The Young Painter Curators Are Rushing to Work With

0:02I want that experience endlessly the whole time you're looking at my work. So duration matters in that way of how can I really capture and freeze the person in that time and sit with the moods that may come up.

0:21Taína H. Cruz:I'm Ben Davis and this is The Art Angle, a podcast from Artnet News.

0:35Taína H. Cruz:The Whitney Biennial is here. That would be the Whitney Museum's big curated show, which every two years brings together dozens of artists, always closely watched by critics and public as a statement about what is important now in art. Hot on its heels next month, MoMA PS1 is staging Greater New York. That event happens every five years, bringing together dozens more artists to take the temperature of art in New York. Taina H. Cruz, my guest today, is featured in both of these shows at once. For the Whitney, she is even, in a way, the face of the show. A work by Cruz, a green-tinged close-up painting of a grinning child called I Saw the Future and It Smiled Back, is blown up on a billboard outside the museum in the Meatpacking District.

1:20Taína H. Cruz:This is a lot of attention for an artist who was relatively young, born in 1998, and just getting her MFA from Yale's famous School of Painting last year. She's worked in a variety of media, but is known now for paintings, often featuring images of black female figures with a woozy, moody, sometimes unsettled or unsettling atmosphere. Sometimes she works in suggestions of African American and Caribbean folklore or intimations of horror and fantasy. Sometimes she's played on the images of celebrities like Halle Berry or Tyra Banks. sometimes she reworks her own personal photos of neighbors in new york since cruise is an artist that the curators of these big shows are looking to i wanted to get a sense of the influences from art and otherwise that are shaping her approach to art and what she makes of all the attention taina thank you for talking to me yes i'm so happy to be here where are you right now i'm currently in new haven connecticut so i wanted to talk to you pick your brains partly because I was going through the lists for the Whitney and Greater New York and your name comes up in both.

2:28Taína H. Cruz:How does that happen? Yeah, it feels really surreal that it happened simultaneously at the same time. I grew up with thinking the city as my playground, so to be included into these institutional big art spaces is very significant and intimate in its own way. It definitely wasn't something that I was strategizing towards or was thinking about. I had just finished grad school and the work was expanding in scale and atmosphere and just like about how much space that I was taking up. So the work was already calling for a different kind of visibility. And it just so happened that timing and aligning worked out.

3:10Taína H. Cruz:Do the curators know about each other or are they like you're keeping it a secret from them? Now that the announcements of the artist list were posted, everyone just knows and has been talking. But when I first got the information over the summer, fall area, I definitely was able to keep the information to myself. Oh, yeah? Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And do you know what's going to be in both of the shows? I mean, can you give people who haven't or aren't going to be able to see the shows a hint of what you're showing? Yeah. So for the Whitney, I am presenting a multi-part installation that has a site-specific wall drawing, paintings, an animation that I made, a bronze figurine on top of like a stack of drawings and writings that I made in the studio.

4:02So there's a sense of storytelling and narrative particularly involved for that space. I was given this large curved wall and architecturally created something different than however type of ways that I've been displaying my work. So I was really was challenged with this architectural curved wall and the work was responding to that.

4:25Taína H. Cruz:They threw you a curveball or a curveball. It definitely did. But I love a good challenge. I was already thinking about curved portals in general. So it just seemed like everything that has happened so far just keeps working organically and naturally. So I was already thinking about a curved exterior in general. And so now to show work on that makes so much sense. Is that a development in what you've been doing, this kind of multi-layered mixed-media installation, kind of scaling up, you're saying? Yeah, I mean, it even goes back to in grad school for my thesis, the first time I made a painting that looks like it was coming out towards you.

5:05So it was definitely a mixture of my sculpture background. I studied sculpture in undergrad, so I am constantly thinking about my work within a 3D space, how art can feel embodied sensorially. historially and I want my paintings to feel that same way. And so for my thesis, particularly for that installation, it was more so like, how can I create a painting that you can feel like you can delve into? And what better way to do that than to have a painting coming out towards you? So that calls for like a different way of showing, showcasing my paintings. And I was still thinking about that for the Whitney installation specifically, different ways of just showing painting.

5:46Taína H. Cruz:And Greater New York, is that still top secret? No, not top secret. For the Greater New York, my space is in a corner, and I'm going to be doing a large-scale wall drawing within that corner. This one feels a lot more atmospheric, a lot more architectural to the building of MoMA PS1 itself, so there is some specificity towards that as well. It's more so like, how can I make the image wrap around you? It's exciting because both of these shows are happening simultaneously and they feel so related, but also it's like behaving very differently. One is like gathering elements to create like a stage, a performance, a story, while the other one is more so dispersing into space and working across what keeps like lingering.

6:33It just depends on where the art is living at the moment.

