Artist: Kachelle Knowles (Bahamian, born 190)
Title: Old People Drink At The Bar, Young People Drink in The Streets
Date: 2024
Medium: Decorative paper, acrylic gemstones, graphite, ink, acrylic paint, colored pencils, and gouache on paper
Dimensions: 30 x 20 inches
Credit Line: Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art, Northwestern University, purchase funds provided by Allen-Niesen Family: Kim, Keith, Kelsey, and Kyle. Image © Kachelle Knowles, Courtesy TERN Gallery
“I’ve always been very close to Black men. I grew up with two brothers. My dad used to take me to his job at a hotel, and that would be a babysitting moment for many of his male co-workers. I’ve grown up with predominantly male friends. I was also a tomboy. So there are so many things I’ve noticed about men that were just not being talked about. I feel like the conversation about the pressures being placed on women has overtaken any conversation about what’s happening with our men…My love for the men in my life has allowed me to sort of express their stories. I never really want to say that I’m trying to speak on behalf of them, but I’m projecting my feelings and appreciation for them through art.”
–Artist Kachelle Knowles1
Kachelle Knowles’s drawing, Old People Drink At The Bar, Young People Drink in The Streets, focuses on two figures, a pair of Black men sketched in graphite on brown paper. The work is emblematic of Knowles’s artistic interest in representing Black, Bahamian masculinity.
In this drawing, neither man looks at the viewer head-on. Both men wear oversized t-shirts and shorts, with the folds of the garments’ fabric accentuated in almost cartoonish black lines. Each subject’s attire is intricately patterned, with decorative paper applied on top of the brown paper base. The artist creates many of the patterned designs she uses herself. The figure on the left wears a shirt with sleeves that contrast its midsection, as well as red shorts with an ornate silver pattern and a bracelet comprised of a smattering of differently patterned paper appliqués. The one on the right wears spotted yellow shorts, as well as a patterned floral t-shirt layered over top of a plain, pale yellow one.
Their postures are relaxed; shoulders slouched, legs spread, knees bent, as if at rest on a bench or staggered on a set of stairs. They each hold a bottle covered in white, blue, and yellow rhinestones. These bottles reference Kalik, a popular Bahamian beer. In an interview, Knowles contextualizes her inclusion of the rhinestoned Kalik bottles in this work. She explains:
“As an artist, I really want to present a different view of the islands that doesn’t erase the tourism narrative — because that’s still an important part of anybody’s culture — however, when that narrative becomes aggressively stereotypical, it becomes more important to document the social realities of the Bahamian people through art.”2
Inscribing Kalik beer bottles in the drawing is one means by which Knowles addresses what she calls “the tourism narrative,” since Kalik features prominently in the touristic imagery of The Bahamas. The artist calls new attention to these bottles by applying rhinestones and placing them in the hands of young men, for whom the bottles signify a technology of leisure and socialization distinct from their role in typical touristic images.
Knowles’s work seeks to address the complexity and nuance of masculinity. She notes her aim to push against Eurocentric scrutiny of male behavior and the “homophobic projections men face when they take care of themselves and attend to how they present to others.” Knowles’s empathy for Black men’s self-presentation is evident in her careful drawing of the two figures’ hair, the only aspect of the drawing not outlined in either black or white. Her love for the men who have shaped her life comes through in her detailed attention to the two figures, rendered with very realistic, softly shaded facial features.
Knowles’s appreciation for her subjects is also apparent in her technique, which prioritizes the privacy of the sitters. Her practice uses Photoshop and AI technology to create composite faces, thereby protecting the conversations and intimacies shared by the real people depicted. The artist has said she intentionally does not include the background of her reference images in her drawings, leaving the task of recontextualizing her subjects in space up to her viewers.
This drawing, newly acquired by The Block Museum in 2024, enters into conversation with other works in the museum collection that address themes of masculinity, leisure, and representation.
– Contributed by Bobby Yalam, Curatorial Assistant
- quoted in Armstrong, Byron. “Beyond Borders: This Transatlantic Exhibition Challenges Perceptions of Black Manhood With Black Portraiture.” Noah Becker’s Whitehot Magazine of Contemporary Art (February 2023). whitehotmagazine.com/articles/black-manhood-with-blackportraiture/5679. ↩︎
- Ibid. ↩︎
