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Lubaina Himid
180 Plays5 months ago
When small displays convey the biggest experiences and stories.... This episode is dedicated to Lubaina Himid's display of drawings and collages for her Turner Prize installation Naming the Money at the Royal Academy.
As often, but particularly at the RA, exhibition going is full of encounters, idiosyncratic journeys, rushes and meetings.
We explored Himid's biography and other projects, namely her Guardian artist residency.
For more information about the project: https://lubainahimid.com/portfolio/naming-the-money/
Enjoy this new episode!
And follow us at @exhibitionistas_podcast.
Music by: Sarturn.
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Transcript
Labena Himmid's Exhibition Impact
00:00:10
Speaker
Hello, hello, hi there, I hope you're having a wonderful week. So this is an episode that focuses on a small but poignant display of drawings related to Labena Himmid's Turner Prize work, Naming the Money.
00:00:27
Speaker
We chose to talk about it because sometimes the smaller and most unassuming exhibitions can contain the biggest experiences. In this case, the context is key as well as the incredibly powerful experience of seeing the sketches and collages that convinced Labeina Himmid that this was the way to go.
00:00:48
Speaker
and boy are we glad she did.
Artistic Diversity and Recognition
00:00:51
Speaker
The small exhibition was set up within the Royal Academy collection which in itself tells a story of slow recognition for artists with a certain background and who look a certain way. With all the very negative things happening around the world and in the UK, it's always great to note how long we've come and how far we can and will still go.
00:01:15
Speaker
On a lighter note, I did try to defend the new Wim Wenders film Perfect Days and if you loved it, I apologize in advance because I don't think I did a great job. But go and watch it if you haven't. It's worth it. And go see exhibitions. After all, that's what we do so that you have to.
00:01:43
Speaker
Hello and welcome.
Introduction to 'Exhibitionistus' Podcast
00:01:45
Speaker
I am Joanna Pia Nevis, an independent writer and curator, and this is Exhibitionistus, the conversational podcast with some research thrown in for good measure about experiencing the work of contemporary artists through their exhibitions. We visit exhibitions so that you have to, or so that you can if you're not in London.
00:02:06
Speaker
I would also urge you to follow us and review the podcast. Believe it or not, it really helps. And you can even interact with us through our Instagram account, exhibitionistasunderschoolpodcast.
00:02:19
Speaker
I'm Emily Harding, an art lover and an exhibition goer, the part two of the Power Duo. So as ever, Joanna, it's so nice to see you and talk to you about
Significance of Smaller Exhibitions
00:02:30
Speaker
exhibitions. And I'm so keen to know what you think about this week's quiet, slightly smaller than a normal one, yet striking display that will be
00:02:42
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. We did something new this week. We asked you a question on our Instagram account. So the question is very simple.
Listener Engagement and Art Preferences
00:02:52
Speaker
It was, what artwork would you live with if you could? And we had a few interesting answers. So Nicole Vandal chose Rony Horn's drawings. So a woman after my own heart. I'm a huge Rony Horn fan.
00:03:09
Speaker
And she said, I agree with what was written at Art Forum. And she shared with us the text, actually, which is so generous. So it says, Roni Horn makes her haptic drawings by slicing and pasting, painting and dusting, reading and writing. Some are involved with problems of geography and mapping, of knowing where one is and where one is not.
00:03:35
Speaker
They are alternately utopian, nonsensical, and philosophical, charting terrain more imagined than real, more felt than known. And if you know Ronnie Horn's drawings, this is so powerful. It is cutting and gluing and taking parts and journeys and
00:03:54
Speaker
making lines that were cut, but they are now back together. They're really incredible, quite big usually. So two people mentioned Hilma Af Klint, which is incredible because, do you know what, a few decades ago, no one could have mentioned her because no one knew her.
Public vs. Private Art Access
00:04:10
Speaker
How incredible is that? And well, we have another comment, which is actually the thing I thought about when I wrote the question on the Instagram account. And so Susana Pomba from Portugal, a colleague, a fellow curator wrote,
00:04:28
Speaker
would have lots of posters, postcards, books of favorite artworks, but would never have the actual artwork. It is more important to me to have it be seen by other people in a museum or another space. I could never deprive anyone of that pleasure and would want more and more people to see it." And she wrote between brackets, curator speaking.
00:04:51
Speaker
And I understand the sentiment. I understand it. It's for everyone. But I guess, though, there's some pieces, you know, I mean, that will never be seen, right? I mean, that, you know, a museum may buy and store for many decades before it comes out somewhere. Yes.
00:05:10
Speaker
So you might be doing it a favor by giving it an airing on a wall somewhere.
Discovering New Artists
00:05:15
Speaker
And why not have it be in your living room? And if there's a display, the museum can take it back. Should that ever be the case? But I do love that notion. I love that notion that art is for everyone and just kind of getting people out there to see it. That's lovely.
00:05:30
Speaker
And yeah, I thought great food for thought so much. Thanks so much to all who submitted answers. It was so cool to learn about new artists because me, Emily, I am the half of this duo that is not steeped in the art world. So there was so many discoveries in the suggestion of artists. So, I mean, you know, particularly, yeah, Ronnie Horn's drawings. Thank you, Nicole. I mean, I wasn't aware of it.
00:05:56
Speaker
And the suggestion just sent me down this brilliant rabbit hole this morning, so that was fantastic. The artwork that I encountered
00:06:07
Speaker
by mere chance, and that I would definitely have at home. And it's edition, so it could be in a museum somewhere, but also in my home, would be one of Roni Horn's photographs, untitled, from the 90s, I think, and then they're numbered, of these incredibly strange shapes. So I was walking around Art Basel, I stop in my tracks,
00:06:31
Speaker
and I see this shape from afar that is elongated, a bit sinuous, and I didn't know what it was. It was a photograph, like a portrait.
00:06:43
Speaker
but nothing recognizable at all, but in yet, hypersexual. Like I found this kind of sensuality in that shape. Like even sexuality, there was something maybe because of the phallic nature of the shape, I don't know. Anyway, I kind of like, I remember walking, like being drawn to it, like crossing, you know, all the corridors and bumping into people and just getting straight there.
00:07:11
Speaker
And it was this beautiful, feathered shape with lots of different colors. There were different photographs. And they are the backs of birds, so the neck and head area. And it's the most alluring thing you'll ever see in your life. You just want to rub yourself in them.
00:07:35
Speaker
Okay. Bestiality! I mean, we are called exhibitionists, after all. True to the title, yeah. You know, the things that, you know, sort of pique your attraction.
00:07:52
Speaker
uh, you know, particularly, you know, kind of sexually that aren't sort of the usual things you're supposed to think of. And I think that that, I think that kind of element of attraction is something that that we're just not
00:08:07
Speaker
open to exploring. We don't talk about that. We talk about attraction in terms of I'm attracted to men or I'm attracted to women, which is so silly because of course I'm attracted to very few men.
Emily's Week in London
00:08:22
Speaker
I mean, I might identify as a heterosexual woman, but I mean, to say that I'm attracted to men is just a bold-faced lie because the vast majority of them, I've got nothing. So the nature of attraction and what attracts you is just so much more nuanced. And a piece like that can make you reconsider that in a way, which is, yeah.
00:08:51
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. It's not about fear not listeners, desiring birds. It's really not. Oh my gosh. So tell me, Emily, we didn't talk a lot about our week. We didn't talk about anything now unless we're recording, which is incredible. So how was your week in culture?
00:09:18
Speaker
Pretty non-existent, I gotta say. Other than this rabbit hole I went down on Ronnie Horn's drawings, thanks to Nicole, the weather was beautiful in London. And we know that when London is covered in sunshine, that is the only thing you can do is be out in it.
