Carlos Khali is an emerging artist who could easily and harshly be judged and dismissed. He is a light-skinned Black male, lanky and of modest height. He has tattoos on his neck and arms and wears his jeans belted well below his waistline. A durag covers, what he refers to as, his massive forehead. You don’t see too many men like him frequenting the Art Walks in downtown Seattle, yet he is a refreshing presence. Vulnerable and emotionally intelligent with a desire to connect deeply to others are just some of the qualities that come through when speaking with him. It is easy when you do not fit into the crowd, especially in Seattle which was ranked the 6th Whitest city in America (2020 Census), to feel like you do not belong. But Khali is quick to reassure others like him that “you belong here,” something he recently told a young Black artist during Art Walk when he overheard him say he couldn’t go in because “you don’t see durags in galleries.” Khali’s journey as an artist has been evolving - he describes his art as gritty and raw because his life has been just that. And through his art, he is learning to see and understand himself outside the confines of others’ expectations. 

Could you share a bit about your upbringing and how that shaped you into who you are today?

I am half Black. My dad was a very interesting individual. He is from the ghetto [South Philly] but was also brilliant. He was a professor and played college basketball. He prided himself on education and intellect and somehow ended up learning Swedish and meeting my mom who is from Stockholm. All of my brothers―we all have different mothers so he was definitely a man about town. My mother was very pivotal to my art and to the way that I think and feel about the world. I’m from San Francisco. That’s where I was born and then we moved to Marin County because my mother always thought that no matter how much money we have, we should always have the best in education. We lived in a very rich neighborhood, but we were on food stamps. I loved the experience because I can see everything from both sides. I love my parents. I attribute so much of who I am to just the energy and essence that they gave me. They both pushed me into art.

How did your interest in and practice of art evolve as you grew up?

I have dyslexia so I can read at a college level but the words are hard. When you paint, it speaks so I don't need words. I need colors and shapes and forms and with those, I can say anything. I write poetry and essays but I can speak so much louder and clearer with my paintings. When people walk up to my paintings, anybody from any demographic, they look at it and understand. It makes me cry sometimes. It's so beautiful to know that I'm touching the universe and it shows me that we're all connected. 

Your work mainly speaks to your experience as a Black man. Why have you expressed yourself this way when you desire to be seen as just a person?

I just thought I was a person and then somebody called me the N-word, and that's when I was about 8 or 9 years old…I found out I was Black. I was privileged and afforded the universal experience and when someone took that away from me, I recognized [it] and I've always just latched back on to that. One of my favorite quotes is three words from Bob Marley, “it’s a feel” and feeling, emotion is everything. I just put so much emotion into my art and that's why I do so much art that speaks to social justice. We shouldn't have to do that because we should all just be people but I have to speak to it because I've lived it.

How has your self-discovery journey shown up in your art?

I do a lot of studying in psychology, self-help, Buddhism and Hinduism. I study everything like I am a connoisseur of the world. I want to be free so one of the things that I do with my art is I want people to feel alive. I want to make people feel the universe. One of the things that I love about the Buddha was just getting comfortable with and understanding suffering. I'm okay with pain because I know that you can't have joy without it. When you express pain, you let it go. You have to push through it and I feel like a lot of the things that we go through in society, like a lot of this racial injustice, just the horrible things that people do to each other, comes from not understanding pain. Connecting that to my art is showing people that you need to let it out. 

You have your first solo show later this year. In what direction is your art going and how has that paralleled your recent growth? 

I remember the first artist talk that I did when I said, “I don't know if I'll ever be able to do anything but this racial injustice work” and then I realized no, you're not showing them who you are, you're showing them what you've been through. We live in 2024 and you can be anything you want to be except a Black man in America and be okay. We're not accepted. We're not appreciated. We're not loved, not for the right reasons, and those things led me to be a person that I shouldn't have been. I ran through the streets. I was a good person doing bad things because I thought that's what I was supposed to do. So now my art is about expressing the fact that black men have value, that everybody has value. I really just want people to feel good and experience joy and work through suffering in a healthy way. This upcoming show is about showing myself and everyone else, the universe, our creator, the energy who I am and also showing other people that I feel you too. Every time I wake up, the world is so bright and big and beautiful. We should all just embrace it and love each other. Be kind, caring. Be compassionate. 

Being a transplant, how do you feel about living in Seattle? Specifically, what has The Brush Squad, the collective you’re a part of, provided you?

The only thing that keeps me here is the art and the people that I meet and the experiences that I have through the art. I don't really like the city. I'm not from here, it's not for me. But because of [artists], I have community. I feel safe now. I want to be here. Rodney King, one of Seattle's most prominent and I would say best artists, is all about community and I met him through Instagram. He reached out to me and he said, “I got this hip hop show and I saw your work. Come put it in my show.” Then he had this idea like, why don't we just keep doing this? We're not really just an art collective. We pick each other up, help each other when the car breaks down, buy each other’s groceries, and watch each other's kids…It's so organic and genuine and it's so great to see how we've built this amazing family.  We're going to take the city over but we don't want to just do it for ourselves. We want everybody to be on it. Miami is an art hub, New York, LA. But Seattle, I think it could be a world class destination for art if we let it.

‍Carlos Khali’s work can be found on Instagram @carloskhaliart. He is a featured artist from The Fishbowl, a QTBIPOC centered artist gallery and community space.