In-Conversation
with Liz Johnson Artur, London-based photographer and Anique Jordan, Toronto-based artist, curator and writer, moderated by Liz Ikiriko, independent curator. Recorded discussion on the importance of documenting Black daily life and the social and political value of self representation.
Liz Ikiriko
Hello, my name is Liz Ikiriko, I am an independent curator, artist and photo editor, and today I will be moderating the Wedge Collection and Canada House Galleries conversation between artist Liz Johnson Artur and Anique Jordan. The High Commission of Canada, in partnership with the collection, will display an inaugural presentation of Position as Desired at the Canada House Gallery in Trafalgar Square in London, UK, in July, 2021. In anticipation of the physical presentation an engaging online preview, will present samples of the exhibition on view beginning October 2020.
This showcase of works by notable Black British artists provides an important parallel to the African Canadian artistic practices being explored in Position as Desired. Synergistic themes are on display, including beauty, memory, community and resistance to the forces of oppression. There's also a powerful connection through shared histories of migration and colonialism. However, significant differences are also apparent in the respective evolutions of style, expressions of protest and regional perspectives on personal identity and representation. The addition of important works by Black British artists will serve as a necessary reminder that the Black Canadian experience has many alliances with narratives within the diaspora.
Today, we will be in conversation with two of the featured artists from Position as Desired. Liz Johnson Artur is a Russian Ghanaian photographer based in London, born in Bulgaria and educated in Germany. She arrived in London in 1991 for the last twenty five years, Johnson Artur has been working on a photographic representation of people of African descent. She's worked as a photojournalist and editorial photographer for various record labels and publications such as I.D., The Face and The Fader.
Her independent artistic work, including the Black Balloon Archive, has been shortlisted for the AIMIA AGO Photography Prize in 2012. Her work, capturing the Global African Diaspora, has exhibited at the Berlin Biennale, the Brooklyn Museum and South London Gallery, among others. Her monograph with Bieke Verlag was included in the best photobooks list of the New York Times in 2016. Johnson Artur is one of the 2020 recipients of the prestigious Turner Prize bursaries.
Anique Jordan is a Toronto based artist, writer and curator who looks to answer the question of possibility in everything she creates as an artist. Jordan works in photography, sculpture and performance, often employing the theory of ontology to challenge historical or dominant narratives and creating what she calls ‘impossible images‘. Jordan has lectured on art and community engaged curatorial practice at Harvard University and in numerous institutions across the Americas. She has received numerous awards, grants and fellowships, including the Hnatyshyn emerging Artist Award and the 2020 Artist Award from the Toronto Friends of the Visual Arts. Her work appears in public and private collections nationally.
So now that we've got the introductions out of the way, I'd like to thank you and welcome you both for being here and taking the time to share your practices with us. I'd also like to acknowledge that we're in these unprecedented times in which we're affected by a global pandemic and the uprisings that are addressing anti-Black racism, police violence and the dominant structures of white supremacy, And that's also not to mention wildfires in California, a looming election, Brexit or the state of Lebanon. 2020 has been, at the very least, so very extra. And I'm just hoping that you're both taking care of yourselves in the midst of our shared global crises.
With that said, I'd like to start by asking you both how have your personal histories drawn you to lens based Black artistic production? What are your origin stories in terms of getting interested in photography and lens based work? So maybe, Liz, did you want to start us off?
Liz Johnson Artur
I think it's I guess you could say it's a visual journey that I took, as I would almost say, as an object has been around me all my life. And in a way, photography reflected a lot of times, you know, like other people, my family, that I had access to certain sort of references to stories because I didn't grow up with my father or his family. And photography or photographs always have been a kind of a thing I looked at, I suppose. By looking at it, you know, it was always connected to stories. I think when I discovered photography, actually, I discovered that I could actually take my own pictures because before that I just didn't click to me. Then I think, yeah, from then on, I just use it as my tool. And I suppose that's why I said it's a visual journey. You know, I think that to see things visually, strongly and that kind of ended up in photography, if that makes sense.
Liz Ikiriko
Yes, the form of communication and storytelling and making your mark.
