EMPIRE LINES

Curator Folakunle Oshun links Peckham in the UK, and Lagos in Nigeria, with water and two centuries of shared colonial histories. Artist David Sanya captures European statues and lingering stereotypes in West Africa. Plus, Emeka Ogboh projects the sounds of the megacity onto the streets of south east London, and recreates the taste of migration with a brand new beer. Often called ‘Little Lagos’, Peckham in south east London is home to one of the largest Nigerian diaspora communities. When the West African country declared independence after a century of British colonial rule in 1960, the flow of migration soon increased, with economic crises and civil unrest in the country. But individuals and families have long moved between both places. As a port city, Lagos became key to the transatlantic slave trade; its name meaning ‘lake’, after the Portuguese, the first Europeans in the area. Using water as a channel to connect Lagos and London, a new exhibition at the South London Gallery brings together both Nigerian and British-Nigerian artists like Yinka Shonibare, crossing generations and diasporas. Its curator Folakunle Oshun, founder and director of the Lagos Biennal, describes growing up with CNN, navigating imperial architectures in Berlin and Paris, and why he’d never drive in London. Artist Emeka Ogboh takes us beyond the museum space, using loudspeakers to project the sound of Lagos’ Danfo bus drivers onto the streets of Peckham. We sip his ‘bittersweet’ beer made in collaboration with local brewery Orbit, a blend of English hops and Nigerian alligator pepper, and discuss how food and art can together capture the ‘multisensorial’ experience of migration. Plus, closer to the River Thames, Birmingham-based artist David Sanya traces his travels from Nigeria to the UK, and how he combines the European artistic tradition of the sublime with Lagos’ distinctive lake and seascapes, creating contemporary photographs of his own environments. Lagos, Peckham, Repeat: Pilgrimage to the Lakes runs at South London Gallery until 29 October 2023. Reframe: The Residency Exhibition runs at the Southbank Centre until 27 August 2023, part of the Southbank Centre’s Planet Summer. For more, you can read my article. For more on A History of City in a Box, hear artist Ndidi Dike on EMPIRE LINES: https://pod.link/1533637675/episode/386dbf4fcb2704a632270e0471be8410 WITH: Folakunle Oshun, artist, curator, and founder and director of the Lagos Biennal. He is the co-curator of Lagos, Peckham, Repeat. Emeka Ogboh, sound and installation artist best known for his soundscapes of life in Lagos. Born in Nigeria and based between Lagos and Berlin, he creates multisensory work that takes the form of audio, installation, sculpture, and food and drink. David Sanya, artist and photographer. Born and raised in Lagos, he migrated to the UK in 2016, and practices between Birmingham and London. His collaborative work, I AM YOUR MOTHER DISMANTLED, is on view as part of Reframe: The Residency. ART: ‘Lagos Soundscapes, Emeka Ogboh (2023)’. PRODUCER: Jelena Sofronijevic. Follow EMPIRE LINES on Twitter: twitter.com/jelsofron/status/1306563558063271936 And Instagram: instagram.com/empirelinespodcast Support EMPIRE LINES on Patreon: patreon.com/empirelines

