THE SCULPTURES OF PROMISE LAGIRI:
AUTHENTICITY, CONTEMPORANEITY, POWER AND IDENTITY

Curated by Zina Saro-Wiwa

It has been 5 years since I opened Boys’ Quarters Project Space and on the occasion of this anniversary I am delighted to be presenting a series of works by Ogoni sculptor Promise Nenyien Lagiri at the gallery. Promise Lagiri is a carver and artist that hails from Ogoniland, more specifically the Eeken Community of Baabe Kingdom. A predominantly rural and farming area an hour outside of Port Harcourt City, Ogoniland consists of 6 kingdoms and 111 villages and is famous not just for the problems associated with the oil extraction that has taken place there since the 1950s but also for its unique carving traditions. Promise is 50 years old and has been carving since the age of 12. Although he is employed in an administrative capacity at a local charitable organization, he is one of the busiest carvers working in Ogoniland today.

I met Promise in 2014, several months into my return to Port Harcourt and Ogoniland, to begin a body of work about the region. Most visitors to the Niger Delta either work in the oil industry or visit in a journalistic or NGO capacity to cover the fall-out associated with the oil industry. However I was there as an artist and I was looking for a different way to map and navigate my ancestral homeland and place of birth. I was not looking for stories about oil bunkering or militancy. I was after something else: culture. I decided to travel from village to village to find out who the carvers of Ogoniland were. After traversing much of the 1000sq km of Ogoniland two carvers stood out as ones that were busy and active in their communities. Lenu Naagbiwa of Boue and Promise Lagiri of Eeken. Out of the two it is Promise Lagiri who expresses something of the history and tradition of Ogoni carving in his practice. Promise is a quiet, calm and modest man. Extremely likeable and easy to be around. A man of few words, part of his energy seems reserved and inaccessible. But there is little artifice about him. He is committed to traditional methods such as carving from one block of wood only (never nailing different elements together even in tall, complex masks); he is notoriously choosy about the sorts of wood he sources; he is patient, always ensuring that the carved object is dried thoroughly before embarking on painting to prevent termite infestation and he is committed to using natural dyes instead of the car paint that some carvers have taken to using today when decorating their works. The styles he creates are in line with a powerful heritage and seem to embody a particular spirit of Ogoni. Modern Ogoni mask-making and carving can veer into the ghoulish or even cartoonish. But with Promise there is refinement, delicacy and potency. A sense of connection to something deeper that is revealed in its lines and proportions. There is also genuine personality. You form powerful connections with masks he has made. After every visit I come away with at least one piece I’ve forged an instant bond with, knowing I’ve secured some sort of treasure.

I consider this breed of contemporary traditional Ogoni art hugely important. It is the product of a fascinating history. Ogoniland, with its highly fertile alluvial soil, was known as the breadbasket of the South East and for centuries it is thought that Ogonis supplied provisions for slave ships about to set off over the Atlantic from as far back as the 18th century. For this reason the Ogoni people evaded capture by slavers because they were needed to farm. In addition, due to our geographical position set back from the Atlantic coast, we had little to do with the British until 1901. We resisted their advances after that date and did not finally submit to the British until 1914 when they destroyed our centrally important Gbenebeka shrine. So whilst the people of Bonny on the coast have experienced generations of Christianity and Western education, the Ogoni have maintained far more of their pre-colonial culture than many other peoples of the area and this is evident in the uniqueness and potency of our artistic production. So for this reason we put a spotlight on this work. They are avatars of resistance. This history is alive in the work of Promise Lagiri. His commitment to tradition does not feel in any way unimaginative or mechanical, his carvings always feel urgent and alive. And in many ways their existence is miraculous considering the myriad obstacles that Promise finds himself facing as he practises his craft.

