Ugandan curator Serubiri Moses and Host Gianofer Fields discuss the work of two South African photographic artists a generation apart: Santu Mofokeng, whose Black Photo Album debuted at second Johannesburg Biennial, and Lebohang Kganye, whose work appears in the Chazen's current exhibition Insistent Presence.
Meet Me at the Chazen is a podcast about the the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Chazen Museum of Art, the largest collecting museum in the Big Ten. As we report what’s happening here, we'll also explore what it means to be an art museum at a public university and how art museums can help enrich and strengthen the communities they serve. Meet Me at the Chazen theme and incidental music is “Swinging at the Pluto Lounge,” composed and performed by Marvin Tate and friends, and is used with permission of the artists.
We'd love to connect - find us on Facebook and Instagram!
Ugandan curator Serubiri Moses and Host Gianofer Fields discuss the work of two South African photographic artists a generation apart: Santu Mofokeng, whose Black Photo Album debuted at second Johannesburg Biennial, and Lebohang Kganye, whose work appears in the Chazen's current exhibition Insistent Presence.
Meet Me at the Chazen is a podcast about the the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Chazen Museum of Art, the largest collecting museum in the Big Ten. As we report what’s happening here, we'll also explore what it means to be an art museum at a public university and how art museums can help enrich and strengthen the communities they serve. Meet Me at the Chazen theme and incidental music is “Swinging at the Pluto Lounge,” composed and performed by Marvin Tate and friends, and is used with permission of the artists.
We'd love to connect - find us on Facebook and Instagram!
[machine-generated transcript]
Gianofer Fields 00:07
Meet Me at the Chazen. I'm your host, Gianofer Fields. When you see photographs of African families, be they historical or contemporary, it's important to think about who was behind the lens. Serubiri Moses is a Ugandan curator and writer. He's an adjunct assistant professor at Hunter College and visiting faculty at the Center for Curatorial studies at Bard College in New York. His lecture about the history of portraiture in the African family featured the work of South African visual artist Lebohang Kganye her work as part of our exhibition, Insistent Presence: Contemporary African art from the Chazen Collection.
Serubiri Moses 00:52
When we think about Lebohang Kganye's work for me, it's not just about this kind of like urban setting, and in which you have Black, middle class families, predominantly in the in the urban centers, like Johannesburg. But you are thinking about a trajectory that goes, cuts across the entire country and in several different urban areas. And that is where the difficulty lies. Because you have to think about the lens through which the artist actually is making this work. It moves around a lot, and you have a lot of different ethnic groups that are spread or spread out across South Africa. And so I mean, coming from her family, specifically, you may speak about one race or one ethnic group. But in a sense, when you get into it, in terms of these various movements of her people around South Africa, it's kind of challenging to really then understand the complexity and the layering. I mean, this work is really depicting some of those different I mean, you see that she's gonna get on a train, and the train will come. And she'll go, and that is very important, because that sense of movement is not about just commuting, you know, between Soweto and Johannesburg. It's also the way in which people in general travel across South Africa. And this means that if you're from one area and one social group, you enter in another area and find other social groups, even when they're Black. So it has a kind of how can I say, regional cosmopolitanism or like international cosmopolitanism, and I think that's very, very, very important.
Gianofer Fields 02:37
One of the things that I remember reading from the research before this conversation, was his idea that there's a British or European way of thinking about the African families and images. And then there's an African way about thinking about family images. What's the difference? Because I feel like I don't have a firm foot in either one of them. Oh, yeah. I come from a very, you know, southern Black tradition. And so I'm looking for, you know, if my mother had it to tell, I'm looking to see what people are wearing, to make sure I don't wear the same thing, because that would be tacky, or buying the same thing, because that would also be really tacky. So what's the difference between that those two, those two viewpoints of what, or how the African family is in, share it with a broader audience?
