Raque Ford: A little space for you right under my shoe

Raque Ford: Hi, my name is Raque Ford. 

Narrator: Ford made the billboard that is on Gansevoort Street across from the Whitney Museum. 

Raque Ford: So I was thinking about scale. And since this would be kind of seen from the street and the person would be under the billboard, and so I wanted to play with this idea of them being footprints stomping on them that are viewing it.

And then also thinking in advertising I remembering seeing ads on a subway of really big shoes or this kind of distorted perspective.

I do use a lot of foot marks, and these are clip art foot marks or shoe marks because I often work on the floor in my studio and sometimes I step on stuff. 

Narrator: The way that Ford plays around with images like the footmark here was inspired by a poem she wrote. She read it aloud for us.

Raque Ford: What's the new level of cute you are reaching for? I don't know, but she holds her face like someone that doesn't know her face. You know when you are standing and your soul is on the floor and your heel is digging into the ground and that little space between them? Right there, that's where I make a little space for you, right under my shoe. Sometimes I will get down on my knees and see if you are still there, as if I'm praying, praying for you to give me my sin again. 

Then I wake up to the realization that, fuck, I don't want to be a pretty girl, and I know I'm preaching to the choir, but I chose you for a reason because you would listen. I'm sitting at a bar, Black face, white mask and a martini, pouncy and petulant. I used to think a lot about performing, performing my identity, but now I'm so tired I can't. I haven't thought about it in a while. Does that make me myself?

Do you think when you voice something that you want, that it will happen or that saying it out loud will jinx it and it will never happen? That you've ruined it by letting it out into the atmosphere, or worse, you'll get exactly what you want, but you don't want it really, or arrive slightly wrong. They didn't hear you right, because you said it so softly.

That’s it!

Narrator: Ford takes up this older text in the large, site-specific work. 

Raque Ford: You're kind of this large person trying to make a little space and protect someone down there, but then there's something threatening about maybe being gigantic. And so that scale, I was thinking about that and then the sweetness of trying to not squish someone. I think emotions are so complicated and I think that's a lot of the work is kind of diaristic, but then I like to push away from it and not make it so much about me and more so the viewer. So I think that's where there's places to play with.