Kehinde Wiley Curates “Self-Addressed,” an Exhibition of Contemporary African Artists
Black Rock Senegal and Jeffrey Deitch team up for “Self-Addressed.”
“How do we create images in a world where there’s an eternal return and eternal sense of transformation?” Kehinde Wiley asked writer Vinson Cunningham during the 2018 edition of the New Yorker Festival. “That image is different for each person. New commentary is layered on. So, as opposed to running from that, I think as an artist in the 21st century your job is to fold that understanding into your intentions, using it really as another color on your palette.”
Wiley brings that same sensibility to his work as founder of Black Rock Senegal, a residency dedicated to fostering connections across the diaspora by creating a shared space for artists to showcase the unique creativity within each diverse African community. Since 2019, Black Rock Senegal has provided artist residencies for one to three months at Wiley’s compound on the coast of Dakar, designed by Senegalese architect Abib Djenne.
“I’ve been able to engage with Africa from a lived perspective, much more than a tele-visual or perceived-media perspective,” Wiley says. “Africa is a continent that exists in many different temperatures, Senegal being just one of the many faces of Africa. It’s been an honor to be able to engage a very unique and constantly changing aspect of the African creative environment.”
While artists may follow individualized passions and paths, the need for community and connection is paramount. Recognizing the moment we are in now, Black Rock Senegal has partnered with Jeffrey Deitch for “Self-Addressed,” a landmark exhibition curated by Wiley featuring self-portraits by 44 contemporary African artists around the world. Viewed individually, each work opens a window into the artist’s life at this unprecedented moment in time. Together, the portraits present a counterpoint to the myth of a monolithic “Africa,” and a kaleidoscopic view of style and identity.
“For far too long African artists have been assumed to be coming from a singular point of view,” says Wiley, acknowledging how colonization introduced a reductive notion of race around the construction of a Black/white binary. "'Self-Addressed' attempts to correct for that by allowing artists to speak for themselves using the idiom of portrait-making. They’ve been asked to use the portrait as a catalyst through which they can engage the notions of self, space, place, time and the broader importance of painting.”
In a world filled with selfies, the self-portrait stands alone. Part memoir, part poem, it’s a repository of soul—a visual investigation of the space where the spirit and flesh mingle and merge. “All art is autobiography in the sense that it desires to scratch the itch of what it means to be alive and what that looks like right now,” says Wiley. "From the perspective of the artist, everything is seen as being in direct witness to the self. Self-portraiture turns the gaze [inward] and reveals aspects that are subconscious, or at once conscious and subconscious.”
With the self-portrait, the artist turns their attention inward for a journey into their very core. We see the artist as they see themselves: Their expression, gesture and pose as deliberate and revelatory as their composition, colors and brushstroke.
“It’s fascinating to see how the artists represent themselves and their artistic vision,” says Deitch, who has worked with Wiley for the past 20 years and recognizes the importance of uplifting contemporary African artists in the West. “The artists are fusing local traditions with an international artistic language. Most of the painters are great colorists. Many of the works also show a strong interest in pattern. There is a subversion of European old master styles—a takeover of this tradition to make it African.”
Though dazzling to the eye, the works challenge commonly held standards of beauty, respectability and vanity to explore a deeper truth: that identity is an inescapable construction to which we are bound. “There is no feeling of being alive without a sense of identity,” Nigerian artist Victor Ubah shares in his bio, offering a thread that connects the wide array of works on view in “Self-Addressed.” In Ubah’s acrylic-on-canvas painting, Ultralight Visit, we see the artist as a complex, multidimensional figure existing within a one-dimensional background that acts as a metaphor for the social structures around us. Influenced by anime, cartoon animations and cubism, Ubah’s self-portrait explores the inherent tensions that exist between the individual and the environment.
“We heal by retelling our stories,” explains South African artist Teresa Kutala Firmino, who presents The Imagined Self, a mixed-media work that shows the artist beside a painting bearing the same pose in a stage-like space. Nude but seated with their backs to us, both figures look over their shoulders, making direct eye contact while firmly avoiding any vestiges of the historical art trope of woman as object. Combining images from magazines, newspapers, historical documents and social media, Firmino creates a baroque scene that investigates the trauma African people have experienced due to colonization, civil wars and present-day struggles, imagining alternative narratives for the past, present and future of the continent.
