Insistent Presence: Margaret Nagawa, Part 1

Guest curator Margaret Nagawa and host Gianofer Fields discuss the Insistent Presence exhibition, touching on the challenges of classifying  African art, colonization, commodification, the relationship between artist and culture, and much more.

Above all, Nagawa says, "It's important that we walk through the doors of the Chazen Museum of Art with an open heart. The idea that Africa is so far away, it's so remote from our understanding, should be left outside the doors."

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.

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Transcript

Gianofer Fields  00:10
Meet me at the Chazen. I'm your host, Gianofer Fields.

Margaret Nagawa  00:14
What I would like is for visitors to engage with the show, ask questions of the work, ask questions of one another, and not expect to have instant responses or answers or conclusions. Leave the openness. I'd like to leave the openness in it, as people think about the presence and the absence of the human figure in contemporary African art. And what does that mean?

Gianofer Fields  00:49
Margaret Nagawa is an artist and a PhD student at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. She is the guest curator for a new exhibition entitled Insistent Presence: Contemporary African Art from the Chazen Collection. Born in Uganda, part of her research focuses on the connections between African artists on the continent, and how their relationship with Europe and the West is changing. The work is contemporary and spans the continent. Nagawa says although it's a small selection, she hopes it's the continuation of a much larger conversation.

Margaret Nagawa  01:29
When we are thinking about contemporary art, sometimes art historians merge what we might think of as modern art and contemporary art, there is no hard year that this is the beginning. So from the 1960s, even before that 1940s, '50s, 60s, when there was a move towards decolonization of African countries, that's when some of the art that is termed as modern is happening. And there's a sometimes a conversation between the art being made on the continent, and the modern art developing in Europe. So there are conversations between what Picasso is doing, and he's taking from African art and what African artists are doing, and taking from European art. So those conversations are going on. Even if when we are looking at Picasso, we are going back and thinking 1910, thinking 1906, when he's encountering masks from traders coming along the West African coast, and the work is arriving in Marseille, and then getting distributed into Europe. So at good person to read who is discussing that kind of interaction between Picasso and the West African art is Joshua Cohen. He's a professor at City College in New York.

So those kinds of interactions allow us to have a more fluid, kind of a time frame. So modern art, and then we look into the post-independence 1960s. Most countries on the African continent, were gaining independence. And so the relationship now is no longer so much with Europe, but an internal conversation about ideas of who the new African, independent African, is going to be. And that's when there is all this self-imaging and self-projection of who are we. The questions that artists are asking are slightly different. What is our relationship with the colonizing powers? How are we formulating our new nations and who is the person that is coming out of this new relationship with the colonizing power? So some people date contemporary art from that, while others dated from the 1990s and connected to the Dakar Biennale. And among those scholars is Ugochukwu-Smooth Nzewi, who is a curator at the MoMA, now curator of painting and sculpture, and he studied with Professor Sidney Kasfir at Emory University. So for him, we're looking at the relationship between institutions. We're looking at how the biennales are developing, and bringing the African continent together in cultural conversations. So the 1990s were an important point, when the Dakar Biennale was established and brought not only African people together, but Black people from around the world were invited to this biennale. So every year it's still running, every two years. The artists come together or are invited, supported by the Senegalese depart, Senegalese government, to have this exhibition happen, and some of the artists in this exhibition have taken part in that biennale.

Gianofer Fields 05:14
I think Margaret, one of the things is that, in thinking about African art, we in the West have been conditioned to relegate it to a specific time period, tied to culture, not necessarily the individual. And tied to, do I want to say, something otherworldly? Does that make any sense? I think I want to say otherworldly, even to the point where and talking about African contemporary African art and reading about it, the flip between traditional and classical, this sort of idea that it's even given different words to describe it than you would European art, as if it's some unbelievable other that has dropped out of someplace unknown. So talk to me about that, how do we then, how we're, how the gap may be bridged between that idea of even what to call contemporary African or, or to call classical African art.

Margaret Nagawa  06:16
So that's a very interesting debate, or even a conceptualization of art around the world. To have the idea that there is modern art, modern art had to be contrasted with something else. So out of the modern, in order to create a contrast, somebody had to make the word primitive rise, as a contrast as to what modern was not. And in ...

