In Conversation With Chire Regans

In Conversation is a program that seeks to contextualize both special exhibitions and the permanent collection through the lens of Miami and the broader South Floridian artists, curators, educators, and community leaders.

[Music]

Armando 00:19
Hello and welcome to In Conversation by PAMM Edu. I am Armando Zamora, Digital and Interpretive Content Coordinator and your host. This program is meant to go alongside other educational materials the museum offers. However, instead of talking about the art on the walls, we will be talking to community members with differing backgrounds about the issues the art aims to tackle with a specific focus on Miami and south Florida. This episode is inspired by the work of Gary Simmons and the exhibition Gary Simmons: Public Enemy. Simmons’s work often deals with the history of racism in the United States and about the African-American experience. Here to speak about these experiences is Chire Regans aka Vantablack. Chire is a Saint Louis native and resident of Miami for the last three decades, an active community leader and advocate in Miami. She commemorates the lives and legacies of people through not only her art but also her active participation in the community. Her series of portraits pays tribute to victims of violence and her aim is to amplify the voices of families in remembrance of their loved ones. This series of portraits began after Chire heard the news of the death of King Carter, a six year old boy who was the victim of a stray bullet.

King Carter’s Family Member 01:31
Where the real men at? They missing their daddies and my son had a daddy, and his daddy standing here before y’all fed up.

News Reporter #1 01:38
Sick and tired of the gun violence. The family of a six-year-old boy gunned down in northwest Miami-Dade expressing their anger.

News Reporter #2 01:44
King was shot and killed while he was playing outside of his apartment complex along Northwest 12th Avenue and 103rd street. The shooting sparked newly appointed, Miami-Dade police director- Juan- director, rather Juan Perez to personally come to the scene…

Armando 01:57
After hearing the news and Carter’s family pleading to the public for help in finding the killer, Chire, whose son was also 6 at the time, felt the need to pay tribute to Carter and help the family tell their story without the sensationalism of the media cycle. After sharing the portraits of Carter and other victims, Chire was invited to participate in a community relations committee.

Chire 02:20
It came about after I started to tell these stories, because that meeting that I went to. It is a subcommittee of the community relations board, which is a countywide committee and they created a subcommittee called the criminal justice in law enforcement committee. And so, I had some work on display in government center in maybe 2017 or 2018. There was an exhibition centered around artists in Miami and this exhibition was up at the same time as art week in Miami. So I was invited by my commissioner at the time to have these portraits on display at government center. So, I was there installing the work and a woman who runs the committee, the CRB, her name is Shirley. We were talking and she invited me to be a part of this committee. Because she had never seen anything like this, and I’m pretty outspoken and she wanted someone who she considered just to be an average citizen to be on the committee. And I later learned that the committee is comprised of people from all over the county, a lot of them have political interests and they’re going to run for office later. And it’s just the way that things are. These are the types of people that are interested in talking about these types of subjects. So I am the regular person on the committee and I keep it real. I talk about things that have been shared with me by parents, and the importance of this work, because I don’t have an agenda. I’m just here to tell the truth. That’s it. So I’ve been on the committee since 2017, I believe it was. And we have monthly meetings. And we talk about whatever. Is a hot topic in the community at the time, we bring it to the table. And there are a lot of members of law enforcement that come from police forces across the county, they come. And we have dialogues. Candid dialogues about what we can do about what’s happening.

Armando 04:46
Along with her artistic practice and participation in the community, Chire also teaches both art and activism in multiple institutions in Miami, including PAMM.

Chire 04:57
I think what got me interested in education was my education. It was an educator when I was in elementary school, that saw that I had an affinity for creative things and she kind of pushed me into the direction of the arts. And she had a conversation with my mother and suggested that I apply for a magnet program at a junior high school. Well, South Miami Middle School. That is always stuck with me. And I’ve always wanted to do that same thing for other people.

