Hope & Dread Extra: Michael Armitage
Hope & Dread Extra: Michael Armitage focuses on a conversation with artist Michael Armitage, who recently founded the Nairobi Contemporary Arts Institute (NCAI).
Hope & Dread Extra is a series of short, sharp bonus episodes featuring your season favorites from Hope & Dread. Our guests were brimming with additional ideas and extra insights that we just didn’t have room for within the documentary series. But we didn’t want to leave them on the cutting room floor. Join hosts Charlotte Burns and Allan Schwartzman for new Hope & Dread Extra every Tuesday and Thursday.
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Transcript:
Charlotte Burns:
This is Hope & Dread Extra. I’m Charlotte Burns.
Allan Schwartzman:
And I’m Allan Schwartzman.
Charlotte Burns:
Hope & Dread was a program about the tectonic shifts in power in art. We’ve heard from people who are making change and from people who are resisting change.
Our guests were brimming with ideas and off-topic thoughts that we just didn’t have room for within the documentary series. But we didn’t want to leave them on the cutting-room floor. So now, we’re bringing you a set of short, sharp bonus episodes featuring some of your season favorites, which we’ll be dropping twice a week.
Today we’re bringing you more from artist Michael Armitage, who is also the founder of NCAI, the Nairobi Contemporary Arts Institute. Here, Michael talks about his artistic influences, starting with “Mwili, Akili na Roho”, a section of Michael’s retrospective at London’s Royal Academy of Arts last year. In it, he dedicated space to six artists whose work track the shifts in figurative art in East Africa from the 1950s to the year 2000.
Michael Armitage:
For me, it was important to speak to a history that also had stylistic and conceptual shifts throughout it, because that's something that people really never talk about and think of. There's always this phrase, which drives me mad, of African modernism, that seems to bundle together every single idea that has been spoken about on the continent over a 50-year period, it's a little bit insane.
Whereas for me, it was really important to recognize the figures within the trajectory of East African art and the changes. So for example, the artists in this span about a 50-year period, from the 1950s to 2000. Obviously, you can't tell the full story in a small space, so we narrowed it down to six artists that we felt were important to the story.
The older artists who are still alive and still working today were Asaph [Ng’ethe] Macua and Elimo Njau, and they both studied at Makerere University under [Sam] Ntiro, who is a phenomenal figure in East African art. Elimo Njau started Paa Ya Paa. So not only through his paintings, and thinking about ideas around, that kind of came up with ideas around Pan-Africanism and claiming language to an indigenous culture; claiming a religious history to an indigenous culture; ideas of working together that were very prominent within the politics of these new emerging states around the continent.
And then there was an artist who, for me was also incredibly important. Theresa Musoke, who took a totally different angle where her work really focused on this symbiotic relationship of people, landscape, culture, the wildlife, all of it working together. And she found this kind of a mercurial way of painting where the forms are all interlinked; you don't know where one begins and one ends, and really speaks to a deeper philosophy on existence.
Then there was the artist Jak Katarikawe, who is as, again, a seminal figure within the story of East African contemporary art. He was taught by his mother, who painted her own home and things like this. Worked as a driver for one of the professors at Makerere University, and then was introduced to Ntiro when this professor saw his paintings. Ntiro said, come work with me at Makerere for a couple years, which Jak did. When he finished that kind of pupillage really, He then moved to Nairobi, where there was more of a commercial element to the art world so he could make a living.
When he was there, he started working with Ruth Schaffner at Gallery Watatu, and Ruth Schaffner had taken over Gallery Watatu from the three artists that had set it up before. And really, with Jak, began to establish a different sort of presence in the art scene. And there she championed a lot of self taught artists.
But the artists which then followed Jak were Sane Wadu and Meek Gichugu, that we're showing in this exhibition. Sane and Meek set up a collective called the Ngecha Artists Collective. And they really were there to challenge the way that language in painting, and also written language, had been used, and adopted a style that was quite coarse and aggressive in a way. And for many people, they saw that as being naive. And that's kind of the way that their work had been framed.
