(curious music) (audience chattering softly) (curious music swells) - Welcome, everyone, to the Penny Stamps Distinguished Speaker Series.

(curious music continues) (audience clapping) Welcome, everyone, to the Penny Stamps Distinguished Speaker Series My name's Chrisstina Hamilton, the series director.

Today, we present a Detroit phenom, artist, painter, and time traveler Mario Moore.

(audience cheering) Yes.

(audience applauding) - Yes!

- Whoo.

It is so exciting.

A big thank you to our dedicated partners in this endeavor, UMMA, our Museum of Art, and the Institute for the Humanities and our series partners, the U of M Arts Initiative, Detroit PBS, PBS Books, and Michigan Public 91.7 FM.

I hope that everyone in this audience is by now familiar with the Institute for the Humanities, which is just around the corner at Washington and Thayer.

They have a magnificent gallery space.

- Whoo.

- Yes, our opening speaker of the season this year, Catherine Chalmers, has an exhibition still on view there.

If you haven't seen it, you have through next week.

So get over there and see it.

Also next week, they will be presenting a very interesting and engaging program on Tuesday at 4:30 PM with Detroit barber and artist Tzu Pore, discussing his project "Shifting Roots: Hair is the Garden We Wear."

So I'm in for that.

Also, next week, series schedule, Penny Stamp Series, very, very different from normal next week, so please take note so you don't miss out.

We will host a very special event here on Monday, yes, just this next coming Monday, October the 20th, with Jacob Collier, right here at 5:30 PM.

This is a not-to-miss event.

It is also gonna feature Jacob performing on a big Steinway piano and other instruments.

He is described as the Mozart of Gen Z. So yeah, don't miss this.

I'm telling you, this guy's a phenomenal person.

And he also has the mission of uniting humans across the world with a language beyond words.

So don't miss him on Monday, not Thursday next week, but Monday at 5:30, right here on this stage.

Please do remember to silence your cell phones and take a break from technology.

I know you need it by now this week.

We will have a Q&A with Mario directly following his talk.

You'll notice microphones at the end of each aisle here.

So when Mario gets to wrapping his talk, he'll invite you up.

You can line up at those microphones, and we will get to as many questions as we have time for.

And now, for a proper introduction of our guest, we have our very gracious partner, the director of the Institute for the Humanities, who's also a curator himself and a professor of US History, African American history, and the African diaspora.

Please welcome Jason Young.

(audience applauding) - Good evening, good people.

It is my distinct pleasure and honor to introduce tonight's presenter today.

Mario Moore is a Detroit native who earned a BFA from the College of Creative Studies in 2009 and an MFA from Yale University in 2013.

His childhood was steeped in the arts.

His father was a security guard at the Detroit Institute of Arts.

And his mother is an artist and art educator.

Moore interweaves history, art history, politics, literature, into a practice that explores the cyclical nature of national memory and myth.

His work brings the past into the present by mining through American myths to resurface figures that have been too long overlooked.

Moore is a 2023 Kresge Arts fellow and recipient of the Princeton Hodder Fellowship.

His work has been exhibited nationally, with pieces held in the permanent collections of the Detroit Institute of Arts, the Studio Museum in Harlem, and the Princeton University Art Museum, among others.

Moore's first museum survey, entitled "Enriched Presence and Preservation," opened at the Charles H. Wright Museum and traveled to the California African American Museum.

His most recent institutional exhibition, "Revolutionary Times," opened at the Flint Institute of Arts and explored Black resistance through recovered histories.

If you'll just allow one personal reflection here, I just want to note that I've been deeply drawn to Moore's art for a number of reasons, not least of which is that he communicates visually a portrait of the wisdom and grace and vitality of a people that, as an historian, I'm always trying to capture and find in the historical archive, in little known or forcibly suppressed stories about the past.

In this talk, Moore will speak through a practice grounded in rigorous research and material precision, drawing from archives, ancestral memory, and art historical traditions to interrogate the afterlives of history in contemporary life.

Moore insists on the immediacy and vitality of his subjects.

His work is both a record of the past and a reckoning for the here and now.

Thank you, and I hope you'll join me in welcoming Mario Moore.

Thanks.

(audience cheering and applauding) - Whoo.

Sweet, sweet.

(audience continues cheering and applauding) (Mario sighs) Dope.

(chuckles) What up, though?

I just wanna thank the Penny Stamps lecture series for inviting me here to speak about my work.

I hopefully am gonna take you on a journey through time.

And my work has to do with that, and hopefully they'll both tie in together some kind of way, we'll see.

Before I jump into the slides, I just wanna say a little bit about, you know, my trajectory with how I got to where I am.

So after undergrad, I... Michigan had a huge film incentive here.

If everybody remembers, this is around 2008, 2009.

I remember when I graduated from undergrad in 2009, the graduation speech was basically like, I don't know what y'all gonna do, pfft, pfft, you know, 'cause that was during the housing crisis, the downturn.

And I was able to get a job as a set sculptor.

So I did that on "Real Steel" movie, which had Hugh Jackman in it.

And then I did it on another movie as a set sculptor on the remake of "Red Dawn," which is an '80s movie.

And that was great, but it took up all my time.

So then I had to think, well, how do I get to a place where I can make my work all the time?

So then I decided to go to grad school.

