Art as Activism: Esmaa Mohamoud
Exploring the voices of Black artists with art curator, historian and educator Antoine J. Girard.
So much conversation can exist in the art world over success, what defines it and the shortcuts one can take. We’ve moved away from the seductive fifteen minutes of fame art prophet Andy Warhol promised us, to the compressed fifteen seconds our Instagram Stories hold. While so many of the voyeuristic omens Warhol preached about authenticity and the speeding up of culture proved to be accurate, no one could predict the global halt we’ve all experienced. A shift so strong that the spaces in the art world, galleries and museums who have historically prided themselves on their ability to hold expensive expressions of humanity, were also left wondering where to turn.
I wanted to reach out to four artists that challenge and cultivate new positions of connectivity, that lead the way—artists not afraid to create community in what’s missing. The voices of the artist originate from vastly different places: Otis Kwame Kye Quaicoe of Ghana, Esmaa Mohamoud of Canada, Murjoni Merriweather of Maryland and from my home state of Texas, Riley Holloway. They represent the moment.
In my experience as a curator, the voices of artists of color can work in chorus, expressing shared human truth and hardships, but the true intellect is mastered only when listening closely for their individual differences and high pitches and wildest dreams for us. It is more widely known than ever that Art, especially that made from creative minds of people from African descent are not monolithic. No two walks of life are the same.
The task was simple: open up a dialogue where the artist can comment on how they are maneuvering professional creative careers ahead in the frightening uncertain reality of our “new normal.”
— Antoine J. Girard.
Kicking off this series is Esmaa Mohamoud, an African-Canadian multidisciplinary artist who explores the realm of Blackness via sculptures and installation-based projects. Through immersive experiences, her body of work invites the viewers to question the ways Black bodies navigate spaces whilst confronting, reimagining and performing racial and gender dynamics. She is the winner of the 2019 Toronto Friends of the Visual Arts Awards and is currently working on a number of projects including Kehinde Wiley’s artists-residency ‘Black Rock Senegal’.
LOCATION: Toronto, Canada
MEDIUM: Sculpture and installation
INSTAGRAM: @thequeenthrone
When did you discover you were an artist?
Real early. When I knew-knew, I was probably six years-old. I don't know if you guys have this in America, but there's this show [in Canada and the UK] called Art Attack that would come on every day at 4:00 PM. After school I would rush home to catch this program. There was this English guy who was the host; he would make art projects every episode and you would make it with him. I think at about six years-old, I was telling my parents that I was going to be an artist. I didn't think it was possible, but I wanted to be an artist. High school is when I was like, ‘I got to do this for a living.’
Can you talk about what your practice looks like today in the current climate?
To date, my practice has been about Black bodies and their navigation in contemporary society. I've been really interested and invested in invisibility and visibility. I've also been really interested in the vernacular of athleticism, although now my upcoming work is moving away from [this] and moving more towards financial literacy and the policing of Black bodies. It is still about the navigation of Black bodies in contemporary spaces, just I want to look at it through a different lens than what I've been doing thus far with sports.
Do you feel like the world has finally caught up to what you're saying? I feel like everyone's more politically conscious and aware at this moment.
I would say that the people who got it always got it. But I think that what I'm seeing now is with all these Black Lives Matter movements and things like that, I'm noticing that older white folks are starting to get it too, where even five years ago, this was different. There has been an undeniable awakening in North America and the world about the ways in which we actually treat Black people. I've seen a complete 360 of what white collectors used to appreciate versus what they're appreciating now. We're seeing the Black art market just go the fuck up—it's these awakenings. I notice people are changing, for sure.
There's so much speculation on what the Black artist is making and responding to. Does your work ever feel labored by some of that gaze? Do you feel tied to that? Are you making work to respond to that?
I feel like I'm making work that responds to the time and to my experiences. I do feel like I am labored and exhausted by what people put on me and what they expect me to make, but I'm always going to be true to me and make what I believe needs to be seen. We need to be talking about gender in sports. We need to be talking about sexuality in sports. These are all conversations that need to be had, and we're just stumbling on them now. What I try to do is to create work that is responding to what's going on right now. Your practice will shift, depending on what's happening.
I found your work to be so refreshing because it was such an individual perspective, but it is actually super universal as you unpack it. When we talked before, it was sort of unpacking the WNBA and rules and regulations around women and athleticism. I thought that was such a fresh take in the art world, because it's usually this Trojan Greco-Roman male body that's usually white and perfect, and that's what we're sort of having to respond to. I really liked your work because it to me was so unique. How did you come to that?
Really through just my experiences and what I was seeing and I thought that there was a conversation that needs to be had. I grew up in Canada where the politics around Blackness is to deny what's going on. It's to pretend it's not happening, to pretend that Canada is so diverse and it's not racist. Canada is so racist. The difference between Canadian racism in American racism is that American is in your face, and that's the racism I prefer. I prefer to know that someone doesn't fuck with me. I don't like to be eating dinner and find out that somebody's a racist. Canadians have passive-aggressive racism. So I was just reflecting on what I was seeing.
What type of artist and artworks are you drawn to outside of what you do?
I like weird shit. You have to remember that I grew up in a predominantly white society where everything I was learning about the arts in my two degrees was about white artists. I had to take what I learned from these white artists and adapt Blackness to it. One of my all-time favorite artists is Richard Serra. Richard Serra ain't got shit to do with race, but I loved what he was saying about the body and the body's connection and reaction to objects. I just took race and I mapped it on to that. I was like, ‘Well, how do Black bodies navigate spaces? How do Black bodies interact with objects?’ I took what I could learn from these artists and put it together with something new. But honestly, Richard Serra's my favorite artist.
