EP04: "My mother said to me: I have dreamt of you in colours" Nkata with Otobong Nkanga

12/20/19 • 116 min

Otobong Nkanga (b. 1974, Kano, Nigeria) is a visual and performance artist whose artistic practice spans almost two decades. She began her studies at the Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife Nigeria and continued at the National Fine Arts School of Paris. She obtained a Masters degree in performing arts from DasArts, Amsterdam, The Netherlands in 2008. Ever since she has exhibited and published her work in various platforms and institutions numerous to expound here.

Otobong’s drawings, sculptures, photographs and how they become integral to a performative constellation examines the value of natural resources as well as the mechanisms, impulses, gradations of power structures that constitute their flows. In an interview reproduced in her book, Lustre and Lucre, she summarised some polarising associations explored in her work when she said: “What we are making in one space empties another”. Yet, her work and its myriad contours draw from a deeply personal place. Her poems, for instance, are a tacit testament to this. The various mediums she works with are held together in a manner that could be likened to the circulatory system of a body: there are independently moving parts yet there are joints that allow for malleability, elasticity, stretching and bending; bouncing back to the original form. In her performances and videos, she uses her body as the protagonist. However, according to her, her presence is merely an invisible hand that sets the process in motion. It is yet another instance of the intricate interplay between the visible and invisible in her work.

In her conversation with Emeka Okereke for the 4th episode of NKATA, she begins with a poem – Diaoptasia – Our Future Will Be – that would serve as a running thread for the almost two-hour-long conversation. She talks about resistance, of malleability, beginning from her mother giving birth to her. She reminisced about events and moments that shaped her life during its earlier stages, mainly in Nigeria. Central to this is the role her parents played; more so with the events of their untimely deaths. Her mother, for instance, she would say, liberated her way of thinking at the age of 15 when she told her that “everything is art. It is not for anyone to decide what art is”. Her mother also said to her: “I’ve dreamt of you in colours”.

Towards the end, she brings the conversation around to the notion of visibility and how inherent in that, there ought to be a place for opacity. “[Something] needs to be working, doing something that allows for regeneration, repair... there needs to be a time for fake dormancy”.

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There are timestamps in the podcast to help the listener navigate parts of the conversation. If you enjoyed the conversation, pay it forward by sharing it with those in your network.

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EP03: "No Thank You – I Will Live Up To The Consequences" Nkata with Jihan El-Tahri

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For our third episode, Emeka Okereke is in conversation with Jihan El-Tahri, an Egyptian filmmaker, producer, and visual artist.

Jihan El-Tahri began her career as a foreign correspondent covering Middle East politics for the Financial Times, Washington Post, and US News & World Reports. El-Tahri has since produced and directed several monumental documentaries, including the trilogy Egypt’s Modern Pharaohs (2016); The House of Saud (2004); Cuba, The African Odyssey (2006), and Behind the Rainbow (2008).

In this podcast, she reflects on events and moments that remarkably shaped her and made her the kind of filmmaker and artist she would eventually become. She elaborated on the fundamental elements that drive her political and creative will. If you do not know Jihan El-Tahri, or perhaps only know her through her work, here is a chance to get a sense of the multifaceted layers that are composites of her powerful, fascinating persona.

What do we do with the responsibility that comes with privilege? How do we offer a different narrative? What is the place and importance of archives in the weaving of narratives/histories especially within the process/research of film making and visual arts? How does one stay true to oneself? How does one deal with the stereotypic construct of motherhood where it has to do with being an artist at the same time? These are some of the questions reflected upon.

The conversation comes full circle with a quote (read out by Jihan) by Olu Oguibe, excerpted from his 2004 essay “Exile And Creative Imagination”.

Duration: 135 mins.

*Timestamps:

0:00 mins: Upbringing, returning to Egypt. Role of Family – father, sisters, mother. Childhood Experiences

30:00: Place/importance of oral history. Working as a journalist from the 80s. Covering the Middle East and the Gulf War. Cairo as a hub for vibrant revolutionary Africans in the 80s and 90s. Beginning of her Pan African Consciousness. Moment of disillusionment and disenchantment with journalism. Transitioning to film making.

56:30: Film making, process and working with archives, the art of interviewing and accessing important information from the interviewee. The complexness/predominant narratives of the archive.

87:01: Doing the leg work of piecing together our histories through research and archive. What happened to the dignity we were chasing? What happened to the Dream? The transition from filmmaking to visual art.

95:00: Mentoring and helping young Africans to find their voices. Audience: Who do you make your films for?

110:00: Staying true to oneself. The Africa Burden. CNN’s publication on “Best of African Photography” as an example of a status quo and oppressive system that urgently needs to be countered by alternative narratives. Privilege and abuse of power. Privilege as responsibility and how to use it.

124:00: Create an alternative system that would make the old, oppressive one obsolete.

126:00: Being a mother who is also a professional. Relationship with daughters

134:00: Conclusion. Quote from Olu Oguibe excerpted from “Exile and Creative Imagination”.

*Timestamps are only vague estimates that serve as a rough guideline.

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EP05: "Not only are we ahead of time, we are classic" Nkata with Nontsikelelo Veleko

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Nontsikelelo Veleko (b. 1977) is a South African photographer most notably recognised for her depiction of black identity, urbanisation and fashion in post-apartheid South Africa. Veleko studied photography at the Market Theatre Photo Workshop(1999–2004).

In 2006, her photographs were part of the group exhibition, Snap Judgments: New Positions in Contemporary African Photography, at the International Center of Photography (ICP) in New York; curated by Okwui Enwezor. There, the bold and lively portraits depicting South Africa street style from her series “Beauty is in the Eye of the Beholder” attracted a great deal of attention, shifting previous perceptions of Africa as a whole on an international scale. Alongside this, Veleko has also implemented clothing ‘to deliberately challenge assumptions of identity based on appearances and historical background’.

Veleko’s work presents a strong statement of a younger generation that is loud, self-expressive and daring; a collection of youth she strongly relates to. Such sentiments are evident in the photographs resulting from what she considers to be a ‘collaborative process’.

For the 5th episode of Nkata, Emeka Okereke travelled to meet with Veleko in Nîmes, in the South of France, where she is currently based. Their conversation starts with the recollection of some precursory events foundational to her journey as an artist.

She speaks of how her father prepared her mind from an earlier age, and by that gave her a sense of independence so rare for young girls/women at the time. How photographing graffiti on the streets of Johannesburg in the early 2000s; going to Switzerland for her first-ever residency program inspired her to turn towards street/urban fashion as would later be seen in her one of her most prominent bodies of work.

She illustrates her response to the stimuli of street imagery in a succinct recount of a certain photograph she made: A graffiti on the streets of Johannesburg reads “I am not afraid”. However, the “A” of the “Afraid” was cracked. I found that interesting. Because I thought to myself: that’s how I am, a woman, with a camera, alone, photographing on the street of Johannesburg. I affirm that I am not afraid, yet there is a crack somewhere: I am afraid.

The conversation settles on her arrival in France, and subsequently Nîmes, a small but ancient city in the South of France. How with her presence, and in collaboration with good friends and colleagues, she has begun the work of opening the small town to African photography starting with her home country South Africa.

She takes Emeka Okereke through the streets of Nimes while discussing new bodies of work, projects and prospects stemming from reinvigorated energy after a long career pause.

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