Tara Fay: September 2022

Tara Fay is a conceptual artist, mother, and curator, from Buffalo, NY. Tara examines her practice as a study in duality, a constant work in progress, and a continued exploration of Black female subjectivity, language, selfhood, and self-presentation. Through performance, photography, and text, Tara mines her lived experiences as a way to explore her identity, while allowing space for cultural critique around the realities of existing as a low-income Black, bi-racial femme and mother. Tara describes her work overall as constantly reframing her own artistic record as her practice grows and evolves.

“I came to be an artist later in life, and my practice is an extension of my curation in that I seek to make art that speaks to marginalized and underrepresented audiences that share a background similar to my own. I am very interested in the nuances of what Black art could and should do, and I apply that idea to my practice by creating the things that I would want to see. I am also interested in the audience, and how conceptual work is interpreted, especially with regard to performance. I want to create work that exists to communicate difficult themes, but also work that centers joy, rest, and love. This is where I consider the concept of duality: a culmination of what I believe Black art can be.”

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UPCOMING PROJECTS
Tara is curating a show at 38A Gallery with Steven Alexis that opens September 17th titled Does it Rain Diamonds on Neptune?
Tara will also be doing a public art performance in September (dates TBD).

Professional Affiliations
Board member, Bunker Projects
Member, Associated Artists of Pittsburgh
Member, Professional Alliance for Curators of Color, Association of Art Museum Curators
Board member, Bloomfield Development Corporation

Distance, 2021
Digital Photo

Work made during my residency at the Chautauqua School of Art. In this piece, I tried to convey the loneliness and feeling of distance I felt from being away from my children.

How Many Drops, 2018
For Pittsburgh Performance Art Festival

For this piece, I utilized my blood as material to concentrate bowls of milk. I asked the question, how many drops of Black blood does it take until we begin to see erasure of whiteness? This piece functions as an exploration of the one-drop theory, as well as race versus ethnicity, and how these themes align with how I viewed my white-passing daughter.

How Many Drops, 2018

Checklist for a Black Artist, 2022
Screenprint
20”x40”

Black artist checklist is a study of language, and the parameters that exist for Black artists' access to opportunities. For this piece, which began as a checklist in my iphone notes, I reference words I used personally for various applications within the past year, as well as language largely associated with academia. Although much of my practice centers on accessibility, and centering Black audiences, I often feel pressured to use what I consider elitist language in order to be taken more seriously as an artist who has not had the privilege of higher education. The idea that Black artists have to adhere to a particular checklist of words and phrases in order to validate their work is rooted in respectability politics and white supremacy. Acknowledgement of this oppressive requirement for artists to use inaccessible language also requires the refusal to uphold it in order to work towards dismantling these systems.

Pageant sash with text

This piece, part of an ongoing series of pageant sashes, explores troupes within the Black community that align with lighter skinned and multi-racial identities. It also explores my relationship to my own complex background, and the implications of colonialism and violence associated with bi-racial identities dating back to slavery, as well as themes of privilege, and colorism. This work is directly inspired by Lisa Jones “Combination Skin”, which includes a segment titled $100,000 Tragic Mulatto, and Lorraine O’Gradys performance piece “mlle bourgeoise noire”.

Eternity/Exhaustion , 2017
Durational performance, Melwood Screening Room, Pittsburgh, PA

4 hours, 30 minutes

For this performance, I explored themes of labor, and violence against Black femmes. I scrubbed the floor of the screening room for 4 hours and 30 minutes, while images of Black femme and trans women who were victims of homicide played on a loop, along with a quote from Zora Neale Hurston, “De nigger woman is de mule of de world so fur as ah can see”.

Eternity/Exhaustion , 2017

Durational Performance @ AAP Performance Series
May 2022
2019’s Pittsburgh’s Inequality Across Gender and Race is a research study that affirms how Pittsburgh is one of the worst cities in the country for health and economic outcomes of Black women. For this durational performance, Tara read this report in its entirety while balancing a steel beam across Her shoulders. This act of labor and endurance is a reference to what Black women in this city have to fight against everyday; the marginalization, racism, lack of opportunities, and discrimination. The usage of a steel beam is an obvious allegory to Pittsburgh’s title of the Steel City, but also functions as a more indirect reference to its reputation as the “Most Livable City”, a reputation that has historically excluded Black populations.

Durational Performance @ AAP Performance Series
May 2022

Tara Fay working in studio

Photo by Porter Loves Creative

Guest UserAugust 29, 2022