Valerie Asiimwe Amani

Interview by Daniella Brito

Upon my first glance at Valerie Asiimwe Amani’s website, a much contested term kept surfacing in my mind: transdisciplinary. It’s one of those slippery words that often gets used interchangeably with the others we have adopted to describe disciplinary expansion such as interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary. Both add and integrate many terrains of knowledge; yet, they tend to result in a coherent whole, be it a sculpture or a new medicinal treatment. Instead, Amani’s methods feel distinctly transdisciplinary—they transcend the boundaries of artistic expression and propose a decentralized orbit of questioning. The artist indiscriminately weaves together text, sculpture, video, and performance to field inconclusive inquiries about belonging and homemaking. Zooming in from her birth country, Tanzania, Amani joins me in conversation after being awarded the 2023 Foundwork Artist Prize. We discuss how migration, intergenerational memory, and language inform her adaptive approach to artmaking.

To Dismantle a House (stills from performance), 2022

Re-made documentation of performance

Daniella Brito (DB): One of my first questions is about journaling. In many instances, you have described your works as “fleshed out journal entries.” What is the significance of diaristic narration within your practice?

Valerie Asiimwe Amani (VAA): For me, it’s the reflective process of journaling. I'm a very emotional person, as a lot of artists are. As a child, I used to cry a lot and I found that by writing things down I was able to process my thoughts and emotions. So I think when it comes to my art practice, when I'm reflecting on the political or other questions that I’m passionate about, journaling provides a safe space. Writing things down helps me question why I feel the way I do and reckon with the significance of each sentiment.

DB: That definitely makes sense. We tend to process thoughts and affects in a plethora of ways. The journal for this reason has the potential to be a transdisciplinary space in itself—it communicates many sentiments across various kinds of expression. In your practice, you work across an amalgam of durational, text-based, and visual mediums.

To me, your expansive approach to art-making invokes the assemblage of aesthetics that one might find in collage. How do you define collage in your work? And how would you describe the relationship between collaging and journaling?

VAA: I would say that my upbringing was like a collage. I'm Tanzanian and I was born in Dar es Salaam. My parents are from two different tribes in Tanzania so within the country I have two distinct cultural backgrounds. Between the ages of six and twelve, I lived in Zimbabwe. Afterwards, we moved to Rwanda and then, South Africa.

Growing up, I experienced all these layers of languages and cultures that today inform the ways I create artwork. Journaling sets the foundation for what the work becomes as words help me determine the medium of expression, whether it be a visual moving narrative, a performance, or an object. In this way, journaling itself is a form of collaging in my work. Often, I’ll take note of a sentence or a picture I’ve taken on my phone. These kinds of notes help me process the work, but also, my personal life. I like how life can be recorded in a variety of ways. Through journaling and collaging, I narrate all these different ideas, voices, and experiences that in turn come together across different textures.

"Journaling sets the foundation for what the work becomes as words help me determine the medium of expression, whether it be a visual moving narrative, a performance, or an object. In this way, journaling itself is a form of collaging in my work."

Body of Water, 2023

Fabriano Paper, muslin, acrylic, thread, ink transfer

50 x 127 in.

DB: I love what you're saying about how culture, especially diasporic cultures, is like a collage. To me, one of the primary components of collage is fragmentation. Visually speaking, this means that new images emerge from the extraction and juxtaposition of idiosyncratic symbols and marks. But we also see this happening in real time: new narratives arise from the enmeshment of distinctive cultures, languages, and traditions. This makes me think about the theme of belonging that surfaces in your work. Can you speak to these notions of placemaking, displacement, and belonging in your practice? Are there ways that collaging or journaling inform this investigation of place?

VAA: I grew up in a very privileged Tanzanian household. My parents prioritized education and upward social mobility and they made sure that I went to white schools because this is where the best English was taught. When I was a teenager in South Africa, I realized the weight of being Black in these schools.

I spent the next 16 years of my life learning what it meant to be African. But still, wherever I live, I am always a foreigner. Because of this, for so long I have tried to uncover what home means to me. Even before I moved back to Tanzania, I was afraid of coming here. I was afraid that people would judge the way I speak Swahili, for example. And then I started asking, what is it about language? Language is more than just understanding; language is also about sound and familiarity. These elements are components of belonging.

