Category: art (page 1 of 1)

A panoramic mural from the House of Kong exhibition featuring a crowded scene set against a colorful South Asian architectural backdrop. Animated Gorillaz characters, including Noodle in the foreground, are surrounded by a diverse cast of illustrated and photorealistic figures, a black panther, an elephant, and stray dogs. The scene blends the real and the fictional in the visual style that has defined Gorillaz for nearly three decades.

March 8, 2026 / 2 Comments

The Tinkerer

Last weekend, I was roaming through a collection of warehouses and open spaces somewhere in Downtown Los Angeles. House of Kong is an immersive experience created by Gorillaz, the virtual alt-hip-hop group that grew from the minds of Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett over the past 30 years. The exhibition is both a celebration of that history and, seemingly, the way they are rolling out the latest album from this band that doesn’t really exist. I was agog at how they constructed a maze of interconnected rooms that revealed both the band’s actual development in our world and the parallel universe where Murdoc, Russell, 2-D, and Noodle exist. A guided tour with each visitor provided headphones that delivered a synced audio experience, moving us from one room to the next. From the very beginning, we were active participants in the adventure, though we didn’t know that yet. Anna spent 45 seconds as a roadie for the band, getting a flight case to its appropriate location. Another member of our group was given a task that seemed normal and mundane but was actually critical to our experience.

My senses were turned all the way on for the entire afternoon. There were sights, sounds, and even smells that could only have been envisioned by a group of highly creative humans working and playing together. I was inspired by all of this but mostly by the idea of a musician and a comic book artist sitting in their flat, riffing off of each other, and with pen, paper, some musical instruments, some talented friends, and some luck they turned a ridiculous concept into a successful GRAMMY award-winning band that continues to be a thing nearly three decades later.

For the rest of the day, I romanticized this analog creation myth as a counterpoint to the AI slop encroaching upon seemingly everything right now.

And then the next morning, instead of happily or frustratingly toiling away at some hobby rooted in the physical world, I spent hours on my laptop screwing around with Claude.

Am I a hypocrite?

At work, lately, my 1:1s with a colleague have mostly been animated conversations about AI tools and experiments. Recently, the discussion centered around how he had spent his weekend playing around with AI coding agents, yet kept running up against token limits. It got to a point where he set an alarm so he could get up in the middle of the night when one of his cooldowns was scheduled to end during the wee hours.

He wasn’t doing this for work. He was utilizing the software in the service of one of his hobbies. He’d made iOS apps in the past, not to get rich but to solve a problem specific to him. With the current advancements in AI, he was now able to take those ideas even further and try new ones. His only customer? Himself.

I’m doing the same.

The first weekend of each month, I analyze my music listening from the previous month. I nerd out on this blog about it relatively regularly. It’s a tedious process. I spend several hours extracting, transforming, processing, and categorizing the data so that, in the end, I can tell myself the story of my music habits. I blog about it, but this is just for me. It’s a labor of love. Really, though, it’s mostly just labor. The part I most want to do, categorize music based on my taste and context, is maybe 25% of this effort. This weekend, though, I changed it up.

After three or four hours of doing my normal process, I opened up Claude and said,

“I want to automate the labor and leave the part I love to me. Here are the tools I use. Here’s my existing workflow. Suggest a plan.”

And it did. I reviewed it, made adjustments, and put it to work. Claude Cowork turned a tedious data analysis job I didn’t want to do (and likely would have done poorly) into something that will make my little music hobby project infinitely more enjoyable. Now I can spend those hours categorizing songs and artists if I want. Or doing something completely different. As I watched Claude manipulate my web browser and work in the terminal on my laptop to output what I requested, it felt like magic.

These little moments of magic powered by AI are becoming ever more frequent. There are work cases, sure, but that’s not what has got me excited. It’s about trying shit, learning new ways to do things, and surprising myself with the results. I’m not trying to use AI to come up with million-dollar ideas or 10x my work output or whatever else some self-appointed industry guru or tech CEO-cum-snake oil salesman is claiming that this technology can do.

