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Curator Alayo Akinkugbe on her new podcast and the challenges of presenting 'A Black History of Art'
We sat down with writer and curator Alayo Akinkugbe to discuss her new podcast ‘A Shared Gaze’...
June 27, 2023
Your new podcast is an extension of your Instagram platform ‘A Black History of Art’; can you tell us about the origins of that?
In my second year of uni in 2020, I was halfway through the only contemporary art paper offered on my art history degree at Cambridge, and that was the first time I had been presented with black artists. And then I realised, in the first year we hadn’t studied a single black artist, even though we had supposedly gone through the entirety of art history. And because I enjoyed learning about people like Isaac Julien and Faith Ringgold, all these well-known black contemporary artists in the US and UK, and I didn’t want to stop learning about them, so I decided to start researching black artists and putting it on Instagram.
I noticed that, on the account, there is a focus on contemporary artists, and of course the podcast is interview-based so focuses on living artists; was focusing on contemporary artists a conscious decision?
I think it is because… I want to promote contemporary artists to have an impact on their lives, I mean I am also personally interested in contemporary art. I want to promote contemporary artists because doing so could have an impact on their careers, in terms of giving them more visibility. But I am also, personally, more interested in contemporary art than any other period.
I feel like coming from a formal art historical background, there are two approaches to looking at art: there is a very historical academic art history and then a more sociological approach especially when looking at contemporary art. What sort of approach are you taking in the podcast or is it more art criticism?
With the Instagram account I do research artists from an art historical approach which is informed by my work at uni, especially when looking at methods or black figures represented in historical works of art, like a drawing by Pisanello of a Black woman or a 17th century portrait of a Black minister in Bijapur, India. But then the sociological stuff comes in when I’m writing about contemporary art. I don’t think I’m engaging in art criticism… It’s more celebrating contemporary black artists. But to be honest, I haven’t put anything on my page that I’m not interested in or I don’t think should be platformed.
How is it that you decide who to put on and where do you come across them?
It’s kinda a mixture of things: I do get sent a lot of press releases, and of course it’s easier to write about artists that are having an exhibition at the moment, but when I began I wanted the page to have a very international approach, so I would look up a country for example Norway and research black artists there, or black artists in Brazil or Cuba. I remember searching for black Cuban artists and the only thing that would come up was musicians. It seems crazy to me, because I don’t do that now, but when I started in the pandemic it was a good route to finding artists that wouldn’t be included in an art history degree. But since then I have been using more exhibition catalogues and books, such as survey books which focus on artists from a specific country.
Where were you finding those books? Would you say there was a gap in the literature?
I would go out and buy them, but since the page got bigger I’ve been sent books. I would say the resources are there but there was a gap in the art history library.
Are there complexities in creating an art history linking artists by skin colour? I recently went to a poetry open mic night and a black poet had a line ‘I wasn’t born black you called me that’, how do you navigate linking artists by an essentially racist binary?
I think it was James Baldwin who said something like ‘I didn’t invent the [n*****]… I give you your problem back’. So, yes there is absolutely an element that you are grouping people together who may not have anything in common, but that’s what curating is, you make groups and categories that are arbitrary - a contemporary artist from London next to a Renaissance drawing of a black figure next to an 80’s Brazilian artist may only have their blackness in common… But the point is, I suppose, to showcase the multiplicity of blackness; it cannot be put into a box. Because the way I learnt about black artists at university was through the lens of the Black Arts Movements of the UK and US - which was interesting, but it meant I was only learning about blackness in art history in relation to English speaking western countries, but obviously blackness dictates peoples’ experiences in every context. Even in Nigeria where I’m from, the majority of the population is black but your blackness still affects the way you live and perceive yourself – it’s a formerly colonised country, and skin bleaching is part of the culture.
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Yes, totally… It was nice to see you did a post about murals dating back to the 16th century in Northern Ghana, because something like that lies completely outside the predominately white western art scene.
Yes, they were murals of the Kassena ethnic group in Burkina Faso and Ghana. Another key thing is I don’t want people to look at the page and think ‘oh this is what black art history is’; you can’t put it in a box, which is why I’m so concerned about trying to showcase such a range of radically different artists, all black, but working within a broad range of histories and traditions.
But the focus for the podcast will be contemporary artists in a western context? Would you take contemporary “art” from outside the formal art system? For instance, indigenous textiles…
That’s an interesting point, I would love to do that but the way I have been working on it has been very rooted in a Western art-world context unfortunately. The main thing is to interview artists from different places, but I am limited by needing them to be able to speak English, so we can communicate. And I am interviewing them in a formal sense. I do need to interview bigger names first, to generate interest and create the platform to then be able to offer to people who are lesser known. So that is the dream. Another thing I want to do is to think about other places where blackness exists in the art ecosystem, like to interview black security guards, because I often get stopped by black security guards who want to show me something.
What would you say draws different people to art? What drew you to art?
I was lucky that art history was offered at my school, I loved it, I loved all the Renaissance stuff, Impressionism, literally everything, all the white shit, but there was no… Like we looked at Chris Ofili and that was it… I already started the ‘a black history of art’-esque stuff in school. Even though I was studying a very European Eurocentric style of art history, I was still finding ways to link it back to blackness. In 2016/17 I found the picture that is now the icon of the Instagram account and that was the first picture I ever posted a few years later. Even though it’s not by a black artist, it was the first time I was looking in depth at blackness in art, thinking about who this figure could be, where the sitter was from: it’s called ‘Portrait of a Black Woman’ or ‘Portrait of Madeleine’ by Marie-Guillemine Benoist, made in 1800.. I spoke about it for a competition and that was when I really fell in love with art history and decided I wanted to study it at uni. But at the time I wasn’t thinking about diversity or my own blackness, it was subconscious.
.jpeg)
So, the page has a long history- I guess it was with the pandemic that gave you the time, but also BLM made the page so relevant?
Yeah, I started it in February 2020 not knowing we were going to enter the pandemic, then in June it really took off because suddenly everyone was interested in blackness.
But the podcast is the latest extension of the page, you're also a contributing editor at AnOther magazine and of course you're writing the book. Have you got any exhibitions coming up?
Yes, I have a column in AnOther magazine and I’m working as a curatorial researcher at an exhibition at the RA but I can’t talk too much about that…
Alayo Akinkugbe runs the @ablackhistoryofart Instagram account.
She also produces and hosts A Shared Gaze arts podcast
Your new podcast is an extension of your Instagram platform ‘A Black History of Art’; can you tell us about the origins of that?
In my second year of uni in 2020, I was halfway through the only contemporary art paper offered on my art history degree at Cambridge, and that was the first time I had been presented with black artists. And then I realised, in the first year we hadn’t studied a single black artist, even though we had supposedly gone through the entirety of art history. And because I enjoyed learning about people like Isaac Julien and Faith Ringgold, all these well-known black contemporary artists in the US and UK, and I didn’t want to stop learning about them, so I decided to start researching black artists and putting it on Instagram.
I noticed that, on the account, there is a focus on contemporary artists, and of course the podcast is interview-based so focuses on living artists; was focusing on contemporary artists a conscious decision?
I think it is because… I want to promote contemporary artists to have an impact on their lives, I mean I am also personally interested in contemporary art. I want to promote contemporary artists because doing so could have an impact on their careers, in terms of giving them more visibility. But I am also, personally, more interested in contemporary art than any other period.
I feel like coming from a formal art historical background, there are two approaches to looking at art: there is a very historical academic art history and then a more sociological approach especially when looking at contemporary art. What sort of approach are you taking in the podcast or is it more art criticism?
With the Instagram account I do research artists from an art historical approach which is informed by my work at uni, especially when looking at methods or black figures represented in historical works of art, like a drawing by Pisanello of a Black woman or a 17th century portrait of a Black minister in Bijapur, India. But then the sociological stuff comes in when I’m writing about contemporary art. I don’t think I’m engaging in art criticism… It’s more celebrating contemporary black artists. But to be honest, I haven’t put anything on my page that I’m not interested in or I don’t think should be platformed.
How is it that you decide who to put on and where do you come across them?
It’s kinda a mixture of things: I do get sent a lot of press releases, and of course it’s easier to write about artists that are having an exhibition at the moment, but when I began I wanted the page to have a very international approach, so I would look up a country for example Norway and research black artists there, or black artists in Brazil or Cuba. I remember searching for black Cuban artists and the only thing that would come up was musicians. It seems crazy to me, because I don’t do that now, but when I started in the pandemic it was a good route to finding artists that wouldn’t be included in an art history degree. But since then I have been using more exhibition catalogues and books, such as survey books which focus on artists from a specific country.