03:30
Yeah, I think this is, I think, of course, about exhibition-making. It's also about how we view family albums. I do think that the two artists I'm talking about today, Santu Mofokeng on the one hand, and Lebohang Kganye on the other, are tackling a different time in South Africa. I mean, they're both artists who are specifically looking at old family photographs that are perhaps 50 or 100 years old, but Santu Mofokeng is on the longer end. And so with Santu Mofokeng, you have a Victorian understanding kind of Black Victorian understanding of the family album, meaning that it has to do with showing, first of all, the family album is also part of the Victorian culture. So there's a kind of sense of the family photograph and you know, who is in the family photograph and the kind of constellation of the family, the father, the mother or the children, or husband and wife or often you have the small configuration of singular family units in the family album, right?
Gianofer Fields 04:42
You're not going to see aunts and uncles and grandparents. That nuclear family sort of tight little band.
Serubiri Moses 04:49
It's tight and if you look at Santu Mofokeng's Black Photo Album, that's what you see. These tight nuclear families that are like husband and wife, you know, one of the photographs examiner's called Claire first and Martha it's really the one that I shared with you all, it really has that sense of it's, it's he's the minister, and that's his wife standing next to him putting her hand on his shoulder as he sits on a chair. But then when we move in, you know, 50 years later, with Lebohang Kganye's work, it changes, it changes because, you know, after that Victorian era, just like here in the United States, you know, you have more, how can I say, more development happening in cities, and more Black people who, who live in cities and therefore, shape, actively shaping a kind of Black modernity or African modernity in this larger sense. So that has something to do with it. So even though it's not the Victorian period, I think the family album in in Lebohang Kganye's work is informed by the different activities that Black people were doing or different, I'm speaking professionally, for work in the '50s and '60s, and, and at the time, her grandparents would have been working because her grandfather and grandmother feature heavily in her work, as does her mom. But this specific work has a lot to do with that kind of older, it's during apartheid, but it's also that Black people are contributing to the growth of the economy. And so not different from Detroit, where Black people migrate to Detroit and contribute to the motor industry. It's very similar in South Africa, in Johannesburg, in particular, and the diamond, the, you know, industry and all of that, and the gold industry as well. So, yeah.
Gianofer Fields 06:42
In her work too, and looking at this piece, even though it's on another continent, the tableaus are familiar. Yes, I was talking to Margaret this morning about going with my mother to go cut, I go out my grandmother and grandfather, and my mother would cut my grandfather's toenails. Because here's one sequence in this video, where she's using an extremely large nail clippers. Yeah. And that took me right back to that moment, because I would sit and watch her do this. And he would be where we did something would fly in my eye, because you know, he was seeing my grandparents side. So even though the work is not only is based on her memory, and her gathering stories from her family about these photographs, yes. But it still has that way of reaching across the ocean, to pull the viewer in no matter where you may be. It's a common experience that we all have.
Serubiri Moses 06:42
Yeah!
Gianofer Fields 07:14
if we're lucky.
Serubiri Moses 07:36
Yes. And I think that, that that is something that, I guess, I absolutely agree with you. And I think it's something that I should say is, is also within how we understand Black families, and African modernities in general, I mean, thinking about it, in terms of the, the kind of transatlantic conversation. I mean, I'm thinking Robert Farris Thompson here, but I'm also thinking about it more in terms of how, as I said, you know, Black people on both sides of the Atlantic, you know, kind of helped to build the modernity in their in their countries, right. And but then inserting, I'm also talking about how then they established their own kind of a way of looking right? So when we get to Essence magazine, and Ebony Magazine, that's its own way of looking. And in South Africa, Drum magazine, as well has a particular kind of way of looking at the photograph. And of course, the configuration of the Black family is very interesting to me. So when you talk about your grandfather and your grandmother, I think that is beautiful, you know, thinking about the I mean, one of the things with Lebohang Kganye's work that I love is that I think she's really also paying homage to the Black men in her family. And I think that, for me, this is it's interesting. It also talks about, you know, who is part of the family and how, how they are, you know, represented. Yeah.
