A conversation with Mozambican artist Euridice Kala at Dak’Art 2016 about her artistic research practice and her views on Réenchantments, archives and feminism

By Jorinde Splettstößer

 

 

In Simon Njami’s curatorial concept of this year's Dak’Art lies the aim to invent new strategies and aesthetics in order to “re-enchant” the world and the continent, “to make Dak’Art a new Bandung for culture.” Never having heard of Bandung in any history lesson or study course before, I learned that the Bandung conference was the first big Asian-African Conference where Asian and African states promoted economic and cultural cooperation to oppose (neo)colonialism. This event, that was the first step towards the Non-Aligned Movement, is mostly forgotten in the hegemonic narrative of the history of “global capitalist success.” The notion of the Bandung conference in its historical factuality but especially in its broader meaning for global south connections and collective resistance to colonialism was very present during the Dak’Art Biennale. Not only in form of the international exhibitions at IFAN where curators and artists from India, Brazil and Korea were invited, but also in form of the artistic practices and manifold stories that I encountered during the two weeks of our students’ excursion. Nevertheless, the Biennale in itself is an immensely complex and sometimes contradictory art show where those emancipatory and critical aims are intertwined with the economic logics of the neoliberal and Eurocentric international art field.

My interest to engage with Euridice Kala’s work is based on my exploration in perspectives that challenge hegemonic narratives about global encounters that broadly overlook south-south perspectives/connections and instead look at the “European-African encounter” through a Eurocentric angle. In thinking through my encounter with the Dak'art Biennale, I consider my position as a white female student of African Art History in Berlin on a semi-funded academic trip to visit the Dak'Art Biennale. Being aware of the layers of power and hierarchies in this “encounter,” I try to exercise a form of art writing that finds other perspectives which exist alongside and challenge western readings through a dialogical method. This method is an attempt to break the binary between the interviewer as the 'neutral' scribe and the artist as informant’s voice, trying to create a plural poesis where both are interpreting observers whose social relations become visible. Part of this is the process of choosing on what you write, whereas choosing does not describe the process adequately. The artwork or practice activates the writer, rather than the writer activates the art work. It is not a self-determined choice nor a passive artwork. This reciprocal activation can take place on many levels and not necessarily while being physically close to the artwork, ideas get connected in a certain disposition, while walking, seeing, reading, having conversations or even dreaming.

Euridice Kala’s art practice approached me through seeing and thinking on cement. Cement was surfacing all over my course through Dakar and Dak’art, a responsive material, that spoke to me about history and presence on very different levels. The cement took on the form of French colonial architecture that structured the formerly wealthy part of Dakar, Plateau, into a network of easy controllable streets and never finished (due to economic crisis) cement ruins that were meant to be family houses in Ngor. Cement, furthermore, took on the shape of freshly finished mansions whose cement walls were still raw and unpainted, neighboring our oversized and brand new Airbnb house in Oakam. This same material in all its different substantial and symbolical states also appeared in the exhibitions, for example in the dance performance and installation piece Structure by Stefano Canto and Ashai Lombardo Arop as well as H.H. Lim’s Living Room or the photo collage RD du Congo by Sammy Baloji. The works pick up the aesthetic, the specific materiality and the socio-economic implications of cement to work on urban and corporeal transformations. Wang Quingsong’s History of Monuments instead documents the cementation of real people into a huge living monument. Later, I realized that this engagement with materials and materiality, its ability to speak to us and each other about cultural, historical and social conditions, paved the way for engaging with Euridice Kala's artistic practice.

I stepped into the slightly hidden hallway, left to the entrance of the old justice palace, where Simon Njami’s big exhibition Réenchantments was installed and where smaller rooms showed mostly video installations. There I encountered the room with the installation If Truth was a Woman...and why not? by Mozambican artist Euridice Kala. Especially regarding the fact that most of the prominent works in the center of the exhibition are by male artists, the title promised an interesting and critical perspective. Moreover, the arrangement of photographs and videos as well as her use of text, too, offered a thought provoking perspective.

