Episode 5: “Cyclical Issues” by Danae Antoine

Transcription:

I think of the Black femme as a character that maintains and holds so many different attributes, stereotypes, nuances, and our roles in this culture. I think the Black femme is seen as a caretaker, the Black femme is seen as aggressive, the Black femme is seen as unattractive, the Black femme encapsulates a lot of different meanings in specifically western culture and I think that it's important for me as a Black femme to really disassemble some of these notions of who we are. And within my own artwork, I really want to express and highlight a sense of vulnerability. [MUSIC]

My name is Danae Antoine. My pronouns are she/they. I occupy Muscogee Land. The identities that I identify within my art— I really try to express and articulate the Black femme experience. The mediums of art that I identify with are paintings. I also do sound insulations, I make sculptures, and I consider myself a conceptual artist. I also do large scale murals. When I think about the art canon, despite the past, I would say 50 years really bringing on more of Blackness as an experience in terms of the art world, that a lot of, you know, people are coming into the world with Black figurative paintings. I think that there's something very nuanced and special about the Black femme experience. I think it's really important that the Black femme is seen as someone who is soft, who is impressionable, who is vulnerable, and who is susceptible, and that she is not a monolith. She is not someone who is above it all. That she is inherently affected by the things around her because I think in our current iteration of the Black femme we have this notion that she is someone who is above it all and she's supposed to save the world and she's supposed to uplift everybody, but the Black femme is also a person. For me my own practice really relies on it being a sense of survival for me. It's a sense of expression and it's something that I lacked for many years.

My family is very woman-centric just by nature. We do have a patriarchal head of the household, but when I think about my family, I think immediately of the woman. It's an interesting situation because I was raised in a very traditional Caribbean household where women were supposed to be subjugated to men and they ultimately are the head of the household, but when the man is not present you have this weird dichotomy of the woman being so encompassing, she can do so many things, but in her own mind she finds herself second to the man. So I mean even from a very early age, I thought that this notion was inherently problematic and I want to challenge that in my own artwork. So for me it's really important that this work encompasses everything that I felt like I was robbed of for around two decades now. And that's why when I make large murals I have a really strong emphasis on making them Black women at rest because that's just something that encompasses my practice, again speaking on vulnerability, feminine expression, talking about our pain, our struggle, and giving the world a more holistic sense of the Black femme.

This project came about under the guise of one of my mentors, Pamela Longa Barty, who is an environmental artist um and we wanted to talk about how we can approach ecofeminism, how I could approach ecofeminism from a more multicultural lens because when you again address the art canon, ecofeminism is a general synopsis of the way that we treat women is the way that we treat the earth and the work, the art work that lies under ecofeminism is often attributed to white women who are very middle class or well-off, who have chosen to address this issue. 

So I started to do some more research on people who had, who lived in more delicate ecosystems and how we understand climate change, we see climate change, but we are ignoring its signs and those who are from more delicate ecosystems— that's the phrase that I like to use referring to like people who live on islands where subtle changes, you know, if there's not enough rainfall [SOUNDS OF RAIN] then the harvest is not, is not plentiful enough and then the whole ecosystem and the financial systems begin to collapse. We don't have that level of vulnerability in the majority of the United States— so I wanted to focus on countries that do have that level of vulnerability and how they're ultimately being ignored. So I focused on women who had to basically sell their bodies for fish near Lake Malawi which is near Tanzania and in Tanzania. And this issue was really important to me because again it encompasses the role of women, the bodily sacrifice of women, and how in issues of war, famine, of just crisis, women are often the people first sacrificing themselves literally um and it made me think about the cycle of pregnancy in how these women are entrenched in this horrible cycle of having to create more life and dealing with death and having to maintain their current way of living through something that they often don't want to do. And I am really so thankful for this project because it, again, opened my eyes and it forced me to see these different nuances of what's really going on and I feel more impassioned about climate change, and not in a way that I think a lot of Americans view climate change more in a way of this is happening now, this is affecting people on a smaller scale, on a more intimate and devastating scale and we need to really start discussing it today. 

