Tschabalala Self “Cotton Mouth” In Conversation
The article originally appeared (in a shortened version) on She Performs in January 2021.
A few weeks ago, I went to see Tschabalala Self’s exhibition “Cotton Mouth” at Galerie Presenhuber in New York. As per the press release the exhibition is intended for black audiences, I don’t think it is my place to write about it. However, I still want to have conversations and increase my sensibility and understanding of the pieces. After a few logistical challenges (due to the current circumstances surrounding COVID-19) the safest way to move forward was to reach out within my own social circles and ask for support.
Instead of a regular review, I co-created a conversation piece. All contributing individuals were upfront informed about my intention and generously agreed to talk to me about their — very personal — experience of viewing “Cotton Mouth”. The main purpose of this article is to inspire and stimulate reflection, conversation, and further research about the art and the issues raised in it.
Exposure matters, hearing and considering multiple perspectives matters, hearing black voices matters.
NOTE: Three of the four people whose opinions are given in this article did not view the exhibition in person. They based their opinions on the materials online. All opinions belong to the respective contributors and have only been edited for length and clarity.
Nana:
When I looked at the works in Cotton Mouth (online) my first thought was “all of that ass, ass, ass, ass,…” so I had a direct connection with being black and Pop Culture and the exploration of the black body — female and male. Upon glancing over the press release I thought that it makes a little more sense. I was associating the art with similar things, so in my review, I will be focusing more on what I saw and felt as opposed to what the press release contained.
The Name of the Exhibition is a stopper but as a first Generation Ghanaian-German, it’s not triggering as much as it might be for Afro/Black-Americans.
The whole collection reminded me so much of the exploitation of the black body by white media and even some black media. There is Tyler Perry who uses a kind of exaggerated stereotypical portrayal of black people — in a clearly comedic/caricatured way — but then there are also movies when it’s not a comedy, where you have a lot of (racial) diversity within the cast, yet it still appears somewhat racist (exp. The Help)…Until you find out that the director or production company was white and it becomes a lot clearer why. I feel that Tschabalala Self is referencing those notions a lot. This critique is so obvious that the works almost come off expressionist. I am not even American. But I think that’s good. Because as a non-black person this may startle you and get you to think and reflect a bit. And maybe even research some more — more than if the bodies in these pieces were portrayed in a subtle way.
It recalls a very familiar sensation: being black and seeing your body features being exploited by American pop culture — sometimes you are not quite sure if it’s praising, appreciating, or appropriating? Especially as a woman you are always aware of your body because it’s always judged and picked on. In mass media, the beauty standard is still “controlled” by the white gaze, and being black in a world where white bodies were publicly praised for so long (and still are) is not easy to look at and accept yourself all the time. This past year in particular shone some light (very visibly in social media) on issues like “blackfishing” and cultural appropriation. There is a saying: “When black women do it it’s ghetto, when white women do it it’s fashion”. I feel like this exhibition embodies that with all the exaggeration and the focus on certain body parts that are now considered beautiful because the media says so.
The exaggerated portrayal of black bodies refers back to notions of “Ghetto”, a term that I feel White Americans like to use a lot for something that doesn’t stem (or is appropriated by) white culture. There are so many things that have been stolen from black culture, which used to be degraded and looked down on: long acrylic nails, big butts, hairstyles, music — there are hundreds of examples. Now, suddenly, everybody wants to buy wigs. Ten years ago only white people with medical conditions or the elderly would ever wear a wig. If someone outside of that target group would do it, it would be considered “ghetto”. And now suddenly only because a Kardashian is wearing wigs, everyone wants to do it. And yes, white people used to also wear extensions, but that is a different story. The same goes for long nails, acrylic nails in particular, which are now even seen in high fashion because someone like Billie Eilish wears them. In Movies and Music Videos from the 2000s, those kinds of long nails would only be shown on strippers and prostitutes.
The black body is not a trend, nor there to be used.
Nana has a B.A. in Culture Science and Digital Media. She currently works for a Social Media Company in Content Safety. She is a first Generation Ghanaian, grown up and living in Berlin, Germany.
Oronde:
I went to see the exhibition in person and I chose to not read up on the artist or look at the art beforehand. Any piece of art I want to engage completely on its own merit. I completely understand that context can drastically change an art piece but I prefer that context to fill in the gaps or background rather than taking center stage.
It threw me off at the beginning because at first glance it made me think of stereotypical perceptions of specific Black Americans (big ol’ butts, heavy make-up). But the closer I looked — especially at Nate the Snake, my favorite in the collection — I picked up on certain things that felt familiar: the proportions, the way the tones in the skin blended into one another, the aesthetic of that makeup. I thought of someone very particular in my family that carried a lot of the same aesthetic mindset. It gave me insight into the artist’s point of view through the details she put in her work. It felt like a celebration, a festival. It provided that ever-elusive “black joy” that I’ve heard mentioned after this summer’s social upheaval. It’s an energy I haven’t seen much in non-photographic work.