00:09:38
Speaker
I work on St. James Square in London. It's this really beautiful garden square. It has some sculpture. I mean, there's loads of galleries in the neighborhood that will have sculpture exhibitions there as well.
00:09:54
Speaker
It's just a beautiful garden and it has been absolutely heaving with the happiest people you ever saw on planet Earth because that's what it's like in London. I mean, for those of you who don't live in the UK, when the sun is out and it's not gray, it cannot be beat.
00:10:14
Speaker
It's pure joy. It's palpable. It's palpable.
Joanna's Cultural Week
00:10:18
Speaker
And men take off their shirts in the middle of the... I was just going to say that. Yes. It's like the moment the sun kisses their skin, they're just...
00:10:29
Speaker
Off with the shirt. How about you? What have you been up to? What have you seen? How's your weekend culture been? I did watch Wim Wenders' new film, Perfect Days. It made me think of you because it's a very peaceful film and it's about balance and about having a simple life.
00:10:47
Speaker
So the main character played by Yakusho is called Hirayama. He's a public toilet cleaner and he has a simple life. That brought to mind me a toilet cleaner who has a very simple life. You were like, you know what? That's bang on for Emily. You did tell me when I was your lodger, I remember telling you, oh, I hate cleaning. And you said,
00:11:13
Speaker
My mom actually told me that doing your chores at home is a mindful thing. Like she kind of gave me that teaching. And ever since then, I've been thinking about it and I've been coming to terms with cleaning the house.
Reflections on 'Perfect Days' Film
00:11:29
Speaker
Thanks to your mom. Thank you, Emily's mom.
00:11:31
Speaker
Yeah. Well, look, my grandma was a house cleaner. And so she gave my mom top skills and was quite demanding on how clean she must keep her house. But yeah, I mean, for sure, cleaning is a form of therapy. It's like something you can do that you don't have to put your mind into. So your mind can kind of wander and
00:11:58
Speaker
work things out in the background while your, you know, active monkey mind kind of has a little bit of something to sort of focus on. And your house just feels so much better after. Don't you just feel good? Come on. After a good vacuum? I mean, is there anything better? I don't know. There's nothing better. Okay, there is. I mean, it could be. Yeah, I mean, we can think of a few things.
00:12:23
Speaker
But I think it's kind of like the stage for all the other good things that could come about in life, right? The clean space. So yeah. I don't know if you're totally felinous. I don't know if you're totally. I mean, I love inventors, but I don't know so far.
00:12:41
Speaker
public toilet cleaning doesn't really capture my interest. Okay, I can tell you more about the character. There's another part of the character that I didn't tell you about. And now you're going to be like, okay, Joanna sees me. So he has a very simple life. So he wakes up in the morning.
00:13:00
Speaker
goes to the vending machine, buys a coffee from the vending machine, which is funny because he's in kind of a dead end. And I kept thinking, who puts a vending machine in like a back of the back of a street somewhere? It's funny. So he wakes up, brushes his teeth,
00:13:17
Speaker
goes out, takes his cleaning van, listens to 70s American music. There are two Japanese songs in there, but basically Lou Reed, Patti Smith. You're kind of obvious choices, very clean.
00:13:34
Speaker
choices of music. And then he cleans the toilets, then he always goes to the same restaurant to eat. He eats his meal, always the same meal, and then goes back home and the only possession he has are books.
00:13:49
Speaker
So he puts his mat on the floor, puts his mattress on the mat, takes his duvet. Before that, he obviously brushes his teeth, always the same kind of routine, and then reads. So he reads a lot. That's his passion in life. He always goes to the same bookshop.
00:14:07
Speaker
gets books that are always on sale. I mean, he leads the simplest of lives. And then you learn, and that's kind of a downer for me, that he actually comes from a wealthy family and a cultured family. So it's not your character that is like, just found books at a certain point. He's not from an affluent social context, but he found literature and he loves it. And he decided to dedicate his life
00:14:31
Speaker
to it. That's not the story. The story is about how difficult it is to keep a simple routine and how life comes at you and disrupts it. And not with big things, mind you, like the smallest of things will disrupt his routine and reveal also the reason why he decided to have that simple life and the reason why maybe
00:14:57
Speaker
he decided to dedicate his life to simple gestures. He always goes to this Buddhist garden to eat. There's a whole thing about analogic versus digital, which is well done.
Mindfulness and Life Balance
00:15:11
Speaker
It's really interesting.
00:15:12
Speaker
And so he has an analogic camera and he takes pictures of the same tree every day, but he doesn't look through the lens. And I thought, this is Wim Wenders doing a homage to Dido Moriyama for sure. And it's funny because I didn't love it. I wasn't moved by it in the end. And I just kind of like, oh yeah, that's done. Okay, watch this. This was, it was beautiful. I mean, you know, Wim Wenders is beautiful to watch.
00:15:38
Speaker
But then the days after, I kept going back to it and I kept thinking of scenes and some decisions that were made. OK, so I'm back. I'm back with you. You lost me. And now I'm back again. OK, I'm going to check it out for sure. So Joanna, do you want to tell us a bit about the artists we're looking at this week?
00:16:02
Speaker
Absolutely. I'm very happy to say that we are talking about the artist, curator, and professor Lebena Himmid, C-B-A-R-A. So what is a CBE, you might ask? Well, I certainly will. As I arrived in this country, not middle age, but like 10 years to middle age,
00:16:22
Speaker
And there's a lot about this country that I think I know, but actually don't. So let me tell you, let me tell you, I mean, I am learning new things all the time. The CBE, all of that stuff. My world, full of it.
00:16:38
Speaker
full of these kind of like capital letters that go after people's names and the CSRS and the Baroness and the, you know, all of it. And we actually have a thing at work like a manual about how to address people because there's so many complicated
00:16:58
Speaker
kind of, yeah, it's a link for online, like the House of Lords has a link of how to understand all these things and then how to address them, say, in a letter or if you're in person. But yeah, it's very complicated. You don't know how to write to these people, right? Very strange. So CBE means commander of the British Empire and is given to a person in question through a royal ceremony.
00:17:28
Speaker
where the king or queen at the time pins the medal on your chest. So the official description of a CBE in the government website is, quote, a prominent national role of a lesser degree, a conspicuous leading role in regional affairs through achievement or service to the community or a highly distinguished, innovative contribution in his or her area of activity, unquote, which I found more confusing.
00:17:57
Speaker
Oh, yeah, no, that makes sense. That makes perfect sense. Conspicuous. Anyway, moving on. And so RA also means that Lubaina Hamid is simply a member of the Royal Academy and good for her. And the reason why I'm highlighting all of this is because Lubaina Hamid is a mixed race woman. He is an activist for black artists.
00:18:23
Speaker
and invisible communities in general, not only through her work, but also through her curation. Because ever since she was a young girl, she was, in her words, unspeakably ambitious and wanted to make art that would make a difference. So she was born in Zanzibar in 1954.
00:18:41
Speaker
And again, for those like me who are always a bit confused with geography, I will give you a little recap. So Zanzibar is a small island on the southeast coast of Africa in the Indian Ocean facing Tanzania. So Zanzibar was right on the trading routes. It was taken over first by the Africans, then by the Persians in the 10th century.
00:19:05
Speaker
which left a big mark. So the African Persian population converted to Islam and adopted Persian traditions. Many Arab populations used Zanzibar as a slave trading station, especially from what is now Oman. So in 1832, the Sultan of Oman made it the capital of his empire because Zanzibar was crucial for the slave trade to North and South America, which was then in high demand.
00:19:35
Speaker
So in 1861 it became an independent sultanate but in the African mainland, of course, the British and the Germans were dividing up Zanzibar between them and it was decided that Zanzibar would be a British protectorate.
