59. EKUA McMORRIS: A SPACE BETWEEN IDENTITY AND BELONGING.
‘My work speaks of the family and its extension, the everydayness of life and moments, but also the grappling struggle we all have when it comes to identity and belonging. In my case, I am always trying to get to the point of understanding what it means to be African Caribbean in Britain’. E.McM
Ekua McMorris, ‘We Played Spaceships 2’, image courtesy of the artist.
Ekua McMorris, We Played Spaceships 1, image courtesy of the artist.
Your relationship with the medium of photography and documentation is very particular, can you think back to the key moments of forming your visual language?
I grew up in a family of storytellers. I used to love resting my head on my mother’s lap, listening to her and her friends discuss, and reason the history and experiences of Black folks, politics, family, and the police. These stories took place in rooms that were filled with a variety of images, paintings, and illustrations. Regardless of the subject matter, there was a sense of warmth that enveloped the rhythmic flow of discussions that I was permitted to silently be part of. Always at the heart of these discussions, there was a feeling or a need of having to record and document these moments and faces that represented the diversity of Black life in Britain.
As I lay with my head on my mother’s lap, these stories would become pictures in my mind, that helped me understand the world and my place in it. The camera helped me capture the works and emotions I grappled with, working as a tool that allowed me to speak without opening my mouth.
Ekua McMorris, untitled, image courtesy of the artist.
Ekua McMorris, Me as a child 1983 Wilesden, image courtesy of the artist.
Carrie Mae Weems, in a lecture given at The Barbican last year, said how important it is to pay attention to your own work, as an artist, 'as your work will tell you what you are up to', can you reflect upon this statement in response to your own practice?
It requires sitting and listening to oneself and one’s work. There is a conversation, or a narrative that can take place, that at times goes beyond the purpose of creating the work. We have ideas of what the work will be about, but I think that changes once it has been created or given life.
My work is not just about the images that I make, they are also about the stories that they speak out to the world. My work speaks of the family and its extension, the everydayness of life and moments, but also the grappling struggle we all have when it comes to identity and belonging. In my case, I am always trying to get to the point of understanding what it means to be African Caribbean in Britain.
Ekua McMorris, How I will always remember you, image courtesy of the artist.
The subject of memory plays a key context within your work, please can you discuss this?
Yes, it does, this is because I know how precious it is. There is something so intangible about it, while at the same time, memories are so embodied.
I do not come from a financially rich family, but I do come from a culturally rich one. My mother ensured that we all had access to our heritage and culture, and a strong part of that was to expose us to the fullness of the past, of which my mother had many ways. But the storytelling made me pay attention to the importance of observing, recording, and telling our story of belonging, not just to the past but also to the now.
I suppose I am trying to do several things in my work, and one of them is to create images that one day will also be a part of the Black African, African Caribbean, and British experience.
Teaching is sometimes described as a calling, not a choice... You inspire your students deeply to commit to their practice and without instruction - I think great teachers possess that quality - as Louise Bourgeois said 'artists are born not made - There's nothing you can do for them'... how do you feel about this?
That is an interesting thought. I think, if one considered the ‘born-ing’ of an artist that can happen at any stage in life, then I agree. Some people are fortunate to be gifted from birth, to have an ability to create and see the world differently, for others I think it is about connections and moments that collide that can create an artist.
I think teaching is about showing students the value of listening to the self and their work and responding to knowledge through feeling and making.
I remember you advising someone once to sit with discomfort in order to learn and break a system of fear, which I thought was very interesting. When you work through ideas, I realise you often physically stand to process your thoughts. Physicality seems very important to your methods of thinking, can you expand upon this?
It requires a lot of energy and focus to stand or sit in front of a group of students, moving around enables the channelling of that energy.
I think there is an expectation that knowledge, learning, and change will come about instantly, when really it takes time, and sometimes that can be uncomfortable and challenging. I also find that it requires a shifting or position.
Movement also allows me the opportunity to process my thinking, to feel it and work with it physically. I suppose what I would like to demonstrate is that ideas are things that move, grow, change, and form.
Ekua McMorris, Dread, image courtesy of the artist.
A wall of your sitting room, in your childhood home was covered in images that your Mother placed together, can you tell me more about this?
My mother used images as an educational tool to familiarise us with our culture and history.
For my mother, positive images of African, and African Caribbean culture were placed as a counter-narrative to the negative stereotypes that were commonly placed throughout our childhood.
My mother wanted us to see ourselves reflected in those images so we could imagine a different reality.
For example, photographs of us as children were placed next to Black people from across the diaspora of great standing. The photo of the little girl on the mantelpiece is me, and above there is a photograph of Queen Mother Moore, an African American activist who suggested to the African Caribbean community here in London, that it was essential to archive their experience here in Britain, of which the Black Cultural Archives was born. You also see her wall, images of Marcus Garvey, Haile Selassie Emperor of Ethiopia, Malcolm X and many others who fought for the liberation of all Black people.
Ekua McMorris, Mum and Makeda 1984 Kilburn, image courtesy of the artist.
Within your work, you have focused on archives, a physical space for order but also within a psychological state of time - why do you return to this?
I think that this goes back to your first question. The archive as site of storage and retrieval is an exciting one, particularly if we think of it outside of its traditional use. What if we think of it as a space that requires creative interaction to give it life, or new ways of engaging with it. When we delve into the archives, we allow documents or object from the past to time travel, which I think is a wonderful prospect. This also allows one to think about what an archive can be or contain, and what it can allow us to do, as Diana Taylor suggests, it can expand what we understand of the world.
For me, knowledge and it’s making is a form of storytelling, that is performative. I am most inspired when I am faced with a story of a thing, or how a moment came to be.
When working with a camera, taking a photograph, there is always that moment/s before the shutter is released. I love those moments; they can add so much more to an image than I think the image can do alone, but that also requires a different type of documentation.
Someone once said that I was an intuitive artist, and for a long while I thought of this comment negatively, but as I have got older, I can now hear what they were saying.