Armando 05:35
In the spring of 2023, Florida lawmakers led by Governor Ron Desantis, passed two laws, HB1467 and HB 1069. The laws require schools in Florida to keep public records of all instructional materials and makes it unlawful for books to mention sexuality or violence in any way.

News Reporter #3 05:54
A Florida school district has pulled 176 books from its libraries to comply with the new state education reform law championed by Governor Ron Desantis.

News Reporter #4 06:05
Under Florida’s HB1467 law, beginning this year, school books have to be reviewed by a media specialist, to ensure they are free of pornography or certain race-based teachings, from kindergarten to third grade the books must be free of instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity. The school reminded educators violating parts of the law could lead teachers to be charged with a felony.

Armando 06:31
Later that year, the Florida State Academic Standards for Social Studies was published and included language about how “slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit”. These laws and academic standards became the subject of controversy and media attention. Because of Chire’s relationship to education, I asked her about these recent events.

Chire 06:55
When it comes to education, the approach should be that there is knowledge. There’s knowledge and it only – all it can do is empower you. And make you better, right? So when you try to limit access to knowledge, that means that you were trying to hide something straight up. And, For curriculums to be regulated, the way that they are being regulated in this state, what’s happening is there is a disservice being done to students. If there is a limit to the types of history that you can learn about in school that means that there’s there’s an erasure happening. If the study of black history is eliminated from the curriculum, you’re in essence erasing the history of an entire group of people and you’re limiting access to that knowledge by students. So you’re creating a legacy of erasure. And as someone who went to a historically black college, access to information regarding the history of my people was there, And, We all chose to go to an HBCU because we knew that this was a different type of access. Right? So, when that access is being limited, Not only are you erasing history, but you’re sending a message to black people that where we come from, how we came to this country, and other people learning about it isn’t important. And then, When it comes to other marginalized people, queer people. If there’s an educator who identifies as queer, And they can’t talk about the history of their people in this country, you’re erasing their history and you’re minimizing the impact that they had. They are educators so they want to share the history of people like them in this country, and when you limit someone’s access to history, you’re limiting them globally. Now, that I’ve traveled outside of the United States. I understand how important it is to not only know the history

Chire 09:37
of my people and other people’s in the United States. But there’s a relationship between the United States and other countries that’s important, that history is important to learn also. And when you have people who get to these positions of power, and their goal is to take away access. That is a dangerous person. Because it won’t stop at limiting access to information. It can go far beyond that and that is what’s scary. It is a different level of propaganda. “Learning about these things is not okay, but learning about these things is okay.” So then you’re creating this idea of what is good and what is bad. And if books about specific types of people are labeled as bad, anybody connected with that person is bad. So if a book about Malcolm X is banned and considered bad, you’re going to feel that way about black people. It’s like, This subconscious thing that you’re doing, you’re teaching people that this is bad and this is good. You can learn about this but not about this. And, you know, one of the things that I try to do as an artist is to tell the truth and when you ban knowledge you are reshaping truth, you’re deciding what is true, and what is false. And that’s * dangerous and scary.

Armando 11:24
When you talk about deciding what is true it makes me think about the academic standards that were made public recently and how it stated that black people benefited from slavery and I think about how that is a complete re-writing of history

Chire 11:40
A complete rewriting and you know, when you start to do this with young young people, you are programming them to think that way. And as an educator, my responsibility is to tell the truth. But there are teachers who are having to choose between their career and their conscience because educators know that this is some bullshit. It is completely asinine to think that this nation was built on the labor and blood of black people and to think that you have to start telling young people that black people benefited from this and to sell that as the truth. How do you reconcile- How do you morally reconcile with that? And this is what’s happening with teachers. They have to choose and one thing that we can’t afford to damage anymore is our educational system.