24 Aug 202325min

In this bonus episode, brought to you with historicity Tokyo, Japan House London curator Hiro Sugiyama, and contemporary artists Tsuzuki Mayumi and Suga Mica, ride the great waves of Japanese graphic design, commercial illustration, and counterculture, from the 1980s to now. Heta-uma - meaning bad but good - was an accidental art movement. A kind of ‘anti-illustration’, heta-uma rocked the established conventions of Japanese art, coinciding with the economic boom of the 1980s. Emerging in the underground manga magazine GARO, and manifesting in posters and adverts, pop art and animation, heta-uma challenges what is ‘ugly’, ‘beautiful’ or skilled art - as well as what ‘subcultures’ mean in the context of a global mainstreaming in Japanese art, embodied by Hokusai’s The Great Wave. Hiro Sugiyama, artist and co-curator of WAVE, has brought the annual exhibition in Tokyo to Japan Houses in San Francisco, Sao Paolo, and London. From his training at Yumura Teruhiko’s Flamingo Studios in Shinjuku, we return to the city’s Inari shrines with the surrealistic paintings of Suga Mica, and Showa period traditions with Tsuzuki Mayumi. Both artists also detail the long role of women artists in commercial illustration, the two-way exchanges between Japanese and Western European art traditions like ‘superrealism’ and ‘hyperrealism’, and how contemporary Japanese artists take as much from the concept of haziness (morotai), as David Hockney and the films of David Lynch. WAVE: Currents in Japanese Graphic Arts runs at Japan House London until 22 October 2023. For more, you can read my article in gowithYamo: https://www.gowithyamo.com/blog/wave-currents-in-japanese-graphic-arts-at-japan-house-london This episode was produced in collaboration with historicity Tokyo, a podcast series of audio walking tours, exploring how cities got to be the way they are. WITH: Hiro Sugiyama, artist and a curator of WAVE. Tsuzuki Mayumi and Suga Mica, contemporary artists based in Japan. WITH: Hiro Sugiyama, artist and a curator of WAVE. Tsuzuki Mayumi and Suga Mica, contemporary artists based in Japan. Eyre Kurasawa and Bethan Jones are interpreters based in London. ART: ‘WAVE: Currents in Japanese Graphic Arts (2023)’. IMAGE: Installation View. PRODUCER: Jelena Sofronijevic. Follow EMPIRE LINES on Twitter: twitter.com/jelsofron/status/1306563558063271936 And Instagram: instagram.com/empirelinespodcast Support EMPIRE LINES on Patreon: patreon.com/empirelines

18 Aug 202310min

Photographer Gregor Sailer exposes the neo-imperial scramble for resources in the Arctic Circle and the Polar Silk Road, with stills frozen in white cubes at the Natural History Museum in London. Climate change is melting ice across the Arctic Sea, opening a channel known as ‘The Polar Silk Road’- and for traders, access to a wealth of natural resources. The term was defined by contemporary China, a nod to the long history of the the Eurasian Silk Road, characterised by the exchange of tea, spices, and disease. But these stark monochrome settings are contemporary sites of geopolitical conflict over the ownership and exploitation of oil, gas, and borders, all subjects of a new Cold War; the damage endured by local Indigenous people, animals, and plants has global impacts. From isolated research centres to Icelandic geothermal power plants, Austrian photographer Gregor Sailer captures man-made architectures across the region, but always avoids photographing people themselves. He talks about documenting the ‘surreal’, the sustainability of travel photography, and how taking one-shot analogue photographs makes him more present in his environments. The Polar Silk Road: Photographs by Gregor Sailer runs at the Jerwood Gallery at the Natural History Museum in London, part of the programme Our Broken Planet, throughout 2023. Part of EMPIRE LINES Photography Season, exposing different perspectives on the past. Listen to the other episodes on Carrie Mae Weems, Contemporary African Photography at Tate Modern, and Nil Yalter’s Exile is a Hard Job. WITH: Gregor Sailer, artist and photographer. ART: ‘Photographs of the Polar Silk Road, Gregor Sailer (2017-2021)'. PRODUCER: Jelena Sofronijevic. Follow EMPIRE LINES on Twitter: twitter.com/jelsofron/status/1306563558063271936 And Instagram: instagram.com/empirelinespodcast Support EMPIRE LINES on Patreon: patreon.com/empirelines