00:19:51
Speaker
And so this was decided in 1890, which was to last for 70 years. So Hamid was born under the British protectorate rule, meaning that a sultan ruled under the British control. So in 1963, after Hamid had already left, Zanderbar gained independence and became part of the Commonwealth.
00:20:13
Speaker
Yeah, such a typical story of empire. I mean, you could sort of trot this out over so many different regions in different countries where it's just like, yeah, we'll draw these lines and we'll give it to this. We'll take this and you take that. And then, yeah, I mean, it's and so, you know, as we'll see, really influences her work and her story. So
00:20:38
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. So this actually, yeah, makes me think of Afro pessimism. So in our episode about Aria Dean, she interviewed Frank B. Wildesen III, who made a reference to the fact that black bodies
00:20:54
Speaker
were historically the exploited side of slavery, but not only by white Europeans. And that's really, really interesting in that way. And as you say, it really informs Labena Himmid's work later on, you know.
00:21:10
Speaker
And it makes me think as well of how important the history of your country of birth is, whether you want it or not. So I am Portuguese and Portugal still considers itself the greatest conqueror of the world. We call the invasion of other territories and their subsequent colonization, the discoveries with a capital D,
00:21:33
Speaker
As in, we discovered the world, basically. And so this is taught at school. I was told this over and over again when I was growing up. And even if I completely reject this, it's part of my history. It's part of my psyche, whether I want it or not. And you can reverse that to someone like the Bena Hamid and lots of Black people across the world who were moved and displaced from their areas of birth.
00:21:58
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, girl, I'm American. The way that history has been taught and understood and so much of what was
00:22:14
Speaker
you know, embedded in the messaging, you know, I mean, look, education is a state enterprise for a reason. And this is one of the reasons that it is a state enterprise is to manufacture the narratives, to build nationalism so that we can all band together. You know, there's this great book called Imagined Communities,
00:22:38
Speaker
by, I don't remember his first name, his last name is Anderson, but, you know, he really walks through that process of, you know, initially we are bands of people and you know your community by name and then it expands and, you know, kind of to the point where we're at nations and you need these institutions like education, like museums.
00:23:02
Speaker
et cetera, so that me who grew up in Minnesota can feel connected to somebody, you know, three and a half million people who live in the USA, who I will never meet. Like, how do you build those kind of connections?
00:23:20
Speaker
And it's a thoughtful process. But that's because you are from the most important country in the world. Of course. Of course I am. That's the most powerful country. I think that says it all, doesn't it? I mean, and it really is alive and well, you know, and by necessity. I mean, if you're going to get people
00:23:43
Speaker
to go and fight in a trench, as it were, or go fight in the Middle East somewhere, you have to make them absolutely believe that the thing they're fighting for is the best thing and the most valuable thing that they could possibly fight for.
00:24:00
Speaker
So yeah. So back to Labena. So of course all of this to say that in her work she's very attuned to the past of Black people seen as commodities which sustain the European and American economy, or who sustained the European and American economy,
00:24:20
Speaker
without having been rewarded or even recognized for it. And with their identities, peel the way from them, as we will see. So she's therefore very sensitive to wording and to the way you use vocabularies to define and describe society, which was made apparent in a sort of artist in residence she did at The Guardian. There's a YouTube video about this, which is really, really interesting.
00:24:48
Speaker
First of all, to see the Guardian journalists and the people work there listening to her, a Black artist, kind of desiccating all the covers of the newspapers and seeing this is insensitive for me as a Black person, seeing this next to this.
00:25:06
Speaker
is really bad and drives me back to a past that is not perhaps yours. And another thing to say for the Guardian is that there's a big diverse crew in there. I mean, it wasn't just a black woman talking to white people. And that's what was interesting as well. It's a really interesting video that I would really recommend you to watch. It's like five minutes. So her mother was a black woman and her father was a white British man.
00:25:35
Speaker
But very sadly, her father passed away soon after she was born. And so she came to England with her mother when she was four months old. So young. So her mother was a textile designer and she had a great love of art, textiles, patterns. And so she would take young Lebena to museums.
00:25:55
Speaker
The artist recalls loving Bridget Riley and her mother being a bit kind of uppity about it, like perhaps she says thinking she could have done it herself. But Hamid loved the sense of entering the painting and then being pushed out of it. She also remembers looking at James Tiso at the Tate, so the old Tate Britain in the corridors that are now the passage between the entrance and the cafe.
00:26:22
Speaker
And she remembers seeing his paintings with just interior scenes with women dressed in beautiful patterns and just going about their lives, which was really important to her and she loved seeing that. But parallel to this, her mom also took her to shops and to look at storefronts.
00:26:42
Speaker
but not to buy, to inspect the taste of the day, the craftsmanship. So really as a professional, as a textiles designer, she would just go and inspect everything. And so museums and shops work kind of on an equal standing for La Bay in a humid.
00:26:58
Speaker
And it's not surprising that then she started using objects. She sometimes paints in drawers, a furniture that you can manipulate. She loves secondhand stuff because, of course, those things were not the things she would buy. They would go to other people. And she was interested, and she still is, in those stories. She also says that her mum never really taught her practical stuff.
00:27:21
Speaker
and just kind of passed on this, you know, knowledge and this love for beautiful things, which just like my mom. My mom never taught me how to boil an egg, but she would take me to museums and she would teach me about literature and, you know, talk about her job. She was a teacher. I mean, she's still teaching a few people on Zoom. And, you know, Hamid went on to study theater set design at Wimbledon School of Art.
00:27:49
Speaker
where she graduated in 1976 because she thought that making a difference would be in theatre.
00:27:55
Speaker
Of course, she then got there and they were doing ballet, you know, stuff that didn't really interest her. So she moved on to other things. But in the 80s, she did an MA in cultural history, where she was accused of being a cultural terrorist, which is a phrase she abhors. In an interview with Maria Bolshaw, the director of the Tate, she explains that her work is more like a perfume.
00:28:20
Speaker
Someone comes in a room and a whiff of perfume takes over, then the person leaves and the perfume lingers. That's how she sees the workings of her activism in art making. So in this time, she was looking and thinking about Black artists, and that's why she was called a cultural terrorist because she was
00:28:41
Speaker
adamant that there were Black artists out there, because her mum had Commonwealth artists' paintings on her wall, so she knew they existed. But she was told that there were no Black artists. She finally decided that she perhaps needed to curate a few shows, you know, to kind of share the work she knew existed. So she was called a cultural terrorist.
00:29:04
Speaker
because she was emphatic in saying that there were other Black artists. Is that why she was called a cultural terrorist? Yes, she had this insistence and this need of trying to show Black art. And she was constantly told that there was no such thing in the 80s. And that there were these artists that equated to her then being a cultural terrorist.
00:29:34
Speaker
Yes, so she... That's wild, that's wild. I mean... Yeah, yeah, it's strange. I can see why she abores it. Yeah, especially in the 80s. It's kind of, you kind of think back and you think, oh, this was actually a moment where in pop culture, you know, hip-hop was taking over, there were series, whole series with only black casts.
00:29:58
Speaker
I mean, this is strange, isn't it? There's this idea that Black art was African masks. She decided to curate a few exhibitions in the 80s that are now considered turning points for Black art in the UK, such as Thin Black Lion at the ICA, showcasing art by Sonya Boyce, who was an MBE-OBE-RA, by the way, sit up a business, Marlene Smith and Chila Kumari Singh Berman.
00:30:26
Speaker
So even though these exhibitions are considered groundbreaking, she maintains that there were a one-off and didn't create a consistent path to visibility for the artists. She's very adamant in saying that, yes, of course, these were important, but there was also the moment that came after, which was that the people in power at the time in museums and galleries didn't pick up these artists.
