Elephant’s Editor-in-Chief, Tschabalala Self, pays tribute to Howardena Pindell’s groundbreaking legacy, tracing the ways her experimentation, experience, and vision have shaped generations of artists—including her own.
Howardena Pindell is one of the greatest artists of her generation. Her practice has transcended various mediums and is now most readily associated with her dynamic, multilayered abstractions which are substrated by both paper and canvas. Her most iconic work which often provokes the most curiosity is still Free, White, and 21 (1980). The droll humor and grating honesty of this piece is unmatched, and unfortunately still relevant today. When watching this short, I find myself recounting my own banal, disappointing and infuriating experiences of racialized violence. These instances are glibly foiled by the feigned ignorance of the free, white and 21-year-olds who know nothing of these realities. The importance of this pivotal work is greatly amplified by the increasing normalization of racist ideologies in American society and the rise of White American Nationalism. One still wonders when in America can all citizens be carefree?
Pindell’s work has shaped the landscape I entered as a young artist; her commitment to experimentation, truth-telling, and abstraction has guided my own practice. Her use of material, accumulation and repetition has been extremely inspiring. Before I ever touched a piece of fabric, I knew Pindell’s circles, I knew her story and her refusal to fold. Through the realm of abstraction Pindell speaks to her lived experience as a Black woman, artist and most importantly human being navigating the ever challenging human experience.
We spoke ahead of her exhibition at White Cube, Off The Grid, in the space where decades of her thinking and making reside—part studio, part archive, part living museum. In her presence, one feels the full weight of her legacy, but also her curiosity, humor, and relentless drive to question deeper. Our conversation moved from art school memories and the politics of abstraction to family history and the microscopic details that shape a life.
Howardena Pindell is one of the greatest living American artists— she is also, still evolving, still searching, still making and it is our shared privilege to still learn from her.
Tschabalala Self: So today we’re here in your studio. If you had to describe this space to someone who’s never been here before, how would you describe it?
Howardena Pindell: Gigantic — and the way they’ve set it up, they can put up little exhibitions of my work for collectors or museums to come in.
TS: Luckily, I’ve been able to see some of your work in person before — my whole arts career, I’ve studied your practice. When I came in, I thought, “Oh, it’s not just a workspace; it also feels like an exhibition space.”
HP: Yes, we set it up that way.
TS: And this neighborhood here — what do you call it? The South Bronx or Mott Haven?
HP: I think it’s Port Morris. This whole building has furniture makers and fashion designers. It’s mostly artists.
TS: Yes, it’s a huge arts community in this neighborhood nowadays.
HP: Oh, really?
TS: Yeah, I think so — especially in the last ten or fifteen years. A lot of my friends from graduate school moved here from New Haven. Could you tell me a little about how long you’ve been living in New York? You didn’t grow up here, did you?
HP: No, I’m from Philadelphia. When I graduated from Boston University, I never went back to live there. I visited my parents, but that was it. After that, I went to New Haven, went to Yale, and then I came to New York without a job. While I was at school, I worked at Francis P. Garvan collection, which gave me some credibility for working at a museum. I ended up at the Museum of Modern Art and worked there for twelve years. By the end, I was an associate curator and acting director of the department when the department head was gone. There were a lot of power plays in that world and I got tired of it.
Then there was a job opening at Stony Brook University in teaching, and I taught there for forty-three and a half years.
TS: Really? I wasn’t aware you taught at Stony Brook University for that long.
HP: Oh, yeah. It was an awful commute—four hours round trip, sometimes five. After twenty-three years, I finally found a ride.
TS: Wow, that’s a very long time.
HP: It was.
TS: So you grew up in Philadelphia. Can you tell me a little about your early life and education—going to Boston University for undergrad and then to Yale School of Art for your MFA?
HP: Yes, and Boston was extraordinarily racist in the 1960s. It was unbelievable. You could go into a restaurant and they’d say, “I’m sorry, we don’t serve you.” I remember I ran for office in one of the dorms, and they took me off the ballot. They said, “You are not appropriate.”