6:36Taína H. Cruz:But it's interesting to me, in both cases, it sounds like the curators kind of more picked you than works of art. They're actually inviting you to respond to the space in both cases. I really like that you mentioned that because, I mean, outside of me and the work itself, I think they're giving me these opportunities for me to just control or just have full-on manipulation of the space given to me. Manipulation may not be the right word, but I have to submit proposals and project ideas. So it's not really like work that I've made in the past. It's all like what is currently I'm feeling and inhabiting at the current moment.

7:12And they're totally like willing for me to like let my ideas just like splurge all over this space. That's essentially me as an artist. I think like it's necessary for me to constantly create something that feels now and present. So I'm grateful that it's not like work I've made in the past and it's just done in that. But it's something that is actively moving and feels energetically towards something.

7:36Taína H. Cruz:Well, let's talk about you. Maybe that'll give people a sense of the content of some of this new work. So you already said you're from New York originally. Tell me about your background. Yeah, I grew up between Harlem and the Bronx. My mom lives in Morningside Heights near Columbia, and my dad is in the Bronx near the Bronx Zoo. He was born in El Barrio in Spanish Harlem. So New York really runs deep in my family through different generations and cultures. I went to school on the Upper West Side and school in Brooklyn Heights. And a lot of my afterschool activities really took me all over the city.

8:13So again, I think about the city as this playground of discovery. I was in different neighborhoods. I was uptown, downtown. And I was constantly thinking about the movement between these different communities and the energies that was felt because each block held something so different. I was just, I was feeling all of that from child to when I went to college. And so I think like I'm still reliving those memories. I'm still feeling how sensorial and heightened that experience was. And I think the work is inspired by that.

8:46Taína H. Cruz:You mentioned in an interview I read with you, the punk goth scene as an influence? Yeah, I feel like the punk-ish scene was also at a time where the intranet was also creating spaces for communities. So I found that there was community reflected on the intranet, but then people were finding inspiration in the communities in New York. I was witnessing this overlap of internet culture influencing also New York being two steps ahead of what is the next trend or something in that way. New York is very gothic. It's very like solitude. Yeah. And I think like that is just part of me to like really admire the nitty grittiness of the essence of what it means to be punk rock.

9:33Taína H. Cruz:What was the first thing that inspired you to think about being an artist? It's hard to like name a first moment because I feel like every little like strand was like braided from childhood up. I had a very active imagination. I was always playing pretend, inventing worlds, speaking to the stuffed animals. And, you know, I felt really embodied by my imagination. It felt more like it was in my body and not just something outside of me. But then like more literal, my mom gave me a portable dry erase board, something that like I would use all the time on subways or on the bus. And, you know, going back into the city, I like, I see how much children need like stimulation while they're in these like public spaces, because in these public spaces, there's people themselves like going to and from work, dealing with so much.

10:26My mom was like carrying myself and my younger sister around the city along with her to run errands. And she gave me a dry erase board. And that was kind of like my way of finding peace and sanctuary between like me feeling the energies of like all these other adults. And so I recognize that as like an early memory of like when I found art making to be a source of like, okay, this is peace. This is sanctuary. This is my survival of how I can navigate this bustling world.

10:56Taína H. Cruz:It's interesting working in public, you know, like as you are doing now, you know, site responsive and in a way, uh, mobile. You went to art school though. You went to MICA, yeah, the Maryland Institute College of Art and studied sculpture, you said? Yes, I think that was really like a transformative experience studying sculpture. It combined my interest in the digital and internet art within something that felt installation-wise, creating environments. And so that was really a transformative experience, like recognize the type of art that I wanted to make. I did not always feel like I was so tied down to being labeled as a sculptor or a painter or an illustrator.

11:36It was just like within the sculpture department, you were given a lot of concepts and theories to help you amplify what you're searching for. And I think the sculpture department really allowed that to really flourish.

11:49Taína H. Cruz:Were you a pandemic era student? I graduated in 2020. So when it was kicking off. Yeah, you graduated into the pandemic. Yeah. So that was super strange. So my like last semester of undergrad was online and did it shift anything? I don't know. I think like if anything. I mean, how do you how do you show your art to your peers in that situation? How did you? Well, I was really working a lot with like creating 3D modeling videos and 3D animation. So I was like a perfect opportunity to just like keep making video work even before like the pandemic happened. I think when I was studying sculpture, video installation was front and center of like the work that I was interested in.

12:28So now that I have everyone's full divided attention on Zoom, everyone was able to like see like my videos and like have to feel something from the videos themselves. That was kind of like the work that I was doing. But also I think like I was also interested in creating video games a lot more. I have a lot of like extensive background with just like playing with technology. So it just allowed me to make video games related to my video. It was all just different ways of exploring.

