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    Nina Chanel Abney and Jeffrey Deitch On Finding the True Artist’s Voice [Exclusive]

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    “San Juan Heal” (2022), Geff en Hall, Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, New York City. Artwork © the artist, Nicholas Knight Studio. All images courtesy of The Monacelli Press, shared with permission

    Nina Chanel Abney and Jeffrey Deitch On Finding the True Artist’s Voice [Exclusive]

    October 6, 2025

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    This conversation is an exclusive excerpt from NINA CHANEL ABNEY © 2025. Reproduced by permission from The Monacelli Press. All rights reserved. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

    Jeffrey Deitch: Nina, I’ve always been inspired by your expansive vision of what an artist can do. Your achievement in painting and works on paper is really outstanding—as is your NFT startup; your interest in multiples—but I’m very curious about your interest in public art murals. We did several of them together; so Iʼd like to ask you to start [by speaking] about this expansive vision you have about being an artist and reaching a broad public.

    Nina Chanel Abney: I think it first comes out of my natural inclination to work in many different mediums. Growing up and looking at [the work of] Henri Matisse and Andy Warhol, my understanding of a masterful artist was an artist who evolved their practice through experimentation with different mediums. When I knew I wanted to be an artist, I aspired to have a career in which each body of work propels my practice forward.

    Deitch: I remember a discussion we had some years ago about proposing a balloon for the Macyʼs Thanksgiving Day Parade. They didn’t understand how great you were, but I was very impressed then—and that was some years ago—very impressed by your ambition to reach people with your art.

    Abney: I have always appreciated graffiti artists and their ability to reach a broad audience. The idea that anyone could access art just by walking by it and the idea of being able to share my work with a larger public has become more interesting for me, showing people how you can discover art in the everyday—whether thatʼs a sneaker or a billboard. I am always looking to find new ways to do that.

    Deitch: Our first project together was your great mural at Coney Island. Somehow, I had the instinct that we had to position you right at the center, give you the great entrance wall, and your work was phenomenal.

    Abney: Thank you very much.

    Deitch: Was that one of the first public murals you did?

    Abney: Yes, it was one of the first. The very first one I did was in Newark, New Jersey, off of McCarter Highway with Project for Empty Space. They did a program where they worked with about eighteen different artists through a long span of the highway, and each artist got a section of the wall. When given the opportunity, I said, “Of course I’ll do it.”

    Most everyone involved was a full-time graffiti artist. I completely underestimated what the project would entail. We were working crazy hours to avoid traffic, basically midnight to 5:00 a.m. It was about 1:00 a.m. and I went there with spray paint in hand, arrogantly thinking I could just start working directly on the wall. I realized, “Oh my God this is… an entire other way of working, a talent I don’t have.” I was on the verge of tears, panicking at 3:00 in the morning on the side of the highway, thinking, “I don’t even know how to do this.” It was a learning curve.

    In that moment, I had to figure out how to translate my work into a large-scale mural. Thatʼs when I began using tape and creating stencils to adapt my imagery to a larger scale. That was the very first mural. After I conquered the first mural, I did one in Detroit with Library Street Collective and Coney Island came after. Fortunately, every opportunity led to another, allowing me to improve my technique along the way. I might still do a balloon [for the Macyʼs parade]. I found a loophole, I think.

    Deitch: That would be very exciting. I love how you think. By the time you did your third mural at Coney Island, you had totally perfected it. It was incredible and so impressive to see you and your team. We more recently did this project in Miami with two gigantic multi-story walls and a tunnel, and that was phenomenal. It was amazing to see how you had put together this team that allows you to create massive works of public art.

    Abney: At first, I was doing the murals with one studio assistant, which was labor intensive because I work intuitively. It truly felt like doing an extremely large painting in a very condensed timeline, sometimes less than a week. It didn’t seem sustainable. Also, I realized that maybe I’m a little afraid of heights. Thatʼs when I came up with a different strategy.

    My friend JJ, who helps me manage my mural projects, introduced me to an amazing team of women painters who are capable of working on the side of skyscrapers with no fear. Theyʼre badass and have been helping me paint murals ever since. There’s great synergy.

    Mural for the Morrison Residence Hall basketball court (2018). Artwork © the artist, Nathan Klima Duke/UNC Nannerl O. Keohane Distinguished Visiting Professor, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

    Deitch: Oh, thatʼs fascinating. Iʼd like to talk about how you approach the work. I read in a previous interview that you do not do preparatory sketches. Is that correct? It seemed with the complexity your work, one would think that there are numerous preparatory sketches.

    Abney: There are not. If I sketched the piece beforehand, Iʼd lose interest and wouldn’t want to paint it. The excitement for me comes from the unknown—the spontaneity and problem-solving in the moment to create a cohesive composition.

    Deitch: Thatʼs extraordinary. It’s very rare that an artist can create these large-scale complex works without numerous preparatory drawings. I’ve seen that with Keith Haring, who would be able to start a large painting or mural in the upper left corner and move across, but thatʼs amazing that this is all internalized. It’s almost like a jazz improvisation that you do.

    Abney: Each painting becomes a puzzle for me to solve.

    Deitch: Something that I admire immensely in your work is the inherent rhythm of the composition: in classic critical art terms, one talks about the color, the edge, things that you associate with painting. Rhythm does not generally come up, but thatʼs something thatʼs so inherent in your work. Looking at a large painting of yours, I can see it move. I can feel the rhythm. Iʼd like to ask you about that aspect of your work, because thatʼs quite unique.

    The excitement for me comes from the unknown—the spontaneity and problem-solving in the moment to create a cohesive composition.Nina Chanel Abney

    Abney: The work is rhythmic because I aim to create movement across the canvas so that the viewer’s gaze is never stagnant. To achieve this, I have created systems and techniques that utilize color, shape, repetition, and text. I want the work to keep your attention.

    Deitch: Do you have a background as an athlete or a dancer? The rhythm is so physical.

    Abney: I played tennis. I still play tennis. I played soccer, basketball… I was always very athletic when I was younger, and I play the piano.