00:30:53
Speaker
And so they were fighting for visibility. Whereas then in the 90s, the YBA, young British artists, were fighting for a place in the market and they succeeded. So they were not thinking of the market at all. They were at a point where they were thinking of, we want to be out there in museums. So this is a really important
00:31:13
Speaker
thing to say because we are now making a lot of exhibitions. And I had a talk with a friend about women in revolt at the Tate. And she was saying, oh, this is such an important exhibition. And I was saying, yes and no. I mean, yes, yes, definitely important exhibition. But it leaves me a kind of bitterness because those women were invisible all their lives. But then when it becomes history, then it's fine to have them at the Tate.
00:31:39
Speaker
but when they were actually fighting for visibility, fighting for their rights, fighting for motherhood to be recognized as an important part of their lives as artists, no one was there to listen to them. So I think that's a very important distinction to make, which is that when things are history, then they're accepted or they're archived, which is even worse, which is not the case for Labena Himmitt. So this is, she knows
00:32:09
Speaker
what her story was. She says she made a lot of concessions as well so that the door could remain open for those who came after her. You know, take it as it is, what she doesn't say which concessions she made. But in 2013, she highlights the fact that Hollybush Gardens, an amazing gallery from London, started working with her and they were responsible for her visibility afterwards.
00:32:37
Speaker
to the point where in 2017 she was finally awarded the Turner Prize, first black woman and oldest artist to get this recognition. So her life is really interesting to kind of evaluate what is novelty, what is belonging and not belonging to the art world, what is accepted and how aesthetic
00:32:57
Speaker
lack of diversity is also a lack of audiences. I mean so she was in her 60s by the time she got the Turner Prize. In 2013 she was almost 60. She was 59 when Holly Bush Gardens, you know this gallery kind of gave her a good push of visibility.
00:33:18
Speaker
And you just think of, you know, all of the work that she was doing there, sort of out of the limelight, trying to do the important thing of erasing awareness around Black artists. Meanwhile, herself, just trying to, you know, it's not as though she was doing that from a position of privilege of, well, I've made it, so I'm going to help others come up behind me. She was doing it at the same time, which is an enormous effort. And that's, yeah, just really impressive.
00:33:47
Speaker
Yeah. And Sonia Bois represented Britain at the Venice Biennial so recently. So that's how far we've come, but it's taken a long time for this generation of people. It's really something that you get from her biography. But so what are we seeing? So what is the exhibition between inverted commas that we're talking about today, Emily?
00:34:13
Speaker
Yeah, happy to talk about it. So the exhibition's called Naming the Money. It's paper works and it's showing at the Royal Academy in London. It started on the 9th of December and is going to be showing through the 16th of June.
00:34:28
Speaker
And as you say, it's not, I mean, it's an exhibition in inverted commas, it's more of a display. And this is a, it highlights Hamid's Royal Academy diploma work. So it's a, which is a set of 20 paper drawings relating to her Turner Prize winning installation, which is also called Naming the Money.
00:34:49
Speaker
So, Hamid describes naming the money as the story of slave-servant, but also the leper, the émigré, the refugee, the asylum seeker. The full body of work features 100 life-size cut-out figures, all allotted to one of 10 roles, including
00:35:08
Speaker
Toymakers, drummers, painters, shoemakers, and along with a soundtrack of their stories. So the paper works that are on display at the RA that you and I went to see were produced somewhere between sketch and pitch. So the display is her sort of working out what this larger exhibition would be, which is the one that went on to win the Turner Prize.
00:35:36
Speaker
So you're seeing the art as a work in progress and not the final draft. And I love that. You never see this, right? I mean, for me as a punter, it's like you're never going to see this. This is the castaway stuff of the broader work that you never get a look in on. And it's really beautiful nonetheless, but it's kind of seeing the ideas in motion and getting worked out.
00:36:05
Speaker
And I found that part of it really, really thrilling. So the life-size painted cutout figures were part of the exhibition Entangled Pasts, 1978 to Now, Art, Colonialism, and Change, that was in the RA's three main galleries from February to April. So did you see the show?
00:36:32
Speaker
No, I, weirdly, I haven't seen the exhibition. I always managed to miss the, him, it's exhibition naming the money or the artwork, the installation, but I saw it at the CPA.
00:36:48
Speaker
I can't say it in English, what's wrong with me? CAPC in Bordeaux and it was a huge installation. It was incredible. And the sound was really moving as well.
00:37:04
Speaker
So the space for the display is modest. It's at the back. You kind of really have to go to the back of the RA to find it. So I came in the main doors and you're just walking back and you're walking up some stairs and back and around. And it's, you know, there's the display is between two temporary walls that create a small hallway so you can get in from either side.
00:37:33
Speaker
And it's you're kind of suddenly in her world, you know, you've come through this giant gallery. And I really liked that, you know, while it's a small display, it felt very intended, which I appreciated. So the you know, there's these temporary walls and there's kind of entry points on either side. So it's not just like,
00:37:56
Speaker
you know, kind of a random, uh, put together thing. But you feel tucked away and very much, yeah, in her world in this space. And there's five framed works on each wall that, you know, on either side, and each framed work has two figures of the same person in it.
00:38:14
Speaker
So one is drawn, yeah. So in each framework, there's two images of the same person, roughly in the same body, pose, etc. And one is drawn and colored in on one side, and the other is collage.
00:38:34
Speaker
So as noted above, the figures have specific roles and names, a birth name and the name that they're called in their new place. And they have a short text to them. So for example, one is the toy maker and underneath it, it says, my name is Venda, but they call me Sissy. I used to make staffs and spears. Now I make boats, but I still have my measuring stick.
00:39:00
Speaker
So it's kind of telling us. It's beautiful because it has, so it's always, you know, black and brown people. And so they were dispossessed of their identity, called a new name. But the last sentence is the resilience, is where they get the resilience. It's like she explains how
00:39:21
Speaker
these people were in some ways starting over, being someone else, doing something that might not have been their skill in life or one of the skills they would like to use in life. But then at the end, there's something that they hold on to that is this kind of untouchable interiority and idiosyncrasy
00:39:46
Speaker
that makes you who you are and that you hang on to so that you still are who you are. It's quite striking. And it's really, beautifully done. You can read the text for each drawing and collage. And yeah, it's really beautiful.
00:40:03
Speaker
It's really nice, yeah. So in the frame, as I said, you see both images of the same person. And so for the toy maker, she's holding a dagger in one hand, which is kind of down by her side. And in the other hand, she's holding a boat.
00:40:22
Speaker
So she's making toy boats. She's not there making ships or something like that at a shipping dock. So the body position's the same, the garments are roughly the same, but of course on one side it's drawn and colored in and the other side it's in collage. So there's still this, as you say, there's a pointing to the interiority
00:40:46
Speaker
But there's also sort of what she's putting on. So the dress, etc., is roughly the same style of dress. You know, it's not wildly different. But in one side, it's sort of this collage of a bunch of different found things that she's sort of putting together on herself.
00:41:09
Speaker
And the other side is sort of a more holistic piece of garment. It's not a bunch of things that are brought together. I mean, it might be a couple things. It might be a dress and an apron and a hat, as opposed to the dress and the apron and the hat being pulled together from several different little pieces that come together to make those things.
00:41:32
Speaker
So yeah, so it's really interesting. I mean, you can, and I think you could, you could sort of view that a couple of different ways, right? It's like, is the collage in the new place or is the, is the kind of whole dress in the new place?
00:41:51
Speaker
You know, I mean, I read that. So the drawing, as you're looking at it, the drawn one and colored in one is on the left hand side. The collaged one is on the right hand side. Yes. You read from left to right. Yes. So you would think, OK, so the original one is on the left and then she moves to a new place, which is the collage. But there's part of me, too, that was like, you know, what we put on and what we have on ourselves, even in our native kind of place of birth.