Gianofer Fields 09:17
So, as we look at the timeline, yeah, of these images, what are some of the cues you were picking up that you thought is changing? Talk to me about what you saw that excited you about this, because even just talking to you about it, now, your eyes kind of light up and you start smiling. So there's something about this, this research this looking intense looking, yeah, that is triggering something. When did you start to see these changes in how the Black family, the African family was being represented?
Serubiri Moses 09:49
Yeah, I mean, I think that speaking about it is beautiful because it reminds me of yeah, that I also I feel very attached to the material. And I also thought that Santu Mofokeng's work was very much in dialogue with Lebohang Kganye's work. Not only did Santu Mofokeng make and work with family photos and collect family photos, meaning he collected them from communities in urban Black communities in South Africa. But Lebohang Kganye also did the same thing in her own family, right. And then they're connected with this kind of field work strategy and all of that, you know, there's a kind of anthropological, if even ethnographic way that they go about, you know, gathering this data. And if you look, what I appreciate about Lebohang Kganye's work is that it's so visceral in that way that it, it's a slice of a moment. But the detail is so beautiful, right. And that that beautiful, the beautiful detail, I think, is something that I can't ignore, I think it's already too old to this artist to create such new ones, in the way that she thinks about the family way that she thinks about these moments in time. I think that's part of her rigorous kind of scientific methodology and like capturing.
Serubiri Moses 11:21
But on a personal level, I also think that I was wowed by the fact that these artists are looking at the past. And that's something that I'm really interested in, and I talked about very openly in the lecture. But I was also anxious about that, you know, because what would make you feel anxious? I think that people tend to misunderstand when artists are in a position of narrating the past, because they don't people don't often trust artists, to be the ones telling the story. And so this notion that this artist is telling this very important history of Black families and also Black, male and female workers working in these sort of gigantic industries and helping to build up Africa is not something that historians would run to the artists to for or people who run to the artists for it, we often think it's historians who have the kind of privilege of telling history and telling that story
Gianofer Fields 12:28
It’s that this artist lens is somehow cloudy in the historian’s lens is somehow clear, not understanding or maybe not considering that this, the artist producing this work, isn't doing it in a vacuum, they're talking to people, they're using actual physical ephemera from their own lives. And how is that story less authentic than someone say, who hops on a plane and go somewhere, and decides to tell the story because they've been studying it in a room somewhere else? And through with books that someone else wrote, who knows when, suddenly that is more of an authentic telling than someone who's lived, breathed and is talking to someone who live breathing experience and holding the actual photograph that some historian may have to dig through in a historical society for 30 years to find. I'm just saying, Serubiri, that's all I'm saying. I'm not saying but I'm saying.
Serubiri Moses 13:31
Exactly! But, you know, the, the thing that is also interesting about this is that that's what Black artists and Black curators are experiencing a lot of the time. They're, they're not often, how can I say they're not often allowed, or they're not often, what's the word I'm looking for? I think there's a kind of word that philosophers use these days, called epistemic injustice. And I think that that means oftentimes that you know, when you say something, that the other person, due to the fact that they feel either more superior or more entitled, or will often try to deny or declaim what you're saying and so a kind of epistemic injustice happens, in that sense, complicated by race, complicated by gender complicated by class, and complicated by many other things, right. And so I do think Black artists experience epistemic injustice. And I think Black curators have experienced epistemic injustice to because they are not often seen as the truth tellers of their communities and their societies.
Gianofer Fields 14:57
Well, how could you be when I've been reading a book for 20 years, and you just lived it? So of course I know more! I've read about it! It's been, it's gone through the lens of somebody who is trained in studying these things. So your experience couldn't possibly compare to someone who has read a book that someone else wrote, who wasn’t from that culture either.
Serubiri Moses 15:25
And the thing with Black curators is that Black curators are unusual, because I mean, thinking here about Margaret, but I'm also thinking of people like Thelma Golden. They're unusual because they're there, they are also interpreting and reinterpreting the work without knowing the historical facts of what that art is. I don't think that, you know, the curators of the second Johannesburg, Biennial, in which Santu Mofokeng’s Back Photo Album was shown, Okwui Enwezor, Octavio Zaya, had known anything about Black Victorians in South Africa during the 19th century, or the different churches that they belong to, you know, how those churches contributed to Literacy Center Marcus mission? Yes.