When I think about the connections between your work and his, actually it becomes extremely apparent that there are things [in common] , there are environments that you're welcoming people into.
Exactly. It's an experience, too, because as much as I am a sculptor, all my works are installation-based. I'm always trying to create an environment or an experience for people to navigate their body through. What does it mean when we make the room a lot smaller? What's it mean when we paint the walls black? What do all these small gestures actually amount to when it comes to the ways that bodies navigate space? I've always been interested in minimalist work, objects that don't have meaning behind them. Throughout my practice, all my work is about objects and how these objects live. I'm fascinated by objects. Basketballs, flowers, shoes, all these things. They're all objects that inspire me, and I figure out how to manipulate these objects. The reason why I like minimalism is because it's void of that. I can't identify a minimalist object and go, ‘I know what that shit is.’ I've always been more interested in minimalist work, but I like the same Black artists that everybody likes. I'm rooting for them and that's where my heart's at, but secretly, deep down inside, what I don't tell people is I like that boring, white minimalist shit.
No, you're not alone. That's the thing. Because we're so put in positions to be the voices of so much in our community, we’re not allowed to like, for instance, Francis Bacon and Jackson Pollock.
You're Black, so you got to be like, ‘Oh, I like Kehinde Wiley and Glenn Ligon. And I do, I love those guys. I think they're brilliant. I think they've paved the way for artists like me and future artists that are coming up, but you are a product of your environment and I grew up in a white society and I grew up being taught only about white artists. I would ask in class, ‘What about Black artists? When are we going to get some diversity up in here?’ All they taught was whiteness, so I took what I could from it.
Are there any common misconceptions about your work? For example, when I first saw the work, I thought that it was about a queer perspective, and then I learned that it was actually about your experience with being able to play sports.
I think the beautiful thing about art is that everybody comes with their different perspectives, their different experiences and they take what they can from the work. What I want to say is, yes my work came from a particular experience that I had, but who am I to say that this representation of what I went through doesn't apply to somebody that's queer? I believe that good art has the ability to not be one-note. It can't be just one, singular narrative that nobody else has access to. You have to have a point of accessibility. If people want to see it as queer narratives, then it's 100% about queer narratives. If people want to see it about gender narratives, it's 100% about gender narratives. I'm just working from my perspective and the fun part for me is to hear people talk about what they think it's about. People are going to come with their own experiences and see their own things in it and I'm not going to stop them.
I think the only misconception that drives me a little crazy is when people assume that I'm a man, because they don't know who I am. They see the work and they think it's so masculine. I've had so many people be surprised when they meet me. It's so surprising to me, but I guess women are not really seen in the realm of sculpture. Why are we not allowed to use industrial materials? Why have we not pushed past this? For Christ's sake, it's 2021. Women make sculptures and women make industrial sculptures.
The community around you I think is going to be so important, because I honestly look at your work and I think that the world just has not caught up to you yet.
It's hard being in Canada as a Black artist. I say that because a lot of people don't understand. If you're a white artist in Canada, easy-breezy, but if you're a Black artist in Canada, it's harder for the Canadians to get it because there's been so much denial. In the States, there's an acceptance, there's an ownership to the racism that allows works by Black artists to be seen and to be heard in volumes. In Canada, they don't see it as an issue. They're like, "What are you complaining about? We're not racists." I've known about racism from my experiences, I've been knowing it from the experiences of others and I just find that working as a Canadian artist in Canada has been very difficult.
Part of what I'm trying to strive for in the next year is to move back into the American market, because that's where I started my career and I believe that my voice will be heard there. It’s not that Canada hasn't supported me, because honestly, I've been super supported here. I've been collected in museums and I feel all the love. I know that I'm getting opportunities that most people don't get. I'm really thankful and honored by it and surprised by it, to be honest. But I do think that my work would be heard more in the States, because the conversations are actually happening now. You can't have a conversation that isn't happening, if you know what I mean?
I totally do. I totally do.
When they see my work here in Canada, they just want to talk about sports. They want to talk about it topically. They don't want to get into the issues of race. Even when I did my first solo museum show, they were talking about it like it was sports. The vernacular of athleticism is a tool that I use to get people to talk about racism. I had to trick the viewer into talking about race. Because who doesn't love sports? I thought if I used sports, I could trick people into having conversations about race. It fucking worked, but I don't want to have to trick people. I wanted just to be able to have these conversations, so I hope that with my new body of work, which is discussing things like Black body politics and Black bodies and financial literacy that we can start to have these conversations in a more in-depth way that doesn't escape from the reality of racism, if that makes sense.
It totally makes sense, and I'm so thrilled for this audience to be able to be exposed to your work, because everything you said, it offers you so many entry points, but you leave with consciousness. I'm listening to you in awe because you are a multi-layered, thoughtful artist. I am just as much on this journey as you are, and I really, really hope that you get that community that you deserve.
It just would be nice to be around Black folks and people who understand these experiences, too. I think also, the hard part of being in Canada is as much as people want to grasp what's going on, it's not a collective, shared experience. But Black people collectively share these experiences. I think I'm yearning for that Black experience, and I think that's actually what made me apply to Black Rock Senegal [a multidisciplinary artist-in-residence program founded by renowned artist Kehinde Wiley in 2019], because I wanted to be surrounded by Blackness in an environment where I could actually get feedback and criticism about my work from people who actually experience the same things I've experienced, rather than having white people who don't have the experience be like, ‘Oh, your work's great.’ That don't do nothing for me. I need Black folks who know what I'm talking about to criticize my work.