Liz Johnson Artur
Yeah, you know, to me, I think photography has always been a tool I really enjoy. I enjoy taking photographs. I enjoy making photographs. So the whole process of producing a photograph and I say photograph because I think I was always my first love about photography was the process of it, you know to take a picture and film and then have this picture in the dark and suddenly you come out with something? You know, I think it's just something when I discovered that the simplicity of it, that was it. And I think it's still a base of my work that I think when I take a photograph, that's an exciting moment. But the process to actually see the photograph is also really exciting.
Liz Ikiriko
Do you, Anique, have a like a similar because you work across a number of different mediums. So I'm wondering in terms of your interest, if there is that same sort of relationship to tactility?
Anique Jordan
Yeah. Yeah, it's very similar to what Liz is saying actually, for me growing up - and I was just telling my mom this - I was really drawn to to seeing pictures of my mom and my aunts as children just to see what they what they looked like, what their lives were like. And my mom didn't have very many pictures of herself as a child. Like, I think there's maybe one group picture of her with her siblings. And then years later, like more recent times, I was visiting her old - she used to dance in a Trinidadian dance company - and I I visited we together visited her old dance instructor and she had a few pictures of her as a child. And aside from that, I have never seen any images of my mom as a child. And I think it sort of started an obsession with trying to document my own life as a kid. So I used to write a lot, like I used a journal a lot as a child. Every little thing that was happening in the day, like just to sort of I think it was a way of like making my mark to see, like, ”little girls exist and here's what our lives are like“, and so it sort of started from that - this desire to document. And then I think it started to grow in in the way of like trying to just document and have tangible memories or like memories that couldn't be denied I think, when we think of, like the broader state of the archive and the ways that black lives are remembered. It became sort of this way of me trying to say that our presence is like the sort of permanence; there's like an ongoing and always was type of something. And I feel as though the short span of time that I have to live my life, I I have always had this impulse to want to make sure that I'm adding to an archive, or creating one or seeing us from the perspective of my own eyes. So I think and as much as I work with other mediums, I always come back to photography. Like I push away from it a lot because I'm like, I'm not a photographer, I'm not trained in photography. And then I'm like, no, like I just love the frame. I love the moment. I love like I also love the materiality of it. So, yeah, it sort of started from from those sort of roots. And it feels less of a choice and more of like an impulse I think, than anything.
Liz Ikiriko
I'm really curious from both of you to maybe answer a question in regards to the importance of real material archives, and like do you when you're creating work and thinking about them existing for a future, are you thinking about them in terms of, I guess like either a real physical presence? Maybe you could speak to the idea of archives that are yours like that, that you personally are in control of in response or also in connection with collections and institutional archives?
Liz Johnson Artur
I think the physicality for me is fundamental. I think because simply as an evolutionary thing, I've always wanted to touch whatever I saw and yeah, as simple as that. I wanted to be able to touch the things that I see. And I think that's still something that I'm conscious of when I take pictures that particularly when I go through the process because I'm, you know, like analog trained photographers, I've learned that process and do it because it makes sense to me. And in terms of I think one of the things about like I call my worK “archive”, you know, Black Balloon Archive and I think that's not something I did from the beginning. I think about 10, 15 years, I was just taking pictures and they were accumulating and the drive to go out and take them didn't go away. But the consciousness that things are growing because when you‘re analog - things are literally rolling in front of you in terms of stacks of negatives - I was trying to keep up with printing because that was one of the things I didn't want; pictures, you know, before there was computers, I had to either do contact sheets. I wanted to see physically my pictures. That's always been an important part for me. And I think when I decided to call it an archive, I also felt like that's a good thing for me to make publicly, to say this is my archive, you know, to actually give it a certain importance. But for myself, I don't need to call it an archive, but at the same time, once I called it an archive, my approach was different. Suddenly all the things mattered, all the things that might be touched by me, because, you know, the way I kept hold of my archive was that it grew in my place. And I was lucky because I had enough space to fill this space. But, you know, even the biggest place can you know, there was something to me where I needed importance. And I think the thing for me was archives is I like the idea of a mockup, you know. I don't claim to I don't need an academic background in my archive. My archive is really something that reflects that I think a lot of people have I think we all carry archives in whatever form. And I think that level of archiving is something that I find interesting to investigate, because, you know, the way it is with archives that you carry around your life, some you lose, some get damaged, some you know, there's all these crises that happen. And I think things like this, yeah, they when you actually encounter them in a physical way is different to encountering them on screen.