There was one piece that I really wanted to get, the diptych Spat, but it was difficult. I remember staring at it and trying to understand, and maybe I was just not approaching this with the right eye, but I couldn’t get the meaning I wanted. It wasn’t giving me enough to work with.
There was a certain comfort and familiarity in some of the works. I feel like in a certain perspective the visual vocabulary that she used was filled with a lot of familiar elements. I read that she uses her own body and that these are not exaggerations, and I felt that. It doesn’t feel like someone just inflated someone’s booty, and I am not saying that all black people look like this but I thought that this feels like someone I could know. Being able to take something that may not be looked at and celebrated a lot and have it put in a public sphere, for someone to take the time and effort to compose that imagery was a worthwhile endeavor.
The other pieces of art carried the lens mentioned above but the style of abstraction simply isn’t my preferred. It shows skill in color and materiality and I enjoy the multimedia combination of fabric, stitching, and painting. With added context, I appreciated the art more but not enough to shift my opinions into favoring it.
The piece that stood out negatively were the Loveseats. I’m all about sex and art, but these sculptures feel crude. What is the artist trying to say? And even in my reading, I didn’t get a better sense of what the meaning is. Sure, we can put vaginas and butts in the middle of a room, it’s 2021, we have the ability….but why? It’s the fact that they looked sort of crudely made and that the color is different on each one. What was the choice, what was the artistic intention for the coloration? And then the fact that they’re named after a furniture piece. I have all those questions of “why?” with no answers given.
And maybe there’s something that I am missing. I probably am just not as black as some other people. I’ve been called an Oreo before, and I don’t think it’s too far from the truth. Despite that term being bothersome to me in my youth, I know what I sound like and I know what I look like, and sometimes for certain people that doesn’t drive. I am asking myself, is there something that is missing from my lexicon? This doesn’t feel like a super Caribbean Afro perspective, it feels definitely American and yes, sometimes we’re lumped together, and sometimes there is a strong overlap, it’s not like we’re completely separate groups. That’s at least something I can tell from the art, and I think that may have also easily have been a factor. Maybe it’s meant for black Americans and not black Caribbean, Afro Caribbean people. Cause we would never put Vaginas like that in a public space, we would do it differently.
I agree with the question of who is this for. For me, the strongest feeling I get for that is where the exhibition is located. I can see these working better in a different context. I don’t know where. But it felt like such a very white space (pun intended). And even the physical location of the gallery brought up the question of who’s going to see this? Because if it’s not reaching the intended audience then it’s not really a good spot for the exhibition.
Only after returning home and looking up the exhibit did I see that there was a second floor. I thought it was a back of house space. I did like the pieces downstairs more. The linework was interesting and that sense of black joy felt present. I’m sure it’s even better on site.
Overall, I did feel that it really missed/lacked some interpretation in the space. Unless the intention of the artist is to question your blackness. I feel a little guilty because I really wanted to love it. The message, intention, and meaning remain unclear. Still, I very much enjoyed a reason to go out in the city and see an exhibit that stirred my thoughts! Art can be disgusting and still beautiful. I don’t need to like it, it’s ok to not to, but I can still appreciate it. We need more practice in engaging with black art. Exposure is good, and encouraging conversations is the kind of genuine interaction that we need in order to appreciate art better. I hope that this dialogue will continue so that different audiences can practice looking at and engaging with black art. Exposure is a benefit to everyone. It is a chance to engage.
Oronde, 33, is a Jamaican born but New York raised illustrator and exhibit designer. He studied at Rochester Institute of Technology where he received his B.A. in Industrial Design in 2009. He currently works at Thinc Design
Noelle:
When looking at the works in Cotton Mouth my thoughts constantly spiral around two questions: What is the artist trying to say and who is she saying it to? Who is the intended audience? When Self says she made it for black eyes, I wonder “which black eyes”? The black diaspora is so diverse it really can be determinative to what kind of black experience you’re going to have. I think that she has a very specific view of the black community that’s not necessarily shared throughout the entire diaspora. Is she saying that it is our bodies that make us all the same? Her subjects’ bodies, however, are all positioned in very specific aspects of stereotypical black culture, that doesn’t represent all the forms, sizes, and shapes of black bodies. It seems like she’s just assuming that we are all sharing the same pop culture and thus understand her references.
As a matter of fact, it wasn’t until I read the press release that I realized the intended audience is the black community. However, when I turned to the press release looking for clarity, I understood even less. The artwork is saying one thing and the press release is saying something else, neither of them is talking to the other, but the art pieces are very “loud”.