And then I moved to New York, and I lived there.

And then I, you know, basically ended up back in Detroit.

But the first thing I wanna start with is this slide.

Because I think it gives you an understanding of me, a little bit where I'm coming from.

But I don't know how, I do a lot of research, I found this story, and in the '90s, the late '80s and the early '90s, Detroit had a lot of Afrocentric schools.

So I went to Malcolm X Academy.

And I somehow was looking up this story 'cause my dad was telling me about it.

And I didn't know that it was in "The New York Times," so "Hostility Greets Students at Black School in White Area of Detroit."

So this was me going into first grade.

And I look at this because I think about some of the language happening now, but also to note that this is in 1992.

This is not in the '50s.

This is not in the '60s.

this is not in the '40s.

And this is just some of the text of what was written in this article.

"Educators say the curriculum raises the self-esteem of Black children, and that, in the long run, will help keep those children interested in school.

But school officials also contend that all children can benefit from such a curriculum.

So far, however, only one of Malcolm X Academy's 470 students is white.

'I don't think it is any place for a white kid to go to school,' said Wayne Earhart, 29, a leader of the opposition to Malcolm X Academy.

'They teach the kids that Blackness is the center of the universe.'"

And here's another, "But many Warrendale residents opposed the move.

At a chaotic meeting, one of the neighborhood residents and school officials last August, some shouted, 'I don't want n-words in my neighborhood,' and, 'Go home.'"

After reading this article, I started to remember some things as a kid.

So I talked to my dad, and I asked him, you know, what was happening during that time?

And he was like, "Oh yeah," like, "Me and some of the parents got together, and we would ride around Malcolm X as security."

And I also remember walking into the school and people shouting.

Again, this is Detroit, Michigan, in 1992, not the '60s, not the '20s, not the '40s.

And for me, thinking about that beginning, it kind of guides my work, right?

I think a lot of things that I learned from Malcolm X Academy comes into my process., the archives, the research that I do.

And the art side comes from this lady right here.

This is my mom, Sabrina Nelson.

This is me.

If there was ever a photo of me at this age, I was always in his pose, every time.

(chuckles) But I learned a lot from my mom and her friends.

So I grew up with my mother going to art school and taking us to the DIA all the time.

So I was kind of engrossed in art.

That's all I knew.

And I would go into her friend's studios.

I would smell the paint.

I was invigorated by the idea that somebody can take nothing and turn it into whatever they wanted.

And that's really what got me inspired to create.

My grandfather was a sign painter.

And I feel like, some kind of way, that passed through my mom and then that passed through me.

And I feel like both of these things come together to create the work that I focus on.

This piece, the title of... And remember that photo that you just saw in the last slide.

Title of this piece is "PTSD for a Lifetime It Seems."

This work comes from looking at the history of PTSD, but not post-traumatic stress syndrome, post-traumatic slave syndrome.

And the context of this is, basically, a researcher went to, you know, a Black family and talked about white kids being in the mall versus Black kids being in the mall with their parents, right?

And white kids have a lot of freedom to run around and explore.

And the Black child with the mom can only go so far.

And she went and spoke to the mothers and talked to the Black mom and asked her, you know, why do you keep your child so close?

Well, it was something that my mom did to me.

I couldn't go too far.

And then you kind of go down generation, and you talk to Grandmother.

Well, why do you keep your child so close?

Because my mom did it.

And then you end up all the way back into slavery and the auction block, and understand that families were being ripped apart.

So the context of why people do certain things without even knowing why they do it is entrenched in history.

So this piece was looking a lot at the city of Detroit, was looking at the liquor stores that you see, the churches.

I had an artist residency at Knox College, which is in the middle of Illinois.

And I wanted to focus on this painting.

And a lot of times in my work, I'm looking for references.

I like to take photos.

So I was like, oh, maybe I can take a picture of my nephew.

And then I found a photo of me crying, standing next to my older sister.

And I'm pretty sure in that photo, right before the photo was taken, she probably beat me up or something.

But it was perfect for a reference.

I'll talk about this dog a little later 'cause it comes back as a symbol.

And then in the lower right corner, you can see a little child's drawing.

And that is a drawing of a Black man running away and a cop shooting that child in the back.

This is a really, really famous photo.

Probably most of you all have seen this photo at some point in a history class or Google, whatever.

It's a photo by Bill Hudson taken in 1963.

I was reading a book titled "David and Goliath," and the one thing about this photo is that it can be misleading, right?

As we look at the image, we think that the guy that we assume is being bitten by a dog is a martyr for the Civil Rights Movement.

The author of the book "David and Goliath" actually, years later, in the 2000s, went and met up with this man.

And he asked him about this moment in history.

And he was like, "I was just on my way to school.

I wasn't doing any sit-ins.

I literally was walking past the protest that was happening."

And then he went to grab the dog, and he went to knee the dog.

So the notion of non-violence isn't always what it's meant to be.

As you look at the photo again, you'll see that he's actually pulling the officer's hand in, and the officer's grabbing him.

The officer is pulling the dog away, and the guy is kneeing the dog, right?

So I like to think about the way that we perceive images, right, and this notion that everything that we see is exactly what it is, when it isn't.

So in response to this, I did this painting titled "Black and Blue."

And on the back, it does say "hot sauce," which is definitely a Beyonce reference.

