Meet Derek Fordjour – One of My Favorite People

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Speaker 1 How do you know when something's finished?

Speaker 10 I think there's a creeping feeling that you get where you're like, I'm not making this better. You know, it's kind of like when you're at a barber's chair, like the longer you're there,

Speaker 10 this guy can only remove hair

Speaker 10 do you know what I'm saying yeah I know exactly you shouldn't be there too long

Speaker 10 it's like a moment that if you're like it's it's been a while that you want to look for

Speaker 1 diminishing returns in a way yeah like there's a point where you're like if I stay in this

Speaker 10 it's not gonna get better I'm sure you like write a joke and you're like that's too many words I did too much to get there you know it's enough leave it there's like an instinct right Yeah, mine, I think, is more do I still feel this way?

Speaker 1 Yeah, that's the same thing. Yeah, that's that's more mine.

Speaker 1 My guest on today's podcast is someone I'm lucky enough to call a friend and a human being who has achieved one of the hardest things in the world, which is becoming extremely successful.

Speaker 1 and genre-defying in many ways as an artist.

Speaker 1 I always think about how crazy it must have been back in the days to be friends with someone like Picasso or Michelangelo or any of those people.

Speaker 1 And I'm not comparing artists, but for me, Derek Forgel is the modern equivalent.

Speaker 1 He's an artist, he's a painter, a sculptor, one of my favorite people who's able to bring history, identity, and joy to life in a way that stops you in your tracks.

Speaker 1 We've known each other for a while now. I've always been inspired by how deeply he sees the world and how beautifully he translates that onto the canvas.

Speaker 1 And so in this conversation we get into how art messes with value in the best way, why all work is kind of a scam and what it means to create beauty even when no one's buying it. Yet

Speaker 1 I think you're really going to walk away from this conversation with your mind spinning and hopefully your heart full just like I always do.

Speaker 1 This is What Now with Trevor No

Speaker 1 Rolling?

Speaker 1 All right. Derek Forger, what's going on, man? Hello, Trevor.
How are you going to go and get a block nose? when we're doing a podcast?

Speaker 10 Bro, you blow me up immediately about the nose.

Speaker 1 No, because you know why? It's not self-conscious about it. No, but okay, let me explain.
First of all, I apologize. I I didn't know you were self-conscious about it.

Speaker 1 The reason I have to call it out is because some people will be hearing your voice for the first time. That's true.
Some people. That's true.
And then they'll think that that's how you speak.

Speaker 10 Yeah, I have a very different voice than what I have today. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 Right? So it's similar, but it's, I know you're nasally today. Yeah.
But you say you're not sick.

Speaker 10 Well, I can't be sick. I can't.
I'm an American.

Speaker 1 Let me tell you, I worked at the daily show. I was in the office for eight years.
I hosted for seven years. Yeah.
No one ever admitted being sick.

Speaker 10 The entire time.

Speaker 1 No one.

Speaker 10 But wouldn't you say that's also like entertainment culture? Like nobody wants to like like you first of all, you're the boss to each other.

Speaker 1 Yes. Do they admit it? Oh, that's a good question, actually.

Speaker 10 I never considered my position of no, you don't, because you're such a man of the people.

Speaker 1 You just don't. I actually really never considered that.
Yeah, you don't think. No, you know what it also is? It's because in South Africa, we don't really have that.

Speaker 10 What? Like, oh, the culture of...

Speaker 1 Yeah, like I think in America more than most places, maybe in europe actually to a certain extent the hierarchy in an office place is respected in a different way oh it's true so it's true managers don't realize that rooms move differently when they step into them not at all yeah but i would argue in most parts of at least south africa i know for sure yeah there's like a boss and a manager but a lot of the time that person just came from where you were right exactly so there's a certain level of familiarity

Speaker 10 yeah it's true i mean even in ghana i mean there's this wonderful thing you observe right away where the boss and his subordinate may hold hands, like same sex.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 10 And it's a way of like, let me have a chat with you. And that's totally normal to hold hands.
In fact, by the time we leave, my brother and I hold hands while we're walking around.

Speaker 10 See, you're trying not to smile because you've been.

Speaker 1 I'm not trying to smile. I'm smiling.
Your smile is just growing. Yeah, right?

Speaker 10 The whole thing.

Speaker 1 This is

Speaker 1 completely normal. No, no.
Okay, I'll tell you why I was smiling. Why? Because I was thinking,

Speaker 1 because I'll start by saying this. I'm not ignorant to the idea of men holding hands.
I know this, yeah. Because in South Africa,

Speaker 1 same thing. So depending on where you're from, people would hold hands.

Speaker 1 I remember in the Middle East, men hold pinky fingers. I don't know what they do in Ghana.
They hold full hands. They don't have to smile, but yeah.
No, they hold pinky fingers. It's quite normal.

Speaker 1 You like lock pinkies. Two friends, men, and you walk.
Yeah, and you walk, you walk hand in hand.

Speaker 10 It's just a pinky that's...

Speaker 1 Yeah, you see, everyone thinks one part of it is weird. Yeah.
What I found weird in in that situation is there's something almost more threatening

Speaker 10 in your boss calling you

Speaker 1 and giving you the hand. Hey, Lamia,

Speaker 1 hold my hand. Let me talk to you for a second.

Speaker 10 That is scarier.

Speaker 1 The idea that somebody's going to berate me or chastise me while holding my hand.

Speaker 10 It's true. That could be, it could be threatening.

Speaker 1 But this is the trauma I think I have from being a kid. The worst beating you would get is where your parent was holding on to you.

Speaker 10 Oh, yeah, because you can't run.

Speaker 1 Yeah, you can't run.

Speaker 10 You know about this. I haven't talked about this in years.

Speaker 1 Talked about what? Being beaten.

Speaker 1 Like

Speaker 10 affectionately.

Speaker 1 Like it's

Speaker 1 like affectionately.

Speaker 10 Well, when we're speaking about it affectionately.

Speaker 1 Oh, yeah, like it's normal.

Speaker 10 We joke about the objects with which I was.

Speaker 10 I mean, I didn't want to tell you.

Speaker 1 What was the craziest object you got hit with?

Speaker 10 The craziest object was probably skillets and pots. Oh,

Speaker 10 because it's a kitchen.

Speaker 1 Thrown or hits?

Speaker 1 Both, man. Okay.

Speaker 10 I mean, it was me, though. I have two brothers.
They were great. She never, I mean, they didn't require anything.

Speaker 1 You're victim blaming. Don't blame me.

Speaker 1 Can I tell you? I'm not for it.

Speaker 10 Right. But

Speaker 1 it was quite normal.

Speaker 10 It was.

Speaker 1 I never got hit with a pot or a pan. Yeah.
Because my mom didn't cook much. So I think that's probably why I was saved from that environment.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah, but I got hit. What you did with? Oh, everything.
Really? High heels. High heels were terrible.

Speaker 10 I'm not laughing either.

Speaker 1 There's not a fan of it. Yeah, I got hit with high heels.

Speaker 1 Very few belts, I guess, because my mom didn't really wear belts.

Speaker 1 You've thought about this too. Yeah, I mean, I think...

Speaker 1 Okay, I'll tell you why.

Speaker 1 So now that I am at an age where I think my mom accepts that I'm an adult and I feel like I'm an adult.

Speaker 10 And you're the same plane with her. Yeah.
You can both reflect.

Speaker 1 I've now decided to like open up the statute of limitations

Speaker 1 and say to her,

Speaker 1 yo, lady, what were you doing?

Speaker 10 Did you try it? Did you soft try something to see if she was ready? Because you have to.

Speaker 1 I think every few years I probably said something to her. Okay.

Speaker 10 See, that's still respect.

Speaker 1 Yeah, like maybe in my 20s.

Speaker 1 Maybe in my 20s, I said to her, oh, man, the beatings you used to give me. And the way she'd react would be like, you want another one?

Speaker 10 That sounds exactly. That's my mom.

Speaker 1 Right.

Speaker 1 Where are both of your parents from?

Speaker 10 Both of my parents are from Ghana. You're first generation, right? First generation, same tribe.
So both of my parents are Asante.

Speaker 10 So, you know, we say Ashanti, but in Ghana, we say Asanti, but 100%.

Speaker 10 So I remember my dad telling me in the,

Speaker 10 oh, I don't know, I must have been in kindergarten. He goes, I'm going to tell you something.
He sat me down and he goes,

Speaker 10 if the entire Ashanti kingdom perishes tomorrow, but you're alive,

Speaker 10 then the Ashanti kingdom lives.

Speaker 10 And that's the way he explained where we were from and what it meant to be part of a tribe.

Speaker 10 That the entire kingdom lives in you. And mind you, I'm in like Tennessee having this conversation as like a kindergartner.
But that was like the early framing of like what's in our blood, you know.

Speaker 1 Sounds like the opening of a Black Panther movie. Yes, yes.

Speaker 10 It really does. The trilogy.

Speaker 1 Scene opens up. Right.
Young Derek,

Speaker 1 little black kid in Tennessee.

Speaker 10 That's right. 100%.

Speaker 1 Camera comes into like the little house. Where did you live? A house, I'm assuming you're like, yeah, like a small little house in Memphis?

Speaker 10 It was a little apartment, actually. A little apartment.

Speaker 1 Yeah, even better. Marvel loves apartments.

Speaker 10 Could we start with?

Speaker 1 Superheroes love apartments.

Speaker 10 It has to be an apartment.

Speaker 1 Apartments are better than houses for superheroes.

Speaker 10 But it has to start with the kid being bullied, being called African Booty Scratcher.

Speaker 1 Were you called that?

Speaker 10 Were you not?

Speaker 1 I was in Africa. Who's going to call me that?

Speaker 10 That's true.

Speaker 1 This is true.

Speaker 1 That would be awkward. Who was going to say to me that would be awesome.
Nah, Trevor, you're an African booty scratcher. I'm like, yeah, we're all African booty scratchers.
What do you mean?

Speaker 10 No, it's true.

Speaker 1 Wait, you got called African booty scratcher.

Speaker 10 Totally. It's a thing.

Speaker 1 This was the full sentence.

Speaker 10 My son was called the same thing.

Speaker 1 No, you're lying. I was shocked.

Speaker 10 I'm telling you.

Speaker 1 This is now.

Speaker 10 Now. I was like, what? I was like, are you? I thought he was spoofing me.
It's like, no, it's a thing. Well, it's a funny thing.

Speaker 1 Okay, wait, wait, let's take it back. So, your parents moved from Ghana.
Yes.

Speaker 1 To Tennessee.

Speaker 10 So I'll give you even more drama for your

Speaker 10 movie. The movies do it.

Speaker 10 My dad really just wanted to be a doctor, and the entire village helped conspire to get him to America to become a doctor.

Speaker 10 So he tells a story, I have no idea how true any of this is, of like leaving the village with

Speaker 10 a bag of money that everybody pitched in to give him on his journey away.

Speaker 10 So he literally was like saving the entire, he was going to be be a doctor. Wow.
That was the deal. And then my mother left at 16.

Speaker 1 So this is like a village, village then.

Speaker 10 Yeah, well, my dad was from Kumasi, which is like another, it's like a second city

Speaker 1 after Accra. Have you ever been to Ghana? I've never been to Ghana.
What? You're going to take me?

Speaker 10 Trevor.

Speaker 1 Really? You have not? No, I've never thank you. Yeah,

Speaker 1 I don't want to.

Speaker 1 So I talk to my friends about this all the time.

Speaker 1 Anywhere in Africa,

Speaker 1 I don't want to just go as a tourist. I'd rather go visit.

Speaker 1 I want to go to visit my friend's house or visit.

Speaker 1 because going as a tourist is too familiar to me.

Speaker 1 Like, if I go as a tourist to Italy, it is very much, I'm like, ah, wow, this is Italy. This is.

Speaker 10 Right. You get a guide.

Speaker 1 When I'm in Ghana, I know the food. I know the music.

Speaker 1 I even understand the people. Of course,

Speaker 1 you know what I mean?

Speaker 1 So I need my people there to take me deeper. Otherwise, like, what am I going to do? I'm going to take pictures of little African camps.

Speaker 10 See your hotel. Right.

Speaker 1 Come on. Drive.
Come on.

Speaker 10 It's true. Come on.
Okay, so you want to hang differently. Yeah.
And we struggle with this too, because unfortunately, my brothers and I don't speak the language, which is, I mean, language is

Speaker 10 the passkey.

Speaker 1 No, it is the thing.

Speaker 10 It's the thing. So we don't have that.
And even though we're English speaking because of the British,

Speaker 10 it's still different. So when I go without my parents, it feels really different.

Speaker 1 There's like a piece of Ghana that you're locked out of.

Speaker 10 A little bit.

Speaker 1 Huh.

Speaker 10 It's like you approach the groups while everybody's speaking tree and

Speaker 10 they change to English because you're it's polite to do they want you to hear but it's you're still it's not the same it's not the same the South Africans will do the same thing yeah but you can feel that it's almost like someone took the spice in a meal and washed it and then gave it to you because you can't handle the spice look there is that of all the places I mean Ghana is the most welcoming to English speakers to people returning home yearning for culture it's the best place isn't it getting overrun by Americans now though Stop saying that.

