HOW WE ENDURE: A CONVERSATION ON BLACKNESS WITH ESMAA MOHAMOUD
By Rikki Byrd
Esmaa Mohamoud, One of the Boys (red back), 2017
Courtesy of Georgia Scherman Projects
Written in conjuction with the exhibition Cry of Victory and Short Walks to Freedom
In 2016, football player Colin Kaepernick began sitting and kneeling at games during the national anthem to protest against police brutality. Subsequently, his actions sparked a nationwide conversation on the right to protest, questions about patriotism and the insurmountable injustices endured by marginalized people. Artist Esmaa Mohamoud thinks that figures such as Kaepernick, among many other black athletes who have protested throughout history, reflect true diligence despite the consequences. She also recognizes that despite how pyrrhic activism might become, black people continue to endure and remain resilient; and, athleticism requires a great deal of similar characteristics. Thus, Adam draws on the intersection of sports and race to consider how black bodies navigate space. Perhaps more concretely, she draws on the two to rethink gender and sexuality across the African diaspora. As the only girl among her siblings, Adam not only pays homage to the experiences of her upbringing, which involves taking up her brothers’ athleticism and interest in sports, but also challenges what it means to be masculine and femi- nine. Below, the artist discusses her influences, how she has considered her own identity alongside her practice and her push to undergo a particular type of practice of inserting her own body into her work to reflect not only how violence is enacted upon black bodies, but also how black bodies move autonomously through space.
RIKKI BYRD: Your work explores black masculinity, and specifically you’re using sports as a lens for this exploration. It seems timely that you’re creating this work consid- ering the conversations surrounding sports and race recently. The most immediate one that comes to mind, of course, is about Colin Kaepernick, but historically there’s always been an intersection between the two. Why are sports so deeply rooted in your art practice?
ESMAA MOHAMOUD: I think sports are deeply rooted in my art practice because it’s what I grew up with and what my brothers grew up with. I learned a lot of the discipline that I have as a young individual from athleticism. I think that sports culture is often a big stake for many African American or African Canadian kids growing up, so it always just felt really close to home. It’s something that I found myself using as a catalyst to speak about larger issues about gender and sexuality.
RB: I read that your oldest brother is kind of your biggest influence for the work that you do.
EM: I fixated a bit on basketball because I was revisiting conversations that my brother and I had growing up. Many of those experiences revolved around basket- ball and around our time bonding with the Raptors and watching the Raptors games, and really seeing this struggle that I had to watch my brother go through
where he had the dream of getting into the NBA – like a lot of black kids do – and he didn’t get there. To me that felt like the most heart-crushing thing. To see his dreams actually not come true in that way was just a little bit of a shock to me. Now as an adult reflecting back on that, I was just like, this is extremely hard when you go your entire life thinking that you’re going to do this and you don’t. I needed to make work about this.
RB: In addition to your brother, do you have any other influences for your work?
EM: I think just black men in general to be honest. I’m surrounded by them. I mean, I say black men in general, but I think that right now because my work is strongly focused on masculinity there is, in my opinion, no masculinity without femininity and the intertwining of both of those things. I think that I’m trying to dance on the fine line of what we actually consider masculine and what we actually consider feminine. As someone who identifies as feminine, but also pretty masculine at the same time, I’m trying to redefine my understanding of gender, but also how blackness is perceived within gender. I think there’s a lot of unpacking we need to do within black culture and the stigmas that we have surrounding gender and sexuality.
RB: You’ve said before that in your work you’re interested in making black culture tangible. Can you expound on that a little bit?
EM: I’m not interested in making black culture tangible because we have black mate- rial culture. I was interested in the intangibility of blackness. Growing up, people would be like, “You talk this way, you’re not black enough. You look this way, you’re not black enough.” And I was always curious. How are we evaluating blackness? I just felt that blackness was intangible, so I began my research in my Master’s thesis around the intangibility of blackness and that really revolved around material black culture and popular black culture.
RB: What were the results of the research that you conducted?
EM: Still a lot of unanswered questions. I started from a point of the intangibility of blackness, and then I kind of got into what is material black culture and what is popular black culture, and the ways in which blackness gets taken up in the media but through the realm of athleticism and violence and the juxtaposition of the two of them. A lot of where I speak about violence is through the act of making these actual sculptures. The basketball net, I have to reweave it every time I install it and it’s so heavy, but I force myself literally to do it without stopping. I really believe in the process of going through some sort of bodily violence in order to create this piece. It’s the same thing with the concrete. It’s like hand mixing concrete instead of using a mixer, so that no matter how violent it is, your body then goes into the work. It’s the same thing with the concrete: hand-mixing it instead of using an electric mixer, so, no matter how violent, your body is part of the work. Those are really the key issues that I was thinking about in my thesis.
RB: It’s interesting you’re talking about inserting your body into your work. I just read this article in Arts.Black— are you familiar with that writing collective?