17 Aug 202311min

Artist Nil Yalter, a pioneer in 20th century video and multimedia installations, explores the often challenging experience of being an immigrant in a foreign country, through her transnational wallpapers, posters, and photographs of Turkish workers, in Exile is a Hard Job. Born in Egypt in 1938, Nil Yalter moved from Istanbul to Paris in 1965. Since the 1970s, she has pioneered the practice of socially-engaged video art; working at the intersections of feminist, anti-racism, and labour movements, her media is always decided by the political issue at hand. But her contemporary practice has always been historically-informed, drawing on literatures and languages from the Ottoman Empire. Pasted up in global cities from Valencia to Mumbai, ‘Exile Is a Hard Job’ includes defaced photographs exposing the living conditions of illiterate ‘guest workers’. Navigating between private, intimate spaces, and public displays, the artist also considers the ethics of photography, using her practice to reflect the loss of identity felt in these communities. She talks about its latest installation at Ab-Anbar Gallery in London, the parallels between her ‘illegal’ practices and subjects, and why women are often ‘doubly punished’. Plus, Yalter describes her motivations for migration from Turkey to France - ‘to learn’ - why MENA artists produce the most exciting work today, and how she feels about her status as the ‘grandmother’ of viral, video art. Nil Yalter: Exile is a Hard Job ran at the Ab-Anbar Gallery in London throughout June 2023. The artist will return for the gallery’s full reopening in the autumn. This episode was recorded at London Gallery Weekend 2023. For more about Nalini Malani, hear the artist and curator on My Reality is Different (2022). Part of EMPIRE LINES Photography Season, exposing different perspectives on the past. Listen to the other episodes on Carrie Mae Weems, Contemporary African Photography at Tate Modern, plus Gregor Sailer’s series, The Polar Silk Road. WITH: Nil Yalter, Turkish-French contemporary artist who currently lives and works in Paris. Her works feature in many notable public collections including the Tate Modern, London; the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; and Museum Ludwig, Cologne. ART: ‘Exile is a Hard Job, Nil Yalter (1974-Now)’. PRODUCER: Jelena Sofronijevic. Follow EMPIRE LINES on Twitter: twitter.com/jelsofron/status/1306563558063271936 And Instagram: instagram.com/empirelinespodcast Support EMPIRE LINES on Patreon: patreon.com/empirelines

10 Aug 202316min

Curators Osei Bonsu, Jess Baxter, and Genevieve Barton cross the diverse landscapes, borders, and generations of contemporary African photography, exposing how the past, present, and future can co-exist on camera. Plus, contemporary artist Ndidi Dike revisits the ‘living archive’ of colonialism in Nigeria, from Independence House in Lagos, to London. Since the invention of photography in the 19th century, Africa’s cultures and traditions have often been seen through Western lenses. By 1914, European powers had colonised 90% of the African continent, often using the media to construct Africa and Black diasporas, in opposition to whiteness. But photography - and photographic traditions of preservation - has long been used by artists on the continent, whether in the pioneering work of studio photographers like James Barnor in pre-independence Ghana, as a means of anti-colonial resistance and political protest in the 1950s, or powerful shots of modern Nigerian Monarchs. Tate Modern’s A World in Common platforms how artists are reclaim Africa’s histories and reimagining its contemporary place in the world. Curator Osei Bonsu connects show how masks, removed from their ritual context for display in European museums, can also address contemporary questions of restitution, highlighting Edson Chagas’ passport-style photographs connecting Portugal and Angola. Jess Baxter and Genevieve Barton look at how globalisation, inequality, migration, and urbanisation, are differently experienced across the continent, and how their ‘hopeful’ exhibition focusses as much on climate activism as climate change. Moving beyond Afrofuturism and pan-Africanism towards ideas around ecology and global solidarity, we see how artists exercise agency in ever changing cities, and through boundary-pushing practices of ‘expanded photography’. Plus, moving from the diaspora London to practice in Lagos, multimedia artist Ndidi Dike explains what discarded files and archive documents from Nigeria can reveal about the post-colonial government. A World in Common: Contemporary African Photography runs at Tate Modern in London until 14 January 2024. For more about the artist Ndidi Dike, listen to this episode of EMPIRE LINES on Lagos, Peckham, Repeat at the South London Gallery: https://pod.link/1533637675/episode/dd32afc011dc8f1eaf39d5f12f100e5d Part of EMPIRE LINES Photography Season, exposing different perspectives on the past. Listen to the other episodes on Carrie Mae Weems, Nil Yalter’s Exile is a Hard Job, plus Gregor Sailer’s series, The Polar Silk Road. WITH: Osei Bonsu, British-Ghanaian curator and writer, and a curator of International Art at Tate Modern. He is the curator of A World in Common, with co-curators Jess Baxter and Genevieve Barton. Ndidi Dike, Nigeria-based visual artist working in sculpture and mixed-media painting. ART: ‘A History of a City In a Box, Ndidi Dike (2019) (EMPIRE LINES x Tate Modern)’. PRODUCER: Jelena Sofronijevic. Follow EMPIRE LINES on Twitter: twitter.com/jelsofron/status/1306563558063271936 And Instagram: instagram.com/empirelinespodcast Support EMPIRE LINES on Patreon: patreon.com/empirelines

