At 1:54 Contemporary African Art Fair

The Cinematic eye of West African photographer Paul Kodjo: The Ivorian Miracle in the 1970’s

Saturday May 4, 2019, 6:30 – 7:30pm

Forum Room/1-54 at Industria, 775 Washington Street, New York City

Panelists:

Ananias Leki Dago (photographer and founder of Les Rencontres du Sud)

Antawan Byrd (art historian and assistant curator of photography at the Art Institute of Chicago).

Moderator:

Claude Grunitzky (media and culture entrepreneur, founder of TRACE and the media platform TRUE Africa).

During this panel, we will look at what makes Paul Kodjo’s photographic practice different from other West African studio photographers of the same period. Ananias Leki Dago has worked for the last ten years at preserving Kodjo’s photographic archive and will describe the artist’s journey, while Antawan Byrd will speak of Kodjo’s cinematic approach and aesthetic engagement with visual art and popular media, in particular the photo-novel. Claude Grunitzky will bring his own experience with popular media while highlighting this unique record of Abidjan being reshaped by social cultural changes and modernist design and architecture.

To register click on the link

The Lay of the Land at the Walther Collection in Chelsea, New York.

I was looking forward to this exhibition since my conversation with Mame –Diarra Niang in Arles about her recent body of photographic works Metropolis. I had first met her the previous year in Joburg at a cocktail party on the occasion of the art fair. While I had not yet seen her work I had liked her smarts, her erudition, and the way she spoke of her art in terms of her personal life experiences which spanned her life in France and many visits to her family’s home town in Cote d’Ivoire and later Dakar. A need to reckon with her feelings around her father and his history was something that struck a cord in me and I was eager to see her work at the time and was not disappointed when I did a few months later.

Her work deals with the cityscape in the process of modernization. It is also a metaphor for her evolving sense of identity, as she reckons with her history. More then a record of a place or “territoire” , it is her memory of a place that she captures in these images .

The photographs’ abstract quality was most impressive. Mame has an uncanny ability to present urban structures of all sorts as flat color planes organized in geometric patterns. It all happens in a flash as she takes her photographs quickly – At The Wall series and Metropolis were taken from a taxi as it was driving by – and she rarely feels she needs to rework them afterwards.

Her photographs are of a modest size and each one makes a subtle statement. Her three series were displayed together beautifully and with great effect. A new comer to the international art scene she held her own opposite Angolan photographer Edson Chagas’ work from his ongoing series Found Not Taken that brought him fame at the Venice Biennale in 2013.

The way he transforms the ordinary into a field of vibrant colors is very seductive yet it is his critique of global consumerism that give his work weight. Francois –Xavier Gbre’s constellation of sixty-three small-scale architectural photographs completes this contemporary take on the postcolonial African cityscape.

I was more familiar with his large architectural views of obsolete interiors, which I always found beautiful but left me ambivalent.

Here, however I found myself engrossed in each small architectural vignette loving the warm hues and the subtle play of the light as it touched the surfaces. The effect was wonderfully poetic: the images capture the passage of time in often time-worn urban structures.

All together this was a very well curated and hung show and a first of several exhibitions on contemporary and video art from Africa and the African Diaspora that will be held at the Walther Collection Project space in Chelsea.

This October was the second year that African art was making a showing in London during Frieze week and it was doubling in size! Named 1:54; 1 for one continent, 54 for 54 countries, the title was a reminder that Africa is not one country but a multitude of countries with distinct traditions, styles, and histories. Founded by Touria El Glaoui  the fair was also the impetus for a critical dialogue organized around a series of lectures and panels curated by artistic director Koyo Kouoh.

While I had been in London just a couple of weeks before I could not miss the event. I made a quick jump to London leaving late Tuesday night after attending suitcase and all a fundraising for a cause dear to a friend of mine. I caught miraculously a few hours of sleep on the flight over and after dropping off my bags at a friend’s house rushed first to the Frieze art fair to see the work of Serge Alain Nitegeka, a Burundi artist at Stevenson Gallery. I had put one of his recent panels on hold – I don’t buy from an image on the Internet – and needed to make a decision. An established South African gallery, Stevenson shows its artists at global contemporary art fairs eschewing the African tag.

The booth looked fabulous with Barthelemy Toguo’s large paintings hanging on the walls and works on paper displayed on easels.

