Author: xerkss

Since the true beginning of our interview, the incredible enthusiasm that passionates would already associate with this magnetic artist emerges. Her commitment to environmental and political issues and her extraordinary capacity to express her messages clearly put Sokari Douglas Camp in a privileged place among contemporary established artists. We had the pleasure to immerse ourselves in what’s behind her idea of Art and her unique artistic approach.

How did you start doing Art

In the first phase when I started art school, I started with paint, I was very excited about it, and I truly thought that I would be a painter, but what happened is that I didn’t really love any of my paintings! Today, I’m still highly fascinated by the idea of painting, but luckily I soon discovered that it was easier to express myself through sculpture to put my hands in something. It’s just that the two-dimensional approach wasn’t for me.

In which way does sculpture allow you to express yourself more than painting?

It’s so different, and I think that was driven by it also because, in my culture, it was forbidden to women, so for me, it was almost like a statement.

In your work, we always find a unique cross-cultural approach between the Kalabari and Western cultures. Your way to create an intersection between these apparently distant worlds is powerful and yet incredibly harmonious. Can you tell us more about how these two realities merge in your Art?

It certainly has to do with my out bringing because I was brought up by brother in law, my sister’s husband. He lived in Nigeria, but he was English. He was an anthropologist and he was studying my people, Nigerian and Kalabari people. Since he was an anthropologist, I was soon exposed to incredible information about our cultural identity. I knew lot more than I normally would if it wasn’t for him. There were many people coming to discuss aspects of my culture. That gave me an expanded way of thinking. So, when I decided to live and work in England, I approached English or European culture in the same way I would think of Kalabari culture. It was almost like finding their differences together with their similarities. However, it was not an analytical approach, but more a life-enjoyment way.

What are your artistic influences?

They come actually from an older person that I met in my teen years. This person was a dance choreographer. She was taking traditional dances and putting them on the stage. She took very traditional aspects of her culture and choreographed them beautifully. The cultural influence was so strong that she brought theater on stage. It translated so well that I thought I could put traditional aspects of my culture in a gallery.

In your work, there is a significant focus on environmental issues. You spend a whole deal of energy across the years in delivering the problems due to oil production in Nigeria and how it affected Nigeria Delta. What pushed you to embrace this purpose in your Art?

In my lifetime Nigeria discovered oil. The place that I was born in has gas flaring. They used light gas to burn it off, a very unsustainable way that would have never been applied in Europe. However, they chose to do that in Nigeria. It made the air terrible, the situation was way worst than the one you could find in big industrialized cities, and we were a tiny, little island. My family is breathing that every day, and when I visit, I do too.

In London, I read a National Geographic paper saying that gas flaring in Nigeria affected Australia’s ozone layer. When I read that, I sadly realized that it wasn’t just a Nigerian problem, it concerned the whole world, and it was right to have a conversation about it.

Other current topics of your work are colonialism and gender inequality. With the year passing, did you notice any positive or negative changes concerning these issues?

I think we have become even more unequal. One time you could have a conversation about putting it right, but sadly today, a lot of it has still to do with money then since. Covid was a perfect chance to think about how we’re managing the world, how we are behaving, but we soon moved even further back before it started. Where we are is very painful right now

You created many memorial sculptures; which one was the most challenging and why?

I’ll say my memorial to Ken Saro-Wiwa. I made this bus to commemorate his work as an environmental activist, he was African first environmental activist and a writer killed in 1995. It was the most challenging piece that I ever did because of its history and because it was a public memorial. It gained a lot of notoriety, and many people wrote about it. It traveled England for about nine years with the idea to educate people about the situation in Nigeria.

Speaking up about the Nigerian government and the colonial powers misbehaving, especially as a Nigerian woman, was quite a big move for me.

Which part of your work do you most enjoy?

Playing in my studio! It’s all about the making and the creation process! It’s a place that always gives you surprises because sometimes things don’t figure out as you imagined them

This leads us to our next question: you said you like to be playful also with your Art. Do you think a playful approach is something artists should keep in his/her practice?