I’m chasing the “wow, isn’t this fun” feeling. It’s a hobbyist’s enthusiasm rooted in figuring out how to do something that maybe only you will think is cool, but, damnit, that’s all that matters.

Cruftbox calls it tinkering. 40 or 50 years ago, we might have thought about it as homebrew computer culture. Before that, ham radio enthusiasts.

But is collaborating with my computer in any way close to what might be when humans come together to make things?

I find AI as a “creative partner” distasteful at best and gross, at worst. I don’t want to read things in “AI voice.” I don’t want to be assaulted with your AI-created images, videos, or audio. Especially if the output is for artistic pursuits. Whatever for your slide decks or infographics, but if you’re trying to make me feel something? Get that slop out of here. Prompting is not creating.

I’m not being holier than thou. I’ve tried it myself. There is writing I’ve done where I’ve used AI as a writing assistant, and I can clearly identify when I let the computer replace my words, style, and voice with its own flattened idea of what constitutes good writing. There are a couple of things I’ve published over the last year that are absolutely cringeworthy to read.

Over the last few weeks, though, I’ve been floored by the power of accessible agentic AI software. Charlie Warzel, in conversation with Anil Dash, said the “aha” part of this moment in AI’s development is that we’ve moved on a bit from trying to get AIs to mimic Human conversation and, instead, found real material benefit in talking “Computer” to AI so that it will then do computer things beyond our capabilities. That’s been the thing for me as well.

I’ve gone from being highly skeptical of the rise of AI to enthusiastically discussing what I’d like to try next.

Digital tinkering has a cold-start problem that is often very difficult for non-techies to overcome. You don’t know how to talk computer. Having a tool that can understand you, figure out the computer shit necessary to get it done, and actually execute on those things is incredible.

Still, I never want to see your fake video of Tom Cruise fighting Brad Pitt. Please, though, put the latest Gorillaz music video on repeat.

I’m not a hypocrite.

I don’t want art made by software cosplaying as a person. Damon Albarn hasn’t replaced Jamie Hewlett with a drawing program that can simulate his style. Hewlett isn’t asking an AI song maker to create soundalike hits from their discography. There’s no humanity in that. It would have no value. Artistically, they’ve only opened the aperture for more people to contribute to their creative spectacle.

And yet, I’m having fun playing in this digital sandbox with AI agents solving the silly little computer-centric problems that only matter to me.

How human.

Alt text: White sculptural figure of a tall Black man with locs extending his arms forward, gripping a small equestrian statue by the tail and holding it aloft; the miniature monument dangles upside down, emphasizing a reversal of power within a museum gallery.

January 4, 2026 / 0 Comments

MONUMENTS

A year before we married in the city, we spent a Memorial Day weekend in New Orleans. We stayed at Hotel LeCirque. It stands on what is now Harmony Circle, once called Place du Tivoli. In 2010, it was still known by the name it had carried for more than 130 years: Lee Circle. As in Robert E. Lee, the defeated Confederate general.

Our room faced the circle, where the enormous statue of Lee, mounted on his horse, was perched, looking down upon us and all those who came to enjoy what is, otherwise, a wonderful part of my second-favorite city in the country. Every morning when I opened the curtains of our room and was greeted by the long-standing monument to a man who led armies that killed tens of thousands for the express purpose of keeping people who look like me enslaved, I cursed his name and flipped him off.

That twelve-foot bronze monstrosity celebrating “the Lost Cause of white supremacy” no longer stands atop that perch. It was removed in 2017 during the great reckoning around Confederate memorials that followed the 2015 Charleston church massacre. That moment of overdue accountability, in turn, provoked a surge of white supremacist counter-rallies opposing the removal of these monuments, culminating in the “Unite the Right” rally in August of that same year — an event that ended, predictably, in violence.

It should come as no surprise, then, that despite the threat of rain, we recently trekked to Little Tokyo for First Fridays at The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA to view MONUMENTS. The exhibition examines a decade of contestation over Confederate monuments in public spaces across the United States, pairing decommissioned statues with works by nineteen artists reflecting on the monuments themselves — and on what both their presence and their removal might mean. Robin D. G. Kelley has called it the most important exhibition currently on display in any museum in the nation, perhaps even the world.