12:59Taína H. Cruz:Well, but then you went on to go to the Yale Painting and Printmaking Department, which is a very famous department. A lot of very famous artists have come out of it. Kande Wiley and John Curran and Michaline Thomas. You have a multimedia background, but decided to go in for painting. Why? When I was applying to grad school, I had a studio in Chicago and I was just making a lot of paintings. painting is something that feels natural to me as well as my video and sculpture work and that's where I feel like I don't have like a hierarchy on what matters most to me which medium matters most to me and that's why right now I need to combine them all both if it's necessary but when I was applying to grad school I was making a lot of paintings because I think painting is fun and my portfolio had a lot more of the 2D drawings and paintings than like my sculpture so it was simply like, this is the one moment I'm going to apply to grad school.

13:53Let me like take what I have. And it just fits the painting category.

13:59Taína H. Cruz:I'm interested in what the mood is in art school right now. You know, you're talking about how you have a background in multimedia stuff, doing video games and stuff. And I feel like a lot of image makers are really freaked out because of all the AI stuff and the way the digital world is. Is that a conversation that you're having in school that people are talking about in relationship to painting? In a sense, I think the relationship that people are talking about painting, at least what I saw was kind of like, are you abstract or are you figurative? And I was like... Oh, really? Old school. Old school.

14:35Taína H. Cruz:So no. The answer is no. They're not having a conversation. Yeah, I think that wasn't really the forefront. And so I think I strategized my two years of grad school as like, okay, this is a container. During these two years, I'm just going to figure out the type of artist I want to be or that I already am. And of course, that is always going to be fluctuating. But I was able to really garner those two years as like, I don't have to put my survival on the line and that I had this freedom to experiment, to play with scale, to play with tone, to play with if I want to include a figure or an animal.

15:09And so I guess like within that discussion, the idea of the digital kind of was back end to me. I can go on forever about the internet and digital sphere and what that means to me. But I was more interested in like what my paintings were already doing for people and how I can like really push them into thinking about it completely differently. And that's two years of studio space where I was just having fun and And experimenting, I think, really solidified what time and pressure means to my work and what that means to others.

15:41Taína H. Cruz:What sort of artists do you look to historically or contemporary peers you think are doing relevant work? An artist that I look to historically always, I would say Francisco Goya. I think there's a type of existential loneliness that doesn't feel performative. It's atmospheric. the feeling really sits in the space rather than being announced and I think about that a lot how tone can carry something you know heavier than narrative something I think about Goya is something I can see in your paintings that he's an old master but there's something always a little odd in his figuration yeah it's so odd and I love that it's odd because it just shows that it's more real I don't know that's like it really sits with me it sits with me for a very very long time and I think he's that one artist that I I'm always finding something new towards and um for the contemporary I would say like I look towards like modding communities like people who are taking apart devices and putting them back together yeah I think like because I'm already coming from this background of art making as embodied that i look towards like other references of embodied men and i think like the modding community the hackers that are still striving along really like solidifies that these systems aren't fixed and so i really admire just like going back physically hacking together machines yeah physically like a maker community yeah maker community but also like different scripts online that can like easily be not easily but now that is like again with the internet things have been constantly changing but there is I feel like there is an essence of like going against this fixed idea of how we can use the internet and these devices and they're still holding strong to a lot of what is being able to change today so I really like to be reminded that there's other communities outside of this art world that are actively building a part building something together and seeing what comes of it and I think that's where discovery you know as artists is really important to keep that mainframe alive.

17:48Taína H. Cruz:Yeah. Pre-Yale, you made some digital work. You have the work that's a sort of a digital avatar of Halle Berry, I think. Walks you through a breathing exercise. It's sort of creepy, sort of sincere. What were you trying to get out with that? I made that during undergrad. So again, like undergrad, I was really like, let me combine my love of computer science and the tech world and the glitch art digital art community into like something that could feel like I could project that kind of hacked together hacking together absolutely and so I was interested in spirituality always my mom was a trained hypnotist and was a very religious person I'm coming at these worlds I would call them from like a deeply religious perspective a folklore perspective but then also like a computer science Lego robotics kinetic machinery like putting like motors and machines together to create like a sort of animated being and all of that sometimes works well in the language of video so I was inspired to just like create a 3d avatar Polly Berry kind of enacting like this influencer trope of can you achieve spirituality through a YouTube video and it's fun to create something that is direct and straight to the point that doesn't always have to like be blurred or layered or a little bit more advanced to get to a reaching point.

19:12I felt like sometimes, you know, the video is doing what it's doing and we can leave it at that.

19:38Taína H. Cruz:Your art now, even though it's not necessarily working with digital stuff, has been shown in the context of digital stuff. Like at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Detroit, in the Code Switch, Distributing Blackness, Reprogramming Internet Art show, right? They're showing your paintings in the context of a show about Black artists relating to data and art. How do those pieces fit together? I think it fits together because I think it fits together. Sure, sure, sure. But I suppose for the curator. I think particularly for that, it was wonderful. You managed to convince someone, I guess is what I'm saying.

