And so right now, I've been working a lot in text and dealing with stereotypes and just language when talking to and about natives, but I'm also doing performances, dealing with the murder, missing indigenous women's movement, and the project that I'm working on now, the body of work, it's a new body of work and it's working in an evolved way that I have in the past. It's dealing with Indigenous ideas of humor. I think sarcasm and humor is something that is aligned through all of the work I've made. This work, I just wanted to make it. I wanted, because I hadn't seen an illustration of this before, a visualization of what Indigenous humor is, all the different facets of it and how they're put together. I hadn't seen that before on the scale that I'm doing it or at any scale really.

And so I just wanted to make that, and I think that it's something that people will connect to in some ways, but there's not a direct hope for solving world peace or anything.

Artist Anna Tsouhlarakis explains her desire to showcase the many facets of Indigenous humor

TRANSCRIPTION

My name's Anna Tsouhlarakis. I'm an artist based out of Boulder, Colorado.

I think at the heart of my practice, I'm a minimalist in some ways. I try to simplify ideas down. I'm always cautious about adding too much, and I always find myself taking things away because it's a flourish I don't need. I'm not a flourished person. I like things pretty minimal. And so when it came to getting across certain ideas, I realized that text was a very direct way to do that. And so when thinking about how to illustrate that text or to present that text, that's when signage came into play or using billboards or big wall banners and things like that, because I think that they engage the viewer in a very unique way, and I love that it also has people question ideas of what Native art is and what it can be out in the world.

Artist Anna Tsouhlarakis speaks to the minimalist approach she takes to her art

TRANSCRIPCIÓN

Esta es una traducción del original en inglés

Mi nombre es Anna Tsouhlarakis. Soy artista y vivo en Boulder, Colorado.

Provengo de dos lugares. Nací y crecí en Lawrence, Kansas y me mudé entre Kansas y Nuevo México varias veces. Y mi familia también es de la Reserva Navajo en Nuevo México. Terminé la escuela secundaria en Taos, Nuevo México, antes de mudarme al este durante la mayor parte de mi vida.

Al crecer, cuando yo era más joven, todo se trataba mucho de burlarse y ser molestada por tu familia y, debo decirlo, todavía lo es. Creo que dentro de las comunidades nativas gran parte de crecer fue ser objeto de burlas por parte de tus tías y tus primos. Ese es el origen de gran parte de este trabajo: es la idea de ser objeto de burlas por diferentes cosas, ya sean tus elecciones en la vida o el lugar donde estás creciendo.

Y eso siempre ha sido importante para mí porque crecí fuera de una reserva y, como nativa urbana, se burlaban de mí por muchas cosas diferentes sobre la forma en que hablaba, sobre la forma en que montaba a caballo, todo eso. Pero hay un amor en esas burlas y ataques y una conexión que se crea. Eso es realmente en lo que me encanta enfocarme. Creo que soy graciosa. Quiero decir, no soy como una comediante, pero creo que trato de encontrar las partes divertidas de una situación. Disfruto haciendo reír a la gente. Creo que es una excelente manera de conectarse con nuevas personas y fortalecer las conexiones dentro de la familia y las comunidades. Por eso realmente quería explorar esto un poco más en profundidad.

SPANISH - Artist Anna Tsouhlarakis explains how her childhood influenced her sense of humor

TRANSCRIPCIÓN

Esta es una traducción del original en inglés

Mi nombre es Anna Tsouhlarakis. Soy artista y vivo en Boulder, Colorado.

Cuando yo era muy joven, mi papá traía trozos de madera. Él era contratista de día y artista de noche, y nos traía estos pedazos de madera que mi hermano y yo clavamos y creábamos todas estas formas diferentes y hacíamos nuestros propios juguetes. Y a medida que crecí y comencé a hacer arte de manera un poco más intencional, me di cuenta de que trabajar en tres dimensiones me resultaba muy fácil, que era un lenguaje que entendía. Mi trabajo fue forjado a través de muchas disciplinas. Soy una escultora capacitada, pero trabajo en desempeño de video de instalación, por lo que realmente trato de utilizar diferentes medios según el alcance del proyecto en el que estoy trabajando.

No creo que haya un medio en el que disfrute más trabajar que en otros. Creo que realmente depende de la idea. Me emocionan mucho los diferentes conceptos y, a veces, eso es en la escultura. Tal vez sea en video o en texto. Solo depende del proyecto. Y creo que esa es la razón por la que me encanta hacer trabajos porque, al ser versátil, las cosas siempre se mantienen frescas y emocionantes.

