Conversations: Peter Uka
I was fortunate enough to meet Nigerian artist Peter Uka in his studio earlier this month and speak with him about his work, a perhaps overheated art market, terrible immersive experiences and his record collection. Our conversation was part of a series of interviews in the context of a research project exploring the dynamics of (private) museum interaction with the art market and contemporary iterations of arts patronage.
LW: You’re a classically trained painter. Was contextualizing your work or, to be frank, selling yourself as an artist, part of your education at all? I know that some fine art degrees will incorporate guidance on how to navigate the art market, but I imagine that this is not so much in the spirit of more traditional fine art degrees.
Peter: I remember we had a class in our last semester, a course called “Sales and Marketing” and I didn’t pay much attention to it.
LW: Let me guess, you didn’t appreciate it?
Peter: No, I did not, not at all. It was the worst. Because sales and marketing were never my objective. If financial security had been my priority from day one, I probably would have stuck with architecture. I am the first audience for my work. I don’t work for a potential buyer. I work for myself.
LW: What about winning the scholarship? That did involve selling yourself to a degree I would imagine. It’s a bit of a competitive thing right?
Peter: Not really, I didn’t expect it, because funnily enough, I never applied for it. Everyone at the academy that was graduating was in the pool for these prizes and awards. I happened to get selected for two of them without knowing it. I was on stage to collect the Freunde und Förderer award and I remember very vividly how everyone was clapping and then the professor reached then announced that I had also won the BEST GRUPPE Preis. It just sort of happened. It was a blessing. I was a young father at the time, my son was just three years old and my wife is going back to work. It allowed me to rent a studio space, focus on my work and be a dad. Everything just took off from there. Being able to do something you love and live off it is a blessing.
LW: So what is your impetus to create? What was it in the past? Has it changed in any way? Because sometimes artists or their gallery will directly or indirectly – once they understand their market and what clients want – factor that into their process. I’ve seen scenarios at work where young artists were almost operating on a purely commission-based model through their gallery, rather than venturing into new territory that is maybe less palatable.
Peter: I prefer to follow my own choices rather than conforming to others' expectations. I just do me. It’s a very intuitive process.
LW: That makes me think: Do you think that contemporary African painting has been having a massive moment? And that artists are moving with the market?
Peter: It is still having a moment, but the problem with that is or rather what happened in the last couple of years is that we have begun pushing ourselves into the dangerous realm of “trendy”.
LW: True, there is almost a bit of an expectation when you’re a contemporary artist from any African country, a certain visual that people have come to anticipate, in the same way people used to expect a particular kind of “primitive” art from the continent in the decades before that. Now it’s a particular kind of figuration that needs to be delivered.
Peter: And as a result we begin to lose our essence. You have to keep yourself in line, because if you don’t, finding your footing again is going to be one hell of a trip.
LW: It does almost feel as though there’s only a very narrow space for artists from the continent to work within successfully.
Peter: It has taken us this long to get into this space. We should have been in this space 30, 40, 50 years ago. I hold tremendous respect for people who were doing it back then. Now we have more strength in numbers but I also see the obstacles that we are still facing and just imagine what it was like when there were just a handful.
LW: You mentioned you like to approach creating in a more intuitive way.
Peter: Yes, there are works that I started years ago and didn’t finish, just because they didn’t feel right or mature to where they needed to be. They are either overcooked or undercooked. I sometimes have difficulty letting go, to not work to the point where something loses its essence. Where it becomes more about the craft. I need to understand when I have moved past that point and then I need to walk it back. Also, the thing is, nobody has a crystal ball and can tell you what people will want in the future. Everything moves in waves. There will be a time when you’re on top of the world and other times where you’ll be underwater. If you have substance, you’ll be fine. I just want to continue to tell stories, maybe tomorrow no longer in form of figurative painting, but through installation. Some things I want to do are not yet where they need to be. I’m in a constant process of refining my craft to the point where I can say, ok, I have arrived.