But it really was a position; it was a conceptual standpoint that they had taken on and pushed forward, and then found their own way of working within that. So I really wanted that presentation to track that evolution, that then kind of finishes in this particular presentation around 2000. And then things shifted again after that, and that's a whole other story, which will hopefully be part of what we'll be able to do at NCAI, is tell those stories.
Charlotte Burns:
How did you learn about these artists, this East African lineage if other students today aren't? What changed in the education system?
Michael Armitage:
So I was born in the 80s, and I grew up in Nairobi till I was 16. And I was very lucky in that my best friend, Rik Van Rampelberg, his mother was Chelenge Van Rampelberg, and his father, who's an artist and is often spoke of as the first female sculptor in Kenya. And his father was Marc Van Rampelberg, who was an amazing furniture designer, but also a collector. And so through that family, I was introduced to the life of an artist through Chelenge.
But then also what other people made through their collection, and then Marc also worked at Gallery Watatu at the time, so I got to see work of some of the artists that are showing when they had their first exhibitions or other shows that they had, at Watatu, when it was at its kind of peak presence in the region. So for me, that was kind of fundamental.
Then when I moved to go to boarding school when I was 16 in the UK, at that time, as one does at that age, I was just interested in making my own work. I wouldn't have been able to recognize the elements of my thinking and my approach to art that had come from home and the artists that I knew growing up.
When I then went to study, sort of in higher education, on my foundation course, and just before then, I had my first sort of experience of seeing Western art and Western art history in the flesh. And I remember being taken around The National Gallery by a tutor of mine on my foundation course and being shown Titian's, I think it's Diana Shooting Actaeon with a Bow, [Diana and Aceaeon (1556-59)] and being told that that was the greatest painting ever made. And at that time, I just, I was kind of, I was like, why this brown? It's not very good, it's not very well painted, the proportions are all wrong, it's a bit scuzzy. I know plenty of people who can use color better than this guy. And that's because my experience of art was very different to the art that I was being introduced to. And there were elements of taste, and appreciation of what other artists were doing that I hadn't developed at all and hadn't been exposed to.
And it took me a while to be perfectly honest, to find anything in Western art that I related to strongly. And it started for me, probably with [Paul] Cézanne and El Greco, and then kind of grew from there. And seeing [Francisco de] Goya was also something that kind of broke me a little, and then created a new space for myself.
So that was where for me, the guys that we’re showing at the Academy, in “Mwili, Akili na Roho”, in that room, I knew all of their work growing up. The conversations I'd had with artists were some of those artists. Someone like Theresa Musoke taught many people of my peers and friends. So that was my history that I was coming from.
And quite frankly, it was a little bit difficult, wanting to speak to that while making work within a Western art education, just simply because that history wasn't available. And so when thinking of work in its context, in the way it was used by someone like Meek Gichugu, and with the framework, and the legacy of a show like “Magiciens de la Terre”, which was an extraordinary show, and there are extraordinary things about it. But when you then come up against a different culture with a different language, and thinking through socio-political things, through a different language that fits this other story told, it begins to be very difficult to see and appreciate the considerations of these artists and that history for what it is, as opposed to this other framework provided. So like that was something that I went back and forward with, throughout education.
Charlotte Burns:
You talked about Goya, and you’ve talked about how seeing the Black Paintings [1819-23] in the [Museo Nacional del] Prado was a moment of profound and immediate change for you. But something you said is, I've never heard anybody say when they're thinking about Goya, which is that you understood something about the kindness he must have had to think about people in this way. And I thought that was so interesting to talk about the kindness of an artist to spend time considering society and other people.
Michael Armitage:
Yeah. And it's also something I see in many artists living today. I would say the same of Doris Salcedo, the same of Julie Mehretu, amongst many others, where there's a dedication of their life to providing a space for people that would otherwise be totally unrecognized by society. To provide a space for them and their lives to be recognized, and if those lives are lost, to be memorialized.
But Goya in particular did that for me, where through observing the incredible breadth of humanity and people's experience, there is just, beneath what's incredibly dark, is also for me, this idea that through their presence and through the representation of this, people are aware of that which is dark within themselves.
And if you're aware of that, perhaps that would allow you to treat others better. And there's something of that in and throughout his work, where he can be humorous and tender. He can be absolutely brutal, but never in a sense to damn people, but simply to question the action that is to hurt somebody else, in whatever way. To put somebody else down, whether that's violent or psychological. That for me felt kind of true throughout his practice.