I found Serge Nitegeka’s two recent panels in the back room, out of sight. I was immediately struck by their powerful visual impact. Serge paints on large wooden boxes. Abstract geometry here is imbued with potent psychological power.

In one of the panels Serge has chosen to eliminate any illusion of space: heavy black bands delineate a square slightly off center pressed up against the picture plane. There is nothing serene about this square: shards break up its interior periphery; I even have a visceral reaction and experience a sense of oppression and aggression.

In total contrast, the black lines on the other panel open up to a fictive space allowing for a sense of relief and perhaps hope. The contrast between the two pieces is striking and highlights Serge’s increasing ability to manipulate competently geometry for his own psychological and pictorial purposes.

Despite the fact that I loved the piece I couldn’t figure out where I would put in my apartment so I decided to be reasonable, urged along by my boyfriend who keeps on trying to curtail my art buying. So I very reluctantly let it go, not sure that I was making the right decision. In fact I later chided myself for not following my inclination. Indeed Serge is a very promising artist and he is having a show at Marianne Boesky in New York opening mid-November.

After a quick walk through Frieze I headed off to the Somerset House where 1:54 was housed. Somerset House is a U shaped neoclassical structure built around a courtyard and since the fair has grown from the previous year it now occupies two wings of the building. I confess it took me two visits to realize that half of the galleries were located in another wing! The lack of information given at the front desk was in part the culprit, but my fried brain resulting from the frantic pace of my short visit to London did not help!

I liked ambling on my own through the galleries, taking time to discover, explore, and understand new and different perspectives. There was a healthy mix of art coming from West Africa, North and Sub-Sahara Africa; a diversity of style; plenty of painting, photography, and sculpture. Some rooms were better curated than others, and overall there was enough good work to feel satisfied with the visit.

I was quite pleased to see Abdoulaye Konaté’s wall hangings in the foyer of the fair and later on during my visit at the booth of Primo Marella Gallery of Milan.

Konaté, an artist from Mali started as a painter and later turned to using textiles native to Mali to create large wall hanging where he developed a unique aesthetic combining a local sensibility for symbolism and color and craft with a global political message. I had visited his studio a couple of years back and felt his work had a striking grandeur.

Sammy Baloji’s photograph from his series “Mémoire”was particularly appealing. I was familiar with Baloji’s work and this image was one of his best ones. Born in Lubumbashi, in the DRC he has created photomontages where past and present collide. Here colonial figures, both indigenous and European, are layered over the contemporary architecture of a local mining town in the Kantanga province. Past and present coalesce to expose the underlying economic alliances that benefited colonial masters and a small minority of privileged indigenous people. The juxtaposition here was particularly successful which I don’t think is always the case in his work.

I stopped to ask questions about Nicene Kossentin’s photographic work (Boujmai Fatouma) at the Selma Feriani Gallery. Kossentin has set ghost-like portraits of her late mother and grandmothers against the backdrop of a dried salt lake found in her native city of Sfax, Tunisia. A line of calligraphy delineates the horizon. Because the wordage has no beginning and end it points to her historical cultural lineage. Kossentin’s work is about memory, about remembering, and mostly about the fear of not remembering. She points to the role of women in her culture as “passeuses de mémoire”- a beautiful phrase – or couriers of memory. Long a tradition in her culture it is also the role of women in many other cultures in the rest of Africa where grandmothers are the storytellers and keepers of the oral history of their community. The images were particularly haunting and poignant.

From there I wandered towards the Galerie Mikael Andersen where I had the opportunity to see the lovely drawings of the late Ernest Mancoba, who while perhaps considered the most important modern artist from South Africa is barely known internationally and deserves a new critical look. His drawings – often stylized figures – done during the 60’s and 70’s and inspired by African ritual woodcuts oscillate between abstraction and figuration and convey a unique energy. Having emigrated to Europe at the time of WWII Mancoba was part of the CoBrA movement in Europe before he returned to South Africa. Always present in his mind was his wish to bring his deep understanding of African culture to European art.

I was seduced by the work of Armand Boua at Jack Bell gallery. Using tar and acrylic on found cardboard boxes Boua captures the street kids from his hometown Abidjan.In the process of layering paint and removing it he creates scenes imbued with light and poetry despite the pathos of the subject. I absolutely loved the work though I was not sure the price was justified. Fortunately by then I had reached a state of  temporary wisdom and this time knew to walk away…no matter how much I was tempted.

