March 22, 2021 • 30 mins
Jovan C. Speller joins Matthew Fluharty for a conversation on her recent work and its meditation on Black origins, land, and multilayered family histories.
Jovan C. Speller is a multidisciplinary artist based in Minneapolis, MN. Her work – visual, textual and performative – interprets historic narratives through contemporary discourse. Her research-based practice is centered around elevating, complicating and inventing stories that explore ancestry, identity, and spatial memory – making the intangible tangible and the invisible visible.
Speller holds a B.F.A. in Fine Art Photography from Columbia College Chicago. Speller's work has been exhibited at The Plains Art Museum, the Bockley Gallery, and Minneapolis College of Art and Design, with upcoming solo exhibitions at Aspect/Ratio Projects and the Minneapolis Institute of Art. She is a recipient of the McKnight Visual Artist Fellowship, a Next Step Fund Grant, the Jerome Emerging Artist Fellowship, and a Minnesota State Arts Board grant. She completed a residency at Second Shift Studio Space in St. Paul and was awarded the Carolyn Glasoe Bailey Foundation Minnesota Art Prize in 2021. Speller is represented by Aspect/Ratio Projects in Chicago.
For more information on Jovan's work:
http://jovanspeller.com/
For more information on the High Visibility exhibition at the Plains Art Museum:
https://plainsart.org/exhibitions/high-visibility/
High Visibility exhibition site: https://inhighvisibility.org/
In this conversation, Jovan mentions the following works:
This video of Jovan's photographic process, and the Choosing Home series, can be found here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yDuQLPAglfc
Relics of Home:
http://jovanspeller.com/relics-of-home
In Lottie's Living Room:
https://inhighvisibility.org/Jovan-C-Speller
High Visibility is a partnership with Plains Art Museum and Art of the Rural:
https://plainsart.org/
http://artoftherural.org/
We are grateful for the support of the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Matthew Fluharty (00:07):
Hello, you're listening to high visibility.
This is the podcast produced byArt of the Rural and Plains Art
Museum welcomes intoconversation artists, culture
bearers and leaders from acrossrural America in Indian Country.
It's offered in conjunction withthe high visibility exhibition,
(00:30):
a collaboratively curatedeffort, currently on view at
Plains Art Museum through May 302021. My name is Matthew
Fluharty, and I'm the organizingcurator. In the months ahead,
I'll be with you, along withother hosts from the Plains Art
Museum and beyond. As thispodcast here is the richly
divergent stories livedexperiences visions of folks
(00:52):
across the continent.
You can learn more by visitingthe high visibility exhibition
by heading to plainsart.org.
We also welcome folks to checkout the high visibility site at
inhighvisibility.org, where weoffer show notes and
transcriptions of ourconversations. Alongside further
(01:13):
information on the individualsand work discussed here. We're
grateful for the support of theAndy Warhol foundation for the
visual arts and the NationalEndowment for the Arts, making
this endeavor possible.
And we welcome folks to checkout and subscribe to these
conversations on their favoritepodcast platforms.
Today we have the chance tospeak with Jovan C. Speller. And
(01:35):
to learn more about theexperiences that shaped her
ongoing relics of home project,and the installation in lady's
room that is currently on viewat the Plains Art Museum.
We're publishing the selectionfrom our larger conversation. So
chances are, if you're listeningto this now, there's an even
deeper conversation availablewhich avant to enjoy. Wherever
(01:58):
you listen to podcasts. Jovan'swork bridges visual art, writing
in performance, with a researchpractice that she describes as
centered around elevating,complicating, and inventing
stories that explore ancestry,identity and spatial memory,
making the intangible tangibleand the invisible visible.
(02:21):
Jovan C. Speller is currentlyfocusing on expanding her art
practice and experimenting withinstallation and sound works as
an artist resident at secondshift studio space in St. Paul,
Minnesota. She is the recipientof numerous grants, including a
McKnight visual artistfellowship, into Jerome emerging
artists fellowship.
(02:42):
Her photographic works have beenpublished and exhibited in
various exhibitions throughoutthe United States. Jovan holds a
BFA in photography from ColumbiaCollege, Chicago, and studied
art in Maryland InstituteCollege of Art. Folks can learn
more about her work atjovanspeller.com.
This conversation was recordedin February 2021. And it ranges
(03:05):
across a field of artistic,familial, spiritual and
historical forces that her workso subtly interviews. I'm so
grateful for Jovan's connectivevision to this conversation for
how on one hand, we have theopportunity to understand how a
body of work deepens around aset of questions over time. But
(03:26):
I'm also grateful for how sheoffers all of us new
orientations new ways intothinking around some of the most
central imperatives of ourshared cultural moment. What
follows is a meditation onorigin stories in Black culture,
and the potential forintercultural exchange with
indigenous communities.
And also a long term cultivationof various artistic and research
(03:49):
practices that can witness andaddress legacies of nostalgia,
trauma and cultural changethrough an attention to the land
itself. Jovan references a fewprojects will share in the show
notes so folks can dive deeper.
The first is reflexive home, along term effort that takes root
in her family's multigenerational stewardship of land
(04:09):
in Windsor, North Carolina, onacres once tended by her
enslaved ancestors. We alsodiscuss in lady's room, an
installation that brings thosefamily stories into photographic
and material presence in areimagined structure from that
land. Our conversation beginswith giovane sharing, choosing
home in evolving collaborationwith Dyani White Hawk that began
(04:33):
as a one night visual inquiry,supported by mn artists at the
Walker Art Center.
