Viewing pictures from family albums and artistic creations is a significant aspect of how black people, like myself, see ourselves and others within our community. Bell Hooks, for example, spoke candidly about how the camera is portrayed for black people, the role of art in black culture, and the use of photography as a tool for visual resistance. Black people were able to begin telling their own stories thanks to cameras and artists like Asia Estelle (she/her). This led to a voyage of self-discovery to comprehend, challenge, and organize the many facets of the black experience.
On campus, Asia and I chat in our photography building, Sabinal. An atmosphere that is filled with memories of our first encounters, our friendships, and our increased knowledge of photography and its various creative etiquette. Soon, we'll be departing to explore other facets of our lives. We talk about Asia's experience with photography, her thesis, Liminal Intimacies, black identity, and more.
How did photography become the outlet for you and when did it all start?
Six years ago, in high school, I was a sophomore, and in that period, you needed certain electives. What was cool about my school is that we had a photography class and you could go up to Photo 4 and take AP classes. I was most interested in photography. I wasn’t as drawn to the idea of painting, drawing, or theater. I learned about the fundamentals of photography and the principals/elements of art and design, how a camera works, and how to use it. I was exposed to different types of cameras, like the pinhole. For an assignment, I made a pinhole camera out of a Pringles can. We had a makeshift darkroom that our teacher made for us, something that wasn’t provided, so that was really nice of him, and we were able to learn film and digital. I was also learning different processes of things like Photoshop. I was able to take that knowledge all the way to Photo 3 AP since I started a year late. I entered some competitions for Scholastic and Vase and got a couple of medals, which was really cool. I had no clue what I was going to do for college. So if I hadn’t taken that class, I definitely wouldn’t be here right now. So that’s how it all started. Curiosity, I’d say.
Do you find that when doing ceramics is there a compatibility with photography? Is the process different?
I love this question. When I think about ceramics, I think of it in an entirely different way than photography. I do in the future want to combine the two mediums and make that my practice. With photography, not that I think it's necessarily easier, but I think my brain thinks a lot easier in 2D rather than 3D. When I started doing photography and having these assignments and trying to find ways to make them more creative, I opened my creative floodgates and started seeing pictures in my mind. I’m a very visual person, and I’d always enjoy watching TV, shows and films more than reading a book because I was able to see the visuals. With photography, seeing things in my mind, I was able to think of an idea, see it, and then work backwards to create the product, which is what I’ve always done. With ceramics, it was another class that I needed to fill an art elective and was interested in seeing what it was like. I just fell in love with it. With ceramics, I love it because of the things I know that it can and will teach me. I’ll be in the ceramics studio all day; I’ll forget to eat, I’ll forget to sleep, I’ll forget to go to the bathroom—not good things, haha, but I think it's important to have something in your life that allows your mind to feel free of everything: free of stress, responsibility, time, etc. It's very calming, meditative, and cathartic to be in the ceramics studio to make and do things with your hands. It taught me so many things, like patience, especially when throwing, and to embrace imperfection. You can’t always smooth out every single bump or lump in the clay; you can’t always have the perfect shape when throwing. The glaze might not always come out as you initially intended for it to. Those are the small things I love about ceramics. I think about it in a different way and how it teaches me things. I’ve also never wanted to do something all the time so badly, and it's definitely another passion of mine. I’m always wanting to make, or do something with ceramics. It's the only thing that has made me so frustrated, but I still want to do it every single day and not just cry and give up. Haha.
Did I answer your question? Did I just go on a tangent about ceramics? Haha.
No you're good, haha.
How is your real life different from your art life?
I think if I take myself out of the picture and think about my work objectively, I’d say it takes a certain amount of confidence to produce the images that I do and to say the things that I do and talk about important messages and cultural experiences and be completely honest and vulnerable about it. I don’t know if I have that confidence at all times in my personal life. I’m always going to be the first one to say that I’m black, and I’m proud. It's not necessarily that, and I feel there are other parts of my life that I lack confidence at times. Even the confidence to say that I am a good artist and that I make good work is something that I struggle with. I think every artist can relate to seeing the things you make and wondering if they are good or not and if people are going to respond to them, things like that. Making things in spite of the perspective of others. On another note, and to contradict myself, a lot of my personal self can be seen within my art. Because I do have photos of myself, my family, and the things I’ve experienced that are meaningful to me. All my work is very narrative-driven and very personal. My personal life and my art life are connected in some way and related. Art imitates life and vice versa, and my life is in my art. The artist Asia is a bit more confident than personal Asia and is kind of her protector, but subconsciously, they are also the same person. Maybe this means my art protects me in a way.
In order to capture others, we often have to capture ourselves. Through all the blemishes, tired rhetoric and all the spaces in between. When you create an image in someone else’s light, is there a space for you to have self-reflection?
