Photographer and video artist Elizabeth Axtman is brutally honest. Thought-provoking and darkly humorous too, she has been dubbed the art world's next Adrian Piper.
Born in 1980, Axtman completed her BFA at San Francisco State University (2004), and an MFA at The Art Institute of Chicago (2006). She recently returned to the California Bay Area after a summer residency at The Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine.
Elizabeth and I chatted over the phone about her most recent video, Where's the Party At? in which she dances in front of a burning cross. As Axtman sipped on Hennessy and Pepsi a humorous dialog developed that extends from the relatively small art world to the slightly broader arena of black popular culture.
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Contemporary Confections: What’s your confection of choice?
Elizabeth Axtman: It’s Hennessey and Coke, but technically it’s Pepsi and Hennessy, because I think [Pepsi] tastes better than Coke.
CC: Ok. Mine is Bigelow Vanilla Caramel tea with a little bit of milk and two packets of Splenda…Yum!
EA: Well we have very different taste now don’t we?
CC: So, you got back to California from Skowhegan not too long ago. Talk to me about your experience at Skowhegan.
EA: Skowhegan was amazing. The first day I had the “too cool for school attitude” because it was camp and I knew that people were going to be just geeked about it.
I was terrified of the woods and the cabins and the roommate [situation], but once I got over that it really was an amazing experience. For one, you get to be around other artists of color -I never had that before in grad school- so that was the most amazing thing...[and] meeting a member from Otabgenga Jones, Jabari. He was amazing. Aisha, Mya, and David - they were all great. It was a really cool experience. I got to meet with artists and talk about work and you just don’t get that experience to be around 65 other artists who are really talented. It was nice.
CC: Who were some of your teachers or mentors at Skowhegan?
EA: Radcliffe Bailey was my absolute favorite. I made sure that I never missed a meeting with him, because we just had a really great rapport on work and what not, so meeting him was really great. Andrea Zittel was there, Byron Kim was there and he’s amazing; he wasn’t really there as an advisor, but he took time out with people if the wanted to [talk to him]. Lisa Siegel was there and a bunch of other people.
CC: So, before I talk to you about the work that you created at Skowhegan, let’s talk about grad school because you said that you didn’t have the chance to be around other artists of color and you went to The School of the Art Institute of Chicago?
EA: Yeah, it really lacked diversity, but [in] talking to other artists of color who were at Skowhegan, it was the same for almost everyone who was [there] as well.
CC: So while you were at Skowhegan you created this video called, Where’s the Party At? Do you want to talk about [that piece] a little bit?
EA: Yeah, it was interesting because there was a town close to Skowhegan called Milo, Maine and that’s where the very first outdoor Klan rally was ever held. My idea was that I would get a white Adidas track suit to mimic the Klan-like sheet, with a Kangol white hat and I was going to go up there and dance. And [then] I was like ahhh [in hesitation]…
CC: You were going to go to a Klan rally and dance?
EA: No, no, no, no. I don’t know if there’s a “down low” Klan crew going on over there, but there definitely aren’t supported Klan marches happening in the streets today.
I thought that historically it [would be] interesting to go to places where Klans had been. I got very interested in the idea of access and me, being biracial, I’m [half] white, but I’ll never have access to white privilege.
So the idea morphed one night when we had our very first bonfire at Skowhegan. We were walking up all of these hills and we hit [the bonfire] and this thing was huge and [the fire] was really beautiful. Just jokingly I asked Steve Locke, who is one of the people you go to if you need help, if it would be okay if I lit a cross on fire and danced in front of it. And I was saying this like, he’s going to tell me no, but I’m going to ask anyway and he was like “Sure, no problem.”
The year before somebody did a piece in the field where I made [my] piece and lit the whole field on fire, so what I was asking for was really nothing. So they got a bonfire permit for me and I had a few friends up there with me, [we] shot it, [I] danced, it was a one-time take only and it went perfectly, just the way I wanted it to, and that’s how the piece came together.
CC: And are you wearing a white tracksuit in the video? I can’t really tell, but it almost looks like you’re wearing a mechanic's jumpsuit, but in white.
EA: Yeah, it could be construed as that. There’s a lot of distance between me and the camera, but yeah that is what I’m wearing.
CC: Where’s the Party At? is only three minutes long, but by minute two I'm feeling tired for you and a little out of breath myself. Do you dance like that all the time? It seems like endurance was necessary.
EA: That was the longest 3 minutes of my life and people don’t know this, but I danced to one other song after that.
CC: What song was that?