TS: I think you spoke about that in your piece Free, White and 21.
HP: Yes, you’re right—but that was something else I was removed from. When I was at Boston University, I’d run into people who were friends, but when their family would visit they would turn away—because if they told their parents they were friends with me, their parents would say, “Stop. Don’t have her as a friend.”
TS: Was it any different in New Haven, or was it a similar experience?
HP: New Haven was different. While I was there in the ’60s, it wasn’t very built up as a town—it was mainly Yale, and then working-class and kind of sparse. At the time, Yale didn’t have women undergraduates, only graduate students—so the men were very friendly. Sometimes you’d run into things. On parents’ weekend, if you were friendly with someone and they were walking with their parents toward you on the sidewalk, they’d cross the street to avoid you.
TS: Was there still a large Black community in New Haven at that time? I know that even when I was there at Yale they actually told students not to go outside the “Yale bubble” —and that was in 2013.
HP: So, did you have much interaction with the city outside the Yale bubble?
TS: Occasionally, more so after I graduated and stayed. I was too busy to explore anyhow while in the program.
HP: That’s true.
TS: When I’ve looked at some of your other interviews, you talk quite a lot about your parents and their influence on you—in particular your father, who I think was involved in science and math.
HP: Yes, science and math. That’s one of the things that really changed the way I look at everything. For example, I often look at things through a microscope. For example, that’s what skin looks like, apparently.
TS: Really? That looks like one of your artworks.
HP: I’m trying to work from it. Apparently, it’s human skin. I don’t see how it could possibly look like that, but that’s what they claim.
TS: That’s amazing. So, looking at the world on that microscopic scale has informed the formal aspects o your practice?
HP: That’s probably true. I bought the microscope because one of the first gifts I was ever given by my parents was a microscope — not a doll, but a microscope. I spent a lot of time looking at things like Philadelphia water, seeing all the things swimming around in it. Recently, I thought I might try that again, so I bought a new microscope online. That got me interested again in the micro.
My father was a mathematician. He went to Morgan State, got his degree in mathematics, and then went to Columbia’s Teachers College to learn about teaching. At that time, he lived in Harlem during the Harlem Renaissance. He was very supportive. When I graduated, I had no debt, he made sure of that. He was also very helpful when it came to my art career. He took me to my interview at Yale, made sure I had art supplies.
And my mother—well, she was old-fashioned. She would say things like, “You may be famous, but at least I have a husband.” Nice, huh?
TS: [Big laugh]
HP: Or when she came to the show I had at Yale, my first solo show using all the numbers and stuff, she walked into the gallery and said, “Well, I gave your phone number to a very nice young man on the train.” She was always kind of putting me down. My father was always supportive—at least, until I got older.
TS: I know you also spoke about another formative experience you had with your parents—I think it was a road trip heading to Ohio, when you stopped in northern Kentucky at a root beer stand— can speak about the “circle?”
HP: That’s the real thing that started the dot. My father would drive to Ohio—my mother’s family was there. Her father had passed, but her mother was alive. There were eight children. So her sisters would get together with her mother, and my father decided, “Well, let’s drive.” He loved to drive. We went down to southern Ohio and then to northern Kentucky. There was a root beer stand, and they gave us a glass like everyone else’s—a chilled mug with root beer. But on the bottom of the glass, there was a circle.
I remember saying to my father, “What’s that?” And he said, “Well, this is segregation. We can only use certain silverware and glassware — this is how they mark it.” I was shocked. I let it go at the time, but it became a catalyst. When I was at Yale, I started working with a circle, and then—boom—it crawled into my unconscious mind.
While at Yale I began as a figurative painter, but then I started to abstract more and became looser—more like abstract expressionism. But I needed natural light to paint figures. When I came to New York, I didn’t have that. I had a job, and even though I was seeing amazing artwork in the galleries, I started to look at Poons’s work.
TS: Poons?
HP: Larry Poons. He uses circles and ovals. So I just started drawing grids and putting circles and ovals in them.