Gianofer Fields 16:18
Ah, I see you over there. It’s Gianofer, hi!
Serubiri Moses 16:23
Hi Malik! Good to see you. So I think that, you know, Black curators are, are I think that they're unusual, they're unusually brave, because they dive into the work. And they show the work oftentimes without fully grasping the entirety of the history that that that informs that work. And I mean, not just art history, I mean, that the cultural, political, social, economic history, and so but the artists is, is perhaps even braver because the artist went in headfirst? You know, so we are experiencing that. And I think, as a Black curator, myself, I feel very much this weight and this pressure, you know, who are you tell this narrative? You know, why are you? Why do you think that you're, you know, you tell it better than such and such a story and such and such, who gave you the right to speak about this or to do an exhibition about this?
Gianofer Fields 17:29
It's so interesting, because it's all misguided, or guided correctly, however, you want to categorize it. Everybody's trying to get this information. Yes. And to me, sometimes, the issue with ownership, who those who think they have ownership over it, for me are always just a little bit dangerous.
Serubiri Moses 17:52
Yeah.
Gianofer Fields 17:52
You know, because if knowledge is becoming ownership, then there is some idea that there is only one way to interact with this work, and that just cannot be the truth. So if I'm thinking that I have ownership over this particular photograph that anything you say it's not necessarily going to seep in, and then I'm not going to have the full picture. And that doesn't matter. It doesn't matter who you are, when that happens.
Serubiri Moses 18:18
Yeah, yeah, I hear you. And I think that, for me, it's really important that knowledge is, is at least one of the things that people have the right to, I was actually speaking to cultural and literary historian today, who, who helped me think through my lecture. And his name is Quezon Keizer, and he teaches at Duke University. And we talked about the fact that when it comes to Black archives, you know, there is this constant problem of information not being made public. Right. And so, the record on Black people often is, is one that in which the information is actually hidden, right, not just out of the sheer desire to hide or to keep secrets, but the information is often just not made public. But you have to wonder what public institutions are willing to willingly keep that information away from, from the from the public, you have to really wonder about that. Because this is something that the artists are showing us and revealing to us. Clearly, they're the ones who are breaking through those barriers to knowing things because they're going into places, finding the archives that even historians and the people who work in institutions have not been able to find, and they're the ones who have been able to dig out that info Mission and make it available. Right. So that I think is about being brave and a kind of epistemic justice. Right. But at the same time, I do think that point that Qasim Keizer made is very important about the fact that, that public records are oftentimes don't include, you know, the records of Black people, I don't know, how else to say it. I mean, I think he was absolutely right.
Gianofer Fields 20:31
I mean this, there's, there's a layer, just for my own personal experience, too, of not wanting to trust someone else with that information. So it's almost this double, this double, not hiding, but sort of double a mission, one, to protect themselves and family, and then maybe one to protect reputation in terms of the museum, like maybe how they got it, or what happened behind it. But there's this desire to protect, and one to be things more valid than the other.
Serubiri Moses 20:59
No, but we develop this. And at the same we develop it we develop that need to, to keep secret and sacred, you know, the things that we know, as Black people in our communities and our societies, precisely because we have understood the way that information about us is treated on the public record and how it's weaponized, often against us. In Uganda, where it come from, I think, you know, doing research in the 1970s, in particular, has shown me that Ugandans were participating in all kinds of things. They we're doing festivals in Russia, like, you know, performance artists, doing festivals in Russia, the way in Lagos that we're here in the United States are models, you know, Uganda, very famous Ugandan model in London, catwalks in London and New York on covers of various magazines, including Essence, and Ebony. And I don't know, Ebony, I think, but I don't know, you know, the idea that that time period is, is now clouded in the controversy of a military dictatorship, one that actually was very, very violent, and we should not excuse, you know, crimes against humanity. But I think that, that has shaped and overdetermined the entire story. Of all those people in the 1970s, the one thing that you say when you hear Uganda is Idi Amin.