    Deitch: I didn’t know that. Do you have a classical training or was it more jazz piano?

    Abney: Classical, but I have always wanted to learn jazz. I have several cousins who were self-taught jazz [musicians].

    Deitch: Your improvisational talent goes into the painting?

    Abney: Yes.

    Deitch: Thatʼs so fascinating, because your paintings do have a sound, in a way.

    Abney: I would love to learn jazz. I recently bought some books and a piano to try to teach myself.

    Deitch: Did you get to the point where you were a performer also or was it more just your own study?

    Abney: With classical, I performed in recitals as a kid with my stepsister, who was, at the time, learning opera. It’s so wild when I think about it. We would do some recitals together, I would play and she would sing. Outside of that, after a certain point, I didn’t really take it up. I feel like I quit after I realized I needed glasses or something. That was in the ’80s, early childhood, but I kept with it. I can still play now.

    Deitch: Let’s talk about your trajectory. There’s an unusual year where you worked in a Ford factory, one of the only contemporary artists I know who actually had that kind of experience. It seems that and other aspects of your background had given you a sympathy for the working class. Your art addresses everyday people in the city, not only the art elite.

    Abney: I am everyday people, I come from everyday people. My mom worked for almost forty years at the unemployment agency, my stepfather delivered Pepsi®. I come from humble beginnings, so being catapulted into this elite art world has been interesting. I still feel like an outsider sometimes, though I am a part of this “art world.”

    “Untitled” (2019), monoprints, 65⅞ × 118⅞ inches. Artwork © the artist, courtesy of Pace Prints

    Deitch: A lot of your work has a strong social-political message. Iʼd like to ask you about how you integrate messaging with the formal aspects of the work.

    Abney: My whole way of working, from color, humor, and seducing the viewer into challenging topics in a way in which they want to stay, comes from my own experience with artwork. I noticed that with works that are overly didactic, people tend not to spend much time with them since they feel like they already have the work figured out. I want to create work that can be visually engaging: it can make you think, but also, provoke self-interrogation.

    Deitch: It’s also fascinating the way you invite entry into the work by your use of humor.

    Abney: When I was younger, I wanted to be a cartoonist. I love the most sarcastic animations. I was a big fan of Hanna-Barbera. Thatʼs where I got my sense of humor. With animation, you can walk the line of inappropriateness. I’m interested in that play, too.

    Deitch: Do you have some plans for an animated film?

    Abney: I actually wrote a cartoon with my partner, Jet Toomer, and our friend, Zoe Lister-Jones. We wrote a cartoon based off me and my younger sister’s relationship, but we threw a wrench in. We have turned the family structure thatʼs usually depicted in animation on its head.

    Deitch: It sounds brilliant. Maybe I can help you to make that happen.

    Abney: Maybe. I’m even thinking maybe a short film, centered around the same concept, and would love to do it at the Sundance Film Festival because they have an animation program. The film industry, from what I’ve learned, is so different, even in the approach to ownership and intellectual property. I feel like I’m more independent-minded when it comes to that, where Iʼd rather take the time and do it myself.

    Deitch: Well, thatʼs one of the greatest things about being an artist: You do not have a boss. Nobody’s telling you what you can do.

    Abney: I don’t want to have to compromise my vision to make things more mainstream. When you’re not conforming, people might see it as risky, but there are communities that are rarely considered in film and television and thatʼs who I would like to prioritize.

    Deitch: Fascinating. I anticipate you will be able to realize this.

    Abney: I hope so.

    “Guns and Butter” (2017), Unique UltraChrome pigmented print, acrylic, and spray paint on canvas, 96 × 72 inches. Artwork © the artist, courtesy of Mary Boone Gallery

    Deitch: In your approach to your art, there’s a lot of references from the vernacular—you mentioned strip clubs and sororities—but you also have so many deep art historical references. I imagine you’ve deeply studied Pablo Picasso, Romare Bearden, Stuart Davis… I want to ask you about these art historical references that you build on, that are inside your work, that you must have studied.

    Abney: Actually, funny story, Stuart Davis… I hadn’t even heard of him until I was working on a show called I DREAD TO THINK [October 18 – November 24, 2012, at Kravets Wehby Gallery, in collaboration with Anna Kustera Gallery, New York, NY]. When I was working on that show, Lowery Stokes Sims came to my studio and brought up Stuart Davis, assuming I was aware of his work. Immediately after that, I was obsessed. I didn’t know much about contemporary art until I came to New York for graduate school at Parsons School of Design.

    The first show I went to was a Marina Abramović performance at the Guggenheim and my mind was blown. Parsons was an intense education because I was playing catch up to the contemporary art history while trying to become a contemporary artist, myself.

    My references came from what was available to me when I was younger. I mean, everyone knows Picasso. I had field trips to the Art Institute of Chicago, where I learned about Chuck Close and Georges Seurat. I had some exposure to Black artists through The Cosby Show.

    Deitch: Really? From the TV show? Thatʼs fascinating. It must be thrilling for you to see your work influencing artists who are of the younger generation.

    Abney: It’s surreal to know that my work is being studied in classes. I still can’t believe it. Because I have become an influence to others, I feel a responsibility to keep pushing the boundaries of my own practice, exploring new mediums and delving into industries in which people who look like me aren’t represented. It’s crazy to think that I could be a part of art history. If you named the period of art we’re in now, what would it be? I don’t know…

    Deitch: Well, you’re one of the people defining it. Fascinating to know that you studied both computer science and art, because most artists, if you ask, “What did you study?” they’ll probably say poetry and art. I think maybe part of the rigor thatʼs in your work comes from this study of computer science. Could you elaborate a little bit about that, about the dual mind that you bring to your artwork?

    Abney: I intended on being a computer programmer because I couldn’t fathom having a career as an artist. I didn’t know how artists made money and I needed a sustainable job, but I didn’t like going to work. When I started the major, however, I quickly thought, “This isn’t for me.” It was hours of trying to figure out a program that may simply not work because of a missing semicolon.

