Fowokan George Kelly.

Interviewed by Isha Mckenzie-Mavinga.

Fowokan traveled to Nigeria in 1974, where he found a quality of spiritual energy amongst the Yoruba people, which has informed his work as a sculptor ever since. He was profoundly influenced by the art of Benin which included bronze, iron works, ivory and wood carvings.

He gained insight from writers of the Harlem Renaissance period. Mainly male writers at first, then women like Toni Morrison who expressed a profoundly abstract view of the world from a black viewpoint. He discusses his transformation from musician to sculptor and poet and his developing understanding of the challenges presented to Africans.

His work speaks of the lives of black people in positive and healing ways that break the Taboo on things African. He presents his objects for reflection and encourages others to express their Africanness with pride.  He discusses developmentally the breaking down of the old and reconstruction of current images, which harnesses the spiritual essence of African people so that the spectator can recognize themselves within, in a positive light.

Isha: When did you first start sculpting?

Fowokan: I can remember making clay models in school at age five, when I first attended elementary school. In Jamaica in the nineteen forties and fifties our parents were too poor to give us store bought toys and so we grew up having to create our own entertainment and learning materials. For example we would use the clay in our back yard to model all sorts of objects; we would then make a kiln in which we would fire them. In this way we educated ourselves about the world around us as there were many brick making and clay pot makers living around us. When I first came to England I was shocked to discover that people didn't make or repair things; when things were broken or when they needed anything they would simply throw the broken one away and buy a new one. I started carving some years after I left secondary school, after discovering African art at the Horniman Museum in South East London; in fact I’ve still got some of those early pieces. They were of African masks, spears and shields.

Isha: How old were you then?

Fowokan: That was in Nineteen sixty-two, I would have been in my twentieth year. I started learning to play the flute and congas a couple of years later. The period of learning to play the flute was a very intense time for me. I would sometimes lock myself away for what seemed like weeks at a time and would be totally absorbed in the instrument to the exclusion of all else practicing scales and arpeggios. One way of releasing the tension was to take up modeling. So I would buy modeling clay and stay up until two or three in the morning taking out my frustration on the clay. Then in the early seventies I went to Africa for the first time. When I returned to England, I decided to give up music. I had visited what was for me the mystical city of Benin in Nigeria, and had brought back what I felt was a new and very powerful spirit with me. I started looking around for ways to express this spirit, as I felt I had reached a point in my life where I could no longer work within the music business. Sculpting gradually emerged as my only creative outlet after some years of searching. At first I did a lot of relief carving in wood. Then around the late seventies I made my first three dimensional piece, however I couldn't make a direct link between these new pieces and the results of the sculptures I made during my flute playing period. This new art was as though it was the product of a new awareness, a higher consciousness.

Isha: You said that when you went to Africa you found a spirit. Can you describe this for me?

Fowokan: The Nigeria experience was really overwhelming. I had travelled to Hong Kong a couple of years before my trip to Africa where I visited sacred places up in the mountains on isolated islands where monks spent their time meditating and chanting, but it didn't have the same effect on me, as my visit to Benin. In Africa I experienced a kind of déjà vu. There was a familiarity about the place and the people; I definitely had been there before. The spirit of the people and places were very different from the feelings I had experienced in the mountains in Hong Kong. I met a young man in Benin who looked like a living, breathing ebony carving. Everything about him emanated a sense of the ancient. He looked like what I imagine the original archetype of the Yoruba people must have looked like. It then occurred to me, that this was what the African carvers tried to capture in their work. The spirit of this archetypal being is still with me, and continues to express itself through my work. But the spirit of Nigeria was for me, a powerful pulsating energy that you could feel, hear, touch. That's what I brought back from Nigeria. I've not experienced anything like that since. You know, power, real power.

Isha: What do you think it was then?

Fowokan: I can't say exactly what it was. It may have had something to do with the quality of energy created by a people who had lived, created and died in the same place for thousands of years; a people who saw themselves as existing at the centre of the universe. Their creation myth says that man first set foot on earth at Ile-Ife, the heart of Yoruba land and the Yoruba people. The people have become like the place, and the place like the people, and the energy that is then created by the people and the place is what I saw as that spirit. That's the only way I can describe to you what I think that spirit is, and it is a very different kind of spirit from that created by monks meditating on isolated islands in the South China Sea.

Isha: So did you find that healing or do you have your own term for the experience.

