Good evening. I'd like you to welcome you to this boy that firstly to thank the Africa Oxford African Studies seminar series
for inviting me to talk about my work on the title of this talk was due to be unmasking African and British art.
But there was some work which I wanted to share with you that doesn't address British directly,
so perhaps you should just think of the subject as unmasking Africana.
And the reason obviously I want the lights to be dimmed is because primarily this is artist.
From my perspective and. If you can't see the work properly, it doesn't make any sense at all, sir.
And a lot of my work is some of it's like this pieces kind of nocturnal and it's some sort of a presentation.
So yeah. OK, so that's the title of my doctorate was Africana, unmask fugitive science of Africa and takes British collection.
I would it in 2016 and the thesis kind of documents,
my discovery description and also critical analysis of what I call unmasking africana as an artistic methodology.
So it was a practise based thesis, and the aim was to create artworks with a very visual African theme that would
be visibly connected to artworks that seem to have nothing to do with Africa.
So the purpose of making these kind of connexions is to fully facilitate through art a critique of those artworks,
which appear to have nothing to do with Africa. And my work acting as a kind of conduit for that sort of understanding.
And later this year, the the the Oxford University Press is going to be publishing a chapter which is based on part of my thesis court.
And in an anthology called Classicism in the Black Atlantic.
So perhaps I could send details if people want to buy this wonderful new publication because there are so.
Africans have always been very important to my art. However, I have a very expansive view of the subject in the term,
so that's why I frequently use the term Afrikaner because its usage by American US africana studies.
Academics, I think, helps facilitate thinking about people, places, ideas and artefacts with a strong and definitive association with Africa.
That's what the peoples of Africa and its diaspora. And before I talk in depth about the notion of unmasking Afrikaner, I want to just give a brief.
You've my artistic journey that led towards those works for Sony to give it to somebody.
So this painting that you can see on the screen now was made quite early in my career and is an
imaginary depiction of two historical characters who played a leading role in the Haitian Revolution,
which defeated slavery, including colonialism in in 1884, when Haiti gained its independence.
And this picture here, which you can on screen now, it's Toussaint Louverture better, it is an artwork from the same series.
And I suppose in terms of think, you know, in terms of what I was saying about Africano and thinking about Africa for me and you know,
the question of Diaspora is is very important.
So certainly at the time in the 19th century when the sort of people of Haiti and other enslaved Africans in the new world were, you know,
struggling for that for their emancipation, many times they considered themselves to be African and in some respects still do,
as we know from the the phrase African American.
So, yeah, I think that says that.
And by the way, if people want to ask questions in the course,
if something really bothers you that you don't think you can wait and you can feel free to to kind of interject something really funny.
And just to give you a kind of idea of the sort of the quiet these paintings are quite kind of large six,
they're sort of designed to be, you know, gigantic paintings, but they sort of have a monumental feel when you approach them.
This is quite big paintings, and that's a sort of installation view to something new to be taken last year at the Wolverhampton Art Gallery.
And I suppose one of the things about this early work on was was that I was already thinking very much
of how to navigate the use of black and African history in relationship to Western and European art.
So for example, this this this painting,
the Tucson painting has got a sort of a visual relationship to a painting by a French classic neo classicist painter Jacques Louis DVDs,
which depicts Napoleon in a very similar pose to this sort of, you know, an equestrian warrior leading the troops.
But when I created this, Toussaint knew the two painting. I did things to sort of subtly and which I can't shake the hand that David painting here,
but sort of subtly make comments about the artistry around the paint around the sort of French painting.
But also on. I suppose.
I'm not trying to say this, this relationship to the to the artworks and also thinking about how oftentimes.
There are elements of European history which have a strong connexion to black life and to African life,
which aren't in any way visible in European artworks.
So in this instance, for example, the reason I wanted to make a kind of allusion to this painting about Napoleon was
because Napoleon was the leader of France at the time that Toussaint knew that two was,
you know, battling against sort of French and French colonialism.
So there's a sort of a biographical or historical connexion between my work and the other.
And similarly, from the same kind of series, the title of this work,
Backus and Ariadne is kind of related to similar to a Renaissance painting kind of similar composition.
So I was thinking very much about how you could take motifs and ideas from Renaissance,
the classic neoclassical western painting, and think about how that might be relevant to black and African history.
And I should point out this painting was made in 2004, and it was specifically for the bicentenary of the Haitian Revolution.
And here is another sort of installation photograph from when the painting
was displayed at the Venice Biennale in the Diaspora pavilion 18 months ago.
And then also, my work has very much focussed on the lives of black and African people in in the West,
in the sort of western diaspora, what I say in the West, because I suppose Haiti's in the West, isn't it?
But perhaps you could say in the metropolitan west, in and particularly in Britain.
