Pearl Lam (林明珠): We are today in Lagos not as a satellite town of a global arts circuit, but as a centre of thought, production and urgency. People is always asking me why I’m interested in Africa, especially the rise of African contemporary art. I’m looking at it because my experience and being witnessing of the rise of Chinese contemporary art. So I’m here today in Africa. Now we want to take Africa as from the beginning and we look outward. And I am very honoured to have Alimi and have Maria to join me on this conversation.
Maria Bojan: Thank you.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): So now I have to ask you, why didn’t you move to other countries and what Lagos gives to you that makes it so different from and from the global art system?
Alimi Adewale: Thank you, Pearl. Working out of Lagos, I think give a kind of energy, you know, if you look at the city Lagos, it’s a very, very complicated city in terms of the lack of infrastructure. With that we’ll still try to create. There’s a lot of stories to talk about. And if you look at the general global art system, there are actually expectations from artists from Africa that this is what African arts supposed to be. But as a contemporary artist, we are influenced by the environment, which is not the general environment in other part of the world. And we are trying to respond, you know, based on our own experience of the city. What I’ve seen, you know, subconsciously, I’ve seen African artists in diaspora trying to do, I mean, respond to what people are going to connect with over there. And the work basically always take a different dimension. The depth of you working from the continent and the power that comes from the work is basically the chaos, everything combined. You know, there’s an element which when you place African arts in a global context, you can see there’s a kind of energy. And this energy is as a result of working on that, you know, pressure, trying to. Lack of electricity, still trying to create, you know, from that environment. I think I won’t call it a negative thing. It actually had a positive change to the work.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): Many of your works are inspired by local emergency, the local, what we call the local intelligence. But when it comes to global art world, it seems to be completely gone, disappeared.
Alimi Adewale: I mean, as an artist, there is the way you communicate, which is we are not trying to create anything new. We are just trying to continue the general narrative, you know, using arts, elements, the skills. But personally, for me, the direction I’m taking is to kind of look at the Asian, African art and try to interpret it in modern things. Some people can really get it, but it’s just continued the global narrative of what the old European masters have done. And as an African artist trying to like, continue the narrative, basically.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): You know, in the west there, there is a very dominant genre that we want to put all the artists in, like migration, identity and et cetera and et cetera and et cetera. What do you think about that?
Alimi Adewale: Yeah, I agree. The challenges, I mean, if you look at a global art system, most artists always try to satisfy what the market demands. So authenticity is somehow lost. In terms of you trying to talk about your cultural elements, you know, the philosophy, talking about the deity, the worship of old African religion. Hardly, you find artists, you know, trying to explore this because it’s more like a complicated themes that we feel the global system will never understand. And by doing that, we are not. I mean, like the Chinese always emphasise the calligraphy is Asian. But for contemporary African artists, we tend to explore modern themes, you know, you know, trying to reference the old, but in a very modern way. It’s very important that you mention that, that we are not really exploring the meanings most times are always lost, you know, artists really, we don’t want to take that risk of not to be understood.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): That also means that artists will be losing themselves because there’s no way you can communicate, because art is about communication.
Alimi Adewale: Yes, I agree. You know, in regards to me, that is why I’m trying to like reference the mask. You know, what are old African styles that inspire the European masters?
Pearl Lam (林明珠): I’m being. I’m being like liking these African authenticity to like mask.
Alimi Adewale: Yeah.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): As a curator, Maria, I mean, how do you curate a show when your background is not really, you know, not enough understanding of an African culture? Are you going to discount what we just now we are saying like a Yoruba philosophy, blah, blah. Are you going to discount this to make it into a global art language or art vocabulary?
