by Elana Mann and Vera Brunner-Sung
Senga Nengudi (b.1943, Chicago) is an artist best known for her sculpture, installation and performance work involving ritual and everyday objects. By transforming mundane materials such as pantyhose, sand, rope, bicycle tires, and water into stretched, sagging, and knotted forms, Nengudi refers to the female body’s corporeal and societal limitations.
Nengudi attended California State University, Los Angeles (CSULA), majoring in sculpture and minoring in dance. After spending a year in Tokyo at Waseda University, she returned to CSULA for graduate school. During this time, she was involved as an educator with the Watts Towers Art Center and the Pasadena Art Museum, two vital Southern California institutions that supported, respectively, community-centered initiatives and avant-garde practice. In 1971, following graduate school, Nengudi moved to East Harlem and spent a number of years traveling back and forth between New York and Los Angeles, making close ties to communities of African American artists in both cities. Upon returning to Los Angeles, Nengudi became a founding member of Studio Z, a loose-knit collective of African American artists[i] that formed in the 1970s around the studio of artist David Hammons.[ii] Nengudi often collaborated with Studio Z members to create site-specific performances based on ideas of ceremony and identity throughout the city of Los Angeles. In 1989, Nengudi moved to Colorado, where she taught at the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs, for many years, and where she still lives. Her work can be found in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Brooklyn Museum, the Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles, and the Studio Museum in Harlem, among others.[iii]
In 2011, artist Elana Mann and filmmaker Vera Brunner-Sung approached Nengudi as part of a collaborative research project on the history of feminist performance art and its relationship to the memory of place in Los Angeles. In the following interview, Nengudi recalls her experience living and working in the city during the 1970s and early 1980s. She discusses the political and cultural climate, as well as her relationships with peers and concurrent artist communities.
Vera Brunner-Sung: Let’s start by hearing about your experience living in Los Angeles in the seventies and eighties.
Senga Nengudi: I lived in a neighborhood called Sugar Hill starting in the mid-seventies, but back in the day, back in the 1940s, it was home to black artists like the Mills Brothers who could not purchase houses in Beverly Hills[iv]. Back then, there were racist covenants on those properties. So there were these wonderful houses up and down West Adams Boulevard, these small mansions that were owned by black entertainers. It was a very rich area for black culture. There was the Urban League,[v] and there were these different cultural clubs that would bring in people like James Baldwin to speak at a tea or that kind of polite thing. Marvin Gaye’s parents lived just down the way. And Eric Dolphy[vi] — I mean, it was just an amazing area. So that’s where I lived, and I enjoyed it. But there was a shift in 1978 when Californians voted for Prop 13.[vii] In cutting taxes, Prop 13 got rid of most of the social programs in the city. I left in ‘89. The city had dramatically changed in terms of gangs. That’s when graffiti took hold of the place — and not good graffiti. That’s when the colors[viii] started coming into play. You couldn’t wear this; you couldn’t wear that. At that time, our kids were in elementary school, and we decided to bring them to Colorado, because it was just getting ridiculous in our area.
VBS: Could you tell us about Studio Z, and how it first formed?
SN: In the late sixties, there was a group of black artists that lived in Altadena, Pasadena, and LA. They were more of a traditional group, and David Hammons was a solid part of it.[ix] So I met David when there were shows. Then in January of ’71 I moved to New York and was there through ’74. David and a number of other people came through for a conference and stayed at our house, so that solidified our friendship. When I moved back to LA, he had a studio on Slauson [Avenue]. It was in an old dance hall, and there were a number of studios on the bottom floor. Roho,[x] who was another part of this whole tribe situation, had a studio in the same complex below the dance studio. David let me use his studio when he was out of town. I got my own studio space in LA, and after David moved to New York, he would use my space when he was in town. So that’s where Studio Z evolved. People kind of floated in and out, and there was no obligation to be a “member.” It was open and it allowed for a lot of experimentation. We would have people perform like the Chicago Art Ensemble.[xi] They performed in David’s studio and it was exciting. I mean, stuff was happening all the time around ’76, ’77, and we just all came together through common interests. We were interested in Sun Ra and his way of having total theater. It wasn’t just music; it was costuming, performance, dance — everything. And we were about total art, because that is also an African-type thing, and a Japanese-type thing. The ceremony incorporates everything: it incorporates story, visual experience, movement, dance — everything is involved to create an experience, and that was of interest to us. Our east coast component was Just Above Midtown gallery, which was owned by Linda Goode Bryant.[xii] She tackled the gallery situation as we tackled our work. It was a really creative experience for her. It wasn’t just a business; she was doing some deep work that she was really interested in, and not so much for profit. David Hammons brought me in and introduced me to her, and I became a part of her gallery as well.
