After an interruption, Host Gianofer Fields and guest curator Margaret Nagawa finish their walkthrough of the Insistent Presence exhibition. Touching on themes of memory and movement, they discuss works by artists like Khaled Ben Slimane, Moataz Nasr, and El Loko, noting how they deeply evoke humanity without needing physical representation of the body.
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!
After an interruption, Host Gianofer Fields and guest curator Margaret Nagawa finish their walkthrough of the Insistent Presence exhibition. Touching on themes of memory and movement, they discuss works by artists like Khaled Ben Slimane, Moataz Nasr, and El Loko, noting how they deeply evoke humanity without needing physical representation of the body.
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!
Gianofer Fields 00:04
Meet Me at the Chazen. I'm your host, Gianofer Fields. Margaret Nagawa is an artist and PhD student at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. She's also the guest curator for our exhibition, Insistent Presence: Contemporary African Art in the Chazen Collection. Our last conversation was cut short.
Margaret Nagawa 00:25
The exhibition, as we said before, I categorized it into three sections: The Body and Society, the Artist is Present, and now The Absent Body. And The Absent Body appears, let's say, at the end of the gallery space, but it could also be the beginning of the gallery space, depending on how you enter the space. If you enter from the back door, or the side door, then you're landing in the absence. And what this shows us is the various ways that the body is referenced, without really showing us the body itself, and how that is productive for us to think about how we move through society.
Gianofer Fields 01:20
Happily, Nagawa is back to finish what we started.
Margaret Nagawa 01:25
For example, Khaled Ben Slimane, he's, his vessel, ceramic vessel, the blue glaze, it's quite shiny, beautiful. And it's not only one blue; there are three shades of blue that I can see here. And then the brushstrokes of black, you can get the sense of having drawn a line, a big brush in one direction, and another, the colors, the glaze, and the painterly effects, and then the scratching into the clay, where he's writing the script and writing the words. So we see that his drawing us into the work into this vessel, and drawing on not only our visual sense, but also drawing on what we can think of as speech. Because once you're looking at the writing, then you're imagining reading it, you might even articulate the word houa, which is who he has written in Arabic. And then the repetition of that might even sound or feel like you're saying a prayer, saying the word God again, and again, and again, to me, he's asking us to approach this work visually, and through the voice. And that way, we don't need a physical representation of the body. But he has drawn us in through the senses. So this space, this section of the exhibition, where we have the absent body, the physical presence of the body is not necessary, but it's alluded to, in order for the artist to communicate what they're trying to communicate in.
Gianofer Fields 03:16
What I like about the work, Margaret, is that it doesn't try to mine any particular body. And there's this wonderful way that he sends you just under swirls, invites you to go around it. There's parts of it that are very fun, just fun in here to my sort of gamey play. Like, I want to push these imaginary buttons over here. There's a plexiglass, I can't do it and I wouldn't, because I know better ...
Margaret Nagawa 03:44
Looks like you playing games on your phone a lot!
Gianofer Fields 03:46
Sometimes I do, sometimes I don't!
Margaret Nagawa 03:50
But you have brought to mind one other aspect I had not spoken about that's movement. So we're using the eyes, we are using the voice and we're using the body to move our body. So he's inviting the body of the viewer, which is as varied as anybody who walks through the doors. And you brought that up quite beautifully. Thank you.
Gianofer Fields 04:12
Well thank you, Margaret. Just because I'm talking to you, you just make me smarter.
Margaret Nagawa 04:16
Okay so when we think about scale, so we might imagine the body or our body engaging with this ceramic work by Khaled Ben Slimane. But we can also think of a larger-than-life body. When we look at this prayer bead installation, that Moataz Nasr from Egypt made, so we have gas canisters, strung together, quite tall, almost reaching maybe three quarters of the way up in the exhibition, and then dropping down again to the very edge so we have prayer beds, but constructed out of gas canisters and lit from the inside. The gas canister is perforated with patterns, they look like glass. And with the light coming from inside, it throws shadows against the wall. So there is that sense that we have a physical object here. And we have light, let's throw in the shadows, and almost thinking like this more than myself in the presence of this work. And the other being is either unknown or unknowable, but also larger than life. So this installation by Moataz Nazir can talk about what we might infer as the physical relationships between people praying using prayer beads, but also between those people and they, the god they're praying to, or another being that they're praying to, but also something larger than us, which might be what we engage with on a regular basis, because their work is called Petrol Beads could be petrol, the wars we fight around oil. But it could also be that because of the scale we're dealing with, these wars around petrol are larger than any single person can fathom.
