Take Role; Take Roll-Absentee ARtists

[Omari Fox - Stool P.I.J.I.N.]

I was recently asked about a topic point concerning who/what was an absentee artist? my response...

You ask...
What is an absentee artist?


my interpretation of the absentee artist is on a few levels. The show constructed a community via invitation and collaboration with the project so to me the absentee artist might be people who rejected the concept of receiving an artwork or a gift to adapt to their own creativity and documenting it; I dont know if that was an actual occurrence but because there were only so many stools to go around the invitations had to be limited and my guess is that not everyone wanted to participate much like the reception people have to receieving a gift with "no strings attached." (which is debatable to me)

another level would be the grander theme of coexistence on the planet and the role that artists "could" play in the neighborhood, not "should." Actually artists play a huge role depending on the view, but i think about rap and fashion. A lot of the young world dress like some neighborhood guys in New York and turned it into big business. Rap might be bad poetry, but people listen and memorize it like religious scripture. What if the corporate mandate was given up and the young people went back to self-definition? what would they look and sound like? That absentee artist might be hiding rhymes, fashion, ideas from the public which is there right to do so, but I remember my paradigm shift when i heard a song called Follow the Leader by Rakim, and later a sonnet i had to do in acting class by Shakespeare, who to me was an emcee of sorts in his own way. those were moments that lead to my ability to create a following just from rhymes in my visual art and then performing them. Nevermind me, I've seen talent in places I almost never heard of but because of a series of factors not just money, the world may never know these folks. Absent. These folks arent even known in their neighborhood but they are genuises.

Another level for me is the absentee artist from the Gallery/museum scene. How many great ones are not seen by people who would love/hate, but definitely respond to their work. For whatever reason. I know as a hip hop dude I'm not interested in appealing to folks outside my neighborhood, but as an educator and messenger of ideas I am all for exposing my ideas to anyone, particularly folks in circles i don't walk in. For those of us at the Sunday session at the Gibbes, I honestly zoned out. I liked my niehgbors in the Future is on the Table community but a few blocks up meeting street, the people that look like me, who some would even distinguish from me as hood, and me bourgie, I heard the "C" community word and wondered where those folks were. I can speak to anyone in art I belive but my voice was born of the 70's 80's hip hop movement which is tailor made for the hood/ Neighborhood. WHat walls keep people who live right there in Charleston out of the Galleries that are supposed to speak and support them you know. The viewers but especially the artists. I wanted a round table on the application of art in the community, im not a theory guy for too long yamean.(you know what i mean)

PS interestingly enough, I left my thoughts absent in the discussion so I'm looking in the mirror in this blog. Some from abroad would argue my absenteeism from the collaborative nature of the project but I say know names.