Kevin Beasley's Raw Materials | Art21 "New York Close Up"

[DRUMMING]

[KEVIN BEASLEY]
--There's not going to be a beginning...

[DRUMMING]

--I think that's enough to start.

[DRUMMING]

[CLAP]

So right now,

I've been putting a lot of energy
into an exhibition at the Whitney,

which is my first major solo exhibition
here in the city.

The project is multiple parts.

There is a sound installation,

that is rooted around
a cotton gin motor,

and three large sculptural works.

The work really comes out
of an experience I had at a family reunion

in Valentines, Virginia,
in the summer of 2011.

I drove down from New Haven.

The property has a meandering road
that leads to the house.

I look up,
and I see the fields are planted.

I stopped the car and I looked,

and I was like, "Whoa, what is that?"

And I rolled the window down,
and I saw that it was cotton.

It struck me in a way that I couldn't quite
wrap my head around.

Emotionally, it was too heavy.

Mentally, it was too heavy.

I felt like I hadn't reconciled something.

I was like, "Why am I so mad at this plant?"

This plant is not doing anything other than
growing and being beautiful.

I felt like, okay, there's a lot of unpacking
that has to happen.

--You know, I want to actually point to this
cotton here.

--This here has all been ginned.

--This is all cotton from Virginia,

--Valentines, Virginia.

Using cotton, raw cotton, as a material
is really important,

because as materially-oriented as I am,

it's all because there is a context
for those materials.

For the exhibition, there will be
three large sculptural works.

I've been calling them slabs,
because of their relationship to architecture.

They're made from wildly different materials.

--This is a sweater.

--It's a Yale cotton,

--really nice, preppy sweater.

--And then these are some durags,
some blue ones.

--For this they're going to represent a
river,

--or some sort of flowing water.

Every material has some sort of
history or life that it's lived.

They become ways of telling stories.

--This is a collar from my cap and gown,
when I graduated from Yale.

When I think about cotton,
it takes me everywhere.

You think about politics.

You think about social relationships you have.

You think about economics.

Reparations.

It all just unfolds and is laid out.

These pages come from an
atlas of the Transatlantic slave trade.

It's remarkable that these records
have been kept for so long

and in such detail.

But it's also indicative of trade and commerce.

You keep track of every single thing,
every movement,

because there's money
and there's capital involved.

But these were bodies.

Being a Black person in this current state,

that’s what you're encouraged to do--
is to move on.

Like, "Ok, there's been time."

"There's been space," right?

It's a false narrative.

But it also is one that you
feel the pressure from.

That to me is an essential aspect
of making sculpture.

You have to deal with its materiality.

These works, I think,
they demand that.

They demand you to confront them,

because they're confronting you.

[DRUMMING]

[DRUMS STOP, SILENCE]

I was searching for a cotton gin.

I had cotton, and I was thinking,

maybe I could make t-shirts,
or I can make garments.

I went on eBay,

searching for a small hand-held,
hand-cranked thing,

and the first thing I came across
was an ad for this large cotton gin motor.

I felt like it was telling me what I needed
to do.

The cotton gin was invented by
Eli Whitney in 1794.

What it does is it separates
the fibers from the seeds,

which was the most time-consuming part
for slaves.

People thought that it would decrease
the number of slaves.

But it actually had the opposite effect,

because more land was acquired,
plantations got larger.

It actually increased the number of slaves.

The cotton gin motor is encased
in a sound-proof glass chamber,

and primarily came out of this decision
to be able to experience

and see the motor running,
and not hear it.

That came out of a conversation
with the former owner,

where, when I asked him about
what it sounded like,

he couldn't articulate.

He didn't have the words
to really describe that sound.

It was really something that
you had to experience for yourself.

--Okay.

Sound has always been important to me.

It has increasingly become a way
for me to process the world.

Sound is just as physical and tactile
as any other material.

[PROCESSED SOUND OF COTTON GIN MOTOR]

[SILENCE]

How do you deliver that physicality,
or that tactility of something you can't see,

or something that you don't feel
in a traditional way?

[PROCESSED SOUND OF COTTON GIN MOTOR]

It shakes your insides.

You feel the vibrations.

Do people want to sit and listen to this?

Do they want to take the time to consider

what that sound is,
and where it is coming from?

I'm interested in people asking
what their relationship is to this material--

to see a wall of cotton
that comes from a really specific place,

the American South--

just to think about
what their relationship is to that,

and how do they feel implicated,
if at all.

Are we really taking the time to process
and understand these things?

So I think setting up a scenario
where people can take the time

is as much as I can really offer.