The pieces I buy most often from Promise are karikpo masks. The karikpo mask represents a mammal - most often, but not always, the antelope - and is worn on the front of the face. Karikpo masquerade is historically performed during the planting and harvesting of crops in order to ensure fertility. In the past it was played as a form of entertainment at the Ogoni end of year which is the 7th month of the Calendar year. Today it is played at different events and mostly for entertainment. A special drum known as kere karikpo is utilized and the dancers take on some of the characteristics of an animal such as shaking the head and pawing the ground. They also famously perform feats of great agility like cartwheels and somersaults - which are particularly hazardous when the tall horned masks are worn on the face.

In the first gallery we are confronted with eight such karikpo masks. Three of them (ones marked out with black horns) represent very old style Karikpo masks. The rest are more contemporary. There is less realism in the older style mask and the eyes are carved as crescents or long diamond shapes, representing more the idea of an antelope. The newer style masks feature slightly more realistic representations of the animal and the eyes have hooded lids. At least in Promise’s creative universe. But overall Karikpo mask styles are exceptionally varied. Promise is able to deliver a range of styles and he is well versed in the history of carving. But they are all in his language. You see Promise in any style that he delivers. Promise’s works and he himself are connected to some sort of spiritual and historical layer of Ogoni life. His own grandfather, Korkege Isaah, was a master carver and Promise cites him and another early 20th century carver called Izuuga Korobee as his greatest inspirations. I asked him about his religion and he states that he follows the traditional religion, i.e. he is animist and not Christian. This seems significant. The carvers that become Christian tend to give up mask-making altogether. But one wonders what else they receive from the traditional religion that informs the work. I wonder if they aren’t in some uninhibited communion with the spirit of the land. Indeed Promise states plainly that some of his inspiration come “from dreams and from the water spirit, Mami Wata.” He continues: “she reveals works of my forefathers to me through dreams and in return I offer sacrifice to her annually”. Promise’s works give embodied form to our past. They express a deep connection with the land and are expressions of an environmental spiritualism. They are also benign.

Karikpo might not be the most spiritually heavyweight tradition in its jovial playfulness. It is not invoking any major, named animist spirit. However it is profoundly environmental. Mask-makers are keepers of culture. Code keepers. To carve an animal and to dance an animal encodes them into our being. Carvers also document natural life in Ogoni. As the population has grown and as the oil economy has asserted itself, wildlife has grown scarce. These masks document the fauna that have existed in Ogoniland. Forest elephants, monkeys, lions, alligators all used to exist in the Niger Delta. It is evidenced in our masking culture. I myself have never seen an antelope in Ogoniland but Promise assures me that they are still there. He encounters them when he is roaming the forest searching for the right wood for his work. He does not work from images on his (non-smart) phone, he is working from real life, his dreams and the history of Ogoni carving. Then there is the relationship to tree life that is a part of mask making. Chopping down a tree may, on the surface, seem to show a lack of reverence for the environment. But quite the opposite is the case here. The hunt for the right tree or wood enhances ones knowledge of what resources exist and encourage resource management. Moreover, the carving industry is a small and sustainable one.

Karikpo masks are mostly decorated with paint, especially for local Ogoni buyers. But in this show we are displaying them partially painted in the case of the old-style masks and in the case of the newer style masks they are only stained. This contrasts with the second gallery where we see a variety of other masks and figurines freshly painted in three native dyes: white, created using nem a kind of edible clay; black, created using Yan Aghon leaf (also known as detarium microcarpum or tallow) and red which is made from ibeedo, a local seed. These figurines also form an important part of his practise. There is one breastfeeding figurine known as “Waakoo" which, according to Promise, is created to show appreciation to mothers and is meant to encourage and remind mothers of this present generation to breastfeed their kids sufficiently at least for a year and three months. The Ka-alu of Eeken Community in Ogoni use it for masquerade (worn on the head?) But, it is not used in shrines.