Given the authoritarian tendencies of our current administration and the increasing comfort with which some Americans express supremacist ideology, I suspect he may be right.

While there are many monuments on display—several destroyed, dismembered, or defiled—the data reveals a more unsettling truth: four out of five Confederate statues in this country still stand. Though I delighted in being able to once again whisper “punk bitch” to statues of Lee, Stonewall Jackson, Jefferson Davis, and their ilk, the reality is that these losers are still honored as heroes in government-owned spaces—the people’s places—across this nation, and not merely in the South.

Inside The Geffen Contemporary, the people are represented by a wall of photographs taken by the nineteenth-century pop-up photographer Hugh Mangum. Despite working during the Jim Crow era, Mangum did not segregate his subjects. Everyday Black and white men and women gaze out from fragile glass plates, serving as witnesses to the era when many of these false idols were elevated in their name, supposedly for their benefit. The counterweight between these perspectives—common folk rendered vulnerable by time and decay, and monumental figures cast in bronze and stone—is striking. As in my memory of New Orleans, the gaze still moves upward, toward icons of oppression looming above the public.

Hamza Walker and Bennett Simpson, the curators of MONUMENTS, consistently juxtapose competing ideas. Nowhere is this more devastating than in the placement of white grievance in direct proximity to Black grief. It was impossible not to break down while watching Julie Dash’s short film HOMEGOING, in which Davóne Tines sings the souls of those murdered in the Charleston church shooting home. It was even harder to suppress the rage stirred by the glossy images of Ku Klux Klan members displayed in the very next room.

I was too overwhelmed by my visceral reaction to The Birth of a Nation to appreciate Stan Douglas’s reinterpretation fully. Still, encountering Descendant by Karon Davis—my favorite piece in the show—proved cathartic. The statue depicts a young Black boy, Davis’s son, with locs standing tall, holding a miniature monument of a Confederate General on horseback by its tail, as if it were vermin. The juxtaposition filled me with joy. When faced with the grave threat posed by the darkest hearts of our fellow Americans, Black folks have long mastered one enduring response: trolling.

After this whirlwind of emotion, Tiffany and I exited the museum ready to join the dance party promised as part of First Fridays. There was none to be found. BlackMuseumist was spinning, but the makeshift dance floor remained empty. Blame it on the rain. Or perhaps people don’t dance in public the way they once did, surveilled as we are from every angle.

We, however, would not be denied. After two-stepping to some rare grooves, we threw up a peace sign to the DJ. He answered with Fela Kuti’s “Water No Get Enemy.” Those afrobeat horns and drums got us sweating, shaking loose whatever heaviness had glommed onto us through the gallery.

MONUMENTS makes plain the weight of what this country refuses to reckon with. Our most violent truths occupy the public square. The hatred is sanctioned. The cruelty is celebrated.

Still, we dance.

An ofrenda from the 2025 Grand Park Dia de los Muertos exhibit featuring a skeleton wearing LA Dodgers gear and an open seat reserved for those kidnapped in ICE raids.

November 1, 2025 / 0 Comments

Halloween 2025 and the Spirits of Los Angeles

As we got closer to Halloween, social media was filled with creators, influencers, and regular folks dressed to surprise, scare, or delight. The holiday has become a showcase for imagination, titillation, and referential humor, with little connection to the pagan or Christian rituals at its roots.

I sometimes lament not feeling as compelled to dress up as I once was. That won’t change, though. As I get older, I’m less interested in wearing a costume to amuse colleagues and friends. There’s nothing wrong with that. I love a good Halloween meme. Someone came to the office party dressed as a Labubu, and it was terrific.

But these days, I’m drawn to something else: remembrance. Why ignore, mock, or ward off the spirit world when the evils of our time don’t come from beyond? They are right here in human form, adorned in the clothing of authorities.

This Halloween, Tiffany and I took the Metro downtown for a night at the Mark Taper Forum to see Jaja’s African Hair Braiding. The show was her idea—a last-minute addition to our social calendar—but it turned out to be precisely what I needed. We arrived early and wandered through Grand Park, where the annual Día de los Muertos installation had transformed the plaza into a celebration of color, reverence, and resistance.