00:42:21
Speaker
is a collection of so many different things and maybe it was simplified down to just a dress. Or you could think of it as the dress in its kind of drawn form and its simpler form.
00:42:37
Speaker
of being essential and then having to put on lots of different things in the collage bed. Because I mean, you know, she's coming from a place where maybe in her context she's reading right to left.
00:42:54
Speaker
So I thought that was an interesting kind of idea to play with. It's funny because you made me see it in a completely different way because for me it was all about the drawing makes the shape and then the collage is
00:43:10
Speaker
the moment before the figure becoming a freestanding sculpture. So it's the moment where you kind of become a bit delirious about the materials that you're going to put on them. She has a work called Freedom and Change, which is from the 80s.
00:43:35
Speaker
And you can hear me clicking away because I had it open in my computer. And it's a sheet that is hanging on a cane.
00:43:52
Speaker
It's two women running outside of the sheet. There's a bunch of dogs that they're kind of walking. And there's two white men on the ground, just the heads kind of being, it seems like they're running away from them. They're quite joyful as well. And their dresses, one of them is drawn and painted on with little bits of fabric or paper, I can't quite see. And the other one is made of envelopes. It's a blue dress. And she,
00:44:22
Speaker
likes to build these characters from bits of things as if their identities were kind of also bits of things that you put together. So for me, when I was looking at the drawings, it was kind of almost imagining her thinking, oh,
00:44:37
Speaker
What am I going to put here? Is it going to be fabric? She probably has a bunch of things in her studio that she can choose from. So maybe looking and then replicating them and seeing how these big figures that she makes come from
00:44:54
Speaker
Also, this thought of little things, little bits and bobs that kind of constitute then a figure, and also the choices of objects that they're going to be holding, like the herbalist, for example, is holding, I think, a plant, if I remember correctly, and maybe a tool, and how they're defined by their work as well. They're defined by what they do, like we were saying in the beginning,
00:45:20
Speaker
by their currency through the work that they make. They have a new name and they're not valuable. And the idea is also to make them freestanding and big is a conscious decision of giving them power, agency, and existence and bringing them to a place
00:45:40
Speaker
where they can finally be acknowledged, although they're in the past, but they're in us as well. They're parts of our history. So I like the way you see it as well, because you see them as telling a story and how these things, even though they're preparatory sketches, they have a life of their own. You know, they're there, they're being shown that they're telling a story that's bigger than just this pragmatic way of looking at
00:46:07
Speaker
the different steps of turning them into freestanding sculptures. But maybe it's time for a little break. What do you think? Great. All right. Let's do it.
00:46:31
Speaker
Welcome back, everyone. Glad you're with us. We are looking at Lubana Hamid. She has a work display at the RA just now. So we were just talking about the works themselves and how they are all representative of different jobs.
00:46:51
Speaker
that an immigrant or a person who moves from one country to another might be doing. Her work focuses on the lives of this work, particularly black and brown people. So another example of this is the dancing master.
00:47:14
Speaker
So this is an image of a guy sort of in Renaissance dancing gear. He has the great sort of like balloon shorts on. And he's in sort of mid dance step. So again, one version of him is drawn. The other version is collage. And as all the other images, it's showing people that are traversing space between
00:47:38
Speaker
what they are and what they're becoming as immigrants, migrants, slaves, indentured workers, etc. So the Dancing Master, the text underneath that is, my name is Edwin, but they call me George. I used to dance all night. Now I have to watch my step, but I still have my shoes.
00:47:58
Speaker
So again, looking at that, you know, kind of interiority of the character and of course all of these and I mean, what you were saying before about, you know, looking, you know, I've been looking at these as a work of art, you know, I mean, I understand that all of these are sketches.
00:48:19
Speaker
for her Turner winning prize piece. And all of these images are going to become life-size standalone sort of sculptures. But it wasn't until you were talking just then, and I know this, but it's like I just didn't regard them in that way.
00:48:39
Speaker
So when you look at who she is and how she grew up and her mom showing her fabrics and shop display windows and looking at how these different pieces come together, kind of looking at it as she drew something very basic to get the idea down. And then that collage is just kind of her sort of adding herself. I mean, she talks about how she loves color and texture and shape
00:49:07
Speaker
you know you can just see the evolution of it and you can see her in that collage piece so much more which is which is really cool. Yeah and it's beautiful that she often mentions Bridget Riley and to see that there's this very specific way of looking at abstract painting that is her way
00:49:32
Speaker
through this teachings of putting at the same level this high art that she was seeing at the Tate, she would go to the V&A with her mom, and then these
00:49:44
Speaker
fabrics and these patterns that she would see in shops and how she kind of amalgamated everything and turned everything into her own universe and to her own relationship with her family, with her mother. There's a beautiful experience that she talks about where she finally goes to Zanzibar
00:50:06
Speaker
She hadn't returned, apparently. I mean, she didn't remember it. She left when she was four months old. And I think she went with another artist who said, you must go, you know, let's go. I think it was a residency, it was a project there. And she says how normal, you know, she speaks of how normal it was.
00:50:28
Speaker
to be there and to just be in that space and see those landscapes. And then she came back and she did an installation with just abstract paintings hanging from the walls. So they're linen.
00:50:44
Speaker
They were installed in Sharjah, which is interesting because there's that Islamic cross-reference also in her work and in her heritage. And so the works are beautifully, beautiful repeated square-like patterns that give a sort of perspective in some ways. And then she added little elements of the only things that her mum brought back to England.
00:51:13
Speaker
so rose water, shells, so everything is really tied up with the experience of displacement of her mother and then of herself as someone who
00:51:26
Speaker
brought back a heritage that shows on her face and her hair and the way she presents herself socially. So it's really beautiful to see all of that combined. And I agree, it's true that. And I had a really funny thing happening when I was seeing the show, which was that I was taking pictures, I was reading the text and really interested. I mean, probably my
00:51:51
Speaker
body language show that I was into it. And there was this lady next to me who just looked at me and said, this is so wonderful, isn't it? This is incredible and incredible to just see this here.
00:52:06
Speaker
And I said, yeah, you know, I agreed. And she asked me if I was. And I told her a little bit about the project and she said, oh, do you know her? And I said, no, I don't know her. I'm a curator. I'm actually recording an episode of a podcast. And, you know, she said, oh, what podcast? So she started, you know, following the podcasts on Instagram. We looked for it.
00:52:30
Speaker
And then I asked her, what are you doing here? So did you know, are you an artist as well? And she said, yes, yes, I'm an artist. And I came to the RA to deliver a work that was pre-selected for the summer show. And so at the moment, the Royal Academy is full of people who are taking their works for the summer exhibition. And so she was an artist herself. And it turns out,
00:52:58
Speaker
that she makes. I'm going to give her a shout out because she's so fantastic. Turns out that she has a little gallery where she lives. I'm going to find it for you. And she also makes works with textiles, but she makes works and it's kind of remarkable. I urge you to look her up.
00:53:20
Speaker
Her name, the name of her account is quite funny. Her name is Joy Pitts. Hi Joy Pitts, I hope you're listening. And she has, she's in Norfolk and her account is Joy Next to the Sea.
00:53:36
Speaker
And it is a little gallery she has. So it's the name of a little gallery she has of artworks. And she makes artworks with labels of clothes. And she actually makes quite remarkable things. So she was bringing one of them. Well, in this case, it was something different. It was a cast of a pocket. I won't say more about it.
