Richard Mark Rawlins looks for self-defining references in his latest exhibition Finding Black. In his search, he uncovers childhood memories of meeting Ray Apollon and Randolph Burroughs, experiences of watching films with martial arts champion Jim Kelly, comic book sources, Bruce Paddington's documentary about the Grenada revolution, dancehall lyrics and much more. In this interview with MARSHA PEARCE, Rawlins offers a window to a picture of an ongoing process of discovery and art making.
Q: What prompted this series? Can you pinpoint a moment or a number of conditions that sparked the work?
A: At my Steupps exhibition in 2013, I had a discussion with (New York based, Trinidadian artist) Nicole Awai. She was staying in Trinidad at the time, as an artist in residence. She asked me where I was born. When I told her I was from here, she found it interesting because she observed that a lot of my references were from North America. I think another moment was an exchange I had with a local artist about the kind of art being made in T&T.
I used that experience to create a take on Roy Lichtenstein's painting in which a white woman says to a white man: "Why, Brad darling, this painting is a masterpiece! My, soon you'll have all of New York clamouring for your work!" In my version of the painting, I made Brad a black man and I inserted what the local artist said in response to my views on art.
That painting started me thinking about my own programming. What made me reject certain things and want to create certain things? I asked: What things defined who I was as a black man? I started listing books I had read, snippets of conversations I had. I was dealing with memory–trying to find my references, both visual and aural, and I began to come across things that would take me on different trains.
I had read The Adventures of Asterix, and Tintin in the Congo, which both represented non-whites as super caricatures. Enid Blyton was another source, with some of her books that included the golliwog character, which was depicted as a black trickster. My references were also comic book characters like Falcon, Black Panther and Luke Cage. I recall a comic book issue of Muhammad Ali versus Superman.
In that issue, an alien race demands that Earth's greatest fighter battle their world's champion. Both Muhammed Ali and Superman step forward and agree to battle each other in a boxing ring to determine who would represent earth. The fight draws an audience of real world and comic book universe people including Frank Sinatra, Andy Warhol, Batman, Cher, Christopher Reeve, Don King, Jimmy Carter and Lex Luthor. Muhammed Ali wins and is crowned earth's champion.
I am also a sci-fi fan so I remember Star Trek's lieutenant Uhura played by actress Nichelle Nichols. I learned that she had planned to leave the show but Martin Luther King Jr encouraged her to remain in the role because she had become a positive symbol for black people. Astronaut Mae Jemison, the first black woman to go into space with the US space programme, credits Uhura's character as her inspiration.
From my research things started to criss-cross. I crossed through Blaxploitation films, the idea of afrofuturism and people like Sun Ra. I also looked at contemporary events and discussions: Alex Ross' image of Barrack Obama as Superman, ripping open his shirt to reveal an "O," a Howard University professor's critique of Pharrell's idea of the "New Black" and the boat ride as the big thing in T&T and seeing that in relation to the ultimate black man, Black Stalin and his song Black Man Feeling to Party.
So the work goes back and forth. It is an ongoing work. I don't think any of the pieces are absolutes.
You use WEB Du Bois' idea of double consciousness as a point of departure for this work, which you say addresses what you see as a triple consciousness: your being Trinidadian, being black with privileges and being in a world conditioned by global media. Tell me more about this triple consciousness.
There is one consciousness that is rooted in the Caribbean and it has significance in the context of art where there are certain expectations of your work or subject matter. We have this idea that art from here should look a certain way. I don't feel the need to conform. I prefer to live globally. The references that interest me don't only exist here.
Another consciousness has to do with the fact that my right to comment on blackness may seem at times questionable when measured against the somewhat clich�d cries of the "voices of the ghetto." I am a seven-year "prestige school" black man with a Canadian tertiary education. Am I an authentic explorer of this subject? The third consciousness is connected to perceptions of black people globally. Once you travel you are in that game.
You talk about perceptions of black people; the way others see black people. The late cultural scholar Stuart Hall noted that identities are the "way in which we are recognised and then come to step into the place of the recognitions which others give us." How does your art deal with the places of recognition given to black people–given to you?
Part of my practice involves subversion. I think I take what I need from things, discard the rest and say with my art: Look meh here! If I didn't do that I would reject everything and shut down.
In your last show at Medulla Art Gallery, your exhibition design involved a large steupsing mouth painted on the wall and the participation of viewers who were invited to wear a "steupps" bandana and pose for a group photograph. How have you considered the display and experience of the work in this new show?
This exhibition is designed differently. The nature of interaction will be the way viewers put the story together. The feeling is like a book with chapters, paragraphs and words but in your mind you can put the chapters where you want, the paragraphs where you want or the words where you want in order to make sense of it on your own. You might look at one thing that overwhelms you and forget four.