From where you stand, what is your position? How do you look at something? What is the story that comes out of what you’ve seen?
– Otobong Nkanga
Some books here hold stories about how they came to be in his library. For example, Otobong Nkanga: Luster and Lucre, Berlin: Portikus and Sternberg Press, 2017), was a gift from his mother. On learning that the artist, whose work he had first encountered at documenta 14 and whom he had met at the 14th Sharjah Biennia, was having an exhibition (Otobong Nkanga: From Where I Stand) at Tate St. Ives, 21 Sept 2019-5 Jan 2020), he had asked her to visit it and if there was a catalog, if she could pick him up a copy.
She went, but at the time of the exhibition the catalog had yet to be published (it has been now and can be found here), so instead she sent him some photographs, the gallery guide and the book of the artist’s earlier exhibitions.
They didn’t really talk about the exhibition, so these photographs are the only for him to understand what resonated with his mother from what she saw.
How much of the intimacy we feel with others, especially those we love and who love us, comes through a process of trying to put ourselves where they have stood and seen what they have seen? At the same time knowing that it is impossible, no matter how close we feel to them.
