That Joy and Rage: An Interview with Curtis Talwst Santiago

Wednesday, September 9, 2020

by Preston Pavlis

A variety of place and experience are integral to Edmonton-born Curtis Talwst Santiago’s working life. His art—which includes installation, painting, sculpture and more—is both a living coalescence and an informed subversion of tradition, history and popular culture. I spoke with Santiago from his studio and home in Munich, Germany, in anticipation of his upcoming exhibition at Latitude 53 in 2021. During our conversation, Santiago went into detail about his current studio process, his appreciation for Frank Bowling and his affinity for clowns, among many other things.

Preston: I think the first thing to address would be the fact that your show at Latitude was literally supposed to be like, right now. (laughs) And due to the COVID-19 pandemic it’s been delayed a whole year.

What direction were you initially looking to take for the exhibition and how has that direction shifted? 

Curtis: Well, the direction hasn’t shifted, it’s still in the hopes that we can do it next year. It was supposed to be in conjunction with my show at the AGA called Liming, which is the Trinidadian word for hanging out, gathering, a group of people just chilling. The show is about collaboration, so I was looking to reconnect with my old band that I used to play with in Edmonton over, oh my God, almost like 15, 20 years ago. Bring in different artists and people and use this space as a place to ‘lime’ and see what develops from possible collaborations, whether it’s food or poetry or music, or just parties, or whatever happens from that.

I would still like to do that, so I’d rather just wait than try to do things digitally. But yeah, it was about gathering people and seeing what could happen as a collective, because my creative time in Edmonton, especially with music, was spent so collaboratively.

Preston: It seems like collaboration has been an important part of your practice. I’m thinking back to some of your work at the Drawing Center, those large brick murals, which kind of blew my mind that they were paper. I only found that out doing research for this interview, I thought they were brick and I’m like, “how did he get those up there?” Those things must be super heavy…

Curtis: Oddly enough, it’s the structures that are really heavy but the panels, the actual surfaces, if you were to take them off are fairly light. Yeah that was definitely a collaboration with myself and my studio fabricator, Brian Humphrey, who’s also from Edmonton. 

Preston: Oh really? 

Curtis: Yeah, he used to teach at the U of A and he had a design store, back in the day, called 29 Armstrong with a friend of ours, Amedeo. He was in Red Hook in New York. Through him, I got the Pioneer Works residency, which was really instrumental for my career.

He was the studio manager for the artists who started at Pioneer Works with this guy Dustin Yellin, who makes large glass pieces. And so Brian and I just always had this rapport from when we were young and we were very comfortable creating and sharing around each other.

I also knew he was a design genius, so I could tell him, “this is what I want to make, this is how I want it to function,” and he would be able to do the alchemy behind it and create these surfaces. 

Preston: Where do you think that appreciation for collaboration stems from?

Curtis: From music. I was never a Prince-type musician who could do everything himself. So it was like being in a band, seeing what the frequencies were, how they could meld with all these different people coming together and when you hit it, it’s just like one sound. 

Painting can be very lonely, you know… the act of drawing on the surface and all those things. So it’s like, I wouldn’t want to spend all of my time alone in this medium so I found a great way to be the introvert that I am at times, but then also be engaged with other folks. 

Preston: I feel like, myself, I end up just working on a single thing in a dark garage for ages. Sometimes it’d be nice to break out and do something with other people.

Curtis: Yeah, absolutely. When it comes time to draw there can’t be anyone but us, and that can be a time where we learn much about ourselves and dive deeper and it can get quite lonely. I always think of Joni Mitchell’s line: “I am a lonely painter. I live in a box of paints.” I remember hearing that, and even though it’s kind of melancholic, there’s still something very romantic about it.

Preston: It’s such a romantic idea, the ‘lonely painter’, but actually doing it is a different story. (laughs) 

I’m curious about what your apprenticeship with Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun was like. 

