Four years after bringing her queen art collection to Detroit's Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History, Actress, CCH pounder is back with an exhibit that focuses on black men.

It's called Double ID and it features 54 works from her private art collection that depict noted scholar, W.E.B.

Du Bois concept of double consciousness.

I sat down with Pounder at The Wright to talk about the exhibit and her incredible love of art.

CCH Pounder Conay, welcome to Detroit.

- Thank you.

- And welcome to the Wright Museum.

- [CCH] It's lovely to be back again.

Have to say.

- This is not your first time here.

- It is not my first rodeo at the Wright.

- Yeah.

- [CCH] And it's wonderful to be able to bring something completely different.

- Right.

- And feel like you're just beginning again, so that's really nice.

- Yeah, so let's talk about this exhibit.

- [CCH] Absolutely.

- [Stephen] Double ID.

It is about black men and I, the duality, right, that.

- Yes.

Well, first of all, I should really say that I started off at the Wright with Queen.

- [Stephen] Yes.

- [CCH] Which was an all female show.

And then we talked later on that somebody had mentioned, she said, well, what about the men?

- What about the men?

What about us?

- And so I said, okay, well, the next time I come, we'll do a show on men.

- Yeah.

- But what I loved about how this was done is that it is couched in the philosophy of W.E.B.

DuBois.

- [Stephen] Sure.

- [CCH] Of double consciousness.

And so it was providing paintings that not only were sort of very present on, as you look at them, as you get an idea and the moment that you think of double consciousness, you get another idea of what this man may have had to do to present himself in a way that is less threatening one way, as less powerful than he actually is.

And so I thought, let's bring up these paintings.

And these were the ones that they chose from my collection.

- [CCH] Just walking through and looking at the.

The various faces and images, the spectrum, the broad spectrum of what it means to be an African American man is all here.

- It's all here.

And I have to say, it's literally the diaspora.

It's men from the Caribbean, from America, from Africa.

- Okay, so I wanna talk about selection and not just selection for the exhibit, but selection for you, how you choose these pieces for your collection.

- Absolutely, I think I always say it's a visceral moment when I sort of approach my front of a painting.

- And it literally goes, hey.

- [Stephen] You gotta have me.

- Hey, yeah, I connect with the eyes, I connect with the movement.

Something happens that makes me go, oh, could I get that?

I, there's always that moment.

And every single painting has had that moment.

Even when I decided to educate myself in paintings that I don't have, like for instance, I'm not particularly fond of abstract art.

- Okay.

- But just to learn about it and to have it as a part of your collection, just as a, her collection overall is well rounded.

I wanted to learn a little bit about it.

And I even had that moment that there, okay.

There was something about that one, about the color, about the look that says, okay, take me.

- Yeah.

- And all of them have have been a take me moment.

- Yeah.

- Every last one.

- So then how do you go from that to what's displayed here?

This is just part of what you have.

- This is just part of what I have, but also it's the idea that when somebody approaches me for a museum exhibit, we, there's a theme.

There's something that the curator wants to talk about, like how we brought in W.E.B.

DuBois with the double consciousness about this show.

- [Stephen] Sure.

- Then when they come, they visit your home and they choose the pieces.

And now that I see the pieces up, I see that double consciousness.

I see that brutish man, that uthman wahaab who's behind you, big and it's the gardener with the shears, he's just a gardener.

- [Stephen] Right.

- But he's massive.

- [Stephen] Yes.

- And I can imagine that in certain places where he was walking, he would have to try to make himself quite small so that you see this other person.

- [Stephen] Right.

- To disappear in some ways, right.

- [CCH] To disappear in some ways, yeah.

And it's how the Wright went about choosing these works.

And now that I walk in as a visitor, even though they're the pieces that I.

- [Stephen] They're yours.

- It all makes sense to me.

It all comes together really, really well, so yes.

- Yeah, so when I walk around and look, I see my grandfather's face.

- [CCH] Yes.

- I see my father's face.

I see my face, and I see my son's face.

It's remarkable how powerful that is.

- I thank you.

- And as an African American man, you don't get a chance to do that in many, in many art spaces.

- I have to share my first experience with that, which was the first time I displayed work.

It was in Xavier University in a sort of public forum.

And it was in a sort of what I call a passage gallery where students are walking through from one classroom off to another, headphones, cell phones, and their books, et cetera.

And to watch these students kind of.

And have that look of, oh my God, that's me, that's me.

That's me, it was thrilling.

And that's really what opened my brain to saying, we cannot just store these and keep them for your own pleasure.

These need to go around the world and be seen by us.

And really enjoyed by us.

So that was the beginning.

And I realized that even people who would be considered, others who feel like they don't really know African American people or African Caribbean people, there is this kind of portal that these paintings provide.

That there is this variety of men and women, obviously, in the world that you've taken a sort of a one dimensional look at.

- [Stephen] Yes.

- And here's an opportunity to begin to open up your mind to visiting these people.

- [Stephen] Yeah, yeah.

- [CCH] Making a connection.

- [Stephen] To see them more fully.

- [CCH] To see them more fully.

- Yeah.

- Yes.

- Let's talk about this being here in Detroit.

- Yes, and at the Wright, which is of course a special place in Detroit.

- Well, for me it's special because Neil Barkley was the first person that said, you should bring that collection to Detroit.

- [Stephen] Here.

- [CCH] And, which was fantastic.

And so this is my second time around.

So I feel now I write is almost like the home for me in terms of my start of showing the works.

And I think Detroit in particular is a type of city that could use an infusion.

- Sure.

- Of self.

- Yes.

- And so I think this is sort of a good place to come back to.

- Yeah, so I wanna talk about this piece that's kind of off to your left because it's sculpture.

- Oh, Dermeili Fini.