(chuckles) But I wanted to think about the pillars of the civil rights organization and the Civil Rights Movement.

And a lot of the people that were writing these speeches and organizing were Black women.

But often they're in the background.

They're not the ones that are, that we see at the podium, right?

And I wanted to oppose that with the police officer that we saw in a previous image.

But I decided to paint them all blue, again, an analogy to look at the present versus the past, but also the notion of blue, blue lives matter.

You know, I made sure she had a 'fro, and there was something about that.

And I was able to find a great model for this piece.

So in 2019, I had brain surgery.

And it was something that changed my perspective about life and living.

But it also made me think about, what does it mean as a Black man to rest?

And I never thought about that.

(laughs) I feel like I'm always working.

I'm always moving.

I'm always mobile.

And I think about my dad, and he's always had a job.

But at this moment, my body had no choice but to rest.

I didn't have a choice.

And then I started thinking historically about famous Black men, and what did rest looked like for them?

And I started thinking about Muhammad Ali, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King.

And I started to google images of them resting.

But the only thing that I can find were images of them screaming, yelling at the podium, marching, protesting.

So I had to do a deeper dive.

And then I started to find images like this.

And I wanted to do something that felt soft, right, to honor these men and kind of the softness of being, the idea of rest and relaxation.

So I started to use silverpoint.

And I had no idea what that meant.

I knew when I went to museums and saw Leonardo da Vinci drawings or Michelangelo drawings, it said silverpoint, and I was like, I like it.

But I started to do research to figure out exactly what it was.

And it's essentially just drawing with a piece of metal or silver.

You can draw with gold, whatever.

You just have to apply a paint layer before you can get any kind of image.

And no matter what you do, you can only go so dark.

So the value of the drawing is always gonna be light and soft.

So I did this piece, which is titled "Can't the New Negro Relax."

And this is actually me right after my brain surgery.

And you can see the scar where I had to apply a certain kind of paste, right, for the healing.

And then I wanted to have Jack Johnson behind me, doing all the hard work and all the labor, while I'm chilling, relaxing.

There's also one other thing about this piece.

And I guarantee you when you look it up, you're gonna be so happy.

If you see a music album with this pose, it's a platinum album, okay?

Guarantee it, Michael Jackson, Minnie Riperton, I mean, I can go on and on.

There's something about this pose, so I was like, I'm gonna use this post for this piece.

But the other thing about silverpoint that I really, really liked was that it had an innate value to it.

So no matter what, whatever I'm making, I'm adding value to a group of people that often aren't seen as valuable.

This piece, which came about doing a lot of research and also considering myself, right, as having this traumatic experience, brain surgery, I found this book that looked at the history of photography, anatomical photography, graveyards, things like that.

And in this book, taken from the early 20th century, the medical industry in America was new.

People were just doing things.

They were like, people were dressed in trash bags.

They built these hospitals that were just, like, buildings.

It was very different from Europe.

Europe, you had to do a residency.

They had centuries of that.

But when you get to America, in the early 20th century, the 19th century, it's totally, totally different.

So as I started to look through this photography history of medical images, I started to see most of the cadavers were Black.

And I just wondered why that was.

Why was these the images that were coming up?

And then I realized there was an entire industry of grave robbers and grave diggers that were digging up these bodies to use medically, to, right, experiment on and explore.

And in the beginning, they were digging up criminals, previous prisoners, and then they started to dig up Black graves.

And then it was the notion that they started actually... Well, they didn't kill people, but people started to be killed to use for the bodies, right?

There's this notion in Baltimore, if you're a Black person, you don't walk around John Hopkins at nighttime.

(laughs) And I found these images over and over again.

And then I got to one image where the photographer actually placed himself on the table, and he had skeletons surrounding himself.

And there was definitely something, he was making fun, but it was the first moment in the book where I saw the person that was creating the image was thinking about empathy.

He was thinking about what it meant to be on the table.

So I used that as the source to create this painting.

And then I took images of all the men that I did see from that time, and I placed them in the painting.

Again, you see the dog.

I use this dog as a symbol of America itself.

Oftentimes you'll see this dog lying or sleeping below some big issue that it's ignoring.

And I use it as a simile.

It's a British bulldog, American bulldog, which is bred from the British bulldog.

And I think about it in terms of America being bred from the British colony, right?

So whenever I have this white American bulldog, it is the realization of America ignoring some really, really huge issue.

So right after I had my surgery, I had this incredible opportunity to do a fellowship at Princeton University.

This is 2018.

And this was really important for me because it gave me an opportunity to have, like, a real studio space.

Like, I mean, it was my first studio space.

And I wanted to do a project that focused on Black blue collar workers.

And I started to think a lot about my dad.

Again, somebody, if he lost a job one week, less than a month later, he would have another job, no matter what it was.

He was a labor man.

He was somebody that was always and still is always working.

So I came up with this project, and I had to figure out, how do I meet people I know nothing about, right?

Because there is a hierarchy in making art, right?

You've got the creator, and then you've got the, especially if you're working with figures, you've got the people that you're gonna paint.

So what I decided to do was just walk up to random people at Princeton University, whether it was the lunch people, whether it was security guard, or it was a custodian, and ask them if they wanted to be painted.

But unlike now, where I'm talking to you all, I don't just walk up to random people and ask to paint them.

