Insistent Presence: Margaret Nagawa, Part 2

Host Gianofer Fields revisits the Insistent Presence exhibition gallery with guest curator Margaret Nagawa, getting behind Nagawa's color choices,  use of space, and the art groupings that help gallery viewers forge connections between North America and the African continent.

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

[machine-generated transcript]
 
 Gianofer Fields  00:06
 Meet Me at the Chazen. I'm your host, Gianofer Fields. Margaret Nagawa is an artist, PhD student at Emory University in Atlanta, and guest curator for our exhibition, Insistent Presence: Contemporary African Art from the Chazen Collection. Our first conversation took place prior to the opening and unfortunately Nagawa had to leave before the installation was complete. Much to our joy and delight, she is back to see years of planning come to life.

Margaret Nagawa  00:41
 In my thinking about the show, it derived from the colors that I was seeing in the art, and mostly from one particular work by Nigerian artist Ranti Bam, and the work is called Osaan. So it's a small vessel, a terracotta vessel. And those colors are oranges, earthy oranges, and blues, more like indigo blue. And I take that as a starting point to think through what they feeling what the mood of the exhibition would be. It's very grounding. I wanted to feel earthy, but also have a connection between the African continent and the North American continent through the indigo plant. Indigo was one of the earliest cultivated plants in America. And that was in South Carolina and rice before they cultivated cotton. So it's a painful history. But it's also a history that connects these two continents through a botanical relationship. So taking that on, and looking at how an artist is working with those colors today, felt that this is a connection between the two continents that I wanted to create. Even if it's a very subtle connection, you might not pick up on it, but it's there in the background. And the selection of this particular work, when one enters this space, it's a warm orange.
 
 And I chose a black and white contrasting piece by Sungi Mlengeya, from Tanzania. And this painting is a woman whose face is pointing right at the tip of the top part of the canvas, her nose is the tippy top of it, and then her toes reach out to the edges on the left and right sides of the canvas. So we see this body on a very white, rectangular canvas, but it's pushing against those margins. And that's the kind of feeling that I wanted, When one enters they are grounded in her arms that are stretched right in the center. But they're also the feet, the toes suggest to us that move beyond where you are now continue on into the space. And that's the kind of feeling that I wanted to create the contrast, and also the warmth. And the black text on the top that, again, is contrasting, and it's very bold design and Maria ensured that we have this text that communicates the message that the exhibition is about. So this is a collaborative work is not a single thinking and executing. It's a collaborative work between the museum and myself as a curator as a guest curator.

 Gianofer Fields  03:28
 So one of the things I wonder, is there a blueprint that you follow? What are the steps to putting together an exhibition? How do you go about deciding what goes where, when you're faced with conveying I think, so much information, so much emotion, this isn't something that you just walk into and read, you feel it first,
 
 Margaret Nagawa  03:49
 I begin with the work. I think as curators, we have responsibilities to the art, to the artist, and to the audience. The gallery space, the museum space becomes a context. It's either an institutional context, which goes not only the physical space, but also the larger picture of how the institution serves the community around it. Or it's an independent exhibition where it can be a one off event in a non traditional art space, pop up exhibition. But here we're dealing with an institutional space. So that's the context with which we are working, but physically my responsibilities to the art and to the artist and to the audience, first in the context of an institution. So when I look at the art, that's where I derive the direction and the display that is going to follow. How am I going to encourage or what conversations do I see happening among the works then how do I bring out those conversations that I observe in the work for the audience to also engage in those conversations. But at the same time, I'm thinking, what was the artist trying to communicate? Because the artist is thinking about an audience, which might be themselves, but which might also be beyond themselves.
 
 Gianofer Fields  05:21
 You've acquired for new works with the exhibition. But there are also pieces that are from the Chazen permanent collection. So how do you have conversations with the work that you may not physically be in the presence of when you're putting together an exhibition?
 
 Margaret Nagawa  05:36
 I saw the work in images first. And in August 2022, I came here on site, I saw the collection. And that way, I could actually see the work that I had originally seen as an image, I can physically be in the presence of Neo Matloga. And no, oh, this work is taller than I am. So I can be in the presence of highlight Ben Slimane's pottery, and know that this glazed ceramic work, we cannot show it on the ground, we have to show it at a certain level. And we have to protect it in a certain way. Because we don't want curious little hands touching it. It's quite fragile. So all these thoughts are building when I am in the same space with the art, I spent three days here, engaged with the people engaged with the art, such that I could then build on my ideas of how the work was going to be shown in this space that I was also seeing for the first time, I would like us to be able to have a range of conversations around the work. And personally, I felt that we could add works that would enrich these conversations.
 
