Guest Voices : Georgina Owen

In March 2013, The National Museum of African Art built a collaboration with the Environmental Film Festival in the Nation’s Capital that was centered on the Earth Matter’s exhibition. This collaboration resulted in an Earth Matters’ themed segment in this year’s annual festival. Also born from that collaboration is this week’s guest post, which comes from Georgina Owen, the festival’s Associate Director.

 

The Environmental Film Festival collaboration with Earth Matters

 

In the summer of 2012 the Environmental Film Festival in the Nation’s Capital was invited to collaborate with Earth Matters to develop a series of film programs as part of the 2013 festival that would herald the opening of Earth Matters at the Museum of African Art.  Through long-time EFF partner Jeffrey Stine, Chair and Curator in the Division of Medicine and Science at the American History Museum, who represented the NMAH on the Earth Matters Project Team, we were introduced to Karen Milbourne and Anthony Stellaccio.    As they described the exhibition I was struck with the amazing complexity of the exhibition and yet the elemental importance of its message – the significance of the relationship between humans and the earth we stand on.

The result of our programming was a rich and varied group of films that formed a major theme running through our 2013 festival.  The films were presented in collaboration with four different Smithsonian units and two external partners.  The films ranged from documentaries on mud masons in Mali, on the effects of climate change and drought on onion farmers in Niger, to an inspiring portrait film on Jane Goodall, and to a Gabonese produced family adventure film involving lions and stolen tribal artifacts.  Special guest speakers included Claudine André, who spoke about her work rescuing and rehabilitating orphaned bonobos in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Tony Huston, who presented classic films by his father, legendary film director John Huston, exploring the influence that filming on location in various parts of Africa had on his work.   The last film in our series was an intimate portrait of El Anatsui, one of the artists invited to create a land art piece in the Smithsonian Gardens for the Earth Matters exhibit.

Fold Crumple Crush: The Art of El Anatsui

Credit: Icarus Films

For the Best and For the Onion

Credit: Icarus Films

The success of our Earth Matters film series was a natural precursor to a new pan-Smithsonian collaboration for our 2014 festival, which will take place March 18 through 30.  This year we will be working with the Smithsonian Grand Challenges Consortia on “Living in the Anthropocene: The Age of Humans.”  Films we are planning to include are The Last Call, that revisits one of the most controversial environmental books of all time, The Limits To Growth, and redelivers its message that growth must be responsibly managed to avoid a global crisis.  We will also show Extreme Realities, narrated by Matt Damon, a new episode of “Journey to Planet Earth,” that explores the links between climate change, extreme weather and national security.  Other films will examine how man has reshaped the natural world – our landscapes, our rivers, our oceans, our atmosphere – even outer space.  The relationship between humans and the earth we stand on matters in unprecedented ways.

Georgina Owen
Associate Director
Environmental Film Festival in the Nation’s Capital

Sand Fishers

Credit: Sand Fishers

The Future of Mud: A Tale of Houses and Lives in Djenne

Credit: Icarus Films

The King’s Necklace

Credit: The King’s Necklace

The African Queen

Guest Voices: Adejoke Tugbiyele

Todays guest post comes from fine artist Adejoke Tugbiyele. In 2013 Adejoke assisted world-renowned, Ghanaian artist El Anatsui with the installation of his sculpture “Ala”, in the Smithsonian Gardens.  As she prepares to show with artist Nnenna Okore at the Joburg Art Fair, Adejoke shares her experience working with El Anatsui in this week’s Guest Voices.

Working with El Anatsui

Working with El Anatsui was a dream come true.  It could not have felt any better to do so at The Smithsonian, National Museum of African Art. Before me stood, on the one hand, an artist whose reputation deems him an institution by himself, and on the other, an institution which promotes and preserves the legacy of artists like El Anatsui.  I do not come from a family of artists.  Like many children of Nigerian parents, I was encouraged to go into the medical field.  In fact, I went to college as a pharmacy major for two years right after high school. Clearly, that was not the role the universe intended for me.  I quit and eventually went on to study architecture.