When I’m photographing others, I try my best to detach what presumptions I have of them from the artwork. Because ultimately I don’t want to misconstrue how someone sees themselves or represent them in a way that they don’t feel is representative of themselves. I think very meticulously about how I frame others in my artworks and the different viewpoints or opinions that can be brought up from a viewer's perspective. I never want to make anyone look bad or make them look how they don’t want to look in an image of mine. Usually when I’m using other people in my work, it's for another purpose; it's usually to serve my own purpose as well. If I am to include other people, and it doesn’t feel close to the body of work, it definitely wouldn’t be right to represent them within everything. As far as self-reflection, taking these images of other people and knowing how I am when it comes to people, I always seem to put others first and think more critically about my actions and how they’re affecting others, and I can reflect on that and learn about how I treat myself and how I treat others. I can also think about how I represent myself in my images a bit more; I mean, I don’t really because I’m just snapping a photo. I don’t think about how others will see me in a photo. I could do that, and that can be a way to self-reflect. But ultimately I’m photographing someone else, and I don’t think there is much room for me to give input on how they want to look.
Do you think it is difficult to find value in yourself and who you’re meant to be when there are political systems that tell you, you don’t belong?
I think it would be wrong to say no entirely. I personally don’t think I’ve let that affect my self-worth. Because I know I do belong, and I’ve always been proud of who I am and where I’ve come from. I’ve always been black and proud since I was a little girl. I’ve never felt like my existence was wrong. From a young age, you definitely know that you're different, being black, and looking different from other people, or having people talk to you differently, or having people associate you with different things that you have no connection to. From a young age I’ve always known that I was different; my parents have always taught me about the world, so I was prepared and braced for the impact. It didn’t really affect my self-worth or my value as a black woman. If anything, I knew that me being a black woman and despite all the things that I've been through would make me stronger. On another note, I do attribute some of my self-worth to productivity. If I’m not doing something or I’m dormant or taking time to rest and relax, I don’t see that as productive. I’ve seen it as being lazy, and I’ve always felt guilty about not doing something or being on the go. I think it's partly because of how I was raised to just do things, not half-ass things and to have that, “do it till it's done” kind of mindset. But then I grew up and realized the plight of a black woman. It’s expected of us to keep going and keep pushing on and have all things thrown at us, and we’re expected to juggle it all, at all times. So I think that’s what my self-worth is like. I have to be this go-go person all the time. I don’t know if I think about how society sees me; I mean, naturally, you do, but I don’t think I have issues with people seeing me as a black person because I've always been confident about that part of myself. Every now and then you have a little identity crisis, but I’m getting to a point now in my adulthood and in my blackness that I’m just confident and this is who I am and my identity is valid. The only time I had concerns with my blackness was because I’m lighter-skinned. Now, to me, I look in the mirror, and I can tell that I’m black, and you can tell that I’m black; you can look at my features, and you can look at my hair. My family has all the colors of the “black rainbow,” and to people who aren’t black, we look the same to anyone else. So the identity part is not necessary to feed into is what I’m learning.
When I look at your work, I feel seen. Your art creates a foundation that speaks in a way of not only thinking about blackness, but discovers what you can create when a story doesn’t exist. How important is it for you that the audience finds a human experience within your work?
I think ultimately that is all I’m searching for. In the creation of my thesis project, Liminal intimacies, I think I’m discovering that it is partly the black experience that I am searching for but the human experience as well. Because it is inevitable that there are going to be people who don’t understand my work. It's inevitable that there are going to be white people that view it and don’t get it. I don’t think there's anything wrong with catering to a specific audience, but I do think it is also special when people can see the humanity within your work or see the emotion of it although the work might “belong” to a certain community. Even just creating the semblance of empathy and igniting people's logical empathy can be really powerful if an artwork is able to do that. It’s just like ‘well, I don’t come from this community, and I don’t know what this person is speaking about exactly, but I can relate because of a personal experience of mine, or something a friend has experienced.’ We all know somebody who knows somebody who’s been through this or gone through that. Because we love them, even though we can’t relate to them, we feel for them. Having that be in your work is really special and important, and I’m learning that encryption can be really cool and special, and I’ve been talking a lot about that with my professor. You can have anyone look at your work and feel that emotion, but it's kind of like an Easter egg, or have something in there that can be for your intended audience and they understand it and acknowledge it. So there’s a deeper understanding to envisioning yourself in this situation because you’ve lived this. That’s a really beautiful thing that I’m trying to explore: the emotions of being human and the additional, layered, and different emotions of being Black and the different ways that can look. Blackness for some, can be first thing they see, but for others the last thing they see. There’s no doubting or getting around the fact that blackness does exist in my work. I’m a black artist, and I photograph things that have happened to me and my experiences, so naturally it's going to be in the work. It doesn’t have to be about blackness, but about the cultural experiences of it and the emotion that anyone can feel, no matter what you look like or where you come from.