Elana Mann: So it sounds like you were collaborating with musicians and dancers at the time, as well as artists?
SN: Yes. Ulysses Jenkins[xiii] was another one of our cohorts. He came in a little bit later and, besides being a performance artist and a video artist, he was musically inclined. So he brought in a number of people, and he had a studio as well, called Othervisions.[xiv] Some of our work was formed through classes that we had with Rudy Perez, who was a contemporary choreographer and dancer,[xv] and we would translate it into a performance that wasn’t considered “dance” dance, but rather more performance art. And we worked with jazz bassist Roberto Miranda[xvi] as well. Maren Hassinger[xvii] was another major collaborator of mine. We have a similar background in that we both had art majors and dance minors, and so we both had an interest in movement. And then Sun Ra came to LA.[xviii] That was very important to all of us. One of my collaborators at the time was Cheryl Banks,[xix] and she was a dancer with Sun Ra, so she was the queen of improvisation. The thing with Sun Ra is that, not only did his audience not know what he was going to do, but his group — his musicians, dancers, and so on — had to be sensitive to what he might do. They rehearsed and everything, but they didn’t plan what was actually going to happen. Oh, we couldn’t wait for the Sun Ra experience: this whole audience full of people. He might come out of a bag doing 1940s big band music, or progressive jazz, or he might come out of a bag of not doing music at all, and just doing a lecture on “space is the place.” He was a trickster, and he was about stretching people. I did a whole series called “Mouth to Mouth,” where I interviewed friends and people like Sun Ra, on particular subjects, and then created kind of a radio performance piece.[xx]
EM: What else was going on in the art world at the time, that was inspiring to you?
SN: When I was going to school, I had the privilege of working at Watts Towers Arts Center, just after the Watts Riots.[xxi] I also worked at the Pasadena Art Museum. Both were very experimental places. At the Pasadena Art Museum they had original paintings by the Blue Four, Jasper Johns, Rauschenberg, Richard Serra, etc. And they had a lot of Happenings. So in a way, I was weaned on Happenings. Working at the Pasadena Art Museum was a white experience; working at the Towers was a black experience, but it was equally experimental. Noah Purifoy[xxii] was the director at the time, and there was a lot of energy being put into pulling in kids from the neighborhood to work with them. For some of the kids it made a difference in their life; for some of the kids, it didn’t, because the neighborhood was stronger. At any rate, it was a place where kids could come and express themselves, and do spectacular work.
EM: Were there performances or exhibitions that you remember during that time that were particularly influential to you?
SN: Yes, Laurie Anderson. She had a major exhibit in the eighties at UCLA [the University of California, Los Angeles],[xxiii] and that just knocked me out. Pretty much everything in the exhibit had to do with sound. And the Fowler Museum also had an exhibit of African art.[xxiv] It was so amazing to me. The way it was set up, you almost brushed up against the work, and it was so tightly done that you could smell the wood. There was a fragrance in the wood. And so it became this total experience, because the way you moved through it — I can’t quite explain it, but you were so close that you could really, truly feel the energy of those pieces.
EM: Was there a specific artwork you created that encapsulated that time and your experience of community?
