 Welcome everyone. Thanks so much for joining us. So my name is Polly Savage. I'm the Lecturer in Art History of Africa at SOAS and I'm really delighted to welcome you all to this event. So it's the second in a series of talks that are hosted in partnership between the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art and SOAS School of Art and this has been organised by the SOAS Centre of African Studies. So thank you to Angelika and to Stephanie for organising this and to Gus as well. So we have two really extraordinary guests tonight. We're very excited about today's talk and I think they're both familiar to many of us. I think in the last 20 years of art history at SOAS I don't think a year has passed without a really indexed discussion of Yinka's work and every year these discussions bring new insights about the entangled relationships between Britain and Africa and about how we might destabilise notions of cultural and national identity and globalisation and you know it keeps on giving this sort of wonderful nuanced energy to these discussions so we're kind of incredibly happy to have Yinka here talking with us tonight. So he doesn't need much introduction. His work has been obviously exhibited and collected by major institutions around the world and he has this really extraordinary list of accolades so he was nominated for the Turner Prize in 2004. He completed the commission for the Trafalgar Square fourth plinth in 2010. He was elected a Royal Academy Mission in 2013. He was awarded an MBE in 2004 and a CBE in 2019 and most recently he has just been awarded the White Chapel Gallery Art Icon Award so that will be presented in March this year I believe and also he's been in the news recently because he's been commissioned to produce a sculpture in Leeds which is in memory of David Oluwale who is a Nigerian who died after police harassment in 1969. So that's very exciting and I know he's going to talk quite a lot tonight about some of the projects that he's working on at the moment. One of these is the Gas Foundation Artist Residency Programme which is due to open later this year in Ijebu and in Lekke in Lagos, Nigeria. So we're really excited to hear more about your recent projects and to hear more of a reflection on your practice as well so thank you so much for being here Yinka. In conversation with Yinka we're delighted to welcome Dr Gus Cacely Hayford. Gus is a research associate and long-term friend of ours. He's an art historian who writes and lectures and broadcasts widely on African culture and he has an equally extraordinary list of accolades so in addition to presenting the major BBC series The Lost Kingdoms of Africa he's held former posts as the director of art strategy at Arts Council England, the director of INEVA, the director of the UK's largest ever African art season, the director of the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art and most recently he's now the inaugural director of the V&A East in London which is opening hopefully in 2023 is that right Gus? This is going to be a five story museum and a collections and research centre and it's currently under construction at the Olympic Park in Stratford so this is all incredibly exciting and we're just really thrilled to have you here so thank you so much both of you for being here. So the structure of this session will be roughly as follows Yinka and Gus will have a discussion for probably about 40 to 50 minutes and then we will open it up to questions and answers so please submit your questions in the chat box and we've got a nice good amount of time to deal with questions and answers and have a discussion at the end so I will hand over to both of you thank you again for being here. Thank you so much Polly and thank you to everyone at SOAS and Namafa for making this possible I mean this is an absolute genuine pleasure to get the chance to speak to a great personal friend but also a genuine hero of mine Yinka, Yinka Shanabare and you know for me he's someone who I've spoken to a number of times but every single time I speak to him I think his work is ever more prescient ever more timely welcome Yinka, welcome lovely to speak to you. Well no thank you for having me and you know it's a pleasure to be you know having this conversation with you. Oh thank you and what a time to be in conversation I mean if you look at the ambient politics polarizing politics attitudes that are related to Brexit potential unraveling of the UK as I saw in the news today the rise and then the fall of Trump you know these are all things as I was saying that make your work feel ever more critical prescient timely I mean have you felt that yourself? You know well yes it's you know one thing about humanity is that we we keep repeating history and we keep making the same mistakes over and over again and you know the when you know Trump was elected and then we started seeing all the images of you know black people being harassed by the police and being killed now the world was seeing that for the first time right but actually many black people always knew that was happening and you know parents would say to their children you know don't you know you have to behave in a certain way when you when you see the police and you know it's a kind of a very kind of sad thing that the world is now actually coming to terms with something that we have known for a very long time and you know it's a shame because I think that after the civil rights movements in the United States you know I'm talking and also you know I'm talking about 68 and the kind of you know post-Vietnam period things you know we imagined things were starting to get better I mean we imagined that and then of course within the academy itself and the emergence of post-colonial theory and also you know the decolonization of culture generally which is a debate that we all seem to be having right now but the issue of decolonization is something that I've explored in my practice since I would say probably the early 90s you know I've been exploring those issues and so I don't quite understand how in 2021 we're still where we are you know I'm just constantly baffled by that and it's not just that we're where we are but now that history itself is under attack that we're in this thing which has been defined by the right as being in a culture war in which we're actually wrestling with ideas of narrative and truth and veracity and you know we're in a territory which usually politics isn't that investigative thinking about the meaning of of of the culture that surrounds us and and you know your work has been a kind of constant beaker beacon for helping us to deal with some of these issues of history and and its veracity I mean how have you felt about that I mean as you've seen it have you seen you know statues actually being pulled down but also a new generation of statues being erected well you know may I start continuing our conversation by asking you what does the term woke mean to you yeah I mean it's not so it's something that every time I hear it it gives me great pain the way in which that word has been used as a as you know as a way of of diminishing the pain and the search for a kind of recalibration of the terms in which we navigate the past and the culture around us and it's it for me it comes out of a move for greater equity within the cultural sphere and an awakening to a sense of the misjustice and the way in which history and wider cultural narratives have only told the stories of of a few and its institutions like so as an and the Maffa which have tried from their very conception to to find the space for other voices and so there was in its original instantiation a movement of people who became awakened to a wider kind of discourse and of course that has now been tarnished by the right who saw that as being something of a threat to the sorts of histories that they felt comfortable with and of course like always it's using words to diminish people's pain to diminish people's search for the truth so is that is that a word that would be in use in the United States I'm not too sure if if that word is actually used in the United States it may have been at some point used by people who generally talked about themselves in that context but now it's just used pejoratively to well I don't think just but for the it's used mostly as a pejorative statement about minority cultures and the support of them which is for me is is so painful yeah but you see the reason I bring this up as well and also it's very important that you know you know our friends in the United States also understand the context of some of this recently in Britain I think it's the community secretary who said that you know hods of people are trying to destroy British history by bringing down statues and you know that people have this sort of work attitude and they're trying to destroy kind of British history and this is not true I mean people you know I don't see hods of people in the streets trying to bring out bring down statues I mean I think that we need to correct some of the mistakes of history and also history itself as you know is dynamic so history kind of continues you know even public statues are forever changing and what's important to one generation is not necessarily important to another generation and if you're a black person and their images of former slave owners and you literally feel belittled and insulted in the city that you live in and you don't feel a part I mean surely it's right to question those things and to readdress them and so there's a you know there's a desire now from the right to basically you know stifle people and to stop them sort of expressing their views I mean surely we wouldn't want you know images and statues of Nazi leaders in our cities I mean we would have to question them and so I don't know why it's fine to have statues of former slave owners that we then have to confront every single day and we're not actually breaking the law and we're not even trying to bring down some of those statues we you know we understand the history I'm not suggesting here that history should be erased that's not what I'm suggesting but I'm suggesting that we need to have conversations about these things and then decide whether we want to move those statues of course in consultation with local people you know whether we want to move them into museums where we can learn about them and possibly don't make you know the mistakes that we we made before but I certainly don't see anyone from the black community trying to remove public statues I don't see that so there's a bit of an exaggeration in the response here I totally agree Yinka I mean your work in the public sphere has been something that has meant a huge amount to me I mean can we look at some of your your your work now I mean absolutely for me some of your