Through a wide ranging eventfeaturing performances,
conversations and videoinstallations. Jovan and her
collaborators created a space tosit with these questions. "Those
(04:54):
with the privilege of power overthis land," the United States,
Jovan wrote,"proclaimed that it has no
official language, that it ismade up of immigrants in a place
where freedom reigns.
It was said to be a safe haven,a new start a dream. But what is
home without the recognition andreconciliation of myths used as
(05:18):
tools to manipulate and oppressgenerations of peoples?
What is home when complicated bycenturies of radical and violent
displacement, forced relocation,captivity, migration and
colonization?" This selectionfrom our conversation begins
here with choosing home, and inhow the act of braiding hair
(05:40):
became a bridging space forthese collaborations. So without
further ado, please settle inand enjoy our conversation with
Jovan C. Speller.
Jovan C. Speller (05:51):
I was actually, at the time of working
on choosing home and kind ofconceiving of it, I was also at
the same time, starting to getimages of what would later be
relics of home. And it wasreally this exploration of
(06:12):
defining home in origin stories,and tracing back origin stories
in black culture, in particular,and in black families. But I
felt, really, if I was going tohonestly, look at ideas of home
and origin, it was difficult toimagine doing that without at
(06:36):
least starting the conversationabout indigenous bodies, and
indigenous people and cultureand the overlaps between African
Americans and Native Americansin this country. Because what is
home, you can't talk about homein America without talking about
(06:56):
indigenous people. And so I feltvery uncomfortable doing that.
And so I at the time reallyadmired Dyani White Hawk's work
and the way that she spoke abouther work and, and, and her
family and identity. And, Ibelieve emailed her or called
her, I don't even remember how Igot her information. But we did
(07:19):
not know each other at the time,but we had a phone call, and
instantly, we're speaking thesame language. And we both were
looking for, like, we werecurious about each other. You
know, I think that's wherethings have to begin, you know.
And the only thing you know,that we knew was there was
similarity and ritualin our cultures, and so that we
(07:41):
really started to explore thatwe, you know, talked about
relationships with the land andstewarding the land and honoring
land. But we really came back,you know, she and I are both
really close to our mothers. Andthat led us to specifically like
caring, caring of generations,and caring of women, and passing
(08:05):
knowledge. And that led us tohair braiding.
Unknown (08:13):
So
Jovan C. Speller (08:16):
I think also at the time, she and I were both
really interested in creatingand working in film, and I had
been working on a film idea forrelics of home. And she had been
working on a film idea, which Ithink is now at the Kemper
Museum. So she's fully executedhers. And so we wondered if we
(08:43):
could work with a filmmaker tokind of create this little
explorative short, you knowabout hair braiding. And so she
and I both interviewed ourmothers separately about their
relationship with hair, orrelationship to hair with hair
and culture, and the history oftheir hair story. And then we
(09:09):
kind of created thisgenerational overlap by shooting
Auntie's braiding their nieceshair. Yeah. So that was that was
that collaborative work. And wedebuted that at Choosing Home: A
Right, A Priviliger, or an Actof Trespass. So that was my
(09:32):
question, just about choosinghome in general. Was it a right?
Was it a privilege, or was it anact of trespass and it's all of
the above, but I wanted toexplore those different avenues
into home. So that's what thatpresentation at the Walker was
really about.
Matthew Fluharty (09:48):
What I would like to share just for folks who
are listening would be welcomethem to check out the show notes
for our podcast, where we canlink to what I thought was a
video that they made that TwinCities Public Television made of
pretty wonderfulthat evening and also of your
work. The video begins with somewere able to visualize the
(10:11):
photographic process that youmentioned earlier. It just was
it was I thought was a reallybeautiful video in terms of how
it connected your creative workto the curatorial work as well.
It's really awesome, highquality video. And so I'm
wondering that if we could justcontinue the thread. And I'm
curious as,as the filmmaking process, kind
(10:35):
of concluded, as that evening atthe Walker, with choosing home,
happened, and then opened up thereflective space that probably
did for you. How did relics ofhome continue to emerge and take
shape After choosing home?
Jovan C. Speller (10:54):
Yeah, so that was the it's interesting. So
one, like important detail inthere is that when I was working
on choosing home, I was eight,nine months pregnant. And the
presentation debuted, I believe,it was like may 7, and then on
(11:17):
May 9, I had my first child. Soyeah, so I was, so like,
disclaimer, if you're looking atthat video, I'm super shiny,
super pregnant, roll swollen,there's a reason I was nine
months pregnant, okay. But, um,but there was this like, great
(11:41):
momentum, this kind ofconverging of the stars, after
we finished that, thatpresentation, because I felt it
even more urgent and moreimportant to understand origin.