Gianofer Fields 22:33
Yep.
Serubiri Moses 22:33
And that determines the entire narrative. And so, when it comes to those records of, you know, artists, I think it's, it's, for me, it's just, it's a pleasure to try and dig this thing up myself as well as a researcher, because it means that that you're getting at something that hasn't been given access, and you haven't been given access to so easily. It almost feels like you're wrestling, access away from something else in order to, to grasp, you know, knowledge or information about that time,
Gianofer Fields 23:15
And also wrestling with self because I remember that time period, and it was so hard to even wrestle with myself to see beautiful images coming out of Uganda, but thinking, Oh my God, wait a minute, dictators I'm gonna throw reason I can't, I can't enjoy almost like, I can't enjoy this. If I enjoy this, then I'm discounting what's happening to people, which is a very real scary thing. Yes. But all we're being fed, I can honestly say this. But we were fit two narratives. It was the horror of Idi Amin.
Serubiri Moses 23:43
Yes.
Gianofer Fields 23:44
And then the over sexualization of Black and brown bodies. So we had to, there was nothing for us, there was nothing in between, right. It was just this incredibly beautiful sexual object was this incredibly horrible, you know, murderous dictator? So there was nothing in between for us.
Serubiri Moses 24:02
Yes, yeah. I think that that tells me a lot. And also, it just is it shows you that the public record tends to be overdetermined and controlled and tightly, tightly, tightly, tightly, very, very tightly curated, very tightly curated.
Gianofer Fields 24:23
There you go!
Serubiri Moses 24:28
Oh, very tightly curated, in terms of what we know publicly on the record. And so I do think that Lebohang Kganye’s work is so important, and as is Santu Mofokeng’s work, but work in particular, Lebohang Kganye’s work because I think that stories she's telling, I don't think they exist on the record. I think these are very personal narratives in families, but which also, as I said, like if you really look at the 1950s and 60s in South Africa, you will find that her families narrative is that narrative of so many other Black families, right. And so this, this is also about the making of South Africa into the kind of larger economy that then became, you know, is and how Black people contributed to that and build their own sense of image, they built their own kind of image, the kind of image that they wanted to see.
Gianofer Fields 25:25
So if we stand here in front of her work, do you want to do it in front of the video or still, but what I'd like you to do is break down for me, what you're seeing, you can choose the work, you can choose the video, or you can choose these.
Serubiri Moses 25:39
Okay, let's start here. So what we're seeing here is, we're seeing a lady, a Black woman moving on a road. And it looks like she's moving down the stairs, actually. But she's moving. She's crossing a kind of like railway line. And then on the other side, you see a train. And it right in front of her in the foreground of the image. Is that Black man wearing a suit as if he's going to work? Yeah.
Gianofer Fields 26:08
What are you drawing from that? Whether information is within those images that we're seeing? Because to me, he looks he's going to work? I can't tell if he's happy or sad about it. And he's got the watch on. So time is like, of the essence. And he's, he's, they're both, they're moving in different directions. And there is almost a quality of time. Yes. Like, maybe the direction she's going with? Maybe she's the grandmother and he's the son. Maybe they're not husband wife, because it looks like a whole different time period.
Serubiri Moses 26:45
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think, I think, of course, you know, those, I think those nuances, I think would have to be more in terms of how the artists research these stories, and actually what she's basing them on in terms of like, but I think I think one of the larger things that I see in this image is the train. And I think for me that that is a very symbolic, very symbolic of working class and middle class Black South Africans.