SPANISH - Artist Anna Tsouhlarakis talks about working in different mediums

TRANSCRIPCIÓN

Esta es una traducción del original en inglés

Mi nombre es Anna Tsouhlarakis. Soy artista y vivo en Boulder, Colorado.

Así que vengo de una larga línea de artistas. Muchos de ellos trabajan en joyería específicamente como plateros navajos, pero también hay muchos pintores debajo de los nuestros en nuestra familia. Creo que el arte y la cultura nativa se entrelazan mucho. No hay necesariamente una diferenciación entre alguien que hace arte y un artista, y realmente me tomó un tiempo antes de verme a mí misma como artista porque crear obras  era algo que hacía naturalmente. Realmente no fue sino hasta la universidad que me di cuenta de que podía ser artista como profesión. Cuando fui a la universidad, tenía una doble especialización en estudios de nativos americanos y arte de estudio y realmente estaba tomando clases que me interesaban en ese momento. Resultó que la mayoría de las clases eran estudios de nativos americanos y clases de arte de estudio, y cuando llegó el momento de declarar las especializaciones, fue cuando me di cuenta de que realmente en el centro de todo estaban ambas cosas.

Antes de eso, especialmente en la escuela secundaria, era matemática y era una verdadera sabelotodo en matemáticas y ciencias, y programaba. Representé a los EE UU en la Feria Internacional de Ciencias e Ingeniería y, por lo tanto, en toda el área de STEM. Ahí estaba mi mayor interés, y eso es lo que pensé que iba a ser cuando creciera. Pero creo que una vez que fui a la universidad y comencé a explorar más en profundidad otras materias, realmente disfruté las posibilidades específicamente dentro del arte y cómo puedes unir ideas que tienen que ver con las matemáticas y la ciencia, pero también con la historia y la creación de formas que hablan de eso.

SPANISH - Artist Anna Tsouhlarakis reflects on growing up in a family of artists

TRANSCRIPCIÓN

Esta es una traducción del original en inglés

Mi nombre es Anna Tsouhlarakis. Soy artista y vivo en Boulder, Colorado.

Creo que en el corazón de mi práctica, soy minimalista en algunos aspectos. Intento simplificar las ideas. Siempre soy cautelosa acerca de agregar demasiado, y siempre me encuentro quitando cosas porque es una floritura que no necesito. No soy una persona florecida. Me gustan las cosas bastante mínimas. Entonces, cuando se trataba de transmitir ciertas ideas, me di cuenta de que el texto era una forma muy directa de hacerlo. Entonces, al pensar en cómo ilustrar ese texto o presentar ese texto, fue cuando entró en juego la señalización o el uso de vallas publicitarias o pancartas de pared grande y cosas así, porque creo que atraen al espectador de una manera muy singular y yo. Me encanta que también logre que la gente cuestione las ideas de lo que es el arte nativo y lo que puede ser en este mundo.

SPANISH - Artist Anna Tsouhlarakis speaks to the minimalist approach she takes to her art

TRANSCRIPTION

My name is Tomashi Jackson. I'm a visual artist. I am from Los Angeles, California. I currently live in Cambridge, Massachusetts and split my time between Cambridge and New York City.

"Across The Universe" is my first major museum survey exhibition curated by Miranda Lash here at the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver. The work in the show spans the last nine years. I've made seven new works. In response to my research about Colorado, I got to be here for six weeks, an all too brief, residency last summer, a collaboration between Swoon Art House and Boulder, Colorado and MCA Denver, that allowed me to stay at the Swoon Art House and, uh, roam the mountains and the countryside with my curator to get to know the landscape and some of its people. 

I was very influenced by a film that I had the opportunity to see at the Chautauqua Amphitheater in Boulder, Colorado called, “This Is Not Who We Are”. “This Is Not Who We Are”, is a film that was made by John Tweedy, Barrett Strong, and Katrina Miller.

Tomashi Jackson introduces her exhibition "Across The Universe"

TRANSCRIPTION

My name is Tomashi Jackson. I'm a visual artist. 

