Sasha Bogojev: Let’s talk about the Dalmatian series. What is that one about? We keep hearing about art being about current times or times we live in, artists needing to work from a subjective position, and things like that.
Vaughn Spann: So, I'm really interested in speaking about the work through the lens in which I exist as a person, and as a black man, in particular, also, the ways I experience the world as a westerner and US citizen. Growing up in an urban city, concrete jungle, per se, when I think about the neighborhood, one thing I noticed is that people had animals. They would have dogs that would protect or guard their homes and domestic spaces. They were usually rugged animals, like German shepherds and such. So, these are experiences I have from my youth. As an artist, I got caught up thinking about these ideas of class, social aspects, ethnicity, and all these higher notions; so, every time I'd see Dalmatians, they would be associated with things around wealth, desire, those markers of money and class. They were also part of the entertainment industry, so a firefighter in a TV show would have a Dalmatian, so I kept wondering, ‘Where does this exist?! This is not the America I know!’ It was something very micro that meant so much to me. So, I was always interested in the ways I was fed these false social realities that don't really exist for me as a person.