    Everything happens for a reason. My grades were horrible. I was barely holding onto my computer science major. And just when I thought things couldn’t get worse, I was helping a friend with his homework and he accidentally turned in a copy of my homework as his. When I get my assignment back from the professor, I have a big F written in red marker. I look at my friend like, “What happened?” The professor had circled my name on his paper—he also had an F. It was a major assignment, and she would not change my grade. That class was so vital, it put my major in jeopardy, so I dropped computer science and focused on art.

    I also wanted to be a graphic designer. I was learning how to design websites during my summers off. I thought, “Graphic design, thatʼs how I’ll get paid as an artist,” but when I got out of undergrad, I got pretty much rejected from every graphic design program I applied to. I worked for a little bit and thatʼs when I said, “Maybe I’ll try painting.” Thatʼs how that all came about.

    I still have a definite interest in graphic design… I feel like most people don’t realize that we were all teaching ourselves HTML code to create cool pages on Black Planet. We were learning HTML to play music play or feature graphics on our social media pages. I was fascinated by it.

    “I Am- Somebody” (2022), ciptych collage on panel, 85¾ × 61½ × 1⅜ inches each. Artwork © the artist, courtesy of Pace Prints

    Deitch: Prior to our talk, I was looking through the catalog of your exhibition at the Nasher Museum of Art. It’s very interesting to see how your work has evolved. The figures were much looser, Iʼd say a little less rhythmic in the composition, and progressively become more abstracted, the rhythms more complex. Iʼd like to ask you about the evolution of your work over this period.

    Abney: My work was always critiqued for being too flat, so I had a specific preconceived notion of what a “good” painting was, and that was one that was rendered realistically. The earlier work is a by-product of this mentality. Over the last twenty years, I have been moving away from this way of thinking and towards abstraction, which I feel is more freeing.

    Deitch: You’ve evolved a completely unique style thatʼs only you, that is instantly recognizable, which is quite an achievement.

    Abney: Thank you. It’s been a long journey to block out the noise and be in tune with my own voice.

    Deitch: You have your own artistic vocabulary thatʼs yours. It’s remarkable. Very few artists can achieve that.

    Abney: Thanks. I’m still trying to unlearn a few things that have been restrictive to my practice, but I feel like I’m now at 80 percent of my true artist voice. There’s still work to be done.

    How do I break this down to the simplest form? I try to remove unnecessary information to create a language that becomes universal.Nina Chanel Abney

    Deitch: It’s good that you still have another 20 percent to achieve. Something that fascinates me is that you’ve been able to put together a narrative, where some of your work tells a story with an abstract set of images. Thatʼs quite rare to be able to be narrative, bold, and abstract at the same time. I think thatʼs quite an achievement.

    Abney: When approaching my work that is representational, I aim to figure out the least amount of information needed. Thatʼs how I approach the imagery in my work now. For example, what’s the least amount of information needed for one to register a figure? How do I break this down to the simplest form? I try to remove unnecessary information to create a language that becomes universal.

    Deitch: Another characteristic of your work is the integration of text. You’re using text almost as an abstraction, but it also becomes an essential part of the narrative.

    Abney: I started using text because there are certain things I felt I just couldn’t paint. Some things just need to be said plainly. I also see letters and numbers as forms and shapes. I’m also interested in the use of text in advertisements.

    Deitch: I look at your work as taking Pop art into the present.

    Abney: I love Pop art, so thatʼs what I would hope to be achieving right now with my current work.

    The artist. Photo by Todd Midler

    Deitch: You’re expanding into other media—some ambitious sculpture is coming. Iʼd like to ask you about your sculpture in relationship to the painting.

    Abney: I’ve always wanted to work in sculpture, but I was waiting until the right moment. I could not figure how I could organically translate my paintings to sculpture. I had no idea what my sculpture was going to look like. It took so much time to figure it out and now it’s finally here.I took the first step by making a vinyl toy, which allowed me to see how my work could look three-dimensionally. That was the start and things have been quickly evolving. In the past year alone, I’ve made over ten sculptural works. Eventually, I want to do large public sculpture that can be interactive. I’m not necessarily interested in creating monuments, but works that people can sit on, sculpture that is functional.

    Deitch: I read some exciting news this week about your being selected as one of the artists commissioned for New York’s new John F. Kennedy International Airport terminal. It seemed that you were thinking of doing a sculpture.

    Abney: I am. I’m working with a material I’ve never worked with before, stained glass, inspired by New York City iconography.

    Deitch: That will be brilliant. Now, we’re here at Pace Prints in New York City for this conversation, and you’ve really reinvented how to make a print, how to make collage. I’m fascinated by how you’ve taken this well-traveled medium of all the artists who have made prints or works on paper and you’ve done it in a fresh way.

    Abney: I held out for years when it came to doing prints. Many printmakers or print shops would approach me and say, “You know, your work would translate so well to print-making,” and I would turn them down in hopes of working specifically with Pace Prints. Also, my understanding of prints was limited. When I thought of an edition, I only thought of an image of an existing work. So for the longest time, I was not interested in doing this.

    I got a C in my printmaking class. I didn’t have enough patience for the process. I did an etching, and it was the most tedious thing, so I never thought I would end up loving printmaking. Fortunately, I was introduced to [President of Pace Prints] Jacob Lewis and the printmakers of Pace Prints. I was blown away by the work that they were doing.

    We started working together, and it’s such a collaborative process. We challenge each other to think beyond traditional printmaking and create unique works that explore collage and expand the conversation around paper as a medium.

    Deitch: Well, your prints have the impact of complex paintings.

    Abney: Thatʼs what we hope to achieve.

    Deitch: Of all the important contemporary artists I follow, your work is sexier than almost anyone else’s, but it’s never vulgar. Iʼd like to ask you about how you insert the sexuality and the sexual power in the work in this strong way thatʼs elegant and impactful, but never vulgar.

