This morning, Nigerian
visual artist, Laolu Senbanjo, sent out a letter he wrote to
British artist, Damien
Hirst, calling him out for appropriating Nigerian art in his
latest collection “Treasures from the Wreck of the Unbelievable,”currently on
display at the Venice Biennale. Hirst—who is currently the U.K.’s
richest living artist—created a replica of the Ife sculpture, “Ori Olokun,” but
failed to credit Nigeria or Ife as his source of inspiration.
This is
certainly not the first time thatplagiarism
in the art world has come at the expense of
black artists. It’s an ongoing problem that erases the contribution of art from
the continent and the diaspora.
Senbanjo
addresses this and more in “A Letter from one Artist to Another.” Read it
below, and stay posted for more on this story.
Dear Damien Hirst,
You may not know me but I know you. My name is
Laolu Senbanjo; also known as Laolu NYC. I am your contemporary, a visual
artist based in Brooklyn who just happens to be Yoruba from Nigeria.
You see, as an artist we all pay our respects and give
homage to different artists in all our works at some point in time. In
fact, I helped bring Beyonce’s vision to life
in her visual album, “Lemonade” which was an homage to her ancestry and paid
tribute to the Yoruba culture.
However you did not give an interpretation, you created a
flat out carbon copy. I refuse to sit down and be quiet about what you
are doing in Venice.
To quote you Mr. Hirst, “with all the liars running our
governments, it’s far easier to believe in the past than it is in the
future.” Who’s past should we believe? Is it the German
Anthropologist (Frobenius) who claims the Yorubas were far too primitive to
create such beautiful things or is it we the descendants of the Yoruba people
who know our own history and can recognize a counterfeit when we see it.
This body of work, Treasures from the Wreck of the Unbelievable is an
unbelievable pile of cheap knock offs.
Damien, who do you think you are that you can literally
just outright steal, imitate and appropriate my culture? As a Yoruba man,
I consider myself a keeper of my culture and my art also reflects that. How
would you feel if I started creating copies of your work, then claimed that you
were incapable of creating such beauty, because White people are degenerates
and feeble minded. As artists all we have is our integrity. As an
African my culture is everything to me. It drives me crazy when people
see Africa as a commodity, something to be bought and sold and yet never
understood. Africa is a continent, not a country with so many languages
and cultures. My people, the Yoruba are some of the most prolific
individuals that have graced this earth and to make replicas of our antiquities
and pass them off as your own originals is sacrilege, racist, ethnocentric, and
down right dirty. You should be ashamed of yourself. You did not
discover Yoruba art and it’s people. I am also extremely disappointed in
the curators that allowed this to happen.
Apparently, you’re past your prime because you cannot
create something original without stealing from others. Just because the Artist
is Unknown does not mean we don’t know where it came from and what it
represented. Did you know the significance of the figures that you
copied? Why did you choose them? It’s funny that you make comments
about Trump yet you are doing the same as he is, making alternate facts.
Venice is one of the largest art platforms in the world, some of the kids
attending are going to be art history students someday and when they see what
you’ve done they can’t unsee or unlearn your version of the history of my
people. They will believe what you’ve fed them. You don’t know how
far and wide your art will spread; because of your stature and your white male
privilege you should not be ignorant about the impact of your art in the
world. Now, you are imposing yourself and infusing yourself into our
history, when we are struggling to make our own mark and names in this industry
that is dominated by people like you (white men). Is it not enough that
this art was stolen from us by the colonial rulers who came and destroyed our
civilization(The Brits), our culture, our religions, and pilfered the culture
and the artifacts that represented it. This is double jeopardy, first
your forefathers conquered and stole our people and our art (which we still
have not received it back)and now your weapon has changed, it’s no longer guns,
you’re using your status to steal what’s not yours and claim it as your own
original art and ideas and profit off it.
How can the man that comes from the country where
Stonehenge exists, a landmark phenomenon that is still shrouded with mystery
deny the possibility that the Yorubas could create artifacts of our great
Kings? Is it that you think Africans are not capable? You have the
audacity to perpetuate the idiotic logic of Frobenius stating that this art
must be from Atlantis because the Africans are too primitive to create such
beauty? And then you create an exact replica of one of our Ooni’s and say
it may be a copy? May be??? Like, it’s a complete perfect
copy. Who do you think you are that you can go and create and profit off of
my people and my art? Isn’t being colonized once enough?
I wonder if Pharrell, Disney, or the
Greeks and Romans (and countless others you’ve ripped off) are as offended as
we are? Damien, you’ve messed with the wrong people. No more
appropriation. Enough is enough. You are ripping off bronzes of our
Kings. No more stealing from my people and denying our excellence, let
alone our existence. Do you not realize the sacred symbolism of these
pieces of work for example, the one you called, “Golden Head” is actually
called, “Ori Olokun” which is named after the Orisha (God/Goddess) Olokun who
is the God of Great Wealth and the Bottom of the Ocean and can be either male
or female. “Olo” meaning Owner and “Okun” meaning Ocean. For the Yorubas,
this work of art is sacred as it holds the passageway for the living to be able
to connect with their ancestors. The original removal of this artifact
was a crime to the Yoruba people and to re-create such a significant and
important sculpture without truly understanding how sacred it is, it’s
value and importance to it’s original owners, not sharing that information and
just washing away it’s importance that it holds to the Yorubas, a group of over
40 million people within Nigeria (not counting those in the diaspora) is just
horrendous.
As a Brit you should understand the importance of royalty
and kingdoms. Why didn’t you make a bust of the Queen? Oh wait,
that would be wrong, right? It would disrespectful. Right? This
only shows us what you really think of Africans? You just want to drown
us, make us disappear, rewrite our history to include you.
I find it very curious that you chose Frobenius, an open
racist thief of antiquities as your source of knowledge and information
about the piece you call, “Golden Heads.”
Here is a direct quote from when Frobenius first set eyes
on the beautiful Ori Olokun in Ife, Nigeria:
“Before us stood a head of marvelous beauty, wonderfully
cast in antique bronze, true to the life, incrusted with a patina of glorious
dark green. This was, in very deed, the Olokun, Atlantic Africa’s Poseidon.”
He follows this up with the following statement:
“Profoundly stirred, I stood for many minutes before the
remnant of the erstwhile Lord and Ruler of the Empire of Atlantis. My
companions were no less astounded. As though we have agreed to do so, we held
our peace. Then I looked around and saw – the blacks – the circle of the sons
of the ‘venerable priest’, his Holiness the Oni’s friends, and his intelligent
officials. I was moved to silent melancholy at the thought that this assembly
of degenerate and feeble-minded posterity should be the legitimate guardians of
so much loveliness.”
It is truly incredible that you have decided to quote and
believe Frobenius, the man who believes that the Yorubas were not capable of
creating something beautiful and therefore stole it because in his mind they
were not deserving. Unfortunately, by using him it appears that not only
Frobenius but that you too, Mr. Hirst feel the same way about us. Was no
one else available? No current scholars of Yoruba art? Not
one? Really? Do you think me and my colleagues like Victor
Ekpuk, Victor Ehikhamenor, are
we also degenerates and feeble minded? Are we are not worthy of spreading
our own art, culture and ideas in an intelligent manner to the world?
Yours Truly,
Laolu Senbanjo
Culled from OkayAfrica
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