Rashid Johnson
Rashid Johnson
Rashid Johnsonis an African-American socio-political photographer who produces conceptual post-black art. Johnson first received critical attention when examples of his work were included in the exhibition "Freestyle," curated by Thelma Golden at the Studio Museum in Harlem in 2001—when he was 24. He has studied at Columbia College Chicago and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. His work has been exhibited around the world and he is held in collections of many of the world's leading art museums...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPhotographer
CountryUnited States of America
For me, all the materials and objects I employ come from a specific space that's very personal.
My mother introduced me to more academic-minded writers, Cornel West and Skip Gates. In her library, I came across, when I was very young, Harold Cruse's 'The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual,' which is like a bible of Negro intellectuals from Frederick Douglass to Amiri Baraka.
I was going through a divorce, and I had a lot of reading I was doing, and I developed what was probably a serious anxiety problem - because I was about as poor as you can get, in graduate school, and trying to make my work and keep my head above water.
I don't have any other skills. Some artists say that to mean that their embodied passion for art gave them no choice. I say it, very specifically, to say that I really didn't have any other options.
I started rereading 'The Dutchman' - I kind of just pulled it off the shelf.
My father ran a CB radio business. I grew up in a cluttered space that was filled with radios and antennas. It felt alien.