Texta Queen: My friend asked me to draw portraits at his childcare, it was in 1996 or something, and I went there in jeans and a t-shirt and I was like, This is not right! Look at all these kids, I have to be something, I have to be a superhero! I had friends that were amazing costume designers, my first costume is really funny now, its really Rave 94, it had tubes coming out of the crown and into the sides, it was vinyl with lycra whatever and stuff, but the new one is more sophisticated or something.Nia: The red one.Texta: Yeah. Its less rave. Maybe it still is, I dont know, I havent raved in a really long time. Not that I ever did. No, I did.*****Nia: So I first met you at the Allied Media Conference in Detroit and we got assigned a table together, we were sharing a table. You kind of set up your stuff and left. And I didnt want to leave my stuff or your stuff on a table unattended, and you clearly did not care. You were like, Whatever, I have a grant, if people steal thingsTexta: If people really want a postcard or a poster and they just take it, its fine, if theyre fine with having the energy of the stolen poster in their house, I dont mind.Nia: What I really wanted to ask you was: How did you get to a place where you could afford to not mind if people steal your prints?Texta: I am definitely a class-privileged person ad that has definitely helped me be able to get my art where it is like where I dont mind when some posters go missing or whatever. I think Im really lucky as well as privileged growing up in Australia and making my art career there, growing up in Perth and getting my first $6,000 grant when I was 21 or something. There was more access to funding there and I grew up in Perth when it was very affordable to live there. After I came out of art school I was on unemployment for a really long time, and being middle class I didnt have a stigma attached to it in the same way. I was able to take my time to prioritize my art and not be really stressed about money at the same time. Its been a long process though. Not that I havent worked hard, but I have had lots of really good breaks and I have a superhero persona in the newspaper and they like to put me in the newspaper or on the cover of things.Nia: You mean a literal superhero persona? You mean you have an outfit and everything?Texta: Yeah I have an outfit and everything. I think, my face... I think the newspaper likes my face. I think if I wasnt conventionally attractive for a brown person, my art career wouldnt be where it was, it helps you be in there. There is definitely cute privilege that allows you to succeed in the art world too. I got some good breaks in being in this Young Artists Showcase when I was like 22 or something at the Museum of Contemporary Art and got picked up by a commercial gallery and I had that sense of, Im going to be an artist. This Texta Queen thing is what Im doing, and Im going to have to make that happen pretty young. So that was a constant in my life.Nia: So there was never any question of doing anything other than art for a living?Texta: No not really, I mean I did a lot of different things related to creative stuff, well, since art school. I was meant to be a scientist or an engineer or something. I was like a nerd and in all the top classes and got really great grades and decided to do art late in high school. Sad family stuff happened when I was in high school and I shifted my brain enough to try to find my happiness not in science.Nia: So you were like, Lifes too short to not do what you want to do?Texta: Exactly.Nia: One of the things Im trying to get at is, Is Australia better at supporting its artists than the [United] States?Texta: Definitely for me growing up, yeah, I think so. I think the funding system has changed a lot and is changing more so right now, I dont know, but I still have the impression that its easier to be an artist there. There are more youth grants yeah, I think its better. Nia: Do you feel like youre always chasing grant money?Texta: Thats really a game trying to apply for that stuff. You got to have a University degree to write the things in the way that they want you to, to get a grant. Well, you dont have to, but you need to know the game. Once you get one, its easier to get another one. Its like a lottery too, who is deciding, whether or not they know you I used to be a really social person and that definitely helped. If people dont see that youre around the more you play the game, the more things you get, generally, in the art world.Nia: So most of your work has been grant-funded since you were 21?Texta: No. Once I left Perth I didnt get another grant for a quite long time. I was on unemployment for a really long time [laughs] because in Australia you can get it without Like its difficult to stay on it now because they make it so, but when I was on it, it wasnt as difficult. I havent had a job Oh, god how long ago did I finished curating the gallery? I dont remember, 5 years ago or something. Ive only been doing my art and living on grants and selling my artwork since then. And when Im not well my parents help me out too.Nia: You said you grew up in Perth? On the West Coast of Australia?Texta: Yeah its the most isolated capital city in someone told me the world, but it is definitely really far away from Sydney and Melbourne and you know, flights were ridiculous, like $1,000 to go across when I was younger. So growing up it really felt small. My parents immigrated a year before the White Australia Policies ended which limited immigration to certain European - mostly Great Britain immigration, so it was very white. My sisters and my cousin were the only brown kids in the school. It was very overtly racist often and it still is, probably, I havent really been there very much. It was a place. [laughter]Nia: So the