Curtis: It was very experimental. He’s a nontraditional person and that’s the thing, when we think tradition, we think so much about the Western canon and Eurocentric ideas of apprenticeship. And my whole experience, the more I sit back and look at it, was the most organic and nonWestern idea of apprenticeship. I just spent time with an elder you know, I found his studio, knocked on his window and asked if I could study with him. He said I could hang around and I would just sit by him, paint and watch him paint.

It was never ‘this is how you do something’ or ‘stretch my canvases’ or anything like that. It was just like, I would make next to him and we’d share ideas. It was more just seeing how he handles his business and galleries and how he handles collectors. It was by being in proximity that really formed the artist that I am, because I didn’t go to school, and so it really propelled me in ways that school couldn’t.

Preston: In thinking about some of your influences, I noticed in the video walkthrough that you gave of your show at the Drawing Center, when you’re speaking about those brick pieces you mentioned the Gee’s Bend quilters and medieval tapestries. So I’m wondering, how do you integrate influence into your work and how do influences enter into your sphere?

Curtis: I think over time, for me, influence has been able to be absorbed in a way. Like, I think through hip hop, how let’s say Kendrick or maybe Drake, who does it a lot, is able to adopt a flow to let you know what he’s referencing only for a short period, and then go back to his own. He’s taking you to this era, to this culture; he’s done West Coast, Southern, UK. But then he touches back in because he’s mastered his own voice. He’s mastered what the ‘Drake flow’ is.

I feel like it’s okay to borrow a line, if the next line is your line. Or say, if one line is de Kooning and the line next to it is Tintoretto or Basquiat… I think essentially they are all talking to each other. It’s also an innate sensibility that one has to have so that it doesn’t just feel like mimicry. I was watching a Miles Davis documentary and, I mean, sometimes you’re just born with it.

I’m always consuming things and looking at things. I remember when I first started, trying to copy a Basquiat. But then I realized, I’m really trying to figure out how he layers. How is that block of red layered over the blue, how do they weave together in that quilt like way?

I remember recognizing like, okay I’m just copying, now it’s time to try something completely different. Through that exploration, I find all the time that I come to more and more of my own flow. 

Preston: How you’re describing the Basquiat, it’s almost like you have to get to that point where you’re not copying their work, but sort of looking into how they do it.

Curtis: It’s the timing. Like with cooking, when do you boil pasta? Italians know with fresh pasta… Just knowing when to apply that ingredient, I think is so key.

Preston: Are there any new influences for you at the moment? And are there new materials or ways of working that you’re currently interested in?

Curtis: Ambera Wellman. Younger contemporary painters like Devin B. Johnson and Marcus Jahmal, that whole school of New York Black kids that I was fortunate to be in the city at the same time with, and who genuinely gravitate towards each other. Oh, but there’s so many influences and people that inspire me, but also, at the same time I try not to look at a lot of new stuff. 

In terms of materials, I feel like I might be coming to the end of my use of aerosol, as I see it more and more. It’s always been used, but a certain way it’s used has become really prevalent and it just feels kind of dated.

I’m really into fucking around with watercolour in a non-traditional way. I’ve found these watercolour pencils and ink blocks that just make sense for me to use. For a minute there, I was really into super soft pastels; the materials and how I work always change with how long I will be somewhere with my transient lifestyle.

As I start to set up in Munich with my family, my partner and I having our first child, I’m like, “oh, I'm going to be here longer”, so let me really get back into investing in oil. Let me work in a way that is slower and not concerned with, ‘okay, I gotta pack this up, roll this up, ship this…’ whatever.

Plus I have a studio where things and ideas can just sit. It’ll be interesting to see how that continues to develop. Because of my diorama practice, which has me using anything from clay to all sorts of paint and other materials, I don’t know where it’ll roll next.

I have an idea for woodcarving that I’m interested in exploring because I want to make toys for my baby. We’ll see how that develops; I was cutting some wood today and the fucking amount of dust it created…  (laughs)  I’m like, yo, I can’t have this right next to my painting.

So I will get this out of my system and then perhaps transition into more of a sculptural space. 

