Home From Home: Valuing the everyday – Sajjad Musa
Sajjad Musa - photo by Timbuk Atakora
Sajjad Musa is a Multidisciplinary artist based in New York. His approach to reimagining the 'everyday' creates space for nuanced conversations about cultural and political landscapes using a range of analogue and digital techniques to create work. His study of currency examines concepts of togetherness through sharing and repurposing motifs and movements seen in his project Break Bread which through a chance encounter lead to a commission by Atlantic Records to produce the artwork for Burna Boy’s critically acclaimed fourth studio album African Giant. I met him during my first trip to NY at the start of March for The Armory Show before the COVID-19 pandemic exploded in our respective home cities restricting movement and international travel. As a means of reconnecting Sajjad and I chopped it up over FaceTime.
Sajjad Musa Privacy is Theft
Péjú Oshin: How did you start developing an interest in art alongside your practice?
Sajjad Musa: It really started with collage. There was a stack of old Jet and Ebony magazines that we had at home and every Sunday when my dad would send me to the store to get milk, I’d pick up the latest issues of those magazines. I was interested in the ads, particularly the ones that focused on liquor as they came across as being derogatory. I wanted to turn them into something new and in the early 2000s I started using those magazines to create collages and the work started to develop a surreal feeling. As the work became more intentional, I’d start off with an idea in my head and source elements from the magazines to construct what was in my mind. Later on, I started to take an interest in currency, there were these reoccurring motifs and as I started to study and experiment more, I realised I was using the same skillset.
PO: You’ve talked briefly about your process mentioning that it often starts with an idea in your head followed by an act of going through imagery, tell me a little more about how the works come together.
SM: As mentioned, it starts as idea in my head followed by me needing to find those elements. I go through hundreds of magazines - it’s painstaking. When I create work, I think about the vantage point too. Very often you’ll see collages and things are the wrong proportions or scale, my work is designed to make sense, everything needs to make sense. Aside from this, sometimes I’ll hear a piece of music and want to capture it and put it into a different form. I’m really observant and take a lot of photographs of signs. At the end of the month I’ll go through my camera roll and see how I can play with it. Occasionally I’ll come across something I may not like; in this case it then becomes about coming up with a concept to hold space for conversation.
Sajjad Musa When We Were kingz
PO: You’re well known for your study of currency which explores themes of commonality and also led to your work on Burna Boy’s album, how did this interest develop?
SM: It started in 2017 with the Break Bread project. Breaking bread is a metaphor for people - what happens when people from around the world come together and share assets? what happens when you take elements from all of the different currencies and put them together, does it make sense? I’m interested in the power that money has, and I often blow up the details of the currency.
Break Bread was a self-funded project, it was by chance that I connected with someone from Atlantic who had seen the work and was interested. When we spoke about the Burna project I thought immediately, he has to have his own bill/currency. Spotify commissioned me to create two custom bills including one for the single ‘Pull Up’. I was interested in the juxtaposition of resources – I swapped local transport out for a Mercedes-Benz which I pulled from my experience of having lived in South Africa in 2013 for a couple of months and having a Garveyite family which helped me tap into the culture.
PO: You mentioned briefly that you had the opportunity to live on the continent for a few months, what was that experience like, and has it help inform your work or relationship with space?
SM: It was a constant conflict of love and hate. I was connecting a lot of what my family had instilled in me. The food and culture were amazing, I was happy being a student of the land. We (me and my partner) were in Cape Town, I made an effort where I could to go into the everyday hustle and bustle. There are still remnants of the apartheid era - it was triggering and although I was in this new place, it also felt really familiar.
They have this system of transportation, white vans with everyone packed in - as many as they could. I don’t think they’re government run, and I started drawing parallels with NY dollar vans. In both cities these ad-hoc networks are responsible for moving the everyday people. When I travelled to Havana, Cuba I found something similar there too. Although it wasn’t the white van, there was still this ad-hoc element.
The shanti towns were interesting. There is a lot of dilapidation and struggle but a very tight-knit community. This was another parallel that I started to draw, particularly with New York projects. You have the ‘everyday people’ and they’re doing the same thing. People still get on and build communities in these places. It reminded me of spending time with my grandparents going to the community centre - people develop this real sense of community. Your mom's friend might be watching you after school leads to common adage that it takes a village to raise a child.
