Two Artists On the Cutting-Edge of Paper
RUBY ONYINYECHI AMANZE & M. FLORINE DÉMOSTHÈNE
Two Artists On the Cutting-Edge of Paper
By Bonnie Langedijk
What really happens behind the closed doors of the art world? The space that can feel exclusive and elitist, is changing. But how much? Frieze London’s Director Eva Langret gave us some insights, but we wanted to hear from other echelons of the art world. And who better to ask than two women who live it themselves?
ruby onyinyechi amanze and M. Florine Démosthène have more than one thing in common. The two artists are both represented by French-Somali gallerist Mariane Ibrahim. The gallery spotlights artists of the African Diaspora, which has recently opened a location in Paris next to its Chicago-based gallery. Secondly, both women work on paper. Through their conversation, amanze and Démosthène quickly found out their commonalities didn’t stop there. The women discussed sexism in the art world, their experiences working in Nigeria and Ghana and the need for a re-evaluation of the value of paper.
amanze and Démosthène lift part of the curtain many enjoy hiding behind. And they do it better than we ever could.
M. Florine Démosthène, Love Long Awaited, 2021. Ink, mylar, glitter and pigment stick on paper, 111.8 x 76.2 cm. Courtesy of Mariane Ibrahim
Portrait of M. Florine Démosthène
ruby: About five or six years ago my partner came to me, it was outside of Mariane [Ibrahim’s gallery] and he said, "Look at this artist. We should get a piece if we can. I really love it.” We rarely agree on any work that we’re interested in but yours was a shared, immediate love.
Florine: Thank you. I've been hiding for a few years, so I've been out of the loop in a way. I went to Ghana and then I came back and then we've been here in Oklahoma. In my mind I've been in this strange bubble world.
ruby: Can you tell me about that?
Florine: Living in London gets tiring after a while. I don't know if you're first or second generation. But I'm like a half generation. I was born in the US and then my parents sent me to go live in Haiti. So you still have that pressure from your family expecting you to be a lawyer, doctor or nurse. And the reminder that on some level you're disappointing them with this art thing that you do. I was supposed to be in Ghana for three months but I ended up spending a year there. It allowed me to disconnect. I felt like there was too much news, too much scrolling.
ruby: I relate to the amount of noise that exists. You have to work so hard to be your own buffer and to protect yourself and the work. You talking about your year in Ghana, makes me think about my time in Nigeria. I was there making work and living and being, but I wasn't a part of anything.
“It never crossed my MIND that I was a woman making art, until I got there. I thought, "Oh, shit I'm a woman making art.”
Florine: Where are you based?
ruby: I'm in Philadelphia. I grew up in the UK in Birmingham but we moved to the US in ‘96. There's something inherently quieter and less immediately present. It's protecting the paper. Not literally but I mean metaphorically
Florine: Paper is so utilitarian and there's this tactile quality with paper. The art world hasn't valued paper in the way that they should. One of the main reasons I switched to Mylar was because I knew I wanted to move abroad for a long period. It was practical to be able to travel and have your artwork as carry on luggage. When you're working on canvas it becomes complicated
ruby: Well, I for one have no painting experience. I've always worked on paper. Prior to that I was trying to make textile work. But I'm a paper loyalist through and through.
Florine: There's something about being a Black artist and working on paper. When I was in Ghana I was also faced with sexism. I didn't grow up in a family that limited women or what women can do. I was trying to involve myself in the art world [in Ghana] and it was just a boys club. It never crossed my mind that I was a woman making art, until I got there. I thought, "Oh, shit I'm a woman making art." And the second thing I faced in terms of materiality, was the bigger the canvas the better. The testosterone was bigger than MaCheeseMo's was.
ruby: [There are] so many similarities in our experiences here. I went to art school in the US where the majority are women. When I was at UNN in Nigeria all the faculty in the art program and most of the students were men.
Florine: In the past seven to eight years with this burst of African artists on the larger arts scene, it's still a boys club. Women are still secondary. Women who aren’t American. Men from the continent are hard pressed to name more than three or four.
ruby: It’s a whole other thing when you add the distinction between on the continent and in the diaspora to it.
Portrait of ruby Onyinyechi amanze, Photo by Sahar Coston. Courtesy of Mariane Ibrahim
Ruby Onyinyechi Amanze, ‘How To Be Enough’. 15 panels of coated papers plus ink, graphite, colored pencils, photo transfers, acrylic, assorted mediums.
Florine: It's something that I can't escape because I carry that surname and I carry the legacy of the culture. I’ve also noticed they never paint themselves nude.
ruby: Wait, contemporary Black male that isn't diaspora or not in the diaspora?
