Richard-Jonathan Nelson

BIO

Richard-Jonathan Nelson is a multi-disciplinary artist who uses textiles, video, and digital manipulation to create alternative worlds of speculative identity. His work is multi-layered, chromatically intense and mixes images of the natural world with reference to hoodoo, queer culture, and Afro-Futurism. He uses his constructed worlds to examine the overlapping spheres of culturally perceived identity and the emotional memory of what it means to be a queer black man. Thereby creating a limbic space free from the weighted excepted western cultural reality, and able to examine the unspoken ways systems of power persist.  Born in Savannah, Georgia (1987) and working in Oakland, CA Nelson received his MFA from California College of the Arts in 2017. His work has been exhibited at Southern Exposure, Embark Gallery, Root Division in San Francisco, and Aggregate Space in Oakland.

STATEMENT

My works expands modern definitions of Black existence through the boundless imaginative possibilities within Speculative Fiction. Through textiles, video, photography, and makeup,I reinterpret the Black body not as a simple caricature of identity but as an undiscovered impetus for cultural evaluation. By reconstructing Black bodies, culture, and experiences through the prism of Science Fiction I make apparent the diversity and nuance Western culture so easily ignores. By referencing the southern gothic roots of my upbringing to create Afrosurrealist realms where the Diasporas' relationship to reality isn’t limited to a faulty western gaze. My work through the conceptualization of hoodoo as a forgotten technology for cultural defiance and escape reclaims the influence and beauty of forgotten traditions. By integrating the symbolism, metaphorical material sleight of hand, and herbal knowledge of hoodoo to create a visual language that speaks to Blackness but also its concerns regarding freedom, emotion, and sexuality.

Interview with Richard-Jonathan Nelson

Written by Andreana Donahue

Can you tell us a bit about your background and how you became interested in becoming an artist? What were some early influences?

I am originally from Savannah, Georgia, and come from a long line of seamstresses so cloth and sewing as a means of expression were always present in my life. From my early childhood, I was encouraged to sew and make whatever I wanted especially if a toy or garment didn’t exist in a way I liked. I would spend hours trailing behind the women of my family as they turned yards of silk crepe into brightly colored garments. That constant proximity to cloth and craft created a curiosity in me about how textiles were made and when I walked into my first textile studio in Atlanta I was swept away. In Atlanta, I was able to experiment and continuously learn about the different aspects of textile art. Consequently then when I learned about the cultural, gendered, and bodily relationships textiles have embedded in them, cloth felt like a fitting medium to exam myself with.

Where are you currently based and what initially attracted you to working in this community? Are there any aspects of this specific place that have surfaced in your work?

I currently live and work in The Bay Area and spend most of my time migrating between Oakland and Berkeley. I was drawn to the Bay for graduate school because of the region's Queer, counterculture, and craft history. I wanted to live in a region where I would be influenced by its history and be in conversations with similar artists. My goal was to pursue a direction in my work both chromatically and conceptually in the Bay Area that felt limiting or foreign in the deep south. This time away from the south has allowed me to see the unrecognized influence of my cultural upbringing and personal history. I've been able to see the uniqueness and cultural value I’ve inherited aesthetically, narratively, and linguistically because of my Gullah and low country heritage. Also living in northern California has allowed me to experience so many varying ways of life that are inspiring future bodies of work.

What is a typical day like?

Usually, a typical day for me involves assessing what components of work whether it’s rendering video or weaving need to be tackled and what can be done simultaneously. Because what I create has so many physical components I’m always concerned with how can make multiple components at once while still enjoying the pleasure of making them. After a long walk and that initial planning stages ill dive into a task and cue up either a podcast, recorded art lecture, historical sewing video, or science fiction series and costume that form of inspiration while working. Sometimes what I’m listening to or watching will inspire a new aesthetic connection in the work or will fill in a conceptual gap for a future series. Even while I’m focused on my practice I can't deny my southern roots and will end up taking a break to bake and process the status of my work.

What gets you in a creative groove? What puts a damper on your groove?

A truly invigorating conversation sparks my creative groove, a talk where someone else's perspective on a topic creates new connections or confirms a conceptual direction for me. By talking to other people about my research or interest I can see that an internal thought has connections to a larger human experience. That flickering flame of mental connection then drives me to make work as a means to facilitate a continued larger conversation with others. I’ll admit the administrative side of being an artist always throws me for a loop, that anxiety-ridden pushpull between paperwork and making haunts me.

What criteria do you follow for selecting materials? Do you prefer to maintain a narrow focus or work across diverse media? How do you navigate the limitations and possibilities that result from this path?

I'm always curious about the construction of historic textiles or digital media and that interest drives me to explore new materials. Usually, when I come across an extant garment or music video that interests me I want to know how it was created and how I can replicate an aspect in my work. However, I usually limit my materials to ones I can easily manipulate chromatically. I will often start with a blank fabric or yarn and custom dye it for the work I plan to make. Because the loaded meaning is intertwined when certain colors, fibers, and structures are interlaced. By controlling the color and fiber of an object I can subvert its cultural associations, a lime green and royal purple gingham take on a very different meaning than a red and white one. Admittedly having to hand dye or print the foundational structure of a piece does slow down my means of production, but that slowing down does allow me space to contemplate and assess my impulse to make another object. My material and technical curiosity isn’t based on just a tangible consumerist hedonism but is means to reexamine Blackness through non easily associated means.

Can you talk about some of the ongoing interests, imagery, and concepts that have informed your process and body of work overtime? How do you anticipate your work progressing in the future?

