Icon Intervention With Artist Awol Erizku
On Capturing A Flame While It Burns
- Text: Osman Can Yerebakan
In past visits to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the artist Awol Erizku often found himself in the Egyptian wing. “Western art, you didn’t have to ask for,” he told me when we spoke on the phone in October, but he always had to walk through Greek sculptures and Roman busts to find what he was searching for: “missing pockets of art history,” he calls them. While working with African objects at his downtown Los Angeles studio, he is always thinking about how he can decentralize the Western canon and engage with another dimension through his Black, African, and Muslim identity. “We were sold on one type of art knowledge, which heavily took from African art without credit.”
Erizku recalls watching The Message, the 1976 film by Syrian-American director Moustapha Al Akkad, with his uncle during Ramadan. As a child growing up in a Muslim-Ethopian household in the Bronx, this was his first encounter with the intricacies of representation. The thirty-two-year-old was, then, baffled by the mystery of the prophet Muhammad onscreen: the protagonist is never represented in the film’s three-hour run. “There was a cleverness in the way they handled cinematography and camera movements around the prophet,” he says— a body that was invisible, yet prominent. The scene where Muhammad goes to Kaaba to destroy the figurines still plays in the back of his head whenever Erizku enters his studio. He repeats what he told the critic Antwuan Sargent in a recent GQ profile: “It’s time for a historical intervention.”
Erizku often works as a photographer, but his latest exhibition, Mystic Parallax, on display at New York's The FLAG Art Foundation until mid-November 2020, shows the multiplicities of his artistic practice. Besides his color-bursting images captured between staged precision and real-life ease, the show includes his mixed media sculptures, drawings, and films. A mirror-tiled bust of Nefertiti (“Nefertiti-Miles Davis,” 2017) rotates close the ceiling, reflecting disco ball gleams over a photograph (“Raised by a queen,” 2020) of a woman’s bare nipple pierced by the same Nefertiti’s minuscule version, next to a burning candle. Another gleam-washed image shows a girl holding a gun adjacent to three burning candles (“HEAT,” 2019). Fire is a blazing theme for the entire show, leaving traces of its various formations, as ashes in a series of abstract drawings (“Ramadan Drawings,” 2020) or a burnt African mask over a praying rug in a floor installation (“Submission,” 2018-20).
He orchestrated an ancient Egypt-inspired set with two Pharaoh sculptures on both ends of a throne to photograph Kelly Rowland, as well as Mary J. Blige and her mother, for VH1’s Dear Mama: An Event to Honor Moms in 2017. Those two sculptures later appeared in a scene behind Leonardo di Caprio and Brad Pitt in Once Upon a Time…In Hollywood. “It’s about bringing those objects— what most people call props—to the foreground, in the right context,” he says. Icons are everywhere across the show. African masks and a pair of Gucci loafers and burning candles convene in photographic vignettes with the crispness of stage lighting. He is not interested in a linear discourse or ending his narratives with a period. “Thirsty,” is the way he describes how he hopes to leave his audience. “Thirsty to do their research.”
Between fatherhood (he has a nine-month-old baby) and the studio, Erizku lets his paternal role influence him behind the camera. His next project, New Visions for Iris, stems from the artist’s efforts to explain heavy topics to his daughter. The Public Art Fund exhibition, which opens in 200 bus shelters in New York and 150 in Chicago on February 24, will be Erizku’s first public presentation and feature recent photographs: of candles, flowers, birds, and men praying, all in the transient environment of public transportation. Erizku himself has been on the road lately, as well. On a recent eleven-day trip, he met Jacob Blake Sr. They talked about him reciting a part from Quran during a press conference about his son’s murder. These encounters show him the “poignancy of capturing the moment,” the delivery of human emotion—joy, or agony if needed— and experience, where Erizku’s narratives blossom. Chance occasionally comes into play, and art imitates art. We spoke about the process to unlearn, the joy in looking at the roots, and the mysterious charm of fire as a destroyer and maker.
Osman Can Yerebakan
Awol Erizku
Your connection to Islam is a central theme in “Mystic Parallex.” What made you decide that now is the time to reflect on your religion?
