WEBVTT

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[New York Close Up]

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["Jordan Casteel Paints Her Community"]

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[JORDAN CASTEEL] Hi there.

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Do you remember me?

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Do you know where Harold is?

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Have you seen…

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Harold?

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Do you remember that I painted him?

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I wanted to show him the painting.

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I gave him my stuff
so he could get in contact with me,

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but I haven't seen him back out here.

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[MAN] I haven’t seen him in a while.

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[CASTEEL] Okay, if I ever saw him then...

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[MAN] I haven’t seen him in about a year.

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[CASTEEL] I can email or text it to him.

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This is like seven foot tall, too.

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It's big.

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Get kind of close to your dad.

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Get like right here.

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Because this is your dad?

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Or that’s your dad?

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Yeah! I love it.

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Now I see it. That's so good.

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[MAN] Thank you.

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[CASTEEL] Yeah, come right here.

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I want you close to this middle one.

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[CAMERA SHUTTER CLICKS]

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Will you put this leg in a little bit?

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Yeah!

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I’m just thinking about my canvas.

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Yeah, that's perfect.

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[MAN] Thank you.
[CASTEEL] Look.

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[MAN] Oh yeah, that’s lovely.

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[CASTEEL] The summer between my first and
second year at Yale,

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I was awarded a grant to get
ten thousand dollars

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and to go to Gloucester, Massachusetts
to do landscape painting.

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During that time,

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there was the acquittal of
the murderer of Trayvon Martin.

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Gloucester is a very white place,

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as in I was probably the only brown person
for miles.

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So like, there was a sense of isolation
that I was sort of feeling around that experience.

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[Home of Jordan’s Aunt]

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I remember

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having a phone conversation with my twin brother.

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My twin was describing being
in a convenience store

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and somebody was following him,

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and he was kind of going on this rant, like,

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"You know, people follow me like I'm a threat,"

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"but they don’t even know that I'm a father"

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"and I'm, like, trying to get my shit together."

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"They don't know anything about me,"

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"I'm just the one who's, like,"

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"going to steal something or whatever."

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I think I felt at that time

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that I needed to go back to Yale

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and do work outside of landscapes--

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that I needed to find a way to combine

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my desire to create a sense of
visibility around

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my family and my brothers that was feeling
absent at that time.

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Let me help you with your ringtone.

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Record it?

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[AUNT] We have to record it.

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Go in the settings and see how you do that.

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[SINGING]
♪ Trump is our enemy. ♪

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♪ He must be removed ♪

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♪ Trump is our enemy. ♪

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♪ He must be removed. ♪

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♪ Just like a can of garbage in the alley, ♪

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♪ he must be removed. ♪

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Yeah!

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[CASTEEL] Okay now we got to test it out,

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But I think I did it!

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Okay.

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[AUNT] Okay, and then you call me,

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and let's see if this works.

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[FROM RECORDING]
♪ He must be removed. ♪

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[LAUGHS]

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[CASTEEL] Everytime the phone rings,
that's now what it is!

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So I came back to Yale and was like,

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"I am going to paint my black men"

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"Imma do this thing about my family, basically."

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Nine times out of ten, people think that
I am a man

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before they meet me.

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Even though, like…

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Yeah, because my name is Jordan
and I'm painting men.

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So even at my own openings,

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the number of times that my mother…

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I hear my mother across a room being like,

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"SHE's over there!"

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And I'm like, "Mom, it's okay."

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And I think a lot of that has to do with 
historical painting

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and the notion of who has the right

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to depict what bodies at what scale.

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And, I like that.

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I feel really present in this work as a result.

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Like, whenever people…

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There have been some criticisms of:
I only paint men.

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And every time people say women are absent,

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or people are like, "When are you going to
paint women?"

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I'm like, I don’t know if I feel absence,

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because I’m very much a part of this work,

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and it's translated through my experience.

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So, these nudes happened,

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which was horrifying.

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And I got a lot of criticism, sort of,

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during that time around it.

