>> My generation, having grown up in the shadow of AIDS, are now old enough to really have lived enough of our lives to understand what was lost by it.

>> JARED BOWEN: I'm Jared Bowen, coming up on Open Studio, playwright Matthew López on his Tony-winning drama The Inheritance, and gay life in a New York ravaged by AIDS.

Then Sir Zanele Muholi's Portraits as Resistance.

The South African visual activist focuses on race, gender, and sexuality.

>> All I ever wanted to do was to make sure that I become the voice for change in South Africa.

>> BOWEN: And artist Jeffrey Gibson uses his multi-colored palette to express his multi-dimensional self.

>> The idea of, like, reversing what's oftentimes seen on the periphery, making it, like, the central subject, to me is something that, it's honoring it, it's celebrating it.

>> BOWEN: It's all now on Open Studio.

♪ ♪ Welcome to this special edition of the show.

We're not going over the rainbow, we're going directly into the rainbow.

We're revisiting conversations we've had with artists whose works look at gay culture, celebrate queer identity, and call for inclusion, starting with Matthew López and his play The Inheritance.

>> Tell me the name of one of your closest friends.

>> Tristan.

>> (sniffles): Imagine that Tristan is dead-- name another.

>> Jasper.

>> Jasper is also dead.

>> Jason.

>> Jason has been at St. Vincent's for two weeks.

The toxoplasmosis has left him with dementia.

>> BOWEN: Presented by SpeakEasy Stage Company, the show won the 2020 Tony Award for Best Play for its story of New York gay men in the wake of the AIDS crisis.

But Matthew López's inspiration might come as a surprise.

He took his cues from the classic 1910 E.M. Forster novel Howards End.

Here again, a conversation we had in April.

Matthew López, thank you so much for being with us.

>> Hi, it's a pleasure.

>> BOWEN: So tell me about what it was in reading Howards End as a very young man that sat with you to become The Inheritance.

>> So I saw the film first, in '93, and that was the first time I saw a movie that was so different from the world that I knew that still somehow spoke to me in some way.

>> Couldn't you get it renewed?

>> I beg your pardon?

>> The lease, the lease of your house.

>> The characters, the vivacity of them.

And then my mother, who was a schoolteacher, she got me the book, and I really sort of fell even more in love with it through the writing, through E.M. Forster's voice.

And, you know, it took me a long time to sort of figure out why that particular book resonated.

You know, I was this Puerto Rican kid from Florida.

(both laugh) And then when it was...

Upon reading that, that E.M. Forster was gay, that he was closeted all his life, that he was only out to his, his most intimate friends, that I started to understand that it, that Howards End was the creation of a gay man.

And I think there was something connecting me to him through that.

I think that I could, without knowing anything about myself or him, there was a vibration that I picked up on, and it felt like he was speaking to me.

>> BOWEN: Well, we'll go back to that in a moment.

But I'm wondering, this is a moment in which a lot of people are looking back at the 1980s and the AIDS crisis, as you very much do, of course, in this piece.

What is it about this time now looking at that time?

>> It's perhaps the right amount of time to gain perspective, both, uh, by those who experienced it and those who were too young to.

I think that it's possible that, that my generation, having grown up in the shadow of AIDS, are now old enough to really have lived enough of our lives to understand what was lost by it, to understand what it must have felt like to be imperiled by it, to feel always in danger.

And, you know, for someone who was born in 1977, I was a child when all of this was going on.

And now I'm a grown man with, who's lived longer than many of the people who died of AIDS, and I think I have the requisite perspective now, as a gay man, to understand it fully.

And I think maybe others do, as well.

>> BOWEN: What was it like to live in this history, to live in this world?

I was struck to read that your husband could tell which character you were working on, which character you were writing, by your moods when you came home.

What does that tell us?

>> That I am, that I'm probably a bit of an empath as I, as I write.

(laughs) >> Why do you need to tell your story?

>> To understand it.

To understand myself.