Then there are the remarkable face masks Nwibee - which feature the famous Ogoni sculptural trait of an articulated jaw - with the full human figure stood atop of the face. These are freshly painted and bright white. These masks commemorate heroes and heroines of the community. Promise states that “the honoree could be a good drummer or a woman who has demonstrated great bravery. Couples are also honoured in this way. I use my work, especially this mask, to pay tribute to my forefathers who were able to establish themselves in a particular way that affected their environment or community positively.” In most cases, the figure on the mask is the full body representation of the face it stands on. These masks are, generally, not worn during masquerade. People that request and buy these masks for use in their shrines. But there are some exceptions. Cultural groups such as the Koromu and Pogobere group use it for

masquerade but tend to perform with simpler masks that do not feature the figure on the facemask. There is, however, a cultural group called Waalo who play their masquerade with the entire mask. These masks and their local uses belong to a world that sounds like it might have died out a long time ago. But it is still in existence in the Ogoniland of 2019. This style of work is alive and functioning now. The freshly-painted quality we are presenting deliberately underscores this contemporaneity.

Boys’ Quarters has never before ventured into exhibiting traditional forms of art-making. The Port Harcourt and Niger Delta art scene is focused mostly on painting and some modern sculpture and we have reflected this in our program. We have also shown video art, watercolors and some conceptual photography from local, national and international artists. But the gallery and its umbrella organisation The Mangrove Arts Foundation exist to explore and support all modes of art making in the region (and to mix in and promote highly contemporary modes into local practises). The idea being to re-invigorate story-telling from the region, build cultural capital and to radicalise conceptions of environmentalism. We want to tease out and nourish the sinews and connections to environment that exist rather than emphasize fissure and disruption, (the sort of storytelling that our history with oil encourages). These sculptures by Promise Lagiri are a living embodiment of a connection to land that is important to recognise. To use. They are a vivid part of our art ecology. We must therefore not discount this type of art production. Especially as older iterations of this work have represented the region abroad for nearly a century. Placing this contemporary traditional type of work, in this kind of art space, at this time, when the conversation around restitution of African objects residing in Western Institutions is very alive, is highly significant. It helps us ask important questions about our relationship to such cultural production. Questions that when we answer will inform our own individual approach to museology. This contemporary traditional art functions differently in Ogoniland and differently again in the white cube galleries of Boys’ Quarters Project Space. Because the work currently occupies Boys’ Quarters, we acknowledge that this type of work has a function beyond being used as accoutrements to performance. It has the capability of being an ambassador for the region. But it is at this point that we come across some interesting problems surrounding these objects’ ability to do work for us globally. And its contemporaneity is one of the cultural stumbling blocks.

Contemporaneity is not an innocuous quality when it comes to traditional African art. The Ogoni pieces that exist in foreign museums and private collections (mostly in Europe and the United States) were made in the early 20th century. And this is what European and American collectors value. From the European and American market perspective, antiquity and its visual signal (patina) is prized and contemporaneity is looked on with suspicion. Art historian Sidney Littlefield Kasfir states: “Museums function as official guardians of traditional arts as well as in some cases, arbiters of what qualifies as contemporary, ‘cutting-edge’ form. One way in which they avoid having to endure (and explain) the ambiguity of the past co-existing in the present is to insist that examples of traditional genres be certifiably old. Contemporary traditional objects immediately become suspect as potential fakes and are forced to pass authenticity tests (typically evidence of wear from local usage before arriving on the international art market) in order to be collectable. In this way, ‘heritage’ and ‘tradition’ become exclusionary tactics in the global art world, though back in the cultures where the artifacts came from, the arguments spill out of the museum and into performative spaces, where a whole different set of rules apply, and they are rarely antiquarianist.”

