1 00:00:00,700 --> 00:00:03,740 [New York Close Up] 2 00:00:04,020 --> 00:00:08,600 ["Jordan Casteel Paints Her Community"] 3 00:00:11,780 --> 00:00:12,420 [JORDAN CASTEEL] Hi there. 4 00:00:12,420 --> 00:00:13,420 Do you remember me? 5 00:00:14,380 --> 00:00:15,580 Do you know where Harold is? 6 00:00:15,580 --> 00:00:16,320 Have you seen… 7 00:00:16,320 --> 00:00:16,920 Harold? 8 00:00:16,920 --> 00:00:18,460 Do you remember that I painted him? 9 00:00:19,760 --> 00:00:21,840 I wanted to show him the painting. 10 00:00:22,640 --> 00:00:25,480 I gave him my stuff so he could get in contact with me, 11 00:00:25,480 --> 00:00:27,100 but I haven't seen him back out here. 12 00:00:27,100 --> 00:00:29,020 [MAN] I haven’t seen him in a while. 13 00:00:29,020 --> 00:00:31,020 [CASTEEL] Okay, if I ever saw him then... 14 00:00:31,020 --> 00:00:32,580 [MAN] I haven’t seen him in about a year. 15 00:00:32,580 --> 00:00:34,060 [CASTEEL] I can email or text it to him. 16 00:00:34,140 --> 00:00:35,800 This is like seven foot tall, too. 17 00:00:35,800 --> 00:00:36,480 It's big. 18 00:00:41,660 --> 00:00:43,100 Get kind of close to your dad. 19 00:00:43,110 --> 00:00:44,110 Get like right here. 20 00:00:44,110 --> 00:00:45,110 Because this is your dad? 21 00:00:45,110 --> 00:00:46,110 Or that’s your dad? 22 00:00:46,110 --> 00:00:47,260 Yeah! I love it. 23 00:00:47,260 --> 00:00:48,640 Now I see it. That's so good. 24 00:00:48,640 --> 00:00:49,140 [MAN] Thank you. 25 00:00:49,140 --> 00:00:50,240 [CASTEEL] Yeah, come right here. 26 00:00:50,240 --> 00:00:51,240 I want you close to this middle one. 27 00:00:52,680 --> 00:00:53,680 [CAMERA SHUTTER CLICKS] 28 00:00:54,420 --> 00:00:56,240 Will you put this leg in a little bit? 29 00:00:56,240 --> 00:00:56,820 Yeah! 30 00:00:56,820 --> 00:00:58,560 I’m just thinking about my canvas. 31 00:01:01,440 --> 00:01:02,340 Yeah, that's perfect. 32 00:01:02,340 --> 00:01:03,760 [MAN] Thank you. [CASTEEL] Look. 33 00:01:07,680 --> 00:01:10,180 [MAN] Oh yeah, that’s lovely. 34 00:01:11,940 --> 00:01:14,380 [CASTEEL] The summer between my first and second year at Yale, 35 00:01:14,380 --> 00:01:18,110 I was awarded a grant to get ten thousand dollars 36 00:01:18,110 --> 00:01:22,740 and to go to Gloucester, Massachusetts to do landscape painting. 37 00:01:23,840 --> 00:01:25,000 During that time, 38 00:01:25,009 --> 00:01:28,659 there was the acquittal of the murderer of Trayvon Martin. 39 00:01:28,659 --> 00:01:30,930 Gloucester is a very white place, 40 00:01:30,930 --> 00:01:33,670 as in I was probably the only brown person for miles. 41 00:01:33,670 --> 00:01:38,380 So like, there was a sense of isolation that I was sort of feeling around that experience. 42 00:01:40,240 --> 00:01:43,600 [Home of Jordan’s Aunt] 43 00:01:45,860 --> 00:01:46,940 I remember 44 00:01:46,950 --> 00:01:49,399 having a phone conversation with my twin brother. 45 00:01:49,399 --> 00:01:52,460 My twin was describing being in a convenience store 46 00:01:52,460 --> 00:01:53,850 and somebody was following him, 47 00:01:53,850 --> 00:01:55,919 and he was kind of going on this rant, like, 48 00:01:55,919 --> 00:01:57,969 "You know, people follow me like I'm a threat," 49 00:01:57,969 --> 00:01:59,790 "but they don’t even know that I'm a father" 50 00:01:59,790 --> 00:02:02,009 "and I'm, like, trying to get my shit together." 51 00:02:02,009 --> 00:02:03,329 "They don't know anything about me," 52 00:02:03,329 --> 00:02:04,520 "I'm just the one who's, like," 53 00:02:04,520 --> 00:02:07,060 "going to steal something or whatever." 