Across the corridor The October Gallery had an eclectic selection that needed time to take in. I was struck by Homeless Hungry Homo, a sculpture lying on a low stand in the middle of the gallery by the Nigerian artist Adejoke Tugbiyele.

I found myself aware of some of my inner prejudices, which were fortunately being challenged. I was at once intrigued and slightly puzzled and even a bit put off at first. The supine figure disturbed me. It felt unapologetically African and so a part of me – the part shaped by my Western training – hesitated to give it its due. Yet it was so bold and provocative: strangely human despite it being a thing made out of yarn, palm stems, metal, African mask, and dollar bills. Would this appeal to a Western audience? I don’t know but I liked the boldness and the artist commitment to her particular aesthetic.

I hope you notice the variety of styles and aesthetics exemplified by all these artists, which makes it all very fascinating.

I moved on then to the ArtLabAfrica Gallery and soon found myself engaged in a long conversation with James Muriuki and Miriam Syowia Kyambi about their recent seven months residency in Kilifi, Kenya at a science research center as part of the Art in Global Health Residency.

I loved looking at the photographic work coming out of this residency, many of the photographs capturing the local architecture of Kenyan small towns. As you know I have a fondness for Kenya so I was just thrilled.

Great was my surprise when I saw hanging on the wall the work of Kenyan artist Peterson Kamwathi. A couple of years ago I had tracked him down on the outskirts of Nairobi. After he had very kindly offered and then made me tea we had spend two magical hours looking and talking about his work. I was so happy to hear that he was experiencing good success and had just had been commissioned to do a public project in Nairobi.

In the center of the booth were two sculptures by conceptual artist Gor Soudan. Using protest wire – a tangled black mass of wire he salvages from car tires burnt during civil unrests in Nairobi – he reworks them into beautiful, wispy, poetic sculptures, which look like drawings in space.

Photography was well represented with works by Francois-Xavier Gbre, Leonce R.Agbodjelou, Edson Chagas and Frank Marshall. I noticed an interesting trend: two photographers that were getting a lot of attention had originally trained and worked as fashion photographers. Lakin Ogunbanwo and Omar Victor Diop both work with a keen interest in form, color, lighting and design and turn to the inclusion of the self as a mean to address their personal and artistic concerns.

An erotic and subversive undertone can be felt in Lakin Ogunbanwo’s beautiful compositions (shown at Whatiftheworld) where he eludes the gaze of the viewer while highlighting the centrality of his presence in a serial layering of his figure.

Omar Victor Diop at Magnin-A in his project Diaspora is the main protagonist as he adopts the dress and pose of African historical figures having lived in Europe, which he combines with more contemporary props pointing to contemporary life.

Another photographer who has a fashion background is Hassan Hajjaj. His work was unfortunately squeezed between two booths but his take on the “Odalisque”, a video piece, was just wonderful: full of wit and incisive criticism. See upcoming post on his work.

Athi-Patra Ruga’s camp tapestry peppered with eclectic multicultural references was an explosive reminder of the hybrid construct of cultural identity. I was mesmerized by his unabashed combination of gaudy motifs, traditional stitching, and profusion of fake flowers that made the tapestry a textural and colorful delight. He was just included in the Phaidon book “Younger Than Jesus” directory of the 500 of the world’s best artists under the age of 33. It was a fitting and uplifting end to my perusing through the fairs.

I enjoyed the more low key tempo of 1:54, the absence of jaded dealers and collectors, and the opportunity to see more work from North Africa. The big fairs are already so big and to my view a bit of a chore, therefore I like the smaller venue.

I got to see some African galleries that I would not normally see mixed with Western galleries which made for a good mix.  For instance Anne de Villepoix, a mid –size gallery in Paris who has a few African artists in her roster liked the low-key atmosphere which reminds her of how fairs where years back.

Is it ideal to set African art apart? Perhaps not as it risks reenforcing the colonial idea of the African being seen as the other. However, one thing I have learned from all my times going to various African countries,  there are no simple solutions. This one seems the right one for now. It is an unique opportunity for many of these artists to be seen by a greater audience. More importantly it gives them a platform where they can explore keeping an authentic voice while contending with a global art world which demands them to fine tune their  skills, incorporate contemporary strategies, and hone their message to make it more effectively convincing .