Gianofer Fields  06:46
I'm sorry, I just I can't resist. Would that word have been used for any other continent? In any other work, that we would call something classical. Like, it's seriously like, Okay, I'm sorry, I just had a moment there, I was just like, immediately offended at the fact that the immediate goal to contradict, classic, not classical, contemporary, would be primitive. And talking about African art.

Margaret Nagawa  07:16
That's African art. That's art that was not in Europe. Most places geographically around the world were contrasted in relation to Europe, and there was that hierarchy being created. Unfortunately, that hierarchy pushes forward. It exists, but it must not, we must not let it exist, because what is termed as so-called classical or traditional African art, is not in the past. That art is living. That art continues to be made in this day. And there are artists who are working in what one might call contemporary art, but in direct conversation with what with what one might call traditional African art. One of those artists is Zina Saro-Wiwa, who is here in America. So Zina Saro-Wiwa plays with these two areas. And in her work, we can find that no, you cannot work in the way … we cannot look at these terminologies in terms of time. The periods we are looking at did not start and end at any one moment. The beliefs that follow or create this work out of what this work arises, continue. They're altered. Of course! There was change. Of course! Nothing is static. So even the word "tradition" is problematic. It assumes that something is static and is not changing, which is not so.

Gianofer Fields  08:58
I think that when you can use, because I'm, my background is art history and material culture and I work a lot with textiles, that's my sort of my thing, that is my thing, it's so much fun to tell you about. I have to tell you about my fabulous kaftan when we're done. And so is that part of assigning the work to the culture rather than an individual? If we can keep calling things traditional or primitive, then it becomes the work of a culture and not a person. Is that sort of way or is that, I think I've kind of answered my own question. That seems to me a way to deny the individual, that there's an individual person who may have a particular point of view that does not necessarily align with the culture. But yet the work they're doing is ascribed to a culture rather than to them as a person.

Margaret Nagawa  09:54
Again, those debates about assigning work to a culture have been going on for a while. There is an essay from 1984. I might be wrong, by Sidney Kasfir, "One Tribe, One Style" or the other way around.

Gianofer Fields  10:10
Oh, I can tell you because I wrote it down. It is "One Tribe, One Style."

Margaret Nagawa  10:15
"One Tribe, One Style." So that contests the idea that you have a group of people who are all working in the same way, and repeating the same patterns, repeating the same way of working with a particular material using a particular technique. Again, and again and again. Professor Zoë Strother has also talked about it. Professor Susan Gagliardi is also discussing this. It's not tenable. We have to realize even by walking out of our doors, that there is no group of people that is thinking the same way, even within any group of people that ascribes to a particular belief does not express that belief in similar ways. Just as there's that variance in our thinking, in our expression, is the same way that artists, they have ideas that may relate to one another across geographical zones, or even within one city. But it doesn't mean they express them the same way. If someone is talking about the political situation in their country, and another person in the same city is talking about the same issue. They're going to express it differently. And we recognize that we must recognize that.

Gianofer Fields  10:15
Is that also part of the, it's part of the problem, but also the ... I read about the difficulties in classifying and classification of African art. You know, what's the material, what, you know, how do the difficulties that the West seems to have in just describing it and ascribing it to any sort of the categories that .... read your question, Gianofer! Here it is! The imperfections of categories for African art outdated, anthropological classifications, rather than info about the work maker, patron, is this that heart of that whole big problem? And is, that would that possibly be a solution, there's going to be, there's no one solution to any great problem. But is that like the start of a solution to this problem?

Margaret Nagawa  12:29
It is, and it's, it's been going on for a while. There are scholars who are recognizing that this is an individual artist, this is how they work with this particular material. And this is how they have changed over time. Because we also cannot expect an artist to work the same way in 1962 and still the same way in 1975, and even still the same way in 2001. They change over time, just the way any other individual changes in how they think, in how they express themselves, in the material and technology that is available that they take on and work with and experiment with, that is growth. And we expect that of each individual. So the moment we sort of take off our blinders and look more openly, and say, all right, there is a bronze sculpture made by Mary Sibande. And we recognize that, and also recognize her other work in performance. And we recognize the location in which she is working, in South Africa, Johannesburg, and we also recognize the political history. What is that context? And how does it inform the art that she produces? Then we are recognizing the individual contribution to cultural conversations, then we are reaching for it.