Preston: How do you find a balance between doing more spontaneous work, like maybe drawings or other more experimental things, versus larger projects like the Toronto Biennial?

Curtis: Well COVID has forced me into a slower mode where projects are delayed, although some projects are picking back up, but for awhile there, it was hard to have moments of spontaneity. Preparing for the Drawing Center, I knew I had to get these things done. That was probably one of the most pressured situations that I’ve put myself into because I hold that institution in such high regard due to the works I’ve seen there. I wanted to show out, I wanted to really take it to another level, so it was more of a focused thing, but I would have a canvas on the side where I could just make a mess. Make a mistake, fuck up early on in the process before time started to close-in. 

But yesterday, I watched that Miles Davis documentary and I wanted to make a painting of Miles Davis and I started it and I’m like, ‘Oh, this is cheesy as fuck.’ Like why make a painting of Miles Davis? But at the same time, at the end of my practice, hopefully you can look through my body of work and there’s hundreds of works. So why not just indulge in that Miles Davis painting for the day? Instead of thinking that this has to be in a gallery, why not just fucking make the thing?

So it’s something I wrestle with, and right now being like, can I go back to just being super spontaneous now that I’ve put expectations on a medium that I didn’t have expectations of before? It’s something I wrestle with through just allowing myself to be frustrated one day and then going in the studio the next day and having no agenda.

I’ve been in the studio all day today and I’ve been trying to set up a rig so I can hang some blinds from my window because the sun pounds through right about now, and it gets super hot. So I’ve spent the entire day drilling and cutting and not even touching this painting, after we talk, I’ll probably smoke a J and get on this canvas.

It’s important to not be so precious about it, like ‘this exhibition is going to make or break me.’ Allowing oneself to let loose, and not to have that pressure. I think in the art market and the art world we’ve put so much pressure on excellence, and I’m from the perspective of questioning the objective of excellence, or maybe the pursuit of what excellence can be. Excellence for me would be surprising myself with something that maybe I initially don't like but then much later I fucking love.

Preston: You're speaking about this idea of excellence in the art world and how that affects the way artists work. As a bit of a side note I remember seeing on your Instagram, your visit to Frank Bowling’s studio. 

Curtis: Oh yeah. 

Preston: So I’m wondering, seeing a master artist like Frank Bowling, what was that experience like? 

Curtis: It was like rocket fuel, being there and seeing an artist that I felt like I could connect to. He came to America thinking that he would join the Black struggle. Like, “where are the Black artists at?”, and then being kind of disillusioned because the conversation throughout the different diasporas is different, with America being such a unique situation. And Frank, he’s got strong colonial roots too; there’s that complication of being from a different generation.

A quote I believe I read, said the difference was that he bought his ticket to America, and that right away sets up for a different dynamic. I remember going to Henry Taylor’s show with a group of some of my favourite young Black artists, and then we all went for dinner afterwards. I thought we were going to launch into a conversation about how Taylor applied the paint and the works in the show. It ended up being focused around the white gaze and the white people that were there looking at this work. 

It was kind of fitting that we went up to this super wealthy neighbourhood to see the show. And as we’re leaving the show, we’re walking down the street and my friend yells at this guy, “Hey, Steve!” He turns around and then realizes that he doesn’t know us. He gets kinda panicked and starts walking faster and looks around for his security detail… and it turns out he was Donald Trump’s main speech writer.

Preston: Are you serious?

Curtis: Yeah, and we were just like, right, this is the neighbourhood we’re in. We see this guy and then we go and have dinner, it was so surreal. These artists were like, “Well, you’re not from here, so you don’t understand.” And I had to concede that to some degree, like, I don’t understand the American psyche of what you all have grown up with in your schools and everything. 

Canada is not much better with the telling of the story. But I feel like with the Caribbean family having to keep their cultural roots alive through Cariwest and restaurants and community centre parties and things like that, there is a sense of at least knowing, to some degree, where part of my history comes from. Even though we were brought to the Caribbean… it's just all of these nuances.

