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All Of It with Alison Stewart
'Lyle Ashton Harris: Our first and last love'
00:26:04
Bronx-born artist and photographer Lyle Ashton Harris discusses his new exhibit of work currently on view at the Queens Museum.
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- [00:00]
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- [00:30]
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Lyle Ashton Harris
Listener support WNYC Studios.
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Alison Stewart
This is all of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. He was born in the Bronx, lived part time in Tanzania, went to college at Connecticut, at Wesleyan, taught school in Ghana and now lives upstate part time. Lyle Ashton Harris has lived a life and we get a glimpse of revealing moments in his show Lyle Ashton Our first and Last Love. It's a mid career retrospective of the photographer's work. Holland Carter of the New York Times wrote about the show. He's turned some three decades worth of loosely curated personal accumulation into one of the most remarkable bodies of American art around a data dense, visually compelling archive not just of one life, but as seen through that life of the social and political history of black queer culture in the post Stonewall years. The show is now appearing at the Queen's Museum until September 22nd and we're lucky that Lyle Ashton Harris joins us now. Welcome to the show.
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Lyle Ashton Harris
Oh it's what a pleasure to be here to see you.
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Alison Stewart
When we first approached about this mid career retrospective, what was your first reaction?
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Lyle Ashton Harris
Well it was an Early. It was during early Pandemic, and the curator of the Rose Museum, Caitlin Rubin, reached out to me, and when she first spoke, I was a little hesitant because I was thinking, is this gonna be like a retrospective? Is this sort of the death. The death of me? I'm kidding. But I reached out to a dear friend of Min, Chris Liu, formerly of the Whitney, and he suggests to maybe do a show that has sort of a survey aspect to it, but to really focus on a recent body of work. So what Caitlin Rubin and Lauren Haynes brilliantly did is to do a survey show, but have it anchored by a recent body work called the Shadows, which are all unique assemblages. So it's a. It's. Yeah, so it's exciting. It's really amazing to have the work in New York City because initially it was started at the museum in Boston at the Rose, and then it traveled to the Nash show. So initially it was not supposed to come to New York. So it's such an honor. That is homecoming, if you will come back to New York and to have people, New Yorkers, get a chance to experience it directly.
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Alison Stewart
So as you looked back on your career, re read your journals, what were.
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Interview Producer/Assistant
Some of the themes that you wanted to capture?
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Lyle Ashton Harris
Well, what I find unique about what Caitlin and Lauren have done with this particular survey show, as opposed to do a more traditional show that takes you from a starting point from A to Z. They have clustered the works around certain themes around the family, desire and violence, and to use those themes as organizing principles to see how some of those ideas and concepts have been throughout the work over the last three and a half, four decades. So that was an interesting way to think about engaging an audience. So, for example, you could have a work, one of the oldest works in the show, the Americas Triptych. It was actually for my honor thesis, undergraduate thesis at Wesleyan, to have that open up the show. But that's juxtaposed again, some more recent work from 30 years later, Colbert Shadow. And to see how those ideas percolate over the course of, let's say, three and a half decades. Yeah.
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Interview Producer/Assistant
When you think about all the places that you've lived, the Bronx, you lived part time in Tanzania, you taught school in Ghana. What about living in those different environments? What are you teach you living in all those different environments?
- [05:51]
Lyle Ashton Harris
That's an excellent question. It can't be overstated. What it meant for my mother after my parents divorce, to take my brother and I to live in Dar es salaam, Tanzania, from 74 to 76 it was soon after civil rights movement. A lot of Americans, particularly African Americans, were answering the call to come back to the continent, if you will. And my mother was a chemistry professor, decided to take my brother and I. I was 9 to 11, my brother's a couple of years older and to live there and to live in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. And she, although she was making a professional salary as a professor, it was a tenth of what she was making as a professor in the U.S. so we were given the option, which my mother gave my brother and I, the option to go to an international school, which most Americans or foreigners did, or to go to a local English speaking Swahili school, which we opted for, and take great vacations. So I think, I mean, just as I was saying, it's hard to imagine, like a young African American boy from the Bronx who has roots in Harlem. My grandparents met at Bethel AME Church in 28, they were married there in 32. To travel across the world and to live in a African country ruled by a black African president. And I mean, like any. And to be. To be there and to have foreign dignitaries come and visit the school. And it was our duty as students to travel, let's say, 10 miles to visit a foreign dignitary, let's say from China, for example, for a. Maybe the U.S. so it was very interesting in terms of having that experience. And it just really widely opened up my purview of what was possible, you know, in terms of, number one, being an American, being an African American, being of a global citizen. And I think those, without question, had a deep impact. And that was also influenced by my mother later marrying a South African exile, my stepfather, the man who raised my brother and I, who was left after the burning of the passes in South Africa in 59 and had traveled from Bloemfontein, which is the capital of the Boers, to Tanzania. And so we had that aspect back in the Bronx in terms of, let's say, at any given time there were scores of people. It was sort of like the South African exile community were students. So I resented it at the time because as you can imagine, any holiday it meant, you know, with an extended family. And it seems like I definitely have carried on that tradition. You know, in fact, I prefer holidays. Having a little family, a little friends, a little. It's always good to have a nice blend.