practice has really kind of transformed my thinking around so many things one of my favorite pieces particularly as a next director of INEVA which commissioned this particular series but also as now my current employer that we we actually own one set of these works a diary of a Victorian dandy and I recently wrote about this series in relation to Black Lives Matters because I think it's still so powerful it still resonates so powerfully can you tell me something about this work and why you feel it really speaks to this time as well okay so this work was made in 1998 you know at that time there was a question of visibility for black artists and also discrimination and generally the lack of opportunity and I was at that time exploring my own history the relationship to Britain and of course you know I was born in London but I grew up in Lagos Nigeria and then came back to the UK and I kind of was really exploring that colonial history and my place within that as an artist of African origin and so the first thing I did was to you know I was actually looking at Hogarth's Rex progress and I wanted to somehow reinterpret that because whenever you saw those sort of you know 18th century paintings and also even the 19th century people of African origin tend to be somewhat in the background you know there might be valets, butlers you know and I felt I wanted to reimagine that person and reimagine myself in history and so but I also wanted to do it with a very large audience and of course the place to do that was on the London Underground so actually the photographs were first displayed on the London Underground in London and as you know you know literally thousands of people see that and I wanted to move that work outside of the gallery setting and to put it in the public realm so I guess you could then say that Dario of Victoria and Dandy was actually my first sort of public work of art. Can we can you talk us through what we're actually seeing as we get so what you're seeing I mean it's kind of a bit back to front but the Dandy works up in the morning and he goes so this is this what I was doing really was I was deconstructing the leisure pursuits of the aristocracy given that those leisure pursuits of the aristocracy was actually then you know allowed to happen because of their access to cheap labor and slavery so it's a kind of a reverse addressing you know of history so if you were to kind of go forward you you you will then see you know the rest of it so can we go to the next yeah okay so so you know he the Dandy kind of woke up in in the morning then went for you know to play billiards went to his library and then you know and then basically indulged in the evening and so if we were to kind of go back again yeah then then you know that's kind of what's what's happening there so one thing that you will notice with my work is there is a degree of there's a degree of play and humor in it because you know this was in the context of very serious postcolonial art practice and there were many artists who were doing what I regarded as very important political art but I felt that I you know actually I wanted to mock the whole situation by using you know what what I would describe a sort of you know gallows humor really I wanted to introduce a degree of you know of humor into the work and yeah a degree of humor but it's also that there's something which is is so serious and resonant that for anyone who knows those Hogarth images of that period that there are there is kind of diversity illustrated in them but usually the figures of African descent are servants who sit usually on the very edge of the frame usually they're very evidently carrying something in service of the actual situation and very often Hogarth would use them humorously um but it is very evident that they are integral to the situation and that they were actually servicing everything that was happening but at the same time they were peripheral to it and here that the the the central figure the dandy is a man of African descent and it inverts all of that the whole kind of enlightenment thing which you see demonstrated through so many areas still of the arts that in which the the the key figure the perspective through which we look at our images is set and that this subverts all of that and I've I've found that always kind of to be you know powerful in a way that spoke to the very heart of of so much that I had learned and also the whole sector within which I worked yes absolutely and you know what you're talking about there really is is empowerment and sort of feeling empowered and you know and what that meant and you know and it was very kind of liberating for me to have actually done this work because I think in a way it also acted that as a catalyst so a trigger for what I was to do subsequently because I gained a sense of empowerment through going through this process could we look at some more of your work now could we go on to the so if we go forward yeah scramble for Africa yes and I mean this series it deals with that that period that in the latter half of the of the 19th century when Africa you know is is basically set upon by the powers of Europe and divide it up and it's I mean for an institution like so as that you know that this is the territory within which it so many of its courses are are actually fixed and it's such an amazing rendering of that I mean what what what how what drew you to this particular subject area and what made you want to to recreate it in this way okay so you know in Nigeria you know there was a there was a civil war in the 60s and you know Nigeria is so you have all the kind of different tribes connected but they are in a country called Nigeria now Britain created this idea of Nigeria and also many other African countries you know not just Britain France you know and so you know I started to really think about you know Africa itself and Europe's relationship to Africa and the way that Africa was divided up by 14 European nations and the territories were created within that based on the interests of European countries without necessarily consulting you know us Africans about what we wanted to do you know and then and of course we are aware of the Berlin conference and when Africa was divided up and then I just thought to myself what were they thinking or what you know what was actually going through their minds and also I wanted to be you know a fly on the wall and just kind of in a way mock that moment so there's a degree of parody because I see I see them as sort of you know headless European countries you know you know dividing up Africa so there's a degree of humor about it you know the the kind of quiet pleasure I mean it's you know it's a bit macabre because you don't see blood but you don't see blood but there's a macabre element to the piece because in the sense that you know I've literally just guillotined all of them and you know but it's done in the manner of a gentleman you know there's no blood it's terribly polite the way the way it's been done but you know again you know of course I wouldn't necessarily you know I wouldn't hurt a fly you know but but in my art I can I can sort of reenact what I would have really liked to have done to them but I obviously I can't do it but in my art I can and that and that gives me a lot of satisfaction it gives us all a sense of satisfaction and catharsis so we're grateful on our behalf could we go on to the the next oh these are yeah so that's the detail there yes and the creation of these works how you know the the the sourcing of the fabrics of the of the the chairs and the the tape I mean and the inlay and how how is all of that happened Inka well you know I used to I used to live in south London in it south London so I used to go to Brixton market right so and I I used to buy the fabrics at Brixton market and and you know that's also at the time I mean that was a kind of a radical thing to do because you know I wanted to make my art from something that comes from the market yes and I went to the shop in Brixton and I was talking to them about the fabrics and then I was told oh well you know the Indonesian influenced fabrics produced by the Dutch and then you know made on the industrially and then sold within West Africa of course you know people might challenge me and say the fabrics are now made in Africa of course I do know that and the fabrics are made also within the African continent but I'm interested in the trade routes and the trajectory of the of the actual fabrics and as a metaphor for the kind of trade routes that many you know people of African origin have kind of you know gone through and so you know but I I also have a I have a number of so my studio is quite large I work with a number of different skills so there are costumers who work for the studio and there are also set designers and photographers and you know so I work with a wide range of people depending on the projects you know I'm trying to do so we pretty much put these things together the way you would the way you would put together a stage set you know so but as you know my practice is quite broad so you know I kind of work on it in a wide range of ways and I have the skills people within my studio to do those amazing can we go on to the next slide please Ruth now this is another one of my favorite pieces that sits at SAP in one of the most kind of important pieces of public spaces in Britain Trafalgar Square Nelson ship in a bottle and in Trafalgar Square that there is a single plinth that had been empty and and Yinka's Nelson ship in a bottle was chosen as a work that should sit on that plinth which if you were to stand just behind it you would be facing down toward parliament and Buckingham Palace it's right at the very center of things so Yinka can you tell us a bit about this work? Yes so I was invited to work on the fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square now in Trafalgar Square there is a Nelson's column now the reason Trafalgar Square is actually called Trafalgar Square that's to commemorate the battle of Trafalgar in which Admiral Nelson won that battle against Napoleon now the French had more control of the seas but when Britain won that war the empire was then able to expand further and I find that battle kind of interesting in terms of the story of my own history and identity in the sense that perhaps if Britain had lost that war why perhaps would be speaking French now and you know but Napoleon lost and Britain won so and then you know the flagship of Nelson is HMS Victory and so what I chose to do with the flagship was to change the sales into African textiles and then put it in a bottle I wanted public art that's somewhat serious yet playful so you know most people want to know how did the you know how did the ship get you know how did you put the ship in a bottle