Yes! It’s very hard to describe what you feel and what you see. When you try to couple it together and make a presentation, you attempt to catch something – and it’s kind of ironic -, you try to make something meaningful, but there can be flows. However, even when you are making an effort is important to have an open approach.

Has your practice changed during covid?

Well, it was certainly hard; you ask yourself what is Art for if no one can see it. So what did I do? I created tables and chairs, something that people could use! That was quite fun, and it was very physical, I used the materials I got, I created metal flowers that I put on top of them. The only thing we could do here in England was walking in nature, and you could look at your surroundings, and that was my way of celebrating nature

Your international reputation is huge, and it converted into many solo shows worldwide. What’s next?

So many things! I’d like to display my works differently, on the streets, because there are no restrictions this way. Just before lockdown, I was in Japan, and I was able to make a work in a railway wagon, and it could be seen from the platform. You couldn’t touch it, but t was for everyone to look at. If you think about it, it was totally covid sensitive actually! I’d like to pursue more works like that. That’s what I’m concentrating on next.

I have one final question for you; what is Art for?

Art simply expresses things that cannot be put in words, it’s a conversation for your eyes, and it makes you look at things differently. That’s just wonderful!

Sokaro Douglas Camp artworks on RDN Arts: Sokari Douglas Camp Sculptures

We had the pleasure of conversing with a one-of-a-kind artist, Scott Kahn. We talked about how the pandemic has affected his artistic routine. Also, we delved into the worlds of his art and magical universes, searching for the connections at the base of art and life, always inextricably linked to each other. 

Among the most renowned names in contemporary American art, Kahn has built a unique artistic and expressive language. His painting is chimerical, dreamlike, imaginative. The manifestations of his creative quintessence find inspiration in the portraiture and landscapes, nature, intimate spaces. These signs find space in diverse layers of colors that emerge in vivid canvas, incredibly intense. We thank Scott Kahn for this interview.

The allegorical and symbolic charge in your works is notable. Can you explain this choice and what is, according to you, the intersection of visual art and poetry?

I had a particular interest in dreams, yin-yang symbol symbolism – and I guess I’m still painting in this kind of symbolic dreamlike way. You know, to me, it’s an elevated way to present my experience, and most importantly, it’s just my nature, and I can’t fight my nature. You might say it’s a subtext. It’s the way it’s reported to the viewer that suggests something beyond what is actually being seen. If I’m really successful, the painting achieves some poetic transcendence. 

You said to consider your work to be a visual diary of your life. How do you choose which images to represent? What is the process that leads you to a choice in the representations you carry into your art?

I wait for inspiration to pick up the brush and put it on canvas. It’s a little magical and mysterious. I often have to wait for that inspiration, that moment. The impulse that gets me to the canvas generally comes from something very recent in my life. Something I’ve seen, maybe even frequently. It could be a feeling. I don’t consider myself a conceptual artist, but I certainly want to express some symbolic and philosophical meaning through my work. 

Covid surely affected, among many others, the world of art. How did your practice change during this period?

For sure, it has. At the moment I’m working at home, painting smaller pictures on panels. I started working this way, and I love it. However, I’m really craving to get back at my studio in Brooklyn. I got a big canvas all prepared, ready to go. Generally, I very much like and find inspiration in nature but now I opened to news subject, like interiors. I did a couple of painting from the park, but mostly I find inspiration in my immediate environment. When I look down from my window, there is a garden, I look through leaves and branches. My view is more westerly, so I see the sunset at night, and sometimes I get up early to see the sunrise in the morning. These are the things I’ve been relying on for subject matter. 

I’m too close to my current work to assess it, but I think it’s shifting a little bit, becoming more experimental, in a way very surreal. 

Why is it important to relate events that had actually happened to you?

I have to wait to experience and see something that moves me to feel inspired. What I think is, if I don’t feel driven by what I’m trying to express, how can I expect the viewer to be compelled?

Portraiture is an important part of your production. How did you approach it?

