30. Mónica Palma & Kemar Keanu Wynter
Mónica Palma and Kemar Keanu Wynter discuss their recent work, how they are Invoking memories of food and home, the relationship of the body to their choice of materials and processes, trusting the wisdom of their bodies in making the work, how their thinking has evolved regarding making work for a white gaze, and how truth and honesty play roles in their work.
This conversation happened in person in the Winter of 2023, the text was edited for the purpose of the Correspondence Archive Project.
Kemar Keanu Wynter, (II.) Rederrin, 2022, Oil pastel, acrylic, graphite and grommets on collaged French cardstock, 35.375 x 36.25 inches
Mónica Palma (MP): Let's see. Hello. Okay, so we are in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. Tell us who you are?
Kemar Keanu Wynter (KKW): My name is Kemar Keanu Wynter and I’m happy to be talking to Mónica today.
MP: So here I am. I'm Mónica Palma. And I'm so happy that you're here! I knew you were coming and I'm aware that I live in the neighborhood where you grew up - Crown Heights. That's your place. Before opening this recording app, we were talking about place, location, and neighborhoods. We talked about neighborhoods changing and transforming. We were talking about mulberry trees in this neighborhood whose fruits are edible. And I know that in your work one of the biggest anchors is food, your neighborhood, and your family. I wanted to ask you, because I know that you were in a residency recently. What happens when you are far away from your location or the place that you consider your location at heart? How do you access those familiar forces? How do you remember actions? Do you think that those forces are embedded in you when the place changes and you find yourself in a different location? And if so, how do you access those sources, those powers?
KKW: Whether I'm home or traveling, be it a residency or just out of the city for any other reason, if I'm working on paintings based around the dishes that I grew up eating, generally the way that I try to pull back to that–I mean the process generally doesn't really change depending on where I am–is through the recalling of memories. You know, my experiences with these dishes within mine or my auntie’s apartments, which are just second, third homes. The best way to do that is through writing. Text has become a big part of my practice and it's something that I think I've refined and become more attuned to in the last year especially. I will start thinking about my experiences of the dish, the flavors, the heat, the conversations and ambiance around it– I feel like every single dish has a story attached, some have multiple stories that can be attributed to very specific, singular moments in my life. I just write about those moments, and that helps me figure out where my focus needs to be when it gets to the painting side of things.
From the jump I knew that I couldn't just be a freely working abstract painter, I always needed something to ground the work, right? Having that text, something that really serves to bring those memories from years back to the forefront of my mind… it’s crucial for me to hone in on those memories and use it as the nucleus for my practice and then reach out from there. There's definitely a point in my process where the painting becomes as much about the dish as it is about making a formally good painting. And so there’s this moment where the narrative I’m bringing to the dish evolves into this dialogue with the surface about what it takes to make this work a good painting, but I wouldn't be able to get to a finished painting at all without having those initial references at the foundation.
MP: You mentioned the words nostalgia and memories. When you travel into the past to access specific forces, they will help you carry the work, but you also have to anchor yourself in the present. Then when you were talking about the formal qualities, the interest in making a good work, and your personal ethics. For me, it's like you're mixing those two tempos, right: the past and the present, like perhaps the time traveling sometimes takes you to sad or happy places, but then you bring the work to the present, and you give it roots and feet and work that comes back here and has its own flesh and its own identity.
I was wondering if the topics of food and family become beliefs? When I think about my work and how I don't have a religion and I don't live in my country, and as a result, there are certain things, certain materials, certain memories, that I invoke in the work. This is part of, if you wish, a narrative, but then there's the other part of the labor, which is organizing the materials, thinking about composition, etcetera. I think, in that sense, there are some similarities in our work in accessing the past, accessing ancestors, and accessing memories, and then manifesting the work and giving it flesh, I think both of our works have bodily qualities.
KKW: Yeah, definitely. I think that these aspects around physicality have become more prevalent in this most recent series of works because I’m really studying and thinking about heraldry in relation to my work. There’s this quote–
MP: What does “heraldry” mean?
KKW: So heraldry as in coats of arms and such.
MP: Right!
KKW: There's pretty much like this language and system of metals, colors and materials; different visual motifs that denote a family’s identity or an individual’s relationship to their family. There are select offices where people study the previous millennia’s heraldic markings and work to ensure that tradition persists into the future. One of these titles in Scotland is known as the Lord Lyon King of Arms and he and his staff have records of every coat of arms ever appointed and oversee the creation of new arms because though arms could be inherited, between marriages and descendants, the markings of a family could go through any number of alterations–there are evolutions to it. One of these Lord Lyons said that heraldry is “the handmaiden of history” and I’ve been fixated on it since.