After my dad’s passing last year, I began reading about Día de los Muertos and the significance of the ofrenda, the altars families build to honor and invite departed loved ones back into their lives.

One of the exhibits invited visitors to write a message to someone who had passed. On a small index card, I wrote:

Dad (KT),

Dominique is getting married soon. Your presence is requested!

You are missed and loved.

—JT

It was the first time I’d written directly to him rather than about him. Usually, when I write or speak for the dead, it’s for myself or others. A way for us to process loss. But this felt like a conversation, a hope he might hear, and that with open invitation, he might make his presence known, especially at such a momentous occasion. This spirituality is so unlike me, but I meant every word. I hope he joins us.

The Grand Park installation also honored the living, especially those in Los Angeles whose lives are made precarious by our country’s immigration enforcement policies. With City Hall glowing behind it, the exhibit called out the trauma caused by ICE raids and border policies that tear families apart. Surrounded by marigolds and the righteous indignation of our Chicano brethren and sistren, I was reminded why I love this city. Los Angeles isn’t perfect, but it shows up. We fight for one another. We build community from loss and struggle.

And that spirit carried into the theater.

Los Angeles is the final stop for Jaja’s African Hair Braiding’s initial touring company and likely the last time so many members of the original ensemble will perform together. To do so here feels right. As playwright Jocelyn Bioh said, “to culminate in such a special city that understands the power of community and coming together, that doesn’t feel like an accident.”

Set in a Harlem salon where a group of West African women—many working under tenuous visa conditions—build a makeshift family, the show is sharp, funny, and profoundly human. It captures what it means to chase the American Dream while being told you don’t belong.

By the time the curtain fell, I felt grateful. For the play, for this city, for the way art challenges me to stay open and engaged in my community: to remember, to listen, to love.

To fight.

I love L.A.

January 15, 2023 / 0 Comments

Ancestry in Progress

When you first enter the back exhibition halls at the Resnick Pavillion, you are met with Hank Willis Thomas’s “A Place to Call Home (Africa-America).” It is a map of the Americas with the continent of South America replaced by Africa. It is also a mirror. As you take it in, you see yourself in the piece. At my height, I appeared dead center of the hybrid continent. This is not just history. It is your history. Not in the abstract; these displays are about you, specifically. Experience it as such.

The Afro-Atlantic Histories exhibit at LACMA is a powerful and thought-provoking display of art and culture that explores the impact of the transatlantic slave trade on the African diaspora. Curated by Robert Farris Thompson, the exhibit features a wide range of works from artists of African descent, spanning centuries and continents.

Scheduled on a lark by Tiffany, the visit felt serendipitous, as if guided by otherworldly forces. To spend nearly two hours with these works during the same week that I was reading and, candidly, struggling through Wake: The Hidden History of Women-Led Slave Revolts felt heaven-sent even to my apatheist heart. And that’s not to mention that we arrived before the heavy rain and the LA crowds looking for something to do during a downpour. Thank the ancestors.

In Wake, Rebecca Hall writes:

Living in the wake of slavery is haunting, and to experience this haunting is to be nothing less than traumatized.

This “haunting” was my primary challenge in making it through her graphic novel before I spent the morning with these works. The exhibit features pieces I’ve seen before from Glenn Ligon, Kerry James Marshall, and Betye Saar, along with many artists from Brazil and the Caribbean that were new to me. It was overwhelming to walk from room to room, each with its theme meant to make the enormity of the black experience in the Americas digestible. Digestible even if it goes down bitter. Digestible even if you have to swallow hard.

Americans are myopic and self-centered, and I am no different. When I grapple with the realities of slavery, I think of it as a uniquely American problem, a United States of America problem. This curation, though, makes plain that the impacts of the transatlantic slave trade were similar and terrible throughout both North and South America. This horror-as-commerce, of course, rippled back to Africa and the countries that brought themselves into the modern world on the backs of Africans for hundreds of years.