And reconcile my issues, perhapsit's the right word issues with
(12:06):
not knowing, like, the fullstory. And no, there's, I have
not yet met a black person whois a descendant of a slave that
knows the full story like whereyou're from, and can really
track back to African culture,or a specific African culture or
(12:28):
country that really can informidentity, rituals, spirituality,
right those like, again, thathas been a continuum in my
exploration and my research,I've wanted to connect back
authentically, to some spiritualritual. So I was really feeling
(12:49):
this intense urgency of needingto reconcile that need that
feeling of there is somethingthat I don't know there's
something missing, because Iunderstand generational trauma
and did not want to carry mineforward through to my child,
(13:11):
more than I already had. So, soit was really interesting
because it required generationsof my family to be involved in
the project in order to make ithappen. So, you know, my brother
accompanied me to Windsor, NorthCarolina. I was, I think, Silas
(13:35):
my firstborn. He was like, threemonths. on that trip. My father
drove up from Georgia, I think,to meet his grandson and
introduced me to some relatives.
My mother drove up fromTennessee, to hang out with her
(13:56):
grandson while I was offshooting. And my uncle, my uncle
Wayne, I think he was in NewYork at the time. Oh, no, no,
no, no, no, no. No, I can'tremember. But he, he, he goes
back and forth between NorthNorth Carolina and New York. So
(14:17):
I don't remember where he wasliving at the time. But I
remember picking him up at maybeit was Asheville and Asheville
before we went to Windsor. So weendeavor with all of these
relatives, and with it all oftheir drama that I did not know
about, right, with family comesdrama, and trauma, but um, you
(14:41):
know, I didn't know that myfather and my uncle had not been
speaking because of somethingthat happened right there on
that land. I didn't know thatthese relatives But I had not
yet met had been a part of likethis drama of you know what
(15:03):
happened right before my Fathersold that land. So there was
like, you can call it kind oftwo camps in the family, those
who wanted to keep the land andthose who wanted to sell it and
didn't think it was worthanything. And I think that, for
me, in my generation, I couldn'tunderstand how anyone would
think that the land wasn't worthanything, when it held all of
(15:26):
this history, when it held theblood of our ancestors and the
bodies of our ancestors on someparts of the property, how could
that not be enough value? And,you know, that
goes back to why does right butanyway, you know, understanding
(15:47):
our own value within ourcommunity within our culture is
also work. making this happenwas really like kind of being
this cross between, you know, aresearcher, and artist,
photographer, mother, nicedaughter, and kind of like
(16:09):
anthropologist, as well. And so,I had to put on all of these
many hats, while also learninghow to be a mom. And fighting
off the ginormous bugs that arein the kind of what they're
(16:30):
huge. They're like three inches,and swarming around you. Anyway.
So you know, so there was a lot,there was a lot, there was a lot
to battle, there was a lot tocontend with, both physically
and just the logistics of beingin that kind of new terrain. And
then, in terms of access,because technically, we had sold
(16:52):
this land, but my uncle stillowned a trailer that was on part
of the land. And then the farmhad been sold later and was
overgrown. But the house was wassold but broken into already. So
it was open. So there were allof these like questions of like,
access of trust in mytrespassing in my not whose
(17:14):
property is this, there were allthese questions of ownership. So
basically, when I got there, itwas not a straightforward story.
And I thought I was going tofind a straightforward
authority. And that's just likemy general optimism like that,
like I thought that I would findthis, you know, oh, I'll just
kind of take my I remember myoriginal proposal, because I did
(17:35):
have to write a grant to get thefunds to go do this work. But my
original proposal was to depictthese, the land almost as a
portrait. Right? So if I wasn'tgoing to take landscape images,
I was going to take a portraitof the land and discover kind of
like, Who is this land, rightand personify it. And then when
I got there, I couldn't separatethe people from the place. I
(17:58):
don't know why I thought that Icould, but I couldn't separate
the people from the place thatcouldn't separate the stories or
the trauma. And so it becamethis really complicated, really
layered thing, which then mademe call on that technique of
layering and cutting apartimages and putting it back
together in a more narrativeway. So yeah, that's how that
(18:21):
came to be, visually. And Ithink, you know, the all of the
people involved, like the workwouldn't be the work with all of
the people in the work involved,and all of the, their level of
openness with me and sharingtheir side of the story, their
memories, their myths, you know,the all of those, all of those
(18:41):
voices really shaped the work.
Matthew Fluharty (18:44):
It's powerful, because for folks who have been
to the Plains Art Museum to seehigh visibility, the work that
is in those galleries InLottie's Room,
it feels like an extension ofthe work you're describing. And
there's a qualitybetween between all of this work
(19:05):
that really came to the fore isas you were just sharing all of
this Jovan and it's this notionof time. And notions of
nostalgia,you know, and in the style as a
Western concept. You know, whenwe go back to the Greek it means
lost home. And nostalgia reallyhas been since since the Greek
(19:29):
and Roman Empire, an elementthat has been weaponized for
ideological and political ends.
And we've seen so much of it inin recent memory as well. So
there's that tradition, butthere's like this, this other
tradition that Replacing Home Ibelieve, which carries forward
(19:56):
the collage practices you weretalking about.
earlier and Black Quiet.
And folks will will link to thisin the show notes as well, so
folks can see the image. Butthat is a really powerful image.
I keep going back to it. And youknow, when we were preparing for
this, this conversation, Ishared this quote, but the
(20:20):
artists performing artist essaysdirector, Daniel Alexander
Jones, shared this quote byAlice Coltrane with me a couple
years ago, where she's talkingabout ancestors, and I don't
have it exactly correct. Buthopefully it hits the same
spiritual tone where she saysthey will be there, they will be
(20:42):
there in trans Linear Light.