>> Writing this play took so much out of me, it required so much time from me, it took so, it took emotional, mental, and creative outlay, and, yeah, you know, every day was a new adventure in the writing process of this play.

I felt like I was sort of chasing after something different from anything I'd ever written before.

And for any writer who's listening to this, they know how exciting that feeling is.

And, yeah, and so much of the play is also, you know, the structure of the play and the characters are based on Howards End.

But so much of the real experience of the characters, the actual experience of just feelings or fears, they're based on my life.

And I've sworn I'd never tell what bits, but I put so much of my life in the play, and so there were so many days when I was just reliving those experiences, and some of them were wonderful, and some of them were awful.

But it, yeah, it felt, it feels like it was worth it.

>> BOWEN: Is this something as a writer that you felt that you were building toward or that you knew in some way you had a responsibility to do at some point, which was to really look inward and put yourself in the piece?

>> On this one, I knew it was inevitable.

And on this one, I knew I was ready.

My other plays, you know, have bits of me, or bits of people that I know in them.

You know, I have a play about my, about my family and their experiences making the West Side Story movie in 1959.

That comes from family lore, you know.

This is a whole other order of magnitude.

This was, this was me.

This was me really sort of writing about my addiction and my alcoholism for the first time, really.

This is the first time I ever wrote honestly about my own trauma, and in ways that I, again, can sort of put in the play without actually sort of having to sort of specifically talk about.

But I was prepared for what it was going to take.

>> BOWEN: How is it to experience it now, hearing how you've talked about it, how difficult it was-- and I can only imagine what the process was like-- to then relive it quite frequently as you're seeing productions, and it's out in the world and shared in the world now?

>> It is different now.

I can look at it just as a piece of writing, I can look at it as a creation that I made and I've really sort of allowed it to be a piece that I've created.

And I was just in Munich last weekend seeing it there in German, and that was such a thrill to sort of watch the play in a language I don't speak, and to hear an audience engage with it, laugh at what I assume are the exact same jokes.

(both laughing) It's not...

It's like the thing about childbirth, you know, it's like, you love your children, and you don't think about how painful it was to have them.

And I think that is the sort of same way with writing.

>> BOWEN: Well, that must be so interesting, too, to see, especially to be at a place like Munich, where you, where it might seem so different, but to know that what you've written is so universal at the end of the day.

>> It was so very reassuring to watch the audience have the exact same reaction that the audiences in London and New York did.

I think that it really helped me understand where this play may sit within the human experience.

>> Being gay doesn't feel remarkable anymore.

It's, like, "Oh, you're gay, ho-hum.

What other tricks can you do?"

>> BOWEN: And finally, and I said we would return to Forster, do you think about him often?

Do you think about how his life and his work now lives in this world through yours?

>> Yeah, he's, he's deeply important to me.

He has been from that, that day in March of, I guess it was 1993, when I saw the, James Ivory's film, and he's only grown in importance to me.

You know, we work very closely with the Forster estate on this play.

And I went to Cambridge and met with the librarian at King's College, who is the, who is the estate, basically, he represent...

He, Forster left his literary estate to King's College, and... And Peter, the librarian, brought me into this small room, and he, he... First he showed me Forster's old rooms, and he walked me around the campus of King's.

Then he brought me into this old room and he showed me the original handwritten manuscript of Howards End, as well as Forster's, what they call the Locked Diary.

And I sat in a room with these two documents for hours, and I just... Communed with Morgan, you know, and it was a real, it was a real treat, a real honor.

He means everything to me.

>> BOWEN: Well, thank you again for being with us today.

>> Thanks so much, Jared.

♪ ♪ >> BOWEN: Now our exclusive interview with Sir Zanele Muholi.

Rather than artist, they describe themself as a visual activist.

And they have been documenting the oppressed in South Africa for decades.

We revisit a conversation I had with Muholi in February, when their exhibition titled Being Muholi: Portraits as Resistance was on view at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.

This is Sir Zanele Muholi at work-- intent that people be seen and acknowledged.