but that seems to be the the most important questions you know I'm often asked by London car drivers you know how I got the ship into the bottle I often say to them well you know if I told you I'd have to kill you but no so it was a fun thing to make but also I wanted to make public sculpture that the general public would find magical and engaging because I don't really want to make art that the public don't feel they can engage with and it speaks to this particular moment when you know public art is being contested and and reconsidered and it is wonderful to see work which which speaks to the contemporary moment but also sits within a historical context comfortably and I think you know for for those reasons I think I would love to see more of this sort of work dealing with contentious complex issues but dealing with them in ways that as you say are playful and which will elicit in young old the invested or not you know a response yes no I think it's absolutely important because I of course you know I want to make work but I'm not making work just for the intelligentsia because the issue of access is central to my practice you know so I don't want to be a snob in my work you know but I think it's absolutely important that you know one is not necessarily um sort of dumbing down by doing that you know I think it's important to that you can actually engage serious issues and produce exciting work you know it's it's important so I don't think that you have to compromise on on one thing or the other do you see what I mean absolutely absolutely can we go on please Ruth okay and next next image oh yes of course the um the British library which it's just a stunning piece I mean to look at it here in these images but to stand adjacent to it it's it's one of those pieces that it changes you it as a way of dealing with complex issues of narrative and history it is deeply moving but it's also just so exquisitely beautiful all of these books bound in these beautiful textiles but also ordered in this way but also telling us the lives of all of these discreet authors but also simultaneously of histories that have been denied as well I've found it an immensely moving piece I mean could could you tell me something about its creation and its impact yes so I was invited to show work at the Brighton Festival in the United Kingdom now that coincided with that that well I don't know what's happened to the images the images have a mind of their own okay thank you yeah so um so that coincided with Brexit and um you know because unfortunately because of Brexit you know there was a rise in xenophobia and and then I thought well you know I don't quite understand why people you know I don't understand the reason for xenophobia you know Britain is a very diverse country many many foreigners have made huge contributions to Britain and also the makeup of this island you know we are from everywhere and so a number of people you know from the Queen to many many contemporary artists writers who have made significant contribution to Britain you know their families have come from elsewhere so I wanted to actually celebrate that and I so I created this library called the British Library with those textiles with the names of those people first and second generation generation immigrants on the spines of the books but I most importantly I also added the names of people opposed to immigration how interesting but I wanted something that's entirely immersive and so that you know there's just this sensory overload so that you're you're physically you know immersed in this you know it's just kind of something that's kind of too beautiful but also in a way kind of dark as well so there's a degree of darkness I mean one aspect of my work there's always a degree of contradiction within the work so you're looking at something really beautiful on the one hand but then you're also there's also the kind of subtext of pathos so the subtext is always quite important and this I believe it sits in the tape now what have been the reactions of visitors because Tate itself as an institution which is is grappling with issues as the whole of our sector is at the moment of history of the future of dealing with you know the complexity of changing Britain I mean how has it been seen there? Well I mean the work has been incredibly well received at the Tate yes I mean they have so many visitors there you know to see that piece and people are kind of you know doing talks about it I mean the great thing about you see unfortunately because of COVID the Tate is unable to do that right now but there's some tablets there where you can actually enter the story of your own family your own immigration family and that and there is a website which people can also go to it's the British Library website and on that website you can actually read all the fascinating stories that people have entered so there's that kind of participatory element to it which is great but unfortunately because of COVID they can't really carry on that part right now but it's also cathartic you know our history and our presence has been so so compromised denied and you know even now in the context of culture war etc that many people have to fight for their space and it's wonderful to deal with with this as a set of issues both as something which is as a point of catharsis but also to deal with the points of contention that this is the stories of the people who have tried to posit some of the kind of you know the the terrible things about about race in Africa as well as those who've peoples of African descent and immigration as well as those who've who've actually who've who've championed it so it's about all of those areas of contention yes not absolutely and you know this is you know Gus this is us you know I mean this is you know you look around around Britain everyone's got a story you know of one kind or the other you know I mean I think Britain has been described before as the as the Monroe Nation yeah but we fight to we fight to not acknowledge that history and it's wonderful to have you and your work and artists like you reminding us of the complexity of our history and of our responsibility to navigate it with care so you know it's it's it's just so wonderful to see this work and to experience it I mean if you get the chance to stand in close proximity to these works it's it's deeply moving deeply affecting could could we go on please Ruth so here you see the kind of particular base and how did you how did you choose the particular works that went into this well so what I actually thought about culture as a whole and culture in the broader sense of it so there are people who've made contributions to the sciences to the arts to literature to to theater so and it's sort of broken down in that way so that's how it's been done amazing could we go on please Ruth and this is it's kind of twin the African library and you know as again it's another kind of area of true frustration of our histories being erased systematically forgotten not invested in you know that idea of Hegel that Africa being a place almost without history and narrative and the idea that I came away with seeing this piece I saw it in South Africa and found it again very moving this investment in in the affirmation of African narrative African stories African history I found it very very powerful indeed yes you see there are a number of people who's you know Africans throughout history we may talk about imperialism but it's it should be noted by a lot of people that throughout that period and throughout the period of difficulty Africans haven't been passive people you know Africans have been very proactive Africans have had the independence movements they've had the struggle and they're you know a number of very significant personalities both men and women make huge contributions to the effort to emancipate Africa and you know that needs to be recorded and that needs to be acknowledged we are not a passive people and you know and that's what I'm trying to do with this piece you know the people who have fought for independent struggles and also who have made significant contributions in different areas of culture from the sciences to the arts as well and the people fundamentally who have been involved in that process of nation building within Africa as well I thought needed to be celebrated and acknowledged and so that's what I've done with this piece yeah and it's so powerful I was very moved seeing it could could we go on please Ruth and these the classical works like this the discus thrower which you know they again they interrogate that enlightenment period in which so many of these attitudes really come to prominence and it also deals with our current fear with facing into that period and interrogating where issues of you know where racism and issues of race and colonialism where they actually came from I found this this body of work enormously powerful as well yeah so um many of us are used to seeing classical sculptures as white now we know that those sculptures were not always white they were in fact painted now there is a German historian called Johann Winklemann now Johann Winklemann suggested that you know the classical sculptures were white because of the superiority of the Aryan race and I felt that you know of course this is this is nonsense you know it's now well documented that those paintings were white were not white and the whiteness came from the paint actually fading off the sculptures and so this is a process of returning the color to those sculptures and suggesting then that actually there is no culture which is sort of isolated you know the Romans got the idea from the Greeks you know and so we always you know there's no such thing as a kind of pure culture you know we influence each other and we evolve our art and our you know heritage in that way and so the globe is actually sort of claiming those works as you know part of human endeavor to the emergence of culture generally so and that's what I'm sort of doing here by deconstructing those classical sculptures and can we go on please Ruth and it's part of a number and they all have the globe but they you know why the globe what was your thinking there well you know again it goes back to what I said about how culture emerges and how culture emerges through trade and throughout history and so human culture has always been about how we influence each other and so the globe there for me represents a sort of universal humanity and of course you know when people start talking about pureness or pureness of the race or they're not necessarily thinking about you know humankind they're thinking about nationalism and actually this approach here is the opposite of nationalism this is this is sort of reclaiming heritage for humanity as a whole that's beautiful could we go on please