So I had to figure out some way to do it.

So the first person I painted was Clyde.

And I figured out the best way to do that while I was living in Princeton University, a very wooded suburb, was asked him where I can get my hair cut.

'Cause as a Black man, that's really important.

You gotta know what barbershop to go to.

And there wasn't a lot of barbershops in Princeton.

So once I did that, he was like, "Oh man, yeah, you go down here.

You check out this place.

This is the place to go."

So then after that, that was the icebreaker, I asked him if he would be interested in this project.

And what I wanted to do was share time and share his story.

I didn't wanna just go to him, take a picture, and then go back and make a painting.

So instead, I asked him if he had time off or a break, what his schedule was like, and that we would meet, and I would do a sketch from life, and I would tell him about my life, and he would tell me about his.

And then we would come up with the painting together.

So this piece titled "Several Lifetimes" is about Howard, Kaniesha, and Valerie.

And in the background, it says, "The full meal is the work of several lifetimes."

That was a saying by an incredible, incredible historian and amazing, amazing literaturist Toni Morrison.

And she gave this speech at Princeton University.

And they asked her, could you explain the history of slavery?

And she was like, we don't have all that time, so I'm gonna give you what I give you, but the full meal is the work of several lifetimes.

And I thought that was really, really powerful because a lot of the Black labor workers that work in and around Princeton, their families have been working at Princeton for generations, right?

And Princeton has a history of slavery.

I did this piece titled "The Center of Creation" of Michael.

And essentially, with Michael, what I wanted to do was put him inside the art gallery at Princeton University.

That's totally being changed now.

They're building a whole new museum.

I think they're almost done actually.

But I put him in what would've been the European galleries.

And the entrance he's standing in, you would enter from the back as a student or a special guest, and the elevator would take you up, and you would come out right into the European galleries.

But what I've done is I've changed all the artwork that was in that gallery and put all the stuff that I would wanna see in there, by all Black artists.

So you see a painting by Henry Ossawa Tanner.

You see a painting by Barkley Hendricks.

And you see a piece by Charles White.

And then way in the back, the female that's painted in the back is a painting by me.

Because if I'm gonna create a gallery, you know I'm gonna put myself in there too.

So (chuckles) why not?

But the most important piece is actually hidden behind Michael's head, and it's a Ife head.

And that plays into the title of the piece, "The Center of Creation."

So Ife heads come from the Yoruba tribe, come from Nigeria.

And the notion is that the center of creation of humanity, all those things, the belief in Yoruba is that it comes from that place.

What's interesting about the Ife heads were, they were discovered in the 19th century by a German scientist, and his theory, because these sculptures were so beautiful, that a Greek civilization went to Nigeria, made all these sculptures, and they buried them and left.

Because he couldn't believe that an African society could create such magnificent sculptures.

So the idea is that Michael is inviting you into a building that exists, but changing everything that's inside of it.

And, also, I want you to show... You know, 'cause digitally, you can't see what the painting looks like, right?

Like, I like to consider myself a painter's painter.

I'm really into the materiality of paint, right?

I want you to be able to feel the tactility of it.

So this is actually the really small painting that you see back there.

This is a detail of Michael's face.

And then this is his hand that's on the elevator door.

But I'm playing with different ways of painting.

I'm, you know, looking at opacity.

I'm figuring out how I can paint thin and put all those things together.

I'm gonna show you all, after this piece, a short video.

This is "Guy."

And what I love about this painting and the way that Michael is inviting you into the space, Guy is actually blocking you from a space that was about an actual protest at Princeton University led by students in the '70s, right?

So both of these paintings do different things.

(bright music) - The halls of many colleges and universities display paintings of school presidents, big money donors, famous alumni.

Pretty standard, right?

Well, at Princeton University, a gallery of portraits presents campus workers in a whole new light.

Adriana Diaz reports tonight from her alma mater.

- [Howard] Okay, the first two orders are up.

- [Adriana] At Princeton University, the most popular man on campus- - Here you go, sir.

- may be Howard Sutphin- - All right, have a good one.

- [Adriana] who's worked in dining 22 years.

- [Patron] Could I have a two-egg omelet with everything?

- Everybody knows Howard.

It's true.

- He's awesome.

- I remember that.

- [Adriana] That's because he's a staple at Princeton games.

- Yeah, every game or every sport I go to, it's like bumblebees, they come right to me.

And I love it.

I love it.

- How many times have you come here to look at this?

- I don't wanna say.

(laughs) (Adriana laughs) - [Adriana] But now he's off the sidelines and center stage in portraits of campus workers- - [Mario] And I believe they should be seen in this way.

- [Adriana] by visiting art fellow Mario Moore.

- These people are some of the most important people on campuses, that deserve to be seen, and seen on the walls, in the same way as these figures historically have been seen at institutions.

- [Adriana] So now graduate James Madison and Princeton presidents are joined by Guy Packwood, a Princeton security guard, Garfield Brown, a groundskeeper, and Sutphin, Kaniesha Long, and Valeria Sykes from dining.

- The majority of the people that you see in dining and facilities are African Americans.

For me, as a student, these are the people that I connected with.

- When they need, you know, some advice or a motherly figure or a nice hug, you know, eh, they'll come and look for either me or Howard to talk to them to death.