Speaker 1 I asked the question. I'm not saying that.
I'm not saying anything. No, you know why? You know what I mean? I said, isn't it? There's a question mark at the end.

Speaker 10 No, I won't say that. The kid that was called African Booty Scratcher needs all of those kids that call him that to return.
So there's no overrun. We need more to go back.

Speaker 1 So you're saying no, it's not. I'm saying no.
Okay.

Speaker 10 Okay. I'm saying

Speaker 10 that.

Speaker 1 I'm saying no, but I also know what you're saying.

Speaker 10 Like,

Speaker 10 I'm saying one thing with my eyes and another with my mouth, right?

Speaker 1 We could do this, right?

Speaker 10 So, no, it's not a little rhyme.

Speaker 1 Can I tell you, my favorite stories have been my Ghanaian friends complaining about black Americans coming to Ghana, and they'll complain about them as if they're like white people.

Speaker 10 Oh, totally. Yeah.

Speaker 10 I mean, on some level, I mean, I mean, that's, but I look, I choose to stand for the marrying of the marriage of like the African cultural experience and the African-American and the British American and everywhere else in the diaspora we exist.

Speaker 10 I mean, I think you definitely represent that. Oh, I love it.
And so that's what I'm on. You know what I mean? Okay.
Like, it's not overrun. There's space enough.
Okay.

Speaker 10 But you know what's happening is now they're like

Speaker 10 encampments and suburbs that are for like African Americans and it's being marketed as such. And so as an African-American, you could buy a home in the like in an African-American enclave in Ghana.

Speaker 10 I think it's fine.

Speaker 1 I don't know.

Speaker 1 I mean, if it works, it works.

Speaker 10 That's a big if, right? But

Speaker 10 it brings people back.

Speaker 10 We have to take you to a slave castle because have you ever been to any? Huh.

Speaker 1 That's a sentence that's never done.

Speaker 10 Let me watch you deal with it.

Speaker 1 Let me watch you deal with that. I don't feel like there's ever been a time in history when that sentence has ended well.

Speaker 10 But you have to experience why.

Speaker 10 Because,

Speaker 10 first of all, I didn't know that you hadn't done this. So I'm even more convicted about it.

Speaker 1 I've been to slave castles, but I need to know why this one in particular.

Speaker 10 Okay, well, I think there's a moment, well, at least for me,

Speaker 10 where you go to the door of no return, and it's in all the castles.

Speaker 1 Oftentimes, it'll be like the port, near the port somewhere there. That's right.

Speaker 1 They bring them in, and there's a little area where they're going to get loaded onto a boat, and that's the area of no return. That's right.

Speaker 1 It's similar in the one I went to was in Zanzibar.

Speaker 10 Yes, very similar. So, first of all, I mean, East African slave trade was different,

Speaker 10 just as brutal, but

Speaker 10 I think the dynamics are different East-West, but there's always that moment in the castle where you stand between where you were and where you're going. And for me, when I stand there, I get it.

Speaker 10 I get the whole diaspora.

Speaker 10 Like, I understand.

Speaker 10 My experiences in Brazil, in Canada, you know, parts of Europe where there are Africans. Like, I get it.
Like we all came through that door.

Speaker 10 And I don't know that there's another physical location that explains the movement of black peoples in the world quite like that point for me.

Speaker 1 No, I feel you. You know, what do you experience there?

Speaker 1 I mean, it's, it's...

Speaker 1 It's a complicated collection of feelings. Because on the one hand, there's relief, I'll be honest.
There's relief that it is now history.

Speaker 10 Right, that it's there, you know?

Speaker 1 Yeah, so like I know, but what I mean by that is it's over. Yeah,

Speaker 1 there is something I feel whenever I go to these places where I'm like, damn, I'm glad that's done. Right.

Speaker 1 I know there's other things to deal with, but I'm like, I'm glad that's done. Right, that's true.
You know, because I could also be here, but not as a tourist.

Speaker 10 But you feel that in your body, too.

Speaker 1 Yeah, there's just like an element of, okay,

Speaker 1 and then there's another side of me that's like, damn, this is

Speaker 1 it's heavy. It's dark, yeah.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 For instance, I've never taken a picture there. And not because I judge people who do take pictures there.
I just. Yeah.

Speaker 10 There is something. It's like a sacred site.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it's like I go, do I take a picture of me here?

Speaker 10 And how do you, what? How do I pose?

Speaker 1 Do I smile? I see them all.

Speaker 10 I see the smiles. I see the fists.

Speaker 10 I see the somber.

Speaker 1 Yes, the somber. You see the somber.
Yeah, but and I get it because those are all the feelings that people are having. But let's go back to your dad because I want to understand

Speaker 1 this journey of Derek because I, because I know you.

Speaker 1 This is is the thing i love about doing uh podcasts with people i know is i realize how many things i don't know about them

Speaker 1 exactly because i would never ask this in a conversation no we've taken all the spice out essentially right yeah yeah but um the version of ourselves yeah it always will be um

Speaker 1 but like your dad so your dad comes here yeah

Speaker 10 was he already married to your mom No, but they were dating and, you know, we found some lovely love letters that they wrote to each other. So my mom went to school in England for nursing.
Yeah.

Speaker 10 And.

Speaker 1 And your dad was going to be a doctor. Yeah.

Speaker 10 Isn't that? Man, you guys are Ghanaian.

Speaker 1 Right. This is like Ghanaian.
Right.

Speaker 1 Proudly doctor. This is.
Lawyer. Right.
Engineer. Right.

Speaker 1 Exactly. This is it.
Right. A real

Speaker 1 this is a real professional. This is a profession.

Speaker 10 It's a proper

Speaker 1 doctor. Okay, so wait.
So your parents, so you're born in the U.S.

Speaker 10 I am born in Memphis, Tennessee.

Speaker 1 Why Memphis?

Speaker 1 I always want to know why immigrants land where they do and why they call that home.

Speaker 10 Dude, I really want someone to research African immigration.

Speaker 10 Like, we know the story of how the Irish came, we know how the Italians came, but I don't know that anyone has really studied like the movement of Africans to America.

Speaker 10 And I would just love to hear the story because we have so many cousins, Ghanaian and Nigerian, in these far-out places in Ohio or Texas, Tezaz, we call it, like all these places.

Speaker 10 And we're just now of age to like share experiences. But I think it happened like maybe the 60s is when it really picked up.

Speaker 10 But yeah, so my dad came here. My mother was in England for nursing school.
And there were all these strange things about growing up. Like we would eat beans with our eggs in the morning.

Speaker 10 And I just thought this is what people, it's normal until you like share with a friend, like, wait, you guys don't eat beans?

Speaker 1 And they're like, beans?

Speaker 10 Why are you eating beans for breakfast?

Speaker 1 Were you in a black neighborhood or white neighborhood?

Speaker 10 Where were you? Bro, so black. I said African booty scratcher.

Speaker 1 Follow, Trevor. Come on.
No, but come on.

Speaker 1 How am I supposed to know? I don't even know. First of all, I don't even know the term.

Speaker 10 Listen, white kids are not going to call you African booty scratcher, generally speaking. That's just too.

Speaker 1 It's too what?

Speaker 10 It's to a lot of things.

Speaker 1 It's too what?

Speaker 10 It's a lot of things. It could be a lot.
I have a list.

Speaker 1 Like, why they wouldn't wouldn't say that?

Speaker 10 First of all, there's too many syllables. It's too funny.
It's too, you know what I mean?

Speaker 1 Okay, okay. You mean on that side? You say too much swag.

Speaker 10 It's just a lot of swag. It's like an insult that will also make you laugh.
It like hurts and tickles you in equal parts. That's very black.
It's very African. You know what I mean?

Speaker 10 Like, I'm offending you and you love it. So we grew up in a very black community.
Okay. And we're talking about, you know, the 70s, 80s.
So this is, you know, Memphis, I mean, dr kids died in 68.

Speaker 10 yeah this is full of segregation yeah so my father actually we're just learning a lot about like the rage he had about like going to graduate school uh to to uh to to dental school because he was like i think the second black oral surgeon in the state but he's very african so he doesn't know about black

Speaker 10 history they don't know about like black american history yeah they don't know yeah yeah i also wish that there was like a place that if you come from an african country you can go like learn learn black history before you engage with society.

Speaker 10 Why? Well, because what it means to be a black immigrant, as we're seeing at this time, I mean, this statement now has lots of weight.

Speaker 10 You also have the double burden of understanding racial politics. So you don't just enter.

Speaker 10 It's a bit like you enter a game in action when you are an African immigrant and you come to America. But you have on a jersey and you're on a side and you're losing.

Speaker 10 And the refs are really mean.

Speaker 1 Oh, that's a great annoying.

Speaker 1 Oh, man, that's a great enough. That's a good hit.
Like balls are flying.

Speaker 10 So,

Speaker 10 but nobody explains, you know, the history, the game. So, yeah.

Speaker 1 I think that's why it creates a lot of conflict. Yeah.
So I remember the first time I discovered this, I was

Speaker 1 doing comedy shows. This was like way back, way, way, way back, long before Daily Show, long before anybody.
Oh, wow. Okay.

Speaker 1 So I was doing stand-up shows at colleges around the u.s oh that's a good education yeah yeah yeah yeah and then one day i got booked i forget where this university was but i got booked by the african student council the african student union yeah african student union yes yes yes yes yes so i get booked by them right and so i get to the campus and i ask mistakenly

Speaker 1 I said, I'm looking for the African American Student Union.

Speaker 1 Wrong group. Yeah, and these people were like, oh, we'll take you there.
And they took me there. And you were like.
And I got there and they went,

Speaker 1 wait, no, we didn't. And no one knows me.
So it's not like someone's going, oh, Trevor, no. They're just like, what are you here for? I said, I'm here for comedy.
This is great. Like, where?

Speaker 1 I was like, oh, the African-American Student Union booked me. They're like, nah, we don't have any bookings today.
We don't. Right.

Speaker 1 It goes around, goes, I call my managers, my team. This is great.
Finally, it gets back. They go, no, you're at the wrong place.
It's the African Student Union. So they come and pick me up.

Speaker 10 Right.

Speaker 1 And when we're in the car going across campus, I go,

Speaker 1 what am I missing? I'm going to take two groups. Right.
Yeah. And And then they tell me, oh, there used to be one union, right?

Speaker 10 Which was the

Speaker 1 black student union. That's right.

Speaker 1 And they said there was so much friction between

Speaker 1 the non-American black students.

Speaker 10 Do you see my heart already?

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah, yeah. I can see it already.
I can see it. I'm triggering you here.

Speaker 10 Yeah. You know, when I hear that, I hear the tragedy in a few ways.
One, that blackness is flattened to just black because it's quite heterogeneous. There's a lot of mix inside of that.
We know this.

Speaker 10 Even as a West African and a South African, there's worlds of difference.

Speaker 10 So it's kind of absurd to fit it all in the first place to black. So that's one tragic thing.

Speaker 10 The other is the splintering that happens and then the potential tensions that arise, which are not always the case. Everybody's kind of happy when they have their own place, but

Speaker 10 it never absolves you from the unfortunate necessity that you must advocate collectively.

Speaker 1 Yes, because you are oppressed collectively. That's right.

Speaker 10 So the splintering is comfortable for entertainment, for culture,

Speaker 10 so long as you can reunite when it's time to advocate. But that doesn't always happen.
Yeah, that doesn't. So that's the tragedy that I feel, right?

Speaker 1 One that it's already flattened in the first place but also it splinters a collective action it also creates a um a type of resentment i found so for instance i would meet african immigrants who would speak about african americans oh bad just they would just be like why don't why don't they like they're like republican in their vibes

Speaker 1 white people yeah worse if we're honest well worse because they don't want to

Speaker 1 they don't want to work yes let me tell you something about black americans

Speaker 1 they don't want to work

Speaker 1 yes they don't go to school they love to do crime

Speaker 1 they why are you wasting they love to do crime they love to do crime let me tell you something

Speaker 1 they are not african american they are just american i don't know why they put african the way they are dressing their pants their trousers are falling there and you're like wow this is like full on dude i have i have i have relatives like this that's why i love the idea of having a school yes because you what will happen to a lot of africans and i'm sure you've seen this is a lot of those africans who come in with like the respectability politics yes one day they come up against the bruns

Speaker 1 of American racism in some way, shape, or form. That's right.
And they're shaken forever.

Speaker 10 Forever. I mean, I have also that point.
I have, I have an uncle, Uncle Manny, he's now passed.

Speaker 10 And it wasn't until his later years that he talked about, he lived in Minnesota. Lisa, my cousin Lisa, he raised her.

Speaker 10 And he talked about like being used because he realized that, oh, I was, I wasn't fight, I wasn't angry. So he came in the 60s, had success as a corporate guy, but he was a token.

Speaker 10 And I don't want to reduce his life. I mean, he was a hard-working man,

Speaker 10 but he, as in his later years,

Speaker 10 looking back now with a black, an understanding of the identity, he's like, oh, man, I think they used me. You know, like, I think I was part of this game.