Liz Ikiriko
I think it's really interesting also that you said it was really important for you to name it, like to actually identify your archive as the Black Balloon Archive or that you were creating an archive. And I think about our presence as as black women and and there's kind of been a consistent sense of erasure that has been, you know, embedded in dominant culture that actually naming something and kind of addressing your actions as being relevant and contributing to something bigger.
Liz Johnson Artur
I mean, you know, we we also live in a society where words are very important. You know, when you name something, it suddenly becomes something. And I think that to call something an archive is making itself official. You know, I declare my stuff official because the idea of an archive is always somehow connected to most people with institutions and institutions, again, connected to a certain power structure and to a certain way of narrative and a certain importance. And I think I also see because you know what naming my work archive means, I've created my own space to present my archive, to work on my archive. I find that the space that gives me also a legitimate way of saying, you know, it's important. And I think I know it's important and I think a lot of people it see the same way, but I think what is important is also to make a point that it is important and I think that's how I see my work. So it's important to be serious about your work. And I think with what type of sometimes can emphasize that.
Liz Ikiriko
The practice of of archiving is really reflecting and acknowledging unaddressed histories is really present in your work as well. And I was thinking about the 94 Chesnut series, and I'm just wondering if you could speak to the importance of either resurrecting.
Anique Jordan
The ideas for it came about through the excavation of a parking lot in downtown Toronto, where it was found that site of that parking lot, it had at one point been the old site for a Black church, a British Methodist Episcopal Church. And so it was a site of this black congregation, it was also the site of a of a home that was owned by a Black family. And then the area itself had tons of artifacts from that area that the parking lot covered had tons of artifacts from different communities that lived within that area at different times. So at one point, it was largely a Jewish community. Then it became a largely African-American, afro-Nova Scotia, Afro-Ontarian community. Now it's the outskirts of what's like currently Chinatown in downtown Toronto. But it's always been an area of people migrating, at least in the more recent histories of it. It's been an area people migrating into the community and creating their own communal enclaves. That is that was distinctly different from the other areas within the city. And so it was different because it was close to the waterways. It was close to a lot of commerce, there was the Eaton’s and it was the site of so much black history within the city of Toronto and within the broader context of Canada, and within thinking about the relationship between Canada and the States, and the ways in which the slave trade operated, that pushed a lot of people towards specifically towards that community within Toronto. And so I had been really interested in talking specifically about this history of that of that space. I want to say, like 1857, 1870, as it would have the first version of the church would have been erected. Because it was happening around the time of the Fugitive Slave Act that was enacted in the States - where people were, no matter where they essentially were, they could have been accused of running away from from like their, the slave owner, or plantation owner or whatever, and they could have been captured and brought back into slavery in the south. So for a lot of people, the churches were the sites of refuge and the site of a bit of a sanctuary to be able to not be captured by the bounty hunters. But because the time the church was erected, it was considered to be an African Methodist Episcopal Church, which is a sect of Christianity that was based in the States, it was still considered to be a part of an American sort of ecosystem, so bounty hunters could still go there. So the church itself changed its name from an African Methodist Episcopal Church Episcopal Church towards a British Methodist Episcopal Church in order to maintain the church as a site of sanctuary, as a space of refuge for people who were escaping the bondage of slavery. And so in doing that, they actually created a site where people, bounty hunters, could no longer enter because it no longer was associated with the United States of America. So this church itself was this this freedom space. It was a space where people can go and actually begin to understand what a life of a free person could feel like within their own bodies, because this church take this radical act of becoming a place, an actual physical structure, where they, where the bounty hunters could no longer enter, right? And so I was really interested in this history because because of all those pieces, because of the fact that the church became the site of social justice and in so many ways and such a radical waging a time where, you know, it was so dangerous to to sort of act in these types of ways. And then, in our recent history, we're watching this site