 For example, when we're looking at photography, and some of the photographs we have in the collection already, were works by Malick Welli, which are showing architecture. But these two architectural sites that he's showing are a Christian or a convent, which is coming from a Catholic Christian Catholic beliefs, and also a mosque, which is coming from Islam. And I'm like what else is going on on the continent, we have these two religions. Yes, they are very important on the continent at many levels. But also there are religions that preceded this and still exist, the kind of deities that individuals and groups on the continent are still in contact with, they consult and guide their lives along those consultations. So I found it very important to have that complimented by work by Ibrahima Thiam from Senegal, as well. So we have these two artists, both from Senegal, both talking about belief, but in different ways. We have then Ibrahima, I suggested his work that I had seen in an exhibition in San Louis, in Senegal. So I have seen these works previously. I I am familiar with the stories they're telling. And I'm familiar with how they can fit within the story that the museum collection is already saying.
 
 Gianofer Fields  08:19
 So the exhibition is titled Insistent Presence and we're in the first part of it. So talk to me about how this landing spot when we enter the room, your intention behind it. And then I have a question because you've done something I don't remember seeing and I've spent a lot of my life in museums. But we'll get to that once you tell, I don't think I always think about how a good object sparks better questions. Not only do we have these works that are sparking these questions, but it's also how you've decided to lay them out. So talk to me about where we're landing here right now in your intention for this space.

Margaret Nagawa  09:03
 When we enter the museum and see the title of the show Insistent Presence, and we see the work by Sungi Mlengeya, the black and white contrast against the warm orange background, we then move into a space that has both orange and blue. This landing space has work that I have categorized under the title, Humans in Society. I have conceptualized the exhibition along three different sections. The first section where we learned is Humans in Society. The second section, which is also in a way where we learned is The Artist is Present. There are no barriers between the two spaces, they flow from one to another. And the final space in the end of the gallery is called The Absent Body. Following what the art is telling me, these are the three major sections that I could see, the major conversations that I could see in the work, the presence and the absence of the human figure in the art. I followed the direction of the art, the arrival space, we look at some work that one might ask, but this is not a figure in society. For example, we're looking at a Leilah Babirye sculpture. And it's a single ceramic sculpture. It's even encased; it's on a pedestal in an old fashioned way of showing art protected in a box. So why am I talking about this work as being in society? My thinking is that this work, it's a head. And the upper part of the body, a torso, decorated, has a necklace. The facial features stand out as strong protrusions, and particularly outstanding is the mouth, which is wide open, and painted red. I read this work as addressing us. Even if the sculpture appears in a singular form, it is trying to be in dialogue with the viewer. And that direct address to the viewer is what I am looking for is what I want to stand out, that this work is talking to you and then inviting you to read the label. After you have taken in that sort of conversation with the work as a viewer.

Gianofer Fields  11:52
 There's something about, normally I don't think about the glass cases, Margaret. But with this work, I want the artists to be doubly protected, because they had to leave their home because of the anti-LGBTQIA+ mandates, would you call them mandates laws, in Uganda.
 
 Margaret Nagawa  12:13
 It's an act. Yeah.
 
 Gianofer Fields  12:14
 And act in Uganda. So Leila has to be, she left Uganda and moved to New York, for her safety. And so for me, this glass case also has another meaning in that we're extra protecting her from any outside influences or any sort of harm. Was that part of your intention?
 
 Margaret Nagawa  12:35
 No, but I like your reading of it.
 
 Gianofer Fields  12:39
 I just want her to be safe!
 
 Margaret Nagawa  12:42
 I'm delighted to hear how you're very empathetic towards Babirye and towards other people who might be caught in situations of exile, not of their own choice. So yeah, thank you.
 
 Gianofer Fields  12:59
 Now, another thing that I've noticed in this space, Margaret, is your use of a blank wall? I don't think that I've seen that. Talk to me about how you arrived at leaving a space, how you how you envisioned it? And is it as the kids would say, is it serving what you want it to serve? Is this doing what you need it to do in this space, because it's striking, because no matter which angle you come from, this blank wall is certainly full, if not overflowing with work.
 