20:19Yeah, well, it's also like those paintings were also kind of like a collaboration between the curator, Legacy. So Legacy Russell, I really enjoyed when I'm showing in these spaces that there is some sort of like connection beyond myself, the art. What else can we like pull from there? So like having like a coffee time with Legacy and we're discussing like where she's coming from and where I'm coming from. It just like ended up having it being the right moment to create a painting to like really talk about this moment.

20:50Taína H. Cruz:That makes a lot of sense because Legacy Russell wrote Glitch Feminism. she's also from New York and she talks in that book exactly like you do about discovering the internet in a time in New York when it becomes a place where you're finding subculture and the city is is changing so there's a horror vibe I mean you talked about folklore and spirituality I wouldn't say that the paintings read as digital but they read as kind of images you're finding and processing maybe out of like digital archives perhaps and then transforming? Is that how you work more or less? Not anymore. So again, that was kind of like pre grad school, pre like right off the bat from pandemic vibes and it's like still in pandemic vibes and that was like a source of like processing for me.

21:39Taína H. Cruz:You mean because everybody was online? It's like that's the only reference you could have? I was always already online. If there was like a pandemic or not, I was like online. I grew up online. So for me, it was More so, like, again, I was going back into, like, drawing and painting, and I found different images that I was still, like, interested in from, like, a teenager. And I would just think about why I was interested in those images and display it back to me. For example, like, one of my paintings prior to grad school was, like, again, thinking about these, like, caricatures. So I had Holly Berry.

22:14I thought about Tyra Banks. And so I formulated Tyra Banks as she was, like...

22:18Taína H. Cruz:Was Tyra in the middle from 2023? I think I depicted her in the Middle East, basically. I thought about my mom, single mom with two daughters. We were watching America's Next Top Model growing up. Different ways of like I was seeing and thinking about culture growing up just resurfaced. And so why not put this like another character in this like abnormal space and like see what kind of conversation goes from there. So like at that time, that was like my way of like thinking about digital art and physical paintings in ways that wish they converge. But like now that's not how I work at all. So I feel like things have shifted in a way that I think has just been important.

22:58Taína H. Cruz:So what are you shifting away from? Is it just a process of self-discovery, more discovering what you like through graduate school or through living? Or is it trying to move away or towards something? Oh, yeah, absolutely moving towards something. I feel like as much as I admire and was interested in what the grassland experience gave me, this is all like work that I have been like just taking in on my own time. And so it began with a lot more listening, you know, listening in silence, spending time with silence. The Internet is loud. Everywhere around us is loud. and so it allowed I think like if I wasn't listening to myself and what the work was like actively like speaking or saying because if you sit long enough if you sit straight at your work in the studio for two hours long or more it just starts coming to you and so I think I spent a lot of more time listening than like being still in silence and then that has like really generated the work that I've been making today that feels a little bit more different than starting off from the digital and going off from there.

23:59Taína H. Cruz:I have not seen your work in person. I've only seen it digitally. So I'm going to get a big dose of Cruise, double dose of Cruise in this coming season. But the works I have seen features a lot of female or femme black figures with a very unplaceable emotional tenor that sometimes verges towards the monstrous, I'd say. Is that still what you're exploring? Are you moving towards a new thing with the new projects? Or am I even reading those images correctly? I'm thinking of one where there's like a figure taking a selfie and she has like yellow teeth. Again, that was like when I was referencing more from this photo that I had of like someone taking a selfie in Harlem.

24:48And I incorporated a lot of like different elements to like amplify the expression a bit more. For that, it's hard to say where it comes from besides like my neighbors growing up were like otherworldly. I feel like I've already experienced like what otherworldly beings or creatures or humans look like just growing up in the city and being surrounded by anyone and everyone. And I held on to what that felt like. And so the work that I was making that was sort of depicting that emotion was like highlighting the people that I grew up with or that I felt like I grew up with that you didn't really know too fully their story but they were like right there in your face and you felt tingly or charged by that and all those portraitures was just me recounting those moments of like ding something like this like I'm interacting with this human that isn't like no longer a real human but I just create like it feels fun to just go in and start like creating and working around with that tingling cessation.

25:51Taína H. Cruz:I'll tell you how I naturally read them, just looking at them, is that there has been this big tradition of, it's been very much at the center of art for the last, oh, 10 or more years of the black figuration that, you know, some of the artists who came out of Yale, like Wiley and Thomas, are major avatars of. And that's such a heroic and idiom, you know, like creating really attractive, almost like fashion-y figures. And then I look at these images that you're working with, and it really just seems to be resisting that, or it's looking at the image in a different kind of way. It's almost trying to draw out some kind of image that energy in these figures or images that's almost hard to pin down.