Even before knowing of the quote, I had always seen these dishes as my family heritage, there’s so much power and presence in the dishes. My family started immigrating here in ‘93 and brought every dish that I, having been born in ‘95, grew up on. Each of those dishes is incredibly formative in molding this concept of who Kemar is. Those dishes are markers and coats of arms for my family, serving as a way to evoke an aspect of our relationship to one another. So I’ve been leaning into that system recently, in the shape of the surfaces and the sort of–
MP: Some kind of new symmetries are happening.
Kemar Keanu Wynter, (VI.) Tomorrow’s Dumplings, 2022, Oil pastel, acrylic, graphite and grommets on collaged French cardstock, 52.25 x 48.625 inches
KKW: Yeah, so the new works are all hexagonal because I'm thinking about shields, and I'm also thinking about Tupperware for holding food. You know, the painting is a container, so why don't I literally create the surfaces such that they evoke their relationship to the container, right? So for me, the hexagon made natural sense in that regard and with regards to that sort of triangulation that you're referring to, there are ways of partitioning shields, breaking their fields to identify your allegiances. The partition I'm using throughout these paintings is the saltire partition, which is utilized by the flags of only a handful of sovereign nations. The one’s I know off the top of my head are the United Kingdom, and more specifically Scotland, Grenada, Burundi and Jamaica so it felt like it made so much sense to take that form and keep it as my reference to Jamaica. Especially when you consider that this assumption of heraldry also runs headlong into a tradition intermingled with many fraught centuries of British hegemony.
It's been interesting for me to have to work with the complication of the per saltire partition across like a hexagonal form right. So now this hexagon is broken into these four fields, two rhombuses, two triangles and now I have to figure out how to deal with the composition.
MP: You in fact have partitions, where before you used to have fields, right? your surface used to be a field where you went swimming and now you have these partitions, these are boundaries. I imagine that you want unity at the end of the day but the idea of boundaries is also everywhere. Did you impose them on yourself, or did you think they were necessary? These demarcations also seem like they want something from you too.
KKW: Absolutely, they definitely give me something to sort of wrestle with and instead of there being one field, like you were saying, now there's four and how do I reconcile all of the sort of happenings within each of these fields? How can I make each of the fields function strongly, independently and then also operate together as one unit, one heraldic structure that also embodies the dish that catalyzed its making.
MP: Are you facing challenges related to entering a more mental space with the addition of these physical boundaries? I notice variations in the time-marking marks interacting with the divisions. Are these changes worrisome or exciting?
KKW: It doesn't entirely. I'm always open to making new changes in the work but the thing is, if I'm going to make a change in the work, it's something that I've probably been deliberating over for months before I actually make that first move. But once I do, I'm fully committed to it and to seeing it through to some point of resolution. So making the hexagons felt very natural, I'm really just taking a square and just tapering it at some of the edges, that was easy enough.
MP: I like the triangle because it's a very stable shape. Very solid, and present.
KKW: Exactly. There’s definitely a certain oomph to it for sure. There's that aspect of it of like having that sort of shapeliness, but the thing that I wrestled with the most there's now this sort of question of how I'm handling the surface because in prior work, I was sort of doing this sort of all over gestural mark that involved a lot of smearing and created a fairly uniform surface. Now, I’m also building more densely layered areas over that. I've done each of those approaches independently in work, but I'd never brought them together until this point. So it was a thing of just like, really wrestling with surface quality, and like really wrestling with how the sort of finished work should look.
And I think having those partitions to like really designate spaces for those sort of those textural qualities to exist, sort of in their own spaces, but also as part of the whole was the thing that made the most sense. I've always been like a very regimented, very list-oriented, a person who really benefits from having things very clearly delineated, so having those boundaries felt really natural and felt very generative in terms of just like really just figuring out the peculiarities of these new works.
MP: Coherence also with your way of thinking, organizing your brain, and also finding a form or shapes that make a mental click.
KKW: There's this moment where everything sort of just seemingly fits together. I'll build up the surface and have a first draft of the work, but as I'm looking at each section relative to the ones around them, I have to go back and respond according to what's going on in the other fields. So it becomes this call and response and I have these four parties demanding different things from their neighbors.
MP: There’s some kindredness; taking a bit of the DNA from this one, the DNA from that one. I saw a picture from the residency upstate where the paintings were all on a wall, and I could feel my eyes jumping from piece to piece, and my brain acknowledging the familiarity and sensing that the pieces required some democratic attention.
