FEMME FATALE

Words by Shantrelle P. Lewis | Images by Numa Perrier

Miss Numa Perrier is a mystery to many. We met several years ago, very early on in my career. She responded to an artist call I sent out for an exhibition at the McKenna Museum in New Orleans, where I was director and curator. The minute I opened her email, my jaw dropped. I was like, who the hell is this woman? And why is her work so damn bad? (In the words of Run-DMC, not bad meaning bad, but bad meaning good.) I felt like I was running in a poppy field and stumbled upon a buried treasure. From that time on, our professional relationship was established and our friendship grew.

Over the past few years, Miss Numa, who taught herself to be an artist, has made more than a few strides. She’s had work in several of my exhibitions; she’s starring in films, plays and a new happening web series (see “The Couple”); she’s making magic and creating work with her lover and partner, Dennis Dortch, the talented director behind A Good Day to Be Black and Sexy. She’s a femme fatale playing shoot ‘em up, bang bang, claiming victory every round. She’s making couture gloves for mega stars and experiencing motherhood for the first time, teaching her almost 2-year-old baby, Rockwelle, tricks of the trade – basically how to be and do it all...with style and grace. Since we’re nine hours apart, we conducted the interview via Skype, taking time to chat about art, life, aspirations and women who run with the wolves.

Shantrelle: It seems like a lifetime ago when we met for the first time. So tell me how you got to that point in your career as an artist, which was very early on, yet advanced at the same time.

Numa: I don’t feel like it was super advanced. I was in the vortex of creation, back-to-back shows that I would curate and also put my work in. That was the only way I could get my work seen at first. I had no clue about the art world. I still feel like an outsider.

Shantrelle: Honestly, I do too, like the underdog. What are some of the themes you have dealt with in your earlier work?

Numa: Racial identity, sexual abuse, shame, femininity. I’m still working with these themes, with more maturity now (I hope). I love GIFS and will be working with my own form of GIFS. Shantrelle: How do you define a GIF?

Numa: Moving images that capture a feeling over and over again in few frames. I’m into that as an art form, the repetition. Repetition is a component of ritual. I want to do a series of these long-form GIFs.

Shantrelle: Speaking of ritual, how does being Haitian affect your work? You went back to Haiti right after the earthquake, right?

Numa: I did. I vowed it would be my last trip. I had post-traumatic stress disorder. It was horrific. No one should have to witness such devastation. I saw zombies, the walking dead. I was in another world. I was there two weeks before they opened the airport. Good God, bad memories. I have this rogue spirit to go to the darkest corners of the world. But I’m healing from it now, so, I’ll go back in the summer. LOL. I have a film to shoot. Art calls.

Shantrelle: LOL. Do you think that discomfort informs your work, and forces you to constantly push the limits?

Numa: The discomfort frees me. I already know I’m not fitting in, so I don’t even try.

Shantrelle: How do women and sexuality play out in your work?

Numa: Womanhood is so fascinating to me. Just how everything is viewed through this sexual lens because that is part of our role as women, to be watched, gazed upon... Previously, my self- portraits were part loneliness and a yearning to express my sen- suality in a safe way. Although it (the self- portrait) has lost some allure to me because it’s so saturated now, I will challenge myself to create more worlds with them like Renee Cox did or to be even more personal.

Shantrelle: Like the series about your family that you are working on now.

Shantrelle: When did you start making films? What was your first film about?

Numa: In 2006. It was about my relationship to my [White] adoptive mother, who had diabetes. It was an experimental exploration of what I experienced, very intense. I’m remembering now that it was tough for me to see on the big screen. I had anxiety. But I like bringing it all back to life.

Shantrelle: So what are you interested in now, in terms of subject matter and mediums?



Numa: I’m interested in more films and large scale installations. I want to do an installation that recreates the farm I used to live on as a child. I want to take people there, through film, photography, live performance, etc. It was a small town in Washington State, Skamokawa, near an Indian reservation, less than 500 people. That’s where I lived for a while with my adoptive family. We had cows, pigs, ducks, goats, chickens, a barn. We were renting, the only Black people there. Lots of racism. Lots of horrific things. I want to turn it inside out and present it as a gallery project. I’m calling it a cinematic gallery experience, so it will be films and other things.

Shantrelle: Visual art is not the only discipline you work with, you also work in fashion.

Numa: Well, it will sound crazy, but I don’t think I work in fashion. I guess I’m in denial. I define it all as art.

Shantrelle: Um, haven’t your gloves been on the hands of superstar celebrities? On runways? Rhianna? Ellen? Vogue?

Numa: Yes, yes, yes.

Shantrelle: OK. Just checking. Most would say that’s fashion.

Numa: Yes I design high fashion gloves that have been in all of these places, on all of these people. Maybe because I’m a perpetual outsider, because I don’t feel like I belong in the fashion world either. I’m an artist. I have lots of creative outlets. The gloves were a glorified hobby that kind of took off.

Shantrelle: Who are your influences, if any?

Numa: Louise Bourgeois, Nan Goldin, Maya Deren, Diana Vreeland, Kara Walker, Diane Arbus, Edwidge Danticat, Eartha Kitt, Lucille Ball, Marilyn Monroe, Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Gustav Klimt.

Shantrelle: If you could choose your three favorite bodies of work from everything you’ve done to date, what would they be, and why are they so dope to you?

Numa: Forsaken. Skeleton Bride and La Petite Mort. Forsaken is a photo series and a collage piece about the child sex slaves and soldiers in Uganda. The collage is the first work I ever sold, a mosaic map of Africa full of white guns, which I painted individually. The photo series is some of my strongest work to date and impacts people greatly. Skeleton Bride was an installation and photo series based on Clarissa Pinkola Estes’ story, Skeleton Bride about how a woman can lose herself in love.

Shantrelle: How challenging has it been for you to share so much of your personal life? I mean, most people hide behind a public self and shield the rest of the world from their true selves, especially their past.

Numa: I think I do both. I am committed to being personal in my work, because that’s the only way I can stand by it, no mat- ter what others say. If I am honest, it doesn’t matter who likes it. It’s not for them to like it. I did my job. I expressed myself truthfully and generously.