Why is this significant?  It is significant because despite my telling him that I was graduate sculpture student at Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA), El kept introducing me to people as an architect. As any graduate student would, I showed him images of my work during one of our strolls through the Museum’s African art galleries, asking for a critique of some sort. A man of few words… he merely smiled.  Sure enough, and before I knew it, he was requesting detailed sketches and technical drawings of his pryamid installation for the Smithsonian Gardens. This task was not as easy at it sounds.  I often had to switch back and forth between a metric ruler to one in inches and feet, the latter being the system I’ve used most of my life here in the United States.  El didn’t care and remarked that our system in the U.S was “very colonial.”

Adejoke Tugbiyele

Water Go Find Enemy (2013)

Perforated metal (woven), palm stems, brass wire and copper wire

During the installation we became short on the mirrored plexiglass that was used in the construction of El’s pyramid, a delicate material which was meant to be inserted underneath of sheets of cassava graters in pre-specified areas. I sketched out a rough estimate on paper of the total number of existing mirrors and those needed, and sent them to Anthony Stellaccio, the project manager for Earth Matters.  We corresponded back and forth and a decision was finally made on how many more mirrors to purchase.  I was glad that my experience in design and construction management came in handy in supporting Karen Milbourne (curator), Anthony, and their team at the Smithsonian.

Over time, it became apparent why El valued my help.  While installing the pyramid in Washington D.C, he was simultaneously preparing for two other exhibitions in Amsterdam and London respectively.  That London project recently won him the prestigious £25,000 Charles Wollaston Award for his work, TSIATSIA – searching for connection, 2013.  El took several breaks to his hotel room to manage the London project from D.C. and he must have anticipated that he would have to do the same in Amsterdam.  I was thrilled when he said I could join him in Amsterdam as his assistant (or architect, I suppose) to manage the installation at ArtZuid.  This was paid work, whereas at the Smithsonian I was one of the four or five volunteer assistants selected by Karen Milbourne.  I should also mention that the South African artist and one of the artists in Earth Matters, Ledelle Moe, initially recommended me to Karen.  Ledelle was a professor of Sculpture at MICA and gave me very inspiring critiques in my studio.

I can’t thank the Smithsonian Museum enough for the wonderful opportunity of working with El Anatsui.  The volunteer program is very special and one that I highly recommend graduate students should take advantage of.  The exhibition Earth Matters is genius in its selection of artworks that represent a continent whose land has, and will, always matter.

-Adejoke Tugbiyele

    

Adejoke Tugbiyele and El Anatsui                                       Doug Johnston, Adejoke Tugbiyele and El Anatsui

El Anatsui (b. 1944, Ghana)

Ala, Site-specific installation, 2013

Adejoke Tugbiyele

Master of Fine Art, Sculpture (2013)

U.S. Fulbright Student Fellow (2013-14)

Website: www.AdejokeTugbiyele.com

From the Archives: Graters of Cassava

Cultivated plot, near Jos, Nigeria.
Photograph by Edwin R. and Emily Dean, 1966.
EEPA 2002-120042
Eliot Elisofon Photographic Archives
National Museum of African Art
Smithsonian Institution

  

The Earth Matters exhibition features, for the first time, three earth works installed in the Smithsonian Gardens (SG) on the National Mall. This monumental undertaking was detailed in an earlier post by SG supervisory horticulturist Jonathan Kavalier, but the works began in conception long before they ever materialized in physical form. The artists, Ghada Amer of Egypt, Strijdom van der Merwe of South Africa, and El Anatsui of Ghana and Nigeria (and Ledelle Moe, whose outdoor sculpture has also been installed outside of the National Museum of African Art), each came to visit walked the gardens before they even began the process of creating, getting a feel for the unique spaces of the garden and beginning the thought process about what shape and material form their earth works would take.

El Anatsui, for instance, looked to challenge conceptions of what an earth work might be made of in his work, Ala, named for the Igbo earth goddess. The pyramid of mirrors and rusted metal that ultimately emerged seems deceptively industrial when first viewed.  But Anatsui says that he “settled for something that just rests [on the ground], something which is light but has allusions to the earth—because the material I am going to work with is rusted metals. Metal is from the earth, as are the reflective sheets. Glass is silica, which is soil, so I am still using the earth. …” (personal communication with curator Dr. Karen E. Milbourne, Sept. 10, 2012).