transform from the space, the sacred space - granted, it was a parking lot for the longest time - but now it was going to become a courthouse. Right. So, a place where justice was enacted as like on behalf of Black people and now a place where justice would be removed from Black people, so many communities have passed through the space and made it home. And so this was also at the height of Black Lives Matter activity in Toronto, at the time. Black Lives Matter had started up really taking hold in 2014 but by 2016, Tent City was occupying the police headquarters downtown Toronto, there were regular marches happening, the taking over of the Gardiner Expressway (one of our main highways) had just happened. So much was going on, right? And so, being Black and seeing Black with a capital letter became such a hyper-political thing, that of course the city, the province, the country, didn't want to be able to allow a historical narrative to be centered around. Another long story short, because it exhausted me, the act of trying to figure out how to get on the site to the point where I was in touch with with a lawyer, we were making plans; should we jump over the fence? At one point we were going to send actually Black balloons over the fence and document them floating over this terrain that we didn't have access to at one point. There's so many ideas. We're going to cut the lock, all these things. And then, you know, it just took over with exhaustion for me. And I thought to myself, you know, just for a Black person to tell a history that includes us, we have to physically jump a fence. So it came to a point where I wanted to more so show that we were denied access. And so that's how those images came about. It was a lot of work and thinking about ancestors bringing me to this story, bringing me to this site, the memories and the type of mourning that is involved in remembering all these bodies that would have walked through this space and all the bodies that couldn't imagine the type of freedom we're still fighting for. And so that's why she's dressed all in Black - at least in these images that you're talking about - she's dressed all in Black. She's standing in front of the locked gate of the site. And on the site you see the signage that's around the gate, there's like two hands that are up, like stopping using ‘stop‘. But there's two signs so it's sort of like those gestures of like hands up, which was one of the more popularized gestures that was in response to resistance at the time. Now it's taking the knee, you know. And so, she's all in Black because it's like a mourning, you know. Just trying to remember and trying to offer what this physical archive looks like, and the meaning that it has in our current day, and how politicized, and how much power was imbued in that simple action that I was forbidden by the state. And so then what is the role of the artist to continue to tell that story?
Liz Ikiriko
The work that you're creating is so personal, even if you're telling stories, Anique, that are not personally connected to your actual experiences. These are histories that we are sharing. I think there's a cost and a benefit to this very personal work that we're doing. I'm wondering if you could both speak to that. What is the cost of doing this deeply personal work? It's not like you're both going off into offices, you know, typing a couple of emails, being like, great, all right, now it's five o'clock, I'm coming home and you can shed that, right? This work is ongoing. You're unearthing a lot, I think probably continually - maybe you could speak to that in terms of the cost and the benefits of the practices that you both do.
Liz Johnson Artur
To me, there's never been a question to put myself in or not. I think it's just how kind of role. I think when that's simply doing what I do for myself. But I think when I started showing work, I realised what the cost is of being personally involved, because then the conversations when they start, they usually start with my biography.They usually start with certain perspectives that are really things that, you know, I don't mind talking about, but I also realized that I don't mind being personal in my work. I think that's the only way I can do it. I do feel that not everyone has to pay the same price in terms of Black artists, I think there's always a knowership going along with it. And on one side, I think, of course, that's where we come from. But it's about this thing of not being just in that corner. For me the thing is that, yes, I'm always going to be personal about my work, but I don't always want to show my work on that level. I do want everyone to have a look at it. Yes, it comes from my personal perspective, but it doesn't stay with me. Once I put it out there, it's about looking at things and I think that's something that as human beings, we should be able to take. I think as artists I am trying to learn to protect myself.
Liz Ikiriko
Anique, I wonder if you could speak to that. I'm so glad, Liz, that you mentioned that sense of protection, because I think that's such an important part of understanding the cost that's paid to do personal work is that there is a way that I think we all need to find ways to also protect ourselves and create a certain sense of opacity that we not only allow ourselves, but that we are consciously aware of in the work that we're creating.