Part of me just felt like I was not the intended audience. It made me question whether I am black enough because I don’t know what she is trying to say. When I look at this exhibit, I don’t see it as an extension of me. While there are some similarities in the body types to people I know and that I’ve grown up with I don’t look at any of those pieces and see my life. It’s to me as strange and removed from my black experience as looking at a piece of very Eurocentric art. With the pieces in “Cotton Mouth” I don’t emotionally connect to it. If anything, it gives me pause. I don’t leave thinking about her pieces; I leave thinking about her. Is this how she sees herself? Is this her view of the community?
Most of her collages and sculptures are not fully realized people. It just looks like a lot of exaggerated body parts. The overuse of genitals distracts from the blackness and feeds into the hyper-sexualization of black bodies. The overt display of genitalia appears to serve no other purpose than to be controversial for the sake of being controversial. If she took the genitals out, she would still be left with a lot of color and shapes. Black shapes. For example, the corporeal shapes in Nate the Snake — it’s reminiscent of the Hottentot Venus. It is questionable if she intended to make a statement about feminism or anything of that nature. If she is discussing the black gaze, black sexuality, and black feminism that would be one thing, but since she never said that was her intention, I’m not comfortable making that assumption. The press release states that her intention is to ‘dissect the agency of mythology within the black community’. That’s a very broad brush for an exhibition that appears to have a very narrow focus. And it doesn’t fully make sense: A myth is created over time and usually not by the person who the myth is about. Agency, on the other hand, means control. There are two juxtapositional processes here and they are put together in a sentence without a clear connection.
Although I am comfortable with my body, I can’t say that I am comfortable with the sculptures. They look animalistic. Just the way that the legs are truncated and the fact that the vagina is exposed, they remind me of hippos. It almost seems like she’s putting out her own insecurities into the world, and projecting them as the black community’s insecurities, when that’s not how many in the community view ourselves. I feel bad because I want black female empowerment, and I want to support it, but I just don’t feel that I can necessarily get behind this exhibition. But I don’t want to police those thoughts either. I don’t want to silence another black artist. I just don’t feel like she is having a dialogue with the black community in its entirety.
Within the black community, our battle has never been to show our body. Our battle has been to keep our bodies. Our battle has always been to be acceptably black in a room without having to fear that one person might look at us one way or another. We are constantly fighting an oversexualized, villainized perception, I don’t know how those works help. Will I now have to justify my body and the way I dress? Will I have to dress more prudish? Or will people now expect me to be louder and prouder because this work is out?
I feel that saying it was meant for the black gaze it might make white people more comfortable gazing. Right now we are in a weird place, where a lot of white people want permission to understand and delve deeper into our history and our backstory even though we have been trying to share this for our entire lives. But it’s only ever been acceptable to delve into the popular version of black culture. Maybe this is where she was trying to go with these works? The statistics show a significant decrease in white participation in the BLM movement as time wears on, and I get it, it’s exhausting. But we’ve been exhausted for 400 years. It appears that you can only take our pain in small doses. Are those over-exaggerated, large-scale paintings supposed to be an explicit cry of protest in response to the declining numbers of white allyship? If anything, I feel it rather confirms stereotypes about black bodies. Because it is so superficial to the black experience none of that is really something that I deal with on a daily basis. More often than not I am not worried about my body. I really am not worried about my genitalia. That’s not forefront of my mind. Seeing that doesn’t say the “black experience” to me. And I don’t even think that says the ‘white view of the black experience’. I don’t know, whose — outside of the porn industry — experience this is really portraying.
Overall this exhibition contains a lot of voyeurism and seems to be more about black sexploitation as opposed to sexual liberation. I’m not quite sure how that press release came into being. It is incoherent and I don’t feel that the artist is saying anything to us through it. I don’t see the pop culture references outside of basketball and possibly WAP. Honestly, I feel like this is someone else’s gaze looking into what they think our community is. I feel that not enough has been said about the exhibition’s purpose and I feel that her voice isn’t coming through clearly. I won’t say that it’s not coming through strongly, because these are very strong pieces. She has a very prominent voice, and she has a very communicative style, it’s just I feel like this is patois, it’s a dialect, it’s a connumeration of multiple languages and it is just not coherent to non-speakers.
Intent does not negate consequences. And it might not have been her intention, it might not have been the gallery’s intention, but once you put art into the world, you no longer have control over the narrative. So make sure you say exactly what you need to say and be as clear as you can possibly be because once it’s out there, there’s no taking it back.
Noelle is a New York City based interior design project manager and Brooklyn native, with degrees in both Fine Art and Interior Design from the Fashion Institute of Technology. She identifies as Afro-Caribbean American.