KKW: There's definitely moments where there's parts of the painting where I'm like, I love this section of the painting, but the whole painting falls apart because of it, right? And so I have to sacrifice that section and it becomes something else, for the sake of the cohesion of the whole. There's some times where sections pop, but it works because some of the other areas are a bit more muted or uniform. So there are those moments of calm within the composition that allow for like other places to speak more loudly.
The paintings now really feel like cooking, these are the most cooking-esque paintings that I've made. It's just like working on a stew for hours and like realizing okay, I need to add more of this seasoning here, and as things reduce down and tenderize and break down the flavors change again I realize, okay, I need to actually introduce a whole ‘nother element to round things back out.
MP: Is there one particular dish that requires all your attention, or you are talking about having different fires, controlling the temperature on all of them and making sure that nothing is burning?
KKW: You’ve got to maintain the tempo. I use stews as a general reference point to talk about the paintings, but I'm handling multiple burners at once, moving back and forth between the surfaces. If I hit a soft wall, I’ll move over to another one on the other side of the studio, and work on that one for a little while, just getting a little visual rest from the painting to return with fresh eyes and a new perspective. Or I'll make a mark on the surface that I'm currently working on right and graft it over to the one that I'm struggling with and it fully recalibrates the composition. It's become a really good sort of give and take, figuring out how not to overdo it– getting the tastes right, getting everything to harmonize in the right way, not necessarily having them all operating at the same level but having everything make sense by the end of it. Like having really sour notes but then having some sweet, some bitter and a hint of char to make it make sense. So it's not just a dichotomy at play in terms of balance, it’s numerous sensations operating in tandem.
MP:
I think that that's something I need to do more in the studio, I get lost in one single piece. I get completely devoted to one single surface, but I have this innate trust that there's going to be a common language across all of them. But there are moments where I'm like, wait a second!, and I crave a little bit of what you're having right now; this contained energy with these groups of work, that they help each other and feel like more of a community of objects. In my studio right here, I sometimes desire that kind of consistency.
KKW: I see the works that are around us right now and feel like there is definitely a familiarity amongst them, like they all know one another. There are nuances to the way that the surfaces are applied of course, but within that there are common through-lines between all of them. It’s most notable in the way the works reach away from the wall, out into space and towards the viewer. Even with the bindings, the yarns that weave around and serve to dictate the forms. A real kinship exists, they all branch from a central bloodline.
MP: I hope so, I think as an artist, that's what you hope that you make your choices, that this knowledge and interest is so deep, that it is going to be integrated into your system, that your psyche and your body are taking care of that process. And you can just do the work because you absolutely believe in it. Then it becomes about the materials you choose to do the right thing on the surface. We both work with surfaces, right, I think we both want some acknowledgment of that surface, we like touch. How did you arrive at that?
KKW: I've also been sort of wrestling with that question of like, what is true or what is honest? Because I really want to make honest paintings and I think that in the last year, what I really have come to realize is, I find honesty in that point of my practice where I let go and remember that I've been doing this work and that I know what I want in a painting already and what’s been accumulated.
MP: I agree with the wisdom of the body.
KKW: We've accumulated knowledge that’s gotten coded into our muscles, what marks feel good to the hands, wrists, the body and how to make them. That also extends to our materials, we know what makes sense and resonates. We’ve developed this knowledge over years of investigating within the work and to a degree there are moments when we don’t need to think about what we’re making and just let the body do. There are times where I find the most interesting passages in my work happen in those moments when I’ve receded into the background, into the music playing in my earbuds, and just feel it out. That might be five minutes or two hours but when I come back, I find that I’m in a location beyond the hump or complication that I was brushing up against and that intuition was able to serve as the guide in the moment. It’s true because it didn’t have to be forced.
MP: Right.
KKW: Not that powering through and pushing through a painting doesn't have its benefits in certain moments, but letting go of the preconceived painting in my head and letting all of the body wisdom that has accumulated– that understanding of color, that understanding of mark do what it needs to do and take control of that moment and get you through that ravine of uncertainty to that other side. If that makes sense?
MP: That makes sense. I feel that also-correct me if I'm wrong, but I feel something kind of similar; you make this work, then there is a point where you need to jump! Mostly with each piece, you have to jump and know that you're not going to break your head. It’s the trust that you're going to do the job every single time, and you're going to come out alive after that jump. I think it's a matter of material congruence, with personal histories, personal narratives, and with context, but also trusting the walk to the edge. I don't know how you feel about that. People work in different ways. I like walking on the edge with performance in particular, but also with the object-based works here, and I like to believe that I'm going to come out alive after that experience. It feels like you are surrendering yourself to life in each piece - I don't know, maybe I'm exaggerating! But I feel this gravity every single time I perform. Since the performances are absolutely related to the work, then it helps me know that I'm taking the right risks and that if I'm afraid it’s OK - that's my main barometer. You have to have a little bit of fear. Sometimes I've had a lot, and it's unsustainable, for me, Mónica, sensing that fear can be a very good indicator that I'm alive, and I'm taking risks.
