Nigerian-American visual artist, Abi Salami, was recently interviewed by Beyond the Black Canvas. Check out the interview below!
Your work has changed so drastically, it’s almost like two different people. Can you explain?
(laughs) I am bipolar so it's not necessarily strange. If you go back and look at my body of work I have a bunch of drastically different styles. I remember once when I was at a 2-day exhibition in 2018. I had all my different styles there and people kept thinking it was a different artist. I had to keep explaining, ‘Nope! All of this is me.’ During the event a psychotherapy, who was working upstairs in the building, came down and was looking at this one piece I had that was called ‘An Ode to my Anxiety.’ He looked at it and then he instantly said ‘You suffer from anxiety?’ I said yeah and confessed that I was bipolar. He said he could see it immediately in my work. ‘I can see the different personalities - the mania. I can see it all over your work.’ he said. So yes, that's why it looks like a full and drastic turn but, I think the similarity is within the form. I love figurative art. I think there's something so beautiful about the human body, particularly the female body. If you look at the work I created in 2019 there were a ton of female figures. It's always been something that I'm really into and this time around I’m still focusing on female figures and celebrating blackness and also celebrating Africa-ness, it's just less direct.
Why are there less direct visual references to Africa? Is this a conscious decision?
Well part of me reframing my mindset around painting my mental health also included paring down on detail. If you look at all of the characters I paint now, they usually wear very monotone clothing. It's usually green or pink or white and I guess the general palate is more clean and clear, less congested. But, using green and white is actually me giving a shout out to my homeland Nigeria. I'm still tying in the African, I'm just not doing it in print because that's a ton of detail and that's anti what I'm trying to do right now which is less detailed but still getting the same message across. I’m still doing it, but just not in such a direct way. In fact, when I was working on the outfits for some of the girls in this series, especially Child of No Nation, I went back and looked at the outfits worn during national service in Nigeria: the white shirt, green sleeves and collar, worn with the green khaki short. It was a way of tying it back to Africa without the print or detail.
Also in 2019 when I did the series and did use a lot of African print and African wear, what I was trying to do was shed light on the fact that mental health issues are an issue within the African Community. I wanted that to be direct and I thought that putting African attire on the people made it more relatable to people on the African continent or within the diaspora. I wanted them to see themselves in the art and think this is an issue that doesn't just affect Western people, it affects me too and we have to pay attention. We all know somebody that's probably suffering right now but because it's not discussed or it's not addressed, so many lives are senselessly lost because of that-it's not necessary, all we have to do is have a conversation and help the person get help.
Why is it so important for you to get this message across?
People don't think poor mental health is an illness. My mum struggled for years to accept that I had poor mental health. In her head she just thought that when I came to America I was just trying to act American. I was seeing a therapist in 2014 and the therapist suggested that she come to the session with me. I don't know how she came, but by the grace of God she did. For the first 45 minutes my mum was very resistant to anything the therapist was saying. She didn't believe any of this was real. Eventually, my therapist had to break it down to her. I remember her saying, ‘you know it's possible for lungs to be sick yeah?’ ‘Like lung disease’, my mum responded. ‘Same with a heart, yeah?’ Again my mum understood this as heart disease. ‘Is the brain an organ? Is it possible for the brain to be sick?’ My therapist probed. And here it clicked for her; it is the sickness of the brain, it's not this nebulous feeling of having too much or not being in Nigeria suffering because you're worried about electricity or food or whatever. It’s an actual illness. You're just not producing whatever is necessary to think like a normal person. Through showing my work, I'm able to open up a similar conversation and create an environment in which I’m able to break down poor mental health for people in a way that they can better understand, even if it's about themselves. I can explain that just like some people have asthma or whatever due to a deficiency, others have a problem with producing chemicals in the brain like serotonin causing poor mental health issues . It’s the same; it's a deficiency. It is nothing to feel bad about. This for me is very empowering, and can save lives.
As well as being somebody who experiences poor mental health, you're a black woman. How does this play a role in your new body of work?
I take the black female form and paint it over and over again until it's normalized. I always make sure my characters have natural hair because I didn't grow up seeing natural hair. I remember several times during my childhood wanting to grow out my natural hair and being heavily discouraged against it. I think that if I had seen more images of natural hair growing up, I wouldn't have been so scared of my blackness and I'd have been way more confident.
Also, if I think back actually, when I grew up in Nigeria my skin was great. I didn't mind being black. It was great. However, when I got to the US. I suddenly discovered that I was a black person and my skin was always an issue. So now, the people I paint have this purple tint to them. I have always associated purple and blackness together. Initially wanting to differentiate my work, I found these really cool almost muted purpley colors that I now use for the skin tones. I love how it looks. I think it makes the blackness of the characters more striking and it draws you in because you're like ‘Wait! I know that's not the right skin tone but somehow it works’. It's my way of celebrating blackness -it's so regal and so grand. With the purple I feel like I'm making the skin more royal - something that needs to be celebrated. Therefore, hopefully the younger generation that looks at my work can feel like: This is me. I am royal. I am regal. I do not feel like I need to do anything to change myself because I'm good how I am.
Have these changes affected who your collectors are?
Yes, I would say that earlier on my collectors were almost exclusively black and since I started with this new style, which as you explained is more accessible, I've got people of different races buying my work. I think they appreciate the blackness in it and they love it .I often have people asking how do you get the skin tone to look so beautiful, so regal? A question that makes me glow on the inside.
How do you feel about this change?
I like that there's other people appreciating my work because of what I'm talking about. I think that it is important that everyone gets the message, because poor mental health affects everybody. Yes, I want to make sure that the people that look like me get that message too but I would rather everybody get that message. People need to understand that you need to take care of your mental health and you need to engage in self care. I also want people to understand that black women in particular are under different stresses than others and so we need self care more than anyone else. Therefore, my work is normalizing that: normalizing black women taking a day off and enjoying themselves; normalizing black women wearing luxury items because it makes them feel good; normalizing black women’s natural hair or whatever different hairstyles they choose, and having people realize that depicting that on a canvas can be considered fine art. It doesn't have to be just an art niche ‘black art.’ My art is black because I am black. Not black because that’s what I’m choosing to create.
What response have you had as a result of the change? And what effect has it had on you as an artist?
With this new style, unintentionally, it's made my message more accessible and I think people are responding to it well. My collectors are genuine. I talk to them at least once a week. They DM me, they're sending me hearts. One of my collectors purchased a piece as a surprise for his wife. He told me that the first thing she said when she saw it was ‘I am her and she is me.’ This almost made me cry. This is exactly what I want people to feel when they see my work. The response to this new body of work has been amazing. I like the fact that I’m somehow creating a community with these people from all over the world. I think community for me is the keyword. What I'm building right now is like an art community around Abi Salami.
