SNP Episode 120 - Dr. Imo Nse Imeh
Be Your Own Artist w/ artist Dr Imo Nse Imeh
Our guest this week is Dr. Imo Nse Imeh professor of art and art history at Wayne State University. Imo is an amazing draftsman that intertwines his drawing practice with his art history practice. We get to the love and passion behind his amazing drawings including his Benediction series. We discuss his approach to teaching in 2021, give a shout-out to the people that inspired Imo to pursue art history, and how his commitment to making and drawing manifested during his time at Yale University. It’s a great conversation that highlights the need to follow your own path and be your own artist. Listen, subscribe and share!
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JBarber: All right. It's your boy, Jay Barber back with more StudioNoize talking to my man Dr. Imo Nse Imeh. How you doing, man?
Imo: I'm doing pretty well. Wonderful. Wonderful to be on thank you.
JBarber: That's what's up, man? So, Dr. Imo is a scholar, he's an artist. You do all types of stuff, man. Tell people what you do, really quick.
Imo: Yeah, I'm kind of all over the place it’s been a little confusing for everyone involved. I draw primarily, I paint because I have to with the size that I work, it's very hard to communicate what I'm trying to communicate with drawing materials. So, paint makes things faster and more voluminous, depending on, you know, what I'm going for or the size that I'm going for. So, I don't say I'm a painter I usually say that I like to draw. I'm a professor of art and art history at a small state school in Western, Massachusetts Westfield State University and I've been there since 2009. I feel extremely, blessed in my capacity there as an art historian, my degrees, all of my degrees, all of my collegiate degrees, graduate-level, everything is art history. So, I'm a trained by the Ivy league historian.
I don't think I behave like an art historian. A good art historian would have, you know, on my track, my career track would have maybe book number five being developed and, and you know articles this and this exhibit and, and I mean I do stuff, but I still get excited over a ream of printer paper because of what I could draw, you know what I mean? So, that's never gone away. So, I came to, I came to art history as an artist and that has never gone away. And I'm also part musician, I write; so, there are a lot of things that kind of, you know, orbit around, around, around, and they kind of come together and, and helped me create the things that I create. I think that they're all connected.
I don't believe I'm ever going to, have a live performance at Carnegie Hall as a vocalist. All right, but I do believe that what I do as a vocal musician is in every way, I'm connected to what I'm doing as a visual artist now. And, and so on and so forth with the various things that I do. So, that is that's how I see myself in this universe of art-making and creativity. And I'm looking forward to kind of discovering my voice more in the coming years. I feel like my confidence as an artist has always been there, but because of my ties to these institutions, Yale Columbia, my current institution, various institutions, I'm an institutionalized artist in many ways, even though I didn't go there as a visual artist. And once you're institutionalized, while there are a lot of benefits that come from being attached to institutions, once you've been institutionalized, the weight of that word, which is usually not in a positive way, the weight of that word you wear it. And you begin to doubt yourself and you begin to question it, you begin to wonder.
And so, I feel like now in, I just turned 41, I feel like I'm just now rediscovering my voice, the voice that I had when I was a teenager, as an artist, I'm realizing once again, I can do anything in art that I want to because that's what I was designed to do. It's taken me, it's taken some years after the institutions to kind of unlearn everything that they tried to wrap around me and become a little freer. And I think that's beginning to happen in my world.
JBarber: That's awesome, man. That's quite an intro but I like a lot of stuff that you say, I'm a piece of apart probably as we talk into our conversation, I want to start kind of at the part where you were talking about teaching, and I know you posted this the other day that I saw and I wanted to bring it up. Cause I think it plays right into what you were just saying right now about being institutional. You said we are not about to discuss the progression of African-American and African diaspora art through the 19th and 20th centuries without also addressing the history of white violence in the US and Africa. Like, like you post, you posted that like, yo, this is for sure what's going to happen like we're going to have a true examination. And I think that's a much different approach, especially when you know that you'll be institutionalized in the way you think. You know being fed this information and it's kind of up to people like you to combat it and give people a true understanding going forward by telling them
Imo: Well, I'm, I'm aware that I have students stalkers cause I, you know, [laughter05:57] we all Facebook stalk a little, you know. You know, I'm aware of students...students can find their professors online I'm very locatable I don't hide. And my views are very, observable very easily observable, my views, my politics. And I don't hide when I'm in the middle of a class either. I teach at a predominantly white school, a predominantly white institution, you know, you and I, we call them PWI. A lot of people don't know that terminology, but you know, when you're at a PWI as a large young black man, relatively young, relatively large, you're constantly aware not just of who you are, but of who your audience is and you can very easily become the black spectacle.