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Alison Stewart
My guest is Lyle Ashton Harris, our first and last loves at the Queen's Museum through September 22nd. The title comes from a fortune cookie and it's Expressed in neon in the show. And the whole phrase is our first and last love is self love. What did it mean to you at the time when you got from the fortune cookie and what does it mean to you now?
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Lyle Ashton Harris
Good question. Well, I. In early 90s, I was living in the West Coast. I did my graduate studies at CalArts and my partner at the time, his mother just passed away recently, passed away in Seattle. So we were up there and we went to Pike's Market and we had Chinese food, and that was the fortune. And I have, I guess, a history of collecting, you know, memorabilia, putting things in journals. And I was very struck by that. That would be, you know, a fortune. So I kept the fortune. In fact, when people go see the show at the Queens Museum, you'll find the actual journal that I place a fortune in in the early 90s. But in 93, I took part in a project organized by Creative Time, and it was an international show in New York on around 42nd Street. In fact, Jenny Holzer, who has a show at the Guggenheim right now, amazing show. Glenn Lagann, et cetera. There were like several of us who were commissioned to do work, site specific work. And I was thinking what it means to take this neon that. Excuse me, take this fortune that I. And that was in my journal, and to make it into a text piece that would resonate with 42nd Street. So I worked with a neon fabricator to create this ruby red neon. That's our first and last love of self love. So. So what does it mean decades later? I mean, it is a question. In fact, this showing, this viewing, I think is the first time the neon has shown since shoning in New York on 42nd street at the Victory Theater in 1993. I don't know, I think it's almost calling those who see it, you know, including myself, to imagine the idea of care. And what does it mean to love oneself, you know, particularly in a world which at times can be brutal and to draw on the beauty of life. And I think in a way it beckons us. And so I think in a way, I see it as invitational, you know, in a way.
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Alison Stewart
So there are certain prints in the.
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Interview Producer/Assistant
Show that weren't shown or printed until much later. Billy Dreaming in Blue is from 2012. It wasn't printed or shown until 2021. You're dressed up like Billie Holiday.
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Lyle Ashton Harris
Yes, yes, yes.
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Interview Producer/Assistant
Why did you choose to exhibit them.
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Alison Stewart
Later, so much later?
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Lyle Ashton Harris
That's a very good question. Well, I mean, that image in particular, I mean, there's Something. When you make work, I think often artists and writers, they make something, and at the time it's made, it could maybe feel too raw, if you will. And often work may need time, you know, to gestate or, you know, to. Or to sit with it. And so I think that in the case of that particular dreaming Billy, I think it was a work that felt a little bit too personal to roar. And I felt like I needed some time. The work needed time, if you will. But it's resonating with people today.
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Interview Producer/Assistant
So my guest is Laa Ashton Harris. Our first and last love can now be seen at the Queen's Museum. As you mentioned, the show is based around a body of recent work, the Shadow Works. And they're so interesting. They're photo collages and they're set against Ghanaian cloth.
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Lyle Ashton Harris
Yes.
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Alison Stewart
And.
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Interview Producer/Assistant
Well, first of all, does the cloth dictate the way the piece is going or vice versa?
