Essay 3- damali ayo

As addressed in Kwon, “new genre public art- visual art that uses both traditional and nontraditional media to communicate and interact with a broad and diversified audience about issues directly relevant to their lives- is based on engagement” (105). Damali ayo’s work fits those exact guidelines. Her website‘s success, “rent-a- negro” is based on the participation of its audience. In damali ayo’s digital performance and dialogic art piece “rent-a-negro,” ayo assumes that every white person currently living in the United States is a racist and uses their ‘whiteness’ to his/her advantage. Her work directly implies that whether one has participated in her satirical rental of a Negro or simply just viewed the website, they have used black people. Ayo presents a lose/lose situation to her audience because while she succeeds in bringing about awareness and getting people to think, she herself appears as a racist, despite her claims otherwise.

The content of the piece involves the satirical portrayal of an actual website where one can “rent a negro.” At the top of the simply colored black, red, yellow, and blue page five links are titled, “Home, About, Pricing, FAQs, and Rent Now!” The “About” section gives real feedback from satisfied customers persuading the viewer and potential customer why renting a negro is a completely feasible action with comments such as “My friends still ask ‘how is that black friend of yours?’” The “About” section also gives some background history of the rentee (damali ayo) and her lifetime of experience addressing questions in white situations about her hair, culture, politics, and history. Pricing is detailed with specific prices for different events including: corporate/business rate: $350 per hour, personal/private/individual rate: $200 per hour, non-profit rate: $275 per hour, drop-in/appearances: $100 each, informational/high question volume: add $100 per hour, and emergencies/short notice (24 hour window): add $150 per hour. There are also additional services that cost extra such as: touch her hair: $25 each time, touch her skin: $35 each time, compare your skin tone to hers: $50, dance lessons for the rhythm-challenged: $250 per hour and many others. The FAQ section ensures the renter that the “rent a negro” process is a smooth and easy process that will remain confidential so that “no one knows you are renting.” Finally the rental form appears under the link “Rent Now!” complete with credit card icons, asking a range of information including one’s basic contact information, previous experience with black people, and reasons for choosing this service. Automatically under the question “Have you used black people before?” the yes bubble is filled in and same with the question “Did you pay or were your services rendered in kind (donated)?” These questions automatically assume that every white person has used a black person to their white advantage and to the fact that their ancestors may or may have not been involved in slavery.

Damali ayo makes herself out to be a racist because she does not accommodate the fact that being white does not automatically mean that one’s ancestors were slave owners. She also makes it impossible for her intended audience (white people) who are also participants in her project to (not appear) as the white privilege. The participants in this piece included not only anyone that followed through with the request by either filling out a rental form (white people) or submitting a resume to the website to be considered as a rental (black people), but people who simply out of curiosity viewed the website in it’s entirety. Catanese explains:
completing the rental form produces an implicit admission of possessing some degree of white privilege, whether or not one believes herself to have an embodied experience of this. Suddenly, the FAQ ‘How do I rent a Negro?’ becomes not a procedural but an ethical question that raises that stakes of the entire project demanding a very personal decision by each visitor (711).

Ayo not only intends people to think, but she demands it. She uses satire because “you want that humor but you want that sting. You want that ‘Oh, I feel sick to my stomach feeling,” ayo also recalls Jonathon Swift’s “A Modest Proposal” where Swift suggested in order to tackle poverty, why not eat the children? (Davila 2). Ayo succeeds in getting people to think because her audience’s reactions range from downright anger to confusion to even just playing along. She hopes, “it makes people take another look at the way they approach people” and says. “Many black people have come up to me and said it really sums up a lot of their experiences” (Robinson 2). Yes, damali ayo and others alike may have had similar experiences of white people touching their hair and asking about the care and maintenance, but this does not mean that every white person has taken part in the subjugation of black people. Ayo’s website automatically assumes this and excludes opposing opinions.

Damali ayo’s intentions are succeeded through people’s differing reactions to the website regarding either a relation to ayo’s experiences or anger in her audacity. In “A Day in the Life of: damali ayo” she explains how she “would often be the only person of color or one of few African-Americans at a party and strangers would make a point of asking her about her opinion about O.J. Simpson or news stories with racial overtones.” Does this particular scenario spell out racism? Damali ayo could have been the only black person at a social event because according to the 2000 Census only 12.3 percent of the U.S. population identified themselves as black or African American, explaining why there may be fewer black people at parties or social functions.
Ayo explains that she doesn’t intend to make fun of people as much as she wants to show “how absurd interracial interactions can be” (Davila 2). Although despite the fact that these interracial relations may be ridiculous, “a failure to recognize race is self-contradictory” as Neil Gotanda’s famous quote states. There are differences among races. Different hair, different heritage, different history, different opinions and so on. Interracial relations will continue to be illogical until there is an acceptance among both races that these differences will foster a curiosity. This idea retreats back to the fact that ayo’s intended audience is white people. She wants white people to accept the history of slavery and that it still exists today. She makes the entire idea of race a lose/lose situation for white people. Two options are given in reality, accept these differences among races, thus ultimately and naturally fostering curiosity or curious questions or fail to recognize the idea of race.

When all of the above are taken into consideration, it is implied that all white people are racists and that all white people use their ‘whiteness’ to their advantage. It is also implied that all white people are ancestors of those that owned slaves, when according to the U.S. census report for that last year before the Civil War, there were nearly 27 million whites in the country, eight million of them lived in the slaveholding states. The census also concluded that there were fewer than 385,000 individuals who owned slaves. This means that even if all slaveholders had been white, that would amount to only 1.4 percent of whites in the country or 4.8 percent of southern whites owning one or more slaves (Grooms). Additionally, she does not consider that there were also some black slave owners.

Finally, Kwon’s question on page 117 of One Place After Another: Site- Specific Art and Locational Identity of “What criteria of success and failure are posed now, especially to the artists, in this major reconfiguration of public art that moves aesthetic practice closer to social services?” directly relates to damali ayo’s work. She expects her art to not only create a reaction from her audience as all artists strive to do, but is striving to serve the public by forcing white people to admit up to their mistakes. More so, she is working to serve the black community by forcing white people to admit that they are responsible for slavery and ultimately the racial tensions that exist today.

Damali ayo’s main underlying intention is for white people to understand that racial tensions and “absurd” interracial relationships still exits today due to slavery. She wants understandings, apologies, maybe even reparations. This constant idea that the United States and white people have not taken responsibility for slavery is not true. In fact, numerous states have issued formal apologies including Virginia who in February marked the 400th anniversary of the founding of Jamestown and “expressed profound regret’ for the state's sanctioning of the institution of slavery” (Gershman 1). Since then, Maryland, North Carolina, and Alabama have also accepted blame for their contribution to slavery (Gershman 1).

Damali ayo may claim that she is not a racist, but her work “rent-a-negro” and the underlying intentions of her work show otherwise. Her rental form with her pre-conceived answers assumes that each and every white person has used black people to their advantage. She also deems every white person responsible for racial tensions due to slavery, forcing that the white community and the United States admit up to their mistakes, when in fact they already have. Damali ayo’s “rent-a-negro” portrayal of new genre public art brings hypocritical awareness to the community.