I no longer care about, I don't care if I'm the black spectacle, because I realized that suppressing any part of my being in order to make others feel comfortable about the space that they're in just for that purpose, it's killing, it's part of being officialized again. And I feel that I've done just too much of that, and so I'm not just the professor at Westfield State I have tenure at Westfield State. I'm not saying that means, you should walk around, you know, unshowered and unshaven [crosstalk07:29],
JBarber: Do whatever you want to do, yeah.
Imo: No, but with tenure, it comes to the bully pulpit, that's part of what you've worked so hard for. And right now, we battle lines have been drawn. There is no critical race theory attack on America right now. There is none, it's a Phantom thing that was brought up. That is taken on traction because white folks who should know better and many who do know better, don't want to talk about the white races that caused the January 6th insurrection. That's what this is, you are trying to bury a recent history, a recent event with this falsification of history. It’s ridiculous when you think about it, it’s like wait a minute, wait, wait, wait.
You would have to turn the page on what just happened and you want to turn that page by saying you're not allowed to talk about things that are anti-white that don't explain from the truthful standpoint of white governed oppression of black people. You want us to turn this page and at the same time, you want us to turn this page by battling a ghost that you created, that black people are coming to take over the universe, it’s the most ridiculous, insane thing I've ever heard. And so, for every dusting of white students, I've had over the years that I've taught since 2009, it's just been a minor dusting of students who have said this is kind of, this is heavy stuff.
I took African American art, I thought we're going to be looking at drawings and stuff, I’m wow [inaudible09:29] that’s what you thought. For every dusting that I have had of students like that, I am now very aware of the fact that we are entering a new phase right now in the fall. That post was not a joke post. We're entering a phase in the fall where professors are already arming themselves. Like, what should I do? Should I take this book out of my syllabus? Because Tucker Carlson is whipping up a frenzy among, you know well-meaning white people who just don't want to feel uncomfortable. And so no that's not going to fly in my classroom and that's the reality, you know, as a professor, you know, what the Lord has done is he has given mean I think it's an amazing thing that he's done this.
He's given me a platform and he's given me custody over the minds of this next generation of students, this next generation of people, you know, white, black, whatever they are. I'm their custodian for a semester in my class they're going to learn this history or they can leave class or they can fail the class if they have a problem with that. And so, it’s from that standpoint that post was made but that's a very, very honest post I try not to use anymore I've been trying over the pandemic. It's easy to do this because Facebook and Twitter and other social media platforms are created in such a way where we're all bloggers, we're all bloggers, right? And you can, it's a stream of consciousness. You just pick up your thumbs. And every one of us a little bit intelligent has posted something or almost posted or written something, and then deleted the whole thing, knowing it's not writing it, right.
I'm trying to govern my posts in such a way that what I post means something. That post is not a false post. That was not a fake post. I stand by it [inaudible11:35] and someone on my campus by it I'm okay with that. I stand by that. And that is what tenure allows. It allows a certain amount of truthfulness to be expressed. And that is a reality that myself and a lot of other professors of color, who are at PWI, we're going to be dealing with this. This is our reality now a Phantom, a ghost that we're all battling because a major news channel and a bunch of Republicans and a bunch of Trump supporters are telling us that this ghost is real. It's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard. Yeah.
JBarber: And I think in a, in a way and I just finished graduate school, it was cool. And I know I've had a lot of conversations with other artists seeking their MFA's and, in a way, as also the same struggle that we fought as graduate students, just in an academic year, right. Just taking all that, that fight and having to prove yourself, prove the worth of black artists the whole time. Right. You know what I'm saying? So, it's like even bringing in, when I teach my drawing classes, I always bring in all my examples are from black artists. And my argument is the black artists that I'm showing you doesn’t bring down a curriculum at all. You know, like, what's the difference? You know what I'm saying? It's all that they don't know them and they're not traditionally accepted as these are the masters, right? The quote-unquote masters who he's supposed to look at. So, it was all always, you have to always challenge that narrative just to exist you know anywhere you are,
Imo: People probably don't realize ... you know, you probably have different circles of friends and people who follow your work, Jay. And you probably have an entire circle or two of people who see you posting a big MFA thesis they're excited. They're just excited for you. But they have no idea what you've been through. Like, like, like uni therapy. They have no idea, they're like, no, you don't understand. I know you don't necessarily see me wearing the t-shirts then getting beaten by cops. You have no idea what I've been through in these [inaudible14:01] when I was at Yale, I sat in with some of the ...I would have some of the students there, they’re all doing big things now it's so funny. But some of the students there that, you know, some of us would go in groups like,] they’re going to be off of it today.