In Afro-Atlantic Histories, this sober reality is expressed by displaying art from artists that seem to be conversing with each other, like Kara Walker’s “Restraint” and Sidney Amaral’s “Neck Leash—Who Shall Speak on our Behalf?” In Wake, Hall highlights this by recounting her trip to Great Britain while researching her dissertation. She makes it to archives of Lloyd’s of London—an insurance company that exists solely because of the need to insure the cargos of slave ships hundreds of years ago—only to be denied access to their records out of fear that a proper independent accounting of history will also come with a bill long past due.

While Wake’s tagline sells the graphic novel as a deep exploration of the women who rose against these supposed enslavers, these stories are unavailable. Historians of the period seem biased against the idea that women could do such a thing. Perhaps they would kill their masters in a domestic dispute but lead an insurrection? Arm and inspire dozens or perhaps hundreds of others? Surely not!

To which, and this is not a joke, can someone get those old codgers a copy of The Woman King?

Hall and her illustrator explore the idea of captured Dahomey warriors on a slave ship and how they would have taken advantage of being underestimated.

Or invite them to the Afro-Atlantic Histories portrait room, where Dalton Paula’s Zeferina is on display. Zeferina was an abolitionist leader who joined with formerly enslaved people to lead a rebellion, killing enslavers to establish an independent community of free black people. She was executed for her crimes against the Portuguese crown. A woman king, indeed!

We must use our haunting to see how black life truly is and see how it could be otherwise.

The closing chapter of Wake is titled Ancestry in Progress, referencing the Zap Mama album I loved at its release. It’s playing now as I write this. I feel the throughline of the graphic novel, the art, and being a descendant in my bones. Staring into artwork that demands you reckon with these horrors—our shared history, even if you don’t yet recognize it as such—has had me on the verge of tears.

But I am here. Many of my ancestors survived these incomprehensible circumstances and found ways for their spirits to thrive. To swing out. I am here with Zap Mama singing along as we make it past the rain to the sun on Ca Varie Varie. I am here with portraiture that conveys all we might be as we exist today. We are our past and our future. And sometimes, I am overwhelmed by how improbable and beautiful that is.

To crib a bit of how Firelei Báez describes one of her paintings, black joy amazes and I will not relinquish it.

January 5, 2023 / 0 Comments

Shades of Black

BLACK IVY: A Revolt in Style

BLACK IVY: A Revolt in Style by Jason Jules and Graham Marsh is a coffee table book. That’s precisely where it’s been in the year since I received it as a Christmas present. I’d browsed the photographs several times over the year but had yet to stop to read the accompanying words. Until now. I’m mad at myself for not getting to it sooner because it was a delightful and inspiring read and a fitting first book of the new year.

I’d put the book on my list for Santa in the fall of 2021 after reading several articles that used it as a jumping-off point to discuss masculine fashion in broader or more contemporary terms. I’m not a fashionista, but I think about my outfits, the pieces I like, and what goes well together. One of my seldom-used boards on Pinterest is called Sartorial Game. I save hip sweaters and shoes that come across my Instagram feed in a collection. I get dressed for work even when that means taking just a few steps into my home office.

Through BLACK IVY, I can contextualize the clothing that resonates with me and why it feels so cool. I love a short sleeve button-down popover shirt. I prefer a cub collar on my full-length dress shirts if I can find one. Give me a beautiful sweater with a visible tee poking out of a collar. I want to pair these items with fresh sneakers, though the style’s originators would’ve likely preferred a hat as their touch of flare.

I felt both affirmed and encouraged by the stories and clothing of those civil rights-era cats. I wrote notes to learn more about Ted Joans, Noah Purifoy, and Jacob Lawrence. Images of Dignity by Charles White will likely be another read shortly. Thelonius Monk will be my Throwback Thursday music this week. I sought out the A Great Day in Harlem documentary.

I’ll soon be re-injecting Malcolm X (in both book and movie form) into my veins. I’ve got a date with Jazz on a Summers Day this Sunday, which will be a fitting end to my winter break.

And as I return to my routines next week, I’ll be thinking about which pieces go together. If clothes make the man, what is in my closet representing all shades of me?

Understated. Observant. Thoughtful. Clever. Kind. Undeniable. BLACK.