I don’t know if you got a chance to see this book that I made, “Cordyceps Gaud Adversary,” but I think it’s a good place to start. The name comes from a fungus that infects carpenter ants. It compels them to climb above the colony, so to climb above their people, and then once the fungus finishes growing, it bursts from the ant’s head and rains down on all the other ants—and then they’re all compelled to do the same thing. It becomes this cycle of killing themselves and killing the entire colony. I’m bringing this up because I feel that in Black culture we’re all motivated, we’re all striving for a kind of greatness, but sometimes we don’t know the forces behind that. I’m weary of that, because it’s not nourishing for our people—it’s actually killing them, in a sense. Even like in gangster rap—to be the hardest, you’ve got to literally have shooters and killers around you.

And on that point, I’m curious what you think about platforms, which was another thing my book was trying to grapple with. As a publication, it was a platform, just like an exhibition would be. But what are we supposed to do with these platforms? How can we use them to ensure that we’re not like the ants, climbing up just to kill?

Yes, I struggle with that.

That’s the core foundation of my practice. When I use the word “function,” for example, I’m speaking about function in a literal sense, but also about how ideas are supposed to function when they’re coming from so many different directions. I use history and I use place to complicate that. That’s why a lot of the objects that I source are manufactured—they’re old antique Portuguese or old antique African objects. The industrial history that went into their making then adds another layer onto my situation and how I’m using all the resources available to me in an art world context. Then it all gets crumpled together into this surreal object. It may seem to simply be representative of a chair or a table, but it’s not. There’s much more going on there.

Right—and then you get into the history of place. Portugal, where I’m based now, was the first country to discover West Africa, basically starting the West African slave trade. My parents grew up in Lagos, which is named after the first slave port in Europe, in Portugal. Then another layer: my parents immigrated to the US, so I was an African in America and not African-American. That means I have a different relationship with material than an African-American artist might, because my ancestors were never actually considered material themselves. I’m able to engage with material because there isn’t this kind of disruption that most Black Americans are faced with.

It’s crazy. I found it out afterwards!

Like something was pulling me there.

This is something I’m still working on. I found part of an African wood headboard, which I’m going to use as the base alongside scrap from a metal junkyard. I’m going to piece it together to create a side table.

I want to talk about that. I’ve been thinking about why we aren’t really seeing a Renaissance or young people pouring into the art making these days. I think it’s because the pathways to “making it” are so confusing—it’s not clear cut in the way that becoming a football or NBA player is, where you know you have to be good, and play in a league, and then you get drafted, etcetera. With art it’s all about these shifting opinions on what you’re doing—and as Black people we check out when our work is judged like that.

Representation of Black bodies, Black people—exactly.

You have try to resolve aesthetic problems outside of the social guilt trip. You have to be concerned with art and that’s what I think a lot of people get away from. They’re concerned with what their work can do socially and its moral uprightness, which gets away from them making an object people want to look at.

Just this morning I was watching a lecture by Kerry James Marshall where he says “Everything has to be in play.” So, yes, there’s a lack of representation in museums, but just because I’m trying to resolve that doesn’t mean I have to abandon trying to make something beautiful at the same time. We can have our work be uplifting for Black people while also making beautiful shit. Right now, everyone’s happy to jump on an artist because they’re Black, and no one’s critical about whether what they’re doing is good.

That’s exactly what I’m trying to do. I want Blackness to exist very directly and overtly in what I’m producing without it taking up the entirety of the piece. That’s the goal.

But I would argue that Black abstract expressionist painting really doesn’t do anything for Black people. Obviously, it’s okay to be a Black abstract expressionist, but that goes back to my idea of the obscure pathways to “making it” in the artworld. With abstract expressionism, you’re at the mercy of someone’s opinion, whereas if you’re able to show a kind of pictorial literacy—how to position a body, how to work with color and shading, etcetera—there’s this undeniable knowledge, an undeniable intelligence you can pin down. If you’re splattering on a canvas, you might make something that looks good, but as a practice you’re not saving yourself.

