Kadara Enyeasi
KADARA ENYEASI’S PROVOCATIVE, RADICALLY CONFIDENT PHOTOGRAPHY PROBES AND CHALLENGES BLACK MASCULINITY, VISUAL SELF-REFLEXIVITY, AND INTERROGATES NIGERIAN AND AFRODIASPORIC SOCIOPOLITICAL NARRATIVES, FOLKLORE, AND CONSCIOUSNESS.
Often producing rigorously composed photos and photo-collages (as well as painting and film) in his fine art practice, Kadara’s architecture-degree training and clairvoyant intuition for silhouette, form, line, and compositional dis/unity have translated to stunning commissions and editorials for many Nigerian and international fashion brands and magazines.
Here, Kadara’s timely and quietly hopeful contribution to TSUKI is a slight left turn, and sees him engaging and manipulating deceptively simple ideas via materials of digital media, language, and symbolism.
HOW DO YOU CREATE FROM HOME? HOW HAS THIS BEEN DIFFERENT FROM YOUR REGULAR PROCESS?
In some ways it has not been different because I actually started shooting at home when I began my artistic practice; I was working from my bedroom. I would string up fabric on this blank wall I have opposite my door and hoist up some lamps that I made. So working from home brings back some of that feeling.
I’ve been painting more recently. I was working on a series of large-scale paintings in my studio on Lagos Island. And once the coronavirus broke out I said to myself: OK this is the time to stop—in part because of the outbreak and also in part because I’m a broke artist working in Lagos. Obviously I ran out of capital and needed to work, and then this thing happened so I just retreated back home, took some materials from the studio, and I ended up doing some work at home.
So it doesn’t feel entirely different because I have a history of working at home, although this sort of proximity—or I call it that—when you’re stuck at home with everybody… someone can walk in, and then that’s your influence on whatever next step you’re going to take with whatever you’re doing. So obviously there’s a sort of breach of privacy—especially with family— but it is what it is. I’m sort of used to it, it doesn’t really take that much away from my work other than it breaks up my concentration. It’s not been so different.
HAVE YOU BEEN ABLE TO WORK IN AND ENGAGE WITH YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD DURING THIS SITUATION?
I went on lockdown a week before Lagos went on lockdown. Last time I went to the studio this year was two weeks ago, because I had to show a collector some of the paintings. I had to schedule that meeting—I mean, just to make sure I sell something and to get money to continue living and existing!
But in my neighborhood: I’ve been feeling the need to photograph again, so I’ve taken a couple of walks. I run, so it’s normal to go out for a jog, and evening times I take a walk and take some pictures, but the ability to work from home is still there. If you condition yourself to work from home you will. But it can be underwhelming because every day you wake up to the same spaces, your eyes get used to the environment, and your eyes obviously need to wander, and you need things to entertain you… it becomes monotonous.
HAS THIS SITUATION ENCOURAGED OR EVEN DEMANDED THAT YOU TRY SOMETHING NEW?
I used to have a routine, not like a hard routine but a very a loose daily ritual, a schedule. I wake up, I have a cup of tea, I smoke a joint. If there is time I do yoga—if not, fuck it—I get dressed, my assistants come and we drive to the studio on Lagos Island, we work until 3 or 4pm, and we are done for the day. I come back home I have a late lunch and I go to the gym.
But with this lockdown situation it’s a bit different. I wake up—and obviously the tea-drinking and the joint-smoking are prerequisites for the morning!—so that will be done. I’ve added to the schedule but also relaxed it. Some days I wake up and I just look out my window. There’s this nice view of the landscape and the sun is on the other side so everything in front of me is animated and illuminated and it’s nice to look at… so sometimes I just do that and then I’m like fuck it, and I’m back to bed.
HOW ARE YOU STAYING INSPIRED AND MOTIVATED?
I’m inspired by just waking the fuck up and having a smoke, no? Also I’m doing more work outs. I found a sort of group with neighbors on my street. They come around, we lift weights, and that’s in the evening time. In the morning time I’m doing yoga if I have the time or feel like it.
Also these days I’m staying inspired by looking at Tumblr; I’ve been running my Tumblr for almost 10 years now, on and off, but when the lockdown intensified, a month in, I started losing touch with other social media; I started getting irritated and feeling like it was getting too much just waking up and scrolling Instagram. So about a week ago I just deleted all my personal socials other than my work Instagram. Especially now with all these injustices and the virus, it’s almost just too much.
HOW HAS LOCKDOWN-LIFE ALTERED YOUR WORK?
It hasn’t really, it’s just altered the way the way I planned the work for the rest of the year. As I was saying I was working on some paintings when I got my new studio on the island. And the plan was really simple: to pour my heart out into this thing to get the work done and to just have a couple of people come around to look at it, and hopefully get an exhibit.
I had to put all that on hold and go out and look for some photographic commissions—if I can get any, because a man has to eat!—I mean I poured all my savings into getting this space, into buying materials, into shipping them, and into processing and whatnot, only for the work to be like 60-75% done, and so now there’s a lockdown and no way to find appreciation for the work that I have already done. So it’s a bit saddening, and also, beyond that, I’m wondering what the rest of the year will look like, and the things I will need to do to get through. I mean it might be also blessing for me to not show the work (the paintings) and to show them at a later date because of the pandemic. It might be—but I can’t know yet.
WHO ELSE'S WORK MIGHT YOU WANT TO SEE FEATURED ON TSUKI?
So when this lockdown began I didn’t really know what to do. In Nigeria, most times it’s just every man for himself, so I was just locked down, staying inside, staying with my family. That was pretty much it until my friend, Adeju Thompson (who happens to be a fashion designer) who is anchored in the community, he’s looking out for the vendors and the communities by just feeding them, helping people with less privilege, people with less generally, people who are finding it even more difficult now that there’s a pandemic in the country. So yeah, I would like to see him featured.
Adeju runs Lagos Space Programme which makes androgynous and gender-neutral collections. It’s pretty real, especially coming from Lagos, to have someone thinking of something clean, refined, and true to the concept, because his concepts are not just international, they are very much local, they tie into local stories. Imagine a collection he made that was pretty much made to just ask the question: What would the modern day shaman (we call them Babaaláwo) wear to work. In Nigeria they have this heavy regalia that we have seen a lot but Adeju’s is a bit different, because—see you don’t know where from, but they will just put their hand into some pocket or fold and bring out some weird looking thing, like a magician bringing endless handkerchiefs from a hat—so imagine someone looking into that type of clothing and expanding it into a collection that you can actually wear. Something you can actually feel functional in and feel ready to take on anything in Lagos, which can throw anything at you.
HAVE YOU BEEN WATCHING / LISTENING / READING ANYTHING YOU’D LIKE TO SHARE WITH US?
I read “The Catcher In The Rye” by J.D. Salinger and “Just Kids” by Patti Smith. Also, “Dear Ijeawele, or A Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions” by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Also right now I’m reading Joseph Gaer's "What the Great Religions Believe." I’m not religious anymore but I felt the need to read about what other people are believing. Also, lots of Youtube: Alain de Botton’s philosophical talks. And Netflix. That’s how it’s been.