Therefore this work may not be deemed important from an international perspective or judged on its own artistic merit. But why do I consider the Western gaze considering Boys’ Quarters is an art gallery based in Port Harcourt, Nigeria. I do so because these objects are already international, global icons. Ogoni carvings have an international audience and voice. Many objects are found in private collections and Encyclopedic museum in Europe and America nestled alongside more extensive collections of Yoruba, Malian and Congolese works. Therefore to consider the power of these objects fully we need to contextualise them internationally as well as consider the Ogoni gaze (which in itself is not a monolith). Futhermore as an Ogoni woman brought up in the west both the masks in vitrines and the masks in performance are part of my lived experience. They naturally sit in dialogue with one another and I am forced to reconcile them within myself. The other reason we consider the global gaze for this work is because of Ogoniland’s geopolitical global standing. We are global and we provide the world with a substantial portion of it’s petroleum needs. Morever the territory is a muse in the fight against big oil. Ogoniland came to global prominence in the late 1980s and 1990s as the call for Shell Oil and the military government to rectify their polluting, under-developing and genocidal practices in the region intensified leading to the internationally denounced execution of Ken Saro-Wiwa and 8 other Ogoni men. Finally, whatever happens at Boys’ Quarters is meant to be in conversation with the world. It is what I call a ‘glocal’ space. It is at once a local art gallery but also an international art space. The history of the space (it being the former office of Ken Saro-Wiwa) as well as it being situated in a global energy capital ensures that anything that is shown in the space is in conversation both with local audiences as well as international ones. This gives Promise’s work an expanded geographic and psycho-geographic canvas and with that a cultural terrain to navigate that is filled with contradiction and vignette.

Contemporary traditional art has local enemies as well as . It’s not possible to generalize but overall from observation it seems that within the Niger Delta the market for contemporary traditional art is alive but is also limited. Because although masquerade is still played in Ogoni, Christianity is dominant and some see these masks and even masquerade as heathen and unChristian. Indeed Promise often fields visits from local evangelists who petition him to stop making his work. Belief is of course not so cut-and-dried. There are those that are Christian in name but still hold animist beliefs or indeed still fear the perceived power of these objects and the non-Christian spirit world. So even amongst those that decry it they still see these objects as having power and therefore paradoxically they are seen as important. Overall there is still interest in masquerade. During Christmas and New Year in the villages, you will see a plethora of masquerades being performed. People young and old wear their finest and most colourful attire and roam the villages. Many are recording the festivities on their cheap android phones and tablets, suggesting an appreciation but also perhaps a psychological distance in some cases. They do not decry the masquerade or masks but they do not attribute much power or emphasis onto them either. They see it purely as performance. Overall most young people do not want to fish or farm or get involved in carving. They are not interested in rural life. They want city jobs. None of these industries have young people taking up the mantle. The average age of Nigerian farmer is above 60 for example. Promise says he has trouble retaining apprentices. Ogoni carving is, in fact, a dying craft and contemporary traditional Ogoni art is under threat. Promise is one of around 8 carvers in Ogoniland and he makes around 20 karikpo masks a year for local people. It is only when a mask “dies”, is lost or stolen that a new one is requested. The local market for carved objects is therefore limited.

Most contemporary traditional art falls into the category of handicraft or “tourist art”, work that is reproduced relentlessly for marketplaces. The sort of work that is bought by tourists but looked down upon by connoisseurs. But Promise is not a part of this market. Although his work is contemporary and traditional you will not find his work - nor the work of any traditional Ogoni carver - in any of the craft stores that exist in the hotel lobbies, airports and streets of Port Harcourt. (In fact a lot of the sleek, polished carvings on offer in these stores come from other parts of Nigeria and other African countries. Even Asia). Promise’s works are to be found on the international market. They get there because by far and away his biggest clients are the Hausa men from the North of Nigeria or the occasional French West African buyer who spirit away the majority of the objects he makes to other countries and international markets. These Hausa and French West African merchants have been clients of his family for decades and Promise remembers that one of his earlier buyers also bought from his grandfather. These men make their way to Ogoniland to buy the work directly from him. They often require that he ‘smoke’ the works after they have been painted (we think to make them seem older). Promise does not ask where his works end up but he was once told that some of them go to Togo to meet international buyers. I have had to presume that the work enters the international market and get passed off as antiquities. My efforts into investigating the pathways of these Ogoni objects were thwarted because Promise would not pass on the number of his main buyer and for good reason. This Hausa man is his prime customer and Promise has two wives and six children to feed.

The African art object in Europe and America.

