About the Artist
NAFYAR is an artist based in Minneapolis whose work excavates colonial histories and pasts. They are interested in post-colonial theory and media, particularly from Africa in a Somali context. Third World Cinema, anti-colonial literature, and Sufi poetry inspire them. They create large-scale oil paintings and drawings while working intuitively and meditatively to process the experiences that have shaped their existence. Their work contemplates their familial nomadic past while living in an imperial capitalistic present. They use reference images from colonial pasts and neocolonial futures/presents and combine them with the photos that appear in theirsubconscious and familial photographs.
Website + Socials
Website: https://nafyar.webflow.io/
Instagram: @nafyaree
About the Artwork
FRANCE? NOTHING GOOD COMES OUT OF IT.
Where are we in the archive? What roles do we take on, and who are we being viewed by? Should we continue adding to this colonial archive? Do we have a choice not to?
The title references the 1973 Senegalese drama, Touki Bouki--which takes the camera--a tool initially used to document and subject Africans and uses it to tell a heartbreaking love story that shows the lasting effects of French Colonialism in Senegal. This piece deals with the historical violence of the visual--specifically ethnographic photography and its role in creating "the Other" in the colonial narrative. The intention of this piece was to establish a boundary between the viewer and the subject, providing those being observed with a sense of separation from the violence of being scrutinized and pieced apart, To converse and relate. with each other away from the harm of the viewer. In this piece, no one is viewed but related to each other through space and time.
This piece calls us to question the usefulness of the archive for liberation, and for imagining a future of liberation and justice--should we be viewing the past to imagine the future?
Website + Socials
Website: https://nafyar.webflow.io/
Instagram: @nafyaree
About the Artist
NAFYAR is an artist based in Minneapolis whose work excavates colonial histories and pasts. They are interested in post-colonial theory and media, particularly from Africa in a Somali context. Third World Cinema, anti-colonial literature, and Sufi poetry inspire them. They create large-scale oil paintings and drawings while working intuitively and meditatively to process the experiences that have shaped their existence. Their work contemplates their familial nomadic past while living in an imperial capitalistic present. They use reference images from colonial pasts and neocolonial futures/presents and combine them with the photos that appear in theirsubconscious and familial photographs.
About the Artwork
FRANCE? NOTHING GOOD COMES OUT OF IT.
Where are we in the archive? What roles do we take on, and who are we being viewed by? Should we continue adding to this colonial archive? Do we have a choice not to?
The title references the 1973 Senegalese drama, Touki Bouki--which takes the camera--a tool initially used to document and subject Africans and uses it to tell a heartbreaking love story that shows the lasting effects of French Colonialism in Senegal. This piece deals with the historical violence of the visual--specifically ethnographic photography and its role in creating "the Other" in the colonial narrative. The intention of this piece was to establish a boundary between the viewer and the subject, providing those being observed with a sense of separation from the violence of being scrutinized and pieced apart, To converse and relate. with each other away from the harm of the viewer. In this piece, no one is viewed but related to each other through space and time.
This piece calls us to question the usefulness of the archive for liberation, and for imagining a future of liberation and justice--should we be viewing the past to imagine the future?
Website + Socials
Website: https://nafyar.webflow.io/
Instagram: @nafyaree