PS: No one was walking around talking about being afraid of catching Ebola at the fair. That was a different reaction from the hysteria that I was about to witness at the airport when I landed at JFK! All customs officers were wearing masks and plastic gloves. Go figure….

I love this photograph of Malick Sedibe!

Shortly after my return from Kenya I went to Houston for the opening of the exhibition Progress of Love at the Menil Collection. I had co-sponsored one of the video of the artist Zina Saro-Wiva on Kissing!

Several months before that I had met Zina at a party and we had subsequently gotten together to talk about her work and the positive focus of my blog on Africa.  A former BBC journalist, the founding filmmaker of the alt Nollywood movement Zina is originally from Nigeria but was raised in the UK. She aims in her work to change the way the world sees Africa.  It was quickly evident that we were both on the same page.

Zina explores in her work highly personal experiences. She showed me her recent video project, which focused on the subject of mourning.  She referred discreetly to her personal family tragedy – her father, Ken Saro –Wiwa, an environmental and human rights activist had been executed by hanging in 1995 in Nigeria. She had found it impossible to properly mourn her father in England. Local mourning traditions seemed so unsatisfactory. She had been in search for “ritual and meaning ever since.” It had been so difficult to let herself express her grief. One part of the video shows her with her hair shorn, grieving, and eventually fully weeping.

There was no question I felt uncomfortable witnessing such raw emotion and was keenly aware of it. However it was also coupled with compassion and a desire to join in.  I also could not help but think about how I relate to my own grief – we all have some. All of my reactions were evidence that Zina’s work was powerful, provocative, and emotionally demanding of the viewer. I liked that: I was struck by her courage and the cathartic and healing aspect of the performance.

There is no mourning without love. The video she had shown me was to be shown at the Pulitzer Foundation in St Louis and was to be a part of a three prong collaborative project on the theme of Love and its many forms in Africa and beyond. Zina was in the early stages of making a video about Africans kissing, Eaten By The Heart to be included in the exhibition at the Menil Collection in Houston, one of the venues. The Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts was the second venue and included works by Sophie Calle and Yinka Shonibare.  The third venue was the Centre for Contemporary Art, Lagos, Nigeria and was to focus on the more performative aspect of Love.

Zina described her thinking to me: “ So many of us cite with confidence that Love is universal. But the performance of love is, it seems, cultural. I wonder how the impact of how we choreograph and culturally organize the performance of love impacts what we feel inside and who we become.”

Needless to say, I was on board.

If I felt uncomfortable watching Zina grieve, let me tell you I was very uncomfortable with 12 couples kissing for 3 minutes each. Zina’s starting point was the fact that Africans generally don’t kiss in public and not even that much in private . Things are changing for the young generation more exposed to Western pop culture through the media.She has made use of vibrant colors, various background sound tracks and a careful selection of couples, some gay, some straight, some expressive, some less so, some married, some strangers to reflect the reality of life and love and draw the viewer in. She complemented the video with interviews that can be seen on the website recounting Africans’ thinking about kissing. I recommend checking it out.

The exhibition at the Menil Collection was curated by Kristina Van Dyke, an African Art specialist in charge of revitalizing and expanding the role of African Art in the Menil Collection. The exhibition was at once provocative, thoughtful, scholarly, carefully edited and often visually beautiful and conceptually stimulating.  It presented contemporary African artists’ reflections and explorations on changing modes and meanings of love in today’s global society.

I was totally captivated by Romuald Hazoumé’s installation ONG SBOP situated at the beginning of the exhibition. Hazoumé documents a project he started on Valentine day 2011 in Benin. A non-governmental organization or NGO it is staffed by Beninois and has the mission to help Westerners live better lives. Included in the installation are videos of people, some of them celebrities like the world renown Angelique Kijo, going through markets asking for money for the poor in the West and reminding the Beninois that they should help because they know about love which is something Westerners do not know about. As I am involved with an English NGO that does work in Kenya, this particularly captivated me.  While Hazoumé’s NGO turns upside down the normal paradigm of aid giving and points to one of its shortfalls, it is above all to be understood as an act of self respect for the people of Benin.