Florine: Not American and not like totally not American. Give me Caribbean or on the continent. That would actually paint themselves nude.
ruby: None of them, ever.
Florine: So then why do I do nude images and it's about being a woman? But they can do these images and it’s about nothing. We are all, whether we like it or not, in the same sort of world. Whether we live in the continent or in the Caribbean, we're seen as black artists period. So you can't drop that aspect of the persona. It’s almost as if you're [only a] serious [artist] when you work on canvas.
ruby: But that has to be ending. It's such a tired conversation. It's complicated when you add the Black artist [element] for many reasons.
Florine: The buyer’s perception is that somehow canvas is better and more secure than paper. It will have a higher value later on. But I wanted to ask you about a recent show where you made pieces and then you tore them apart to create other pieces.
ruby: That piece came after doing a really large piece that was maybe 55 feet wide. It consisted of 15 panels. Scale wise it was the largest piece I've done. The only way to do it is [through] this paneling. After that, I had been working in pieces to make a hole and wanted to continue that exploration. I would have a piece of paper, draw something on it and set it aside. And another piece of paper and I'd draw something else on it and set it aside. Until at the end I could play with them like puzzle pieces and put them back together to make a single image. It seems like you've become more minimal too.
Florine: That came from the Ghana show that I did. Up until then, I was just painting on the Mylar itself. There was no real collage. When I was in South Africa, I found little packets of glitter at the art supply store. So I thought: “This could be another hue in the painting, because it's a limited color palette." And then for the Ghana show, nothing arrived on time. The materials, we ran out of glue, typical.Ghana thing. The idea was that everything would be on Mylar and then I would do two or three on panels, but I ran out of Mylar. So I remembered the glitter. I had the glitter in the whole figure and I thought, this is tacky. I came back the next day and looked at it. I said, "Shit, all of the work should have been like that." Before I left New York, I always had a checked-in bag of art supplies. This was the first time I didn’t take them. It felt so good not to pay $250 for extra luggage. But I did shove a whole bunch of glitter in my carry-on bag. And that's how it happened. I thought I would have three months, but I ended up having six, seven weeks. I think I made like 20 something works in that time.
ruby: What? If you're coming onto the continent, you bring the things you need with you. Or you just roll with what it is. But I love the glitter in your bag. That was intuition.
Florine: My focus was on building that collage and creating something new. It was also risk taking because it's dramatically different from the work that I was doing before. But it paid off.
ruby: I love and hate that feeling of fear in making the work. If you keep doing the thing that you've been doing, it doesn't transcend itself. It's just a repetition.
M. Florine Démosthène, It's Not My Problem, 2021. Ink, mylar, glitter and pigment stick on paper. Framed: 124.5 x 167 x 6 cm. Courtesy of Mariane Ibrahim
Florine: Do you find that artists are sometimes driven more by the market or the demand of a particular type of work that they make versus what they really want to do or what's intuitive to them?
ruby: An artist can be conscious of that happening and move forward with that as a choice. For others there may be more sadness in it. A feeling of what can you do?
Florine: There's that point where you are making decisions, where it's heart over mind or heart over finances. But what prevents us when we know that change has to happen? Look at artists like Louise Bourgeois or David Hammons. They’ve shown it’s possible. But that in between time can be scary. You're trying to figure out where you’re going. And if the work starts to look dramatically different, how are people going to accept it? It’s very much the same for musicians. Your first two albums went platinum, you signed a 10-year-record deal. And now you want to make an acoustic album. And everybody's like, what the hell? But then you see musicians who navigated that, and you see the ones who just turn out the hits.
ruby: Yes. I love Louise Bourgeois not necessarily for her actual work, just for her longevity. I always feel like I'm in one of those chapters where something has to give in the work. It's maybe not even a change, but a return to something that was more true. Are you in that moment or one of those moments?
Florine: I'm getting there slowly but surely. Most people don’t understand that being a creator, it's a lot of vulnerability. Once I start to feel like it's coming to that end, I'm looking at how do I want to move forward? Performance is something I've been [wanting to do] for maybe three, four years now. But always keeping the paperworks close to my heart.
ruby: Paper's not going anywhere. There are other pieces that don't feel like the work that you're doing now. But they’re very much a part of you and part of how you want to express yourself. From one drawing to the next, there's always some small-ish growth.
Florine: I agree with you. It's important as an artist to have that willingness to always stretch yourself in a way that you haven't stretched yourself before. I'm working on something now, but I always have some paper and pencils and inks in my luggage wherever I go.
ruby onyinyechi amanze, two bikes and two skies, 2020. Photo transfers, ink, screen-print collage, pva coating, 115.6 x 102.2 cm. Courtesy of Mariane Ibrahim