SN: “Freeway Fets” [1978] was a public work commissioned as part of the CETA program, which was a seventies program that was supposed to be like the WPA from the forties. It was the seventies answer to putting artists to work on public art projects.[xxv] For the piece, I chose an area off of Pico Boulevard. It was just down from the LA Convention Center in a wonderful area that was very, very diverse: Latino, Native American, etc. The location was under the freeway because it reminded me of Africa: there was dirt, little palm trees, and of course, columns. I put up a public sculpture of my pantyhose pieces; I wrapped them around the columns. There was a “female” column and then there was another column that was “male” that had, for lack of a better term, phallic symbols. They were all what I considered to be fetishes, and so I called them “Freeway Fets.” I had a ceremony to christen the sculpture, and called upon some of my buddies from Studio Z to play musical instruments. I created loose costumes for some of them, and I called on David Hammons and Maren Hassinger to be a part of the actual physical ceremony. And we christened the area by dancing in our costumes, and it was wonderful.
VBS: Why was it important to have the performance for the public?
SN: This type of ceremony was for the village, in a sense. It was open to everyone. It was a community event, although there weren’t a lot of people there. But it was important as a public art piece to have it open, even the ceremony, to the public. And the wonderful thing about public art is it can be experienced by everyone. There are two aspects of ritual: there’s the private ritual where it’s one-on-one with you and a spirit, or whatever. But a larger part of ritual is communal; it happens in a community. You are doing something together to make something else happen to improve your circumstance, to connect with the spirit, to connect with the ancestor, to make a connection amongst each other — that unknown, unseen world that you occasionally try to control, because you feel as though, as a human being, you have to have a sense of control. So these ceremonies -- elaborate Catholic rituals, the Shinto religion, the chanting of Buddhists in a communal setting -- build up positive energy so that everyone can be better for it.
VBS: What are your strongest memories of performing that piece?
SN: Well, the sense of family. The people who were involved, who consented to be a part of the piece, were kind of my tribe. And they did things that they normally wouldn’t do either, like pick up instruments -- which was part of what that time was about. Actually, after the “Freeway Fets” performance, Maren Hassinger, myself, Houston Conwill,[xxvi] and Franklin Parker,[xxvii] another friend of mine, would go around LA and we would do exercises together. We would go to Griffith Park, or the Greek Theater.[xxviii] We would go when no one was there, and create our own performances. Most of the time they weren’t seen; they were exercises for stuff that we wanted to do. So each one of us would come up with an idea, and we would carry out the idea for each other. We would do it in different places around town, like an empty swimming pool or the flower garden in Exposition Park[xxix]. So that was our energy, and we did it on our own. Some of the other black artists who were working at the time were doing things — I’m not quite sure how to phrase this — but they were more traditional, and related to black nationalism. We were doing work that we also felt was highly significant to our roots, but it was taking another route. Filmmaker Barbara McCullough[xxx] was the only one who was documenting what we were doing, who had a similar energy in terms of improvisation. She was ready to be there on the spot — Johnny on the spot — whenever we called. I really want to emphasize her value to us, because, at that time, people weren’t really paying attention. Our own culture [didn’t understand us either]. They were saying, “What are they doing?” So if it wasn’t for her filming our community, people like Betye Saar[xxxi] and others would not have been able to share their voices in the same way.
VBS: Could you talk a little bit more about transformation in the performances that you and your collaborators worked on?
EM: Yes, and what were you hoping would come out of the performances? Were you interested in exploring relationships between performers, investigating altered states, or tapping deep into basic human needs and desires?
SN: Actually, this directly tied into my visual work and the work of some of the artists I collaborated with. I was personally very interested in altered states and a transformative state of being. You go from one point to another point. You allow yourself to be a channel, and then this transformation happens. It was also freeing, movement-wise, to have this other state where you could free yourself. My work is also about taking utilitarian things, such as masking tape or whatever — found objects and stuff that has an original, very mundane, very humble use and value, even if it’s trash that I find in the street — and transforming it into, as I say, its poetic self. Going beyond its usual function. For example, a paper painting tarp whose function is to lie there and catch paint can suddenly be used for something else, like the costuming for “Freeway Fets.” It’s similar for David Hammons. For instance, he collected hair at barbershops. He would go around to various barbershops in the area and sweep up the hair, and he would say, “Well, we can make very elegant pieces out of discarded hair.” The key word is “discarded”, just like discarded beings. Everyone possesses a transformative quality, whether they’re on the street or whether they’re the King of England. This quality of being able to transform yourself into whatever, the high or the low, is very human. So that was my work and some of the work of the other collaborators: taking objects, and things, and people that society devalues, and making something that is just wonderful and glorious. There’s a curious beauty in destruction. And I do mean curious. So there’s a value to everything. The insurrection and revolution of Watts in ’65 was part of our personal heritage and grounding — it was a phoenix-rising-from-the-ashes kind of thing. We were taking this horrific thing and allowing it to jettison us into another way of thinking.