And I and I came to that quote,because there's something in the
spirit of what Alice Coltraneshares that absolutely resist
the really linearand very restrictive nature of
the kinds of straight upnostalgia, we see straight up
(21:02):
white nostalgia we see in ruralAmerica, and that is
superimposed upon landscapes.
Andyou know, and then I'm curious
about, about that work ReplacingHome I, and maybe more broadly
about, about relics of home. AndIn Lottie's Room, the workers to
the Plains Art Museum and howit's meditating on on these
(21:25):
notions of time. But how, howmuch more fluid and embodied
they may be than we might thinkthey are at first glance.
Jovan C. Speller (21:37):
Yeah, so I think that one of the things
that was really important to mewas being able to capture a
sense of the place, so that itcould feel like now, I think,
for me, for some reason, thefact that black quiet was so
steeped in nostalgia was a bitof a failure. And so I was
(21:59):
trying to figure out how to growas an artist and how to, to
better reflect the stories thatI was trying to tell. And so
that led me to shoot in color,which that was, that's my first
color series. Like I said, Ilove being in the darkroom. And
so there aren't many colordarkrooms that haven't seen a
(22:19):
color darkroom since I graduatedcollege. So
Unknown (22:24):
So yeah, that was my first color series. And
Jovan C. Speller (22:28):
I tried to create a way of working that was
similar to my darkroom prakpractice, though, where there
was no like digitalmanipulation, right, there might
have been like a, like the samelevel of like a color cast
correction that you could do inthe dark room, right. But I
wasn't correcting to get aperfect image, I was correcting
(22:49):
to get it to feel like the placeand look like the place how I
saw it that day. And so thatimage Replacing Home I, first of
all, that's the first time Iused that technique. In this way
in the series, the cutting andlayering. I was trying to tell
this, like really complicatedstory about that particular spot
(23:12):
on the land, that that outlineis of the house is the trailer
that my uncle owns. And it waslike disputed, like, does he own
the land underneath it. Also, ifso, then this is the last bit of
land that we have from theacreage that we were given. And
(23:35):
then you can see the the thelike the line in the grass where
the lawn mower has started andstopped. That's the actual
border between the the the landunderneath the trailer and like
what we think he owns, and thebeginning of the actual fields,
(23:57):
the farm land, where my fatherhad already sold that. Or maybe
my I think my grandmotheractually sold that farm to the
person who was renting it, Ibelieve somebody sold it. But so
that's that border, that borderline, physical, physical border
line of that grass, which islike like this hard edge that I
(24:18):
reallyloved its representation. And
then filling in the thesilhouette of the house are like
that's a view of the farm rightnow. Like that's the view of
that land. It's just eight feetof weeds. And I also wanted to
bring the like depict the landas a whole as shelter. Because
(24:39):
literally it is where ourancestors live this underground
in that land, but also justspiritually, it's where all of
those kind of lost souls likewhere I imagine them. So I
wanted to bring them home. And Ithink that that is that idea of
(25:03):
bringing ancestors home, atleast inviting them into my
spiritual home as like areconciliation as an honoring as
a closing the gap between thenand now and me and them creating
the US. And we, I think thatstructure that house structure
(25:25):
became really key in thisseries. So the installation at
the plains is a physical homestructure that I got to encase
and enclose these reallyimportant moments. Within that
study of fam family history, youknow, I got to enclose it and
(25:48):
encase it and give it voice. Andit's the voice is my great aunt
Lottie. And she is tellingstories about the family, right,
that I had never heard about mygreat grandfather and how he was
poisoned. That was one of themany stories that she told me,
that's the one that plays on aloop in that space. And there is
(26:10):
an image of her hanging in thatspace. And, you know, I went
back and forth to North Carolinaa few times. And that's exactly
where she sat, how she sat andhow she looked each time I went.
So that was, you know, that'sjust like for me, for me, like
that's quintessential greyed outlady, she, she's my
(26:33):
grandmother's youngest sister.
Her voice is also significant,because she sounds exactly like
my grandmother. So it was thisfamiliar sound that was so
necessary, you know, like mygrandmother's passed away. And
so like hearing her again, itwas like, I was reconnected with
(26:53):
my grandmother. You know, it wassurreal. But there is the sense
of like, I am home, even thoughI've never met this person, or
even though I've only sat withthis person three times in my
life, I am home, right, there'sthat like, continuation of
genetic fiber, right? Like,it's, we were all stitched
(27:14):
together.
And so that was like, an audiokind of version of that, or
reminder of that. And thenthere's an image of a, I think
third cousin, who lives in tat trailer. So he's like, the
ast relative that is physicallyconnected to that space, the
(27:40):
last living relative, right, heives on that land still.
And then there is the picture InThe Thick, where I'm standing on
the porch of the house. That wasmy grandfather's. And, you know,
that has been sold. And so it'sjust like a field of weeds.
That's the front yard with myuncle and my third cousin, you
(28:03):
know, talking beyond about theywere actually talking about
fixing the roof of the trailer.
