Engage. Exchange. Replenish. Renew.
We talked with the artist Adébayo Bolaji for just over an hour. We spent that time doing exactly what it says on the tin (see title…) Challenging, thought-provoking, entertaining and always generous. Enjoy.
Photo: Amoroso Films
Who are you?
Who am I. I think it’s better to say –who am I becoming, rather than “who am I”. On one hand, people call me an artist. I make things. I make paintings, I make sculptures, illustration, theatre and film. And poetry. Those are concrete things that I do. I don’t really like to use the expression – “I make things”, because I feel like I discover things and I feel like they are two different notions. “Making” feels a bit more concrete, as if I always know exactly what I’m going to do, whereas I’m discovering what I am always going to do. And that’s more exciting. I would say I’m an explorer. I like to explore creative things. No – I like to explore things and through exploring, use creative ways to find out what I’ve explored. And they seem to come out in painting, sculpture, direction for film and stage. But I’m generally just exploring. It’s a constant state of curiosity.
Is the journey part of the result?
It’s the whole thing. Process. I remember Peter Brook saying that the beautiful part of making theatre for him is in the making, in the discovery. And that when he had found it, he was done. Then he wanted to go back again. I realized, when I was acting, I loved rehearsals and I loved process. For me, the joy was in the process. I think a lot, I’m asking “why does…?” “Oh, that’s an interesting discovery – what can we discover next?” So, my joy is – wow – the earth is filled with so much richness, do we not want to understand how everything works? The human mind is filled with so much richness – don’t you want to understand how people think? I think that’s why I love conversation because, in conversation, you can find out why someone thinks the way they do. I’m less concerned with what’s just come out. I’m more concerned with – why did you say that? What’s making you move? Why did you do that? That’s why I pick up materials when I paint quickly, because, they’re just the means. They just happen to help the process. I’m definitely looking for something. And I don’t even know what I’m looking for. I think I just wake up in the morning and I’ll say – “okay – what can I learn today?” I think I’m asking that subconsciously, it’s not even that those exact words are in the forefront of my mind. It’s almost like, if I dig deeper, I’m asking – how can I grow today, how can I be better than yesterday? And everyone is probably looking at what I’ve done yesterday and I’ve left that…. People always come to my studio and I say “oh, this is an old painting” and they’ll ask how old. When I say “last year”, they’ll say “that’s OLD???” it is to me.
When have you done enough “digging”? When have you explored enough?
I don’t know. It’s like cooking a meal. You’re improvising and you put salt in – is that enough yet? And you taste – needs more. You put a bit of lemon in and everything just goes – boom, bam, bam. That’s one way of looking at it, where for you and your senses, everything just hits at the right spot. If you go over, it’s a bit self-indulgent. It’s nice, it’s still flavoursome, but it’s going to be a bit too much. If it’s under, you’re not courageous enough and you can’t put that extra, little bit more. It’s just an instincts thing. With some pieces, it can be purely instinctual, a real feeling. If the painting is completely abstract, I feel that in that abstraction, I’m exploring some kind of existential idea that is multiple questions. I’m not deliberately going in and questioning x/y/z. It’s just a feeling of all sorts of stuff. and then they all just seem to merge and we’re done with that question. I can feel it. If it’s a figure, I could stop at one stage and someone could go – oh yeah, that looks like her. But, there will be something about you that’s vibrating in me and I’ll feel that I haven’t reached that point yet. It’s an instinctive thing where all the flavours hit. And I go – that’s it. That’s what I want you to eat today.
Is it the same process when you’ve directed theatre?
That’s different. David Mamet said – “you understand drama and storytelling because of an audience. You understand how boring you are or how interesting you are when you have an audience.” When you have a moment in storytelling, when the audience ooh and ahh, you have them engaged. Like Brook said, theatre is not complete without an audience. To me, a painting is complete without anyone. It’s just me and the work. Then you just leave it out there. But theatre is this continuous circle where there’s an exchange and an engagement – an immediate engagement, as well. What you’re constantly doing is being responsible for how each moment affects the next. You become more consciously aware of ‘plotting’ and having a real understanding of cause and effect. With a painting, I’m not necessarily thinking about the plot. I’m capturing a moment. That moment will be something different for every single person. The way they will experience, where they experience it, will always be different. Theatre is a completely different experience. Also, there’s a collaboration between me and the writer (if I didn’t write it), if there’s music in it – with the composer, with lighting – with every other kind of medium. There is now a collaborative effort to bring all of those sensibilities and ideas together to serve the plot. There is something that I am deliberately serving. With painting, I’m serving what is going through me, in that one moment.