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Lyle Ashton Harris
I think it's. Good question. I think it's a collaborative relationship. I mean, I should just say that. I lived in Ghana from 2005-12. I'm a professor at NYU. And in 2005, the then Vice provost, Yaran Yoko, economist Ashanti, invited me to go to Ghana for a semester. Because NYU up to that point had had campuses in other parts of the world. London, obviously, Paris, Tel Aviv, Buenos Aires. And it was important, they felt, to definitely have one on the continent of Africa. So we settled on for Ghana. So I really fell. I took to the. Having lived in Tanzania as a child and my stepfather being South Africa, there was something about Ghana in terms of its reach. It being the first sub Saharan country to gain its independence since 1957. And there's a history of Americans, African Americans in particular, most famously the great Du Bois or Maya Angelou, who answered the call of the great Nkrumah, who led Ghana from the Gold coast to. To the independent country that it is. And it figures widely in the African diasporic imagination. So I was very drawn to the culture and I fell in love with the people, the culture and someone. And so that one semester became seven years tenure there. In fact, my tenure at NYU is based on the research that I'd done there. But it was during my first semester I was visiting with a friend, Kumasi, which is the capital for the Ashanti, the Gold coast, you know, Ashanti culture. And we were visiting. He is part of the royal family, and we're visiting his uncle. And a year later the uncle had passed away and I went up for the funeral and I was just struck by the funerary procession, and it was something that I had not seen before. In fact, in doing research on Akan Ashanti funerary rites, they say that African American funerary rites, it has more akin to African Akan spiritual rites in terms of the idea of thanksgiving. It's not just the idea someone dies and then you bury them. Within the funerary procession, there's also the idea of thanksgiving, honoring of the ancestors. So clearly there's mourning and grieving period. But during the whole funerary procession, there's a time where people come together. They ancestry worship the honor of the dead. There's an exchange of gifts, so there's a celebratory aspect of the continuity of life, if you will. So I was struck by just the. Just the ritual. And a large part of that is also the funerary fabric. And so any given Friday and Saturday, whether someone's a teacher or a fisherman or you'll see people wearing various forms of the funerary, because those are the days that are set aside where it's a public acknowledgment. So although you may be working that day in terms of whatever you do, you can still honor your process of grieving for about a month. So that, for me, was fascinating how that's part of the culture, because in our culture, you were obviously black.
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Alison Stewart
Yeah, it was so interesting, now that you've said that. And I'm thinking about succession 2020, and your grandfather.
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Lyle Ashton Harris
Yes, yes.
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Alison Stewart
The ancestors being part of the collage with the Ghanaian fabric behind it. That's interesting.
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Lyle Ashton Harris
Well, my grandfather, as you know, was an economist at the Port Authority, and He shot over 10,000 slides as early as the mid-40s. And documenting the family, the church community. And in fact, my first show in New York called the Good Life, was in collaboration with him. And in that particular work, the Legacy, it's a way of honoring the ancestors, meaning my grandfather, my late biological father, Thomas Ellen Harris, and also as a way of situating that within the idea of mourning, but also celebration of life.
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Alison Stewart
And in the shadow works, they have a piece of one.
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Interview Producer/Assistant
It looked like it's grooved pottery is.
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Alison Stewart
On one of them. They all have different objects.
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Lyle Ashton Harris
Yes, yes. Ranging from dreads of mine from the early 90s that I kept in storage to the pottery, which is actually. It was actually a piece of broke pottery. It's actually. I think it's called Sankara. It's actually a vessel that you crush red pepper in, which is part of the everyday diet. And Although it's probably just a couple of dollars in the market, it was my most prized possession that I brought back anyway. So when that broke, I include that in the work itself. So is the idea that one could actually include artifacts that deal with memory and also what is significant to me?
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Alison Stewart
You're listening to my conversation with artist and photographer Lyle Ashton Harris. His exhibit at the Queens Museum is titled Lyle Ashton Harris, Our first and Last Love. And it's on view now through September 22nd. We'll hear more from Lyle after a quick break. This is all of it. This is all of it on wnyc. I'm Alison Stewart. We continue my conversation with the artist and photographer Lyle Ashton Harris. We are speaking about his new exhibit at the Queen's Museum. Lyle Ashton Harris, Our first and Last Love. It's on View through September 22nd.
- [19:36]
Interview Producer/Assistant
Lyle, a lot of the show is how personal things are to you, but I was there's a photo called St. Michael Stuart, 1994, and people who don't know he was a graffiti artist. He died while in police custody in 83. And it's a photo of you in makeup and you're wearing a police uniform. What moved you to make art around some things, like the killing of graffiti artist Michael Stewart?
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Lyle Ashton Harris
I did not know Michael Stewart, but I was, was I had met Basquiat in 85 at Club Erie, and he was a close friend of Michael Stewart, as you know. But I was Michael Stewart who was killed, as you mentioned, by New York's finest In, I believe, 83, ignited, let's say, and people often don't talk about that. A, a turmoil in the Lower east side because of the violence, and people forget that, how people were affected by the violence against this young African American graffiti artist, artists, you know, and for me, I guess it was the idea of how does one use art to bring people into a conversation? I remember when I did that portrait, self portrait as Michael Stewart, and it appeared in the New York Times the fact that art could be used to tell the story again. Because if there's one thing that we suffer from is amnesia, and I'm interested in art that reminds us to go back to tell those stories. And in the case most recently, Harlan Carter mentioned that in the New York Times review of the show. But in 94 he had mentioned that photograph has appeared now several times, including most, you know, recently in the Guggenheim show, the Boss Defacement show. And how does art allow for people to have those conversations again? Well, who was Michael Stewart and how can we engage and Use art as an act of remembrance, if you will.
