Serenity, 1993 © Kebedech Tekleab 

Kebedech Tekleab is one of the foremost Ethiopian artists today. While her “interest on human conditions globally” has inspired much of her work, her own personal narratives and her love of literature, music, drama etc. are equally great sources of inspiration. Tekleab’s pieces have been acquired by the Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center and the Embassy of Ethiopia, among notable others. She is currently a professor of Foundation Studies at the Savannah College of Arts and Design in Savannah, Georgia.

Tekleab first collaborated with E. Ethelbert Miller, literary activist and author of the recent memoir The 5th Inning on The Handprint Identity Project–an exchange between artists and poets. What follows is a conversation between two artists and friends.

EM: When creating new artwork how important is memory and vision?

KT: I find this question interesting. If it deals with the issue of time, then memory and vision try to bridge the past, the present, and the future. It is true that there are times when creating new work one might depend on personal or social memories. The existing objective condition might also be the source of inspiration, or subjective ideas may serve to create visionary directions.

In my work, the demarcation of time dissolves, the new truth could be old and the past may exist in the present. It is the moment of personal discovery that marks time—either in the form of pure memory or in the active form of the present continuous.

For example, Robert Motherwell’s, “The Elegy to the Spanish Republic” appears to be a piece that has a time print on it. It is about a specific social condition in Spain, however, it is also a phenomenon mankind has passed through. What is equally important and new could be the aesthetics itself, the concept of the art, the way Motherwell thought about his work in terms of what it is instead of what it means. The idea of what is abstract and what is real became sufficiently important for him that he defended his non-objective piece as something real.

More on Tekleab’s conversation with Miller.

EM: How has this notion of memory and vision as bridging the past, present, and future impacted  your pieces?

KT: I completed “A-Day,” (2003) a piece about the Iraq war the day “Shock & Awe” began. I started working on it when the world felt the war in Iraq was inevitable. The day it began, I was at my studio working on the piece and listening to the explosion of bombshells on the radio. There was nothing to depict but to feel; visualization dominated observation. I dealt with the present but the process evoked a great deal of memory, social and personal, and time lost its boundary. I titled the piece “A-Day” and in doing that I marked time, the time of my inspiration, which happened to be timely and historic.

Beside the issue that inspired me to create the piece, which is probably shared by millions of people around the world, I was concerned about the aesthetics itself. Where do I put “A- Day” in the life of my own artistic journey? Could it serve as a bridge between my past and my future, or would I be singing an old song with new lyrics?

The aesthetic memory of “A-Day” and that of earlier pieces helped me to create pieces such as “The Ballad of the Century,” (2005) which was inspired by omnipresent wars and natural calamities. It is a piece that changed my treatment of surface and space in a way that bridges the gap between painting and sculpture and between what is permanent and what is ephemeral.

EM: What particular pieces do you find interesting, both content wise and aesthetics wise?

KT: Content wise, Pablo Picasso’s “Guernica” dissolves the barrier between past and present, but its aesthetic identity is so markedly prominent that it has become a visual memory to inspire new pieces or serve as a springboard for envisioning something new. In the same way, Henri Matisse’s paintings and cutouts, Marcel Duchamp’s “Fountain,” Sam Gilliam’s “Relative,” Martin Puryear’s “Untitled” at Oliver Ranch or Eva Hesse’s minimalist forms mark time and serve as aesthetic memories on which to build.

EM: How has your relationship with your mother influenced your life and work?

KT: If I close my eyes, inside me is dark and cold; my mother would be the single source of energy that would give light and warmth to my soul. My mother is a woman who distinguishes price from value and lives a humble but rich life. Her sense of justice is especially clear. Although she never had a formal education, she appreciates the arts and literature with a remarkable level of sophistication. It is uncommon to find someone with such a strong inspiration and who believes in what you do even when you can’t put a dollar sign on it. Her nurturing, since the beginning, influences where I stand today. Mom is still in charge and she “Rules” by love.

