Strange Fire

Q&A: André Duane Ramos-Woodard

By Hamidah Glasgow | July 22, 2021

Raised in the Southern states of Tennessee and Texas, André Ramos-Woodard (they/ them/ theirs) is a contemporary artist who uses their work to emphasize the experiences of the underrepresented: celebrating the experience of marginalized peoples while accenting the repercussions of contemporary and historical discrimination. Working in a variety of media—including photography, text, and illustration—Ramos-Woodard creates collages that convey ideas of communal and personal identity centralized within internal conflicts. - Kat Davis

HG: Andre, Thank you for taking the time for this interview. We’ve been working together through the Center, but there is so much I don’t know about you. Let’s start with how you came to the arts.

ADRW: Thank you for the opportunity, Hamidah! Strange Fire has been a huge inspiration and resource for my practice: I remember looking through the interviews and artists on your website for inspiration before we even met! I’m so excited to be in dialogue with y’all.

So I loved art for as long as I can remember, really, but my family and their support helped bring me to the arts. My first distinct memory of art making happened back when I was in the first grade. I redrew this picture I’d found in a random Animal Planet picture book at my granny’s house. The photo I redrew was one of a wolf and its pup—ya know, one of those cheesy but cute photographs of animals that you’d see on Flickr’s “Explored” page back in the day. Anyways, my mother and grandma were so proud of that drawing that they hung it up on the wall. I remember feeling so happy and affirmed when my loved ones saw something beautiful in my creation, and I think that’s what really solidified it. That little drawing stayed on that wall the entire time that my grandma lived in that house. After that, I just kept drawing things.

In high school, I was introduced to photography. I took my first course when I moved from TN to TX my sophomore year. The traditional art classes were already full so I only had photography and P.E. to choose between (an easy decision, might I add. You will not catch me running around a gym with them other kiddos. No ma’am.) I hated it so much at first honestly because of the way it was taught—all technique, no artistic exploration. But at the end of the school year I started looking at a bunch of images online that inspired me way more than anything I’d been taught in the class. As soon as I saw the endless potentiality of the art people were making with their cameras, there was no going back. I feel in love with it.   I’ve been hooked on photo ever since then!

HG: There is such a lovely vulnerability about your presence; how do you stay so open and loving in a world that is so difficult? Once you tell me about that, I also want to know where you got your great sense of humor!

ADRW: Giiirl, you are so sweet! You flatter me! I’m so happy that I can give off those vibes to you. I really try my best to be as genuinely me as possible and to care about the world around me those that inhabit it. I also owe that to my family and  the way I was raised. When I was little and my entire family (aunts, uncles, cousins, and more) would get together, there was always so much love, laughter, and straight-up happiness bliss in those environments. I think my personality grew so much as a result of being around my loving kin.

That being said, I know living in this world is tough for most of us. Dealing with societal and personal identity, politics, and our economy paired with one’s own individual hardships can really make day-to-day living completely exhausting. So, I’m constantly questioning how people (myself included) maintain their authenticity.

I definitely owe my sense of humor to my Dad. That man is an incredibly hard worker and can be serious and stern as hell, but he’s also the same person who would come around the corner imitating Donald Duck’s voice before cracking jokes. I swear, my dad can always find a way to make the whole family smile saying something random-ass funny shit. He’s just so damn genuine and charismatic—he inspires me so much.

HG: The work, a mediocre-ass nigga, that you showed at Filter and Redline is incredible. The depth of conversation they attempt with the viewer is admirable. Of course, whether the viewer understands or can go there with you is up to them. I believe that this depth comes from your vulnerable, authentic way of being. Perhaps, also from the pain that you have endured. Do you agree?

ADRW: Thank you so much, Hamidah! Both Filter and Redline are such amazing organizations that I’m so gracious to have had the opportunity of working with (special shout outs to Jennifer Murray and Mark Sink <3). Those shows were the first times “a mediocre-ass nigga” has been shown somewhere where I wasn’t living, so I was happy to share it with an audience that I was completely unfamiliar with.

