INTERVIEW WITH DIAMOND STINGILY

By Kimberly Drew, art curator and writer

This text was originally published in NGV Triennial 2020, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, 2020.

Diamond Stingily is an artist and poet from Chicago, currently based in New York City. In August 2020, in the middle of moving out of her apartment, she connected with writer, curator and activist Kimberly Drew for a conversation about her practice and participation in the NGV Triennial, which will be the first time Stingily’s work is exhibited in Australia. The installation, In the middle but in the corner of 176th place, 2019 (pictured above and below), is her most ambitiously scaled to date and was the central work in her two acclaimed institutional solo exhibitions of 2019, before entering the NGV Collection.

Diamond Stingily: I think I wanted to do it because, honestly, it’s pretty cool that my work will be in Australia. I hope people can see it and find some connection to it. I think that’s why I took the opportunity to do it, because I was like, ‘Oh, I hope people see my work’. I just don’t want my work sitting in storage somewhere hiding. I think that’s why I agreed to it, because it will be shown.

KD: There’s so much that I really respect as part of the artistic practice. You labour dutifully over works that are made to be seen, shared and interpreted. How do you prepare yourself for that release? Or do you just say, ‘Okay, I signed up for this’.

DS: I don’t have room to keep any of it, so it doesn’t really serve me to just keep it to myself. That’s kind of how I feel about it. I can’t be too possessive, because I don’t have room to be possessive like that. And, how wonderful it is that people want to see my work? Why should I hide it if I’m proud of it and I want people to see it? That’s how I feel about it, because I can’t afford to be possessive.

KD: I feel that. I’ve visited with and interviewed artists who have varying responses. I have definitely visited my fair share of studios where artists are hoarding paintings.

DS: It’s amazing that they can create that amount of work and have the space to store it, but the work that I make right now is bigger than what my mind can even conceive sometimes. I don’t have the space for it mentally to be around me, nor physically. So it’s like, let it out into the world.

KD: Could you talk about In the middle but in the corner of 176th place? What do you hope viewers see when they encounter the piece?

DS: I grew up playing a lot of sports, and my brothers are all athletes and so is my sister. It mainly focuses on classism, the idea of being elite and my personal experiences with those ideas. I think that’s why I chose trophies. I grew up with the image of having a lot of trophies and taking pride in being strong physically, and being a team player and being a leader. It’s really important when you play sports. They drill that into you. I think trophies, to me at least, are a very American thing – the athlete mindset and being competitive at a really young age. Also, I feel like there’s more emphasis on the Black body to be good at some type of labour. I think trophies, they’re always doing some type of position, like in the middle of doing something.

DS: Yeah, we did a Sparkle Nation Book Club [a literature-focused artists’ collective, co-founded by Stingily] event, where archivist Lavonda Manning chose a few readings for us to do, and we talked about how usually within the media, or even photography, Black people are always in motion. You never can just be at rest. My work is tied to racism and classism, if you look at the plaques. I think Americans don’t really play sports just to play a sport. It’s looked at more as damn near a career. The personal, social and political, they all essentially connect, but they’re not identical. So, there’s a lot of things within these trophies that people can look at and resonate with, but it’s not a universal piece. I’m not trying to make it a universal piece. It’s very personal.

KD: Can you explain more? I don’t want to prod, but I am curious about what’s personal here.

DS: To be real with you, my vocab, it changes. It’s taken from conversations with my older brother, who is a retired NFL player, Fred Moten quotes, some quotes from me and my friend, artist Brie Williams, and quotes from my grandmother that I took to put on those plaques. Just everyday things that Black people have said. Because that’s who I talk to I guess, on a regular basis. I’m not even trying to say it like that. It’s just that Black people have a way of speaking that’s very poetic, without it having to be. It’s not a poem, it’s poetic though. It’s language. And the way my grandma can say something, or the way Brie says something, it’s so familiar, and it’s a beautiful way of saying something matter of fact, but it’s still straight to the point. That’s what I wanted to have on these plaques, because what I’m trying to say is: that’s how it be. The things that I said on the plaques, those are all factual. But, it’s a beautiful way, to me, of saying it.

KD: I really enjoy the way that you’ve described it. There’s something really special about the application of this language that is just so much more beautiful than I think people stop to really realise. What I find really valuable about your work is the way you engage with your family, and listen to your family, and share your family, with such generosity. I’m sure you may also feel an urge to protect your family, with every opportunity that you have to engage with them. To do the act of sharing and protecting and celebrating. It’s a type of labour in and of itself.