- I figure, they're away from home, and they need love.

Hey, how you doing?

And I tell 'em, you know, when you in the dining area, just relax and eat your food.

- Bye, Howard.

- As soon the minute you leave here, jump back into that book.

- You're creating a legacy for people who are so often in the background.

- For sure, and I think it was really important for it to be at Princeton because of the history of Princeton.

- [Adriana] That history includes slaves who worked at the president's house for decades, and Woodrow Wilson, who blocked Black student enrollment as Princeton's president and oversaw segregationist policies as US president.

These portraits are working to create a new legacy.

- And I was wondering how I can be here after I retire, but that's going to be here after I retire, 'cause the school has purchased it, mm-hmm.

- What does that mean to you?

- Love.

That's love.

For all the years I gave love, I got it back in that.

- That's great.

- [Adriana] Love that will now live on.

Adriana Diaz, "CBS News," Princeton, New Jersey.

- A new perspective on prominence.

(audience applauding) - Oh, thanks.

(chuckles) So after that, Howard would, like, text me every day with the video.

(laughs) He'd be like, "Man, you seen this?"

I was like, yeah, I there, man.

(chuckles) No, but I talk to Howard and Valeria often.

You know, another part of my practice that I don't usually talk about is sometimes I do performances.

And I think it's important for a performance to be seen in person.

But, you know, everybody can't be there.

I did this piece while I had the fellowship at Princeton University.

And the piece that I wanted to do was have security guards who would operate, or you would believe are operating as security guards, but they are actually hired singers.

You know, again, one of my dad's first jobs was a security guard.

So I wanted to think about, well, what can I say about the history of Princeton?

So Paul Robeson, the famous actor-singer Paul Robeson, was born in Princeton.

And he applied to get in Princeton University, but he could not go there because they didn't allow Black students to enter Princeton.

So for this performance, for this video that I'm about to show you, we restructured a really famous song by Paul Robeson.

And, again, nobody knew this was gonna happen.

So you'll see people that they believe are security guards who are not actually security guards.

♪ What does he care if ♪ the world's got troubles ♪ ♪ What does he care ♪ ♪ if the land ain't free ♪ ♪ Old man river ♪ ♪ That old man river ♪ ♪ He must know somethin' ♪ ♪ But don't say nothin' ♪ ♪ He just keeps rollin' ♪ ♪ He keeps on rollin' ♪ ♪ Along ♪ ♪ He don't plant taters ♪ ♪ He don't plant cotton ♪ ♪ And them that plants 'em ♪ ♪ Is soon forgotten ♪ ♪ But old man river ♪ ♪ He just keep rollin' ♪ ♪ Along ♪ ♪ You and me, we sweat and strain ♪ ♪ Body all aching and racked with pain ♪ ♪ Tote that barge, lift that bale ♪ ♪ You show a little grit ♪ ♪ And you land in ♪ ♪ Jail ♪ ♪ Jail ♪ ♪ Jail ♪ ♪ But I keeps laughin' ♪ ♪ Instead of cryin' ♪ ♪ I must keep fightin' ♪ ♪ Until I'm dyin' ♪ ♪ And old man river ♪ ♪ He just keeps rollin' ♪ ♪ Along ♪ (audience applauding) - Yeah.

So I think that piece really surprised everybody.

Everybody was like... It was, it was great.

It was great.

So a lot of the next work you'll see is really diving into the archives and thinking about what's happening now.

A lot of this work I made in 2020 or 2019.

I was thinking about the election, and I made this whole body of work about the Civil War.

But this is really interesting because we talk about notions of history repeating itself.

So the Senate had just adjourned on May 22nd, 1856, when Representative Preston Brooks entered his chamber carrying a cane.

The pro-slavery Southerner walked over to Senator Charles Sumner, whacked him in the head with the cane, and then proceeded to beat the anti-slavery Northerner unconscious.

Afterward, Brooks walked out of the chamber without anyone stopping him.

So this was the first recorded time where there was an attack on the Senate floor.

This is the second time there was an attack on the Senate floor, in January 6th insurrection.

And then this is not Washington, DC.

This is the Lansing Capitol before January 6th.

I created this piece titled "American Windows."

And I wanted to think about what was happening in the present, I wanted to think about the past, and I wanted to think about the future.

And you'll see on the window sill is a pistol, right, as a symbol of of protection.

But also at the same time, I'm looking at how things happen.

And there's a history to it.

There's a circle, right?

And this is the piece that I created in response to that.

So after, or as I'm working on this work, I started to do some deep research into my family's history.

And my cousin on, I don't know how many cousins away, on my father's side, is like the family researcher.

And she did all of this information, all this research.

And we found these books of ownership.

And you'll see, on the top left, you'll see all the Moore names.

So we have Jerry Moore, Viney Moore, Henry Moore, Joseph Moore, Nimrod Moore, James Moore, Sarah Moore, Minga Moore, Martha Moore, and then prices next to them.

And the price is the value, right, your books, your account, right?

You're looking at your assets.

You're seeing what you have.

And then I found this will.

I am gonna read the will, just so you can... 'Cause I think it's one of the most interesting things I've found in my research.

"I, George W. Humphreys, of the county of Jefferson and state of Virginia, do declare this as my last will and testament, hereby reworking and annulling all former wills by me made.