You know and so we go to the [inaudible14:25] and just listen to, again, well-meaning white folk just say the most asinine things about black and brown artists and their work. It is just a remarkable thing... so they don't know what you've been through. They definitely don't know what happened to you with a Ph.D. from Yale doing [inaudible14:46].
JBarber: I can imagine yeah.
Imo: So, it's... anyway we can go back and forth about then you'll share battle wounds and all that stuff. Because it was a real thing. But this idea is that going through these kinds of systems, these institutions require a certain kind of healing and therapy at the end. I've even just had the conversation like this can be that it can be therapeutic and I don't know if people fully grasp it. I think everybody has those of us who enter academia, whether it's business school or law school, we get it from different angles. I don't think people understand what visual artists go through before they're in the galleries before they're in the museums, before they're in major collections, the amount...the beating and the restructuring that this institution has done to you. And then you have to undo that and rediscover your voice, amazing stuff,
JBarber: And still, and also like yourself, where I see it make room for other people to come through and maybe not have to do the same thing. Like, you know, if I can take your struggle from a nine to a seven like that's about as far as I can go, you know what I'm saying? [crosstalk16:06] my power. So, it’s always... and I find that we are constantly engaged in that kind of reaching out to other people like you said, you did it like people requesting you to come into the crits, me going and being sought out by other black students that's on campus, like looking for like, yo, you are a grad student here; you have some kind of authority and official title. Like, I need you to engage with me because you do it in a different way. Like, there's not so much, you don't want to be in the resistance all the time while you doing your work. Like sometimes you just want to be with the work in conversation with people that you don't have to have a 45-minute conversation explaining like the history of blackness to somebody in a feeling to, just to, just to get by what you're doing. So,
Imo: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. You know, I think everything you said. Yes.
JBarber: Yeah, absolutely. Man. So you got your doctorate from art history, man. Tell me what's your, how did you get into art history and like what fascinated you about?
Imo: Well, I went to the high school of art and design in New York City. I graduated in 1998 and my major and while I was there, I started my major was fashion design. Let me explain fashion illustration. Let me explain. I was always interested in drawing the figure, art, and design high school. I'm a proud graduate of art and design, high school, a great school, amazing people have come through there. And they had different majors. You could select, I chose fashion illustration because the teacher who was teaching that class, did the most magnificent oil paintings and it was just such an amazing artist.
JBarber: What was his name?
Imo: David Pastor, David Pastor he does copies, he did copies of like, Rubin's everything like, he's amazing what he did. And so, I'm like, okay, what did you teach it?
Another good friend of mine. We sat down. You don't care what? That I learned a lot under him. I wasn't interested in it at all. Now, how do I bring him? Because my senior year, there was a course in art history, AP art history taught by Ms. Berger. She is now passed away, but I always credit her with bringing me into the art history falls. Because of her, I have a career as not concerned right now. He's like, there is this class that you need to take. And if you don't take this class mob, then maybe you're not the guy. I thought you were, you were a category one for a city that you haven't signed up for that class, which means you're actually a category. Nothing, no art history, AP art history. It completely rocked my world. I walked in expecting to hate this class.
I fell in love with Egyptology. I fell in love with the Amarna period, how cannot tin. And I fell in love with just all things, Egypt. I mean, other stuff too, but that was what really got me. I, that, that that that natural history discovery channel side of me came out and it was related. And I never looked back. I went to one when I got into Columbia University, I took every, I started taking all the art classes and then I was just system art history, major hung out with all the artists exhibited with all the artists when the artists had their senior show, they were like, there must be where's your stuff. And I'm like, yeah, I told you, I'm an art history major.
But the art history department, the art department were literally across campus from each other two very different departments. And that was how I got into it. I, I just, I hate anything that involves the history of aesthetics, philosophy, Japanese art, and art. And I just, I just couldn't get enough of it. But for me, it was the discovery of all of these different ways that people think, and, and different aesthetic possibilities and how it's certain cultures, you know, objects that are in continuant or asymmetrical. That's what makes it beautiful. And I just, I was all, all like most students who entered Ph.D. program master's Ph.D. program. I was all over the place, but they saw some talent there. They were like, okay, we're going to, we'll write on it. You know, they did reign me in and I ended up studying the history of my culture the Ibibio people.