3 Aug 202318min

Curator Morad Montazami assembles the revolutionary artist-professors and students of the Casablanca Art School who constructed the post-colonial state of Morocco in the 20th century, and how North African crafts were part of both transnational networks, and local traditions, pre-dating Western European modernism. The Casablanca Art School proposed a bold, revolutionary new wave of Arab visual culture following Morocco’s declaration of independence from French and Spanish colonial rule in 1956. Reflecting a new social awareness, Farid Belkahia, Mohamed Chabâa and Mohamed Melehi looked beyond Western European academic traditions - and demanded the removal of all Greco-Roman sculptures - sending students to travel more locally, where they encountered traditional arts and crafts more modern than Klee and Kandinsky. The Tate is the only institution in the world to hold works by all three of the Casablanca trio. Morad Montazami, a curator of a landmark new show in St Ives, explores how the School’s many artists worked across painting, sculpture, graphic design, and architectural murals, integrating art and infrastructure, and artists and the economy. Plus, why we should decentre the Bauhaus as a Western European school, how artists incorporated modern abstract influences alongside Mexican, pan-Arabic, and Marxist revolutionary politics, why a Dutch anthropologist coined the phrase Afro-Berberism, and how the absence of museum spaces after empire provided an opportunity for more public, accessible art - for the nation to ‘build itself’. The Casablanca Art School: Platforms and Patterns for a Postcolonial Avant-Garde, 1962-1987 runs at the Tate St Ives in Cornwall until 14 January 2024, then at the Sharjah Art Foundation into 2024. For more, you can read my article. WITH: Morad Montazami, art historian, a publisher and a curator. He is the director for the platform Zamân Books & Curating, committed to develop studies of Arab, Asian and African modernities, and co-curator of The Casablanca Art School. ART: ‘Multiple Marrakech/Multiple Flamme (Multiple Marrakech, Multiple Flame), Mohamed Ataallah (1969)’. PRODUCER: Jelena Sofronijevic. Follow EMPIRE LINES on Twitter: twitter.com/jelsofron/status/1306563558063271936 And Instagram: instagram.com/empirelinespodcast Support EMPIRE LINES on Patreon: patreon.com/empirelines

