Muzae Sesay (b. 1989, Long Beach, California) lives and works in Oakland, California.

1. You describe your work as existing at the intersection of what we’ve built and what was already here. How do you navigate this tension between human-made structures and the enduring force of nature in your paintings? 

Yeah, I believe you’re referencing the quote, “There is a collision where what we’ve done meets what has been. I happen to live there. We all do. A place where brutality and majesty can dance around a singular occurrence,” from my artist statement for the exhibition ‘born on the earth.’ There, I’m mentioning the general human existence happening in between the power struggle of infrastructure and nature. The paintings themselves are a by-product of a studio practice which acts as the reconciliation and renegotiation of the witnessed world.

2. Your work reduces the physical world into rudimental forms and skewed perspectives. How does this process of abstraction reflect your ideas about memory, community, and shared reality? 

I’ve always been fascinated by my own struggles with memory. I don’t know if there’s anything more humbling than not trusting your recollection of experiences. My process of investigating those occurrences led me to value the overall emotional outcome of the memory rather than the specific details. The works themselves deal with memory in their own individual ways, however, simplifying the world into two-dimensional planes of color and symbols allows me to play with a type of vagueness of space that guides viewers to project their experiences. There’s also often a dreamlike fuzzy glow to my representation where the composition and color relates back to the idea of an overall emotional takeaway. 

For me, community informs a shared reality. They’re quite intertwined. Those really come into play when one considers abstract representation as a mode of communication. The vocabulary that is visually formed is a result of my own participation within a shared global reality and a universal human community. 

3. You’ve mentioned the way beauty and destruction coexist in the landscapes you depict. Do you see your work as a critique, an elegy, or something else entirely?

I think work can take the form of either of those. More generally I see the studio practice as an observation of life. In that sense, the work is allowed to be hypocritical and oxymoronic in its reflection. 

4. You touch on the effects of urban development. How does your use of color—both robust and shadowed—help communicate the psychological and emotional weight of urban change? 

Through a type of abstraction of the representational elementing in painting, color is sometimes the main driving factor in conveying the psychological weight of urban change and the overall emotional takeaway of the work. All I know now is that a bit of darkness has suppressed my vibrancy of the past. For me, I’ve only been able to analyze my use of color in hindsight. Some things are meant for an outsider to determine. Some things unfurl over time. 

5. Your works allude to the struggle between humanity and the Earth. How does this tension manifest in the visual language of your compositions? 

My work alludes to observations I have about everything. The tension between humanity and Earth is omnipresent and can be illustrated by most things. The oppressive nature from the tension creates the endless drive of creation itself. The visual language goes back to the ideas around shared reality within a world community. What manifests is a rudimentary matter-of-factness in both practice, imagery, and composition, akin to the amoral logic of an emotional existence. 

6. Your recent works engaged with deforestation, gentrification, and environmental destruction. Do you see your paintings as a form of activism, or do they serve a different purpose? 

No, not really. It would be a pathetic attempt at activism. I’m just a concerned citizen. I am merely etchin a human experience onto the wall of my cave as an optimistic attempt to connect with humans past, present, and future by means of contributing to our endless dialogue of “what the hell are we doing here?” and “isn’t this just the most beautiful planet you’ve ever seen?” 

7. What are you currently working on in the studio? 

Grinding my life into a powder and mixing with it linseed oil. You know the vibe.