Irene Antonia Diane Reece: Home
Irene Antonia Diane Reece was born and raised in Houston, Texas, lives and works between the United States and Europe.
She graduated with her B.F.A (2018) in Photography and Digital Media at the University of Houston and M.F.A (2020) at Paris College of Art in Photography and Image-making. She exhibited a solo exhibition in 2017 at Lawndale Art Center in Houston, TX; in collective 2018 at Le Bateau-Lavoir in Paris France. She’s currently exhibiting work for a collective exhibition in 2019-2020 in Paris, Barcelona, Utrecht and San Antonio, Texas. Her series Billie-James will be exhibited at the 5th Biennale Internationale de Casablanca in 2021.
Her array of photographic works, appropriated films, usage of text, and found objects create an insight towards issues that revolve around racial identity, African diaspora, social injustice, family histories, mental and community health issues. She identifies as a contemporary artist and visual activist. Her recent work questions society’s perspectives on her racial identities and combats the social norms in regards to being a Black Mexican woman living in the United States and Europe. Her work pushes boundaries and forces her viewers to confront issues that are deemed difficult to tackle.
BEF: Hey Irene! How are you doing since getting back to Texas from your time in graduate
school in Paris?
IR: At this moment I feel relief and I am in the continuing process of healing. Paris is rough. Graduate school in Paris with a majority white faculty is rough. Being the only Black student in your program is rough, especially engaging with them about your art relating to subject matters about race and oppression. I will express that it is very stressful fleeing France during a pandemic but I feel fine. I have to remind myself that I do not need to continuously make work and put out product. I am only human and not everything revolves around my career, sometimes you are needing to step back and just be happy in the moment versus planning for the future. So since being back I keep having to take breaks from working on projects but it is great to be home. It is very ironic that my thesis project manifested into Home-goings. It was a metaphor for protecting Black lives, aspects of liberation, and canonizing them in pictures to make them sacred; to bring them home. And in that regard, I brought myself back home physically and spiritually coming home where I felt safe in my communities. I am happy that I am done with graduate school but there is a lot of work to be done regarding racism in institutions and especially all different sectors of art institutions which is the activist work I’ve been doing since returning home in mid-March 2020.
BEF: The theme of “home” is weaved throughout your work. Your use of family portraits is delicate in the handling in your series Billie-James. How do these poignant vignettes facilitate in helping you create the larger narrative?
IR: I had first actually started this series during my last semester of undergrad due to the election of Trump. I remembered sitting in class at the University of Houston PDM (Photography & Digital Media) program and having my non-Black peers and faculty being vocal about how far we had come as a nation and we were taking steps back. This really struck a chord with me because I had never experienced what they were talking about “how far we have come”, because I experienced racism everyday. So I began experimenting with objects and photographs to create the feelings that I was having in that moment. It was a very rough draft of something much bigger. Originally made up of one large cotton bale, broken mirrors, expired polaroids, small printed versions of family archives with a mixture of Langston Hughes’s poems and audio of my father speaking / James Baldwin’s speech at the 1965 William F. Buckley debate. I didn’t know what it would manifest to but I knew I wanted the narrative to display the repetitiveness of nothing has changed in America regarding the respect of Black lives. I left it alone for two years.
I’ve stated before my work is cathartic. I am not able to fully commit to a body of work unless it has a form of connection to me personally. It can be labeled as cliche but it is a form of therapy for me. So, when I moved to Paris and I experienced the different forms of racism in the institution and in public settings I found that my identity was being questioned/attacked in these environments. I knew I needed to resurface this work to bring not only comfort to me but force the audience to confront my world. I am heavily influenced by Deborah Willis: Reflections in Black and Tina Campt: Images Matter and Listening to Images . In regards to methodology of the Black gaze and observing my family archives as more than a photo, I see them as haptic images, they are tactile to me, full of complexities. I chose the mixtures of my childhood images that were fond memories for me growing up being Black and Mexican. I chose images of moments when I wasn’t sure of myself in regards to my identity or the years when I experienced the most racism as a child. It was important to showcase the parallels between my father’s life growing up in the late 50s/early 60s versus me growing up in the 90s. The plethora of Black family imagery from that era, my father’s era is nostalgic but I am pushing the boundaries of what people assume Black families look like. As are many Black artists and artists of color are showing the different forms of representation, eliminating the canon, the white gaze and showcasing their own cultural narratives versus an outsider. God, I wanted to make sure that gaze was not present. I wanted to push the notion of my family history and how they built America as every Black ancestor has done. I chose the images of my grand-daddy (my father’s father) showing generational love to his son and coincide with the images of my father giving me that same strength and affection. This installation is multifaceted with hidden messages and experiences that I and my father have encountered in our life. The end result or large narrative behind this is the notion that we as Black people were never truly free, we are never truly respected, we are seen as a threat, we are demonized, our culture is stolen, our features are celebrated on other but not on us, our children are not protected, and above all nothing has really changed. I see this flickering glimmer of hope in the past month or two regarding Black lives and I hope we still keep that momentum going. This does not mean I will stop making visual activism work, I will continue to move forward and maneuver in this life by celebrating, liberating, and protecting my Blackness. That is the larger narrative of the work.
BEF: Can you talk about your process in regards to using three-dimensional materials alongside the two-dimensional photographs?
