Naima Green: “Begin from a place of questioning”
Brooklyn and Mexico City-based photographer Naima Green is one of the artists showing work in the Authority Collective’s group show, “Parallax,” which offers an alternate view of the contemporary queer experience from the eyes of queer and trans image-makers of color. Check out the work of our exhibiting artists at the first-ever Photoville Los Angeles from April 26–28 and May 2–5.
What informs your work? Why do you make the work you make?
“Is it possible to form a sense of self outside our relationships and environments? Can I participate in a community that I’m documenting? How might I neutralize the power dynamics native to portraiture?
As an artist and educator, my art practice begins from a place of questioning, of working through critical ideas by archiving communities and working towards understanding my iterations of self.
Formally, my artistic investigations manifest as a synthesis of photography, text, weaving, and photo-performance. My work emerges as a way to shift dynamics about who is worthy of having a portrait made, to invite my subjects to be collaborators, and to re-contextualize the way black and queer experiences are pictured, understood, and therefore lived.
My conceptual inquiries position as primary the body and language as a way of indexing, collecting, and archiving forms of subjectivity. I think of the body as a site of experimentation, one that is fluid, and where notions of access and transformation can be examined.”
Why is it important to provide an “alternate view of the contemporary queer experience”? For artists image their own communities?
“If we don’t picture our communities they will either go undocumented or documented by outsiders who might not treat us with the same care and consideration.”
How can the photo and film industries better support queer and trans artists of color?
“Commission us. Hire us. Mentor us.”
Follow Naima Green on Instagram and check out her website here: http://www.naimagreen.com. Naima holds an MFA in Photography from ICP–Bard, an MA from Teachers College, Columbia University, and a BA from Barnard College, Columbia University. Green presented two solo exhibitions in 2018 — All the black language and A Collective Utterance.
Read more about Naima here:
Artsy: https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-naima-green-captures-faces-queer-community
Frontrunner Magazine: https://www.frontrunnermagazine.com/naima-green-the-frontrunner-interview/
NYLON: https://nylon.com/naima-green-pur-suit-interview
