Shame Can’t Survive There

Jess Owens-Young

Interview by L. Valena

September 16, 2022

Can you start by describing the prompt that you responded to?

The prompt that I had featured a figure. There were some muted colors. I remember red, and a yellow halo behind the top of the figure's head. And there were words. Several words, but the one that really stood out to me, as you can probably see in my piece, is the word 'shame'.

Where did that take you initially?

Shame really stood out to me for a few reasons. We have this cultural sense of things that are supposed to bring us shame. That really limits the stories that we can tell each other. One example that I often think about when I think about shame and storytelling is the role of the church. That was something I was thinking about too, given the halo in the piece. I think about divinity when I see that symbolism. Often, organized religions try to control the stories and narratives that we tell by making certain experiences or the telling of those experiences shameful. That prevents people from sharing their truth. Sharing their experiences of what happened to them.

Another thing that stood out to me around the idea of shame is the complexity that it requires for us to overcome it. When I was thinking about what we have to do in order to overcome the shame or work through it, I thought of a tangled mess. I like to work on paper, so I took out a piece of watercolor paper and an acrylic paint marker, and just drew a bold black line that felt tangled. I just let my hand go wherever it wanted. To me, that represents the tangled-ness of shame that we have to work through. From there, I thought about what comes during feelings of shame and after. To me, that connected with the colors.

I had noticed the color yellow in the halo in the prompt, so yellow was one of the first colors that I chose. It also represents light, or enlightenment. We have to work through that tangled mess of shame in order to get to the light. I also chose blue for multiple reasons. When we think of light, we might think of sunshine and blue skies. When skies are clear, we can see our sense of purpose, we can see clearly. Blue is a hopeful color, but it's also a sad color. I'm really into music, and I was thinking about the blues, which is one of my favorite musical genres. While we have this idea of hope, it comes together with this sense of blues. Even though we're hopeful for something, we can also feel sad about losing something, or moving forward to get past something, or get through something such as shame. There's a dual meaning to that color for me.

Then I chose green, which represents growth. I think of nature, plants, and often when we're working through our shame, we're also growing within ourselves. We can also grow our community when we talk about our stories. So that's where the colors come from.

People who follow my work know that I always include glasses. Like 99% of the time I have glasses in my work. I've been wearing glasses since I was eight, so it's a bit of me in every piece. Also, I think of glasses as a way of seeing. Part of my work has to do with seeing Black narratives and seeing Black bodies differently. So the glasses are there because of that, and they're blue, also representing that dual meaning. When we're sharing with someone, we can have hope, but we can also have sadness come up, too.

The word shame really brought up a lot, especially at this stage of my life. I'm in my mid-thirties. For me, the thirties have been a time of self-rediscovery, and leaning into the things that I love without shame. Without feeling like I always have to be grinding. Without feeling like I'm trying to impress someone. Those kinds of cultural ideals that elicit shame in us when we're not working or trying to keep up with other people.

Yeah. I'm there too. I've been really enjoying talking to other people who are in this period of life, during this historic moment in our world. It's wild to think about the fact that such a massive percentage of the earth's population had some sort of existential crisis within the past couple years. I feel like people are talking about self-rediscovery and leaning into the things that bring joy a lot more than they did a few years ago, but sometimes I can't tell if that's true, or if I'm just hearing it more because that's where I'm at. What do you think?

I do think it's an interesting alignment in the universe. The pandemic forced us to be with ourselves. I'm an introvert, so I love being with myself. But other people who don't spend as much time alone were pushed to explore this experience. I think some people found out that they kind of liked it – less noise, seeing themselves for who they are, and not only in comparison to someone else or in the context of their jobs. I think people are also using social media as a way to promote the pro-rest movement, especially pages like the Nap Ministry. That really promotes rest as a necessity for us. It's not a reward for working hard and hustling. I think all of those phenomena coming together at this really unique time in our history has made it kind of expected for people to talk about rest. At least in my circles, being a public health person and also being into spirituality and being in touch with ourselves and nature. I think a lot of people are really questioning these dogmas that we were taught at a really young age, about how we have to live or how to be successful in our lives.

Yeah! We all have such a complex about work! Even the people who don't think they have a complex about work have a complex about work. It's going to be interesting to see how things feel in 10 or 20 years.

Absolutely.

I love that your two figures are sharing a pair of glasses. Has that come up in previous works?

I actually just started doing that. There's one other piece I've done so far that has the three eyed/two figures sharing glasses, and that was really an experiment for me. But I really enjoy it. The first time I did it was because I was thinking about my wife, and thinking about how we've grown, and the joy that we share together. I was also thinking about how growth in relationships kind of needs a shared vision. So to me, that third eye represents not only the third eye of intuition, but also that shared vision that two people can have as they move through life together. That first piece was a study for a bigger piece that I'm going to make. My wife is keeping the study. I was surprised that she liked it, and that I've gotten such a positive response. When I've done two figures before, they've been two separate figures or I've really focused on a singular figure. This kind of represents where I am in my life. This is also related to the words that I wrote in the piece. In order to share your story, you need someone else. I mean, you can share it with yourself, but ‘sharing’ kind of requires at least one other person.

I love the way you phrased this: "Share your story, shame can't survive there." Have you seen that play out in your own life?

It's kind of a new sentiment for me. I've always thought about shame and other bad feelings as something you had to work through on your own. Journal, do art, go to therapy, things like that. But I've recently discovered that when I talk to people about my lived experiences, those feelings of shame start to chip away. There is no place for shame when you're sharing your story with people who support you, love you, and have gone through something similar. We'll be surprised by how many people have experienced things that we thought were so rare. As we share our stories, and the more we normalize our experiences, the less people who are interested in maintaining power and holding up the status quo can use shame as a weapon against you.

When I first looked at the piece, and was thinking about shame, I started looking for quotes and reading about how other people talk about shame. The idea that shame can't survive there came from a Brené Brown quote: "Shame is the intensely painful feeling or experience of believing that we are flawed, and therefore unworthy of love and belonging." It was that 'belonging' that really stuck out to me. That's when I started thinking about how much there is to untangle when it comes to shame, but you have to feel like you belong in a space in order to work through that shame with someone else. Shame can't survive when you feel like you belong and you've told your story.

Is there anything we haven't talked about?

Texture was an important part of this for me. Our stories aren't point A to point B, there's a lot of texture. I really enjoy texture, because nothing in life is smooth. When I first started painting, I had this obsession to make everything smooth and clean. I do enjoy looking at art that has that quality, but I quickly learned that that's not me. I like messiness and texture. I used multiple types of material, because I like it, and we're made up of so many different things and experiences. I think mixed media art appeals to me because it creates a picture from all of these different materials. For this piece, I used acrylic paint marker, acrylic paint, oil pastels, and water-soluble wax pastels.

Do you have any advice for another artist approaching this project for the first time?

I would say to trust your first responses to the piece, because those are going to be the most pure. Don't overthink what you're going to do in response to the piece. It's not a high-pressure thing. It will be more beneficial to your piece if you come at it with who you are. And have fun with it!

Call Number: M57VA | M59VA.oweSha

Jess Owens-Young is a mixed media artist based near Baltimore, Maryland where she lives with her wife and a cat named Milo. Her work focuses on using whimsical and imaginative visual images to help viewers rethink the narratives about Black people and their lives. She is also a public health professor in Washington, DC.