Conversation Piece

I like to leave in space in the painting for the observer because, for me, a painting can only be understood as something between my expression and your interpretation. I think that's important. Also, it's a static thing on the wall and somehow with the concreteness and the diagrammatic nature of the painting, it's important for me to allow the viewer to inhabit the painting themselves. I think it really makes the work bigger, in my opinion. If a work can be equally charming and disturbing, I'm thrilled.

Ermias Ekube’s story is a tale of our times. An artist whose life has been shaped by political upheaval and military conflicts, his practice both responds to and is affected by and the brutalities of global history, yet is not defined by it. His is a story that is still very much being written.  

 

When painter Ermias Ekube visited his family in Eritrea’s capital, Asmara, in 1997, he was unaware of the fact he wouldn’t be able to return to his home in Ethiopia for almost two decades. Ermias had been living in Addis Ababa, when a border conflict between Ethiopia and Eritrea left many unable to move or communicate across the two countries. “I was stuck,” the 54-year-old says on a video call. “I had left all my belongings in Addis, including my paintings, and I didn’t know my friends’s whereabouts.” 

It could be said that my journey towards being a gallerist started in  1988 in Kenya, where this latter day European adventurer ended up on the shores of the Indian Ocean with my then partner and her children in  a palm-thatched Swahili dwelling that had been the home of an artist friend.

My work isn't about what we've lost or gained; it's about the fact that change never ends. I find that very positive and optimistic because it means you don't reach conclusions too quickly about where things are going or what we are going to discover.

In his latest exhibition Standing Still, now at Wolverhampton Art Gallery after launching at Ed Cross, Eugene Palmer (b.1955) paints two recent family events. These images of his family – modern, blended and extended – can be reproduced “a thousand times all over the UK”, sociologically substantiating the changing structure of the family in the 21st century, dipping into multiple narratives about identity.

In Cut from the Same Cloth, Wole Lagunju extends his long-term interrogation of the concept of Iyami.  Described by the artist as the basis of Yoruba culture and a primary theme of his work, Iyami literally translates as “my mother” and refers to womanhood – a kind of essential femininity – more broadly. Drawing on a pre-colonial social structure and often symbolically associated with birds, Iyami figures femininity as institution, unifying the collective by evoking the origins of life on earth.

"Hiraeth. The word, Anya Paintsil tells me, “can’t be translated directly into English – but is kind of a nostalgia, or homesickness for a time
or place you cannot go back to”. Hiraeth refers specifically to Wales – but it pinpoints a feeling I have experienced as a diasporic person, uprooted and replanted elsewhere."

Metaphor has long acknowledged the power of the cut in conveying precision, ruthlessness – in English, to cut a fine figure, deliver a cutting glance, cut to the chase, cut someone down to size or cut one’s losses, are all idioms loaded with a blade’s implicit finality. When a director shouts CUT! she stops a scene in its tracks, and when we pronounce something to be on the outer reaches of culture’s avant garde, we call it cutting edge. In Odedina’s hands, that title is wielded with something of a sideways smile. 

There’s something unmistakable about a Mário Macilau image – perhaps a detail that has drawn his interest, or the openness with which he approaches it. Macilau’s knack for snatching moments and forging connections with his subjects (often, he is working on a given series for months at a time) has served him well since he started making photographs as a teenager in Maputo, Mozambique, 20 years ago. Today, he’s in high demand – but as his new series demonstrates, the gaps between jobs can be just as fruitful as any assignment.

Katy Hessel of The Great Women Artists speaks to Anya Paintsil about fibre, feminist art, family and much more in this very special edition of ECFA's Conversation Piece. 

Shiraz Bayjoo deconstructs the material and visual languages of coloniality to articulate new critical strategies for decolonial sovereignty in the present. The artist’s research-based practice, rooted in his Mauritian heritage, addresses the settlers’ endeavours that have marked the Indian Ocean by pursuing a transversal understanding of the region as a whole. His work investigates the implications of such interconnectedness, in resonance with Édouard Glissant’s notion of ‘poetics of relation’ and Patrick Chamoiseau’s interpretation of creolité.

On May 28th, ECFA's Conversation Piece took to the airwaves in a live stream with Tiffanie Delune and Enuma Okoro. Here, we've collected our highlights from their conversation. 

 

 

 'In Cornejo’s work, meaning and material, source and symbolism, cleave more tightly than any cement could hope to.'

'Everyone has a different story – my mum thinks of Mami Wata as albino with long blonde hair, and lots of people think she has a fish's tail… She represents money, healing – she does loads of different things,’ says Sahara Longe. ‘But I like the story of fertility. If a woman couldn't have children, she would go and pray to Mami Wata who would give her a baby.’

A small town, north-east of Mosul, Bashiqa was once known for its onion pickles and olive trees. With a population spanning Kurdish Yazidi, Shabak, Assyrian and Arab Muslim, there are records of a diverse community at the site from the 13^th century; undoubtedly, Bashiqa’s history stretches back further still, and it remained a tourist destination for Iraqis into the 21^st century.

One might say that Yoruba is among the most powerful answers to the legacies of European empire. As the history of empire coalesced the world around a few European languages and the Judeo Christian religions, the potency and charisma of Yoruba beliefs, hermeneutics, aesthetics and theology has sustained its hold upon people across the African diaspora. And continues to grow. Wole Languju’s striking portraits are a testimony to this.

There are two women in Edouard Manet's infamous Olympia. We know a lot about one; reclining, pert and centre stage, is Victorine Meurent. As for the second woman, a servant standing behind Meurent/Olympia to present her with flowers, we know only her first name: Laure. Laure is black. 

“Ni yn unig” – only us. Titled in Welsh, Anya Paintsil’s first language, Ni yn unig is based on a childhood photograph. The artist and her sister, aged circa seven and five respectively, have been rendered in textiles: not only how they were (“She was quiet; I was loud. I was such an angry kid, and she was this duckling behind me,” says Paintsil), but how they felt themselves to be. 

A boy stands centered in the frame. The eyes of his lightly painted face are closed. The foliage behind him, out of focus, situates him out of any identifiable place.

Delune’s excitement in staging encounters – setting, medium, sentiment – is palpable. It’s contagious, too; how could anyone resist travel-by-painting in a world whose borders have never felt so stark?

In Bayjoo’s Searching for Libertalia, ‘searching’ – with all its connotations of irresolution, journeying and betweenness – remains the operative word.

Abe Odedina’s Warm Leatherette is an uncanny tableau, familiar and alien at once. On its surface – and when it comes to painting, what else is there? – we observe a girl. Sofa. Table, LP. A bottle, and two glasses.