Artist Antoinette Cauley discusses how Phoenix inspires her work

Rising with the downtown Phoenix skyline, a 100-foot-tall, vibrantly colorful mural of author James Baldwin gazes out over the city. Created by native Phoenician Antoinette Cauley for the Ten-O-One Building in 2020, at the height of a year marked by the murder of George Floyd, racial justice protests, the COVID-19 pandemic and Trump’s first impeachment, the mural is a permanent reminder of resilience in the face of injustice.

Celebrating the fifth anniversary of her work being part of Phoenix’s landscape, Cauley reflects on what has and has not changed in our society. Today, with a second Trump administration going full tilt towards fascism, doubling down on racist and queerphobic policies and using divisive fear tactics to abuse power, Baldwin’s message feels more urgent than ever.

“Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced,” reads text wrapping around the James Baldwin mural in bright orange lettering. Baldwin was a queer Black writer and activist whose work in the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s both championed and challenged ideas about human equality and freedom to be who we are and love who we love.

As a Black woman working in the arts today, and a strong ally to the queer community, Cauley says Baldwin inspires her to be a guide for future generations of creatives. When Cauley left the desert for the first time to live in Germany, she inadvertently followed Baldwin’s exodus from America, learning about his work and how he found a sense of liberation in Paris and on his European travels.

Missing the mountains surrounding Phoenix and the desert landscape of her youth, Cauley returned home and has since been busy making our city a more vibrant place. This summer, Cauley led a mural mentorship program, in collaboration with the Phoenix Mercury, for young girls and women. This culminated in a bold purple-and-orange-themed mural outside the team’s Phoenix arena, with portraits of players and text reading, “Women who lead inspire girls to dream.”

Cauley also has a portrait mural up at newly reopened The Pemberton, and continues to paint in her own personal art practice.

Phoenix New Times spoke with Antoinette Cauley about how being a third-generation Phoenician and the desert inspires her art; how living in Germany and learning holocaust history shaped her thoughts on America; queerphobia in the Black community; the power of James Baldwin’s legacy; mentoring the next generation of women artists with the Phoenix Mercury; and what has changed in the world in the five years since her mural has gone up.

Phoenix New Times: What was it like growing up in Phoenix, and how has it informed your creative journey?
Antoinette Cauley: I was born and raised here. A lot of my family history I didn’t learn till I was older, but my family comes from South Phoenix, and as a child, I bounced around. My parents weren’t together, so I’ve pretty much lived on every side of Phoenix. I’m a third-generation Phoenician, which is rare, and so much of my art is connected to where I come from. I feel very connected to the land here.

I like to sit in the mountains, look out at the city, meditate and reflect. So I’ve always had this feeling that I was born with this gift. I didn’t look at my art as a talent, but more as a gift with intention and purpose. I felt like I was meant to inspire the people around me, and I would do a disservice if I didn’t pursue that. Everything I do is with my community and my city as a whole in mind. The city is so deeply ingrained in my heart and soul and I feel blessed the city also pours into me and has embraced me in the ways it does.

My dad was an artist who did a lot of public work in the New York City subways. I remember as a kid how incredible it was to feel like my city was being decorated and see myself reflected in the art. How do you use Phoenix as your canvas, and what response do you get in return?
I don’t think I realized how much the physicality of the city would come into my work until about six years ago; there was this shift. A lot of my color palette is inspired by the city. I love our sunsets, the rich saturated colors.

But really bringing Phoenix as a city physically into my work happened really for the first time in 2021 when I moved to Berlin, Germany. It was the first time I had moved out of Phoenix, and in every way, it was a completely different society, community and landscape. So it really helped me look at my city from a different lens, and I started to talk about the city through the visuals of my work, so more mountain pop-style art landscapes, I started using imagery specific to Phoenix, like the South Mountain lights or the South Plaza sign. It took me stepping away from home to yearn for home and talk about it through my artwork.

It’s coming up on five years since your James Baldwin mural went up in Downtown Phoenix. In some ways, the world is a very different place, and it almost feels more urgent now than ever. What has the journey been like for you, as your mural has become integrated into the landscape of the city?
I do feel like the mural is more relevant now than it was when it went up, but the thing is, it was also really relevant then.

Literally. Which is kind of fucked up.
The world is crazy. Honestly, I had no idea how much impact that mural would have. When I chose James Baldwin, I knew a lot of people who didn’t know who he was. I had actually just learned about Baldwin because I took a trip to Paris on a whim, and I did a Black Parisian queer history tour and learned about him. It was maybe eight months after I got back that we started production on the mural, and I kept hearing James Baldwin in my mind. He was Black, he was queer, he was creative, he was an activist, he represents such a beautiful intersection of communities.

People don’t know this, but the response was so big, and I was so unprepared. I was literally like, I need to run away, and booked a flight to New York. That was when I learned I am probably not built for fame. It opened my eyes to a lot. I didn’t realize in that moment I was becoming part of my city’s history. I don’t want children, so my art is really like my children and my legacy. I’m so grateful to create that in a way that is impactful and meaningful to my city, and beyond.