Abb.1: Part of the installation If Truth was a Woman...and why not? by Euridice Kala. Photo: Euridice Kala

 

Image and text spoke to me about a thoughtful play on different perspectives on materials, colors, textures but also a play on human relations and stories, balancing and testing the weights of historical narratives.

Before I dive into my conversation with Euridice, my first approach to the work will be laid out here, to be later re-directed and re-seen through the encounter with the artist's thinking. In her installation If Truth was a Women...and why not? Kala brings several works, media and layers together. On the left-hand side is a big scale desaturated photograph that shows herself in a white dress, sitting on one of two chairs, both, placed close to a stone wall. The slow shutter speed used while taking the image, captures the back and forth rocking movement of the artist as she appears to be shaking the skirt of her dress, leaving most of her figure partially blurred. The untraceable movement between the empty chair next to Kala and the unspecific and rough background create a space of tension and imagination. Seen and understood within the whole arrangement, this photographic space poses a question for something that has not been told or seen and offers a space for still hidden meanings and truths. The two chairs can be seen in Kala's video installation in the center of the same room and which in relation to one another, start to speak back to ideas around binaries, balance, hierarchies of knowledge and visibility and an ever involving in-betweenness.

The video shows the artist standing in a bright space with wall, pinned with postcards and maps, behind her. She can be seen weighing material with a big old balance. She slowly weights different materials, such as cotton, powder, ivory, paper and bones which all share a shade of whiteness and differ in texture and meaning. She weighs them until two of each kind are balanced. Three white frames are placed to the left side of the video screen in a shifting line, each frame shows a single word: ivory, salt, bone. On the right side, three white frames are placed in row which read cotton, coconut, powder. Besides the poetic element, the three-dimensional text-objects underline, visually and rhythmically, the factual and metaphorical balances and unbalances.

Whiteness, as a cultural, historical and social construct, often stays invisible and unnamed, with its privileges unreflected. Kala’s work allowed me to demystify the construct of whiteness as something pure, objective and, somehow, intrinsically virtuous. By balancing materials that are connected to important resources of African countries and interrupting simultaneously their usual context and meaning, she opens up a space of reflection about history, global entanglements and hierarchies as well as the connotations of whiteness and its deviations.

Abb.2: Part of the installation If Truth was a Woman...and why not? by Euridice Kala. Photo: Jorinde Splettstößer

 

In this space, whiteness is connected to complex histories of exploitation, slavery and capitalism. Looking specifically at the materials chosen, I noticed that they were loaded with political and cultural meaning and impact on both Europe and Africa – ivory, cotton and sugar are resources that were exploited by the colonizers during slavery to build modern capitalist societies and are still materials whose exploitation goes along with injustice and crime. Bones evoke the idea of death and exploitation of human bodies,

particularly those seen as disposable. At the same time, they remind me of the stolen human remains of African people that European museums still claim as their “heritage.” The white powder that is gently trickled on the scale links to the powder made from the white mineral chalk that was exploited in the “new world.” It was used by the European elite cosmetically to powder their wigs or to reach a certain beauty standard of white skin. The hegemonic and European history is written and printed on paper, paper fills our archives, and paper tells us true legible history. Here it takes a while until some bones equilibrate a pile of paper. The notion of un/balance reappears in the two video screens that hang next to each other on the right wall, showing names on a black background, some of which I recognized as African figures of resistance movements.

In the conversation with the artist a lot of aspects question, expand and complicate my first approach to Kala’s work. They open up a view on the art installation to include Kala's meaning and conditions of being a black female artist. It includes her relation to archives and methods to intervene in the hegemonic narratives that are informed by colonialism, but also of the way her work is responding to Simon Njami’s curatorial concept for the biennale and contesting the mechanisms of an international art show as well.