Anique Jordan
A lot of what is important for me right now is to work through the questions that I have. A lot of writers talk about writing your story first and I think part of it is, is that sort of impulse. I must do the work that's calling towards me to understand the questions that I have of myself before I can begin or even consider removing my lived experience from from my immediate perspective of what I'm producing. So that's sort of a starting place, but I don't necessarily know if you go away from that and why should you need to? I don't think that having an artwork that comes from your particular perspective means that it's void of a universal understanding. I think that if you're thinking about a human experience, there's so many universality surrounding a human experience. Why then, as a black person or as a black woman must we dilute our experience to universalize it, as opposed to allowing people to tap in to seeing themselves within our experience. There's pieces of that, you know, that's there and then there's also the pieces like, "Well, this is where I am at right now, so this is what is going to be coming out, and I'm fine with that." But at the same time, I have been called at least by on a couple of occasions, by white men, narcissistic and self-centered in my work. I remember I did a talk and this white guy came up to me - this older white guy came up to me after - and I thought, wow, what what sort of nerve you have to come to an artist talk and then approach the person who was speaking in front of you and tell them that you believe they're narcissistic because you're not in it. There's that there, there's a weird type of risky feeling, because it still impacts you in certain ways. You still go home and question like "oh, what the hell, am I?" And then you have to refute that. Then there's also that feeling of like, "am I too much in the center of my work?" There's all these questions that are constantly being put towards you because you have never seen yourself being in the center of something, you know? So I think there's those types of pieces. And then, more broadly is the risk of being exposed. There's a risk in being vulnerable. There's the risk and being the nonconventional, you know, as many artists are, regardless. There's so many things that are involved in there and there's the risk of asking and attempting to answer big questions that society tries to hide from us or or to normalize. There's a lot of things that I think are constantly at stake that we put out, but I think maybe as a profession, as an artist and as the identity that becomes part of how we move through the world as artists - those things that feel risky and feel really difficult to move through become part of the way we exist in the world. So we adopt them and know that what we're producing has a type of risk involved in it, but it comes from and is a part of how we just exist.
Liz Ikiriko
I think both of you have worked in different capacities, but also in ways where you do use collaboration. Maybe you could speak to your desire possibly to share your power, your privilege, your voice with others, because I think you both do that, but also in very different ways.
Liz Johnson Artur
I think to me in an interesting way up until, I suppose the last two years, I've been very much used to just working on my own. It was just a way of how I went about things. I think when I started to suddenly - it's only a few years ago that suddenly people offered me shows, before that, it was a different story - that's something that I was used to and in a certain way, that also kept me in my own way of doing things. But getting shows made me realize, like the show that I had last year, there was something where I knew straight away I need to, you know, I need to collaborate. I need to bring people in. I suddenly got this space and I thought, well, what do you do with this space? You bring people in. For me it was a very important experience, because it really opened up this idea that, actually, if people give me space, that means I don't come own, I come with a crowd. I like to think of that whenever people offer me things. As I said, it's something that I'm getting used to and it is a privilege because, you know, another time when those places were not accessible or just given over to me. I also now insist on being an artist because I want that space. I also want, in that space, to create. My work is very much based on, more or less going out and meeting people, and capturing them, so I have a certain responsibility about how to treat them. I think one of my responsibilities, besides keeping the pictures safe - to not have them go over the Internet or whatever- is also to make people understand that what I'm trying to show is a community, you know, individuals that I try to pick. Individuals have individual stories that lead with each other and that's something that I've done in terms of how I make my pictures, how I show them, but also very much how my pictures are integrated with, let's say, this show that I did in London. It was about the place, in south London. I've had my studio there for twenty five years. I met people who, were born when I moved to Peckham. These kids need to be in the show. We did a dinner of elderly, elderly women; a friend of mine organized through her mum's women's club. You know, it's once you start thinking, "who could I invite to the party?" You know, it goes off. I see that as part of this opportunity that I have. If I can show work, I'm going to make sure that people understand I don't come as a token.
Liz Ikiriko
It's interesting, you know, in terms of the fact that you're rooted in documentary work and thinking about the choices that you make as a photographer when you're documenting other people. I am really fascinated by looking at documentary portraiture in ways where you can really see the photographer reflected within that work. I feel like there are certain works where it's clear that the photographer identifies with the community that they are also representing and that that is that collaborative spirit. It's very evident in your work that there is a way that you are alluding to these moments being a moment that I feel like represent a multiplicity, that these are beautiful images of black communities, but they are not monolithic. They are not anchored or stopped in this place where that is the only way that they exist. I think that finding ways to do that is something that is a recurring thing that I see in black documentary work that I think is really interesting, because I don't I don't think that is actually evident in other spaces as well.