Armando 12:55
Hearing what Chire had said about education and the teaching of racial histories or lack thereof, I was curious about how or if Gary Simmons, the inspiration of this episode, had tackled similar topics in his work. In his own words,

Gary Simmons 13:10
I was a latch-key kid, you know? So, cartoons, Saturday morning cartoons, after school, cartoons, were kind of your best friends. Some of those early Disney cartoons, they were embedded with kind of racial constructions. And I started looking at that and thinking of, in terms of how racism is a taught or learned thing. And I think that it starts With visual imagery, that’s where really the eraser drawings kind of started. That’s the genesis of it. It was this taking a racial or racist image In attempting to erase it. Um and having, you know, kinds of residue or traces and ghosts, that still appear because there’s no way to actually erase a stereotype. It’s always going to have some traces left behind.

Chire 14:04
Gary Simmons explores imagery of what’s called “Sambo”. And there is a specific time period where those depictions of black folk where features are emphasized and it’s a mockery of the black face that was prevalent in movies and advertisements that had black people in them. And he is really engaging with these depictions. Because even, I don’t want to say memorabilia, but for lack of a better word, memorabilia that uses these caricatures of black folks, it is something that is hidden. People don’t put it on display, they share these items amongst people that they’re comfortable with, right, because these depictions of black people were racist. And in his work, he confronts viewers, anyone who engages with these depictions, he’s confronting them with these depictions because it was so common in the United States to use this imagery, right? And instead of shying away from it, he goes, he engages with it head on, right? And that is a conscious choice you make as an artist because you understand everything connected with these depictions and how it fueled racist sentiment towards black people. So to include that in your work is a conscious decision because he is not trying to erase this history of treatment of black people, right? And what I think is brave about that, is when, when you work with this material, you are coming face to face with how people who look like you were depicted and which led to treatment, right? I think there’s a certain type of bravery there for him as an artist because I couldn’t engage with those images that way because they represent such a traumatic period of time in America, as it pertains to my people. So, I think making that conscious choice as an artist is something to be applauded. And then to do that in these reputable spaces, where these conversations about the treatment of black people historically are probably not being had. But since the work is there, these conversations are going to be had in response to this imagery and also him using clan hoods, right? And knowing how polarizing, just the idea of the KKK is, you know, there’s so much trauma there that people don’t want to talk about and that’s on both sides. So black people don’t want to really talk about that experience because that trauma lives in our body and stories about being terrorized by the Klan is passed down. So it’s not something that we outwardly talk about, especially in museums, right. Then white people who had family members who were members of the KKK, they don’t want to talk about that, because then you have to confront this racism that lived in your family and you have to acknowledge what your ancestors did to an entire group of people. So using Klan’s hood KKK hoods and garb in art you’re making a very profound statement it is also confrontation through this this type of imagery. And he has to understand that different people are going to feel differently about these depictions and he is willing to engage with those types of dialogues in his
work.

Armando 18:19
I think when we talk about the history of racism and white supremacy in the united states, it’s sometimes hard to conceptualize what that fully means and what it is when you live in such a multicultural and diverse place like South Florida. Can you talk about some of the histories or traces of white supremacy and racism in South Florida and Miami?

Chire 18:41
Yes. And you know, I think it’s important that you say That this is, uh, South Florida is multicultural now. And it’s also important to understand that it was not always So. And the way that racism existed in the rest of the United states, it existed the same way here in South Florida. And when we think about just navigating through the United States as a black person, Miami was a sundown town. And if you were caught in certain parts of Miami and Miami-Dade county after sundown, it was going to be a challenge for you. There are remnants of segregation as it existed in South Florida. When you think about some of the historically, black cities In South Florida. Like, Coconut grove and down south where I live now. Goulds was settled by black folks, but there was a certain spot in these cities where it was the line to where we knew not to cross. And there are remnants of that line in Coconut grove, it’s called the segregation wall, it still exists there. And then there was one further further north in the city of Miami in Liberty City. A segregation wall. So that line was there. that literal wall was there. So black people knew this is as far as you can go. once you move past this wall, you’re entering into white owned lane. You know.