For some, the struggle exists between the self and the world, with art offering a space to mediate our explorations and discoveries. “The aim was to reflect on my progress with my art and my reaction to peer pressure,” says self-taught Nigerian artist Talut Kareem, who presents an untitled work made with charcoal and acrylic that is at once playful and poignant. “Self-portrait allows you to see yourself in ways others might not perceive you, which then also allows others to see you in the way you wish to be perceived. It’s an influential tool for self-awareness.”
Seated on the floor amid pink, yellow and blue polka dot balls, Kareem wears blue jeans and a striped shirt that sports a yellow happy face in place of an embroidered logo. One of his Converse sneakers has gone missing. The other is casually untied. His legs are slightly splayed, his hands lightly pulling his knees toward his chest. It’s a posture that is both open and closed at the same time. A layer of white paint covers his face and hands, with polka-dot cutouts so that we can make out his features. Kareem watches us looking at him.
“So many artists right now are engaging not only the academy and the way art is received through art schools, but also engaging art through social media and Instagram,” says Wiley. “They are able to share ideas without necessarily having to carry the weight of its conceptual and historical precedence or significance. [This allows for] a new type of work that is informed by the past but also desires to leapfrog over some of the weight of history, [creating a new] object that represents a unique way of engaging the self within time.”
Inspired by the work of countryman Amoako Boafo, who is also exhibiting in “Self-Addressed,” Ghanian artist Adeji Tawiah sees portraiture as the perfect way to celebrate Black life in Accra today, and reimagine the image of his nation on the world stage. Tawiah finds his subjects on Instagram, the street and among family and friends to create an inclusive cross section of contemporary society. With his oil and sponge painting, THE GIFT, Tawiah adds himself to the extraordinary cast of characters in his oeuvre. Standing in front of a lilac wall covered with flowers and vines, Tawaih casually leans against a post, holding a yellow flower in his hands, while gazing upon us with a look of recognition and acceptance. “My message is that you need to give people the freedom to live as they choose,” he says in his bio.
This message is resonant throughout the works featured in “Self-Addressed,” as artists take control over their self-image. In doing so, they offer new paradigms for the ways in which we consider the vast permutations of existence as seen through the lens of cultures and traditions that distinguish Africa from any other place in the world. While there is no singular “Africanness,” the exhibition presents a multiplicity of facets that sparkle, mesmerize and engage us with the liberation that comes from truth, integrity and self-actualization.
“Africa is a state of mind, it is a constantly moving target,” says Wiley. “What brings it together is what Africans themselves hold in consensus surrounding its temperature, its taste, its texture. It’s never easy to say what African means in so far as the Tunisian citizen and the South African citizen have something in common. It’s much more of a conceptual notion, a construct that really originates from the desire to create impossible holes out of multiplicities. My goal as an artist, a thinker and a provocateur is to create spaces where there is at once an empowerment of Africa but no need for Africa as a term.”
“Self-Addressed” runs until December 23, 2021 at Jeffrey Deitch in Los Angeles.
Jeffrey Deitch’s full sales commissions will be donated to Black Rock Senegal.
Participating artists are Stacey Gillian Abe, Tyna Adebowale, Juwon Aderemi, Omar Ba, Ngimbi Bakambana, Hilary Balu, Amoako Boafo, Dalila Dalléas Bouzar, Rehema Chachage, Félicité Codjo, Mbali Dhlamini, Ekene Emeka-Maduka, Yagazie Emezi, Teresa Kutala Firmino, Nonzuzo Gxekwa, Mwangi Hutter, Tosin Kalejaye, Talut Kareem, Banele Khoza, Lindokuhle Khumalo, Salifou Lindou, Epheas Maposa, Gael Maski, Nandipha Mntambo, Shabu Mwangi, Ludovic Nkoth, Collins Obijiaku, Harold Offeh, Temitayo Ogunbiyi, Oluwole Omofemi, Nengi Omuku, Zohra Opoku, Eniwaye Oluwaseyi, Thania Petersen, Zizipho Poswa, Otis Kwame Kye Quaicoe, Jerry Quarshie, Adjei Tawiah, Barthélémy Toguo, Moussa Traoré, Victor Ubah, Chukwudubem Busayo Ukaigwe, Uthman Wahaab and Sylvester Zanoxolo.