Liz Johnson Artur
I was talking to someone yesterday and they asked me what is what is my idea about "what is important in taking a picture?", just as a kind of reflex, I said, "well, to be visible," and I think this is something that touches on this thing that you say. I do see every time I take a picture as a certain way of collaborating. It happens in place, and also through time I've learned how to create the space and then let go of it and see what happens.I think to be visible means to be open about your intentions, to be also open about how you engage. All these things - it's something that to me, I think didn't happen from the beginning because I was actually shy, which I think most people start off when they have approach strangers. I feel like, yeah, I don't want to be on my own is something that has at least shifted my work in terms of how I show it.
Liz Ikiriko
Anique, you also collaborate a lot. you share platforms in your artistic practice as well as in your curatorial practice. How do you think about collaboration?
Anique Jordan
I think that for a lot of maybe a lot of black artists, the opportunity to one be seen and taken up as an artist, for our work to be taken up as art work, and for us to be in spaces where we can organise our own shows or shows of work that we are interested in, is not a regularly occurring thing as it is for any other artists of many different types of identities. I think because of that, for many of us, the professionalization of the work that we're doing or taking up in a way is like this is a job. This is how we survive is taken up in a very either late way or slow way, or maybe even not at all. For me, I wasn't exposed to anything, for many of us to being able to say that I am an artist or I am a curator or what those two things even possibly could mean, or that you could live off of doing either of those two things. I think because of that and because of how little I had learned or knew or was exposed to what both of those things have meant, that my learning around them has come at a much later time and at a much slower pace, I would say. Part of I think it's another type of impulse that I have is towards reducing the amount of time and increasing the amount of opportunities that black artists or black curator has to adopting those things as professions and being able to see that I am an artist. I am a curator. This is what it looks like for me. This is what it feels like, this is how I define myself. I think that a lot of the ways that I try to increase the access and the readability of somebody to be able to say that is by, as much as possible, sharing what it is that I've learned, the mistakes that I've made, the ways that I've navigated through things, the type of language that I've learned that places use to talk about the things that we've always already done, and be able to sort of democratize that in a way that people can adopt it if they want to, if they need to, but that they know that this is what is there. So, being a mentor is one of the ways that I do that. Making sure that people know, "What is the role of a curator?" How has it been done with this pretty recent professional field. And how is it that we always already had so much of those skills, especially if you do work in community or you're an activist or whatever, a lot of the skills you use to curate are exact same things. Four years ago now, I guess it is starting the black woman artist collective or a black woman artists network or however people phrase it as, started off as a way for me to increase the visual literacy of people that surrounded me, who never called themselves artists, but who were constantly doing artwork. For me, the increase of the visual literacy was to show black women artists reflections of themselves from other black women artists so they see that they, too, are within that same community that they've always already been producing at that same type of level. Also, to know what other artists are doing work that responds to the questions that they may be asking on their day to day lives. I think that always is an impulse for me, to show that we we've been doing this, that you can choose for yourself how you label yourself. But at the core, you deserve to be able to work as an artist if you so choose to, and to be able to survive off of doing that. And so I think that even when I'm doing things like a critique that's specific for black artists or mentoring or things that are a lot more invisible or a lot more one on one, the impulse behind it has always been to be able to create more spaces where artists can be artists, can produce work and can continue to shed the feeling that: "you don't deserve to be here. You're you're you're not worthy -all the imposter type of things." However it is, you want to name yourself, that you should and that you should claim that. I think a lot of the collaborations comes from wanting to ensure that platforms are constantly being shared and that they are shared in a way that people assume their own power within that space.
Liz Ikiriko
That's amazing. So it's so nice to hear you both speak on this, because I think these are obviously questions and ways of moving through the world that I think so many of us are contending with and I think specifically as black artists, black curators, and people within the contemporary art world are always challenged by, because I think that there's always ways that we are also being questioned and pushed against, because we're always facing whether it's the canon or, you know, these histories that don't include us, or if we're just in spaces; I'm thinking about you, Liz, in terms of having an editorial background that I imagine was predominantly white men that were other photographers in your in your spheres. And also in terms of thinking about Anique talking about critical text, I mean, in terms of an editorial community and in an editorial practice like that, there rarely is places where your work was probably written about until you were really acknowledged as being an artist and how important that is in terms of the ideas that we've been talking about regarding archives and being able to anchor ourselves to a history or to histories, I don't think it's a singular. So thinking about all of this, I'm wondering if you could both, we should probably wrap up in a little bit, but I wonder if you could speak to our current time and how it's affecting the work that you're creating now, and if there are previous time periods that you're reflecting on in relation to where we are now and if that's influencing your work.