^{JS: Thinking about Simon Njami’s concept and title of the exhibition, Réenchantments, I was wondering if the artists featured here can relate to this idea of a, somehow magical transformation and reappropriation of history, space and culture and how this can be mirrored in the old French justice palace transformed to an art space. Can you relate to these ideas and does your installation respond to this context?}

^{EK: When I read the paragraph ‘la cité dans le jour bleu’ I thought – Wow, that is so abstract, that is so out of control! What is that? How do you ‘re-enchant’ people? How is enchantment very much a French word? How do you conduct it, how do you bring magic to people’s life? I think the work in itself responds. If you look at the image where the bride is sitting alone and next to her is that empty chair, there is a kind of wonder, I think the idea of wonder is very important, it's a kind of lacking, and there is a childlike quality to the image itself. For me, it is fantasy, a fantastical world. My work in general is very silent. It's about an input of certain ideas, it's not about grand gestures. I like quiet, very precise interventions, but they have to be effective!}

^{And how do you enchant the world if the world is already so heavy with certain ideas? You take them through history. You use memory to take them to history, to take them to their own history, to find themselves in history, to tell the people and to tell myself that I am part of this history that has been denied for so long by the world – this western construct of the world. The white wedding dress, this white silk fabric tells about this white Victorian era of photography in Europe. But Africans suddenly started to appropriate whiteness... and you see this western construct of history, that's not the reality! We’ve been trading for a long, long time, trading ideas and people, trading material – and we’ve gone through 600 years of systematic oppression. And during this period it’s been about trading and appropriation that goes both ways. So how do you identify this appropriation both ways? Where do you find yourself when the West tells you that you don’t exist in this? ‘We've created this narrative; you don’t exist in it’ – How do you intervene if you don’t exist in it? I looked at whiteness and I deconstructed it. For me it was about looking for nuances of myself in it, for new ways of whiteness. I must exist here during that time in the 19th century when Queen Victoria got married because we were already in contact since the 15th century and even earlier. So how can this white wedding dress be only a representation of Europe at that point? It is not possible!}

^{I found these materials such as white ivory, white salt, white powder, white cotton, white sugar, and it began to show this connection back to the continent, it started to show that I exist in this history, in this larger European narrative. Sugar, for example, is very important in this context. Sugar became the oil that fueled the industrial revolution in England, which is where Queen Victoria was reigning at the time, which was also where she got married and when photography then fueled. The scale that I use in the video also express the duality of these materials, which is interesting because within the duality is a lot of in-betweenness and I enjoy this in-betweenness. Looking at the paradox and looking what is actually in between – that can be like mine. I wanted to balance this relation and these ideas, and that's what I show in the video. I want to express that the history is, in fact, unbalanced! It's not just about Europe. This unbalance is precisely what I wanted to demonstrate through the texture, color and materiality and show that we are together, in a way that we exist together and have been constructing all of this together. Even with me reputed as a passive being or just a passenger in this history, I want to redefine it, I want to be able to rewrite it. There is the possibility of opening up the archive, the possibility to include different stories. History is always about writing the narrative, closing it down and never looking at it again. We consume it so passively! But the point is that we actually could consume it actively by deconstructing, fragmenting and reconfiguring history. I think that is our responsibility as human beings, never to trust the official history. And I think the installation is saying: ‘Never trust history.’ And that is the Réenchantment, for me to have the possibility to say 'never trust history' and to continue to question it. We have the power to do this.}

^{JS: In order to open up the archive and include different stories, it is almost impossible to avoid the hegemonic and colonial perspective, especially in the official and state archives which are centered on hierarchical power structures and are, often times, only in exclusive spaces. What is your relation to archives? Are they useful or beneficial in any ways?}

^{EK: I spent as little time as possible in archives, I spent more time in the city walking. Why I don’t trust archives is because of those very reasons you mentioned. Official archives are very much conservative, they got very specific colonial perspectives, depicting a part of history where certain people had positions of power over certain other people. But at the same time, I am very compelled to collecting material for reasons that I may be able to see what the conditions were. I do go to archives but I don’t necessarily think they are my point of reference – they are never my point of reference – I never use them in my bibliography either because they are very normative bibliography. They are suggesting a kind of ‘fact-space’ where you go and get ‘facts’ about history. An archive is such a precious space where the archivists look at the materials as if they were the most precious objects – it kind of dissipates any point! In reality they are just books that were written by people who at the time could write those books. And some of them use a language that depicts people of my ancestry in ways that I feel like… I don’t even know how to describe. And how do you trust in that? How do you use it as your reference? That’s where I stop. That’s the point where I have to be objective as well. And so I stop. Period! These things are very distressful so I sometimes resist my need to go to an archive.}