Mónica Palma, Before I Started Working With My Mouth (performance), Plexiglass panels, activated charcoal, honey, aloe, saliba, microphone and amplifier, 2020
KKW: Do you ever think that the embrace of fear and push on your boundaries that happens within performance expands the sort of boundaries that you have within the walls of the studio when you're working? Or do you think about performance and your painting practices sort of independent of one another?
MP: I find them completely related, but perhaps that's up to the viewer. My desire is that they are seen as related, if not even different manifestations of a single idea. In performance I expose my body and my body becomes a surface. I'm starting to see more and more that the pieces here in the studios are bodies that I act upon, and though not precisely my body (because it’s external), they feel like a proxy for my body. So for example; those marks on that piece are bites that are framing the metal. The last performance that I did in Tennessee I was using twine braids to tie up and restrain my body. In some of these pieces I'm also using braids to transform, mold, and mark the surface. And many of the pieces were done in a very performative way, more like private performances. Someone asked me if I ever film them or take pictures while I'm doing that, but because I'm so busy with my body, hands and mouth I never did.
KKW: I feel like there's this interesting relationship to like, to intimacy that exists within your work that I’m fascinated by. With the bindings I'm thinking about rope bondage and how aspects of power and control exist within that work, but simultaneously functions as an artistic practice where you're also using the rope to accentuate and sort of exaggerate the dimensions of the body. For me, it's interesting to think about these surfaces as surrogates for the action. These surfaces are your participants in these assumptions and relinquishments of control. As artists we're always sort of engaged in that because like we were saying earlier, there's that point where the work also tells you what it needs.
MP: I'm thinking about your small drawing pieces where you see your fingers smearing the oil pastel. I had this thought that you were tapping into S&M dynamics, although I'm not an expert in it, I'm interested in the idea of domination and pain, the kind that makes you feel present. I have a medical history, where too many things were done to my body, in a moment, at an age, where I could do nothing (I was 12), I had to be there for doctors to do things to me, to cut, to put things in me, and to extract things. The older I get and the more experience I have, these themes continue to emerge: themes of acknowledgment of a body and making it present.
I started using the braids thinking about my Mixtec grandmother's hair, and then braiding and wanting to bring that very simple action of transforming hair into my pieces, then eventually I wanted that braiding to be a force too. Those kinds of actions and materials are perhaps similar to the way that food is for you. They feel right. Like if someone doesn't get it, it's OK. I believe in the actions. It feels purifying. It feels liberating.
Mónica Palma, Cae mi voz (Mi voice is falling) performance, Chair, mug, hand dye braid twine with cochinilla, amplifier, microphone, vinyl text on windows, and serigraphy paper posters with poem by Xavier Villaurrutia, 2022
KKW: It is also interesting with braiding because you know, be it hair or any other fiber, that act of braiding strengthens the material. Even in this moment of vulnerability there is also this reinforcement that is happening. I think about that in relation to your works with these metallic edging, the central fields are paper but then they have this structure that once again, sets the boundaries, but those edges have this sort of strength to them, this rigidity that transcends the paper. It becomes like armor. Let me know if that doesn’t sound right.
MP: I think it's definitely the case with the metal that I've been using. They have the strength of bones. Those pieces you mention were done using the doors of subway cars. I took them on rides and I crushed them between the doors, and I enjoyed the moment where the middle of the doors and the rubber touch each other: metal meeting metal, that union, and the force, an external force that is the doors of the cars, marking the drawing. It was quite performative, even though I was not fully the one doing it but the machine. I'm not fully participating but I'm orchestrating the crushing.
KKW: You're a sort of conductor, you're setting a score. I would never say that I’m the most well versed in happenings but I think about how the Fluxus folks often had set instructions and parameters in place for the execution of their performances. I think about the medical situation in your past where you weren’t able to have that power in contrast to your role as the conductor in the subway and how there is a power in that relinquishment. Where you’re able to establish these parameters that are slightly out of your control and can exist outside of your intervention.
MP: I like what you're saying - I think it's about asserting the presence of the body. I'm talking a lot about my body, it is also about making visible the bodies of others that are not being considered, and asserting a presence by bringing materials to the front, by bringing the wound into view.
