Sokari Douglas Camp: Interviewed by Patricia Ainslie

Sokari Douglas (amp, Alali Aru (Festival Baat) (1986). Wood, steel, and electric motor. Courtesy of the artist.. mmJournal of Contemporary African Art· Fall/Winter 1995 INTERVIEWED BY PATRICIA AINSLIE n an exhibition at the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York a few years ago, Sokari Douglas Camp exhibited two motorized monumental sculptures, Alali Aru and Church Ede, that intermittently carne alive. They started off with a slight purring then crested in spasms of growling that shook the building. This marriage of sound, object, and psychic destabilization lend to our experience of the works an air of ritual and awe, not unlike the experience one has in the presence of the work of German artist Rebecca Horn. One didn't know what to make of them and the sheer pressure they exerted on the museum space, at once interrupting and nullifying the dominant reading of what constituted contemporary African art. Such revisitations notwithstanding, what is confirmed for most of us is Sokari's immense vision and power as a sculptor, and as one of the few important artists to appear on the international stage in the last decade of any lasting significance . Sokari Douglas Camp, though not as often anthologized in major international shows as most of her peers, remains firmly situated in all the important issues facing artists and their practice at the end of the millenuim. For this issue of Nka Patricia Ainslie interviewed Sokari at her home in London. They discussed Sokari's roots in Kalabari traditions, and her training and work in preparation for her exhibition at the Museum of Mankind in London in September 1995. Journal of Contemporary African Art· fall/Winter 1995 mm Patricia Ainslie: What is your understanding of the role of the masquerade in Kalabari society? Sokari Douglas Camp: Well, the masquerade is a spirit performing. It's something as peculiar as a performance art and as fantastic as a stage performance. PA: Were any ofyour family artists? SDC: My mother a was very good storyteller . My father was a dandy, a very attractive man. My uncle was the town drummer. But, you know, all of us had to do some sort of handcraft. My mother used to make all her children produce fishing traps. Her mother was a woman who threw a net to catch fish, and that's quite rare, because women are basically periwinkle and oyster pickers. PA: I read somewhere that you had worked for a while with Lamidi Fakeye. SDC: Yes. Lamidi was in Ife, in the Fine Ats Department at lfe University. My husband was working there at the time, and I worked with Lamidi carving. He used to carve as ifmahogany was butter, and I used to struggle with it. But I had very nice conversations with him, and he was a very supportive man. He didn't get at me because I was a woman. He didn't get at me because I wasn't Yoruba either. He is Muslim, an astute Muslim, you know, a straightforward Nigerian man. He was traditional, yet he was able to handle me, and it was great. PA: When did you study with him? SDC: It was after my studies in America...the late '70s. I was with him for about six months. It was great trying to carve with such a master. He was adept and did really delicate, wonderful things, while I struggled with my chisels. It was a bonus after a very good foundation in the California College of Arts and Crafts [1978J. But they were going on about how I have two influences -my Nigerian and British influences . What was I doing trying to tackle a third! They didn't actually see why I was in America. They thought that I should go back to Nigeria or go back to England, because I was dealing with two cultures and that was enough. PA: What made you choose California? SDC: I'd been at school in Britain, but I had an American boyfriend whom I'd met in igeria. I quite fancied going to America, because I thought, why not go whole hog and get a little more Western education? And I thought that...