TS: While at Yale, when you were still working in figuration, you’ve also mentioned there was a classmate using dots — and that kind of sparked that subconscious memory? Is this correct?
HP: That would be Nancy Murata. She was a really nice person. She worked with dots and circles and was the catalyst to begin my exploration of the circle.
TS: When I was there, a lot of my classmates were sewing.
HP: Really?
TS: I actually thought it was silly for the longest time — I didn’t understand why they were all doing it. But at some point, it resonated with me, and I decided I wanted to try sewing. Now it’s become an integral part of my practice.
HP: It’s interesting how your classmates influenced you there.
TS: Yeah, a lot of them. It was actually kind of a running joke with the faculty — they were calling it a hipster sweatshop, because they all had this one big room packed with machines. The atmosphere there can be very competitive.
HP: Al Held was faculty while I was there, the male students clung to him — wanting a loft in New York, wanting a show…They felt like he could give them an inside tip.
I remember one of the students — I can’t recall his name — got a loft before he even graduated, somewhere in Soho. It was like, “He’s going to make it.” But at that point, too, white men were the ones being shown. White women weren’t being shown. Anyone of color getting a show was a big deal. It was pretty ruthless.
TS: So then, after you left New Haven, you came to New York — and that’s when you started working?
HP: Mhm.
TS: What year was that?
HP: ’67.
TS: How soon after that did you start working at MoMA?
HP: August of ’67. I graduated in May or June, and by August I was working at the museum.
TS: Oh, that was fast.
HP: It went very fast. I think because I got a recommendation from Jules Brown, who was the person in charge of the Garvan Collection — he was my teacher. It’s funny, to this day, he’s actually pretty feeble now, but he still teases me about a paper I wrote that contained information he’d been searching for for years.
TS: Oh really? How did you find the information?
HP: You know, I just love research.
TS: I know that experience working at MoMA was a large part of the inspiration for one of your most famous works, Free, White and 21, because of the institutional racism you experienced.
HP: In fact, if you look it up online, it’s been shown in a lot of places. I’m kind of numb to it — because, you know, I made it. And I’m always shocked when people are moved by it.
TS: I’m really moved because when you experience those kinds of things, the victimization of it almost makes you embarrassed. You don’t want to recount the story. The fact that you were able to recount each story and make a record of it — that alone is such a profound gesture.
HP: You know, I’m tempted to do a Free, White and 21—and Trump. [Laughing]
TS: That would be amazing.
HP: Because God help us, we’ve gone back.
TS: Yeah, it’s been really scary, what’s going on right now.
HP: I’m upset that the African American Museum in Washington is closed.
TS: It’s closed? Because of the government shutdown I imagine, among other things. Wow, that’s actually very scary. I’ll look into this…
HP: Yeah. If you look it up online—ask Google a question, it’ll find an answer.
TS: In regard to Free, White and 21 Do people still ask you whether the stories you recounted in the video are true?
HP: No.
My favorite one was being at a wedding for a friend. The luncheon was held at the home of a woman close to the bride. She invited the bride and bridesmaids for a meal, and she was stunned and annoyed that I was part of the party. That’s where, in the video, I can hear myself saying, “She moved her place over to face me so she could watch me eat.”
And when it was time to leave, the men lined up on one side, the women on another, and I was part of that group. She shook hands with all the women except for me. Then she shook hands with the men—and came back to me. And when we were eating, she was looking at me like I was some sort of, I don’t want to use the word monkey, but that’s where her brain was.
TS: Likely, based on her behavior. But this fixation — this staring, this preoccupation with Black people — it’s just very bizarre. In the short, you recount various experiences of physical and mental horrors, disgusting sexual advances, every facet of violence, and it’s all racialized. It’s also often at the intersection of your femininity, your womanhood.
I kind of feel like, as a psychological exercise, it would be cathartic if all Black people made an account of these experiences — to get them out of their minds, out of their bodies. There’s a somatic aspect to all of this. You carry it with you when you just keep these memories to yourself, you know?
