Senga Nengudi

LO-B

It was moving to see you on the stage at the Nasher gala receiving the lifetime achievement award with your family and longtime friends and collaborators, like Maren Hassinger. How did that feel?

SN

It was kind of an out of the body experience to be there, as awardees tend to say on the Academy Awards. It was highly emotional for me. And that's quite a team there at the Nasher. They really know how to put on a party. And just to be able to be there and receive the accolades and to receive the love, so to speak, was amazing. I remember thinking that night that there's so many of my colleagues who are not here, not with us on planet Earth anymore. So, I felt representative of my crew. But yes—I was so glad Maren could make it. That was very important to me.

LO-B

And this is such a huge year for you. It almost seems like you're having a retrospective show spread across parts of the US.

SN

I know. It genuinely is amazing. And obviously, I feel the same kind of things. It’s just great that I'm here to experience it. It feels good with the interviews I've been doing to be able to state my history and point of view and not have it distorted. That's so important that I can say what I want to say, and that it’s not interpreted this way or that.

LO-B

Unfiltered Senga.

SN

Yes, yes. [Laughs.]

LO-B

It’s also interesting to me that some of the shows are in Beacon and Dallas, away from art world centers. For a long time, you've lived in Colorado, also away from the art world. Has that distance been generative for you?

SN

Yes. In the latter part of 1989, we moved from LA to Colorado. My husband had wanted to move out of LA for the longest time and into a smaller community. And I would have none of it because I was accustomed to urban life. But then after a while, it just felt like it was time to leave, especially of course with my kids growing up and wanting more space. The atmosphere in LA was also getting funky by the late ’80s and certainly intense in the early ’90s. But also, I felt like I had hit a wall creatively and artistically and I really wanted to make that change. I like that people here don’t, or didn’t, really pay attention to you; you could create things and develop projects and develop thoughts and concepts and you had all that space. Space to me was important.

LO-B

Did you feel like your work changed after you moved?

SN

In a way, because after we moved, my mother had a stroke. She had a full stroke, and I couldn't really go anyplace. And so, a lot of the stuff was happening in my head. So, you know I do performances. I could do these performance concepts in my head. So, in that sense, yes, it changed.

LO-B

Though it seems like performance always had a conceptual side for you—and Maren. What was it like meeting her for the first time? Through the Brockman Gallery, right?

SN

Yes. We quickly found that we had similar interests. We both were interested in dance and movement and sculpture and all of that. So that allowed us to quickly become friends. I had a solo show at Pearl C. Woods gallery in Los Angeles and I asked her if she would be a part of that and interact with the work. And she said yes, and it kind of went off from there. We had these friendships and relationships with other artists and it all just naturally happened. We went into a “what if” kind of situation. Maren and I have been a constant, but Ulysses Jenkins and another dear friend of ours, Franklin Parker, and then Houston Conwell, we kind of paired with everybody and we would say, "Oh. Why don't we do this? Why don't we do that? Why don't we go here? Why don't we go there?" And it was just so much fun. We were the explorers, and it just kind of evolved. We all had these ideas that we wanted to put into play, and we were our own personnel in a sense.

LO-B

Is there a particular work you’ve made with Maren that you are the proudest of, or the happiest with?

SN

Well, every piece has its own energy, particularly with the R.S.V.P. pieces. So, there's two that stick out in my mind. One was at White Cube in London. To my mind, that was the epitome of what I wanted the interaction with R.S.V.P. sculpture to be like, and then the other one was early on, and that was a piece I choreographed for Maren, Ulysses, and Parker called Dance Card.

LO-B

The first was R.S.V.P. X activated by Maren Hassinger (2014) right? What about it sticks out in your mind?

SN

Well, at White Cube it was just sweet perfection. I had audience participation. Maren was able to really interact with the sculpture the way she had intended which was partnering with it and make it to almost suggest the next movement. It felt like watching Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. For me personally, it was exquisite.

LO-B

I read that you had spread thin strips of sand around the bottom edges of the walls for that show, as an alternative baseboard. And we see that at Dia Beacon too. Is sand your favorite material to work with?

SN

Well, water and sand are my favorites. Both are highly flexible and eternal. I also love found objects of course because they all have their own energy and history. And I love plastic. But I am taken with sand and water in all their forms and that they are ever changing.

LO-B

Eternal is a great word for those. What initially drew you to work with cast-off materials and secondhand items in the 1970s? You mentioned the energy and history—could you talk more about that?

SN

Yes. And I think it was money [Laughs.]

LO-B

Right, humble and modest materials but also completely revolutionary in terms of sculpture.

SN

Yes. It was what was there for me and that enticed me. I was interested in the history and the energy that was in the pieces that I would pick up. I love history in general and so that fed into it, finding these objects that already had their own histories to them. But that makes it kind of problematic when I'm trying to duplicate something because there really is no duplication [Laughs].