Where were you finding those books? Would you say there was a gap in the literature?
I would go out and buy them, but since the page got bigger I’ve been sent books. I would say the resources are there but there was a gap in the art history library.
Are there complexities in creating an art history linking artists by skin colour? I recently went to a poetry open mic night and a black poet had a line ‘I wasn’t born black you called me that’, how do you navigate linking artists by an essentially racist binary?
I think it was James Baldwin who said something like ‘I didn’t invent the [n*****]… I give you your problem back’. So, yes there is absolutely an element that you are grouping people together who may not have anything in common, but that’s what curating is, you make groups and categories that are arbitrary - a contemporary artist from London next to a Renaissance drawing of a black figure next to an 80’s Brazilian artist may only have their blackness in common… But the point is, I suppose, to showcase the multiplicity of blackness; it cannot be put into a box. Because the way I learnt about black artists at university was through the lens of the Black Arts Movements of the UK and US - which was interesting, but it meant I was only learning about blackness in art history in relation to English speaking western countries, but obviously blackness dictates peoples’ experiences in every context. Even in Nigeria where I’m from, the majority of the population is black but your blackness still affects the way you live and perceive yourself – it’s a formerly colonised country, and skin bleaching is part of the culture.
Yes, totally… It was nice to see you did a post about murals dating back to the 16th century in Northern Ghana, because something like that lies completely outside the predominately white western art scene.
Yes, they were murals of the Kassena ethnic group in Burkina Faso and Ghana. Another key thing is I don’t want people to look at the page and think ‘oh this is what black art history is’; you can’t put it in a box, which is why I’m so concerned about trying to showcase such a range of radically different artists, all black, but working within a broad range of histories and traditions.
But the focus for the podcast will be contemporary artists in a western context? Would you take contemporary “art” from outside the formal art system? For instance, indigenous textiles…
That’s an interesting point, I would love to do that but the way I have been working on it has been very rooted in a Western art-world context unfortunately. The main thing is to interview artists from different places, but I am limited by needing them to be able to speak English, so we can communicate. And I am interviewing them in a formal sense. I do need to interview bigger names first, to generate interest and create the platform to then be able to offer to people who are lesser known. So that is the dream. Another thing I want to do is to think about other places where blackness exists in the art ecosystem, like to interview black security guards, because I often get stopped by black security guards who want to show me something.
What would you say draws different people to art? What drew you to art?
I was lucky that art history was offered at my school, I loved it, I loved all the Renaissance stuff, Impressionism, literally everything, all the white shit, but there was no… Like we looked at Chris Ofili and that was it… I already started the ‘a black history of art’-esque stuff in school. Even though I was studying a very European Eurocentric style of art history, I was still finding ways to link it back to blackness. In 2016/17 I found the picture that is now the icon of the Instagram account and that was the first picture I ever posted a few years later. Even though it’s not by a black artist, it was the first time I was looking in depth at blackness in art, thinking about who this figure could be, where the sitter was from: it’s called ‘Portrait of a Black Woman’ or ‘Portrait of Madeleine’ by Marie-Guillemine Benoist, made in 1800.. I spoke about it for a competition and that was when I really fell in love with art history and decided I wanted to study it at uni. But at the time I wasn’t thinking about diversity or my own blackness, it was subconscious.
So, the page has a long history- I guess it was with the pandemic that gave you the time, but also BLM made the page so relevant?
Yeah, I started it in February 2020 not knowing we were going to enter the pandemic, then in June it really took off because suddenly everyone was interested in blackness.
But the podcast is the latest extension of the page, you're also a contributing editor at AnOther magazine and of course you're writing the book. Have you got any exhibitions coming up?
Yes, I have a column in AnOther magazine and I’m working as a curatorial researcher at an exhibition at the RA but I can’t talk too much about that…
Alayo Akinkugbe runs the @ablackhistoryofart Instagram account.
She also produces and hosts A Shared Gaze arts podcast
Your new podcast is an extension of your Instagram platform ‘A Black History of Art’; can you tell us about the origins of that?
In my second year of uni in 2020, I was halfway through the only contemporary art paper offered on my art history degree at Cambridge, and that was the first time I had been presented with black artists. And then I realised, in the first year we hadn’t studied a single black artist, even though we had supposedly gone through the entirety of art history. And because I enjoyed learning about people like Isaac Julien and Faith Ringgold, all these well-known black contemporary artists in the US and UK, and I didn’t want to stop learning about them, so I decided to start researching black artists and putting it on Instagram.
I noticed that, on the account, there is a focus on contemporary artists, and of course the podcast is interview-based so focuses on living artists; was focusing on contemporary artists a conscious decision?
I think it is because… I want to promote contemporary artists to have an impact on their lives, I mean I am also personally interested in contemporary art. I want to promote contemporary artists because doing so could have an impact on their careers, in terms of giving them more visibility. But I am also, personally, more interested in contemporary art than any other period.
I feel like coming from a formal art historical background, there are two approaches to looking at art: there is a very historical academic art history and then a more sociological approach especially when looking at contemporary art. What sort of approach are you taking in the podcast or is it more art criticism?
With the Instagram account I do research artists from an art historical approach which is informed by my work at uni, especially when looking at methods or black figures represented in historical works of art, like a drawing by Pisanello of a Black woman or a 17th century portrait of a Black minister in Bijapur, India. But then the sociological stuff comes in when I’m writing about contemporary art. I don’t think I’m engaging in art criticism… It’s more celebrating contemporary black artists. But to be honest, I haven’t put anything on my page that I’m not interested in or I don’t think should be platformed.
How is it that you decide who to put on and where do you come across them?
It’s kinda a mixture of things: I do get sent a lot of press releases, and of course it’s easier to write about artists that are having an exhibition at the moment, but when I began I wanted the page to have a very international approach, so I would look up a country for example Norway and research black artists there, or black artists in Brazil or Cuba. I remember searching for black Cuban artists and the only thing that would come up was musicians. It seems crazy to me, because I don’t do that now, but when I started in the pandemic it was a good route to finding artists that wouldn’t be included in an art history degree. But since then I have been using more exhibition catalogues and books, such as survey books which focus on artists from a specific country.
Where were you finding those books? Would you say there was a gap in the literature?
I would go out and buy them, but since the page got bigger I’ve been sent books. I would say the resources are there but there was a gap in the art history library.
Are there complexities in creating an art history linking artists by skin colour? I recently went to a poetry open mic night and a black poet had a line ‘I wasn’t born black you called me that’, how do you navigate linking artists by an essentially racist binary?
I think it was James Baldwin who said something like ‘I didn’t invent the [n*****]… I give you your problem back’. So, yes there is absolutely an element that you are grouping people together who may not have anything in common, but that’s what curating is, you make groups and categories that are arbitrary - a contemporary artist from London next to a Renaissance drawing of a black figure next to an 80’s Brazilian artist may only have their blackness in common… But the point is, I suppose, to showcase the multiplicity of blackness; it cannot be put into a box. Because the way I learnt about black artists at university was through the lens of the Black Arts Movements of the UK and US - which was interesting, but it meant I was only learning about blackness in art history in relation to English speaking western countries, but obviously blackness dictates peoples’ experiences in every context. Even in Nigeria where I’m from, the majority of the population is black but your blackness still affects the way you live and perceive yourself – it’s a formerly colonised country, and skin bleaching is part of the culture.
Yes, totally… It was nice to see you did a post about murals dating back to the 16th century in Northern Ghana, because something like that lies completely outside the predominately white western art scene.
Yes, they were murals of the Kassena ethnic group in Burkina Faso and Ghana. Another key thing is I don’t want people to look at the page and think ‘oh this is what black art history is’; you can’t put it in a box, which is why I’m so concerned about trying to showcase such a range of radically different artists, all black, but working within a broad range of histories and traditions.
But the focus for the podcast will be contemporary artists in a western context? Would you take contemporary “art” from outside the formal art system? For instance, indigenous textiles…
That’s an interesting point, I would love to do that but the way I have been working on it has been very rooted in a Western art-world context unfortunately. The main thing is to interview artists from different places, but I am limited by needing them to be able to speak English, so we can communicate. And I am interviewing them in a formal sense. I do need to interview bigger names first, to generate interest and create the platform to then be able to offer to people who are lesser known. So that is the dream. Another thing I want to do is to think about other places where blackness exists in the art ecosystem, like to interview black security guards, because I often get stopped by black security guards who want to show me something.