We are both black artists utilizing different formats to present blackness. How does it feel seeing your work and my work coexisting together?
I don’t remember if I’ve ever told you this or not, but us being the only two black women in our cohort and seeing the difference in our work, I think is really important for other people to see. That we can have the same or different views on blackness and represent them in two completely different ways. I think it furthers the fact that blackness is not a monolith. I think it's an amazing thing. Even when we look at other black artists’ work we see in class, or in books or through our own research, it's really cool to see how our people represent us in many different ways and it's special because it's just the thing, the black community. It's like the head nod in the grocery store: ‘Oh, this hair product doesn’t work.’ It's the commonality we all share, but everything looks different. I’ve for one not seen too many surrealist artists in photography, usually in painting, and coming to this program, you have some of the most magnificent work I’ve ever seen. It's so creative, diverse, and out of the box. It's not anything I’ve seen before, and you also put so much of yourself into your work. You say I do that, but you definitely are very meticulous and detailed. All of your work is symbolic of something, and you choose specific items to be representative of that thing, and I think that in itself is amazing and is a testament of who you are as a person. I love it. Your work can be a wake-up call and can make people think. You don’t want to have to tell everyone everything, and you just want to exist, so interpret it how you like. I’m the opposite of where I’m telling you everything because people aren’t listening to me, which I think both ways are interesting, but I’ve toned it down.
That’s so nice (speechless)
Talking to you about your process, just seeing your work is also helpful to me as an artist because we do have different ways we represent blackness and different messages to tell, but it's nice to know that we have each other's back and it's nice to have someone understand.
Thank you so much, that’s so nice. I really appreciate you so much throughout this program. When I look at your work I do feel seen because I don’t think I could ever document something like that the way you have. It's very much special and unique toward you and I’m just viewing what you are looking at and I feel all of it. I love your work and it’s everything.
Your thesis, Liminal Intimacies, serves as a reflection to other questions like, “Who am I?” and “Who are we?” Never ending experiences of being Black and the Black identity. The questioning desire needed to understand the why of it all. Does creating this body of work feel hard to grasp at times when you’re both creating and finalizing the work?
Yes, I don’t think there is any world that exists where the answer could be no. I think it could be hard because all of these questions can be answered in different ways, no answer is definitive, and it's always a never-ending thing. As I evolve, so will blackness. So for me and everyone, it is always going to look different; it's always going to be changing as we change. My book never really has an ending in my mind because it can always keep going. Seeing it finalized, it doesn’t feel final. I used to think, ‘Oh, it needs to be this way; it needs to be like this, and everything had its order, and it would have a beginning and an ending’, but that’s not what it's about. I think in this part of my life, the art I’m making doesn’t have to end, which I thought it would. Being in this program for three years and having people say, "Oh, you make work about the same thing,” makes me wonder, do I though? Sure, maybe, whatever. It's been like a research project, and I thought I had to be finished with it once I left college because I thought if I continued to make the exact same thing, where does this lead me as an artist? Am I not going to be able to explore different things? I know I’m just coasting because this is something that I will proudly make work about in addition to other things. I think I’m just not as scared anymore as far as grasping the finality of the project; it doesn’t have to end. The book can have an ending, but it can have multiple volumes. You know, it's like I don’t want to skip the song; I want to pause it, and then whenever I’m ready again, I just push play. So acknowledging that has made everything easier, and I’m just done, for now. In my artist statement, I say I want the work to act as a paragraph in an essay. It has been hard to grasp, but also making this book has helped me come to those realizations. Before I started this two months ago, I had a completely different mindset on my work and about leaving this program. So through making it, I’m a bit more at ease with its ambiguity.
In your work you create these open spaces and gaps that identity is intentional and can be non-transparent. You’re creating a language of your own that few will intentionally understand. Why do you think there is such calamity between understanding and misunderstanding when it comes to black artists?
