Where do we come from, what are we, where are we going? – 200cm x 150cm – acrylic – 2020
INT. DAY – CAFÉ
FADE IN FROM BLACK
In a café overlooking the corner between Julius Nyerere and 24 de Julho two gentleman sit at a table. Their names are Ndambi and Jorge, they are having a cup of coffee.
Ndambi
Perhaps there is too much. I have an uneasy gut feeling when I look at your painting.
Jorge
Yes, I heard that comment before, that it is exaggerated.
Ndambi
Yes, that’s why it’s not real art. I hope you are not offended by this.
Jorge
That’s funny.
Ndambi
But I’m not joking.
Jorge
Then please elaborate, it is too easy to just dismiss it. Some people just like to provoke, or get under your skin by saying exactly that: your work is not real art. I would like to take you serious, so please, tell me why.
Ndambi
Well, there is too much information on the canvas. You overload the viewer with a complex scenario and many details that just confuse the viewer. Art is simple, deep, the viewer must feel the artwork. This piece gives me the feeling I’m in a classroom.
Jorge
It was not my intention to make a simple piece, I didn’t want to reduce anything. You are right about there being a lot of information, but again, this is the nature of the piece.
Ndambi
But that is an outdated way of painting. You try to tell a multi-layered story in one image, don’t you think you are overdoing it? This makes me think of church-paintings. Surely you don’t want to reference that?
Jorge
Surely I do, and the piece hints at many other things beyond classical European painting.
Ndambi
But why do you want to be stuck there, in the past, on the other side of the world?
Jorge
Again, that’s funny.
Ndambi
Painting is much more than copying a photograph Jorge. So much happened in the last century, you don’t seem to be interested in any of it.
Jorge
Can you be more specific?
Ndambi
You are trying to paint realistically, but that is not art any more.
Jorge
I see.
I am going to be very blunt and direct to you, please do not be insulted. I appreciate fierce debate.
This is the twenty-first century, times have changed. It was a typical artistic tendency in the last century to, just like politics, speak a language of conquest. Many movements in the western art world were somewhat militant in their quest to monopolize art. One aesthetic to rule them all, one to find them, and one aesthetic within the art-world to bind them. It feels messianic to me, to bring an higher concept into manifestation for the others to assimilate. It is typical of that culture of that time, they really ruled the world for a while there right?
Ndambi
Right! So why do you want to copy the aesthetics of the oppressors?
Jorge
To make it mine, to steal it from them and own it.
Ndambi
.. go on.
Jorge
An artist has to be directed to the future. You look back to learn from the masters, but you walk towards the future. You can only make so much monochromes, primary objects, or deconstructionist sculptures.
The piece is made in pre-pandemic times. It was finished in the year before the world changed dramatically, as we are speaking the change is still on its way. If there is going to really be a reset of the economy into emancipation our collective dream will come to be. More probable is more domination and control, this was predictable, no?
Ndambi
Yes, I understand, but..
Jorge
.. Hold on.
When looking at the future there is an obvious theme, the magnification and acceleration of techno-humans, the cyborgs. One should react to it, strategically, not just go with the flow without reason. Lex Fridman is right to always speak about love. This painting would not be possible without access to the internet or acrylic, and I have been listening to the AI-podcasts, and many others, while painting this piece. I believe the painters of earlier times would love to have these tools. A software like Photoshop, or rather GIMP, is based on photography of course, which is on its turn based on the eye, developed through art and engineering. These are extensions of our anatomical body that are fresh, they have little to no historical precedent. There is so much to explore! People are much more educated than they ever were, this gives new artistic possibilities. That’s why you asked if they would understand it, you are not aware of what happened, and still is. The whole world knows Art History now.
You have to make the next step.
Ndambi
Which is going back to outdated painting?
Jorge
What is outdated is to reduce the artwork to zero. Personally I expect much more from an artist than just the bare minimum. I have seen too much canvasses that are just colour, that adventure is not interesting to me. Which does not mean there are no interesting contemporary abstract painters, there are, which only makes it more interesting. But that is simply not my manner of expression.
It is by now a formula: mixing the various styles, artistic experiments, mannerism, and what not into one painting and tadaa. I get it. The canvas as a surface, a place of action, collage, you name it. It doesn’t motivate me at all to do anything in that manner.
Ndambi
So you put aside modern painting?
Jorge
I am not a modernist, though I am greatly inspired by the Surrealists.
Ndambi
Oh, but ..
Jorge
.. Stylization and abstraction are interesting, but also outdated. If we play that game we end up doing nothing, because wasn’t everything already said and done? In art we are free. It is silly to them limit yourself because someone used the same technique a few centuries earlier. That is being stuck. That would be acceptance of historical shadows regulating my work. Why does that matter so much to you?
Ndambi
That is important in art, you have to be aware of these things.
Jorge
In that case I should tell you more about this painting in question.
Ndambi
Okay.
Jorge
In the eight years I’ve been living in Maputo again, I have made a series of paintings that are about the city of Maputo. Am not sure of the number, but it counts more than fifteen. The one in question is made at the end of this series, when I was reflecting on what I have been doing.
Ndambi
So, this is a painting about your series of paintings?
Jorge
Yes. In a wider sense it is about the word ‘performance’. The three main figures represent three ways of interpretation.