IR: I remembered when I started becoming critical of photography in regards to the machine being used as a tool of violence towards BIPOC communities in the past and even now. So that was one of the reasons I had stopped taking pictures for a while and dipped into my archives. I have influences that you can sometimes see in my work from Ellen Gallagher, Willem Boshoff, Oscar Muñoz, Albert Chong, Lorna Simpson, and Carrie Mae Weems; there are far more but the list would be endless. In regards to creating the form of tactlessness in my work, I have an issue with just having traditional photography in the traditional frames in a straight linear line or the occasional grid. It doesn’t bring me joy nor sustenance. Some images are needing to be untouched and left how they are. I always feel the need to create depth and different senses. Culturally my background is deep and rich full of history. I have traditions, rituals that are important in my family history that hold a connection to others. So I incorporate aspects of my personal objects, spices, hair, letters, alphabet letters, and anything/everything that I feel holds the identity of the narrative I am trying to express.
BEF: What are some of the ideas behind the use of text throughout your work?
IR: Well, I would never consider myself a writer but I will say I have a lot of them in my family so let’s start there. I grew up with a granny that was a librarian and her son, my father that is a writer (an arts writer), and my older sister. So I am heavily influenced by my upbringing in literature. That has transferred to my art when I use quotes from an author directly or verbal sayings that my Black family would repeat to me as a child. I am heavily influenced by the poems of Langston Hughes, the speeches and writing of James Baldwin, the speeches of Stokely Carmichael and Angela Davis, and the books of bell hooks, Zora Neale Hurston, W.E.B DuBois just to name a few. I am also influenced by messages from my community as an adult. Text is a powerful tool. It is a form of language and can be interpreted in many ways of how we view the world. I think about this in regard to the portrayal and representation of Black people in literature throughout the years and how it still circulates in the present day. That has an effect on my communities and I am wanting to change that. While the image itself is important I use the text as a reinforcement of empowerment. The messages are repetitive to keep reminding my communities that we are worthy, resilient, strong, brilliant, and have always been. As a Black Mexican woman artist, I try my best to use my visuals as a form of expression to uplift, protect, fight, and keep my people as the primary voices.
BEF: There is also a “pop art” sensibility to your series There Were Always People Like Me. How do you see this stylistic approach add to the need for representation in media of BIPOC, both historically and currently?
IR: Yes! The work is all about representation and how we are not needing to recreate ourselves as Black people. There have always been different forms of Black beauty but it is not all celebrated or represented in the right way. I am biracial, I swear I’ve seen more representation of mixed-raced models than dark skin models in beauty advertisements/commercials. And this is one of the many things that are not represented enough. I don’t see a lot of representation of coily and kinky hair versus curly/wavy hair (good hair). I remember seeing advertisements of Black women that are light completion or racially ambiguous having very little to no Afrocentric features. I didn’t like that because then it always creates this one standard of beauty and specifically Black beauty. This is not a new topic we as a community have been putting pressure on clothing lines, makeup lines to have more representation.
I grew up looking at Ebony magazines and advertisements from the 50s to late 70s because of my parent’s era. I’ve been enamored by that aesthetic regarding representation and I observed throughout those magazines different representations in hair. From curly to bobs to fros the variety was there, however you rarely saw that in “mainstream” advertisement and it is still like that today. I really don’t want to give a history lesson on how representation has an affect on us as a society but it does. So I would appropriate and manipulate the old imagery in the advertisement to create a message for my generation. I chose specifically to talk about the Black woman and what white society has deemed not up to their standards of beauty. I wanted to keep the pretty light colors to confuse the audience and make them think it is all just a pretty picture. When you come closer and actually spend time (and confronting) with the image you will see the messages are about colorism, cultural appropriation, microaggressions, and above all celebrating Afrocentric features.
BEF: As a multi-ethnic, Black-Mexican Female artist, your work is often in response to the racism that is lived and experienced not just in America but abroad as well. Do you find strength in honoring your ancestors and their struggle?
IR: I actually started with my work based on community and mental health. I only started this self expression of my experiences being a Black Mexican woman in my art due to the institutional racism I was experiencing at my graduate school and the everyday life in Paris. It just took off after that I had no idea it would affect people positively and negatively. I felt I was reaching a community in Paris where their voices weren’t being heard. It also became lonesome for me because I knew my communities back home would benefit the most from my art. I felt at times I have found my purpose. I must say it is very draining. I am in awe of those who do this 24/7 it is not for the faint at heart. It is of full dedication and commitment. You will piss a lot of people off but I truly believe nothing will get done unless you say something. And by saying something it can be through your voice, words, art but also you are needing to make sure there is action. I would take a deep breath, cry, go home, and look through the images of my family archives. It was very healing for me when I would go through the images and listen to them. That is when I realized maybe this could impact someone else like me. I would like to think I am honoring my ancestors in many different ways. I come from many generations of Black and Brown excellence both worked to exist in a place that was not welcoming of them. I hope I am doing them justice or I believe I am. I will continue to push boundaries, grow, stay strong, be as raw as I can be and unapologetic. I am Black and I am proud. I am Mexican and I am proud. I will continue to emulate that in my work and myself.
BEF: Thank you, Irene.
IR: Thank you, Brenda. It truly feels good to be home.