April Bey Asks Us “Will you watch me win?”

April Bey "Will You Watch Me Win?," 2024 Installation view. Courtesy of The Union for Contemporary Art, Omaha, NE, Photo credit: Harrison Martin.

By JONATHAN OROZCO October 28, 2024

Imagine diving into the ocean only to emerge in a futuristic André Courrèges-style boutique, saturated in bright purples, pinks, and greens. That’s where April Bey, the Los Angeles-based artist, is transporting us in her exhibition “Will You Watch Me Win?” at The Union for Contemporary Art.

This environment is covered in purple faux fur and advertisements that appear as if they’re out of a 1970s copy of Ebony Magazine. With models in profile, tentacles and pineapples as hair, the aquatic seapunk aesthetic brings you into Bey’s realm of Atlantica, a utopia blending Afrofuturism, personal storytelling, and themes of Black queer joy. Atlantica is a space where oppression falls away and where people can embrace their identities freely. 

I sat down with April Bey to discuss how this project came about and how it fits into her oeuvre - opening another portal in spacetime. Here, Bey tells us about the complex dynamics of competition and internalized jealousy we feel when someone we care about is doing better than us. 

JO: Let’s get into it. Tell me about this body of work happening in Omaha. How did The Union approach you? Were you in residence there when you were making this work?

AB: Brigitte McQueen reached out to me because my work aligned thematically and culturally with the artists The Union supports. We had a few curatorial discussions, and now we’ve planned programming for a closing reception in December. The show, “Will You Watch Me Win?”, is inspired by a line from a song by Akwaeke Emezi: “Keep Your Dollar, Phuck Your Dollar, Will You Watch Me Win?” It's about living your life and winning on your own, but also about asking others whether they really and honestly want to see you succeed.

JO: Tell me more about the materials, process, and the themes you’re exploring in this body of work.

AB: I’ve been researching blue holes—natural phenomena I’ve been fascinated with since childhood. They’re mysterious, deep underwater caves found all over the world, from Florida to the Bahamas to Mexico. There’s folklore in the Bahamas about blue holes being portals to other realms, where mermaids and warlocks live, and where whales travel between the deep ocean and the islands. My Grammy used to tell us these stories, and I’ve always been drawn to them. In my work, I treat blue holes as portals between Earth and Atlantica, an imagined utopia where Black queer joy and resilience reign. Within these portals, there are space stations full of luxury beauty supply stores—places where people can revel in self-love and beauty.

For this show, I created advertisements you might see if you were traveling through one of these blue holes. They feature queer figures with tentacles for hair, which resemble weave bundles being sold in these beauty supply stores. There's a lot of humor and insider jokes in the ads too. For example, one of the large tapestries in the show features the word “judgmentorializing,” which is a term I invented back in high school. It's a word I made up when I was in yearbook. I initially joined yearbook because I wanted to learn page design. Back then, we were using Adobe PageMaker—it was like the precursor to InDesign. I was obsessed with learning it because I wanted to do graphic design, and yearbook seemed like the perfect way to gain those skills.

But my English teacher, who was friends with the yearbook advisor,  and they decided that I would be better as a writer. They switched me to a writing role, which I wasn’t happy about at all. Every time I turned in an article, my teacher would say, “You’re editorializing.” I hated that word! I was like, “What does that even mean? I’m just a high school sophomore—how am I supposed to know what you’re talking about?” She’d just keep telling me, “You editorialize too much.”

I was venting to a friend about it, and in my frustration, I said, “She keeps telling me I’m judgmentorializing my writing!” That’s where the term came from. It stuck. Now my close friends use it all the time, especially because I’m a Capricorn—and we’re known for being judgmental. Whenever I’m being critical, they’ll say, “Oh, April’s judgmentorializing again.”

I define "judgmentalizing" as judging something with your own commentary and then going even further to explain why your judgment is valid—even if you might be wrong or making an attribution error. We all do it, but it’s about that extra step of rationalizing the judgment.

April Bey "Will You Watch Me Win?," 2024 Installation view. Courtesy of The Union for Contemporary Art, Omaha, NE, Photo credit: Harrison Martin.

JO: In terms of material; so the tapestries that you make, are they machine made, or are they made by hand? And are you using any other new materials in this particular series of work?

April Bey: It's a combination. Most of the work in this show uses a new process that I do by hand. Many of the works are hand-printed, traditional prints. I developed a technique where I create image transfers using gel medium. I separate the image into CMYK and transfer each layer by hand. So, even though the image looks like a digital painting because each layer is carefully painted on, the registration isn’t perfect. When they’re done, they have this relic-like quality, like something that’s aged or passed through time.

This was the tapestry I was telling you about—the one with the text “Judgementorializing” in a sequined lace.

JO: And do you hand-embroider that?

AB: Yes, there’s hand-embroidery  and sewing involved. 

April Bey "Will You Watch Me Win?," 2024 Installation view. Courtesy of The Union for Contemporary Art, Omaha, NE, Photo credit: Harrison Martin.

JO: What do you want the audience to get out of viewing this particular body of work?

AB: The title of the show is “Will You Watch Me Win?”—it's a question I hope the audience will ask themselves and answer honestly. One of the things I’ve struggled with is competition. I’m competitive in terms of pushing myself and getting to the next level, but competing with others creates anxiety for me. Sometimes the wrong kind of one-sided competitiveness feels like people think I want to hurt them or take something from them, and I hate that feeling.

So this show asks the audience: Will you watch me win? Are you as the person you think you are capable of being proud, happy and enthusiastic for others winning? 

In Akwaeke Emezi’s song, which inspired the title, they say, “Fuck your dollar, keep your dollar, will you watch me win?” The song touches on something personal to me in just that line. Akwaeke had a public intellectual clash with Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, who had been their mentor. The issue arose during a time where Akwaeke’s career was skyrocketing—Chimamanda hadn’t released a novel since Americanah, though she was producing wonderful essays and short stories. They had a public falling out, over transphobia, TERF rhetoric among other things. What this line “Will You Watch Me Win?” means to me, "You were happy to mentor me when I was beneath you, but once I started succeeding, you didn’t want to watch me win."

I had to face a similar situation recently with a former mentee. My dad had to sit me down and remind me that if I was really a good mentor, watching my mentee win should’ve been my goal from the beginning—that they’d surpass me and do better than I did, that they’d fix the issues I had to deal with and grow beyond me.

He told me, “The goal of a mentor should be to watch them win, without feeling threatened, without interfering.” That was a tough pill to swallow, it means a different position in their life if they want you there but I now realize it’s true. That’s what this show is really about. Can you catch yourself being proud of strangers? Will you watch with bated breath as someone else wins? Can that make you happy? WM