Contemporary traditional art has to pass itself off as an antiquity in order to gain access to certain collectors circles. But of course contemporary traditional art at lower ends of the market do find their way around Europe and America.

Once in Europe their fate is harder to ascertain. Some research is needed. Perhaps I should not be but I am always surprised to see Ogoni artefacts in Encyclopedic museums. Aside from petroleum they are the other quiet but persistent export of ours that finds itself parked in Encyclopedic Museums alongside more extensive collections of Yoruba, Malian and Congolese works. Whether stolen or bought fairly the works are there, our diasporans, representing something. I have always wondered what role this plucky and egregious indigenous cultural output could take on on our behalf. What do they have to say to the world?

For Europeans what these objects have said to them has changed across the centuries. In Western museums the objects underwent a double taxonomic shift - first from exotica and trophies of colonial domination in the “cabinets of curiosities” model to scientific specimens when the newly-founded museums of natural history emerged in the late-nineteenth century. Then following their “discovery” by Picasso, Brancusi and others in the early decades of the 20th century they were “promoted” into art museums and galleries where they were re-contextualised as art objects. But they still do the job of story telling about whatever region they have come from. The encyclopedic and didactic functions are still implicit in display. There are some collections which are more about displaying the work as sculptural contemporary art pieces. But there is always this sense of othering.

The western market for these objects values age, patina, (European and American) exhibition and ownership history. Collectors give their collections an identity and vice versa. This African art gains its value - at least in Western eyes - from proximity to Brancusi and Picasso. We in Africa collude with that silence. We also believe that the maker of the mask is not revealed as is custom in the markets. Authorship is not important. And this is because the European and American markets prize antiquity, patina, mystery.

I myself am torn about the pull of patina. I cannot deny its beauty. It is both beautiful and psychologically powerful. Aged paint, wood or metal hold stories. Invokes memory. It is having a conversation with you. Texture and depth is universally recognized as an important tenet of design. I have often wondered: does this texture have to be coupled cognitively with a certified history or is the aesthetic suggestion of it enough? Can you ever truly separate the aesthetic of an aged object and its the real (or imagined) history? Is its history its beauty? Part of the aesthetic experience is not visual but lived in the mind. You need the mind to see after all.

So where does the aged African object take you that the new traditional african object does not? To whose Africa? An Africa of the mind. An entire market is predicated on this imagined distant world. This is the economy of desire and distance.

This mystery is compounded by the fact that we do not know who made these works. One European collector reportedly told Sally Price: “It gives me great pleasure not to know the artist’s name. Once you have found out the artist’s name, the object ceases to be primitive art.” In other words, the act of ascribing identity simultaneously erases mystery. And for art to be “primitive” it must possess, or be seen to possess, a certain opacity of both origin and intention. When those conditions prevail, it is possible for the Western collector to reinvent a mask or figure as an object of connoisseurship. This approach may create a thriving market amongst Western collectors. But in a globalized world, there is no excuse for this Africa of the mind, predicated as it is on ethnographic pedagogy. Luckily there are curators such as Alissa La Gamma head of African and Oceanic art at New York’s Metropolitan Museum who are behind this idea of authorship and being clear about who makes the objects that they display. There is also the move to try and contextualise the work and display videos of them in performance.

I am in agreement with the idea of promoting authorship which is why we have presented a show centering the artist in question. If you profess to be interested in African cultural production then some respect for those that create the work needs to be demonstrated. The work that these objects are able to do to act as ambassadors are curtailed, stymied by an idea of Africa promoted by the collecting circles. An Africa of the past. Or an Africa of the mind. When of course there is a very alive Africa of the present. Not only in contemporary art but in traditional art that has not been commodified, such as the work of Promise Lagiri.