EA: It was Jon B’s One More Dance. It was more of a slow seductive number, so the video has been edited down. Where’s the Party At? is really like a four minute song. I thought [to myself], "This song is never ending!" I hate time endurance pieces.
CC: It’s really beautiful the way the fire starts to extinguish towards the end.
When I see a cross burning I cringe and immediately what comes to [my] mind is the movie A Time to Kill with Matthew McConaughey and Samuel L. Jackson, maybe because I recently watched it again. That movie angers me so, though when I think of a cross burning my initial thought is “This is just something out of a movie. This is not real.” At the same time, I want to turn my head in the other direction, so I feel that I’ve never actually engaged a burning cross and tried to look at it for aesthetic value. I think that that’s something really interesting about this work.
EA: It is beautiful. There’s so much irony in it all.
I would watch historical videos to figure out how I was going to make my cross and really got into the historical meaning of burning a cross, because even that is [ironic]. When they burn it within their little crew of white people in little dresses, there’s such meaning of spirituality, and brotherhood and their white pride. Then they put it in black people’s yards to [say] “I hate you nigger, get away.” So it has this really weird double meaning. It was really important for me to feel like I was mocking their sacredness. That was the best part for me...making a joke out of their hatred.
CC: Where’s the Party At? has this element of humor and it’s further ironic, because you’re out in the middle of the woods and you’re burning a cross and you’re biracial, Afro-Panamanian and German-American, but you’re dancing around this cross. I feel like there are so many layers to the work, but [one thing] seems typical of your work and that's this element of dark humor. How do you see your work in that way?
EA: See, in school kids were not nice, so I thought "I’m going to go with being funny to distract them from noticing that one of my parents is black and the other one is white." And then I turned into this really sick human being who found really mean things funny. I love some of the great comedians like Richard Pryor. Paul Mooney is an absolute favorite. He takes things that are really sad like race and oppression and he finds a way to be humorous about it.
I think that even though there’s a great deal of anger behind my sense of humor, it helps people to engage with my work. If it was only the anger being conveyed then I don’t think that people could have a relationship to anything that I do; except if they were coming from an “I’ve been there, done that” point of view versus “I’ve seen it and I get it,” but they really don’t get it. So humor has always been a part of what I do. It helps me to talk about things, but it keeps me safe too.
CC: I’ve never heard you talk about your work this way. Of course, I know you have a great sense of humor...well, you have a dark sense of humor.
[Laughter]
CC: There’s one piece on your website, the montage, where you put a bunch of video [excerpts] together. I think the still image is from Winter Break. In the still you’re getting your hair braided and you have a black eye.
EA: Uh huh.
CC: It looks very real. Is that part of the piece?
EA: Oh, that is real! Yeah, I’m not your average artist. I was out one night with friends and I got jumped by seven ugly bitches who were hatin’ on my fine ass. The next day I went and got my hair braided.
[Laughter]
... It’s definitely a good story. When I came back to school people were just stunned. I think they perceived my life as a trip home to Watts, Los Angeles where I lived in the hood and that is not my life at all.
I just went out one night and I got jumped, got into a big fight, cops ensued; I’m punching, I’m throwing, I’m screaming, I’m bloody, it’s crazy and then I’m like “shit happens.” I’m laughing about it. But then I go back to school with a bunch of artists who have had very privileged lives and the idea of being jumped and it not being a big deal is kind of beyond them.
CC: So it seems like there’s always this element of the personal in your work. Do you ever separate your work from your personal life? Or do you ever see a break between the two?
EA: Not really. My work is very personal [pauses] I guess my Bill Cosby stuff…
CC: I was just about to say that this is the only work I’ve seen in which there’s not this direct link to who you are, and how you look, and how you live on a day-to-day.
EA: That’s what I find so interesting about my obsession with Bill Cosby, O.J. Simpson, umm…who’s that motherfucker that ate all of his boyfriends?
CC: Jeffrey Dahmer?
EA: Yes. I have a bit of an obsession with him as well. Yeah, I’m crazy.
I like the idea of getting caught up in someone's story. [Through the stories of others] I can convey the way I feel about subjects of race or socialization, culture, etc. I like getting caught up in that and that’s something new for me. I have all of these ideas in my head, but I’m just now thinking about how to get involved [creatively] with these ideas, but using them through other people instead of myself all of the time. I think that it does take a lot to put yourself out there personally. And often people try to make you feel bad about using the personal.