Gianofer Fields 06:19
And the size of that also, to me calls to mind that something larger than life, also needs guidance and support from whatever they may believe in. Yeah, and what's really interesting about this piece is that it's part of the permanent collection. And it usually lives upstairs, and the gallery space between the old Elvehjem and the new Chazen [buildings] and, and for so many people, including myself, it was our guiding light, it was a wayfinding object. So if you saw this object hanging up, you knew which direction you needed to go to get to the other part of the museum.
Margaret Nagawa 06:55
I like that aspect. And it's bridging the old and the new in the physical space, the architectural space here.
Gianofer Fields 07:02
Exactly.
Margaret Nagawa 07:03
That's a good way to look at it.
Gianofer Fields 07:04
It's so many good ways.
Margaret Nagawa 07:05
So many positives!
Gianofer Fields 07:08
We're recalling together beings that are larger than life. And we've talked to Immy Mali, and I'm not going to ask you to read the texts, because I know you won't do it because it's your friend. And that's none of your business. Even though it's everybody's business because it's hanging up here in this gallery. But Immy Mali's piece [Virtually Mine] also refers to an absent body. And it's larger than life, now.
Margaret Nagawa 07:30
it is larger than life, and she creates a tension between presence and absence. This work could, I could have installed it in the first section, the body and society, because she's representing a figure with this text messages printed on glass tiles. So from different angles, you can see the body where we're standing, now you can see a cascading set of glass. So sometimes it's visible, sometimes it's invisible. And she plays with a presence, that tension between presence and absence, which I love. But it's a presence and absence that is larger than life, we have to crane, our necks to look upward to see the tippy top of this sculpture, and also bend low to look at the very bottom piece, we might have to squat in order to be able to look at it or even try to read it. So it demands of our body a lot more than we might be demanded from by a work of art, a painting that is sitting at eye level and all those museum conventions. So the larger than life, the scale demands a lot demands different things from us as viewers.
Gianofer Fields 08:50
It also is a really, because a lot of the work, I shouldn't say a lot, but a number of the works are playing with memory. When we look at Leonard Pongo's work, when we look at Lebohang Kganye's work, when we will look at Nana [Yaw Oduro], Nana's, work, it's, a lot of it is playing with memory. And in this work, I remember talking to her about how it's based on her long-distance relationship because her partner had to move away her, then-boyfriend, had to move away for work, that she would sometimes forget what he looks like. And so it's really interesting in that piece that you get that sometimes you see a human figure, sometimes you don't. If you go away from it sometimes like how like you start to think, wait, is it taller is taller than I am, right? I know it's taller than I am because of the hang. And then there's the presence sometimes in the absence of sounds like the presence and absence of a voice. So it's all these ways of being in the presence of somebody who's just not there. And it's really interesting that how many of these pieces have movement or suggest movement because the vessel invites you to move, the beads invite, this one actually moves, and then we go to Exodus.
Margaret Nagawa 10:02
With Exodus, we have a bicycle, like a real manufactured bicycle that, Barthélémy Toguo has used and installed the cart, a wooden cart with two car tires, and mounted, tied down large parcels wrapped in wax print textiles. And we have other household goods there, the raw plastic kettles and broom, sort of everyday objects that one might use in their life. So this work, we actually moved it from the gallery's upstairs to down here ...
Gianofer Fields 10:44
She would not ride the bike. We tried to get her to ride the bike, and she wouldn't do ... okay, I tried to get her the ride the bike, and she wouldn't do it. Because ...
Margaret Nagawa 10:52
That is not how we treat museum objects! [laughter]
Gianofer Fields 10:54
I know, but it would have been ...
Margaret Nagawa 10:54
It's no longer a bicycle for traveling on, Gianofer …
Gianofer Fields 11:00
It's just suggesting the, suggesting the mode of travel. All right, all right!
Margaret Nagawa 11:04
Yes! Yeah. So it's a very direct and reference to movement. But it's also a cry around why we move. It invites us to think about that. Why does one move with all that luggage on the back of a cart? So those kinds of questions, invite us to walk around the work. Maybe not touch the bicycle, don't be tempted to ride it ...