    Abney: It comes from a sincere place of wanting to destigmatize the idea that sexuality is vulgar… and thatʼs one of the reasons I moved to New York—it’s forward-thinking energy fosters self-expression and challenges outdated norms.

    I’ve always wanted to tell you that when I first came [to New York] to go to graduate school, your gallery was one of the first that I went to. You had a show with Kehinde Wiley with a band that performed on Wooster Street and that blew my mind. It was a very impactful experience that expanded what I thought of art as an expression and as a career.

    Deitch: That was our goal, to inspire people. I really, really love hearing that it had such an impact on you.

    Abney: I have always wanted to work with you because your exhibitions are ambitious, fun, smart, and not so uptight. With our February 2025 show [Winging It], it’s a full circle moment.

    Deitch: Let’s close by talking about what you hope to realize in the next few years, expanding your work, both pushing the painting practice and also expanding into more popular areas.

    Abney: I want to prioritize sculpture and public work in the coming years. Right now, I’m very interested in installation. I’ve been thinking about Yayoi Kusama’s Infinity Mirror Rooms—something more experiential that can travel. Also, animation production, and I can do something new in that space that hasn’t been done before. I’m also very much interested in creating more products, specifically, sneakers.

    Deitch: A lot to look forward to.

    Pick up a copy of Nina Chanel Abney, which will be released on October 23, in the Colossal Shop. Limited signed copies are available from Phaidon. Find more from the artist on her website and Instagram.

    Nina Chanel Abney. Photo by The Monacelli Press

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      in Art

      Maria Gaspar On Abolition and the High Stakes of Working with Incarcerated Communities

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      ‘Disappearance Jail’ (2020-ongoing), inkjet print on rice paper. All images courtesy of Maria Gaspar, shared with permission

      Maria Gaspar On Abolition and the High Stakes of Working with Incarcerated Communities

      August 26, 2025

      ArtConversationsSocial Issues

      Grace Ebert

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      Having grown up in Chicago’s Little Village neighborhood, where Cook County Department of Corrections sprawls across 96 acres, Maria Gaspar has always felt the haunting presence of detention. As a child, she visited that jail as part of a Scared Straight program and, through the years, became more involved in conversations about mass incarceration, abolition, and spatial justice.

      Both an educator and practicing artist, Gaspar has put collaboration, compassion, and critical thinking at the center of her work. At the School of the Art Institute, she teaches students to develop interdisciplinary, research-based approaches to art making. Outside the classroom, she strives to engage communities that might not otherwise be brought into the creative act, whether that be local teens and their families, activists, or people trapped inside the carceral system.

      Following a studio visit last fall, Gaspar and I met virtually in May to discuss her practice and Disappearance Jail, an iteration of which we would be working on together for No One Knows All It Takes at the Haggerty Museum of Art in Milwaukee. In this conversation, we consider the necessity of care in collaboration, the possibilities of abolition, and how healing is always political.

      This conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.

      Grace: Can you take us back to the beginning of Disappearance Jail? What was the impetus for that project?

      Maria: When I began the project, it was the height of the pandemic. I had already spent a number of years working in prisons and with incarcerated people. I had just had my child, and I was unable to return to Cook County Jail to teach a series of workshops due to the jail being a COVID hotspot. I was trying to figure out what to do, how to respond to the moment, and was mostly at home. I wasn’t able to get to my studio at the time.

      I was thinking a lot about ways of making this static and rigid place more porous through materiality. I’ve done it in various ways, including performance and installation, as well as other kinds of site interventions. But I was curious to see what it would look like, materially, using a photograph. I took to my home printer and started printing out images of Cook County Jail I had taken over the years. I continued to print out photographs of all Illinois prisons. Using materials I had around me, I began experimenting with types of perforations. I cut them into pieces, much like an erasure poem. I tore them, and I hole punched them

      At the time, I performed a piece where I cut up text from the jail’s website and then pieced it back together like a concrete poem. It may have happened at the same time when I was working with paper and cutting things up that I then took to my hole puncher and started hole punching this iconic image I took of the jail in relation to a major thoroughfare—26th Street in Little Village. I’ve gone back to that photo many times.

      That led to the current project, where I am making porous all images of jails, prisons, and detention centers in the United States. Visually, I was playing with the shadow of the scanned punched-out image and noticed how the gaps started to take on their own form. I liked how that looked, and then I kept doing it.

      ‘Disappearance Suits.’ Photo by Martin Seck, courtesy of Museo del Barrio, New York

      Grace: Is the project related to Disappearance Suits, or do they just share a name?

      Maria: There’s a connection. I’m interested in the simultaneous visibility and invisibility of places like jails and people and bodies, the way people are extracted from communities and put into prisons. It’s an ongoing project, but when I first started it, it was about examining the way brown appears in various spaces. It was certainly talking about a political identity and a racialized body.

      For me, it connects to the ways jails and prisons function and erase predominantly Black and Brown or poor communities. There’s a relationship, and I was very conscious of that title, of reusing it or applying it to the perforated images of jails. It’s interlinked in my mind, separate projects, but linked in many ways.

      Grace: Invisibility is something that I wanted to talk about in relation to the exhibition at the Haggerty Museum. One of the things we’re thinking about with that show is the ways we societally conceal problems, particularly issues like addiction, trauma, and mental illness, all of which can push people to the margins without care.

      This invisibility, coupled with the belief that people who have committed crimes deserve whatever punishment comes to them, seems to lead to the idea that people who are incarcerated are less than human. I’m curious, as an artist working with incarcerated people, how you ensure that people are able to show their full selves?

      Maria: As a society, we normalize the way we mistreat people in the criminal legal system. This idea that they’re less than is felt not only within the carceral boundaries but beyond. It’s felt when you’re thinking about people from a lower economic status or a racialized group or some other marginalized identity. So the carceral aspect is just one part of it. Like you’re pointing out, it’s a bigger systemic issue. 

      Working with incarcerated communities or about incarceration is high-stakes work. It’s quite different from what an artist is doing in their studio with a discrete object. I teach at an art school, so I think a lot about how we’re educating younger artists, especially those interested in activist or community-based practices, particularly if they’re not coming from or don’t have experience in that space.