EM: I am not, but I’m going to take this down.
RB: It’s amazing. It was started by two black women. They just had an article released in Canadian Art where they’re writing back and forth to each other about being black in the art world and and how we show up for ourselves and how we locate ourselves within the work. I probably need to sit down and reflect after our conversation because for a second time I’m being asked to consider how we place our bodies in our work but also take care of our bodies at the same time. Because blackness is precious.
EM: Exactly. We have to guard it, but we also have to take care of ourselves. The entire overview of what my art practice is about is really just about the navigation of black bodies in contemporary spaces. How do our bodies communicate with other bodies? How are our bodies perceived? I think the number one thing that I was self-conscious about growing up in London, Ontario – which is a predominately white city with a lot of racist folk – I became hyperaware of my body in space. It took a lot unlearning growing up to realize that I shouldn’t be this aware. It’s important to be aware, but I shouldn’t be this hypercritical of how my body operates in space to make other people comfortable.
RB: How do you bring the experiences of your identity to your work?
EM: I think that I’m starting to uncover or starting to feel comfortable making work that deals with my identity. For the longest time I was fixated on black masculinity and not really wanting to reflect upon myself. I think that was a tool that I used to feel safe. I think thus far the work that I’ve made within the realm of athleticism I didn’t really feel that connected to nor did I feel it was a reflection of me in particular. But the Raptors dresses that first started out with One of the Boys was directly about me. That was the first time that I was like, “I’m really going to go out there and make a piece and see how I feel about it.” I didn’t want to be vulnerable. That piece felt very vulnerable to me and I was really worried about how it would be taken up. And it’s been taken up all types of ways.
RB: Why was creating the dress out of the jersey a vulnerable experience?
EM: It was vulnerable for me because I was uncomfortable with uncovering a lot of experiences that I had in terms of turmoil that I’ve had with my own gender issues. Deep down inside I knew that when I put a black man in a dress it was not going to go over well. I knew that not having talked to anyone. I knew that just having been conditioned as a young black woman. Just being aware of the stigmas that there are surrounding black men and black masculinity and its fragility, and I just knew that if I put a man in a dress, people were going to say something or people might be upset. I knew and I did it anyways because I thought that we should have a conversation about what this means. People were upset, people sent me death threats. It was strange, but also I expected it.
RB: Who are the subjects that you’ve photographed? How do you select them?
EM: It usually happens pretty organically. When I first started the project, I was looking for men and women. Women I found instantly. I would ask a woman and she would just say yes. I had to ask 12 men before I got one yes. When I was talking to a lot of my black male friends, they were like, “I love you. I love the work. I think it’s fabulous, but I can’t do that.” I was like I respect that, but I just want to know why you can’t do it. Not to push them, not to make them feel vulnerable or anything. Some of the responses I got were like “If I do that, that means I’m gay.” First, a garment can’t make you gay. Or, “If I do that, people are going to think I’m a fairy.” All these perceptions about how people will see you rather than how one feels about themselves. Rather than looking for people, I started to have organic conversations with young black men and just hear what they had to say about athleticism and the representation of black men within athleticism and how a lot of that is structured around this macho-masculine, all-powerful being that never cries, [is] never fragile, never gets hurt. In a way, I think those conversations really formulated my under- standing of black masculinity and its fragility, and I just started to get people who were like “I really wanna talk more about this piece.”
RB: Because you use different mediums for your work, how are you thinking about them separately, and how are you thinking about them cohesively? For example, if we return to Untitled (No Fields) and you’re using African wax print, which comes with its own narrative and story. You’re using this football gear. I mentioned Kaepernick and him kneeling during football games. That comes with its own narrative.
EM: I don’t know if I think about them separately. A lot of times it is just overlapping. With the football project that I’m making right now, for example, I was really interested in the resilience and endurance of the black male body. As you mentioned, Colin Kaepernick really inspired me. I really think that [as] artists we have a duty to reflect the times and to talk about what’s going on right now. And I just felt a calling to what was going on. I was upset, as many people are upset with what’s going on. I really just thought what resilience and endurance does this man and a lot of people have. As black people we are really resilient. We go through so much. We still put a smile on our faces, still stay optimistic, positive. Of course, we can all get down, but I do think that our endurance is something that I’ve always admired. I feel like that piece is more reflective of the now as opposed to the basketball works, which was a lot of uncovering part of the past. I think the overlapping aspect between this work, the nets, or the new works that I’m creat- ing is that it always surrounds the black body, how the black body is speaking up through material black culture, through popular black culture, and the ways in which we navigate. How his [Kaepernick’s] black body existed on that field in front of all those people doing that same act over and over again. What does that mean? What does it mean when LeBron James comes out on the court with a “I Can’t Breathe” t-shirt? What do these acts of resilience and endurance really mean in the larger scope of black navigation?