Gianofer Fields 27:19
But I think about the train, I think living in Chicago and going five miles, she may be going 10 miles, she may be going 20 mile more. So she's going a greater distance. So this is really …
Serubiri Moses 27:31
Yes, it's commuting, and it's commuting to work. And but the distances were so big that people, Mofokeng tells us that they would have train church. That's how long the commute was, like, you know, an hour or Yes. And so people would be on the train, and there'll be train church, there's also a lot of things to do there. You know, just like in New York, half graffiti and Chicago. Yep. Graffiti. And the trains had a lot of graffiti. In South Africa, you have staff riders, and staff riders were young, predominantly young guys, but also, I'm sure women who basically climb up on the side of the train and then hopefully, you know, ride it that way. Yeah.
Gianofer Fields 28:18
So taking your life in your hands going some to and from places.
Serubiri Moses 28:23
Yeah, yeah. But there was what we see is like a kind of for me, it's like the trains symbolize a very hectic and intense schedule of work. But these long commutes and where the commutes going, they're going to the factories are going to the minds, they're going to all these places where people work, and they work quite far away from where they live.
Gianofer Fields 28:47
So as we move through to the second photograph, we see Lebohang in a man’s suit, yes, the first image of is of a man don't know I don't think don't believe that's her in that. White shirt, tie, pressed slacks, watch, hat; here we see full on suit jacket. Some sort of luggage, maybe they brought in.
Serubiri Moses 29:09
Yeah, so instead of a suitcase, a briefcase that's dropped. So this this image is really interesting. There's a there's a woman, a Black woman ironing, and dressing up in this kind of white shirt, and white sort of headscarf in a style that I think for me is related to the Manyanos, who are, it's a women's churches, kind of independent administration in South Africa. But at the same time, I also think that she's really reenacting photographs of her grandfather. And so for me, this is like, you know, the mid- century in South Africa, and it's kind of Yeah, I mean, if you see the video who walks in and then he kind of like, you know, puts his hand on his, his kind of his waist and then he, he like He drops the brisk briefcase, right? And he, he then raises his arms, you know, as if to say, What's going on here or something. And so I, I also think these are, like, deeply interpret the interpersonal kind of relationships. So when it comes to Black families, what are those various kinds of dynamics? And again, I don't think it's the nuclear family. Right? I think there is something else that's going on, because it has changed. Really, it has changed from those kinds of Black Victorian photographs from the late 19th century. You know, it's no longer just like the minister, his wife, you know, when they're when one or two kids No, it's, it's really that it's become this more extended family or if different configurations of you know, grandparents, you know, grandchildren, you know, uncles and cousins. So I think a lot of that is actually happening in in her work. I don't think it's just the single kind of nuclear family. It's really this kind of sprawling, extended,
Gianofer Fields 31:11
I’m thinking about those Victorian images and looking at these images. Those images are very much. Person is object. Yeah, it's my job. I'm dressed. Well, this is my wife, we're here. We're looking at you. You're looking at us. This is you, you are witnessing who we are. This is the first one he's looking at us, but not really. Yeah, he's the second the first one, she's kind of walking away. But in this one, it don't even care that we're here. Yeah. Like this is not a performance of us. This is not a performance for.
Serubiri Moses 31:43
I love that you point that out. Because I think this is one of the things that makes Lebohang Kganye's work for me very, very important. It's the nuance is the quiet. And it's the precision of how these tableaus, these scenes execute a particular memory. And that is where I think that is the historical accuracy. If there is any historical accuracy at all, in the word lies, it lies in that restraint. That sense of I'm not actually performing for you, trying to create some sort of elaborate spectacle, I'm actually trying to be faithful to this story. And you may find the story, uninteresting, you may find the story, not very appealing. But this is the story that I was told. And this is the story I'm telling.
Gianofer Fields 32:31
I'm not even thinking about the importance you subscribe to this story, I am telling you this part of my life, and here it is do with it what you will or not,
Serubiri Moses 32:39
Exactly, exactly is the kind of sense of take it or leave it. It's my story. I think that that sense of calm and restraint is really beautiful. But it goes back to what you said I think about how the family photos and family archives and the records in in a, you know, in Black families that often actually we guard them, you know, with almost sometimes with our lives, and I think that is beautiful.