Self-Portrait Tale of Two Michaels, was inspired by what I came to learn about Michael Brown Jr. Who was raised and died in Ferguson, Missouri, and Michael McDonald, who spent his formative years in Ferguson, Missouri. At the time I was researching the cases that led up to Brown versus the Board of Education, attempting to visualize a legislative history of public space, uh, with public education as the site the painting is a, is a color field painting painted on gauze, hanging free, connected by a strip of green canvas that I employ as a green screen through the video editing process. I use that green screen to hold images that I recorded from Al Jazeera, America's broadcast, Ferguson City Under Siege. Their documentation of Ferguson after Michael Brown's killer, Darren Wilson was found unaccountable for shooting someone with their hands up as they plead for their lives in the middle of the street. 

I'm accompanied in this piece by Alteronce Gumby. I joined him in a, in a color study that covers almost my entire body, safe from my mouth, that is free to lip sync or embody the lead vocals of Michael MacDonald and the Doobie Brothers song, “It Keeps You Running”. I felt like the song really encapsulated the way that I and many others felt and continue to feel about being vulnerable, vulnerable to the negative perceptions of color imposed upon us with the likelihood of death as an outcome and the very serious likelihood of no accountability for harm being done to us. So I juxtapose this very contemporary history of the devaluation of a life of a young black person in public space with the research I was doing about the revaluation of the lives of children of color and public space through fully resourcing public education.

Artist Tomashi Jackson explains the inspiration behind, Self Portrait: Tale of Two Michaels.

TRANSCRIPTION

My name is Tomashi Jackson. I'm a visual artist.

With the piece Heiresses: The Central Park Plan made in 2019 as a part of a body of work titled Time Out of Mind, an image of Harriet Tubman is pinned at the bottom left, a portrait of Mary Joseph Lyons is pinned at the top left. Mary Joseph Lyons and her husband, Albro Lyons were black abolitionists in Antebellum, New York. Property ownership was a condition for suffrage. The Lyons family owned multiple properties in Seneca Village and lived elsewhere. Other transformed images include images of contemporary women of color in New York who were then experiencing the seizures of their fully paid for properties just as the people of Seneca Village had in their time.

Artist Tomashi Jackson discusses the iconic Black women featured in the work Heiresses

TRANSCRIPTION

My name is Tomashi Jackson. I'm a visual artist. 

"Love Rollercoaster" was a solo exhibition at the Wexner Center for the Arts in Columbus, Ohio. The paintings made for the Love Rollercoaster series are comprised of Greek canvas textiles, American canvas, American voting ephemera that’s both contemporary and historic that was given to me–that was shared with me from across Ohio by friends of the Wexner Center for the Arts.

For that project, I interviewed members of the security staff at the Wexner Center, all of whom were black, some of them young, some of them middle-aged, some of them older. We spoke over Zoom and I asked them questions about their experiences voting. For one person, their first experience voting was Barack Obama's second presidential term. They had a joyous experience with other students. Other people had other experiences from previous generations in Ohio of wild gerrymandering. So the, their experiences were varied. 

I chopped up our conversations with songs from the Ohio Players catalog of music. All of the pieces are titled after songs made by the Ohio Players. Love Rollercoaster really encapsulated for me this up and down experience of hope and disappointment, of ambition, of exclusion, of you know, striving to participate in the democratic process that is you know, this, this storied noble American institution. But that is inherently based on disenfranchisement of Indigenous and Black people.

Artist Tomashi Jackson discusses voter disenfranchisement in Black communities of Ohio

TRANSCRIPTION

My name is Tomashi Jackson. I'm a visual artist. 

Blessed Be The Rock is one of the three new paintings about Colorado at MCA Denver, part of Across The Universe. Blessed Be The Rock is taken from a gospel song that I remember being sung in the church that I grew up going to. Blessed Be the Rock of My Salvation. 

I chose that title, or that title chose this piece, or the piece chose that title inspired by Ruth Flowers and the Deerfield settlers having attempted to build rocks of their own foundation. The new works are inspired by narratives of black people in Colorado seeking to create spaces for self-determination, safety, and empowerment. 

I made the surface it didn't, it didn't otherwise exist in the world. It's a bit of a patchwork. The surface is made of canvas, wood and, uh, blue textile. The blue textile was a gift given to me last summer by a Coloradan. The surface is embedded with marble dust from the Yule Quarry, where the Lincoln Memorial was famously unearthed. The image that's painted into the surface is of Ruth Cave Flowers in front of the home that she built with her mother. The photograph is dated somewhere in the 1970s, in what was then called “The Little Rectangle” section of Boulder, which was a black community in Boulder that is no longer, but was the place where black people were able to build their homes and lived in community for decades. 