So that being said, being able to connect to Frank’s work, but also seeing how much work goes into it… and that’s just his New York studio. To see these works that you’re blown away with and to think that, however many years ago, curators, gallerists and museums would see these works and not feel the unction to show them immediately.

It was just stacks of paintings, on paintings, on paintings. It felt like such an honour. My partner co-curated Frank’s show with Okwui [Enwezor] here at Haus der Kunst before the Tate thing. So she’s the person who really introduced me to his work, and getting an introduction on that level I was able to like really, you know, get underneath.

Preston: That’s so cool. 

Curtis: Yeah. It was wild, it’s such a beautiful space. And the area… you can imagine artists during that time having a studio in an area where now you’d have to be like Jeff Koons or someone to have a studio there.

Preston: Frank Bowling is such an interesting figure because, like you said, he didn’t really have his first major retrospective, and wasn’t given his first flowers really until the Tate show.

I feel like in some ways his story is connected to yours, because he’s from the Caribbean, specifically Guyana, but he lived and worked in so many different places including the UK and America. How does your experience of living and working in different places affect your work and your life?

Curtis: I was watching a James Baldwin documentary and he talks about this school teacher, who he had when he was very young, who took him to these crazy opera performances and just recognized that there was something special about him. And he said, because of that alone, he knew that not all white people were racist. He lives in a racist country, under its racist institutions, but not all white people are the Devil. Traveling reminds me of that. It’s fucked up, like Malcolm X will talk about getting out of America, what that did for him… Baldwin, other African Americans who’ve gone to Europe… Josephine Baker and Nina Simone.

And you go, and of course you’re gonna be faced with some racist bullshit. But for the most part, you’re able to just exist as a human being. What Portugal did for me, was allow me to get a sense of how good humans can actually be to each other.

Strangers. I had a moment in Portugal where I was walking to a market and I went the wrong direction and this old guy just comes and loops his arm through my arm. I show him this market on my map and he goes “No, no, no.” He walks with me almost 25 minutes, up a hill, to where the market is and then lets go of my arm. Moments like that, time and time again, where I’m expecting to be met by people who faced certain things in the previous generation when it was Portugal and Africa fighting. Their sons going to die in Africa, their brothers, friends, themselves. And yet I was met with such warmth and I will not ignore the privilege of the fact that I’m treated differently because I don’t look directly Angolan or Cape Verdean, or I’m not from a colony they recognize.

But what it showed me on face-level value, when I was in my neighbourhood every day going to work, smiling, saying hi to people, I was embraced. So traveling has really opened me up to those things. Being in South Africa, you can see that the system gets to a point where Black folks are oppressing Black folks, wealthier folks are oppressing…

It was a necessary change for the lens, I think. And then also just being able to see different collections around the world. Being able to get in front of paintings that shift my whole practice or give insight into what I’m searching.

Preston: While you were in Portugal, did you find any other works like the painting with the Black Knight [Chafariz d’El-Rey]? 

Curtis: I found a Black Jesus in an old monastery. A wall fresco that was kind of just fading away. I went up there with CBC and we’re looking at this fresco and we’re like “Is that a Black Jesus?” And straight up, yeah that’s what it was. 

So we saw things like that, but often I found portrayals of a Moorish time period. They were works done during that time; anything else after like 1500, 1600 is going to be like a propaganda kind of thing. Like ‘they just came and slaughtered’ and ‘the Moors left nothing, they were infidels’ and meanwhile, the aqueducts and so much of the architecture and everything is from the Moors. 

Being in Portugal also made me realize that, conquering is conquering is conquering. Just because the Moors were dark-skinned and Black didn’t make them heroes.

It was still this human idea of like, ‘I'm going to go somewhere that isn't mine and just take shit and bring my culture and bring them into the civilized world.’ So yeah, I think it opens things up and makes them more complex, which is necessary for me to have more nuance within what I’m doing.

