Khalif Tahir Thompson

Interview by Kiara Cristina Ventura

Khalif immediately offered me coffee as I stepped into their vibrant, plant-filled Yale studio. While I sat on their velvet couch and drank from the warm cup with gratitude, I realized that the yellows, blues, and greens emulating from their seven-foot paintings spilled seamlessly into the physical studio space. It was then that I knew that this artist deeply contemplates the essence of comfort, interiors, domestic space, and the meaning of home.

Born and raised in Brooklyn, Thompson sources inspiration from dozens of family albums by the box load. This precious archive holds images taken throughout the entire 20th century, chronicling both of their maternal grandparents’ journeys from the Deep South to the Northeast during the Great Migration. Their ancestry is specifically rooted in early North and South Carolina African American communities. Meditating on their lineage, Khalif places the selected photos on their studio walls for reference. The photos show family members making their house alive; they are gathering, hugging, smiling, talking, posing, or resting in living rooms, dining rooms, and bedrooms.

Thompson gives new meaning to the old phrase, “if these walls could talk…” Their current practice involves translating images of family from the 1980s and ’90s into portrait paintings, and intentionally altering details to invite intuition and experimentality into the process. Thompson layers the paintings with mediums such as oil pastels, chalk, spray paint, foil, wax, fabric, leather, newsprint, stencil, stamps, and handmade paper, thus animating the interiors with these textured details. In addition to abstracting the domestic environment with material, Thompson uses improvisation to add a rhythm of numbers and letters throughout the scenes and disorient the viewer, making them question the imagery rather than take it for granted. This amalgamation of layers, from texture to text, comes together to convey scenes of family gathering, rest, comfort, and pure quality time. In this ritual of recreating images, Thompson’s artistic lens is a vehicle for telling their family history—thus reimagining how one can transcend time, powerfully connecting with one’s legacy, and ultimately one’s sense of self, via artmaking.

KCV: Who is Khalif? How would you describe yourself?

KTT: I'm a comfort. I am a caretaker in a lot of ways and I'm a caring person more than anything. I'm a little bit cuckoo. I'm very layered. I don't want to say complex to sound pretentious, but I feel like we're all complex as human beings. I think there's a lot of different sides to me, a lot of different facets. I think I'm an all around positive spirit. Very, very light and very light in love.

KCV: Love that. I see the home a lot in your work. If I were to step into your childhood home, what would I see? And what kind of energy was in the house? I'm guessing there were many of your siblings and kids running around?

KTT: I was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York: Canarsie, last step on the L Train, over in Glenwood Projects. I have four siblings. One of them is my twin sister. I have two older brothers and one oldest sister. We come from a very artistic background. The house was definitely chaos. There are two different experiences, at this point, to my adolescence and childhood. This came from the passing of my father. I lost my father at age 11, in 2007.

Before he was sick, there were my siblings in the house, lots of running around, lots of fighting with my twin sister, lots of DVDs, VHS, and TV, and all types of crafty things going on. My mom was always very eccentric. She put us in a bunch of public after-school programs in public school. I took capoeira, I remember tap dancing and chorus. We also did tributes to the ancestors. Coney Island. Lots of trips to the beach and lots of drumming and dancing.

But after my father passed, a lot of dysfunction took place. Right at the crux of high school was really difficult because of instability. I talk a lot about it with my therapist now. Those were really rough years and there was a lot of deconstruction in my life.

I was in a shelter, and I was homeless at 16. That was a really traumatic but impactful experience for me. I've always been very motivated, ambitious, and involved in the arts. I knew what I was good at, for lack of a better way to say it. I knew that answer in the back of my head. I didn't know where I would be today, but I knew where I would need to go to get to where I wanted to be. I went to LaGuardia High School of Music and Art.

KCV: Wow, you have a powerful story. And that's a flex! LaGuardia is known for cultivating talent.

KTT: It's a flex. I got myself in there. I did the research. After my dad passed, I just started getting this bug. I had this real feeling that I needed to turn a really bad situation into a good one. When I heard about LaGuardia, I was very self-motivated and I got myself together. I got a little portfolio going. I had all types of drawings in there and I auditioned. I got in. That was one of the proudest moments of my life at that age, because I always just wanted to be a serious artist. That's what always guided me, more than academics.

When I got into high school, suddenly, I was in the city. I wasn't in Brooklyn. So, it was very fish-out-of-water. And mind you, this was after my dad had passed, so a lot had changed at home. I didn't have supplies, I didn't have lunch money. I leaned into my rebel around that point... I was a teenager. I didn’t have many of the things that I needed. But I always had a sketchbook and I always kept drawing and trying to do something meaningful with my drawings.

