The artist reflects on the objects and memories that made him.
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That was a life changer.
It looks as if the words are bleeding out of the wall.
There, Nari and his brothers spent much of their youth as the only black kids in their classes.
I was the only black kid in the school.
He finished at Hunter and got his MFA at Brooklyn College.
I was down in the Lower East Side, he says.
And the police came along: Get that stuff and get out of here.
Get out of here!
So, I went from watching the things, to watching the police engaging with him like its theater.
Im thinking,This is interesting, I dont know anything about this.
When Ward responded incredulously he wasnt doing anything wrong the cops cuffed him and brought him to the station.
The whole thing seemed like a dream.
I was still on the outside of it, thinking,Wow, this is interesting.
When that guys head got hit, I wasnt just viewing it.
It wasnt theater anymore.
I really got scared at that point.Where could this go?
After the officer saw Wards lawyer brothers card among his belongings, the mans tone changed.
He goes, Man, you look like a nice guy.
Why did you make me do this to you?
Deitch went to visit him at his then-studio at the Studio Museum in Harlem.
I was just enthralled by his energy, Deitch remembers.
Hes one of those artists who everything about him is connected to the work, he remembers.
But that was a different New York, and a different art world.
An art-professor friend of his once marveled to him about how their students source materiel has changed.
Today, Ward says, the aesthetic is Home Depot.
But the materiel is dead.
Which, one could argue, is a reasonably apt metaphor for whats happened to this city.
Nari Ward: We the Peopleis open at the New Museum through May 26.
