Groundbreaking artist continues to transcend barriers with her latest exhibit in Brooklyn
By Sean Yoes
Special to the AFRO
“Overwork, overgiving … self betrayal and not keeping enough to yourself, for yourself,” is how Imani Bilal describes a recurring theme in her life and the often obstinate muse for her latest art exhibit, “The Beauty of Enough.”
“It challenges this … I call it the quiet expectation of giving to the point of exhaustion–you know what I mean? To the point where you sometimes don’t recognize yourself … or your selfhood is compromised,” Bilal added. “And so the paintings, they kind of became my way of telling those stories, my story and the stories of others.”
Bilal’s latest series of stories (nine works that range in size from 6 feet tall to 12 inches high) are on display at the Mazlish+Wright Contemporary art gallery in the eclectic Dumbo neighborhood of Brooklyn, N.Y., until May 27. The exhibit opened on May 7.
“I was telling a lady at the show (opening night) that they hold traces of the things that we carry, the things that we protect, withhold, preserve and that they offer a visual language for self discovery,” Bilal said.
For more than 10 years Bilal has manifested the revolutionary visual language of her soul, defying parameters and astonishing many in the art world, with Forbes magazine in 2021 acknowledging her as, “A force to be reckoned with in the contemporary art world.”
A self-taught artist, Bilal decided at age 17, that she didn’t want to “work a regular job,” after a perfunctory food service job experience at the Columbia Mall in Maryland (Bilal is a Harlem native who moved to Maryland with her family at age 10). She has never worked a so-called regular job since.
“I always wanted to paint. I always wanted to create. Before I was a painter I was a metal smith. But, I’ve always … created,” said Bilal.
“I’ve always wanted to share and connect people through art. That’s been my mission and my goal and to add beauty to a world that can often be very chaotic and ugly in some ways,” she added. “I wanted to add more of the things that beautify the world and also more things that challenge perspectives and get people to look a little bit longer and ask questions that connect people with themselves.”
Experiencing an Imani Bilal painting may be akin to sliding down the side of a beautifully vibrant mountain with impunity – visceral and exhilarating on multiple levels.
“A lot of what you are seeing on the canvas is me translating … the ebb and flow in real time. So the tension on the canvas may look like a bunch of intersecting lines, or it might be something that might be very expansive, suddenly, gets very tight and small,” Bilal explained.
“Sometimes you’ll look at my painting and it will almost feel like it’s leaning. These things are ways for me to articulate the story and articulate the journey of the story without words,” she added.
For Bilal, a devout Muslim, her art and spirit are indistinguishable. “There are some pieces that are purely about me being in a meditative state. There are pieces that aren’t me telling a story and more so translating like the current emotion that I’m presently in. An active meditation, a prayer through color,” Bilal said.
Her work has been exhibited internationally and housed in galleries across the United States. And in January 2023, Bilal’s undeniable virtuosity led to her most prodigious offering to date, in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
That’s when she was commissioned to create artwork for the Vivienda luxury hotel in Riyadh, more than 200 works across 43 villas. In creating, “The Shape of Light,” Bilal became the first Black American artist to design a hotel in Saudi Arabia.
“I was pretty much tasked with creating an art story, creating a selection of work that tells a story of what they were trying to convey in regards to their property and also their country,” Bilal said.
“The Saudi people are a different people, a different culture but they still trusted me on a human level to tell the story of spirit, the story of humanity, the story of interconnectedness through land, through language,” she added.
Bilal collaborated with Italian architect Michele Arcarese and South Korean interior designer Michelle Song on the sprawling and elaborate Vivienda.
“Michelle is the one that found my work. She found it through visiting one of my exhibitions, a photo exhibition in New York City and that’s how she found me. And she contacted the owner (of the Vivienda) and showed him some of my work along with the architect (Arcarese) and things kind of went up from there,” Bilal explained.
“They (the Vivienda) had a lot of things that they wanted incorporated into the work. The depth of their culture and the richness of the colors that they use within their culture, in their clothing and their foods and their spices. They wanted all of that combined, for me to bring that into the work … while keeping the elegance,” she added.
Yet, in the midst of Bilal’s towering professional triumph she was confronted with a devastating tragedy; her beloved little sister died the day before Bilal received the contract for the Vivienda project.
“My baby sister, she passed March 31, 2023, I got the contract the next day,” she revealed. “I was grieving and then it was like this huge blessing and she would be the person that I would usually go to to celebrate and all the things. And I was having to navigate the grief … and kind of use some type of emotional alchemy to take that energy and channel the best parts of her and use it to fuel me to get the project done.”
“It was a lot. But I got it done,” she said. “That’s what made me that much more proud of completing the project and completing it successfully and really feeling good about the work, because I did do it in the midst of grieving and … the energy and spirit of my sister was with me in a way.”
“In that land where a princess sits under lock and key,
Pining behind massive walls.
There gardens surround a palace all of glass;
There Firebirds sing by night…”
-From the poem, “A Winter’s Journey,” which inspired Igor Stravinsky’s, “The Firebird.”
During her ascension as an artist, Bilal has defied categories. Yet, there are those who seem determined to build cages for her: abstract artist, Black artist, Black woman artistist, Muslim woman artist, not-Black-enough artist.
“There’s this idea that Blackness is reduced to concrete representations. Blackness is powerful in a literal way but it’s so limiting because Blackness is abstract,” Bilal said.
“It doesn’t get more abstract than the Black experience,” the artist continued. “It’s atmosphere, it’s vibration, it’s density, that’s Blackness. It’s interruption, it’s mystery, it’s the beginning of all like the cosmos.
“I’m really determined to present myself in the wholeness of my Blackness and to create art that can be considered Black art, but doesn’t have to be,” she added.
“However, I do think that it’s important that you do recognize I’m a Black woman, with a Black soul that is creating art. Just because I am a woman that brings life into this world and I’m a Black woman, just by virtue of that, there shouldn’t be any conversation about whether what I do is considered or not considered Black art.”
Some of her greatest influences in art have grappled with similar challenges, including the legendary Elizabeth Catlett.
“Catlett for me, Elizabeth, I feel like she’s very overlooked. I like the underdog. And for me, for one, she’s a Black woman. I feel like she’s very revolutionary, just her story is amazing,” Bilal said. “An African-American woman that was living in Mexico and … directly addressing people whose perspective and experiences are like hers in a time where it wasn’t popular to do so. And she developed a very distinct visual language and she found a way to make art that was political and also intimate. And that’s kind of what I try to do through my work … . I see myself in her a lot.”
The great Sam Gilliam, who spent his entire adult life in Washington, D.C., was known as the dean of the city’s art community. He inspired Bilal with “his fearlessness,” she said.
“Also, his theory that abstraction is political I believe that wholeheartedly. We’re forcing you to see a thing move that you can’t name … . You can’t name it, you don’t know what it is but you know that you feel something when you look at it. And by that we’re forced to take a deeper look into . That in and of itself is political,” Bilal added.
For Bilal, and all revolutionary artists, regardless of genre, it always comes back to the story.
“It usually starts off with a very strong feeling. An emotion that I want to give form to. Or it will start off as an experience I’ve had, a story I want to tell. Somebody else’s story I want to tell,” Bilal said. “And you know there are a lot of parts to our stories. There’s pain, there’s tension, there’s joy, there is the climax of the story … there’s a lot of emotional depth when it comes to storytelling.”
