“Robin Coste Lewis: “I don’t accept the idea of my history as tragic.””
“The more research I did, the more heinous it became, the larger it became, the more I realized that the entire Western world is saturated by black female figures, everywhere. Even if it’s not in the painting, it’s in the frame that someone carved to house the painting. In certain frames you’ll have black female figures carved in these subservient postures, or even a beautiful mahogany chair with black female figures as the legs, or holding up a basin. And that shocked me so much that I quickly realized that the project was going to have to expand…
One of the things that is intrinsic for anyone within this period, but especially for people of color, or anyone who’s been repressed, people in exile, anybody that’s lost the floor in some way, whether nationally or culturally, is that we learn that absence is as much a presence in our lives as anything else — if not the greatest presence of all. So I tried very deliberately to have absence be the main character in that so-called story. And it’s very important to me that fragmentation be something that’s not only present, but that I also celebrate. I don’t accept the idea of my history as tragic. I refuse that in every way that I possibly can. And in order to do that, I have to embrace and celebrate situations that many people quite understandably renounce…
Why would a person need to hold a black woman’s body in their hand while they shave their face? That’s not a black sadness, to me. That’s a white, pathological, tragic sadness that has really nothing to do with me.”
There are so many moments I want to pull from this interview.
Like — this is beautiful and meaningful about remembering our identities —
“ there’s a line that says, but maybe “embodiment is so bewildering, even God grows / wracked with doubt.” That occurs in Sanskrit epic over and over and over again. The gods are constantly forgetting that they are gods. The gods are constantly making a mess and acting out. Rama is one of the classic examples. In The Ramayana, when Sita is abducted by a demon, and Rama, the god, loses his woman, he completely loses it. Mind you, this is the incarnation of Vishnu, the creator of the entire universe. But he loses his shit. And his best friend, Laksmana, takes him by the shoulder and shakes him and says, “Rama, Rama! Stop losing your shit, you’re a god, dude! Come on!” This scene has always stayed with me. Even God forgets that God is God.”
