‘Language Like a Pickaxe’: An Interview with Chloë Bass | Emily Raboteau

Emily Raboteau
A sign reading “How much of love is attention?” from Chloë Bass’s “Wayfinding,” St. Nicholas Park, Harlem, 2019

I first encountered the work of conceptual artist Chloë Bass in the fall of 2019 while walking to work through Harlem’s St. Nicholas Park. On the sloping hill up to City College, a reflective billboard—a giant mirror—was planted in the grass, with the words “How much of love is attention?” written across it. I felt arrested by the sign because it demanded thought, and also because, the previous fall, I’d been stopped in my tracks by another work of public art that stood in nearly the same spot. That road sign had been by artist Justin Guariglia, and flashed terrifying warnings about climate change. The residue of its message still accrued to that public space in my memory. In fact, it radicalized the way I see the environment.

Though Bass’s signage may not have been in direct conversation with Guariglia’s, the two projects were, to my mind, connected. They even seemed narrated by the same disembodied interrogator, which may as well have been the voice of the park itself, directed at the community. I felt in my body that the answer to Bass’s question about love was that it had entirely to do with attention, especially love of this threatened world. And that, when applied, this attention looked like caring more for one another’s wellbeing. I discovered that this billboard was one of twenty-four sculptural signs of various sizes situated throughout St. Nicholas Park, sponsored by the Studio Museum in Harlem. “Wayfinding” is Bass’s first institutional solo exhibition, and will remain on view through late September.

We exchanged emails about how this project fits into her larger body of work, and how her practice has changed as a result of the global pandemic. Our conversation has been edited and condensed.

Emily Raboteau: Your signs and Justin’s both put me in mind of what theologian Walter Brueggemann has said about prophetic language working like a pickaxe. A fearless truth-telling joined with fierce hope conveyed by disarming language to reframe the social realities confronting us so that we can see them from a different angle. I felt implicated by your question “How much of love is attention?” Do you feel you’re working in a prophetic, poetic, or spiritual tradition?

Chloë Bass: I haven’t read Brueggemann—although now you’re making me want to—but I feel a deep relation between language and tool that his metaphor suggests. I also haven’t had cause to use a pickaxe yet in my life—what does that say about me? Insufficient mining and ice-fishing, I guess—but I have considered language in other similar contexts: the scalpel, the hammer, the needle.

I’m very moved by the dedication of belief, and the way that belief in the best sense can actually open our eyes to the world, and expand our interpretations of the world. A huge part of my art practice is to get people to look more closely at what’s around them, including, but not exclusively, at themselves. To really put that forward into the world requires a huge amount of belief, and belief in what belief itself offers.

Two other mirrored billboards in “Wayfinding” ask, “How much of life is coping?” and “How much of care is patience?” The billboards anchor the exhibition, mirroring Harlem as it transforms over time, reflecting what you’ve observed as “gentrification and the force it enacts on a city in constant flux.” Can you say more about how posing these questions on reflective surfaces in a public park might build a bridge between internal thought and external social and political dialogue?

It’s not a new realization to me that these external locations are both highly social, and extremely politicized. I’ve noticed this as a woman, as a person who identifies as Black, and is perceived in many different ways (a reality I know you and I share), but never as white, and as a person who on her own appears normatively femme, but has also been in visibly queer relationships. All of these identities, and their associated readings by external viewers, mean that public space can be fraught. It’s something we all participate in, but not something that we all experience in the same way.

I’m also really interested in the way that feeling shapes everything that we do. I’m particularly interested in how the phrase “I felt afraid” was used by police so often in 2014–2016 as an excuse for murder that it took on a weird kind of refrain. The internal register is always already part of external social and political dialogue, up to and including the formation of laws. I just want to make that more apparent.

The billboards anchor the project, but there are several smaller wayfinding signs throughout the park with statements considering loss, anxiety, family intimacy, and desire. I enjoyed photographing them when I walked to and from the campus where I teach creative writing, before the college shut down. You’ve described yourself as an arts-based researcher and also as having more training as a writer than an artist. What text-based artists and writers are you influenced by?