Speaker 10 And it really is, you're talking about those moments, sometimes it happens later.

Speaker 10 I hope, Trevor, that we're in a different world now where social media is cool. Like you see Nigerian weddings, you have these shows.

Speaker 10 Like kids, if you're six, seven, eight in today's world, you have Afro beats. There's all this cultural export.
It's just like a different time.

Speaker 10 And I mean, maybe I'm, I don't want to be Pollyanna, but I just think it's different.

Speaker 1 I've noticed more kids growing up today.

Speaker 1 are comfortable with their culture in ways that kids weren't before. Totally.
Like I know, I know all of of my Indian friends growing up

Speaker 1 were, I mean, they were ashamed of, especially if they grew up in England.

Speaker 10 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 It was just like, don't open your lunch box.

Speaker 1 We all had that. Yeah.
Yes. And now, yes.
Now on TikTok, people are like, where do I find the best Igusi? Exactly. Where do I find the best Jono Frice? Where do I find that? You know what I mean?

Speaker 1 Yeah,

Speaker 1 it's not even just a pride, but there's almost,

Speaker 1 I don't know, man, there's character that comes with it now. Yeah, but it's also not just comfort, it's cool.

Speaker 10 It is cool. I think that's cool now.
That's a very important distinction. Comfort happened some while back.
Now, cool is definitely the thing.

Speaker 10 Like, to be African and to live in America, I think it's cool. When I grew up, it was kind of like we would say to our black friends, like, yeah, you know, yeah, I've got in.

Speaker 1 They're like, look at you ain't.

Speaker 10 African where?

Speaker 1 Do this.

Speaker 10 Sit up.

Speaker 1 You know, it's like, bro, I'm really African. Like, trust me.
Say something.

Speaker 10 You know, it was like that kind of like shakedown. And now that we're older, we realize that they also just didn't,

Speaker 10 that splintering, they didn't want to happen. And then there was also this like envious thing.
Yes. Because they're like, dude, we don't know where we came from.

Speaker 1 Like, we don't know our origins.

Speaker 10 You know, when we got old enough, they talked about that. I was like, oh, that was like...
part envy. Like it was, they admired it on some level and they were also envious of it.

Speaker 10 And I also appreciated differently what it means to go back to the town of my mother's mother. That is like the that's you know, we are matrilineal, but to know that is to like locate your lineage.

Speaker 10 That's part of the slow violence that happened in America.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I'll often say

Speaker 1 we talk about slavery as being one of the most heinous things that happened in history, and it is. Yeah.
But I don't think we speak enough about

Speaker 1 how cruel it was to not just steal a people from their place, but steal a place from their people. Oh, there you go.

Speaker 10 That's what happened on the other side.

Speaker 1 Because they robbed people. I think of it for myself.
Yep. Right? Yep.
There are moments when the world will throw you around. People want to label you, not label you.
Of course.

Speaker 1 No matter what it is.

Speaker 1 If I pause and I breathe, I go,

Speaker 1 you can take everything away from me.

Speaker 1 You can even take my citizenship from my country.

Speaker 1 I'm not South African anymore. But you know what? My Tosa lineage,

Speaker 1 I I can paint it for you. I can paint it for you and I can show you each

Speaker 1 little, like, you know what I mean? Which name took us where and how

Speaker 1 do you get what I'm saying? And I think that thing, yes, people take for granted how beautiful it is

Speaker 1 to know why you do what you do. Yes, because it comes from a long story that was told before you.

Speaker 1 We're going to continue this conversation right after this short break.

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Speaker 12 Hi, everyone. I'm Ashley Flowers, creator and host of Crime Junkie, the go-to crime podcast for the biggest cases and the stories you won't hear anywhere else.

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Speaker 1 So

Speaker 10 I remember Roots. I don't know if...

Speaker 10 The show? Yeah, the show. Right,

Speaker 10 exactly. So they had a few iterations of it.
But when we grew up, it was the first iteration from Alex Haley, the author who wrote Roots.

Speaker 10 And it was, I think, for a long time, like the most watched miniseries. Black, white, American households were obsessed with roots.

Speaker 10 And it created a narrative for African Americans that

Speaker 10 explained their roots in this very detailed, multi-generational story. The old African, you see Kutikente as a young man, and then you see him as an old African.

Speaker 10 And so Kutikente was in the lexicon and the whole thing. And then years later, we found out that some of the details in that story were fabricated that Alex Haley wrote.

Speaker 10 And so it wasn't all true. When it came out, I was like, this is all true.

Speaker 10 This is factual. And I've, you know, and that was part of the strength of it.
And then years later, we found out that some of it wasn't true. And it didn't matter because people needed a story.

Speaker 1 I think it also doesn't matter because all stories aren't true.

Speaker 10 Exactly. History is itself a fabrication.
I love your bit about nations and

Speaker 1 anthems. Yeah.

Speaker 10 You know, it's like it's all. And so, I mean, I love both sides of that.
That I knew it when it was factual and it was, and then when it was something that was falsified, and it didn't matter.

Speaker 10 The power did not, the power of the story didn't change.

Speaker 1 How do you think that informs your arts?

Speaker 1 when I think of your art,

Speaker 1 I think of you as a storyteller. And not in like a highfalutin way, by the way.
Like, let's preface all of it by saying this.

Speaker 1 Yes, Derek Forgio is easily considered by many, especially who like know what they're talking about. You're considered a luminary of the art world.
Oh, wow. No, you really are.

Speaker 1 And it's not easy to get to the place that you've gotten to. Well, thank you.
Like in the art world.

Speaker 1 It's also, let's be honest, five times harder to get get there as a black man, like randomly, like a black person,

Speaker 1 yeah, but I think less so in the NBA.

Speaker 10 Let's put it that way. Oh, Trevor, you say some of the wildest things.

Speaker 1 What are you talking about?

Speaker 10 And it's totally appropriate.

Speaker 1 I'm saying there are some areas that are still way harder to get there.

Speaker 10 Could you give me another one? Because that was a black person. Give me one more.
What do you mean? Like, just another one. Like, so we have the NBA.

Speaker 1 You want to go into music. If you're a black man walking into music, no one's going like, hmm,

Speaker 1 I don't know.

Speaker 1 Let's hear something. I don't know about that.
Let's hear it. What are you made of? No, that's true.
But the art world. You're right.

Speaker 10 You're right.

Speaker 1 This is true. The art world is the most gate-kept gatekeeping that has ever existed in the history of gatekeeping.

Speaker 10 That's fair.

Speaker 1 So what I want to like, so the reason I want to preface it with that is because your art holds a special place in the storytelling

Speaker 1 of the intersection, I believe, between African American history. Yes.

Speaker 1 But I want to know how much the idea you just talked about informs how you perceive your art. Because what you just said was crucial, right? We all need stories.
Right, right.

Speaker 1 But the facts of the story are less relevant than the story itself.

Speaker 10 Well, I think, like,

Speaker 10 I love the question. And

Speaker 10 I think about you that way. Like, the shock I just had about what you just said, you have the authority, the moral authority.
to make certain comments.

Speaker 1 Oh, man, I just have authority with you. What do you you mean?

Speaker 1 Authority with me. If you're offended, then I'm screwed.
What kind of authority you got with me?

Speaker 1 What I mean is like, if you're offended, there's only, I mean, we're friends.

Speaker 10 That's true, it's true. That's very true.
But I mean, even publicly, right?

Speaker 1 I just think sometimes what you do, and I understand why you'll do this, I actually think it's a very African thing. You will dismiss, a lot of people do this.

Speaker 1 You'll dismiss how hard it was for you to get there. There's a certain element of you being like, no, no, no, it's hard for all of us.
And I'm not saying it's not hard for everyone. Right.

Speaker 1 But I'm saying what you chose was particularly hard.

Speaker 10 I mean, it's true. Okay, so it's true.
So you and I'm and again, this is hard.

Speaker 1 And again,

Speaker 10 this is what's hard about talking to you.

Speaker 1 And let me clarify this for people. I don't mean painting is hard.
Art is already hard. No, right?

Speaker 1 I'm talking about getting into the art world and being considered a verifiable part of it. Yes.
You see what I'm saying?

Speaker 10 Yeah. So now you're forcing me to have a real conversation.
I mean, that's what I'm doing.

Speaker 10 I guess that's why I'm here.

Speaker 1 Well, that's why we always. I'm like, damn.
When have we not had a real conversation?

Speaker 10 Yeah, this is what he this is what he does. Like, because I'm so well attuned to like

Speaker 10 switching the conversation, given the context and how it's going to be received. Yeah, yeah, I'm with you.

Speaker 10 And so there's a lot of posturing and withholding that's necessary because with art, you want the conversation to be about the work and you don't want the

Speaker 10 traps to happen where it gets into places that you have no investment.

Speaker 1 You see, but that's something I feel like is also unique to a black artist. I'll give you an example.
Absolutely. Vincent van Gogh, right? Yeah.

Speaker 10 Very good at that pronunciation.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I mean, you have to be.

Speaker 10 You've been to the museum? Did you go?

Speaker 1 Actually, I haven't.

Speaker 10 I haven't either.

Speaker 1 I haven't either. I haven't.
I don't think I have. Okay.
But they never talk about his art without talking about his story. Right.

Speaker 1 His health, his mental health, the way he saw the world, what he was going through, the medicine he was on. Picasso.

Speaker 1 I've never heard anyone talk about Picasso and just be like, eh, Picasso, the painting.

Speaker 1 No, they'll tell you about his journeys and his travels to Africa and the way he saw women and the loves, the passion, the loves who informed him and how his heart was broken. You know what I mean?

Speaker 1 There is no artist, Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, you name it. There are none of them

Speaker 1 where their story is not part of their art. Oh, this is true.
Right. Yeah.
And it's never seen as an excuse. It's never seen as

Speaker 1 something that leaves a blemish on their work in any way. However, to your point, with black artists,

Speaker 1 I find for the most part, in speaking to you and many other black artists, the art world wants your story. That's right.
But not like

Speaker 10 the rough edge of the story. Not the messy parts.

Speaker 1 Yeah, not the messy parts of it.

Speaker 10 I was looking at this idea called stereotype threat, which I came across 20 years ago. There's a guy named Claude Steele who talks about

Speaker 10 not racism,

Speaker 1 the

Speaker 10 anticipation of racism happening has deleterious effects. Like,

Speaker 10 if I don't even encounter it, but I think on the other side of this door it might happen, it affects how I present myself. Damn.

Speaker 1 Right? And strolling is racism. I like that.

Speaker 10 Right. So stereotype threat is an additional anxiety.
There's the thing, which is actually racism

Speaker 10 that you have to contend with. But your anticipation of it, how you steal yourself,

Speaker 10 how you,

Speaker 10 you know, that is also like very anxious. So that's a lot of what my work is about, is the strategy, the gamesmanship

Speaker 10 necessary to

Speaker 10 traverse a troubled space, right? And the art world, and you're right, has been troubled.

Speaker 10 It's tough for us, but I have to acknowledge all of the artists that came before me

Speaker 10 and my peers to make this moment possible. And I sound like I've given it a war speech, but

Speaker 10 I think it's really just important to acknowledge because those are the artists that people just don't know at all.

Speaker 1 Who would you say are the black artists who made the art world see black art differently or open the art world to black people?

Speaker 1 Can you think of just a few of them?

Speaker 1 And I'm not saying they're the only ones. No, just a few.

Speaker 10 It's a complicated question because

Speaker 10 there is a moment that the art world starts to take notice of black artists.

Speaker 10 But then there have been artists working way before that that were just never acknowledged at all. So there's a lot of retrospective work that's happening to

Speaker 10 acknowledge artists. So it's kind of like saying, like, if we were to use an NBA analogy, like,

Speaker 10 Like, we all know, like, Michael Jordan was the first guy that showed us you could have astronomical commercial success

Speaker 10 while you have success on the court, right? So there's no Kobe, there's no LeBron without Jordan, but there was also Dr. J,

Speaker 1 right?

Speaker 10 And there was also Wilt Chamberlain, right? And so there's so many people behind him.

Speaker 10 I would say probably David Hammonds.

Speaker 1 David Hammonds.

Speaker 10 Yeah.

Speaker 10 And actually on the pier here in New York, I mean, there's a wonderful monument that he has across from the Whitney Museum.

Speaker 10 I think it personifies perfectly why so many people might not know the name David Hammonds. There's a full-blown monument that costs tens of millions of dollars to build.

Speaker 10 And I spoke to the director of Whitney about this. So we, I mean, it's a big thing for them.
But you could pass it a million times and never notice it.

Speaker 10 It has thin wire frame to outline what used to be the piers on

Speaker 10 the West Side Highway. So he just framed a building.
So you can miss it. And he's okay with that.
And this is part of the genius of David Hammonds.

Speaker 10 His presence is as

Speaker 10 fascinating as his absence.

Speaker 10 And he's done some of the most compelling conceptual projects, like he sold snowballs on the street,

Speaker 10 like for an exchange. Like people bought snowballs.
And

Speaker 10 that's an artwork.

Speaker 10 Right.