Gianofer Fields 11:36
Don't throw the bundles. Don't touch it. And that's the thing with this exhibit. It's so inviting and so warm, you want to you want to touch and this is delightful part of it. But then there's the underlying there are these messages that bring into like question like, I couldn't, I could not imagine a) putting all of my stuff on a single thing, and then having to move it. I mean, it's just like this, not only does it bring in movement, but how we move and what we have access to the move. And then the, what's important, like what from our lives, if we were to carry, well, we carry like a, what do you think this is like four by six foot? Maybe, what did you call that the trailer? Yeah, it's maybe like, how much of your life could you fit in a four-by-six-foot trailer?
Margaret Nagawa 12:24
But also what are the conditions that are forcing you to move, that compelling you to move for these moves from the particular to the general to a broader question of movement today. There is the undesirable movement. And there's the laws that govern who moves to where, and also the push from the places people are moving from as well as the perceived pool from the places that people are trying to go. So there's a lot of intricate political challenges and barriers to movement. So even if this bicycle and the cart are laden with goods, that, personal belongings, we're not sure that this person is going to the destination that they really want to go to if they will arrive right at the destination.
Gianofer Fields 13:19
That they even wanted to leave in the first place like this just so many questions about so many quests because you could approach it from absolute joy. The bundles are gorgeous. Yeah, the sacks of what we call I think you call them China bags.
Margaret Nagawa 13:31
Yes, but in West Africa, somebody was telling me they're called Ghana Must Go, so that's a whole different history. So ...
Gianofer Fields 13:37
Ghana Must Go?
Margaret Nagawa 13:38
Yes. Don't ask me the details. I don't know.
Gianofer Fields 13:41
We call them shopping bags. They're full, they’re full, full, full, almost bursting with things.
Margaret Nagawa 13:48
But they give us even just looking at that one material that one bag, we can access different kinds of histories on the eastern and southern side of the African continent. The bag has a different name and therefore it conjures different relationships it's like okay, this is a relationship a transnational, a transcontinental relationship between the African continent and China and then in West Africa is an intra relationship intra Africa relationships, okay, what's going on? What's gonna doing? And then you come to America and it's a shopping bag. Oh, by the shopping can you do this is huge, right. But you are speaking about memory as well, when we look at Gonçalo Mabunda's work from Mozambique, the war in Mozambique is something he experienced. And so when these decommissioned weapons are now put to a different use, it becomes it becomes a new work in a way it repels us because they have bullets and other parts of a gun, have an AK 47, who wants to be that close to this thing? That because it's a chair, it's a throne. It can also be inviting. It can make us feel like, oh, I want to take a break. I've been walking around this exhibition, let me stop. Because of the weights installed off the level of the ground of the floor and onto a pedestal. You stop, because you realize this is a work of art, is not a throne that I can actually just go sit up or sit on and have a conversation with Gianofer.
Gianofer Fields 15:37
Well, we could; we would just both never have jobs again. But then Margaret, talk to me about the face, because there's something about the face that I see in the chair. That's direct. It's not brass copper wire. Talk to me. It's both inviting, it, it’s also a warning. It looks for me, that's what it feels like.
Margaret Nagawa 15:57
Okay, tell us more.
Gianofer Fields 15:58
What like the face is like bringing you in like, Oh, yes. Like surprise. Like, do you? Is it surprised? Like do you want to come closer? Or is it surprise like, watch out? Because ...
Margaret Nagawa 16:11
Maybe that's where we need to sit in the in between space, trying to straddle both worlds, of inviting and repelling circumstances, because the tools, the very materials that he's using, are weapons, this is annihilating somebody, they have been used in war. Therefore there is an end to that. Well, it could call it a beginning of the afterlife. But it's an end, a weapon that has been used to end the life here. So do we want to be invited to that? And then when you talk about warning, maybe saying stay away? It could also work. It's like this is not a throne. This is where the ghosts of all the bad people sitting, right? You don't want these people lead the wars, people who deal in the ammunition. The politicians who make the decisions that one goes to war or does not? Do we want to sit with that for a while. So yes, you're right, it has both aspects of inviting a closer inspection, but also a warning, like stay away.
Gianofer Fields 17:36
It just does this thing to your head, because the end result is beautiful, made up of all these horrible things. It's gorgeous.
Margaret Nagawa 17:44
The contradiction.
Gianofer Fields 17:45
It's just it really messes with your head when it was sitting for a while it was right in this in the gallery that's right to the side of this. And you would watch people walk by it they walked by and then they'd stop like, wait, and then a colon they'd look. And then they'd look closer. And you can almost watch them backing up once they realized what it was like, oh, wait a minute, I don't want to be here. Yeah, like I don't know how I feel about this. It's a, it's a strange place to be.
