Prototype Issue
Pundin' the Art Scene with CCH Pounder
By Meri Nana-Ama Danquah
(page 2 of 2)Do you think that all art is political?
What a great question. No, it’s not all political. I don’t think so. Sometimes it’s fiduciary. Sometimes you’re making art because there is a kind of nebulous area where you know things are salable because the content is titillating, and therefore you can see the attraction. It becomes very quick attraction. I find Western art for the most part nonpolitical. I find Third World art political because it has no other choice. It is not free enough to rise to a place where it’s just about your imagination floating. I have never seen nonpolitical art in Africa.
How do you know, when you see a piece, that that’s the one?
I rely explicitly and solely on the emotional. I am not Hellenic in choice at all. I will keep circling it, going back and forth, going (grunts), “Why doesn’t it leave me alone?” And I can go for weeks and weeks, but it’s still somewhere in the back of my head that now I have to figure out a way to acquire it.
Are you a serious collector or is this a hobby?
I have three storage houses, so I guess it’s too late for it to be a hobby. And I have a gallery, and my husband and I have the contemporary museum in Dakar, so we’re beyond hobby now. This is an integral part of my life, and I think that the fact that I’m an actor is where I funnel the support for it.
You have a museum in Dakar, Senegal?
Yes. Our modern miracle. It’s a private museum. It’s quite small. It’s about 3,000 square meters. It looks like it was built yesterday because my husband, Boubacar Koné, keeps it in military fashion, fabulously (laughs, snaps her fingers for emphasis) pristine. It is about 20 years ahead of itself. Most people who visit it are foreign. They’re mostly French, German, Belgian, and we have kept up an open policy that invites the Senegalese people to see it. Usually, what happens is that they come as the guide for someone foreign who has already read about it or seen photos or something. There isn’t yet a museum culture, even a contemporary, so we have really been striving to make it as hip as possible. But as a private museum, we’re talking a two-man operation, and we stretch ourselves as far as we can stretch and then we breathe. Still, it’s been there for 14 years.
What’s it called?
Musée Boribana. My husband really wanted to give back something to his country. He was born in Senegal. He’s from and what Boribana represents is when the Arab marauders were coming across the African plains and Sundiata said, “This is the place that I’m going to stay and fight.” So it’s like the last stand. Boribana is kind of equivalent to Custer’s last stand. It’s like, “I’m not running anywhere. I’m not going to England or France or America or anything like that. I’m coming back home and I’m making my effort here.” So I rather appreciate the name Boribana.
And you also have a gallery here in LA?
Yes. It was a great excuse. The artists that I saw in Africa, it was a wonderful way to introduce them to the United States. They had done fairly well in Europe, and it always seemed like this American connection was always missing. First of all, it’s incredibly far, and it’s expensive to lug stuff from there. But I still thought I had the opportunity, because I was going back and forth, to perhaps introduce some artists to the United States. And at the same time, Los Angeles, which is a great metropolis, just had a dearth of artists. I don’t know why, but it just wasn’t treating artists well at that time when I started. So I thought it would be great to open up the gallery to Angeleno artists and African artists—Angeleno artists of any ethnicity or denomination. I started off in my house. The fact that I was an actress sort of got in the way, so I closed down the house gallery and it took me a while, but I went and I found a gallery on Pico and Hauser, and after I outgrew that one, I am now happily in Atwater Village in Los Angeles.
Why Atwater Village?
Besides the fact that financially, I could afford it at the time? Actually, it was more than that. It looked like it was about to go through a major change. There were two or three little boutiques that I found inviting. There was the Black Maria Gallery, and there another space that I had tried to get which another gallery ended up getting and I went, “This is a very good sign.” When I bought the space, well, I leased the space, and opened, there were three of us all together. As of today, there are now five of us. So Atwater is actually becoming “Artwater.”
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