What would you say draws different people to art? What drew you to art?
I was lucky that art history was offered at my school, I loved it, I loved all the Renaissance stuff, Impressionism, literally everything, all the white shit, but there was no… Like we looked at Chris Ofili and that was it… I already started the ‘a black history of art’-esque stuff in school. Even though I was studying a very European Eurocentric style of art history, I was still finding ways to link it back to blackness. In 2016/17 I found the picture that is now the icon of the Instagram account and that was the first picture I ever posted a few years later. Even though it’s not by a black artist, it was the first time I was looking in depth at blackness in art, thinking about who this figure could be, where the sitter was from: it’s called ‘Portrait of a Black Woman’ or ‘Portrait of Madeleine’ by Marie-Guillemine Benoist, made in 1800.. I spoke about it for a competition and that was when I really fell in love with art history and decided I wanted to study it at uni. But at the time I wasn’t thinking about diversity or my own blackness, it was subconscious.
So, the page has a long history- I guess it was with the pandemic that gave you the time, but also BLM made the page so relevant?
Yeah, I started it in February 2020 not knowing we were going to enter the pandemic, then in June it really took off because suddenly everyone was interested in blackness.
But the podcast is the latest extension of the page, you're also a contributing editor at AnOther magazine and of course you're writing the book. Have you got any exhibitions coming up?
Yes, I have a column in AnOther magazine and I’m working as a curatorial researcher at an exhibition at the RA but I can’t talk too much about that…
Alayo Akinkugbe runs the @ablackhistoryofart Instagram account.
She also produces and hosts A Shared Gaze arts podcast
Your new podcast is an extension of your Instagram platform ‘A Black History of Art’; can you tell us about the origins of that?
In my second year of uni in 2020, I was halfway through the only contemporary art paper offered on my art history degree at Cambridge, and that was the first time I had been presented with black artists. And then I realised, in the first year we hadn’t studied a single black artist, even though we had supposedly gone through the entirety of art history. And because I enjoyed learning about people like Isaac Julien and Faith Ringgold, all these well-known black contemporary artists in the US and UK, and I didn’t want to stop learning about them, so I decided to start researching black artists and putting it on Instagram.
I noticed that, on the account, there is a focus on contemporary artists, and of course the podcast is interview-based so focuses on living artists; was focusing on contemporary artists a conscious decision?
I think it is because… I want to promote contemporary artists to have an impact on their lives, I mean I am also personally interested in contemporary art. I want to promote contemporary artists because doing so could have an impact on their careers, in terms of giving them more visibility. But I am also, personally, more interested in contemporary art than any other period.
I feel like coming from a formal art historical background, there are two approaches to looking at art: there is a very historical academic art history and then a more sociological approach especially when looking at contemporary art. What sort of approach are you taking in the podcast or is it more art criticism?
With the Instagram account I do research artists from an art historical approach which is informed by my work at uni, especially when looking at methods or black figures represented in historical works of art, like a drawing by Pisanello of a Black woman or a 17th century portrait of a Black minister in Bijapur, India. But then the sociological stuff comes in when I’m writing about contemporary art. I don’t think I’m engaging in art criticism… It’s more celebrating contemporary black artists. But to be honest, I haven’t put anything on my page that I’m not interested in or I don’t think should be platformed.
How is it that you decide who to put on and where do you come across them?
It’s kinda a mixture of things: I do get sent a lot of press releases, and of course it’s easier to write about artists that are having an exhibition at the moment, but when I began I wanted the page to have a very international approach, so I would look up a country for example Norway and research black artists there, or black artists in Brazil or Cuba. I remember searching for black Cuban artists and the only thing that would come up was musicians. It seems crazy to me, because I don’t do that now, but when I started in the pandemic it was a good route to finding artists that wouldn’t be included in an art history degree. But since then I have been using more exhibition catalogues and books, such as survey books which focus on artists from a specific country.
Where were you finding those books? Would you say there was a gap in the literature?
I would go out and buy them, but since the page got bigger I’ve been sent books. I would say the resources are there but there was a gap in the art history library.
Are there complexities in creating an art history linking artists by skin colour? I recently went to a poetry open mic night and a black poet had a line ‘I wasn’t born black you called me that’, how do you navigate linking artists by an essentially racist binary?
I think it was James Baldwin who said something like ‘I didn’t invent the [n*****]… I give you your problem back’. So, yes there is absolutely an element that you are grouping people together who may not have anything in common, but that’s what curating is, you make groups and categories that are arbitrary - a contemporary artist from London next to a Renaissance drawing of a black figure next to an 80’s Brazilian artist may only have their blackness in common… But the point is, I suppose, to showcase the multiplicity of blackness; it cannot be put into a box. Because the way I learnt about black artists at university was through the lens of the Black Arts Movements of the UK and US - which was interesting, but it meant I was only learning about blackness in art history in relation to English speaking western countries, but obviously blackness dictates peoples’ experiences in every context. Even in Nigeria where I’m from, the majority of the population is black but your blackness still affects the way you live and perceive yourself – it’s a formerly colonised country, and skin bleaching is part of the culture.
Yes, totally… It was nice to see you did a post about murals dating back to the 16th century in Northern Ghana, because something like that lies completely outside the predominately white western art scene.
Yes, they were murals of the Kassena ethnic group in Burkina Faso and Ghana. Another key thing is I don’t want people to look at the page and think ‘oh this is what black art history is’; you can’t put it in a box, which is why I’m so concerned about trying to showcase such a range of radically different artists, all black, but working within a broad range of histories and traditions.
But the focus for the podcast will be contemporary artists in a western context? Would you take contemporary “art” from outside the formal art system? For instance, indigenous textiles…
That’s an interesting point, I would love to do that but the way I have been working on it has been very rooted in a Western art-world context unfortunately. The main thing is to interview artists from different places, but I am limited by needing them to be able to speak English, so we can communicate. And I am interviewing them in a formal sense. I do need to interview bigger names first, to generate interest and create the platform to then be able to offer to people who are lesser known. So that is the dream. Another thing I want to do is to think about other places where blackness exists in the art ecosystem, like to interview black security guards, because I often get stopped by black security guards who want to show me something.
What would you say draws different people to art? What drew you to art?
I was lucky that art history was offered at my school, I loved it, I loved all the Renaissance stuff, Impressionism, literally everything, all the white shit, but there was no… Like we looked at Chris Ofili and that was it… I already started the ‘a black history of art’-esque stuff in school. Even though I was studying a very European Eurocentric style of art history, I was still finding ways to link it back to blackness. In 2016/17 I found the picture that is now the icon of the Instagram account and that was the first picture I ever posted a few years later. Even though it’s not by a black artist, it was the first time I was looking in depth at blackness in art, thinking about who this figure could be, where the sitter was from: it’s called ‘Portrait of a Black Woman’ or ‘Portrait of Madeleine’ by Marie-Guillemine Benoist, made in 1800.. I spoke about it for a competition and that was when I really fell in love with art history and decided I wanted to study it at uni. But at the time I wasn’t thinking about diversity or my own blackness, it was subconscious.
So, the page has a long history- I guess it was with the pandemic that gave you the time, but also BLM made the page so relevant?
Yeah, I started it in February 2020 not knowing we were going to enter the pandemic, then in June it really took off because suddenly everyone was interested in blackness.
But the podcast is the latest extension of the page, you're also a contributing editor at AnOther magazine and of course you're writing the book. Have you got any exhibitions coming up?
Yes, I have a column in AnOther magazine and I’m working as a curatorial researcher at an exhibition at the RA but I can’t talk too much about that…
Alayo Akinkugbe runs the @ablackhistoryofart Instagram account.
She also produces and hosts A Shared Gaze arts podcast
Your new podcast is an extension of your Instagram platform ‘A Black History of Art’; can you tell us about the origins of that?
In my second year of uni in 2020, I was halfway through the only contemporary art paper offered on my art history degree at Cambridge, and that was the first time I had been presented with black artists. And then I realised, in the first year we hadn’t studied a single black artist, even though we had supposedly gone through the entirety of art history. And because I enjoyed learning about people like Isaac Julien and Faith Ringgold, all these well-known black contemporary artists in the US and UK, and I didn’t want to stop learning about them, so I decided to start researching black artists and putting it on Instagram.