Gianofer Fields  13:51
I think Margaret, this is a great way to start talking about this exhibit, entitled Insistent Presence.

Margaret Nagawa  13:56
I am delighted to be a guest curator, to have been invited to guest curate this exhibition, Insistent Presence. One, it brought me in touch with more work from the African continent than I had experienced. So it's a benefit to me individually, and I highly appreciate that. I went through the process of looking at each artist and each work very carefully before I came up with the sort of the thematic unity through the work. The presence of the human figure, the presence and the absence of the human figure, but always referencing the body, is what I found to be a common thread in the work. The work spans the continent, from Tunisia up north to South Africa, and the very south of the continent, from Senegal, all the way into Ethiopia and Kenya. So we are hitting all these various coasts, although not trying to represent the whole continent, not at all, that's not the intention of this exhibition, the intention is to see or create a conversation among the works. But they're only a small selection of work from the continent, art that's been made in the very recent decade, between 2011 and 2022. It's very new work. And the artists are mostly living artists, except one, [El Loko] from Togo. And that's the only artist who has passed away. But the rest of these artists, these conversations can continue among the works. But also, because we are helped by today's social media, once one sees a work of art here, they can look them up. And then they can see the artists on Instagram, they can find their website, they can see the artist interactions on Facebook, and sort of join the conversation beyond the physical exhibition. So it's wonderful that we have the current technology to communicate with one another, we come here, we see their work together. And also we can leave the museum, but still continue to see the images and the thinking of the artists who have made the work we have just experienced.

Gianofer Fields  16:20
Margaret, I'm gonna give my age away here, because until you said that it did not dawn on me that I could go on Instagram, and actually contact one of the artists! I'm so used to having to do it from, from my work point of view. And I always, and will, like, art was the thing that was my reward for being good in school. So it's always on this pedestal for me. So the idea that I would dare, you know, reach out to an artist, just to say I love your work, I didn't have it not be part of something that has to be shared with whoever. Thank you for that. Because it told me I was like, wait a minute, I can send them a DM!

Margaret Nagawa  16:58
You can. That's the beauty of working with living artists. They're mostly accessible. We don't want to badger them though.

Gianofer Fields  17:07
Right? Crazy, like, Hey, I just had a steak this morning, how are you? I want to keep it classy! But just this idea that, you know, there is this, because it's always presented to us. And I think I can say this is a general, as something so far away, it's so far away. It's a continent so far away. All of this is so unattainable, you know, be it time, be at some language barriers, be it whatever, but just this idea that it's not so far away.

Margaret Nagawa  17:44
It's not so far away. And also it depends on where you place the center. But if we're sitting in Nairobi, America is so far away.
 
Gianofer Fields  17:53
Exactly. On so many levels.

Margaret Nagawa  17:55
On so many levels. So, it depends where you put the center of your campus. And any place in the world right now, the barrier is ... I can say there is no barrier. There are many barriers, many barriers to the travel of human beings. But the goods travel much more easily. Yeah, and the human beings too. So that is a problem. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie spoke about this, when they were opening the museum in Berlin, we have to look up the proper name of the museum. So in her keynote speech at that opening, she spoke about this. The work, the art can travel so much more easily than the individual human beings, because we have the barriers of visas. Of course, each country wants to man their borders, they want to know who's coming and going and why that's understandable. But sometimes, it is enforced in a very inhuman way. And that is a problem. We have to look at one another as humans first. This exhibition teaches us that or reminds us of that, we know it. The exhibition reminds us that there is a centrality to a human being. And there is a centrality we have to place about relationships. So when we talk about the body, and we talk about the artists, and we talk about works that might not represent the body directly, but they still refer to the body indirectly, we have to really center our thinking around one another. The concept of ubuntu in Uganda, they call it obunto bulamu. It's a concept that is widely understood on the African continent, that relationships are critical. If you are well Gianofer, I am well too. And the greeting tells us that. How are you, Gianofer? I am well, how are you? How are your children? It is important to know how one person is and how the other is because that's what builds community. That's what builds relationships, not the barriers. And that is critical for our progress for the peace that we seek.