And in fact these objects do have a story to tell. This is the story of the objects in this particular show: As has already been expressed, Promise is inspired by the water spirit. By his ancestors. But the story of this mask also exists in the material plane. During the preparation of this exhibit, there was a spate of very serious cult violence in parts of Ogoni. Cultism is rife in Ogoniland right now. Cults are groups of young men and sometimes women that belong that terrorise neighbourhoods. A scourge that community elders are trying to bring under control and are struggling to understand as they are distinct from former militants and their motives are not understood. During this recent violent spate, Promise, his family and most of his village were chased out of their homes. One person was, horrifyingly, beheaded and his workshop ransacked. On a mission to retrieve work during a perceived lull Felix Fadeh and Promise discovered that most of the work he had been working on for this show had been stolen. A few items remained. He relocated his studio for us in Bori, the central town in Ogoniland, and resumed his work after settling his family. The show has been delayed by three weeks as a result of this violence. But this local crisis has plagued Promise and his village before. There have been many times when we have not been able to visit him because of “cult crisis”. In fact Promise has been kidnapped because unscrupulous local people perceive him as someone with relative wealth as a result of his carving business. But there are other stories. The stories of continuity and communion with ancestors. The story of the joy his works bring to performers. Performers that develop real emotional bonds with the masks that they wear. (I remember filming a video with a masked performer over the course of several weeks. At the end of the shoot, he removed his karikpo mask to return to me. But before he handed it to me he kissed it, then whispered audibly to it “My queen”. The mask owned part of him. Such was its power.

And so it is for me as well. These objects are still mysterious to me. Even though we are furnished with stories about the surrounding culture and makers of this work, they still have power. Despite the fact that I am an Ogoni woman, despite the fact that I’ve visited objects being made, despite the fact I’ve designed and commissioned masks, worn and danced these masks, made photos and video art from these objects, I still find mystery in them. I do not fully understand the nature of their existence. Part of my practice is dedicated to broaching this distance I sometimes feel, attempting to forge a connection and extract new meanings from masking culture. I have attempted to bring mask-making into my emotional universe. To create work that also meant something to me as an Ogoni woman brought up primarily in the West. Karikpo Pipeline my five channel video features masked karikpo dancers performing over remnants of the oil industry in Ogoniland. The Invisible Man is a mask I designed and commissioned (not from Promise but from the another Ogoni carver Lenu Naagbiwe) to bridge the emotional chasm I felt when confronted with masquerade. So I made the Invisible Man mask to deal with male absence and death in the hope that masking could help me transcend absence. Then there are the Holy Star Boyz. This is a series of photos that I display in lightboxes that feature two polyutherane masks made from a mould created from one of Promise’s most beautiful karikpo masks. A selection of these are on display in the exhibition in the Windowall Gallery.

Indeed there are a number of Diaspora artists making work with traditional African art objects. Hugh Hayden, Pascale Marthine Tayou, Romuald Hazoume, Natasha Wura Ogunji, to name but a fraction. Either making work about their objectification in the West of making work about the properties they represent or relating them somehow to modern day concerns.

And surely these objects should be more than vehicles for recounting the story of their time. They are art objects after all and they have more than just a pedagogical function. If they are indeed art objects and not pedagogical tools should they not be a spring board for the imagination? Can they not be liberated from history or even the facts of everyday life? Should it not say something about the future. About something totally imaginary perhaps. Something out of this world. Must they explain? (And if I think this, does that then liberate the Western collector to imagine whatever Africa they desire if I am free to do so also?)

I talked in the beginning about Promise’s work being benign. Not all African masks and figurines are benign. There are masks and figurines I don’t like to look at. That I would not personally have in my home. There are masks that fill me with dread. I have always been fascinated at the idea that form and line can affect me in this way.