White Australia Policies, is that what they were called on the books?Texta: I dont know if it was called that on the books but you know, there is, like, a Wikipedia entry for it. I think its in reference to a whole bunch of policies that limited immigration and its just called the White Australia Policy. In my recent series, I made an artwork about it because I found an image of a White Australia medallion that the Australian Natives Association (which has nothing to do with indigenous people), Australian Natives meaning white people born in Australia, made this bronze and silver medallion that had the map of Australia inside it that said White Australia, and in the gold rim it said Australia for the Australians. I made that, in the drawing, into the foil cap for these milk bottles, and theres a whole row of milk bottles coming down the page and its a schoolbook page, and at the top it says, Subjective History like Subject: History. All the bottles that are coming down are supposed to represent white immigration. And there is this one brown gummy baby, I used these gummy babies called Chicos, theyre lollies candies in the supermarket that used to come in these caramel flavors and now they are chocolate-flavored brown babies, black babies. I use them to represent myself and my ancestors in my drawings, and theres one of them in the bottles coming down. I changed the different bottle tops into variations of racist slogans like, Indians Out. Go Back To Where You Were Colonized and No Asians, But Leave The Dim Sums. Just ridiculous real racist slogans in the bottle caps. I spent a long time describing that artwork. I dont know how to make it shorter.Nia: Thats the piece you are working on now, with the pouring milk?Texta: Thats the same series, yeah. Ive been working on this whole series that uses dairy milk as a metaphor for whiteness and coconut milk and coconuts as related to my heritage as Goan Indian and also as a symbol for internalized racism: brown on the outside, white on the inside, you know. And so that is in the same series.Nia: What does Goan mean?Texta: Goa is a place in India is where my family is from. Its a Portuguese colonized area of India. So its different to other places in India because the Portuguese colonized it like 400 years ago. Its mostly Catholic, its on the water, palm trees, coconuts, colorful things.Nia: Did you grow up Catholic? I noticed theres a lot of Catholic imagery in your work.Texta: Yes I grew up very very Catholic and its an influence on my work and me. Im not currently Catholic. Nia: This is a super broad question, but Im interested in how racism is different in the US versus Australia?Texta: God. I dont know where to start or stop. The 101 arguments that you can have any minute of the day in AutraliaNia: Do you feel racism is more blatant, and on-the-surface acceptable there than here?Texta: Oh yeah. I think so. A couple of years ago these guys I know did a video breakdown of it, Fear of A Brown Planet. On Australian television, on like a Saturday night variety show this group came on and did a Jackson Five thing in blackface and the only person who said anything about it on the panel was Harry Connick Jr. who was a special guest, who was like, No way, what are you doing? Everyone else was like Oh my god, lighten up! and he gave it zero. It was so basic, but it was on television and talk shows were saying that this is no big deal. And on the government lefty channel they had a panel with 8 different people talking about it and every single person on that panel was white. And some were like, No this is terrible, and some were like, Its offensive to comedy, but I dont know about race But you didnt think to even have a black person on that panel or any person of color on that panel? Because you didnt need to because this is Australia and, because white people are the ones most qualified to talk about [everything].The grants division for people of color is culturally and linguistically diverse, thats the bracket, and that includes anyone who is not a white Anglo Australian, so it includes Italian people, and whatever. But theres been someone who writes a lot about people of color and I think queer people of color in Australia and she ticks that category, and shes a white American woman. Shes gotten huge grants to write about people of color and shes like a white foreigner person. And its seemingly acceptable for her to be doing that. When Ive tried to talk about stuff there, the backlash is so exhaustingly one-dimensional, that its exhausting.Nia: When you talk about people of color in Australia, my understanding is that its mostly indigenous and Asian, not necessarily Black or Latino?Texta: Yeah. As far as I understand, yeah. Apparently there is a Latino population but its nothing like here. And ten years ago I feel like I would go 2 weeks without seeing a Black person. Except in Australia indigenous people also call themselves Black, so Black as in African diaspora. There is a lot more people from Sudan and Ethiopia, I dont know the numbers, there is a lot of Vietnamese people, and yeah, like Asian people.Nia: South Asian, East Asian, or both?Texta: Both. Nia: This conversation might be awkward so I want to explain where Im coming from. I recently realized that I unconsciously assumed that a U.S. understanding of race and who is encompassed by the term people of color, that I was assuming that it was applicable to other places and situations, when its not.Texta: Well, Ive been ostracized from people of color communities in Australia for questioning whether Italian people were people of color. Ive had mostly backlash, I feel like the only support Ive really is from Ive gone to gatherings where most people are Italian and Ive always known them person as white and Ive known that person for 15 years, and I