I wondered: where do I begin? I started from myself! The first painting from life was a self-portrait. It was a small painting, it was an abstract painting originally, but I painted over it. Then I moved, and I started with landscapes. It has been four years where I taught myself to paint from life. I wanted to paint everything: I painted the interiors of the tiny apartment I had when the weather wasn’t good, I painted portraits, I asked the woman who was living downstairs to sit for a portrait, I painted all the traditional subject matters, but I was obsessive, I painted every leaf as I saw it as accurately as I could. I sold all those paintings, but while photorealism became popular and my art just brought me somewhere else.

Everybody thought I was a photorealist, and I had to revaluate myself again. I had exhausted the abstract art four years previously, had to discard my practice’s driving element, and now a new challenge came by! My work was photo-realistically looking, but I wasn’t using photographs. I was painting from observation. It bothered me because I think the main thing in art is to be uniquely yourself and not being summed in categories or movements. 

I moved again, and a new period started; I painted in my studio, and there were no trees, no landscapes out the windows, there was NY. So I began to rely on my memory and imagination, which was the beginning of really finding my new voice.

What are some of your early influences?

There was this very famous artist in America, his name was Alexander Brook in the 30ties and 40ies he was one of the most famous and successful artists in this country. I used to paint on his property in Long Island, and he once said to me, “it’s best to have no Gods.” I have always been ispired by classical European artists, who stood the test of time. To be honest, I can’t say one artist or even a group of artists influenced me stylistically, but I always admired art that creates an illusion. I like the idea of two dimensional flat where you can make these otherworlds with perspective, form, color, and light.

At the top of the list, I would say Van Gogh. Every of his painting makes me feel like my soul has been stabbed. It’s so moving and so compelling. When you see one of his paintings, it’s like there is no distance between your soul and the artist’s soul. It’s that straightforward and that direct.ù

What part does education play in an artist’s work?

I consider myself a self-taught artist. I admire the concept of death and poetry. You could say that artists are self-taught to the extent that whatever education they had, eventually, to find your voice, your unique voice, you have to throw up your education. I think the process for anyone, for any artist of substance, is to throw off the masters, as Alexander Brook said. The main thing I consider to be valuable about going to school, about getting an education of every sort, is that it gives you some technical skills, but ultimately I went through this project more consciously in my 20ies: you have to find your unique artistic nature.

I think in a way it’s hard to avoid when you are young and sometimes impressionable, as a student, to prevent admiring artists who are well known and successful, who achieved fame, whether they are contemporary or recently dead. I admired Hans, Hoffman, Nolan, Stella. When you are a student, you kind of emulate what they are doing. I was working with acrylic paint, I was using masking tape, but, you know, I wasn’t yet aware of the need I had to have my work reflect my life and the circumstances of my life. I went through a several-year process to learn that.

When I finished school, I traveled a bit, came back to NY, was still an abstract painter, was still emulating, and experimented a little bit with sculpture, installation and then I finished my education. I came back to NY after traveling, and I realized that those abstract paintings weren’t reflecting what I was living and the world around me. 

Fortunately, I went to an art foundation at the end of Long Island and met Edward Albee. I was the only painter there. There were all playwriters. In that period, I quit the abstract mode. I felt exhausted. I reached a point where the abstract was meaningless to me. This was a blessing in disguise; from that point, a new era began in my art. 

How is doing art in NY?

When I first came to NY, all the galleries were in the upper east side, and over the years, they moved to different neighborhoods, and now they are all over the place. At first, when I was a student in the city, you could pretty much cover the gallery scene almost in a long afternoon between the upper east side and 57th street, and that was it! The whole art world changed, the internet contributed a lot to that.

Your art is dreamlike, imaginative. It’s almost like taking off pre-established filters and finding the immediate and straightforward language of childhood. Do you think your art identifies itself to some extent with the world of children?

I paint to understand myself and the world around me. That’s what children have to go through. As they develop and get older, they absorb these life experiences, and they come to an understanding. I cherish life and cherish freedom more than anything, and I feel very freedom as an artist to have total freedom when working. I think we all get trapped into some system or another to survive. It spends so much of your energy and time just needing those basic requirements but having total freedom and nobody telling you what to think. When I’m standing in front of a painting, even if it’s for an hour or two or three hours, I feel blessed. Funnily this all relates to the childlike nature of art.

Scott Kahn’s artworks on RDN Arts: Scott Kahn paintings