Zakkiyyah Najeeba Dumas O’Neal: On Whose Time?

For my second portrait I invited my dear friend, artist, educator, and independent curator Zakkiyyah Najeebah to share space with me. It felt appropriate since the last time we saw each other she was taking my portrait in the butterfly preserve behind South Shore Cultural Center. It was October and still warm enough to take pictures at sunset with only a dress. How I miss those days. The lakefront has been boarded up by police tape, trashcans, and industrial benches for the last two months. I miss our ease, our comfort, our carelessness; laughing together, catching the last rays of sun over the water, and sharing space without fear of contagion. This portrait session was facilitated via Zoom, and although the world feels much heavier in this time, we still found moments of laughter and connect. Here’s an excerpt of our time together:

“Everything changed overnight.”

"Everything changed overnight. On Friday I came in to work, and by the end of the day they told us we're not coming back. For the month of March I was very, very sad. I've just accepted it at this point. I've been finding ways to be grateful for the time off. I don't know when I'm ever going to have time like this for myself again. I should appreciate it. It's a very strange middle place to be in. I've been writing a lot in my journal. I've been taking a lot of images with my cameras of the interior space that I'm in. I've been writing poetry and reading poetry. Doing research. 

I've been really curious about abstraction. I don't know if it's because of the time because everything looks so abstract to me. But that's where I've been finding a lot of my inspiration. I've been looking at a lot of artists who explore things that deal with metaphysical concepts or color theories. Or this idea as abstraction as a space to explore the unknown. That's where my head has been. Very introspective.

Abstraction was my first introduction to art. My mom would drop me off at the library when I was a kid because I loved books. I remember when I first checked an art book out of the library it was a book about abstract painters. I would just check out these random books like, Franz Kline and Jackson Pollock. At that time I didn't have a measure for art history, I just liked looking at abstractions that I could get lost in. 

Now that I'm exploring charcoal in my art practice abstraction is coming up a lot. Abstraction just seemed so open to me. I was a very curious child. I was like the black sheep of my family and for me that was a space where I could explore what was unknown to me but also something very familiar. There was something familiar that I could find in abstract painting that I couldn't find anywhere else. And it's still the same, I get very emotional when I view abstract works for art, I just feel like there's so much room there for openness and possibilities. As a child I would get lost in my own imagination and abstraction was a place where possibilities and my own imagination could be affirmed. It just seems so free, there's no limitations, there's no bounds. You can just explore the depths of whatever. 

“As a child I would get lost in my own imagination and abstraction was a place where possibilities and my own imagination could be affirmed.”

I started using the color back last year with charcoal and I've been obsessed with the concept of the blackest black. I’ve had people send me articles and podcasts of all these different colors of black I didn’t know existed. I've been looking at artists like Kerry James Marshall who explores Blackness, or artists like Torkwase Dyson who used the color black within her own work, or Fred Eversley who did a whole sculpture series using the color black. I’ve been obsessed with the infinite qualities that the color black has. It’s also funny because when I mention it to something they’re like, “oh yeah, you can relate that to race.”

“I’m not thinking about race actually, I’m just obsessed with the color black and thinking about the color black as having possibilities instead of limitations.”

Whose time? For me, especially during this quarantine it further solidifies the construction of time. The real reason that a lot of us live our lives on this time clock is because of capitalism; we have to do things that are productive that enable our survival. So that's one of the things I've been thinking about: if I had all the time in the world? What would I be doing? How would I be using that time?

Even though we're in a pandemic which is a very critical and real situation, that is harming a lot of people; I’ve also never felt this free in my body. Which sounds really weird because physically there’s so many limitations that have been put up on us. But at the same time, I oddly feel more emotionally and physically open. I have been at ease in a way that I haven't felt before.

“Even though I still have work to do, I feel like I have a little bit more control over my own time; versus when I’m servicing other people or institutions.”

It’s like that Maxine Waters quote, “reclaiming your time.” How important are the things that we've made so much time for in our live?

You brought up the nonprofit industrial complex, how much of the work is limited when you put a time cap and how much are people really benefiting from it? When there's this limitation of time, instead of allowing things to happen organically. It seems really weird to put a time cap on transformation and social change." - Zakkiyyah Najeebah