‘Freedom in Multitudes’: Explorations of the Self with Sosa Omorogbe
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A lot of the artists on the top floor of the exhibition – Anne Adams, Amanda Shingirai and Ousmane Bâ, for example – seemed to be grappling with the idea of the fragmented self.
What did you like about their approaches? How did you compare their different presentations of the fragmented self?
With the artists on the top floor, I loved their representations of identities and personhood. The fragmented self is the self. That feeling of not being one thing but multiple threads intertwined into one physical, corporeal form, that is what it feels like to be human. I don’t think traditional portraiture where the figure is posed and sat always captures that.
However, I saw Amanda’s work, which might not be viewed as portraiture by some critics, as a more accurate representation of what it means to be human. It’s deconstructed and plural, but it is a portrait. Anne does the same with collage work where she’s using archival images, deeply African, traditional images, but mapping it onto a contemporary whole. As someone who is very closely linked to my heritage – 1897 directly references Benin where I’m from – Anne’s work speaks to me on a deep level. Being West African is a big part of who I am, but I’m also travelling around the world, I’m in London right now, I studied in the states. We are not one thing.
Roisin, too, uses the River Mumma spirit to grapple with two parts of herself. Ousmane uses Senegalese forms and Japanese techniques, but he’s French. Their works show and depict what it’s like to be human, the multitudes that contains. Of course, they lead viewers to grapple with real questions around Black identity, but none of the works centre around the fact that the artists are Black. I love that because I think so many times we’re confronted with the colour of our skin first, and it’s tiring. I didn’t want people to be tired [laughs], walking through the exhibition. I wanted it to still speak to deep questions about identity, but from a different angle. I wanted to show that African art, or Black art, is universal. It can be ‘for us, by us’, but that’s not necessarily exclusionary. The message of ‘Freedom and Multitudes’ is universal. I don’t think anyone would walk in and feel, ‘Oh, I’m not Black, I don’t get this’.

It’s interesting you say that you see their work as portraits, and more accurate portraits than traditional portraiture. You mentioned in the curator-led tour that you didn’t want traditional figures in the exhibition; you wanted to avoid a representation of self and identity that didn’t speak to you. Afeez’s pieces, however, use classical figures or representations of bodies that might be deemed traditional.
What about his work spoke to you in ways other traditional portraiture or images didn’t?
First of all, I just love his work. Also, he’s young, and I really wanted to support young and emerging artists in this exhibition. When I was planning the show, the words in my head were ‘freedom’ and ‘fluidity’. I divided the space into upstairs and downstairs. The upstairs work questions the self and fragments, but downstairs, the figures and artists are already who they are. They’ve gone through the searching process and have now found joy in their multitudes and freedom. I hate to say freedom in their multitude.
It’s the title for a reason.
It is [laughs]. And for Afeez, his subjects felt free to me. There’s a dynamism in his figurative work that I don’t think is very common. Usually, when people paint portraits or figures in an obvious, recognisable way, there’s a rigidity to it, it’s posed, but his figures are existing and swirling around in the liminal background space that I felt linked very well to the exhibition. So, ostensibly, his works are traditional figuration, but the composition is not.
What happens when we remove the obvious, which is that we are Black, and talk about other things?
They seemed to be swimming through the background. In fact, water as a theme emerged in a few pieces: the crocodile in Anne’s pieces and the ocean-like texture of Nola’s textiles. I suppose that is linked to the centrality of ‘fluidity’ in the exhibition.
Was water a conscious theme? What did you make of the way water was handled as a symbol in the various pieces?
It wasn’t a conscious choice, but it was something I thought of at the end: the Black relationship with water and migration, and the impact that water has had on Black identity. I could talk about slavery. I could talk about modern immigration patterns. I know in the US, as well, there are a lot of Black people who can’t swim because of segregation and swimming pools. I could talk about water forever; it has such impact upon who we are as human beings, even the politics of water. I should do an exhibition about water… It is woven into everyone’s identity as human beings – it is our sustaining life force – but it is specifically woven into the Black identity, in both ancient and modern ways.

