TIO Artists Sessions Feature
- Classic Reinvention
- Jun 3
- 1 min read
It felt important to begin gathering conversations around the thinking behind Taji's work. God willing, this is one of many sessions before and after his voyage to Rome.
Preserving the preserver.
Question: You have described yourself as a "composer-philosopher, and systems-builder". In an art world that often demands neat categorization, what specific societal or historical systems are you dismantling, and what new frameworks are you building in their place?
Question: Your masterwork, Black Desk Remix – The Prequel, pivots around a brilliant conceptual thesis: "The Black Desk kept files on Black people. Banneker kept files on the stars, the land, and the water so people could survive". How did you arrive at this duality of information production versus information control?
Question: You are staging Work of Water at the Fairmount Waterworks, an architectural marvel historically used to measure, control, store, and distribute water. Conceptually, how does the history of this specific building amplify your themes of surveillance and distribution?
Question: You credit your late mentor, the renowned artist Terry Adkins, with inspiring your practice of the "exclamation point"—being in direct, active conversation with other people's artwork. How does this philosophy manifest in your live collaborations and curated platforms?
Question: You recently received the 2024 Guggenheim Fellowship and the 2026 Rome Prize in Visual Arts. How does this sudden influx of elite institutional backing alter, if at all, the logistics and scale of a practice that has been fiercely independent for 25 years?
In preperation for session two, we welcome any and all questions. Please, feel free to leave them in the comments.
-The Inquisitive Outsider
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