Fowokan: I don't know if it was healing but it was part of a process of change, because I know the same energy is in Jamaica, but not to the same extent, in terms of the power. There are many millions of Yoruba people in Nigeria creating this energy whereas, the population of Jamaica is less than two million, so obviously Jamaicans create from a different source and is of a different magnitude. The experience certainly changed my mode of creation from an audio visual one.

Isha: What do you mean by audio?

Fowokan: I had stopped perceiving in terms of sound, or music. I had begun visualizing the sound as objects.

There was a great need for healing, for an understanding of who I was, this African, this black person. There were times I would go to museums and just sear at the African artifacts on display, trying to absorb the essence of the objects; or trawling through books about African history and culture. In those days the sources were usually white and very racist, so one had to struggle with a mountain of negative material to get a speck of positive elevation as a Blackman. We were made to reject and despise ourselves and each other. I grew up with the racist depiction of blacks on the screen; the Tarzan comic book notion of black people which was always demeaning and degrading. But of course in my heart I knew we were not the base caricatures we saw on the screen or read about in books. Caricatures like 'step and fetch it' and the 'big fat mamas, were like no one I had ever met in my life. There was a constant diet of this stuff fed to us.  I was a serious comic book reader, especially Tarzan comics. In these books, there was not one single redeeming black character. The writers all seemed to have conspired to force black people into a bottomless pit of ignorance. Imagine my joy and delight on seeing the Benin Bronzes for the first time. Objects that showed a high level of expression of black people, by black people, it really shook me up. I thought of course this was much closer to Black People’s true nature and not the kind of negative caricatures, the unintelligent natives who would run and hide at the sight of the great white god men.

Isha: That sounds quite profound. The African imagery that inspired you back then has stayed with you and is now coming out through your work.  Every time you create an object, that story continues to come through from the ancients. So what happened, your work changed? You began to create profound works of art but you weren't trained, you were guided in a sense.

Fowokan: That's the only way I can explain what I am able to do, but I have always been a very curious person. As a young child I would spend many hours in solitude catching ants and putting them in containers and watched them as they created their nests and went about their lives. So I've always wanted to know how and why and I think the creation of visual images, sculptures are in many ways just like observing ants in a bottle; the pursuit of the divine WHY. My pieces are the answers to experimental and technical questions. I left school at fifteen, have not been back to any institution of learning, but I have always read because I knew the answer was somewhere out there between books and life. In those days I did a lot of reading, form Jung and Freud through to Aristotle, Socrates, from Zen Buddhism to Confucius. However I soon came to realize that I needed to read a lot more black writers who wrote about a world that was closer to my view and perspective, writers and thinkers who were searching for the same answers. From the early seventies onwards I spent most of my time reading writers like Richard Wright, Conti Collins and Claude McKay, those types of writers. Then as time went on I began reading more overtly political Black writers like Marcus Garvey, W. E. B. Dubois, and of course Malcolm X.

Isha: These were mainly male writers?

Fowokan: Yes. In those days one grew up as a male chauvinist because that's how the culture was back then, so one emulated the male examples. Later on of course, writers like Tony Morrison came along, who I really love. One has to continually adjust to make sense of the world as it changes. But also I think my greatest heroes were Jazz musicians; people like Charlie Parker, Miles Davis and Jon Coltrane. To me these people were not mere human, they were gods. The discovery of jazz in my late teen years had the same kind of quantum effect on my life as the discovery of African art which occurred around the same time. Jazz was another of Black People showing to the world an abstract view of reality.

Isha: What did they show the world?

Fowokan: What I saw in those musicians was the only expression of abstract meaning that came out of black people imagination. They showed the world that we too were capable of expressing profound meaning in an abstract way.

Isha: Would you call your art abstract?

Fowokan: At present, no, however it shows signs of moving toward abstraction. When I started I*­realized that like the music, you can't just simply go into abstraction. One has to begin at the primary level. Abstraction comes with true understanding of the basics. I grew up with friends who thought it was not necessary to learn the basics of music theory or technique to play jazz. They argued that they could pick up a saxophone and begin playing like Albert Ayler, who plays an extreme form of abstract music. Music that appears to discard theories around melody, harmony and rhythm; he seemed to be playing with the twelve note scale only. These friends of course soon became hopelessly lost and gave up playing after a while. Ayler appeared to be playing a whole heap of noise, but that's only what he appeared to be doing. When you look beneath the surface you find a structure that has been meticulously worked out but broken up. When musicians like Ayler break up a structure, they always know what the rules are that underlie the broken structure. For me art has a strong pull towards expressing in an abstract way, but I have always forced myself not to. I want to have a thorough grounding and understanding of what the work is before it is broken up. For the past two years my work has been moving towards that breaking up, but I don't think it will ever be reduced to the level of true abstraction; I mean, just lines and squiggles and swirls. You have to be able to understand my work in a direct way as a black person. What I am hoping to do is to break up a language that is common to us into its component parts, yet is still able to recognize the elements. This process is not deliberate it is a natural progression as one move forward as an artist.