Another question that is provoked by the project Free, White, and 21— is how you would personally define whiteness as a concept?
HP: Indifference. Insensitivity — those would be some words. Imperial.
I remember women of color, mainly Asian women, referring to the white women’s movement as “imperial feminism.”
Callous. Stupid. Lack of Mercy—because when you look at the historical stuff. When you look at historical examples — like Columbus and what he did to the Dominican Republic when he thought he was in North America — he trained his dogs to eat human flesh.
TS: That is horrific.
HP: I learned something interesting. When I did my DNA, and besides African and parts of Europe, I have Inuit, Alaskan, and other ancestry. But I had Irish, and I was trying to figure out — how did that happen? Then I looked online, and apparently — there’s some good Black history stuff there — apparently Irish people were brought here and were basically enslaved. They suffered under indentured servitude.
TS: Freedom is another concept that’s explored in that video. How would you describe freedom?
HP: No consequences. A kind of shallow feeling and sense of possession.
Freedom is not being stared at, like you don’t belong here. Freedom is being able to reach whatever high point you want in your work, whatever that job is. Freedom is not being put down because you’re a woman or a man, or if you’re a person of color. White women can be ruthless.
I had a dealer, she was one of the first to show my dot pieces that had thread grids, and she was selling them pretty well. She was on 57th Street, and one day she said to me, “I’d like to represent your work exclusively, but I will not list you as being in the gallery. And by the way, your nose is Jewish — but I bet they weren’t married.”
TS: What? That’s disgusting.
HP: Yeah. I quit the gallery. I thought, I don’t want to put up with this shit. Excuse my language.
I do have Jewish ancestry though — I have two Ashkenazi, one Sephardi, and one Palestinian.
TS: When did you do your ancestry test?
HP: Well, I used a company in Canada. I’ve been warned you have to be careful, because someone might steal your DNA and substitute it for someone else — someone who might be a criminal.
TS: Oh my god, that’s scary.
HP: I’m afraid to do it again.
TS: Well, luckily you have a lot of notoriety, so I don’t think anyone could frame you for a crime.
HP: I can give you the list — I have it right here. Those others are places I’ve lived.
TS: You actually have really nice handwriting.
HP: I can’t read it! (laughs) Okay, DNA: Ethiopia, South Africa, Zulu and Bantu, Nigeria, Benin, Libya, Basque, Portugal, Cyprus, Madagascar.
TS: Oh, Madagascar — that’s exotic.
HP: Delhi, South India, Scandinavia, Finland, Inuit, Alaska, Russia, and Greece.
TS: I’ve never done one. I’m curious now.
HP: But the main thing is — you can only test the same sex as your parent.
TS: For example, you don’t know what’s on your dad’s side, right?
HP: Yeah. You have to get a male relative.
TS: Something else that you speak about in Free, White and 21 is the “token” — and that “you will not be the token.”
HP: Well, the thing is, everywhere I went after I got out of Yale, it felt like there was no other Black woman. There was Bill Williams, who was the next year, and then another Black fellow who was a sculptor at Yale, but no others.
TS: So you were the only Black person in your entire class?
HP: I think so.
TS: That’s quite isolating. The school told us that it was just a coincidence that every year there were four Black students — two girls, two boys. They said it was just a coincidence, not a quota.
HP: Really? Oh my lord.
TS: Maybe it was a coincidence. Who knows? I really doubt it, though. Do you think that this issue of tokenism still exists within the art world or the art community?
HP: I think so. But with what’s happening now to our whole country, it’s hard to know what’s happening within the art community.
TS: True.
HP: It’s hard to know because there are such outrageously evil and negative things coming out of the government. The fact that the current administration wants to revoke DEI — diversity, equity, and inclusion — it is against including people of color and women.
I’m just kind of isolated. I mean, I have the studio and I have my apartment. I’m here usually five days a week, and yeah — my favorite place for the weekend is the Metropolitan Museum, where I like to hang out on Saturdays.
TS: Do you go see the Egyptian exhibit?