54 00:02:07,060 --> 00:02:08,849 I think I felt at that time 55 00:02:08,849 --> 00:02:10,759 that I needed to go back to Yale 56 00:02:10,759 --> 00:02:13,680 and do work outside of landscapes-- 57 00:02:13,680 --> 00:02:16,430 that I needed to find a way to combine 58 00:02:16,430 --> 00:02:19,489 my desire to create a sense of visibility around 59 00:02:19,489 --> 00:02:23,440 my family and my brothers that was feeling absent at that time. 60 00:02:24,040 --> 00:02:26,160 Let me help you with your ringtone. 61 00:02:28,040 --> 00:02:28,940 Record it? 62 00:02:28,940 --> 00:02:30,440 [AUNT] We have to record it. 63 00:02:31,100 --> 00:02:34,320 Go in the settings and see how you do that. 64 00:02:35,240 --> 00:02:38,460 [SINGING] ♪ Trump is our enemy. ♪ 65 00:02:38,460 --> 00:02:40,940 ♪ He must be removed ♪ 66 00:02:41,840 --> 00:02:45,000 ♪ Trump is our enemy. ♪ 67 00:02:45,000 --> 00:02:47,160 ♪ He must be removed. ♪ 68 00:02:47,180 --> 00:02:55,420 ♪ Just like a can of garbage in the alley, ♪ 69 00:02:55,420 --> 00:02:59,920 ♪ he must be removed. ♪ 70 00:03:01,460 --> 00:03:02,060 Yeah! 71 00:03:02,480 --> 00:03:03,880 [CASTEEL] Okay now we got to test it out, 72 00:03:03,880 --> 00:03:04,880 But I think I did it! 73 00:03:04,880 --> 00:03:05,880 Okay. 74 00:03:05,880 --> 00:03:07,300 [AUNT] Okay, and then you call me, 75 00:03:07,300 --> 00:03:09,100 and let's see if this works. 76 00:03:09,180 --> 00:03:13,160 [FROM RECORDING] ♪ He must be removed. ♪ 77 00:03:13,160 --> 00:03:14,120 [LAUGHS] 78 00:03:14,120 --> 00:03:15,980 [CASTEEL] Everytime the phone rings, that's now what it is! 79 00:03:17,540 --> 00:03:19,240 So I came back to Yale and was like, 80 00:03:19,900 --> 00:03:23,180 "I am going to paint my black men" 81 00:03:23,180 --> 00:03:26,700 "Imma do this thing about my family, basically." 82 00:03:45,940 --> 00:03:48,510 Nine times out of ten, people think that I am a man 83 00:03:48,510 --> 00:03:49,870 before they meet me. 84 00:03:49,870 --> 00:03:50,870 Even though, like… 85 00:03:50,870 --> 00:03:53,640 Yeah, because my name is Jordan and I'm painting men. 86 00:03:53,640 --> 00:03:55,260 So even at my own openings, 87 00:03:55,260 --> 00:03:56,370 the number of times that my mother… 88 00:03:56,370 --> 00:03:58,500 I hear my mother across a room being like, 89 00:03:58,500 --> 00:03:59,500 "SHE's over there!" 90 00:03:59,500 --> 00:04:01,390 And I'm like, "Mom, it's okay." 91 00:04:01,390 --> 00:04:03,760 And I think a lot of that has to do with historical painting 92 00:04:03,760 --> 00:04:06,510 and the notion of who has the right 93 00:04:06,510 --> 00:04:09,020 to depict what bodies at what scale. 94 00:04:09,020 --> 00:04:10,930 And, I like that. 95 00:04:10,930 --> 00:04:13,220 I feel really present in this work as a result. 96 00:04:13,220 --> 00:04:14,440 Like, whenever people… 97 00:04:14,440 --> 00:04:16,819 There have been some criticisms of: I only paint men. 98 00:04:16,819 --> 00:04:18,319 And every time people say women are absent, 99 00:04:18,319 --> 00:04:19,860 or people are like, "When are you going to paint women?" 100 00:04:19,860 --> 00:04:23,229 I'm like, I don’t know if I feel absence, 101 00:04:23,229 --> 00:04:25,229 because I’m very much a part of this work, 102 00:04:25,229 --> 00:04:27,770 and it's translated through my experience. 103 00:04:27,770 --> 00:04:29,930 So, these nudes happened, 104 00:04:29,930 --> 00:04:31,210 which was horrifying. 