      In my experience, community-based work with incarcerated communities is both tender and political. It often involves a group of people who may be different from what we are accustomed to within a very white and homogeneous artistic environment.  This work means that you might be in meetings with the sheriff’s department or with violence prevention workers. There is a system that is uniquely different from the art school or museum context. 

      ‘Disappearance Jail’ (2020-ongoing), inkjet print on rice paper

      Therefore, as an artist, I believe one must be thoughtful and open to collaborating with diverse groups of people, but it also needs to include a power analysis. Within those groups of people are different kinds of power structures and hierarchies. Navigating between these various systems is quite challenging and sometimes disorienting. At the end of the day, one has to really think about what the core values are. What is the intention behind the work? What is most important, and how do you make sure that as you’re navigating through these spaces, you’re not compromising the work and what the work means, and that you’re not compromising the lives of people who are in the most vulnerable state, which are the people behind the cages? That’s one piece, remembering that you can’t just take a risk out of whimsy. You have to remember that you’re dealing with people’s lives and lived experiences, and it must be with utmost care.

      What is most important, and how do you make sure that as you’re navigating through these spaces, you’re not compromising the work and what the work means, and that you’re not compromising the lives of people who are in the most vulnerable state, which are the people behind the cages? Maria Gaspar

      I also value the ways in which artists can be subversive, the way they can be wild and wacky, audacious, and joyful. Artists are not always taking the preconceived pathway. We’re often pushing those boundaries. And so I also want to honor the creativity and creative capacity and possibility that not only I hold but that my collaborators hold. How do I create the conditions within a community-based practice that feels creative, even within the limitations, even within the precarities? How do we recognize those limitations and precarities and move forward? How do we work together while also finding ways to flourish and nourish ourselves within a creative environment? Those two things aren’t always compatible, right? Captivity and creativity, or the freedom to be creative, work against each other. They’re meant to be in conflict.

      But we have seen artists who are incarcerated supercede their environment. I love how people like Dr. Nicole Fleetwood highlight those artists in her exhibition and book, Marking Time. I feel like my role as an artist, with the skills and the tools that I have gained over the years that I continue to sharpen, continue to learn from and continue to add to, is that I want to find ways to soften those boundaries, make those boundaries porous, so that there’s something to be gained, that there’s something meaningful, that we can make together. It may not be this polished, highly finished work at the end. It might be the beautiful process that we just engaged in that we can’t even put into words. That is meaningful to me. That’s worth it when we can be in a room together, building something transcendent where people feel like they can be themselves

      Christopher Coleman, one of the “Radioactive” ensemble members, said something so powerful in a podcast interview we conducted a couple of years ago. I think they had asked him a question about what his experience was like being part of the “Radioactive” project, and he said something along the lines of, “It was so transformative that even the shackles came off the hands of the guards.” I thought that was such a potent image. What it said to me was that not only is the carceral system oppressing those who are incarcerated, but it’s also oppressing the staff and all the other people who work within those systems.

      This leads to other questions about how these systems become the primary economic driver of an entire community and how we rely on them. Why do we depend on them? To me, that was a compelling statement that went beyond ourselves.

      Grace: I think a lot about the phrase carceral-impacted people or justice-impacted people. I understand why we use that phrasing, but it bothers me because we are all impacted. The threat is always there. I reread Are Prisons Obsolete? a couple of weeks ago, and there’s a point about how anyone unwell, anyone deemed unfit, anyone outside the norm gets put into prisons. By hiding people inside, we don’t have to confront any of these issues on a deeper level that could prevent them from happening in the first place. It creates this necessary remove to keep the system in place.

      Maria: Yeah. I’ve been consumed by rage over what’s been happening in the last few months regarding the kidnapping of immigrants. We saw a version of this a few years ago with incarcerating entire families and children in immigrant detention centers. We’re seeing this in ways that maybe we hadn’t quite seen before. It’s absolutely brutal. The ways that people are being dehumanized and mistreated and abused, there’s a political rhetoric around normalizing this. We have to fight against it. 

      While I am filled with rage, I am also hopeful. I think people are recognizing that this is a larger issue. We’re entering this fascist political moment, and we have to fight back. We have to defend each other and love each other and take care of each other, our neighbors, our community members, our students, and our loved ones.

      I do feel like abolition has become more possible given how people have been embodying it in these different ways. It’s about this process. It’s about learning and relearning and holding each other accountable but also holding each other with some love and some hope. I hope that’s the direction we’re moving, but it’s going to take a lot of work. 

      Grace: That’s one of the reasons I was so drawn to Disappearance Jail. One of the biggest questions about abolition is what will we have instead? Your project puts that question in the hands of the public in a way that allows everyone to reimagine what’s possible. I’m wondering how you set up that experience. How do you bring people into that conversation if they’re either skeptical about the idea of abolition, the way that art can be effective in these very real world problems, or maybe they feel they’re not creative enough to participate in something like this?

      Maria: I think of it much like doing a public artwork. I’ve mentioned that I come from a mural background. That was my entry point into art making. What I recall from those experiences and working with local muralists in Chicago was that it was almost always a very inviting place. There was always an invitation to engage. Engaging meant cleaning the brushes, or engaging meant putting paint on the wall, or helping create the design, or helping take the scaffold down or up, but there was always this invitation to be a part of it. I feel fortunate to have had mentors who created those conditions where I felt like I could be part of something more. 

      I do the same for Disappearance Jail. There are people who can get down with abolition, who understand it or are trying to understand it, who are interested. There might be others who are against it or don’t understand it, but are curious. There are all these different positionalities. The punch party is an invitation for you to come. I have not had anybody yet say they don’t want to punch anything out. Everybody has punched out an image so far. And we’ve punched out around 2,000 images, so at least that many people have punched out images of carceral facilities and have thought about what they want to see instead.