I looked at a woman's initiation ritual known as which is characterized largely by the seclusion and fattening of women prior to marriage. My mom hadn't gone through this ritual, but my grandmother had, and we had it, it was tied to our family in different ways. And so, my project to Gail really turned into this self-discovery and my language, and traveling back to Nigeria and interviewing my cousins. It was just really, really, really interesting. It was wonderful working on all my artwork as well. And so that's really how these things came together. I never, there was no point where I stopped working on parts. It's just, all of those things ended up being braided together. As I was developing my dissertation, I was working on these large images that had bits and pieces of my dissertation in them and writing, and it was crazy stuff, you know?
And so, I feel like I spent a lot of years, not trying to be an artist while doing other stuff, being an artist part was never a question I was good at. I don't know. I didn't need a degree to tell you that, you know I spent a lot of years trying to find my voice and then trying to figure out how in any given moment something, how it mattered, and why. And I, I feel like I may be coming into a place where I have a better understanding of that now, but I still feel very young, very young artists. And maybe that's because I haven't, you know, you've just gone through an MFA program. I don't know if there's a certain kind of rigor or a certain kind of something they put you through that made you, you know, very, in a very focused way, question your identity as an artist, maybe in a way that I've been doing it long span.
But I feel like I'm just arriving at an understanding of what I do and why and what I care about. And also, the part of the deep institutionalizing of myself has been realizing that the quirks in my work that tends to aggravate me are the very things in my work that make my work, my work brief, those things. I'm like, you know, this is just how I do ahead. I don't know why on the back I could study it. I know how to drop photographically graphically if I had to, but why it's a photograph, that's what they look like, and accepting that accepting. That's how my hands when I draw them, that's what they look like. Accepting all of these things as part of my signature. I think the acceptance of my signature inscribed onto the air around me. The acceptance of that is possibly my biggest step in the last five years. Being okay with something, looking like my work and with all of its quirks and all of its instabilities and all of its incompleteness being okay with that, that, that I feel is where I am now. And I feel like in many ways I have to credit the history of art and the study of art and aesthetics alongside the making of art to bringing me to this place.
JBarber: I think it's an interesting way of looking at one, one of the key things about the MFA program is it helps you build your practice, right. But it doesn't give you direction on what your practice should look like. And so that's what, that's what you are doing differently in, in way to building. It was so interesting about it is that it is a more history-based academic research-based practice. Like that's the foundation inspiration for all the other things that come out of it. Like you wouldn't get the same ideas unless you were researching basketball. Like you wouldn't, you wouldn't arrive at the same conclusion. Do you know what I'm saying? So, I think so. I think I think it's very interesting how that's sort of the foundation, of what you do.
Imo: Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's been an interesting ride, I guess. And I, and I, and I do wonder every time I wonder because I have these moments where I have people with this happens, I think every three years it's happening. It's taking longer now for it to happen. Just time where I'm like, oh God, I got to go get my MFA. I got a job, the deeper I get into like the, my rights as an adult, the more ridiculous, you know, but, but I have people who are like, okay, I start, I go online.
I could probably do a night school here. I could do it because there's some part of me that feels like I missed something. I missed something. But all of these years, I think about it, I'm just saying, no, I, I feel, I don't know how I would have done the MSA given the way my brain works. I think I needed the slow burn of sitting in the stacks at Columbia, sitting in the stacks at Yale, going through old, old books that were published in, you know, 1906 and 1895. And, you know, I needed that experience as I was just working on the art. You know, I don't know if jumping into an MFA program would have been good for me. I think that this was the way I was supposed to develop probably at about 13 months. I'm going to get on the computer. I wonder, you know, nothing's working. It'll be, it'll be right after I started drawing it. Is it going well? I've gathered everything. I come back the next day. I'm like, all right, [inaudible27:50].
JBarber: Oh yeah. That moment of desperation we just need an answer. Just give me something. Yeah. Yeah. So, tell me about how your drawings were manifesting while you were going through all this program. You said you kept it up. Like what, what did that look like? Exactly.
Imo: I just, it, I made time for it. I made space for it when I would while I was at Columbia university, I made sure I had housing that had a large living room with other people living in the spaces. And I would use the living room as my studio. Nobody ever questioned it. It was just, it was just like, yeah, we got to live in artists.
