Fowokan

Artist of the Diaspora

George Kelly-Fowokan

The last Black History Month of the century will have special meaning for sculptor George Kelly-Fowokan. His monumental 13 foot high obelisk of masks representing the multi-cultural peoples of south London should be ready by October. And, his designed trophies will honour prominent Black Achievers.

Fowokan came of age in the Brixton neighbourhood of Black London. He developed his amiable character under the watchful eyes of his Jamaican parents and extended family. Indeed, in 1994 the Jamaican High Commission in London hosted an exhibition of his sculptures entitled "Beyond My Grandfathers' Dreams"

The Fountain

Mary Seacole

Within the seed infinty within infinty the seed

Beyond my grandfathers" dream

Photographs by Ariyo Nsoromo
e-mail - tightrope@eathemail.net

The Artist Speaks

The African experience is a rich and varied tapestry. It stretches from the timeless Bushman, hunter-gatherers of the Kalahari desert, to the forest dwelling Pygmies of equatorial Africa. From the technologically conscious Africans in the urban areas of the Americas, to those in the Caribbean, Africa and Europe. Ours is a continuum that encompasses the full span of human temporal and spatial existence.

Beyond my grandfathers' wildest dreams is the title of one of the pieces in this exhibition. This title came to me as I noticed for the first time the quality of the beauty of the piece. I realised that it was highly unlikely that my enslaved foreparents on the plantations in Jamaica would ever have been exposed to African beauty through art. They lived a long time before the dawn of the elevation of African ideals by Africans in the diaspora. By elevation of African ideals I mean, the defining, valuing and the expression of laws and principles that determine our own models of beauty in art, and taste. The struggle to define and re-define this ideal is an ongoing process. The pieces in this exhibition are the result of my struggle.

Beyond My Grandfathers' Dreams

I fell in love with a face today
A face I saw for a moment
on a London Transport 37 bus
A finely sculptured face
A face so wonderful
I dared not look it in the eyes
A face strong and hard
fashioned from the heart of an ebony tree...

The dreams of those who struggled to survive the evils of slavery are beyond my comprehension. However I cannot help wondering about their thoughts, hopes and dreams. What were my great-grandfathers' dreams as they gathered to hear the manumission declaration read? What were the dreams of my mother's father a hundred years later as he laboured to cut sugar cane on a plantation in Cuba, or as he listened to Marcus Garvey speak of black pride, or Bustamante of self-determination?

What were the dreams of those who struggled with the reality of freedom on the march towards self-determination and self-realisation? Were their dreams different from our own as we come to the end of the second millennium A.D. and begin the awesome task of defining a future in the Twenty-first Century?

Praise for Fowokan from Prof. Stuart Hall

K.G. Kelly (Fowokan) has been making objects and working as a sculptor for fourteen years. We first met years ago when I was a young and rather bewildered secondary school teacher at Kennington Boys School in Brixton and he was one of the young men at the back of the class who 'bewildered' me!

Kennington was a secondary modem;' most of the boys there many of them Black African Caribbean, had failed the 11 +; a mischievous and divisive educational barrier, which blocked the educational advance of many black children and which I hoped we had buried forever; but which, under the recent drift in educational reforms, is creeping in again by the back-door.

The boys at Kennington, especially the Black ones; were certainly not encouraged to think for themselves as achievers, and yet several of these boys have subsequently crossed my path and have done remarkably well. Some of them outstandingly so, K.G. Kelly is one of these.

His Work with Black Children
I met him again when he was on the management committee of an organisation designed precisely to help young black children of the next generation to develop a positive image of their own blackness, of their (often silenced) African and Caribbean backgrounds and of their own self-image. I encountered his work again, later, on a project to do with "The Mask" organised by the Impressions gallery in York, which has pioneered this kind of work in the visual arts.

Artist of the Black British Diaspora
K.G. Kelly is one or the many "Black British" artists who is working in the tradition of the diaspora. Born in Jamaica, of African descent, he has lived since childhood in England, the imperial metropolitan centre. He has travelled widely in the Far East, Europe, America and in Africa. It was in Nigeria, where he reconnected with the traditions of African representation in the great historic centre of Yoruba culture, the City of Benin.

Children of the Scattering
We can see in this itinerary, not the simplicity of a return to a lost origin, but the more complicated story of all of those who have lived the "diaspora" experience, - who are children of the 'scattering' which slavery, colonialism and the Middle Passage of slavery represented.

We see the trace of the slow, painful struggle to connect together again the fragments of a broken and fractured history, and not simply to return to that image and history as if nothing had happened, but to put the parts together again for the future across a disrupted and splintered past.

Fresh Eyes to see New Ways
Tradition is not something dead and inert, lying buried, unchanged, for us to 'discover.' Tradition is a living language, which we must constantly renew, which enables us to make ourselves anew, as new Black subjects. In his sculptures and images we see the eye and hand of a modern Black artist, looking anew, looking not at, but through the aesthetic prism of an "African" aesthetic. His work recovers - speaks again, in a new place - Europe, the voices and languages which Europe, for so long silenced. In doing so, it offers to new generations of diaspora Blacks, the opportunity to look again - to look with fresh eyes to see themselves in new ways. (Excerpts from the exhibition catalog).

The artist George Kelly-Fowokan may be contacted at:
E-mail: fowokan@hotmail.com