DS: Yeah, I think, with my family, just Black people in general are not really looked at as having full lives, but we’re actually very complex, and we have these complex relationships. We have very complex family dynamics. I think I try to just explore that within myself. My work is a poem. It’s a visual poem to me. But that doesn’t make it autobiographical. I do pull from the personal a lot and the personal does include my family. I’m not as close to my family as people would assume, so through my work I think I try to figure out these complex family dynamics, and just relationship dynamics in general with people. It’s like ‘You do so much with your family!’, and I’m like, I know so many Black women that talk to their mothers on the regular, you know what I mean. Black people that call their dad and see how they’re doing, or they love their great grandma. These are things that aren’t really, I think, shown often. It’s out there, it’s just not documented or shown, or expressed, within this patriarchal white supremacy umbrella that we live under.

KD: Yeah. For me, I have a family that is somewhat resistant to being recorded in ways that I have learned to do this work. I want them to participate in an oral history project and they just simply don’t see the value in some of these ways of recording. I think part of it is their agency, but also because they weren’t socialised in a society that taught them that their stories have value. I don’t mean to pathologise in any way your relationships, or to overstate any understanding of it, but I do, as an audience member, really appreciate those engagements. It helps me to sit with that complexity.

DS: When I come home and I’m like, ‘You all are going to be in a video’ or something like that, it’s ‘whatever’ to them. And I’m fine with that, to be real. Better ‘whatever’ than ‘no’. If I ask them to do something, they’ll do it, but I don’t think that they … I don’t know. There’s an honesty and vulnerability to them allowing me to do what I do. But they are very private people and I can only take it so far with them.

KD: I feel that. Can you talk to me a bit about, more broadly in your work as a poet and as a visual artist, how you found yourself bringing your personal story and narrative to the work that you’re doing? Has it always been an impulse?

DS: If it’s a decision, it’s not a conscious decision, to be honest. It’s just, not even to sound conceited, I’m just going to say it: I would be an artist even if I wasn’t getting recognition for it. I would be writing even if I wasn’t being published in a magazine, or making my own books or something like that. I would still be doing what I’m doing. And I think it just comes natural to me, so I don’t think too hard about it. Honestly, I don’t. I try to have fun. Or, that sounds so silly, to just be like ‘I try to have fun’, but I really do try not to stress over art. And just make it as natural as I can for myself, and not force anything. If I force it, it’s definitely going to look like it and so I don’t do that. Because I’m not out here trying to be corny, I want to be real.

KD: I don’t think that’s silly at all. There’s too much work to be done to not enjoy the act of working.

DS: Yeah. I know the work I make is … I don’t know. I know the work I make is ‘me’. I can look at something and be like ‘I made that’, and not get it confused with anybody else’s. And other people can see my work and be like, ‘Oh that’s her’. Yeah, I just try to be as natural as possible, and have fun, and not think too hard and stress out. Because I’m not trying to stress myself. I’m not trying to kill myself with that.

KD: And to keep it 100, there are so many forces that are trying to kill us right now.

DS: Yeah, there’s a lot coming at me on a regular basis, and the last thing that I want to harm me is what I love doing, and that’s making art.

KD: Love that. In the works of yours that I’ve experienced, it seems like there’s different dimensions that you’re working with, in terms of scale, in terms of different mediums that you’re working with. How do you focus on smaller details? Do you find yourself really obsessed with that little corner that might speak to somebody? How do you make those decisions?

DS: Whatever the poem calls for, to be real. That’s how I approach it. But I’ve been challenged before. It’s been like, ‘I can make this figure, so I should’. So I have this idea, ‘What if it was like this, and not like this?’ I do like to play around with scale, because if my ideas are coming from a little kid’s perspective, it has to be big and over the top, because adults are looking at it. Or, I don’t know, you want to feel like you’re in a church, so the door got to look a certain way. Or, you want to make it look like somebody’s grandma’s house. You know, you’ve got to scale it the way the poem is. Or, sometimes go opposite of the poem and be like, okay, I said it like this, but now can I say it louder visually? They’re not going to hear me, so I’ve got to say it louder.

KD: In relationship, especially to this work that looks at accomplishment, and maybe even idealism and the metrics of success – I wonder what success looks like for you. Is it about technical growth? Is it about narrative development, or is it about completion of an idea? Or is it about accolades? What, if any, are your metrics of success for yourself?

DS: Success for me, to be real, is being satisfied and happy with myself. People can be proud of me all day, but if I’m not satisfied and proud of myself, what’s the point? I’ve got to be happy with the decisions I make in my life, and that is success to me. Being satisfied with myself. And, knowing that I helped others do what they want to do. That’s being successful to me. Because, if you’re just going out of your way to reach for materialism the entire time, that’s a hard life. Yeah, I think that’s being successful to me, it’s like towards personal growth, as a person. And it makes me a better artist, it makes me a better writer. Or a poet. I love saying I’m a poet. People be list writer, I be like poet, hey girl.

This interview has been edited and condensed.