EM: You seem to be drawn to the aesthetics of destruction, but your work isn’t mourning or saying destruction is bad or ugly. You’re trying to uncover other meanings. And it seems like there is a theme of putting value onto things that aren’t valued that also draws you to different materials as well. I was wondering whether you could also talk about improvisation a little bit.
SN: Yeah, I mean, that’s essential to my work. There’s a piece that was written by Richard Wright,[xxxii] where he talks about jazz, and the interrelationship of musicians, and how one musician plays a riff, and then another musician takes over. I often use this paragraph to explain the relationship between improvisation and black culture. Even though he’s describing music — I think he might even mention painting, actually — he talks about how the musicians go back and forth and begin to elevate each other, because one will do one thing and then another one will add to it, and then it goes up, and up, and up. African American culture is founded on improvisation as a survival tool. It’s about coming to a place where your socks are knocked off by what’s going on and surviving. It’s about not being given any food to eat, and having to figure out how to survive on the throwaway stuff. Performance-wise, African Americans have to perform and improvise just to get through life and through the day. I adore the Dadaists and Gutai; they were really significant influences on me when it comes to performance. But what’s central is the performative quality of life lived in America as an African American. That brings in double face, double consciousness, double this, double that, because you’re living, in essence, two lives. You’re living a life with the majority culture where you have to perform, and then you’re living the life of your base culture. This reality is historical, and has an improvisational element. You have to think on the spot, in the face of, “That man might kill me,” or, “That person might do me in.” So you do the tap dance and figure out how to maneuver the situation, and it is true performance. To survive in the majority culture world, you have to perform all the time.
EM: In the time period we are talking about, there were many other movements in Los Angeles challenging the majority culture. I’m curious to know about your relationship to the Feminist Art movement, and how that’s changed over time.
SN: I’m finally at peace with the feminist thing. And I say “finally” because it just happened, really — every time I checked in with that energy, I could still feel in my body that there was energy that hadn’t been released yet. And now I’m okay; I’m fine with it. I taught women’s studies at one point to women of color, and I found that I was not the only one who had experienced not being fully valued, or put on an equal plane. The feeling was, in a sense, “This is our party and why don’t you come in?” So it was a curious experience. I value feminist issues, but again, it was a cultural thing. The cultural history of women of color is that they had to work anyway, so it wasn’t about some of the similar issues related to working, and a particular kind of freedom. Those things were different. Having financial equality to men was certainly important. In the black community there was also this issue of women and men being together. I don’t know why, but black men, in general, were such a threatening issue. Black women had an easier time getting jobs than black men, so sometimes there was an economic disparity there that created issues for black men and women. If the woman is making the money, then the man feels like less of a man. And that goes back historically, because the black male sometimes had to stand by while his wife or loved one was being raped by the “master.” It was either be killed because you said something, or be compliant. This issue of compliance is huge. Historically, there was this issue of a black male not being able to do what is totally fundamental in a relationship, and that is to protect your woman and your children. So this stuff is deeply rooted, and is our issue as black people. That’s why the “Freeway Fets” piece pulled both male and female artists together, There are issues we have in common with white women. But it felt like I was invited to the party, and that invitation meant I wasn’t equal; it was still their party to be invited to, as opposed to us having a party together. That said, I loved Suzanne Lacy’s work. She really worked hard to pull groups together. Of course, Nancy Buchanan[xxxiii] and other people made a genuine effort, too.
EM: That makes a lot of sense. You had a cultural legacy that was really affecting you and your community, that did not affect other women in the same way.