It's important that we walk through the doors of the Chazen Museum of Art with an open heart. The idea that Africa is so far away, it's so remote from our understanding, should be left outside the doors. Once one walks through the doors, looks at the work before even reading the label, because that's one reading as a curator, that's my interpretation of what's going on in the work. I have spoken to some of the artists, but that's my understanding of what they're saying. So to me, it's important that we walk through the exhibition, look at the work, spend some time with it, talk to one another, even if it's a stranger standing, Besides, you're looking at the work, talk to one another. What does it say to you? What does it say to me? Challenge the labels. Challenge the chat that is sitting on the wall telling you what the work is. I invite you to challenge it. I think that's how we grow conversation. That's how we get to talk about and with one another. And therefore we get to understand one another, through that process. We ask questions of ourselves, we ask questions of the work, we ask questions of the curators. What is it you're trying to tell me? How are you saying it? And why are you saying it that way? That's important. And I invite visitors to the exhibition to approach the work in that way. It is not set in stone.

Gianofer Fields  21:39
So then, Margaret, what ... is there a particular piece that started this conversation for you? Oh, I can see, see, this is why it's important for us together?

Margaret Nagawa  21:50
Don't ask that question! [laughter] All this work is special. Each piece is important in its own unique way. Some is due to the materials, how artists have worked with the materials. When you look at the bronze, the Mary Sibande sculpture, Sower in the Field, it flows like water.

Gianofer Fields  22:37
I swear she moves. Where she moves, I do I swear her hand moves.

Margaret Nagawa  22:45
Even the toes, yes, how they're peeping out of the gown. And her hand turned outward yet it's still holding seeds in its palm, and the train flowing behind her. That is like waves. And yet made out of a permanent material, bronze. And she's moving and she's moving.

Gianofer Fields  23:10
And it's such the idea of this. It's a simple act, It's so elegant and so crucial to survival, sowing seeds planting. It's this way of not only is this a feeding visually, spiritually, like my heart is evolved, but it's actual, an act that does feed us, that does allow us to continue.

Margaret Nagawa  23:37
If we're able to sow seeds, that means we believe these seeds will germinate. We believe there is a future. So reading that act, that elegant Act, as you call it, in the context of South Africa, post-apartheid South Africa means there is hope in the future, because she's looking at that domestic worker, the uniform of the domestic worker that as ascribes women to work that they couldn't get during the apartheid period. They were domestic workers, Black women in white homes, and members of Sibande's family, her mother, her grandmother, did this work. This sculpture is a declaration that that is the end of that kind of labor. The new kind of labor believes there is a future and we will make that future even better than we have in the present. The end of apartheid in 1994 meant that women could be educated more than they were before, Black women. Black women, Black women could leave being a housemaid in somebody's home and have a different kind of a dream. And in this work, we see that,  so she's taking the domestic worker's uniform, molding it or using a Victorian gown and exaggerating that gown. The sleeves are rising up to the ears, the gown, the tail, the train is way back, which to me looks like a wave, leaving waves in her way. Oh, yeah, the future is positive. And she's inviting us into that future. To dream with her to make it happen.

Gianofer Fields  25:35
To move out of this place, like she's, it even looks like the with, the way her knee is against, it's bending the fabric in the front, like she's just gonna walk right out of that dress and into her future.

Margaret Nagawa  25:44
She is walking forward. She is. And she has that gentle smile on her face.

Gianofer Fields  25:51
She know this, there's a certainty to her face. Like, she can be relaxed in this motion, because she knows that it's at the end of it, she's walking out of it. So she's on to the next.

Margaret Nagawa  26:01
Next, and the seeds tell us so much. So in the field, she's sowing a different future. And she believes there is a different future.

Gianofer Fields  26:14
And in that she's found peace, in that she's found peace. I've noticed Margaret, there's a lot of photography in this exhibition. Let's walk through and talk about some of them are, you know, what you want to take me, you can take me where you want to go.

Margaret Nagawa  26:30
I love each of these works. I love each section, I have spent so much time looking at the work reading about it, reading about the artists. So there is no way I can say this is my favorite, this is not. It's like having children. Not a single one is better than another. Each one has a different attribute that makes them unique that makes them special.

Gianofer Fields  26:55
But you did, there is a first child.

Margaret Nagawa  26:58
The first child is just the number. And the baby is just the baby is just the order in which they were born. They're all great. Yeah.

