On Africa's Global Influence
NEW YORK, United States — After opening hours at the Brooklyn Museum, a few hundred folks gathered to hear a highly anticipated dialogue on the influence of Africa on the global stage with revered contemporary artist Kehinde Wiley and pioneering founder of ALÁRA Reni Folawiyo as part of the traveling Africa Fashion exhibition. As a purveyor of ready-to-wear, design, and hand-crafted objects, ALÁRA represents a cross-continental exercise touching Dakar, Marrakesh, Cape Town, and of course, its hometown of Lagos by celebrating and championing the very best of domestic talents in its David Adjaye designed flagship store in Victoria Island. A few highlights from the two-hour conversation ranging from launching a first-ever pop-up in New York and sourcing designers to navigating Africa’s complicated relationship to the West and its current spotlighting of African cultural production.
ON THE MOVE TO BROOKLYN
Folawiyo: “What do we really want to see as we move out of Lagos? What do we want to offer the world? There is product everywhere, but we wanted to offer people’s work. What [these talents] bring to the table is new, fresh and brilliant. It’s different and it’s worth it. And because of you, we are.
I felt I could not stand in Brooklyn without the people who make us who we are, who ALÁRA is. These are the creatives that are making things.They are the designers [and] the craftsmen. They are people making traditional clothes, sitting down for hours, committing their lives to beauty and we wanted to celebrate them.”
ON DISCOVERING NEW DESIGNERS
Folawiyo: “I am very interested in creative people. I like to find them everywhere. They intrigue me, they excite me, [and] they make my life what it is. I realize that the strength of Africa is in its variety. That is why I find it so powerful.
You have continents where their countries have their different strengths, but there is no common thread that unites them. In Africa, even though we have different strengths…there is a thread of shared history that brings us all together. In Senegal, their creativity goes right through the roof [and] they are great with making objects with an African aesthetic in a very contemporary way. In Nigeria, we have the flair of fashion and of music. The Capetonians are the masters of the ceramics. ALÁRA tries to tell that story. Always looking, always trying to see what is next in the next country.”
ON AFRICA & the west
Wiley: “You have to realize [when] you go to Senegal, there is a different relationship to weaving than [Nigerians have] in the Igbo or Yoruba tradition. [Each country has] their own high water marks and these standards of excellence perhaps are unknown to the Western world, but within [an African context], there is a very strong sense of ‘Oh, you’re wearing that’…
Folawiyo: “Yes! There is also a hierarchy of who does it best, and how do they do it and which one are you wearing, and why and when.”
Wiley: “Strangely in so many of our countries — whether it be Sierra Leone, Gabon, or Cameroon, [there are] different relationships with the West. It reminds me of when you look at Yinka Shonibare’s work and you look at the history of where the wax materials come from, the triangle trade and the global trade in fabric, but how international that notion is…
This [fabric] has a sort of beautiful and terrible past that is embedded within its actual physicality. Each country has a very unique history and a very unique way of engaging that truth.”
ON returning to roots
Folawiyo: “Currently in Nigeria, we are celebrating our indigenous creativity — the adire and the aso-oke. Previously, it was ankara, that was where the status symbol was — the best ankara from Holland. We are thinking more inwards and finding ways to express ourselves by breaking from the past. It is very wonderful to see. We feel a lot more fulfilled by it. If you now see someone wearing Dutch wax, you’re looking at them and saying ‘Ah, where is your aso-oke?’”
Folawiyo: “Going ‘back home’ — ‘back home’ meaning to the village — [the people] never change. We are the ones that change. We are the ones that are trying to impose these ideas. [‘Back home’] never changed. They have all of the traditional methods. They are the guardians of our culture. We just went back to find them and that is what is going to propel us [forward].”
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity. Lead image courtesy @alaralagos