 Margaret Nagawa  13:38
 We have installations in the exhibition sculptural installations, and part of my thinking was, we do have walls, and we also have these freestanding works. This particular one we're looking at is by Péju Alatise, and it's a work that is talking about migration. We have three oars, covered with textile, that she has hand painted, it's blue textile, and the painting on it is patterns in reds, yellows, blues, it's quite lovely and warm. And then on top of that, which one can think about as maybe somebody riding a horse, we have figures seated on top of the fabric which is covering the oar, and these figures are taking positions that are not necessarily joyous. It's not like a figure of sitting on a horse and trying to canter forward. It's figures that are sometimes bowing their heads, hands on their cheeks, an arm on the head. It's not a happy situation.
 
 Gianofer Fields  14:53
 They're not comfortable. This is not something that they it's not a trip anybody necessarily wanted to take or had much time to plan is what it feels like, this is what we got to go now. And this is how we got to go. And we hope that everything works out.
 
 Margaret Nagawa  15:08
 And Péju Alatise is really sending out a cautionary message to say there is trouble in immigration, which withdrawal from the title of the work in installing the work, and leaving a blank, warm orange wall behind it, my thinking was that I do not want the work viewing, the viewing of the work to be interrupted by other work behind it. When a visitor comes to stand in front of the work from any direction, my desire, my intention was that they're able to focus on the art itself. So the wall behind them has to remain as free of any other art as we possibly can, as the space can allow. Fortunately, the space allows us to have blank walls behind Péju Alatise's work to have a blank wall, beside Immy Mali's installation, and that having a lot of space around Mary Sibande's sculpture as well, gives us the room to walk around the sculpture. And if we choose to stop, we can look at the work from a particular angle unimpeded by anything else.
 
 Gianofer Fields  16:28
 I would say that having that blank wall behind it in this this orange sort of ochre cue, you feel like you're part of that journey, sort of like that journey through the unknown, maybe it's dark, when they're passing through this passage, maybe you just you don't know what they're going through. So it invites you to, to, to not only consider the work itself, consider the circumstances of the travel, but also empathize with the journey itself.
 
 Margaret Nagawa  16:55
 Yes, it draws you in emotionally. And that you're able to do that as a viewer, you're able to do that, Gianofer, because you're not disrupted by other art. Once you leave this work, then you will be able to engage with another work, oh, you might choose to walk out of the gallery, but you will have had this kind of relationship with the work for those few minutes you spend with it. And that way, if there's nothing around it, a visitor comes into the space, they spend time with the work they have time to digest it, they have time to draw on their personal experience to draw on what they have read in the past to draw from prior knowledge, either about the topic of migration, or about the artist herself, or they're bringing in knowledge about sculpture, bringing in knowledge about textile art, bringing in knowledge about faring on the waters. These are oars they have been used, they have had a life! So they might be talking about appropriating something from another use into art. So we can enter this work from multiple directions. And I think the blank wall or why I wanted the blank wall, was to give us the space to enter the work.
 
 Gianofer Fields  18:20
 So then as we move, one thing I will say about this work is that when you and the preparers were hanging it, like everybody was talking about something different. Like I was wondering, are these found oars they used, and this is why they have this hue, and somebody else was talking about the fabric. I wonder if this, like everybody found a different place to land on to talk about the piece, because it has so many different elements to it. You can focus just on one of the figures on the oars, there's so many things that can pull you into it. And I really it was really striking about it is that you think of the person, if there are several people lined up in a line, I'm the or. But when you think about travel, and you think about people moving through, you always assume the person in the front has a clear path. But you can see that the people on the front of the or are just as worried as everybody else.
 
 Margaret Nagawa  19:12
 Yeah, they told top most oar for example, has eight figures and to me, some of them are leaning back. Some of them are leaning forward. A couple are leaning sideways one is holding up their cheek. It feels to me like waves. We have waves going up and crashing down on to the next and then up and down. It feels to me that she's conveying this motion this movement on water through the figures without directly talking about water. She does not anywhere say the word water. But that sense of movement, the waves how a vessel might move on the ocean or on a lake, depending where one is, it is conveyed through the way the body is the gestures of the body, the postures of the body. Those ways that the artist is using to convey movement, I think are very important for us to sit with, for a moment.
 
 Gianofer Fields  20:23
 It's a hard work to walk away from.
 
 Margaret Nagawa  20:26
 I think it invites us to stay.
 
 Gianofer Fields  20:27
 Yeah, it's a hard one to, because it's not, I don't feel like I'm being rude. But I feel like I'm not giving it all the attention that it requires to really get into it.
 