First, I desire and direct that my slaves, Jerry Moore and his wife, Viney, with their children Henry, Joseph, Nimrod, James, Jerry, Viney, Mary, Martha, Phebe, and Florinda," definitely, "and Thomas," somebody was reading the Bible, "children they now have, together with all they may hereafter have, with my man Matthew and Frederich, shall be emancipated at my death or as soon thereafter as all or any may demand deeds of manumission, Jerry Moore to make the demand for his wife and children under 21 years of age, as well as for himself.

On the day that Jerry May fix on to accept of his freedom and that of his wife and children under age, I direct he shall be paid out of my estate $600 in cash," again, this is 1860-whatever, $600 is a lot of money, "and be furnished with a good wagon and four horses, his choice of all my horses, with gear complete.

Matthew and Frederich in like manner to be paid $100 each in cash.

I give, bequeath," this is the good part, "and remit to my nephew Samuel Lucas, son of my sister Hannah Lucas, all the debt."

(audience laughing) Never read anything like that before.

(laughs) Yeah, it was some family issues going on, something.

But at the same time, I was like, wow, this is like some kind of moment or element of kindness.

You know, then doing DNA, oh, this is the guy that owned my family, and this would be, through DNA, my fifth great-grandfather.

And I believe he was giving that money because the wife of the husband, he wrote the will to release all the children, was his daughter.

And we know how that happened.

So I created this work that talked about the significance of Black Civil War Union soldiers, specifically this man here, which was one of the sons mentioned in the will.

His name was Thomas Moore.

And this was actually in the "Philadelphia Courier."

And he housed the editor who created the "Philadelphia Courier."

And I was like, there's gotta be a better image than this.

So I started texting family.

I'm like, does anybody have a good photo that this came from?

'Cause it came from somewhere.

And then some of the elders were texting me back.

And I started getting all these blurry pictures.

I'm like, get somebody young to take their camera, you know.

So finally, I was able to get a good image.

And this is the actual photo that it's from.

So this is Thomas Moore and his nephew Clarence Anderson.

And this is another rare document, a photo of you have a Civil War vet standing next to a World War I vet.

So this photo was taken in 1918.

I think that's also the same year that Thomas Moore passes away.

But I started to imagine what it would've been like to be a Black Union soldier during that time, fighting for your country, right, where the country's not exactly fighting for you.

And I created this piece, thinking about all that family history, titled "Vanitas."

And, also, this comic book, "Superman vs.

Muhammad Ali," it's one of the greatest comics ever, it's crazy.

Muhammad Ali beats up Superman, y'all.

It's nuts.

You gotta read it.

My sister gifted me this for Christmas one year.

But I use it, and I wanted to think about vanitas.

So these are vanity paintings that you usually see in Dutch galleries.

And I wanted to think about it in a way of what would a vanitas look like with Afrocentric items and things that are important to me and my family and my culture.

So I started thinking about a bowl that has water, which is the transience between life and and death.

I repainted the wheel, so that's painted so you can actually read it, that I read to you all.

And then the flag is actually the battle flag, the 6th Regiment that my fourth great-uncle Thomas Moore fought under.

I did this piece with an artist friend of mine.

And a lot of times, you never know with collaborations.

Because I feel like, you know, artists sometimes can have big egos.

So you work to collaborate with somebody, you don't know what's gonna happen.

So he decided to collaborate with me.

And he did an incredible, incredible job.

And he built the entire frame.

And he used certain kind of wood to give it a color.

So essentially, the wood is red, white, and blue.

And I painted the really small portrait of Thomas Moore on copper.

This is the photo that I've used to create these paintings.

So I started talking to friends of mine, and to honor the past but also think about, you know, contemporary Black men, and all of these paintings are really small.

I did one of my wife.

This is my wife, Danielle.

And this is actually taken from the famous young photo of Harriet Tubman.

So this is another collaboration I did with my friend Mark Gibson.

Again, I went to him really nervous, and I was like, I got this idea, man, what do you think?

And I essentially asked Mark, would he be willing to do a drawing of a really famous battle that happened in the Civil War, the Battle of Antietam?

And he said yes.

But Mark likes the challenge.

You know, he's the type of artist that works in a very cartoonist style.

So what he did was create like a smoked-filled space in, like, black ink and white.

And I talked to him because I was like, I wanna create a piece that looks at the paintings that we like when we go to the Met Museum, Peter Paul Rubens, history paintings.

So it was to take Mark's piece and turn it into the middle piece.

But the reason that battle was so important was because that battle gave Lincoln the possibility and the big enough of a win to announce the Emancipation Proclamation.

And that battle is also why Mark can chill in his studio with his dog and have some flowers sitting there and be relaxing.

This is another piece with Mark.

This painting is actually at the DIA.

So during COVID, 'cause this was painted during COVID, so none of these people in this painting actually met in real life.

But they're all friends of mine, so Titus Kaphar, who's in the center, (attendee cheers) (chuckles) Jamea Richmond Edwards, who is over to my right, and Mark Gibson, who's over to my left.

So during COVID, because we were all locked into spaces, and we couldn't see anybody, I started to think about the death toll that we were seeing, the numbers kind of repeating.

And it reminded me of the death toll reaching close to the death toll of the Civil War.

And I was like, well, what would me and my friends talk about during this time?