Sunday Kind of Love, 2022

Oil, pastel, handmade paper (kozo, abaca, cotton), papyrus, magazine, newsprint on canvas

66 x 78 x 3 in.

KCV: Can you tell me more about that moment where you decided, "I want to be a painter." You were like, "Yep, this is what I do."

KTT: Definitely, it was survival. It was my junior year of high school in 2011. My first painting was of Amy Winehouse. It was this little tiny thing, but it was my most proud achievement. I remember having an affinity towards portraiture. I was already into portraits, celebrities, and pop cultural figures. I was really interested in the stories behind them. I remember wanting to do honorifics. I loved Times Square caricature work. I used to be amazed at how they draw. I'd love to just go there and watch them draw. I thought that's what I wanted to do, actually. But that portrait of Amy was my first work that I did for advanced painting in class, even though I had never touched a paint brush before. And it was with oil. I just took to oil. I used to carry my canvases on the train and get paint on everything, all the seats. I'm sure somebody sat in some oil paint because I didn't have a portfolio case.

KCV: So you used to bring your painting on the train? Wow.

KTT: Yes, the actual painting. Like a crazy person.

KCV: On the canvas, just like…

KTT: Yeah, yeah. No, seriously.

KCV: That's definitely some New York shit. So dope.

KTT: From that age, around 16, I was kind of like, "Okay, I'll just continue and see where it takes me."

"My first painting was of Amy Winehouse. It was this little tiny thing, but it was my most proud achievement. I remember having an affinity towards portraiture. I was already into portraits, celebrities, and pop cultural figures. I was really interested in the stories behind them. I remember wanting to do honorifics. I loved Times Square caricature work. I used to be amazed at how they draw."

KCV: Amazing. So, fast forwarding to the present, we are here in your studio. How do you navigate your studio practice? Even just the details—is there a certain time of day that you come into the studio?

KTT: My practice has grown a lot over the last three years. In terms of my methodology, my use of material, my subject matter, all those things have really been becoming more intentional, guided, and intuited towards things that I value. As far as my studio practice, I try to be an early bird, but usually when I get into the studio early, I'm sitting down on this couch, looking at YouTube, or watching Real Housewives of Atlanta or Flavor of Love. And I'm completely not doing any work.

A lot of my juices and my great ideas, or when things go smoothly in the studio, actually happen at night. It's a night owl thing. For some reason, I'll sit down and stall up until 10:00 PM and then I'm like, "Oh, okay." I definitely do have adult ADHD. So that's part of it, probably. My philosophy is that I want to enter this space comforted and feel inspired to create something beautiful. I'm very concerned with beauty. I'm concerned with livelihood and experience. I'm concerned with inviting viewers to really enter a work and get lost. I think one of the great things about figuration portraiture that I've always loved, and that’s true of the artists that have inspired me—like Lucian Freud, Alice Neel, Henry Taylor, and Lynette Yiadom-Boakye—is that it always told stories, not just about the subjects, but about the artists themselves.

I think that art has a way of revealing you to yourself, if that makes sense. You're confronted with what you find important and what your legacy is. I always go to the studio thinking about my legacy, which is why it's overwhelming at times. When I'm most generative and inspired is when I'm just thinking about all the myriad ways of existing and telling a story. That's why I love documentaries and I love different film shots of people in spaces, living in contemplative thought. Those kinds of images are open and expansive. They have abstract narratives that speak to how we know people. I was just talking with Walter Price yesterday about how you never really know people, all sides of people, you know what I'm saying?

"I think one of the great things about figuration portraiture that I've always loved, and that’s true of the artists that have inspired me—like Lucian Freud, Alice Neel, Henry Taylor, and Lynette Yiadom-Boakye—is that it always told stories, not just about the subjects, but about the artists themselves. I think that art has a way of revealing you to yourself, if that makes sense. You're confronted with what you find important and what your legacy is."

When The Birds Fly Overhead, 2021

Oil, pastel, handmade paper (kozo, abaca, cotton), papyrus, magazine, newsprint on canvas

48 x 68 x 2 in.

KCV: I’m thinking about so many things. I think what's beautiful is that with painters especially, we're literally seeing through your eyes as a viewer. If this was all in a gallery show, we're literally looking through your gaze and connecting to you and finding out more about your identity as an artist through that. Something that I remember from when I took a documentary class during the time I studied journalism is that the professors always said, "Let the scenes breathe." They were like, "You don't need to do a million shots. Let the scene breathe and let the viewer sit in that moment." And I think something that's beautiful with painting is that you're sitting in that stillness in front of a person and you're just there with them.