In picture after picture, Muholi wants us to take in their pride, their togetherness, their very being.

>> All I ever wanted to do was to make sure that I become the voice for change in South Africa in which every single being who is Black, who is queer, who is trans is documented in South Africa.

>> BOWEN: For nearly 20 years, Muholi has been photographing LGBTQIA+ people in South Africa.

In the aftermath of apartheid, it was the first nation in the world to outlaw discrimination based on sexual orientation.

But that community remains subject to high rates of violence and murder-- especially among young and Black people.

Muholi has used photography to change the culture.

>> It's like you cannot dare to ignore it.

It's Black, it's beautiful.

It's in your walls and it forces you to wonder how can you, as a, as a white person, deal with a Black image, deal with Black people in your, in your spaces, deal with Black colleagues in your workplace.

>> BOWEN: Their work, stemming from their role as a self-described visual activist, is on view at Boston's Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.

>> You see a sense of undeniable pride that comes from a confidence in being.

>> BOWEN: theo tyson is the show's co-curator, and the work became even more layered, tyson says, when Muholi began creating stylized self-portraits in 2012, part of a series shot all over the world called Somnyama Ngonyama, translated from Zulu as "Hail the Dark Lioness."

>> They're not playing dress-up.

The costumery, if you will, is part of the storytelling.

There are clothespins used to talk about domestic labor and share stories of their mother.

Luggage wrap that's used to talk about issues with travel, racism, colorism.

There are the plastic gloves that we see in sort of this signs of the times and what that represents, from sexual violence to access to healthcare to now COVID, and what we need to do to protect ourselves.

>> BOWEN: Originally, you didn't necessarily turn the camera on yourself.

What, what was the genesis of that?

>> I guess that after many years of documenting other people, or photographing other people, I needed to remember me.

I wanted to pay homage to my mom.

Her spirit forever lives with me.

If she didn't suffer from labor pains for me to be born, we wouldn't be having this conversation right now.

>> BOWEN: In these images, Muholi also increases the contrast of their skin tone in post-production.

It's yet another conversation with the viewer, Muholi says.

>> This is just engagement.

How far can we go with our bodies?

How far can we go with our voices?

How fearful are we to say what makes us feel uncomfortable?

So are we brave enough to face the world out there that doesn't allow us to be, either as Black, either as queer folks, either as anything?

>> BOWEN: The exhibition also features Muholi's latest work-- their first sculpture and paintings never before seen in a museum.

Pieranna Cavalchini is the show's co-curator.

>> It's so exciting, you know, this idea of still, you know, dealing with different characters and archetypes, and also connecting the painting to the photography in very interesting ways.

>> BOWEN: Cavalchini came to know Muholi during their time as one of the museum's artists-in-residence in 2019 and during a trip with tyson to Cape Town last year.

The show, she says, paints the duality of Muholi.

>> Being Muholi: Portraits as Resistance is the idea of letting Muholi be.

So it's Muholi as an artist-activist.

Very powerfully so.

But at the same time, there's a humanity.

You know, there's that sense of vulnerability.

>> BOWEN: Which Muholi readily talks about.

The paintings were mostly made last year, during a period of pain, so these works were a way of healing, even if they're sold at the end of the day.

>> What's different is the color.

So for once, I was, like, trying to dive out of the, you know, the drowning.

>> BOWEN: What did you see when you stepped back after you had completed these paintings and saw the color?

>> It's, it's very interesting.

You, you fall in love knowing that you might lose that lover, you know?

And once it's out of your sight, and it belongs to the other, so it's like losing love and that love belongs to someone.

And you wonder if you'll ever, like, touch it again.

>> BOWEN: But being Muholi means that love was fully realized.

♪ ♪ Next, in his efforts to make sure Indigenous people and their stories are seen, artist Jeffrey Gibson molds the monumental and wades into words.

Evidenced by the title of his deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum exhibition, Infinite Indigenous Queer Love.

We first brought you my conversation with Gibson in February.