Speaker 10 This is David Hammonds. I mean, that's one of his more popular artworks, but he can hide in plain sight.

Speaker 1 He played like a broken-like snowballs that actually melts. Yeah.
Okay.

Speaker 10 But you can buy one.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 10 It opens up this amazing commentary on commerce. What are you buying? What is exchange? Where is value?

Speaker 1 I feel like

Speaker 1 there are fields that people get into

Speaker 1 that don't reveal

Speaker 1 how essential they are to society immediately. So when you look at fashion,

Speaker 1 a lot of people just go, oh man, fashion, whatever.

Speaker 1 They very seldom look at how fashion can include or exclude them from a space and make them seem like they're supposed to be or not be somewhere. That's right.
Do you know what I mean?

Speaker 1 A simple example is like just a suit. Just a suit in and of itself.
Yep.

Speaker 1 Immediately became a signifier

Speaker 1 as to whether or not you were deemed respectable enough to step into certain establishments. Absolutely.
Right? And so you look at how like MLK used a suit. Yes.

Speaker 1 And he was like, all all right, guys, we're wearing suits. That's right.
We're going to go get beaten up. That's right.
It'll be way.

Speaker 10 Easier to wear broke. Yeah.

Speaker 1 It'll be easier to wear like hoodies. Yes.
It was more comfortable. So we're going to get beaten up.
We're going to beat down. You're going to get beaten up.
Why wear a suit? That's right.

Speaker 1 The man said, we're going to wear a suit because the suit represents something and it says something. I love it.
Yes.

Speaker 1 And I remember speaking to someone in fashion about this, how they were like, oh, a lot of people think of fashion as just being whatever.

Speaker 1 But even look at sizing, for instance, right? When sizes become more accommodating, more people feel like they're part of

Speaker 1 the world now. That's right.
You know, it's small things and yet it's powerful.

Speaker 10 No, no, because you're talking about the power of images. Yes, right.

Speaker 1 Architecture was another one. Most people don't care about architects.
Most people, right?

Speaker 1 And most people are affected by architects in ways that they would never, ever imagine from like a bench. that tells you whether or not you can or should sit at a park

Speaker 1 all the way through to how your house sits in relation to another house telling you whether you should greet your neighbor or not and some people are like what are you talking about I'm like, No, no, no.

Speaker 1 Architects have shown me some other worlds.

Speaker 10 That's right. Let me add to that.
And then when we open this conversation even more broadly to African architecture and different modes of

Speaker 10 creation and

Speaker 10 domicile and public space and the plaza, it's a big conversation, but it's invisible to most of us.

Speaker 10 What you're talking about relative to

Speaker 10 the suits and respectability, you'll see a lot of suits in my paintings because of that. It's a signifier, It's a code about how to

Speaker 10 navigate space, how to anticipate a certain perception, and then to use it for your benefit, which is why, back to Hammonds, his invisibility

Speaker 10 is as crucial as his visibility. Right?

Speaker 10 And so when we talk about representation, over-representation, under-representation, I kind of jokingly say, like, if you ever went to see the doctor and all the doctors were six feet tall and they were black guys,

Speaker 10 we would all whisper a question to someone, like, what's

Speaker 10 and I joke, my little brother Rick is a dentist, right? And I talk about him all the time because I used to get on my brothers about wearing expensive shoes. Yeah.

Speaker 10 And I'd be like, bro, I would never pay that much money for shoes. You guys are ridiculous.
And I just thought, like,

Speaker 10 like what you were saying earlier about like the way Africans critique African Americans. You pay $400 for shoes, $300.

Speaker 10 And my brother is like, hey, man, they look at my shoes.

Speaker 1 Oh, damn. And I was like, oh, he's right.

Speaker 10 He's like the only black doctor in a practice of four doctors. The other three are white doctors.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 10 they look at his shoes. And he feels that.

Speaker 10 And so there's this tax where he's going to spend more on shoes when his partners arguably, I don't know what they're wearing in real life, but I mean, in theory.

Speaker 1 Yeah, but their competence

Speaker 10 is not connected to

Speaker 1 their reputation.

Speaker 10 All of these conversations are embedded in the codes of my work because

Speaker 10 I feel like it's additional pressure. I mean, to take us full circle back to your question about what it means to be black and to enter this space.

Speaker 10 One, it's impossible without our four

Speaker 10 bears. And I've even had dealers at different times where we would talk about the absence of black artists, you know, 80s, you know, 70s from the commercial art space.

Speaker 10 And they said, Hey, man, the blacks weren't making the good work. The blacks are making the good work now, man.

Speaker 1 It got better.

Speaker 10 You guys are making the good work. It's why it's working.
They just, it just wasn't that good then. And I thought, wow, there are a lot of people that believe this.

Speaker 10 That's why I cannot talk about entering this space without shedding light on all of the ones so much further behind me, you know,

Speaker 10 because they really made it possible.

Speaker 10 There's an artist named Norman Lewis, who we're going back now to bring his legacy forward. There was an exhibition at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art.

Speaker 10 The curators, in the middle of the exhibition, had a letter that Norman Lewis wrote to Leo Costelli. Leo Costelli is a legendary dealer in New York and all of the art world.

Speaker 10 Norman Lewis's studio was right around the corner from Leo Costelli's gallery, like two blocks.

Speaker 10 And Norman Lewis had been writing letters to Leo Costelli to ask him to visit the studio, and it never happened.

Speaker 10 And so the inclusion of that letter gave what you're talking about the kind of perspective of what it meant that Norman Lewis was able to make all of this work

Speaker 10 under those circumstances.

Speaker 1 I'm with you. Right? You're with me, right?

Speaker 10 And so,

Speaker 1 I don't know.

Speaker 10 I feel like I'm in the space where it's cool and we can make money. And, you know, it's like looking at the NBA.
I also have a friend whose dad played in the NBA and

Speaker 10 he worked and sold used cars in the offseason.

Speaker 10 Like, it was. He was pre-money.

Speaker 1 He was pre-money. Yeah.
Same game, worked as hard. Might have worked harder.
Yeah. Right?

Speaker 10 But doing the same thing.

Speaker 1 Now it's time for a segment we call Where in the World, brought to you by Uber.

Speaker 1 Whether it's your best friend's wedding or your niece's first ballet recital, Uber is on their way. So you can show up for what matters most.
Uber on our way.

Speaker 1 Christiana,

Speaker 1 do you want to know where I am now? Sometimes I feel like you get frustrated that I'm traveling.

Speaker 13 No, no, I'm interested because you get to travel and I don't. So I'm living vicariously through you right now.

Speaker 1 Oh, I like this. I like this.
This is like a new, a new vibe. Before you'd almost say it like, like I don't have a home.
And now. Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, yeah, no. Now you said open.

Speaker 1 Well, currently, I am in your neck of the woods. I'm in London.
I came here for a friend's birthday party. And yeah,

Speaker 1 he took me everywhere, actually. I'm trying to go everywhere that I can go in London that I haven't been.
So I'm trying to stay away from like the usual, you know, like Buckingham Palace.

Speaker 1 Oh, yeah, you don't want to do that.

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah, yeah. And like the the I so I'm all in like Brixton and Hector and Delton

Speaker 1 yeah yeah and like Camden and all of these places yo let me tell you something I'm London's a vibe it's great especially when the weather's good when the weather's good it's one of the best cities in the world you see I don't often go to London when the weather's not good and what I don't like is how all of you Londoners say that that sentence that's crazy I'm surprised that you've been to London and the weather's been good because normally it's just rainy and grey like that's the london i mean i mean i mean now and again i'll bump into like a rainy gray day but i don't let me put it this way i've been to few places in the world where more people immediately bring up the weather like a reason i should escape so i go everywhere i go everywhere in the world but in london i'll say to somebody they'll go oh they go like oh trevor how are you enjoying london are you having fun and i'm like oh i'm having a great time they're like oh yeah and the weather's been good you're really lucky you're really lucky trevor it's not always like this oh you should go before it it changes.

Speaker 1 I'm like, yo, what is happening right now? What is happening right now? Just enjoy it.

Speaker 13 It's being British. It's like the national pastime is to speak about the weather.
So you're either complaining about it or you're happy about it.

Speaker 13 Those are the two states of emotion when it comes to the weather.

Speaker 1 So yeah, but

Speaker 1 I find it's more the Brits are complaining about it or they're complaining about how it normally is, but it's not now. So you'll go, this is nice.
They're like, yeah, but it's not normally like this.

Speaker 13 Yeah, we're a nation of complainers.

Speaker 1 I don't know. I think it's lovely and I'm enjoying myself.

Speaker 1 Well, that was today's Wear in the World brought to you by Uber. Whether it's your best friend's wedding or your niece's first ballet recital, Uber is on their way.

Speaker 1 So you can show up for what matters most. Uber on our way.

Speaker 1 I'll often say to people,

Speaker 1 and I think I have this because comedy has been my profession. Yeah.

Speaker 1 I often will say say to people, all work is a scam. I love this.
Right?

Speaker 1 I'm not saying things that people do are scams, but I'm saying work, the word work, all work is a scam.

Speaker 1 Because the value of that work is merely assigned by those who have the resources. That's right.
It's all arbitrary. Yes.
You know, so that's why I was smiling at the snowball thing.

Speaker 1 That's why I had that fake, because I'm like, oh man, yeah, that.

Speaker 1 And I try and explain this to people and they go like, no, no, no, but, but what about, and I'm like, listen, I'm not trying to offend anybody right but almost all our jobs are fake yes they are okay absolutely and we also assign a fake value to them and that value shifts and moves

Speaker 1 you know one of the the simple examples is like if you think of like the computer game back in the day in in the US yeah it wasn't a really well-paying job no not at all and women used to work as computers as they called them and they would like run those machines plug plug plug plug and then that was like a stable job and started growing and the men came took it over and then it skyrocketed That's right.

Speaker 1 And if you look at most professions that are generally considered a woman's profession, when the men get involved. When the men get involved, the money goes up.

Speaker 1 But when the women are involved, the money goes down. That's right.
So nursing,

Speaker 1 teaching, all these professions. Yes.
But doctor. Oh, no, no, no, no.
Money goes up, money goes up, money goes up, money goes up.

Speaker 1 I actually want to know, though, like in the art world, I understand that things cost a lot of money. Right.

Speaker 1 Yeah. But I know for myself and for most people, a lot of people will just be like, this world,

Speaker 1 it feels like a scam. It feels like people are just making it up.
Right. So for instance, I'll go with this.
Many people do not question the price of a Louis Vuitton bag. Right.

Speaker 10 All right. Because of the story they've been told.
Yes.

Speaker 1 Because they, I love that. People believe it.
Yes. And they go, it's Louis Vuitton.
That's right. Someone goes, oh, that's a Louis Vuitton.

Speaker 10 That's right.

Speaker 1 And then when you break it down into its components, And people do this all the time. That's why YouTube is amazing.
That's right. Someone will go, oh, it costs $12.

Speaker 1 Whatever to make this Louis Vuitton bag. That's right.
And they sell it to you for $2,000. That's right.
And the same bag with the same level of artisan skill, the same level of everything. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Someone else is doing it for $300. That's right.

Speaker 1 And you're buying it because of the Louis Vuitton of it all, right? In that world,

Speaker 1 I find people are less likely to question it. Same thing with cars.
That's interesting, yeah. Right? People will buy a Ferrari.

Speaker 1 But really, all Ferrari has done is limit their supply. That's it.
Focus on the demand. Tell a great story.
Tell a great story. It is a fantastic car in many ways.

Speaker 1 But they could make more of them if they wanted to. Easily.
Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 1 What do you think it is about art that like jars up with the everyman?

Speaker 10 You know, it's a great question. And I think what you're asking about is not art.
I think you're asking about value, the way the art world assigns value, right?

Speaker 1 That's exactly what I mean. Yeah.

Speaker 10 And even more specific, we're talking about the art market, which is different than but related to art itself.

Speaker 10 It's an important distinction to make because I think out in the world,

Speaker 10 outside of the art world, much like the purse, we conflate the value or the price.

Speaker 10 We relate the price to the value, right? So, okay. So, we see a Louis Vuitton, and automatically we know it's expensive.
Yes. Right.

Speaker 10 In the art world, very differently, you will witness the cost of the Louis Vuitton bag go from $3

Speaker 10 to $20

Speaker 10 to $3 million.

Speaker 10 Nothing about the bag has changed. We don't tell a different story.
We've added deluxe zippers. There's Wi-Fi in the bag.

Speaker 1 Nothing.

Speaker 10 When you bought it at three, it's the exact same bag.

Speaker 10 And so that's what's baffling to people that

Speaker 10 we don't even hide the fact that it's the same bag at $3 that it was at $3 million. You have so many people here in New York City City who will tell you,

Speaker 10 oh, I paid $200 for my Warhol. Or, you know, I.

Speaker 1 Oh, like an original Andy Warhol. They bought it for $200.
100%. And now it's worth...

Speaker 10 Oh, my gosh, $20 million.

Speaker 1 Why would we?

Speaker 10 Oh, you think you would have been able to...

Speaker 10 You think they would have sold it to you?