If you go back as far as “Serendipity,” the mixtape I did for MoMA’s Pop Rally in 2015, you hear Yasiin Bey or Mike Tyson being recited. For me it’s always been there. I’ve reiterated Islam in my own way every single time. I’m not trying to convert anyone, or be a propaganda machine. This is me sharing another personal dimension, yet another portal, to engage with the work.
It seems, to me, that icons of Islam are generally foreign to the contemporary art audience. The series, “Ramadan Drawings,” visualizes a so-called mystery around Islam’s objects, and show the ritual as a clear, everyday habit.
I made those drawings during Ramadan, while I was engaging with some mundane administrative work but trying to get back into the creative zone. I was burning incense, which is a habit transferred from my parents. They burn it while praying or just drinking coffee. I find a visceral engagement between this side of mine and a studio practice—I am tapped into another dimension.
Fire is an important element throughout the show. I agree with Gaston Bachelard’s psychoanalysis about fire—it is a metaphor for a lot of reasons. There is beauty in fire. It’s also alarming, and there is an act of running away from it, a metaphor for freeing myself of certain affiliations or reservations.
I started burning incense at the studio two and half years ago, and both fire and incense come from a response that I needed to make in relation to how commodified the Black body was becoming in art around the same time. Because of this solitude during work, I don't necessarily feel the need to create something with a body in it. I like the idea of work that is less about the body and more about the language. The drawings became my way of using my personal body without it being represented, without having to signal a Black body, per se. Everything I want to say is inherently built up in this mark-making with incense.
You’re showing that icons are subjective doctrines veiled by mainstream opinion
When I see Isa Genzken use Nefertiti in her sculptures, I can’t help but find a way to bring that icon back to its African origins. I, however, don’t want to make it too didactic or overly formulated. Islamic music, or an image of a woman holding a gun next to three hands making fire create dots in a larger constellation of ideas to connect.
Recently, a man at FLAG gave me his whole read on the image of Pharaoh in one of my photographs. His take was more poetic than what I was imagining about the work. Hearing someone else’s understanding of history through my work is exciting, because I sometimes question myself about whether these images are too much about my own interpretation of symbols.
Let’s talk about flirting between everyday objects and those with a spiritual charge. The praying rug in “Submission,” for example, is a decorative accent for some, and an element of spirituality for others. By placing a burnt copy of Robert Farris Thompson’s Flash of the Spirit: African & Afro-American Art & Philosophy and an African mask over it, you collage objects of various resonance and purposes.
For a viewer with some understanding of my work, this is a very clear-cut manifesto. I can be making work about all of ideas, symbols, objects related to religion, but at the end of the day, none of this is a form of worship. When I finished burning that book, the only thing that was left over was the spirit.
I also believe in serendipity and chance. “Submission” has been slightly modified due to COVID-19, because we cannot burn frankincense in that space. Originally, the piece was on a stool with the rug draping over it, topped with the book and the mask, and the frankincense would be underneath.
Installation view of Awol Erizku: Mystic Parallax at The FLAG Art Foundation, 2020. Photography by Steven Probert. Top Image: Installation view of Awol Erizku: Mystic Parallax at The FLAG Art Foundation, 2020. Photography by Steven Probert.
Rugs have an element of circularity. I remember watching my great-grandmother pray everyday over the rug. She used to repeat the same gestures and movements multiple times a day.
The main reason why I go back to Islam, without pragmatic principles projected onto the work itself, is because it represents a very “Malcolm X-ish” idea. Think about his statement about Islam being the furthest thing from Christianity, which is also the furthest thing from the whole Western canon. Again, without being didactic or overly explained, I can take it back to a certain history, and add to the lineage of African thinkers who have also dealt with these dilemmas. How do I engage with my generation and with these tools we’re bombarded with every day? At the very least, I’m trying to anchor an open-ended philosophy. My notion of Afro-esotericism is essentially about certain things that do not need explanation if you approach them from the background they originate from.
Who has the right to dictate what can and can't be done with these symbols?
This is also about you unlearning what has been culturally, academically, and socially imposed.
Absolutely, it's unlearning and relearning my own history. In some ways, I internalized a lot of what I learned in school, and at a certain point in my personal practice I realized a lot of these values weren't really meant for me to grow with. I wanted to address what I thought spoke to me more than anything else.