Were there any artists or creatives that inspired you when you had the concept of this exhibition? Who were your influences?
W. E. B. Du Bois. I’ve been inspired by Du Bois since I first encountered him in college. I had just moved from England, where I was in boarding school, to New York for college, and the experience of being Black in America is so different to being Black here. The experience of being Black when I went from Nigeria to the UK was different as well, of course, but it was really different in America, and it was hard. It was hard to be confronted all the time with being Black. Obviously, I knew I was – like the artists in this exhibition, they know they’re Black – but I kept thinking to myself, why does this feel so different? No one was openly racist to me, but it felt different. Hearing Du Bois speak about double consciousness, that feeling of constantly judging oneself through the eyes of others, spoke to me. The internal struggle feels like something is rubbing against your skin on the inside, where your self-perception and the world don’t match.
With art, you can reclaim what is lost.
Extrapolating from Du Bois’ theory, I thought to myself, what happens if I create an exhibition where there’s a single consciousness, where there’s what I wish I had throughout my life, and what I wish other Black people had throughout their lives? It’s kind of impossible, but what happens when we remove the obvious, which is that we are Black, and talk about other things? Who do we really see ourselves as? And what I found was Ousmane speaking to being Senegalese through his forms, Roisin talking about Jamaican ancestry and folklore, Anne talking about being African and being a young woman. None of them have to talk about the fact that they’re Black.
We’ve spoken about your choices and aims with ‘Freedom and Multitudes’, but I’m always interested in what emerges unintentionally in exhibitions or anthologies when you bring multiple strands together.
Were there any themes that cropped up that were unexpected?
That’s a really good question because I’m such a planner [laughs]. Nothing could have really shocked me. With Anne’s work, though, and the works that weren’t on canvas, something I kept on thinking about was fragility.
Before we had the show, Ousmane and I were on a call. He was talking about paper. Honestly, this call was 45 minutes long, and the whole time we were talking about paper. Ousmane only works on paper. In the art world, people will look down on works on paper with the connotation being that artists should work on canvas. Works on paper tend to be cheaper. We were speaking about that, and how paper is fragile, of course, but also very strong. There’s Japanese armour where parts of the armour is made from paper that has been closely and tightly packed. We were talking about how you can’t fold a piece of paper more than seven times because it becomes very tough. Compare the reputational fragility of paper to the copper of Roisin’s work. You have to be very careful with copper, a material that is ostensibly strong. Once you’ve marked it, it’s very difficult to correct or change. I had to take extra care with the transportation and installation of Roisin’s copper works, whereas Ousmane’s works were very easy.
The conversation made me think about materialism, what we see as fragile and what actually is fragile. What are the qualities of fragility? How do we delineate what is fragile and what is not? It calls into question attributes we ascribe to things and people as a society, particularly in the art world. What do we think is valuable? What do we think is not? For example, with the paperwork that people tend not to value, paper is the basis of art. When artists or writers start a project, they scribble on paper, they draw, they sketch. So why is this material which is the foundation of all that we do and we know not seen as the highest form? Why do we value the things we do?
Lastly, on the theme of fragility, the trope of the strong Black woman popped into my mind. What is that? Society has ascribed these attributes and qualities to us, of hardness, of strength, and how can we trust that? Even with Black hair, people think Black hair is tough and wiry, but Black hair is, in fact, extremely soft and fragile.
It was unexpected, the way that even the material of the artwork mapped so interestingly onto the themes of identity I wanted to explore. Materialism is very important. I knew I didn’t want an exhibition that was just canvas stretched over wood, even though that’s the easiest thing to work with and install. I wanted to explore materialism and have people thinking about what are the works are actually made from.

This exhibition was held in CasildART, your partners in London, but 1897 is a nomadic gallery and project. Can we talk about what that means, both logistically and metaphorically? Why did you want it to be a nomadic concept?
I’d been curating in Lagos for a while. I took a break because I used to be in investment banking, and I wanted to figure out what was important to me. I’m working in the arts, but what impact do I want to have? I realised that community was one of the pillars of my practice, one of the things I was most concerned about.
Now, working and curating in Nigeria and in any one space – unless it’s somewhere like London or New York where the art scene is massive – can be quite limiting. When you show an artist, you want to show them to an audience that will appreciate them, that will understand their work. And in one place, that can’t always be the case because that one audience has their own specific taste that is difficult to circumvent. There were artists I thought were fantastic, but I could not guarantee that I could sell their pieces in Nigeria. That’s not a problem with their work, that’s not a problem with the Nigerian collector base, it’s simply taste. I realised that if I did something that was nomadic, it would open up the scope of the artists that I could work with, and it would open up the scope of collectors.
It also achieved my goal of building a community, because with each space we go to, we’re creating a new audience. My vision for 1897 is that eventually it becomes a global community made up of all the locations we’ve been to. A global community that are focused on amplifying Black and African art. Thank god for the internet, because that’s where the community will be: online.
1897 is a creative agency. Artists, collectors, people who are enthusiasts, I’m excited about the prospect of connecting with anyone who shares our values and wants to contribute meaningfully to the Black and African art world.
Finally, I wanted to ask about the name. Why 1897? What’s the significance of that year and how does that fit into your aims with the project?
The name, 1897, is directly taken from the year of the Benin Punitive Expedition. I’m from Benin, which is in the south of Nigeria, and my mum’s family are historically bronze casters. So, in Benin, we used to cast, and still cast, bronze. All the bronze is casted on one street called Igun street, and there are seven families who are allowed to cast bronze.
The Benin Punitive Expedition happened in 1897. The British came in and essentially looted Benin, taking the Benin Bronzes. The British still have them. You can find them in the British Museum. The taking of the Benin Bronzes signified the fall of the Benin empire, but it wasn’t just the fall of the king. It was an erasure of history. The works, like a lot of classical African artifacts and arts that we see now, are not decorative. They’re serving a purpose. For example, you have ancestral heads that were used in altars, you have plaques that were a record of history. By taking those works, the British were taking history, ceremony and culture from us. And so I named the business 1897 to pay respect to Benin, which I always do, but also to remind myself of the type of exhibitions I want to do. In my own little way, I want to do exhibitions that help us reclaim what was lost. Benin is not unique. There were many other sorts of extractive events like that, and with art, you can reclaim what is lost, you can cross boundaries and barriers that are still in existence today.
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Sosa Omorogbe is a creative consultant, curator, art dealer and finance professional with extensive experience in project management and client relations. Prior to founding 1897, she co-founded SABO Art, a leading art advisory and curatorial firm. She began her career in the arts handling fair programming as well as VIP and Collector relations at ART X Lagos, West Africa’s premier international art fair. Following this, she proceeded to work with institutions within the African arts ecosystem, including The Ben Enwonwu Foundation and Yinka Shonibare CBE’s Guest Artist Space (G.A.S) Foundation. Sosa’s expertise also extends to classical African art with a focus on the ‘Benin Bronzes’, on which she has conducted in-depth research.
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