I will never allow anyone to try to make me feel bad about working with identity or myself. Anyone that says they got a problem with identity work and it has passed, like it was a fad...I’m sorry, but my being black is not a fad. So whenever I hear that it just goes in one ear and out the other, because they don’t know what the fuck they’re talking about.
CC: And so being interested in other peoples' stories [are you always influenced by] popular culture? You mentioned O.J. Simpson and Jeffrey Dahmer…I mean if you want to call Dahmer “popular culture,” but are you influenced by the media or literature or...?
EA: Oh, all those things influence me. Jeffrey Dahmer, well it’s not so much him, but there were these scenes caught on videotape of the black mothers who had lost their sons to his sick perversion. The passion that they showed for their loss is what, I think, affected me. I think it just always stuck with me.
Paul Mooney is someone that I always admired, because there are moments in his stand-up when he’s not joking. It’s a serious rant. He’s pissed talking about how he wasn’t allowed at the school, because he’s black and he’s angry. It’s so refreshing to see someone be mad about something that they have a right to be mad about. People are just so afraid of anger. It’s a very important emotion when it comes to things like race and oppression if you want to make some change, because this sweetie-pie shit is not getting anything done.
Who else...O.J., he's a very interesting man because of all of the emotion that [he] evokes across racial boundaries. I find it very comical, sad and [also] interesting. I love to work around O.J. and…Bill Cosby. Yikes! It’s like your dad gone bad.
CC: O.J. is that story that never goes away too.
EA: Never and he never will! Now he’s writing that book about “if he did it,” it’s just bananas. He can’t stay out of the limelight.
Just the emotion that he evokes from black people supporting his innocence to white people going bucky-balls-bananas if you say that he’s innocent. It’s just very interesting how polarized O.J. Simpson is in this country.
CC: I even see a still on your website of Grace Jones from the movie Vamp, which is not, I’d say, very well known. It’s not like a cult classic or anything, as fabulous as Grace Jones might be. Tell me about that piece and how you came across that material and [then] decided to use it?
EA: Oh that’s an easy one. My brother and I were complete latch-key kids and we saw every A-movie to every B-movie and I think that Vamp might be a C-movie. Nobody has really ever seen it so people are like, “where did you get this rare footage.” I’m like it’s really just a bad movie that I just happened to see. It popped into my head one day, because I was working on this piece about desire and repulsion and this idea of being attracted to something that you hate. I use myself in the piece, not out of my own desire [for white men], but for [logistical] reasons. It’s hard to put people in a position to kiss for you.
So the piece has many layers from being caught - I overlay the DMX sound [from an album] of him catching his girlfriend cheating on him and I use the sound piece over and over again. Then there’s the scene [in which] Grace Jones is a vampire and chews the neck off of a white man.
[There's] the whole black over-sexed female, black relationships breaking up over infidelity, black male aggression, black female aggression, and I throw some white men in it and you got a video.
CC: Let’s go back to Bill Cosby. We went on to talk about O.J. Simpson after you said “OMG, [Bill Cosby's] like your dad gone bad.” What’s your beef with Bill Cosby?
EA: Bill, Bill, Bill. I don’t understand how tearing down our people is going to help us in any way. You know the whole idea of “pull yourself up by the bootstraps” and his rant about black children’s names and how they shouldn’t be Aisha or Jamal, like these names are trashy. You just can’t believe that it’s Bill. You’re like NO, but we performed Ray Charles songs for our family together. You think of the old Bill Cosby from the show as someone that you admired so much growing up [now] being so nasty and mean as he gets older. He pretends to be so perfect and then you really find out about his life. He’s one of those people who shouldn’t throw rocks at a glass house.
CC: Well, I think there’s been some interesting dialogue that’s come up recently not only with Bill Cosby, but with Oprah having Ludacris on her show when the cast of Crash was there, just to really talk about the movie and how great it was and doing what Oprah does. But to then turn around and kind of attack Ludacris to say, “I don’t like your lyrics, I don’t like the way that you talk about women,” and so on. Then there’s been this [response] from rappers saying, if you don’t like us, don’t have us on your show and if you do have us on your show let us talk. Don’t edit out our defense.
EA: Yeah, Oprah…it’s interesting who she chooses to do that to. Jamie Foxx has said horrible things in stand-up about women and she loves his ass to death. Ludacris does have misogynist lyrics, but that’s not what he was on the show for. He did a great job in a movie role that most rappers suck at and shouldn’t do...He was there to talk about the movie. That mentality of better than is irritating to me.
CC: Do you think that you’ll be that way when you start selling work for millions of dollars?
EA: Yes. I’m going to be like, “What is this rr-aaa-p music?”