Ruth and how why did you choose these particular works the Venus de Milo the David I mean why did you choose these particular works yes I mean I chose those works because I mean those are kind of anchors if you like of European civilization I mean they are they are emblems of European civilization you know they are they are so well known and I sometimes choose iconic works to say to make very important points because I again there's the question of access and I want to be in dialogue with with a public that can have some access to what I'm trying to say could we go on please Ruth and and here with the kind of the scales of justice and that you know I mean justice isn't as we've seen over the course of this last year it's not something that is that has been impacted in a powerful way by the sorts of changes that we would like to see I mean do you feel kind of optimistic about the future particularly at this time as we've we've seen kind of the rise of black lives matters we've seen kind of ambiently that there are profound changes do you feel that we are in a place where we should feel begin to feel optimistic about the future you know I'm sure you saw Biden's inauguration yes and the young woman the poet yes and she's only 22 22 years old and so we have a generation that it's actually our duty to be optimistic you know regardless you know I'm a glass half full person yeah you know and I and I believe that some of the mistakes that we're making that they're human mistakes and humans can also unmake those mistakes you know and I think that we have to as survival depends on us being optimistic you know there is actually no other way you know and I think that you know as an artist we as artists we sort of raise those issues but I certainly am not raising those issues because I feel that you know it is the end of us as humans I want I want survival I want us to collaborate and work together and make things better and we have to we have to do that and you know remind me the name of the the poet do you have it on the top of your head you know the the young I'm sorry I can't remember her name but um yeah I thought you know who I mean yes yes I mean you know Amanda Gorman somebody's saying yeah thank you yeah Amanda Gorman incredible you know absolutely incredible I was blown away by listening to her you know if she is able to be optimistic then I have to be but but but the thing about for most minorities that there is a sense in which optimism is something which is usually kind of um it's usually something which is reserved for very particular kinds of people and it's so hard it takes so much work to be optimistic in the face of so much and at this moment it can feel I think for particularly many young people like the forces that are standing in the way of progress are gaining a sense of confidence um and boldness and um it can feel overwhelming and I agree with you that we need to we need to have a confidence and um an audacity to actually reclaim a sense of momentum and optimism but it takes a lot of effort yes well you know almost I take comfort from the fact that despite the fact that Donald Trump tried to um you know compromise the results of the elections in the in the United States he did not succeed because people voted and people got out and and they voted and that message to young people is that you know vote for change you know it can work and we've seen it work you know despite all of the difficulties people getting out to vote actually worked and you know so we have that power we have something we can you know we can vote and get the leader uh that that we that we want and I think that you know and I think that's a very powerful thing and then could we go on Ruth please now these are these are marvelous wind sculptures and I as as a an ex director of the National Museum of African Art uh in DC that one of my great pleasures was coming in every morning and seeing one of these outside our building as one of our proudest um parts of our collection could you could you talk a little bit about them please yes so you know we've talked today a bit about public sculpture and monuments and you know what kind of sculpture do we do we have enough in the public realm do we have you know diverse works of art do we have works by contemporary African artists within uh within the public realm and what do those works actually represent so after doing the shipping a bottle in Trafalgar Square you know and looking at the sales on that that the sales inspired a body of work and you know they evoke for me the sense of movement uh migration and also questions around monuments and sculpture what is sculpture you know um and so you know sculpture is something that has weight volume and so on and what I'm doing here is completely deconstructing that and actually saying okay can we actually sculpt something that's not there is it even possible to sculpt wind so in a way this is a sculpture of nothing and you know it's you know it's not it's this is the opposite of didactic sculpture you know this is not didactic sculpture this is this is playful it's colorful it's meaningful too in the sense that it deals with issues of migration in a very subtle manner and it deals also with the issue of multiculturalism and diversity within the realm within the public realm and so that's how those works evolved could could we see another one Ruth if we and they are exquisite and that um I mean how how were they made because they look so so light yeah so this is the fiberglass and there's a metal structure at the center so that's what's keeping it up but then it's painted fiberglass and it's painted you know in the patterns of the fabrics and I design all of the the images on the on the um you know on the public sculptures but they're they're also fun I mean you know I I enjoy working on them very much and designing them and so and I know that you know it gives the public fun too and it's it's just like a splash of color in the gray city you know I remember I had one we may have an image here but there was one in Central Park in New York and it just looked exquisite I did see that one and it it did transform it it is transformational of both the viewer but also of the landscape within which it sits and as you say created by something which is mainly an animation of of of wind through through through cloth but which is actually not cloth as you say so it's an extraordinary thing extraordinary I'm going to see more gosh and this is this is this the Royal Academy is that the Royal Academy this is during the summer exhibition and so that was a temporary installation but it was that it was fun to have one next to Reynolds there but also the Royal Academy yes exactly and and what the reaction not I mean because the Royal Academy particularly over the summer it attracts lots of people who come from all over Britain to come and see it and it and it represents it represents the both the art establishment but also it represents a kind of an accessibility to the arts and you know I think that is one of the intersections that you manage to traverse so well of of being someone who is absolutely rooted and fits perfectly in the context of of great august institutions like this but at the same time it represents something that feels of the people well you know I mean I think it's you know it's important to to always give that access you know to to be in dialogue with the audience that you're sort of you know I mean I I've never really understood artists who produce work that the audience can't really kind of engage with and what's the point and could we go on please yeah and this of course in my my old employer the Smithsonian this National Museum of African Art and it's just a glorious piece and it sits in the Enid Hout Garden which is just the north of the castle adjacent to our front entrance so everyone who comes in and leaves that they get the chance to see it and I think the connection as you say to narrative to history to social justice to the arts to to Africa in all of its complexity to the the magic of the arts it's everything which Namatha that institution is about and it's all beautifully encapsulated in this one glorious piece that you pass as you as you enter and you and you leave the the building should we go on please and this is of course the the central park one which again I would pass quite often yes no I mean that was fun to to do that in New York and they all they they all transform the place that they're in as well as you know being discreetly beautiful but it's about them enhancing the environment which is something that you would always want from public art yeah no absolutely you know should can we go on please yeah and that was the novel so if you step back wow yes novel foundation in in Cape Town yeah and so there's a Cape Town an absolutely gorgeous setting as well yes the novel novel foundation and Ruth can we go on yeah and this is in Boston if we go back and so that's that's in Boston at the moment it is wonderful and it and as a as a particular body of work just demonstrating how you can do such a wide variety of things but also within any discreet area how you can really kind of push the parameters of of your practice it's just another exceptional chapter in this amazing story of your work and we're now going to kind of finish with some of your current one of your current projects which is what you're doing both in in Hackney and East London but also in in Nigeria could you could you talk to us a little bit about this yes so this is my studio in in London and I have a gallery in my studio and for about 11 years I've been given artist space to show for a month and that could be dance it could be visual arts it could be and the idea you know as you know gas in London it's really difficult for artists to find spaces to work you know it's just become very expensive you know and spaces to show their work so I wanted to provide that platform in my studio and so you know I've been doing that for 10 years it's called guest projects and so and then after 10 years of doing that now on the 11th year I decided to make the residency international so and then I registered a foundation which is the yin cashon barri foundation and then we're going to do so in Lagos it's called guest artists guest artist space foundation in Lagos which is a gas foundation and so we're actually in the process of building a purpose built building so that we I will then be able to invite three artists and they will have workspace there and they can work in a comfort residency for three months and the residency is open to all art forms including curators so that you know and and writers as well and visual artists but the residency is also in two parts so artists will also be able to go to the countryside so we have a 54 acre farm two hours from Lagos and we are already