Together, the works speak to the creative act of migration and the potential for everyday objects to simultaneously contain culture, but also cause it to confront other forces surrounding it – namely rapid urban development, technology and the digital economy, which accounts for billions of connections between individuals and multinational companies through mobile devices and data.
We should have more shows about Black creativity in the UK, exploring the dialogue between Black artists and how they are communicating the Black experience. There have been some exhibitions on Black creativity before, but often they aren’t given such a big platform or even if they are, it’s cyclic, a programming trend that’s then forgotten again for another decade. For instance, I remember in 2005, there was Kerry James Marshall at the Camden Arts Centre, Back to Black at the Whitechapel and Africa Remix at Hayward Gallery. All fantastic shows but then there was no follow up straight afterwards. I would advocate that it needs to be more consistent.
Spiritual practices, linked to masquerade inspire much of my approach to making and thinking through my research. I think my work is very much a mash up, a mash with masquerade and afro-futurism.
Africanah.org at 5: We celebrate the 5th anniversary of this magazine with the re-publication of a number of remarkable essays. This article of the South African artist and writer Thuli Gamedze was published in April 2015. It talks about the student protests in her country in that year. On a general, even universal level however it talks about the correction of the history by tearing down monuments that were once made to hero-ize a person or an event, but that now can and must be seen as symbols of a malign colonial system.
I think I wouldn’t encourage people to become full time artists. I never even encouraged my students to become full time artist because you don’t go to school and learn to become one. Being an artist is a calling, you are either called to be that out of a need inside you or you are driven by circumstances. But I encourage most of my students to be creative, always question and be productive. The only way we can show our worth is through what we say and do, in other words through action. The more you say and do good things, the more you are considered productive and the more you will be rewarded.