      I guide folks through a set of five prompts, and we start with something like, Imagine freedom. What does it feel like? Taste like? Sound like? They need to take some time to think about what freedom means to them. Sometimes we do this in groups, or sometimes we do it individually. It depends on how people want to engage. Usually, it’s guided, so I’m giving people some context. I’m giving them information about the work. 

      ‘Disappearance Jail’ (2020-ongoing), inkjet print on rice paper. All images courtesy of Maria Gaspar, shared with permission

      In some situations, we’ve had co-facilitators. I co-facilitated a one-punch party in California with Christopher Coleman, who I mentioned earlier, who was part of the “Radioactive” ensemble. I’ve also done it with other people who are local to that city, who may come from a community-based practice or local movement. We lead groups to think about these specific jails and prisons that they might recognize or maybe they have a connection to. I’ve had people share that their loved ones were incarcerated or that they have family members who work in those facilities. There are so many different connections, and sometimes people will share publicly, and sometimes they’ll just tell me.

      I ask them to create a mark using the hole puncher and to imagine what, instead, they would like to see. Sometimes we’ll hold writing workshops, where participants can write a little bit about what that means to them to punch out. At other times, people will simply say it while they’re punching it out. They’ll say something like love or joy or community. It becomes this embodied experience of creating the perforation, creating the hole, and imagining a world without prisons.

      I collect all the perforations that will be transformed, possibly composted one day. I’ve been thinking a lot about what it would mean to compost or transform those materials into something else, to let something grow. The Disappearance Jail images are printed onto rice paper. It has a kind of softness to it, but it’s also quite resilient as a material. Sometimes hole punchers get stuck, and a bit of tearing occurs. It feels a little like fabric. It’s interesting as a material to think about its relationship to fiber and fibrous things that grow from the ground. 

      That is important to me, that touch feels good. That’s sometimes a strange thing to say when you’re looking at this image of a punitive system in your hands, right?Maria Gaspar

      Grace: I love the compost idea. That’s beautiful.

      Maria: I like the idea, too. I recently got into making paper. It’s such a beautiful process of making paper pulp and just working with scraps, you know? I think it’s such a beautiful transformation.

      Grace: That was one of my favorite things to learn how to do as a kid. I wanted to do it all the time because it just feels so good. It’s soft, and touching the pulp is so satisfying. 

      Maria: That is important to me, that touch feels good. That’s sometimes a strange thing to say when you’re looking at this image of a punitive system in your hands, right? And everything it represents. However, there’s something about the participant, being able to manipulate it, that’s really important: to cut away and be with the mark. 

      I made some guidelines for the perforations because there was a point in one of the cities where people were starting to add words. They were quite beautiful–they’re lovely–but then I had to step back and really think about what that would mean to see a bunch of words. I decided to add a guideline that focuses on marks, rather than words. I’m inviting people to make a puncture without a word, so that the mark could be felt more by the viewer. 

      Grace: How do you think about senses when you’re creating a community project? That feels so much a part of embodiment.

      Maria: There was a point in my practice doing community work where I was dealing with a surface through images and language. I started to feel like it wasn’t enough to just deal with the surface. Then that work changed. We were looking at the jail, thinking about the wall and making that porous. I did it through screenshots of the jail using Google Earth. 

      I wanted to take a different approach and to think of it like something that can be shaped and reshaped, abolished, or deconstructed. I was also beginning to do more performance work. I was really excited by the possibilities of movement and touch and creating these different kinds of compositions by way of the body or bodies together. We did some performance workshops for the “Radioactive” project, where we moved around in the room using  Augusto Boal-inspired performance exercises. Touching in jail is prohibited, so it was a particular kind of touch using just our fingertips.

      There was something very sensorial, and there was a connection being made. For me, that was a moment where touch became really electric and in some ways radioactive, right? I thought that was a beautiful way of coming together, that we can be together through conversation and through drawing and through these collaborative exercises, but also through movement. 

      I’m always trying to make things that feel embodied. I completed a project where I created a large textile curtain called “Haunting Raises Specters,” where it was essentially a visual representation of the jail wall, which can be arranged and rearranged in various configurations as an installation. I really wanted people to experience both sides of that textile, but you don’t quite know what is what side and also that the wall is movable. It could be gathered. It could be opened up. People can participate in it somehow. It’s essential to me that it feel embodied, and so I think that’s how I come to touch. 

      Grace: I wanted to ask you a little bit about wellness. I think embodiment can sometimes be tied to influencer wellness culture and can mean a lot of different things to different people, particularly as we think about identity and positionality. Do you see there being a distinct connection between embodiment and collective or even individual well-being in your practice?

      Maria: That’s a good question. Recently, I’ve been thinking more about healing. I mean, I think I’ve always been thinking about healing. Being together and being in community, it always has healing potential. We know that we’re not solitary beings.

      It must be grounded in a consciousness of political struggle. I can’t think of wellness without some kind of political stake. Without it, it would feel really disconnected. It has to be grounded in understanding the different types of struggles that we have on an individual or community level, or neighborhood level or city level. There’s a political condition that needs to be recognized and identified, and considered when you’re thinking about what wellness means.

      The Colossal-curated exhibition ‘No One Knows All It Takes’ is on view through December 20 in Milwaukee. Find more from Gaspar on her website and Instagram.

      Maria Gaspar. Photo by Mark Poucher

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      in Art

      Amarie Gipson On The Reading Room, Houston’s Black Art and Culture Library

      by

      All images courtesy of Amarie Gipson, shared with permission

      Amarie Gipson On The Reading Room, Houston’s Black Art and Culture Library

      May 27, 2025

      ArtBooksConversationsHistoryPhotographySocial Issues

      Grace Ebert

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      One of Amarie Gipson’s many gifts is an unyielding desire to ask questions. Having worked at institutions like The Contemporary Austin, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Studio Museum in Harlem, Gipson has cultivated a practice of examining structures and pushing beyond their limitations. Her inquiries are incisive and rooted in a profound respect for people of all backgrounds, with a central goal of expanding art’s potential beyond museum walls.