VBS: And these movements grow out of personal experience, right? If we’re going to talk about the personal being political, and an embodied experience that women were beginning to identify, then of course that’s not going to be the same for every individual, especially along racial, ethnic and class lines.
SN: If a Latina mother has to take care of her kids and the Women’s Building invites her in for something, and she brings her kids and then gets a sense that they don’t even like kids there, then it’s — I don’t know. I don’t want to be negative about it. We come to it in different ways, but there is a commonality of wanting the same thing: wanting a career where you receive equal pay, oh, the whole shebang.
VBS: Did you have support for your work from other peers or arts institutions in Los Angeles, at the time?
SN: Sometimes we didn’t have a lot of support, or a lot of understanding, from our other artist friends, and certainly, the establishment was not particularly interested in what we were doing and how we were doing it. At that point, it was very difficult to get our work into a museum like LACMA [Los Angeles County Museum of Art], and I find it ironic that today the [contemporary art] director of LACMA is black.[xxxiv] But then — and I hate to use crude language, but in the past, if any of us exhibited at places like LACMA, it would be in what they called a “community room,” which we called a “nigger room,” because that’s where the community, be it Latino, black, or whatever, was assigned. So the museum could say, “Oh yes, we have artists of color here,” but somehow, we always wound up in this room. And it was similar in New York as well. They always had this room on the first floor or the bottom floor in the basement where they would show “community artists.” It’s humorous to see that we’ve made it to other floors now. But it was very funky, that’s all I can say. We were consistent in breaking through to be acknowledged, but the establishment was fairly disrespectful. But there were people like Josine Ianco Satarreles who was the director for Barnsdall Municipal Art Gallery at that time, and she was very supportive of artists of color and really worked hard at getting our exhibits into that space. In fact, Ulysses, Parker, myself and Maren actually did a performance on the grounds of Barnsdall that heralded the opening of an art exhibit called Afro-American Abstractions.[xxxv] So Josine was quite the champion for us, which was really helpful.
EM: Did the lack of institutional support influence where your performances were located, or were you just interested in exploring spaces in general, and public spaces in particular, as the locations of your performances?
SN: No, the lack of support didn’t really influence the location of the performances. We were still pushing to have our work exposed in any way possible, sort of like the Negro baseball league. In the south, because of segregation, black communities had to create their own businesses, insurance companies, and so on, because they were not serviced by the main culture. And similarly with the black baseball league, it allowed for really skillful development. Our circumstance allowed us to combine with other artists of color to do some really interesting work, and that was very exciting. So it didn’t stop us. We were excited about what we were doing, and that was just part of life in America. We just did what we needed to do, but still pushed to be acknowledged. We had a hard time dealing with even the “liberal” group organizations, including LACE[xxxvi] which was better than most. Some of the performances weren’t acknowledged by High Performance[xxxvii] until later. But, to answer your actual question, whether or not it influenced where we did our performances: no, it did not.
EM: I’m just curious, were you involved in any sort of social or political activism during your time in Los Angeles?
SN: Yes, but it was gentle activism. I wasn’t a Black Panther. Some artists in my community were, because they were involved in artist collectives that dealt with Black Power. In general, we participated in all these things related to protests and so on, but most of my community was not deeply involved in the Black Panther movement. It was an active time, and it was exciting and particularly special since we really were a tribe and a family -- we had to support each other. And now, because of the climate of the times, and because we are in different places, that isn’t particularly possible. Maren and I still connect, and have been collaborating long-distance for forty years. We assign ourselves performances even if we’re in separate places, and we often make performances together when we’re in the same location. So that is still active.
VBS: The intensity of your conviction, and your creative vision as a group, sounds very powerful.
SN: In Joseph Campbell’s interviews that were done by Bill Moyers, he talks about the power of myth and sacrifice.[xxxviii] There’s an episode in that series I sometimes use if I’m doing a lecture to talk about those times: There is a tribe that has a ceremony where the women of the village beat out a rhythm that the men dance to. So the men are dancing in this circle and, after doing this for a while, one or more of the men go into trance. And in this trance, they describe the experience as climbing a ladder and going up to God’s place. When a man enters into trance he emits an intense scream. During the time that this person is going into trance, the other men that are dancing hold onto him. Campbell describes this, that they’re running with the man while he is in this trance and having this experience. When he collapses from this trance experience, his friends blow all over his face – they blow life back into him. Afterward he says, in essence, “If it wasn’t for my friends, I would simply have died.” That is what the experience was like for us: we were there for each other, and as we made these trips, these experiences and these experiments, we were running with each other and we were breathing on each other’s faces. We were keeping each other alive, because we were the only ones who could keep our energies alive creatively.