There are just so many moments in his work where he's always just saying, there is something extraordinarily beautiful in this world and in this life and look at it. There really is a deep, deep love that runs through all of it.
Even in the anger at society and things that people do to each other. So for me, he really like sets a bar on that. And that art can do that. And that someone in their life and totality of their career can provide such an extraordinary reflection on humanity, is…ah! As an artist, it's humbling, but it's also just something that I feel like everybody needs to see and experience. It is very, very special.
Charlotte Burns:
You also talked about Jacob Lawrence, and the idea here that, just a kind of link here is that ambition. The idea that as an artist, you said, you can try in effect to describe an entire culture through a series of paintings and in doing so, talk about humanity on so many levels. I think that's really interesting. Do you have that ambition as an artist? Is that something you strive for to create that space, but thinking about entire cultures and getting close to something of the essence of humanity?
Michael Armitage:
Just one thing about Jacob Lawrence, it's also the kind of, how humble the means with which he decided to do that in. There's nothing epic about the scale of a Jacob Lawrence or the language. It's so reduced and so direct. It's extraordinary and so sophisticated, and subtle. He's just, he's another one who’s extraordinary, and I feel everyone needs to stand in front of his paintings once in their life at least.
But for me, it was more a question of, when I was trying to find a way of making that fulfilled my own search for a meaning and in my own life, it was important that when I would make something, that if I showed that work in Kenya, at home, in the place that I'm so indebted to in my life, that anybody walking off the street who didn't come from an art background at all would see something they recognized.
And for me, the other aspect, which is purely selfish, is that I love telling stories and I'm not very good at writing, but painting was a way for me to think about that.
As an artist, when you're always having to think on your feet because of the situations you're put in, it's incredibly fulfilling and rewarding like that. And so to then, to be able to look at the stories of home and what society brings to the table, the things that I felt are problematic, the things that I feel are also positive and could help in building ways forward. To deal with the imagination that's part of our cultures, to deal with all of that felt true to me, but it also felt like I could do something where I would be able to speak to others.
I could only dream of having a practice that by the end of my life reflects on society in any way near as close to what people like Jacob Lawrence, or Goya, or Doris Salcedo have been able to do in theirs. And I wouldn't say that that's an ambition—but if that is a consequence of a life of work, I'd be incredibly happy with that.
Charlotte Burns:
Okay, so my final question for you, Michael, is one that I'm asking everybody. The show is called Hope & Dread. When you look ahead, do you feel hope or dread when you think about where we are?
Michael Armitage:
Both. It's hard not to be concerned about the direction of many aspects of society at the moment, whether that's to do with a kind of right-leaning politics and nationalism, to the effects of us people on the environment, to the effect of so-called development on countries like Kenya and those things. It's hard not to have quite a high level of concern about that.
But in the same vein, like for me, just if I took us trying to start NCAI in the beginning, the amount of goodwill, the amount of excitement, the amount of people wanting to be part of something, not because it benefits them, but because they feel that it's part of improving some aspect of society as a whole. And that there's also generations that expect that as the basic level of existence within one's own community. Those are things that are full of hope and I'm incredibly excited by, and would like to be part of that as well.
So I would say there's both and there should always be both. I would hate there to be a place where there wasn't an element of dread, because then you're being complacent. And in the same, I'd hate there to be a place where there's no hope, because that's bleak and the end of it all. So I think it's a time for both of those.
Charlotte Burns:
For more from Michael, tune into episode nine of Hope & Dread, “Artists: Players or Pawns?”.
Listen to Hope & Dread Extra every Tuesday and Thursday and subscribe wherever it is you find your podcasts.
Hope & Dread is brought to you by Art&, the new editorial platform created by Schwartzman&.
The executive producer is Allan Schwartzman, who co-hosts the show together with me, Charlotte Burns of Studio Burns, which produces the series.
Robert Bound is our associate editor.
Holly Fisher mixes and edits the sound.
Additional research has been provided by Julia Hernandez.
And our theme music by the inimitable Philip Glass.