Maria Bojan: For me as a curator, the history of representations is very important. So no matter from where the artist is coming. I look very much at the place he’s coming from, the traditions he’s coming from and the intentions he has or she has with the work, but also how all these collective experience are embedded in the work of the artist. So I would like to say that this talk about the globalisation of art and so on, it’s just an excuse to, how you say, reassert again and again the domination of the Western culture. So precisely because I understand very well these mechanisms, I also look for artists who are not opportunistic in answering these expectations of the Western world. So what we have seen on the global scene recently, especially with regard to African art, is a kind of answer to that kind of picture of Africa these people from the dominant circles have. So that means it’s their own projection on Africa, which is how you say answered with the works of certain artists, especially the diasporic African artists, who are understanding how the mind of these people in these dominant circles is functioning. So, I personally believe that this discussion should move away from what is expected or what is actually important and so on. What is important is for what for the artist is important. So, in my experience, and I have 35 years experience as a curator, the intensity of the message and of the feeling which is contained in the artwork is making the work valuable. So if an artist is having his own voice, his own style, his own authenticity, no matter what the dominant circles, art circles globally, are thinking, he will go on, he will pass through all these challenges and will be known. Of course, regarding Africa, there are lots of stereotypes and I was just looking in the catalogue of the Nigerian modernism and then I was going through all these cliche way of how a country like Nigeria should be perceived from the critical point of view of the curators working in an institution, curators that maybe have never been to Nigeria. That’s basically saying a lot about the ignorance that is how you say everywhere, especially in the Western world, because they are only reading some pictures and then they have immediately an opinion about African art without understanding what Africa means and how large Africa as a continent is, and how all these subcultures are coming together to create a fabric of different images, of different visions and so on and so on.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): You know what always makes me laugh is when the whole world is talking about how bad colonisation is, how bad it has been affected. The early 20th century century. The next, the next turning point was that, okay, there’s no territory colonisation, but we would do cultural colonisation. We have curators, we have Western curators coming in to China at the time, they will come and tell us what is good and what is bad without understanding our history, without understanding any of the basic things of our culture. You know, we’re 5,000 years of culture. And of course being Chinese at the time, because China wasn’t strong like that, we just say yes, yes, yes,
Maria Bojan: Yes and no. I want to say that there is a reflex. It’s a neo colonial reflex. It’s like inherited view upon the world. And this is very difficult to challenge. It’s very difficult to tell to a British that he should really understand the other’s perspective, you know, without, you know, how can he eliminate this experience of hundred, if not thousands years of domination of different territories? You know, so. But the point is, it’s not about this, their point of view. That’s why art is so good. Because art is challenging precisely these positions and these acceptations and perceptions, you know, while coming with something new and coming with something which is strong enough to convince the whole world.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): Yeah, I think it takes time, I remember, for nations to become, or making the artists or making curators to become strong with confidence in order to communicate as an artist. Now, okay, of course financial means is very important and also the pride, the ego. And obviously in Africa there is not enough great museum which is at par with like the big museums in the West. MOMA, Pompidou, Tate, whatever, you know, whatever these museum. So ultimately the dreams of African artists, the dreams of every artist other than northern Europe, I mean, dreams of every artist including northern America or western Europe. You all want to be collected by these museum and also having a show there. So would you then bend everything; your approach just to suit and just adapt, adapt in order to have this language, your art language that could be understand by this global art audience.
Alimi Adewale: I mean, Maria pointed out, if a art is good, it’s good. But we’ve seen there’s this stereotype of what an African are supposed to be. And I know, okay, they’ll tell you you’re not supposed to know how to draw. The hats must be crude. And I keep telling people, for example, Lagos is a very cosmopolitan society. People are sophisticated, they school abroad. But the idea of what the west feel as African artists is not what we think African art is supposed to be. Was saying, where you go to museums, you can see what they are showing. And we all say, oh, this is not, you know, relevant to us. This is not how Lagos is. This is not a depiction of, you know, our culture. But they decide to dictate to say, okay, this is what an African art is supposed to be. And it’s actually for the artist is always the middle way to say, while you’re trying to appeal to the west, you also must make sure the meaning are not lost, the culture is not lost. So it’s actually very dicey situation where for it to be collectible, you can’t really do very challenging works because how is it going to be accepted at the same time? So artists are always trying to find this middle way, you know, to say you’re going to appeal to the museum, you’re going to appeal to collectors. At the same time, the meaning must be there.
Maria Bojan: I believe that this perspective is wrong. I mean, you should not have in view this idea to please any kind of audience.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): But it’s very difficult.
Maria Bojan: It’s very difficult. But on the other hand, if the work is growing and convincing, it creates automatically an audience.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): I think I understand all that, but I think it’s really difficult. Like in Asia or in Africa. Now Asia, Hong Kong has a fantastic museum. But you want. If your own country has a museum or has institution, they are as far as par as those in and in the Western world, then obviously they don’t need to create work to please. Right? But then if you lose that opportunity, you do want, you know, I think every artist wanted to have a big show at MoMA.
Maria Bojan: Of course, if that happens.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): What are you going to do then? I mean, are you going to bend or are you not going to bed? I mean, it’s difficult because I always see one important point is until a country has a great infrastructure, then you can actually incubate fantastic artists. That’s how I see what is happening.
