The Politics Of Freedom

Never been to an art gallery [it is something I will definitely try to fix].

Yet, even what I see through the screens of a smart phone, or in movies, is evocative. There is something about the absurdity of the worlds in visual art, in paintings, that I find to be very beautiful. And very necessary.

My favourite kind of painting, is one that depicts people in ordinary life. Sitting in a chair, around a table. Or just standing, posing, looking back directly at the viewer, as if to say; look at me, I can see you too. I am here. We are here.

Quite a few artists have been pre-occupied with creating these ordinary, daily life portraiture. Just as I have been pre-occupied for almost a year now, in simply taking the pleasures of a normal daily routine quite seriously. I try to do this with utmost dedication and reverence; as though I were observing and partaking in something divine.

Now, the artists I will be talking about in this post will largely be of West African heritage. Many of them have created or subverted the ordinary in their visual art, and have taken what we consider to be

And something particular about artistic culture from this part of the world is that the preferred medium in visual art [as far as we can tell] in the past was sculpture.

With wood, or metal, or brass. Seen in the Benin masks, the sculptures from ancient Ile-Ife.

These sculptures, things hewn with precision and great mastery that form an important link into the histories of West African civilizations were largely dismissed by colonial or Western artistic tradition [then the art was carted off to be displayed in Western museums. A conversation for another time I suppose].

Now, in the present day, modern artists are expanding the traditions they were born into. Exploring what mediums African art can take form in. And perhaps even more importantly; exploring what stories that can be told about African people, and life and existence.

THE FREEDOM TO SEE

There is a certain freedom particular to visual art. Of course, you can find it in music, or dance or other art forms.

But a painting is just a painting in a frame. It looks to you for interpretation. It is not like literature, or like a song where the narrator’s voice can wedge into your consciousness, and get you to root for a certain character or idea, or feel a particular thing.

An image presents itself to your eyes, and to your mind. It says nothing with words.

It is your own mind that fills out the blanks in that silence. It is you that gets to decide what you see, in a sense you become a joint creator of the image after the artist has dropped their brush. You get to decide, and create, what the final version means.

I think about this when I look at paintings. And sometimes, I cannot exactly decide what a painting means to me, sometimes I am just content to feast my eyes, and dwell for a moment in the indeterminate feelings they bring up.

By Njideka Akunyili Crosby

For example, when I looked at this painting by Nigerian-American painter Njideka Akunyili Crosby. I suddenly feel that specific comfort of being in your own home, your feet in a familiar place, the sun outside the window, being nonchalantly resplendent. And just safe. The ordinariness of safety, and stability. Yet how precious what we consider to be normalcy is when it is taken away from us.

The pandemic last year [and this year honestly] was a time when the world was thrown up, everything was uncertain, and we all wondered, at least at some point, if we would ever get back to normal. Or create a new normal.

And now, I think about this painting, of this woman sitting in a chair, likely in her house, and just not doing anything. Not facing the viewer, pre-occupied in the easy brightness of her own world. And there is something aspirational about that simplicity.

Something free.

TO CREATE WHAT WE SEE

On the other end of the spectrum, we see artists like Toyin Ojih Odutola who works with a kind of surrealism that is formed within the images we are used to in regular life, but subverts it in a unique way.

By Toyin Ojih Odutola

Like in this painting, of this boy. The skeleton, the outline of the boy, is in the hyper-realistic fashion that Nigerian paintings tend towards, yet it looks like there is a galaxy where his skin should be. Where his ears, the shape of his nose should be formed, they are embedded in something cosmic.

There is something about it that reminds me of writers like Helen Oyeyemi. She has this collection of short stories where she not only blurs the lines between myth and reality, but disregards the need to consider myth as foreign. In the reality of those stories, the world can be bent in any direction, and still be valid as it is.

Other paintings of Toyin Ojih Odutola’s do this same amazing thing. And I see it again and again.

By Toyin Ojih Odutola

By Toyin Ojih Odutola

By Toyin Ojih Odutola

In this earlier post, I wrote about how art helps us to imagine new worlds, and to guide us in creating new realities. That is the gift of portraiture like this, of African existence being represented in more art mediums, we are given more room to imagine what is possible for us to be.

And we create room to consider what exists right now in our lives, simple or otherwise, as worthy of being art. There does not need to be deep suffering, or on the other extreme- distasteful affluence for who we are to be incorporated into high art.

In this case, normal is good enough.

Speaking of imagining, another unique artist I will be talking about is Lynette Yiadom-Boakye who makes portraits that strike me as being something from a dream. Or something remembered from a dream. How the characters in the paintings are almost anonymous, in a way, slightly unreal, even when they have faces.

They have a sort of generic essence in themselves, but generic in a way that the artist uses the familiar to push us forward in re-considering what is commonplace to us.

Take a look

By Lynette Yiadom-Boakye

AND THE FREEDOM TO SEE AGAIN

Finally, this painting, is one of my favourites.

Tutu by Ben Enwonwu

Tutu is a 1973 painting by artist Ben Enwonwu. It depicts a princess from the Ile-Ife royal family, and I am as fascinated by the story around the painting’s origins and creation, as I am enamoured by the painting itself.

There is something regal about the subject of the painting; Adetutu Ademiluyi (who is believed to still be alive today]. It is in the effortless regality. She posture of her neck, the way her eyes look, as though she were a little afraid yet still confident in her position as the focus of this art piece, of wielding such a vaguely ethereal beauty.

And the story behind the painting, how the artist Ben Enwonwu spent six months searching out the princess, and working hard to persuade the members of her high-ranking family to allow her sit for the painting.

What would motivate a person to go to such lengths for their art? The original painting was never sold, two copies were made to be sold, and the original was eventually stolen from the artist many years later, causing a lot of distress for him.

I think it is what the painting symbolizes.

Beyond what it means for the painter themselves, what it represents.

Tutu was painted as a form of resistance to Western influences on African culture, societies and nations. At a time when most of Africa had gained independence, and nations were working to stabilize themselves, to form their own national identity, this idea of royalty, high-status and ingenuity that was unmistakably African was immortalized in that painting. As it might have been in the ancient Benin or Ife masks and sculptures. Freedom hewn into the art we made.

And that is one thing about art. It can be a form of protest too. It can be a path that is carved towards freedom. Towards reclaiming or recreating our identity. And these visual artists, show us a taste of that freedom. What it would look like.

AND…

This essay I read recently talks about the value of viewing art for its own sake, and not worrying about the very specific nuances and categories that get in the way of just seeing the art. And experiencing it. I agree.

I agree perhaps because, I am satisfied with my own meaning for now. With what I can see myself.

I am glad to have been shown these things, and interpreted them through my own mind and thoughts. To consider on my own the gift of the small, many worlds of these paintings.