I saw this image in the film, “This is Not Who We Are”, and the filmmakers were kind enough to help guide me and Florence Blackwell in our research around that imagery. Another image is painted into the surface in black, on black of settlers in front of a building in Deerfield, Colorado, the Black colony established by Oliver Toussaint Jackson. And that image is dated somewhere between 1920 and 1930. Finally, the image that is printed in halftone line, opposing halftone lines on the PVC vinyl that drapes the front of the painting is just the edge of two choir members at Second Baptist Church in 1972.

Artist Tomashi Jackson talks about the process of creating her painting "Blessed Be The Rock"

TRANSCRIPTION

My name is Tomashi Jackson. I'm a visual artist. 

Interstate Love Song was made in 2017 from my time in Georgia, site specific research in and around Atlanta, Georgia. The book that's my grounding text for this work is called White Flight Atlanta in the Making of Modern Conservatism by historian Kevin M. Kruse. I had support from the Georgia State University Archives at Kennesaw State University. That's where I found these images, an image of suburbanites in Cobb County, demonstrating to resist the creation of a Pitts Road Station. The expansion of public transportation beyond Atlanta, and an image, a more contemporary image of people, mostly women demonstrating together as the friends of Clayton County advocating for funding for public transportation in Clayton County, Georgia. 

So what I found doing research in Atlanta and around Atlanta, around the experience of transportation, was inspired by being stuck in gridlock there, gridlock that was very familiar as someone who grew up in Los Angeles. I didn't know that they suffered from that sort of traffic congestion. So I started asking people questions about their experience of transportation. What came from those conversations were memories of decades of voting referendums, arguing for and against the expansion of public transportation. That always ended with no funding for public transportation.

Artist Tomashi Jackson discusses her artwork Interstate Love Song

TRANSCRIPTION

My name is Tomashi Jackson. I'm a visual artist. 

The Great Sand Dunes in Southern Colorado and the San Luis Valley are just extraordinary. Last summer, I got to visit them for the very first time, and well, I fell in love. And when I'm happy I hear music, <laugh>. I just felt like this was the love song to embody. There I was joined by artist, curator, thinker, and spacemaker, Adam Gildar, who was kind enough to go out there and to trust me <laugh> and to indulge me. 

I think the lyrics of Bobby V from the early 2000s, you know this song that at the time was a hit about a guy wanting to spend time with someone, wanted that person to slow down and get to know them. I felt like it was just perfect for the way that I feel about the Great Sand Dunes, about the Front Range and about my time in Colorado, period. I just would like to slow down and get to know it better.

Artist Tomashi Jackson talk about her work Slow Down (Love Song for the Great Sand Dunes)

TRANSCRIPCIÓN

Autorretrato: Un cuento de dos Michael

Esta es una traducción al español del original en inglés.

Mi nombre es Tomashi Jackson. Soy una artista visual.

Self-Portrait Tale of Two Michaels, Autorretrato: Un cuento de dos Michael, se inspiró en lo que aprendí sobre Michael Brown Jr., quien creció y murió en Ferguson, Missouri, y Michael McDonald, quien pasó sus años de formación en Ferguson, Missouri. En aquel momento yo estaba investigando los casos que condujeron la demanda judicial de Brown contra la Junta de Educación, tratando de visualizar una historia legislativa del espacio público con la educación pública como el sitio en el que se encuentra la pintura. Es una pintura de campo de color pintada sobre gasa colgando libremente, conectada por una tira de lienzo verde que utilizo como pantalla verde durante el proceso de edición del video. Uso esa pantalla verde para mostrar imágenes que grabé de la transmisión en Estados Unidos de Al Jazeera, el programa llamado Ferguson: Una ciudad sitiada. Se trata de un documental de Ferguson después de que el asesino de Michael Brown, Darren Wilson, fue declarado no responsable por dispararle a alguien con las manos en alto mientras suplicaba por su vida en medio de la calle.