I do agree that the viewer has a choice in whether or not they wanna dive deep with me, but there are some layers that can’t completely be understood by a viewer unless they check a specific box. There are different access points in the work; some pieces in “a.m.a.n.” are more about Black identity while others speak more to dealing with mental health. If you’re Black, it may be easier for you to read into “An Abstraction of 2 Niggas”, and if you struggle with anxiety, you may be more drawn to “This is a piece about me having an anxiety attack.”.

There’s something very real about shared experience, ya know? Shared love and shared pain are so real, especially the latter when it comes to the subjects I explore. I’ve met a few homies that have told me they had a visceral response to some of my work because of their own experience, and even if that response is rooted in trauma or pain, that sort of understanding by another human being feels good. I feel listened to… I don’t know how to completely describe it, but when someone tells me that a piece I made about my personal experience resonates with them I recognize that there’s a myriad of people on this planet who get what it’s like to endure the crappier parts of existence. The struggle. There’s something enlightening about that sense of community.

This is a personal investigation of my experience as a Black person with anxiety and depression. That simple sentence cannot convey the complexities of my experience struggling with the various hurdles that come with my lived experience. And I know I'm not the only one. I fight for our visibility.

The sooner we realize that our existence as BIPOC people in general, and Black people specifically [in these contexts], was tremendously altered by colonialism and the racial hierarchy that the white man created, the sooner we can escape the toxic ideology that brighter skin implicates an entitlement to a better life. - Ramos-Woodard, Artist Statement for a mediocre-ass nigga

HG: Let’s take anime, graphic novels, and your thesis work. This isn’t my world, so I’m gonna ask you to tell me how these play a part in your life and artwork.

ADRW: Hahaha, you tellin’ me you don’t watch no Samurai Champloo or Fooly Cooly, Hamidah?? Jk... but both of those are really good so I mean if you wanna give ‘em a try no one would blame you. :)

Yo, I've just always been into anime, comics, and cartoons. From the old stuff I’d watch on Toonami, like Inuyasha and Dragonball, to the new stuff I watch like Demon Slayer and Land of the Lustrous: anime is such an astonishing way to escape from the real world! It’s a really powerful form of art, and I think I recognized that subconsciously from a very young age. I mean, the boring ol’ real world didn’t have anyone doing anything fantastically inspirational to me. I was all about the people throwing out energy beams, summoning giant frogs, and sending people to the Shadow Realm.

And since I tend to make work that comes from personal experiences and feelings, it just made sense when I started adding those sorts of characters and drawings into my photographs. My thesis work for grad school, “BLACK SNAFU: Situation Niggas All Fucked Up,” juxtaposes photographs that more factually depict the (sometimes just my) Black experience with drawings from American cartooning that depict Black people. This evolved from my love for cartooning and comic characters combined with the heightened recognition of anti-Blackness in the United States last summer.

After starting my research about Black cartooning in American history, it wasn’t long before I uncovered the repulsive collection of minstrel cartoons dubbed “The Censored Eleven”—a group of Warner Bros. cartoons that were banned in the 1960s due to their extremely racist depictions of Black people. I decided to redraw caricatures from these cartoons and add them into the various works in “BLACK SNAFU,” allowing me not only to call attention to the ways Black people have been stereotyped, but also to reclaim and use them for my own vocabulary. But after a while, I also started including more contemporary, pro-Black cartoon characters like Huey Freeman from The Boondocks and DC Comics’ Bumblebee ‘cause girl, I needed some positive illustrations up in there to play with, too!

HG: Andre, what is next for you?

ADRW: Bay-bee, I’m tryna figure that out! I’ve just moved back to Beaumont, TX after graduating from The University of New Mexico so first and foremost I’m tryna regain my footing. Grad school ain’t no joke!

I do have a couple things planned though: my friend Jennifer Marion and I started an art space called “the space in between” in order to highlight underrepresented artists so that will definitely keep us busy. Along with getting back into the groove of making work, I’ve got a show coming up at The Kansas City Arts Coalition in August so that should be fun! Last but not least, I gotta get on my Bayonetta grind so I can take some names at local Smash Bros tournaments.

HG: Thank you!

ADRW: Thank you!

All images © André Duane Ramos-Woodard