Armando 20:26
Segregation walls are in fact still present in Miami. Along NW 12th Avenue between 62nd and 67th streets one of these segregation walls is still visible. It is now only a couple feet high and could be mistaken as just a development with higher ground, or some sort of strange median. It is painted yellow and houses a walking path with trees. However this wall was once much taller and was used to divide land between white people and people of color. Right next to this wall is Liberty City Square which was one of the first public housing projects constructed for African-Americans. As an expansion of the square happened, white residents objected as they had been promised a 20 acre buffer between them and the housing project. The wall was constructed and lined with trees to appease these objections and keep the projects out of view from the white residents of the area.

Chire 21:18
There are also schools that were built specifically for black youth, to be educated there within black communities. So we knew this is where you go, and then you don’t go over there. When different people from different cultures started to come into South Florida what started to happen was as long As you understood that you weren’t a black person, then you were treated a certain way and I remember having a few conversations with my colleague who immigrated here from Haiti and her understanding of blackness in the United States was very different than my understanding of blackness in the United States. So she immigrated to South Florida and had access to opportunities that the black folks that lived here did not. She didn’t understand what was happening because she came from Haiti and she didn’t have that history here that we live with as an African-American. If you come into a new city, you want to acclimate and you don’t want to be treated like one of those over there. So, there were certain opportunities that she was given that in our conversations, I realized that I didn’t have access to, right. Then there’s this idea of I’m not American I’m from this country because I emigrated here from that country. So there’s this separation of you being this type of black. I’m the type of black that came from over here. It’s really easy to lose sight of that, in South Florida because there’s so many different cultures here. But everything is rooted in this idea of racism, even the way that neighborhoods are separated. You know, if you look at historically, black communities in South Florida, the access to resources is very limited in those areas. Even today, the access to resources is very limited. If you look at the access to education in these areas, it is very different. The schools that I had access to because I was going into a magnet program were completely different than the school I would be at if I wasn’t in a magnet program, right? So all of that is rooted in racism and white supremacy and a limitation of access based on what you look like and where you live.

Armando 23:59
One of areas in South Florida that has been well recorded as a prominent land for African-Americans is Overtown, which was known as “Colored Town” in the 1930s. Chire speaks about Overtown and the effects that building I-95 through Overtown had on the community.

Chire 24:16
Well, I did a residency at Overtown some years ago, with ProjectArt and I was working out of the Comer Overtown library in the heart of Overtown. And, When you talk to people that live there, and that have lived there through generations, like their grandparents live there, the parents grandparents live there, they talk about why it’s called Overtown and this was a historically black area and all the black folks are here. There are, you know, vendors and schools there and when people would say they’re going to Overtown they were like, “oh I’m going over town”, you know, so that means that you’re going specifically to this pocket of blackness in the city of Miami. So the name just stuck, right? This was an area that many have compared to black wall street, right? Where, um, it’s just there’s a sense of community here. People are thriving and families are raised. And you just stay there from generation to generation, right? But what changed was when 95 was built right through Overtown. So, what happens when major construction comes into an area? What happens? People are displaced. So, homes were seized, property was seized and this highway was built right through this community. And what happens when you have built a life in an area and then all of a sudden, there’s this upheaval that you have no control over, you are displaced to another area of the city. And Black people like to be rooted in a place because we have a connection to where we grow up. So that changes your way of life when you have to move somewhere else. And then you know, there’s this noise pollution from people traveling through your community. What’s happening in Overtown now is because it’s so far inward from the coast, this land is more valuable because it’s a little higher. I’ve watched- I’ve lived in Miami for just over three decades now, I’ve watched condos spring up, I’ve watched homes being taken away and “affordable housing” come into these spaces. And this is something that’s been replicated all over the county in historically black neighborhoods. I lived in Coconut Grove for a little while and I saw just the beginning of gentrification happen in Coconut Grove people being displaced. People who don’t own homes are the first to be displaced because if there’s this housing Affordable housing unit there. You know that land owner will take a million dollar payday to to get up out and that displaces everybody there and it’s it’s being replicated all over the county in historically, black neighborhoods and even the city that I grew up in, South Miami, I have watched it completely change because if you don’t own a home you will lose that home I’m fortunate enough to grow up in a house where my mother owned the home and we hadn’t been displaced and we haven’t been displaced but I’ve seen it happen to families all throughout South Miami.

