Put on the earphones. Push play. A cartoonish white girl offers
a litany of questions in Valley-speak: "It's just like regular
hair? Can you go to the same salon as we go to? Do they know how
to cut your hair?"
As
you listen for 10 more minutes to this art installation called
"white noise," you look at dreadlocked hair hanging
on the wall. The former wearer of these displayed locks and creator
of this piece is damali ayo, an African-American woman who, in
five short years, has gone from self-taught "junk artist"
to a sought-after conceptual artist showing confrontational race-based
work in the Pearl District's trendy Mark Woolley gallery and in
Portland Institute for Contemporary Art's exclusive Northwest
Narrative show.
It
is a career many Pacific Northwest College of Art grads strive
for and some achieve in twice the time. How did ayo get so far
so fast? She credits what she calls "Portland moments,"
little flashes of inspiration in which she envisions her next
artistic development, then realizing that goal through dedicated
persistence.
She
moved to Portland on whim: All she knew about the city was that
it rained a lot and it was whiter than tuna salad on Wonder Bread.
At the end of the day, it's this cultural shock that has provided
her inspiration.
In
her short career, ayo has compared Mickey Mouse's visage to Al
Jolson's blackface, handed out nametags at her shows reading "Hello,
My Race is...," deconstructed the lyrics of the Rolling Stones
song "Brown Sugar" onto sugar packets, and made a quilt
using photographs of celebrities with whom her looks are often
compared. (Her work at Mark Woolley usually runs $200-$500 a piece.)
"A
lot of this work has been in me for a long time, because I've
been in the white system a long time," says the Brown University
grad, though she attributes her recent productivity to her overwhelming
reaction to being immersed in such a white city. Though its racial
makeup is not unique, ayo believes that Portland in particular
lives "in a kind of delayed politic...all the communities
that I've met are still dealing with issues that I dealt with
10 years ago." Ironically, the very culture ayo exposes as
ignorant via her artwork has embraced and celebrated her creations.
As curator Mark Woolley notes, ayo's status as a relative newcomer
to Portland has given her the ability to "pick up sub-themes
of community life."
Portland
moments seem to be coming more frequently for ayo. She is one
of the founders of the defunkt theatre company, which specializes
in contemporary and unproduced works, and she has taken on the
local theater community for its racism. While ayo stands fiercely
behind her views on racial politics, she doesn't let her convictions
or frustrations taint how she feels about her art. "People
think I'm always angry when I'm making stuff, and I'm never angry.
I'm having a blast."
Although
ayo is starting to land her work outside of this city, showing
as far away as New York, she plans to stay in one of the whitest
cities in the country for the time being. While other artists
may feel constrained by Portland's small size, ayo finds both
the accessibility and the friction just what she needs. "I'm
still shaking Portland up a bit," she says. "I guess
I'm not entirely finished doing that."
--Kim
Colton
-------------------------------------------------
Willamette Week Cover Story
Originally
published
Wednesday, April 24, 2002
