© Ishola Akpo from the series 'AGBARA Women' (Archives / Behanzin, King of Abomey )

In your last project, Agbara women, you recompose a glorious history about pre-colonial African queens. How did you arrive to conceive this work? What was the research behind it?

Ishola Akpo (IA): With Agbara Women, I decided to explore the memories and heritage of forgotten, neglected, or even erased pre-colonial African queens such as - Tassi Hangbé (ruling Danxomè between 1708 and 1711), Njinga (ruling Angola between 1582-1663), Ndaté Yalla Mbodj from Linguere Wollof, (ruling Senegal between 1810-1860). During my research, I noticed the absence of archives despite the importance and the real political weight of these queens ruling different kingdoms of the continent, so I started to excavate and collect information that led me to tell the complexity of the story of these queens.

© Ishola Akpo from the series 'AGBARA Women' (Archives / Gods kings and peoples of Benin, Ceremony of the anniversary of the death of the father of the king of the Dahomets, in Antoine-Edme Pruneau de Pommegorge, Description de la Nigritie, Amsterdam, Marada, 1789)

© Detail - Ishola Akpo from the series 'AGBARA Women' (Archives / Gods kings and peoples of Benin, Ceremony of the anniversary of the death of the father of the king of the Dahomets, in Antoine-Edme Pruneau de Pommegorge, Description de la Nigritie, Amsterdam, Marada, 1789)

In Agbara women you use different materials like photographs, paper, a red string. Why did you choose these materials and what is the sense behind it?

IA: As an artist, I wanted to explore a new experience in my photographic practice because I don't want to limit myself to one medium. In my series (“Traces d’une reine”/ "Traces of a Queen") I have made several collages of photographs and archival images, which reveal the power of these queens in Africa. I opposed the needle, materializing the resistance of the queens, to the fragility of their power embodied in this paper. But this (red) thread also expresses the common thread of history. It links archives and contemporary perspectives, thus making it possible to link and weld disparate elements together to create a new history. On some of these collages, I have deliberately substituted the heads of the sovereigns for that of the queens, thus staging archives to the glory of the latter. I propose another version of history by rehabilitating these women.

© Ishola Akpo from the series 'AGBARA Women' (Archives / Wives of Leopard, gender politics and culture in the kingdom of Dahomey)

© Detail - Ishola Akpo from the series 'AGBARA Women' (Archives / Wives of Leopard, gender politics and culture in the kingdom of Dahomey)

© Detail - Ishola Akpo from the series 'AGBARA Women'/ Trace d'une reine 

In your series 'Les marriés de notre Époque' you focus on marriage as an institution steeped in history, centuries-old tradition, and stereotypes. Do you relate to other experts, anthropologists, historians, sociologists on your research? Tell us about your methodology?

IA: The tradition transmitted orally is so precise and so rigorous that we can, with various cross-checks, reconstruct the major events of our continent which illustrate our history in great detail. In Africa, knowledge is alive, and that is why old people who are its custodians can be considered on the same basis as anthropologists, historians, or even sociologists. It is notably on the basis of various oral traditions that I was able to reconstruct my series ("Les marriés de notre époque"/ “The married people of our time”) in the Yoruba tradition.

© Ishola Akpo from the series 'Les marriés de notre Époque'

© Ishola Akpo from the series 'Les marriés de notre Époque'

In your projects you often compose narrations on African women, passing by your family history, for example. Can you say something more about this?

IA: In 2014, seeing the aging body of my grandmother, the topic of the dowry interested me. The mutation of this ancestral practice, the reappropriation of the dowry by young Africans, and the social change that results from it challenged me. I started by exploring the objects of the dowry of my grandmother's wedding through those I had found in the house: wooden canteen made by her future husband, loincloths, pearls, bottles of gin, basins, mirror, etc. I photographed these objects and thus was born the series (“L’Essentiel est invisible pour les yeux” / "The Essential is invisible to the eyes"). These images reveal the anguish of one who, with age, wishes to leave a trace of her passage in family memory. These rusty and worn objects that had aged with this woman bear the marks of time. My grandmother's personal story is also the story of millions of African women.

© Ishola Akpo from the series 'L’Essentiel est invisible pour les yeux' 

How does your formal education influence your work?

IA: I have inherited a huge, varied traditional education that covers all aspects of life passed down from my grandparents. Above all, they taught me respect for nature and respect for those around me. That’s why family is both a landmark in my work even though I don’t limit myself. It is a way of not seeing the world only through the prism of the competition as it is presented to us (the strongest, the biggest, the poorest, the richest, etc…) Some traditional practices are interesting because they advocate a series of values that are still useful for the world today.

Being an African artist what are your strategies to reach a wider audience and what would you suggest to emerging young to raise their voice? Is there anything else you wish to add or mention regarding your works?

IA: I try to find originality in the stories I tell. Being an artist is no accident; this status comes with time and experience, through what one achieves. I think that strength is both the network you build and the intensity of your work.

© Detail - Ishola Akpo from the series 'AGBARA Women'/ Trace d'une reine 

What does postcolonialism signify for you?

IA: As Achille Mbembé reminds us in his work on the postcolony. Essay on Political Imagination in Contemporary Africa: "What is it today, and what are we today?" "What are the lines of fragility, the lines of precariousness, the cracks in contemporary African life?

It seems important to me to note that one of the many questions of our time remains those of identities or rather of the complexity of identities today. Post-colonialism opposes a world inherited from dominant discourses, breaking with traditional representation. We are faced with the difficulty of reclaiming our values because the influence of colonialism on African values, especially on our secular culture, reinforces the superiority of the West. But we must also create a new world by getting rid of the scars of colonialism which favor all victimhood consciousness, we must relearn to live together and accept the right of everyone to live in complete freedom on the basis of mutual recognition of humanity for everyone.

© Ishola Akpo from the series 'AGBARA Women' 

How important is photography, for you, in African history? And in contemporary Africa?

IA: My photographic work allows me to question the place that man occupies within society, while reflecting on the place of the artist, on the status of the photographer that I am. My recent work "Agbara women" questions the notion of memory and heritage as potential and relates the complexity of the history of these African queens.

LINKS

Ishola Akpo