And this painting is inspired by Dutch history paintings.

And a lot of those paintings are governor paintings, so portraits of people who rule and control their own societies.

So what does it look like for artists to sit at a table and talk about, you know, what they would do?

And what's funny, which is kind of scary actually, because, again, these are all my friends, but they never met each other until after this painting, I was sitting at a dining room table with Mark and Jamea, and they was making those exact faces.

Like, Jamea was explaining something that was mythological and outer space.

And Mark Gibson is very analytical.

He was like, "I don't believe you."

(audience chuckling) But it was like the painting coming true.

It was incredible.

And then what you see on the floor is actually representation of Civil War book.

And there's a man getting his pass checked by, the only notion would be some kind of police officer during that time, right?

And it's, right, the the same system that we're still dealing with to this day, very different but very similar, right?

The notion of ICE is right in line with that.

And then you see the white American bulldog again.

But this time, he's standing up, and he's looking.

That's because Black people got together, and they planning something.

This is an installation of the museum exhibition I had at Flint.

So you can just see kind of scale and what everything looks like.

And this is the largest painting that I've ever made.

I think it was 21 feet.

I wanted to kind of think about the two opposite sides.

So you got the hero, and you have the villain.

And I started to think about the horse as essentially the night rider.

I started to think about the four horsemen, the horse in the Bible, right?

The pale horse is ridden by death.

When we usually think about a pale horse, somebody's riding in to save somebody.

It's a beautiful horse.

But no, this notion was for the Confederate side.

And I wanted to imagine, 'cause I have no idea, but using my family and old photos of what my fourth great-uncle or third great-uncle, one of those, Thomas Moore would look like during the Civil War.

And in the middle of that painting, you see the American flag.

And it's there because I feel like there's always hope.

There's this notion that that aspiration is still possible.

But it's way in the distance.

These were some of the paintings I was looking at when I was thinking about what I was gonna make.

So, of course, this is a really famous painting by Basquiat.

This is his last painting before he died.

Yeah, seeing this painting in person is incredible.

This is a piece that is a recreation by Peter Paul Rubens of a Leonard Leonardo da Vinci painting that they still think is hiding behind some wall in Florence that one day they wanna discover.

But, again, I'm looking at all of these references and bringing them together to create what I wanted to make.

And the thing about this horse, and the saddle blanket has spikes to let you know that nobody can ride it.

I didn't want to put somebody with a scythe on top of the horse.

So the horse represents death itself.

And the saddle blanket is the actual saddle blanket of Robert E. Lee.

That's what it actually looked like.

You also see CS, which is Confederate soldier.

That's in the middle there.

And I wanted the horse to feel alive and dead at the same time.

This is a painting titled "The Drum Rolls On."

I really like this painting.

(laughs) The reason why I'm laughing is because I had to get a photo of somebody, so I took a photo of my nephew.

And whenever he sees his painting, all he can ask is, "Why am I in the fire?

Uncle Mario, why do you have me in the fire?"

(laughs) But I started to think about drummer boys during the Civil War.

And they would often get caught in the battle.

But they were the announcers for each side, right?

And I feel like, leading up to the election in 2020, I mean, even more so now, right, the alarm is is sounding, but nobody's listening.

This is a piece of Sojourner Truth that I collaborated with, again, I like to do a lot of collaborations, with my mom.

She did the sewing.

So this is a large, a really large silverpoint drawing.

And Sojourner Truth lived in Battle Creek, Michigan, for the latter part of her life.

I started to kind of go further back in time, right?

I'm Civil War, and now I'm in the Underground Railroad period.

And I wanted to think about how we consider Black abolitionists.

'Cause a lot of times, if you see an Underground Railroad movie or something, you have a lot of white abolitionists saving all the Black people and hiding them under carriages.

And yes, part of that is true, but the majority of the abolitionists, the majority of people that were leading the way were Black.

And I wanted to talk about Detroit and Canada being pillars in this movement.

And this silverpoint drawing is, the stitching are stops on the Underground Railroad in Michigan.

So every dot that you see is an important city on the Underground Railroad.

This is a incredible story that I feel like should be a movie.

I want my wife to make the movie.

I don't know when it's gonna happen, but I think it should.

It's the story of Thornton and Lucie Blackburn.

So these were an enslaved couple from Kentucky that escape and make their way to Detroit.

I would often think about my grandma, Helen Moore.

And she's here today.

She's incredible.

She is a education activist, and she's been that for my, since I've been alive, way before me.

But I would think about her temperament.

(laughs) I would think about how I would see her on the news, you know, causing a ruckus in front of city council or the school board meeting, getting arrested.

And I just wanted to know where that came from.

So I started to go back, just thinking about revolutionary moments in Detroit.

And Thornton and Lucie Blackburn is that moment.

So when they make their way to Detroit, the Black population of Detroit in the 1830s is probably under 200 people.

And some of the wealthy Black residents and abolitionists hear about them arriving.

They put them in the jail.

The jail location that were in, if you know downtown Detroit, is where the downtown library is on Library Street.

That's where the jail used to be.

And they're in prison.

And Black people in the community hear about this, and they're like, okay, we gotta get them out.

So they come up with this incredible plan.

Okay, like topdoglaw.com plan.

Okay?

Y'all know that commercial, stop playin'.

