An interview for Sixty Inches From Center (in collaboration with Art Design Chicago Now)
May 2022

”I should have known that my conversation with Ross Stanton Jordan would go unexpectedly. It’s on-brand with how he has shown up in my art world over the years that we’ve known one another. We’ve crossed paths randomly on the streets of Chicago or in Zoom rooms where he’s representing the Jane Addams Hull House Museum as the Interim Director and Curatorial Manager. I’ve run into him at places like the Chicago Cultural Center, at spaces where he happened to be holding events for projects he’s curated, and most recently as I was on my way out of Expo Chicago. What is predictable, though, is each time this happens I’m grateful for the encounter and reminded of the thoughtful and endearing energy that he pours into the cultural vessels of Chicago.

Recently, we changed things up by finding a scheduled time to sit down and chat. I thought that our time would be spent tracing the years of his Presidential Library Project up to our present-day context from 2015, which is the year it began. Or, I thought we would dive into an endless analysis of former First Lady Michelle Obama’s canonized image as interpreted through the brush of Amy Sherald, just like he did during his recent talk on The Obama Portraits, an event hosted at Hull House Museum and presented as part of Red Line Service’s Art Histories Series. Yes, we talked about those things, but, of course, the conversation still took a turn. Before we knew it we were summoning our memories of nearly a century’s worth of fictional and speculative Black president portrayals–everyone from Sammy Davis Jr. in his youngest years, to Richard Pryor (a fellow Peoria native) in his short-lived, self-titled 1977 sketch comedy show. We discussed Key and Peele, Eddie Murphy, Wanda Sykes, and Chris Rock. We talked about the searing words of James Baldwin and humor as a means of survival, often infused with sharp truths and trickster energy. We discussed Black comedians’ role in imagining the unimaginable during a time before November 4, 2008, a time when most Black people could only speak the idea of a Black president in front of an audience of millions if it was presented as comedy. A joke for ideas unattainable and considered absurd by those who historically and currently run those offices.

Then, we discussed the collective bewilderment of the Obama family occupying that position for eight years and the ways that artists have translated this very complicated anomaly. We talked about how, during and after Barack Obama’s presidency, artists have given form to what was formerly a tenacious and cautiously wishful and subtle joke. We discussed how artists are helping us articulate a period in history that many of us are likely still trying to fully understand the reality and impact of.”

Read the full interview here…

Photo Credits:
[1] Ross Stanton Jordan stands in a room of the Jane Addams Hull House Museum, surrounded by variations on the color brown through a wooden table and chairs next to him and wood paneling and wallpaper on the wall. Ross looks off to the left at something outside of the frame, one hand resting on the table. He’s wearing a denim jacket, dark brown pants, and a belt that matches the brown of the table. Photo by Joshua Clay Johnson.

[2] Ross Stanton Jordan sits in a chair, at a desk in a bright room facing away from the camera. He’s looking out of the middle of three windows that surround him. On the desk are two incoming/outgoing trays, a pencil holder, and a small yellow sign with illegible text. Photo by Joshua Clay Johnson.

[3] Ross Stanton Jordan sits, back turned to the camera, in a room of the Jane Addams Hull House Museum, again surrounded by variations on the color brown through a wooden table and chairs next to him and wood paneling and wall paper on the walls around him. His head is slightly framed by a projector screen in the distance. He’s wearing a denim jacket, dark brown pants. Photo by Joshua Clay Johnson.

[4] Installation view of the exhibition The Presidential Library Project: Black Presidential Imaginary which was on view at Hyde Park Art Center from March 26, 2017 to July 2, 2017. To the left of the image is a monitor with a still, close-up image of a person looking directly into the camera. Next to the monitor are several wall-mounted sculptural artworks with photographic images dispersed throughout. On the adjacent wall is a series of green images framed in bright orange with bright orange, illegible text in the middle. In the foreground there are two monolithic wooden assemblage sculptures. Photo courtesy of Hyde Park Art Center.