As someone who’s obsessed with winning, who’s not interested in mediocrity, I believe you have to consider all these things, yes. If you just want to make shit and hope that someone, someday, puts it in a gallery, that’s cool. But if you’re trying to ensure success, you’ve got to be interested in what’s going on.

It doesn’t help to be a secret as an artist, in my opinion. But I think there are a lot of elements within the game that you don’t have to play—in terms of making work that you like. I know I’m obsessed with space, aesthetics, form, and texture. So at one point I asked myself, how can I ensure that I’ll have an artistic practice that explores those obsessions? I knew I couldn’t afford space in New York for that kind of work—but I’d heard property was cheap in Portugal, so I went and found a warehouse in the countryside for €150 a month. I renovated it to act as my studio and home, so I won’t have the excuse of not having a place to work or live. Then fabrication costs—I knew I couldn’t afford to fabricate from scratch, so I looked around at different scrap metal yards and learned to scavenge the forms that I love, accumulating and accumulating until I had enough to play with. Basically, I’ve minimized the barrier of entry.

Right, and on top of that, I’m still making “functional” objects. People with excess money can put my work in their homes. That was a conscious choice—to tackle the commodity object space with pieces that allude to a function. I’ve set up a practice where I only really have to sell two or three objects every six months in order to live and keep working. There’s a way to solve a lot of the problems of the game while still rigorously tackling what you’re interested in.

That’s exactly right. It’s like adding medicine to really delicious food. I don’t dumb myself down at all, I’m expressing myself to the fullest of my ability, but it’s also beautiful enough that someone wants to live with it.

This whole Portugal studio is me playing the game, for example, but it’s also an artwork in its own right. I hope it’s preserved when I’m gone, so people can visit it. It gets to the heart of what I’m interested in, which is engaging with and building out the material world. I respect all of the theorists, the writing around Critical Race Theory, etcetera, but I don’t think writing is enough. There has to be a physical object that stands for those ideas. There’s been such a lack of Black consciousness within the material space. Look around this apartment, for example. Almost all these objects are manufactured by white companies. I’m talking about silverware, bottles, tables—maybe some of it was mass-produced overseas in China or Thailand, but the design is all from a white consciousness. I’m trying to disrupt that by making as much as I can. Like doing reps at a gym. That’s one of the things that I really respect about Virgil now, looking back—I didn’t like everything that he did, but boy was he getting his reps in.

That’s soundwaves, it’s not material. Black people have a strange relationship with material because we were once cost. We were once something that you could trade for money. If you think about oratory skills, that’s something that you can perfect without going to buy anything. That’s why you have Black preachers and great Black vocalists. Or sports—you buy a basketball one time and then you use your body for the rest. You can be the best simply because you bought one thing. Whereas I’m in here putting reps up and I have to use a lot of material. The barrier for entry is high.

And what it doesn’t resolve is this issue of Black consciousness existing in the material world. I’m trying to resolve that—just simply the fact that I’m making shit alone is an attempt.

I’ve been thinking a lot about that. I’m doing this collaboration that’s going to come out in 2025, which I see as the first step towards changing that context. It’s a very prestigious company, but it’s going to be mass-produced so that anyone can buy it.

AC units, coffee makers, all that shit. Exactly. I do wonder if I can still get the same amount of respect in the art world if I start moving into an industrial design space. But we’re living in a new time, and I just can’t be scared of that. The mission is the mission. I hope that it gets contextualized properly, but I have to stay true to what I’m trying to resolve. I can’t worry that I’m not going to get a show at the Guggenheim because of this upcoming collaboration, for example.

Everyone knows that it’s up to us right now to build these new institutions. If I don’t get a show at the Guggenheim, that’s cool because one of my homies has already built the new Guggenheim.

I love that. And I think that’s a great place to end, because we literally posed the question at the beginning and resolved the problem in the same conversation!