So this painting that was created in 2005, it's called under fire the shooting of Terry Gross,
and I suppose it's a kind of self-explanatory title image.
And again, this is to give you a kind of indication of what the paintings look like in situ.
It's installation photograph from a couple of years ago in Nottingham.
So I'm just going to start talking now a bit more about this question of unmasking Africana and what I mean by that.
And what's on how that came about in my practise.
So this painting or it's not painting, is a mixed media assemblage.
It's called U.K. Diaspora. It was created in 2007 to mark the 200th anniversary of Parliament's 1847 act to abolish the slave trade.
And I would say that one of the things that I do in my work on both of the titles and also through the the way which the work is created is,
it's very attentive to this kind of specific details,
historical details to the fact that this is created to mark the 200th anniversary is kind of
emblematic of the way that I practise also using quotations and this kind of thing in the titles.
So I always try to have these very kind of quite specific, detailed relationships with documented historical characters in different.
And as you could probably tell, the work sort of brings together all these different canvases in a kind of map of the island of Great Britain.
And, you know, they sort of arrange in that in that shape.
And ask the kind of basic concept of UK diaspora is that it incorporates portraits of famous people connected with slavery.
There was a kind of notion of thinking about a sort of a triad of concepts in a way to represent the notion of the on the the world,
the Atlantic Triangle. And even the phrase was the phrase the of trade, a triangular trade.
That's what this notion of a triad concept which underpins this work.
So on the one hand, it is, and the idea was that each each sort of point of this triad would represent a kind of an aesthetic,
not an artistic aesthetic associated with the geographical points of the triangular trade.
So the portraits of famous people connected with slavery represented as it were the European and point of the triangle.
There are kind of symbolic objects which you'll see in more detail than the sort of attached to each work,
which are supposed to have a relationship to the voodoo, the various religions which appeared in the In the New World.
A result of African enslavement such as Santeria.
And condemned Blair and other, you know, Haitian beauty.
And then around each of the individual canvases, the release of thousands or hundreds of nails,
which represent the kind of like an appropriation of the Inquisition on the sacred sculpture motif, which obviously comes directly from Africa.
If you go into little bit more detail about this notion of unmasking Africana, so on screen at the moment is a painting of one of Sir John Hawkins.
Has anyone heard of Sir John Hawkins before? Yes, the devil himself.
So what I'm doing actually is right now I'm digging in from a laser because.
At work, I take that with me, OK, so.
So John Hawkins, obviously a tutor to the sea captain, this portrait apparently done in 15,
18, 15 and 81 and is permanent and permanent display in the National Maritime Museum.
And I think they've kind of slightly changed when I first made this artwork to the way that they showed this painting.
So what's different? So back we're talking about, you know, 12 years ago.
And I think now the way they label it is a little bit more, it's a bit more clarity on.
But obviously, Sir John Hawkins was to have his to have his portrait on display, the National Maritime Museum,
as it has been for a very long time with a kind of a statement of, I suppose, praise for him.
And whereas what I did in UK Diaspora, so I just go back a couple of slides.
Sir John Hawkins, when is there?
On Friday, the UK Diaspora acquired smaller work would arise, Sir John, and the idea of it was to kind of, I suppose, express my anger,
if you like of my knowledge that this portrait represents someone who kidnapped the 1500 West Africans,
sold them into a sort of slave labour camps during the 16th century.
And so you could see that there's a piece of of a neo has been driven through, said Jones, head of faith.
In my portraits. It's a kind of way, if you like.
It's a kind of commentary not only on the life of this person and his evil deeds, but also on the artwork itself.
And another. So just sit back again. So this is kind of the next to each other, this is this one in the assemblies.
Elizabeth, the first this portrait hangs in the National Portrait Gallery.
When I first saw it, it was in states. It was in Britain, but it's now going back to the National Portrait Gallery.
And I suppose it was this particular work and this particular thing which sparked my decision to do the PhD thesis on.
But by the time I kind of started it and it wasn't in state anymore.
But, you know, so it's a 50 and 75 portrayed by Nicholas Hilliard.
And you can see that my version of it sort of reverses the the the, you know, the orientation of the portrait.
And the reason I wanted to include Elizabeth is because obviously, you know,
obviously she loaned Hawkins a ship explicitly for him to carry out his treating and kidnapping activities.
And then when he came back and with lots of money and treasure for her, she knighted him and appointed him admiral in the English Navy.
And so the work has got a lot of my kind of work, it's got lots of, I suppose, symbolic things which relate to this history.
And amongst them is which can just about see on the original Hilliard painting,
you have all these kind of sort of like, I think they are supposed to be rose roses or lilies or something flowers.
And so in my version, I sort of replaced them with faces of all of the.