HP: I hang out in Oceania, Africa, and Egypt. Yeah. Apparently you can get to the Asian exhibit, but since I’m in a wheelchair and their elevator’s broken, you can only use the steps.
TS: They have that new exhibition Divine Egypt, if you go. They just opened it.
HP: Yeah?
TS: Yeah, it’s open now. It’s pretty good. I went this past weekend.
HP: I’ll do my best to get there this Saturday.
TS: Do you feel like a lot of this racism — that creates such a toxic environment for Black artists — also creates strained relationships within the Black arts community, between peers?
HP: Well, when I first came to New York, there was Bill Williams and myself. We went to the most prominent Black museum at the time and they told us to go downtown and “show with the white boys” because we were abstract. I was becoming abstract, but still, they didn’t want anything to do with us. And then there was part of the Black art community that really hated us — for being abstract or whatever, or not having a narrative in the work. I actually started putting a narrative in the work after I was in that car accident.
TS: And the car accident happened in 1979?
HP: Yes.
TS: That’s when you made Free, White and 21 the following year, in 1980?
HP: I did it because I felt I could be dead any day. I wanted to express what I felt about what was going on. And so I started doing issue-related paintings. I guess the figuration came back, and I started putting text in my paintings. In fact, I have one painting that kind of creeps me out, so I sort of stopped using figuration because there were premonitions in the work. One in particular, Scapegoat — it was made for an exhibition that was supposed to be in Florida about the AIDS crisis.
TS: I want to talk to you more about your work itself. I know you talk about texture and how exhilarating it is for a painting or an artwork to have texture. Why is that?
HP: I just like that. As a figurative painter I didn’t get into texture at all. The thing that changed me the most was Albers’ color course.
TS: Oh, really? Was he one of your professors?
HP: He was, but Sye Silman taught the course. It helped me with figurative work. It helps me a lot with abstract work. But I love texture and that came out and I became abstract. I don’t know what it was but at the Modern, I would go down to the frame shop — they had the center window, they make a mat and throw out the middle. It was a bevelled edge and 100% rag. So I bargained with the guy at the frame shop — the guy who happened to be Black, I think he was from the Islands — and he said, “Oh, sure, you can take the trash.”
TS: Yeah, it was good quality paper.
HP: Very high-quality paper.
TS: And that’s the paper that you started using for your cutouts?
HP: That’s the base.
TS: Okay. I understand better.
HP: God, I’m still amazed about the sewing.
TS: Yeah, I love sewing. It’s kind of the signature aspect of my work, and I really identify with your work because of the accumulation of the layers — I do that quite a lot as well. My work is figurative though.
HP: Oh my goodness, that’s amazing.
TS: It veers into abstraction, but I hope as I mature as an artist it can become even more so. The significance of accumulation and materials and layering — can you speak to why your oeuvre lends itself to that and what it means conceptually?
HP: I have no idea. I have one memory — my mother was the one with the gift. And I remember when she passed away, we were packing up her stuff and I found a calendar or something she did for her students, but she wanted to show the ocean. So she took various images of the ocean and collaged them together so there was some continuity to it. And that was kind of a shock to me. But then for a while she was making her own stationery, and she would sandwich flowers. You know, she stapled the edge. And you have the white paper so you could write, but on the outside there was almost like a crepe paper.
TS: Was she using wax paper maybe? Because you can use wax paper in the kitchen.
HP: That’s probably it.
TS: Wow, so she was pressing flowers at home?
HP: Yes. Mhm. Very strange.
TS: Well, there’s quite a lot of pressure in your work as well, with the holepunch, and there’s a similarity there.
HP: So she was the one with the gift. My father was the one with the support.
TS: Did you ever see your mother working on these things?
HP: No.
TS: But you said you knew that it made her happy, that she was excited about it. How did you know?
HP: Well, she brought me the finished product. She may have made them at school. She taught third grade.
TS: So your mother was a teacher?
HP: Yes, she was.
TS: Well thank you Ms. Pindell for all the knowledge you imparted onto me today.
