Kwanzaa begins Dec. 26 and runs until Jan. 1.
It is a celebration that honors African heritage in African-American culture and is based on seven core principles: Umoja (Unity), Kujichagulia (Self-Determination), Ujima (Collective Work and Responsibility), Ujamaa (Cooperative Economics), Nia (Purpose), Kuumba (Creativity) and Imani (Faith). This week’s portrait, Meg Onli, embodies several of those principles.
Onli is a visual artist and blogger. A graduate of the Art Institute of Chicago, she received a bachelor in fine arts before attaining a master’s degree in art history from the Courtauld Institute of Art. Her writing has appeared in Art21, Daily Serving and Art Papers and she is currently the first queer, black art curator at Institute of Contemporary Art.
PGN: So how does one pronounce your last name?
MO: Only.
PGN: I understand that you’re a Cali girl.
MO: Yes, born and raised in L.A. I moved to Chicago when I was 21 for art school, then New York briefly, then Portland, then off to London to do my master’s then back to Chicago and now here.
PGN: You just wanted to experience all sorts of weather, didn’t you?
MO: [Laughs] I feel like after 12 years in Chicago, I can handle anything.
PGN: Even the London fog?
MO: Oh yeah, I love London. I mean, we’ll see what it’s like after Brexit, just like we’ll see in America after Trump, but it’s great. You’re so close to other countries that I could be in Berlin one week and Marrakesh the next, it was just great. This job allows me to travel a lot and I was just in Europe and visited five cities in five days: London, Nottingham, Paris, Brussels and Antwerp.
PGN: What is the job?
MO: I’m the assistant curator at Institute of Contemporary Art. We’re a museum that’s connected to Penn. We’ve been here since the ’60s and have a really long history of bringing under-recognized artists to the attention of the broader world. In queer history, we were the one that originated the Mapplethorpe exhibit that traveled to Cincinnati and created a huge controversy. We were the first museum to show Agnes Martin and Andy Warhol, so we have a history of working with queer artists. I worked on the current exhibit downstairs, “The Freedom Principle,” and I’ll be working on my first major exhibition in the fall called “Speech/Acts,” which will look at six contemporary black artists that are using poetry, asking why figurative language has come back with artists who are interested in tackling the issues about the way in which black figuration is being shown in the media. As a curator, I research artists and exhibitions and I’m one of four people who decide what exhibits are important for the public to see; of course, our director has the final say. We are the liaison between the artist, the museum and the public. I did my master’s in art history and there’s a historical component to putting up an exhibition where we write up information about the context, etc. We publish a catalogue for every exhibition we have here.
PGN: When you travel, are you looking for new work?
MO: Sometimes. In this instance I was going to meet with a Nigerian artist named Otobong Nkanga. She lives in Antwerp with her partner and is about to have her first exhibit in Chicago in 2018. A lot of my job involves the relationship with the artist: Are you going to work well together? And we hit it off really well. We’re going to bring her work here in 2020.
PGN: Tell me about getting your master’s.
MO: I went to the Courtald in London, which is considered one of the top art-history programs in the world. In the U.K., you work with a specific advisor; mine was Mignon Nixon, and she’s a feminist scholar. I took a course called Art and Aggression in American Art: 1960 to Present — looking at psychoanalysis and early second-wave feminism and how art and all the ideas coming out of that feminism were connected. So I have a core art-history/feminist background.
PGN: Tell me a little about the Black Visual Archives, which you founded in 2010.
MO: BVA was started because I wasn’t seeing a lot about black art and visual culture online. We’re still at the point where it’s hard to find black artists in museums, and especially hard finding black curators — I think I know all of them! It was a way for me to counteract that and work on some ideas. It won a Warhol grant, which helped me get here. It’s being reworked into a journal, which I’d like to launch in 2018.
PGN: I think people’s predominant exposure to black art came from TV, the Romare Bearden paintings shown during the opening credits of “Good Times” and “The Cosby Show.”
MO: For sure, and now it’s shows like “Empire,” which showcases a lot of black artwork.
PGN: So how does Philly compare when it comes to presenting and representing black artists?
MO: I love Philly! As a black person who lived through the L.A. Riots and the O.J. Simpson trial — those foundational moments in L.A. — and lived in Chicago, which was a huge city for the great migration and has a lot of issues regarding race, Philly just comes across to me as a very black city. A city where it feels like I’m seen. I’ve found a really great community of artists … and a great hairdresser!
PGN: Kevin Jennings from GLSEN used to give a lecture about why LGBT rights were important to everyone, not just gay people. Why is black art important to everyone?
MO: If you think about the way history is rewritten and edited, a lot of the “others” — queer people, people of color and non-conformist people — are often written out. As a curator, part of my job is to think about the whole picture. I’m interested in the multiplicity of blackness as something that’s complex. I mean look at us, we’re both black women — I may be a little bit more identifiable because of my hair — but blackness isn’t one type of person, it’s not one type of art. It is a long history of expression that comes from something I find beautiful and moving. When I see work that came out of the slave trade, it’s moving. That’s my history. What does it mean to be stolen? To be bought and sold? Where do you discuss these things? You discuss them in art and music and film. It’s all of our history. We have diverse experiences that should be represented.
PGN: And there are always common themes. Discrimination because of color might resonate with someone who’s facing it because of being gay, etc.
MO: Yes. I’m going to be spending the holidays with people who are very conservative, who voted for Trump. I’m going to support a good friend, but I feel that it’s imperative to be able to talk to each other. I think one of the reasons we’re in the position we are now is because that civility has been lost in contemporary politics. We’ve decided, “Our politics don’t match,” so we’re not going to talk to each other. But we’re all still people and we need to find common ground.
PGN: Tell me a little about the family.
