Home From Home: Framing culture, women and everything between – Àsìkò
Self portrait - courtesy of the artist
Àsìkò is a British-Nigerian visual artist whose practice in primarily explored through the medium of photography and mixed media. His work is constructed in the narrative that straddles between fantasy and reality as a response to his experiences of identity, culture and heritage. Àsìkò’s work has featured on platforms and publications such as CNN Africa, BBC London, Essence magazine, Nataal, Afropunk and The Guardian to name a few.
I had been following Asiko’s work on Instagram for some time and we finally met in Miami for Art week through a mutual friend and collaborator and we’ve developed a great friendship and working relationship since. We’ve done a few Instagram lives together during the lockdown period and most recently discussed his recent body of work A Black Life Matters (2020) for Goals House at the UNGA 2020.
We defaulted to zoom as we had done consistently during this period for a conversation full of jokes and a deeper dive into this practice.
Péjú Oshin: How would you describe what you do and the type of work that you make?
Àsìkò Artist: I’m a visual artist who expresses ideas through the medium of photography, film and mixed media. I’d say my work is autobiographical and it chronicles my life and some of the things I’ve come across. I explore things that I love or leave a mark on me and aspects of those things feed into my work such as the Adorned series. The starting point for that body of work was an image sheered into my mind of an older woman who was very dark, powerful and adorned in layers of jewellery. She was possibly a priestess based on what I know now. It looked at the intersection of women and culture and how jewellery is worn by women in Africa - we don’t just wear [jewellery] it for the sake of it. My work parallels my life and as such, it’s more organic and more emotional.
PO: As a self-taught artist, how do you think this has impacted or enhanced your practice?
AA: Being self-taught was a journey. When I first started taking photographs, I was interested in renaissance art and then I found photography. I was between jobs and I picked up a digital camera and started taking pictures of landscapes. As time went on people wanted me to take photographs of them. People started asking me to take pictures of their weddings which I did for a while. Then I started to better understand how I might represent an idea or a concept in a photograph and began to realise the emotion attached to them. I then started to explore with photographing myself - it was during an emotional time. I’d make sure no one was around because I didn’t want to have to explain. It became a cleansing experience, I made all these self-portraits and discovered that’s what I wanted to do with photography. I wasn’t interested in documenting things, I wanted to create worlds within my work.
Àsìkò, Self Portait , 2015
PO: When looking at your self-portrait series one of the first comparisons I drew was with the work of Rotimi Fan-Kayode, but then I also started to think about the journey of vulnerability one might embark on to enable themselves to become a subject, is there any part of this that rings true for you?
AA: It’s funny, I started created images and I wasn’t exposed to art. I was purely working as a photographer or so I thought - a guy who just carries a camera and makes sure that everything is technically right. At the time, I was reading photography magazines to learn techniques and didn’t know that I was looking at emotions too. About 10 years ago, I was in central London and someone told me about a gallery. I walked in and saw this work and I knew instantly the artist was Nigerian. It was one of the first exhibitions I went to when I started looking at work and strangely it was that of Rotimi Fani-Kayode. There is a difference in our ideologies and struggles, but this idea of being vulnerable within the work is present. I’d never thought about that work until we spoke about this today, but it just reinforces the need for the work that I make.
When I photograph my self-portraits, I’ve found it difficult to photograph myself with clothes on. It’s work that I do in isolation and I always feel emotionally drained by the end of these shoots. I don’t know if I’m seeking to be vulnerable, but maybe subconsciously I am. I’ve been planning to do some new self-portraits which are part of a series called A Black Life Matters (2020).
Àsìkò, I Can’t Breathe , A Black Life Matters series, 2020
PO: It is clear that your move to the UK and shifts in Nigerian culture inform much of your work and the conversations that you have through it, let’s explore this.
AA: I was born in the UK and lived here for a year or two before my parents moved back to Nigeria. They were part of a group who got scholarships to study in the UK, once my dad finished university, he decided he wanted to move back to Nigeria. He wanted to go back to his country and contribute there. I think living in Nigeria was a blessing because I found I was quite an introvert and very quiet. I took lots of visual notes of the things I saw and much of it has ended up in my work. The old powerful woman I saw was a visual note for the Adorned series and there are a number of other things which have been years of thinking on to create upcoming projects such as the Egungun series. I feel like Nigeria itself seared a whole image in my head because Nigeria - Yoruba culture grabs your attention.
When I moved here, I lived in Stockwell and was exposed to a lot of Black culture. But I’ve never considered myself as Black British. When I moved here, I felt alone and didn’t really understand what was happening in terms of ideologies – I really felt like an immigrant. I was learning how to cope in a space I didn’t understand. Visiting on holiday was different to living here. When I was in university, I wondered if I fitted into being Black British but I came to realise I didn’t. I’d talk to friends sometimes but didn’t really get the context. When I look at my nieces, we have bants about it [laughs]. I’ve stopped caring about what I am and I just am. I am somewhere in-between and I’m comfortable with being in this diaspora. When I’m in Nigeria I’m not Nigerian and when I’m here I’m not British either. I think it’s about learning to accept that special new breed of what we are and using it in what we create.