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Alison Stewart
I'm curious about some of the more simple pieces in the show. I'm curious about the one that says Oak Bluffs. You have an Oak Bluff picture?
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Lyle Ashton Harris
Oh, yes. Oak's Bluff. It's actually from 1996, and my sister lives there. Oh, wow.
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Alison Stewart
It's a masculine.
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Lyle Ashton Harris
So do you go off, then? Yeah. So, you know, all the carousel is an Oaks Bluff. So that was from the. I took the photograph. There was a pinball machine. I'm not sure if it's still there. Put a quarter in, and depending on how you play, it's like the guide to romance. So it's like, you know, hot medium, et cetera. So that particular Oak Spluff is a sampling of those lights. And that's been abstracted is what it is. But I've been going since a child. But it was something about shooting objects and having similarly, in terms of like, taking this photograph that was just of this pinball machine and abstracting it. Yes.
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Alison Stewart
The piece that takes up the entire wall. I'm gonna ask you to pronounce it Obsessio. Obsessio.
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Lyle Ashton Harris
Oh, yeah. Obsess. Owl. Yes.
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Alison Stewart
Thank you.
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Lyle Ashton Harris
Yes.
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Alison Stewart
It's just made up of just beautiful images. Some of them were discovered in an archive. Right.
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Lyle Ashton Harris
They discovered.
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Alison Stewart
When you found the pictures, what were you looking for initially? And then when did you realize they would work so well together? I mean, this piece is huge.
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Lyle Ashton Harris
Well, Obsessed Style was actually part of my Blow up series that predates the Shadows. In this Particular one is 2016 that first premiered in the Sao Paulo Biennial, and then it showed most recently at the Rose and the Nash and now in New York. And it's really exciting to have it here. But getting the basis for the particular piece is the Etikrome archive that I rediscovered after returning from Ghana, living there for seven years. And that's a criminal archive that's become known as the Criminal archive are hundreds or thousands of images, slides that I had taken over the course of, let's say, 20 years. Photographs of, you know, friends of mine, family. But a lot of those friends and family were, you know, happened to be people who were majorly important in terms of the transatlantic black cultural letters. I mean, for example, the great late bell hooks who was I met at Cal Arts, you know, in 1990 or 89, or the great Marlon Riggs, you know, the filmmaker of Tongues and Tide to Skip Gates Corner west, you know, just to name a few. And they capture a few main key events in cultural letters. One, the Black Popular Culture Conference. I was at collaboration between the DIA center for the Arts and the Student Museum in Harlem. That was in 91. And then other major landmark events, such as Thelma Golan's Blackmail exhibition, of which I was in in 1994. So these are just snapshots that I was taking. You know, I was in the Blackmail show, for example. I remember being there. And I think photography has always been a way that I guess I'm crashing out loud. Did my grandfather use it in the same way as a way of like to engage and what. Cause I guess I could be somewhat shy, but with a camera I could be much bolder. So what it meant is just to be incessantly shooting. And the fact that these images all remained in my mother's cellar for several years when I won American Academy in Rome Prix de Rome in 2000. And I deposited him there and I did not re. Engage him until maybe 15 years later when I returned from living in Ghana. And so what was once two large bags of, let's say, slides became known now as the Intercom Archive. So getting back to the abscess Sal, what I love about that piece is really about the working through, because in any book project or exhibition that I'm going through hundreds of images, and those were small prints that I was actually printing out, you know, to engage with and look at. That's also peppered with newsprint. That's also cover, let's say the Pulse nightclub, you know, the way in which the. I think it was the. The Post did an inflammatory cover of the guy. Of the guy who had murdered all those, you know, all those young men, men and women. And so it's like incorporating multiple sources, you know, for example, acetate, you know, that I use in terms of like, shooting, like gels to, let's say, small prints, newsprint, et cetera. And so it's a work that carries in the tradition of using just multiple sources. And there's a combustion to it, you know, so. And I think it's also how I work and more importantly, how I think in terms of the idea that one could, like, we all are inundated with stuff, and what does it mean to somehow have all that stuff come out and to really, to allow for myself and also the viewer just that working through process, you know. And I think anyone, you know, online right now can go home and I'm sure they have their own form of collage on the fridge or in the cupboard or anywhere in the office. So it's very much rooted in that digesture of just accumulation and also things that you're drawn to. Yeah.
- [27:28]
Interview Producer/Assistant
Lyle Ashton Harris, Our first and last love is at the Queen's Museum through September 22nd. Thank you so much for joining us.
- [27:36]
Lyle Ashton Harris
Well, thank you, thank you. It was a real pleasure to be here and lovely to meet you.
- [27:42]
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- [28:09]
Interview Producer/Assistant
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