Art as Activism: Murjoni Merriweather
The Baltimore artist on Black stereotypes, proud sculptures and monumental grills.
So much conversation can exist in the art world over success, what defines it and the shortcuts one can take. We’ve moved away from the seductive fifteen minutes of fame art prophet Andy Warhol promised us, to the compressed fifteen seconds our Instagram Stories hold. While so many of the voyeuristic omens Warhol preached about authenticity and the speeding up of culture proved to be accurate, no one could predict the global halt we’ve all experienced. A shift so strong that the spaces in the art world, galleries and museums who have historically prided themselves on their ability to hold expensive expressions of humanity, were also left wondering where to turn.
I wanted to reach out to four artists that challenge and cultivate new positions of connectivity, that lead the way—artists not afraid to create community in what’s missing. The voices of the artist originate from vastly different places: Otis Kwame Kye Quaicoe of Ghana, Esmaa Mohamoud of Canada, Murjoni Merriweather of Maryland and from my home state of Texas, Riley Holloway. They represent the moment.
In my experience as a curator, the voice of the artist of color can work in chorus, expressing shared human truth and hardships but the true intellect is mastered only when listening closely for their individual differences and high pitches and wildest dreams for us. It is more widely known than ever that Art, especially that made from creative minds of people from African descent are not monolithic. No two walks of life are the same.
The task was simple: open up a dialogue where the artist can comment on how they are maneuvering professional creative careers ahead in the frightening uncertain reality of our “new normal.”
— Antoine J. Girard.
This week, Antoine J. Girard touches base with Baltimore-based artist Murjoni Merriweather whose phenomenal sculptures are currently on display at Girard’s curatorial debut Shattered Glass at Jeffrey Deitch. Made in clay, sometimes covered in braids, sometimes adorned with grills, Merriweather’s sculptures address stereotypes about Blackness head-on. Long necks, supersized dimensions or artwork cards in all caps as a nod to the importance for Black bodies to take up space are among the many details Merriweather incorporates in her work to celebrate African American culture, self-love and self-acceptance.
LOCATION: Baltimore, Maryland
MEDIUM: Sculpture
INSTAGRAM HANDLE: @mvrjoni
How did you come to make your art?
The whole point of all of my work is for people to look at [it] like, ‘Oh my god, I've seen that person. That person looks familiar.’ I want it to be relatable, instead of it being something that we can't touch. If we see it as relatable, then we see ourselves as art and how society deems us to be, which is super important for my work. The reason why I got into grills [as subject matter] started with the “See Me” sculpture. I made [it] because I wanted to talk about how the media portrays Black people, and how that has a big effect on stereotypes, and also has an effect on how people see our community. That's the bigger idea. I took something and narrowed it down to something super small, like grills.
I feel like there are so many things that we're stereotyped to be with different aspects of how we look, like our hair, our lips, our noses. There are so many features that are stereotyped and looked at as negative, and I think grills were one of those. For us, they're like teeth jewelry. It's an adornment; it's taking care of yourself; it's loving yourself. But in the media, it's usually portrayed as something dangerous. They are portrayed as intimidating, scary. I wanted to normalize little things that we have in our culture.
It's extremely brave. I feel like many artists I’m seeing these days deem success by continuing something that has already been done. I really like where you are coming from. It's hitting on everything that the community is going through right now. How long does it take for you to actually get to the image?
It's really a whole process. Usually I think about it for months and people don't know that. The piece that is going to be in your show [Shattered Glass] I was sitting on for a year before I actually did it. Sometimes you have to take your time to actually do it and do it right, instead of doing it just to do it.
With your work as a Black person or Black body, do you have certain expectations that you feel have been placed on you as an artist?
A lot of people relate my work to a lot of African work. Which is fine, because I understand that as a part of Black culture in general, but my work focuses on the experiences that I have, and the experiences that my peers have in the Black community [in America]. I try to tell people, I don't necessarily make African work, because those are parts of our culture that I haven't really understood yet, or I haven't really researched yet. I don't want to make work about something that I don't know, because then I'm going to feel phony.
No one feels their Blackness is the same and I'm so glad you highlighted that [about] the African American experience.
My thing is, you don't have to know everything about African culture to understand what's going on, to us. There are artists who make African work and I love their work, they're amazing, and they should keep doing that, but I also want there to be an avenue for Black Americans. To know about you about being Black in America.
I keep coming back to the word ‘brave.’ I think what you do is brave art, because you could have done something that was quick to the market, that would have sold and would have made you a lot of money, but you chose to make images that people have pride in.
That's another thing. I feel like there is a lot of work talking about Black trauma all the time. There are artists who do that and they do it very well, but I also just want to be able to bring another avenue that is not about trauma and just about us loving ourselves and us just being us. Us being in our naturalness and our well-being instead of us constantly having to be reminded that we're Black, therefore we're different. We already know this, we've dealt with it with the whole pandemic; we've dealt with it all our lives. Our parents have, our grandparents have [dealt with it]. I want to be able to uplift us and make us be proud to be Black.
To think that you started off making cups [out of clay at eight years old], and now you're making sculptures that are changing the game. That's pretty inspiring. Where do you want to go? What's the most ambitious thing that you want to do?
It’s funny because my mom recently asked me this, and I told her that I don't think that there's an end game, because it's something that I want to continuously do. I want my work to live beyond me, I want my name to live beyond me, I want my purpose to live beyond me. Physically, I think I want to make monumental pieces. I want to see a grill piece, but huge AF in the middle of New York.
[There’s] something about the way your world takes up space, [and] it needs to be seen in a public or big space. I mean I've seen enough museum spaces to know I've never seen something like that, or I might have stayed longer.
That makes me happy. I'm actually really glad that you said take up space, because that is what I want my work to do. That's also why there are spaces in between the letters for the names in my work. There's space, because I want the names to take up space. That's the whole reason for that. I think people just think that I make sculptures for the hell of it sometimes. I also do that, because I also just love working with clay, but I also want to be able to take up space. Which is why I make so many at once, and that's why I'm going to try to continue these big pieces in the summer actually.