mosie romney received their BFA in Visual Art from SUNY Purchase in 2016 and have completed residencies with the Home School, Hudson, NY; Pocoapoco, Oaxaca City, MX; Painters Painting Paintings, Amsterdam, Netherlands; and Mahler & LeWitt Studios, Spoleto, Italy, among others. Their work is in the permanent collections of the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami, FL; Pond Society, Shanghai, China; the Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, NY; and the Yuz Museum, Shanghai, China, among others. romney’s work has been included in exhibitions at White Columns, New York, NY; Nicodim, Bucharest, RO, Los Angeles, CA, and New York, NY; Greene Naftali, New York, NY; Gern en Regalia, New York, NY; Almine Rech, London, UK, and New York, NY; Rachel Uffner Gallery, New York, NY, among others. Their work has been featured in articles in BOMB Magazine, Hyperallergic, The Brooklyn Rail, T Magazine, and Juxtapoz, among others.
How do concepts of self-perception and visibility weave their way into your artistic process?
I think visibility toes on the line of invisibility. Something I have been interested in my work is anonymity, which is why I am not painting faces all the time on figures or I’m painting mannequins or puppets. I think having no face or being invisible is also kind of a visibility blending in. I think about the celebrity of the art world and the celebrity concept of the art world and how to challenge that and that feeds into self-perception, or lack thereof, just becoming a laborer, a person of society rather than an art star. I think that is important for me, which is part of the reason why I started studying herbalism so I can have both a private practice and a public practice. Painting feels very private and working with herbs feels very public.
In what way does your family and cultural background influence your art?
I have studied a lot of Western culture and American culture, like art history to psychology, and I have found myself at a kind of standstill. Getting to know my family’s culture, my family is from Jamaica, I am learning about Duppy and Bogeyman or Obeah people, spiritualists, which is helping me understand my role in the world. What I perceived as mental illness at one time or mental instability is actually mounting or possession or entities and spirits passing through.
Can you speak to the significance of fantasy and incorporating Polychronic time into your work?
I think there are multiple timelines happening at once and I try to access that in my paintings. Whether that be smaller people, mounting a bigger person, or a head that has a staircase in it and a person walking up the staircase. It’s multiple things happening at once that don’t seem exactly right but could exist in the multiverse.
Fantasy for me is also reality. I love to think of positive and negative as almost the same thing because you can’t have one without the other. Invisible communication feels fantastical and talking to the spirit world has a fantastical quality to it but it also feels very real for me and people in my culture so that’s how it shows up.
What is your creative process for blending figuration with abstraction?
Sometimes it’s nice to just put down some color and line according to gates that I see on the street or spirals that I find. That has lent itself to abstraction just because it really is just about color and line and shape. Then I impose figures on top of it or faces in between, or a figure becomes a solid color, and that allows for a conversation between abstraction and figuration. I think also painting the spirit, trying to figure out a way to make something beyond the body ends up falling into abstraction.
Is there an additional institutional collection that would be meaningful for you to be in?
The Stedelijk Museum
Describe what an ideal public or private space would look like for your artwork to reside in.
An ideal private place would be in someone’s home – more likely someone who is spiritually inclined or honors the sacred. Someone who prays maybe. Maybe in someone’s prayer room.
Within museums and shows that deal with the surreal or the spiritual psychological realm.
Which artists would you like to be in a group show with in the future?
Chris Ofili. I love Chris Ofili’s work. He is so cool.
What progress would you like to see in the arts for the black trans community?
More visibility, more shows that aren’t just about black transness, but other things as well. I’m black and trans and that’s innate – that is just who I am – but there’s so much more to me and my work. I would like to see shows that are just not focused on that once a year, but where I can just exist amongst other artists that have identities that can fall away and remain at the same caliber.
Which part of the art ecosystem excites you the most for the future of your practice?
I am between social practice, like working with the community, and also teaching. Social practice for me is working with people that are in the community who aren’t interested in gaining a certificate or a degree in art, but they’re curious about learning about color or herbs or just drawing for the day. Working with students also excites me because art-making is really a way of getting to know oneself and getting to know others – that is really a way of empathizing. If you can read visual language, equipping people with the tools to understand visual language or to decipher visual language, and read it, requires a presence and that excites me.