Liz Johnson Artur
I mean, I think whatever time it influences my work, because I live in that time and because my work is kind of woven into that practice of producing work. I think for me it was quite interesting because to start with is one of the things I realized of our current times is that I was actually a very lucky position on many levels, and I had to simply acknowledge that. I don't have a problem with that because it's not guilt, but it was the thing that I suddenly realized actually, if time just suddenly stops, I'm not in a bad place because I can just do my own thing. And that's what I did and a lot of it came out in making work. It was quite interesting. You talked about someone calling you egoistic. You know, I totally enjoyed indulging in it, I want more of it. You know, if I have to stop feeling, I should start with myself. So it's something that I take out of this. I think it's very hard to look ahead. I have this thing of looking back - I'm not there yet. But I do feel that it has strengthened me in my belief that it is important to look through my eyes and to see things and to question things. I think we live in times where all this is suddenly bubbled up. But it really made us realize because, you know, if you deal with history, you deal with something that is so old, so established, no way it's going to just disappear and change and become - say that things are suddenly at the moment up on the surface. I take my work like this as well. When I go out, you know, things much more up there. You don't have to dig hard. I think in terms of my work, I find that very interesting because it's on many levels. On one side I take my self indulgence and then I put it into going to marches and taking pictures and thinking about how do I combine them. All these processes, I think, have influenced me and they have influenced me because of how I spent the last six months. This thing of being here right now, not really knowing where things will go and also not really making sense of what has happened so far, I think artistically is quite an interesting time, I have to say. And it's because I have the privilege of being able to express myself artistically and yes, and I pay my bills with that. So you know, I think acknowledging that privilege that I have, I don't know it might change, but I do like to acknowledge that because I think that gives me space to say what I see. And time will tell. It's an interesting time. It's a painful time for a lot of people, and I'm trying to somehow digest it all through my work, you know, because, yeah, that's the best way for me to digest it.
Liz Ikiriko
I know that you had you had spent some time with James Barnor, and I'm wondering if maybe you could maybe briefly speak to that just because I think there's something really interesting in terms of his archives as well, and the fact that there is this reflection in terms of thinking, and thinking also particularly about London, and black culture and being able to kind of look back at what maybe, you know, maybe there's some synergy there.
Liz Johnson Artur
When I went to see - because he lives in London, sort of not close to me, but a friend of mine took me to see him - and it was quite amazing. I mean, James Barnor, I think he's over 90 now, so he has time, and in all this time, he never really stopped doing what he was doing. So that's how he accumulated his archive and what I really loved, I mean, on one side, it was painful because he had this room and he would just go down on the floor and pick up negatives,you know, amazing glass negatives. To me personally, it was wonderful to see how it was all part of his life. It wasn't anything - I think he is aware of his legacy. So he's trying to also keep that in a place that way will be safe. But I think just James Barnor, as a photographer that's been around for 60 years, you know, that's history in itself because he recorded and I think. I'd like to to to relate to that, I don't know if I have the time to do it. I think we both work in different ways. You know, he had a photographic studio in Ghana and all the work that he did there when he left in the 60s was gone, you know, so he lost like 10 years of work just like this. To me, things like this are like, I get a bit nervous when I think I could lose my my work. So there's this physical thing. But I think altogether it's something that, you know, that's why I said in the beginning, I think archives is a very human occupation. We're trying to make sense of right here, and what I do now. I think I like that idea of an archive. I like that kind of living organism that needs to constantly accumulate with, you know, here in the U.K. I know in America as well, you know, the black population is much harder affected by this whole pandemic. So in real time, we're looking at something where, yeah, it's going to be very difficult. I mean, that's why I talk about my position as a privilege, because I think that's what I said. Central London, where people can afford to work from home. It's empty, everywhere. You know, you go to Brixton, it's like it's been there before. And it's not that people don't care. People have to live. This is just how it is. That's something that has been heightened through the pandemic. You know, where we are on this sort of scale of importance and who pays the price?