PO: A lot of your work features landscapes and architecture, it’s in a way a creation of new spaces. How have you managed to navigate and carve out space for yourself and work?
SM: It took a lot of soul searching to realise this is a specific space I want to investigate. Taking my own life experience, my biography and putting them in a space that it’s never been in; such as a gallery or launching a tech platform. I’m exploring how I can take my upbringing and the things that I’ve come across be it currency or the everyday items you find and create a dialogue. I also look to my creative or academic background and considering putting it in spaces so that other groups of people who wouldn’t pay attention to or come across them can realise there is something beautiful there that they haven’t been exposed to. Hopefully, that highlights some similarities and differences spanning all social-economic strata. It’s for our culture and outside of our culture to highlight an exchange and hopefully, there are more similarities.
Stop 1 (Roger Cortés & Sajjad Musa) No I.C.E 2019
PO: The theme of commonality, shared space and dialogue has come up quite a lot in your work, do you ever work collaboratively?
SM: Yes, I’ve been working on a collaborative project with a friend of mine, who is also an Architect. We’re a multidisciplinary studio called STOP1 and work with creating sculptures from everyday items. The name is actually inspired by a franchisee of bodegas in NY. We focus on art beyond the walls and making it accessible to the everyday person.
I don’t like the idea of creativity or inspiration being for one class or that only one group has access. This is the art that is really considering people from an inner-city environment. It is possible to take everyday interactions and inspire.
We started the No I.C.E project which we built ourselves and was self-funded. Under the Trump administration, there has been a zero-tolerance approach to immigration with many being sent to ICE detention centres. In New York particularly there has been lots of xenophobia which is worrying.
As part of the process we sourced authentic textures from existing ice boxes. We rebranded them to say no ice and created an interactive element. We’ve had a lot of great feedback from those who have encountered it. It’s been very accessible; people have a natural reaction to it as it’s a consumer item that people use in their everyday lives and we’ve made art from it. We wanted to destigmatize what it is to be an immigrant.
PO: We’ve spoken about the possibilities of exchange through your work, what do you hope for this to look like?
SM: It centres on the conversation around scholastic research and intent. I feel our culture is beautiful and it deserves the same level of research, exploration and platform as others. When someone from the outside does it such as agencies, brands etc, it doesn’t have the same level of nuance. We can be unapologetic about what we like and our daily practices and appreciate the daily struggle that has created the culture. Hopefully those on the outside come across something they haven’t seen or experience a paradigm shift on those objects and materials as well as the people who create them. I feel it’s disposable for cultural agencies and we need an anthropological approach which means preservation and documentation. It’s also part of the icebox idea, has anyone ever documented the phenomena of the icebox? I find them quite beautiful and that’s another level of these gallery exhibitions as a method of documentation.
PO: Your framing of the phenomena of the icebox is really nice and one of the reasons I’ve connected with your work and practice, where did your interest in the ‘everyday’ or ‘mundane’ come from?
SM: It about being biographical - documenting myself and my experiences. It’s like a book about myself, my goal is to look back and say, ‘I’ve done all these projects, and this is my life’s work’. I really land on using materials and graphic elements that come from urban landscapes because that’s really me. I think about it and I’d like to inspire a younger version of myself. I didn’t come up with everything alone, I’ve definitely along the way. Artists such as Steve Espo Powers and Gordon Parks have been a huge influence. I want to create the same feeling, being able to affect someone in that way. I see it as a kind of chain reaction/ domino effect.
PO: As working from home shifts into being our ‘new normal’ due to the COVID-19 pandemic, how will you be using this time to reflect or shape your practice going forward?
SM: A lot of internet…a lot [laughs]. Going on Instagram, connecting with more people. The internet is a treasure trove of inspiration, most of the time you don’t have to leave home to be inspired. I’m spending time reading books, a lot that have been in the queue for a while. I would hope there’s a lot of space for dreaming and otherness, hopefully this time to disconnect speaks to people - this is temporary, there is something bigger out there.
PO: What one song has been on your mind or speaks to your emotions in the current climate?
SM: I would have to say NERD - Things Are Getting Better. It’s a great pick me up meets confidence "I'm the shit" booster which is needed in times like these. Simultaneously the message that everything is temporary is delivered within an aggressive cadence is genius. Also, it’s a young Pharrell which you can't go wrong with!
Follow Sajjad on Instagram @sajjad.wrk and artist duo STOP1.