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Because I was making some pretty
intentional and dramatic moves,

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such as not showing the genitalia,

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which was always a thing.

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But I was really interested in humanizing

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in a history that is often
criminalized and sexualized.

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So, I didn’t want the black male body

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to be taken advantage of

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any more than historically it has been.

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So that was like a gesture of

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not allowing people to have

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what they felt like they deserved
from the body.

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[STUDENT] To consume the body...

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[CASTEEL] Yeah, exactly.

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Yeah, of course.

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Thank you, guys!

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Best of luck to you as well.

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[SOUNDS OF DJEMBE DRUMMING]

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There was some conversation about

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my paintings being surrogates for my brother.

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And it was when that conversation
came up that

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I first was like, "Oh, you’re maybe right."

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"Like, maybe I need to go to the source of
all of this."

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"Maybe it's time for me to actually paint
my twin."

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[RECORDING] One, two, three…

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[MUSIC BEGINS PLAYING]

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[MAN, OFF SCREEN] Turn up!

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[LAUGHTER]

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[CASTEEL] I never heard this song.

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[WOMAN, OFF SCREEN] What!?

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[WOMAN] Oh, we do know this!

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[MAN] The fact that y'all
all dancing to this song,

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like it's, like…

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I've never heard this song in my life.

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[ALL LAUGH]

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[MAN]: Let’s get the hottest rappers around
right now.

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Lil Yachty!

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[ALL LAUGH]

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[WOMAN] Lil Yachty!
Oh my God!

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[MAN] See?

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[MAN] I feel like I’m doing like a…

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[WOMAN] Like a belly dance, yes!

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[WOMAN] You have such an emotional connection...

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Like, the moments when you decide to photograph.

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Like, with the twins, like, all of a sudden,

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they're lifted in a way that's like…

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I don’t know how to…

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[CASTEEL] Well that wasn't an intentional
photograph.

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Like, I was photographing Charles,
the fur guy.

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And this woman pushed her babies in front
of my camera

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and was like, "Photograph my babies!"

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[ALL LAUGH]

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[CASTEEL] No, literally.

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And I was like, what?

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Okay?

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And I took one shot.
Like it was literally, like, click.

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And I was like, "Oh they're so cute,
are they twins?"

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And she was like "Yeah they are,"

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and then just like ran off.

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[MAN] Wow…

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[WOMAN] Did you tell her you're a twin?

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[CASTEEL] Yeah, I was like
"Oh, I'm a twin too,"

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"So maybe I, like, noticed that or something."

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And she was like, “Oh, okay that makes sense,"

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And then she kind of, like, ran off.

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[MAN] And have you found her since then?

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[CASTEEL] No! No.
I have no idea.

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When we were really young,
we were really, really close.

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And then we went to high school,
and we were both...

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We went from this all white,

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private middle school
from first to eighth grade,

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where we were the only two black kids,
basically, in the whole school.

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And we transferred in high school
to our local public high school.

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And both of us experienced some bullying,

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I think, because we were coming from
a different background

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than a lot of the other students.

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[MAN] It’s like I'm, like,
setting it down though.

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[CASTEEL] Yeah! Yeah.

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Well, here, maybe sit in front of it,

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then I can do a close up of y'all sitting
in front of it.

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Would that be cool?

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[CAMERA SHUTTER CLICKS]

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The way that I dealt with that was I made

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cookie cutter peanut butter and jelly sandwiches,

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and I would sit outside of
my favorite teacher's classroom--

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on the floor, during lunch--

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and eat my cookie cutter sandwiches.

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But my twin, on the other hand,

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was bullied more physically.

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I think he literally had to, like,

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become tougher.

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And a lot of that had to do with
societal expectations.

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I only feel like…

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I just, in at least a public sense,

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I get really conscious…

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His story is not mine to tell.

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And I can only speak from the perspective
of his sister.

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And somebody who's seen him as
this really funny

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sensitive, charismatic,
loving young man,

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and recognizing that the world
perceives him differently.

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And as a result,
this work, I think, really comes from

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my desire to share

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what I have known with the world.