20 Jul 202319min

Artist Shahrzad Ghaffari replies to orientalism in the Arts & Crafts Movement, William De Morgan’s Arab Hall, and the new contemporary architecture of Leighton House in London, in her Persian poetry-inspired mural paintings. Since reopening in 2022, Leighton House has commissioned contemporary, often SWANA-based artists, to respond to its interiors and collection - particularly, the vivid ceramic tiles collected from Turkey and Greece, Egypt and Syria, which shroud its 18th century Arab Hall. Iranian-born, Canada-based Shahrzad Ghaffari was the first invited to contribute to the museum’s redesign. A new exhibition, Journey to Oneness, follows her process to construct the helical staircase which now sits at the House’s core – a ‘totem of union’, connecting East and West, the historic and the contemporary. The artist details how Islamic patterns and Persian poetry permeates her practice, interests shared with the House’s creator, Lord Leighton. Shahrzad describes her movement back to abstract, calligraphic painting after studying graphic design, and why making public art is a physical, constructive act. Plus, she details Iran’s contemporary political landscape which informs Lion and Sun (2010), painted in response to the women-led protests which followed the shooting of Neda Agha-Soltan - and its continued resonance amidst global attention on the death of Mahsa Amini. Shahrzad Ghaffari: Journey to Oneness runs at Leighton House in London until 1 October 2023. Leighton House is a finalist for the Art Fund Museum of the Year 2023. For more, you can read my article in recessed.space: https://recessed.space/00013-Leighton-House-Evelyn-De-Morgan-Shahrzad-Ghaffari-Nour-Hage WITH: Shahrzad Ghaffari, contemporary artist. As a member of the Ghaffari family which sired such Persian masters as Sani-ol-Molk and Kamal-ol-Molk Ghaffari, Shahrzad continues a family tradition spanning 150 years. ART: ‘Oneness, Shahrzad Ghaffari (2022)’. ADDITIONAL SOUNDS: Nagihan Seymour and Dr Usama Hasan, from Perspectives on the Arab Hall, Smartify audio tour. PRODUCER: Jelena Sofronijevic. Follow EMPIRE LINES on Twitter: twitter.com/jelsofron/status/1306563558063271936 And Instagram: instagram.com/empirelinespodcast Support EMPIRE LINES on Patreon: patreon.com/empirelines

13 Jul 202313min

Curator Florence Ostende visualises how violence against African Americans has been perpetuated throughout history, and challenged with contemporary art, by developing Carrie Mae Weems’ radical photographic practice from the 1980s to now, and how she reframes whiteness, and ‘Anglo-America’, in relation to Black subjects.Carrie Mae Weems is one of the most influential contemporary US artists, and interest in her films, installations, and performance artworks is rising in Europe too. From her first UK exhibition with Autograph, founded in Brixton to support Black photographers, Weems returns to London with her largest UK exhibition to date, spanning three decades of her multidisciplinary practice, and over 300 years of American history.Curator Florence Ostende talks about how her ‘direct intervention’ in daguerreotypes taken from the Harvard Museum archives - with colour, tints, and text - challenges their use in perpetuating systemic racism, inequality, and violence, whilst blurring the boundaries between past and present to reveal how colonial stereotypes still linger today. Alongside these ‘appropriated photographs’, she details the artist as art historian - and her bid to expose the Black Abstract Expressionist painters hidden in plain sight. Beyond her iconic Kitchen Table (1990) series, we see Weems’ political activism, with works addressing women’s position in domestic spaces and Marxism, the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., and the murder of George Floyd. Ostende reveals why Weems literally puts the muse in Museums, the complex relationship between artist and institution, and what it was like to work with the artist - and ‘win over’ the Barbican’s brutalist architecture.Carrie Mae Weems: Reflections for Now runs at the Barbican in London until 3 September 2023.For more, you can read my article in ⁠Shade Art Review: shadepodcast.substack.com/p/jelena-sofronijevic-revisits-carrieFor more about Autograph, hear artist Ingrid Pollard’s EMPIRE LINES on ⁠Carbon Slowly Turning (2022)⁠: ⁠https://pod.link/1533637675/episode/e00996c8caff991ad6da78b4d73da7e4Part of EMPIRE LINES Photography Season, exposing different perspectives on the past. Listen to the other episodes on Contemporary African Photography at Tate Modern, Nil Yalter’s Exile is a Hard Job, plus Gregor Sailer’s series, The Polar Silk Road. WITH: Florence Ostende, Curator at the Barbican Art Gallery, London. She is the co-curator of Carrie Mae Weems: Reflections for Now.ART: ‘From Here I Saw What Happened and I Cried, Carrie Mae Weems (1995–1996)’.PRODUCER: Jelena Sofronijevic.Follow EMPIRE LINES on Twitter: twitter.com/jelsofron/status/1306563558063271936And Instagram: instagram.com/empirelinespodcastSupport EMPIRE LINES on Patreon: patreon.com/empirelines

13 Jul 202315min