Africa is not a country! Coffee time with Camilla Boemio
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| ‘Agenda Setting’ (neon series) Africa is not a country! Filippo Peretti © 2016 courtesy Ola-Dele Kuku Projects and LMS Gallery Brussels |
I first met Camilla Boemio back in 2013 at the
Maldives Pavilion during the 55th Venice Biennale; she was Associate
Curator.
I had the privilege to get an insight into the
exhibition and artists’ work. I was completely fascinated by the Pavilion from
different perspectives: the concept, the quality of artwork, the venue, the
exhibition set up and the team’s openness especially towards visitors. Ms
Boemio walked with me through the venue and I had the chance to be introduced
to some of the artists. In that occasion I developed a big respect to the
professional but also friendly way she takes her job.
It was with no surprise that I welcomed the news she
was appointed Curator of the Nigerian Pavilion for this year Architecture
Biennale in Venice, it seems to me just a quite obvious result of her
professional career. This Pavilion, titled "Diminished Capacity",
marks the very first presence of Nigeria at La Biennale di Venezia; Ms Boemio
presented a site-specific exhibition by architect and artist Ola-Dele Kuku. Spazio
Punch, a captivating industrial building, is hosting the exhibition.
Originally from Nigeria, Ola-Dele Kuku conducted his
studies at
the Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-ARC) in Los Angeles and
in Vico Morcote, Ticino, Switzerland.
Since the inception of his career, his private
practice brings together architecture’s elements and concepts with a special interest in
philosophy, theory, and composition.
Quite recently I had a nice coffee time with Camilla
Boemio. A great opportunity to exchange inspirations, visions, and talk about
her most recent experience at Venice Biennale.
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| 'Diminished Capacity' Barbara Rossi © 2016 courtesy Ola-Dele Kuku Projects |
AM: I was very pleased to hear the
presence of Nigeria at this year Architecture Biennale. This pavilion
definitely breaks boundaries between architecture and art. Can you tell me how
you met the architect/artist Ola-Dele Kuku and how this project came about?
CB: Beginning with Catherine David’s and Okwui Enwezor’s Documenta (in
1997 and 2002 respectively), the world of mega-exhibitions has announced a
shift toward rethinking the limits of Euro-American internationalism, and
granting greater sensitivity to global practices in the Middle East, Eastern
Europe, South and East Asia, Africa, and Latin America. So it's a prior
evolution for continents outside of Europe to be well represented at Venice
Biennale.
The world is transformed through architecture, but also art should find
more complex social contexts where inviting the public to explore unexpected
places, discovering new routes in the city and its surroundings where art
starts an unpublished public view.
Global world is in a trans-formation and the cultural world is creating
several unedited connections. Increasingly, intellectual projects are parts of
a bigger ecological, economic and technological system in which collaborations
are a source of innovation.
It was born out of artistic interest and the ‘urge’ to speak about
social architecture, to talk about difference in cultural and even aesthetic
canons, why these differences are there and how we approach them. It’s quite
easy to ‘dismiss’ a certain approach as naive, immature or wanting to play
hardball with geopolitical issues, without really understanding what’s going on
in that nation and why certain tendencies have developed and are there. Being
that 'Reporting from the Front' either a political / activist approach
incidentally, both very present in the Nigerian architecture scene and in my
research; I was the perfect curator for this collaboration with architect and
artist Ola-Dele Kuku.
In the last years I have curated several public art projects and I
investigated architecture topics within museums and art galleries. My curatorial
practice, broadened between art and architecture, is combining different
approaches from developing structures to support either the work of others,
forms of political imaginary, existing and fictional realities, to wider
inquiries such as forms of commonality and discursive sites. The result of my
research shows projects that merge together exhibitions, politics, fiction,
display, public space, writing, and whatever else feels urgent at the time.
Being very attentive to most of these complex issues, I then developed
several exhibitions, as "Cities", part of the preview of Festa dell’Architettura in Rome with the
lectio magistralis of Paolo Soleri at Auditorium Parco della Musica, also
showed at Torrance Art Museum in the South Bay of Los Angeles in 2011; as
"Sensational Architecture" group show with two site-specific video
installations of Mark Lewis and Spencer Tunick at Auditorium Parco della
Musica, Rome, in 2012. I have also curated many others shows with: Michael
Wolf, Gabriele Basilico, Catherine Opie, William E. Jones, Olaf Otto Becker and
others; in which I have analyzed transformation of cities and landscapes
topics.
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| 'Diminished Capacity' Nigerian Pavilion photo – Barbara Rossi © 2016 courtesy Ola-Dele Kuku Projects |
AM: As you wrote in the Curator’s
note: “Conflict is one of the recurrent themes in the work of Ola-Dele Kuku.
The architect–artist sees that as one of the driving mechanisms in our world,
and as a tool to set change in motion”. In your opinion, in which way conflicts,
external but also internal ones, pervade the work of Kuku?
CB: My curatorial approach seeks to examine how Ola Dele Kuku have not
only focused on Nigerian history, but also simultaneously investigated the
mobility’s conditions in relation to the actuality with innovative installation
chosen to re-write the diminished capacity of a territory.
Conflict is one of the recurrent themes in the work of Ola-Dele Kuku.
The architect-artist sees conflict as one of the driving mechanisms in our
world, and as a tool to set change in motion. Conflict has played a crucial
role since the dawn of creation. The diminished capacity is a part of the
mechanism of a state of conflict. The existing hierarchy is at its zenith and
is therefore about to fall. And although social media sometimes give the
impression that our world is just a village, we are still increasingly
concerned with what is happening outside our own front door. How our world will
evolve is not still unclear, but there is no doubt that conflict stimulates
change. It stands the existing order on its head and inspires innovation.