Preston: What would you say is the role of an understanding of history within your work? For me, I think of the fact that the Moors ruled Portugal for 700 years, and the history of colonialism and the Atlantic slave trade is about 600 years old. Thinking about time in that way, really puts things into perspective about how things rise and fall. 

Curtis: And how quickly one story can be forgotten and rolled over with a new one. With the earthquake in Portugal, I think it’s 1755, they uncovered all of these Roman ruins like an amphitheater and things that they just had no idea were there.

By no means am I so well-versed in history that I can say that it truly informs the work. I’m interested in the idea of how we imagine things the way we want them to be. And then we just paint it so, sing it so, and that’s how it is for a time until it’s either debunked or just forgotten.

Preston: That sort of makes me think of the beaded suits of armour that you’ve made. Those works have often been spoken about as being a mode of defence. But in my mind they also sort of imply this act of going into battle.

Being a Black artist and a Black person today making these works, especially during this time, do you think… and I guess a side note is that the suits of armour are also made of these vibrantly coloured glass beads. I’m wondering, is there a space for rage and joy to co-exist? 

Curtis: Absolutely. I think to be a person who feels oppressed or a minority, they have to coexist because otherwise you become fractured and you’re already fractured into many different versions of yourself, in the world we live in now. 

If you’re a person of colour in a predominantly white society, you wear all these masks and perform all these roles and constantly live in a space of like, closing your door.

Let’s say you watch a Tik Tok video that comes from the South and it’s a dance that you can connect to and you feel this joy, but then, just the rage of what you’re experiencing outside of your door… yeah, rage and joy I think they’re often the same. They’re both necessary to just make it through the day. It’s healthy to feel rage. If you didn’t feel rage about the things you’re seeing or the ways you feel offended then yeah, you’re not really living. You’re just numb. You’re desensitized to it. 

I think that there should be space for artists to depict both. If I go there, then I’m thinking about who the work is pleasing. Is it pleasing myself? Is it pleasing the community? Who is the work for? I feel like the minute I start to really bring those audiences into the studio, it’s at a detriment to myself, at least for my practice. It does me no good to constantly be thinking about what people think of me or which group will be satisfied.

Maybe some artists can work that way and their work demands it and their ideas demand it. But I don’t think it does my work good.

Preston: With all of these different audiences that view your work, what do you hope translates for them?

Curtis: That they’re viewing the work of what society would deem an artist. We’re not looking at a Canadian or an African Canadian or a man. That they look at my body of work beginning with music, and see someone who was just consistently creative and consistently explored ideas.

But I also recognize that with the way the art world functions there are moments where you can be specific and then have hopes that it does translate. Like, for example, when I created the Eric Garner piece and showed it at the Studio Museum, I hoped that it would allow people to grieve. Allow people to see optimism not in the moment that it happened, but just the faith that we have to go forward. And this has brought awareness hopefully, but God, since then, how many… you know? And I think that is why I would never make another piece like that because there is a certain amount of naiveté that needs to exist to make something so honest and sincere.

To recreate that now I would just be playing with tropes and, I don’t know, it just wouldn’t feel honest. 

Preston: Can you speak a bit about this new series of dioramas with the clown figure that you’ve been working on? 

Curtis: The Smokey Robinson song, Tears of a Clown has always been that joy and rage. It encapsulates so much, but there’s nuance behind it because he’s got this sweet voice.

*sings* If there’s a smile on my face and it’s like, yeah, positive, it’s only there just to fool the public. I started getting into the physicality of being a clown. So like seeing this mime video of David Bowie, he would explore different mediums and document his exploration and not necessarily need to present the video in a museum context. I think when he made it at the time it was just for him to get into a deeper connection with his body and his own creativity.  

Seeing that left an impact on me, of how beautiful and graceful clowns are. So then I started watching more clown videos, and often you’d see in the clown videos, the organizer of the act would play the heel. So he looks like he’s the dumb clown, yet he’s playing all the instruments and taking all the abuse and doing the most physical work. Meanwhile, the really good-looking clown is just there as a distraction.