^{JS: What is your strategy or method of doing artistic research in the archive in order to deconstruct and re-write histories?}

^{EK: For me it makes sense to go to an archive and collect what I need just to be able to make something visually interesting for me and where I am able to intervene myself. I am obliterating the material, a process which also takes the power away from the archive. To not give the object so much power once it is archived and formalized as a possible conveyer of information or data. By this it gets very sacred at the same time. By taking it away I am removing this kind of aura of preciousness. For example, I look at a map that I can actually use and put paper on it, write on it and create my own mapping system – I can intervene in it. But the map is still there, whatever the archive is telling me is there but I am intervening in it. Through that I have certain powers over this archive. Thinking about how to reproduce it, to recreate it, to put it again into a new archive of my own. I think this is very important, we need to re-archive history especially in those spaces that have been denying my presence for so long, to undo this invisibility. The proposition is to construct and to contest history. For example, let's look at the women who have been part of the history of fighting for the beginning of what we know as contemporary Africa.}

Abb.3: Part of the installation If Truth was a Woman...and why not? by Euridice Kala. Photo: Jorinde Splettstößer

 

^{JS: Giving space to untold or silenced histories I see very much reflected in the two video screens showing names of women who have been fighting for the independencies in Africa. The left video shows a continuous flow of names of known freedom fighters and leaders such as Nelson Mandela, Robert Mugabe and Julius Nyerere. The right video shows the names of women, like Josina Machel, Janet Mondlane and Ginette Eboué, in big white letters on a black screen, whose contributions to the continent have generally not been reflected upon. One name after the other, slowly takes the space of the black screen, inviting the viewer to contemplate rather on the women’s names than the swifting male names to the left. I am curious about the meaning of the title of your installation that, for me, poses a powerful critique to the hegemony of men: If truth was a woman...and why not?}

^{EK: The title actually comes from the book Beyond Good and Evil by Nietzsche. The first paragraph says: Imagine if Truth was a Woman...and why not? I think the title is a provocation but at the same time it is a statement. We always try to find truth in art, but that is so abstract – how can we find truth in art? When you say something very concrete or highly political but you are presented in an artistic environment it can lose the power that you really wanted to put across. The context has the power to remove the urgency of the content of whatever is presenting your ideas. However, the whole artwork is actually a provocation because it is about finding my presence in these spaces. I have seen enough art shows to know that I am not interested in this competition. Whatever I am presenting – it’s not new but it's so me, that it's not anyone else. I am aware of that and I am aware of the fact that it is difficult for people to easily grasp it or to easily put it into a gallery context or whatever other art space. So it is a provocation to both worlds, to the broader world where we live in but to the art world as well. Imagine if truth was a woman. Imagine if the work of a woman were the real work/world and not the men that you were selecting for all of these things!}

^{JS: I think it is very interesting to use Nietzsche’s introducing words for quite a feminist message. While Nietzsche conceptualizes the woman as a fragile, emotional and temperamental being, the same words put into the context of your work makes it an empowering appropriation for your own perspective and means as a feminist.}

^{EK: I am talking from my own perspective, that's how I identify with feminism. Maybe I am creating a different feminism as well, one that applies to the context where I am. I am very aware of the coordinates of this feminism that I am talking about. It's definitively located on the continent, it's definitely filtered through down to Maputo. I am looking through a perspective from where I am. I am not responding to old feminist ideals but to the structures of the space where I am. I am designing for myself what is being a feminist in that space. For example, in Maputo women held 40 percent of the seats in parliament which means we supposed to have a lot of power and a lot to say. But in politics itself, women (not only women but anyone in general) don’t benefit from that. It doesn't really happen this way. We are still living under colonial policies and under certain laws that were established during colonialism. And some of them have direct impact on the lives of women, such as the rape law. That's very dangerous when a country that seems so liberal to women but actually doesn't really address women's issues upfront – it doesn't change the quorum and the way that women are treated in our country. I am a feminist who is a lot more localized, who is a lot more concerned about the context. I try to bring an ideology that refers to something very real, rather than to an ideological or philosophical feminism. There's nothing wrong with it, but it dissipates when it is time to really implement certain ideas and ideologies. These ideas should be actively implemented to make sure that we create a certain balance in the environment. That's the feminism I am aligning myself to and perhaps it's not even called feminism. Some feminists today... I don't think we should all be about the same language.}