LW: You just mentioned craft. Fine art was once clearly relegated to the realm of “craft”, when a painter was like a carpenter was like a goldsmith or a seamstress. Where do you, as a classically trained but at the same time ultra-painter fit within this ecosystem of creation? Are you a craftsman? Or closer to the modern conception of an artist, one that creates to express themselves and not just produce for other’s enjoyment?
Peter: I am halfway in-between the two, I need both ways of creating, I can’t deny either one of them. I require a certain set of tools, the technicality to express what I want to express but I also don’t want that technicality to be the focal point. I need my vision and message to remain central, the execution, craft if you will, comes second.
LW: We talked about this the last time we met. You said you get your motifs from memory and that they’re always rather personal.
Peter: I tap into memories a lot and I have done that in the last couple of years. Although there are works that I have photo references for, for most of my work I dig through memories. I have this long mirror over here that I sit in front of and recreate the pose I’m thinking and then begin to sketch. Like I did with this one (gestures towards an unfinished painting of a man slouching on a chair) or the one with the yellow background you saw before.
LW: To me it always seemed like a memory is distilled and anchors itself once we describe it or we write about it, like it’s plucked from this ethereal realm and materialised. For you, it’s when you paint it.
Peter: What will happen to me is I can sit here and visualise the entirety of what I want to work on in my head based on a fragment of a memory. Sometimes a conversation will also deliver the initial image. I had a conversation with one of my siblings the other day and he was like “Oh by the way do you remember this guy who lived just two blocks from the family house” and I was trying to remember someone from almost 30 years ago and I couldn’t really. He then said “ The brother of so and so” before telling me he had passed. It was then that the image of this person appeared in my head, the image of a 15-year-old, that I had played with just before I left Nigeria, that I couldn’t picture as an adult. It’s like that with so many experiences and conversations. I just build my body of work around that. I looked at your photos on Instagram, maybe I’ll end up painting you. It’s there now, in my head, somewhere. I’m like a sick puppy until I get it out of my system.
LW: If you ever do paint me, be sure to let me know.
LW: What I’m writing about at the moment is this anxiety around the supposed commercialization of art. Like it’s this last unspoiled bastion of creativity, slowly conquered by a corporate blandness. And then there’s a counter thesis, discussed brilliantly in a book by Max Haiven (Art After Money, Money after Art) in which he essentially breaks down how art and money have always been a dream team, how art would not exist without the market. To me it’s not that wild but it seems to be a bit of an inflammatory standpoint.
Peter: Absolutely. Throughout history, artists have always had a patron, who supports their art, their dream, their madness. That never went away. Some of us work night shifts to be able to make art. When I was able to be in the studio full time and focus on my art, things really changed for me and I am grateful for that. But there is a kind of love hate relationship between the artist and the patron. It’s a give and take. But yes, I’ve been lucky, let me put it that way.
LW: It is a symbiotic relationship that – I would expect – produces some ambivalent feelings for an artist like you, who is selling the way he does.
Peter: I find myself in a position to not have to work directly for any patron and it’s a luxury to be able to afford that. I don’t do this for anybody, I do this for me. I’m not a great orator, not so good with words, but I can speak through my work and that’s what I set out to do. I love when I’m able to sit down and enjoy the work and look at it, before I let it go. I also enjoy when I get paid for my work. I then want my work to be acquired by someone who loves it, who connects with it. I like to think of the connection future buyers might have with the works I create.
LW: That sounds like there is an almost intimate relationship you have with your paintings, like you want to create something that touches you and a prospective audience in a similar way. You are a purist.
Peter: I can’t really own that. Sometimes you get complacent and get carried away with your convictions and you end up failing. But I try to have as much integrity as I can with my practice.
LW: On the subject of integrity or rather the lack thereof: did you watch Candyman? Or Velvet Buzzsaw?
Peter: Yes, I saw Candyman. Velvet Buzzsaw rings a bell.
LW: John Malkovich’s character is this slightly washed up big name artist who is absolutely disgusted with the state of the art world, the insincerity, the obscene amounts of money changing hands. I guess you know the sentiment: there’s a lot of anxiety around the “evil one percent”, about how the market is rotten to its core…have you experienced this Zeitgeist surrounding the convergence of art, money and power?