I mean, I've put 17, there's probably more than that. Cinema actors who over the years have represented Queen Elizabeth,
including Oscar and BAFTA winners like Cate Blanchett and Helen Mirren and Duke Dench, and in all over this country, all of the films.
Elizabeth is portrayed whether she's portrayed well or not so well in terms of her, you know,
status in the movie slavery and her role in it is never meant to never ask me, including the current Queen Elizabeth film of the moment.
And this was a was a film which I think came out in two thousand seven.
So at the moment that Britain was supposedly claiming to be celebrating the abolition of the slave trade,
the film industry felt it was time to show the movie in which the founder of the slave trade was,
you know, seen as a great heroine of an English life.
So this work, I suppose, was created as it as a kind of a kind of a protest, if you like, as a counterbalance to that kind of iconography,
which permeates the British art world and British cultural life around figures
who've been involved in the exploitation of African people over the years.
And obviously, trading figures in the world can keep people like George Washington, Sir Isaac,
Newton Francis Drake, then Daniel Defoe, all who had, you know, put their fingers in the pie.
And this is a photograph of an installation photograph of the work,
which I suppose gives you an idea of the kind of scale and you know, the way the world looks in in in when it's been installed.
And it was acquired by the International Slavery Museum in 2017, which.
You know, they had it there for this sort of 10th anniversary.
So I want to move on to a work now, which was much more strongly featured, which kind of arose directly through the process to the doctoral process.
Maybe you've seen for those of you don't seem so familiar with how practically theses work.
So on, this painting is called your assent to inspecting the dispositions at AGC.
It's 2014, and it says that the Muslim collection of the British Museum, they bought it last year,
and it's hopefully going to be going on display later this year in Africa galleries on.
And obviously you are sent to war on those who aren't familiar with that anti-colonial leader in nineteen hundreds West Africa,
the portrait the woman he's displayed in, he's actually portrayed in the in the painting The Face of Him.
So it was the painting represents your sense of what the actual portrait is of my partner.
He's British born and of West African heritage and sort of the the scenery, the the landscape, the background in which the this.
Putri said it's based on my photographs of the countryside in Ghana.
And so now on screen is a painting by John Singer Sargent,
who is the sort of school is the pre-eminent portrait artist of the late 19th century and early 20th century Britain and America.
And this painting is it's like it's held by Tate, is held in Tate Britain.
It's often on display in Britain.
It's not at the moment, but it kind of comes in and out of display in the Victorian paintings room, and it's called a study of Madame through.
And I should say let him go.
He was made in Paris in 1884. And it's a kind of the the portrait of a Parisian socialite called Madame Gertrude.
She was the wife of a wealthy Parisian banker. And the text here on the side, she probably can't read if you sing far back.
It's basically taken from the the sort of online caption in, you know, in Tate's website about the work,
which in itself which itself is extracted from the sort of catalogue entry for when,
you know, when they'd created the catalogue of this of the collection with its work in it and nothing in this text mentions it.
This is where Madame Gertrude is from. She's from a Louisiana plantation family.
This is a photograph of her dad in his Confederate uniform.
They were very ardent Confederate kind of slave holding family.
And so there's nothing about that in the text about her, which, you know, it's fair enough.
They can write what they like, honey about this lady.
So enslaved Africans, Peabodys, Madam Gertrude's inheritance are not visible in portraits or curatorial takes.
So from our perspective, in terms of my sort of theory, my thesis about my art and it relates to,
I consider this to be what call most africana because there's a there's a there's a way in which by,
you know, producing the wealth which allowed her to become the subject of this high value portrait.
There's a kind of a as it were a very strong connexion between her and the African people who laboured on this plantation in.
And you can see there's a slight difference between this painting and this other one, because there's two of them.
There's a two paintings which are more or less exactly the same.
I mean, this one is on display permanently in the Metropolitan Museum in New York, where it's one of their sort of signature.
Pride of place. Paintings and what you call it, you know, the way they curated it,
the way they contextualise this work doesn't have any sort of mention of the the history that lies behind Madam Gertrude social position.
So from my perspective, unmasked africana, which is, I think,
what I'm trying to make their intended as visual appropriations of the the the masking work,
but they function is what I'd call it, the tournament, which is an art world, which means turning around a reversal of meanings.
So you can see that it's a very close to the fun.
Visual relationship between the E.R., he was basically the same pose, the same body, but she's the the the figure has become a black woman.
But even there's lots of other sort of similarities. So when you see my painting,
you can't help but understand that there's a strong relationship between the two
artworks in terms of proportionality where they sit in the frame of the picture.
And even then, there is obviously a kind of ironic differences.
You know, the fact that I'm your sense you are, who is this military commander and anti-colonial leader is holding up a shotgun,
and she's wearing a sort of a toga of, you know, it's it's part of the sort of Ghanaian and, you know, high status dress.