grew up in a really Italian suburb. Are you asking me to rewrite my history to say I grew up around people of color? Because thats wasnt my experience. I know a Black person who spoke up about that, at a thing, and they accused her of lateral violence! Ive been very burnt from people of color organizing things there. I was organizing things in the park, and over and over I would turn up with the stereo and the picnic basket and I would be like, Where is the picnic? I cant see where the people are! Oh, its over there. And everyone is really light-skinned. And Im not even that dark-skinned. There were there that were East Asian and visibly people of color, but that kind of thing would not even be acknowledged. Im like, Im the darkest-skinned person here, unless my one friend comes.Nia: Your one Black friend.Texta: Yeah, my one Black friend that would come to those things. I mean, I think its partly because Im a middle-class person organizing this. The first gathering that I organized, Id grown up around all white people, most of my friends were white, and my two good friends of color stopped living in Melbourne. And I was like, Oh my god, Im just only surrounded by white people. So the first gathering I literally gave a flyer to every visible person of color that I met, from the bus to everywhere. The first gathering, it was really diverse in terms of class and race and whatever. I think people turn up with their fancy foods and talking about their fancy jobs more privileged people were taking up more space and it was really hard for me to be in that space. There was a lot of space for people to talk about things that I found really silencing. People complaining about being mistaken as white, and no one acknowledging everyones differences in that circumstance. Everyone on an email list is being invited to some POC-centered event, and Im like, Those the tickets are like $25. And no ones acknowledging that not everyone can afford that. Acknowledge that, if you are going to send that out. At least say, This is really pricy.Nia: There is a culture here of saying No one turned away for lack of funds or scholarships, but that is not necessarily the norm, it sometimes happens in progressive POC communities, but there is also a lot of bougie POC shit.Texta: And this was stuff that was probably government-funded. There isnt many DIY POC events in Australia. I barely know any. I helped organize some for a while, and those were no one turned away for lack of funds. But those were the only thing. There would be like 2 a year. Thats what its like there. People were so concerned with identity policing, that Nia: Theres no room to talk about things like colorism or class.Texta: No room at all. That was the backlash against me when I was like, Just questioning whether Italian People and people were like, Identity Police! and I was like, Butcolonialism? They were like, You cant take US politics and just transfer them here. I know Italian people get called names and stuff too, but I dont feel comfortable that somebody who in my whole life experience has been treated as a white person, like maybe not an Aryan white person, but theres just not space [for that conversation].Nia: So you talked about growing up in Perth. You also mentioned that leaving Perth was a really important milestone in your career.Texta: I left Perth in 97. I used to draw everywhere I went, draw drawings of people, had a couple of shows doing that, but no one you know, would swap me a drink for a drawing. Nia: You were still in high school at this point, or in college?Texta: I had finished college. Nia: Now old are you?Texta: Im 39.Nia: You look a lot younger than you are.Texta: Yeah, in Perth people dont expect anything good to happen there, because its such a its like Australia looking to America too. Because of American imperialism, people there look up to the States so much, you know. Its like the times Ive come here and had shows half the size with half the attendance here, and I go back and people are like, You had this show in New York? Amazing! And Im like It was at this never mind. [laughs]Nia: Because its New York.Texta: And similarly people in Perth were like, Oh youre still here, you cant be any good. So going to the Eastern states was like a big deal. Im really close to my family and it was my first time away from them. I got involved with activist stuff, I was part of a big squatting collective - I dont know if thats the right word for that - that was involved with four big buildings with an art gallery and things that happened during the Olympics in 2000. And we ran a squatted art gallery and had like community dinners and events. I had a show there that got me other things. I got picked up by a commercial gallery after that. That was really instrumental in me being the person I was, and my art thematically for a long time was about the people I knew and I met a lot of people there. That was an instrumental thing.Nia: I feel like your work is really explicitly political, but I dont know if the politics of it are always obvious. And part of that might be because I dont get the cultural references to the Australian things? Texta: Yeah.Nia: It seems like they are really intentional and I imagine that an Australian audience would understand maybe not 100% of your intentions, but your general politics of the pieces youre making. Im wondering if being a political artist that explicitly talks about race in your work, how that impacts your ability to sell work to these rich white art collectors and institutions.Texta: Institutions started buying my work more when I started doing things more explicitly about race. Its that thing that institutions like to do. They like to have that political work in there, you know?Nia: Do you think they are trying to buy cred, or? Because I dont know