Maria Bojan: I mean, my experience, and I’m talking here from an Eastern European perspective, and how the Eastern European artists have been in the end accepted and included in the European art at a certain moment. Those artists whose creation was very strong and whose creation influenced generations, different generations of artists, successive generations, they finally made it to the Tate and to MoMA because of the content and of the messages embedded in their work.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): But Maria, isn’t it also because that they have joined very established galleries that do a lot of marketing, and then they got all the curators in going through that, it’s true.
Maria Bojan: But on the other hand, you know, in certain cases in Eastern Europe, there were artists without galleries, but they were so dominant in the local scenes that they could not be ignored. And even if the local galleries didn’t work with them, the content was there and it was very important to be included in this framework that these museums wanted to, how you say, to establish. And of course, in Africa, things are different also because Africa is so big and Nigeria is so big, it has 200 million
Pearl Lam (林明珠): And multiculture.
Maria Bojan: Yeah. So it’s very complicated, especially here, to find the best artist, because, as you said, there is no infrastructure. But on the other hand, the fact that there is no infrastructure,
Pearl Lam (林明珠): It actually makes it more interesting.
Maria Bojan: Yes. Because the artists have to strive to survive in a place where there is no infrastructure. And more than ever, the work has to be good.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): Do you think that any African approach to art or the system will actually shape a global. The art appreciation or art evaluation?
Maria Bojan: Yes. So I would like to point here two things. First of all, this influence of African art, especially the one from Congo, on European modernism, early 20th century, you know, so they were basically taking over a style, you know, aesthetic. Aesthetic, yes. It’s like dealing with an aesthetic which only at the formal level. So it never went beyond beyond the form and beyond the picture. It stayed there and it was a seduction of a different kind of form. So what Alimi is doing in his work is actually like rescuing the, you know, the content of the initial contents of this African aesthetics, you know, this ancestral symbolism and meanings, by attaching it to his paintings. So it is. That’s why maybe he’s appealing to this, the symbolism of the prehistoric painting, because it’s a very raw and direct way of symbolising the human experience.
Alimi Adewale: Also, South African artists, they always say you have to play safe by referencing art history, you know, but who wrote the history? You know, so it’s. I mean, for African art, we are not trying to say. Just like where people say we want something back is just to continue the narrative of what some of the old masters have done. Personally, for me, I think that is my own direction just to say, okay, I’m going to reinterpret this in my own way. As you said, the old masters just look at the forms. But in Africa, all the colours have meaning, deep meaning, because if you look way back, they are earth worshippers. And there are no artificial dyes. Every dye was actually got from plants and the rest and every colour has got a meaning in terms of indigo. It’s very royal when it’s spring, the colours and so on and so forth. So I’m trying to explore the deeper meaning of beyond aesthetics and try. It’s just to say, also there’s also a very spiritual angle that the Western audience would never really understand.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): Because I see your work, Because when you do the stitching, dyeing, layering and all that just represent labour. A few things about labour. That also represents immigration, actually I see your work is like a Nigerian Lagos work.
Alimi Adewale: Yes, because also for me, textile, the process, you know, is very fascinating. That’s why my practise. There’s different kind of hands, you know, that a different team will do the dyeing, a different team will do the stitch. You can actually see through the effort and the whole process, which at the same time, I mean, when they talk about minimalism, we always figure out that it only belongs to the west or to Asia. Also in Africa, if you look at the forms, you know, that’s why we have a conversation in terms of. Maria said oh, why the eyes? Why do you want to put the eyes on the painting and the rest? Because in Africa, everything is so reductive to the basic, you know, elements.
Maria Bojan: You know, it’s a synthesis, you know, it’s a. It’s a hybrid vocabulary that must come and create a synthesis of. Of everything, of metaphysics, forms, pictures. And I personally believe that what you do is actually a process of recycling, both from the material point of view, also symbolical perspective and, you know, contemporary perspective. So it’s like containing in one picture all this African experience and your own experience.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): But why do we still use the word Africa, using a geographical, I mean, territorial description? Because I think artists and artists. I mean this only because that you are in this territory, you reflect something out.