Were these two art forms entwined at all? Is there any loss, now that one can’t happen? Has the visual taken over and defined you?
I don’t perform, in the classical sense, anymore. That was a conscious choice. I only make theatre. So it hasn’t affected me in terms of looking for acting work. I stopped doing that ages ago when I decided that I was a full time visual artist. If anything, because I own my own theatre company – I think about the following regarding everything I do: the first impetus is not money. I have ideas and I want them out. When they come out, I’m thinking how are they going to be experienced. How will I eat? How will I make money? Thankfully, I’m able to make money from my work, so that affects how I eat. But who’s going to want art when all they want is bread and water? Who’s going to want something on their walls? However, I don’t stop making because that’s not why I’m making. I’m making because I’m breathing. I also use my social media, not to market, but to engage.
Funnily enough, I’m actually making a musical with a composer at the moment. Because of the pandemic, I have the time and the space in my head to consider this idea, which came to me, almost gushing. With the time that we have, I’ve thought – let’s not worry about where this is going to go on. Let’s just make it. I feel that if something is coming to you, it believes it has a home. That home may not be now, this year, but it’s definitely coming to me for a reason. If it’s coming to me, it’s coming to me for a reason. One thing I’ve learned along the way is to listen. If something comes again and again – if I ignore it, I feel sick. You have to be open to the fact that an economy of some sort will still exist because people are existing. An exchange of some sort will still exist, so ride the wave, because the wave might be – we’re going to start communicating differently. Just keep listening. We may not be in physical galleries anymore or physical theatres any more. That doesn’t mean that what’s coming through us stops.
“I just want to make music”. I say – make it. “I just want to be a singer and my career is over.” No, no, no – what you want to be is famous. You can go to a park, right now, and sing and have people around (if you are talking, intrinsically about the joy of singing). You can do that anywhere. What you’re talking about is not having the recognition that you feel you deserve. That’s absolutely fine, but be specific about what’s annoying you. The actual art of expression – you can do that anywhere. But saying that you can’t sing anymore? Because they don’t recognize me? That’s what it’s about. I say it with passion because I had to have that conversation with myself. Why does another human being give me intrinsic worth? What the heck is that? They breathe just like me. What’s this ‘I can’t do this anymore’? Says who? Who is telling you that? Who are they? Why is their opinion better than yours?
Where did that recognition come from? Was it instilled in you? Was it always there?
It’s been instilled by my parents, from day one. Especially from my my dad. I grew up in a very spiritual and faithful home, so they would quote and say things to me. But even those things – they don’t register. They are good to hear, because I think they are seeds. They are like rain, trying to water ideas. I’d get stubborn and try to push them away, because of fear and lack of self-esteem. After a while, you start to learn and you start to go – you know what? I hate feeling like this. I hate feeling like I’m not worth anything. I know, deep down that I am. I know I am, but I’m still giving people power. If I take it away from them, then they don’t have it. So – I’m taking it away from you and I’m going to keep the power with me and my work. Then I have people telling me “ahh – you’re so free!” What do you mean I’m so free? I’m just doing me. I didn’t ask for permission.
In light of the George Floyd incident and what has happened since, how has that rippled into you and your thinking? Has it informed your art and your digging and exploring?
My work, objectively, does pretty well – it will see growth. But there was one week when it saw extreme growth. What was happening was a “Support The Black Artist Movement”. I don’t have a problem with the phrase ’black artist’. There are friends of mine who want that title because they are expressing a statement and an experience. I am an artist and I am black. That’s who I am. I’m an artist. You don’t go to a white man and say ‘white artist’. You don’t do that. Why am I being objectified? There were people who had seen me before but didn’t look at me properly. Now you’re looking at me and now you love what I do, you’re sharing and reposting – “5 black artists you need to follow” – and I can see they think they’ve done a really good thing. It’s all well intended. But all I could see was a sort of positive discrimination in a different way. Do you really like what I do? Or is it “I really like him”? I was being shared a lot but not followed. It was as if they were just sharing it to clear their conscience about supporting black people and putting it on their Insta stories. But do you really know what my art work is about? And just because I paint bodies that are black, to exemplify and amplify the beauty of black skin, sometimes it’s metaphorical. It’s not about race. It’s because I like that colour. But now, I’m falling into what you think is ‘black art’.
How do you pull yourself out of that hole?
