Dominique Duroseau
gal·va·nizing strat·e·gies: [Black on Black with Black]

Last week I met with the beautiful and brilliant Dominique Duroseau to talk about her current body of works, exhibited at Artists Alliance’s Cuchifritos Gallery in the Lower East Side. The show consists of three elements: five sculptural multi-material wall collages, one self-portraiture*esque audio piece, and two performative video works. 

As per press release, the works “navigate the false monolith of Black existence. A [re]-fusing of Blackness, the compositions of found and bought materials piece together complex conceptual and visual patterns to create body-scaled enfacements. The various forms of black material—plastic bags, thrifted clothing, floor tiles, packing materials—are carefully deconstructed, recontextualized, configured, and hand stitched to represent the nuances of class, education, and characteristics of identity”.

All of Duroseau’s works are deeply personal, affected by her own experiences but also by those of people around her. Each work is a little microcosmos of different (black) cultures, people, experiences, sentiments, and points in time. They come together to create a deeply impactful experience that can be comforting, reviving, or irritating, depending on who is looking. In the three hours we spent talking, Dominique granted me insights into the mindful complexity of her works as they encompass time, her personal background and experiences, social and political issues, and notions of existentialism and survival (two key components of her works). She made references to philosophy, psychology, and history. And while all of these aspects are fundamental to Duroseau’s body of works, the following interview excerpts were chosen to enable a more personal viewing experience. They focus on emotional questions and shaping an open mindset designated to approach the show and the works in it with more empathy, reflection, and appreciation. 

CB: Congratulations on the show!! It is your last before starting your MFA at Yale. How are you feeling?

DD: Strange, relieved, happy, but also still in checklist-mode. I’ve been working on this series for a very long time. Collecting those fabrics took years, 10 years to be exact. But to see how and where it is now – that is truly a satisfaction for me. 

All pieces are very personal and intimate. In terms of scale and interaction, I never go beyond what I can handle with my own body, I can hang and handle all pieces on my own. No element is accidental: When you get closer to the work, the stitches are very important to see, the pins are very important to see. The role they play is so pivotal, they hold everything together. Because these pieces have accompanied me for so long, they hold a lot of symbolism. I do hope that people will analyse the works and read them as codes, as communication pieces for other black people. Large scale communications saying: “Are you paying attention? Are you hearing me right now? Are you seeing that I see you and understand? Can you see that we CAN coexist?” I see the works as portraitures. I see each piece like a map, a visual set of data to abstractly describe individuality and complexity and how beautiful complexities are. (Complexities do not necessarily mean something negative, something toxic, it just means that to navigate them, you need to be more patient. And we all need to practice more patience.) From architectural elements and material compositions (each fabric representing different black cultures, backgrounds, spaces, etc), to notions of existentialism, racism, sexism, colonialism, and flattening hierarchies; all of that is woven and stitched into this body of works.

I also love that everything is in a white space. Originally the wall pieces were framed – contained really. I took away the borders, the original frames, but it is still surrounded and embedded in whiteness. The black materials are recontextualized, but still contain notions of rebuilding yourself, loving yourself, while navigating in these (white) spaces. Like going to Yale, but being a black woman. 

CB: Is there anything in particular that you wish people would ask themselves interacting with your work, or anything in particular they can and take away (questions, answers, …?)

DD: Really just take the time to stop and slow down, look at and analyse the titles, look at the work. I do put a lot of thought and meaning behind the titles. 

And also look at each different element and consider why it is there. Why is that rope there? Oh, the artist is black – it’s black – it’s a rope – it’s slavery – it’s lynching – but maybe that’s NOT what it is. Maybe think about, how a rope is made? How many strands are in a rope? Cause if you see how a rope is made, the structure, it’s multiple strands that get intertwined – it is a whole process. To me, when I look at a rope, I look at that. I take the time to dissect the complexity. I do so with art, but also with everyday objects. These things that people classify as simplicity are not simple. They just come off minimal but it is far more complex. It sometimes blows my mind getting into it. Our interior bodies are very complex. So are the complexities of existence, the complexities around issues of race, the issue around seeing blackness as a monolith. We need to stop looking at black cultures as a monolith. We might be all black, but there is diversity among us. How we eat, how we move… Sure, there are moments where we are completely fused, no matter what we cannot be separated from that. Am I asking anyone to get that from the jump? No…but what I hope for is that if you look at the works you start to analyse and start thinking and start feeling differently. 

I pray that when people look at art, they don’t just whip out their phones to take a picture and walk away. I want you to think about your changing impressions when you were walking towards the work – the Monet/Manet effect, meaning that from afar you see these black tabloids, but the closer you get, you see that there are different black materials, they are sort of intertwined, interwoven, attached to each other. As an abstraction, this is really like urban planning and mapping out possibilities. Possibilities of coexistence. Coexistence of different black communities. The series has just started, so there’s going to be way more to think about, there are endless possibilities of how to coexists. 