Across the way was Felix Gonzales-Torres, Untitled (Perfect Lovers), 1991, a perfect introduction to the personal side of love and its limitations: Two battery-operated clocks set at the same time at the beginning of the exhibition, slowly fall out of sync. It is a reference to love and loss at the time of AIDS.

Yinka Shonibare’s In the Swing installation anchored the exhibition within a historical narrative. A fabulous 3D revitalized remake of Fragonard’s at the time groundbreaking depiction of love, it was without question one of the highlights of the exhibition.  Vibrant – it incorporated as usual his ubiquitous Dutch wax cloth which points to the links between the increased wealth of the Western nations and the economic benefits of the slave trade – playful, exuberant it was gorgeous. What a fabulous appropriation!

The exhibition continued by exploring the role pop culture has in framing ideas of self-love and its representation. Van Dyke showed how film and photographic conventions frame these explorations. Samuel Fosso’s stages himself as the star of his photographic work. He borrows the famous nineteenth century Odalisque pose in a grand gesture of self-affirmation.

Zwelethu Mthethwa’s portraits of South African individuals set in their homes decorated with advertisements, and movie posters are presented in this context as powerful images of an aspiring and affirmative self. They see themselves as participants in this consumerist society and not simple bystanders. Zanele Muholi’s photo stills of the proud gender queer Miss D’vine, give place and space to marginalized communities. To top it all, the tune of the Persuaders’ song Thin Line between Love and Hate, which was part of the minimal sound installation by Nadine Robinson, played incessantly in the background and I walked around in somewhat of dazed state. It had this hypnotic effect, which makes me think of the state one is when in love.

Lynette Yiadom-Boakye’s gorgeous paintings of single figures against non-identifiable backgrounds were a counterpoint to these highly cultured spaces.

Toyin Odutola’s exquisite portraits made with ballpoint pens and markers investigate in depth the skin, musculature, and hair of its subject becoming as Van Dyke says “ meditations on the singularity of the individual.”

All is not easy in interracial love: Ricardo Rangel’s photographs of couples in Maputo bars shows white men and black prostitutes embraced and dancing; yet, they are worlds apart.

I found it a relief to move away from images that quote the world of Western pop culture and sit in the yellow minibus ubiquitous to Lagos while listening through earphones to a young man in Lagos explaining what he was looking in a girlfriend.  This is the work of Lagos artist, Emeka Ogboh whose audio installation was commissioned with the expatriate Nigerian community in Houston in mind and brings the familiar sounds of home to them.

The exhibition ended with another piece by Yinka Shonibare: the video installation Odile and Odette, which explores ideas of mirroring.  Two ballerinas, one white, and the other black, dance most of the time perfectly synchronized on either side of a wooden frame, which creates the illusion that there is a mirror in between them. However, at other times they do fall out of sync and the illusion is broken.  Earlier in the exhibition, Joel Andrianomearisoa had addressed also effectively one’s desire to be mirrored in his installation (Darling you can make my dreams come true if you say you love me too) of 150 pocket mirrors and the impossibility of it.  I stood in front of the piece and could never get a full image of myself.

I liked pondering what is essential to human life.

The stranger is now next door.

The global aspect of contemporary art and the impact of new waves of migrations are definitely on curators’ mind in Europe this summer. Indeed, The Triennial at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris probes the way in which artists react to the challenges of a multi-cultural society. I found again at the Triennial exhibition Intense Proximity the notion of the hybrid, which I had encountered in the work of Kader Attia in Documenta 13.

The Nigerian-born American director of the Haus der Kunst in Munich, Okwi Enwesor,  is the curator of the Triennial.  His point of departure is the ethnographic practice, which he sees as the beginning of the interest in the other. Traditionally, the other was generally located far away on a different continent. However, the distance has now collapsed and the other is now the stranger next door.  It is this experience of co-habitation, that intense proximity and how it is negotiated that is the focus of this show. In other words, ethnography starts at home.

The Marriage Room by Meschac Gaba, which was situated at the beginning of the exhibition, is a perfect illustration of the theme.  An autobiographical work, it includes images of Meschac Gaba’s wedding ceremony with his Dutch wife, her wedding gown and shoes, and a large selection of ordinary objects used by the couple in their daily life which are arranged on tables. The approach is clearly anthropological in the classification process of everyday objects. The juxtaposition of his and hers artifacts which are each linked to their respective origins addresses this idea of proximity.  “Cross-pollination” is one of the effects of this co-habitation.  