Isha: So your work as a sculptor has evolved over twenty years.

Fowokan: yes about twenty years. The writing began during the period I was playing music; I started writing songs which became poems, those poems were songs without melodies.

Isha: You have built up quite a reputation, I see you as an important leader in the black community because you exhibit your work and your work speaks of our life as black people. Can you tell me how that came about; how you have been through a process of creating resources which come from somewhere inside you, to become public expression. How did this process of becoming public happen?

Fowokan: I guess it was a continuation of the music; I am not expressing anything new, or different to what I was expressing through the music. It is the same message, the same spirit. This is who we are; this is what we have to say as a people. There is no point in me as a conga drummer, trying to play Beethoven and Stravinsky. I play the conga because it is a primordial instrument, which links us to the first man who hit a hollow tree trunk with a piece of stick and it reverberated; the first musical instrument. The flute also is one of the first instruments, from the reed or the Bamboo. So with those instruments I guess I had to say primal things. So the visual is just a transition from those early musical expressions, and of course, there has always been someone in our community whose duty it is to make these statements. Within our experience as ex-enslaved people in the Caribbean, it was far more difficult for us to make visual expressions due to our severance from African culture. In a sense, music, or art, is not just about doing for its own sake, or simply for entertainment; they are deeply spiritual thing, the basis of religious expression. For example, in Africa the making of free-standing objects was the norm; this was lost to us during our enslavement so it is a real struggle to create images and present them to our community. The community tends to associate anything African that is obviously not Christian or classically European, as negative Voodoo. That has been one of the toughest hurdles to overcome within our community; to convince our people that what our artists are producing, is not evil, but expressions of who we are, what we are and where we are going.

Isha: For me that could be viewed as a healing element, because it challenges the idea that something is wrong in us reflecting ourselves. So what you are doing is reflecting, mirroring, expressing and challenging the internalized notion that we are not alright unless we reflect from the Eurocentric perspective.

Fowokan: Yes, in other words breaking taboos. There is a taboo on things black, things African. In the early days of showing my work in public, it was a really serious problem; black people would approach me aggressively and ask' Why are you doing all that mumbo jumbo voodoo business’. I would spend hours patiently reasoning with them, getting them to accept that there is nothing wrong with what I was doing. All I was doing in fact was abstracting elements that I could see in us and transposing it into image form, there is nothing evil in that, because thousands of artists around the were doing this every day. As time passed black people became more enlightened and less antagonistic towards the black image. Black people are definitely not as frightened as they were back when everyone in the cinema in Kingston would freeze whenever a black face appeared on the screen. 

Isha: Why do you think that everyone froze?

Fowokan: Because they recognized that they were being dehumanized, turned into objects, this was the process of keeping us locked into a permanent state of self-hatred.

Isha: So Black people are now seeing that there is something useful, positive and enlightening in black art.

Fowokan: Yes. One is brought up as a Christian; you then begin to challenge Christian iconography, as you begin to understand that one man’s fetish object is another man’s icon. You understand; you have to destroy the notion that the African icon is evil, that no one group has the right to create images that are endowed with special powers; that Africans too have the right to produce that kind of imagery; only then we can say we are on the road to true enlightenment.  Our Africans ancestors made purposeful art. They didn't produce art to be admired; it was not simply about aesthetics; it was about endowing objects with power.  We also understand that we too are endowed with special powers, special essences that must be expressed, that can never be expressed through a blue eyed Christ on a cross. 

Isha: So those objects are objects of reflection of our own images.

Fowokan: Yes. And of our own spirit, our own spirituality; they are our own icons if you like.

Isha: So you refer to the breaking down, the inability to express through a blue eyed Christ. Is there a connection between that process of breaking down and what you said earlier about being afraid and arriving at a point at which you were no longer intimidated?

Fowokan: Yes, that fear is instilled in us from childhood, but then later in life you arrive at a deeper understanding of the Christian religion, through a kind of enlightenment. The first time I came across the word iconoclast, I looked it up in the encyclopedia, and discovered that there was a great debate during the early development of Christianity on whether or not images should be used in the worship of god. Some said the image was evil, that the use of imagery was idolatry. In Constantinople they smashed all the religious images. But the Christian church still kept them, particularly the Catholic and the Eastern Orthodox churches. So I realized then, that if Christians could destroy their own images and become iconoclasts why shouldn’t we also become iconoclasts by using our own African images?  And of course the struggle goes on, a black student decides that he wants to paint black images, and questions why he should always be painting white images. His tutors then dub him or her an iconoclast because they dare to challenge the accepted canon of western art. You understand?