KKW: Making those who are pushed to the margins, those who are often invisibilized more visible in a way?
MP: The work gets political. Absolutely. Sometimes it is more explicit in the performance, the work here in the studio feels more abstract. Through the use of loaded materials like volcanic rock - of the same kind that the Aztecs built their pyramids which the conquistadors destroyed and used the same rocks to build their churches– materials like this bring the political component more to the fore.
KKW: How do you feel about that? It's something I always think about. That idea of legibility as someone working within abstraction. Prior to this, you know I was working with coded text, creating these conditions to obfuscate and slow the read of the writing I was sharing. And it's been interesting because as I’ve been making these works, I've realized that the coding is no longer important to the work and frankly, it was funny to look back because I realized my efforts to obfuscate the work, still ended up centering the white gaze in some ways. And so it's been interesting just making the work now, just now I'm just sharing the writing.
MP: More straightforward.
Mónica Palma, Ribes and Bites, Aluminum sheet, calligraphic rice paper, glue, encaustic and braided rope, 38 x 27 x 13 inches
KKW: Yeah just straightforward, leaving it for people to read. I find so much, there's a sort of freedom that comes with that I think, that I didn't notice, or that I didn't realize was absent. That like there was a sort of pigeonholing that I was setting for myself in this effort to speak on the hyperconsumption of Black cultural production.
MP: What you are saying right now is very important: the realization of who are you serving, right? Who are you? Who's the viewer? What do you make work for? With what energy do you make the work? It's interesting because I think both of us have very personal stories to tell about our work, yet we are abstract artists. And for me, I don't know if you feel like this, but it excites me, and I definitely want to go back to what you were saying, because I think it maybe gets to the core of this conversation. I find so much of your practice in the world of sensuality and materials. And I feel that that is revolutionary in a way to claim– to claim the flesh, to claim the dirt, to claim the body, to claim the surface, to embrace the smells. I want to be in that world. And I have other things to say, they're incredibly important to me, like credos. I absolutely need them, but I want the work to have this form manifested in the world in this way that is abstract. Because it's the most sensuous form that I know. And it's not prescriptive.
So back to what you were saying, it sounds very important, that moment where you became more assertive and decided to remove the text.
KKW: Yeah, I definitely feel like taking out, shifting that element of the work has definitely been a way for the work to be more honest. To push the work further toward this idea of truth or honesty. At the end of the day, I’m making the work first and foremost for Black folks, immigrants, folks of color. Reaching out to those who have their own stories and identity woven around these or their own culturally essential dishes… and I find greater pleasure in the work now.
MP: It's so interesting, because it's not indulgent, it's pleasure. And there's a difference between indulgence and pleasure.
KKW: I feel like the joy is purer, now that I'm not thinking about this additional realm of labor that I’d been imposing on myself, to then place within the context of the exhibition or simply engaging with the work.
MP: It’s very hopeful: the path to ownership, to have ownership of your own story, and your own pleasure too. Is there something you would like to ask me or to ask yourself?
KKW: I feel like discussing more in regards to truth and honesty. I feel like we’ve spent a lot of time talking about my thoughts and I’d like to hear more about you.
MP: I will talk more about congruence than honesty. I like the idea of congruence because I feel that it speaks of a convergence of different places falling into the right place, into the right spot. For me it’s related to a search for materials; I put a lot of eggs in that basket. I tried to extract these ingredients and information and make them meet. I want to see if these particles, these elements, when they come together, if there's some kind of amalgamation, but where they can also keep their individual identities shining. Also, I can act upon them and they can allow me to participate, they can allow me to enter. It's an invitation for different elements to come all together. But I don't know if I'm doing any justice to the question of honesty, which feels huge.
I was listening to some writers talking about honesty—fiction writers—they were saying how honesty has nothing to do with the labor of writing fiction—that kind of truth is somehow irrelevant, because you're talking about building different worlds—constructing, characters… Of course you have to have integrity, you have to have some order. But framing the work in terms of truth and honesty was mostly irrelevant. It's not that I see my work as fiction, but I can say that I love written fiction, and it’s almost the only thing I read. I wonder if there might be some similarity between fiction and abstraction, in the sense that what I'm presenting here is not volcanic rock. What I'm presenting here is not me. I'm making these amalgamas—I don't know the word in English—amalgamations! They're creating a third something. So the elements might get a little corrupted on the way, because they traveled from Mexico to here, or even in the thinking because they get transformed by so many factors, including the infidelity of memory. I don't know exactly if what I'm making is really a matter of truth, so much as belief. I feel like there's an element of fantasy to it. But I think that in any fantasy there's some kernel of truth. It’s tricky to make sense of. What do you think—can you help me with this?