Jeffrey Gibson, such a pleasure to have you with us.

>> I'm happy to be here, thank you.

>> BOWEN: Let me just start with the title of your show at the deCordova: Infinite Indigenous Queer Love.

That is not the title a curator has come up with, but you yourself-- what does that mean to you?

>> (laughing) Well, it was interesting.

I did a body of work in 2020, in fact, actually, yes-- it was shown at the Armory Fair.

And there was a painting in there, which is in the deCordova show, titled Infinite Indigenous Queer Love.

And it was interesting.

It was a series of ten paintings, nine of them sold, except for, except for Infinite Indigenous Queer Love.

And it was interesting.

You know, the gallery said that people would come in and they would say, like, "Oh, that's, that's the one, that's really special."

Like, "That's the important one."

And they would be, like, "But I'm going to go with this one."

I told the gallery, I said, "You know, I'm really not surprised, "because I think people don't know how to relate to those words."

So they can understand them as important to someone who's Indigenous, someone who identifies as queer.

But I think they're challenging for people who maybe don't feel that that's their background, you know, or who they identify as.

And so that's just always kind of stuck with me, you know, as, as, like, a series of challenging words.

And when Sarah Montross at deCordova invited me to exhibit, we started talking about the structure that was outside, Because Once You Enter My House, It Becomes Our House.

And in the writing and the conception of that, it was really meant to invite Indigenous, BIPOC, queer performers to come and activate the structure.

So I would just, we talked about, how could we extend that indoors and how could we personalize it?

And I just thought of that painting and I said, "You know, I'd like to build a show around this painting and sort of unpacking those words."

>> BOWEN: Has it taken you a long time to get to those words in thinking about yourself?

>> Yeah, I mean, I think of myself as somebody who's always very much open to shifting and in tandem with popular culture.

You know, I kind of, that's part of my fascination, is how we're impacted by the culture around us and what we contribute towards it and kind of how we negotiate our space in between all of that.

Probably, if you talked to me ten years ago, I may have felt less comfortable with those words.

But I think as I've gotten older and where I have placed myself, where I've decided to put down roots, these words are the words that are maybe on the cusp of what maybe we're all hoping happens next.

>> BOWEN: How about your interaction with space?

When I spoke with curator Sarah Montross, she was very much talking about that and how you filled that space, you do fill that space right now at the deCordova, and people love it.

People are Instagramming, they're interacting.

It, it is resonating deeply with them.

So how about the magnitude of your work and what it does to its environment?

>> You see, now, the thing about the fringe cubes is, they were built onsite.

And the works on paper that are there, which I, I really love, and they both mark a really big shift for me.

So they're not things that I've done before.

I saw the works on paper framed for the first time once they were hung on the wall.

So that exhibition was really in planning and in my imagination.

I've been working really hard over the past, probably, really, I think, three or four years.

Because I'm really known for handcraft, you know, and these kind of very intimate objects.

But it's challenging to kind of, and maybe even a little exhausting, to think about large exhibitions filled with, like, small, intimate objects.

And so starting to think about space and the kind of environmental, atmospheric qualities of the work and trying to materialize them in different ways, which has been going on consciously for now about two or three years, is really how the fringe cubes arrived.

Fringe in, you know, for instance, pow wow dance regalia, it's not the main subject.

It's a kind of supporting role.

Like, it's what hangs off of a dance shawl and moves in the air when someone is dancing.

And I think the idea of, like, reversing what's oftentimes seen on the periphery, making it, like, the central subject, to me is something that, it's, like, it's honoring it, it's celebrating it.

And then to do it at this scale and at this length kind of takes it out of that context altogether.

They're textile-based, you know, you could blow on them and they'll move.

But yet they maintain those, like, hard edges and sharp edges.

So I have to say they actually work better than I would have imagined them working.

Like, they hit everything that I had hoped.

And, you know, it was a challenge to get them done, especially during COVID.

But I'm, I'm thrilled with the, the results.

>> BOWEN: Of course, they evoke Indigenous culture.