This room is part of a bigger project, the Museum of African Contemporary Art that Meschac Gaba has been working on for the last decade. His mobile museum, which in addition to a collection selection includes a museum restaurant, a playroom, and a library, has been touring for the last 8 years.  The whole idea seems so inventive and gutsy I was quite impressed. I liked also the nomadic aspect.

I found the fair quite fascinating and saw lots of good art despite the fact that the underlying premise was not always evident throughout the selection. This was a huge exhibition set in the newly renovated Palais de Tokyo, which felt like a labyrinth at times. As I went down from one floor to another I discovered a succession of cavernous spaces with video projections and installations, which contributed to a feeling of continuous discovery.

Wangechi Mutu’s video installation Suspended Play Time, 2012 in the cavernous lower level of the museum was for me the most striking and provocative piece of the whole exhibition. I am more familiar with her collages, which highlight the hybrid construct of contemporary cultural identity.

The video was projected on an arrangement of white sheets of paper set on the floor in a cave-like setting shaped out of grey felt against which balls made of recycled garbage bags and twine hung like ornaments. Mutu favors organic settings as opposed to the aseptic white cube of the gallery and museum space. The black and white video showed a black woman with long hair sitting with her legs apart proceeding to dig her hands into the cake, slowly eat it, and lick the chocolate cake off her fingers. Eventually she stood up and trampled and squished the cake with her fancy high heels. The video ended with a shot of her washing her hands in the river.

I walked in the middle of the video so it was unclear to me what she was eating. Was it mud or chocolate? Was I going to walk away responding to the part of me that was grossed out and or was I going to hang in there and embrace all my associations and fantasies (let me tell you they were of all sorts!). I stayed and saw it twice.  What was this piece about? Was it about gluttony as a metaphor for our consumerist society, and a critique of the ideal contemporary emaciated female who cannot embrace her pleasure and must conform to a Western norm of beauty? I am not sure, but those were some of my associations. Her lack of inhibition was certainly inspiring in a funny sort of a way.

I loved Marcia Kure’s exquisite watercolors that are becoming more abstract and anthropomorphic, and Nicholas Hlobo’s drawings on canvas made with silk ribbons and rubber.

El Anatsui’s new sprawling sculpture was stunning and surprisingly laid down on the floor. Usually his sculptures become wall hangings.

I am off to South Africa: Johannesburg, Durban and Cape Town and will be back with lots of news.

Sunday, May 20th, the Lisa Cooley gallery saw an unusual sight- cassette tapes.

Brooklyn’s Brian Shimkovitz, author of popular blog Awesome Tapes from Africa, brought his collection of rare African tapes from across the continent to the intimate Lower East Side venue.

In between mounted pieces by Michael Bauer, Shimkovitz took us on an audio journey across Zimbabwe, Ethiopia and Senegal.

The early crowd gathered a bit back from the DJ table, taking in the surroundings, the percussive, uplifting beats and the stack of over a hundred tapes incased within colorful jackets.

From Matthew: “The blog is meant to shed light on stuff that isn’t covered by the excellent funk and afro-rock and afro-psychedelic releases that have been coming out, as well as what’s typically available at Amazon. I feel like there’s so much crazy fascinating stuff out there that people could get into.”

View more from Awesome Tapes from Africa here, and visit lisa-cooley.com for more info on upcoming exhibits.

In the New York Times last Friday, filmmaker Zina Saro-Wiwa presented an op-Doc on black women’s decision to embrace their naturally kinky hair, rather then use chemical straighteners. I think non black women could all use a little return to naturalness in their hair styling in particular in the USA. I remember going to graduate school years ago (ouch in the early 80’s) in Arizona and I was stunned to see women showing up at a 7am class with their hair coiffed into long smooth wavy curls. Today women ( white, black etc )  line up to get their hair straightened in beauty salons! What’s so wrong with our hair anyway? I actually love it when my hair guess curly with the humidity . The weather determines my hairstyle  for the day!

