Posted from The Citrus Report

Today, we catch up with NYC’s iO Wright, photographer, filmmaker, writer… shit, you know what? Today we catch up with ARTIST iO Tillet Wright. We first worked with iO at Manifest Equality this past Winter, and now with her work currently hanging in the inagural show at the post-Deitch gallery, The Hole, we do the big, long, in-depth interview on of our favorite artists of the moment. —The Citrus Report staff

TCR: There is a great line in your About me section that says “My mother, the incomparable Rebecca Wright, is making a show out of photographs like this, from another time, when Manhattan was fucked up and interesting.” A lot of people who grew up in Manhattan or in NYC have this sentiment. A friend of ours, Ricky Powell, whom you have shot before, is a big proponent of keeping NYC bohemian. What happened and why does everyone say NYC used to be a lot more interesting?

New York just used to attract a whole different breed. It was home for all the outcasts and freaks, and people who didn’t fit in in squaresville, where everything was cookie cutter and safe, and largely shaped around some religion. They knew they could come here and be amongst the weirdos, the gays, the creatives, and not be judged. It’s like we all say to the missionaries on the street, “I’m looking forward to hell, because you wont be there.” It wasn’t safe here then, so there was no room for the people who thrived on security and normalcy – the only people who got out of their cars on my block were junkies, punks, drag queens, and the hells angels. Now its a different kind of cess pool, of whiskey bars, fancy hotels, and NYU dorms. Ricky and I both find real, freakish creatives more interesting than frat boys. How can we not miss the old days?

TCR: But even this statement, there is a group of young artists who either grew up in NYC or come there from other places that are working at keeping a bohemian, artistic spirit in the City. Ryan McGinley, you, Dash (RIP), Aurel, ESPO, Jose Parla, Dan Colen ( I can go on and on)… so my point is, is NYC in a healthy place right now?

Those artists are the people I’m talking about, birds of a feather, the weirdos and creatives, and they are drawn to like minds, so it becomes a community. A-ron, Ryan, Tim Barber, these are people who thrive within big interconnected networks, and making a communal thing happen, where everyone feels like part of some strange family.

New York is an international hub. Everyone comes here from somewhere, on their way to somewhere else. Very few people want to stay here for life, and even fewer were born here. Ricky, Dash, and I were born in New York City. It’s an entirely different mindset when this jungle is your playground as a child. You know how to work every angle, how to never pay for shit, how to meet the right people who will hook you up with the things you need. We all come from different parts of the financial spectrum, but New York used to be a broke kid’s heaven, which is how I grew up. When you’re raised here in that way, you don’t necessarily  have the same sense of moving away as people who have a home somewhere else they think of eventually returning to. New York is intense as fuck, and it draws intense people. It always has, and it always will, and as long as some part of Brooklyn or Queens is affordable enough for the freaks to keep flocking, and heads are thinking communally and not only of themselves, New York will always be in a healthy place.

Posted By The Citrus Report