EM: Do issues about race and gender impact your work?

KT: Race and gender are very important issues that have a varying social impact based on economic, social and political demands, and priorities in society. In my work, they can be found under the umbrella of my interest on human conditions globally, which has inspired most of what I have done so far. Mostly, I do not choose subject matter to deal with as such. Instead, I arrive at issues through unexpected incidents and inspirations.

For instance in 1997, when I painted “Strange Fruit,” it was my love of music and my strong attraction to this particular piece of music that drew me to the subject. The week before I started to paint, I continuously listened to the CD by Cassandra Wilson because I found something in the music that caught my attention. I was quite familiar with and loved Billie Holiday’s version of “Strange Fruit.” It was Cassandra’s rendition, however, that touched the issue that was buried inside of me and inspired that specific piece of art.

Perspectives: Women, Art and Islam at the Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts (MoCADA) lives up to its title, aptly providing deep insight into five disparate lives shaped by Islam, the West, and everything in between. With roots in Bangladesh, Algeria, Pakistan, Morocco, and New York City, the artists utilize family photographs, spiritual poetry, Quranic verses, and personal accessories to shed insight into the personal conflicts of Muslim women who face religious pressures to fulfill social expectations at the expense of personal aspirations.

Terrorism and the treatment of women have largely defined Islam in public discourse in recent years. In response, Perspectives challenges the notion of Islam as a monolithic, misogynist, unimaginative and atavist faith. This is no small task, yet it is achieved with a remarkable fusion—from modern photography, painting, installation and video to traditional Islamic crafts like tilework, ceramics and calligraphy.

The exhibition space itself, a series of large rooms and intimate corners, provides disparate experiences. The artwork’s power may well be what it does not openly express, but perhaps, quietly hints.

Pakistani-American artist Mahwah Chisty dims the lighting of her wire-suspended installations and projects Kufi script through a pool of water. More subtle is Safaa Erruas’s (Morocco) spine-like wall installation of cotton and a thousand needles, “Moon Inside Me,” which bathes in whiteness and light. Next door, Brooklyn-born Nsenga Knight fills a corner with sounds of her video interviews of African-American Muslim women converts; the sounds and images bounce off a wall piece with silk-screened words from the writings of Ibrahim Abd ar-Rahman, a West African prince abducted into slavery.

Algerian Zoulokha Bouabdellah appears in a sequence of self-portrait photographs with couscous pots covering in turn her eyes, ears and mouth as if to say see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil. Finally, Chisty completes the full circle with a wall of colorful paintings displaying Islamic words and epigrams in interlaced calligraphic designs of the Kufi style. It is Chisty’s inclusion of materials, such as coral grains and glass, that push this traditional art into the present. 

– Mohamed Hassim Keita

Photo: AFP

Anish Kapoor, Indian-born artist and visionary (in every sense of the word) currently has a solo show, “Memory,” at the Deutsche Guggenheim in Berlin, Germany. In a recent review of one of Kapoor’s monumental pieces, “Cloud Gate,” art critic Meenakshi Thirukode writes:  

“On its surface the viewer sees the reflection of the phallic skyline, the clouds above and himself; as if the sky, earth and the human soul have been conjoined in a transcendent communion…It is not just joy that generations of Kapoor’s audiences have experienced but, fear, tranquillity and a sense of awe standing in front of the Maya or “cosmic illusion” that are his sculptures. It is an experience anyone could partake in regardless of one’s cultural, social or religious conditioning.” 

Read more at The Hindu 

“Would you trust this man with your daughter?” If you said no, then you just turned down Nelson Mandela–Nobel Peace Prize winner, humanitarian, global change maker, etc., etc., etc.,–as a future son-in-law. Shame on you.

I attended the opening of “Marlene Dumas: Prints + Multiples” at the Kyle Kauffman Gallery last night and was immediately taken with the provocative question scribbled under Portrait of a Young Nelson Mandela. Dumas, who grew up in South Africa under apartheid, turns racial (and dating) profiling into art.