if thats true here. Obviously Im speaking in generalizations. I feel like political artists have a harder time because their work is not as easily commercial or co-optable. Texta: I think there is definitely artists in Australia. There is this amazing indigenous art collective called proppaNOW. Maybe theyre the ones who have paved it a little for that kind of stuff. They do a lot of political work about being indigenous its hard to talk about without seeing the imagery. But maybe there is more of a market there in the commercial world. There is definitely a bigger DIY poster activist superstar scene here. [laughs] Once your work is in that institution, like does it dilute the message, or would something really radical be in the institution anyway? I feel like Ive seen things that have really rocked me in an institutional setting, political work in Australia.Nia: It definitely happens here. Theres a song by Saul Williams called List of Demands about reparations, and they use it in a Nike commercial. [laughs] So I guess anything can be co-opted. [sigh] Thats a depressing thought.So lets talk about the community-based art stuff that you do. Because your exists outside of galleries.Texta: I do workshops that I really love doing with kids and youths. A lot of time its run by an institution or a non-profit. I did this series called We Dont Need Another Hero where I asked people of color to pose as outlaws of their apocalypse, the apocalypse being colonialism. Ive done some workshops with different ages, where they do a self-portrait poster representing their oppression I tried to explain oppression or whatever it is they want to battle in the world. Sometimes its not oppression, its something broader. Nia: What are you most excited about in terms of things youre working on or things that you have coming up?Texta: I did a mural piece recently at the DeYoung Museum for a Keith Haring show, they had different Friday night things and this was the Taking It To The Streets night or whatever? It was really fun that I got to do a big painting of Fabian Romero who is in your book. I did an 8 x 8 ft mural for that.Nia: Were you painting while they were watching?Texta: I was painting the end of it. It took me a couple of weeks to paint most of it. And then at the event I was painting the end of it. Im really proud of my last couple of series. Ive been focusing on self-portraiture. Ive been doing really similar things for 14 years, where I did pinup-style mostly queer portraits. Mostly white people. Over the past 4 or 5 people my work just changes a lot and I feel like its really exploding now. I have ideas for some sculptural work. I want to do things with the milk bottles and the bottle caps and actually make sculptural work with the little babies, or casts of the little babies.Nia: Can we talk about the little babies some more? In one of your postcard series, one of those images uses those little babies as well. I was reading the artist statement online, it describes the candies as problematic representations of, you said specifically, Black people, right? Not Aboriginal but African? Texta: Yeah, I dont know who theyre supposed to be, but yeah, I guess so. Nia: For someone whos never seen them, can you describe how they are problematic?Texta: Ive got some in the other room, I brought some packets back with me?Nia: For people listening, can you describe them?Texta: You dont have jelly babies here, do you?Nia: We call them jelly beans.Texta: No no, we also have babies, multi-colored ones, red and green and whatever. Theyre basically little, they are supposed to be babies but they are standing up. Little guys that you eat that are chocolate-flavored and caramel-flavored. When I was little I was really fascinated by them. I didnt eat them very much because my mum never bought us lollies that much. Because they were a representation of not a white person. That was the only representation that I got [of non-white people] was something that people ate. And the packet still says something like, they are getting into all sorts of mischief and the only way to keep them in line is to eat them.Nia: Oh, Jesus!Texta: [laughs] And the old version of the packet they used to have big blue eyes, but in this one they have their eyes shut. They have them in caramel flavor which is the one I use in my drawings because that is my skin color, but they also have them in a dark chocolate color too.Nia: When you talk about how the aesthetics of them being problematic, they made me think of Mammy imagery or pickaninny imagery. Is it the same sort of thing?Texta: I think so yeah. I mean its supposed to be babies. Everyone calls them Chico babies, but it just say Chicos on the packet. But theyre definitely babies.Nia: But they are also caricatures?Texta: Theres a caricature on the cover, and then, I dont know what the figure looks like. It looks like a little straight-legged, round-belliedNia: Brown person?Texta: Yeah, with little bangs and crescent eyes because theyre closed. I dont know. they are meant to be sleeping.Nia: Ok. [laughs]Texta: Ive only been drawing brown people for the last couple of shows. The last two shows have been all me. You know, I was race-raging really hard when I did my first show out of those, when I did my post-apocalyptic posters, so that seems appropriate. Because I was very angry all the time and focused on trying to find connection with other people of color, and ranting together. I think its more apparent in my work from then to now that its less doing something to spite in direct opposition in speaking to the overwhelming whiteness and its more me trying to find my own existence and own connection to heritage, whatever the fuck that means.Nia: Its less about the white gaze?Texta: Yeah. Because in Australia it really feels like it always is about