Margaret Nagawa 18:10
It's a difficult place to sit. Because we there may not be the kind of war on American soil like the one that took place in Mozambique. But there is a continuous and painful slow war against bodies, especially black bodies. And that is extremely painful. When there is again, and there is an institution of authority, and who ends up in the institutions that lock young black people away young people of color away. The weapon that is used in those institutions, is also what we're looking at here. So there may not be the kind of war that is happened in Mozambique. But the war here is equally harmful. And it's slow and continuous for society in general, not only the African American body, but also the whole society. This sense of guilt, the sense of loss, the sense of destruction goes beyond skin color. It's what's the potential that we might have achieved if we did not have that many people locked away. What's the potential that we're losing, when what we choose the ways we choose to enforce discipline to enforce social organization? Our violent? It's a hard place to sit. You can't be comfortable. No, and you shouldn't be comfortable. No, no.
Gianofer Fields 20:12
So now we move to works on canvas. And we're in this section that, again implies movement, there's a bounciness. to it, there's a, there's a movement, talking about what we're looking at.
Margaret Nagawa 20:26
Now these are paintings by a Togolese artist, El Loko. He's the only deceased artist in this collection. He was born in 1950. And he spent most of his professional life in Germany. But with this work, he was inventing a language. This was a work that was trying to create unity across different kinds of people. He was envisioning a future where we could all speak a language that we would all understand in order to create a peaceful society. So he's thinking about futurity, he's thinking about ways we can make a future that is different from where we are. And through creating a whole new script. This is the vision that he was putting forth in these two paintings that we have. Yeah, and you can see from it's the title, the series is called Cosmic Alphabet. So you have a new alphabet, that allows us to unite.
Gianofer Fields 21:40
The way it's presented, if you feel like you might be able to read it, because some of the symbols look familiar. It try, it's like you try to put some like, maybe fish. Like, it's like having on the tip of your tongue. You know, when you can't think of something very much on the tip of the tongue.
Margaret Nagawa 21:58
You're on the cusp of getting something, like, this looks like a T, for example, right? Yeah. And K, someone looks like a king. We're also working with what we know we're starting with where we are.
Gianofer Fields 22:13
It reminds me of, and I'm probably gonna say this wrong, but the tramp series, The hobo series, where hope the traveling workers, migrant or itinerant workers, I think they call them, traveling workers, hobos, we call them. And then we call them Hopi. And there's also a hobo festival. So I don't feel like I'm using a pejorative term. But they would have symbols. So if say, a hobo went to your house, and you fed them, and you were really nice to them. It might be a symbol of a circle with a stick and the triangle bottom, nice lady lived here. But if you had a gun, you were mean, your hands might be splayed out, like, you know, nice lady has a gun.
Margaret Nagawa 22:55
Where would they leave these symbols?
Gianofer Fields 22:56
On the posts, like on the fence posts and wherever, like on the fence post, or if they were going to a rail yard, they might leave a symbol like watch out, they called, they called the, like the security guards, bowls, railroad bulls, like watch out, this bull is mean, or you can get, you can sleep here, but they had like this little chart of symbols. And some of these just remind me of that, that idea of trying to communicate and symbol to people that you may never ever see and probably haven't met, but somehow you've got to, you've got to let them know whether or not this is a safe place to be. I think my favorite one is nice lady have cats, because it's like the little triangle shape. And in fact, a little rough animal drawing. Like, you know, like little ways of communicating. Because in this one too, that just feels like it's on the tip of my tongue. Like this is like a person dancing. Yeah, moving. And maybe that's an H, and a V.
Margaret Nagawa 22:59
And he also plays with depth. Because he uses the grays, the whites and the reds, you get a sense that oh, these are three dimensional objects actually. So when you sort of visualize a human dancing, it makes sense because he has created a certain sense of roundness in the work.
Gianofer Fields 24:18
I don't know what this symbol means but that looks like a lot of fun.
Margaret Nagawa 24:22
Let's try to decipher! Arms up, dancing?
Gianofer Fields 24:26
Dancing, like come on let's go start down the street. Let's go ...
Margaret Nagawa 24:33
Let's do it!
Gianofer Fields 24:34
Just joyful excitment, maybe somebody just jumping up in the air was just like joy and excitement. Yeah. We have the small, small, small, very delicate pieces here.