105 00:04:31,210 --> 00:04:33,270 And I got a lot of criticism, sort of, 106 00:04:33,270 --> 00:04:35,100 during that time around it. 107 00:04:35,100 --> 00:04:38,960 Because I was making some pretty intentional and dramatic moves, 108 00:04:38,960 --> 00:04:40,669 such as not showing the genitalia, 109 00:04:40,669 --> 00:04:42,419 which was always a thing. 110 00:04:42,419 --> 00:04:45,939 But I was really interested in humanizing 111 00:04:45,940 --> 00:04:49,640 in a history that is often criminalized and sexualized. 112 00:04:49,640 --> 00:04:51,960 So, I didn’t want the black male body 113 00:04:51,960 --> 00:04:54,820 to be taken advantage of 114 00:04:54,820 --> 00:04:56,759 any more than historically it has been. 115 00:04:56,759 --> 00:04:58,939 So that was like a gesture of 116 00:04:58,940 --> 00:05:00,220 not allowing people to have 117 00:05:00,220 --> 00:05:02,600 what they felt like they deserved from the body. 118 00:05:02,860 --> 00:05:04,120 [STUDENT] To consume the body... 119 00:05:04,120 --> 00:05:05,120 [CASTEEL] Yeah, exactly. 120 00:05:05,340 --> 00:05:06,160 Yeah, of course. 121 00:05:06,160 --> 00:05:07,060 Thank you, guys! 122 00:05:07,060 --> 00:05:09,000 Best of luck to you as well. 123 00:05:21,220 --> 00:05:23,440 [SOUNDS OF DJEMBE DRUMMING] 124 00:05:39,800 --> 00:05:41,819 There was some conversation about 125 00:05:41,819 --> 00:05:44,919 my paintings being surrogates for my brother. 126 00:05:44,919 --> 00:05:47,469 And it was when that conversation came up that 127 00:05:47,469 --> 00:05:50,770 I first was like, "Oh, you’re maybe right." 128 00:05:50,770 --> 00:05:53,240 "Like, maybe I need to go to the source of all of this." 129 00:05:53,240 --> 00:05:55,880 "Maybe it's time for me to actually paint my twin." 130 00:05:57,800 --> 00:05:59,140 [RECORDING] One, two, three… 131 00:05:59,820 --> 00:06:00,880 [MUSIC BEGINS PLAYING] 132 00:06:01,740 --> 00:06:02,580 [MAN, OFF SCREEN] Turn up! 133 00:06:02,580 --> 00:06:03,620 [LAUGHTER] 134 00:06:06,100 --> 00:06:07,720 [CASTEEL] I never heard this song. 135 00:06:07,720 --> 00:06:08,800 [WOMAN, OFF SCREEN] What!? 136 00:06:09,640 --> 00:06:10,960 [WOMAN] Oh, we do know this! 137 00:06:14,800 --> 00:06:16,440 [MAN] The fact that y'all all dancing to this song, 138 00:06:16,440 --> 00:06:17,640 like it's, like… 139 00:06:18,600 --> 00:06:19,680 I've never heard this song in my life. 140 00:06:19,680 --> 00:06:20,360 [ALL LAUGH] 141 00:06:20,720 --> 00:06:23,520 [MAN]: Let’s get the hottest rappers around right now. 142 00:06:23,520 --> 00:06:24,600 Lil Yachty! 143 00:06:24,600 --> 00:06:25,500 [ALL LAUGH] 144 00:06:25,500 --> 00:06:27,620 [WOMAN] Lil Yachty! Oh my God! 145 00:06:27,620 --> 00:06:28,240 [MAN] See? 146 00:06:30,520 --> 00:06:31,980 [MAN] I feel like I’m doing like a… 147 00:06:32,180 --> 00:06:33,780 [WOMAN] Like a belly dance, yes! 148 00:06:35,100 --> 00:06:37,460 [WOMAN] You have such an emotional connection... 149 00:06:37,460 --> 00:06:39,800 Like, the moments when you decide to photograph. 150 00:06:39,800 --> 00:06:42,680 Like, with the twins, like, all of a sudden, 151 00:06:42,680 --> 00:06:44,500 they're lifted in a way that's like… 152 00:06:44,500 --> 00:06:45,480 I don’t know how to… 153 00:06:45,480 --> 00:06:47,500 [CASTEEL] Well that wasn't an intentional photograph. 154 00:06:47,500 --> 00:06:49,620 Like, I was photographing Charles, the fur guy. 155 00:06:50,100 --> 00:06:52,360 And this woman pushed her babies in front of my camera 156 00:06:52,360 --> 00:06:53,760 and was like, "Photograph my babies!" 157 00:06:53,760 --> 00:06:54,740 [ALL LAUGH] 158 00:06:54,780 --> 00:06:55,700 [CASTEEL] No, literally. 159 00:06:55,700 --> 00:06:56,960 And I was like, what? 160 00:06:56,980 --> 00:06:57,980 Okay? 161 00:06:58,360 --> 00:07:00,440 And I took one shot. Like it was literally, like, click. 