Dani's Day Fifteen Reflections

June 25th, 2016

Journal

10am-11:30 am

Maeve and I caught up on our blog posts.

Interviews

11:30-1:30


It took a while fore Maeve and I to find people to interview. Although there were more visitors in the museum than usual, many of them did not even notice the Look Again Gallery. By noon, we reached our goal of 30 interviews.

Artist Talk: Ananias Léki Dago

1:30pm-3ishpm

I really enjoyed the talk. Although some of the questions were reductive in some ways, Ananias' responses were thought-provoking. He seems to have been very inspired by James Baldwin and quoted him saying, "The role of the artist and the lover is the same. If I love you, I must make you conscious of the things you don't see." In many ways, his work forces viewers to question whatever they think they know about what they're viewing. He explained this saying, "Who told you that in darkness, there's no light? Who told you that if I'm smiling, I'm happy? Being fragile doesn't make you weak." He also talked about how his creativity was largely the result of isolation. He is left-handed and, in his culture, that is viewed as an abnormality. He felt shunned from an early age. His isolation made him question everything. He used photography to heal himself.

Ananias also gave an interesting description of his experience as an African-born artist. He explained that although he travels to meet other parts of himself in other places, traveling as an African is difficult. This made me think about the privilege of mobility and how borders, as tools of social control, regulate who has the ability to take advantage of certain opportunities. It's interesting to think about how inaccessible the world is for some Africans and how accessible the continent has been made for the West. Ananias also described that, as opposed to western artists, African artists are truly self-made. They have to be there own artist, curator, organizer, museum director, conservator, etc. Lastly, I'm really interested in learning more about his work in restoring and archiving the work of Paul Kodjo. He feels that Kodjo's work is vital to preserving the history of Côte d'Ivoire.

Interviews

3ish-5pm

Maeve and I continued interviews.