00:54:01
Speaker
because I don't want anyone to steal the idea from her and at the same time I'm wishing that they put it in the exhibition so that people can find it. And it was really interesting to see how she was connected to the work through her own experience as an artist and she was fascinated
00:54:18
Speaker
by the collages. She was talking about color and the kind of colors that her mid was choosing that are very specific to her. She uses very strong warm colors with lots of blues as well because the C is very important to her.
00:54:33
Speaker
because she lived in Blackpool for a long, long time. And obviously, her mom's remembrance of the island was also tied to the sea. So what is really important to her? So this was really beautiful meeting, and that's what happens in exhibitions. You meet people, you talk to people. I was talking about my work. She was talking about hers. And we were talking about which were our favorites. I'm really
00:54:57
Speaker
kind of, I would take the herbalist home just to announce it right away. The herbalist really moved me because it makes you think of a specific knowledge and a specific intentionality in the world where you were displaced from where you were, you had a certain knowledge, and then you come to this country and you develop a knowledge. Of course, this is me, the delirious, totally, total delirium here.
00:55:23
Speaker
But maybe you have that skill and you develop a knowledge with completely different plants and completely different maladies as well. So yeah, it was really nice to see how the small display just in this little corridor, like you said, that you can come through from different places.
00:55:44
Speaker
you know, kind of brings people together. Yeah. Oh, I love that. I love the random chats and connections that you have at exhibitions anywhere, really. But that's so nice. There's some really nice text on the wall from the artist where she's quoted saying, I became really excited by the endless possibilities for color, texture, and the decisions about clothes and objects.
00:56:12
Speaker
The expression of the face of each person was different. The process opened up more opportunities for dialogue between the cutouts themselves, between now and then, between art and politics. Although these works are quiet and sedate compared to the installation, in my head this was at the point at which I knew the whole thing was going to work.
00:56:36
Speaker
The cool thing is how often do you get to see that moment where somebody is like, this is a thing. That pregnant pause between big question marks of, gosh, I don't know if it's quite there to
00:56:57
Speaker
Oh, this is definitely a direction, but it hasn't manifested yet. I mean, every other time that you see art, it is the done and dusted work of it. And it brought to mind, for me, Diogo, your husband, the brilliant artist, because, I mean, this was a discussion that we had ages ago, you know, when he was looking at sort of what happens to the byproducts of art.
00:57:24
Speaker
so of course Diogo works in drawing and graphite and on his studio floor there was all of this graphite debris from his work so he's working on you know large-scale uh you know projects and inevitably there's going to be the dustings and all of that that go on the floor and i can tell you it does
00:57:45
Speaker
And he brings it back home. Well, back to cleaning, aren't we? Back to cleaning. This is the cleaning episode. Absolutely. But yeah, so I mean, I am going to totally not say how the process works, but I'm going to say that he put some paper down and caught the etchings of the graphite on the floor.
00:58:14
Speaker
and created artworks out of them. And so we have this diptych at home that's essentially what would have been garbage, what would have been swept up from- Well, I would have cleaned. What you would have cleaned. So you can thank me now, Joanna, for all of that sweeping you didn't have to do.
00:58:36
Speaker
No, you're absolutely right. It's a very good description. It's all about the margins of making the big work. And I agree. It is really what Labena Himid is doing, isn't it? She's just picking stuff.
00:58:51
Speaker
and defining those shapes, those people that she sees as people. They're archetypes, you could say, but at the same time, they're people, and they become that real person. They are, like she says, between politics and art,
00:59:11
Speaker
And suddenly there's an individual, a singularity going on there. And in the margins sometimes it is more about singularity than it is about producing a nice image. And that's what's so strong about these works. And are you quite right in seeing them as artworks, I think, because they're so intentional. They're so thought through and they're so fun as well. You can see she was having fun. And she was also grabbing her own form of resilience.
00:59:41
Speaker
I am doing this, because naming the money is a 2004 piece. I tried to look up a lot of things she did, namely the exhibitions. Thin black line, the trouble I had to know the artists that were included in the exhibition,
00:59:57
Speaker
you know, the exhibition is mentioned, but they don't say what was so important to her, which was the artists she put in there. And same thing with a few, you know, some of the artworks are so difficult to find sometimes. And I think naming the money was a 2004
01:00:14
Speaker
That's what I saw that was shown before and then shown afterwards. And she talks a lot about this idea of wanting to chuck away, wanting to get rid of things. And there's this figure in her life called Susan who keeps telling her, don't throw away.
01:00:31
Speaker
don't, though she kept saying, just keep the stuff. And so she's shown work several times, naming the money was shown in other places and same for other very important works of hers that weren't seen as much in the beginning and then she kept on showing. And that's the thing that kind of
01:00:52
Speaker
you know, that definite moment where at a certain point it clicks with the culture. I think her career really shows that. It kind of clicks with the culture and suddenly people are actually looking, but also because they're shown in places where people
01:01:09
Speaker
have to look, that's the performative thing you do at the Royal Academy, you look. That's what you're supposed to be doing because everything there is validated by the institution. By the way, I'd love to talk about, because I didn't only have that meeting in the display, my journey to that room was quite eventful, I have to say. Yeah. Wow. Okay.
01:01:38
Speaker
Yes, and that's the beauty of exhibitions. It's also the journey to get there and how then you perceive them through the happenings of that journey. So I got in there through the big entrance.
01:01:53
Speaker
So you go in through those doors, those main doors, that main entrance, and immediately you are kind of swept up by the vision of this huge sculpture by Tavares Trachon, born in 1979, replicating the Last Supper, but only with black historic figures such as Harriet Tubman or King Tubby. So completely anachronistic. And all the figures are either in galaxy black,
01:02:24
Speaker
which apparently is the color of outer space, according to astronauts, or in gold. It's bigger than life size. It's made of bronze, but it's covered in these two colors.
01:02:37
Speaker
And the characters are gesticulating. They're talking. They're expressive. They're quite big. So as you go in, I was thinking of, you know, where I'm going to find him. It's work. I wonder where it is, you know, and just you get that sculpture. And it's quite quite a striking thing to look at those bodies that come from different times and different places.
01:03:00
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. And so that's actually in the courtyard before you actually enter the building, and it's absolutely enormous. And when I was there, it was just covered in tourists, I mean.
01:03:16
Speaker
Like everyone, everyone was getting pictures in front of this thing. I almost barely got a look at it because I don't know if there was a tour group there at that time or something, but it was just like I could barely see the thing beyond the crowd of tourists around it. It's quite a sight because they're taking selfies in front of all these Black historic people.
01:03:39
Speaker
And it's quite funny because they're smaller. The sculpture is quite big and it's overpowering. And then, so I went to the exact opposite side, to these stairs, like you were saying, that go up to the collection display.
01:03:56
Speaker
And the doors open dramatically, and they're glass doors, but they're tainted, so you can't see unless they open. And suddenly, you have in front of you this young man, stretching, mid-stretch, completely naked.
01:04:15
Speaker
in front of you that kind of hits you like a ton of bricks. And you're kind of like, what a contrast, because you see that kind of conventional form of beauty. So this is a sculpture from 1885 by Lord Layton. And it is a very conventional form of beauty. It is also the powerful entity of that time, the man.
01:04:41
Speaker
obviously European, and just kind of like mid-stretch in a sort of intimate position, so a sort of a very conventional idea of sensuality, something that you would be doing in your room, but suddenly it's there for you and you can look at it. These little loopholes in Victorian society where you would hide every inch of your skin, but the sculptures could be naked because of the grease, you know.
01:05:07
Speaker
And there's later on, the Greeks, you know, that was the sculpture that you were replicating, you know, this kind of new classicism. And then later on, you have a cast of Michelangelo's Belvedere Torso, which is a bit like the Scratch and Sculpture. It's bigger than life size. It doesn't have any curves. It doesn't have any arms. It doesn't have any head.