When a lot of people make art or they see art they think a lot of it is very frivolous and unnecessary. As Audre Lorde says “poetry is not a luxury”. I think that there is something very valid and very necessary in creating art, not only addressing the climate crisis, but addressing how we are going to choose to sustain and heal ourselves and be better and beautify this world despite everything going on. For me it's a delicate balance of researching making this work and really I use it as a form and a way to inform others and to further inform myself. It just forces me to continue to research and learn about these issues on a more nuanced basis and on the other side of it, it also encourages me to see the resilience, and the strength, and the beauty in itself. So within my practice I make work like this about like these Tanzanian women who have to do these horrible things, but on the other side of my work I do want to emphasize women at rest, women enjoying peaceful moments in their lives because both of these things are important to me. And in my own practice it offers me a sense of reprieve to focus on the quieter, more peaceful, more beautiful moments in life because we have to hold on to these things. Beauty and poetry and art is not a luxury, it's a form of survival at this point.

I've recently started this series called “Trash Diva”, and it is a silly, beautiful, but serious series of self-portraits where I pick up really high feminine roles, and I do costumes, and I do wigs, and I do makeup and I pick up little characters from like, queer and campy movies. And “Trash Diva” is really a huge story about just like how I deal with my own upbringing and poverty and how just being poor, having to deal with homelessness at one point, having to deal with being Black and queer and fat just ultimately makes you a sense, a little bit of an alien in this world. And “Trash Diva” is me holistically accepting all those different parts of myself and embracing that— I guess I don't like to use the word “broken” but— “non adhering side” of my identity, so “Trash Diva” is really about embracing and loving my expression of femininity despite other people telling me and trying to reinforce to me that it doesn't matter. Yeah and I think it's such a fun quirky little series. And I love it. And in regards to my community, “Trash Diva” does deal with my upbringing as a Caribbean person. But, what I really love to do and what I have been doing is I've been doing these, again, large scale murals of specifically Black women in nature. I did one, I did I think at this point three in Atlanta and it's my way of giving back to to the community because making a mural and erecting such a large piece of artwork is a community service, and I wanted to say something and I wanted to heal somebody when I created this piece, and I have Black women who come up to me all the time and they just say that they love seeing a beautiful woman at rest. They love seeing a woman relaxing in nature and they love seeing a Black woman who doesn't have to be a superhero, that she is just a person and she is just trying to rejuvenate herself, and again within other pieces that I’ve done, I've really decided to take in this and disassemble parts of my culture and parts of this these patriarchal structures and really analyze why I do the things that I do

A lot of my family is still very entrenched in these traditional Judeo-Christian beliefs and I find that their wisdom comes from a place of love, of course, but it is very much filtered through that Judeo-Christian beliefs. So it's hard for me to get that type of wisdom from them. What I do get from them is a lot of observation. I do observe them a lot and I see their patterns and I see their strength and I see where these women really shine, and that's what I really want to highlight in my art.

Another place that I get wisdom from is actually my, I would say return to traditional African religions. I practice ancestral veneration and a lot of that practice means coming to your ancestors, coming to them as a humble being asking them for advice, asking them for assistance and help with things, and I believe that once, you know, my ancestors have transitioned and when they exist in like this higher plane, they have a better sense of the actual, you know, the actual scope of the the universe and I feel like I have gotten so much from them. A lot of wisdom on how to fully be myself, how to fully engage with my femininity, how to embrace my queerness, which is something that my family is still struggling to accept. And how art and ego don't necessarily have to exist in the same world. That the art that you make, the art that you do, doesn't need to come from a place of you trying to over-establish yourself but rather it needs to be about self-healing. Healing yourself, healing your family, healing your community and that the art that you create is essentially much bigger than you. [MUSIC]

MUSIC & SOUNDS USED:

Theme music : Water Fluid - Music by ItsWatR from Pixabay

Lovely but Damaged - Sound Effect by SamuelFrancisJohnson from Pixabay

Atlantic storm - Sound Effect from Pixabay

Waves and tears sad piano music with calm ocean waves - Music by JuliusH from Pixabay

Ambiant relax sounds - Music by Daddy_s_Music from Pixabay