That's what I am doing. I see myself as an iconoclast because each one of my objects threatens and challenges and in some way destroys the European images that we are supposed to worship. It goes beyond the solid object, it goes into the abstract ways of thinking and living your lives, in other words, you have to destroy theirs before you can put your own in place. That's what I hope these objects of mine are doing. If you don't challenge the supremacy of theirs, yours will never get a chance to flourish.

Isha: Are you still going through that process of breaking down; breaking down what you yourself have already produced, in other words moving your work onto other levels of consciousness?

Fowokan: The more we break down, the more space there is for us to create within your own parameters. For example, my images tend to reflect the black state of mind, and I think that the way we live also reflect that; the way we dress, the food we eat, the languages we speak and so on. One of the first things we have to do is to place the visual in the vanguard, because as the ancient Chinese proverb says “One image is worth a thousand words”. It is important that the image goes in front and pave the way.

Isha: So what do you hope people will see when they encounter your art?

Fowokan: The main thing I would like them to see is the African spirit in it; that they recognize the sacred nature of some of the pieces. I am looking more and more at African theology and philosophy and am beginning to develop a deeper understanding of the ideas within. Looking at many of the traditional things that have been kept hidden from us, and of course, understanding that knowledge, and reflecting it in the way we live our lives today.

Isha: Yes there is a very spiritual expression in your work. Some of your work has had that effect on me. I have experienced the spirit in your work; you know, as thought is almost alive. 'Man from Redemption Grong. That piece in particular has spoken to me; there is a very strong spiritual presence in it, as though the person is actually alive. It's difficult to describe.

 Fowokan: The thing is, not to be obsessed, or to stop at the fact that it seems so real, but to move through and ask what the reality is. Man from Redemption Grong is actually expressing an ancient wisdom and spirituality that speaks through us all. Spirituality is universal. If it is not, it is not spirituality. So if I am making a statement like the old man, anyone who sees it whether they are African, Asian or a European, they should know what it is saying.

Isha: Yes, what you are saying is that his wisdom comes from deep within self, and of course he is male. I notice a lot of your work seems to be about men, so I would like to move on to your work with men.

Fowokan: No, in fact most of my images are mostly around the female figure.

Isha: Are they, so why do you think that is?

Fowokan: Well I am male, and what stimulates me most is the female. It's about dynamic tension. I have always had deep relationships with females; starting with my mother, grandmother, sister, daughter, granddaughter partners and so on. The relationships I have with males is a different on. The quality of tension that exists between me and females is much more intense than with males.  So for me to feel truly alive is to have dynamic relationships with females. As one develops an understanding of world philosophies, you begin to realize that society today has lost its way. It has accentuated the masculine over the feminine element and so has become unbalanced.  Society has become much too masculine, lacking equilibrium, no ying and yang balance. Society has devalued and diminished the role of the feminine.  We now live in a lopsided world which is out of sync. So in some way the preponderance of the feminine in my work is my own personal effort to redress that imbalance.

Isha: Yet when you went to Nigeria the spirit of the young male African influenced you quite deeply. 

Fowokan: There was a also a female counterpart but she didn't affect me in the same way as the male did. That male left a deep impression on me as he came closest to what I recognized as the primal or archetypal model for the African ancestral carving.

Isha: So do men respond to your work in ways that are different to women?

Fowokan:  I think that the response is general one.

Isha: Do you think there are healing elements in your work?

Fowokan: Yes, on different levels. The debate around notions of aesthetics of black beauty can be a healing process. As I said earlier, most of us, both black and white were brought up without positive black images. In that case any kind of positive expression has got to be healing.

Isha: So facing the community with those images is the healing element.

Fowokan: Yes it has to be, there can be no other reason for me to do this. I don't make money out of it. These images that I produce are meant to challenge and transform the viewer because it forces the viewer to steps into a place where nothing like it existed before; in comparison to westerners and the spiritual things that reinforces their sense of being. The more we Africans develop our understanding of who we are in relation to our place in the universe, the greater will be our ability to survive.

Isha: Thank you very much Fowokan. That was most enlightening.

Fowokan: Thank you, it was a pleasure.

This is an adaptation of a piece first published in BASA newsletter No 35,  January 2003.