On Shy­ness: A Finnish/ Pan-African Ap­proach

PUBLICS are thrilled to be hosting one of the five workshops happening over the next two weeks in collaboration with Uni Arts Helsinki and Lagos as part of the Finland Africa Platform for Innovation.

Introduction

This series of five workshops, exploring the aesthetics of shyness, span a two-week period from August 11–24, 2024 and are produced in collaboration with selected arts organisations in the Helsinki area. The workshops consist of a series of facilitating artist/curator-initiated exercises that open and explore varied dimensions of the concept of shyness.

Participants are invited to reflect on their own cultural and personal perceptions of what ‘shyness’ is/might be and to develop sketches towards artistic works, in collaborative groups, that explore these emerging understandings. The workshops are open to the public, by invitation from the host organizations, and to a wide-range of material practices and modes of working.

On Shyness began as a workshop, hosted in Lagos, Nigeria, that a small group of Finland-based and Africa-based colleagues will now carry to Helsinki. In Lagos, we began our investigation of shyness from the ecological phenomenon known as crown shyness, whereby trees of similar and differing species, under certain conditions, exhibit an awareness of each other, restricting their own growth to allow space for light to travel between them. Shyness is an often-maligned contemporary character trait, when used with reference to humans, and yet one that is commonly found in art and artists. In a presentation-oriented time, we gather to wonder, what ways of knowing, and not knowing, might we find trapped in the resistant posture of shyness?

This series of workshops grows out of an ongoing, multi-year collaboration around experimental artist pedagogies between Uniarts Helsinki and the Centre for Contemporary Art in Lagos. The work is part of the Finland-Africa Platform for Innovation, FAPI (currently funded by the Ministry of Culture and Education, founded and coordinated by University of Turku).

Research group and workshop facilitation team

•Bernard Akoi-Jackson, Painting and Sculpture, Art and the Built Environment, KNUST, Ghana

•Nontobeko Ntombela, Curatorial, Publics and Visual Cultures, Wits University, South Africa

•Odun Orimolade, Fine Art and Curatorial in the Yaba Art Museum, Yaba Tech, Nigeria

•Meri Linna, Sculptor and Performance Artist, Academy of Fine Arts, Helsinki, Finland

•Gesa Piper, Dancer and Dance Pedagogue, Theatre Academy, Helsinki, Finland

•Daniel Peltz, Time and Space Arts, Site and Situation Specific Practices, Academy of Fine Arts, Helsinki, Finland (Uniarts Helsinki project-lead)

•Oyindamola Fakeye, CCA Lagos, Nigeria (CCA Lagos project-lead)

•Taru Elfving, Writer and Curator, PRAXIS, Academy of Fine Arts, Helsinki, Finland

•Alyssa Coffin, Interdisciplinary Artist and Curatorial Assistant for the Helsinki Shyness Workshops, Academy of Fine Arts, Helsinki, Finland

Friday, August 16th

At/in collaboration with Publics

Facilitator: Nontobeko Ntombela

Johannesburg, South Africa

Nontobeko Ntombela works in the Department of Curatorial, Public and Visual Cultures, Wits School of Arts, Johannesburg. Her research focuses on modern and contemporary South African art, with a particular interest in Black women artists. Nontobeko previously worked as a curator for organisations including Johannesburg Art Gallery and Durban University Art Gallery. Recent curatorial projects include Then I Knew I Was Good at Painting: Esther Mahlangu, A Retrospective at Iziko South African National Galleries, Cape Town, and Wits Art Museum, Johannesburg; When Rain Clouds Gather: South African Black Women Artists 1940–2000 at the Norval Foundation, Cape Town; and The Burden of Memory at multiple venues in Yaoundé, Cameroon. Nontobeko has advised organisations including the South African Department of Arts and Culture, Art for Human Rights Trust and the National Arts Council of South Africa.

Workshop Offering: Public Introverts: On Curatorial Shyness

It is hard to imagine a contemporary art world without curators. The long list of household names of tastemakers of the global art world is a good indicator of how curators are heralded as much as the artists they support today. Their increased presence and influence have earned them the power that has significantly impacted the art world, shaping artists’ careers, scholarly research, and the broader values of art. In this light, curatorial practice exists in a world where it continuously interfaces with the public. This kind of visibility implicates how curators appear and are perceived in the world. It assumes a practice of public presence and appearances by people who are always extroverted, boisterous, and confident.

This workshop considers the different characteristics of curators and curatorial practices and proposes a curator who may identify with public introvertedness. Not only as a personality trait, it proposes a way of working that might be considered shy. Using the modality of zine making, the workshop will explore how the extroverted world of exhibitions and public engagement in curatorial work can be understood as a moment to perform a coming out of the shy shell in social situations. It explores the concept of curatorial shyness and its manifestations in the curatorial process, from concept development to audience interaction.

To do this, the workshop mobilised the concept of accentedness. Coined by Carli Coetzee, accentedness articulates not the way we speak with an ‘accent’ but instead as accents of multiple forms of storytelling, even if those accounts might be conflicting. Grounded in linguistic translation and the impact of the history of apartheid, this concept offers a unique approach to storytelling, challenging how the same histories can be told from different perspectives.

In the workshop, participants will be paired to tell each other their stories towards making Zines. This is designed to highlight unique and diverse possibilities of contemplative engagement and collaborative curation through the idea of shyness. It takes into consideration how curators have to engage in different contexts. Usually working in precarious contexts, curators sometimes have limited resources to tell these stories. They also sometimes have to deal with archival/historical inaccuracies or misinterpretations of narratives they come across.

To this, the workshop asks; How can shyness and accentedness contribute to diverse ways of presenting ideas and narratives? Thought of in another way, if curatorial shyness is then accented, how can shyness and accentedness propose ways of working that might include ideas of curatorial listening and (un)learning?

For more information on the program, please contact Daniel Peltz, Uniarts Finland Africa Platform for Innovation Project Lead.

+358503289565
daniel.peltz@uniarts.fi