But you know, it'sthere's also the the one of the
reasons that I love that imageis because my uncle is in like a
Sunday best he is Sunday, itdoesn't matter where he is. He's
got to wear his loafers and hiskhakis, and a white shirt that's
(28:24):
tucked in under a belt. And I'mjust like, you know, we're going
out into the field, right? He'sjust like, it's Sunday. Like,
okay, cool. So, um, so there'sthat, you know, that was just
like a moment I had I kind ofhad to capture. He's so out of
place, but it's hit but heactually is the like, closest,
he's the person who took care ofthat, of that land and of that
(28:45):
property, when nobody else inthe family cared about it. So I
needed to kind of memorializehim and my cousin in that these
are the ones that still care. Ido think that there is this
like, because like if the originstory is essentially the
definition of nostalgia, whichis lost home, right? If that's
(29:08):
what I'm trying to reconcile isthis last home, then perhaps I
could just create one, right? Ithink that that's where we all
land is like, it's gone. I haveto move forward. How do I move
forward, but I do feel like thattension, that sadness around
that loss, and all of thetragedies that exists within the
(29:29):
origin. All of that is now laidto rest.
Unknown (29:47):
You've been listening to high visibility podcast
produced by Art of the Ruraland Plains Art Mus
Matthew Fluharty (29:53):
Please join the conversation at
plainsart.org.
Hello, you're listening to high visibility.
This is the podcast produced byArt of the Rural and Plains Art
Museum welcomes intoconversation artists, culture
bearers and leaders from acrossrural America in Indian Country.
It's offered in conjunction withthe high visibility exhibition,
(00:30):
a collaboratively curatedeffort, currently on view at
Plains Art Museum through May 302021. My name is Matthew
Fluharty, and I'm the organizingcurator. In the months ahead,
I'll be with you, along withother hosts from the Plains Art
Museum and beyond. As thispodcast here is the richly
divergent stories livedexperiences visions of folks
(00:52):
across the continent.
You can learn more by visitingthe high visibility exhibition
by heading to plainsart.org.
We also welcome folks to checkout the high visibility site at
inhighvisibility.org, where weoffer show notes and
transcriptions of ourconversations. Alongside further
(01:13):
information on the individualsand work discussed here. We're
grateful for the support of theAndy Warhol foundation for the
visual arts and the NationalEndowment for the Arts, making
this endeavor possible.
And we welcome folks to checkout and subscribe to these
conversations on their favoritepodcast platforms.
Today we have the chance tospeak with Jovan C. Speller. And
(01:35):
to learn more about theexperiences that shaped her
ongoing relics of home project,and the installation in lady's
room that is currently on viewat the Plains Art Museum.
We're publishing the selectionfrom our larger conversation. So
chances are, if you're listeningto this now, there's an even
deeper conversation availablewhich avant to enjoy. Wherever
(01:58):
you listen to podcasts. Jovan'swork bridges visual art, writing
in performance, with a researchpractice that she describes as
centered around elevating,complicating, and inventing
stories that explore ancestry,identity and spatial memory,
making the intangible tangibleand the invisible visible.
(02:21):
Jovan C. Speller is currentlyfocusing on expanding her art
practice and experimenting withinstallation and sound works as
an artist resident at secondshift studio space in St. Paul,
Minnesota. She is the recipientof numerous grants, including a
McKnight visual artistfellowship, into Jerome emerging
artists fellowship.
(02:42):
Her photographic works have beenpublished and exhibited in
various exhibitions throughoutthe United States. Jovan holds a
BFA in photography from ColumbiaCollege, Chicago, and studied
art in Maryland InstituteCollege of Art. Folks can learn
more about her work atjovanspeller.com.
This conversation was recordedin February 2021. And it ranges
(03:05):
across a field of artistic,familial, spiritual and
historical forces that her workso subtly interviews. I'm so
grateful for Jovan's connectivevision to this conversation for
how on one hand, we have theopportunity to understand how a
body of work deepens around aset of questions over time. But
(03:26):
I'm also grateful for how sheoffers all of us new
orientations new ways intothinking around some of the most
central imperatives of ourshared cultural moment. What
follows is a meditation onorigin stories in Black culture,
and the potential forintercultural exchange with
indigenous communities.
And also a long term cultivationof various artistic and research
(03:49):
practices that can witness andaddress legacies of nostalgia,
trauma and cultural changethrough an attention to the land
itself. Jovan references a fewprojects will share in the show
notes so folks can dive deeper.
The first is reflexive home, along term effort that takes root
in her family's multigenerational stewardship of land
(04:09):
in Windsor, North Carolina, onacres once tended by her
enslaved ancestors. We alsodiscuss in lady's room, an
installation that brings thosefamily stories into photographic
and material presence in areimagined structure from that
land. Our conversation beginswith giovane sharing, choosing
home in evolving collaborationwith Dyani White Hawk that began
(04:33):
as a one night visual inquiry,supported by mn artists at the
Walker Art Center.
Through a wide ranging eventfeaturing performances,
conversations and videoinstallations. Jovan and her
collaborators created a space tosit with these questions. "Those
(04:54):
with the privilege of power overthis land," the United States,
Jovan wrote,"proclaimed that it has no
official language, that it ismade up of immigrants in a place
where freedom reigns.
It was said to be a safe haven,a new start a dream. But what is
home without the recognition andreconciliation of myths used as
(05:18):
tools to manipulate and oppressgenerations of peoples?
What is home when complicated bycenturies of radical and violent
displacement, forced relocation,captivity, migration and
colonization?" This selectionfrom our conversation begins
here with choosing home, and inhow the act of braiding hair
(05:40):
became a bridging space forthese collaborations. So without
further ado, please settle inand enjoy our conversation with
Jovan C. Speller.
