Chenoa Baker on Life, Lessons & Legacy

Chenoa Baker shared their story and experiences with us recently and you can find our conversation below.

Chenoa, it’s always a pleasure to learn from you and your journey. Let’s start with a bit of a warmup: What is something outside of work that is bringing you joy lately?
I enjoy reading historical fiction, watching a healthy dose of reality tv, spending time with friends and family, and making homemade applesauce for the fall season

Can you briefly introduce yourself and share what makes you or your brand unique?
Hi Everyone, my name is Chenoa Baker (she/her). While I wear a lot of hats, at my core, I’m a creative entrepreneur and a descendant of self-empancipators. Through my creative entrepreneurial journey, I’ve organized several exhibitions, wrote for many publications on art (digital and print), taught classes on curatorial practice, writing, and creativity. My most recent feats are teaching a writing class about memes and the foundations of cultural criticism and curating a retrospective of Ifé Franklin at the Fuller Craft Museum for 2027.

Thanks for sharing that. Would love to go back in time and hear about how your past might have impacted who you are today. What relationship most shaped how you see yourself?
There’s a quote I return to: “Everything is what it is because of its relationship to everything else” — So & Pinar Sinopoulos-Lloyd (Queer Nature). With that mindset, I am the oldest sibling of two; my brother most shapes how I see the world. As his older sister, I’ve held roles like teacher, friend, and confidant before I had language for those things. Because of him, I am comfortable forging my own path with care.

Sure, so let’s go deeper into your values and how you think. What are the biggest lies your industry tells itself?
My industry, because of the years of gatekeeping and wealth, has a stereotype of being inaccessible, valuing a traditional path of getting an advanced art history degree, taking on unpaid internships, and suddenly unlocking the key to writing about art and teaching. Instead, the non-traditional route is valid and makes you even more of a well-rounded individual. Also, I wholeheartedly agree with the AfriCOBRA (an important Black artist collective starting in Chicago in the ‘60s) adage: art is the people. It’s for the people. That’s the basis of culture not the colonial paradigm of using art as a tool for rich snobbery.

Thank you so much for all of your openness so far. Maybe we can close with a future oriented question. What are you doing today that won’t pay off for 7–10 years?
When I was in residence at Fallingwater, I talked to a Geologist Fred Zelt. He put the idea of time into perspective because he mentioned that your work may even take effect in a new millennium after you are long gone. There’s a certain slowness that I tend my relationships that I can imagine will ripple for years to come. Also, with my writing, I hope to fossilize bits and pieces of myself, the amazing art and culture that I encounter, reclaiming decolonized language, and both reflect and transcend the times.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://Chenoabaker.org
• Instagram: @chenoa.e.baker
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chenoabaker

Image Credits
1. Photo by Lalah C. Williams
2. Photo by Sian Michael
3. Photo by The Daily Burst/Syracuse in Focus
6. Courtesy of The New Art Center Newton, MA for my show Sensory Garden, 2024.
7. Photo by Napoleon Jones-Henderson (member of AfriCOBRA) at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston for the exhibition Touching Roots: Black Ancestral Legacies in the Americas, 2023
8-9: At the Peabody Essex Museum (PEM) for Gio Swaby: Fresh Up. The artist Gio Swaby is pictured in both and Lydia Peabody, Curator-at-Large at PEM