[i] The active members of Studio Z were constantly changing, but included at various moments: Senga Nengudi, Franklin Parker, Houston Conwill, Maren Hassinger, David Hammons, Ulysses Jenkins, Barbara McCullough and Roho. Members explored performance, improvisation, abstraction and materiality, as it related to African cultural forms and black American identity. (Kellie Jones and Hazel V. Carby, eds., Now Dig This!: Art & Black Los Angeles, 1960-1980. Los Angeles: Hammer Museum, 2011: 22; Thomas J. Lax, “‘No Like This’ Movements in Performance, Video and the Projected Image, 1980-93,” VideoStudio Playback, New York: Studio Museum in Harlem, 2011: 3.)
[ii] David Hammons (b. 1943, Springfield, Illinois), is an artist who creates installation, sculpture, performance and prints. Hammons often uses found objects that are culturally coded as relating to African American experience to critique racial assumptions and biases in the United States. (Andrea Gyorody, “David Hammons,” in Jones and Carby: 310-11.)
[iii] Connie H. Choi, “Senga Nengudi,” in Jones and Carby: 313-314; Esther Adler, “Senga Nengudi,” in Cornelia H. Butler and Lisa G. Mark, WACK!: Art and the Feminist Revolution. Los Angeles: Museum of Contemporary Art, 2007: 272-273; Senga Nengudi, Sengasenga.com, personal website, accessed 14 April 2014.
[iv] A popular African American vocal ensemble that began performing and recording in the late 1920s.
[v] A national civil rights organization founded in 1910 to fight oppressive social and economic conditions faced by African Americans.
[vi] Eric Dolphy (b.1928, Los Angeles; d.1964, Berlin) was an influential avant-garde jazz saxophonist.
[vii] Passed by voter approval in June 1978, Proposition 13 dramatically reduced property taxes in California by capping rates at 1% and limiting property value assessments. Massive budget shortfalls persist to the time of this writing, with state government making cuts in public services, education, and elsewhere, in order to mitigate the crisis.
[viii] The use of color in clothing and accessories to signify gang affiliation.
[ix] Because of her tendency toward abstraction, Nengudi worked on the periphery of what is broadly termed the Black Arts Movement (1965-1976), a multidisciplinary movement that centered on the notion of a “black aesthetic,” and political and social engagement with black audiences. (Kellie Jones, EyeMinded: Living and Writing Contemporary art, Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press, 2011: 428, 446-447.)
[x] Roho is an artist and architect who grew up in Santa Monica, California. His creative practice encompasses a variety of disciplines, including painting, sculpture, photography, architecture, music and literature. (Brunner-Sung phone interview with Nengudi; email correspondence with Chephren Rasika, 10 May 2014.)
[xi] The Art Ensemble of Chicago is an avant-garde jazz orchestra, founded in the 1960s by a group of musicians including Roscoe Mitchell and Lester Bowie.
[xii] Opened in 1974, Just Above Midtown was located in the elite gallery row of West 57th Street in Manhattan. Goode Bryant, who previously worked at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Studio Museum in Harlem, exhibited African American artists (and others) who were creating boundary-pushing artwork. (Jones and Carby: 27.)
[xiii] Ulysses Jenkins (b. 1945, Los Angeles) is an artist primarily known for his diverse work with video. Through a variety of experimental video techniques, Jenkins has challenged ideas of race, history and state power since the 1970s. (Naima J. Keith, “Ulysses Jenkins,” in Jones and Carby: 312-313.)
