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Alison Stewart: This is All Of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. This year's Nasher Prize, one of the most prestigious awards for contemporary sculpture, was awarded to my next guest, interdisciplinary artist, Senga Nengudi, the first Black woman to win the award. This comes as Dia Beacon in Beacon, New York, prepares to open a long-term exhibition dedicated to the more than five decades of work by Nengudi, who lives now in Colorado Springs. Senga Nengudi was born in Chicago, but moved to LA as a young girl where she grew up.

She spent a year studying in Tokyo and then settled back to LA where she met the artist David Hammons. Later on, Hammons introduced her to Linda Goode Bryant in New York, who had just opened a gallery called Just Above Midtown. JAM gave Nengudi her first solo exhibition. The rest is history. The New York Times calls Nengudi sculptures, "icons of the Black Arts Movement." With me now to preview the exhibition Senga Nengudi on view at Dia Beacon, starting on February 17th, is Senga Nengudi. So nice to meet you.

Senga Nengudi: You too. Thank you.

Alison: And associate curator Matilde Guidelli-Guidi. Matilde, welcome.

Matilde Guidelli-Guidi: Hi, Alison.

Alison: Senga, much of your work features found objects. What is interesting to you about everyday objects?

Senga: Well, found objects, first of all, have a life of their own and a history of their own. In terms of a common objects, I really like the idea that they have much more flexibility than people suppose for their utilitarianism. There's always this other thing that can happen with them. A much larger thing that I really compare to human beings, that people see a person and they say, oh, okay, that person is in this little slot, and they don't allow the fact that they can be a very much expanded self and very different.

Alison: I've heard you describe that objects talk to you.

Senga: Yes, and space does too. I really relate to space and objects actually as a co-partnering. We get a relationship going and then it expands from there. Again, the word expansion. It expands from there to create something that is a third thing.

Alison: Matilde--

Senga: The combination.

Alison: Matilde, as you were thinking about this exhibition, what were some of the questions that you were asking yourself when you thought about what are my goals? What do I hope to accomplish?

Matilde: Well, first of all, the exhibition was really through and through in conversation with Senga. Some of the characteristics of exhibitions at Dia Beacon is that they are long-term and monographic. With Senga's work, something that was very important to think about is how the long-term nature of what the institution presents and offer as a platform, how does that work with the more improvisational and, for lack of a better word, the energy of the works by Senga. How to retain that energy in the long duration was a question that led us to choose works because of how they present themselves, especially room size installations that retain traces of those improvisational and creative moments.

The second question was the monographic model and how to at the same time have an exhibition of Senga's work, but at the same time honor the network that has sustained and continue to sustain Senga's practice over the years. For instance, we have one work that is called Sand Mining [unintelligible 00:04:21] which is the most recent work in the exhibition. That work includes a sound piece that beside having Senga's own spoken word, also includes the music of Butch Morris, who has been a longtime collaborator of Senga. That's an example of how the works were chosen in relation to on one hand the institutional characteristics and to honor the specificity of Senga's work.

Alison: I wanted to follow up about sand mining [unintelligible 00:04:58] from 2020. Senga, what materials are in this piece?

Senga: Pure sand, first of all. Then colored pigment. There's some nylons in there and other few little found objects.

Alison: I'll follow up on the nylons in a minute. What were you going to say, Matilde?

Matilde: No, just was thinking precisely about the nylon and the piece in many ways culminates and allows us to tell a story about the use of those materials going back to the '70s and even collective performances that Senga has done in Los Angeles with a loosely associated group of artists under Studio Z. Your ability, Senga, to craft that material, not only for sculptures, but also for costumes and headgears and even to adorn the space and the architecture, in order to really transform it with just very simple and plain material and gestures.

Alison: I was thinking about the sand in this piece because it's a preview. I haven't seen it yet, so forgive me if this question doesn't apply, Senga. I think about sand having mobility to it and it's ability to move and change and evolve. Is that part of this piece, sand mining?

Senga: It's not part of the piece but it's part of why I often use sand. In this case there are some water sculptures and it's the same situation with that. The natural objects, the natural elements in the world have this flexibility, ever changing shape and so on and so forth. Yes, this issue of change is really important to me.

Alison: What about scale? When you think about scale in your work, what dictates the scale of a piece for you, Senga?

Senga: Well, [laughs] the space.

Alison: Practically the space.

Senga: Very practical. The space I'm in dictates the size of the piece and that's been challenging here because it's such a massive place and oftentimes my pieces are more intimate.

Alison: My guests are Senga Nengudi and Matilde Guidelli-Guidi. We are talking about the new exhibition, Senge Nengudi at Dia Beacon in Beacon, New York. It goes on view on February 17th. I'm curious about performance and performance art in your career, Senga. What can you explore through performance art that you really can't get from some of the other mediums in your practice?

Senga: That's a very good question. [laughs]

Matilde: Well, perhaps you can say how movement has always been important for you in terms of dance.

Alison: You were a dancer, correct? At one point or you like to dance.

Senga: The fact that everybody's a mover as long as they can move, yes.

Matilde: And ritual.