Jovan C. Speller (05:51):
I was actually, at the time of working
on choosing home and kind ofconceiving of it, I was also at
the same time, starting to getimages of what would later be
relics of home. And it wasreally this exploration of
(06:12):
defining home in origin stories,and tracing back origin stories
in black culture, in particular,and in black families. But I
felt, really, if I was going tohonestly, look at ideas of home
and origin, it was difficult toimagine doing that without at
(06:36):
least starting the conversationabout indigenous bodies, and
indigenous people and cultureand the overlaps between African
Americans and Native Americansin this country. Because what is
home, you can't talk about homein America without talking about
(06:56):
indigenous people. And so I feltvery uncomfortable doing that.
And so I at the time reallyadmired Dyani White Hawk's work
and the way that she spoke abouther work and, and, and her
family and identity. And, Ibelieve emailed her or called
her, I don't even remember how Igot her information. But we did
(07:19):
not know each other at the time,but we had a phone call, and
instantly, we're speaking thesame language. And we both were
looking for, like, we werecurious about each other. You
know, I think that's wherethings have to begin, you know.
And the only thing you know,that we knew was there was
similarity and ritualin our cultures, and so that we
(07:41):
really started to explore thatwe, you know, talked about
relationships with the land andstewarding the land and honoring
land. But we really came back,you know, she and I are both
really close to our mothers. Andthat led us to specifically like
caring, caring of generations,and caring of women, and passing
(08:05):
knowledge. And that led us tohair braiding.
Unknown (08:13):
So
Jovan C. Speller (08:16):
I think also at the time, she and I were both
really interested in creatingand working in film, and I had
been working on a film idea forrelics of home. And she had been
working on a film idea, which Ithink is now at the Kemper
Museum. So she's fully executedhers. And so we wondered if we
(08:43):
could work with a filmmaker tokind of create this little
explorative short, you knowabout hair braiding. And so she
and I both interviewed ourmothers separately about their
relationship with hair, orrelationship to hair with hair
and culture, and the history oftheir hair story. And then we
(09:09):
kind of created thisgenerational overlap by shooting
Auntie's braiding their nieceshair. Yeah. So that was that was
that collaborative work. And wedebuted that at Choosing Home: A
Right, A Priviliger, or an Actof Trespass. So that was my
(09:32):
question, just about choosinghome in general. Was it a right?
Was it a privilege, or was it anact of trespass and it's all of
the above, but I wanted toexplore those different avenues
into home. So that's what thatpresentation at the Walker was
really about.
Matthew Fluharty (09:48):
What I would like to share just for folks who
are listening would be welcomethem to check out the show notes
for our podcast, where we canlink to what I thought was a
video that they made that TwinCities Public Television made of
pretty wonderfulthat evening and also of your
work. The video begins with somewere able to visualize the
(10:11):
photographic process that youmentioned earlier. It just was
it was I thought was a reallybeautiful video in terms of how
it connected your creative workto the curatorial work as well.
It's really awesome, highquality video. And so I'm
wondering that if we could justcontinue the thread. And I'm
curious as,as the filmmaking process, kind
(10:35):
of concluded, as that evening atthe Walker, with choosing home,
happened, and then opened up thereflective space that probably
did for you. How did relics ofhome continue to emerge and take
shape After choosing home?
Jovan C. Speller (10:54):
Yeah, so that was the it's interesting. So
one, like important detail inthere is that when I was working
on choosing home, I was eight,nine months pregnant. And the
presentation debuted, I believe,it was like may 7, and then on
(11:17):
May 9, I had my first child. Soyeah, so I was, so like,
disclaimer, if you're looking atthat video, I'm super shiny,
super pregnant, roll swollen,there's a reason I was nine
months pregnant, okay. But, um,but there was this like, great
(11:41):
momentum, this kind ofconverging of the stars, after
we finished that, thatpresentation, because I felt it
even more urgent and moreimportant to understand origin.
And reconcile my issues, perhapsit's the right word issues with
(12:06):
not knowing, like, the fullstory. And no, there's, I have
not yet met a black person whois a descendant of a slave that
knows the full story like whereyou're from, and can really
track back to African culture,or a specific African culture or
(12:28):
country that really can informidentity, rituals, spirituality,
right those like, again, thathas been a continuum in my
exploration and my research,I've wanted to connect back
authentically, to some spiritualritual. So I was really feeling
(12:49):
this intense urgency of needingto reconcile that need that
feeling of there is somethingthat I don't know there's
something missing, because Iunderstand generational trauma
and did not want to carry mineforward through to my child,
(13:11):
more than I already had. So, soit was really interesting
because it required generationsof my family to be involved in
the project in order to make ithappen. So, you know, my brother
accompanied me to Windsor, NorthCarolina. I was, I think, Silas
(13:35):
my firstborn. He was like, threemonths. on that trip. My father
drove up from Georgia, I think,to meet his grandson and
introduced me to some relatives.