[xiv] Located in the West Adams neighborhood, Jenkins’s studio hosted readings, workshops, and performances beginning in the early 1980s. (Vera Brunner-Sung phone interview with Senga Nengudi, 23 March 2014; Abbe Schriber, “Ulysses Jenkins,” in VideoStudio Playback: 13.)
[xv] A student of Martha Graham and Merce Cunningham, dancer and choreographer Perez (b. 1929, New York) came to prominence through his work with New York’s Judson Dance Theater, where he participated in the postmodern dance movement alongside Yvonne Rainer, Trisha Brown, and others. (Victoria Looseleaf, “From the Bronx to Los Angeles: The Legacy of Rudy Perez,” KCET.org. KCET, 28 June 2013. Web, 12 April 2014.)
[xvi] An important figure in the Los Angeles jazz scene, Miranda is a bassist who has performed with pianist and composer Horace Tapscott’s Pan Afrikan Peoples Arkestra, among others. See Steven L. Isoardi, The Dark Tree: Jazz and the Community Arts in Los Angeles, Berkeley, California: University of California Press, 2006.
[xvii] Maren Hassinger (b. 1947, Los Angeles) is an artist who works in sculpture, installation, and performance. She was trained in dance and fiber arts, and creates abstract works that relate natural and manufactured forms. (Connie H. Choi, “Maren Hassinger,” in Jones and Carby: 311-12.)
[xviii] The Sun Ra Arkestra performed in Los Angeles several times during the 1970s and 1980s, at various venues.
[xix] Dancer and choreographer Cheryl Banks-Smith has an interdisciplinary practice, collaborating frequently with poets, artists and musicians.
[xx] “Mouth to Mouth: Conversations on Being” is a three-part series of audio recordings, begun in 1988, that features interviews with artists, poets, and musicians speaking to meanings and metaphors of creativity and the black American experience. (Brunner-Sung phone interview with Nengudi; “Double Think Bulemia,” Aapaa.org, African American Performance Art Archive, n.d. Web, 14 April 2014.)
[xxi] Also referred to as the Watts Rebellion. In August 1965, six days of violence broke out after a black man accused of drunk driving was beaten by white police officers in Watts, a neighborhood in South Central Los Angeles. While some blamed racial hatred for the events that caused 34 deaths, over 1,000 injuries, and millions of dollars of property damage, others, such as Martin Luther King, Jr., pointed to the “economic deprivation, social isolation, inadequate housing, and general despair of thousands” that created a climate of frustration among urban-dwelling African Americans. (“Watts Rebellion [Los Angeles, 1965],” King Institute Encyclopedia, Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute, Stanford University, n.d. Web, 26 April 2014.)
[xxii] Noah Purifoy (b. 1917, Snow Hill, Alabama, d. 2004, Joshua Tree, California) was an artist, social worker, activist, and arts administrator. In 1964, Purifoy co-founded the Watts Towers Arts Center, which supported artists and community members in South Central Los Angeles. (Connie H. Choi, “Noah Purifoy,” in Jones and Carby: 211-212.)
[xxiii] Laurie Anderson: works from 1969 to 1983, was on view at the Frederick S. Wight Gallery at UCLA from January 29-March 4, 1984.
[xxiv] Located on the campus of UCLA since 1963, the Fowler Museum of Cultural History is home to an expansive collection of non-Western art. Several shows of African art were mounted during the 1980s; the precise exhibit Nengudi refers to here is lost to memory.
[xxv] The Comprehensive Employment and Training Act (CETA) was a federally funded job training program operated from 1974-1983, focused on economically disadvantaged groups, including artists. (Jones: 457.)
[xxvi] Houston Conwill (b. 1947, Louisville, Kentucky) is a multimedia artist, who creates performances and installations based on investigating African American spaces. Conwill began his career as a muralist, but through his collaborations with artists in Los Angeles he began to experiment with performance, ritual, and mythology. (Courtney J. Martin, “Houston Conwill,” in Jones and Carby: 315.)
[xxvii] Franklin Parker (b.1945, Pittsburgh; d. 2001) was a sculptor and conceptual artist that Nengudi first met in Venice (Los Angeles) in the late 1970s. (Senga Nengudi, “Remembering Parker,” This Long Century, n.d. Web. 23 April 2014.)