And there's also a lot of times where you see these really cinemagraphic movies, when I think of... I know Belly is a little violent, but when I look at Belly, I'm like, "Yo, that scene right there, the colors, the palettes, that is a photo."

KTT: Totally.

KCV: That can be a painting. I think there's a lot of moments, even in life, where you're looking outside… You're looking at a palette and you're like, "This could be a photo. This could be a painting."

KTT: It's so easy to document now. Some of my past critiques here at Yale, from faculty and peers, talk about that relationship between painting, photography, the archive, and historical imagery versus imagery created today. Composition-wise, material-wise, and texture-wise, all these different things that are used in photography and in painting can be interrelated.

In constructing these images and making these paintings, I'm thinking a lot more as a painter because of the hectic viscerality of the material…of the substrate, the surface, the touch, and the emotive qualities, which I think in certain instances, can be seen in photography. Painting from life versus painting from an image might have their differences, but I feel like a lot of the time are very related.

There's an expansion of space which I think has to do with the treatment, palette, and material. The added stencils and the different quotational kind of elements transport you to a different realm. I know subconsciously that family albums are also known as archives. At the end of the day, it’s a historical record that many people can relate to in the sense that we all have family, for the most part, and a record of that. And so, when you see a family image of someone else, you instantly make connections to yourself. That evokes empathy. It doesn't matter your background, you immediately have that connection, no matter that they're Black figures. I think one of the most important things I've experienced with my work is that people forget that they're all Black figures. It's in your face, but it's something that you don't think about right away, which I think is great because it focuses more on the experiences and the human behind our skin, you know?

KCV: Right, right. I love how you are highlighting the human experience behind the visuals. I notice looking in your studio that you do have family photos around and that you use them as references. Can you tell me more about how you translate these photos into painting? I see that you add texture to the painting, it's not just oil, you also have collage within the work, fabric, paper...is this an intuitive process?

KTT: It's polarizing because part of using this kind of imagery requires looking at my family archive, which is over 10,000 images. I don't think that I'll be using this imagery for the rest of my career, meaning that I do choose images that have significance to me, just in terms of my experience of them as pictures. I see the potential for painting in a lot of these different images, but I combed through thousands. And so, part of the process for me is being able to intuit and remain open towards possibility when looking at the images, seeing them for what they literally are, which might be my grandmother next to her dresser and a vase of flowers. I love that as a concept alone for a painting. I think that's beautiful.

I respect the composition of the image and where the collage, fabric, different papers, and the handmade paper come in, those are areas for invention. Those are areas that can transport this image into a painting language that I believe is impactful, which is a myriad of different techniques and interests in terms of art history and in terms of my ability.

The Last Rose of Summer, 2021

Oil, pastel, raw silk, leather, suede, handmade paper, fabric, denim, newsprint on canvas

60 x 60 x 2 in.

"I see the potential for painting in a lot of these different images, but I combed through thousands. And so, part of the process for me is being able to intuit and remain open towards possibility when looking at the images, seeing them for what they literally are, which might be my grandmother next to her dresser and a vase of flowers. I love that as a concept alone for a painting. I think that's beautiful."

KCV: Can you tell me about the size too? Because these are really big.

KTT: This one behind here is 90 inches by 60 inches. A lot are 90 by 60, and these three small ones are around 46 by 46.

KCV: That was the first thing I felt coming into the studio…how immersive your paintings are. These painting sizes are really, really intentional. I know I'm looking at family photos. But family photos are usually seen on a smaller scale in an album. Seeing these photos on a large scale, that's a unique experience.

KTT: I think one thing that I've come to as far as using scale as a device, and being intentional with that, is that it's a very different experience for reference. I'm currently investigating my interest in light and composition. When you think about a photograph, it's merely a record—it's a capture of light, a time of day, and a moment in history.

Painting is a record, in that way, too. The fun part is that you can change things. You can do that with collage, and it's just another imaginative, inventive approach. When you combine these things, you're taking things from life, from light, from record, and you're merging them in this way that, using scale, creates a completely different, very visceral experience. One thing I guess I would not want to do is focus on the domesticity of the images rather than the further expansion of these spaces. I think that's where the interior/exterior imagery comes from. Usually I create these landscapes—open, boyish, idealistic landscapes of a blue, sunny day. I've started looking at landscapes and clouds and skies as a signifier of that act of looking out.

Eretz Zavat Chalav D'vash, 2021

Oil, handmade paper, papyrus, newsprint on canvas

72 x 64 x 2 in.

KCV: I'm going to ask a deep question.

KTT: Of course.