Gianofer Fields  27:12
Because traditionally, traditionally, I don't want to say that. But the Chazen is not known for having a whole bunch of photography and its work. And it's a big discussion in galleries and museums. Whether or not photography is actually art.

Margaret Nagawa  27:25
Oh, it is art, we're not going to go into that debate.

Gianofer Fields  27:28
Exactly! Is that even a question, it's art! So I've always been like, you're just looking for stuff to talk about because it's art, like, what's the problem! Let's move on!

Margaret Nagawa  27:39
we're going to have two lectures as part of the programming for this exhibition. And they will both contextualize the photography in this work. And they will both show that photography has been used on the African continent for a long, long time. It takes us back to the conversations about ethnographic work, about anthropological work on the continent. So the recording of the, I don't want to say the word, the people living on the continent, the recording that this is a type of this kind of a person, this is the kind of hair that they wear, this is how they do this in this part of the world. So that kind of recording, photography played a big role in it. It was not only textual, it was a mixture of text and photography that recorded that. Carrie Mae Weems has worked with those images, revisiting them and trying to tell different stories with them. So that body of work is there. But once the technology was invented, it did not stick with the colonial mission. Artists were working with that medium, experimenting with it across the continent, and the conversations between the Indian, around the countries along the Indian coast, that you're looking at Kenya, Tanzania, so that coastal world, and also the Indian subcontinent, there were a lot of conversations and technological advancements going back and forth. And that's a side of the continent people rarely look at. But photography was central to the self-imaging of a lot of residents along the coast. So as a medium, there's no contestation. It is art.

Gianofer Fields  29:29
And you heard it here first. Because you know, you mentioned the continent there is this idea that African art comes from a certain time period and a certain location and then that's it. And it's so bizarre to me.

Margaret Nagawa  29:44
It is just a bias, I guess, depending on the geographical location, depending on the political situation. The connections between the African continent and other continents varies. So The trade along the East African coast was for a long period with the Arab countries, so the Middle East, and then with the Indian side, so that geographical relationship is different. And when you look at Southern Africa, it's also different. But photography was powerful there. And one of the lectures we'll have with Serubiri Moses, we'll be talking about how Lebohang Kganye and Santu Mofokeng, there is a conversation among the bodies of work that they create, interrogating the current situation or the prevailing situation in which they live in South Africa. So it's very important to see how people's self-image the self-image of individuals using photography has been going on for a long time. So there is no question that photography is important. And it's been, it has been used on the continent, that just the knowledge in different parts of the world about what's going on in the country on the continent varies. So West African countries are more well-known to Europe and North America, mostly because of this cultural work that came to these countries through the colonial extraction of those countries. So when we look at masks, for example, in the next room, we are looking at the Congo, we are looking at the Koba people in the Congo. And we're looking at Gabon, so the West African and also Central African areas have had a lot of contact because of the masking traditions. And because they had materials that were desirable to a culture or cultures that were already invested in sculpture. But when a region is more expressive in terms of dance, in terms of architecture that is immovable, then it doesn't make it into the storybooks.

Gianofer Fields  32:10
Can you commodify it, can you, can, can the market, make money off of it? Can it be bought and sold and traded?

Margaret Nagawa  32:17
You have hit it on the head. So commodification was part of the game. And that's a huge conversation. And also, what we have to differentiate is that the artists working, or artists whose work in this exhibition, made the work for the market. So the kind of relationship with the work is different than when work was taken from an individual who was practicing a different kind of religious belief. And that individual was converted to a new religion imported onto the continent, that relationship to a particular object taken away, because there has been a conversion is very different from an artist who is making a work that is intended to go into an art gallery, or an art fair, and is a direct part of the ecosystem of art today. So this cycle of a work of art is from the artist into the marketplace, and into a collectors home, or into a museum, different avenues and then back onto the secondary market sometimes. So these artists are deliberately making work that goes into the market, it's very different than other kinds of production. Sometimes it was workshops, overseen by a missionary or colonial governor, that were churning out objects to go on to the market. But this individual artist is making a statement, they're intending for it to go into a certain direction to be seen by a certain group of people, either in their location of production, or outside of that. And that's very clear.