Maria Bojan: No, it is because this aesthetics is very different from the European aesthetics. However, yesterday, for instance, being with Alimi in the Lekki market, I have seen a sculpture that was almost a copy of a Neolithical sculpture that has been discovered thousands of years ago near the Black Sea. And it is called the Thinker. So it is a figure sitting with, you know, keeping his head like this. I thought that it’s actually a primordial language, which is an ancestral language. It’s. Is this what Mircea Eliade, who was a very important historian of religions, said that it is the language of the sacred. And this art, it is a symbolism before art really took a shape and started its development and history. So we are operating with different symbolical levels. And I believe that what he is doing, he’s understanding his own, how you say, legacy. The legacy of this kind of local aesthetic, which is obviously an African aesthetic, but it’s also a Nigerian aesthetic, because this is very connected to this place where you are living and you are working and what you try to express.
Alimi Adewale: I love the word that you said. This is actually very primordial visual language. If you look at prehistoric before they decide to say a place is Africa, a place is, you know, Europe and the rest. I think we are all coming from the same source. And for me to start exploring cave painting, I find those symbolism very, very interesting because it’s not predominant to a particular area, it’s just a mankind of way of expression and communication. Communication and there are different kind of similarities. That’s what I find it fascinating to start using rugs, Kiliman, because weaving is actually in all cultures, different ways, the Moroccan way of weaving. And as an African artist, I’ve seen when people say, oh, did you. I mean, we don’t have the, I’ll say, the licence, the artistic licence to say, if you have to work with any material, it has to come from Africa. But I mean, every Western artist can actually use any material they feel like and there’s always a narration to back it up. But for African artists, we are like put in a box to say, this is what is expected.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): We are still talking about this craft. It’s only now, like last 10 years it has been relaxed because there’s high art and low art, right? And when I first visited in Africa, they all told me that, you know, Nigerian art, African art, we have to look at craft. Thank God, all these Western anarchy of art form has been relaxed and therefore we look at things very differently. So go back to the global art system and go back to Africa. And Maria, do you think that globally, in the art world, the art world needs African artists?
Maria Bojan: Of course, because it’s not complete, it’s a different kind of expression. And that’s why the west has been so seduced, also historically seduced, if you look at Picasso and if you look to Modigliani, they were enormously seduced by this essentialisation of form. This is what they are into it. You know, the way in which you reduce the form to a very essential, how do you say?
Alimi Adewale: Element.
Maria Bojan: Element. And also that is both expressive and symbolising something which is bigger than the artist himself. I believe that we, especially in the west, we are very much into this mode of understanding art, art for the sake of art. And this is a totally Western, how you say, invention in the sense that each artist should have a position and it should contribute to the renovation of the vocabulary and of the expressive language. So basically it is this competition that we were, how you say, labelling as avant garde after avant garde. So in fact there is a kind of modernisation the Western art went through, which happened because it was lots of activity, especially in the world’s capital, like Paris and London, but mostly in Paris at a certain moment. And then modernisation led to what we have now in the contemporary art, while here in Nigeria and in general in Africa, we have expressions that were not mediated. So, they are direct expressions. They are very powerful. And they came, how you say, they went through everything, all these prejudices, whatever difference of understanding the perspectives, the African perspective. And that is making everything much more interesting because you have to, how you say, judge. And to look at these pictures or art pieces from a completely different perspective. Because the Western centric perspective will put a wall, say, yeah, it’s not like this. It’s too Modigliani, it’s too Picasso, it’s too this or it’s too that, you know, so if you are not understanding the fact that they themselves basically were using a vocabulary. Yeah, you know, so. And every African artist has a right to make recourse to this type of vocabulary and to this symbolic imaginary, you know, because this is what belongs to them. It’s not like you are quoting Modigliani when you are making elongated figures. No, this is a symbolical way of representing certain things in the history of African art. It doesn’t matter if it is Nigerian, from Cameroon, or from Congo, Ghana, whatever, you know, we have to learn to judge in terms of the history of representations. Because as you have in China, you have also these ideograms, you know, that are a little bit. Yes, yes. So the letters that are actually pictures, this is also an essentialised way of expressing something, you know, so what we have here in Africa is the same, but the forms are different. And you need to be open to learn a little bit, you know, and to find.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): Do you think the art crowd has the time to learn?
Alimi Adewale: They actually refer them as art brutes. You know, the west never acknowledged the contribution.
Maria Bojan: No, the point is. The point is that the fact that they are now ignorant doesn’t change the things. If they don’t understand and they miss the point. They miss the point. The history is going to certify a certain evolution, no matter who is ignorant at the reception of these pieces.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): So let me ask you, Alimi, when your work is being purchased or acquired, do you think that. I’m not talking locally, I’m talking internationally. How many of your collectors who acquired your work actually understand your work? Or they just, they just acquire because they like the Aesthetic?