Krystle:
When I first saw the works of “Cotton Mouth” (online) I was immediately offended. It was like a punch in the gut. I wondered “why?”, but it was less thinking and more of a gut reaction. Then I questioned/guessed if the artist was white. It is obvious that we come from two different worlds. It made me uncomfortable. As I looked at it, I kept wondering to myself “why am I offended?” and then I thought “Is this how she sees black women? With thick thighs and big butts? Black men in basketball attire watching basketball. Big lips?” It didn’t settle well with me. As a black woman and performing artist, I know the history of blackface and different media formats made to demonize and/or oversexualize black people. . The press release mentions that she was drawing true to her own shape and it made me wonder “What do you see when you look at your body”? That is how the media used to portray African Americans. They overexaggerated parts of our bodies. I want to appreciate it. I don’t want to disrespect her art or her artistic process. I really want to see what she is saying, and I want to gather those thoughts to formulate whether I agree or disagree, but I need to understand what her perspective is so I can create that conclusion for myself.
It’s heavy. It’s very heavy, and I don’t think that I am a prude, but I have sensitivities towards black women because it’s just so prevalent in the industry that that is how black women are seen. So, when I see it done by another black woman, I am hypersensitive towards it. If you are trying to say what our industry sees, or what the world perceives about black people and culture, then I didn’t catch it. Maybe I caught it with one painting. Or if Self is saying that this is something we are supposed to be proud of, that maybe there’s women’s liberation and progression in there — I don’t know if I accept that. Intent matters and I don’t know the intent here. I don’t see this as a resistance piece, I see it as an acceptance piece.
The man holding his face; his tongue is shaped like a penis and the space between his hands is somewhat shaped like a vulva. Looking at the female bust painting, it is almost like a ‘man piece’. The silhouette of a woman is shaped like the male organ. In a way, with those, I can take time to let this marinate and interpret it. I don’t know what it has to do with pop culture or Cotton Mouth per se, but the idea of a woman being shaped like a penis and being overly sexualized and almost seen as if she is only meant to be a male interest, well, that is something I can understand. Is she trying to say that in every piece? I don’t know. And where does the title come in?
I was so disappointed to realize that the loveseats are vaginas. And that’s not for the sake of censure. It’s mostly because of the over-sexualization of black women. To me that says “Here I am, this is what I’m good for”. And there are many of us, and so when you see us, this is what you see: Sexual Availability. And I mean, I am not saying that she’s saying that black women are hoes but I am saying that we are perceived as such and this is not how I want to be viewed, it’s not how I want my daughter to be viewed, it’s not how I want the women in my family to be viewed.
When I first saw Pocket Rocket, I thought that’s how I used to draw my aunt as a kid. I would draw her with like a really huge butt, really huge thighs, etc. — it is more of an over-exaggerated depiction of my people, of my family’s bodies. What would it look like if those features were taken out? I feel like I have to look beyond that because it is blaring. And because it’s blaring, it’s hard to see what else she could be talking about — other than the overt sexuality of it.
The danger is that Self might be seen as the entirety of the black voice when it’s solely her portrayal of the black voice. It is her personal interpretation of reclaiming the black body and the black voice. But my problem is that I don’t know what she is trying to say and who is she trying to say it to? Sure, it leaves room for people to go away with their own conclusions. I just don’t think that in our time where she has the opportunity to be so relevant that we want people to just go away with their own conclusions. Not that we want to tell them what to think, because I don’t think that art is supposed to do that, but we want to guide them. Especially if we have our own voice, we want to plaster that and then say “ok what do YOU think about it. Here’s what I am saying, what do you think about what I have to say”.
What’s lacking here, is perspecitiVES [emphasis on the plural]. Once we hear different perspectives, that can challenge our own and that can maybe bring us back to the gallery. Art is successful if someone says I need to go back and see this again. And maybe she was successful because I spent all day looking at it and talked about it with several people. However, I keep coming back to the question “why” and having trouble extracting answers.
As a black woman, you fight so hard to be seen as a whole body and as a whole person and to be respected. I can’t help but feel that those images feed into preexisting stereotypes, they feed into those things that make us look less human and more like an object. Those are the things that I have been fighting against ever since I was a teenager.
Krystle was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York. Her parents were born and raised in Haiti. She is an east coast actress and writer. Krystle studied at the American Musical and Dramatic Academy and is currently an artist in residence at the Abingdon Theatre. She resides in New Jersey with her husband and two children. FB: @Krystletheactresswriter
TSCHABALALA SELF “COTTON MOUTH” was on view at Galerie Eva Presenhuber, New York from November 07, 2020, to January 23, 2021. The works can still be seen online. Self’s next exhibition “BY MY SELF” will be from February 28, 2021, to September 19, 2021, at the Baltimore Museum of Art (BMA).