that. That its always in opposition. Like doing a talk on cultural appropriation to an audience of all white people. When Im here, I live in a house where white people cant come over. And Im around other people of color and I feel like people are in conversation about our differences and, I dont know, just the different parameters about what Im talking about, and I think it comes out in my art.Nia: I want to ask about your superhero alter-ego. For those who dont know, Texta means marker, a felt tip marker. When I first heard your name, I thought Textaqueen was actually your name. I only realized today that it is this persona you have, which is the queen of these markers.Texta: Yeah, I mean, in Australia no one calls a marker a marker, they call it a Texta. Its a brand [name], but no one knows its a brand. The company tried to send me a cease-and-desist letter to stop using the name like a really long time ago, like ten years ago or something. I had to get a lawyer and spend all this money saying like, Im just an artist! They wanted me to sign something saying that I would never work with children and I was like, Im not doing that! I wear it at kids workshops but I also wear it at some of my openings. I dont know, its just me being awkward in a superhero outfit really. When I pose for photos, I look cool.Nia: Its covered in Textas, in markers.Texta: Yeah it has epilets that are markers and across the middle and markers as a bullet belt sort of thing.Nia: I think its really cool.Texta: Yeah.Nia: What is it about markers that youre drawn to?Texta: Drawn to, haha. Drawn to. [laughs]Nia: [laughs] That was not an intentional pun.Texta: Its an easy pun to make. When I was in art school I did photography and video and when I left it was pre-digital, and I was like, I dont have that $40,000 edit suite to edit a video, or a video camera, or a darkroom, so Ill just keep drawing. I was drawing the whole time but it wasnt my main focus or anything. Markers were easily accessible and portable. I was drawing everywhere I went. I was drawing portraits, so I needed something portable cheap it goes along well with my artwork, which is bright and cheerful. Its done in a kids medium, but its like a vehicle for very like, you know, deep political stuff. [laughs] And it lets it get in there. Its all like bright and pretty and non-threatening, but then its like BAM! underneath, and I think it goes along well with being a pretty brown person who can then like BAM!Nia: Its very subversive. And you do a lot about nudes. Is there something in particular about nudes that appeals to you?Texta: I actually started because someone I met at a party wanted to start a nude illustrated website and they were going to pay me to do drawings for it. So I thought Id ask my friends to pose. Then I started them and I met up with him again and I was like Ive been doing these drawings and he was like, Oh, thats a new direction for you. What are you doing that for? And I was like, I thought you He had flaked off.Nia: Oh so he didnt realize he had commissioned you?Texta: Yeah. It was just bad communication really. I think he was just really flaky and the website never even happened.Nia: And you had all these nudes?Texta: I had only done three at that time. But then I was like, I really like these, I think this is something I want to do with my art practice. I had been drawing portraits of people, but just like clothed sitting around everywhere types of portraits. I think I came into my sexuality and it started catching up with my art. Theres the whole thing of the female nude in art, and I was sort of flipping it.Nia: Flipping it how?Texta: Ive said more intellectual things about my art but I just dont feel like it today. Read my artists statement about that series. Nia: But what do you mean about flipping it? Because I feel like your nudes are not traditionally sexy. It doesnt seem like theyre supposed to be.Texta: No. I think what is really cool about them is that when you look at them, they are really intimate but you can tell that the intimacy is really between me and the person, rather than the nude being there for the viewer, so thats what is intriguing about them. So this person is vulnerable, but youre not really in on this thing that we had going. I would sit in their bedroom for hours sometimes drawing them, and they would tell me about their lives. Some people I already knew, some people I barely knew. And as I did more, more people wanted me to draw them so it was pretty easy to find people. They would talk about a tattoo or a scar. I can be an awkward person, but one-on-one, you know, people like me and I liked them. I like people. It was a special experience, and it comes across in the drawings. I would put a quote from the drawing session, I would pick something that would make an obscure reference that could be in the picture or not.Nia: Yeah, I like the quotes a lot. What advice do you have for artists looking for a break and are having trouble finding one?Texta: I dont know about that stuff, I just know about being prolific and making work as much as you can. Thats when the things will happen. My friend in Australia, when I had woes, and was like Why is that guy in that thing? my friend was like, You know he goes to everything, and plays the game, would you want that life? and I was like No, I cant handle that. You can be in it and play that game, but then thats who youre going to be. So thats why I think, keep making your art and make it true to yourself, whether [or not] its going to give you the career to some huge level. But it will give you the career that you want, because youre going to make the art thats true to yourself, and if it is, then people are going to recognize that and hopefully its going to resonate with people. To make a career that you want to make.