LO-B

Would you also attribute your interest in working with artifacts as Californian? I’m thinking of the Funk art artists in Northern California in the 1960s but also of course of Betye Saar in LA working at the same time.

SN

Yes, especially Betye Saar.

LO-B

Did it feel like working with found objects could be easier on the West Coast than on the East Coast?

SN

Yes. We were the stepchildren out in LA. There’s always this competition between LA and New York, or just even the West Coast and the East Coast. There was West Coast Jazz, there was East Coast jazz, you know. But it did seem like West Coast art could be considered the lesser of the two. And now that's flipping, but at the time people treated us like we were pretty green, inexperienced. So, that also meant that the possibilities were wide open.

LO-B

And seems like you didn't pay any attention to any of that competition. You just moved forward.

SN

Of course. I mean, if we paid attention to everything that was going on . . . oh my gosh. But we paid attention to the fact that we were not even covered in West Coast magazines, like High Performance and so on. We just did what we had to do. And we felt like, well, it’s their problem if they didn't figure out language or a way of explaining what we were doing—or even figuring out what we were doing. But yes, if we waited for that kind of recognition, forget it.

LO-B

Photography feels like an undiscussed medium in your work—particularly when it comes to images of your studio performances. Has there ever been a show of just your photos? I know you also take photos as Propecia Leigh so maybe we can talk about that.

SN

You know what? I don't think so. They've been included in a lot of the exhibits, but there hasn't been solely one of performance documentation.

LO-B

For example, Rapunzel, from 1981, which was on view at the Nasher is one of the most beautiful works of yours.

SN

Yes. That was taken by a friend of mine, Barbara McCullough, who is a filmmaker, and has made Water Ritual 1: An Urban Rite of Purification and Shopping Bag Spirits and Freeway Fetishes.

I was going home one day, taking a way that I normally go, and I noticed that this Catholic school was being torn down. It had been in the community forever and it kind of looked like a little castle, with stones and brick and all that kind of stuff. So, I called Barbara and asked her to meet me there. We were both with our kids and the workers were literally bulldozing the structure down as we were there. The only thing that was left was that little area that looks like the little castle. And so, I grabbed my sturdy costume and went inside while they were still bulldozing—they did not stop. Thank God that day she had enough money for film because that was always an issue too.

LO-B

Did I read that those were David Hammons's sculptures that you're holding onto? The wire and hair.

SN

Yes. Part of it was.

LO-B

There’s a related picture of you and your sons sitting on top of the rubble. It’s also a great one.

SN

All that was left was the rubble, so we sat right on top of it.

LO-B

And then you have also taken photos as Propecia Leigh. Are you still?

SN

I am. I have an issue sometimes with that, which is if I should say my real name or if I should say my persona, but yes.

LO-B

How did the personas come about?

SN

I started playing with the idea of personas a few decades ago. It’s interesting to me that there can be an expectation or judgement placed on someone just based on their name. An ongoing performance that I began a while ago is my “What’s in a name” personas. What is in a name? I propose plenty. That is why I have a different name for each medium I use. In Black culture naming has great significance. We have been “called out of our names” so much that controlling that aspect of our lives with a B’rer Rabbit sensibility is important.

LO-B

Yes, that sense of fluidity is important as a material as well. At Dia Beacon, you’re showing some of your early “Water Compositions,” from 1969 and 1970. These are works that, as you once said in another interview, were the “beginning of your sensual self.” What prompted that change?

SN

Well, I was in college, and I was experimenting with this and that. And I have always had this desire to stuff stuff [Laughs]. The hard thing with some of my pieces is that really the best way to experience them is to touch them and unfortunately in a museum setting, that's not possible. But the minute you touch the water pieces, they respond, and that is exciting to me. Just like R.S.V.P., I want that response, and I want people to be a part of the experience. I’m not interested in just looking—but in having an experience and then expanding from there.

LO-B

It’s interesting that in some of your earliest works such as Black and Red Ensemble (1971), your master’s thesis project for Cal State, people could touch the art.

SN

Right, that’s immersive and people can touch of course.

LO-B

It was an “environment for dance,” as you said. How did that work come about?

SN

When I was a kid, my mother took me to this place in Downtown LA called Clifton’s Cafe, and it was basically a cafeteria—it had selections of food that you would take a piece and put it on your tray and then go down the line and all that. But the fellow that owned it was quite religious. And so, once I went to the bathroom downstairs, which was kind of like going down into some catacombs, and there was this life size Jesus that was just… wow. And so, you know I sat on its lap, and I really feel as though that experience did it for me. I wanted to make something large. I wanted to have other people have this immersive experience and to make something three dimensional. That's my first recollection of really thinking in that way even though I was like nine or ten years old that really stuck with me.

LO-B

From the beginning, abstraction, dance, and performance have been elements in your work, flowing freely. Looking back, how would you contextualize your early interest in these concepts, especially abstraction?