I want to end this essay with an account of an experience that I recently had. There is a phenomenon known as sleep paralysis. This is the experience of a terrifying temporary inability to move or speak that occurs when you're waking up or falling asleep. Many people visualize a demon sitting on their chest that they cannot escape because they cannot move and they cannot speak. Just why or how it happens isn't clear. Researchers believe sleep paralysis is caused by a disturbed rapid eye movement cycle because it mostly happens as people are falling into or coming out of REM sleep. During that stage, their brains normally paralyze their muscles anyway -- so they don't act out their dreams. But during sleep paralysis, the sleeper is awake, or half awake, and so is aware he or she cannot move. It is not dangerous but it is very frightening. It has happened to me a few times in my life. The last time it happened, however was the strangest thing I have ever experienced. I had dozed off with my computer on my chest. And I was aware I was in a hotel room. I was not in Brooklyn, it felt like I was somewhere in the Caribbean. Not sure what era but there were shutters on the window and the bed I was on in this semi-dream state was underneath the open shutter. I remember thinking I was thirsty and a young black concierge walked solemnly up to the window bearing a copper cup filled with lots of ice and passionfruit juice. He put his hand through the open window to hand me the cup. I drank it. It was too intense for me. His hand remained there. I was aware that he wanted me to take his hand. I did. I did not want to be rude. But then after a while I decided that I was uncomfortable and did not want to continue holding his hand. I tried to let go but could not. Neither would he let me go. I tried to speak to ask him to let go but I could not speak. He would not let me go. I felt like I was awake. But it was at this point that I had the strangest sensation I have ever experienced in my life. (And this is coming from someone that is spiritually adventurous). I felt like I was being pulled into another world. Half my head and my left shoulder felt absent as I was being pulled through. I thought I was either dying or having a stroke. I felt like I was awake and I knew that wherever I was going was not somewhere I wanted to be. I needed whatever was happening to stop.

I tell you this story only because it happened after I had visited the home of a prominent African antiquities collector on Park Avenue. It was a fascinating evening with only two Africans in attendance. As I sat on my bed, solemn after what had just happened (it felt like an episode of bullying from the spirit world) I wondered what I had picked up from this visit. My interest in the esoteric is not an African trait. Rather I see it as something I picked up in Brazil, in Cuba and in the UK where it is rife despite surface appearances. Just even imagining this made me question myself. Perhaps my sanity too. But it happened. I also wondered what it would be like to live with such objects in this way. Does it affect their dreams? If not why not. I imagine that it would take a certain sort of imperviousness to live with these objects in this way. There was a deep scholarly appreciation. But was there susceptibility that went beyond the aesthetic? There are many masks I will not sleep with or look at, many I would not keep in my home. I am not a believer or practitioner in traditional religion - I have an interest in spirituality and religion but remain agnostic - and yet I am susceptible in some ways. Is it because I am a medium of some sort? An artist? Dare I say it: an African?

Why do I write this? Only to say that we have different reasons for relating to these African masks. I write this to say that they have power. As they are. In this straightforward form. Without contemporary art readings, re-contextualisations, revisions and interventions. There is something of the work as it is. Something they are saying. They are potent and powerful objects that live in different ways in different places. They have agency. They still matter. They don’t have to be diluted, rendered in new material

though these explorations are just fine. But whether we can appreciate this now or not I feel they have a power that we cannot yet appreciate.

We dance around African traditional object. We steal them, we sell them, we make work about them.

(Is spirit expressed in form and if so what aspect of form? Where is this ‘spirit’? His work makes me question this. Where is spirit expressed? Is it in the formal decisions? Why is there a uniform vibration and presence in his works?)

At the CMAP Conference at MoMA in Spring of 2019 I sat in on a discussion between artist Kader Attia and philosopher Souleyman Bachir Diagne. In the part of the conversation that talked about restitution he talked about African objects speak different languages in different spaces. He said that they had an agency of their own. It was a refreshing view of these objects and a view that I share. I talked in the beginning about Promise’s objects being benign. I live with them comfortably.

I don’t think all carvings have power. I do believe that gifted carvers give them that power. Not through religious use - but what do I know - but through aesthetics. There is a code you need to crack and some carvers crack it again and again and access something as they break through. Perhaps they imbue it with something. The mystery is intact in my view. We will return to these objects again and again because they are powerful. They have not even begun their work. Maybe they chose to be stolen, transacted and transported. Maybe this is how they get around. Maybe they have a job to do. Maybe they have us exactly where they want us.