practicing a sustainable farming there so we we're growing a number of crops from you know peppers cassava tomatoes maize yams plantains and we are able to we're already actually supplying people food locally and I had to build a three kilometer road to provide access into the farm so I've managed to do that because so I had to do some infrastructure work but that said you know it's a very exciting thing and the agriculture is going very well and we also have greenhouses now we I think we're up to about 10 greenhouses now to grow crops like you know tomatoes peppers and then you know we were planting we're doing open field farming as well and we we've just planted a lot of kind of fruits as well different fruits and but the important thing is to connect the urban and the rural areas and artists will you know because Lagos is kind of it's a city like any other you know so I thought it would be nice for artists to experience being in the countryside so the farm is in a place called Ijebu and so we can look at some more images yeah that's just some of our residency events and then that's a guest artist space foundation this is when I went to Lagos to talk to some of the artists about what we're going to be doing because I think it's important that local people are involved at the outset okay so go and go to the next one and so that's the building that we are nearly finishing now so that's the an artist sort of illustration of the building but we the the building should be completed around June time so but we're making very good progress on that building okay and then we go to the next one and then this is the barn house where artists will stay on the farm we've we've also started building that building okay the next one and this building is done with local mud slow down what we said this building is built with local materials and so with the kind of local soil and everything and also local people are trained in how to build such such buildings okay so here we go and this is at the very beginning of the farm when we when we just planted things and you can see that the landscape is absolutely stunning okay and the next one and so some of our crops in the greenhouses and and that's some of our crops there you can see some of the harvest and really looking beautiful and nice okay and then the next one and that's all I have to say thank you that's wonderful I mean we're going to open up to questions Polly if you want to come back in but you can just to finish this is just extraordinary I mean your your work has always been about giving I mean it's always been for me amazingly uplifting and inspiring cathartic but now you are also giving to other artists offering them practical ways of of developing their profession and it's just across the course of your career you've been incredibly generous and and I just see this this particular project as being a real instantiation of that it's wonderful I hope you're getting lots of support from all of the necessary people to make this happen well you know we you know there's as I said they are registered as a foundation so with you know with good governance and so on and it's called you know yin kashun barri foundation we have a website and of course you know I welcome support it's it's very important because I can't do this without the support and most importantly I welcome you know people artists of the African diaspora to particularly because I feel but I don't mean just United Kingdom I mean the United States I mean Latin America you know I think it will be a great experience for you know artists on people of the African diaspora but also it's not exclusively for people of the African diaspora you know I welcome people from the United States from Germany from Asia but I believe that this kind of thing can only be achieved with the support of people so the only way I could possibly succeed would be if people were kind enough to be and be generous to help us I agree it's such an important project it is so worthy of support and I hope I hope that there are people who are listening who participate tonight who may know of people who may be in a position to to help in the ways that that that that that yin ke needs and Polly did you want to to now move to the the question and answer yeah gas and yin ke thank you so much this has been such an extraordinarily rich and valuable conversation so thank you both for this this wonderful talk um I think there's a lot of questions coming through in the chat so we'll we'll definitely come to those and please do keep them coming everyone who's watching I know we've got a big audience tonight we've got um almost we're up to almost 300 at some point um so do as they come in um I will come to those but I just want to say that um I think it's been so valuable to hear you talk tonight both to get a kind of a sense of the sort of historical trajectory of your work yin ke um but also I think what really came through in what you're saying is the kind of contemporary urgency of your projects and and the kind of gift that your work brings to this particular political moment that we find ourselves in in which history and narrative and the way in which identity is configured it's really kind of under so much pressure at the moment and I think that you know the way in which you approach historical narratives and really opening the space to all different views of history and different views of the sort of entanglements of you know our global interconnected world you know this really comes through in your work in a way that's so politically engaged and yet never didactic you know it's sort of serious and playful at the same time and I think you know it's it's just such a it's just such a great gift that that your work brings in this way so I don't know if that's something you'd like to talk more about yin ke about the your your approach to history and your your kind of political engagement I mean that's something that's I think comes through in your conversation a lot tonight but I don't know if there's anything else you want you want to add to that I can also perhaps should we do a couple of questions at a time that might be a good way to do it I think that might relate to one question that came through quite early on which was about disciplinary boundaries so it was a psoas alumna was asking about the way in which um art history is taught and historically of course um psoas was a space you know and it's still a space where we have a regional focus in which you know we look at african art we study african art history um and there's a sort of you know long tradition of doing that but I think you know one of the things that comes through in your practice yin ke is how interconnected we are and you know you remind us that it really is impossible to talk about the history of african art without talking about britain and it's impossible to talk about british art without talking about the history of africa you know this it's impossible to to separate these two so I don't know if there's something there you'd like to address either of you yin ke or gas um and then we'll we'll go on to some more questions well I mean I I think that you know well put really I mean I I think unfortunately I mean we we know that um nationalisms evolve out of this um uh pretence to to to uh isolationism and and then we also know that that leads to fascism you know I mean you know it's a it's a kind of that's the equation you're looking at you know when you're when you're sort of denying everybody else and you're kind of giving yourself this sort of special uh special place you know I think that we are kind of interconnected you know I mean even very simple things like you know environment and environmental issues I mean you're not you know you're not gonna breathe your own air you know you have to you have to share it you know where we can't separate ourselves you know the whole we also know fully well that the whole idea of a nation is a very modern construct you know people didn't see themselves in sort of divided nations you know there are kind of no sort of boundaries uh artificial boundaries in that way so I think that we've created them and we need to start dismantling those boundaries that we created absolutely and I think in the the context that we're currently in of this this global pandemic I think reminds us as much as anything of how interconnected we are and how kind of arbitrary these these borders are no I don't think we've ever been more connected in some ways even though we're all isolating in in our own little homes um thank you Yinka should we go on to some of these other questions I don't know if there's any in the chat that you want to address in particular but I can I can summarize some of them um so one question that came up um was about your commission in Leeds to to um create a memorial to David Olivale um so one one part one audience member asked how are you approaching this commission um and how relevant is it to the present moment I mean I know that this is I think it happened in 1969 it's the case of kind of police harassment and brutality that led to the death of this man and I understand that it's the last um example of the police being uh convicted for a death in in custody or you know for a police death um do you want to say a bit more about how you're approaching it and how it's perhaps relevant to to the current moment well I mean I think for those who are not aware of the case um David Olivale came from Nigeria and you know he was living in Leeds um he was he actually came to study engineering and then unfortunately that didn't quite uh work out as planned so he was taking odd jobs in Leeds and but he was constantly harassed uh you know racial abuse and so on and then he was also brutalized by the police and he was found uh dead drowned in the river and um and that is being you know that death then there was a case you know as well that the police were charged well they went to court anyway um but but and I think that it's been a um you know very kind of unfortunate story uh what happened there but also unfortunately we're still seeing some of that today and so what happened to David you know Olivale is really kind of symbolic and it's something that we cannot learn a lot from and so I've been commissioned to make a memorial uh to him but I mean I you know unfortunately I've been told that I can't say much about this in public right now so I can I can I can say that um I've accepted the commission but I can't explicitly say uh what I'm going to do otherwise I'd be happy to I say that but I've been you know specifically told not to okay and not all right well we'll just have to wait um wait and see it then all right thanks Yinka um perhaps we can I mean obviously you know that that commission relates you know so some of the things that you've been talking about