Throughout his practice, Ola-Dele Kuku (architect and artist) has
consistently reshaped representation in a timely challenge. In this pavilion he
is working with drawing, installation, and objects; he has revisited, in an
unconventional approach, the mainstays of architectural representational
methods - plan, elevation and, section - to inject unsettling slippages into
their rigorous formalism.
The exhibition creates a stratification of tensions between methods,
concepts and the materials used. It's an unexpected and site-specific use of
the space Punch with contemporary art in which the curatorial concept is taking
shape from an installation’s sentence: “Africa is not a country!”; in that
conflict wants to prospect new methodologies.
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| "Diminished Capacity" Nigerian Pavilion photo – Barbara Rossi © 2016 courtesy Ola-Dele Kuku Projects |
AM: How did you choose
the title “Diminished Capacity” and why?
CB: When I have started to work at the
curatorial concept, I have chosen several topics that I could annex in the
title in a non-specific way; the idea was to develop a line between West
Africa, Nigeria and global actuality, speaking for example about migrations,
the mass-media use, the economical power of a nation in a diminished condition
and people in a socio-political checkerboard.
‘Diminished Capacity’ was conceived as a
reflection of the contemporary global phenomenon of ‘Socio-Cultural Conflicts’,
with a specific focus on the role of ‘Information / Communication’ and the
‘Mass Media’.
The contemporary sociology of mass media
communication reveals a consistent presentation of agendas rather than reports
which are illustrated by selected interest in particularities, focus and
oversight; as Ola-Dele Kuku observed.
A stronger source of inspiration for me -
not forgetting the long intellectual switching with Ola-Dele Kuku - it was the
masterwork "The Migration Series" by renowned African American 20th
century artist Jacob Lawrence. A powerful visual epic, "The Migration
Series" (1940–41) documents the historic movement of millions of African
Americans from the rural South to the urban North more than a century ago.
The "Migration Series" has
remained a cornerstone of the historical art and stimulating dialogue and
reflection on global challenges in the 21st century. Jacob Lawrence's
masterpiece was created over 70 years ago; it continues to resound powerfully
with the global plight of migrants today.
The universal themes of struggle and
freedom continue to strike a chord not only in our Nigerian Pavilion experience
but also in the international experience of migration around the world.
The stronger idea of the title marked not
so much a "geographical place" but an "emotional idea."
It's an open-ended question to be explored and expanded. The exhibition
encompasses a broad spectrum of media and approaches, demonstrating that
"Diminished Capacity" is more of a shared sensibility than a
consistent culture.
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| photo – Barbara Rossi © 2016 courtesy Ola-Dele Kuku projects |
AM:
From what I see, the space is just perfect: the artwork really relates to it
and vice versa. I would you like to ask you to guide us throughout the
exhibition as we were there with you.
CB: Ola Dele Kuku produces works in a
variety of media, alternating between forms like the neon, and the rough
interaction of materials, and research-based projects that delineate the
broader art historical and cultural contexts in which ideas circulate. His
concerns offer a bracing contrast from much contemporary artistic discourse,
and yet they are urgently contemporary: he consistently revisits
representations of issues, religious iconography, and the enduring beauty of
folk art forms. Kuku's exhibitions are populated with images and objects of
different sizes and materials; it’s his way to allow each work to resonate on
numerous critical register.
The "Diminished Capacity"
features a group of recent works that reveal the broad scope of Kuku's
practice.
The impression one gets entering the space
is to be in an immersive-inspired space where different shapes and materials of
the objects-installations, the video projections, the drawings create an
emotional state in a non-space context. In fact, not only formal but also the
political and socio-economical abstractions that are partially responsible for
a world in crisis are at issue here, but one wonders whether those discussions
would be more influential if surrounded by works sharing discourse rather than
appearance.
The ‘Agenda Setting’ (neon series) ‘Africa
is not a country!’ and ‘Collective Representation’ – Article 1 (blue) are
really powerful; both works manifest the "imaginative perspective"
and "visionary knowledge" anticipated of all artworks by the
curatorial statement, and the same can be said of the video work and the big
wood objects in the central area of the space.
Such contrasts of color, form, and concept
play an important role in Kuku's exhibitions, as they do fundamental perceptual
oppositions like warm and cool, rough and smooth, and light and dark.
The video piece is among one of the
strongest work — because video has become an "expediency" of many
artists whose practice cannot be reduced to, or categorized by, its formal
aspects.
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| 'Diminished Capacity' Nigerian Pavilion photo – Barbara Rossi © 2016 courtesy Ola-Dele Kuku Projects |
AM: What did you learn from this experience and which are your
next steps?
CB: I'm developing several projects. In September I will participate to
'The Social', at 4th International Association for Visual Culture Biennial Conference
to be held at Boston University.
My writing has appeared in various magazines,
publications and catalogues; and I’m currently working on several books. It's
very important for me to create a really intense and honest team, I realized
that I get on well with people with whom there is no interruption between
working hours and breaks practices.
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| 'Diminished Capacity' Nigerian Pavilion team - from left: Ola-Dele Kuku, Fabrizio Monaldi, Camilla Boemio, Fabrizio Orsini |
AM: Do you drink coffee? If yes, how
do you like it?
CB: I love and drink a lot of American coffee. I
really like sipping on my cup of coffee while I am working. I enjoy it black,
no sugar.
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| Camilla Boemio, Fabrizio Orsini, Ola-Dele Kuku, Simone Spiga, Giorgio Staffolani, and Ali Mudassar, Zeb Amir, Syed Mazarulhassan, Zaman Hamid, Parvez Tariq of ACSIM - Associazione Centro Servizi Immigrati Marche |
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| Beyond Luxury – Global Dialogue, May 26th, Private Garden, Danish Pavilion, Camilla Boemio in the middle |
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