Since she doesn’t care too much for labels I won’t attempt to categorize her, but I will say that like Portrait, much of Dumas’ work is provocative and controversial.

In conjunction with the Kauffman’s exhibit in Chelsea, MoMA is displaying a more extensive collection of Dumas’ work that reflect “themes of race, sexuality, and social identity…to create a unique perspective on important and controversial issues of the day.”

– Grace A. Ali

Absolutely Stunning!  Kenyan-born artist Wangechi Mutu is breathtaking in nude-black-white-gold. She is one of three artists commissioned to create jewelry|art for the Whitney Museum’s annual gala on October 20. Mutu deserves a multi-page spread in the next all-black issue of Vogue. Better yet, give her the cover! 

She’s wearing the bracelet she fashioned in the photo above.  

But like any monumental piece of bling, Mutu’s bracelets, which are like those seen in north and central Kenya and in the past were often worn permanently as external, protective bone structures, can be interpreted as both shackle and adornment. “I wanted to create a sheath that ran the length of the wrist and arm,” Mutu says, “that seemed as restraining and heavy in appearance as it was porous, shimmery and handsome.”

Cuff Love, The New York Times, October 5, 2008

Photo: Ruven Afanador|The New York Times

Last week, the New Yorker cover proved that to reveal how ludicrous right wing propaganda is, you don’t have to do anything except pile it on top of itself. But the satire did not stop there. In the tradition of the cleverest satire, the cover used “outrage” as a tool to play with our perceptions of who we think ourselves to be, and what we consider funny.

A few years ago on a gorgeous October morning in New York, I was walking down Crosby street and happened to pass by Housing Works Used Book Cafe. Glancing at their store window, I was shocked to find a copy of Ann Coulter’s book “How to Talk to a Liberal (If You Must)” displayed proudly in this haven of progressive thought. What??? How could Housing Works Used Book Cafe want to sell Ann Coulter? What was the world coming to? I fumed inside. I wanted to throw up. Then I stepped back to look at the larger picture (literally) and found that Ann Coulter’s book was the centerpiece of an elaborate window display of horror novels and vampire erotica. Finally the penny dropped. The day was October 31st, Halloween in New York.

The New Yorker cover is that moment all over again for me. There are two different but parallel processes happening here – first there is the political point the cover/shop window is scoring. But, secondly, there is the joke on the viewer/reader. The joke is not just on those who are anti-Obama, the joke is also on you, and me, who are so serious and earnest about these elections, and quick to take offense. And that is okay! Why not laugh at myself? Why not laugh at how tightly wound-up this election has made all of us?

Many of us for whom art and social change are indivisible tend to turn polemical when politics is on the table. Let’s get over ourselves. A cartoon is not going to kill Obama, who has withstood a high blood-pressure primary with tenacity and charm and cunning strategy.

In many ways, Obama has raised the tenor of America’s national political discourse by opening up risky conversations and introducing an element of articulateness that has been sadly missing in the last eight years of Bushisms. Satire and poetry and irony and multi-layered speech are returning very, very slowly to American campaigns politics after years of ‘us versus them’ discourse. Let’s welcome this change with open arms. And let’s take our helping of art and social change with a side of humor.

“Mohammed al Hamadany’s 25-panel painting Night of Fire…is the most ambitious statement yet to come out of post-invasion Iraq (of course, there are very real limits on what can come out of post-invasion Iraq).

The artist himself has described the work as offering “an Iraqi perspective of ‘Shock and Awe,’ and ” a mediation on the brutality unleashed by the invasion.”

Night of Fire is not just a belated echo of Western styles, but also reads as something of an elegy to Iraq’s own avant-garde, with its unique triumphs and struggles.” 

Excerpted from: Ben Davis, The Iraqi Century of Art, artnet Magazine

Image: Mohammed al Hamadany’s Night of Fire