 Margaret Nagawa  20:40
 The beauty is that you can come back, yeah, at least for you, Gianofer, you live here,
 
 Gianofer Fields  20:45
 Every time I'm in I come back!
 
 Margaret Nagawa  20:48
 So this exhibition invites you to see it in repeated visits, to see a few works at any one time. It's that kind of exhibition.
 
 Gianofer Fields  20:59
 And there really are, like, if you're thinking about someone, and you're thinking I don't share anything, in my history with this kind of work, I really don't understand it, that to me, I don't know, it's think, again, because there's touchstones everywhere you go. It's a human experience. And I don't, you know, I think that one of the mistakes we make is that we see it as something that's outside of ourselves and our experiences. And it really isn't.
 
 Margaret Nagawa  21:27
 Thinking about the continent of Africa and thinking about artists working on the continent of Africa, one in the United States might assume that, Oh, those are concerns that are very far from me, those are not concerns that I would necessarily deal with I am. Yeah, those are concerns for people who live over there. Not necessarily. As humans, we have experiences that we might encounter in different locations on this planet Earth. But there are connections among us. And among those experiences. When one goes to worship in a mosque in the United States, it's a kind of belief that somebody in the Middle East is following, and somebody on the African continent is following, and somebody in Asia is following. So this commonality is what we I, I'm hoping that we can all find in any exhibition we visit, it could be in this exhibition, Insistent Presence, but it could be upstairs in works that are showing a whole different perspective and a whole different time. And it could be work that is coming into this space next semester, which might be 15th century prints. So that demarcation of, separation among ourselves, I think it's nonproductive.

Gianofer Fields  22:55
 I agree. So now we're at the second part. Although with that, I don't like talking about a part because it flows so well, what we're now in is the area entitled The Artist is Present. So what did you want people to experience as they walked into this portion of the gallery?
 
 Margaret Nagawa  23:15
 I looked at the art and found that a few of the artists were working with their own body, either as a photographic image, or starting with performance and moving into photography, and then film like artist Lebohang Kganye does. And I found that this is interesting. Looking at this art then reminded me of Marina Abramovich, who has done an installation, I mean a performance work with the same title, The Artist is Present. So Marina Abramovich is present in that red dress sitting in that chair at the Museum of Modern Art, and inviting people from the audience to come and spend time with her, just looking at one another.
 
 Gianofer Fields  24:08
 It's an amazing performance.
 
 Margaret Nagawa  24:09
 It's profound. And that kind of communication in silence, we tend to disregard it. But it's critical. And I think some people look at it in terms of meditation. It's a moment to go inside oneself, but also to have them emerge with clear insight to what is going on around us. And I found that the artists are inviting us just the way Marina Abramovich does in that in that performance. These artists are present in the work. And Salah Hassan has done this work before where he had an exhibition in New York at the APAC Center. Looking at what he termed the surrogate presence, this is where artists are particularly present in their work. They're using their bodies in their work. So I was looking at other exhibitions and looking at other artists, how that idea or that work process, working process, of having one's resemblance in the work, how have they been conceptualizing it, as it conceptualized it, so I can think about how these artists are conceptualizing it. So the title comes directly from Marina Abramovich. And it's a very straightforward discussion of what Mary Sibande is talking about when she dresses and has a bronze sculpture of her work with this exaggerated dress, discussing labor changes in South Africa. What is Lebohang Kganye talking about in the work, where she's dressed and performing as a male figure out? What does that tell us about migration patterns, from rural to urban, at a particular time in South Africa and apartheid. And she's creating photographs of this performance, as well as a film that really we can look at as chapters in a life and how relationships are built and change over time in a new place. So we are thinking time, we are thinking movement, we are thinking the presence of this artist who is working with us to learn this history and asking us to engage deeply.
 
 Gianofer Fields  26:30
 And I really love the way that she has marked time by the objects in the room. Like you cannot tell me that the phone that we hear ringing periodically, was not carefully curated, that, to me, that flower, is a particular time period. And it just snatches me back to that time, because it's not a cell phone ring, that's a house ring. That's how old school, probably weighs 10 pounds, telephone that's ringing from a particular time period, and you can see it in the dress. You can see it in the object that she has in the room. And you can really does on a really cellular level move you through this time.
 