I noticed that, on the account, there is a focus on contemporary artists, and of course the podcast is interview-based so focuses on living artists; was focusing on contemporary artists a conscious decision?
I think it is because… I want to promote contemporary artists to have an impact on their lives, I mean I am also personally interested in contemporary art. I want to promote contemporary artists because doing so could have an impact on their careers, in terms of giving them more visibility. But I am also, personally, more interested in contemporary art than any other period.
I feel like coming from a formal art historical background, there are two approaches to looking at art: there is a very historical academic art history and then a more sociological approach especially when looking at contemporary art. What sort of approach are you taking in the podcast or is it more art criticism?
With the Instagram account I do research artists from an art historical approach which is informed by my work at uni, especially when looking at methods or black figures represented in historical works of art, like a drawing by Pisanello of a Black woman or a 17th century portrait of a Black minister in Bijapur, India. But then the sociological stuff comes in when I’m writing about contemporary art. I don’t think I’m engaging in art criticism… It’s more celebrating contemporary black artists. But to be honest, I haven’t put anything on my page that I’m not interested in or I don’t think should be platformed.
How is it that you decide who to put on and where do you come across them?
It’s kinda a mixture of things: I do get sent a lot of press releases, and of course it’s easier to write about artists that are having an exhibition at the moment, but when I began I wanted the page to have a very international approach, so I would look up a country for example Norway and research black artists there, or black artists in Brazil or Cuba. I remember searching for black Cuban artists and the only thing that would come up was musicians. It seems crazy to me, because I don’t do that now, but when I started in the pandemic it was a good route to finding artists that wouldn’t be included in an art history degree. But since then I have been using more exhibition catalogues and books, such as survey books which focus on artists from a specific country.
Where were you finding those books? Would you say there was a gap in the literature?
I would go out and buy them, but since the page got bigger I’ve been sent books. I would say the resources are there but there was a gap in the art history library.
Are there complexities in creating an art history linking artists by skin colour? I recently went to a poetry open mic night and a black poet had a line ‘I wasn’t born black you called me that’, how do you navigate linking artists by an essentially racist binary?
I think it was James Baldwin who said something like ‘I didn’t invent the [n*****]… I give you your problem back’. So, yes there is absolutely an element that you are grouping people together who may not have anything in common, but that’s what curating is, you make groups and categories that are arbitrary - a contemporary artist from London next to a Renaissance drawing of a black figure next to an 80’s Brazilian artist may only have their blackness in common… But the point is, I suppose, to showcase the multiplicity of blackness; it cannot be put into a box. Because the way I learnt about black artists at university was through the lens of the Black Arts Movements of the UK and US - which was interesting, but it meant I was only learning about blackness in art history in relation to English speaking western countries, but obviously blackness dictates peoples’ experiences in every context. Even in Nigeria where I’m from, the majority of the population is black but your blackness still affects the way you live and perceive yourself – it’s a formerly colonised country, and skin bleaching is part of the culture.
Yes, totally… It was nice to see you did a post about murals dating back to the 16th century in Northern Ghana, because something like that lies completely outside the predominately white western art scene.
Yes, they were murals of the Kassena ethnic group in Burkina Faso and Ghana. Another key thing is I don’t want people to look at the page and think ‘oh this is what black art history is’; you can’t put it in a box, which is why I’m so concerned about trying to showcase such a range of radically different artists, all black, but working within a broad range of histories and traditions.
But the focus for the podcast will be contemporary artists in a western context? Would you take contemporary “art” from outside the formal art system? For instance, indigenous textiles…
That’s an interesting point, I would love to do that but the way I have been working on it has been very rooted in a Western art-world context unfortunately. The main thing is to interview artists from different places, but I am limited by needing them to be able to speak English, so we can communicate. And I am interviewing them in a formal sense. I do need to interview bigger names first, to generate interest and create the platform to then be able to offer to people who are lesser known. So that is the dream. Another thing I want to do is to think about other places where blackness exists in the art ecosystem, like to interview black security guards, because I often get stopped by black security guards who want to show me something.
What would you say draws different people to art? What drew you to art?
I was lucky that art history was offered at my school, I loved it, I loved all the Renaissance stuff, Impressionism, literally everything, all the white shit, but there was no… Like we looked at Chris Ofili and that was it… I already started the ‘a black history of art’-esque stuff in school. Even though I was studying a very European Eurocentric style of art history, I was still finding ways to link it back to blackness. In 2016/17 I found the picture that is now the icon of the Instagram account and that was the first picture I ever posted a few years later. Even though it’s not by a black artist, it was the first time I was looking in depth at blackness in art, thinking about who this figure could be, where the sitter was from: it’s called ‘Portrait of a Black Woman’ or ‘Portrait of Madeleine’ by Marie-Guillemine Benoist, made in 1800.. I spoke about it for a competition and that was when I really fell in love with art history and decided I wanted to study it at uni. But at the time I wasn’t thinking about diversity or my own blackness, it was subconscious.
So, the page has a long history- I guess it was with the pandemic that gave you the time, but also BLM made the page so relevant?
Yeah, I started it in February 2020 not knowing we were going to enter the pandemic, then in June it really took off because suddenly everyone was interested in blackness.
But the podcast is the latest extension of the page, you're also a contributing editor at AnOther magazine and of course you're writing the book. Have you got any exhibitions coming up?
Yes, I have a column in AnOther magazine and I’m working as a curatorial researcher at an exhibition at the RA but I can’t talk too much about that…
Alayo Akinkugbe runs the @ablackhistoryofart Instagram account.
She also produces and hosts A Shared Gaze arts podcast
Your new podcast is an extension of your Instagram platform ‘A Black History of Art’; can you tell us about the origins of that?
In my second year of uni in 2020, I was halfway through the only contemporary art paper offered on my art history degree at Cambridge, and that was the first time I had been presented with black artists. And then I realised, in the first year we hadn’t studied a single black artist, even though we had supposedly gone through the entirety of art history. And because I enjoyed learning about people like Isaac Julien and Faith Ringgold, all these well-known black contemporary artists in the US and UK, and I didn’t want to stop learning about them, so I decided to start researching black artists and putting it on Instagram.
I noticed that, on the account, there is a focus on contemporary artists, and of course the podcast is interview-based so focuses on living artists; was focusing on contemporary artists a conscious decision?
I think it is because… I want to promote contemporary artists to have an impact on their lives, I mean I am also personally interested in contemporary art. I want to promote contemporary artists because doing so could have an impact on their careers, in terms of giving them more visibility. But I am also, personally, more interested in contemporary art than any other period.
I feel like coming from a formal art historical background, there are two approaches to looking at art: there is a very historical academic art history and then a more sociological approach especially when looking at contemporary art. What sort of approach are you taking in the podcast or is it more art criticism?
With the Instagram account I do research artists from an art historical approach which is informed by my work at uni, especially when looking at methods or black figures represented in historical works of art, like a drawing by Pisanello of a Black woman or a 17th century portrait of a Black minister in Bijapur, India. But then the sociological stuff comes in when I’m writing about contemporary art. I don’t think I’m engaging in art criticism… It’s more celebrating contemporary black artists. But to be honest, I haven’t put anything on my page that I’m not interested in or I don’t think should be platformed.
How is it that you decide who to put on and where do you come across them?
It’s kinda a mixture of things: I do get sent a lot of press releases, and of course it’s easier to write about artists that are having an exhibition at the moment, but when I began I wanted the page to have a very international approach, so I would look up a country for example Norway and research black artists there, or black artists in Brazil or Cuba. I remember searching for black Cuban artists and the only thing that would come up was musicians. It seems crazy to me, because I don’t do that now, but when I started in the pandemic it was a good route to finding artists that wouldn’t be included in an art history degree. But since then I have been using more exhibition catalogues and books, such as survey books which focus on artists from a specific country.
Where were you finding those books? Would you say there was a gap in the literature?
I would go out and buy them, but since the page got bigger I’ve been sent books. I would say the resources are there but there was a gap in the art history library.
Are there complexities in creating an art history linking artists by skin colour? I recently went to a poetry open mic night and a black poet had a line ‘I wasn’t born black you called me that’, how do you navigate linking artists by an essentially racist binary?