JBarber: Hey, girl that's Imo, he grown don't worry about that.
Imo: And the ones who were smart hung around when I was in a bad mood or in a bad state artistically because that's when I started getting rid of pieces. I'm like, I would throw stuff away. I would literally repaint and the smart ones [inaudible29:32] groups of people around the United States right now who have like a retrospective work, like, yeah. So, there's that. And then when I, when I got to Yale, I every time I had an apartment somewhere, you know, I made sure that it was a two-bedroom, you know, or if it was a one bedroom, I used one of the rooms as a studio space. There was always an understanding that I needed space to work, you know? And so that, that was, I kept it up that way. I just never stopped working.
I was always doing double work. There was like articles I had to read and things I had to write. And I'm like, yeah, yeah. And then I had to get the artwork. So, I don't feel like I ever missed a beat. I just I've spent most of my life feeling like I'm running behind. Like, there's something that's happening right now. And I've, I've, I spent many, many years feeling like I'm not I can't read. Because I feel I've been doing two twice the work at any given time. I wouldn't have it any other way though, because those things have said me as a professor of art history. So very things have been researching to teach my classes, have ended up bringing me into projects. It's all like, oh, shoot, this is great. I wonder, I wonder, I feel like there should be an artist that have something to say, okay, you know what? My students have had a chance to, some of my students have had the opportunity to see projects from their inception to their completion. So, like, so the students who continue to follow me, those students who were there were those students who took one of my one or two or all of my classes, you know, they are true believers a lot. They are such lovely people. And they, they still follow my work. They're like, oh, I remember when you just started that project.
Okay. So, in that way it’s kept going. And that way it's kept going. It just hasn't stopped. I have been very fortunate to have friends that, I mean, mostly over social media but other, other African artists I mean, other artists from, from all walks of life, but I'm bringing these up for a reason. Certain artists like Victor, you've probably seen this work before Moya. Right, right. And so, these are people who at once escaping me right now is escaping me, but he's very important as well. But these are people who have encouraged me to hold on to this, to this double, this double energy that I have. They're like, hey, you can write, you can, and you can do the interpreting and you can do the arts. That's a great thing.
Don't, don't, don't, don't, don't be upset about that. I think it was Mario kg. Who's like, why are you complaining when you want to write a paper or a book, you sit down and you write a paper. I had a big, big book that was just came out about him and his amazing work, just an art book do what a lovely individual. And he had asked me to write an essay about his work, because I had written a smaller as I've written about his work for my dissertation and shared it with him. But I interviewed him for that, for that chapter where he appears. And he's like, could you write an essay for this book? And I was like, you know, so I turned off all the art making part of me just went away and everything up. And just like that, I was a writer.
Imo: And when I say it was the most black [inaudible34:03] I just took a picture of my setup and I'm like, hey, I'm a writer again, you know? Perfect. And so, in that way, I've been able to navigate these very, very interesting waters that I'm in as an artist and as an art historian that, sorry, we're getting a little bit of noise from the background. I'm in my studio, in my studio. I'm right by the window into very busy streets called Holyoke. So, if you're hearing people are outside Holyoke, motorcycle.
JBarber: Yeah. That's the noise man, that's the studio, we’ve been to people's houses, they would be getting construction done in the back. Like, you know, w what was the fascination with drawing? Cause I mean, honestly your skill level in draftsmanship, right. You could easily have transitioned into oil painting or like, whatever, you know what I'm saying, whatever the next quote-unquote step in the process. Right. But why did you stick with drawing, like be dedicated as you are?
Imo: I just never gave anything else a chance. And so, so, so I try to remember if in high school I had the opportunity to be, to be a painter at all. I just never, it was, it was scary to me. I think I tried painting in, in high school, on my own. I went to the art students league in New York city as well for just a very short season. While I was in high school, I just didn't enjoy myself there as I've tried three stints at the art students league at the, to be a painter of the three sets to two of them to be a painter to study under a painter and extend work out well. The energy just wasn't right. I felt like I was, it's just an awful space to be in at that time. My first bit with, as a, as a draftsman, as a, as a, as a, as someone who draws and I was 13 years old and it went really, really well. So, the teacher found out I was 30 years old. I don't know if he's still alive. God, that man had a heart attack. And he was like, you have to get out of here. I think I fall in love with what lions do. I don't remember when that happened or.
