Organized by Ganggang, Butter acts as an advocate for Black visual artists’ care and economic viability. Anchored annually in Indianapolis, Indiana, during Labor Day Weekend, Butter is now in its fourth year. It has settled into its role while continuing to evolve, contributing memorable experiences for art enthusiasts and Indiana.
The Recorder’s LaTasha Boyd Jones spoke with Ganggang’s co-founders, Alan and Malina Bacon, on the art fair’s influence and evolution.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Tasha Jones: For those that don’t know or who are new to Indianapolis, can you describe what Butter is?
Alan Bacon: The New York Times calls Butter ‘America’s most equable art fair.’
Mali Bacon: Butter is a multi-day fine art fair that centers the care and the economic viability of Black visual artists around the world. We reserve 50% of our exhibition space for Indiana based artists, very much intentionally about lifting up our creative assets here in the city and the state and putting them on the same platform as some of our most well-known contemporary Black artists of this time.
Alan Bacon:
Yes, and it’s and it’s an emerging artist market that we’re tapping into and we’re challenging the dichotomy between value and worth. One really cool equitable piece about Butter is that 100% of the proceeds go back to the artist and we work to sell 100% of the works. That is not a traditional approach when it comes to fine art or when it comes to the relationship and management of Black artists specifically. We’re approaching, this year, over a million dollars going back to the hands and households of Black visual artists, over 50% of whom are Indiana-born and based. It’s a pride and a privilege of this year’s Butter that we’re upon this milestone.
Jones: It sounds like this concept is not just about art; it’s not just about artists, but it’s about community and equity within community. How did you come about even wanting to work within that realm?
Mali Bacon:
We are community. This work has been about trying to find opportunities for our peers, our friends and the artists that we’ve been around, that we’ve grown up with in this city. All of this is an opportunity for people to know what we have here.
Of course, we know Armory and Frieze and Basel. This show is on par.
Alan Bacon:
It’s not even just about being on par. It’s also the weight and the context of the show. The stories that are told, the voices being heard in this moment. The transformative nature for Butter is what really separates us from other art fairs. But as it relates to just the type of work and the exemplary nature of the work and the emerging artists that we have in Butter, it’s second to none.
Mali Bacon:
And it just feels different. This floor, the way that the art talks to each other is unique. The way identity is explored, and it feels safe; it’s really unique.
To have a Black fine art fair in the Midwest with voices from around the world that don’t know each other, that are working distinctly and then it comes here and it’s such a beautiful comfort.
Alan Bacon:
It’s like it’s in the same book with the same narrative, almost like it’s intentional. That’s the beautiful part of being able to curate from this position that we’re in. Every year is different. 2020 was different than 2021 and so on.
Jones: You have always focused on the community such as what you do for education and how youth 18 and under get in for free. Can you talk about that and what that means for you?
Mali Bacon:
We have been, especially Alan has been, very intentional on student access from the very beginning. Students 18 and under are not being told they can be artists.
When they come to Butter, they’re asking, ‘Do these artists live in Indianapolis? Where did they buy those tools? I think I could do that.’ And they’re looking and they’re saying, ‘I think I can do that.’ They’re seeing you can actually have a profession (in art), and you can stay here and do that.
Alan Bacon:
(Students) are being told what artists to be, what art is, but art is not monolithic. Don’t put my culture in a box. It’s much larger than how mainstream society views art and artists.
If you are a youngster in K through 12 and you see (Butter) and say ‘OK, this is new.’ The newness of this helps them think about music differently. The newness helps them think about food differently.
That is what is innate in us, the artistry that’s in our people. It awakens the gift that we all have.
School is teaching them to be in this box. But what happens when you remove the box? That’s what Butter does. There’s no boxing them.
Jones: What have you evolved into? What’s next?
Alan Bacon:
I think it continues to be the same thing, but there’s just different parts.
Mali Bacon:
This is centering love. This is what we are proposing to cities is that it centers love. Center beauty, equity and culture. Everything now is centered on power — cities and systems and documents and meetings, everything.
And we’re proposing that if we could center these three things, everything is different.
Alan Bacon:
And cities will never center it. America is not going to center it. That’s why Ganggang exists, so we can continue to do that.
Jones: You mentioned different cities. Will there be Butter Atlanta? Butter New York?
Mali Bacon:
Yes, other markets are asking for it. I think about Ball State in Muncie. They’re trying to learn from it. They want Butter for a different reason. They’re saying, ‘How can our students think about the infrastructure?’ and ‘How can our schools track the impact in central Indiana and beyond?’
I think about out-of-market growth in terms of how there can be a Butter LA and then Indiana artists are showing up there, where this is becoming the new model.
Tasha Jones is a poet, writer, researcher, and educator whose work explores language as a tool for liberation and resistance. She hosts In the Beginning: The Spoken Word Podcast, the #1 spoken word podcast on Apple and Spotify. Tasha is also the Poems & Parables Literary Journal editor and is currently writing Pyramids. Plantations. Projects. Penitentiaries. You can follow her on social media: @iamtashajones, @itbspokenwordpod, and @poemsandparables.