I think a very human thing is that you want to be understood. Everyone wants someone who understands them. I think being black, or a person or color, you have to come to the fact that people will not understand you, nor will they make efforts to try. Which can be a hard thing to come to terms with simply because of who you are and others not recognizing your existence. To understand how you are. It's frustrating to not be understood as a black person, because a lot of what our community does is tell people, and people just don’t want to listen. Because they don’t want to learn or understand. I would much rather have someone misunderstand it than misinterpret it and think I’m saying something that I’m not trying to say. From a black perspective, if we’re only talking about that aspect of my work, if someone doesn’t understand it, cool, but if someone is making assumptions based on things they don’t understand, I think that would prompt me to be like, “Just ask me,” rather than just sitting in the ignorance or the misinterpretation. But that’s where, again speaking with my professor and working on this book has shown me that this misunderstanding can hold value, especially when talking about artwork and being a black artist. Because of things like Easter eggs and encryption, your work is going to find the audience and weed everyone else out. Someone misunderstanding your work or misinterpreting it and not wanting to listen and learn doesn’t need to be a viewer of your work anyway, and someone who will sit and be there and take the time to learn-- that’s how your audience is going to be created. So that misunderstanding and encryption hold value because you get to keep things for yourself, and the people who do want to know will find out and be taken into your world. As far as why there is so much calamity, I don’t know, but I’m trying to not let that bother me and to just let me and my work exist.
In light of equality and known insensitivity in the art world towards black creators, do you think institutions and publications are more genuine now, or is there still a performativity being taken?
I try not to go into things thinking that if I’m denied something is because of who I am. I think I have hope that the world has changed. My parents are different in that sense, but I’m not oblivious to the fact that it does exist, and I do think there is still performativity happening in public places and institutions. I feel like inclusivity has become a trend and something not genuine and in the minds of others, feels obligatory. People are afraid that if they don’t include someone from a different demographic, they will be seen as a bad person or won’t support that community, which I don’t think is true, because context, time, and place are very situational. I try to go into things like “I’m Asia Estelle, I’m excellent, I’m great, all this stuff on my resume will prove it, etc.,” But I feel like it's always there. The thought that this could be happening for this reason, I typically don’t think about. Say I did get a position because of my blackness; I’m there, and I try to always not think of it as a negative thing because if I’m placed in a specific position, no matter what it is or how I got it, I will always do my best, do me, and I’m going to shine, and that will show more of who I am and my character versus the fact that I got here because of my skin color. I see both sides. Nobody wants to be pitted or put somewhere where they don’t belong, or if someone isn’t going to value me as an artist or as a person and they only want me there to check off a box. I feel like you can see through that majority of the time, but it's also up to your decision whether you want to be in that position. If you want to work to do something or boost yourself up or not. It's a hard thing. The best thing that I can do is to continue to be myself regardless if someone is performing and biasedly inviting me into a space or not. I will continue to be myself and bring what I have to the table. I’m not going to change who I am for someone else. Sometimes change can happen from being on the inside, but sometimes it just isn’t worth your time or energy if others aren’t going to fully accept you for who you are, and not what you look like-but hopefully, in an ideal world others will realize that what you look like and who you are can be synonymous, and be fully accepting of that as well.
How do you imagine your future as an artist?
I have a lot of dreams. I see myself having solo shows and exhibitions in my name. For a long time, I wanted to be a creative director. I have good ideas that I’m confident in, and I think this is the perfect job title for me to combine the crazy organizational part of myself with the creative side. Someone who can come up with the ideas and work with other people and work with a team and get it done. It's a dream job, and I know I could soar doing it. It's a position you have to work your way up to. I know it takes a while to get there, but finding a company that I care about and invest in and working my way up through it would be how I could reach that goal. So that felt safe to me because I never thought I could be an exhibition artist. I would let the thought of money get to me because it isn’t the most stable source of income. But I think that is another thing I want to do, and because of who I am, I want to do it all, so it's never a subtraction but an addition. I’ll be a creative director, and I will have my work in shows. I think it would be really cool to be known. I’ve always seen that for myself and for my career, I want to be established and known in my field. I want others to come up with an idea and think that I would do it the best. The recognition of my art, my capability, and my vision is what I want more than anything. Again, ceramics has become a big part of my life too. One day I hope to combine the mediums and have shows that incorporate the two because that would be really cool. This is something long-term, but in the short-term, once I graduate, I’m going to go back to my ceramics job, and I want to start a ceramic business making things for fun and selling them to earn extra money. But it's also a way to get my art and name out there. It's a small start, but yeah, that’s what I see for myself. I also think about fashion and the crazy amount of outfits I’m going to wear. I think of styling my hair in different ways and wearing power suits. Very professional, haha. So yeah, that’s what I see for my future.
Thank you so much Asia for talking with me and doing the photo shoot. You’re such a phenomenal person and artist and of great help to see and I feel so inspired by you.
Thank you!
Talking with Asia helped me appreciate our time together and the general ease with which we could discuss our experiences as black women and black artists. Her art starts a conversation that looks within the complexities of visualizing a narrative and challenging photography. It showcases the importance of black visualization in photography of what is and isn’t said. As I gazed upon her, I saw a future of great accolades and acknowledgement of her dedication and forthcoming nature to continue to talk about these sentimental snapshots that represent her identity.
Find Asia's work here https://aaestelleart.wixsite.com/asiaestelle
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