Assuming is Dangerous: Talking with Gowanus-Based Artist Adrienne Elise Tarver

In almost every context, white men are the only makers afforded a blank canvas; everyone else gets qualified. When these qualifications (black, female, gay, on and on) bubble up without context, assumptions can take over the reading of the work—assumptions that the artist intended to employ the politics of race, of being female, of being anything other than an artist making work informed by, but not restrained by, their identity. It’s the ancient blunder of making an ass out of u an