CC: I was looking at your website and I’m wondering whether you can imagine life, especially an art career, without the internet? It seems like a kind of instantaneous exhibition space.
EA: When I first started as an artist I could barely work a computer, not to say that I’m really a computer dweeb [now]. That’s the furthest thing from who I am, but now it’s almost impossible to find an artist who isn’t either on their gallery’s website or have their very own website. It’s now become this huge marketing tool, because the art world is so corporate.
CC: So let’s talk about your video Beef. It’s beautiful! There seem to be two different generations represented here. I think that the gold tooth does something for that. You have the mouth with the gold tooth and then you have, is it John Coltrane playing in the background?
EA: Yes.
CC: What was the inspiration for the piece?
EA: I have to totally thank my upstairs neighbor back in Chicago. She’s totally into music, like hardcore, and kind of obsessed with it in that weird way that makes you think that you don’t like music in the way that others like music, but you thought that you did until you met that person.
She came downstairs and we got into this debate over Three 6 Mafia and their Oscar win and how people treated them. [First] she was upset that they won. She thought that a better rapper who wrote [lyrics] about women’s rights or something should have won an Oscar. I was upset about how they were treated on the Oscars, like retarded babies, and it pissed me off because they’re grown men who wrote a song about what they know [and] where they come from for this movie Hustle & Flow.
It goes back to Billy Cosby and that older generation not seeing rap as a valid art form. Jazz had the same treatment when it was coming onto the [music] scene and people didn’t see it as a valid music form. It was the devil's music and now it’s this snooty, uppity-class music form.
CC: So speaking of music, what’s on your mp3 player right now? Top five songs?
EA: I love Talib Kweli’s song Get By.
CC: I never get sick of that song. What else?
EA: Umm, I like that new Ciara song, Promise. I love that girl. I don’t care what anyone says. Tupac, Ambition; Ghetto Boys, My Mind’s Playing Tricks on Me; Public Enemy, Can’t Do Nothin’ For You, Man.
CC: What are you reading right now?
EA: Lately I’ve been in that place where I read a ton of books at once.
I’m reading bell hooks’ All About Love. I’m finishing Is Bill Cosby Crazy or Has the Black Middle Class Lost It’s Mind, [a] great book by the way; and Killing Race by bell hooks.
Those are the [types of] things that I read. It’s been a long time since I read a good fiction book. My all time favorite book is White Boy Shuffle by Paul Beatty. I love that book so much.
CC: Who inspires you? Which artists do you think are doing interesting work at the moment?
EA: Otabenga Jones.
CC: The whole crew?
EA: The whole crew. All of them. Every damn one of them. I love what they do. They are so raw with it. They’re smart and so creative and they’re funny.
I like Kehinde Wiley – he’s tight.
Guillermo Gomez-Pena really blew me away. His work is really amazing. Adrian Piper. Ya know, someone who’s real nasty with it. Give me all your nastiness. Don’t be nice, don’t be sweet. Those are always the artists that I admire the most.
CC: Finish the sentence, The sweetest thing…
EA: Is Henessy and Coke.
CC: Art is…
EA: Funny.
CC: Anything else that you want people to know?
EA: I don’t think we talked about how sexy I am.
CC: Let’s talk about the sexy.
EA: Let’s.
CC: Go for it.
EA: Simply, I am so sexy. That’s all we really need to talk about. It’s like sexy and the art world, you think they go hand-in-hand, but they really don’t. I happen to be sexy and an artist.
CC: Right, and I guess that plays a role in your work too, because your work is about personal identity and there's the rump shakin’ you got goin’ on in [Where’s the Party At?] and I can’t believe I just said “rump shakin.”
[Laughter]
EA: My idols have always been people that were vain and conceited, especially black people that were vain and conceited, because we are so often told how we're not sexy, how we’re not pretty and how we don’t fit into this blonde haired, skinny standard of beauty. I completely reject them. I’m all for black people being conceited, almost on an obnoxious level like my man...
CC: Muhammed Ali?
EA: Terrell Owens, Muhammed Ali, Kanye West, Morris Day and Jerome from The Time. Day is like my favorite. God, he was just doin’ it. Prince, all of them. Anyone who has this extreme love for their self, you have to appreciate it. I love it, I appreciate it. I never look down on that, because humble is boring.
CC: So you think you’re cute?
EA: Cute is an understatement. Cute is rude. I said sexy
CC: So, Sexy Back - that song is all about you?
EA: Maybe Justin is bringing his sexy back, because he lost it some where but I’ve always been here.
