AT THAT FIRST DINNER, Mr. Satterwhite, at 26 the youngest person at the table—“I got T-shirts older than you!” Chuleta needled—spoke up. “I am who I am,” he said. “I am black, I am gay, and I am an artist.” But he doesn’t use those facts to pander, he continued, describing his experience of racial identity hanging over work by artists of color. “When I was in grad school, if you put a white box in a space, they’d be like, ‘Mmm … what’s that about?’” This was greeted with empathic laughs around the table. “You need to think of strategies to depoliticize that moment.”
The conversation moved fluidly from Tupac to Emory Douglas, Beyoncé to Philip Guston as everyone dug into chicken and lamb atop mountains of rice. There were stories of discrimination at some institutions, and of how thoroughly context, geographical and otherwise, can change how art and race are viewed. There were lively debates about the value and power of minstrelsy, and the degree to which any artist has to perform his or her own identity to succeed.
As the dinner wound down, Rajkamal Kahlon asked the table, “In what ways do each of us compromise in terms of the performance of our identities when we encounter institutions that can legitimize us?”
Sometimes, Mr. Biggers volunteered, “you get asked to be in a show because they want you to exemplify said blackness or colorness or otherness, and they’re just waiting for you to do that shit you do.”
“You can’t ever resist it, though, can you?” Mr. Thomas shot back.
Ms. Alba plans to work with Recess to publish transcripts of the dinners in a book that will come complete with glamorous Vanity Fair-style photographs of the participants, each labeled with a special moniker (Ms. Thomas is “The Female Gaze,” Ms. O’Grady “The Trailblazer”). “Artists are kind of the unsung heroes when it comes to arts,” she said. “I wanted to make everyone into these iconic, celebrity figures.” Though she was present at each meal, she made a point of participating minimally in the discussions. “Bringing everyone together,” she said. “That is my statement.”
arusseth@observer.com