      A true polymath, Gipson is a writer, curator, DJ, and founder of The Reading Room, an independent reference library with more than 700 books devoted to Black art, culture, politics, and history. Titles like the century-spanning African Artists sit alongside Toni Morrison’s novel Sula and Angela Davis’ provocative Freedom is a Constant Struggle, which connects oppression and state violence around the world. The simultaneous breadth of genres and the collection’s focus on Black life allow Gipson and other patrons to very literally exist alongside those who’ve inspired the library.

      One afternoon in late April 2025, I spoke with Gipson via video about her love for the South, her commitment to meeting people where they’re at, and her hopes for The Reading Room.

      This conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.

      Grace: I’d like to start at the beginning. Why start a project of this nature in Houston?

      Amarie: I am a student of so many incredible Black women writers, artists, curators, thinkers, and theorists, and I really take seriously the advice that I’ve gotten through reading their work. If something doesn’t exist, you should start it. I’ve moved and migrated through these great United States for some time, and when I moved back to Houston seven and a half years ago, The Reading Room didn’t exist. I needed it to happen. I wanted to experience my books somewhere outside of my apartment, and I also wanted to create a destination for folks when they came to town, so that my friends know that they have a cool place to land. Those are the two main reasons: it didn’t exist, and I wanted somewhere to go.

      Grace: There’s a thing that happens in Chicago all the time–I think it happens anywhere that is not New York or Los Angeles–and the ways artists think about their careers and what it takes to be successful. There’s often this perception that to reach a certain level, they need to go to one of those two cities. And I would imagine Houston has a similar feeling.

      Amarie: Absolutely. I think it’s important that everyone leaves home at some point. But don’t leave because you don’t think that anything exists here. Leave because you want to see what else there is and bring it back. Come back home and create the things that you want to see here.

      I don’t think I could have The Reading Room in New York. I don’t think I could have The Reading Room in Chicago. It’s not my home. I feel more empowered here. I feel safer to have created something like this, especially in a state that is so extremely suppressed, politically, socially. But culturally, we stand firm, especially in Houston. So, it felt natural.

      Grace: What area of Houston are you currently in?

      What more can we do to connect to the people? How can we bridge the gap between the folks who care about Black art and those who care about Black people and the things that affect us? Amarie Gipson

      Amarie: The Reading Room is currently located in north downtown, right across the way from the University of Houston’s downtown campus. Downtown is not the most exciting place in the city, but it is a meeting point for all different types of cultures. The Reading Room lives inside a hybrid art studio called Sanman Studios. There are two units. They function as an event space and production studio. There’s an art gallery, an artist residency work space, and The Reading Room. This is Houston’s creative hotspot.

      Grace: I’m wondering how your institutional training has influenced The Reading Room. How have those experiences pushed you to make something that is decidedly not institutional?

      Amarie: I was just thinking about this a week ago. I came into the curatorial field around 2016, and that was at the height of philanthropic institutions looking for ways to diversify. One of the solutions was to introduce younger, undergraduate-aged students from underrepresented communities to the field. I did the Mellon Undergraduate Curatorial Fellowship at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. I was a junior in college at the time, and this program really gave me a crash course on what museums are like; how the exhibitions are produced, where the art is stored, and how curators work with other departments. I spent two years at the MFAH in the Prints and Drawings department, and I was always looking for Black artists. I realized quickly that if no one’s here to advocate for this work to come out of storage, no one’s ever going to see it. I was trying to sift through the collection, find, locate, and make these works more visible.

      I also recognized early in my career that people are really important to me. I started asking questions: What are the functions and responsibilities of art institutions? What are we really supposed to be doing? I know what we have done, but what is the purpose? I eventually took those questions to Chicago and New York, and I moved around to different museums to try to find the answer.

      A turning point was when I got hired at the Studio Museum in Harlem, which, for any young Black person in the art world, is the pinnacle. It’s the place. It’s where a lot of careers start. Many folks’ first job in the art world is at the Studio Museum, and they’re being shaped and molded to continue in the field. However, shortly after arriving, I realized the Studio Museum was not the place.

      In 2020, I looked around at all the different institutions across New York sharing statements of solidarity and pledging institutional and systemic changes. I wanted the Studio Museum to do more than say, “We’ve been doing this. We’ve been committed.” Because what are we doing and does that commitment to care only benefit Black artists, or does it show up in our consideration for all Black people? There are real Black people who are being targeted and locked up for protesting the fact that police are murdering us. What more can we do to connect to the people? How can we bridge the gap between the folks who care about Black art and those who care about Black people and the things that affect us? What about the people working in and for the museum? What are we doing to support the struggle outside of working our lofty little museum jobs? The response that I got is that the institution is going to keep doing what it’s been doing. And that just wasn’t enough for me. I worked in my whole career to get there, but I realized that it was not the place I thought it was or hoped it could be.

      And so I left that job and found a way to connect my beliefs with my actions. I’ve taken all of the skills that I’ve learned—how to build relationships, how to listen, how to analyze and organize things, record keeping, data management, object management, storytelling—and do something totally different, something that prioritizes everyday Black people in a way that boosts our intellectual, cultural, and creative capacity. If it’s increased access to literature, if it’s increased access to culture, if it’s just a place that has air conditioning, a place where people can come and hang out, so be it. It’s making space for it all in a way that hopefully destroys the out-of-touch, elitist hierarchy that surrounds “the work.”

      Grace: That’s one of the things that I think is so powerful about The Reading Room and the work that you’re doing. Art books are notoriously expensive, and other than sporadic free days, museums generally are not cheap either. You really do balance such a strong aesthetic perspective and a critical rigor typically associated with institutions with the accessibility of something like a public library meant for truly everyone. I wonder, on a tangible level, what goes into making a space like that?