From there, I’ve continued to ask: what does it mean to belong? Is love enough? Is belonging simply a place where one is loved and safe? Or, does belonging have to do with the sentimental? As in, here are my childhood friends that I've known for twenty years and we grew up in the same neighborhood. I’ve had all these questions but, today, I've accepted the fact that I will always be a foreigner. Even when I come home to Tanzania, where I was born, I sometimes still feel foreign because my hair is blue or because I look “different.”

But despite all these feelings of foreignness and difference, I always manage to find similarities with and among those around me. And I think that's why I remain curious about how we create community and what makes a society. What makes people relate to another beyond a shared place? How can we find common ground without a shared language or cultural background?

"I started asking, what is it about language? Language is more than just understanding; language is also about sound and familiarity. These elements are components of belonging. From there, I’ve continued to ask: what does it mean to belong? Is love enough? Is belonging simply a place where one is loved and safe? Or, does belonging have to do with the sentimental?"

Memory Portal I, 2021

Wood, felt, calico, tranfer printing, wax candle, ink, yarn

80 x 80 x 25 in.

DB: Something that I'm gleaning from what you're saying is that as you move from place to place, as you meet various communities, the common ground is porous—it adapts. In watching your video works, the relationship between permanence and impermanence repeatedly arises. I'm curious about the ways that you approach malleability within time-based mediums like video and performance. How do these transient mediums inform your understanding of what is permeable and what is permanent?

VAA: I think I've been interested in the concept of multiplicity for a while. As people of color and as people of various cultures, we host multiplicity within our very being. I’ve always found the concept of time quite strange because time is something that shifts depending on where you are.

I don't tend to make long videos because I don't think time equates to importance. I’ve been in circumstances where people use time as power. Politicians in Tanzania, for example, take their time to speak, deploying speech in manipulative ways.

So a lot of my video works in the beginning were two minutes or a maximum of five minutes long. But something changed when I started making performance: in performance you are able to distort time completely. You are able to “time-bend” when sharing time and physical space among other performers, but also, as the audience engages with the work. This harkens back to the idea of permeability: for me, through movement and audience feedback, it's easier to permeate time within a fixed space.

With video work, I often use language to disrupt time. Through my translation choices, especially when using Swahili words in a given work, I either invite the viewer in or establish a barrier. When I refuse to translate, I feel as though I am stopping time—I am interjecting with moments that are indecipherable. I think both translation and the refusal to translate are important but for very different reasons.

"With video work, I often use language to disrupt time. Through my translation choices, especially when using Swahili words in a given work, I either invite the viewer in or establish a barrier. When I refuse to translate, I feel as though I am stopping time—I am interjecting with moments that are indecipherable."

DB: Can you say more about the kinds of ideas that get lost in translation? What do you glean from the concepts and questions that refuse translation altogether?

VAA: Yes; there are definitely things that get lost in translation. I think it's important for me to remember that my work is not going to be for everyone and I actually don't want it to be for everyone. To this end, it’s also crucial for me to remember my audience and who I'm talking to. During my first few months of living in the UK after moving from Tanzania, it was very difficult for me to make work. I didn’t like my work at this time because it didn't feel sincere and I think sincerity is not always going to be relatable. So I think in those moments when I refuse to translate, I am the most honest—the untranslatable is what I keep to myself. I enjoy these moments of privacy because I find that with western audiences, there's a tendency to want to over-explicate things.

Power Hungry, 2020; video, 1:02 (film stills)

VAA: I've done a lot of work with German archival institutes and, in these pedagogical spaces, a huge importance is placed on the documentation, classification, and meticulous examination of the artwork. I think the way I make art tries to rebel against these methods; I often make work for the sake of making it. I think we should be more comfortable with not having to “get it” instead of attempting to explain everything.

DB: I also see elements of this push and pull between what is translated and what is left unsaid in your visual practice; wherein, a language of abstraction takes precedent. To me, the way that you approach the stitch as a kind of mark-making is grounded in practices of annotation and timekeeping. By trailing clusters of stitches, one can also trace the passage of time. What role does memory play in your work and how do the materials you use respond to questions of memory?

