Rashid Johnson

Rashid Johnson (born 1977) is an American artist who produces conceptual post-black art. But hiking, walking, is a real democratized thing,You don’t need fucking anything! To walk. You know? But there aren’t a lot of people of color out there. Who is there with you?. If you are alone, is there an enemy out there, a friend? We think of the grace of it, but also, the obstacles. I think of my body moving while being followed by the police, the robotic movement. Not trying to move quickly. Not making reactions. That isn’t graceful in those terms, it isn’t beautiful or rhythmic. The body is filled with adrenaline. How does the black body function in space, when it’s being witnessed, versus when it’s not? It’s about how the body becomes accustomed to the conditions of stress and anxiety. A lot of my work has dealt with hip-hop, taking materials and tools, combining them with mark-making It’s remixing. I kind of fuck with Cardi B right now. Her delivery, she’s hood and her politics are on point. It wasn’t my intention, but someone came to my studio and asked what the characters have to do with the Central Park Five. We live in a time when we connect things to what’s going on in our current moment, and conversations evolve through these connective tissues, whether they’re intentional or not. I m conscious of how the movement has effectively started breaking down the structure of machismo and how masculinity has functioned as a dominant force. When I call these works Broken Men, I didn’t intend to gender or race them. It was meant as a stand in for the human condition. It’s a literal re-negating on the maleness for me. It had led some people to believe it’s about maleness, but it’s not exclusion. I’ve been thinking maybe they are,That existential journey of man v nature, the witness character sometimes alone or accompanied. In a way, they are hikers, left to their own devices. I think doing anything under the Trump era is not a good thing, nor do I think artists are rewarded by a time that’s as frustrating as the one we happen to have. For artists to abandon their long-held aesthetic and political positions, to have that hijacked by some asshole that comes into office over the course of a couple of years, is quite obnoxious. I wouldn’t want my entire practice to be completely taken over by something so asinine. Rashid Johnson on broken men, the black body and why Trump is bad for art,The Guardian (25 November 2019) Category:Living people Category:Artists Category:1977 births