162 00:07:00,460 --> 00:07:02,460 And I was like, "Oh they're so cute, are they twins?" 163 00:07:02,460 --> 00:07:03,500 And she was like "Yeah they are," 164 00:07:03,500 --> 00:07:04,420 and then just like ran off. 165 00:07:04,430 --> 00:07:05,430 [MAN] Wow… 166 00:07:05,430 --> 00:07:06,430 [WOMAN] Did you tell her you're a twin? 167 00:07:06,430 --> 00:07:07,729 [CASTEEL] Yeah, I was like "Oh, I'm a twin too," 168 00:07:07,729 --> 00:07:09,449 "So maybe I, like, noticed that or something." 169 00:07:09,449 --> 00:07:10,569 And she was like, “Oh, okay that makes sense," 170 00:07:10,569 --> 00:07:11,830 And then she kind of, like, ran off. 171 00:07:11,830 --> 00:07:13,520 [MAN] And have you found her since then? 172 00:07:13,520 --> 00:07:15,700 [CASTEEL] No! No. I have no idea. 173 00:07:21,000 --> 00:07:23,860 When we were really young, we were really, really close. 174 00:07:23,860 --> 00:07:26,620 And then we went to high school, and we were both... 175 00:07:26,620 --> 00:07:28,000 We went from this all white, 176 00:07:28,009 --> 00:07:30,509 private middle school from first to eighth grade, 177 00:07:30,509 --> 00:07:34,500 where we were the only two black kids, basically, in the whole school. 178 00:07:34,520 --> 00:07:40,260 And we transferred in high school to our local public high school. 179 00:07:40,260 --> 00:07:43,139 And both of us experienced some bullying, 180 00:07:43,139 --> 00:07:46,840 I think, because we were coming from a different background 181 00:07:46,840 --> 00:07:49,280 than a lot of the other students. 182 00:07:49,280 --> 00:07:51,560 [MAN] It’s like I'm, like, setting it down though. 183 00:07:51,560 --> 00:07:52,700 [CASTEEL] Yeah! Yeah. 184 00:07:52,720 --> 00:07:54,560 Well, here, maybe sit in front of it, 185 00:07:54,560 --> 00:07:56,520 then I can do a close up of y'all sitting in front of it. 186 00:07:56,520 --> 00:07:57,830 Would that be cool? 187 00:07:57,830 --> 00:07:58,939 [CAMERA SHUTTER CLICKS] 188 00:07:58,939 --> 00:08:00,580 The way that I dealt with that was I made 189 00:08:00,580 --> 00:08:02,819 cookie cutter peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, 190 00:08:02,819 --> 00:08:05,819 and I would sit outside of my favorite teacher's classroom-- 191 00:08:05,819 --> 00:08:07,039 on the floor, during lunch-- 192 00:08:07,039 --> 00:08:09,460 and eat my cookie cutter sandwiches. 193 00:08:09,460 --> 00:08:11,760 But my twin, on the other hand, 194 00:08:11,780 --> 00:08:14,300 was bullied more physically. 195 00:08:14,300 --> 00:08:16,700 I think he literally had to, like, 196 00:08:16,700 --> 00:08:18,420 become tougher. 197 00:08:19,560 --> 00:08:23,340 And a lot of that had to do with societal expectations. 198 00:08:23,340 --> 00:08:24,220 I only feel like… 199 00:08:24,220 --> 00:08:26,300 I just, in at least a public sense, 200 00:08:26,800 --> 00:08:28,340 I get really conscious… 201 00:08:28,340 --> 00:08:30,560 His story is not mine to tell. 202 00:08:31,040 --> 00:08:35,500 And I can only speak from the perspective of his sister. 203 00:08:35,500 --> 00:08:39,200 And somebody who's seen him as this really funny 204 00:08:39,220 --> 00:08:42,580 sensitive, charismatic, loving young man, 205 00:08:42,589 --> 00:08:45,960 and recognizing that the world perceives him differently. 206 00:08:45,960 --> 00:08:50,000 And as a result, this work, I think, really comes from 207 00:08:50,000 --> 00:08:53,280 my desire to share 208 00:08:53,300 --> 00:08:55,400 what I have known with the world.