I think it was James Baldwin who said something like ‘I didn’t invent the [n*****]… I give you your problem back’. So, yes there is absolutely an element that you are grouping people together who may not have anything in common, but that’s what curating is, you make groups and categories that are arbitrary - a contemporary artist from London next to a Renaissance drawing of a black figure next to an 80’s Brazilian artist may only have their blackness in common… But the point is, I suppose, to showcase the multiplicity of blackness; it cannot be put into a box. Because the way I learnt about black artists at university was through the lens of the Black Arts Movements of the UK and US - which was interesting, but it meant I was only learning about blackness in art history in relation to English speaking western countries, but obviously blackness dictates peoples’ experiences in every context. Even in Nigeria where I’m from, the majority of the population is black but your blackness still affects the way you live and perceive yourself – it’s a formerly colonised country, and skin bleaching is part of the culture.
Yes, totally… It was nice to see you did a post about murals dating back to the 16th century in Northern Ghana, because something like that lies completely outside the predominately white western art scene.
Yes, they were murals of the Kassena ethnic group in Burkina Faso and Ghana. Another key thing is I don’t want people to look at the page and think ‘oh this is what black art history is’; you can’t put it in a box, which is why I’m so concerned about trying to showcase such a range of radically different artists, all black, but working within a broad range of histories and traditions.
But the focus for the podcast will be contemporary artists in a western context? Would you take contemporary “art” from outside the formal art system? For instance, indigenous textiles…
That’s an interesting point, I would love to do that but the way I have been working on it has been very rooted in a Western art-world context unfortunately. The main thing is to interview artists from different places, but I am limited by needing them to be able to speak English, so we can communicate. And I am interviewing them in a formal sense. I do need to interview bigger names first, to generate interest and create the platform to then be able to offer to people who are lesser known. So that is the dream. Another thing I want to do is to think about other places where blackness exists in the art ecosystem, like to interview black security guards, because I often get stopped by black security guards who want to show me something.
What would you say draws different people to art? What drew you to art?
I was lucky that art history was offered at my school, I loved it, I loved all the Renaissance stuff, Impressionism, literally everything, all the white shit, but there was no… Like we looked at Chris Ofili and that was it… I already started the ‘a black history of art’-esque stuff in school. Even though I was studying a very European Eurocentric style of art history, I was still finding ways to link it back to blackness. In 2016/17 I found the picture that is now the icon of the Instagram account and that was the first picture I ever posted a few years later. Even though it’s not by a black artist, it was the first time I was looking in depth at blackness in art, thinking about who this figure could be, where the sitter was from: it’s called ‘Portrait of a Black Woman’ or ‘Portrait of Madeleine’ by Marie-Guillemine Benoist, made in 1800.. I spoke about it for a competition and that was when I really fell in love with art history and decided I wanted to study it at uni. But at the time I wasn’t thinking about diversity or my own blackness, it was subconscious.
So, the page has a long history- I guess it was with the pandemic that gave you the time, but also BLM made the page so relevant?
Yeah, I started it in February 2020 not knowing we were going to enter the pandemic, then in June it really took off because suddenly everyone was interested in blackness.
But the podcast is the latest extension of the page, you're also a contributing editor at AnOther magazine and of course you're writing the book. Have you got any exhibitions coming up?
Yes, I have a column in AnOther magazine and I’m working as a curatorial researcher at an exhibition at the RA but I can’t talk too much about that…
Alayo Akinkugbe runs the @ablackhistoryofart Instagram account.
She also produces and hosts A Shared Gaze arts podcast
Your new podcast is an extension of your Instagram platform ‘A Black History of Art’; can you tell us about the origins of that?
In my second year of uni in 2020, I was halfway through the only contemporary art paper offered on my art history degree at Cambridge, and that was the first time I had been presented with black artists. And then I realised, in the first year we hadn’t studied a single black artist, even though we had supposedly gone through the entirety of art history. And because I enjoyed learning about people like Isaac Julien and Faith Ringgold, all these well-known black contemporary artists in the US and UK, and I didn’t want to stop learning about them, so I decided to start researching black artists and putting it on Instagram.
I noticed that, on the account, there is a focus on contemporary artists, and of course the podcast is interview-based so focuses on living artists; was focusing on contemporary artists a conscious decision?
I think it is because… I want to promote contemporary artists to have an impact on their lives, I mean I am also personally interested in contemporary art. I want to promote contemporary artists because doing so could have an impact on their careers, in terms of giving them more visibility. But I am also, personally, more interested in contemporary art than any other period.
I feel like coming from a formal art historical background, there are two approaches to looking at art: there is a very historical academic art history and then a more sociological approach especially when looking at contemporary art. What sort of approach are you taking in the podcast or is it more art criticism?
With the Instagram account I do research artists from an art historical approach which is informed by my work at uni, especially when looking at methods or black figures represented in historical works of art, like a drawing by Pisanello of a Black woman or a 17th century portrait of a Black minister in Bijapur, India. But then the sociological stuff comes in when I’m writing about contemporary art. I don’t think I’m engaging in art criticism… It’s more celebrating contemporary black artists. But to be honest, I haven’t put anything on my page that I’m not interested in or I don’t think should be platformed.
How is it that you decide who to put on and where do you come across them?
It’s kinda a mixture of things: I do get sent a lot of press releases, and of course it’s easier to write about artists that are having an exhibition at the moment, but when I began I wanted the page to have a very international approach, so I would look up a country for example Norway and research black artists there, or black artists in Brazil or Cuba. I remember searching for black Cuban artists and the only thing that would come up was musicians. It seems crazy to me, because I don’t do that now, but when I started in the pandemic it was a good route to finding artists that wouldn’t be included in an art history degree. But since then I have been using more exhibition catalogues and books, such as survey books which focus on artists from a specific country.
Where were you finding those books? Would you say there was a gap in the literature?
I would go out and buy them, but since the page got bigger I’ve been sent books. I would say the resources are there but there was a gap in the art history library.
Are there complexities in creating an art history linking artists by skin colour? I recently went to a poetry open mic night and a black poet had a line ‘I wasn’t born black you called me that’, how do you navigate linking artists by an essentially racist binary?
I think it was James Baldwin who said something like ‘I didn’t invent the [n*****]… I give you your problem back’. So, yes there is absolutely an element that you are grouping people together who may not have anything in common, but that’s what curating is, you make groups and categories that are arbitrary - a contemporary artist from London next to a Renaissance drawing of a black figure next to an 80’s Brazilian artist may only have their blackness in common… But the point is, I suppose, to showcase the multiplicity of blackness; it cannot be put into a box. Because the way I learnt about black artists at university was through the lens of the Black Arts Movements of the UK and US - which was interesting, but it meant I was only learning about blackness in art history in relation to English speaking western countries, but obviously blackness dictates peoples’ experiences in every context. Even in Nigeria where I’m from, the majority of the population is black but your blackness still affects the way you live and perceive yourself – it’s a formerly colonised country, and skin bleaching is part of the culture.
Yes, totally… It was nice to see you did a post about murals dating back to the 16th century in Northern Ghana, because something like that lies completely outside the predominately white western art scene.
Yes, they were murals of the Kassena ethnic group in Burkina Faso and Ghana. Another key thing is I don’t want people to look at the page and think ‘oh this is what black art history is’; you can’t put it in a box, which is why I’m so concerned about trying to showcase such a range of radically different artists, all black, but working within a broad range of histories and traditions.
But the focus for the podcast will be contemporary artists in a western context? Would you take contemporary “art” from outside the formal art system? For instance, indigenous textiles…
That’s an interesting point, I would love to do that but the way I have been working on it has been very rooted in a Western art-world context unfortunately. The main thing is to interview artists from different places, but I am limited by needing them to be able to speak English, so we can communicate. And I am interviewing them in a formal sense. I do need to interview bigger names first, to generate interest and create the platform to then be able to offer to people who are lesser known. So that is the dream. Another thing I want to do is to think about other places where blackness exists in the art ecosystem, like to interview black security guards, because I often get stopped by black security guards who want to show me something.
What would you say draws different people to art? What drew you to art?
I was lucky that art history was offered at my school, I loved it, I loved all the Renaissance stuff, Impressionism, literally everything, all the white shit, but there was no… Like we looked at Chris Ofili and that was it… I already started the ‘a black history of art’-esque stuff in school. Even though I was studying a very European Eurocentric style of art history, I was still finding ways to link it back to blackness. In 2016/17 I found the picture that is now the icon of the Instagram account and that was the first picture I ever posted a few years later. Even though it’s not by a black artist, it was the first time I was looking in depth at blackness in art, thinking about who this figure could be, where the sitter was from: it’s called ‘Portrait of a Black Woman’ or ‘Portrait of Madeleine’ by Marie-Guillemine Benoist, made in 1800.. I spoke about it for a competition and that was when I really fell in love with art history and decided I wanted to study it at uni. But at the time I wasn’t thinking about diversity or my own blackness, it was subconscious.