Peter: The state of the art market does make people nervous. It makes me nervous. I’m very new to certain realities of the art world and it does sometimes make feel a little weird. As an artist, I’ve been in situations that have rubbed me the wrong way. I am not going to name names, we’re better than that (laughs) but let me just say: I am aware that there are some people out there that might feign an interest in an artist’s work and then put it up for auction less than a minute later. I find that truly perplexing, from the maybe naive or rather what I like to call “idealistic” position I view the art world from.
LW: It has caught people’s attention that some are selling into the secondary market straight from the academy final year show or auction houses offering up paintings where the “paint is still drying”, like that sort of rapid turnover. How do you feel when your work gets rapidly reabsorbed into the commercial circuit?
Peter: I don’t like it.
LW: There we go.
Peter: I prefer for my works to stay in an institution where people can see it or stay in a space where the buyer actually enjoys it in the way I intended.
LW: Not being used as a trading chip.
Peter: That’s it for me. I don’t paint for my work to change hands so quickly. I find the idea rather upsetting. And again, it’s something I didn’t know about the art world until I found myself in the middle of it.
LW: In a bizarre way this completely circumvents the (living) artist. There’s only one other more egregious scenario I can think of in which this happens which I love to complain about and that the “Immersive Experience”. Where they blow up an easily recognisable artist’s work and project it onto the walls of a space, completely out of context, no actual art works for people to look at, no curation…and I don’t think you need any of the art speak and complicated labels nobody really understands. I love when exhibitions are more accessible to wider audiences and to children, but the ones I’m talking about here, they’re not even interested in the work, the artists, their process, intention, the story. It’s basically just a glorified laser show.
Peter: I just don’t get it. Also, it’s a different experience to see an artwork in the flesh. There’s a sensation you can’t replicate.
LW: I do find them quite bizarre.
Peter: I’ve seen a few. Bullshit. I cannot unsee them.
LW: They’re independent companies with a business model set up around these experiences, they’re not even regular museums doing this. A business model that has sprung up entirely around showing decontextualized art. I’m getting carried away here…
Peter: It’s crazy. But I was thinking, to your point earlier, it’s not like I’m always a passive observer to all of this. I do sometimes sell for less, it depends on who’s asking.
LW: The famous museum discount.
Peter: Sort of.
LW: It makes sense. Museums define the canon. Even though they say they take works off the market, de-commercialize them in a sense, they’re still interacting with the market and the price. Museums write art history and decide what is an important work and what is relevant and thereby what is sought after. It makes sense for a gallery for example to welcome these donations, even though they may not be making that sale.
Peter: My gallery brokered these donations.
LW: It’s not controversial.
Peter: I sometimes do that myself though too. I have gifted works to people whose energy I like. I just let them have it. I remember talking to a friend, who is also an artist and he said “If you can remove the thought of making money from this, there is nothing you cannot achieve. I swear to you, the day I let that behind…and I’m Nigerian, I’m as Nigerian as they come, you know what I mean?
LW: You’re rather “entrepreneurial”.
Peter: We’re money conscious people (laughs). It’s bred into us, you just can’t separate that from who we are. But the day I managed to disconnect from that completely, for some weird reason, I was fine. In Nigeria life would maybe cost less, but I would be in a golden cage. I love living and working here, I love the freedom, I can be here in my studio until 3 a.m., walk home or take the tram. If I don’t feel like painting I just sit here and play my music.
LW: I need to have a look through this record collection. What are some of your favourites here?
Peter: Miles, Blue Mitchell, Fela Aníkúlápó Kuti, Jazz most of the time, but it really depends on my mood.
LW: My dad was obsessed with Duke Ellington and John Coltraine.
Peter: I think I have a few of Duke’s too. Those are some cultivated picks. No but seriously, I love working here. Walking everywhere. I don’t have a car. I’m more of a bike person.