[xxviii] Griffith Park is the largest municipal park in the nation with urban wilderness. Located northwest of downtown Los Angeles, Griffith Park boasts attractions such as the famed “Hollywood” sign, the Griffith Park Observatory, and the Greek Theater, an outdoor amphitheater and concert venue.
[xxix] Exposition Park is a historic park in Los Angeles that has been in existence since the late 1800s. Many important Los Angeles institutions call Exposition Park their home, including the California African American Museum, the California Science Center, and the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles. The Park also hosted two Olympiads (X and XXIII), two Super Bowls (I and VII) and the World Series (1959).
[xxx] Barbara McCullough (b. 1945, New Orleans, Louisiana) is a film and video maker, and a member of the “L.A. Rebellion” group of African American filmmakers who converged around the University of California, Los Angeles in the 1970s and ‘80s. Her documentary Shopping Bag Spirits and Freeway Fetishes: Reflections on Ritual Space (1981) explores the ideas and practices of several contemporary artists working in Los Angeles at the time, including Hammons, Nengudi and Betye Saar.
[xxxi] An influential figure in the second-wave Feminist Art movement, Betye Saar (b. 1926, Los Angeles) is an artist best known for her assemblages. Her works blend the personal and political, as she gathers, manipulates, and juxtaposes cultural and familial artifacts. (Courtney J. Martin, “Betye Saar,” in Jones and Carby: 151-152.)
[xxxii] Richard Wright (b. 1908, Roxie, Mississippi; d.1960, Paris) was a writer of fiction and non-fiction focusing on the black experience in the United States. His 1940 novel, Native Son, was the first best-seller book in the U.S. written by an African American.
[xxxiii] Nancy Buchanan (b. 1946, Boston) is an artist who was an important figure in the second-wave Feminist Art movement. Buchanan was a pioneer in the development of performance and video art in Southern California, challenging ideas of gender, capitalism, and celebrity.
[xxxiv] Franklin Sirmins (b. 1969, New York) was appointed chief curator of contemporary art at LACMA in 2010.
[xxxv] The performance, titled “Flying,” was held on July 6, 1982, and considered flight as a metaphor for struggle and transcendence. Afro-American Abstractions was curated by April Kingsley. (Rebecca Peabody, “African American Avant-Gardes, 1965-1990,” Getty Research Journal, no. 1, J. Paul Getty Trust, 2009: 211-217.)
[xxxvi] Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE) is a non-profit arts organization and exhibition space founded in 1978 by a group of artists. It became an important center internationally for the development of new art forms, such as video, performance, installation, and digital art. (“History,” Welcometolace.org, Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions, n.d. Web. 29 April 2014.)
[xxxvii] Founded by Linda Frye Burnham, High Performance was a quarterly magazine published in Los Angeles from 1978 to 1997. Its contents were devoted to underrecognized art, particularly works engaged with social and cultural issues.
[xxxviii] Nengudi is referring to The Power of Myth, an American television program that first aired on the PBS network in 1988. Journalist Moyers conducted a series interviews with mythologist and writer Campbell on the subjects of myth and storytelling around the world, and the influence on human understanding of the meaning of life.
In the Canyon, Revise the Canon: Utopian Knowledge, Radical Pedagogy and Artist-run Community Art Space in Southern California
Ed. Geraldine Gourbe
Co-published with ESAAA, Ecole Supérieure d'Art de l'Agglomération d'Annecy
Out on Apr. 01, 2015
http://shelter-press.com/061-In-The-Canyon-Revise-The-Canon-En
With contributions by:
Mark Allen, Juliette Bellocq, Vera Brunner-Sung, Nancy Buchanan, Carol Cheh, Matthew Coolidge, Jill Dawsey, François Esquivié, Rita Gonzales, Géraldine Gourbe, Robby Herbst, Walter Hopps, Robert Irwin, Chris Kraus, Leslie Labowitz, Suzanne Lacy, Fred Lonidier, Pauline Oliveros, Elana Mann, Emily Mast, Senga Nengudi, Janet Sarbanes, Annette Weisser, Joshua Young, Andrea Zittel