Armando 28:15
After talking about the history of racism and white supremacy in South Florida, I was curious about the current state of these issues in South Florida and about how politics plays a role in these issues. I asked Chire about conservative politics in Florida and about how conservative politics often attract refugees of failed communist regimes around the world. Although Miami-Dade county as a whole went Democrat in the 2020 elections, it only did so by 85,031 votes, or a narrow 53% of the vote. Compared to Broward County which went Democrat with 64% of the vote. These results show that a large portion of the population in Miami is voting in favor of lawmakers who are passing the laws we spoke about earlier.

Chire 29:01
You know what happens with Conservative ideology? It causes marginalized people to vote against the best interest. Right? Because, right wing politics. Is not. Inclusive. People who emigrate to South Florida need to understand that these laws are not for you. They are against you. When you think about immigration, right? How the right wing wants to close borders. Straight up. So, anyone who immigrates into the United states needs to understand that there is this sense of nationalism that only includes white people. So, if you come here from another country, they don’t want you here. Dead ass, so don’t vote for them. Don’t support them. I think what causes marginalized people to adopt these types of ideas that are contrary to their way of life is the want, the desire to be adjacent to whiteness. Because, they think that being adjacent to whiteness, that privilege is going to just spray on you. You’re going to get some privilege just by being adjacent to those who actually have the privilege. And, I also think it’s important for anybody who comes to this country to understand the history of this country and how wealth is acquired in this country. And if all the marginalized groups of people got together and decided we’re not gonna vote against their best interest, all of these people would be out of office. Because, There’s more of us. And I understand the desire to want privilege, I mean, I want some privilege. And wanting to be adjacent to people with privilege thinking that you’ll get some privilege that way. But when you leave South Florida as a brown person you understand that shit is real different down here. You are treated like an other elsewhere. In other places in Florida you will be treated like an other. And I really wish I really wish people understood that.

Armando 31:51
Thank you. I agree completely. To tie all of this back to art, I want to ask you something I think about a lot. What role, do you think, artists have in addressing these issues?

Chire 32:07
Simply put, the role of an artist is to tell the truth. No matter what you’re talking about, tell the truth about it. And, Gary Simmons isn’t shying away from this history of America’s treatment of black people, he’s using specific imagery, polarizing imagery because there needs to be a dialogue there. He took it upon himself to choose this type of imagery, knowing there’s going to be reactions to it. And I think that more artists should do that. Because if you’re not telling the truth about what’s happening around you, why are you making art? Who is this work for? Is it for you to just look at in your space? Shouldn’t there be some type of discourse about what you’ve created. Don’t you have something to say about what’s happening to you and around you? That’s my approach to my practice. What am I talking about? Who am I talking about? Who am I talking to and being responsible with how I talk about these things, you know. And for this type of show to come here to this institution, which PAMM sets the tone for other institutions in south Florida as it should, right? And having people come in and see this where people from all walks of life are going to come in and see this work and it’s going to spark a conversation, some type of exchange between people. And that’s what you want your work to do. You want people to engage with it and continue to engage with it and then choose other people to talk to about this work and I think that more artists should really decide to do that. It can be a challenge because when you make work like this you’re going to be met with pushback, criticism, praise, the whole spectrum of reactions, right? And you have to be willing, you have to be willing to confront all of those reactions.

Armando 34:26
Following this thought, I also wonder what the difference is or where the line is, for you, between representation and exploitation when artists are making work tackling these issues.

