Brixton Skank

At a superficial level Fowokan’s sculptural piece Brixton Skank packs many messages but look deeper and you find a unifying thematic thread that weaves effortlessly many narratives across time and space. It was the first piece I fell in love with and although I have met many of his creations, I guess for me this will always be a case of ‘love at first sight’, and I am not only talking of the music in her hips.

On one level, the piece is a testament to an important energising principle that runs through much of African people’s sense of spiritualism –the idea of invocation and divination- in this case implied by the bowl and the persona of the subject of the piece. By using red the sculptor extends the invocation into an evocation of life –red as in blood the life force. Skank is a dance move and the equation of the protest/uprisings of the eighties in Brixton which the piece was made to commemorate, is also poignant with layers of meanings.

The eighties, when the piece was made, was a time when, on a daily basis, the media was filled with images of young people dancing the toyi-toyi as they confronted the might of the apartheid state, often represented by armoured tanks. Beyond the immediate anger of the confrontations and the throwing of stones one saw in the dances a sense of a celebration of the real possibility of freedom and change. It is this ability to combine an elevation of freedom to something that can be divined or foretold and the elevation of that desire to a sacred space,as well as the joy of anticipation that makes this piece so special and prophetic. It is true to history not simply through a recreation of a sociological polemic but by offering a poetry of hope- after the anger and the upheaval. Dance like rain to ‘wash al de bad feelin’.

Zagba Oyortey
Feb 2008

See more of Zagbas work on:

 http://cultureworksafrica.com