Alimi Adewale: Good question. I think for the artist, you’re in your studio and you’re making this work, you’re trying to communicate, you know, whatever the story is, whatever the theme is. And from my experience, people different reasons, you know, why people connect to pieces, you know, and for the fact that there’s this visual language, regardless of where the asset is coming from, there’s a general appeal, you know, that, you know, people connect to a piece. For the artists, really the work is not really complete because you also need a view the eyes of the collector to say people want to live with your work. And occasionally what people acquired and said, oh, what is about this? What is so special? Then you start having another view of why someone’s able to connect to it, you know, and for the artist, you start looking at, oh, there must be something about this piece. So generally the artist really doesn’t really care.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): You know, I think you just touched previously the point that you would create art or you will be influenced the art by the market or by other hidden pressure. That is a pressure point. Okay, sell market recognition be accepted in an international, big international museum. So Maria is saying that no artists should adapt or should change or should comply. But for you as practically as an artist, you know, you want to join. So am I going to not adapt or I need to. I need to pay for my food, my rent, still have to adapt. So how much would you do in order to adapt? Or can you just preserve yourself and try to insert what you are about?
Alimi Adewale: My take is I mean you will see the big masters, they were not really working for the museum. Picasso was painting the wife was painting
Pearl Lam (林明珠): At the time they didn’t have huge museum.
Alimi Adewale: Exactly. They were just documenting their life. I think if an artist stick you as an artist, you want to tell communicate to people, not the other way around. It’s always a trap of this is all the market assets. As we are having conversation yesterday. And there’s this trap of repetition. Collector wanted to keep doing the same thing because it is in a collection. The artist doesn’t want to experiment.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): I know, I know about these as well.
Maria Bojan: It’s a repetition of the successful formula.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): Yeah, I know because an artist, I talk to many artists about this problem. A lot of artists doesn’t have the confidence because when they change the market doesn’t take it. And I always say that maybe now they don’t take it if you keep on doing it. This is not your job. This is your gallery’s job to make the market, accept your work. As a curator, it’s not you. You should just express whatever you want to do. Is visibility being seen and an empowerment or is it an absorption, being absorbed to the global art system? Of course you feel empowered because wow. I mean, but actually you’re being absorbed to do exactly into. You are being absorbed into a homogeneous culture, a culture that called the global art system, global art culture that people would understand. So are you losing yourself or not?
Alimi Adewale: Making art, I think there must be an audience and for the artist is very fulfilling when you have the audience to, you know, which I must say, they have to be this balance to be appreciated, you know, to be shown. In museums we’ve seen early career artists, some artists are recognised late career and so on and so forth. The purpose of making art for different artists, it varies personally. For me, it’s fulfilling for me for people to decide to live with my art compared to trying to look at museums. Because I know museums most times, no guarantee for any artist. You know, it’s some artists, when they passed away, that’s when they be recognised. But has always been for me for people to live with my heart. And which I find very fulfilling. And there’s this. I mean, it’s a personal experience. I’ve experienced that you make arts in your studio and you go to a collector’s home and you look at the art and you see the power in that piece and you start questioning yourself, how are you able to make this? Because the work leaves the studio, it develops a life of its own. That’s why the spirituality of art. When I say when people collect arts, the art in their homes take the joy, the pain, all the emotions get embedded into that heart. So that’s what gives a power, you know, to say, oh, you see a paint that was made in 1960 and you can feel the energy surrounding that piece. So for the artist, it’s a very, you know, that’s why curator, I know the role of creator have really, really evolved. That they are like the custodian to pull the artist working perspective. So it’s like, how can I put it? A symbiotic kind of relationship that’s. Without one, I think is very difficult for the artist to decide how the work is meant to be seen.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): Okay, Maria then is curator neutral?