      If it’s increased access to literature, if it’s increased access to culture, if it’s just a place that has air conditioning, a place where people can come and hang out, so be it. It’s making space for it all in a way that hopefully destroys the out-of-touch, elitist hierarchy that surrounds “the work.”Amarie Gipson

      Amarie: I didn’t have a physical space when the idea first came to life. I started working on the concept in the summer of 2021. I passed by an old American Apparel storefront in this neighborhood in Houston called Montrose. I remember going to that American Apparel as a teenager. I never could afford anything, but I was always going in there to try stuff on. I looked inside, and I was like, what would I do if I had the space? At the time, I didn’t really know how anybody could afford anything outside of paying their rent. People who had small shops, coffee shops, small businesses, kitschy little stores, I was like, what do you need to do in order to make this happen? I eventually found my way to Sanman. I met Seth Rogers, the owner. I was working for a magazine, so I started asking him questions.

      I was also DJing at the time. I had been DJing for four or five years prior to moving to Houston, but my DJ career blew up when I moved back because the culture here is so rich. Nightlife is a huge part of the city. I started saving my money from my day job, gigs, and partnerships. I would be at the events that I would play, and I’d be yelling to people over the speakers, “I’m building a library. I’m building a library!”

      I lost my job at the magazine in the fall of 2022, and I had come upon enough money to focus fully on The Reading Room. I built the website to anchor the concept. I scanned the front and back covers of 325 of the books that were in the collection at the time. I built a strong relationship with Sanman and hosted a two-day, in-person experience after I launched the site. There were about 130 people who came that weekend just to hang out. Someone approached me and said, “I didn’t even know this many books on Black art existed.” That was the moment everything made sense, when I realized I’m on the right path.

      Because this is a reference library, where the collection doesn’t circulate, we’ve got to do programs. Every single program that we do is inspired by or connected to a book that’s in the collection. That’s bringing people in, and it’s leaving them with a reading list so that they can keep coming back. That’s been the formula so far. My ambition is to garner enough support and community response so that when I break out of a shared space, the traffic is steady and the impact deepens.

      Grace: When we think about meeting people where they’re at, so much of it is about creating multiple entry points into the work that you’re doing. When someone comes in, what does that process look like? How do you engage with them?

      Amarie: It depends. Most folks are just like, oh my god, I love this space. Some other folks will be like, I’m working on a project about Black hair. Do you have any books about hair? And I’ll go and pull books about hair. I’ll explain the relationships between the books on the main display and point out how I’ve selected and placed things, then give a crash course on where you can find what.

      So even if they don’t know what they’re looking for, pointing them in a direction, they’ll be able to wayfind. It’s a destination for discovery. You come in, and you fall down a rabbit hole.

      Grace: I think of curation primarily as a way of providing context. I’m wondering how the vastness of your collection—in that there’s history, politics, and culture, and you’re not focused on only having visual art or photography—manifests as part of your commitment to accessibility. What you’re doing in making these larger connections and providing context so that people don’t need to read an artwork or image through a traditional art historical, canonical perspective, but rather can approach it through music or politics or a cultural moment, feels like an accessibility move to me.

      Amarie: You said it so beautifully. Seriously, that’s it. The books that people are familiar with are what’s going to draw them in, and then they’ll see that the bulk of the collection is about visual art. Hopefully, what they know is a gateway to what they don’t know and what I want to share. If you open up Arthur Jafa’s monograph, MAGNUMB, I want you to know Hortense Spillers and Saidiya Hartman. You gotta know all these people. Their books live here because they’re in conversation with one another. The artist’s monograph lives alongside the anthologies or the novels that inspired the creation of the work. The collection focuses heavily on visual art, just because that’s what I collected. I’m thinking about visual culture at large, but also history. How do we situate these objects within a larger continuum? We live within that continuum, so it’s important to see everything in concert with one another.

      To your point about accessibility, it starts to tap into that more tangible effect, tangible impact, right? We can have conversations about politics in here, and it doesn’t necessarily have to be through the lens of an artist, but because the book lives in the collection, we can sit and talk about anything, right? We can talk about democracy or the lack thereof. We can talk about the American flag. We can talk about anything because there’s something here that’s going to help us situate it. We can listen to the music. There are so many intersections, and having collection categories that expand beyond art and design allows for that.

      Grace: I was reading an older interview with Martine Syms recently about her publishing practice. She talked about publishing as a way to make ideas public—and then to use that to create a public around an idea because you have shared reference points. That feels very similar to what you’re doing. The Reading Room, by bringing people together and allowing these conversations, is actually creating this collective idea and an opportunity to have this shared way of thinking about something.

      Amarie: For sure. I think about that a lot. Art books, not only because of the price, are largely inaccessible to the public, but are also inaccessible to artists who deserve them. You have to go a long way in your career before somebody feels like they care enough to make a book for you. You usually have to wait for a major retrospective or survey exhibition. Or if you’re really young and hot and you’ve got gallery representation, they might make you a book.

      I’m also thinking about how The Reading Room can be a source, a bridge, or a doula that finds ways to amplify artists who are being overlooked or have been working for a really long time and still don’t have books, how their work can land in the hands of the public in a way that is accessible. I’m hoping to start a publishing branch of The Reading Room in the next couple of years. I’m going to start with zines this year and see what happens.

      I’m also thinking about the legacy of independent Black publishers across history, coming out of different cities, and what it means right now in the age of misinformation, to create a platform for truth. Yeah, it will be making art books. But we’ll also be making political pamphlets, recirculating ideas from the past. How many people know what the Black Panther Party’s 10-point platform really was? What if we made posters? How can we apply those things today? I’m interested in all of that. I want to do every single thing that I couldn’t do in those museums, that’s too taboo or too controversial to do in a museum.

      I feel way more present and clairvoyant than ever before. I realized that for the first year of running The Reading Room, I was like, I’m not reading enough. I was focused more on the structure of this thing, filling in gaps in the collection, all of that. Last summer, I made a summer reading list for myself, and I read ten books. It felt so good to just stop and read. I feel healthier, calmer, and stronger. I’ve been transformed. I want that feeling for everybody.

      The Reading Room is open from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Wednesday to Sunday at 1109 Providence St., Houston. Explore the collection in the online archive, and follow the latest on Instagram.

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