SN

I like difference. The work can't be straight on. There has to be some kind of distortion. And as you know, one of my earliest idols was Picasso. The one thing I liked was that he was ever changing. A lot of artists don’t have that kind of variation in their art. Also, I really was very deficient in Black sculpture, Black art, Black anything—they just did not teach it. So, it was a long time before I even knew about the Harlem Renaissance, because it just was not taught and then I got annoyed with my guy because he said a lot of dumb famous things like, when he was asked, "Well, what do you think about African art?" He said, "What art?

And I said, "Wait a minute." Oh boy. So, there was all of that. When I was growing up, there was no Black art studies—you had to go learn that on your own. I still to this day don't speak French but I took French in high school and college because I found that the only books that covered African art were usually in French. And with my limited amount of French, I could see in those books the horrific, colonialized thinking related to African art. So, you were kind on your own to gather information on one's own culture.

LO-B

That's enraging. But when you came to New York, did you learn about the Harlem Renaissance?

SN

Yes. In earnest I really didn't learn about it until I was old as black pepper, when I moved to New York [Laughs.]. Although at the studio at the Watts Towers Arts Center, I had an opportunity to meet Richmond Barthé. He was still alive at the time, one of the artists from the Harlem Renaissance and so that was very exciting. He was very humble and everything, but I didn't know who these people were though now of course I'm standing on their shoulders. And today when I'm carrying a purse, I have some postcards of their work. I maybe have about five or six cards of various artists just to stay in touch to know from whence I came, so to speak.

LO-B

Absolutely. And when you were in art school, did you have any Black professors?

SN

[Laughs.]

LO-B

Ok, so no.

SN

I was the only Black female in the sculpture department, and there was one other Black male artist. So yes, that was it. But I was so fortunate that I got that job at the Watts Towers Arts Center as well as the Pasadena Art Museum, which was an exceptional place, I wish someone would eventually write on that place as there’s such a history there. So anyway, that was my education being in at the last Watts Towers Arts Center under Noah Purifoy, who was the director.

LO-B

That’s such a great way to learn—with the artist on site, in that space.

SN

Yes. So, in that way I was educated. I really was. I was very fortunate.

LO-B

Obviously, there was also a lot going on politically and socially at that moment in the US—did you feel like your work responded to the violence at home and abroad?

SN

No. I am fond of saying that art is a really big boat. It's like a Noah's ark in a sense. And there's enough room for everybody to do it whichever way they want to, and if there's that freedom, then I don't have to be put into a box. If somebody's doing it and I love their work that doesn't mean I have to do it their way. I had to do it my way, I guess. And even though it might not look like political art, like with the R.S.V.P. works, they are fragmented bodies. Culture affects you—in an abstract way.

LO-B

But with the R.S.V.P.’s, aren't those are based on your lived experience, being pregnant?

SN

Right, right. I was responding to the changes of my body, and what affected those changes, internally as well as externally.

LO-B

There's so much more to say about that but I feel like the scholars have done their work already. So, of your many works, do you have a favorite or is there one body of work that you consider the most important?

SN

I try to look at it like children. If you have three different children, and one might be a really good kid, one might be kind of off, one might be this or that—but you love them all and what they have to teach you. So, I can't really pick one. It's my journey, it's my process, and it looks different each time. When Miles Davis was in his “electric period,” after about 1975 or so I remember thinking, “He's not doing what he used to do, it’s not as good,” and so on. But later I realized that it's all an exploration and if you don't like it, hey, that's your problem. I have to explore everything, and it might be something you like, or you might not, but I have to go through this process to get to the next point.

LO-B

Yes. What would you say is your greatest achievement so far?

SN

In terms of awards and stuff like that, the greatest one is this Nasher Award. The thing that really is so humbling is that so many artists and scholars and so on, put my name out. That was shocking to me. So that is a very special kind of feeling, and like I said, it’s very humbling because I don't look like anybody else. My stuff is different. Just to think of it at Dia Beacon! I'm with all the guys there, like John Chamberlain and Mel Edwards and all these artists who I adore—but how does my work fit in? So, I just do what I do because it feels uncomfortable to do something that doesn't come from myself, I guess. But we're all here to do our own special thing our own voices, to sing our own song.

LO-B

Something that’s clear at Dia is that you’re not choosing to work with one specific or signature style. There’s even maybe a little bit of figuration in there with the floating red figures that look like ghosts.

SN

Yes, those are just commentary on spirit, the energy coming into the space.

LO-B

That's beautiful and leads me to my last question. I tend to ask this one in long interviews: What can people depend on in this time of deluge, spiritual or not spiritual?

SN

I think you can depend on nothing. I've never seen such a fluid time. You have to keep trying to be grounded. And this isn’t quite answering your question, but my biggest concern right now is truth. What is true and what's not true? How does one distinguish truth today? How do you maintain your sense of truth about yourself and how you determine truth as you're moving through the world. So that is something that I think about a lot currently. It’s as if you have to always have some kind of detector, like a metal detector, to really have a sense of what's true and what's not true.