Speaking of art as mentorship, of becoming a guide for the next generation, I’d love to talk about your recent Phoenix Mercury mural mentorship program. What was it like imparting skills to a young generation of artists in Phoenix today?
It was incredible. I developed this program on my own, and invited the reps I have a great relationship with from The Mercury to my studio. We had a conversation about how we could work together with this mentorship format, and I threw out there, what if I taught some girls how to make a mural? I framed it as, ‘What do I wish I had when I was a teenager or in my early twenties as a young artist?’ The Mercury was so supportive. I was like I want to celebrate these girls at the end of the program in a suite at a game, and really make them feel special.

That’s amazing. In a society where we often value art but throw away the artist. What a great way to show these young women that their art is important, and if you dedicate yourself to it, it could take you places you might not have imagined.
Yes, a few of them mentioned that. They were like, ‘Wow, I’ve never had this kind of experience.’ And I was like, ‘Get used to it.’ If you keep pursuing your art. They need to see that. I’m a Black woman in a city like Phoenix, where when I started, there just weren’t any Black women artists out there. To have them watch me command space, take up space, and I don’t dim my power or light for anyone. They needed to see that. I know this experience will change them forever. I definitely shed tears through that whole program. I was honest with the girls about what I was going through in life, too, and I realized they were also reminding me of who I was. I really needed them more than they needed me.

What were some of the creative ideas that came out of the Mercury mentorship?
I worked independently with the Phoenix Mercury, with their president and marketing, on the mural itself, which is what we created. Then I had the girls design their own murals and pitch them to the team at the Mercury headquarters. We talked about how to explain what your art is about, which is so important. My goal was to bring out their artistry in front of people who could create actual opportunities for them in the future.

It’s sad that we are in a moment where we have to talk about this again, but why is diversity important? Why is having a giant mural on a building in Downtown Phoenix with James Baldwin’s face on it important? So visible with that quote, “Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced,” which is universal and can apply to any injustice, any marginalized community, any person who has ever felt other, or small. Why is that so vital?
I just got goosebumps. That quote is so powerful because of what you just said; it applies to everyone, any situation. It can be as small as looking in the mirror and having to face yourself in different ways, or as big as ‘fight the power.’

It is an incredible quote which has withstood the test of time. It is important that there is a reminder we have to face ourselves in order to see real change. Nothing changes until we have radical honesty, until we take a radical moral inventory of the state of our society, of our government, of our country. I want that mural to be reflective of that. I feel like growth is such a small word for what this country needs to do in order to be better.

Living in Germany really showed me what it looks like when a country accounts for its original sins, when a country works for the betterment of the people. I saw that in Germany, the government has a choice to do that, and our government chooses not to do that.

I feel like America needs a reckoning.
America needs a slap in the face. I lived in Berlin for three years, and I found it so interesting that they made sure you couldn’t forget what had happened.

One thing I really appreciated was when you walked around the neighborhoods, if you stopped in front of my apartment building, you would see these about six-by-six-inch bronze plaques in the ground. They list the name of the Jewish person who lived in that building, what date they were taken, what concentration camp they were taken to, and where they were killed. How can you forget when you’re like, ‘Oh, I could be living in the same flat as this person who was killed in the holocaust?’ America would never.

To that point, to have a Black, queer person like Baldwin’s face so central in our city skyline hopefully invites a similar line of inquiry for people who see it.
That’s all I can hope for my art. My goal is not to make just visually appealing art. My goal is to make people uncomfortable, because I feel like discomfort is actually confrontation with yourself. I want people to question, ‘Why does this image or this quote make me uncomfortable?’ If you can start exploring that, you can really get down to internalized issues. If everyone could do that, society would get a little better each day.

I also feel there is something about a queer Black man specifically, because of the amount of homophobia that exists in the Black community. It’s insane to me. From a human standpoint, I don’t understand it. If you look back at slavery and generational trauma, I can understand where it comes from, but I don’t get it for obvious reasons. I am not part of the queer community, but I am such an ally, and I think if you look at the struggles of the queer community, they are so similar to the struggles of the Black community and other marginalized communities.

I’m not a scholar, but my understanding of gender history is that what we would today call trans or non-binary, gender non-conforming people existed in pre-colonized Africa forever. So queerphobia and transphobia are really tools of colonization.
Totally. I remember arguing with one of my exes, he was pretty homophobic, and he was like, ‘This didn’t exist in Africa!’ And I was like, ‘Let me pull up some stats and facts for you.’

So, after this amazing journey of really making your art part of your city, what is next?
I’m working on my next solo exhibition and different collaborations and murals in the interim. People can always expect to see me out there doing different things around my city. But honestly, really staying the course, remembering that my ultimate goal in life is to create real impact and change lives. I’m going to continue on that mission.