Artist Interview | Chanel Thervil
Chanel Thervil is a Haitian American artist and educator living in Roxbury, MA.
She earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Painting at Pace University and a Master's Degree in Art Education at Massachusetts College of Art and Design.
She’s also an activist and community leader, challenging the traditional definition of a fine artist in terms of both her output and her process. Her portraits, painted onto plywood bases, are the result of a collaborative effort where she refers to herself as a “vessel for the way [her subject] wants to tell their story.” Recent projects include her Quarantine Self-Care Series, The 2020 Public Space Invitational, a 500-foot mural in Nubian Square with Black Market, and Warm and Fuzzy Feels at the Children’s Museum. Thervil was one of 2019’s ARTery 25, WBUR’s list of Millennials of color impacting Boston’s arts and culture scene.
Follow Chanel on Instagram @chanelthervil.
art_works: Can you talk about the kind of work you do?
Chanel Thervil: I am a mixed media artist, and I am an educator. I would say the bulk of my work revolves around social practice and getting people to reflect on existential questions, social justice issues, and life in general.
a_w: What drew you to portraits in the first place?
CT: Well that is all really wrapped up in why I became an artist to begin with. I was born in Miami, but I was raised in Brooklyn, New York. I was really hungry to see artwork that featured people that looked like me or my family members or people in my neighborhood. And, the only times that I saw artwork like that, it was always tied to narratives of slavery. And that never really sat right with me. I definitely understand that slavery is a very important part of the history of Black people in this country and at the same time, that’s only a fraction of our story. I was always really hungry to see images of Black people that were joyful and filled with positive affirmations of their beauty. I ended up making a lot of portraits of people that I knew: friends, folks in my neighborhood, people that I worked with before in different capacities. The portraits that I have made are of people that I know and have met in real life.
a_w: I love your process of getting to know your subjects…you’re infusing life into portraits in a way that doesn’t feel static.
CT: Yeah, with my portrait work, I am a vessel for the way that that person wants to tell their story. So it’s only right to have conversations with folks and to ask them questions. I use those conversations in addition to reference photos of the person as fuel for the design.
a_w: Is there any more you can say about the meaning behind your work?
CT: Well at the core of what I am doing I just want people to reflect, empathize, and see the humanity in people that are different from them.
a_w: And that comes across so clearly. I feel like that’s one of the core things that draws anyone to visual art.
CT: One kind of an outgrowth of that effort has been a passion project I have been working on called Quarantine Self-Care Portrait Series. It started at the beginning of quarantine because I just felt really overwhelmed by what was happening. I wanted to talk to fellow creatives about how they were managing living life amidst COVID and navigating self-care among all of the calamity of the world. Through this portrait series, I essentially interview people. I ask them to do some short writing about what self-care actually looks like for them during this time. As someone who grew up really hungry to see not only Black artists’ work, but also see what being a Black artist could look like in practice, I have made a point to create behind-the-scenes videos where people who are interested in the work can actually watch videos of me and the process of making the portraits. They also get to hear about how I made the color choices, and how I decided what to do with the composition.
a_w: To me, that shows how adaptable artists can be during these unprecedented times – to still foster a sense of community and still connect people through art. It's just not necessarily in the traditional way.
CT: Yeah, and I think that it's exciting to see that there are larger organizations thinking about nontraditional connections to art as well. Another project that I just wrapped up was with the Department of New Urban Mechanics through the Boston Mayor’s Office. They did this call for art a couple of months ago for the Public Space Invitational 2020, and I was one of the six artists chosen. Essentially the goal of that invitational is to get different Boston neighborhoods interacting with nature as a way to improve their quality of life. So they paired each artist with a community garden. I got lucky enough to be paired with a community garden in my neighborhood, El Jardín de la Amistad. It was a way for me to learn more about El Jardín, and it was also a chance for me to interview the gardeners and use our conversations for the design inspiration of fifteen terracotta planters. After customizing the planters based on the interviews with the gardeners, I then partnered with City Natives to actually put seedlings into those planters. People who live in Boston signed up to get a free planter and a free plant.
a_w: I think we're so aligned on this, just this notion of art in the community, artists being leaders in the community, and art lifting up a community. I mean, I just love that this project allowed you to do all that, to use your experience and your perspective.