Speaker 1 I mean, this is the suit. Dude, you just talked about the suit.
Yeah. You talked about access.

Speaker 10 I'm saying, like, we cannot, I mean, because access and value, all this stuff is related.

Speaker 1 So the the question then-you know, who gets to pay that $3.

Speaker 10 Yeah, you're right. Who gets to pay the $3?

Speaker 10 Who has that intel?

Speaker 10 That's what the black artist represents and what's very complex about us entering the space because you can't have black artists in the space without complicating the space for black institutions, for black collectors, for trustees.

Speaker 10 The entire ecosystem is affected when black artists participate. I'd like to also point to the entertainment industry when we had black comedians, actors, but you didn't have black ownership.

Speaker 10 You didn't have agents. You didn't have, it took a while to get the infrastructure.
And so we are now advocating for us to participate more globally in the business, right?

Speaker 10 And I think that that's part of why the teams are going to be able to get

Speaker 10 so it's so it's like the question is not me because you know we're kind of frontmen you too you know nobody sees the entire operation behind you we see you right but part of being successful is understanding the apparatus and getting good at that and we've been in long enough where that's starting to happen and that's to me even more exciting than the mere presence of black artists how did it feel when you saw the value of your art go up like did it did it liberate you or did it imprison you

Speaker 10 i you know i have to i'm trying to remember that we're here because you know i want to ask you the same thing i won't do that you can okay this is how we talk so there was a time when you were probably paid $20 for getting on stage.

Speaker 1 You're being very generous.

Speaker 10 Bro, I literally come across emails sometimes where I was begging people to buy my work.

Speaker 10 Like,

Speaker 10 hello, Trevor. Hope all is well with comedy and your world.
I saw your special. It was great.

Speaker 10 Listen, hey, man, I got these new works. I was doing that, like begging people to buy the work.
That was so long for me that I don't believe the $3 million number.

Speaker 1 Wow.

Speaker 10 Right? I know it's made up.

Speaker 10 Now, that's not to say that there's no value.

Speaker 1 No,

Speaker 1 I know what you mean. Do you know what I mean? No, I'm with you completely.
Someone asked me this one day, and they were like, can you think of an analogy for it? And this is how I thought of it.

Speaker 1 In life, when you are creating, forget art, just creating.

Speaker 1 I think there are two ways you can achieve success. Okay.
I think of society as being people on a train.

Speaker 1 I like this.

Speaker 1 The train is constantly moving.

Speaker 1 The train is constantly moving. That's society.

Speaker 1 And as somebody who's creating, you're trying to get the people in the train to look at the thing you're doing and take it.

Speaker 1 And then you are now in commerce with them in some way.

Speaker 1 They're accepting of you. They remunerate you, whatever it might be.
But the point is, you need the people in the train to get there.

Speaker 10 Wait, where are you? Are you on the platform?

Speaker 1 No, you're just like like standing on the side of the train. Are you the side of the train?

Speaker 1 You're just standing on the side of the train. It's like, hey, society never stops moving.
That's right. Except when it does.
There's moments where society just like it slows down

Speaker 1 and they look out the window. Right.
And I always go this one of two ways.

Speaker 1 Either you can run as fast as the train and try and be next to it so that society looks at you and goes, oh, I see you and I'm with it. Or you can stay exactly where you are

Speaker 1 and wait and just hope that the train will stop one day

Speaker 1 where you happen to be right and so when i when i think of it let's i love it we can take it to anything um

Speaker 1 there's a time in history when ferrari is struggling yeah to sell his cars yeah totally do you know what i mean yes now people be like what are you talking about yeah you go into the watch world yeah there's a time when patek philippe is begging people right begging people right right right to buy their watches totally yeah going around to little jewelry stores in new york now good luck getting one that's right i think that applies to everything in every way.

Speaker 1 Yes. And that's why I often say to people, I'm allergic to the advice that most successful people give,

Speaker 1 because most successful people will give advice that implies that they're responsible for their success.

Speaker 10 There you go.

Speaker 1 You know what I mean? So they will say. Yes.
Let me tell you what you got to do. That's right.
You got to believe in yourself. You got to work hard.
That's right. You see the other person?

Speaker 1 You got to work harder than them. That's right.
And you got to put your effort in. Yes.
And you believe. And if you believe, anything is possible.
Yes. Welcome to to America.
Yes.

Speaker 1 But anything that they leave out is failure. Yeah, right.
If anything is possible, then failure is possible. That's right.

Speaker 10 Right? That's right.

Speaker 1 That's right. And I feel like not enough of them say

Speaker 10 luck. Dude, it's real.

Speaker 1 Be involved in computers around the dot-com boom. Yes.
Luck. There are companies that blew up in that period, sold, and then within a few years were worth zero, literally zero.
Right.

Speaker 1 Yahoo bought companies and sold companies. Yahoo itself got sold and bought.

Speaker 1 There's all these stories. No one would say that of the business world.
They wouldn't say the business world is fake.

Speaker 10 No, they can't. You get on there? They're invested in a big world.

Speaker 1 They would never say the business world is fake.

Speaker 10 No, no, no. They can't say that.
They can't. But they know when you go behind the scenes at all these big finance, inside, they'll tell you, it's a fiction, man.

Speaker 10 We need everybody to believe the same thing at the same time.

Speaker 10 Right? It's a house of cards. Yes.

Speaker 1 Intersubjective realities, I believe.

Speaker 10 Oh, this is good. I like that.

Speaker 1 I've never heard that term in my life.

Speaker 1 I learned it from Yuval Noah Harari, who we had on the podcast. I love that.
Talk to him.

Speaker 1 And in his book, Nexus, he's talking about how humans have connected all of these ideas and how we've made societies out of agreed fictions. That's what it is.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 He goes, gravity is objective, right? Right, right, right. Whether you believe in it or not, it isn't there.
Right, it happens. The U.S.
dollar

Speaker 1 is a fiction that is real because we agree upon it.

Speaker 10 That's the only reason why.

Speaker 10 So now you've just explained contemporary art. You've just explained it.
Well, you've explained the market. It's a fiction that we all agree

Speaker 10 will legitimize.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 10 Now, I say to artists all the time,

Speaker 10 realize what's happening when you're able to sell your art because people can give you compliments and not give you money.

Speaker 1 Oh.

Speaker 10 Right. I can like, I can like you.
I can think you're great. But if I don't buy a ticket to your show, Like that's just a different level of investment.
I'm with you. And so, you know,

Speaker 10 I used to hear years ago, you know, my dad would tell me, son, a professional is somebody who gets paid to do what they do.

Speaker 10 Right? You get paid. For artists,

Speaker 10 you can be a professional and have no money coming in for a long time.

Speaker 1 In fact, it could all come after you die.

Speaker 10 Oh, easily. It could come.
I mean, hopefully less so these days, but it's true. So the money cannot validate the art.

Speaker 10 Because of what you just said, because value is all over the place. The value is shifting.

Speaker 10 sometimes they can miss it all those black artists for you know 150 years that were overlooked weren't making better or worse art the the country discounted them it's the train it's the train so the train wasn't the train wasn't stopping that train wasn't stopping so so for me and for other artists you have to at once know that the art is

Speaker 10 authentic and true and real because it's what you have transferred into that material.

Speaker 10 In my case, I make objects, but that transfer has nothing to do with anything but me and that material at four o'clock in the morning. It's a spiritual experience.

Speaker 10 When I'm done with it and it enters the public realm for critique, for connoisseurship, for commerce, that's a different thing.

Speaker 10 Those two things are related and separate. And that firewall, at least in the mind of the artist, has to remain intact.

Speaker 1 I actually like this for all artists, to be honest.

Speaker 10 Right. It really applies for all of them.
It doesn't matter.

Speaker 1 What we're talking about is... If you're in fashion, if you are in music, if you are in

Speaker 1 physical, what do you call art in your because art covers everything, but then what? That's true. Art is fine.
I mean,

Speaker 10 yeah, contemporary art. Contemporary art, okay.

Speaker 1 But in all of these spheres, I think it's the same thing.

Speaker 10 It is the same thing. It's true.
I mean, what you said about the art world that people tend to pay attention to are the big numbers. Right.
How much the paintings sell for?

Speaker 10 But people don't talk about your salary

Speaker 10 like you.

Speaker 10 You want people to talk about what you're interested in. And the conversation is,

Speaker 10 ironically, that's where value is, though.

Speaker 1 Yeah. I think the difference is for us, though, and I've always wondered how you feel about this as an artist.
The difference is

Speaker 1 I have

Speaker 1 a million relationships of one.

Speaker 1 You have one relationship of a million.

Speaker 1 Oh, this is good slow down so you have a million i have a million relationships of one meaning one person so there is no one audience member right who is making me or breaking me right right right and i appreciate them almost all equally because it's like you know that's why you can you're coming in with your twenty dollars and you're coming in with your 300 rand and you're coming in with your

Speaker 10 25 or 40 pounds

Speaker 1 and you're coming in with your yeah everyone's coming in with their whatever amount right and this is like a collective but all of you have come in with a little. Right.

Speaker 1 And then we're making this show. Yes.
Right. But I have a million ones, and that's the relationship I have.
Yes. But you have one relationship with a million.
Very true. Do you get what I'm saying?

Speaker 10 100% agree. The art world, in many ways, is not democratic.

Speaker 10 Because what you're explaining is democratic. Yes, it is.
That's

Speaker 10 one woman, one dollar.

Speaker 1 One vote.

Speaker 1 That's exactly what it is.

Speaker 1 One ticket, one vote.

Speaker 10 And this is also why you could be a superstar and why so many people know your name. Because you play to the widest possible demographic on some level.

Speaker 1 Yeah, no, you're right.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 10 For us,

Speaker 10 we're known in very small rooms

Speaker 10 with very few people with lots and lots of money.

Speaker 1 Yeah, the most powerful people. I would love to know from your perspective as an artist,

Speaker 1 why do you think art is so essential?

Speaker 10 Well, I truly believe that art is

Speaker 10 in our original coding because you would be hard-pressed to find any society anywhere in the world through any period of time that did not create something

Speaker 10 outside of themselves.

Speaker 1 Cave drawings. High-end.

Speaker 10 I don't go through the cave, but like, let's go to South America. Let's go to the rainforest.
Let's go to the way they twisted leaves together to make beautiful fatcheted homes.

Speaker 10 it's really impossible to find humans where they're not creating anything. And so, and I've thought a lot about this:

Speaker 10 about why

Speaker 10 people care.

Speaker 10 One of the things I used to love to do in New York City, and this is even before I was begging people to buy the paintings, you're just kind of in a room and you're making things, and you're just fucking suffering.

Speaker 10 Maybe somebody bought a painting. I would take the painting to them uncovered so I could ride on the train with my art just to see whether anybody cared.

Speaker 1 Oh, I like this.

Speaker 10 And you'd be surprised how many people of different kinds would say, you did that?

Speaker 10 And I say, yeah,

Speaker 1 that's good, man.

Speaker 10 All types of people.

Speaker 10 And I used to love the way.

Speaker 1 This is a, I feel like you invented the first like people's gallery.

Speaker 1 They should, you know, they should do, didn't they do that?

Speaker 10 Someone should do that. Dude, I love that.
There's a woman named Sandra Bloodworth who just retired from the MTA in New York City. Her job for over 30 years was to pick artists for the subway to do

Speaker 10 public works. And New York City probably has one of the best public works program in all of the country.
I did not know that. Yes.
And so it's not always original work.

Speaker 10 I have my work at the 145th Street

Speaker 10 2 or 3 line. Yeah.
And it's all my work. The ideas are in there.
And I love it.

Speaker 1 What kind of work?

Speaker 1 You know, it's like I designed murals on the tiles.

Speaker 1 if I had my art at a station, I would feel personally connected to the station.

Speaker 10 Oh, I love it.

Speaker 1 Yeah, but I would like go and want to like keep the station clean and I want to fight people. Let me tell you what.

Speaker 10 Before you get to the point where you're, you know, looking at museums as a possibility, you know, you have the public. Like, I took the train every day.
Yeah.

Speaker 10 So, like, to have my work in a train station in New York City was like, what?

Speaker 1 I would be fighting.

Speaker 10 Dude, so it's great because.

Speaker 1 Let someone try to take a shit at that station. Yeah.

Speaker 1 That's what what you think. You don't even understand the fight that we're going to have.
That's my art station.

Speaker 1 Yo,

Speaker 1 you don't even understand.

Speaker 10 But what I say is, it is the Derek Forger Underground Museum of the People.

Speaker 1 That's the way I refer to it. I like this.

Speaker 10 But I was actually, you know, after a divorce, which happened years ago, I was like struggling again, living out of my studio,

Speaker 10 sleeping on an air mattress. Like it was just tough times.
And it was a block away from where they called me to put my work at the station years later. And I just thought, this is not coincidence.

Speaker 10 That was my station during some of the darkest

Speaker 10 months of my life. And that's where my work is.
So I think that, look, I think it's spiritual to answer your question.

Speaker 10 I think that there's no people without making something.

Speaker 10 I think about the blacksmiths, the instrument makers, all the technologies that lived in the people that moved to different parts of the world and how those things then express themselves.