My mother drove up fromTennessee, to hang out with her
(13:56):
grandson while I was offshooting. And my uncle, my uncle
Wayne, I think he was in NewYork at the time. Oh, no, no,
no, no, no, no. No, I can'tremember. But he, he, he goes
back and forth between NorthNorth Carolina and New York. So
(14:17):
I don't remember where he wasliving at the time. But I
remember picking him up at maybeit was Asheville and Asheville
before we went to Windsor. So weendeavor with all of these
relatives, and with it all oftheir drama that I did not know
about, right, with family comesdrama, and trauma, but um, you
(14:41):
know, I didn't know that myfather and my uncle had not been
speaking because of somethingthat happened right there on
that land. I didn't know thatthese relatives But I had not
yet met had been a part of likethis drama of you know what
(15:03):
happened right before my Fathersold that land. So there was
like, you can call it kind oftwo camps in the family, those
who wanted to keep the land andthose who wanted to sell it and
didn't think it was worthanything. And I think that, for
me, in my generation, I couldn'tunderstand how anyone would
think that the land wasn't worthanything, when it held all of
(15:26):
this history, when it held theblood of our ancestors and the
bodies of our ancestors on someparts of the property, how could
that not be enough value? And,you know, that
goes back to why does right butanyway, you know, understanding
(15:47):
our own value within ourcommunity within our culture is
also work. making this happenwas really like kind of being
this cross between, you know, aresearcher, and artist,
photographer, mother, nicedaughter, and kind of like
(16:09):
anthropologist, as well. And so,I had to put on all of these
many hats, while also learninghow to be a mom. And fighting
off the ginormous bugs that arein the kind of what they're
(16:30):
huge. They're like three inches,and swarming around you. Anyway.
So you know, so there was a lot,there was a lot, there was a lot
to battle, there was a lot tocontend with, both physically
and just the logistics of beingin that kind of new terrain. And
then, in terms of access,because technically, we had sold
(16:52):
this land, but my uncle stillowned a trailer that was on part
of the land. And then the farmhad been sold later and was
overgrown. But the house was wassold but broken into already. So
it was open. So there were allof these like questions of like,
access of trust in mytrespassing in my not whose
(17:14):
property is this, there were allthese questions of ownership. So
basically, when I got there, itwas not a straightforward story.
And I thought I was going tofind a straightforward
authority. And that's just likemy general optimism like that,
like I thought that I would findthis, you know, oh, I'll just
kind of take my I remember myoriginal proposal, because I did
(17:35):
have to write a grant to get thefunds to go do this work. But my
original proposal was to depictthese, the land almost as a
portrait. Right? So if I wasn'tgoing to take landscape images,
I was going to take a portraitof the land and discover kind of
like, Who is this land, rightand personify it. And then when
I got there, I couldn't separatethe people from the place. I
(17:58):
don't know why I thought that Icould, but I couldn't separate
the people from the place thatcouldn't separate the stories or
the trauma. And so it becamethis really complicated, really
layered thing, which then mademe call on that technique of
layering and cutting apartimages and putting it back
together in a more narrativeway. So yeah, that's how that
(18:21):
came to be, visually. And Ithink, you know, the all of the
people involved, like the workwouldn't be the work with all of
the people in the work involved,and all of the, their level of
openness with me and sharingtheir side of the story, their
memories, their myths, you know,the all of those, all of those
(18:41):
voices really shaped the work.
Matthew Fluharty (18:44):
It's powerful, because for folks who have been
to the Plains Art Museum to seehigh visibility, the work that
is in those galleries InLottie's Room,
it feels like an extension ofthe work you're describing. And
there's a qualitybetween between all of this work
(19:05):
that really came to the fore isas you were just sharing all of
this Jovan and it's this notionof time. And notions of
nostalgia,you know, and in the style as a
Western concept. You know, whenwe go back to the Greek it means
lost home. And nostalgia reallyhas been since since the Greek
(19:29):
and Roman Empire, an elementthat has been weaponized for
ideological and political ends.
And we've seen so much of it inin recent memory as well. So
there's that tradition, butthere's like this, this other
tradition that Replacing Home Ibelieve, which carries forward
(19:56):
the collage practices you weretalking about.
earlier and Black Quiet.
And folks will will link to thisin the show notes as well, so
folks can see the image. Butthat is a really powerful image.
I keep going back to it. And youknow, when we were preparing for
this, this conversation, Ishared this quote, but the
(20:20):
artists performing artist essaysdirector, Daniel Alexander
Jones, shared this quote byAlice Coltrane with me a couple
years ago, where she's talkingabout ancestors, and I don't
have it exactly correct. Buthopefully it hits the same
spiritual tone where she saysthey will be there, they will be
(20:42):
there in trans Linear Light.
And I and I came to that quote,because there's something in the
spirit of what Alice Coltraneshares that absolutely resist
the really linearand very restrictive nature of
the kinds of straight upnostalgia, we see straight up
(21:02):
white nostalgia we see in ruralAmerica, and that is
superimposed upon landscapes.
Andyou know, and then I'm curious
about, about that work ReplacingHome I, and maybe more broadly
about, about relics of home. AndIn Lottie's Room, the workers to
the Plains Art Museum and howit's meditating on on these
(21:25):
notions of time. But how, howmuch more fluid and embodied
they may be than we might thinkthey are at first glance.