So, the page has a long history- I guess it was with the pandemic that gave you the time, but also BLM made the page so relevant?
Yeah, I started it in February 2020 not knowing we were going to enter the pandemic, then in June it really took off because suddenly everyone was interested in blackness.
But the podcast is the latest extension of the page, you're also a contributing editor at AnOther magazine and of course you're writing the book. Have you got any exhibitions coming up?
Yes, I have a column in AnOther magazine and I’m working as a curatorial researcher at an exhibition at the RA but I can’t talk too much about that…
Alayo Akinkugbe runs the @ablackhistoryofart Instagram account.
She also produces and hosts A Shared Gaze arts podcast
Your new podcast is an extension of your Instagram platform ‘A Black History of Art’; can you tell us about the origins of that?
In my second year of uni in 2020, I was halfway through the only contemporary art paper offered on my art history degree at Cambridge, and that was the first time I had been presented with black artists. And then I realised, in the first year we hadn’t studied a single black artist, even though we had supposedly gone through the entirety of art history. And because I enjoyed learning about people like Isaac Julien and Faith Ringgold, all these well-known black contemporary artists in the US and UK, and I didn’t want to stop learning about them, so I decided to start researching black artists and putting it on Instagram.
I noticed that, on the account, there is a focus on contemporary artists, and of course the podcast is interview-based so focuses on living artists; was focusing on contemporary artists a conscious decision?
I think it is because… I want to promote contemporary artists to have an impact on their lives, I mean I am also personally interested in contemporary art. I want to promote contemporary artists because doing so could have an impact on their careers, in terms of giving them more visibility. But I am also, personally, more interested in contemporary art than any other period.
I feel like coming from a formal art historical background, there are two approaches to looking at art: there is a very historical academic art history and then a more sociological approach especially when looking at contemporary art. What sort of approach are you taking in the podcast or is it more art criticism?
With the Instagram account I do research artists from an art historical approach which is informed by my work at uni, especially when looking at methods or black figures represented in historical works of art, like a drawing by Pisanello of a Black woman or a 17th century portrait of a Black minister in Bijapur, India. But then the sociological stuff comes in when I’m writing about contemporary art. I don’t think I’m engaging in art criticism… It’s more celebrating contemporary black artists. But to be honest, I haven’t put anything on my page that I’m not interested in or I don’t think should be platformed.
How is it that you decide who to put on and where do you come across them?
It’s kinda a mixture of things: I do get sent a lot of press releases, and of course it’s easier to write about artists that are having an exhibition at the moment, but when I began I wanted the page to have a very international approach, so I would look up a country for example Norway and research black artists there, or black artists in Brazil or Cuba. I remember searching for black Cuban artists and the only thing that would come up was musicians. It seems crazy to me, because I don’t do that now, but when I started in the pandemic it was a good route to finding artists that wouldn’t be included in an art history degree. But since then I have been using more exhibition catalogues and books, such as survey books which focus on artists from a specific country.
Where were you finding those books? Would you say there was a gap in the literature?
I would go out and buy them, but since the page got bigger I’ve been sent books. I would say the resources are there but there was a gap in the art history library.
Are there complexities in creating an art history linking artists by skin colour? I recently went to a poetry open mic night and a black poet had a line ‘I wasn’t born black you called me that’, how do you navigate linking artists by an essentially racist binary?
I think it was James Baldwin who said something like ‘I didn’t invent the [n*****]… I give you your problem back’. So, yes there is absolutely an element that you are grouping people together who may not have anything in common, but that’s what curating is, you make groups and categories that are arbitrary - a contemporary artist from London next to a Renaissance drawing of a black figure next to an 80’s Brazilian artist may only have their blackness in common… But the point is, I suppose, to showcase the multiplicity of blackness; it cannot be put into a box. Because the way I learnt about black artists at university was through the lens of the Black Arts Movements of the UK and US - which was interesting, but it meant I was only learning about blackness in art history in relation to English speaking western countries, but obviously blackness dictates peoples’ experiences in every context. Even in Nigeria where I’m from, the majority of the population is black but your blackness still affects the way you live and perceive yourself – it’s a formerly colonised country, and skin bleaching is part of the culture.
Yes, totally… It was nice to see you did a post about murals dating back to the 16th century in Northern Ghana, because something like that lies completely outside the predominately white western art scene.
Yes, they were murals of the Kassena ethnic group in Burkina Faso and Ghana. Another key thing is I don’t want people to look at the page and think ‘oh this is what black art history is’; you can’t put it in a box, which is why I’m so concerned about trying to showcase such a range of radically different artists, all black, but working within a broad range of histories and traditions.
But the focus for the podcast will be contemporary artists in a western context? Would you take contemporary “art” from outside the formal art system? For instance, indigenous textiles…
That’s an interesting point, I would love to do that but the way I have been working on it has been very rooted in a Western art-world context unfortunately. The main thing is to interview artists from different places, but I am limited by needing them to be able to speak English, so we can communicate. And I am interviewing them in a formal sense. I do need to interview bigger names first, to generate interest and create the platform to then be able to offer to people who are lesser known. So that is the dream. Another thing I want to do is to think about other places where blackness exists in the art ecosystem, like to interview black security guards, because I often get stopped by black security guards who want to show me something.
What would you say draws different people to art? What drew you to art?
I was lucky that art history was offered at my school, I loved it, I loved all the Renaissance stuff, Impressionism, literally everything, all the white shit, but there was no… Like we looked at Chris Ofili and that was it… I already started the ‘a black history of art’-esque stuff in school. Even though I was studying a very European Eurocentric style of art history, I was still finding ways to link it back to blackness. In 2016/17 I found the picture that is now the icon of the Instagram account and that was the first picture I ever posted a few years later. Even though it’s not by a black artist, it was the first time I was looking in depth at blackness in art, thinking about who this figure could be, where the sitter was from: it’s called ‘Portrait of a Black Woman’ or ‘Portrait of Madeleine’ by Marie-Guillemine Benoist, made in 1800.. I spoke about it for a competition and that was when I really fell in love with art history and decided I wanted to study it at uni. But at the time I wasn’t thinking about diversity or my own blackness, it was subconscious.
So, the page has a long history- I guess it was with the pandemic that gave you the time, but also BLM made the page so relevant?
Yeah, I started it in February 2020 not knowing we were going to enter the pandemic, then in June it really took off because suddenly everyone was interested in blackness.
But the podcast is the latest extension of the page, you're also a contributing editor at AnOther magazine and of course you're writing the book. Have you got any exhibitions coming up?
Yes, I have a column in AnOther magazine and I’m working as a curatorial researcher at an exhibition at the RA but I can’t talk too much about that…
Alayo Akinkugbe runs the @ablackhistoryofart Instagram account.
She also produces and hosts A Shared Gaze arts podcast
Your new podcast is an extension of your Instagram platform ‘A Black History of Art’; can you tell us about the origins of that?
In my second year of uni in 2020, I was halfway through the only contemporary art paper offered on my art history degree at Cambridge, and that was the first time I had been presented with black artists. And then I realised, in the first year we hadn’t studied a single black artist, even though we had supposedly gone through the entirety of art history. And because I enjoyed learning about people like Isaac Julien and Faith Ringgold, all these well-known black contemporary artists in the US and UK, and I didn’t want to stop learning about them, so I decided to start researching black artists and putting it on Instagram.
I noticed that, on the account, there is a focus on contemporary artists, and of course the podcast is interview-based so focuses on living artists; was focusing on contemporary artists a conscious decision?
I think it is because… I want to promote contemporary artists to have an impact on their lives, I mean I am also personally interested in contemporary art. I want to promote contemporary artists because doing so could have an impact on their careers, in terms of giving them more visibility. But I am also, personally, more interested in contemporary art than any other period.
I feel like coming from a formal art historical background, there are two approaches to looking at art: there is a very historical academic art history and then a more sociological approach especially when looking at contemporary art. What sort of approach are you taking in the podcast or is it more art criticism?
With the Instagram account I do research artists from an art historical approach which is informed by my work at uni, especially when looking at methods or black figures represented in historical works of art, like a drawing by Pisanello of a Black woman or a 17th century portrait of a Black minister in Bijapur, India. But then the sociological stuff comes in when I’m writing about contemporary art. I don’t think I’m engaging in art criticism… It’s more celebrating contemporary black artists. But to be honest, I haven’t put anything on my page that I’m not interested in or I don’t think should be platformed.
