My name is Keegan Xavi, a North Minneapolis visual artist, art historian and producer. It’s an honor to be a part of the Transcontinental Dialogue Project and create a response piece to be included in the Virtual Altar. The piece I chose to respond to is “Untitled” by Prophet Royal Robertson. I initially received this piece as too intense and overwhelming and almost walked away from it, but I pushed past those feelings to understand what this artist was trying to say.In “Untitled”, Robertson creates a world with poster board, marker and pen. The work is dense with frenzied words carefully gridded, a calendar in the middle is marking the passage of time. Robertson was a sign painter and this careful precision is evident. This piece clearly took a long time to make and was something the artist kept returning to, perhaps obsessively. There is deep anger and pain etched into the posterboard. I see multiple pin holes in the corners indicating this piece had been tacked up and moved many times. The layering of words becomes texture. His rage at a woman named “Adele” is clear. Prophet Royal Robertson was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and has been described as being full of overwhelming rage at his ex-wife Adele and at women in general.

Instead of shying away from this emotional intensity, I allowed myself to be inspired by it and to respond with a piece expressing my own anger. Like fine, let’s go there. I started on poster board and created grids mimicking the patterns and calendar in Robertson’s piece. I used words cut from magazines to create texture and density. But the more I tried to recreate Robertson’s framework exactly, the collage artist in me rebelled and cut everything apart and deconstructed my grids, leaving space between the elements. I tried to infuse my collage with similar feelings of rage but they just weren’t there. As mentally agitated as I have been feeling in 2020, I found there is more peace and balance in me than I would have guessed although dualities between peace and fear are ever present. The calendar in the center of my piece has no dates but is full of question marks, illustrating day-to-day uncertainty. Fragments of poetry placed alongside images of the universe surround the calendar. At the top of the piece it says “She’s Being Unlovable”.

What I took from exploring Robertson’s “Untitled” piece was the freedom to be emotionally messy. To not have all the answers or know how to proceed. Sometimes there is a pressure to avoid or change unpleasant feelings, but that’s not real. Pain is universal and our relationship with pain defines us as individuals. Sometimes I feel messy and unlovable. And that’s okay too.

“She’s Being Unlovable” by Keegan Xavi
Mixed Media, 18” x 24”
January 2021