So all of those things I really could connect with and draw parallels to life, the art world, this current COVID moment, how I feel in the art world at times. I found this intense desire from institutions and people to “Speak, tell us what you're thinking now!” And also, the desire for the performance of Black artists or artists of colour who are, all of a sudden, now thrust in the spotlight, made me feel sad in a sense, like the clowns. Each clown is also supposed to emote something different, be it joy or sadness or rage. I feel like through clowning there’s so many emotions that can be conveyed and so many layers of meaning.

Preston: In your experience, being in all of these different places, seeing the way artists work and live, are you hopeful, cynical or sort of in the middle about the Western art world?

Curtis: I can’t remember now who I just saw, she was speaking about when the art world became the art market. There’s so much range within that word. Some people are a part of the ‘art world’ and I think most artists aspire to be a part of that world, where you’re with your peers, other work, people who inspire you. You’re celebrated amongst each other, and there’s this respect and camaraderie and you get engaging curators who are interested in and willing to push the work in new places. 

Then there’s the art market, if all of those things go well and some luck and divine timing, then you enter it and that could be lucrative. Or for a short period of time, it can make you feel like you’ve stepped out of the economic class that you’re in. 

If I was cynical, I wouldn’t be doing it. I wouldn’t have ideas. It wouldn’t still bring me the pleasure that it does. And again, I’m at one level, but then let’s talk to Gerhard Richter or let’s talk to Cicely Brown or Kara Walker about what they feel (laughs) … who are having conversations and dealing with institutions in ways that I still have no idea.

The collectors… Lynette, sitting with Lynette…  see, this is the art world. This is why I’m thinking I could be cynical.

Preston: Lynette Yiadom-Boakye? 

Curtis: Yes. Sitting one evening in London at a super high-end Indian restaurant talking about Turner and Sargent and I’m just like, “Oh, kill me. Now.” (laughs)  This is the art world.

Like, this is what I dreamed of. I hope I never lose that. We’re the same age. She might be a little bit older, I mean, I don’t think so, but I’m in awe of this mighty artist and she sees something in me enough to give time, you know? So because of moments like that and connections with artists like her, I think I could never be jaded on the art world.

I will hopefully still be an artist in my fifties or sixties or seventies. Fifties is 10 years from now, for me, that’s still a long fucking time. So why am I worrying or beating myself up about something I’m doing for maybe a year, two years?

There’s still so much more to make. And I remind myself of that when I think about Frank Bowling’s racks on racks of paintings, and how many unfinished canvases might’ve been laying around Manet’s studio. You just gotta keep painting. I think the worry blocks us from making when we just gotta keep making and exploring.

That’s what I’m trying to tell myself and what’s been good about new studios, moving and moving. It’s almost in a sense, you set up a new studio and there’s potential to reinvent the practice a little bit. It’s like, “Oh, well I'm going to buy this block of clay for the studio”, I didn’t have clay in my last one. So immediately that changes things to some degree, if I’m disciplined enough to just pick up the new material.

Curtis Talwst Santiago (b. 1979, Edmonton, Alberta) studied as an apprentice of Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun. Santiago has exhibited internationally at venues such as The FLAG Art Foundation, New York, NY; The New Museum, New York, NY; The Eli and Edythe Broad Museum at Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI; the Institute of Contemporary Art at Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA; the University of Saskatchewan, Saskatchewan, Canada; The Pérez Art Museum Miami, Miami, FL; Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, Canada; and the SCAD Museum of Art, Savannah, GA; among others. The artist was included in the inaugural 2019 Toronto Biennial of Art in Toronto, Canada, the SITE Santa Fe SITELines.2018 Biennial, Casa Tomada, in Santa Fe, NM, and was featured in the 2018 Biennale de Dakar in Dakar, Senegal. The artist's solo exhibition Can't I Alter, opened in February 2020 at The Drawing Center, New York, NY. His work is in the permanent collection of the Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, NY.

This interview was conducted over two separate sessions on July 27 & July 28, 2020.

Special thanks to Curtis Talwst Santiago and Latitude 53.