People are also concerned with origins of true history, because a good part of what we’ve been taught by university professors is synthesized from great Black thinkers without credit. For me, this is an intellectual project about how to make the audience do more research. I’m not leaving it on the wall for you to just read and move on. The point is to look at every single thing, perhaps walk away with a few ideas, and then do more research to fully engage with it. A vast wealth of knowledge in African history has survived by way of proverbs and oratory tradition. This open-endedness also honors African spirituality and history. To this day, it’s an oral tradition that needs to be acknowledged and respected. I try to show the next generation my people’s history and it belongs to all of us, whether it’s through text, neon, or a disco ball
Your way of photographing various diverse objects together gives that sense of looking at someone’s bookshelf to gauge their personality. There are many different volumes, or objects in your case, and they must be saying something about you, and you leave that door open.
First, I should tell you that these are objects, not things that I'm worshiping or putting up for the sake of their spiritual value. I acquire them around the world, whether it’s Africa or Brussels, purely on the esthetics level. I think one point of this exhibition is to show that we can engage with images, but also have fun. The mainstream Western approach has so far been serious, right? “Let’s take an African mask and photograph it in a certain way.” As a Black African, I might be caught up in that fear of changing that direction or narrative of representation. But, then you walk into a lofty gallery, and you’re in contact with Nefertiti in sunglasses. Who has the right to dictate what can and can't be done with these symbols?
Do you feel you must be cautious while changing established directions to look at these objects?
What's in it for me to have a conversation with Picasso about African art? Or for any Black artist? For a very long time, we were indoctrinated to think that it was if it was white, it's right. We have been made ashamed of looking at our African lineage and understanding it’s full beauty. That's where that shift from Eurocentric to Afrocentric perspective comes for me. If I was to be engaged in European busts, I’d put just as much effort into that image-making, but that’s not a history that had me in mind.
I finally have a vernacular that feels very true: it’s the blurring the lines of the commercial. I started with making paintings at Cooper Union. Around my second year, I started taking filmmaking, photography, and sculpture. I abandoned canvas for a while to avoid painting figures. I had to find other ways to communicate more directly. My generation was engaging more directly with editorial and all other commercial stuff. This is also about the collective subconscious, seeing something like a highly effective commercial and trying to understand what they’re even advertising. That blurriness is the spot where I want to be.
Installation view of Awol Erizku: Mystic Parallax at The FLAG Art Foundation, 2020. Photography by Steven Probert.
Your “Fuck 12” neon sculpture is from two years ago. A lot has happened since.
“Fuck 12” is something I’ve been addressing in my work for quite some time, with different iterations before getting to this point, including corrugated metal paintings. I initially made that piece while working on a show in Hong Kong. When I decided to bring it here, we had scheduled this show for April, but of course, now everything has taken on a whole new meaning.
The phrase has its origins to trap music, and it became even more of a duty to collect this cultural moment and give a manifestation. Although it's political, it wasn't made to come off in this political climate, but once this moment came in, it was something that I could not escape.
A sense of rhythmic order is always in the work, whether it’s your arrangement of letters in “Fuck 12” or orchestration of objects in the photographs. Is this an influence of trap music?
My way of working is very sporadic—nothing, for the most part, is premeditated. I really favor that. The music I listen to, which also happens to be trap, is in a sporadic jazz-esque way in the way they put words together. These dots are not linearly connected, but as you zoom out, you also start mapping out constellations of words for a full image. While I work, I listen to trap or jazz, or during Ramadan, I might be listening to the Quran. I'm funneling and synthesizing ideas through these vehicles.
HEAT, 2019. Diptych digital chromatic print, 40 x 50 inches (each). Edition of 3 + 2 AP. Courtesy the artist and Ben Brown Fine Art.
Osman Can Yerebakan is an art writer and curator based in New York. His writing has appeared on T: The New York Times Style Magazine, The Paris Review, New York Magazine, The Guardian, Brooklyn Rail, BOMB, Artforum, Artnet, Playboy, and elsewhere. Osman previously organized exhibitions at venues that include the Queens Museum.
- Text: Osman Can Yerebakan
- Date: January 12th, 2021
