On a hot day in early August, 24 people gathered in a studio space in Red Hook, Brooklyn. They all had something in common: All of them were artists. They were also all Black, queer and 40 or younger. Four of T’s editors were on set, and they later reported what we would hear from the participants themselves — that the mood was electric; that the camaraderie was genuine. Not all of them had met before, and yet there was a sense of reunion anyway, the feeling that they recognized one another; an actual previous encounter was a mere technicality.
The shoot was the (years in the making) brainchild of the polymathic artist and frequent T contributor Shikeith, who was inspired to pay homage to the filmmaker Marlon Riggs’s groundbreaking 1989 documentary, “Tongues Untied,” a paean to Blackness, maleness, gayness and the community and affinity that exist among and between Black gay men. The next day, Shikeith and a few of the shoot’s subjects gathered at The New York Times Building to discuss what had transpired on set. While all of them treasured the experience of being among their peers — the word “nourishment” came up again and again, a recognition of the need to have fellow artists with whom they shared not just a racial lineage but one of sexuality and sexual identification — so, too, did a certain frustration: at the reductionism of always being defined by what makes them othered in the culture at large; at not getting to be just an artist, first and last. As the painter Adam Pendleton said at one point, “A project like this is almost a double-edged sword, in the sense that any instance where you’re identified is a terrible moment, actually. When you’re claimed as something — when you’re named as something — that’s not necessarily a moment of celebration or liberation.”
Anyone who stands outside our still stubbornly narrow idea of what an artist should look like or be will understand this lament. I certainly do. Depending on who’s saying it, preceding my professional identities — writer; editor — with the words “Asian” or “woman” can feel like an objective description or a diminution, an asterisk meant to relativize my accomplishments. Categorizing people by what makes them visibly different is lazy, and yet we do it all the time (journalists, including magazine editors, are especially guilty of this). And yet I also am an Asian and a woman, and I cannot deny the joy and comfort I find in those communities, both professionally and personally. To repudiate those identities is not only pointless, it feels like a kind of treason, as well.
The problem, I think, might not be in the naming but in the expectations — what does a queer Black artist look like? What kind of work do they make? What can we expect from them? The answer, as these brilliant and thoughtful artists make clear, is: whatever they want.