- And sculpture speaks to me in a way that, that other art does not.

- Yes.

- [Stephen] And it was the first thing I noticed when I walked in the room told me.

- Well, I'm really lucky that I bought a really spectacular piece of his, he's a South African artist, was, he's passed away, but he spent some time in New York and he has a really simpatico type of heart and a extraordinary observance of the, the African face that's literally from the mask to man.

So when you look at it, you will actually sort of see the African mask as well.

- [Stephen] I see.

- As the, the human African behind it.

So I was really interested in that kind of look.

So, and another thing was is that it's a very pronounced look.

- It is, it is.

- You know, there is like no doubt about it that this is an African feature you know.

- [Stephen] The jawline.

- The Jawline is very powerful.

Nostrils are very powerful.

And it's a very long, and even the mangbethu sort of extended head, which, you know, your mother might have said, oh, you're lap headed.

Or, you know, you had these other words for it.

But, you know, I think rutabaga head was one of the other ones I used to hear as a kid, you know, so I, I thought this one in particular encompasses a standard recognizable African head, is lovely.

- Yeah, unmistakable for sure.

So in this part of the exhibit, it's portraits, faces.

- [CCH] Yes.

- [Stephen] The other side is.

- More like storytelling there.

There's scenes with African men and they're quite varied.

I have a very, a sort of political section where it, what I would call about draft, like African men have been drafted, Football, drafted for sports, drafted to be in service, enduring slavery to be drafted in a particular kind of servitude service that you must render to others.

And so there's that.

And then there's scenes of their, our colonial past where we are, there's a wonderful painting, a very large painting of Greg Bailey's of a barrister or lawyer getting dressed modern day, still having to put on the powdered wig.

- [Stephen] The wig.

- [CCH] Yes.

And then there's a lovely sort of scene of the, the high tea moment of this table and his man servant getting him dressed.

So there's that.

And then it's what I call the sag God.

It's by Faham Peku, which really kind of relates to our very young citizens with the pants that are well below the waistline hanging off of the hip and creating a kind of his own personal God in a sense.

So sort of reinventing himself the way he wants to see himself.

So there is again, what I call the rainbow of black men.

- [Stephen] Yeah.

- And that's available to be seen in the big, in the big room.

- So, you're an artist.

- [CCH[ Yes.

- In a different medium.

- Yes.

- Of course.

But I'm, I guess I'm really interested in how, as an artist this art speaks to you.

In other words, the translation, I guess, of this form to your life and your experience.

- Well, I then I must confess that I was indeed an artist visual.

- You were, okay.

Yes.

- And I had a wonderful mentor because I was always tortured, do I wanna go into the theater?

Do I wanna go into the studio and paint?

And it was like, what am I gonna do, what am I gonna do?

And she said, art, you can always do art as long as you have your hands and your eyes.

But acting, eh, that's for young people.

I went, okay, well then the first half of my life I'll be an actor, and then the second half of my life I'll be an artist.

Well, obviously that's not the way things could turn out in reality, but I became a great art appreciator.

- Yeah.

- And I've actually recently been writing people saying, do you still have some of my work?

Can you send a picture?

Because I would like to kind of follow my own, kind of, this is how I got from point A to point B, and lifestyle change.

But it's always been with me.

And I even sort of still doodle myself in, you know, on paper you can tell that she's always making some kind of mark.

So this transition for me was really easy.

- Yeah, yeah.

- [CCH] And becoming an art appreciator, I think at the time when I did, was a wonderful thing because I could introduce artists to actors.

Actors always made a little bit more money.

- Yeah.

- And, not with the same consistency, obviously, you know, it was like, okay, I got a job.

Yippee, I can buy a painting.

But I used to do celebrations, like mix artists and actors together, have great dinners.

So food, art.

- Oh my goodness.

- Poetry.

- Right.

- You know, and the artwork was always like the prize at the end of the day.

Like who had the best meal.

We'd give the person who cooked us the best meal.

So from a very young age, there was always this kind of intermingling of the arts for me.

- [Stephen] Artists to start, right.

- It was easy.

It was easy to get there for me.

- All right, so I'm gonna make you choose among your children here.

- I know everybody wants to do that.

Everybody's like, who is your favorite?

- What's the one that speaks to you more than than the others?

You won't do it.

- No, there, because as many moods as you see in the room.

Are the moods that I've had to sort of say, oh, you've got to cut home with me.

There's a painting that that's on your right behind you.

It's a giant head.

And everyone has said, oh, you know, is he sleeping?

Is he alive?

And when I spoke to the artist and said, what's that giant head about?

And he said, he remembers seeing those giant Olmec stones across Mexico and Central America.

- [Stephen] Wow.

- And that he noticed that between Mexico to the Central America, they became more and more black featured.

- [Stephen] They get darker.

- And so he started to paint these enormous black featured men.

- Wow.

- And so it was like that's stunning.

I have to say though, seeing it here in the museum, it sort of fits in.

When I first saw it in his studio, it was like, this is enormous.

- [Stephen] It's too big, right.

- [CCH] But yeah.

- [Stephen] Yeah, yeah.

- [CCH] It fits in perfectly.

- That's what museums are for, right?

- Yes, they are, they really are.

It brings everything into perspective.

It's really beautiful.

- Yeah, it's a wonderful and thoughtful, thoughtful collection.

- [CCH] Thank you.

- I mean, you can get lost.

- [Stephen] Thank you so much in the faces.

So, so thank you for bringing it to Detroit and promise that.

- [CCH] Thank you (indiscernible).

- [Stephen] You'll do a third exhibition here of.

- [CCH] Who knows.

- Maybe black families, - Maybe I'll even do abstract.

Who knows.

Something I'm really not good at, but.