doesn't it and the way in which history is remembered and the way in which these narratives are told in the public space and how you know contested that can be um perhaps that relates to another question that's come in from Laura and I don't know if Gus as well you might if you can both speak to this one which is what steps can museums take to decolonize so you know what kind of active steps can can we take as um as academics as artists as museum directors to to decolonize the narratives of the public space any any ideas for practical steps would you like me to we've been talking about this for the 150 years of my career and um we haven't actually meant to shift the dial but if ever there was a time in which there was both opportunity and need it is now and um I mean certainly at the V&A which you know even from its its its name you know that there is a kind of a kind of pretty um imperative need for us to address these things that we have begun to look at you know across the across the spectrum from our staffing to our programs to our acquisitions to our partnerships um but indeed the reason why I was um um uh uh invited back to Britain um into my new role was to found a new bit of the V&A which is its fundamental um uh drive is to engage with a new audience through the collection to deal with all of those sorts of contentious issues but rather than burying them and rather than kind of dealing with them in an awkward way but to foreground them that we want to we want to actually begin to unpick those histories and to find ways of hopefully building kind of shared dialogue and I would pray some kind of catharsis um and so and I look across at my at my colleagues in other national institutions from from Tate to the British Museum and there's a recognition that it's long overdue for us to deal with them it it's not that we have the answers it's not that we have um you know the resource to do it but the but we must find those things we have no choice and uh there is um I think amongst all of the leadership but also I think amongst all of the staff that I engage with at those national museums a sense that a sense that this is the time in which we've got to stop just talking about it we've got to deliver and so I'm excited by this moment as an opportunity you know I am of course daunted by it as um you know the sort of the scale of the challenge and it coincides with then being uh greater compromises on resource than any point in my memory but we will find the ways of delivering because we simply have to well everyone's very excited to have you in charge Gus I think it's a wonderful appointment um I mean of course one of the questions I think is how do you do this in a way that is really kind of fundamentally changing the landscape rather than just in terms of optics or just in a sort of visual way um you know how do you make these sort of real deep changes that that needs to be made I don't know um Yinka do you want to say a bit about that as well I mean um how do you feel your your work kind of relates to this sort of sudden impulse to decolonize suddenly everybody is talking about it but as you said at the beginning you know these sort of discussions really have been happening of course for a very long time um so how do you feel about how your work sort of relates to this present moment in these discussions about decolonization well you know I mean one message I would like for the various museums is that you know I've been going to museums now for many many years and I've been working with various durators and I have to say you know I don't see senior staff I don't see a diverse senior staff in museums and I think you know it's one thing to talk about it but you have to look at the people that you're actually employing to work in those places and not you know and I don't mean sort of you know interns or junior curators or I'm talking about actually actually directors of museums and I think that some museums need to look at that very carefully and think about who they're actually employing and I can assure them they're not going to regret it because the the younger audiences are very diverse and if you want to stay alive and you want to carry on you have to you know diversity is crucial it's actually crucial to your bank balance you know I mean that's a very kind of philistine thing to say but it's absolutely important because you can actually broaden your scope and your market so you can only gain from it you're not going to lose from it you know so I think if the museums are brave enough to actually start at the level of the board and at the senior level then I will believe that they're serious but if they're not doing that I won't believe them yeah yeah yeah yeah of course Gus did you want to come back no no I was just saying I will relay that but I think it's generally absolutely we've got to begin at the board but also critically with particularly in museums there is that middle echelon of curators who are really you know that is an area that we have to address and that they are some of the longest serving bits of a museum that you look at directors come and go but curators they stay forever and I think you know that is an area where we must invest in trying to to make some change sorry you know as well as I do that a number of black curators have done internships right and they keep creating opportunities for you know black curators to join museums and they do and they do those internships and they do all those programs but actually does that result in long-term employment or even any kind of power within the institution I agree with you I agree I'm as frustrated as as you are Yinka about all of these things and that I fought from the fringes in trying to make these changes I was the very first diversity person at at the British Museum you know that was my first role in museums and I have spent most of my career trying to push for these changes but for the very first time in Britain I'm in a position where I can actually begin to change the patterns and flow of resource in ways that will mean that there will be meaningful change and so and I look across at my peers and there is an equally hungry appetite for making those changes I mean I don't say this lightly but I generally feel that at no point in my career have I felt more optimistic about this particular area and but we've got a huge distance to travel we've got so much work to do so much change and we're doing it as I was saying in a time when it's been tougher because of challenges to resource to do it so you know watch this space and keep asking the difficult questions because we've got to be kept on our toes please no no more reports I don't know what happens to all these reports anyway or if anybody even reads them I don't you know we don't want any more reports we just want you to do stuff yeah yeah absolutely I'm with you so there's a lot of questions coming in in the chat about restitution and um the sort of role of museums in restitution so I don't know if you want to speak about that but I just want to bring up perhaps this one question from Richard Hilton which is that how does the panel view the present UK government's sentiments towards workworthies and pushback on BLM because I think and this comes through in your your talk you know this kind of fantastic sense of optimism and energy that you both have for this moment and kind of ways forward for this moment and you know I think this is really what is needed in this current situation um but of course we're at that that point aren't we where you know at the same time there's there's this energy to decolonize and to to engage in these new different histories but at the same time there's a pushback so the government has been for example you know there's this law that's just passed isn't there to protect the monuments um that or to protect the monuments um you know so a sort of a restriction on direct action and popular action in terms of how history is is understood in the public space so how do you view that um but the law a law wouldn't have changed what happened to Colston but at the end of the day that if there'd been some official saying but you're breaking the law look it's written I don't think it would have that there is an ambient shift and it may well be I mean my view is that um in part what we're seeing is a kind of death rattle and it's a violent death rattle of particular of a particular very vociferous segment of the population and genuinely that across the wider at least the museum sector that I work within that there is that that the ambient shift is towards is toward the sorts of things that we are supporting that if you are against them that you must be feeling a great weight of of kind of a sense of being standing against against what is happening and I think I I I generally do think that um there is great cause in this particular area for optimism of course there's shouting and screaming but I see that as a kind of death rattle of a very particular view and it may well be finding coherence around things that are happening politically but if you look at what happened at the end for Trump that even some of the sorts of demographies that would have been his core constituencies they were the ones that stood against him to deny him those critical votes in those constituencies that would have given him any basis for pushing back I do think that there are shifts changes that we should feel optimistic about and it speaks to what Yinka was saying earlier that the thing they will deny us is our optimism they're going to deny us not just our voice but it's the thing of a young people feeling that they will have a chance of making the changes I think we are closer now to making those changes and seeing them actually become part of of of of ambient accept acceptable belief than at any point in my life yeah no I mean I second that I think you know I think it's sort of self-evident you know that this stuff can't go on this way forever you know and a lot of young people will not allow that to happen to them you know they they have they're far better connected than we ever were and you know and I think that also with with the power to vote and as you say you know I'm not going to be I'm not defeatist I'm never defeatist I'm not going to say oh well you know that's it you know where you know we can't be proactive or we're powerless no we're not powerless and we do have something that counts and that's our ability to vote and you know I know that the mayor of London is setting up a review panel to look at street names and monuments and and that's done in an orderly manner because that's based on the community so there's some kind of fallacy that people are going to be going around putting down statues that that's just some kind of somebody else's fantasy that's not happening you know so I