In Mock Interview, 2019, young white men are asked questions from interview experiences that women shared with Beal they had felt were discriminatory or racist. The young men, aged 20-23 were informed that the questions being asked were discriminatory queries previously given to women of color during professional interviews, but were not informed of what the specific questions would be. At one point a young man laughs at the absurdity of the question. And yet the questions selected for the work were based on a summation of themes from the answers submitted by women of color previously interviewed by Beal.  The purpose of the work is to highlight discriminatory hiring practices with the intention of fostering empathy in those who do not experience prejudice in the interview process.

Office Scene, 2012 is directly inspired by Beal’s personal experience, one that she knew she was not alone in experiencing. In the video she embodies a woman taking her power back by flipping the tables on her white male coworkers who had casually fantasized about touching her hair, a thick Afro. The visual is a cropped in image of a red lipped mouth, without specific identity beyond a perceived Black woman who has been fetishized. She informs the viewer that she is going to let her coworkers touch her hair. The scene changes to a view of cubicles in a seemingly never ending tunnel. The typical sterile work environment and a man’s voice laden with uncomfortability begins describing the experience, clip after clip sharing their experience of what being allowed to do something that they had been fantasizing about felt like. One voice is excited and another admits that it felt wrong but that he had delighted in the experience. The work is a flip on the power structure. Beal has reclaimed her power but she’s had to do it by allowing something to happen because she was being fetishized. Now not only is she uncomfortable and powerful but the men are also uncomfortable and reckoning with a loss of power in the spotlight. 

To my fellow white people: while we can never understand what Black people experience, it is important that we work to develop compassion and understanding that can inform how we move through this world in a more positive and inclusive way so that we may speak out without fear in the face of racism when witnessed. The onus of overturning these stereotypes lies at the feet of white people in the sense that racism is not perpetuated by Black people. We must learn our own internalized biases by listening to and respecting what Black people tell us of their experiences and then we must learn how to speak out to other white people courageously, and that is only the beginning (you can read more about confronting racism by reading my Socio-Political MUSE-ing Essay on White Fragility HERE).

Endia Beal makes work that is about exposing the realities of the Black American experience so that those who are not familiar with what occurs on a daily basis can learn and hopefully step up when necessary to call out the injustice of these inequitable practices and stereotypes in professional spaces as well as in day to day life.  

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Beal offers the Artistic Introspective Workshop, an innovative approach to Diversity Equity and Inclusion training. Beal centers her two hour sessions around the fundamental idea that diversity enhances creativity and leads to “unfettered discoveries.” The workshops utilize art to illustrate how introspection and examination of our personal beliefs, attitudes and behaviors; bringing forth unconscious bias in a non-threatening way so that they may be examined and in order to begin eradicating them from within. Endia provides a psychological safe place within which to take risks, be vulnerable, and learn the importance of expressing empathy and advocacy for those within the organization.

Endia holds a dual BFA-AH in art history and studio art from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and an MFA from Yale University; she has also completed the certification from the Executive Education in Fostering Inclusion and Diversity Program at Yale School of Management.

Learn more about Endia Beal by visiting her website: endiabeal.com

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