The team of people that made that happen I don't know what I saw. I've always liked Leonardo da Vinci's drawings and sketches more than his finished works. But of course, I like a lot Leonardo da Vinci's stuff because a lot of them appear a little unfinished, you know, [inaudible37:11] that's like, that's just dope you know, [inaudible37:23]and I love Rembrandt in that way too. But even Rembrandt's reverence the works I love from him the most are the ones where it's more of like it's more like an oil painting. What do they call it under paint right in the, in the burnt umbers and the ultra-Marine blues? And then he just splashes, you know, you've got all those large, large-chested women he just splashes the peaches and all the, you know, the women look like they're dancing. Their bodies are, are aflame with rouges and white scent.
And I'm like, is this a painting? It like someone was just playing around, like he was drawn with them. Now the same thing can be said about Sargent. There are a number of, artists who I've enjoyed as an art historian as a budding artist, notice all the ones that brought up so far are very white. But even though they're painters it’s the draftsman quality of their work that excites me because I think that somewhere inside of the, works that are kind of being drafted, developed with line, I think that there's a possibility for them to go in many places. But I think once the painting is kind of concretize and complete, and I feel, I feel like I've associated painting with the completed file work and I feel like you've now trapped that work into that exact position.
There's something about writing, especially lines that are skillfully laid out that can suggest movement without producing the movement and make your mind go to places. A line can do that like we follow lines every day. Like we literally got a line to tell you to keep your car on one side of the road. Lines can be instructional, they can be directive, and so when you find a way to communicate that way with digital art, damn you can make somebody do anything. You can make anyone do anything, you know what I mean, I want you to look at that tree. Now you can do that with paint as well you know that. You can use color and you can use; you know value and all those other things. I know you can do this with paint as well. I just think there's something about the line that is primal in a way. And it's honest and I think, I think that's why I care about them, you know? I think that's what I care about them.
And so, for me, there's so many throughout my studio now, all of these work that really could have been done by now, but the big worry for me is like, to what degree should I lose this amazing line work in favor of a painting that on Instagram will make people excited and blah, blah, blah, yeah, yeah, yeah, ooohh, a great painting and I’m like nah.
JBarber: That girl looks like a girl.
Imo: Yeah, right m, right, right you don't see.... the picture isn't capturing all of the lines that are in the thumb. And that's the most exciting part of this, like the lines of the thumb that you can't see, because my phone's not great enough to pick that kind of picture for Instagram. Even if I posted that you wouldn't care about it because you don't care about...
JBarber: Yeah, you ain’t get it.
Imo: [inaudible41:23] chocolate person on the canvas, which I can give you and so I ...
JBarber: You know what that reminds me of? That reminds me of how they started x-raying these old masters work, and they started revealing like all the stuff that's underneath it. Like it was ... what piece was it again? It was like a horse, but the horse leg moved in several instances when the artist drew each movement, but only painted one of them. So, when they x-rayed it, you can see all that under drawing in it, that actually made the painting more exciting
Imo: Was it a Da Vinci? I have been looking...
JBarber: Yea, I'm going to find out...
Imo: I wonder if the person, if that person was like me, or if that person was like me, how dare I, if I'm anything, like that person, no, no, if that person is like me is the right way to say that. Let's just keep it that way, but understand that I'm not enough in that regard I am, but I'm not. If that person was like me, see I have drawn fifty arms in order to lock on the arm that I really want. You know what I mean? I'll dry like five hands. I'm like, oh man, you know, all these guys could work. All right, I’ll keep this one, this line, the differences with my work with my drawings and some other people's work. I'll just keep you .... they gave you the background. You know what I mean? So, but with paint now it's like, okay, now that you select the head you have to take away your stuff lines Oh wait,
JBarber: You gotta, you gotta finish it. Yeah. You got to finish. Another thing that I find so fascinating is the ideas and like how solid your concepts are behind a lot of the work that you're doing. I heard you talk about on another podcast; she was on mission control. Give them, give them a shout out. Right. They were talking about when you talk about Ben addiction and like I norm read it, but when you said it, what Benedict's was about, he hit different. Right? So, tell me that. Tell me about, about Ben addiction, this whole series
Imo: Benediction. There's this, so right now, if you entered my studio, there are these large-scale images of, of, of black men that are, that I decided a while ago are angelic beings. They are larger than life. They're huge. Some are drawn some are painted and some are listening to the ground. Some look like they're falling from the air and the series took on our name. The name came right around right around I want to say the name came right during the pandemic right around the time George Floyd was, was murdered actually more like around the time Amman Arbery was murdered. It's amazing. How about Arbery's murder was such a big deal in our, in our conscious until George flood happened, you know, it's, it's just a strange thing, but I was working on this, I'm working on this project and I think the, the cover of the darkness of the pandemic and the elucidation of all of the trauma that the, the, the cloud of the pandemic highlighted it elucidated all of these traumas that have existed for such a long time in our communities, in such a way that the whole world could see that.