Gianofer Fields  34:15
It's so about time, it's just so about time that artists are able to self-identify, self-determined, decide where, who, when, where the work goes, who gets to name it, who gets to classify it, who gets to have ownership over it. And that's why I love like so many layers of Insistent Presence, because it has been since, and it's like that's the only thing, I don't want to say that's the only thing, but I will because I can have, like this insistence on being seen and being heard and being understood. Not even necessarily understood, but considered to have an opinion. Yes, I have individuality. Even if the opinions differ, that there is an opinion, and that, you know, doing colonization, all that identity, opinion, self-determination, all that was just like, stripped away for commodification.

Margaret Nagawa  35:15
They tried, they tried, the colonizer tried. But there's resilience. individuals, communities, families, they stayed together, despite all the challenges, despite the divisions of the continent into smaller groups into smaller territories that were called the nation-state. Groups of people survived under that, and groups of people remained resilient. And this is the kind of work we see today. Who am I? What do I want to show the world? What do I want to keep private? That kind of agency is paramount. It's important. And artists know that and they express it. So the Insistent Presence of the human figure in the art, I observed that, or I read that from Chika Okeke-Agulu and Okwui Enwezor in their book, Contemporary African Art Since 1980. They observe that even before independence, artists were making work that stood as an equivalent of the literary works in a way, it's a different kind of a voicing, like, when would you what Yongle was writing in Kenya, and writing in his language, they call your language, that was a moment of protests. Like you're not imposing your language on me, I'm speaking to my people first. However, few or many, they might be in the context of the larger newly created nation, I am going to speak to the agricultural people first, then I will translate what I'm saying into English. That is a political act with the pen, and the language and language is quite important.

In this exhibition, there are many artists who are titling their work in their mother tongues. And that's critical. And that shows you the resilience that people have had that is expressed here. The visual artists were also making work of that kind. Aina Onabolu in Nigeria, he was painting, these regal figures of Nigerians. It's like they are beautifully dressed, they're elegant, they're confident. And he was criticized for making work that looked like European art that was using European materials. But he was using the colonial's tools to talk to the colonial person. It's like, these are the tools you understand, these are the images I'm making in a material, you understand, and I am not going to be broken, and these people are not broken.

And in poetry, that was happening as well. The poet President Léopold Sédar Senghor [of Senegal] is more well known through the Negritude movement. And his poetry is like this, there is a kind of essence to how individuals on the continent express themselves. But there is also on the other side of the continent, somebody who is rarely spoken about. And Okot p'Bitek, a Ugandan poet, who also wrote in his mother tongue Acholi, and then translated into English. There's a long poem, which is often called a song, the Song of Lawino. And the response to that, the Song of Ocol, when he's really grappling with the challenges, what colonialism has brought, and that moment, when there is a struggle for independence, the formation of political parties, as they are known outside of the continent, the formation of new structures, new institutions, and how that was playing out with existing institutions. So Song of Lawino and Song of Ocol, those are the two kinds of voices we hear from somebody grounded into their cultural experiences and somebody who is taking on the British ways of living. And so he's having this dialogue between the two. 1950s 1960s Until the early 1980s, before he passed away, so we are seeing in literature in poetry in the visual arts, we're seeing it also in theater. So this is a conversation that's richer. We cannot confine it to painting or sculpture. Photography was critical. It's part of a wider conversation across different media. The visual, the theatrical, the literary, those cannot be separated. We have to think of them together.

Gianofer Fields  40:41
So I wasn't able to get you to pick a specific piece. She will not. So what do you want to tell me that I haven't asked you? We've gone, I feel like I've been we've been covering a lot of academic sort of things. But I want you to, I want you to tell me what you want me to know about this? What do you want? What do you want to tell me that I didn't ask you, Margaret, you can take me anywhere.

Margaret Nagawa  41:08
The techniques, maybe. We've talked about the metal, the bronze. We can talk about Collin Sekajugo's work regarding the playing of the layering, not only of the medium of photography, and painting, but also the layering of the individual artists into the work. So he photographs himself, we have this image of him in the long white tunic, which is called a candle. And he's holding a yellow, a yellow jerrycan, which is also found across many households on the African continent, holding either water or oil, or any range of materials, but water is the most common. Sekajugo takes this photograph, mounts it on top of bags that I use,  shopping bags.

Gianofer Fields  42:11
The bags that we saw in Exodus.
 