Interview with Nicholas Hlobo by Diane Frankel

Nicholas Hlobo cuts, tears, punctures and resews varied materials such as paper, black inner tube, satin ribbon, leather, textiles that are rich in associations and creates drawings, sculptural installations and performances where he explores issues of personal identity, such as gender, sexuality, ethnicity, origins and colonial history. As Hlobo explains in the following video, he makes the seam, which he highlights by using bright satin ribbon, central to his work by giving it metaphorical significance.  In his drawings he wants to make a mark but instead of using a pen he chooses a sharp object and makes a scar. The action is more violent and the following process of sewing is a process of mending, of repair. Sean O’Toole speaks of the seam as “ the defining metaphor of Hlobo ‘s work, grafting histories and reconciling opposites.”

Hlobo’s drawings are a visual delight: imaginative, intricate and provocative. Increasingly they are gaining a sculptural quality as threads and other materials spill out of the frame onto the wall reaching the floor. His sculptural works often made out of black inner tube with its association to industrialization and urban growth feel more aggressive and invasive yet are tempered by the yielding quality of the rubber material, the softness of the textiles and Hlobo’s general unwillingness to be fully explicit and lay things bare.

Hlobo was born in Cape Town in 1975 and belongs to the Xhosa culture. He tends to title his works in Xhosa. Asked about the reasons of his choice, he responds:

“ It opens up worlds that are closed. It challenges the notion that art making is a purely western tradition and should solely exist within the constraints of the English language.  It challenges the idea that English is the best way to communicate. Most of my work requires curiosity, to look a bit further. The visual language is universal but most work is informed by a personal way of seeing. My work speaks of my place of origin and makes reference to my South African history.”

Nicholas Hlobo is a rising international star. He was included in the 2011 Venice Biennale, was chosen in 2010 by Rolex for the Mentor and Protégé program with Anish Kapoor, and has been included in the Paris Triennale, Tate Modern, and Palazzo Grassi.

The first time I saw Nnenna Okore’s work was at the Newark Museum and I found it very poetic and compelling. Hung from the ceiling, transparent strips of shredded burlap dyed with clay like color, felt tactile and earthy yet paradoxically also ethereal and majestic. That dichotomy intrigued me.  Shortly there after, I found myself in Chicago where Nnenna Okore lives and works.  I got in touch with her and scheduled a visit to her studio at North Park University where she teaches.

Nnenna Okore completed her B.A in painting in Nigeria where she was the student of El Anatsui. It was under his guidance that she refocused her studies towards sculpture, which she studied at the University of Iowa completing an MA and MFA. She is now an Assistant professor at North Park University in Chicago.

Okore recycles discarded materials and objects and transforms them into intricate sculptures. While her work highlights the wastefulness of our consumerist society I feel that it is firmly grounded in nature, in the processes of birth and decay, in other words, in life cycles whether it be a tree, an object or her own body as it ages. This awareness of life processes informs her choice of materials. During our conversation she told me that as a young child growing up in southeast Nigeria in the town of Nsukka, she would walk through the rural communities and be on the lookout for objects, either man made or from nature, in partial decay whose texture and shape intrigued her.

I wanted to learn more about her working process. Okore showed me some of her burlap pieces at first and explained how she made them.

Listen to the follow video to hear her working process.

Making art is for Okore a very physical experience. Just as she saw women in her childhood community engage in repetitive daily tasks, she weaves, sews, rolls, twists, and dyes. She responds to the nature of her chosen material whether it is burlap, plastic, paper, or clay and rope and adapts her process. She takes what comes to her and works with it. The process is organic and she speaks of “ collaborating with the material”.  When she creates a large sculptural installation she starts with a broad idea of how it is going to look but no specifics.  The context and the nature of the chosen material play as much a role in determining the end result as her intervention. She has until now very much refused to take full control. However, in one of her more recent pieces, her approach is shifting and she is imposing more structural elements and deliberately aiming for something more visceral.

Finally we walked into the back room where one of her large clay pieces was rolled up and lying on the floor against the back wall. As we unrolled it, hundreds of small rolled clay pieces woven into burlap revealed themselves. This had obviously taken Okore hours to do.  While the sculpture seemed to not have a particular shape – it looked like a  very large wall hanging-  when she showed me how she installs it, I understood the second part of her working method. It is in the installation process that many of her pieces undergo a final shaping as she gathers the material in a particular way or hangs the panels on different planes sculpting the space.