How would you describe the, the arc of, of your... ...working with that in your work?

I know you've been asked about it so often, but you didn't have the traditional experience that people might think that you have had.

>> My father was in the service, and I lived overseas, and I lived in cities and suburbs, you know, on the East Coast.

Growing up, I, I never wanted anyone else to be able to take away the fact that I'm Native American.

You know, it's, like, my experience is maybe not the standard, you know, it's not in huge, huge quantities of people with my biography, but it does exist, right?

And for my father, for instance, and mother, the idea of him traveling was really about escaping poverty and wanting to offer his children, like many other families, you know, different options.

And so my upbringing of returning to Mississippi and Oklahoma, always being aware, one, of, you know, conversations of pride, and just, I think probably as an adult is when I started becoming more shocked at how little people were aware of, of Native histories.

And it's something that, you know, I tell people all the time.

If you're a person of color, it doesn't matter what I do.

People will always wonder where I'm from.

People will always wonder where these stories are from.

And so, at some point, rather than trying to pretend to, like, you know, "No, but I'm an artist first.

I'm not Native American, I'm an artist first."

But all of my references initially all came from, like, my grandmothers and growing up with this idea of being different.

And that difference is marked by the words Native American, Choctaw, Cherokee, Indigenous.

I really just try to be honest to who I am in relationship to those words.

And maybe that's where the queer part comes in, because I didn't grow up with an Indigenous queer kind of model to look at, you know?

So that was sort of one that, as an adult, I realized, I'm, like, "Oh, that's an important missing kind of description of, of who we are."

And so there is some degree of, like, self-imposed responsibility about, about who I identify as.

>> BOWEN: I'm listening to you talk about this awareness that you, you have as, as you've grown.

I'm also thinking about a moment I read where you thought about just turning away from art and being an artist.

I think it was about ten or 11 years ago.

>> Yeah.

>> BOWEN: You were going to leave the art world.

Did that need to happen in order for you to be where you are today?

>> I think so, I think, you know, I really had to kind of, like, call out.

Because I think I had opportunities that had I, for instance, wanted to become known as an abstract painter, you know, for instance, who was great with color and who was really good with composition, I probably had some opportunities that I could have done that.

But I knew the stories that I was trying to tell in the abstractions.

And so I was never satisfied with somebody dismissing that story and just wanting to focus on the formal qualities of my work.

I always knew that I was a content-driven artist and person, and I felt like I didn't want to do this if it wasn't going to come together, if I couldn't push the two of them along together.

To me, they're kind of, I can't really have one without the other.

It's, it's what continues...

It's what's opened me up to video, to performance, you know, to painting, sculpture, installation is really, is really that, like, just to push it all along together at the same time.

>> BOWEN: And to have that conviction that you would do what you wanted to do rather than what, what the art world will tell you what you should do, or what it would accept?

>> Yeah-- I think it's what I believed as a kid, you know.

I always believed-- and I know now that there's many different art worlds, and this isn't always true-- but I really believed that artists received the respect for what they believed in and for what they wanted to do.

Like, I believed that was what the possibility of being an artist was.

And so when I wasn't getting that, I was, felt like I was getting sort of half of that, I was just really frustrated by it, and enough to the point of being, like, "Maybe I should be an educator," you know?

"Maybe I should go back and get my Ph.D. and write, become a historian."

The content was always more important to me than, you know, the, the other side of being an artist.

>> BOWEN: Well, Jeffrey Gibson, it has been such a pleasure to speak with you.

Thank you so much for being with us.

>> Absolutely.

Thank you.

♪ ♪ >> BOWEN: And that is all for this edition of Open Studio.

As always you can visit us online at GBH.org/OpenStudio.

And you can follow us on Instagram and Twitter, @OpenStudioGBH.

I'm @TheJaredBowen.

We leave you now with images from the book Loving: A Photographic History of Men in Love, which documents couples from the 1850s to the 1950s.

I'm Jared Bowen, thanks for watching.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