Speaker 10 Right, right. The banjo, you know, which is I just have a banjo on my last show, but I love the story of the banjo that starts in Africa with a gourd and ends up, you know, as folk music in America.

Speaker 1 Oh, I didn't know that. Yeah.
Oh, yeah.

Speaker 10 It's actually a comedian who did a lot about that history. Steve Martin in his later years did a lot of research on the banjo.
And it starts in Africa.

Speaker 10 There's no banjo in America without the American slave.

Speaker 1 That is wild, because the banjo seems like the epitome of white America.

Speaker 10 Exactly. And so, I mean, look, Beyonce is dealing with that too.
I think she had the banjo in her work. There's a Black Banjo project that has been researching this.

Speaker 10 But you asked about my work and like what stories. I love the opportunity to

Speaker 10 introduce those complexities and to magnify them and to have people make connections to things that they might not have made otherwise. I mean, it's what you do in your work too, right? It's like,

Speaker 10 how can we think about this separate and apart from the stories we've been told about what they are?

Speaker 10 Right. And art is a space where we can make a new story.

Speaker 1 I think I

Speaker 1 only truly, truly, truly understood the value of art when I went to Ukraine.

Speaker 10 Tell me about this.

Speaker 1 I traveled to Ukraine. This was many years ago,

Speaker 1 obviously before the conflict.

Speaker 1 I was going to go watch a Champions League final.

Speaker 1 So we go,

Speaker 1 and

Speaker 1 what I was most taken by

Speaker 1 was how devoid of art the place was. Like any Soviet countries, and not all, but there are many parts of what we call former Soviet Union countries where it's devoid of art.

Speaker 1 Everything has to be functional only for the purpose of the function. It's like East Berlin.
It really is. It really is.

Speaker 1 And when I came back from Ukraine, I remember traveling and realizing, oh, man,

Speaker 1 you know, the thing about art that's weird is

Speaker 1 that you don't play video games, right? No.

Speaker 10 How do you know that? You're making a presumption.

Speaker 1 Man, you don't give me video game advice. Yeah, I hate that.
Also, if you played video games, you'd never finish your art. That's how I know.
It's very true. Like, I've been to your studio.
Yes.

Speaker 1 You are working.

Speaker 1 I know video game people, trust me.

Speaker 10 You're like, that's not what's happening in here.

Speaker 1 Video games and like

Speaker 1 hours in the studio.

Speaker 1 That doesn't work. That's fair.
But you play? I play. I play my whole life.
There's something that I learned from video games that applies to art.

Speaker 1 And it's like, it's what they call like passive buffs. So there's some things you would apply to a character

Speaker 1 that are obvious and easy to see. Like what? Like a sword? Yeah, here's a sword.
Right. The sword is easy to understand.
You have the sword. But then you'd have like a buff.

Speaker 1 And a buff would be, you are going to be 20% 20 stronger now right wow yeah now you don't necessarily notice the 20 stronger in every single encounter but it does make the game easier and it makes a difference right right

Speaker 1 and i remember coming back from ukraine traveling in back into like the world going oh damn this is what art does Art is like a passive buff to society.

Speaker 10 Oh, I love this. Yeah, it's true.

Speaker 1 You know what I mean? It's true.

Speaker 1 You stand in a train station, you stand in an airport, you stand at a bus stop, you stand anywhere, any liminal space

Speaker 1 that has no art. Okay.

Speaker 1 Watch how much you don't feel.

Speaker 1 Right. And it's a difficult thing to notice because noticing absence, as you were saying earlier,

Speaker 1 is extremely difficult. It is hard.
You know, it's very difficult to

Speaker 1 say I'm noticing that nothing is here.

Speaker 10 Yes, yes.

Speaker 1 Sometimes it's even difficult to notice what is there.

Speaker 1 When you look at art,

Speaker 1 when art is, when you're not even like looking at it, right? Yeah. It's doing things to you.
Oh, it is. So it's impossible to walk through the Sistine Chapel and be unaffected.

Speaker 1 Yeah, and not have like one. That's not possible.
You know, like it doesn't matter what the painting is.

Speaker 10 No, it doesn't matter. It doesn't, but it doesn't matter whether you know anything about that.

Speaker 1 You know, like, I don't even, I don't know anything about art. Yes.
But like when I look at a Rembrandt, yes. And I didn't even know it's a Rembrandt.
That's right. I just go like, where's that field?

Speaker 10 Yes, exactly.

Speaker 1 What is that place?

Speaker 10 You take interest, right?

Speaker 1 And you know who I realize knows this and has not robbed us of it, but they're very slick about it is the advertising industry. Yes, they do.
Yes. Because now billboards are our arts.
Oh, absolutely.

Speaker 1 Right. So when you travel somewhere, you see Coca-Cola.
That's right. You see, you know, like the story, the optics.
It's like everything's shining on a billboard. Oh, absolutely.

Speaker 1 Shining on a billboard. Shining on a billboard.
You're in Times Square. Yes.
And they know the passive power of it. They know that in that moment, you may not go Coca-Cola.

Speaker 10 But if they keep, if you keep seeing that red.

Speaker 1 Somewhere along the line, you're going to be thirsty and you're like, man, I really feel like a Coke. And they go, thank you, we got you.

Speaker 1 And now I think if Coca-Cola can make you crave a Coke by putting up a billboard,

Speaker 1 then an artist can make you crave hope by putting up a billboard. Do you know what I'm saying?

Speaker 10 I like that. Okay, so I'm going to complicate that.
I like it.

Speaker 10 I think it's a great opportunity to think about the difference between advertising and art. And it's really simple in that

Speaker 10 advertising, even design, they solve a problem. They answer a question,

Speaker 1 right? That they've sometimes created.

Speaker 10 Yeah, they've created the question, but they answer it.

Speaker 1 That's the goal.

Speaker 10 Art is interested in the question.

Speaker 1 Ooh, okay. I like that.

Speaker 10 So we'll say design,

Speaker 10 the goal is to solve a problem.

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 10 Art is to

Speaker 10 create the question.

Speaker 10 Yeah. So I think that

Speaker 10 that's the difference. And I think that's also why people are sometimes intimidated by it.
But it's like listening to you tell jokes.

Speaker 10 Sometimes there's so many levels in the joke that it can it can be really funny if you understand all the resonance that's true yeah but you don't have to get those deeper levels yes it can also just be funny on level one you taught me that about art really yeah what do i teach you about

Speaker 1 art is the most yo art is the most intimidating world i've ever come across yeah yeah yeah yeah and i still

Speaker 1 yeah still till this day i'm not even gonna pretend i just go that's a nice picture that's all it takes though and you you were the first can i tell you you were literally the first human being who said to me, like, hey, brother, you're like, relax.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it's okay. Like, you don't need to know anything about the medium.
Right. You don't need to know anything about the strokes or what it evokes.
No, no, no. No.

Speaker 1 It's a symbolism or how it relates to another art. You were just like, do you like it? Yeah.
What'd you like? And I'll just be like, I like the picture. And you're like, why do you like the picture?

Speaker 1 I'm like, I don't know. I like that person's eyes.
And you're like, oh, well, let's talk about the eyes. You were literally the first person who did that.

Speaker 1 And it made me more comfortable just liking art because I like what I'm seeing.

Speaker 10 Well, I mean, look, that's look, I mean, not to be, you know, flattering each other, but that's also what you did with humor.

Speaker 10 There was a point in life where I thought, oh, I could be a comedian, but I was like, it's not serious enough, though.

Speaker 1 Like,

Speaker 10 I wanted people to take me seriously. And I don't know, like, as a kid, I thought, well, as a comic, like, you're kind of a clown, you know? Like,

Speaker 10 I didn't really, but it's actually like, it has the space for social critique, for satire. You can get in places that other,

Speaker 10 you know, public figures can't and you can push that as far as possible um and you're you're you're part of some kind of social change a joke is so trivial on some some level yeah it's not a serious thing uh a painting on its own i mean

Speaker 10 it's just an object like it doesn't have any embedded like powers arguably But then there is a part where that is true, though. There's something true.
A joke can be more. It can be profound.

Speaker 10 You know, an object can stay with you um and i think that's the stuff we traffic in i mean as you were talking about um you know the the kind of magic and art or value you know i think about like laughter you know it's like laughter is democratic you know we're coded for laughter yeah we are doesn't matter where you are in the world um i think about like mr bean or something like where there's no language yeah you know but i think we human beings are encoded to appreciate art

Speaker 10 i think we are, actually. I believe, I mean, my whole existence is predicated on that belief.

Speaker 1 No, I actually believe we are. We look at it and we feel whether we like it or not.

Speaker 10 Yes, it's involuntary. Yeah.

Speaker 10 So

Speaker 10 I think that, you know, part of what I love about being an artist is

Speaker 10 the way I can reach people is at a very human level.

Speaker 10 It's not about class, race.

Speaker 10 It's none of those things. In fact, I can be all about my cultural experience and bring people into it that live outside of it.
And how marvelous is that?

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Speaker 1 What um

Speaker 1 what are you working on right now? Because you just you did a show recently. Yes, how long do you take between how long does it take you?

Speaker 10 It takes me about a year to put a show together, a little more.

Speaker 1 Do you take a break? I don't know you take breaks.

Speaker 10 I try not to take too many breaks. I mean, this is my own like whatever anxiety.

Speaker 1 What is that, like poverty trauma?

Speaker 10 I can't claim that entirely.

Speaker 1 Because I know a lot of a lot of artists are, and I think this extends to many people maybe in today's age, but there's a terror that if I step away from the thing for too long, then to go back to the train analogy,

Speaker 1 it'll move. I'll miss it.

Speaker 10 Okay, well, I have to say this about the train analogy, which I loved. When you were talking about that, I was thinking about like performers that keep trying to stay relevant.

Speaker 1 Yeah, chase the train.

Speaker 10 Chasing the train. You're chasing the train.

Speaker 1 Yeah, which is a fool's area.

Speaker 10 It's a fool's errand. It can work.
At some point, you're going to fall out. You can't go as fast as a train.

Speaker 1 Well, here's the thing. You might not fall out.

Speaker 1 But I think there's a compromise in everything you're doing in life. Right.
Right.

Speaker 1 So keeping up with the train means that in many ways, train is dictating what you should create and not the other way around.

Speaker 10 This is the difference between, let's say, an illustrator and an artist. An illustrator is

Speaker 10 in design, doing the work that they're told to do to tell the story for the deadline.

Speaker 10 I can take five years on a painting if I want to. I can take 20 years if I want to.

Speaker 10 I can take one minute if I want to. Because the train and the approval and that, that's not what I'm working for.
It's something very personal and very internal. And I set the time.

Speaker 10 In fact, there is no time in my studio. Here's where the magic happens with art.
I had a relationship with everything that goes out of my studio.

Speaker 10 I had an affair with this thing, a love affair, hated it, loved it, brought it back. The whole thing, every time.

Speaker 10 The whole thing. There's not one thing that I make that I don't obsess over.

Speaker 10 And so my investment is what makes your investment possible. And I think there's a point in terms of finishing a work where you get a feeling that's just like, I think we've had our time.

Speaker 10 You know,

Speaker 1 you can go in the world now.

Speaker 10 But art really concludes when it enters the public sphere. Like, I start it, I make it, I have an experience.
When it goes out for me, that's when the cycle is sort of complete.

Speaker 10 You know, it's like you can write jokes on a pad.

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Until you say them to the audience.

Speaker 10 You have to say it. Yeah.
And it has to land. But like philosophically, where does the joke live? Does it live on the page or does it live in the delivery?

Speaker 1 It's always been a tough one to answer, but

Speaker 1 I think the way I see it is I go,

Speaker 1 for me at least,

Speaker 1 the joke exists when I've thought of it.

Speaker 1 That's when it exists.

Speaker 10 Oh, this is like a this is this is like a very

Speaker 10 you know what I mean? There are parallel political conversations.

Speaker 1 Yeah, but that's literally for me. I go the joke

Speaker 10 of a joke.

Speaker 1 Once I go, huh, that's funny. That's already a joke.
I'm the audience of one, and I've gone, that is funny. The difficulty, and where I think the professionalism comes in,

Speaker 1 is bridging the gap between your brain and mine when we're in a room together.

Speaker 1 Can I get your synapses to fire in the exact same way that mine did for you to see why this is funny? And that is where I think great comedians show themselves off.

Speaker 1 They are able to create the same idea of the world

Speaker 1 that they have in your mind. And that is like, ah,

Speaker 1 that's a, that's a, that's, that's mastery.

Speaker 10 Yeah, but you've just explained what artists do. It's the same thing.

Speaker 10 That

Speaker 10 this thing is doing something for me

Speaker 10 at a personal level. And that experience is authentic and satisfying, so much so that I'm going to invest all this time and energy for that, okay?

Speaker 10 Right, but that's a one-on-one experience, and then at some point, it has to live in the public space.

Speaker 1 And when I told you so much harder, though, because you put it out and it's done.