Let’s also talk about decontextualisation, and how it offers a different perspective to known constructs: If you have no clue of what you’re looking at, don’t start with judgment or rejection. Start with a mindset of “I’m here to learn”. That’s what people need to do in any show. Ask: “How do I feel about this? Does this make me feel uncomfortable? Does it make me angry? Why? Does this bring up memories? What are the memories and why am I thinking about it?” And if you enter and you have no sense of anything at all, if you’re completely blank, you should ask yourself the same questions: “Why am I blank, why am I not getting anything from this?” Maybe you’re not ready for this information. And maybe this is your first time exposed to something like this, so maybe you don’t even know how you’re processing, so maybe this is an overload making you think that you are blank but you’re not; you’re just taking a moment to process. And that process might take a couple of years, or a month, or maybe it will reveal itself by the time you have a drink or two. 

So when I look at art, I don’t wonder, what the artist is trying to say, but I reflect on how it makes me feel. How does it feel in this room? Space is very important to how you experience a lot of works. And my works revolve a lot around the experience and less about the visual only. What do you experience when you look at all these fabrics? Do you wanna touch it? I want you to wanna touch it. It feels nice and plushy. This texture may look like it’s friendly but it is not a friendly texture. I want you to feel curious, I want you to feel weird, I want you to feel annoyed. All of it. We all feel these emotions as human beings so why would you expect not to feel them at an art show? But if I am not in the right headspace, of course, I am going to walk into a show and not feel anything. And that has nothing to do with that work. 

CB: I want to shift a little and talk about gaze: How do you feel about this discourse and where do you see yourself in it?

DD: I wonder what the best way to answer is because I have a lot of feelings about this. There is this one video on the floor: (you flirt a lot) code for: i make his shit hard but his Black ass too scared to admit it: I had people say that I am very flirty when I just compliment them on something. I don’t find many people attractive, meaning I see people who are attractive, but that doesn’t mean that I am going to be attracted to them. So to find that there are people who constantly think I am flirting hurts a bit. Not because I think flirting is problematic, it’s because it is being told to me in a way that is – not accusatory – but unwelcomed and that has a lot to do with attraction and perceptions of beauty. Gazing is such a problematic word for me because my issue is that I do not feel seen. Aspects of visibility and invisibility have always been at the core of what I do. The only time you see my face in the show is in that video – and it’s on the floor, forcing you to look down. And while it raises some issues of hierarchy, I am also asking people to take their time not just to look at me, but to see me. I’m really trying to dismantle looking at someone’s body in terms of gazing. And you have to ask; what is the intent of gazing? Are you gazing at someone to see if you’re attracted to them or to actually see the person? Learn about their interests, their personality? You start dissecting yourself more because other people are dissecting you. I spent most of my life not only feeling invisible, but accepting being invisible, and getting comfortable in it, but then also feeling a level of pain. I am complicit by accepting that invisibility, but still screaming inside “please see me”. I was overly sexualised as a child, and now being desexualised as a woman – it’s a true mindfuck. Also being in a body that has been marginalised for so long. Being a woman, being a black woman, being a big black woman….I’m working through the trauma of it. 

There’s a lot of talk recently about Body Positivity, and I am quite conflicted about that. It is the same as BLM. I shouldn’t have to say that Black lives matter. The question is rather why do you feel that Black people don’t deserve the same agency as anyone else, why do you not see them as anybody else? Body positivity is asking the same thing: Why do you look at certain bodies and assume that they are sick compared to other bodies when we know this is not how sickness works. It can affect anyone. We need to start acknowledging and accepting that there are different types of bodies, and that obsessing over a certain type of body is more media dictating what is attractive. Just as a beautiful person doesn’t want to be sexualized all the time, I don’t want to be desexualized. It becomes more about objectifying, and then leads to the toxic practice of self-gazing, and dissecting your own body. We need a balance. Look at all the different genders. Regardless of what you identify with, your body is going to be different in the way it holds weight, loses weight, reacts to foods, medicine, sickness, aging, etc. And this is where gazing needs to be dismantled. Because when you look at someone and just make certain assumptions, that can be really dangerous. Gazing is also problematic when there is no exchange when it is just consumption. You came to receive and collect, and walked away without leaving anything in exchange. 

CB: Do you think we, as a society, are coming together or drifting apart?

DD: That’s a big question, and I don’t think it’s a fair question… I, as an individual, cannot answer this question for everybody. I have heard many similarly phrased questions over the past year. And while I know there is no malicious intent behind it, it sort of gives off a vibe of “Are we cool now? Can we move on?”, especially towards BIPOC communities. But I have to ask myself: are there questions that shouldn’t be asked? I also realise I did ask that same question in my works. How DO WE come together? My works are like an abstraction of your question. You’re asking me the question, I did the work. Yeah, we do need to come together. It might be a slow process, but the idea of us being more cognisant of each other, being more aware, patient, loving, and kind, empathetic, or at least sympathetic to becoming more empathic – that is a good start. 

gal·va·nizing strat·e·gies: [Black on Black with Black] is on view from June 11th through August 14th, 2021 at Cuchifritos Gallery + Project Space, a program of Artists Alliance Inc. (located inside the Essex Market) 88 Essex Street, No. 21, New York, NY 10002

HOURS: Wednesday – Saturday; 12-6p or by appointment (closed on public holidays)

Exhibition Photos by Brad Farwell