Jovan C. Speller (21:37):
Yeah, so I think that one of the things
that was really important to mewas being able to capture a
sense of the place, so that itcould feel like now, I think,
for me, for some reason, thefact that black quiet was so
steeped in nostalgia was a bitof a failure. And so I was
(21:59):
trying to figure out how to growas an artist and how to, to
better reflect the stories thatI was trying to tell. And so
that led me to shoot in color,which that was, that's my first
color series. Like I said, Ilove being in the darkroom. And
so there aren't many colordarkrooms that haven't seen a
(22:19):
color darkroom since I graduatedcollege. So
Unknown (22:24):
So yeah, that was my first color series. And
Jovan C. Speller (22:28):
I tried to create a way of working that was
similar to my darkroom prakpractice, though, where there
was no like digitalmanipulation, right, there might
have been like a, like the samelevel of like a color cast
correction that you could do inthe dark room, right. But I
wasn't correcting to get aperfect image, I was correcting
(22:49):
to get it to feel like the placeand look like the place how I
saw it that day. And so thatimage Replacing Home I, first of
all, that's the first time Iused that technique. In this way
in the series, the cutting andlayering. I was trying to tell
this, like really complicatedstory about that particular spot
(23:12):
on the land, that that outlineis of the house is the trailer
that my uncle owns. And it waslike disputed, like, does he own
the land underneath it. Also, ifso, then this is the last bit of
land that we have from theacreage that we were given. And
(23:35):
then you can see the the thelike the line in the grass where
the lawn mower has started andstopped. That's the actual
border between the the the landunderneath the trailer and like
what we think he owns, and thebeginning of the actual fields,
(23:57):
the farm land, where my fatherhad already sold that. Or maybe
my I think my grandmotheractually sold that farm to the
person who was renting it, Ibelieve somebody sold it. But so
that's that border, that borderline, physical, physical border
line of that grass, which islike like this hard edge that I
(24:18):
reallyloved its representation. And
then filling in the thesilhouette of the house are like
that's a view of the farm rightnow. Like that's the view of
that land. It's just eight feetof weeds. And I also wanted to
bring the like depict the landas a whole as shelter. Because
(24:39):
literally it is where ourancestors live this underground
in that land, but also justspiritually, it's where all of
those kind of lost souls likewhere I imagine them. So I
wanted to bring them home. And Ithink that that is that idea of
(25:03):
bringing ancestors home, atleast inviting them into my
spiritual home as like areconciliation as an honoring as
a closing the gap between thenand now and me and them creating
the US. And we, I think thatstructure that house structure
(25:25):
became really key in thisseries. So the installation at
the plains is a physical homestructure that I got to encase
and enclose these reallyimportant moments. Within that
study of fam family history, youknow, I got to enclose it and
(25:48):
encase it and give it voice. Andit's the voice is my great aunt
Lottie. And she is tellingstories about the family, right,
that I had never heard about mygreat grandfather and how he was
poisoned. That was one of themany stories that she told me,
that's the one that plays on aloop in that space. And there is
(26:10):
an image of her hanging in thatspace. And, you know, I went
back and forth to North Carolinaa few times. And that's exactly
where she sat, how she sat andhow she looked each time I went.
So that was, you know, that'sjust like for me, for me, like
that's quintessential greyed outlady, she, she's my
(26:33):
grandmother's youngest sister.
Her voice is also significant,because she sounds exactly like
my grandmother. So it was thisfamiliar sound that was so
necessary, you know, like mygrandmother's passed away. And
so like hearing her again, itwas like, I was reconnected with
(26:53):
my grandmother. You know, it wassurreal. But there is the sense
of like, I am home, even thoughI've never met this person, or
even though I've only sat withthis person three times in my
life, I am home, right, there'sthat like, continuation of
genetic fiber, right? Like,it's, we were all stitched
(27:14):
together.
And so that was like, an audiokind of version of that, or
reminder of that. And thenthere's an image of a, I think
third cousin, who lives in tat trailer. So he's like, the
ast relative that is physicallyconnected to that space, the
(27:40):
last living relative, right, heives on that land still.
And then there is the picture InThe Thick, where I'm standing on
the porch of the house. That wasmy grandfather's. And, you know,
that has been sold. And so it'sjust like a field of weeds.
That's the front yard with myuncle and my third cousin, you
(28:03):
know, talking beyond about theywere actually talking about
fixing the roof of the trailer.
But you know, it'sthere's also the the one of the
reasons that I love that imageis because my uncle is in like a
Sunday best he is Sunday, itdoesn't matter where he is. He's
got to wear his loafers and hiskhakis, and a white shirt that's
(28:24):
tucked in under a belt. And I'mjust like, you know, we're going
out into the field, right? He'sjust like, it's Sunday. Like,
okay, cool. So, um, so there'sthat, you know, that was just
like a moment I had I kind ofhad to capture. He's so out of
place, but it's hit but heactually is the like, closest,
he's the person who took care ofthat, of that land and of that
(28:45):
property, when nobody else inthe family cared about it. So I
needed to kind of memorializehim and my cousin in that these
are the ones that still care. Ido think that there is this
like, because like if the originstory is essentially the
definition of nostalgia, whichis lost home, right? If that's
(29:08):
what I'm trying to reconcile isthis last home, then perhaps I
could just create one, right? Ithink that that's where we all
land is like, it's gone. I haveto move forward. How do I move
forward, but I do feel like thattension, that sadness around
that loss, and all of thetragedies that exists within the
(29:29):
origin. All of that is now laidto rest.
Unknown (29:47):
You've been listening to high visibility podcast
produced by Art of the Ruraland Plains Art Mus
Matthew Fluharty (29:53):
Please join the conversation at
plainsart.org.
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