But for Anatsui, in this and past works, each metal sheet references a very specific usage of earth. In a standing arrangement with manufacturers from his home base in Nsukka, Nigeria, Anatsui asks that used cassava graters be given to him.  He leaves them in his studio yard for months or years so that they rust and take on different patinas. Made from discarded galvanized iron oil drums and punctured with nails to create a surface upon which tough cassava root can be grated, these graters signal, for Anatsui, the intersection between nature and human intervention in the form of agriculture and food cultivation. Anatsui’s earth work shows us the common ground shared by nature and industry.  

Cassava (Manihot esculenta) is a staple crop in western Africa, particularly in Nigeria where Anatsui continues to live and work today. High in carbohydrates, this common plant is cultivated throughout the world in sub-tropical or tropical climates due to its high resistance to drought. In this photo from 1966 by Edwin R. and Emily Dean, taken in Nigeria, a cultivated plot of cassava can be seen in neat tidy rows. Here, we can see the crop as it looks when growing, although the true value of cassava is not in view – the tough roots are where the nutritional value is, necessitating the use of the tough galvanized-iron-and-metal graters that Anatsui utilizes.

Today, Nigeria is the world’s largest producer of cassava, and farms tend to look different today than they do in this photo from over forty years ago. Though the neat rows remain, farms tend to be much larger and the crop is useful in that it can serve as a cash crop during good harvests, but can also feed its producers as a hardy, nutrient-rich subsistence crop during leaner times. Where does agriculture fit into your conception of the earth? Do you consider it “natural,” or does your definition of earth differ?

Guest Voices: Earth Works at the Smithsonian

Happy Memorial Day! We at the Smithsonian hope you are enjoying a happy and relaxing day with family and friends.

Our guest post today features Jonathan Kavalier, a supervisory horticulturist with Smithsonian Gardens, who was integral in making the Earth Works happen in conjunction with the Earth Matters exhibit. This partnership marks a first for the Smithsonian – never before has land art been installed on the National Mall. Learn about the process of making this amazing feat happen – with 30 million visitors to the nation’s capital looking on. 

Strijdom van der Merwe’s piece, Land Reform, on Independence Ave. in Washington, DC – photo courtesy Jonathan Kavalier

As a horticulturist, I don’t often have the opportunity to participate in art exhibitions. So when museum curator Karen Milbourne approached me with an idea for a collaboration between the National Museum of African Art (NMAfA) and Smithsonian Gardens, my interest was piqued. I met Karen when she attended a talk I gave on building gardens in Madagascar, a country I had the immense pleasure of living in for two years before joining the Smithsonian. Since I was already emotionally invested in Africa, the idea of collaborating with NMAfA sounded great, and definitely supported Smithsonian Gardens’ mission to enrich the Smithsonian experience through exceptional gardens, horticultural exhibits, collections, and education. What came out of many discussions was an idea to commission earthworks from several African artists in some of the Smithsonian Gardens.

Ledelle Moe’s outdoor sculpture piece, Land/Displacements, outside the National Museum of African Art – photo via Pinterest

Now two years later, this idea has finally come to fruition. My job was to manage the logistics of installing these very different earth works involving sculpture, living plants, and earth moving. Add to that the challenge of working around existing garden infrastructure and the 30 million visitors that come through the Smithsonian annually, all without compromising the artists’ visions. I am very happy to say that the earth works have all been successfully installed, and some rice planting finally happened a few weeks ago for Ghada Amer’s piece, Hunger. We’ve actually been growing rice in our greenhouses for the past two months, eagerly waiting for the warmer weather to arrive so we can plant the rice into the Earth Works exhibit.

The most challenging, and rewarding, part of coordinating these installations was working around the visiting public during what is the busiest time of year for Smithsonian Gardens. Lots of time and effort were put into ensuring the public’s safety during the course of the work, but the reward of observing visitors witnessing the creation of these exhibits was priceless.

Looking down Independence Ave. along the folds of van der Merwe’s Land Reform – photo courtesy Jonathan Kavalier

We hope you’ll stop by the National Mall this summer and fall and see these spectacular works of art that only could have happened with the partnership and hard work of Jonathan Kavalier and the rest of Smithsonian Gardens. They mark a true “first” for the Smithsonian, revealing the constant connection between art, humanity, and the land that each earth artist in the show has skillfully and distinctly revealed.  Don’t miss it!