Senga: Ritual has a lot to do with that. I continue with the word expansion with performance. It allows me to research, go into areas that I wouldn't normally in my regular sculptural practice. It's actually a tool and ritual has a lot to do with that. Taking the form of ritual often.

Alison: Matilde, how will performance be incorporated into this show? Into this exhibition?

Matilde: That's a great question. In a way, the realization of the works was also a performance on its own. There are some improvisational acts, especially just to stay with the work. We were talking earlier, some expression of pigments, almost like a burst of pigment on the wall, or other elements that have come spontaneously in response to the space. We will also working towards staging performances later over the two year duration of the exhibition. I must say, actually, the first encounter for me with Senga's work was stumbling about 10 years ago on Vimeo, on a video of Barbara McCullough which was organized, a video titled Shopping Bag Spirits and Freeway Fetishes from '79 in which the artist Barbara McCullough was interviewing several artists in Los Angeles, whose work was associated with ritual, and Senga was one of those.

Whereas all the artists would be having a colloquial exchange with the [inaudible 00:10:31] Senga was performing. She had her headgear and she-- the poise and the cadence of her response, it was almost mesmerizing to the point that I still remember that her response to, "What is ritual in your practice?" was "A ceremonial way of doing things," and that cadence, I think, stayed with me throughout.

Senga: I didn't know that.

Alison: Is that the first time you've heard that?

Senga: It's the first time I've heard that. It's really interesting.

Alison: What's interesting about it?

Senga: Well, it was 10 years ago. I didn't know she was aware of my work 10 years ago, and that that stuck with her, that I chose to [inaudible 00:11:19]

Matilde: Rather than having this kind of interview. David Hammons is shown doing some kind of found material [unintelligible 00:11:29]

Senga: And building on it.

Matilde: Yes, building on it and then, I think, Houston Conwill and Kinshasa Conwill also respond in their studio, having this kind of conversational attention and exchange. Whereas you have a completely different register, which is incredibly striking, and it was prior to encountering the work in person years later. I think it was a Hilton House-curated exhibition at Hunter College where I was teaching at the time where an RSVP piece was presented.

Senga: Interesting.

Alison: It's so interesting. I want to follow up on the RSVP piece but to hear that Senga had this impact on you and she had no idea. She's just working. She's just doing her thing and being an artist and 10 years ago, you had this moment and this experience with her work. Matilde, can you speak to a little bit about Senga's contribution to the field when you think about the impact that she's had? Not just on you because I think that was a fascinating exchange between the two of you.

Matilde: It's a personal [inaudible 00:12:51] because of its expansiveness precisely across media, across generations, and using the simplicity of materials to generate such interesting works. That has been certainly very influential to me. I want to add that the third encounter and that was the first time I saw Senga in-person, was when my former colleague Kelly Cleveland had invited Senga to participate in their artists on artists lecture series, where we invite an artist to respond to the work of another artist.

Senga had chosen Joan Jonas. She arrived and she started stretching blue masking tape in the presenter's area. Then you laid and covered the presenter's table with tarp and you can imagine the sound and the haptic quality of it. Then you sat down and you started a standup routine essentially. She made a joke and then shifted register again to instead some kind of conceptual list reading and going year by year through the years since Joan Jonas birth and what was happening in the world.

You know this kind of shifting registers and thinking about other performance artists in the '70s perhaps working in New York, kind of the loft scene but thinking a lot about personas and their relationship to objects. That is certainly something that, to me, was opening up another figure that I had not known in that scene, and that was Senga. Then continuing with the other video of perhaps birds in Colorado Springs. Some kind of handheld camera situation, and then concluding with a younger performer who's name is Spencer [unintelligible 00:15:04] who did violin improvisation live.

That was her take on a lecture, stand-up comedy and the levity. Again, this idea of ceremonial way of doing things, the simplicity with which by stretching a masking tape on the wall and tarp, she awoke all the senses. So the memory that I have of the lecture, it's not very surreal. I don't know what to say. It's a very embodied memory. I think that is an incredible lesson in terms of rather than having a high-production object that then is completely inaccessible to you. This was completely enveloping and total, I think, as an experience.

Alison: Senga, I want to ask you about Just Above Midtown, there's a big exhibition about it. It's currently at MoMA. We've talked about it on the show. Given your first solo exhibition, your famous RSVP works now, what do you remember about your initial impressions around Just Above Midtown, JAM?

Senga: Well, it was charged with energy and much of that was because of Linda Goode Bryant. There was just an excitement about exploration. You can do what you want to do, when you want to do it, and the way you want to do it. Coming from Los Angeles, that was just extraordinary. Linda took a chance on several of us from Los Angeles, which was a big deal because at the time, there was East Coast art and West Coast art and East Coast jazz and West Coast jazz. We were the youngins related to that. The East Coast thing was supposed to be more sophisticated and had more juice basically at the time. She took a chance on us and actually, that's kind of the theme of the gallery, taking a chance on.

Alison: The name of the show is Senga Nengudi at Dia Beacon in Beacon, New York. It opens on February 17th. I've been speaking with Senga Nengudi and Matilde Guidelli-Guidi, the curator. Thank you so much and have a wonderful opening.

Senga: Thank you very much.

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