Indë
“this is what i really look like” Exhibition Feature
Indë (he/they) is a featured artist in this is what i really look like, an exhibition curated by Bean Pecorari at the Brookline Art Center’s Beacon Street Gallery, on view from July 22 to October 28, 2023.
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Indë's artistry/experience is made up of reconciliations:
Blackness/Americanness/Whiteness/Foreignness
Appropriation/Authenticity
Queerness/Conformity
Eroticism/Restraint
Sound/Light
These reckonings inform an intersectional worldview. Out of this experience, Indë tells stories of tension, embracing the activism that is inherent to their Self.
Tell us about your background as a visual artist and as a musician. How did you become a part of the BAC community?
Visual art and music are common threads in my story, from my artsy childhood in Western Mass through to my time at MassArt here in Boston. However, it wasn’t until 2020 that I started to tie the two together; I started writing songs about the stories I couldn’t paint, and using my brush to notate music in new ways. These intersections are where I find the most excitement, and serendipitously align with my intersectional identity as a queer Black person. I’m very grateful to Bean Pecorari, curator of this is what i really look like, and Journey Temple, fellow exhibiting artist, for seeing the value in my perspective and inviting me to participate in this exhibition at the BAC!
What is “ART” to you?
Anything made with intention, and acknowledged as such. It’s a broad definition, I know. But Imma keep it brief and unpretentious.
Your work centers around many different contrasting ideas, including appropriation and authenticity, Blackness and whiteness, as well as queerness and conformity. Do you see these ideas as opposing each other? Why is it important for you to explore both ends of polarizing spectrums in your work?
I remember doing a show last year – performing music at the reception – and being interviewed afterwards with a similar prompt. It’s very funny to me that people can miss the point of these explorations. That interviewer unfortunately didn’t get it, but I think those of us that have felt tension in our identities will be able to discern my meaning.
Contrast defines us, in how we are interpreted and valued, and the binaries in our language and systems makes it hard to escape that. So I lean into those gray areas in my work – it’s less about the ends of the spectrum, and more about the middle breadth. I’m vocal about how “contrasting ideas” inform one another, and how vulnerable it is to be both, or neither/nor.
In other words, I’m mixed race, I have an immigrant parent, I’m genderfluid, I miss the woods when I’m in the city and I miss my people when I’m in the woods, and it's been a hell of a journey to reach this place where I feel so secure in my sense of self. IYKYK, YK?
Do you find that your work as a musician impacts your illustration practice? Does your visual art have an influence on the type of music you write and compose?
Some paintings make me hold my breath. Some make me sigh... Sometimes I put on a mellow playlist as I work my pigment into wood panels, and sometimes I belt and laugh and pour my voice all over the picture, and fill the room. I’ve amassed albums of unreleased songs and portfolios of paintings, and I get frenzied, thinking about how to mix mediums. Right now I’m experimenting with juxtaposition – pairing a song and painting and exhibiting them together – but I’ve also developed my Color Harmony system as a means of communicating musical harmony through color relationships. This also empowered me with the means to turn a color palette into a chord progression, and I’m really in the thick of these interdisciplinary explorations. I try to keep them as symbiotic as possible because it’s all too easy for one medium to wither while the other one flourishes. The best way I’ve found to do this is to unify it all in concept; my perspective, my tone, is pretty consistent across the board, so I can comfortably shift between mediums/genres/styles.
What has been the most challenging part of your journey as an artist? What has been the most rewarding aspect of being a musician, fine artist, and activist?
Finding a team is my greatest obstacle at this point in my career. I’ve started to curate my target audience, but I craveeee collaboration. Like, people who are down for the cause, and ready and willing to contribute to the vision. Need that.
Anyway! The most rewarding thing about my art practice is how whole and happy it makes me feel! I love my craft. I love my projects in their successes and failures. I love the breakthroughs. I love the collaborators I do have. I love feeling seen. I love this art thing.
To see more of Indë’s work, visit this is what i really look like at the Beacon Street Gallery, on view from July 22 - October 28. Be sure to view his illustrations and music on their Instagram page, @artbyinde, as well as their website, artbyinde.com.
