Introducing: Lorraine O’Grady and Juliana Huxtable
MOCA, Part 1, 2016
A conversation between artists Lorraine O’Grady and Juliana Huxtable. The dialogue took place by phone from O’Grady and Huxtable’s respective studios in New York City. This is part one of a two-part discussion and the first time the artists have spoken.
Lorraine O’Grady: Juliana, I have to tell you something, Jarrett Earnest interviewed me and said he hoped you and I could meet, but you know, I didn’t ask him why he thought it would be a good idea. [both laugh] To be honest, I have to confess that because I didn’t know much about you or about your work before this, I’d succumbed to the stereotype, I was captivated by your image and didn’t look at your mind at first. But I totally understand why people want to put us together—it’s almost like talking to myself. [JH laughs] Do you know what I mean?!
Juliana Huxtable: Definitely.
LO: I often try to imagine what I would be like if I had been born about the time you were born, and now I realize what I would be like. I’d be like you! I see so much of our attitudes as being similar that it’s kind of scary. But then I wondered why you thought it was going to be a good idea?
JH: Well, I didn’t study art; at one point I had the intent, but I was really turned off by my school’s program and generally distanced myself from studying studio art. So I studied literature and gender studies and found myself in my practice as an artist, not necessarily unexpectedly, but without a really concrete knowledge of an art history. I remember actively seeking out an art history relevant to me. I saw a piece of Miscegenated Family Album at the Brooklyn Museum. When I found your work, I was so excited and so happy—really fascinated by the idea that you were able to navigate the practice that you have. Initially, I was fascinated by the idea of taking a conceptual approach to Egyptology, how your work dealt with ideas of racial violence related to perceptions of Egypt, and the right of someone of the African diaspora to engage or identify with Egyptian history. On a larger level, I was excited by your floating between text and a sort of personal and documentary imagery. You were also using performance as a way of approaching text. It seems—and I don’t know if you perceive your work in this way—that performance has been a way of animating text and taking text out of the referential structures that it’s easy for them to get trapped in otherwise. It’s similar to the way artists see a necessary relationship to Western art history in some ways. So I guess that’s a starting point. ( … )