On the right side we see Atlas of 2019, the android made by Boston Dynamics. The word performance relates to how well a specific activity is carried out. A car performs better if it is faster, just like an athlete does too. That is measurable performance, that can fail or succeed within different gradations. Atlas mimics humans up to the point that it is even more capable physically than a lot of contemporary humans. That android is more athletic, agile and strong than most humans, thus it performs better. It is still a piece of engineering by humans, but now this engineering surpasses our anatomical capabilities with a performance.
The figure on the left side, the lady, wears a mask. That is the face of Marina Abramovich, do you know her?
Ndambi
Maybe, her name is familiar.
Jorge
She should be, I consider her to be one of the great artist of the twentieth century, she is still alive. She proclaims herself being the grandmother of Performance Art.
Ndambi
Oh yes, I know about her.
Jorge
This type of performance is sort of theatrical, in a sense, but meant for the White Cube, galleries, museums, it is always related to a public. In this sense it is about the psycho-social relation between the producers and receivers of the art-piece. It is not quantifiable like the performance of Atlas, it is social-aesthetic, intellectual-emotional. The way to measure this type of performance is through the experience of another human, and the interpretations of its meanings are potentially infinite. It is directly opposed to Atlas its finite but very precise actions, that are pre-programmed by a team of PHD-engineers with an highly advanced industrial infrastructure.
Ndambi
Okay, that is clear but ..
Jorge
..Wait!
There is also the centre figure. It is based on a photo of the Fon of Bamungo of that time, West Africa. I replaced his head with a mask of a Stanley Kubrick movie.
Ndambi
So, you didn’t invent that mask?
Jorge
No, it is from the movie ‘Eyes wide Shut’, the scene in the mansion. When the main character is caught and is forced to take off his mask, you know the, the crazy party?
Ndambi
Yes.
Jorge
We see a few shots of masked guests, one of them is the one I used. I thought of it as a Cubist mask. After an internet search I found out that it is a mask made by a Venetian mask-maker. Don’t know how you call that. Kubrick used it in the movie next to many others of course. But the Cubist mask got stuck in my head, also because I’ve seen the movie many times, I love Kubrick. Another great one of the previous century.
Ndambi
But, you know what that means, in relation to African art?
Jorge
It is a provocation really, but not what you may think. I try to hint at a tendency of artists in Maputo to regard stylization in drawing as the true African way of painting. It is a criticism I often receive, that my work is not really African.
Ndambi
How do you react to that?
Jorge
Well, I was born here, live and work here, make work about my surroundings. It is impossible for me to not be African. Representing a continent, an ethnicity or ideology is not interesting to me. What I tried to do here is complicate it.
Ndambi
So that mask is a message?
Jorge
It is part of the standard outfit of a shaman, or in this case, a sort of shaman-king. Masks are a central theme within African art. My version of the shaman-king wears a Venetian Cubist mask. Have you looked at his shoes?
Ndambi
What about it?
Jorge
They are way over my budget, if you know what I mean.
Ndambi
…
Is that a gold chain?
Jorge
It’s a gold throne too, but that is only visible from specific angles where the gold paint reflects the light.
Ndambi
I did not see that.
Jorge
You will see it next time.
But let me get back to the central theme of the painting. The central figure stands for the ritualistic manner of performance, embedded in the social order. The word itself may not even apply to it, since the fine art context is not applicable to a lot of traditional African culture. The tool in his hands is to fend of negative spirits and dirty energies. The object implies a performance in the physical and spiritual world simultaneously, under the eyes of the ancestors. The shaman-king performs a function to his people, one of political-social negotiation with the higher forces and other entities of the physical reality and beyond.
Ndambi
I see, the painting is a study of performance.
Jorge
And also a critical reflection on my series of paintings of the last few years.
Ndambi
Do you think the viewer will understand all that?
Jorge
Of course!
Ndambi
How? You will have to talk a lot.
Jorge
I enjoy speaking with people, it is one of the great joys of being an artist, it will be my pleasure.
Ndambi
So, explain further.
Jorge
Up till now we only spoke about the foreground of the pictorial space. There is the illusion of space which you seem to object to.
Ndambi
It’s not a real painting, it pretends to be something else. It is a pretentious hint at the concept of interdimensional doors, just cheap science fiction.
Jorge
It is a real painting that creates the illusion of space, it is not fake, and definitely not superficial. I would say that visually it strives to create infinite space for we are looking at the sky and see stars in the background. Those islands are more than just land, I hope you see it. In the background, in the sky, we see what I think of as the Aurora Australis. There are things hidden in the background that add to the theme of the king.
Ndambi
You are talking about those two guards? Those spirits that hold the two staffs?
Jorge
No, they can be considered as being in the foreground.
Ndambi
Wait, I get that the painting is a sort of opera.
Jorge
Yes.
Ndambi
But let’s go back to the art-historical perspective. You have not convinced me that this style of painting is valid as art.
Jorge
I really see a tendency within modernity to limit art to emotional expression that supports one’s ideals. It’s a trap.
Ndambi
You are like a Soviet Realist, using art for educational purposes.
Jorge
Does it bother you?
Ndambi
…
No, it’s different. I don’t like it, but the uneasy feeling in my gut is gone. I get it now, your work is original, but too much explanation.
Jorge
Ha! Just wait a few years.
By the way:
There is an art-historical reference you may like. The American Regionalists of the 1930s are somewhat similar to me. They depicted scenes of the people of their environment.
Ndambi
So, you are a Regionalist Surrealist.
Jorge
That’s a mouth full.
Ndambi
Why did you make this painting?
Jorge
‘Where do we come from, what are we, where are we going’?
Fade to black