Chire 34:41
Specifically, when it comes to, if you’re talking about real people and real issues, right? For example, if you’re talking about blackness in America, right? We can talk about blackness in America without depictions of trauma. I have a very strong belief that artists have to be responsible in the images that they create, they duplicate, and they display because, when it comes to the slave trade, right? And how generations of black people lived through slavery in America. That trauma is generational and it passes down generation to generation. I believe that the trauma of my ancestors lives in my body. So, I have to be responsible in how I approach this trauma in my work. I can talk about how my people are and were treated without recreating images of that treatment, right? Because, Anyone who engages with this work is going to have a reaction to this work. So if i duplicate trauma-inducing images that person is going to experience that trauma so I am very responsible with how I depict people and what materials I use and where I display the work. I’m very intentional about that because i have a responsibility. I think every artist has a responsibility to be knowledgeable about the people you’re talking about, who you’re talking to, and how you display it. And too many times artists cross a line because they want to shock and create, you know, just any type of dialogue and that’s irresponsible. You have to be very careful in how you approach topics, in my opinion.

Armando 36:54
Could you tell me about some artists and community members in Miami who are doing the work of telling these stories in a responsible way?

Chire 37:01
Reggie O’neal, Loni Johnson. T. Elliot Mansa, Roscoe B. Thicke, Chris Friday, Carrington Ware, Rheal Leonard. And these are just visual artists. There are Historians, Actors, dancers that are all black that are telling these stories in their different art forms. Nadege Green is a historian and she really focuses on black Miami-Dade and she does a lot of research, combs through archives and she compiles this information on social media and she tells stories that I didn’t even know living here for 30 years. She has really taken the role of someone who is combating black erasure. And I’ve just learned so much from her. There is a vibrant community of black creatives here that are talking about the black experience that are talking about ideas associated with gender in their work in really poignant ways and, even filmmakers doing great- Faren Humes the work that she’s doing. Her lens is not voyeuristic and I think that because she is a black woman, there’s a certain type of care associated with the stories that she tells, and that is somebody that people should really pay attention to. Oftentimes, I notice that the African-American experience, it falls to the wayside in South Florida because there is so many other experiences that people have access to here. That’s another reason why I’m thankful that Gary’s show is coming here because this is a specific type of black experience in America that even learning this history, is being removed from curriculum. So it’s important to point the lens back at these artists telling these stories because we’re trying to combat the erasure of our experience. It is very specific and it doesn’t discount the experience of people who immigrated to the United states. These two dialogues can exist at the same time we can learn about these experiences at the same time.

Armando 40:31
PAMM Education would like to thank you for listening to this program and we hope you found it informative, engaging, and thought provoking. We would like to thank Chire for guiding us through this conversation and sharing her knowledge and experiences with us. We would also like to thank all the other departments in the museum who helped make this possible and we would of course like to thank Gary Simmons for sharing his work with us and inspiring this program. To end, I asked Chire if she had any final thoughts she wanted to share.

Chire 41:03
I just want people to be… I want people to take the time to inform yourself about things that you don’t know about, and it’s important to do that because if you’re always learning you’re always growing you, stop learning you stop growing. And it’s an important part of my practice to always be learning. Because I want to know all the things. So I just don’t want to stop at a certain point to not have an influx of information. That’s frustrating for me and I think that people should not shy away from that. And not shy away from having dialogues about things that make you uncomfortable because you’re not gonna always be uncomfortable, you talk about it until you’re comfortable. And there’s always something you can learn from somebody else.

Armando 42:02
This program was produced by PAMM Education.
Written, recorded, narrated and edited by Armando Zamora, Digital and Interpretive Content Coordinator. Music by Christian Cummings and Ruben Espinoza. Additional audio samples, cited works, and data are listed in the production notes.

[Music]

Production notes.

[Music]

Pérez Art Museum Miami

Sources

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