And for me, for me, these, these, these large sorry for me, for me, these large figures represented group of a group of angels that have been passed down from heaven by the Lord. Okay. cast outs are arrange for a season for the sole purpose of bearing witness, standing as witnesses to the things that black men, black women, black children are, are dealing with in their lives on a day to day. And reporting that information back to the Lord directly. Now, you would say, or someone would say, or could ask isn't that what a prayer is for. Isn't that what a prayer is for, right? You'll need a new Jesus die. If you're a Christian and you believe that she's died and you don't need the divine is assessor now. But the series is being made out of a kind of desperation that I haven't felt before then.
So, it's like, no, we've been praying, we’ve been praying. I need heaven to come here and see what we've been screaming about, send your best here, then bind them to the skins of boys and black men so that they walk the earth as such, and not only stand as witnesses, but become the downtrodden too. So, they can really tell you exactly what's been happening. And that's the project. Now, the project was born out of something else that I've been working on. That was that was my response to some racist, major racist activity that had happened on my campus. And this project was birthed from that.
JBarber: What was the incident?
Imo: Oh, the incident, this happened shortly after Donald Trump became president this was in 2017. This was in September of 2017. So, Trump isn't president for about six months or so and you'll remember right before that this is an August was when Charlottesville, the Charlottesville catastrophe happened with the Unite the right rally and Heather Heyer was killed. And then two officers, people keep forgetting this, two officers died in that in a helicopter crash. like people died. And so, there was that, that incident happens in my church, white folk were going crazy I don't go to that church anymore. White folks are going crazy in that church. One person posted a noose to a Facebook page. And so, by the time I got back to campus that fall racist messages were written on the dorms of black students, black females you know, you know, the regular old know were still in the 1940s.
Imo: be a little more creative, [crosstalk49:06].
JBarber: It’s not in the history books.
Imo: It’s so repeatedly hackney, like come up with something else but it’s still a terrifying thing when you're a student at a, at a school that your dorm is your home, you know, so racist incidents, rape threats were written on black girls doors. Like off. It was like ... now, you should know for context, this wasn't just happening at my school. If you go and do a little bit of digging up around that time, the fall of 2017 and I will absolutely say this is connected to Donald Trump and his embrace of white supremacy and, far right traditionalists if you can call them that now. And there was a spike in this kind of activity throughout the United States, throughout the United States school. After school, after school was reporting death threats, rape threats, bomb threats, white people were angry and they had it up to here and they wanted the niggers to know.
So, for me, I, wasn't going to go on a protest. I wasn't going to, you know, I, your FACS staff and all the things that were happening on their chose the curriculum and all that gay. I decided to do a project on campus that looked at the life and death of Trayvon Martin and other boys that had been killed in the manner that he had. It was a public art project without going into too much detail, it was very dramatic. It ended extremely dramatically and from that project, that seeds of that project brought us benediction. So, I've been working on Bennett, I've been working on this project. I wasn't sure what it was. And then right when the pandemic hit, I had an understanding I think it was into 2019 is a 2020 I knew the title of the project, but it became really, really, it became concrete.
Imo: After Ahmaud Arbery was shot, I was like I’m done, done. You know, the thing that got me about this whole period as an artist, as a black man, as a Christian what got me was, you know, when there's so much wasn't around when the world was open and there was a lot going on and, you know, noise and Twitter and Trump and everything was going on, you know, it was easy to say, oh, you know, yeah, you, something was happening with black people, but I wasn't sure. And I wasn't sure, I wasn't sure the pandemic arrested all of us. It shut everything down and so now we knew that you knew. Like we know that you know. Because we're all staring at the same thing now, there ain't nothing else to watch, but this man being suffocated to death on TV, all right. Like my mom, my mom's from Nigeria, my mom was like, I have seen chickens killed with more mercy than they killed George. I have seen chickens killed with more mercy. We watched it. And then I waited because all the well-meaning white people who were speaking a really good game, not all of them, but a whole lot of them, especially those in the church, three weeks, three weeks of black people acting out what police, no, he wasn't such a great guy.