Speaker 1 If I put it out and it doesn't go well, I'm like, all right, let me take it back in the studio and change a few things. Yeah, you put the painting on the wall, yeah, and someone goes, boo,

Speaker 10 it's done. Well, what's beautiful about us is we don't hear the booze.

Speaker 1 Museums are quite quiet.

Speaker 10 We're like, like, soft shuffle, everyone, quiet. Soft booze.
Do not boo the artists. Okay.
So the conversation is a little more internal in that.

Speaker 1 Yeah, but I think I would be more terrified by that. How do you know that somebody likes turkey?

Speaker 10 You're trying to stand on stage in Turkey.

Speaker 1 How do you know? 40,000 people. But how do you know that people don't like, you know?

Speaker 10 They keep calling you back for the Grammys.

Speaker 1 We had to cancel the Turkey show. It's a fifth call.

Speaker 10 I'd be terrified.

Speaker 1 We had to cancel the turkey show. Did you cancel it? Yeah, we had to.
I saw that.

Speaker 1 There was a whole...

Speaker 10 I'm sorry, I didn't mean to bring that up.

Speaker 1 No, no, I mean, I'm sorry.

Speaker 1 What happened?

Speaker 1 This happens sometimes. We had to cancel shows in Hong Kong

Speaker 1 in and around the protests, you remember? Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yes, I was. We had to cancel shows.

Speaker 10 Yeah, we canceled shows too.

Speaker 1 Yeah, we had to cancel shows in India when there were the farmers protesting. Yeah.
And then we had to cancel in Turkey now.

Speaker 10 Dude, but let me ask you this. How do you know what's funny in other places?

Speaker 1 I don't.

Speaker 1 That's what I love.

Speaker 10 But why would you get on stage if you don't know that?

Speaker 1 No, but you see, what I love is finding the thing. So

Speaker 1 funny is universal. Okay.

Speaker 1 This This is the first and foremost. In theory, yes.
No, no.

Speaker 1 We can fight about it all day. Funny is universal.
And what I mean by that is, everyone in the world experiences funny. Yes.

Speaker 10 Rats laugh. Did you know this? I did not know that.
And I would have had to come here to find that out.

Speaker 1 Yeah. So rats laugh and rats smile.

Speaker 10 What does it sound like?

Speaker 1 I don't know. Okay, that's what I'm about to find out.
I've just read the papers on it, right? A rat laugh. Okay.
So rats laugh. Okay.

Speaker 1 We don't know why they're laughing. I don't.
I don't. Right.
For sure. But they're laughing.
Humans find something funny everywhere in the world.

Speaker 1 What I love is trying to figure out

Speaker 1 where their funny is and how my funny can intertwine with it.

Speaker 1 So I used to, and I still do in some ways, I used to envy American comedians because American comedians could go anywhere in the world and tell a joke the way they told it in America.

Speaker 10 Because people know America.

Speaker 1 Because the world knows America. So they would go like, hey, man, so oh man.
So I voted for George Bush and

Speaker 1 whoa, let me tell you something.

Speaker 1 And the audience isn't like, George Bush, who is

Speaker 1 this George Bush? That's right. That's right.
What are you talking about? Who is Judge? No, that's right. Well, it's like, keep going, tell the joke.
Right. You know? Yeah.

Speaker 1 But if, as a South African comedian, I would travel somewhere else in the world and then I would be like, oh man, oh, let me tell you, Julius Malema. Half the people are like, what did you just say?

Speaker 1 Yeah, we don't know. Who is that? What is that?

Speaker 1 So while it was a curse in some ways, it was a blessing in many other ways, because it meant when I traveled, I would have to spend more time trying to understand what's funny there. Right.

Speaker 1 What are they thinking? How do you do that? Why are they thinking that? How does their language match up with what funny is or isn't? Yeah. You know what I mean? Yeah, but what do you do?

Speaker 10 You absorb the culture?

Speaker 1 I try my best, yeah. Do you go in? I just sing around for a while.
Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 10 I just listen and look at what people are laughing at.

Speaker 1 Yeah, like my least favorite experience doing comedy is traveling to a place and leaving it immediately. I hate that.
I don't want to fly and fly out.

Speaker 10 Yeah, you like to be there.

Speaker 1 It takes more of my life, but I like to go there, eat what the people eat, see what the people see.

Speaker 1 And by the way, have it as my experience so that by the time I get on stage, whether it's in Amsterdam

Speaker 1 or whether it's in Cairo or whether it's in wherever, I just want to go on and be like, man, this is how I feel

Speaker 1 about

Speaker 1 these alleyways. Right.

Speaker 1 And the magic happens when they go, oh my God,

Speaker 10 you felt that? It's like we feel that too.

Speaker 1 You felt that? Right. And it becomes a magical experience because they go, we even forgot that we feel that.
Right. You know? And I remember

Speaker 1 I really never appreciated it until it was two people who helped me out, Kevin Hart and Dave Chappelle. Kevin said to me one day, he was a classic Kevin.
Kevin was, he was, we were at a tennis match.

Speaker 1 And Kevin was like, he's like,

Speaker 1 he's like, man, Trevor, let me tell you something, man. Let me tell you something, man.
He says, man, I'm sick of your bullshit, man. I'm sick of your bullshit.
And I was like, what do you mean, Kev?

Speaker 1 He's like, man, he's like, every country I go to, they go, you know, who came here? Trevor came here. And they're like, man, you were funny.

Speaker 1 They're like, oh, man, but Trevor, oh, man, he told us jokes about us. And Kevin's like, man, well, this is some bullshit.
He lives in America. I live in America.
How's you?

Speaker 1 And Kevin was saying, he's like, I hope you said, I hope you appreciate what you have. Yeah.
Don't try and be more this. Don't try and be, you know what I mean? Right, right.

Speaker 1 And Dave said the same thing to me as well. We did a comedy festival that Dave was headlining.
And then I was in the run-up days to Dave's show. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And I think it was like maybe the first comedy festival in the UAE

Speaker 1 and

Speaker 1 we both performed our shows and I mean Dave Chappelle is a master of the craft yeah you know yeah and like afterwards we're hanging out and Dave says to me he goes he goes man

Speaker 1 he says I'm funny don't get me wrong he says but tonight I watched you become Dubai's favorite comedian he said you weren't He said, I was Dave Chappelle. That's big.

Speaker 1 But you were their comedian as if you're from here. Yeah.
And I think that's what I've, and I think it's partially where I'm from as a person, my life growing up, my, you know, everything. Yeah.

Speaker 1 I've always loved this. I feel like there's something special when you can find a way to use your culinary skills to cook somebody's food for them.

Speaker 10 That's right. Oh, that's, that's a great analogy.
You know, I used to not understand how serious you were about that.

Speaker 10 You used to say that after you finished a daily show and you were like, I just love to travel and I'd love to be, I was like, oh, he likes to go.

Speaker 10 Like, like, who loves to to tour but you don't just tour you're like learning

Speaker 1 you're like learning the culture and trying to like understand and apply I'll tell you why I think I think you know not not to make it too existential but I think it's particularly now because it's in short supply one of my favorite things I get from traveling the world and meeting people and doing what they're doing is it reminds me there's no one way to be right.

Speaker 1 There you go. You know what I'm saying? Yes.
So there is no one way for a joke to be funny. Yes.
There is no one way for a food to be delicious. Yes.

Speaker 1 You know, earlier on just here with the crew, we were talking about like fermented shark meat in Iceland. Yes.
And if you're not able to handle it, you're like, this is trash. This is disgusting.

Speaker 1 But they're like, no, it's not. I love it.
And somewhere else, people love caviar. In another part of the world, people are like, what is this? So I think that reminds me in everything, politics, in

Speaker 1 the way I relate with other human beings, the way you raise a child, the way you make the world.

Speaker 1 I go, oh, don't think that is there is the way yeah and you know how you know there's not the way all those cultures and people exist look they're doing fine do you know what i'm saying yeah so if there was one way if there was one way for the world to be right every other culture would work that way it's so true but i find a lot of the time bigger nations and bigger cultures yeah will assume so they'll like the british land in africa and they go these savages right they don't know how to do anything it's like yeah but you found them here doing it that's right that's right if you didn't find them yes I would agree with you.

Speaker 1 Yes. But because you found them, it means they do know how to do something.
Yes.

Speaker 10 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Same thing when like the Spanish get to South America and Central America. Oh, God.
They're like, oh, these people don't know. And it's like, no, no, no, no, no.
They do know. Yeah, they're fine.

Speaker 1 Because they're here.

Speaker 10 You know, as a kid,

Speaker 10 I would, my mother would sometimes close the door and be like, don't, I'm eating my food. And when she says my food, she means she's eating Ghanaian food.
She eats with her hands. And

Speaker 10 she would say, I mean, we all eat with our hands, we eat fufu and otherwise. And she would say, these people won't understand that, why I eat with my hands.
They think I need a fork.

Speaker 10 And for her, she understood the fork as a colonial object. Oh.
That was unnecessary.

Speaker 1 I mean, it is unnecessary. It's unnecessary.

Speaker 10 It's completely tasty. And she would say, food actually tastes better.
I mean, your hands are tactile. You're experiencing the texture of the food.
and you're ingesting the food.

Speaker 1 Did she know that based on research? Because that is true. She lived it.

Speaker 10 I mean, she lived it. I mean, she grew up.

Speaker 1 I'm I'm saying she was just saying this intuitively.

Speaker 10 Well, she said we've eaten.

Speaker 1 She's doing that magic model.

Speaker 1 Yes, exactly. She's doing that magic model.

Speaker 1 How did they do that? She's saying... They'll say something that like a university

Speaker 1 in a paper. Oh, totally.
Researchers have found eating food with your hands increases that your mom is like. She's like, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 10 This is exactly right. But, you know, to go back to what you were saying about the cultures, man, you remind me of going to, a few years ago, I went to actually Israel.

Speaker 10 And from there, I went to South Africa. And I remember going to Hector Peterson Square.
I mean, the story of them teaching Afrikaans.

Speaker 10 And after that, I went to Australia. And when I came off the plane, they apprehended me for a while.
And here I am thinking, like, oh, I'm taking a break. You know, I've worked hard enough.

Speaker 10 Like, let me treat myself. And here this Australian guy is.
asking me what I'm going to be doing, how long am I here?

Speaker 10 And then I'm starting to imagine myself as like, you know, some, like, do I have a dubious motive for being

Speaker 1 like the questioning went on so long.

Speaker 10 I'm like, bro, this has been 20 minutes. Like, I'm 24 hours away from home.
And so that trip showed me, and it was actually a relief, that injustices against mankind are as old as mankind itself.

Speaker 10 It blew my mind.

Speaker 10 some kind of way to realize that, oh no, this is like

Speaker 1 human experience. Right.

Speaker 1 Also,

Speaker 10 it's like tough to be black everywhere on some level. Like it's troubles.

Speaker 10 Traveling taught me that

Speaker 10 making art about my lived experience can be resonant because everyone has some version of what those challenges are.

Speaker 10 You know, when you think about the universality of a laugh or a painting from

Speaker 10 far-off part of the world. Yeah.
I want to see it. I want to experience it.
I can engage it. I can look at paintings that were made a thousand years ago and have an experience.
I don't know.

Speaker 10 The humor works that way. It doesn't always age well.

Speaker 10 Like, is there a timeless joke?

Speaker 1 I think so.

Speaker 1 Really? Yeah.

Speaker 10 That's still funny?

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah, completely.

Speaker 10 Like a hundred years later?

Speaker 1 I think so.

Speaker 10 Oh, this is. Yeah, I think so.

Speaker 1 I think some jokes exist in the human experience, and so

Speaker 1 they will always be funny.

Speaker 10 That's true.

Speaker 1 You know, I'm sure there's a joke that Ali Wong has told about having a child that can live forever. For as long as women will have a child, I think that joke will be funny.

Speaker 1 You know, there are some jokes, though, that are about a thing that may be as short-lived as the thing is.

Speaker 10 Because the thing is gone.

Speaker 1 But there are some jokes that I do think

Speaker 1 they will just travel. As long as the people understand the context, that joke will continuously be.

Speaker 10 I mean, as Africans, we we know this right proverbs yes like they still tickle people they've been around just saw didzell washington jake jalehal performing shakespeare yeah word for word and people laughed

Speaker 1 you know so things can be timeless art art certainly is but human humor can be yeah but comedian and and it also just depends i think of it like fashion as well it might just come around it might come in waves it might go in waves a simple example is look at content that goes viral in the world at different times.

Speaker 1 There are TV shows that were hot in America

Speaker 1 and then 20 years later become hot somewhere else. Really hot.
But Americans are like, oh,

Speaker 1 we don't think that's funny anymore. That's true.
But that place is like, we love it. We love it.
We love it. The way you said the black man cannot come inside.
Ha ha, what a great joke.

Speaker 10 You know, I saw recently these Africans that play, is it Kenyans or they play country music? Have you seen this? No. But they love it.

Speaker 10 They have these parties and there's like all these Africans wearing like top to bottom like cowboy gear. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 10 But it's a marriage of the cultures. I love this stuff.
When culture can.

Speaker 1 Oh, no, that's my favorite thing.