 Margaret Nagawa  27:16
 Yes, artists make choices. They make deliberate, intellectual decisions. How am I communicating the ideas that I want to communicate as an artist? Their tools are visual. They're not writing essays like an art historian might, or writing a story like a writer or a poem like a poet might. They're working with these materials deliberately and thinking in detail in depth about the various choices. The nail clipper in this work, the dogs barking, the sounds can locate us in a particular time and a particular place. The train hooting. It's so deliberately chosen, what kind of a suit is she wearing? How does it fit? Is it large? Yes, is extra large. Why is that? So the deliberate choices she's making as something that draws us in. And something that is not random that we must engage with.
 
 Gianofer Fields  28:29
 I just, and what she's chosen to make large, why she would pick a small thing that made them big and they can big things made them small, it's, to me it feels like she's also hinting at memory, like, these are memories of things that have happened, not necessarily. She didn't pick that time period directly up in place it she's remembering what that was. And when you're a child nail clippers are enormous, like everything, you know what I mean? And so you're dwarfed by these small things, and then big things just get out of control. So it really is this, this mix of present day and memory, and almost how she's moving through life, but recalling things that have happened in the past, but it's just very near that ring. It's very interesting how all these cues build up to tell the story. And you've not heard her voice.
 
 Margaret Nagawa  29:30
 Not at all. So she's working with her family history, in order to tell a story about a larger country, moving from the particular to the general, the particularities of her history, which he has gathered through photographs. So her resources that she's working with are photographs from the family album. Her primary materials are the family albums, and also the stories that her extended family is telling. So she starts with a loss in the family. And all that remains is the photographs. And then to reconstruct her history, the history of her family, she's got to find extended family members across the country, to talk with them, and gather their remembrances of who her mother was, who her father was, and how the family got to where they are, where they moved from, where were they born, who did they know, she doesn't tell everything that her family tells her. But this is all information that she relies upon, she works with in order to create the images that we see. So one image that we see on the very far right, she's not wearing a suit, it's a regular shirt, a tie, and pants. But in that second image, we see the suit, and the hat, she's coming into the room, has a bag, drops it down, she's wearing an ill-fitting suit, which tells us a whole different story. Is this a grandfather, and what time in their life is that? So by working with stories, and narrated stories to her, and photographs, she's able to then build on that and make performance art, which what we have right now is the moving image and the still images. So there are layers, the process of creating the work takes time. And it is relying on different kinds of materials to get to where she's, she is right now.
 
 Gianofer Fields  31:47
 She's relying on memories of others to who also have her in their place as a memory. I don't know Margaret, if you've experienced this, that when you talk to your older relatives, for the first few minutes, they kind of forget you're an adult, and they talk to you like you were when you were 12 or 13. And then through the conversation, you can see them go oh my god, she's grown up, like you can see it sort of dawned on them. So even in these conversations, there's a transformation that that happens in between memory, and then what comes out of their mouth, and then how she takes it into, it's all this sort of, sort of it's all this information that's gone through many lenses, and wound up in the gallery.
 
 Margaret Nagawa  32:30
 Indeed, and how each retelling is different. Each individual, your grandmother, grandfather and uncle, each one is going to tell the story differently because they remember it differently. And so as an artist, she's gathering these diverse stories to tell her understanding of their stories, I find that very, very interesting. And also Nana Yaw Oduro, in Accra invites us into his space, his particular location in Accra, Ghana, but through family, who he chooses, specifically, because of what they look like; they look a bit like him. So he's making what I read as self-portraits, through collaboration with friends, and neighbors and family. And only one of these is a real is a picture of himself. The other four are different individuals. But he communicates there's a lot of oral relationship going on, say, this is the kind of mood I'm thinking about. This is the kind of emotion that I'm thinking you would portray in this work. This is the kind of context that we're thinking about, and then leave some space for the person that he's modeling for him to do this. To choose to go through with the gesture that he's communicating. Collaborative efforts to create a portrait that is not of a likeness of oneself is another thing that I find very worth sitting with.
 
 Gianofer Fields  34:13
 As we made our way through the exhibition, guests arriving for a lecture by curator and writer Serubiri Moses began to fill the gallery. Rather than continuing with the interview, we decided to leave you with a cliffhanger. We will revisit the conversation when Margaret returns November 9 through the 10th for a lecture, curator conversation, and gallery tours of the exhibition. You've been listening to Meet Me at the Chazen. Our guest Margaret Nagawa, is the guest curator for 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 collective exhibitions, visit chazen.wisc.edu I'm your host, Gianofer Fields. Thank you for listening.