Flashmag January 2021 www.flashmag.net
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Guillaume Ajavon
Your roots and their murky history of the last centuries, including slavery, colonization, in short, the condition of black people interests you in the highest degree, it focuses practically all of your creation; those striking faces that come out of your workshops, where do they come from?
You can tell all of my entire creation. I will surely surprise you ... It comes from my dreams, certainly influenced by many readings (so as not to be anachronistic). When I understood that many slaves of slave stories came to me in a dream, I wanted to find a solution to remember them. Be careful, I am not saying that the ancestors speak to me through them, I do not have this pretension (even if I speak to them all day long, that I light them a candle I never have an answer-laughter). From several dreams I “know” the character I want to sculpt, I take the mud and model it directly, without taking notes, nor making models, or sketches, never. My fingers and my memory guide me. It's quite overwhelming, some people call my creation mystical, I won't go that far. So, I only work from them.
One of my colleagues said of you that you carve stolen lives, what do you hope for, by showing what the condition of these men and women from Africa, who were reduced to servitude, was?
You know I do what I have to do, these dreams come, and my fingers make them true. It's heartbreaking actually. Really, it is no longer just a job or a passion, but a real human commitment to which I dedicate my life. It is not a question of reparation, since I cannot revive any of these ancestors torn from their land, but what I can do is bring them out of oblivion. Pay homage to them because inside each of my sculptures, I inscribe a message of dignity in the earth itself. All of my creation is called "Stolen Lives" and I define it as such.
The past remains present in the future, as we enter the 3rd decade of the 21st century we have the impression that nothing but appearances seem to have changed, so much the battles of recognition, and I would say of integration or rather of respect fairness, for women and men of African descent, continues to make waves. Do you plan to project your works into the present and the future, because filmmakers have often been criticized for their obsession with slavery time, for example, for living in the past and for forgetting a bit the daily experience which is not always more brilliant, because at the same time it is also necessary to tell the story of our era?
My sculptures tell a past, but also a present.
46 million slaves counted in the world in 2020. Of course, you will tell me, all slavery combined. Certainly. But how can you close your eyes when in Libya humans are sold chained with their feet hanging like chickens? To take just this example.
I tell the story without hatred, I put my finger on it, and sorry to all Afro-descendants (whom I am part of ) for highlighting the sufferings and humiliations, I understand that this is unbearable, but this world does not change! Most of the younger generations do not know what happened to their ancestors and that this is where the racism, they are subjected to stems from.
I unfortunately tell the story of our time, when most of my friends are still called niggers, lynched from an early age, I tell a reality that makes you want to vomit, but I never encourage violence, art is also a way of making a statement, advocating without weapons.
In the same logic, if slavery was a real cataclysm for Africa and its inhabitants, whose diaspora was dispersed in the 4 corners of the world, many believe that it is also necessary to speak of a certain greatness that will have known Africans before the decadence of the Maafa (slavery catastrophe) can we hope that one day Sandrine will make sculptures of kings and queens of Africa?
Well, you have it all. I chose to talk about the ancestors, mine and all, in fact. I also sculpt the time when they lived on their land in Africa and I started the bust of a queen, they are part of history. Only for that, I must see them in a dream. So, I can't say if there will be more. I already have a lot of dreams waiting for their turn (laughs). And I won't have enough of one life to tell them all, hoping that in the next I can continue, or that in the next there are no more slaves in the world!
The world is in the midst of a period of questioning with the pandemic which I would say beyond the disease calls into question the society in which we live, and the confidence given to those, to whom we give mandate to lead the nations. Conspiracy or not, mainstream Western society has never been so much put on the dock. From the perspective of the afro descendant and artist that you are, what predictions do you make on the future of this society? Are we heading towards chaos, made of loss of freedom and control of conscience, or a collective realization of the urgency of a more inclusive paradigm shift?