KKW: How you think about it is also how I think about it as well. I think that when it comes to honesty there is a lot of room for slippage and for things to not necessarily be exactly how they occurred in history. Because I think about a lot of these pieces that I've written, looking back and reading some of the things, I know this isn’t exactly how it happened, but this is how I remember it. That's the thing, memory especially is such a subjective, such an easily tarnished thing. I've decided that there's no point in fighting it. Whatever your brain is able to evoke that's the honesty and in some ways, I think that as artists we are maybe in some ways unreliable narrators but at the same time, because it's our story to tell we're the most reliable narrator you’ll ever get.
MP: I like what you're saying. I think it's almost like you believe in the grey area. I think we're believers in the grey area.
KKW: Yeah, we're always floating through the fog a little bit.
MP: And if I asked you about your auntie in particular; the order of her cooking ingredients, you are the holder of that information, there's veracity in that. But I think allowing yourself as an artist to explore and take those grey areas, that spacing between buildings, you know, that little gap, the alley or where the dust is being accumulated. So that's sometimes where the juices are there's an area that hasn't been completely defined.
KKW: There are times where I've written about dishes and most of the text isn't about the dish itself. I wrote something recently about a meal I had in Europe and the majority of the vignette is about the day that I had after the meal. It was just like talking about the weather on this particular afternoon and how the air felt on my skin, strolling along a canal for hours doing nothing in particular and in my mind, that's as much about the dish as like the actual talking about it directly. We have this luxury of being able to frame the image exactly how we want to present it.
MP: So if there's some sort of veracity that veracity for me is in being in front of the object—in the composition, in temperature, the visual temperature, in the touch—that's the veracity. The rest of it goes somewhere else, beyond. Maybe it has to do with dreams, maybe with memories, and we know that the concept of memories is complicated, like false memories, for example; the more you think about something, the more you transform it in your brain. But as visual artists we need to go back, back to having a bite of that food right? We travel back to that tangible moment or memory.
I wanted to ask you about—this is a bit of a jump to something different—but I know that maya, your partner, was with you at their residency. How was that? Are they involved in your process or a particular kind of viewer? What's their participation in the work? How do they see it? Do they give you feedback?
KKW: It’s interesting because I would say, it's usually one or two things when it comes to relating to the work. It's usually either they'll come into the studio unannounced and see one or two things that really draws their attention and that's usually a good sign I'm in a good place because they're one of the best color theorists I know.
MP: Wow. And they’re a writer.
KKW: Yes, they're also an excellent writer, so I trust them heavily. I trust them fully when they say something is exciting, I usually try and coax as much information out of them as possible about why they find certain aspects intriguing. I’ll usually take a line or two of notes and keep that percolating in the background as something I should be mindful of while working.
Alternately, there are times where I instead ask for feedback. I’m very much a studio hermit and don’t like having people interfering with my work especially when I’m actively in the midst of a session. I need to be in my mind with minimal distractions while working, when I reach around 85–90 percent done with my work, that’s when I might actually call maya in for some feedback and a temperature check on things happening on the walls.
MP: Going back a little bit, tapping on the theme of truth and veracity; Isn't it a beautiful thing that, when you love someone and you respect someone in your life, that person can see you and you believe them? I mean, when Calvin, my husband, says something about my work, I actively listen, though of course occasionally I disagree. The amount of trust that you can build with a partner who's in the arts or even if they are not but they are sensitive and receptive. It's really beautiful.
KKW: It’s definitely surreal, the sort of sensitivities that you have with the people that you care for and their work pulls a different type of critical energy that I think is– it's not necessarily meant to be people pleasing. This is where I stand in relation to your work. With an awareness of your tastes, but also an awareness of their own tastes, seeing those connections firing behind someone's eyes while looking at your work is a beautiful thing to watch.
MP: Sometimes it's the awareness of how they perceive you. Sometimes they see that you've been losing your mind in a project. They sense your energy, your mental health, "That thing is destroying you. Chill!"
KKW: Exactly. Oh my god, very relatable. It’s vital to have that outside look.
MP: Those kinds of viewers are so valuable. I don't know how many you have… well it's not about the numbers. It's just so important to have at least one person like that, who is going to give it to you straight.