01:05:32
Speaker
It's just this bulging torso with muscle everywhere and genitalia. And it's just this kind of powerful manly thing of what you can imagine, you know, the European mindset was at the time in terms of figures of power and beauty. And then you go into this corridor and you have these people
01:05:58
Speaker
that wouldn't have been there at the time. And so it kind of beautifully ties in with Strachan's culture as well. But she has these little drawings with these little texts that are so beautiful.
01:06:13
Speaker
And it just makes for a nice meeting area where things are not as monumental and as conventional as you would expect them to be in some areas of the Royal Academy. So it was a really interesting
01:06:30
Speaker
placement for this work. And it was done with a lot of care. There's texts, but the text is not annoying for once. There's just little bits of information that you can get if you want to. And the text next to the drawings are actually the artist texts and they're essential because they kind of replicate the sound that you have in then the final installation. So yeah, it was quite the experience.
01:06:57
Speaker
Yeah, totally. I mean, as ever, I feel like the story of a lot of my exhibition going is rushed. And so I went immediately after work and I was like, I have to find this and give myself time before it closes to really see it. And walking through, I mean, it was like a candy shop. It was like there were so many things that were like, look at me, look at me, Michelangelo, Lord Layton.
01:07:25
Speaker
And for me, one of the things that really did distract me for a bit, and thankfully I was very dedicated, and I went and saw the display first. And then, you know, with any extra time I had, I had a little bit of a wonder, though.
01:07:42
Speaker
Not much, but Flaming Dune by Lord Layton was there. And that, again, is a beautiful woman sort of curled up on some sort of outdoor chef's lounge overlooking the ocean, and she's having a really great nap. The suggestion of a nap just kind of makes you go places.
01:08:08
Speaker
It really does. It's so funny. It's like you're drawn to the the man stretching the bulging torso and genitalia and I was like oh that lady taking a net man couldn't take my eyes off of her.
01:08:26
Speaker
Well, there you go. Arts says so much about you. It really does. It really does. But she is, I mean, the thing about that one, though, the color and the light, it's very orange. It's so incredible. Orange salmon. Orange. Yeah. Orange salmon. But it's like the light itself. Yeah, it's very orangey, salmon-y.
01:08:55
Speaker
But yeah, I don't know, there's like a quality to it. It's the angle. I don't know, it's almost got to do with the image. Yeah, yeah. Right? Because she's kind of from almost at body level. I didn't only go check out, you know, the Belvedere Tossos genitalia. Now you're changing your story.
01:09:21
Speaker
I did spend some time in front of her as well kind of thinking, huh, what a weird, it's kind of like pre-Raphaelite and at the same time, it's very angre, this kind of very, it's very linear kind of outlining of the human shape.
01:09:39
Speaker
And at the same time, there's a lot of color. So it's very drawn at the same time, very painted. It's a very weird style. It's kind of neither here nor there, but then the atmosphere of the painting is all light. Yeah. I mean, it wasn't experience this exhibition for sure. It was. Yeah. And I just, it feels like it's unlike any other because it is a
01:10:06
Speaker
it is the pre-work to a bigger exhibition. I'm really, I need to see the bigger exhibition now. I mean, that's gonna be a life goal. Because having seen this, I just feel just so drawn to imagine what those sculptures must be like and what they can convey on such a big scale.
01:10:28
Speaker
And also, I was thinking because we just, well, previously we recorded the Sufiana Barbri episode where we talked a lot about innocence and about childlike drawing. And she considers herself a painter and she has beautiful paintings on canvas. There's a lot of work that is also a lot of paintings that are done on furniture or freestanding elements or
01:10:57
Speaker
sheets that hang on the wall or that hang on the ceiling, linen as well. It's very varied, but she does consider herself a painter. But her figures also have a sort of innocence, the way they're painted. They have something that was kind of like
01:11:20
Speaker
They're kind of complex in terms of trying to figure out where they come from in terms of references because they can as much make you think of Hockney as they can make you think of kind of more popular art that you see on the streets.
01:11:38
Speaker
and also theater. You can see where she studied set design and you can see exactly what she took from it as well. This kind of flatness of the figures also kind of replicate sometimes the flatness of figures that you might see on a truck or you might see
01:12:02
Speaker
in theater settings or you might see in a school, playground, you know. So there's this kind of complex set of references that come from the more fine art world and then that are kind of mixed in with other references and other universes as well, aesthetic worlds. That also makes for a certain form of innocence. Would you agree with that or how did you see
01:12:32
Speaker
the way she made those characters and how flat they are, but all the detail they are as well. Did you connect with the Barbary? I didn't until you just mentioned it. I see the Innocence connection. I mean, even the way that they're drawn and they're almost drawn like their feet might be facing
01:12:54
Speaker
opposite directions as a kid might draw feet. I mean, so there is something a bit certainly childlike about
01:13:05
Speaker
about them, you know, kind of the way that they're standing, you know, I mean it's a very, you know, kind of simple outline of a figure for sure. Yeah, I don't know if it's in the sense that I would talk about in regards to these drawings. I don't quite know how to
01:13:26
Speaker
phrase it really because there's an attention on the face as well. The faces are very intentional. There's even one where there's a collage of a real person cut out from, which is the viola, the gamba player, a cut out from a magazine where there's this smiling young man, black young man that is added onto the drawing.
01:13:51
Speaker
They kind of look a bit bewildered at times. They have these very big eyes and they look quite as if they were trying to be neutral. You know, there's something of impersonating a character.
01:14:07
Speaker
There's a form of sadness, or I wouldn't say darkness to them, but there's something to them that makes them as if they were in a play and as if their lives was a theater play, because they're playing someone else. So there's a background of uncertainty in these characters, especially if you read the text. The shoemaker, my name is F. Young. They call me John. I used to make rings for royal fingers.
01:14:36
Speaker
Now I make shoes for ladies' feet, but I have the gold. Yeah, there's kind of a blankness to the expressions. Yes, maybe that's it, a blankness. Yeah, trying not to be noticed. Trying not to come at you with an expression. They're very blank, it's true. And it's the text, and I think in the installation, that's the text that kind of makes them come alive. I remember experiencing it and thinking, you go back to those
01:15:07
Speaker
people to those individuals with a different intentionality once you hear the voices and once you hear the texts. And I think she uses language quite a lot, and I wanted to bring back the conversation about The Guardian, which was a really interesting video to watch of hers because she says, I'm looking at your pages as an artist.
01:15:35
Speaker
you know, I'm not a journalist, implying I'm not a psychologist, I'm not a marketing expert or whatever. She was analyzing the front page and the back page, so she opened the back of the newspaper, which is what you see when you're reading physically a newspaper. And so she was looking at the whole thing as a single image, a little bit like these drawings.
01:15:59
Speaker
So she, because we can separate like this, like I was doing in a very literal sense. This is the drawing, then that is kind of the project. And then she makes the sculpture. But actually she was looking at the page, connecting everything together. And so in every person's mind, there's a news piece, there's a title.
01:16:21
Speaker
And then it's separated from whatever's next to it, which is another news item with another title and another image. And she was looking at all of it as a whole single painting. So everything is connected. And there's one page that she opens where there's a black figure in the cover. I can't remember exactly. I found it so shocking, actually, what she said afterwards, that I think my mind went blank. I don't remember exactly what was on the page. It was a black person.
01:16:51
Speaker
Then in the back, there was an ad saying, let's call a spade a spade. She said, for you, that doesn't ring any bells. For me, it brings me to the past. For those who don't know, don't live here or are not in an Anglophone world, that was a derogatory word for black people. She brought those things together.