Maria Bojan: No, the point is that as a curator, you need to learn to discern what good art means, no matter you like it or you don’t like it. So in the moment, because art has its own criteria of, how you say, establishing what is really important and what’s not so important or minor or you see, so judging art with intrinsic criteria of art and art history and not in terms of market or of local importance and so on. So basically professionals, the high professionals in this world, they have this grid of so called universal criteria to define if a piece is indeed valuable or maybe the term value is not the right one, but if the work is important for its time, for the aesthetical point of view, from the content point of view, from the local and global point of view altogether. So this means that it’s very difficult for an artist, for a curator to decide. You know, of course, when you find something good and you like it, then you are in a wonderful situation. But as a former museum curator, I was in the situation to curate exhibitions of artists that I was not necessarily, how you say, having the same kind of so called reverberation, you know, their work didn’t speak to me. However, you have to make exhibitions and you have to make good exhibitions also trying to understand that type of work. Because for others this means also good work. You have to get out of yourself, you know, and to judge strictly within a different framework, which is this framework that I mentioned, the framework of art itself. Taste is not a criteria of art history. Art history works and operates with different criteria. So as a curator, if you know how the whole system is working and basically learning from the history of representation and art history, how the dynamic of visibility and of success has evolved, then you have a solution. So to say you understand where you are and where we are heading and what kind of representations are important for now and for the future.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): Okay, last question. Africa. Let’s talk about Africa. I remember when I first came here, people told me that what is Africa? Africa is so many different tribes, so many different culture. You cannot say Africa is everything, because even in Nigeria you are, you have, you have different tribal culture. And even that you cannot define. So how are we going to see the next stage of African art?
Alimi Adewale: I mean, the categorisation, as we said earlier, the British artists, I don’t think there’s what does that is a style that is predominant to a particular region. I mean, if you. The same way we look at global economics, where the west would dictate up to the whole financial landscape. You know, the same way is happening in culture. I mean, if you look at the other form of culture, if you look at the other form of creativity, like the way Nigerian music has been able to Afrobeat, Afrobeats, you know, take over the world, you know, we have Nollywood that is very working with us.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): Even I watch Nollywood.
Alimi Adewale: I think the world of art is the last, you know, part of creativity that either we like it or not, is going to be globally accepted in terms of the energy, in terms of what it is.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): Can I add one sentence? Because I think what is the problem of the global world is, as I mentioned before, the fetish of authenticity.
Maria Bojan: You are absolutely right, because these stereotypes were necessary to categorise while we are now living in a global world where everything, all the informations are available. So there is no excuse that you are thinking or you are perceiving everything through a clicheistic way or this, you know, stereotypes upon each culture, you know, so these cliches were important in the modern area when you would put everything in little boxes, you know, while now everything is so fluid that in the end, the only thing which captures your attention is this strong visuality, strong emotion. Art is a lot about perception. And if you see how art along the history, its history was perceived, so now we have also different modes of perception, while we have viewers who are stuck in ancient or in old ways of perceiving the world.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): Not celebrating differences.
Maria Bojan: No, because it is threatening their predominant position. Pierre Bourdieu was saying it is who has the category of the appreciation is the one who makes the history.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): Anything to add, Alimi?
Alimi Adewale: Yes, I think it appeals to me when I see a gallery where there’s a mix of different artists from different nationalities. There’s always this stereotype. You see someone from the west and the rooster of the artists. Everyone is African, you know. So it’s so appealing for me to see where you have a Chinese artist, you have African artists, you have artists from Europe that everyone is coming together based on this uniqueness of their heart and the strength, you know, that they are had. You know, I think that is actually the global approach, you know, way for her to be more, like, democratised, you know, kind of to say, regardless where you’re coming from. So I find that as the approach to the future, where Africans can have equal kind of footing, you know, in a global, you know, arts landscape.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): Actually, I think to summarise and to close this discussion is what we are saying all along is we are not asking Africa to ban the system, but we are saying that there is two valuation system, completely two, because we have to use different facts, factors to evaluate every different country’s different culture. We just cannot use a Western predominant eyes to put, oh, this is immigration, this is labour, this is post colonialism. We cannot just put everything. But we have to start afresh. Yes. Would you agree with me?
Maria Bojan: I agree, but I would say that there is only one way to look at art. To be open.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): Yes.
Maria Bojan: With open mind and not with a predominant, how you say, through grids, which doesn’t belong to the artist or to the place where he’s coming from. So what we see, we have this general mode of perception, which is related to art, no matter from where it is coming. And then we have the different modes which are there to create a kind of dynamic within the art world and basically trying to keep the status quo of the dominant centres for what we call these categories or how you say, keeping their power of judging the value in the art world.
Pearl Lam (林明珠): Thank you. Thank you to both of you. Thank you. Thank you, Maria and thank you for this really fruitful discussion.
Maria Bojan: Thank you.
Alimi Adewale: Thank you so much.