KKW: Absolutely. Funny enough, I actually trust my family a lot. None of my families are necessarily like formal artists, but I trust them when it comes to their thoughts regarding my work because the thing is, all of these dishes are based on familial gathering and dishes that we've all eaten, often together. If I tell them the title of a dish, they immediately start laying out all of their own relationships to the meal and ideas about the painting. Frankly, they're my first audience, right? Back when I was in school, I always said that I wanted to make paintings that my mother would like, so you know.
Kemar Keanu Wynter, (V.) Earl Grey and Water Crackers, 2022, Oil pastel, acrylic, graphite and grommets on collaged French cardstock, 48.625 x 47.25 inches
MP: These folks have a sensitivity that is very similar to yours. I mean, they might not have a studio, but they smelled the same ingredients as you did. They are anchored in a sensuous world where, adding the salt, they know that in order to make a dish some steps have to be followed. It's almost like synesthesia, you know, that they can taste and get where you're going after.
KKW: Exactly, there's an equidistance between us and these reference points. It’s easier to make connections from work to dish and of course we share a lot of these memories.
MP: It's all under one umbrella.
KKW: Exactly. It’s all woven together. Also, I think there is a bias that also comes from me not having a formal, dedicated studio in New York. I’ve sublet one here or there for a month at a time but that's it, so I don’t really have a lot of visitors. There’s a few family members who are usually actively up to speed about what I’m working on, maya, a handful of other individuals and yourself, with us having so much kinship between our practices. I know you’d get what I’m working out.
MP: I have been in your studio. Yeah, remember when you were at the Ortega (Ortega and Gasset Projects), I saw those paper pieces.
KKW: The collage pieces.
MP: Were very interesting. Fascinating.
KKW: Those works have definitely led me down the path that I’m on now.
MP: I still see traces of that work they were also coming from tracing I guess, food containers?
KKW: I was pulling from the forms of actual food, drawing them over and over and abstracting them. That was January of 2018, so five years ago.
MP: You first came to my studio sometime later. And then you also saw me perform on the street.
KKW: Yeah! We’ve been in long range communications.
MP: Right. I agree with that. Yes. Are you still mostly using oil pastels?
KKW: Yeah, mostly oil pastel. I remember that you said the marks you’re making are produced from a sponge right?
Mónica Palma, Big volcán, Aluminum sheet, calligraphic rice paper, glue and encaustic medium, pulverized volcanic rock (tezontle) and braided twine, 2022
MP: Yes, though I also use brushes. These surfaces are now sheets of metal (aluminum), which I coat with layers of rice paper, dipped in archival glue. They make some kind of armor or exoskeleton that I can manipulate. Sometimes I bite them or spoon with them. And recently I started using encaustic to draw on them. Most of the work you’re seeing right now is encaustic, but I sometimes mix it with ground volcanic rock. And here is where I “cook” my ingredients. I've really been enjoying the heat source. I enjoy having to kind of control it, turn the heat down a little bit, also the immediacy I have to react first right at the moment.
KKW: It becomes the heart of the studio. It's so interesting how certain tools can just sort of shift the gravity of the space, you know?
MP: Right. It's like in a home people tend to gravitate towards certain areas like a kitchen. Wait, did you move away from the grommets?
KKW: Oh no, I'm still using the grommet. The grommets are an element of the work that just like will never leave. It's one of those elements that entered the work out of necessity.
It came out of the desire to make larger surfaces and using small sheets of paper to make that happen. It's one of those things where I don't ever see that changing because I think that I kind of like the compactness of just having a stack of paper and those same sheets often become drawings. The utility that comes from being able to take an element or ingredient and utilize it, modify it repeatedly for various functions, and various suites of work just feels right to me.
MP: It feels honest, right, and looks right too. I think it gives a lot to the viewer: little portals, and binders too. The exposure of this material versus the other one; the oil and metal.
KKW: Everyone always asks if they're metal, and I love saying no. It’s one of my favorite things, I love that sort of illusion.
MP: Wait, they’re not metal??
KKW: No, they're paper. They're all paper.
MP: The grommets too??
KKW: Oh, no, my bad. The grommets are metal, the surfaces primarily are paper.
MP: All my pieces incorporate paper too because I have this drawing-oriented mind. Sometimes, I wonder if I'm just being stubborn. What is it?
KKW: I think of my work as painting through drawing so I get what you’re saying. At this point, I don't even know, right? Where are the boundaries?
MP: Maybe it's not up to us, we have other things to think about.
KKW: Leave it to the art historians to figure it out. Yeah, but it's definitely one of those things where it feels so right to put the grommets in.
MP: Closure and satisfaction! Like punctuation marks after a sentence. Period. Comma, Accent. Parenthesis.