Gianofer Fields 33:12
So then, are you seeing another shift, as everybody walks in now that everybody has a little photo, a little camera in their hands? And they're able to, you know, take a quick moment? Are you seeing even more of a shift now, in terms of photography, and how the family and how individuals are being represented now that it's literally in their hand?
Serubiri Moses 33:35
Well, I'm in South Africa, I think, yeah, I think there is, of course, like new a new generation. I mean, of which Lebohang Kganye is, is part of, but I think that her work is facing so much of the past. And that generation is really very, very active on social media, but also is very active. On social, it's very active on social media, but it's also very active in, in, in kind of image making, I think that there is this word “born free.’ You know, that means you know, being born after apartheid. And I think that that the Born Free generation is very, very, of course attuned to technology and is very willing is very interested in that. I in terms of specific ideas of configurations of family in the present, I think it's a bit different. It continues to change. Now we see a lot of like, for example, people claiming other people who aren't their family members as family, right, so not in this even sense that Lebohang Kganye shows that you still have at least an extended family. This is now well I don't need these. So just go find some other family because I think that this process, right you go, you really go from the late 19th century, you go from the Victorian period, and then you go into the, you know, mid-20th century, and now in this kind of post 1994 period, I think people really have move kind of away from the, those sort of structures that were kind of holding the sense of community and I think young people don't are not often feeling very tied to either their kind of, again, social group, whether they are Xhosa or to Zulu, or Bapedi, or, you know, they feel like their identities are to be made and to be built to be established in their own hands. And, and oftentimes now it's really gender or sexuality, you know, race. It's also, you know, your kind of social milieu that you live in, and people create family in that way. So young people are claiming people who are not of their blood as family.
Gianofer Fields 36:08
Hey, fam!
Serubiri Moses 36:11
Yeah, exactly, but it's also, it's in this sense that it's serious, you know, that they're working together, especially in the art in the art, I see a lot of artists who are doing this, you know, they're like, working together, producing, co-producing work, but they kind of a so close that you think that they’re family interests, and they sort of are just a collaborative, or a collective, you know, and I think that that's so, so fascinating to me, you know, like, because it's, it means that the collective, you know, even in in the art space has also taken on the character of a family. And if we're making work together, that means we we basically have the same job. So well, I'm going to spend a lot of time with you. And yeah, and so you find people who, who associate with each other in that way, we'll live that way.
Gianofer Fields 37:11
So Saturday, your lecture is coming up. Yeah. I don't want to make you nervous. In about two and a half hours, okay. No need to feel any pressure! So what are you hoping, what are you hoping rings with this audience?
Serubiri Moses 37:26
Well, I first The first thing I really wanted to do was to just give a sense of this history. And I think that for me, it was important to show artists and to champion the work of curators. Specifically I'm thinking here of Lebohang Kganye. I'm thinking of Santu Mofokeng. I'm thinking of the curators who have shown their work like Margaret Nagawa, but I'm also thinking of Okwui Enwezor, who showed Santu Mofokeng’s work, and Bisi Silva, who showed Lebohang Kganye I think I'm hoping that view, listen, people who listen to the lecture will take away just how important the work of curators is today. And also to understand the challenge that artists have to tell this kind of history that is actually not even on record. That's not even being recorded. You know, and I'm hoping that that will be the the takeaway.
Gianofer Fields 38:24
One of the things that Margaret said, she said that she needed to have communication, with she needed to be around the pieces, and she needed to sort of like experience them, in order to put this all together. How much time do you spend with the work when you're thinking about putting together a show? When does that start for you? Is it, you have an idea? I often ask artists, if when they look at a blank canvas, if when they see the canvas, does the canvas tell you what it wants to be? Or do you impress your idea on that canvas? When you're thinking about a shoq, what speaks to you first? Is it the idea? And the story that you'd like to tell? Or do you look at the work and go I'm going to this is what they're telling me? This is what I'd like to see in the gallery? Where does that chicken egg? I don't know if it's a chicken and an egg.