don't know where all this stuff comes from or what people are afraid of absolutely I love your optimism and yeah I think it's a case of you know moving forward with this energy knowing the momentum at this moment in positive new directions and hopefully you're right and things really are changing I like the idea of this death rattle Gus hold on to that I'm going to keep that um so let's maybe um there's a few questions that have come through about collaboration so maybe that would sort of segue into into a sort of discussion about how collaborations might be useful in terms of developing positive strategies for what we're talking about so two questions there's one from patricia davis says have you ever engaged with educational institutions to encourage the inclusion of colonial history on the curriculum your works would be such an attractive starting point for all ages all age groups and communities um I am I am already in the national curriculum so and a number of schools study my work so um so you know yes so somebody you know that's already that's already happening um and then there's a second one which relates to that from craig stevens says with the goal of making historical narratives about the black experience more accessible how can we be most efficient in collaborations between the historians social scientists and artists through what efforts can we best encourage the production of content that pulls from archaeological and anthropological data um but either of you like to speak speak to those I think that should take this one thank you I personally think that the place of intersection for these sorts of things is naturally somewhere like so as I mean that in terms of its history but also I mean it's it's recent history from the from the kind of the moment of of decolonization there was a sense of so as being a kind of um a space in which one could engage in in in debates that felt like they had resonances across the globe and it's always felt to me like a place of of real of of of of kind of catalyst a catalyst that plays in which could really kind of shift thinking and I do think in the 21st century in the kind of the age of kind of Greta Turnberg's and Gen Z really kind of wanting to see ambient shifts of us having excuse me the technologies to actually speak to peoples across the global south with real efficiency and effectiveness I would have felt that somewhere like so as it's a great moment for it to become the point of intersection for considerations of how we actually shift thinking particularly in schools and universities around these issues um we need we need the um we need to have the kind of the the the the knowledge that the kind of the the data if you google Africa and google African art and look at the stuff after a couple of pages that starts to come up it's just not the sort of thing that you would want young people to be seeing we need institutions like so as and I you know if there's any way in which I can support this to begin to push back against that with the sorts of resources that can feed into curricula that can feed into into the sorts of things that if people are in their own time are just wanting to find information that can really help to serve them putting pressure on institutions like the BBC to begin to shift the dial you know I think it's time for us as institutions to begin to to to be legislating alongside Gen Z to be they want to see the changes but they need the infrastructure within which they can actually make those changes count and it's in spaces like so as where that could really happen absolutely yeah thank you guys um absolutely there's um there's a lot happening at size at the moment and yeah this is certainly questions that we're exploring and working towards things that we're working towards perhaps thinking about that then can we expand that to think about um what's going on in in Africa and the continent there's a few questions that come in about um there was one question about boundaries and the idea of identity and boundaries and how artists in West Africa are approaching that another question about Ramald Hasme's work and how you how you might relate to that um but and another question also about um from Angelica about the the political situation what are your views on the political situation in Uganda and Nigeria in terms of political change so I don't know if either of you want to speak a little bit about your views on what's happening let's let's focus on Nigeria because I know Yinka you're working there um your views on the sort of artistic and political landscape any any reflections on that well I mean I think that it's very important to uh you know to speak about the context when you when you're actually you know when you feel kind of immediately connected to it because I think that I mean obviously you know the the kind of politically things have been you know Nigeria has a Nigeria's had a kind of a difficult history you know politically and Nigeria is sort of you know evolving like everybody like everywhere else and I think that in the context of what just happened at the capital in the United States I think you know we can't sort of sit in the west and start pointing a finger because I you know it's just not you know those things are not tenable anymore you know that can't you know that can't be the way I mean I think the the best way is to understand that societies evolve according to their own history and you know we're all striving for a better democratic government in the in a lot of these places but we also have to understand take into account the socio-economic issues that lead to conflict so we need a broader understanding of context before we start talking about yeah. I feel you know I I look at Nigeria and I see some of the sorts of interventions that are beginning to be made in terms of of the museum sector and after some generations of what can only be called inertia that there is real again cause for optimism you know looks looking at ways in which strategic partnerships can be made with institutions around the world in looking at ways in which objects contended objects contentious objects that they can be re-accommodated within collections in Nigeria. There's there is a lot to feel enormously optimistic about and one looks at the contemporary sector and what is happening you know both in terms of of of the commercial work which is happening but also in terms of collectors as well and it is astonishing I think what we don't do as a continent is to aggregate and these things in ways in which they are so meaningfully done in in Europe that we need you know the equivalence of arts councils of British councils of institutions that both fund and additionally promote the works of artists in on the continent and I think that would make a huge difference I mean if you look at the cultural sectors in Europe and North America the amount of money that they draw into those nations and if we get it together on the African continent I think this will be a sector of the creative industries that could absolutely kind of transform economies and it's worthy of the tiny amounts of investment that it would require to seed these things and of the time and the support of the institutions that have been pushing uphill for a generation without the support of the of the state we need to Is it Gus I agree with what you're saying precisely but I think on the African continent my view from going to Nigeria is that we need to deal well first of all institutions and infrastructure is a major major issue and you know I just told you about building a three kilometer farm to a road to have access to the farm and then building the residency space so and the private sector in Nigeria is beginning to do a lot as you know there is art x in Lagos the art fair the annual art fair which is incredibly popular and all that most of that is supported by the banks and and private individuals and highly impressive what the private sector is actually managing to achieve and there are you know a number of collectors in Lagos there is the so it's slowly happening there's the Yoruba museum that's being built in Lagos there is the museum that's being built in Benin city absolutely well that David Ajay is you know working on that so you know I mean it took America you know a long time and also European countries but you know Africa is starting to get to that point but I think that at this point in time it does seem to me that a lot of it is being driven by the private sector for the most part it is but I would argue that in somewhere like Nigeria which we're talking about a rounding error in terms of the budgets the national budgets that would be needed to be invested to completely transform the state-sponsored museum sector you know to invest in a new generation of museums that was you know then able to to to to broker loans globally you know I and the way in which that would pay back would be astonishing it would be you know you are aware of Zide Smoker I am yes in South Africa and of course when Zide Smoker first started the the main issue was actually the question of training curators yes and so they began a process of actually supporting curators to be trained because you also know that if you were to build all of those museums then you need to build the skills set and the skills infrastructure and I think so and you know it's a process and I know it's happening I mean I know it's definitely happening but it's a it's a slow process because once you build the museums then you have to have the the staff and the training to do it you know and and as you know with museums you know it's a big machine you need conservators you need curators you need you know and you need technicians and so I think that actually the the focus should be on skills training because you cannot build those structures without the skillset required to actually run them and I and I think many African there are so many qualified African curators and intellectuals and but unfortunately currently you know well most of us are in the diaspora and I think you know because that there should also be a way to invite people back to kind of you know head some of those institutions as well combined with local skills and look you know locally qualified people you know but I think there would need to be some kind of attempt to bring back also some people within the diaspora to to work within those institutions because you know without the skillset you can't really run those places there's quite a few questions coming in on restitution I don't know if you either of you would like to speak to this obviously your it's it's a question that that comes up a lot especially at the moment it's a very kind of current issue and when we're talking about these these institutions that are being built you know like the museum in Benin for