Over a hundred people gathered in the McKnight Art Center on Thursday night to listen to Devan Shimoyama talk about some of his recent projects.
In these projects, Shimoyama uses imagery from pop culture to lift up queer Black men.
“(The art is) a lot of representation of femininity since I was raised in a home full of Black women,” Shimoyama said. “Black women are integral to my kind of foundation.”
In the Ulrich Museum of Art, “Rituals” is currently an exhibit featuring many pieces from Shimoyama’s collection, many of which are reimaginings of tarot cards. Shimoyama said he’s only focusing on the Major Arcana and is close to finishing this project.
“I thought a lot about my own journey and my relationship to ritual and religion within this and my understanding of my practices being a constant searching for and a construction of a mythology,” Shimoyama said. “I thought it would be really interesting to just treat myself in this series as the protagonist (the fool).”
Some of the pieces in this collection take obvious inspiration from the Pamela Colman Smith tarot deck, while others distort the original meanings of the cards to create something more personal.
“I started integrating family members into some of these to represent some of the characters that appear in the Major Arcana that I felt were not the protagonist; they kind of impart wisdom upon the fool,” Shimoyama said.
Throughout these pieces, Shimoyama plays with different themes associated with the cards, how meanings can change based on the orientation of the card or the colors used in each piece.
“I thought a lot about what it means to invert one of the cards … it does change the meaning that is conveyed or read through it, but to have the right side up be inverted, I like to challenge myself with a painting that brings up a question,” Shimoyama said. “I thought there was an interesting duality of these upside down versions of myself.”
Also within these pieces are elements from pop culture. For example, “La Mort,” a reimagining of the death tarot card, features Rihanna’s hand. Shimoyama said he included that piece after accepting that Rihanna was not going to release new music. There are also characters from multiple anime series that Shimoyama likes.
“The Star” is one of the more complex pieces in Shimoyama’s collection. In tarot, the card represents hope and inspiration, and Shimoyama used his knowledge of alternative healing and ritual practices for this piece.
“I thought a lot about the kind of throughlines of these different practices that come from different cultures that manifest differently,” Shimoyama said. “We’re looking at something from the occult, but there’s references to other practices like meditation … you might see some of these things in Catholic churches, yet it’s so present in this type of imagery.”
Shimoyama also talked about other works in his Ulrich exhibit that aren’t a part of the tarot card collection. His other pieces deal with barbershops and the hypermasculinity commonly associated with them and also drag and queerness through the lens of Black men.
“This body of work was inspired by … conversations that I had with other queer Black men, just talking about this kind of feeling the need to recloset oneself or speak in a coded way to navigate the kind of discomfort of the hypermasculinity that inhabits spaces like Black barbershops,” Shimoyama said.
In his barber shop pieces, Shimoyama also points out the exclusion of women and queer people.
“Historically, this type of space has been a place where Black men would convene to plan courses of action, of civil rights movements for example,” Shimoyama said. “But I never felt that kind of male fraternal bonding personally … and certainly have not seen it as a safe space for women or trans, non-binary identifying individuals.”
Other pieces like “Vamperia,” were inspired by films Shimoyama enjoys.
“I employ ideas and inspiration taken from popular culture, cinema, music and drag,” Shimoyama said. “All of those things are really important to me, and they influence what I do directly.”
“Old Dracula” and “Queen of the Damned” were two of the films mentioned. Shimoyama wanted to explore the concepts of Black monsters and how they often resemble real-life Black women.
“They are sexy, they’re terrifying, they’re enticing, but they’re also the biggest threat,” Shimoyama said. “There’s something really dangerous but intriguing about them. It feels like it mirrors a lot of the ways in which celebrities or public figures or even individuals that are Black experience.”
When creating his art, Shimoyama said he focuses on capturing the queer Black male experience in a world that doesn’t accept those identities willingly. There are many intersections between pop culture and the real world experiences that Shimoyama often tries to implement.
“In general, my work seeks to examine and uplift the spirit of the queer Black male,” Shimoyama said. “I really try to think of my work as having a kind of more positive viewing experience I’d like to share.”