KCV: I think each artist has an individual intention behind their work as to why they make art. And when I think of painters, especially those dealing with themes of home, of memory, family…to paint your family members is something very vulnerable. It’s super personal to show these people to the world, right?

KTT: Yeah, mm-hmm.

KCV: Family is a complicated subject. It could get really deep, really quick. You see your family members for who they are, especially as an adult, right? So, I wonder, do you see your process as a type of healing? And when you paint them, are you honoring them? What is your intention when you are painting your family?

KTT: Yeah, that's a great question. I've been given the time and space to really exist and contend with these images for their literalness, in terms of them being my history, and it is honorific. I think about bringing these very personal family images and records of my ancestry into this institution and reproducing them through my lens and directing their gaze and their relatability. And what I'm giving, as well as what I’m not giving, is a way of increasing visibility for this type of experience, for these types of images.

I have a responsibility always to pay respects, celebrate, and honor, but also to ask questions and be contemplative. Even though these images are from my own family, I wasn't around for a lot of them either. A lot of this is new to me, in terms of my exploration as an adult, having these albums, having access. An important thing to note is that my grandmother passed a year before my father, in 2006. She was a collector herself, which is where I think I got it from.

KCV: I see.

KTT: These photos were in storage since 2006.

KCV: Yeah, that's a long time.

KTT: That is part of what I'm understanding my work to be now, why I'm doing this kind of work, why I'm choosing this subject matter. Because there's a lot of different subject matter I've worked with. I've worked with public figures, friends, and family. But right now, I’ve been working from these family images. I think it has to do with a bit of a lost history that I had, a lost experience.

My father and my grandmother were, in hindsight, very much the connectors of family, and they brought people together. So, due to the fact that they both passed when I was such a young age, I went through a good part of my adolescence and into my adulthood not really knowing much about my own history. It was in the storage, just boxed up for years...

KCV: Wow.

KTT: When my sister got the boxes from Florida, I got every one, I think it was about 11 boxes packed to the rim with frames and pictures and albums. It took me about two days to actually go through everything and see every image. I was lost in that, immersed. It gave me a headache. It was just so much information, so much inspiration. And I instantly started thinking about them as paintings, or the potential for them to be paintings.

And that came from me thinking of my own inspirations, like Kerry James Marshall and Deana Lawson, and people who use Black figuration in different ways in terms of composition and color and form, and how they choose to translate these images. It's part of a history and a lineage. That's where I felt motivated to try and contribute to the Mickalene Thomases in the world, and the Kehinde Wileys, and really insert my own personal story, but through my own vision that is not necessarily derivative of that genre of work exactly.

KCV: That's a beautiful story, to come across those photos, and I can just imagine what those two days were like for you. But also you have that vision of a painter, so the way that you look at images is probably like—

KTT: Totally different.

Siesta On Lexington, 2021

Oil, pastel, chalk, spray paint, foil, wax, fabric, leather, newsprint, stencil, stamp, handmade paper (abaca, cotton) on canvas

66 x 78 x 2 in.

KCV: Exactly, you see the potential. You beautifully balance portraiture, abstraction, text, and numbers. Can you tell me about the floating numbers and letters within your scenes?

KTT: Suddenly, one day, the information just concentrated in my mind that way. I had thought about ordering stencils. I was thinking about ways artists like Kerry James Marshall and Jasper Johns made these expressive works that incorporated something that didn't involve the hand directly. I began simply using letters and numbers that were internal signifiers that contributed to the work’s own language. I thought it was a kind of signature—something I put into the work as a way of expanding the different dimensions of the images. It becomes a thought space, or a contemplative space and a drafting space. I always phrase it like it means nothing at all, but it also can mean so much.

Kiara Cristina Ventura

Kiara Cristina Ventura is a Bronx-native Dominican American writer, independent curator, and owner of the curatorial platform, Processa. Ventura created Processa (formerly ARTSYWINDOW) in 2015 and has since transformed it into her curatorial and media platform. She focuses her work around the narratives of artists, especially those from underrepresented communities in the art world. Connecting with artists and creating spaces of healing are crucial parts of Ventura’s curatorial practice. Ventura often speaks on themes of spirituality, ritual, street culture, intuitive processes, and femininity. She has curated at The Museum of the African Diaspora San Francisco, The Bronx Art Space, Vis Arts Maryland, Penn State University, The Longwood Gallery at Hostos, The Andrew Freedman Home, Reparations Club LA, NXTHVN, and Sean Kelly Gallery. Her writing has appeared in Artforum, Performa Mag, Aperture, Cultured, Teen Vogue, and Latina. She was recently a NXTHVN 2022-23 Curatorial Fellow.