01:17:19
Speaker
in a way that kind of tells us that however differentiating your conscious mind can be when you're reading news and you know that one thing's not connected to the other is not connected to the other, your subconscious is reading everything together and is putting things together. That's what it says. And some people, I tell my kids this, words are important and they say,
01:17:46
Speaker
I don't know. Who cares? You're exaggerate. There you go, because you like words and you like images or whatever. For me, the proof is dreams. Dreams amalgamate everything together, because that's how your mind works. That's why I don't watch certain films or don't watch certain videos, because your brain puts everything together.
01:18:08
Speaker
And it doesn't differentiate, it associates, thus the archetypes in Jungian psychoanalysis. And she did that. And I found that so interesting. And she presented that as having the way of looking of the painter.
01:18:25
Speaker
And maybe the subconscious is a painter, is an artist that kind of brings things together and makes these portraits, makes these paintings, these landscapes within your own mind. And that's why you need to be mindful of these associations that are made all the time and the images that you look at and the films that you watch and the series that you binge on.
01:18:48
Speaker
I agree completely. That way of looking at things is why we love to see what artists come up with. Emily, what would be the drawing or collage slash drawing that you would take home with you?
01:19:12
Speaker
Need you ask, Joanna. Need you ask. I mean, of course, it's going to be the drummer, right? Oh, right. Yeah, like that is so the obvious choice. And here I'll get to it. So the text for the drummer is, my name is Dumbaka, but they call me Dan. I used to call for rain, now I play for dancers, but I have the beat.
01:19:40
Speaker
Oh, because you, Emily, you play drums. You play drums. I do. Yes, I do. And so, yeah, I was feeling the drummer image, definitely.
01:19:53
Speaker
Oh okay so already yours is the herbalist right? Yes let me dig it up for you. Maybe because of my daughter who's so interested in herbs and you know the knowledge that we kind of lost that kind of is in the back of history at the moment and the
01:20:15
Speaker
and the association between herbalism, knowledge of nature, and women traditionally. So in medieval times, women were herbalists. And there was a fine line between being a herbalist and being a witch. So I don't know, we've had these conversations with my daughter, so maybe that's why I'm drawn to her. She's green as well. She's all dressed in green. And the collage
01:20:42
Speaker
Oh my word is absolutely mind-blowing. It's beautiful. And she has a fierce, she has a fierceness to her. She doesn't have a blank stare. And the text is, my name is Olisade. They call me Jenny. I used to cure diseases. Now I make the tea.
01:21:04
Speaker
but I am never ill. Listen, I love this one. I love this one. That is a good one. And I think, I mean, in a way, I think all of the final lines, the interior sort of resilience markers are saying that, like, I know how to take care of myself. Like, I know what's inside of me, even though the outside is this. Oh, you made me understand the gold now.
01:21:34
Speaker
Oh, now I get it. Because when I read, but I have the gold, I thought, what does he mean? He does not have the gold. He doesn't have any money. And then the gold is he has the most precious thing, which he's not going to say what it is. He has something in himself that is the real luxury, that is the real wealth that you have to hold on to, to be who you are. And thank you.
01:22:00
Speaker
I'm so literal, Emily, today. I don't know what's going on with me. That's the whole point. I don't know what is going on with me today. Oh dear, oh dear.
01:22:15
Speaker
Anyway, yes, he does have the gold and so do we all and that makes me think of the Nina Simone song. So Nina Simone song that really I kept going back to when I was thinking about this display.
01:22:34
Speaker
is a song called Ain't Got No, I Got Life, and she enumerates everything she doesn't have. So, ain't got no home, ain't got no shoes, ain't got no money, ain't got no class, ain't got no friends, ain't got no schooling, ain't got nowhere, ain't got no job, ain't got no money, no place to stay, ain't got no father, ain't got no mother, ain't got no children, ain't got no sisters above, ain't got no earth, ain't got no faith,
01:23:01
Speaker
and got no touch and got no God and got no love and got no wine no cigarettes and got no clothes no country no class no schooling no friends no nothing and got no God and got one more and got no earth no food no home
01:23:21
Speaker
And then she enumerates what she does have. I got my hair on my head. I got my brains. I got my ears. I got my eyes. I got my nose. I got my mouth. I got my smile. I got my tongue. I got my chin. I got my neck.
01:23:38
Speaker
I got my boobies, I got my heart, I got my soul, I got my back, I got my sex, I got my arms, I got my hands, I got my fingers, got my legs, got my feet, got my toes, got my liver, got my love, my blood, got life, I got my life. And this song, when I'm down, just puts me right back there. And she sings with a rage and with a joy. I mean,
01:24:05
Speaker
Nina Simone man, she's yeah She's gold. Have you seen? Yeah, she is gold. She is gold and it is such a good reminder, you know, I mean of of what we have that there is so much you can get in these
01:24:23
Speaker
you know, circles in your mind of like, oh, if only the if then proposition, if this happened, then that would be better. And, you know, we have an embarrassment of riches. I mean, you know, particularly us here, you know, in an area where we're living in peace, relative peace, I mean, compared to lots of places in the world. And yeah, I mean, we have
01:24:51
Speaker
We have our liver and our boobies. What else? Listen, for us, we have boobies. And I love that she talks about organs. Your organs are functioning, my love. Not everyone can say that. And she doesn't mention all of them. Maybe some of them are not
01:25:12
Speaker
as good as the others. She didn't talk about her spleen. Maybe her spleen is not doing good. You never know. You never know. Also, please, I want to apologize to all Nina Simone fans of my butchering
01:25:28
Speaker
of her intonation of the song. I didn't even try to sing because that would have been like a cross, like never listening to this podcast ever again. I could not sing it, but you can't sing like she does. I mean, this song is just so unique and I'm so glad that we have recording technology because with all the things that we have, we have recording technology, which is why we're here, by the way. Yeah, we do.
01:25:55
Speaker
There's a Netflix documentary about her that was out. It's been up for a long time. Did you see that one? Yes, I did. That's a tough watch, isn't it? And that's where I learned that she wanted to be a classic pianist. And when you learn that, you think everything else she got, all the recognition, everything she did,
01:26:23
Speaker
is on the back of that bitterness because she did have a form of bitterness and she became unwell at the end of her life. I think she was diagnosed or we now think she was bipolar.
01:26:40
Speaker
But bipolar disease is also provoked by a lot of trauma and it kind of comes out through trauma. From what I know, forgive me if I'm saying something completely incorrect. It's what I think I know. But you can see how multi-dimensional she was and what a great lady and what an artist. She was incredible.
01:27:06
Speaker
So what else is there to say? I think we've come to the end of the line and it still astonishes me how much you can talk.
01:27:18
Speaker
about such a small display. It's such a small display, but there's so much to say and there would have been so many other things to say about it. But thank you, Emily, for doing this again with me. Yeah, no, thank you. I mean, the same. I always have this worry that we're not going to have enough to talk about or
01:27:40
Speaker
Oh, this is a newer artist. I mean, not that Himed is a newer artist, but we have had newer artists on. And I don't know if there'll be as much, but there always is. There's so many ideas packed in. And it's just really fun to unpack them with you. And really, really wonderful to share this with listeners and seeing them online and on Instagram and engaging. So thank you, Joanna. And thanks, everyone, for listening.
01:28:09
Speaker
Yeah, well, it's a wrap. Thank you all for hanging in there with us and doing this whole journey with us. It's a real pleasure, yes, to know that you're out there and you're listening. Okay, so until next time, when we will be talking about Matthew Christianou, which is the exhibition, the solo exhibition,
01:28:32
Speaker
now on at Camden Arts Center until the 23rd of June, 2024. So you have a lot of time to visit it. So if you want to prepare before the next episode, by all means, go ahead. Bye, Emily. Bye. Take care. Take care, everyone. Bye bye.
01:29:06
Speaker
you