How is it that you decide who to put on and where do you come across them?
It’s kinda a mixture of things: I do get sent a lot of press releases, and of course it’s easier to write about artists that are having an exhibition at the moment, but when I began I wanted the page to have a very international approach, so I would look up a country for example Norway and research black artists there, or black artists in Brazil or Cuba. I remember searching for black Cuban artists and the only thing that would come up was musicians. It seems crazy to me, because I don’t do that now, but when I started in the pandemic it was a good route to finding artists that wouldn’t be included in an art history degree. But since then I have been using more exhibition catalogues and books, such as survey books which focus on artists from a specific country.
Where were you finding those books? Would you say there was a gap in the literature?
I would go out and buy them, but since the page got bigger I’ve been sent books. I would say the resources are there but there was a gap in the art history library.
Are there complexities in creating an art history linking artists by skin colour? I recently went to a poetry open mic night and a black poet had a line ‘I wasn’t born black you called me that’, how do you navigate linking artists by an essentially racist binary?
I think it was James Baldwin who said something like ‘I didn’t invent the [n*****]… I give you your problem back’. So, yes there is absolutely an element that you are grouping people together who may not have anything in common, but that’s what curating is, you make groups and categories that are arbitrary - a contemporary artist from London next to a Renaissance drawing of a black figure next to an 80’s Brazilian artist may only have their blackness in common… But the point is, I suppose, to showcase the multiplicity of blackness; it cannot be put into a box. Because the way I learnt about black artists at university was through the lens of the Black Arts Movements of the UK and US - which was interesting, but it meant I was only learning about blackness in art history in relation to English speaking western countries, but obviously blackness dictates peoples’ experiences in every context. Even in Nigeria where I’m from, the majority of the population is black but your blackness still affects the way you live and perceive yourself – it’s a formerly colonised country, and skin bleaching is part of the culture.
Yes, totally… It was nice to see you did a post about murals dating back to the 16th century in Northern Ghana, because something like that lies completely outside the predominately white western art scene.
Yes, they were murals of the Kassena ethnic group in Burkina Faso and Ghana. Another key thing is I don’t want people to look at the page and think ‘oh this is what black art history is’; you can’t put it in a box, which is why I’m so concerned about trying to showcase such a range of radically different artists, all black, but working within a broad range of histories and traditions.
But the focus for the podcast will be contemporary artists in a western context? Would you take contemporary “art” from outside the formal art system? For instance, indigenous textiles…
That’s an interesting point, I would love to do that but the way I have been working on it has been very rooted in a Western art-world context unfortunately. The main thing is to interview artists from different places, but I am limited by needing them to be able to speak English, so we can communicate. And I am interviewing them in a formal sense. I do need to interview bigger names first, to generate interest and create the platform to then be able to offer to people who are lesser known. So that is the dream. Another thing I want to do is to think about other places where blackness exists in the art ecosystem, like to interview black security guards, because I often get stopped by black security guards who want to show me something.
What would you say draws different people to art? What drew you to art?
I was lucky that art history was offered at my school, I loved it, I loved all the Renaissance stuff, Impressionism, literally everything, all the white shit, but there was no… Like we looked at Chris Ofili and that was it… I already started the ‘a black history of art’-esque stuff in school. Even though I was studying a very European Eurocentric style of art history, I was still finding ways to link it back to blackness. In 2016/17 I found the picture that is now the icon of the Instagram account and that was the first picture I ever posted a few years later. Even though it’s not by a black artist, it was the first time I was looking in depth at blackness in art, thinking about who this figure could be, where the sitter was from: it’s called ‘Portrait of a Black Woman’ or ‘Portrait of Madeleine’ by Marie-Guillemine Benoist, made in 1800.. I spoke about it for a competition and that was when I really fell in love with art history and decided I wanted to study it at uni. But at the time I wasn’t thinking about diversity or my own blackness, it was subconscious.
So, the page has a long history- I guess it was with the pandemic that gave you the time, but also BLM made the page so relevant?
Yeah, I started it in February 2020 not knowing we were going to enter the pandemic, then in June it really took off because suddenly everyone was interested in blackness.
But the podcast is the latest extension of the page, you're also a contributing editor at AnOther magazine and of course you're writing the book. Have you got any exhibitions coming up?
Yes, I have a column in AnOther magazine and I’m working as a curatorial researcher at an exhibition at the RA but I can’t talk too much about that…
Alayo Akinkugbe runs the @ablackhistoryofart Instagram account.
She also produces and hosts A Shared Gaze arts podcast
Your new podcast is an extension of your Instagram platform ‘A Black History of Art’; can you tell us about the origins of that?
In my second year of uni in 2020, I was halfway through the only contemporary art paper offered on my art history degree at Cambridge, and that was the first time I had been presented with black artists. And then I realised, in the first year we hadn’t studied a single black artist, even though we had supposedly gone through the entirety of art history. And because I enjoyed learning about people like Isaac Julien and Faith Ringgold, all these well-known black contemporary artists in the US and UK, and I didn’t want to stop learning about them, so I decided to start researching black artists and putting it on Instagram.
I noticed that, on the account, there is a focus on contemporary artists, and of course the podcast is interview-based so focuses on living artists; was focusing on contemporary artists a conscious decision?
I think it is because… I want to promote contemporary artists to have an impact on their lives, I mean I am also personally interested in contemporary art. I want to promote contemporary artists because doing so could have an impact on their careers, in terms of giving them more visibility. But I am also, personally, more interested in contemporary art than any other period.
I feel like coming from a formal art historical background, there are two approaches to looking at art: there is a very historical academic art history and then a more sociological approach especially when looking at contemporary art. What sort of approach are you taking in the podcast or is it more art criticism?
With the Instagram account I do research artists from an art historical approach which is informed by my work at uni, especially when looking at methods or black figures represented in historical works of art, like a drawing by Pisanello of a Black woman or a 17th century portrait of a Black minister in Bijapur, India. But then the sociological stuff comes in when I’m writing about contemporary art. I don’t think I’m engaging in art criticism… It’s more celebrating contemporary black artists. But to be honest, I haven’t put anything on my page that I’m not interested in or I don’t think should be platformed.
How is it that you decide who to put on and where do you come across them?
It’s kinda a mixture of things: I do get sent a lot of press releases, and of course it’s easier to write about artists that are having an exhibition at the moment, but when I began I wanted the page to have a very international approach, so I would look up a country for example Norway and research black artists there, or black artists in Brazil or Cuba. I remember searching for black Cuban artists and the only thing that would come up was musicians. It seems crazy to me, because I don’t do that now, but when I started in the pandemic it was a good route to finding artists that wouldn’t be included in an art history degree. But since then I have been using more exhibition catalogues and books, such as survey books which focus on artists from a specific country.
Where were you finding those books? Would you say there was a gap in the literature?
I would go out and buy them, but since the page got bigger I’ve been sent books. I would say the resources are there but there was a gap in the art history library.
Are there complexities in creating an art history linking artists by skin colour? I recently went to a poetry open mic night and a black poet had a line ‘I wasn’t born black you called me that’, how do you navigate linking artists by an essentially racist binary?
I think it was James Baldwin who said something like ‘I didn’t invent the [n*****]… I give you your problem back’. So, yes there is absolutely an element that you are grouping people together who may not have anything in common, but that’s what curating is, you make groups and categories that are arbitrary - a contemporary artist from London next to a Renaissance drawing of a black figure next to an 80’s Brazilian artist may only have their blackness in common… But the point is, I suppose, to showcase the multiplicity of blackness; it cannot be put into a box. Because the way I learnt about black artists at university was through the lens of the Black Arts Movements of the UK and US - which was interesting, but it meant I was only learning about blackness in art history in relation to English speaking western countries, but obviously blackness dictates peoples’ experiences in every context. Even in Nigeria where I’m from, the majority of the population is black but your blackness still affects the way you live and perceive yourself – it’s a formerly colonised country, and skin bleaching is part of the culture.
Yes, totally… It was nice to see you did a post about murals dating back to the 16th century in Northern Ghana, because something like that lies completely outside the predominately white western art scene.
Yes, they were murals of the Kassena ethnic group in Burkina Faso and Ghana. Another key thing is I don’t want people to look at the page and think ‘oh this is what black art history is’; you can’t put it in a box, which is why I’m so concerned about trying to showcase such a range of radically different artists, all black, but working within a broad range of histories and traditions.