Margaret Nagawa 24:49
I love these works. They have a complexity that I enjoy because they invite us to return to them and when we return we stay. And this is Jackie Karuti, and we have four of her works. And their title, they're from a collection from a series that she titled A Set of Etchings Produced While Thinking About Fossils. These works, when we look at the title and start from there, they draw us into history. They take us way, way, way back. So when we're thinking about fossils, we're thinking this is a longer-term prospect that we have in front of us, even if what she's showing us is a stool that's tilted. A television set that's bobbing on a body of water, wings, maybe butterfly wings or insect wings. What do you think?
Gianofer Fields 25:55
I'm seeing the stool again too.
Margaret Nagawa 25:58
The stool is there.
Gianofer Fields 25:59
But it looks like monarch wings, like, yeah, it looks like fully. But that's the fly. Yeah, like, is it ... there's an interplay here, I can't tell if the wings are landing or if they're flying away.
Margaret Nagawa 26:19
And that's the beauty. Right? Must we have an answer?
Gianofer Fields 26:23
No.
Margaret Nagawa 26:24
Thank you!
Gianofer Fields 26:24
You're welcome!
Margaret Nagawa 26:25
I think that how she leaves us in that place where we have questions or not quite answers is a fantastic place to be. Because then we can move in different directions with our thoughts with our speculation of what she's talking about. Because she gives us very little information. It's like, etching. That's a title.
Gianofer Fields 26:50
It's not the language. Yeah. It's that. It's, it's how a memory kind of formed in your head, how you remember things like see a flash of this and you see a flash or that or maybe you hear a note, you know, maybe you hear something that starts to recreate, I think image, starts to recreate that image in your head to get you where you just like it's again, it's the tip of the tongue thing. If that questioning, wondering, know what it is for me? It's that moment when you're trying to figure out something with your friend, and they start to pull their phone out and you go, no, no, no, don't look it up. Don't look it up. Let's just see if we can remember! That's what it feels like to be like, No, don't tell me don't tell me.
Margaret Nagawa 27:29
Like a childhood memory that you and your brother remember differently. Right? ‘Yes, we used to have that kind of a TV.’ ‘No, we did not.’ ‘Oh, it used to be on a stand just like that.’ ‘No, we didn't, I know it was on a low table.’ So is this where we are? Where we're not; is this the future? To me, she's taking us through a longer history, but also projecting into the future that we cannot really place. It's, I would say placeless, because she moves, she gives us movement in each piece. Nothing is stable. When we have that those vertical lines, she still gives us diagonals, that challenge the verticality of this. And when we have the TV, and it's bobbing on a body of water, that expands our imagination, because beyond the tiny 10 centimeter frame that she has given us. So in these little tiny prints, were able to travel beyond what is actually physically present in front of us our imagination, is let free, is compelled to go beyond the literal space that she's giving us.
Gianofer Fields 28:48
And she's compelled to not finish the story, but to continue the journey. Like you don't leave when you walk away from it, it doesn't leave you because you sort of start to see these patterns, as you move throughout the stool place. You know, fall sort of falling, invisible, completely over, still tumbling, all of it. This is again, this movement of things just like God inviting you to come along with.
Margaret Nagawa 29:20
And also you want to see the whole series, I begin to wonder what are the other images in this series? So it arouses my curiosity. I want to know more. And why is this one printed in the circular and this one printed in the square form? And why do we have one butterfly wing here and three over there? So those ...
Gianofer Fields 29:44
... and no stool in this one.
Margaret Nagawa 29:46
No stool in this one, but we have water and this stool is cut, it's a half a stool over here. So the possibilities she gives us to allow us to be part of the work to think with her, and to also go beyond what she's showing us visually in this little space. I think these works are very quiet, they are quiet.
Gianofer Fields 30:11
There's also something about it, Margaret, where I want to see the rest of them, but I don't want this story to end.
Margaret Nagawa 30:17
No.
Gianofer Fields 30:18
I don't want that.
Margaret Nagawa 30:19
Maybe we should not see the rest of them.
Gianofer Fields 30:20
Or maybe just look at one, once in awhile.
Margaret Nagawa 30:23
Don't pull up your phone.
Gianofer Fields 30:24
No phone, like maybe, you see it every once in a while that, just like gives you that little bit of taste of it, because it's so delicate. But it's so powerful. Because it also is a reminder, like you said, we don't all remember things the same way.