^{JS: Seeing myself, as well, as a feminist I appreciate to learn from you not to think of feminism as a global and universal movement, as the notion of universalism of ideas speaks back to a very Eurocentric view. The art world, and I guess this biennale too, is no exception. What challenges do you experience as a female artist?}

^{EK: Being an artist is challenging across the world, but it is challenging for female artists for various reasons. Even for older already established female artists, it is challenging, but for younger artists, I mean, how do you even get there? For instance, in the art world a lot of women are in positions of power, gallerists, curators, museum directors – the majority of them are women! (Laughing) So you are in a world where women ARE in positions of power! However, you count by your hands the amount of shows where women are featured. It doesn’t matter, women still don’t have enough shows, they don’t have the same amount of opportunities and they still rely a lot on self-funding. It is very difficult for them to engage with patrons or collectors, they don’t trust female artists for the mere reason that women could have families, they could give up their artistic career. But the artistic career is actually not a linear thing! However, that’s how it’s read. So women get left behind, they are left behind a lot just because of the fact that they are women and may want to create families, or they decide that life can be a lot more expanded. That’s the reality. Of course being in the art world and not being a feminist in the art world, that’s really crazy, male or female artist, it doesn’t matter. If you look at the number of male artists that are in the international exhibition here compared to the number of female artists that are in the exhibition you will just state it, that’s the reality. In the OFF program, it’s the same. If you go to any biennale it is exactly the same.}

^{JS: Coming back to Simon Njami’s idea to re-enchant and to make Dak’art a new Bandung for culture in which lies the aim to empower perspectives, strategies and connections that arise in equality among the continent and the global south. In your several ongoing projects you work on those connections, especially between Mozambique and South Africa, but also between East Africa and India. What was the starting point of your investigation?}

^{EK: For what I am doing now is to look at materiality, I am very interested in materials. So I looked at the fabric that those women wear that I interviewed for a different projects and who go back and forth between Maputo and Johannesburg. I wear it as well for myself and I wanted to find out where does this fabric come from? The fabric is coming from India, its Indian, it's not originally from the continent, so it's telling intercontinental stories. It is actually a story about collaboration and trade, about how Indian people came with fabrics and textiles for trade in the early 10th and 11th century, and how people have been starting to trade goods going back and forth between India and East Africa. It was about commerce and it is still about commerce, because the women that wear this fabric are also going back and forth between Maputo and Johannesburg, or Maputo and Mpumalanga. They are traders, they buy and sell things, it's still a commerce language, a trade language. So my work has a lot of the traders’ language, and somehow, it highlights this. I will possibly go to India and to continue with the research on the resonances of Africa back in India, of this trade language which leads of course to colonial times. I want to intervene in this conversation as well, but I am also looking at how these materials start to project histories and articulate narratives within themselves.}

^{JS: Thank you very much for the conversation.}

In Kala’s practice of interventions I find most powerful how she is placing herself as the narrator, as the starting point for her artistic research and political perspective. Through the practice of embodying and re-inscribing herself into history she is gaining power over the narratives that denied and silenced voices of Black women. Challenging normative categories of how to engage with history or archives her practice is defying any claim of objectivity and universality. This transgression of the art field as a single discipline towards an interdisciplinary visual research practice is rather activating an undisciplined and multi-perspectival field of meaning. The complex web of aspects build up during the conversation with the artist demonstrates the multiple accesses, perspectives and conditions of reading objects and their material and visual quality. Through exploring the visual languages of materiality and objects considered familiar, they become ambiguous conveyors of entangled histories, socio-political structures and emotions. The way we look at things opens us up to deeper, extended and conflicted histories that include ourselves as viewers and producers of meaning.