MO: I was raised by my mom and grandmother. I didn’t have to come out of the closet because being queer was very normative in my family. My brother is trans, I’m queer, and we come from a long line of liberals. Ours was a very working-class family. I’m from Gardina, which is close to Compton and South L.A. I grew up in a predominantly white household but attended a black gospel church and went to an all-girl Catholic school, which is not the fantasy you might think as a lesbian! It’s terrifying as a queer child trying to find yourself in a school full of nuns. It’s funny, going to an all-girls school you think of women as the center of power and then you come out and go, “Oh wow. Patriarchy, it’s a thing.” My family is very close. My brother is the first trans-masculine boxer competing in L.A. and he runs an organization called Buff Butch, with his trans-feminine partner. They do fitness for queer bodies. Oftentimes, fitness is presented as an ideal body, which none of us could actually achieve, but he thinks of fitness as a tool against supremacy and a way in which we can learn to love ourselves.
PGN: I’ve noticed that there’s a lot of biracial representation in the media these days.
MO: Yeah, it’s like that Cheerio’s commercial opened the door. I was telling a friend that I’ve never seen so many people that could be me on TV before. As a person who travels a lot, people are always shocked when I describe my parents’ backgrounds. Most countries are a little more homogenous so you don’t see as many interracial couples as you do in the states. I personally identify as black — I acknowledge my background — but the way I see myself in the world and how other people see me is as a black woman. But it is exciting to see different representations of people and families. I was looking at the new Sprint commercial and they have a guy picking out a Christmas tree with another male. Most people might not catch that consciously, but it slowly becomes normalized. It’s fascinating the way we as queer people can recognize coding.
PGN: True. So tell me about the exhibit you have up now and what we can look forward to.
MO: The current exhibit is called “The Freedom Principle” and it looks at the AACM, the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians, which was a group of jazz musicians; they marked their 50th anniversary last year. They worked with experimental music and created their own academy. They were into free jazz and improvisational music. We feature artists like John Cage, who was a critic of the AACM as well as groups like Africobra, the African Commune of Bad Relevant Artists — bad being good — as well as some contemporary artists who have been influenced by the work of AACM. The entire museum is filled with this exhibit. In the fall of 2017, I’ll open “Speech/Acts,” which is my show. It’s a larger survey of artists who are working directly with poetry. So we’ll have local artists like Tionna McClodden and national artists like Morgan Parker who just had a piece in the New York Times and I believe just won an NEA grant, and has a book coming out called “There are More Beautiful Things Than Beyoncé.”
PGN: Woah. Are you sure you want to mess with the beehive?
MO: Ha. No, you’ll find I’m quite opinionated and don’t often worry about the outcome! We have a great group of artists participating. Some are collaborating with poets, some are looking at structures of poetry, some are poets examining the way figurative language functions in their work.
PGN: One of the things I’ve noticed about the exhibits here is that there often is a multi-media component, sounds as well as sights.
MO: For sure, “Speech/Acts” has a range of works: collage, drawing and a lot of video components. It’s a very conceptual show.
PGN: What’s great about working at ICA?
MO: When you’re hired as a curator you’re expected to have a wide range of interests, which I do, but I also have a bit of a political agenda and specific focus of interest, and I’m blessed to be in a museum that is supportive of that.
PGN: OK, random questions. Two artists on your iPod right now?
MO: I have Jamilla Wood’s new album on repeat and my favorite song from that is “Holy.” I also love Alice Coltrane. “Monastic Trio” is one of my favorite albums.
PGN: Which historical event would you like to have witnessed?
MO: [Laughs] Hmmm, I think the idea of time travel is problematic because as a queer person and a person of color, there aren’t a lot of places where we would be welcome.
PGN: Wait. You mean you don’t want to return to the ’50s when ’Merica was great?
MO: Ha, I’ll choose something more recent. Maybe one of Serena’s grand-slam victories. No, I’ll pick when she crip-walked after winning her first gold medal in singles. That was amazing. It spoke so much to where I’m from. It was one of those moments that collapses into itself.
PGN: A story about your grandmother?
MO: She was very politically active. Before I started voting, my grandmother took me to Green Party meetings; she wasn’t a Green Party member but she wanted me to know there were options outside of the two-party system. I went to numerous protest marches with her as a child and grew up going to gay Pride parades. It was a very L.A. laidback, queer-friendly upbringing.
PGN: I read you’re into documentary films, ’60s and ’70s performance art and cute cats. So, hairless cats: cute or creepy?
MO: Cute. I have an artist that has an amazing hairless cat.
PGN: A favorite family tradition?
MO: I grew up going to Vegas all the time. My family likes to gamble. We are not successful gamblers, but we enjoy the risk. So when I go home, we always either go to Vegas or play cards around the dining table.
PGN: Best gift you’ve ever given or received?
MO: We’re not a very sentimental family, we basically tell each other what we want. I guess the best gift was one I gave myself when I adopted my dog Stanley. He’s a Corgie and a little ball of cuteness.
PGN: And finally, you’re involved with the intersection of politics and art. How do you think the next four years are going to affect the arts community?
MO: [Laughs] Oh, that. Yeah, we’ve been talking a lot about it. It’s scary, obviously. I just heard a rumor today that Sylvester Stallone might be the head of the NEA. I don’t want to spread any more fake news, but you just don’t know anymore. The concern is who is going to be deciding the funding for the future of art. Would we see something like Kara Walker’s “Sugar Baby” in a Trump presidency? I don’t know, but I’m an optimist. I believe that artists will continue the fight. Now’s not the time to be silent. As a curator, I want to remind people that some of the best art comes out of difficult times.
For more information on Institute of Contemporary Art, visit icaphila.org.
To suggest a community member for Family Portrait, email [email protected].