Serubiri Moses 39:14
Well, I think I think, for me shows actually start from a very personal place. I often used to say that I work with artists who don't make art and that …
Gianofer Fields 39:28
That makes so much sense.
Serubiri Moses 39:31
And so I often start from this kind of very obscure place of like, I think, looking searching for the, the birth of the work as opposed to the final work. And I think I want to sort of act in that way as a kind of as someone who is, meeting the artists in that kind of moment, a serious moment right. And for me, the creation of art, I think is just it's just, it's it's mythical. On the one hand, I mean, we know it from the Greek and Roman stories and myths. But we also, I think, you know, Orpheus, and all that, I think that, for me, also, the creation of art, in today's political and social realities is so difficult. And as Black people, I think we have such a difficult time trying to claim that role, you know, because of the political and social pressures and economic pressures that we face. So I think that's often like where I begin, and then I often that process is often for me also about getting to know each other, like, I think, I know, it's not often very possible, because I've curated a lot of really large shows of like, 46 artists, and but I think when I'm doing a smaller project, I really start to have dinner with the artists, you know, go on walks, you know, read a novel together, like let's start a book club, you know, and then, you know, that way, I have a sense of who is this person in life?
Gianofer Fields 41:17
The introduction is not the work itself, it's the person. Yes, it's understanding the mind and the body and the soul that produced this.
Serubiri Moses 41:27
Yes, that is where, that's where it is for me. Yeah, yeah, exactly. The work comes from the person. And so the person is, in some ways, really, really, really important. I know the work is very important. But for me that for me, the person is super-important.
Gianofer Fields 41:47
Yeah. It's always easier to take up and understand a different language, when you spend time with the person that has that native language. This work is sort of this work is a production of life. Not the symbol of that life. Yeah, it makes any sense.
Serubiri Moses 42:09
Yes, it does. It does. It's part of life. It's part of life. And I think we need to wait, I think it's something that art historians, I think wrestle with, because art historians are trying to alert us to the genealogy of objects, and how objects are, you know, exist throughout history. I mean, it is a human history, right? So they're trying to really think very deeply about this human history through the objects that humans make. But that is important work. But I do think when it comes to curating, I think, really, who the person was, is, is so, so so important, especially when you're curating contemporary shows, when the artists are alive, as opposed to the artists who are deceased.
Gianofer Fields 43:03
You better get it right! Just to me, it just makes it that argument whether or not photography is actual art so frustrating because you can discount an entire continent who are you who are working in lens-based visual arts? Yes. If you argue that photography is not art, when you look at level Hong's work, can you see that it clearly is yes, it clearly is. It's a it's a way to intentionally or unintentionally discount an entire body of work, an entire group of people and an entire way of looking at the world.
Serubiri Moses 43:40
Yeah, but what you do the question you posed to me, the very first question you posed to me about the lens through which we see, and how do you see through the lens of others, is very, very important, I think. And for me, this is why photography is important. This photography allows us to build that lens, you know, to build that kind of image, like how do we want to see ourselves, you know, but also, how do we document the kind of beautiful things we've created.
Gianofer Fields 44:08
Especially if nobody else thinks those things are beautiful or important enough to document?
Serubiri Moses 44:13
Yes, exactly. So it is, it is a kind of archival science, in a sense. I mean, I don't mean to be too technical about that. But I think that when you have a camera and you're documenting, you know, things in your home or in your community, I think you are archiving, you're definitely just keep that camera and keep those images whether they're digital printed, you know, because 20 years from now, somebody's going to ask for them.
Gianofer Fields 44:47
You've been listening to Meet Me at the Chazen. Our guest Serubiri Moses, is a Ugandan and curator and writer. He is an adjunct assistant professor at Hunter College and visiting faculty and the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College in New York. Meet Me at the Chazen it's a production of the Chazen Museum of Art on the campus of UW–Madison in Madison, Wisconsin. For more information about the museum, its collections and exhibitions visit chazen.wisc.edu. I'm your host, Gianofer Fields. Thank you for listening.