example that's being built specifically to to house the Benin material from the British Museum and you know in these sort of global collections what are your thoughts on on on this and perhaps we can link it back to your working career and keep you know because of course you know this it's such a sort of recurrent theme in your practice as well this sort of movement of objects between Africa and Europe and you know that sort of circulation of objects so I mean I think I think if you steal something you should give it back yeah I don't actually I don't think that's over complicated you know I mean if you steal something you should give it back yeah you know I want it back you know give me back my stuff you know I mean gosh I don't know what you think is it complicated I don't think it doesn't have to be but and I think it's being increasingly simplified and genuinely I think if you were to get most of the kind of senior museum directors who have who have this contended material in their in their collections if you were to get them into a private conversation that I would imagine I don't think there will be any of them who wouldn't be completely agreeing with you I think it is now about a kind of an alignment of of a number of things which are incredibly boring and of finding the best way of doing it yeah but you know that's usually that's an excuse you know that that's just an excuse really because if you're serious about giving something back you'll find a way to give it back yeah and I I genuinely think over the course of the next five years I would say there'll be a significant move I would think over the course of the next two years you'll begin to see the sorts of things that you are talking about happen and I think that it's not just that there is a kind of ambient shift I think that there is a kind of a credibility need for these things to happen so I don't think the points of opposition aren't they aren't when I began my career that there was a kind of ideological kind of hard core for whom this would have been something that would be almost beyond the possibility of considering and I don't think I think those people have all retired and gone away or just I'm going to ask you a complicated question then okay do you think the Elgin Marbles should be returned? Do I think they should be returned? Yeah I mean for a variety of reasons I probably shouldn't answer that but I think you you know that I would love to see I would love to see kind of a far greater equity and I would love to see kind of objects being able to tell stories in their place of origin in the way in which they they haven't been over the course of the last kind of you know 200 years because of basically the concentration of of resource in a tiny number of countries so I would absolutely kind of you know want to see shifts and changes but I mean I don't want to be quoted on the front page of the of the Daily Mail I have work to do and what I don't want is that for my for you know if you think about the role that I have and it will be so easy for the Daily Mail to make my particular life impossible and so you know I you know I have to think strategically about how I apply my energies to these particular things. No well well well evaded thank you. I'll put you on the spot there Gus sorry about that um maybe we could loop back to so Joy in the in the chat says what about the Black British Museum project currently being considered in collaboration with the Black Cultural Archives do you feel that's a good idea and I suppose this kind of question relates to you know earlier on in the discussion we were talking about kind of disciplinary boundaries do you think it's is that the answer to you think about you know specific museums for Black history or should they be included in in a sort of broader as part of a broader global narrative um I think we should have both yeah I mean I would love to see a museum for women you know I mean I don't know there is actually is there a museum for women um I don't think I'm not sure to be not a national one absolutely not whereas in the US that there will be fairly soon there should be a national museum for women to celebrate women's achievement you know I think it's important and I and I don't think that takes away from a national museum you know I think you know I think actually we need both yes but you know because you need people to have platforms for telling their own stories yes I don't think there's anything wrong with that at all yeah because you know we can always all learn from each other yeah I agree I agree there are women's museums in Dakar in Bamako um in Washington DC um and in Cambridge apparently thanks to the chat so that yeah absolutely and I think it makes it makes us richer you know we we have you know you have multiple perspectives in which you can actually understand we can understand our history um fantastic thank you so much I don't know if we if there's anything you guys want to end on so we've got just nine minutes left if you want to go right to the end if any if you've got any questions that you feel you'd like to explore that we haven't explored yet is there anything Yinka you'd like to talk about or Gus um no I mean you know pretty much I mean are those all of the questions um well there's I mean there's maybe there's one thing we can end on and then that will loop back to your to your practice which might be nice and that's about about textiles so there's a few questions that come in about textiles and of course this is so so central to your practice and and you know when we're talking about objects moving around and kind of cultural appropriation of objects you know fabrics uh as they're so kind of central to these histories aren't they and one of the questions that came up was about the semiotics in in the fabrics that you use do you do you engage I think the questions got lost back in the chat here we go there's there's supposed to be a semiology to each of the fabric designs in wax cotton too uh do you do you have specific reasons for using different motifs so I don't know if you want to speak to that but also maybe perhaps more broadly on fabrics as a kind of as a kind of metaphor for you know our interconnected the interconnected nature of our world and you know the sort of boundary between self and other and the boundaries around identity um I don't know if there's there's more you'd like to say about that in a succinct one sentence way um um maybe can you just comment on on why fabric is such an important part of your work and then maybe some of these questions will come out through that well okay so I mean you know you talked about semiotics and you're talking about sort of you're basically talking about representation and what things mean you know the meaning of things the meaning the meaning of science that's what you're talking about right so let's wasn't my question but yes no no put that yeah because I wanted to put that in English so the meaning of science what things mean what they represent okay so um you know the fabrics you know obviously that's a representation of you know culture um you know how do how do the fabrics sort of represent us and what do they mean you know so if somebody you know obviously if you choose to wear certain you know if you wear if you were to wear like Scottish tartan you know you're sending out a very particular message about your Scottishness and you know people wear African textiles because they want to kind of you know celebrate their own heritage or whatever that that might mean and so my interests my interest is mainly in the creation of those signs and what they mean so my engagement is more to do about you know how we manipulate those signs and how we create them and also for that matter how those signs can also stand for our um you know emancipation or the messages we would like to give out but you know signs are I mean this this issue we're discussing now reminds me of a painting by my great and so in that painting there's a there's a pipe you know it's a painting of the pipe and at the bottom of the painting of the pipe it says this is not a pipe you know and so the point there is that actually in reality what you're looking at is paints you know a piece of a bit of paint and on a piece of cloth and and then the ways of representing that paint you know that pipe through paint and cloth but actually the actual canvas that the pipe is painted on is actually not a pipe you know it's not a pipe it's a representation of the pipe but if you take that image to somebody who has never read image or perspective or doesn't know or indeed has never seen a pipe I mean it doesn't mean very much so you need certain cultural codes to understand signs and so what I do with my work is to manipulate those codes and play with them I don't know if any of that makes any sense whatsoever perfect sense and it's a wonderful thing to end this session on I think but thank you for this evening in Chris just been absolutely incredible and I mean for me your work has been kind of something of a cultural compass across the course of my whole career and it's always wonderful to spend some time with you just for me kind of relocating some of the sorts of things that are really important that mean things to me and that inspire and catalyze being all the work that I do so thank you so much for this evening and also thank you to colleagues that so as thank you Polly thank you to colleagues you know in the MAFA you know I'm missing you so much and you know to this whole kind of community of support amazing questions throughout the evening and it's just a reminder that this kind of portfolio of shared ideas and concerns that is key to your work key to the work of MAFA key to the work of SOAS is ever more important thank you so much Polly for hosting this evening it's been magnificent I really enjoyed it and I hope everyone listening at home has enjoyed it as well well yeah so I think it just leaves to me to say thank you to you both as well thank you Gus for chairing this and helping to organize it I know that you were involved in this collaboration right from the beginning so thank you for that and thank you Yinka so much it's been so rich and so engaged and so of the moment it feels like really the right conversation for this particular moment that we're all in and your work just offers so much so much richness to to these conversations so thank you both well thank you you know and it's a pleasure you know pleasure to talk to everyone and you know yes so thank you and thank you so as thank you Smithsonian and thank you for all the support and you know and support our foundation if you can thank you do support the foundation support the MAFA and support SOAS that these are all causes that absolutely at this time ever more critical and need our support thank you so much