KKW: Absolutely. Also, how would I hang the work otherwise, that's the other question. So as a tool the grommet is serving two vital functions. To borrow your idea of thinking about these works as bodies, it’s like trying to build the body without the skeletal system. At that point, it's kind of just a slouchy mass of tissue.
MP: It's giving it something like an entrance.
KKW: With how many grommets go into our surfaces, it actually does make them more rigid in a way
MP: It must be so nice feeling the weight when it's just paper, and then after the grommets come, sensing the weight.
KKW: You're probably the first person that ever really brought that up without me mentioning it. The way the paper changes from just being this fragile thing to something truly robust.
MP: Savoring the weight! Today, I got some X-rays, and they put the weighted blanket on me and now I'm almost having that sensation. They have a substance.
KKW: They're substantive but they're also kind of delicate. If they’re handled the right way you can really maximize the robust traits of the work rather than emphasizing the sensitivities
MP: I think there's something similar also with my work. They have a fragile facade. Especially these days (with the combination of metal and paper) people don't know how they were made. It's not that I'm intentionally trying to trick anyone. It's just doing what feels right for me.
KKW: Thinking about the work and its relationship to people. It makes sense that there's a certain level of trepidation, a certain level of sensitivity to the way that the work is hung or sits on a wall and exists in space, so that you’re not compromising or endangering the work because they have a certain solidity.
Mónica Palma, Small volcán, Aluminum sheet, calligraphic rice paper, glue and encaustic medium, pulverized volcanic rock (tezontle) and achiote seed powder, 21 x 22 x 8 inches, 2022
MP: In my case the work has been already intentionally injured or intentionally touched. I think they are already accepting of their not being imperfect. But yes, when you hold them, you realize that they need some care, but they also are allowed some level of roughness too. Just by touching, the pieces tell you what they need.
KKW: Absolutely, I'm always sort of relearning my sort of engagement with my materials. I’m figuring out new ways to pack them, new ways to build up the surfaces like there's always something that's changing. Previously, I was using rags or the side of my hand to do a lot of the smearing but I've switched over to gloves and the way that marks are built up is completely different.
MP: Totally.
KKW: There's a slickness to the touch that changes things which, and for the most part have been for the better, but then I've noticed other moments where like, Okay, I need to, like, shift the approach a little bit, right. Yeah. And, yeah, it's good. It's like it's, it's kind of like dealing with people. I mean, I'd like to think that the paintings have a sort of vibrancy and a sort of life to them that you know, they have presence.
MP: Something kind of anthropomorphic
KKW: And even beyond anthropomorphic, they don’t even need to be of the body. With the hexagon, it’s hard for me to not think about the torso, or even thinking about shields and how they relate to the body of course. But I hope that there’s this element in the work, just in how the surfaces are handled, that these marks are imbued with enough care and intention and intimacy that vestiges of myself can be felt and radiate off when you’re in the presence of the work.
Mónica Palma was born and raised in Mexico City and studied visual art at the Universidad Veracruzana in Xalapa, Veracruz. She received her MFA in Painting and Printmaking at Virginia Commonwealth University. She currently lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. Her work has been shown at TSA (NYC), 245 Varet Street (NYC), Ortega y Gasset Projects (NYC), the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art (Kansas City), Soloway Gallery (NYC), Underdonk Gallery (NYC), and Essex Flowers (NYC). Since 2020 Mónica has been a lecturer at SUNY Purchase in the department of Painting and Drawing. In 2022 she was the AIR resident at UTK in Knoxville TN.
www.monicapalma.com @mopanana
Kemar Keanu Wynter (b. Brooklyn, NY) holds a BFA from the SUNY Purchase School of Art and Design. His work was the focus of recent solo exhibitions at Klaus von Nichtssagend Gallery, New York (2021) and Tiger Strikes Asteroid, Queens (2021). He has exhibited in several recent group shows including Notes on Ecstatic Unity, OTP Gallery, Copenhagen, Denmark, Faraway Nearby, North Loop Gallery, Williamstown, MA, and Shining in the Low Tide, Unclebrother, Hancock, NY. Wynter has been an artist-in-residence at The Macedonia Institute, Anderson Ranch Arts Center, Ox-Bow School of Art, the ARoS Kunstmuseum in Aarhus, Denmark and AQB in Budapest, Hungary (both facilitated by Flux Factory, New York). His work is held in the collection of the Art Galleries at Black Studies at the University of Texas, Austin. Wynter has forthcoming solo shows with Encounter Lisbon and Klaus von Nichtssagend Gallery in the spring of 2023.
cowfoot.studio @cowfootsoup