Meet Damien Davis, the sculptor who is “laying the trap” ⛓️:
Perhaps the bright colors and inventive structure of Damien Davis’s sculptures have caught your eye in a museum or gallery. Perhaps you’ve walked up to them, admired the Brooklyn-based artist’s work, and been pleased by the symphony of hues and shapes he evokes using laser-cut acrylics.
BALIAL: When you went there for your MFA, you’ve talked about how it taught you the sides of art they don’t actually teach you in art school proper—selling your work, turning yourself into a presence. BALIAL: I read that you were a Lego kid. Is there some part of you that enjoys the freedom of not having a map and being the only one with the image in your head?
DAVIS: I don’t want the read to be too immediate with anything that I make. But I am fascinated with the works functioning as Trojan horses where a viewer falls in love with their own reflection in the shininess and color of the hardware, and at least at first blush, [is] not interrogating the shapes and imagery as intensely. It’s only after they’ve been seduced by the materials that they start to question what they’re looking at.
DAVIS: There’s a long history of quilting for African Americans specifically. I come from a family of quilters on my mother’s side, and there’s a long and contested history of quilting being used as a tool during enslavement to communicate messages for people looking to obtain freedom, ideas that needed to be kept secret for people’s safety. Even if it’s not always fabric and thread, sometimes it’s acrylic and hardware. It’s the idea of quilting together a narrative that might feel coded.
DAVIS: I guess so. Anything with a dick in it is brand new to that show because this is the first time I’ve allowed myself to overtly deal with queer themes in the work. In that piece, I’m thinking about a relationship that’s been brokered entirely online between two men who are total strangers. So this overweight, red torso figure overshadowing this other shape came from a narrative standpoint on how fucked up those spaces are.
BALIAL: I’m an immigrant. I’m from India and I grew up in quite possibly the most racist environment my parents could have found for us in this country. So I’ve never lost sight of that kind of solidarity. I was joking with my dearest friend from NYU, Esther, who’s from Ghana, that whenever we go into a public place we automatically track how many people of color are around as a safety thing.
BALIAL: You’re not old. I’m sorry, we’re not there yet. But I like Gen Z’s attitude. I hope they use it to hold people’s feet to the fire and push for more change than we were able to. We were too busy paying student loans.BALIAL: I wanted to ask about Blackamoors, which you’ve researched. It depressed me to learn that they’re like lawn jockeys for Europe. It’s considered an art form and maybe not everyone who has it is violently racist, but it’s fine to them.
BALIAL: A friend of mine who’s a community organizer in North Carolina likes to say that the day working-class white people figure out that they have more in common with people of color than they do with rich white people, we will be unstoppable. There’s no version of opening the news on a daily basis where you feel good about what’s going on. How do you find joy?
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