Of the 19th century. So I suppose if you think the press,
the theoretical question that I was asking and making these kind of investment artistic investigations was does this artistic
gesture of mine expose critique or perhaps become complicit in the original glorification of elite colonial privilege?
OK, so. I think the.
I think this is the more it's the last kind of work which I'm going to interrogate in this respect.
It's a painting called For Moses had married an Ethiopian woman, numbers 12 to one.
And it's where I suppose this notion of unmasking africana moves away from, you know, British art who even art, to be honest and into another field.
And one of the few which I'm particularly interested in is underway the if you do religious culture and Christianity, especially so on.
So the idea is that this painting is supposed to represent alludes to the ancient Jewish hero of Moses.
And there are certain kind of things in the painting, which I suppose a symbolic or give you a clue to that intended meaning.
So, for example, Moses in the Bible famously had sort of a broth road around which was code will be transformed, transformed into a snake.
And that's one of his sort of symbols of power and of his divine powers through this use line there on the ground.
And then also, as we know, Moses is famous.
Give me the saw, Lewis, with his tablets of stone.
I've got to they're not exactly tablets, but my computer actually does fold around into a tablet as well,
so he's got his two tablets of stone, if you like to remind you who he is.
And then obviously key to an understanding of the painting is the title for Moses had married an Ethiopian woman,
so numbers 12 to one is where in the Bible you find this particular quote.
And there are very oh, sorry, there are very few depictions.
Well, I say very few. Is it fair to say this is more than one?
There might be more than one. There is a paper about this by a really cool historian, Elizabeth McGraw,
and she's identified this particular painting by Jacob Jordan's 17th century supposed Dutch golden age painter of Moses and his Ethiopian wife.
But I think that is more or less it. And in terms of depictions of Moses as Ethiopian wife in Western history,
even though Western art history is kind of filled with images of Moses because he's such an iconic figure in this Christian,
this this part is so Christian based culture.
So, for example, we have, Mike, you know, a lot of great artists like Michelangelo depicted Moses,
who obviously Moses tablets there, but why isn't there?
Fair enough. You know, Michelangelo didn't often paint people with their wives.
And there's a few other Moses's from the highest sort of ranking parts of Western culture, which is cinema.
And there's no real sort of attempt in the casting of Yvonne to call or marry a velvety alongside John Huston and Christian Bale to think of Moses,
his Ethiopian wife on. And he's not in a way that it's recognisable or obvious or certain, you know, extension on, you know, obvious.
And so you can see this is a tradition which has lasted, you know, quite a long time from the 50s up until today.
There's not much understanding really of Moses as an African person either, because obviously he was born in Africa, according to the Bible on.
So, you know, but you know, that's another another question.
So when I so I made that painting as part of a residency when I was in undertook in
South Africa in 2015 and one of the things which was really sort of I found really.
You know, I don't think the word inspiring, but which I wanted to kind of deal with, I was thinking about this on the massacre,
which had taken place a couple of years earlier of miners, American and mine,
which obviously there's a press photograph here because as we know, the massacre took place on TV.
And so when I was there in spending time travelling around the region, I kind of,
you know, made some studies photographic studies of where the miners live,
their sort of accommodation and the British owned Marikana platinum mine and these sort of figure in the painting.
So it is quite you can't quite see on this side of the painting, but I think if I go back.
It's kind of become a bit more of it's sort of on the horizon, the mine and then the shack,
it's kind of there close in the foreground when of close in the background.
And I suppose of it for me, you know, the purpose of thinking about that in that context is that.
Excuse me, sir. Was this a very strong historical if you like,
Link Moses is considered as a freedom fighter and one of the first acts which he carries out in the Bible is he he?
He witnesses a slave, a slave master beating a slave, and Moses steps in and and dispatches the slave master.
So this this notion of him having this anti-slavery and of freedom fighter type of role in Jewish history.
And I should also say is that I am sort of Jewish as well.
So my my heritage is part Jewish, so on.
And this is an installation for you of the painting at the gallery moment, Johannesburg.
And that's just to give you an idea of the gallery.
I was really happy to sort of participate in with the work we've got to remember.
It's one of the few sort of major black owned galleries in in Johannesburg, in South Africa, I should say.
And in fact,
quite a few that it's these paintings also had sort of religious themes as well as it related to biblical and apocryphal religious stories,
and that's just the picture of the gallery from the outside and in the painting as
well became part of my installation of the gospel feeling it finished in 2017.
I suppose that gives you an idea of. You know, the sort of scale of the painting as well.
And. This slide 40 or 41 minutes.
Is catching up to come out. There you go. Then it goes away again, I sell real food.
It's my website. If you want to see any more of my artwork to find out more about my practise, that's the end of my talk.
Thank you very much for listening. I hope you can hear me at the back.