Trickster Ethics
Artist photo waving flag - Is a language a flag what is a flag on stolen land, 2022.
How Kosisochukwu Nnebe explores the flows of Blackness between past and present
Kosisochukwe Nnebe is a Nigerian visual artist based between Montréal and Ottawa. Deeply informed by philosophical queries rooted in non-Western epistemologies and ontologies, Nnebe draws on a wide range of scholars from critical race theory, Caribbean thought and Black feminisms. With refreshing criticality, Nnebe’s research-creation practice explores the visual politics of Blackness, West African mythology, material culture and object-making. Her practice spans installation, sculpture, lens-based media, as well as curation and writing.
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Nnebe had just returned from Europe when we met virtually in July. We chatted about how her education and childhood influenced her work, and the ongoing project of making visible Black stories and experiences. Nnebe traced the genealogy of thinkers that have shaped her understanding of the visual politics of Blackness and the body. We discussed her upcoming work, which explores the West African trickster figure Anansi as a site of possibility.
Kosisochukwu Nnebe, Ihe Anyị Hapụru, 2023. Bronze, 25.4 x 19 x 5 cm and 6 x 24 x 8 cm. COURTESY OF THE ARTIST.
Sarah Edo: Toni Morrision once said that the very function of racism is a distraction. It is refreshing to hear that you have come to a place where you are not interested in that, and instead are invested in a different set of questions that extend to otherwise possibilities.
Your current work will incorporate West African folklore and mythology — I’m curious to learn more about what the trickster figure makes possible for you.
Kosisochukwu Nnebe: The Trickster helps me fill in the gaps and address the question of what radical Black subjectivity is. Initially, when I was engaging with the Trickster, it was as a way of representing myself and Blackness in a way that defies binaries of good and bad, but also in a way that is grotesque and grey. I was taking those fragments of my body and literally piecing them back together in the form of a spider as a way of embodying the Anansi trickster. I was guided to the trickster by Black and racialized women writers who turn to the trickster as a way of speaking to multiplicity and identity as a way of living within the borderlands, like Gloria Anzaldúa and Toni Morrison. The metaphorical role the trickster has played in literature has offered an understanding of our identity in a way that isn’t fixed.
While that was my initial entry point, at the same time I was engaging with Édouard Glissant’s idea of opacity. So much of Blackness in Canada is this oscillation between hyper-visibility and invisibility. And also, thinking of invisibility can be a form of suppression and erasure. Growing up, I always felt invisible, but I also felt a lot of safety in not being seen. Opacity as a refuge. I wanted to give myself space to create an identity for myself that was not what I had seen everywhere else, that was totally new and novel, and could take shape in ways that aren’t easy to understand or digest. And so that representation of me as Anansi trickster was this way of trying to find a way to free myself.
Kosisochukwu Nnebe, I want you to know that I am hiding something from you / since what I might be is uncontainable (installation view), 2019. Mixed media, Dimensions variable. Photo: Justin Wonnacott.
Kosisochukwu Nnebe, I want you to know that I am hiding something from you / since what I might be is uncontainable (installation view), 2019. Mixed media, Dimensions variable. Photo: Justin Wonnacott.
The first time I did the work of embodying the unseen in my art, I created this installation, I want you to know I am hiding from you (2019), where there were hidden images and text on these banners that could only be deciphered when you stood on this podium and looked through the sheets of red plexiglass. The podium was modelled after a slave auction block, and to fully experience the installation, you would have to put yourself in such a situation where you’re valuing the knowledge production that was produced by virtue of being in those kinds of positions, where you’ve experienced dehumanization to such an extent that your understanding of what it means to be human is so fundamentally different.
I’ve been engaging with Black feminist theory and knowledge production standpoint theory, and I’ve always liked to play with the positionality of the audience within the spaces in the images I create. Only when you mount that podium and look through the plexiglass, you would see these hidden texts and images. Once you saw the image, which is of the spider, you wouldn’t realize what it actually was made out of. Also, you wouldn’t realize that it was a depiction of me as a spider with my body parts.
In this act of hiding, even when you find me, you don’t know that you found me, and you don’t know that you’re meant to be looking for me. I will hide myself and I will represent myself in ways that you will never understand and in that lack of understanding, I will find freedom.
Kosisochukwu Nnebe, I want you to know that I am hiding something from you / since what I might be is uncontainable (gallery view), 2019. Mixed media, Dimensions variable. Photo: Justin Wonnacott.
Sarah Edo is the inaugural recipient of the Jean Johnson Craft Writing Award, which supports emerging careers in craft discourse and furthers the appreciation and understanding of craft in Canada.
This interview is an excerpt and and is available in full in the Fall/Winter 2023-2024 issue of Studio Magazine.