When I have consciously tried to pull myself out of that hole and any type of hole – that’s when I’ve been very controlling about how I’m perceived. I do very much manage my own ‘branding’. If you want your career to go in a particular way, you manage it, you’re strategic. For example – I was being pushed into African art, which is another whole thing. “You’re an African artist”. Am I? What is that? First of all, Africa is a continent and has many different countries in it that are very different. What do you mean when you say ‘African artist’? Do you mean someone who is responding to their environment? Or responding in the way that an artist typically does? Because their environment might, by default, be African, they are an African artist? What does it mean? Here’s the dividing line – I feel that there are people who understand what they mean when they say ‘African art’. There are African stories that are typically African and are being told. That is African art. The people that don’t understand that, they just see that you’re black, your name is Nigerian, so you must now be doing African art.
I think you miss the mark when you have an agenda. Either your agenda has to do with a need to be loved – you want people to like you, or you want to make money. With the first one, you’re always putting yourself at the centre and you’re supporting your friends or you’re going on riots or you’re doing marches, you’re finding new companies, saying that you want to help society. But at the crux of it, you want society to love you for being a good human being. You are helping people, you are doing nice things but it’s always led by your need to be loved rather than a genuine need to help the people who need to be helped. Because if you really want to help someone who needs to be helped, you just listen to them. You don’t study them. You listen to them because, then they can tell you what they need.
How do you deal with the agendas?
I don’t any more. The work has grown and there’s only so much management control you can do. Even on a very small level – if you make a piece of art work and you put it out on a table, you cannot control what people think about it. You have to leave it. All you can do is say – this is what I intended, this is what I feel about it. That’s it. Some people are going to get it and some people are not. Ideally, we would love for everyone to get it but that’s not reality. As my dad says, when you die, people still talk about you. You can’t control it. On Instagram, people would comment and accuse me of things, say horrible things. The first time it happened, I would start getting into discussions with these people and defending it. I was empowering them. I can control it by just deleting it, blocking it or not replying. Replying was feeding it. The fear is “what if people believe what this person has written?” Well, you can’t control that either.
We refer to the “magic of the pandemic” – time to reflect and see the world differently. What has been its effect for you?
When the pandemic first started, I started seeing everything, come onto the internet. I’m not going to knock it. If your circumstances have changed, respond positively to it, so I’m not going to knock it. Where do you expect people to go? They’re using what’s closest to them and I actually think it’s a good thing. It’s a way for you to just be yourself and connect with the world. It’s beautiful.
I thought – I’m just going to paint. I tried. I didn’t want to paint. It was just hanging around me. I thought – what do I want to do? Let’s start with the thing that makes the work – my body. Me. What are things that I need to change? What are things that I don’t do? What’s the planet saying? What’s god saying? What is being said to me that I should listen to and respond to? I said – I’m going to go for a walk. I rarely go for walks. Because I’m always on the move. I LOVE WALKS. I love the park. We were blessed with good weather! It’s almost like someone is screaming at you and you’re not listening. Look at the simple things. You can have a conversation with a friend or family member that you didn’t think you could have. You don’t have to spend loads of money. Look at how beautiful the world is around you. I started retraining, I went and got fit again. Let’s look after me. Let me find some time to do some reading. Let me just learn some new stuff.
I was still connecting on the internet, but I was probably sharing old things at first - stuff that people hadn’t seen for a while. The, I thought – hold on. I’ve always wanted to do sculpture and I just threw myself into that. Why not?! And it’s opened up more opportunities. It ignited the other part of my brain. It pushed me to do other things.
I was meant to have an exhibition in New York. I couldn’t. That went online. I always make sure I’ve got content to engage with, so I have that on the side. But opportunities were opening because I was exploring my craft a lot more. Also – people had time to sit and look. This is why I say – do not sell. Engage. Make engaging content. Yes, people can be bored and look for things to buy. But right now, people have the time to read your stuff and look properly. I think the background of theatre helps for platforms like this, because it is an exchange. I don’t deny myself or deny my own ideas, but I like people and I like getting people involved. I like to know what people think.
So you think that now that the world is trying to normalize, that people will still make that time?
Not everyone. I think some people will. That’s not judgement. We all have different teachers. This could be the right teacher for you and then for someone else, it’s something else that teaches them. I had to say to myself – don’t forget what you’ve learned. The phrase “renew your mind”. Replenish. When something is gone, you put it back. When you eat, your body gets rid of it so you have to put it back in. Replenish.
Renew.