 Margaret Nagawa  42:12
There's bags there, and bags there. So we have those same bags in Exodus. But let me to go from Cameroon on the other side of the continent is using them, and so is Collin Sekajugo from Rwanda and Uganda using that bag also. So the shopping bag is creating this kind of link between East and West between these two worlds. One is collage, painting. And one is an installation with all these fabrics that you love, I'm waiting for you to tell me about your fabulous ...

Gianofer Fields  42:48
The fabulous kaftan!

Margaret Nagawa  42:51
And when you get close enough, you see the logo for ShopRite. ShopRite is a South African supermarket chain, but it also expanded across the continent. And there was a branch in Uganda. It's not the generic bag, but we can specifically locate which places on the continent he's referencing. It could be ShopRite branch in Uganda, it could be in South Africa, he leaves us that room to sort of think through here. Again, when you look carefully, he's mounted the photograph on another bag from Calcutta Sugar Works. And that is a sugar making industry in Uganda. So he has located us in South Africa. And in Uganda. What does that tell us? There are relationships on the continent, our progress, the progress on the continent, or the challenges on the continent. And not necessarily with the outside-of-the-continent kind of geography. There are intra-Africa relationships. This is an economic relationship on the continent. So these are two countries if we place ShopRite in South Africa and Calcutta Sugar Works in Uganda. These are thriving economies at different times, in different ways. They have their challenges, but he has geographically located us through the jerrican and through the logos on the shopping bags. And he gives us that duality through the shadows behind the work. We have two shadows. The shadow is critical metaphysically. What does it tell us? Something that moves. What does it tell us when some people believe that a shadow can be stolen? If one shadow is stolen, then what does that mean? That is an emptiness. But also what does it mean when we have two shadows?

Gianofer Fields  45:03
Right? And we have one that clearly, it's bisected. Exactly. And then there's one that sort of, it's the can, the container does enter into that shadow. But the shadow itself is so, it's on the bag, it's got movement, the head placement seems to be the same as the other than the arm. But it's not bifurcated, really, by anything that is really, and I'm looking for more words, or anything that is standing out. There's some at the bottom, but there's it's within this shadow on this side.

Margaret Nagawa  45:37
We have the end of the word sugar, but it's not in the shadow.

Gianofer Fields  45:42
We have the big sort of sugar here. Cool, and we don't know.

Margaret Nagawa  45:47
Yeah, probably keep cool and dry. Yeah.

Gianofer Fields  45:51
So is this shadow in the future? Is this the unknown? Is this where this could this relationship? Or is it a sign that even though he is he's moving in the pose, is it a sign that there's more travel and more connection to be made, more movement to be made? A signature?

Margaret Nagawa  46:11
Possibly? I think we need to leave some of this for the viewers to interpret for themselves. What does it say to a visitor when they stand in front of this work?

Gianofer Fields  46:23
What is your heart's desire for this exhibition? Or? Or is it the exhibit itself, your heart's desire?

Margaret Nagawa  46:32
That heart's desire is coming into fruition right now. But it won't be complete until guests walk through the doors. And what I would like is for visitors to engage with the show, ask questions of the work, ask questions of one another, and not expect to have instant responses or answers or conclusions. Leave ... the openness, I'd like to leave the openness in it as people think about the presence and the absence of the human figure in contemporary African art. And what does that mean? It does not mean that we're sort of on the top of the hierarchy. And animals are on the bottom, there is relationships materially between individuals, and living things and inanimate things. So that's a relationship that I don't talk about in this exhibition, because that's not what the artists are talking about. I focus mainly on what the artist are talking about, and the body is critical. So think of the human figure and think of the different ways that artists are representing, artists are talking about the body in the show.

Gianofer Fields  47:50
I think that's it. I think that's … Is there anything on the show me? I didn't ask you?

Margaret Nagawa  47:54
I can't think it right now.
 
Gianofer Fields  47:57
If you come up with something we can always add.

Margaret Nagawa  48:03
Anytime you drop in and ask me a question, we can make a collage! [laughter] A collage of conversation!

Gianofer Fields  48:12
You've been listening to Meet Me at the Chazen. Our guest, Margaret Nagawa, is the guest curator for our exhibition entitled Insistent Presence 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. Thanks for listening.