Speaker 10 This is what we live for, right? I mean, I think as artists, I mean, that's what we really are trying to mine is like the human experience. I mean, and it could get dark because you got to go inside.

Speaker 10 When I first started painting, I would make paintings and people would say, and I would have like, you know, an athletic guy, a bright pattern background, and people would say, Kahinde Wiley.

Speaker 10 And I'd be like, no, no, no, no, no. But I couldn't,

Speaker 10 that he had already occupied that space.

Speaker 1 Oh, damn. And so, okay.

Speaker 10 I was like, optically, the things I'm putting together are adding up to what I don't want.

Speaker 10 Like, and so the only way forward for me was to get into, okay, well, what's the feeling?

Speaker 10 about this image that I and it's like oh vulnerability is what I'm interested in because when I experience yeah when I experience radio distilling it down to the core feeling as opposed to

Speaker 10 what it looks like.

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 10 And I'm not saying that that's what he's

Speaker 1 doing.

Speaker 10 But I'm just saying, like, that was for me my salvation is to get inside the experience. And

Speaker 10 because everyone knows what it feels like to be vulnerable.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 10 Everyone doesn't know what it feels like to live in my body. And so, to me, I don't know, in my practice,

Speaker 10 I try to do that inside-outside thing as much as possible.

Speaker 1 I think you succeed. Well, thank you.
And even if people don't feel it,

Speaker 1 the pictures are pretty, man.

Speaker 10 Hey, man, that's an insult in my world.

Speaker 1 No, man, the pictures are pretty.

Speaker 10 The pictures are pretty.

Speaker 1 The pictures are pretty. And I think you should allow people to accept that.
Like, you know why? I'll tell you why. Because

Speaker 1 whether it's the Mona Lisa,

Speaker 1 whether it's, you know, David and God, or whatever it is,

Speaker 1 the pictures are pretty.

Speaker 1 I know people will like fight about it or whatever. But ultimately.
Yo, the pictures are pretty. They are beautiful.
Now they come.

Speaker 1 with a story and they come with meaning and there might be layers and then like an art historian will tell you why it's significant that that road leads nowhere or why those hills make that shape yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah but we should never forget it's true that it does look pretty i say that you have beautiful art thank you that also comes with a lot of meaning but i'm just saying now you're throwing that in it for me no i'm not i'm just saying as somebody who doesn't always understand meanings of i don't i'm not learned enough yeah i just look at it i go like damn, that's dope.

Speaker 1 Yeah. And I think, I think you shouldn't take that for granted.
It's nice to have something where someone just goes like, damn, that's dope.

Speaker 10 No, I do. I mean, I'm joking.
It's absolutely true. I mean, beauty is definitely a strategy for me.
Because, but back to your analogy about the train,

Speaker 10 we're trying to get your attention.

Speaker 10 I operate in the glance economy. Yes.
Right? You don't need to stand in front of a painting for an hour to have an experience. In fact.

Speaker 1 Yo, let me tell you something. One of the biggest reasons I don't like going to museums and art galleries.

Speaker 10 Why?

Speaker 1 Especially if someone from the museum or art gallery knows I'm there.

Speaker 10 Yeah, because they come there.

Speaker 1 Is because they'll come take me on tours and stuff.

Speaker 1 And then what happens is, I don't know how long I need to stand in front of an art piece to make it seem like I fully appreciated it.

Speaker 1 Do you know how much pressure they are? So I'll stand there and then someone will come stand next to me and they'll go, stunning, isn't it? And I go, oh, yeah, gorgeous, gorgeous.

Speaker 1 And then they stand.

Speaker 1 And I stand. And then I go, if I walk away now,

Speaker 1 it looks like I'm not engaged. Right.
And then I'll like zoom, I'll like come forward and I'll be like, wow,

Speaker 1 fascinating. Oh, man.

Speaker 10 Dude, this is a lot of performance.

Speaker 10 That's too much stress. All right, here's what I'm going to say.

Speaker 1 That's why I like looking at art with you because I can literally just say to you straight up, I can go, I like those pants. That's right.
It's true. And I think it's important to be able to do that.

Speaker 10 Okay, that's very important. And I'm going to absolve you of that pressure.
You may never do that again. You may also say, I don't get it.

Speaker 1 I'm not into it.

Speaker 10 That's a good thing, too. That's a reaction.
And in art, that's totally possible. There's some art that just bothers me, but it bothers me.
Okay. And that's a good thing.

Speaker 10 So this, I think the complication with the word pretty is that it flattens for me. Beauty is to me more expansive than pretty.

Speaker 1 Oh, I'll take

Speaker 10 it. Right.
So pretty is just purely aesthetics.

Speaker 1 It's just pretty. But beauty is just a pain.

Speaker 10 Whereas you can be beautiful inside and out.

Speaker 1 Well, I think a lot of your paintings are beautiful on the outside if people don't know what's on the inside. That's what I'm saying.
I'll take that.

Speaker 1 No, but I'm serious, man. And like, for real, I think.

Speaker 1 Yeah, man. What I've always loved about your work is I cannot separate your work from you.
Yeah. Which in my world is a compliment.

Speaker 10 Yes, that's a high compliment. I love that.
I worked hard to get there.

Speaker 1 Yeah, man, because

Speaker 1 I don't just enjoy the stories you tell. I enjoy them immensely, but I enjoy

Speaker 1 how you tell you in the art. Do you know what I mean?

Speaker 1 I love that people get to know a little bit of you,

Speaker 1 and you get to tell people a little bit of us.

Speaker 1 You know, I love that like Africans have stories in your art. I love that black people have stories in your art.
I love that there are some people in America and around the world. Yeah.

Speaker 1 who have only had a black person in their house

Speaker 1 in your art. arts.
Yes. They've never had a physical black person.

Speaker 1 But there are black people on their walls. And you know what? Their kids grow up looking at those black faces.

Speaker 1 And I mean this like in a real life.

Speaker 10 I love it. We have this conversation.

Speaker 1 I appreciate it.

Speaker 1 I'm really appreciative of that where I just go, like, damn, you did that.

Speaker 10 Well, but it's true. Like, think about that.

Speaker 10 And so I've been asked also, well, how do you feel about that if they're those people that don't have direct engagement with black people in their lives, but want to acquire images of black people.

Speaker 10 And I say there's something beautiful that you find about the experience.

Speaker 10 And as long as I put enough truth in the work, where the work is not merely to perform aesthetically, they're part of the conversation. And I think it's a good thing.

Speaker 1 Artists, amen. Let me tell you something.
The first artist who painted white Jesus

Speaker 1 changed the world.

Speaker 10 Immensely. Changed the world.
Our world. Certainly changed the world.
But that's what I mean.

Speaker 1 Think about it.

Speaker 1 Think about it. Think about history history as we know it.

Speaker 1 Would it be the same if that painter kept Jesus as dark-skinned as Jesus was? Just think about that for a moment. No, it wouldn't.
Right?

Speaker 1 Because it would be a whole lot harder for people to travel to other places and do the things that they did to those people when those people look like Jesus now. You get what I'm saying?

Speaker 1 So that's where I'm saying. That's the big thing.

Speaker 10 But I'll also say to complicate that, there are pictures of black Jesus that have been created long, long, long time ago.

Speaker 10 That's that market conversation about that one guy that painted long-haired Arkansas Jesus.

Speaker 10 Like why that became

Speaker 10 as popular is because of a machine. It's not because of the painting.

Speaker 10 So when we go to, say, Ethiopia and we see Orthodox Christ, he looks very different than Arkansas Christ that we know in America or the Western Jesus.

Speaker 10 But that one didn't travel because it didn't function as propaganda.

Speaker 10 So I don't want to say that that artist made this move.

Speaker 10 The machine moved that artist's work,

Speaker 1 right?

Speaker 10 So that's why that firewall is so important.

Speaker 1 Before we wrap this up, I just realized there's something I've never asked you and I've always wanted to. I always remember this when we're not together.
This is going to be good.

Speaker 1 Have you ever heard the conspiracy theory that the CIA invented American contemporary art?

Speaker 1 Or abstract art? Or forgive me if I'm using the wrong term. No, no, no.
Have you heard the conspiracy theory? I don't know it well.

Speaker 10 I've heard some things about them being involved in using it with.

Speaker 1 So apparently, it's just because when you said machine,

Speaker 1 post-World War II, the world is now forming itself. It's becoming this new space.
And America is now a superpower in a way that it wasn't before World War II, right?

Speaker 1 So America was big, but it wasn't like the

Speaker 1 world, right? Early 40s. Now America has the atom bomb.
The world is looking at America differently. America is this thing.

Speaker 1 And America, this is all the story, by the way. America realizes that while it is seen as the military powerhouse of the world, it is not considered the cultural powerhouse of the world.

Speaker 1 So America starts going, okay, we've got to get culture out there.

Speaker 1 And it's doing it in multiple ways. Music and, you know, film is burgeoning at that time and it's growing.
But the upper-minded echelons say, yes, but America will never have arts. Right.

Speaker 1 Art is of Europe,

Speaker 10 of the sophisticated. All the art of America, for example.

Speaker 1 And America is a young baby. And the story goes that the CIA is then tasked with creating an art market.
And so they like start telling people, just make shit and we'll buy it.

Speaker 1 And they go in, they buy it, they inflate the price, they get galleries buying it, they get a market going, it becomes this whole big thing. The story becomes the art.
The art's blowing.

Speaker 1 It's burging as well. And then the thing is created.
Have you heard anything about this?

Speaker 10 I tell you why I think that's complete BS.

Speaker 10 Because it's great, it's great fun. It's a fantastic one.
I like it. I mean, for a dinner party, it's wonderful.
I'd stand around and listen to it.

Speaker 10 Remember what we said before about

Speaker 10 the belief that

Speaker 10 human beings are encoded to create.

Speaker 10 So

Speaker 10 creating art at all levels, in all ways, has been ubiquitous with human beings. The art market really didn't get created until the 70s.
And there was a guy named Skull who owned taxi cabs.

Speaker 10 He was a wealthy guy who decided to go to Sotheby's which at the time was only really selling antiques and you know cars and other things so he had bought art from all these artists in New York probably many from Leo Costelli and he decided I'm just gonna resell this stuff and he did it at these high prices And Robert Rauschenberg was there at the sale and like shoved them and like they had this match and there's a photograph of the moment when Rauschenberg and so Rauschenberg says hey man you bought that for me from this and like you took advantage of me and Skull says I did you a favor

Speaker 10 and so inside our world of contemporary art that's the origins that we know about

Speaker 10 the moment yes that's the moment when New York City

Speaker 10 started to become the center of the art world. So that's, I mean, in terms of art market, I mean, that's, so that's a bit more plausible than this, because Americans, I mean, you know,

Speaker 10 the government is not, I mean, they don't even support artists well in this country at all. So they, that just gives them too much credit.

Speaker 1 Do you know what I'm saying?

Speaker 10 Like, I want to believe that so much. Like, if you told me that happened in Canada,

Speaker 10 I might. I might believe that more because Canada supports their artists.
They understand culture. If you told me this happened in Korea, Look at what they're doing with K-pop.

Speaker 10 The government is like helping underwrite that thing. That's cultural export.
But America?

Speaker 1 Wow. That's a stretch.

Speaker 10 Great story, though.

Speaker 1 Oh, man. I like the story.
Yeah, as we said in the beginning, doesn't matter whether it's true or not. It doesn't matter.
We just need a story. Yeah, man.
This is fun, Dee. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Thank you very much for coming.

Speaker 1 Is there any way where people can see your art right now? Yes.

Speaker 1 Like, where should they go? Other than which way, which station? Let's start with that.

Speaker 10 Okay, so so there's a, yes, yes. The Derek Forger Underground Museum of the People

Speaker 10 is at 145th Street on the 2 and or 3 stop at 145th Street. So that's cool.
So that's there.

Speaker 10 I have a show I'm working on in September in Los Angeles, which is going to be great at David Kordansky Gallery. Thinking only about music.

Speaker 1 And people can just go to these things. They can just come, dude.

Speaker 10 Like, please come to the show. Just come.

Speaker 10 It costs no money. It's wonderful.
So I wish more people went to galleries and museums. So, I want to encourage people to just go.
This show is all about the black voice.

Speaker 10 And I think this is a time where we need to raise our voices. I think the black voice is emblematic of so many things around democracy that are really powerful.
So, hopefully, get you to LA.

Speaker 1 I'll do, yeah, I'll pop by. All right, bro.
Look at that. I travel, man.
You don't

Speaker 10 travel a lot, my friend.

Speaker 1 I travel.

Speaker 10 Yeah. Thanks for having me, Travel.
Thank you for joining.

Speaker 1 Thank you. All right.

Speaker 1 What Now with Trevor Noah is produced by Spotify Studios in partnership with Day Zero Productions. The show is executive produced by Trevor Noah, Sanaz Yamin, and Jodi Avigan.

Speaker 1 Our senior producer is Jess Hackle. Claire Slauter is our producer.
Music, Mixing, and Mastering by Hannes Brown. Thank you so much for listening.

Speaker 1 Join me next Thursday for another episode of What Now.

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