Me acompaña en esta pieza Alteronce Gumby. Me uní a él en un estudio de color que cubre casi todo mi cuerpo, a salvo de mi boca, que es libre de sincronizar los labios o encarnar las voces principales de Michael MacDonald y la canción de los Doobie Brothers, "It Keeps You Running" (Te hace seguir corriendo). Sentí que la canción realmente encapsulaba la forma en que yo y muchos otros nos sentimos y seguimos sintiéndonos acerca de ser vulnerables, vulnerables a las percepciones negativas del color que se nos imponen con la probabilidad de la muerte como resultado y la muy grave probabilidad de no rendir cuentas por daño que se nos hace. Así que superpongo esta historia muy contemporánea de la devaluación de la vida de un joven negro en el espacio público con la investigación que estaba haciendo sobre la revalorización de la vida de los niños de color y el espacio público mediante la dotación total de recursos para la educación pública.

SPANISH - Artist Tomashi Jackson on the inspiration behind, Self Portrait: Tale of Two Michaels

TRANSCRIPCIÓN

Heredera

Esta es una traducción al español del original en inglés.

Mi nombre es Tomashi Jackson. Soy una artista visual.

Con la pieza Heiresses: The Central Park Plan, Heredera: El plan del Parque Central, realizada en 2019 como parte de un cuerpo de trabajo titulado Time Out of Mind (Tiempo Sin Pensar), una imagen de Harriet Tubman está fijada en la parte inferior izquierda, un retrato de Mary Joseph Lyons está fijado en la parte superior izquierda . Mary Joseph Lyons y su esposo, Albro Lyons, eran abolicionistas afroamericanos antes de la guerra civil en Nueva York. La propiedad era una condición para el sufragio. La familia Lyons poseía múltiples propiedades en Seneca Village y vivía en otros lugares. Otras imágenes transformadas incluyen imágenes de mujeres contemporáneas de color en Nueva York que estaban experimentando la incautación de sus propiedades totalmente pagadas tal como lo había hecho la gente de Seneca Village en su tiempo.

SPANISH - Artist Tomashi Jackson discusses the iconic Black women featured in the work Heiresses

TRANSCRIPCIÓN

La montaña rusa del amor

Esta es una traducción al español del original en inglés.

Mi nombre es Tomashi Jackson. Soy una artista visual.

Love Rollercoaster, La Montaña Rusa del Amor, fue una exposición individual en el Centro de Arte Wexner en Columbus, Ohio. Las pinturas hechas para la serie La Montaña Rusa del Amor están compuestas de lienzos textiles griegos, lienzos estadounidenses así como votos emitidos por estadounidenses tanto contemporáneos como del pasado que me regalaron amigos del Centro de Arte Wexner, que compartieron conmigo desde todo Ohio.

Para ese proyecto, entrevisté a miembros del personal de seguridad del Centro Wexner, todos afroamericanos, algunos jóvenes, algunos de mediana edad, algunos mayores. Hablamos por Zoom y les hice preguntas sobre sus experiencias votando. Para una persona, su primera experiencia votando fue el segundo mandato presidencial de Barack Obama. Tuvieron una experiencia alegre con otros estudiantes. Otras personas tuvieron otras experiencias de exclusión abierta de generaciones anteriores en Ohio. En otras palabras, sus experiencias fueron variadas.

Corté nuestras conversaciones con canciones del catálogo de música de Ohio Players. Todas las piezas tienen el título de canciones hechas por Ohio Players. La Montaña Rusa del Amor realmente resumió para mí esta experiencia de esperanza y decepción, de ambición, de exclusión, de esforzarse por participar en el proceso democrático que es, esta noble institución estadounidense. Pero eso se basa inherentemente en la privación de derechos de los pueblos indígenas y afroamericanos.

SPANISH -  Artist Tomashi Jackson discusses voter disenfranchisement in Black communities of Ohio

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Bendita sea la Roca

Esta es una traducción al español del original en inglés.

Mi nombre es Tomashi Jackson. Soy una artista visual.

Blessed Be The Rock, Bendita sea la Roca, es una de las tres nuevas pinturas sobre Colorado en MCA Denver, parte de Across The Universe (A través del Universo). Bendita sea la Roca está tomado de una canción de gospel que recuerdo que se cantaba en la iglesia a la que iba de niña. La canción decía Bendita Sea la Roca de Mi Salvación.

Elegí ese título, o ese título eligió esta pieza, o la pieza eligió ese título inspirado por Ruth Flowers y los colonos de Deerfield que intentaron construir rocas de sus propios cimientos. Las nuevas obras están inspiradas en narrativas de personas negras en Colorado que buscan crear espacios para la autodeterminación, la seguridad y el empoderamiento.