So this plan is essentially led by two Black women and one of the wealthiest Black residents.

So they go to the jailer and the sheriff, and they say, "We would like to pray with Thornton and Lucie Blackburn."

And they say, "You can't pray with Thornton, but you can go ahead and pray with Lucie."

So two women go into Lucie's jail cell.

One of the women trades clothes with Lucie.

So then Lucie escapes with the other woman, and then they get her across to Canada, 'cause they don't want any problems.

But now you have the problem of this other woman in her place.

And there's already been letters sent from the Kentucky governor and the Kentucky enslaver like, we want our slaves back.

What's going on in Michigan?

What's up with y'all Black people there?

And basically, they threatened to send the woman that traded clothes back to Kentucky in her place.

But she knows a really wealthy lawyer in Detroit.

And he argues habeas corpus, and they have to free her.

But she also goes over to Canada until things cool down.

Now they're like, okay, what do we do with Thornton?

We can't run any more secret tactics, 'cause they gonna know we coming.

So essentially, they just gather weapons, gather around the jail, and a shootout ensues.

The sheriff, I believe, is shot and killed.

I think a couple of jailers are hurt.

But Thornton's able to get free and then go over to Canada.

And then they move to Toronto.

And then Thornton starts the first cab company or taxi company in Toronto.

But it's this incredible story of these activists and a certain attitude that I think is entrenched in Detroit.

So then I wanted to go further back in time to the colonial period and figure out why Detroiters are so fresh when it comes to furs.

And where does that come from?

'Cause almost every mom and auntie I know got a fur in the closet somewhere.

(chuckles) It's a thing.

It's a thing.

You don't even have to be going anywhere.

You can go to the liquor store, you'll see somebody with a fur on.

So I started to look into the colonial period.

And what I found out and discovered, that they were Black enslaved who were used to transport the furs, when, you know, we're talking 1700s.

And in my mind, as an artist, you can imagine.

So I started to think about, okay, maybe you're with your father, or you're with someone, and they're transporting the furs.

And you have a desire to wear that fur one day.

And you pass that down.

And it becomes something of an aspirational model to be seen with a fur on.

So I called my friend Sheefy, incredible rapper, artist from Detroit, and I wanted him to pose for me.

So this is the painting that we made together.

And that's his actual, that's what he wears.

Like, I saw that, and I was like, all right, we gotta do something with that.

I also get into sculpture, something that I'm finding I really love.

This is my first bronze that I've ever done.

This is of my wife, Danielle.

And I'm working on more works that deal with the reality of space.

I think every painter wants to be a sculptor, and every sculptor wants to be a painter.

Yeah.

This is a piece I did on my grandfather.

This is a actual... I mean, a lot of things in this painting changed, right?

As I like to say, I like to imagine I create, I invent.

But the core of the photo without the fur, without the books was an actual image.

And my mom had this photo, and I was like, I don't know what I'm gonna do with that one day, but I need it, (laughs) and I used it.

Again, thinking about the fur trade, thinking about my body and my labor to create the kind of movement of furs.

There's this saying that Detroit was founded so King Louis XIV could wear a beaver hat, which, part of that is true.

They hunted their beaver out.

So King Louis XIV sent Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac to the straight, Detroit, Detroit.

And they were able to, you know, start a fur trade.

This is my dad.

He fly.

(audience chuckling) And this is one of the last pieces I'll show before I get to the last one.

The title of this piece is "Pillars of the Frontier."

And I started thinking about winter paintings.

A lot of contemporary artists don't paint snow or wintertime, why, when art history has so much beautiful winter painting.

So I wanted to imagine and think about what it means to be a Michigander, to live here, to be in the cold, but also the warmth that comes from these women that I know.

So I have my eldest sister and both of my grandmothers, my mom, and my wife.

"It Can all be So Fleeting" is the title of this piece.

And this is a notion or a critique of the contemporary art world, right?

I feel like artists are some of the few people in society that could come from an economic low but also engage with the wealthiest people in the world, right?

It puts you in this very weird position, in a position where you're critiquing, but you're also participating.

And the fact that there's a lot of galleries closing, all that kind of stuff, means that you can be the top artist at one point, and then you can be nobody the next year.

So it's actually taken from a famous painting that's at Harvard Art Museum, and Max Beckmann.

And he was critiquing German society in the same way that I'm thinking about the art world in this time.

And this is the last piece.

The title of this is "The Watermelon Man."

I did a show with LaKela Brown.

And that body of work was all about land ownership, land cultivation, what does it mean to own land, but also the relationship between Black men and Black people and watermelons.

The watermelon was one of the first items and fruits for Black people to have economic means to buy land, right, right after the Antebellum South.

So it allowed Black men and Black people agency to buy property, to send their kids to school, or create some kind of self-education in that time.

But what happened was racist white men during that time saw that they were building wealth.

So they had to create some kind of propaganda to separate that.

And that's where you get all the coon images, and you get the Sambos, and the smiling watermelon man.

And he was smiling, but he was smiling 'cause he was making money.

And they didn't like seeing that.

So now the association that we have with this fruit, that is a fruit that's actually from Africa, is something that's very disjointed.

So it's like how do I take back ownership of that image?

And this is the piece that I made.

(audience clapping) - Thank you.

(audience cheering and applauding) (audience chattering softly)