Anique Jordan
I think that more than anything, it's it pushed me towards in a real way being like, you know, all the things that we've created as distractions, all the speediness that we've given, all of these deadlines and all these things. It's just feels kind of pointless to me. I don't know. It just feels like, why am I rushing the world is crumbling, what is this. I just feel and truly in my heart of heart, I have such a strong resistance towards many things, and particularly I think towards like deadlines and like form and function. It's different with my own work where it's helped me work through things and I feel like it's maybe allowing me to work in a more natural human kind of way, I guess. But in terms of like trying to get things done for other people, it just feels really forced and strange. I just feel like, you know, why aren't we recognizing how much has just crumbled and the fact that we've needed to pare down everything that we've done, down to essentials and and we don't acknowledge - there's barely enough time to even acknowledge, show proper respect and all these things to the people who are operating the things that are essential. At the height of the pandemic, at least in Canada, I feel like around the world too - finally people are recognizing grocery store clerks are essential. PWS's are essential. These are the people that we just pretend don't even exist. They're just doing their task and then now it comes down to their very labor for us to be able to survive. So now that we're in stage three and there's a phase two and all the stuff, there's this weird push toward going back to normal, to the "normal" way of doing things, ignoring once again, the people who held us up during the time when we're in the depths of the crisis and then trying to pretend as though the things that have crumbled can just easily be put back together without actually structurally being rebuilt. So for me, I am more interested now in like just spending more time with the environment, enjoying slowing down, learning about things that I was too busy to be able to learn about before, just really, you know, in a way sort of ignoring the desire to speed up and turn back on the electricity and go full speed ahead, and spend the actual time recognizing all the things that have actually crumbled and falling apart and really thinking about if I, myself, as an individual, I'm rebuilding my life, how do I do it in a way that recognizes how easy it is for things to fall apart and what it is that I actually treasure and what it is that I will allow myself to call as essential. The pandemic helped me realize really early on how much of an emphasis I put of my life in just working. Then as soon as the work stopped, and the speed stopped, I was like, "well, what is my purpose? what am I doing with myself?" And you know that I think that forced me to be like, "Yeah, well, what are you doing with yourself?" If you put so much of your of your self worth and your daily activities into "Rush, Rush, Rush, get things done, meet this deadline, meet this person meetings, meetings, meetings." And now that those things don't exist, you don't have a sense of who you are. And that's not OK. I'm really stuck, but happily so, in a space of I'm not allowing myself to be pushed back into the speed of it. It feels very uncomfortable because I know the speed is what creates comfort for many of us. Because it's normal, it's an easy way of keeping ourselves distracted, and it allows ourselves to remember our identity, because it's surrounded around deadlines and an inability to not be introspective. So it's both a comfortable and a discomfortable place to be like: I need to recognize a global pandemic. And the fact that black people are in the height of a modern day revolution. Sorry, everybody, but that's how it feels for me. And I know how it's strange because, and I think many of us are stuck there in the "I actually can't move forward in the way that you want us to move forward. But I know also that it's the fast pace keeps me comfortable." So I'm trying to figure that out, but I know intuitively I'm resisting the return to normalcy. I'm really trying to figure out what it feels like to, instead, put a little bit more power elsewhere to really see what's happening with the Earth, with the world, with the animals, with flowers, with the environment really properly take that in. To not allow only the CNE and Carnival to be my main markers of things changing, you know, those things I love and are very important to me, don't get me twisted. But at the same time, I want to be able to see the dandelions fading out and coming back, the grass changing. I started learning about acorns just yesterday, because of friends doing this acorn project. These things are part of our environment all the time, and I know nothing about them. I'm just feeling it out, and I know that I am pushing against what we're trying to do in terms of returns to phase three, but I am confident and I'm hoping and I'm looking to writers and artists, and to the environment around me and hoping that that will guide me in towards the type of future I actually believe in. I think I'm just trying to slow down. I'm trying to figure out what my art looks like moving forward, trying to see things better and disregard things that I know no longer need to be the front and center. Yeah, that's it, end the scene.
Liz Ikiriko
Amazing. Thank you both so much. We've kind of covered so much in an hour and I'm so appreciative of this time with you both.