VAA: So first of all, I believe in intergenerational memory. I believe we carry memories that maybe are not ours but reside within our bodies and blood. I also believe in the potential of imagination to fill in the blanks when our memories are not complete. So in thinking about my visual practice, through stitching, I am attempting to piece together incomplete pictures or fragmented memories. When I render bodies; for example, I don't typically illustrate the full image. In juxtaposing these various fragments of memories and images, I find I can create new objects and gesture towards new futures.

For this reason, I often call the marks I make through stitching and drawing spirit lines and I call the small wooden works islands. By etching into hard materials, I infiltrate their surfaces and make them permeable and soft. I like stitching into materials that are difficult to penetrate because for me, the holes that remain hold the potential to remark on how we remember and how we might visualize the gaps within our histories. But I also appreciate the softness of the stitch. Thread, wool, and yarn are tenuous materials that won’t last forever—they can easily be weathered. Much like our memories, these materials are imperfect and impermanent.

"I believe in intergenerational memory. I believe we carry memories that maybe are not ours but reside within our bodies and blood. I also believe in the potential of imagination to fill in the blanks when our memories are not complete."

Make warmth for yourself, 2022

Fabric, transfer print, yarn, sunflower seed dye

DB: Are there ways in which the materials that you use are in dialogue with particular geographies or landscapes?

VAA: Definitely. I think the work I've made while I've been in Tanzania has been softer. I have been using a lot of fabric. Even though I do make fabric work while in the UK, I realize I gravitate towards metals and harder materials when I’m there. I actually hadn’t thought about it until now that you said it, but I think there's a hardness about where I'm living right now as well, or an unfamiliarity that I haven't yet figured out that pulls me towards these hard materials. But for the most part, I find that I like using objects that are readily available to me in the environments I’m residing in.

DB: Let’s transition to your video installation works, Moving Mountains and Intense Now. In these works, you consider notions of futurity against the backdrop of colonial memory for communities across the African continent and its diasporas. Can you tell me more about these two projects and how your relationship to futurity has evolved in their production if in any ways?

VAA: Definitely. The Intense Now, produced in 2021, was the culminating project emerging from a residency I participated in with the Mozambique-based festival and programming initiative, Maputo Fast Forward (MFF). What I really like about MFF is its focus on futurity. Often, when we reflect on contemporary African art and digital media, we can get stuck in the same loop of talking about the past. With the Intense Now, we are elevating the many systems across contemporary African cities that are out-of-this-world progressive. These cities are innovative technologically, but also, socially: communities tirelessly find alternative solutions to living with less. So I think I’m interested in the ways that rules are reimagined in African cities and across the global south. There’s a lot of ingenuity within places where there’s so much resource restriction.

The project was in many ways inspired by Felwine Sarr's quote, "If Africa is the future, does that mean that Africa as it is does not exist?" Africa does exist and it exists on its own terms. I think that this sentiment is also at the epicenter of the work, Moving Mountains, which investigates German practices of repatriation of stolen objects. In 1889, the colonial geographer Hans Meyer stole a stone that once lived at the tip of Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania. The significance of this stone was written into history by Meyer and was widely accepted as the truth. Yet, his narrative is not our story. His story is one of someone who has claimed to have taken something amazing. But in reality, he took a stone. He didn't take the mountain and he can't take the mountain because the mountain exists here in Tanzania and no one can move a mountain. It remains here just like the people of Tanzania still do.

The Journey, 2022 (video stills)

Video installation

GRASSI Museum, Liepzig

VAA: When the conversation of repatriation arises, I certainly agree that these things should be returned. But there are also so many treasures that remain. What about those stories? What about the stories of the people that are still innovating and still moving forward? What about the new myths that people are creating? In Africa, everything is constantly remixed; there is endless hybridization. We establish new ways of living and being from half of this and half of that. There is boundless creativity here because we have to be creative; we don’t have a choice.

Daniella Brito

Daniella Brito is a Dominican-American writer, curator, and editor. Their writing has appeared in catalogs for The Studio Museum in Harlem and in publications such as The Kitchen Magazine, Hyperallergic, Contemporary And, Document Journal, and elsewhere. Brito has held curatorial and programmatic roles at The Kitchen, The Knockdown Center, El Museo Del Barrio, and more. They have curated programs and presented work at spaces including e-flux Screening Room, The Kitchen, Fridman Gallery, and NEW INC. Their research interests span across visual culture, fugitivity studies, and queer performance practices.