CT: I think a place to look to as an example of a community that is doing that themselves is the Black Market. I was also one of the artists a part of the Black Lives Matter mural that was created on Washington Street in Nubian Square. The Black Market made the whole thing possible. They also hired Lee and Mar (Lee Beard and Paul "Mar" Chapman) to be the lead artists. So that was really awesome to be able to help work on a public artwork in my neighborhood under their direction! And that doesn’t happen very often. It’s so rare to be an artist that doesn't get called to go somewhere else and make art.
It’s so rare to be an artist that doesn't get called to go somewhere else and make art.
a_w: Switching gears, but along the lines of getting called somewhere to make art – there was just a piece in The New York Times about the rush to hire black artists in the wake of June’s protests – with the result that those artists feel tokenized and used. Have you experienced that at all recently?
CT: I don't know what it is that leads folks to assume that Black artists don’t have critical thinking skills. It’s very clear that right now there are a lot of organizations, entities, and businesses looking for the most exciting, hot, Black artists to do a collaboration with immediately so that they can have the optics and that illusion of solidarity. Black artists are not foolish enough to not see that tokenism and that exploitation. A way to get out of that exploitive place is to really partner with a Black artist or Black community in a way that shows a long term investment or commitment.
a_w: For sure, I think that totally makes sense. And also, going back to this notion of trust and autonomy, trust the community like this initiative in Nubian Square to execute their vision and fund it fairly. It can’t be “charity” – it’s that an artist engagement can achieve a level of social impact that these companies say they want to have.
CT: Yeah, becoming a partner or a sponsor shows the long term investment because you’re showing that you trust the people in the neighborhood to organize themselves. And they have the capacity, the know-how, the skills. I feel like people assume that if you come from a certain neighborhood the reason why things aren’t happening for you in that neighborhood is because you lack capacity, or you lack intelligence, or you lack the skills. No, we’re lacking money to execute our visions, that's really all that it is. It would be great to see more folks show their support for the Nubian Square Public Art Initiative because it embodies that kind of investment that has a positive impact for everyone it will touch.
a_w: That’s so true. The article mentions that a lot of Black creators have been made to be the face of a campaign but then at the same time underpaid for what they would have paid a different kind of artist, or influencer, or creative outside of this movement. I feel like this kind of narrative - being exposed and people coming forward saying, “this is not okay, I am not willing to be tokenized, or exoticized” - maybe wouldn’t have happened a few months ago. Maybe that's the one silver lining of all the tragedy and pain.
CT: And I would also like to add the difference is that these stories are being amplified now. Because since I started being an artist, I have had these conversations with other Black artists. It’s not that these conversations weren’t happening. The reality is raising your voice about some of these issues comes at a cost to the Black artist. Because then it's like “Ok am I going to be blackballed by certain organizations now that I’ve said this? Is it going to sever some ties that I have interpersonally if I say this?” Nobody wants to be punished for highlighting the ways that they are being disenfranchised and devalued when our white counterparts aren’t experiencing that at the same intensity.
a_w: What do you see as the ideal way to engage?
CT: Start with the budget. Declare part of your budget for consulting. Find black artists that you are interested in forging a relationship with and pay them a consulting fee to have a conversation about what they can offer and what they feel needs are in their communities. Start there. Honor their time, honor their expertise, honor their capacity.
a_w: Absolutely. You recently became a full-time artist. What is the biggest challenge you’re facing?
CT: I’m still very much a Black woman with a youthful face, and as disappointing as it is to know that this can have negative impacts on my experience in the world, it most definitely impacts my experience as an artist. The double whammy of racism and sexism in the arts, especially on the business side, is a lot to endure. I’ve been tokenized. I’ve had situations where people refused to honor my rates or approached me with no budget. I’ve had situations where I had to demand that contracts were edited or I wouldn’t sign. The fact that I have to do so much of that advocacy, in addition to just doing the work as an artist, is really exhausting! So I would say that being a Black woman artist continues to be a challenge – especially in the wake of all of these organizations and businesses and entities doing a mad dash for collaborations with Black artists. I have to ask myself: What feels like it has integrity? Do the interactions I’m having with people of this entity feel genuine? What feels like it has an impact that I’m comfortable with? What feels like it’s realistic for me time-wise? In spite of all that, I love my Blackness and believe in the good that art can do. So I have to keep moving forward and dancing around obstacles as they come.