Hice una superficie que de otra manera no existiría en el mundo. Es una superficie con variados elementos. La superficie está hecha de lona, ​​madera y tela azul. El textil azul fue un regalo que me hizo el verano pasado alguien de Colorado. La superficie está incrustada con polvo de mármol de la cantera Yule, donde se desenterró el mármol para el famoso monumento a Lincoln. La imagen que está pintada en la superficie es de Ruth Cave Flowers frente a la casa que construyó con su madre. La fotografía está fechada en algún lugar de la década de 1970, en lo que entonces se llamaba la sección "El Pequeño Rectángulo" de Boulder, que era una comunidad negra en Boulder que ya no existe, pero era el lugar donde los afroamericano podían construir sus casas y vivían. en comunidad durante décadas.

Vi esta imagen en la película, "Esto no es lo que somos", y los cineastas tuvieron la amabilidad de ayudarnos y guiarnos a mí y a Florence Blackwell en nuestra investigación sobre esas imágenes. Otra imagen está pintada en la superficie en negro sobre negro de colonos frente a un edificio en Deerfield, Colorado, la colonia de afroamericanos establecida por Oliver Toussant Jackson. Y esa imagen está fechada en algún momento entre 1920 y 1930. Finalmente, la imagen que está impresa en una línea de semitonos, líneas de semitonos opuestas en el vinilo de PVC que cubre el frente de la pintura, es solo el borde de dos miembros del coro en la Segunda Iglesia Bautista en 1972.

SPANISH - Artist Tomashi Jackson talks about the process of creating "Blessed Be The Rock"

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Canción de Amor Interestatal

Esta es una traducción al español del original en inglés.

Mi nombre es Tomashi Jackson. Soy una artista visual.

Interstate Love Song, Canción de Amor Interestatal, fue hecha en 2017 a partir de mi tiempo en Georgia, con una investigación específica del sitio en Atlanta y sus alrededores. El libro que es mi texto base para este trabajo se llama La huida de los blancos de Atlanta en la creación del conservadurismo moderno por el historiador Kevin M. Kruse. Tuve el apoyo de los Archivos de la Universidad Estatal de Georgia en Kennesaw. Ahí es donde encontré estas imágenes, incluyendo una imagen de habitantes de los suburbios en el condado de Cobb, manifestándose para resistir la creación de una estación de Pitts Road, la expansión del transporte público más allá de Atlanta, y una imagen más contemporánea de personas, en su mayoría mujeres, manifestándose juntas como amigas del Condado Clayton abogando por fondos para el transporte público en ese condado de Georgia.

Entonces, lo que encontré al investigar en Atlanta y sus alrededores, en torno a la experiencia del transporte público, se inspiró en estar atrapada en un embotellamiento allí, un embotellamiento que era muy familiar para alguien que creció en Los Ángeles. Yo no sabía que en Atlanta sufrían de ese tipo de congestión de tráfico. Así que comencé a hacer preguntas a la gente sobre su experiencia con el transporte. Lo que surgió de esas conversaciones fueron recuerdos de décadas de referendos electorales, argumentando a favor y en contra de la expansión del transporte público. Eso siempre terminaba sin fondos para el transporte público.

SPANISH - Artist Tomashi Jackson discusses her artwork Interstate Love Song

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Desacelerando (Canción de Amor para las Grandes Dunas)

Esta es una traducción al español del original en inglés.

Mi nombre es Tomashi Jackson. Soy una artista visual.

Las Grandes Dunas de Arena en el Sur de Colorado y el Valle de San Luis son simplemente extraordinarias. El verano pasado pude visitarlos por primera vez y bueno, me enamoré. Y cuando estoy feliz escucho música, <risas>. Sentí que esta era la canción de amor para vivirla. Allí me acompañó el artista, curador, pensador y creador de espacios, Adam Gildar, quien tuvo la amabilidad de salir y confiar en mí <risas> y complacerme.

Creo que la letra es de Bobby V de principios de la década de 2000. Esta es una canción muy conocida que en aquel momento fue un éxito. Se trata de un muchacho que quería pasar tiempo con alguien, quería que esa persona redujera la velocidad para poder conocerse. Sentí que era perfecto para lo que siento por las Grandes Dunas, por el Front Range y por mi tiempo en Colorado. Punto. Sólo me gustaría ir más despacio y conocer mejor.