Margaret Nagawa 30:38
Not at all. And it also builds on the collection. Because the Chazen museum's permanent collection already has a lot of print work, lino cut and woodcut print, mostly from South African artists. And this one, we're going to a different region on the African continent. And that way in the future if somebody's looking at print work in the collection here, and they want to work with that, they have a range of different kinds of printmaking, but also different themes that artists are working with. Most of the ones in the collection already are figurative. And here, there's not a single human body represented. But because we have this stool and the television, we imagine the figure, we imagine a human being that has been in these spaces, or is Joe coming to that space, going to occupy a room where the television set is even if we don't see the chair they might sit in. So there is a place where we create the image in our minds, where she has not included it in the print.
Gianofer Fields 31:54
I also enjoy a lot of times when I'm looking at works like this, whose perspective, through whose lens am I looking at? And there's an, even though I see the artist's work, I don't I immediately become the lens. You know what I mean? Like [crosstalk] and I'm not like, well, what is what are they trying to say to me? It's like, No, I can. This is my little fairy tale that I'm kinda sorta remembering, but maybe not really, I love that. So it's just that this idea that the body really is absent in this work until you appear in front of it.
Margaret Nagawa 32:29
Yes. And you are the body that is engaging with this work. And I love it that you come to the work before you read the label. Yes, that's the way it ought to be. Yeah, because the labor is one perspective, that's one way of looking at the work. But there are many ways to enter this work.
Gianofer Fields 32:50
Information, it's more information than you can ever put on an on a label, it's so it's so much more than you get could ever be said.
Margaret Nagawa 32:57
It's richer than what we can write on the label.
Gianofer Fields 33:00
Very much so. So then, as we stand back, oh, we didn't cover these paintings over here, the works over here. So one of the last things that we see as we transition to another gallery, or, you know, just in front of the, the opening for another gallery, we see these to work through acrylic on paper that really that are absent, present, present absent, it's both.
Margaret Nagawa 33:29
It’s both, in many ways. And this is Ajarb Bernard Ategwa, he's in Cameroon, that's where he works. And he uses these bright, beautiful, rich colors. The two works we have a depictions of women. We know their women from the hair, the braids that are sort of flowing down the side of one of them of the works evening picture. But we don't see their facial features. And their faces and their bodies are the highly textured sections in the paintings. The rest of it is flat paint, we see lines, we see blue lines as outlines, and then the rich purple, the yellow, ochre, the pink in the back. But he denies us that. We cannot say Oh, this painting of a woman looks like Mary. No, it does not. He leaves us that intellectual space to imagine the face of this person. What might they look like? Who might they be? And that I think is quite powerful. This an invitation to the viewer to create with him to have that role to play in imagining what the face of this person might look like.
Gianofer Fields 34:56
And maybe we can and understand, we can understand that sort of depth to a person. But it's still very private, because we don't know who these people are. And I'd like that you go back and imagine all this, but it's very, it's still very private.
Margaret Nagawa 35:14
Yeah. I think the American Ethiopian artists, Julie Mara to in whatever one of her interviews, she say, one should have a right to opacity. And so I think Ajarb Ategwa is working with that kind of idea, that we don't have to know everything. There has to be something that remains opaque, to other people that remains hidden from everybody else, that private space, you can imagine what my life looks like, but I'm not giving it to you.
Gianofer Fields 35:56
In light, and that sort of way, Margaret, for us to think about this entire exhibition. Because we've done this is our third interview, we've set out and I've enjoyed every moment of it. We have talked a lot. Do you still have that? Do you still feel like you were able to keep something to yourself? Or do you feel like, or do you feel like you've said, made it that way to answer this question. Let me ask you this question this way. Do you feel like you've said everything you want to say with this exhibition?
Margaret Nagawa 36:28
This exhibition says what it needs to say about presence and absence, on my part. And what I love is when viewers come into the show, and they add to the story, they challenge what I say, such that we have a conversation. That's where the show will say more. What it says here is just what I'm thinking. It's with the audience that we are going to get richer conversations going about this work.
Gianofer Fields 37:04
So is there anything, I'm gonna ask you the final question ...
Margaret Nagawa 37:06
Is there anything else you want to tell me that I haven't asked you?
Gianofer Fields 37:09
Brilliant!
Margaret Nagawa 37:12
And I'll ask you. Is there anything that I should have asked you that you haven't told me?
Gianofer Fields 37:17
I don't know. I'll have to think about that.
Gianofer Fields 37:21
You've been listening to Meet Me at the Chazen. Our guest Margaret Nagawa is an artist, PhD student at Emory University, and the guest curator for our exhibition, Insistent Presence Contemporary African Art from the Chazen Collection at UW Madison's Chazen Museum of Art. Meet Me at the Chazen is 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.