Coolest Person in the Room: Hannah Traore

Let's just go to the very beginning. Tell me about your upbringing. Did you have a very creative childhood?

Super creative upbringing. I grew up in Toronto with a big family. My mom is Canadian and Jewish, and my dad is Muslim and African, so we have so many different cultures in the house at one time. My mom was really into art. The way she met my dad was that she would go to West Africa and bring back art to sell in Toronto, so she was kind of in the West African community, which is how she met my dad. There was art all over the house, and whenever we went on vacation, we went directly to all the museums. Also we were all in art classes from before we could speak. We were all doing arts and crafts on the weekends so it was just very much a part of our life. We're all basically in the arts now, something creative, which my mom is very happy about.

Is that what you officially pursued in school then?

I wanted to be a primary school teacher my entire life, until sophomore year of college. I love kids more than anything in the world because I have so many little cousins. When I went to college, I thought I wanted to be a psych major for some reason. Then I took an art history class, and I was like, I don't know why I never thought of this. All of a sudden a light bulb went off. I was not a total fuck up in high school, but I really didn't like school. Once I got to Skidmore, because I loved art history so much, I ended up getting all these academic awards, like academic awards from doing this project. I loved what I was doing. For my senior thesis, I did an exhibition at the museum on campus about my father's culture, mostly. In the show I had Mickalene Thomas, Derrick Adams, Zanele Muholi, Hassan Hajjaj — all these artists who I respect so much. (Hassan ended up being my first installation at the gallery, which was like this beautiful full circle moment.) That's kind of what made me realize what I wanted to do in the arts: a curator. So that's what I did.

What were the steps you took after college to eventually have your own gallery?

When I left school, I curated an exhibition for one of my mentors in Toronto, and then the next year, I did an internship at MoMA in the curatorial department, painting and sculpture, for a year. In senior year, my friend, whose parents own James Cohan gallery, was like, “You should open a gallery.” And I was like, “I don't like business.” And she was like, “You can hire someone to do that.” But then I had some visa issues that got me kicked out of the country. My parents were like, “Well, why don't you just start a gallery now?” Then the visa got fixed, but the pandemic hit three months later. So it was already kind of in my mind, and I realized that the idea I had was much more developed than I'd given it credit for. I started calling my mentors and figuring out if I could do it, and that's when the journey started.

Why open your own gallery before working at other ones first?

In your experience working for larger art institutions, what did you see was lacking?

The biggest thing is that it's really hard to fully understand someone if you are so far from their experience. I wouldn't necessarily identify with all the identities that I sell in the gallery, but I understand the idea of otherness more than a white man at MoMA would. I'm not showing a Black or queer artist to tick off any boxes. I understand the work from their point of view. A lot of my artists have said, “Whenever I go to other galleries, they don't get it.” There is a huge trend with Black figurative art in the art world, which isn’t not necessarily a bad thing, but a lot of the performative institutions and galleries have hung on to that because we see someone's blackness in that work, whereas one of my artists, for example, James Perkins, makes abstract work, but it's not explicitly like, “This is a Black artist.” And he even has said that Chelsea galleries don't care about him because he’s not helping them in their woke journey.” When everyone above you is white, it's just not gonna work.

Our identities are always intrinsically part of our work!

Yeah! Also people are like, “Where's the ‘Black’ in this work?” Would you ever ask a white artist that?

Is it hard to run a business while also supporting artists creating freely?

It is a business, unfortunately. For example, one of my artists had this really wild idea that actually would have worked beautifully at an institution, but there was literally nothing to sell. Although I have an installation room in the back where I can work with artists in that way, in the front room, it really does need to be for sale. Something I love about curating is also helping them shape the show and their work. It’s not always the way that I work with artists because some artists don't want that as much, or some artists already have a body of work ready that's never been seen, but I've had multiple artists thank me like, “I never would have thought to do this. You pushed me in this direction, which made the work that I've always wanted.” That's a really beautiful part of my job.

I'm not a business person. That's not why I opened a gallery. So sometimes it's hard. I make bad business decisions to create great shows. I'll be real, like, I'll pay a ridiculous amount for frames when I know the show won't sell really well because it's important for the work. I just hope it all pays off after a certain amount of years because, especially now, I feel like I'm proving myself, but also for the artist. It's so important for me that the work is really outstanding. In situations where there actually is nothing to sell, I've had conversations with artists being like, “This is an important show. It's not going to sell. Are you good with that? Because if you're good with that, I'm good with that.” And then we move on because it's an important show to be seen.

If you could have a dinner date with three artists alive or dead, who would you go with?

Leonardo da Vinci, because he was more of a scientist than an artist, actually, and he was so prolific in his engineering and that kind of work. I think that his brain was so interesting. He would look at dead bodies to make sure that his anatomy was right. And Michaelangelo, both of them together, honestly. Their work had so much math involved. I studied the Renaissance, so that would be really interesting. Then Hannah Wilke, an artist who died of cancer. She, as a work, documented her death. That just has always really stuck with me. Visually, she expressed how it felt, but I would love to hear more.

What does “cool” truly mean to you?

Ingenuity is the coolest. I love people who are different and weird, which is why I love living in New York. I hate vainness. That's in art. That's in people. If you're quirky, if you're super confident, if you're just yourself, that's the coolest thing. Lean into who you really are, instead of trying to be like everyone else. I love someone who knows who they are, shows who they are, and stands up for who they are, but in a kind way. Being nice is overrated, though, if you're only nice. You gotta have more than that. That's how I feel about my artists too. Their work is so particular to them. They have their own voice. It all sounds so cheesy when you say it out loud.

It’s not cheesy though because we hear it all the time, but it’s still so rare. Now, people are delusional about being different and “that bitch” in an egotistical way, rather than a secure way or a way to connect with people because of your differences. I literally was just thinking about how I’m more at peace and don’t spiral when I accept that people simply just don’t care to know themselves and actually want to be like everyone else.

It is one of my biggest pet peeves, someone who just wants to be like everyone else and doesn't know themselves. I want to feel empathy for them, but the problem is that often people who don't know themselves and are insecure, which often goes together, end up lashing out, and being really whack.

What I've also learned living in New York around so many incredible people who are themselves is that we can get jaded and forget how important and cool what we’re doing is sometimes because they’re doing that too. Don’t forget that what we’re doing is extremely cool and extremely important.

Photography: Diego Villagra Motta
Styling: Angelina Cantú
Hair: Marin Mullen
Makeup: Aimi Osada

Styling assistants: Heidi Cannon, Monet McFarlane

Editor-in-chief: Justin Moran
Managing editor: Matt Wille
Editorial producer: Angelina Cantú
Story: Andrew Nguyen