SPANISH - Artist Tomashi Jackson talk about her work Slow Down (Love Song for the Great Sand Dunes)

TRANSCRIPTION

Hi, my name is Miranda Lash. I am the Ellen Bruss Senior Curator at MCA Denver.

Tomashi Jackson: Across the Universe is the first opportunity to view a range of Jackson's work across nine years, covering the mediums of paintings, printmaking, video, photography, fiber, and sculpture. Through this gathering of work, we get a sense of Jackson's interests that span over many years, including her commitment to looking at issues that affect democracy, such as transportation, education, freedom from violence, and freedom of expression. Through these intricate works, which incorporate collage and video brought together, we get a sense of how color relationships are viewed in juxtapositions to how we understand skin color and race relations. Jackson brings together personal stories with political forces so that we come to understand how individual circumstances are affected by larger issues such as civil rights and systemic racism. Through this body of work, we come to understand the triumphs in civil rights advocacy and the resistance to such movements and how individual actions can play a larger role in the history of democracy.

Across The Universe Exhibition Overview - Miranda Lash, Ellen Bruss Senior Curator

TRANSCRIPTION

Hello, my name is Leilani Lynch and I am the Associate Curator at MCA Denver.

In the first floor galleries at MCA Denver, we have artist Anna Tsouhlarakis's exhibition "Indigenous Absurdities". Much of Tsouhlarakis's work draws from her Native American heritage as a Navajo and Creek woman to create sculpture, video performance, and installation artworks that challenge the aesthetic and conceptual expectations placed upon indigenous artists working today. With this exhibition, she explores Indigenous American humor and its role in processing history, as well as creating and solidifying community and identity. Within the first floor galleries, you'll see how Tsouhlarakis creates humorous and materially layered visualizations of crowdsourced jokes and teasing phrases using sculpture, video, and text-based works.

Thanks for listening to this mobile tour guide. Hope you enjoy the show.

Indigenous Absurdities Exhibition Overview - Leilani Lynch, Associate Curator

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Esta es una traducción del original en inglés

Hola. Soy Miranda Lash, la curadora principal “Ellen Bruss” en el MCA Denver.

Tomashi Jackson: A través del Universo es la primera oportunidad de ver una variedad del trabajo de Jackson a lo largo de nueve años, que abarca los medios de pintura, grabado, video, fotografía, fibra y escultura. Gracias a esta recopilación de trabajos, tenemos una idea de los intereses de Jackson que abarcan muchos años, incluido su compromiso de analizar los problemas que afectan la democracia, como el transporte, la educación, una vida sin violencia y la libertad de expresión. A través de estos trabajos intrincados, que incorporan collage y video, obtenemos una idea de cómo se ven las relaciones de color en yuxtaposición a cómo entendemos el color de la piel y las relaciones raciales. Jackson reúne historias personales con fuerzas políticas para que podamos comprender cómo las circunstancias individuales se ven afectadas por cuestiones más importantes, como los derechos civiles y el racismo sistémico. A través de este cuerpo de trabajo, llegamos a comprender los triunfos en la defensa de los derechos civiles y la resistencia a tales movimientos y cómo las acciones individuales pueden desempeñar un papel más importante en la historia de la democracia.

SPANISH - Across The Universe Exhibition Overview - Miranda Lash, Ellen Bruss Senior Curator

TRANSCRIPCIÓN

Esta es una traducción del original en inglés

Hola. Soy Leilani Lynch, la curadora asociada de MCA Denver.

En las galerías del primer piso de MCA Denver, tenemos la exhibición Absurdos Indígenas de la artista Anna Tsouhlarakis. Gran parte del trabajo de Tsouhlarakis se basa en su herencia nativa americana como mujer navajo y creek para crear esculturas, representaciones de video y obras de arte de instalación que desafían las expectativas estéticas y conceptuales que se imponen a los artistas indígenas contemporáneos. En esta exposición se explora el humor indígena estadounidense y su papel en el procesamiento de la historia, así como en la creación y solidificación de la comunidad y la identidad. Dentro de las galerías del primer piso, se verá cómo Tsouhlarakis crea visualizaciones humorísticas y en capas materiales de chistes y frases burlonas populares utilizando esculturas, videos y obras basadas en texto.

Gracias por escuchar esta guía móvil para la visita guiada. Espero que disfruten de la muestra.

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