Q&A - Kumsai J Barnett with @platformart_com 1. How do you describe your practice generally, and what inspired your artworks of yours on Platform? My practice is like breathing, it is the one thing I can always do. The works I’m doing right now are less about a specific way of practice and more about revealing truths. So I think of them as taking fiction and turning them into real stories. Stripping away the false, the reality is revealed with as little alteration as possible. 2. What song(s) do you have on repeat right now? I have had one song on constantly for the last month. “Party in The CIA” by Weird Al Yankovic. It’s perfect. But I am constantly playing J Dilla’s instrumentals as a way to move through the world. It’s not so much just about listening, but also about theme music. He is perhaps one of the best hip-hop producers of all time. Right at the top of the list with DJ Premier, Dr. Dre, Swizz Beats, Prince Paul, and the Bomb Squad. We can fight about it. 3. Dream dinner guests, dead or alive? Putting aside all the family members and loved ones who are passed away I would like to have a small dinner party with Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, and William Donald Schaefer. Schaefer was mayor of Baltimore during the 70s and 80s. He was responsible for the National Aquarium, Harborplace, The Baltimore Convention Center, and Camden Yards. It might not have much meaning to people from outside of Baltimore, but it was and is probably the most impressive renaissance of a US urban center that I can think of. You should know the other two. I would prefer them to be alive at the dinner. 4. What’s your first memory of being impacted by art? I can’t remember the first time I was impacted by art. My mother was a designer and my brother and I drew early on. I was raised drawing. I thought it was something everyone did When my father would take us to museums he would say, “you could do that.” I said the same thing when I first went to college. We were at the Baltimore Museum of Art with my first painting teacher. I said “meh, I could do that” dismissively about a Matisse blue cut-out silhouette, and she said, “well then you will get an A” #artonplatform (at Los Angeles, California) https://www.instagram.com/p/CoptW4MvUAh/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=