I'm interested in how the Black body and craft can be intermeshed to depict our western culture's speculative future, no matter how foreign the idea of Black craft as Art is outside of the Low country. Through the hybridizing of traditional craft practices like embroidery, weaving, and quilting along with digital art, I reimagine the Black body as a place for futuristic progress. Thereby creating images of the Black Diaspora far removed from continued historic depiction as servile and without agency but instead as visual and culturally complex individuals. The work is balanced visually between the visual dichotomy of Backness as an expansive unknowable monolithic void and chromatically intense generator of popular culture. While also drawing reference from African-American low country herbalism and cybernetic Afrofuturism as a means to expand our mental definition of who and what Black people can be as a culture. In the coming future, my work will examine the restorative abilities of Black queer decoration because after living through such a stressful dystopian year filled with loss that recuperation is needed. As a result of the pandemic, many artists have experienced limited access to their studios or loss of exhibitions, income, or other opportunities.

Has your way of working (or not working) shifted significantly during this time? Are there unexpected insights or particular challenges you’ve experienced?

Even before the pandemic, my practice wasn’t dependent on commuting to separate studio spaces or confined by a stringent set of environmental requirements to make the work. My means of making work have always existed within a contained modular system of domestic and digital craft. Because of the repetitive meditative nature of weaving, embroidery, and sewing the tools of my process are always close at hand. The tools of my practice are seamlessly integrated into the sedentary moments of my life, If I’m sitting I’m sewing. However, the pandemic did shift the mental stress I held toward certain goals and insinuations as they shuttered, and the pressure to pursue those opportunities vanished. I no longer felt behold to the idea that by not achieving a show in a certain space I wasn’t progressing as an artist. However strangely as the distractions of the world fell away the pandemic provided space for people to contemplate my work and new opportunities arising from the void. In a way, the hyper distilled social bubbles lockdown forced me into I was able to pause and review which relationships/opportunities I was chasing that were unfurling and those that flowed toward me organically.

In a time that seems to be marked by uncertainty, collective anxiety, and increasing social unrest, why do you think the perspectives and contributions of artists remain meaningful? Do you feel a natural relationship exists between your work (or the role artists play more broadly) and confronting established systems—of power, cultural institutions, or otherwise?

I am always left wondering as an artist of color how do I approach questions that center on a current sense of social unrest, uncertainty, and collective anxiety gracefully. For me, there is an unspoken implication that this current cultural moment of unrest is a divergence from the norm, but this unsettling of security has always been the norm. Sometimes in the cresting wake of 2020’s summer of social unrest and the thrusting of anti-racism work into the pop culture mainstream, I wonder do the contributions of artists of color truly matter. Because there is a frustration as an artist making work around these issues and having these conversations for years to watch a magical zeitgeist realization concerning Black insecurity. To watch and engage in artistic opportunities that didn’t and wouldn’t have existed for artists like me before this moment. To feel unmoored wondering why did it take political action, global unrest, and an avalanche of intellectual theoretical work by so many people to manifest a few more opportunities for P.O.C to appear. I'm left questioning how long will it take for our present work to shift the systems of power within institutions when I see artists my parents' age just receiving their flowers.

Can you share some of your recent influences? Are there specific works—from visual art, literature, film, or music—that are important to you?

That is such a difficult question for me to answer because I am so inspired by the shifting landscape of popular culture and the ways media references itself. At this particular moment musically I’m drawn to the sonic and music video output of Sudan archives and Lous and the Yakuza. Concerning films and television I’ve been drawn to Saint Maud, Things Heard & Seen, Requiem, A Dark Song, and both Suspirias. I find myself drawn to films that use the metaphysical as a real tangible component but ask the user to question is this an unseen force or our internal anxiety affecting our reality. I feel so behind but I recently devoured the majority of Octavia Butler's works and find myself noticing the similarities between her work and our present cultural landscape.

Who are some contemporary artists you’re excited about? What are the best exhibitions you’ve seen in recent memory?

I recently had the opportunity to see Wangechi Mutus’s video work in person and it reinvigorated my desire to make complex multilayered video work. The undulating soil, flowers, poetry, and insects of Wangechi’s work overlaid onto reclining Black bodies have reinvigorated ideas of Black rest and Black emotional complexity within me. Also, I was able to see the impactful and nuanced video work of Cauleen Smith and was transfixed by the afro-futurist utopia she created with Alice Turiyasangitananda Coltrane's words and audio.

Do you have any tips or advice that someone has shared with you that you have found particularly helpful?

To stay flexible about the execution, form, and the environment you make work in and to not wait on an ephemeral perfect moment to begin making. To accept and welcome failure when it manifests in the work as room for improvisation or learning and not as a roadblock. To mitigate my expectations or preconceptions about how the work should look or what the work is saying and to step outside my own perceived narrative of the piece.

What are you working on in the studio right now? What’s coming up next for you?

At the moment I'm oscillating between a series of works examining the connections between Neocolonialism, mindfulness, groupthink, spiritual capitalism, and exotifying others through video and writing. Along with textile work that examines the fraught emotional nature of torch songs, Black queer nightlife, southern gothic storytelling, and Afrofuturism dystopias.

Anything else you would like to share?

I'm currently working on a solo exhibition at MINT gallery from January - February 2022 in Atlanta and a residency at Real, Time and Space in Oakland fall of 2021.

To find out more about Richard-Jonathan Nelson check out his Instagram and website.