Jordan Casteel
After a few days of researching for an artist who speaks about social issues through their work, I was finally able to discover someone who stood out to me. This artist goes by the name of Jordan Casteel. Jordan was born in 1989 in Denver, Colorado. Jordan received her MFA in Painting and Printmaking from the Yale School of Art in New Haven, Connecticut. ("About Jordan Casteel") While at Yale, she was awarded a grant of $10,000 to do landscape painting in Gloucester, Massachusetts. While she was away for this job, she was speaking with her brother who disclosed to her that he was upset that he was being seen as a threat in his society because he was an African American man. Her brother had several encounters where he was followed around in stores just because they would assume he would be stealing. This angered him because all he wanted to do was be a good father and become a better person, but he was being judged by people who did not know him due to his skin color. After hearing her brother's story, Jordan changed her mind about what she would be paintings at Yale. Rather than painting landscape art, she decided she was going to begin painting black men. One of her first paintings was nude paintings of black men. Jordan decided not to show the genitalia in her paintings to ensure she was humanizing these men, because black men are always criminalized and sexualized in society. Jordan did not want that to be the case, she thought it was time the black body was no longer taken advantage of. (Ravich, 2017)
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| Jordan Casteel, Ato, Oil on canvas, 72 x 54 in, 2014 |
Soon after the nude paintings, Jordan decided to paint men on the street, on the train, in their home, just black men living their day to day lives. Her paintings are used to address the social issue of racism in America. These black men live an ordinary day to day life like every other man in America. Instead of being viewed as regular decent men, they are looked at as dangerous, as thieves, anything but civil humanbeings. Through Jordan's paintings that negative view of black men is removed and we are able to see that they just want to succeed like every one else in this world, but unfortunately, stereotypes ruin their lives the second they are born into this society. In the painting below Jordan painted two teenage boys who were selling clothes in Harlem, with messages such as "Got Melanin?" and "T.H.U.G- The Hate You Gave Us." Her painting this is important because the teenagers selling shirts with these messages demonstrates the message she is trying to give the world, which is, not all of them are bad and evil.
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| Jordan Casteel, MegaStarBrand’s Louie and A-Thug, Oil on canvas, 78 x 90", 2017 |
While researching Ms. Jordan Casteel, I discovered that she is actually an Assistant Professor of the Painting Department of Arts, Culture, and Media at our very own Rutgers University- Newark Campus.("About Jordan Casteel") It was a pleasure researching her and her work and I hope she continues her art work until the day racism is finally put to an end in America.
work cited : (n.d.). About Jordan Casteel. Retrieved from http://www.jordancasteel.com/about
(Nick Ravich, 2017). Retrieved from https://art21.org/watch/new-york-close-up/jordan-casteel-paints-her-community/
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