Yoruba in the UK in 100 years will not be the same as in Cuba, Brazil or Nigeria. I pray that the culture moves otherwise it will be stagnant. As artists, one of the things we can do is to be curators of the culture. There are other people outside of our cultures who are doing this, but it is out jobs to show its beauty and create an entry. I feel like a lot of African artists are telling stories of what their life is like now and what it was like back then and so the culture has to evolve. Things change, people become more aware. Culture as beautiful as it is a man-made construct. I mean man-made - if it was women made it would be a bit better. That’s one of the things I challenge in my work especially when I looked at Female Genital Mutilation and all the things men do to women in the name of culture. Things must change.
Àsìkò, The Impact of, 2018
PO: A reoccurring question for many who encounter your work is about how women are presented/framed in your work. Let’s talk a little more about the relationship that you hold with women?
AA: I love women, I always have. I was surrounded by strong women and that skewed my idea of what women are. I found out that not all women are like my mum or my dad’s sister. I saw different levels and graduations of women. I think part of my work has been about the exploration of love I have for women. When I think of women, I think men were created and women were phase two, they are a better and more beautiful version. I’m intrigued by the female form. I’m interested in the engineering of the female form; this is one of the reasons I believe in God. That level of engineering can’t be by mistake or a process of evolution. It has to be through a process of smart engineering - within that there’s a soul. The longer I’ve been married the more I’ve found this out more. It blows my mind that men decide to subjugate women rather than work with them to build and craft the world.
I’m quite intrigued by the space of women in culture, particularly women in African societies. Whenever I go back to Nigeria and see how women are treated as second class citizens it blows my mind, when I was a child, I thought men pandered to women, it’s the other way around. The Yoruba and Igbo have had powerful women who were revered, and it was the colonial masters who brought how they thought of women and destroyed our way of life. There are a lot of questions I have about the space of women and see the role of some of my as elevating Black women.
PO: How important is the Yoruba language in your practice?
AA: It’s important, unfortunately, my Yoruba sucks. I write and speak bits but I hate hearing myself speak it. My parents spoke English to me and perhaps there’s a craving for it. Yoruba has a spirit in it, that you can’t even translate into English. When you do, you lose the essence of it. It’s always fun to watch people speaking Yoruba and how expressive they are with it. There is a theatre when we speak Yoruba, when we put on native, or go somewhere. I saw a lot of that as a kid. Theatre is very important in my images. There has to be a level of drama or movement. That drama of who we are is very important and that feeds into the work. I love how you can watch a greeting unfold. It is never just a “hello” or “how are you?”, our culture is very expressive in how it plays out. I feel that same energy is present in a broader Black culture that influences a lot of things we call normal. This is why I think Africa needs to believe in its own hype.
PO: When we did our IG live talk in March, I touched on the lengthy captions that often accompany your posts. I think it’s a very beautiful window for dialogue with those who follow or are encountering your work for the first time. When and how did this aspect of engaged dialogue become important in your practice?
AA: I had been posting on Instagram for a year or so and I was tired of putting up an image and not having a conversation about it. A lot of them are conversations with myself. They are about my fears and it felt more wholesome to put them together thwart the images I put out. I never feel I just make pretty pictures. They are about the emotions of the people photograph or myself. Some of it is about encouragement or inspiration. I thought, isn’t this part of the human experience, there was a time when everyone’s pictures were photoshopped and they looked like dolls. I didn’t care that everyone did that, I cared that photographers did that. Human beings aren’t perfect, and I wanted to share that. It’s great to encourage people who are starting out in the field and talk about practice and how to develop their craft and artistry and something I do quite organically.
PO: How has the COVID-19 pandemic impacted your practice?
AA: It’s made me more introspective. It’s not just been about my work. It’s that parallel between work and life. I’ve been more introspective about my relationship with my wife and friends. I guess I’ve had to pause things to take time to think, but there hasn’t been a massive shift as I’ve always been working from home. The only difference now is that I don’t get to go out and see friends. I’m using this time to try and enjoy the creative process. I think that’s the best thing anyone can do. I’m looking at putting together a workshop to support other photographers. Overall, it’s given me time to think a little more about what I do and who I am.
PO: What one song has been on your mind or speaks to your emotions in the current climate?
AA: Lately, I’m listening to a lot of God centred music. Everything from Bethel music to Hillsong. I’m really loving being in the space of African music but not Afropop. A favourite has been Baba Maal with songs like Kalaajo or Generation nouvelle - I’ve created a whole new playlist which has a folk feel to it. I’m enjoying that music, it’s very relaxing and gives me creative headspace.
Follow Àsìkò’s work on instagram here.