Imo: [inaudible53:23] They come up with words. It's just the one person says it and it's a machine. And I just watched white people, white Christians, people who I had stood next to on in worship teams post the most viral things I ever read about someone who we just watched die with less mercy than they killed chickens. And so, for me, this became real in a way that I had not anticipated my project. And it's so that is the energy with which I am developing. These works. Now that is the energy with which I'm developing this other project. And my other studio, my other, the other room through your room now, which directly addresses the January six insurrection. I do believe that these two projects are, are, are one in the same, I guess I just did it. I did it. You don't know how you're going to react. The January insurrection happened, but I just was paralyzed with like, yeah. Wow. This is fascinating. I feel like I was watching discovery channel, like during shark week. So, I'm watching the instruction. I'm like, wow, Joe,
Why am I saying all of this? How does this answer your question? This is, this is the temperature of my work right now. It is analytical. It is documentary. And and it's collaborative. You know, I don't believe that this, this kind of project can be done, you know, by my voice alone. I don't, I don't believe that I believe the reason why the Lord allowed creative harmony, you know, and using harmonic scales and whatnot is because we're not supposed to be alone. And some of the most amazing things that are created are not created by oneself. You need a team. And so, I feel like I'm building a team right now to just tell the story, even if this is just for documentary, if it's just so that someone in 10 years, you know, decides to just, you know, for someone to say that, you know, this has really happened. They're already saying that now. Right.
It didn't happen. Yeah. Right, right. This is where once again, I feel like who I am as our historian and as an artist have come together, it's like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, I'm a historian. So, I'm going to write the documents, you know, and we're going to do this with Bart. Would he do this with music writing? And we're going to talk about that. We're going to talk about this. You're so uncomfortable that you vomit. And then we're going to document that we're going to document the vomit because, because this is all part of it. And I'm, I think the deal in the project that I'm working on right now is that I'm not just like first time. I think that I am not excluding my feelings from the documentary of the project. So, the project itself stands what it is, but it's also a diary who I am absolutely matters in this, who I am as a black Christian man matters in this.
My voice actually matters in all of this. My feelings like anger, my rage, my discomfort, all of those things, going to be part of that. It can be those things, but it can still be documentary. And so, I'm arriving at an interesting place. I don't know what happens with it. I don't know where it's exhibited. There is a gallery in the area that is going to be exhibiting a portion of this, but this feels like big project now, because, because of this, because of this insurrection portion of it, that's where the angels that are part of this now. And so, I, I, I'm kind of mind blown and humbled by the, by the idea itself, how it's developed. And I don't feel like my little brain could have come up with this alone. And so, I feel like this is, I feel like this is something that the Lord wants me to work on right now, and it's overwhelming, but I feel like I can do it. So, I'm working on it. Oh
JBarber: Man. That's, that's amazing. You know, that's, that's a, that's a project for you. Like when you start getting going and you started getting those vibes like that, and you think about it and how big it could be, because you can write. So, it could be a book to go along with a show that goes along with a documentary video that can go along with like, you know, it can completely expand man. And your drawings are fantastic. I don't even feel like we talked about the drawings enough. I love it, man. I love it, man. That just means we got to bring you back to the show, but that's all
Imo: Sure, sure. Sure. Well, you can find my way, my website is just imoimeh.com or Iamemr.com, it’s under construction now, but it's going to be done pretty soon. It's up, but it's going to be redesigned pretty soon. So, I am imoimeh.com or just my first and last name.com. And also, I am on Instagram you can just find me there at you know, @imoimeh . And I think those are the two main things that I'm on right now. I'm very searchable or locatable, as I say are find-able. So, if you put my name in, I think I might be the only one.
I'm relatively friendly so if I see your message, I'll try to hit you back. But yeah, this has been, this has just been wonderful. Thank you for creating a space for artists to speak It's so cliche now to speak their truth. I've got to find another way to say it. A space for artists to speak and thank you for creating a space for artists to be learned and to know you and for this kind of therapy, this is you. I think you, if you don't see what you're doing yet as the Lord's work in terms of it being therapeutic may need to change that because this is, this was therapeutic for me and I appreciate you and everything that you're doing with all of your gifts, and I'm looking forward to a lot more in terms of conversation. Ah,
JBarber: Man, I appreciate you, man. Thanks for coming on the show, brother.
Imo: Thank you so much. All right.