But the focus for the podcast will be contemporary artists in a western context? Would you take contemporary “art” from outside the formal art system? For instance, indigenous textiles…
That’s an interesting point, I would love to do that but the way I have been working on it has been very rooted in a Western art-world context unfortunately. The main thing is to interview artists from different places, but I am limited by needing them to be able to speak English, so we can communicate. And I am interviewing them in a formal sense. I do need to interview bigger names first, to generate interest and create the platform to then be able to offer to people who are lesser known. So that is the dream. Another thing I want to do is to think about other places where blackness exists in the art ecosystem, like to interview black security guards, because I often get stopped by black security guards who want to show me something.
What would you say draws different people to art? What drew you to art?
I was lucky that art history was offered at my school, I loved it, I loved all the Renaissance stuff, Impressionism, literally everything, all the white shit, but there was no… Like we looked at Chris Ofili and that was it… I already started the ‘a black history of art’-esque stuff in school. Even though I was studying a very European Eurocentric style of art history, I was still finding ways to link it back to blackness. In 2016/17 I found the picture that is now the icon of the Instagram account and that was the first picture I ever posted a few years later. Even though it’s not by a black artist, it was the first time I was looking in depth at blackness in art, thinking about who this figure could be, where the sitter was from: it’s called ‘Portrait of a Black Woman’ or ‘Portrait of Madeleine’ by Marie-Guillemine Benoist, made in 1800.. I spoke about it for a competition and that was when I really fell in love with art history and decided I wanted to study it at uni. But at the time I wasn’t thinking about diversity or my own blackness, it was subconscious.
So, the page has a long history- I guess it was with the pandemic that gave you the time, but also BLM made the page so relevant?
Yeah, I started it in February 2020 not knowing we were going to enter the pandemic, then in June it really took off because suddenly everyone was interested in blackness.
But the podcast is the latest extension of the page, you're also a contributing editor at AnOther magazine and of course you're writing the book. Have you got any exhibitions coming up?
Yes, I have a column in AnOther magazine and I’m working as a curatorial researcher at an exhibition at the RA but I can’t talk too much about that…
Alayo Akinkugbe runs the @ablackhistoryofart Instagram account.
She also produces and hosts A Shared Gaze arts podcast
Your new podcast is an extension of your Instagram platform ‘A Black History of Art’; can you tell us about the origins of that?
In my second year of uni in 2020, I was halfway through the only contemporary art paper offered on my art history degree at Cambridge, and that was the first time I had been presented with black artists. And then I realised, in the first year we hadn’t studied a single black artist, even though we had supposedly gone through the entirety of art history. And because I enjoyed learning about people like Isaac Julien and Faith Ringgold, all these well-known black contemporary artists in the US and UK, and I didn’t want to stop learning about them, so I decided to start researching black artists and putting it on Instagram.
I noticed that, on the account, there is a focus on contemporary artists, and of course the podcast is interview-based so focuses on living artists; was focusing on contemporary artists a conscious decision?
I think it is because… I want to promote contemporary artists to have an impact on their lives, I mean I am also personally interested in contemporary art. I want to promote contemporary artists because doing so could have an impact on their careers, in terms of giving them more visibility. But I am also, personally, more interested in contemporary art than any other period.
I feel like coming from a formal art historical background, there are two approaches to looking at art: there is a very historical academic art history and then a more sociological approach especially when looking at contemporary art. What sort of approach are you taking in the podcast or is it more art criticism?
With the Instagram account I do research artists from an art historical approach which is informed by my work at uni, especially when looking at methods or black figures represented in historical works of art, like a drawing by Pisanello of a Black woman or a 17th century portrait of a Black minister in Bijapur, India. But then the sociological stuff comes in when I’m writing about contemporary art. I don’t think I’m engaging in art criticism… It’s more celebrating contemporary black artists. But to be honest, I haven’t put anything on my page that I’m not interested in or I don’t think should be platformed.
How is it that you decide who to put on and where do you come across them?
It’s kinda a mixture of things: I do get sent a lot of press releases, and of course it’s easier to write about artists that are having an exhibition at the moment, but when I began I wanted the page to have a very international approach, so I would look up a country for example Norway and research black artists there, or black artists in Brazil or Cuba. I remember searching for black Cuban artists and the only thing that would come up was musicians. It seems crazy to me, because I don’t do that now, but when I started in the pandemic it was a good route to finding artists that wouldn’t be included in an art history degree. But since then I have been using more exhibition catalogues and books, such as survey books which focus on artists from a specific country.
Where were you finding those books? Would you say there was a gap in the literature?
I would go out and buy them, but since the page got bigger I’ve been sent books. I would say the resources are there but there was a gap in the art history library.
Are there complexities in creating an art history linking artists by skin colour? I recently went to a poetry open mic night and a black poet had a line ‘I wasn’t born black you called me that’, how do you navigate linking artists by an essentially racist binary?
I think it was James Baldwin who said something like ‘I didn’t invent the [n*****]… I give you your problem back’. So, yes there is absolutely an element that you are grouping people together who may not have anything in common, but that’s what curating is, you make groups and categories that are arbitrary - a contemporary artist from London next to a Renaissance drawing of a black figure next to an 80’s Brazilian artist may only have their blackness in common… But the point is, I suppose, to showcase the multiplicity of blackness; it cannot be put into a box. Because the way I learnt about black artists at university was through the lens of the Black Arts Movements of the UK and US - which was interesting, but it meant I was only learning about blackness in art history in relation to English speaking western countries, but obviously blackness dictates peoples’ experiences in every context. Even in Nigeria where I’m from, the majority of the population is black but your blackness still affects the way you live and perceive yourself – it’s a formerly colonised country, and skin bleaching is part of the culture.
Yes, totally… It was nice to see you did a post about murals dating back to the 16th century in Northern Ghana, because something like that lies completely outside the predominately white western art scene.
Yes, they were murals of the Kassena ethnic group in Burkina Faso and Ghana. Another key thing is I don’t want people to look at the page and think ‘oh this is what black art history is’; you can’t put it in a box, which is why I’m so concerned about trying to showcase such a range of radically different artists, all black, but working within a broad range of histories and traditions.
But the focus for the podcast will be contemporary artists in a western context? Would you take contemporary “art” from outside the formal art system? For instance, indigenous textiles…
That’s an interesting point, I would love to do that but the way I have been working on it has been very rooted in a Western art-world context unfortunately. The main thing is to interview artists from different places, but I am limited by needing them to be able to speak English, so we can communicate. And I am interviewing them in a formal sense. I do need to interview bigger names first, to generate interest and create the platform to then be able to offer to people who are lesser known. So that is the dream. Another thing I want to do is to think about other places where blackness exists in the art ecosystem, like to interview black security guards, because I often get stopped by black security guards who want to show me something.
What would you say draws different people to art? What drew you to art?
I was lucky that art history was offered at my school, I loved it, I loved all the Renaissance stuff, Impressionism, literally everything, all the white shit, but there was no… Like we looked at Chris Ofili and that was it… I already started the ‘a black history of art’-esque stuff in school. Even though I was studying a very European Eurocentric style of art history, I was still finding ways to link it back to blackness. In 2016/17 I found the picture that is now the icon of the Instagram account and that was the first picture I ever posted a few years later. Even though it’s not by a black artist, it was the first time I was looking in depth at blackness in art, thinking about who this figure could be, where the sitter was from: it’s called ‘Portrait of a Black Woman’ or ‘Portrait of Madeleine’ by Marie-Guillemine Benoist, made in 1800.. I spoke about it for a competition and that was when I really fell in love with art history and decided I wanted to study it at uni. But at the time I wasn’t thinking about diversity or my own blackness, it was subconscious.
So, the page has a long history- I guess it was with the pandemic that gave you the time, but also BLM made the page so relevant?
Yeah, I started it in February 2020 not knowing we were going to enter the pandemic, then in June it really took off because suddenly everyone was interested in blackness.
But the podcast is the latest extension of the page, you're also a contributing editor at AnOther magazine and of course you're writing the book. Have you got any exhibitions coming up?
Yes, I have a column in AnOther magazine and I’m working as a curatorial researcher at an exhibition at the RA but I can’t talk too much about that…
Alayo Akinkugbe runs the @ablackhistoryofart Instagram account.
She also produces and hosts A Shared Gaze arts podcast
