Phoenix may be one of the fastest-growing places in the country but, it’s also incredibly transient.
As we documented in The Show series Exit Interview, lots of people who make their mark on the Valley of the Sun leave. They hit a ceiling, or head off for the big time.
The Show interviewed chefs whose critically acclaimed restaurants couldn’t make it here: writers who went to the Ivy League, musicians who left for Nashville, and a South Phoenix born-and-raised artist who found her voice in Europe.
"When I moved to Germany, I was set on ‘I am not going back to America … I am living in Europe for the rest of my life,'" said Antoinette Cauley, a local artist.
You might know Cauley from her basketball-court-sized mural for the Phoenix Mercury, or her remarkable portraits of young Black girls decked out in hood culture or, her nine-story high mural of Black writer and activist James Baldwin overlooking Roosevelt Row.
She made a name for herself in Phoenix.
But, not too long ago, as the pandemic took hold and then George Floyd’s murder rocked America, she told The Show, she had to get out. She took a residency in Berlin and left.
It was a professional boon. In her 2022 Exit Interview, she told The Show, she knew becoming international would up her value as an artist. But her mental health suffered during Germany’s cold, dark winters and, she fell in love with someone back home.
"It took me about a year and he, my boyfriend, made it very clear, 'if you don't want to come back, we will figure it out. We'll make it work,'" she said. "He never once asked me to come back, but he did let me know, 'of course I want to be with you.'"
And, at the same time, in a short, few years she says, Phoenix had changed too.
Full conversation
ANTOINETTE CAULEY: The opportunities are in abundance now. It's insane how much the art community, the community in general, has grown. And so I'm bombarded with just different things, and having to turn things down and it's been a whirlwind.
LAUREN GILGER: A very different position to be in.
CAULEY: Yeah.
GILGER: So she's back. And ready to be a voice for Phoenix and the growing community of Black artists here.
CAULEY: I remember maybe like 15 years ago when I first was like, “OK, maybe I should do this art thing,” and went and had lunch with one of my good friends, Kris Rhymes. He's also a Black artist. He's phenomenal. And I remember we had lunch together and we were like, “dude, we are the only Black artists we know. We got to stick together.” And now it's like I keep a roster for different events and things so I can email people and there's like 60 names I have, you know, and growing.
GILGER: That's amazing. Do you feel like you were part of the catalyst for that?
CAULEY: Definitely. I don't think I necessarily tried to be, but I think that just through following my purpose and listening to my calling, that I became a pillar of sorts within the Black arts community and help other artists see what's possible. And also, I've intentionally tried to create a blueprint for how you can build like an independent art career.
GILGER: So it sounds like, and I remember talking to you about this, when you were in Berlin. You really like, something drew you there and something felt free there. You felt like you were free maybe of some of the discrimination, some of the things that you felt held you back or were kind of suffocating you in America as a Black person here.
CAULEY: Definitely, I felt free for the first time and it was tied into safety and interactions with the police and not being harassed. You know, I want to point out that like racism exists everywhere, discrimination exists everywhere, sexism, all that stuff, it's everywhere, but it looked a lot different and was a lot less in Germany. Walking around, you're not getting followed in grocery stores or if you carry your backpack in there, it's normal, you know, it's, they don't think you're going to steal or whatever.
They're just not as bothered, I guess. It's like every time I would land at the airport in Phoenix, it's like I could just smell the racism everywhere. And you know, you get looks here where you can tell people are passing judgment or I've had so many experiences like that and I didn't experience that in Germany. It just felt, I don't know how to explain it. It was just free.
And every flight home, I would cry because I'm like, my family's never going to know what it feels like to be free because they just don't have the access for this stuff. So it was a painful experience. But I'm glad I experienced it, so I can encourage other people to try, you know, try to get out of here.
GILGER: Which, you know, is interesting because of course now you're back. But I want to talk about something you said there that I think comes up a lot with people who leave and come back to Phoenix. Did you feel like you were a failure in doing that?
CAULEY: 100%. It was the most, now in hindsight, I'm like, wow, that was crazy to feel that way. But I remember thinking like, “wow, I did this big thing. I accomplished this huge dream. If I, you know, quote unquote abandon that, does that mean I failed?” And every time I would ask, you know, talk to my friends or my therapist about it, I would just break down into tears.
And I guess I didn't realize like how much at the time, how much of my own like internalized self-worth was in the fact that I was able to move to Europe and do it on my own and do all these things. And I think really what it was is: I would have felt sort of that unworthiness or not being good enough if I had left that behind, which is not true by any means.
No matter what, I did it, you know, did something that most people would be too afraid to even approach, you know. So that was a huge feeling I grappled with that took me about a year to get to the point that I was like, “I'm not a failure if I come home. I succeeded no matter what.”
GILGER: So let me ask you about your art and all of this. What did your three years in Berlin do for your practice, your art? What has coming back done for it?
CAULEY: Oh man, Berlin changed everything. Berlin made me confront a lot of thoughts, feelings and ideas I had about myself, about my community, about my country. I went to Berlin for an artist residency, and so I took that time to really explore and experiment and I realized what I was actually speaking to in my work.
One thing I've always been drawn to is like Black American hood culture. I grew up listening to gangster rap. My dad had like an old Impala with Dayton rims on it and sound systems and I'm used to that culture. It feels nostalgic. It feels comfortable. It feels like home. So I paint about that a lot.
But while I was in Germany, I really explored. I was able to contrast the level of freedom I saw in one country versus the other one. And I just thought like, “why does hood culture even exist?” Because it didn't exist in Germany, like at all, and I missed it a lot.
I realized ultimately that it's a product of colonialism and slavery and it led to the displacement of Black Americans in ghettos, essentially, and we were stripped of resources. So we had to turn nothing into something and that, the product of it, was hood culture, which is one of the leading influences of fashion and music.
And so for me, I realized in Germany, “this is really what I'm exploring and talking about and how do I amplify the beauty of hood culture while also tying in the research and bringing up very important conversations about displacement and place-based safety, place-based identity.” So had I not gone to Germany, I wouldn't have had the contrast of society there versus here.
I looked at the history in Germany versus here. How did they handle the Holocaust versus how does our country handle slavery and genocide. So it really helped me hone in what my voice was and what I'm talking about and helped me be more intentional with my work.
GILGER: So I think one of the central questions that came up over and over again in the Exit Interview series and that you talked about as well, I remember, is this idea of, “Can you fulfill your dreams or your goals in Phoenix? Is this place big enough for it? Does it support it?” What do you think now?
CAULEY: You know, I'm kind of on the fence about it. I think that I'm proof that it's possible. I think it just might be a little more challenging in a city like Phoenix where we lack a certain level of funding, because let's be real, access to capital is the most important thing for artists to be able to create.
So I think if the city had more funding, which was something I saw in Berlin, a city government who was very supportive financially of artists, I think we'd see even more of a boom in the city, and I think there would be more opportunity for artists to be successful. So I'm never mad at someone leaving to accomplish things quicker. So yes, it is possible here. It might just be slower, it might be harder, but I feel like with the right amount of determination and discipline, you can really accomplish anything in the city.
