Today we speak to Tijera Williams, a painter whose work incorporates collage, self-portraiture, and re-workings of art iconography to form images that are rich and raw while carrying a powerful political message. Tijera is a recipient of the 2020 NRA art grant and it was a pleasure having her on the show to talk about her journey with art, the white supremacist political landscape in America, and how art can play a role in making the playing field more equal. Tijera talks about her experiences in school as a Black woman, self-funding her college education, battling homelessness and unemployment, but hustling in multiple jobs to make ends meet while still finding time to paint. We explore the idea of making political art, Tijera’s frustrations with the political climate in America, how art can engage people and shift mentalities, and how she began to make the transition to making more political work. She talks about balancing her art practice with her job and her health and what the process of making a painting involves. We get into the thinking behind Tijera’s most recent work and she also gives some insight into how her hybrid style developed during a painting assignment in college. Tijera shares about her experiences in a tertiary institution that celebrated a white history of painting, how she discovered Black artists she admired, and what it means to be a Black artist at this point in the history of art. For all this and a whole lot more about the need for change in America and how art can help, be sure to tune in.

Key Points From This Episode:

• Struggles Tijera faced growing up, how she found the NRA grant, and her elation at receiving it.
• Tijera’s tendency to speak her mind and how it plays out in her relationships.
• Perspectives on the current political climate and who to vote for.
• How Tijera transitioned into making aesthetic work that was also political.
• The need to be politicized as artists and the justice that can come from this type of art.
• The way that perception of artists changes when they make the transition to making politicized art.
• Critical thinking, seeing blind spots, and other superpowers around perception artists have.
• Balancing work with art and Tijera’s experiences getting a job at EDD and working there.
• Protests around the killing of Ahmaud Arbery and how this put a spotlight on Black artists like Tijera.
• Getting inspiration from odd jobs and Tijera’s experiences working different ones.
• How Tijera has explored her lineage and this fuels her passion for learning languages.
• Learning a language as a way of accessing empathy for a culture, and feeling authorized to make art about it.
• Tijera’s incorporation of photography and visual conversations with her artist icons into her work.
• What the process of creating a work looks like for Tijera and what her newest work involves.
• Forgetting to eat while making art due to focus and the beauty of time stopping in this way.
• What self-care looks like to Tijera and how art, while being demanding, can also be a form of therapy.
• Tijera’s faith, experiences with religion, and the idea that no religion is superior.
• Perspectives around wanting peace but being willing to fight to stop injustice.
• Protecting yourself by investing your money and education rather than carrying a gun.
• A class project where Tijera made a hybrid painting and how this collage style has evolved in her work.
• Perspectives on the idea that the sudden interest in ‘Black’ art is opportunistic.
• Tijera’s experiences at college in a syllabus and institution that didn’t celebrate Black art.
• How white people can use institutional racism against itself to help protect Black people.
• The danger that Black people are in every day in America and the need for equality.

For more information and photos, visit here: https://notrealart.com/tijera-williams

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