11/9-Artist Post-Nayland Blake

Nayland Blake; artist, writer, educator and curator, was born in 1960 in New York City, where he currently lives and works. Over the past twenty four years he has exhibited widely throughout the world. He has had one-person exhibitions at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; University Art Museum, Berkeley; Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston, and the Tang Teaching Museum at Skidmore College. His works are in the permanent collections of The Museum of Modern Art, The Whitney Museum, Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, the Brooklyn Museum, The Studio Museum in Harlem, and many others. He is the author of numerous catalog essays as well as articles and interviews appearing in such publications as Artforum, Out, Interview, and Outlook. In 1995 he was the co-curator, with Larry Rinder, of In A Different Light, the first museum exhibition to examine the impact of Lesbian, Gay and Queer artists on contemporary art. (source)

Blake is bi-racial and is described as white or black depending on where you look. "Versatile African-American artist Nayland Blake creates--in a variety of media--work that reflects his preoccupation with his racial and sexual identities. Interracial desire, same-sex love, racial and sexual bigotry, and the body are all recurrent themes of his increasingly influential art" (GLBTQ)


In 2001 Mr. Blake appeared in a video with another artist, AA Bronson. Each had his face slathered with cake frosting, chocolate in Mr. Blake’s case, vanilla in Mr. Bronson’s. When then two men exchanged a long kiss, the colors, and presumably the flavors, began to blend. Shared love, the implication was, dissolves distinctions between “black” and “white,” which, as racial categories, are cosmetic, superficial.

Installation view of Nayland Blake and AA Bronson, June 20, 2001 (Coat), 2001, a three channel video installation in which the artists spread chocolate and vanilla frosting on each other's faces and perform a six minute kiss.

This work combines both race and sexuality. I find is work very intriguing. He is a strange man but has a lot to say. In some of his pieces he dresses up as a large bunny.

Its hard to find good information about him on the internet. I found a blog post that shared my dissaproval, "Apparently, masochism, pansexuality and his biracial heritage are the main themes of his “sinister, hysterical, brutal and tender” mixed-media work. " The entries are sparse and not very infomrative.