For the Common Good: A Community Artist Interview with Akwi Nji
Akwi Nji in her studio. Photo credit: Lyrikal TMG
Hi Friends!
I’m so delighted to feature my friend (and one of my favorite artists, period) Akwi Nji in the community artist interview series, For the Common Good, as she truly encapsulates the essence of what this series celebrates. Each participating artist responds to a series of questions about the intersections of their personal and community creative practices.
It’s my hope that these interviews will provide insights into what it means to be an artist working in and with community, both for artists who aspire to do this work, as well as for communities who strive to engage more creatively with their residents.
A little about Akwi:
I first met Akwi in, let’s see, 2016 during an Iowa Arts Council professional development workshop, and I’ve followed her work ever since. She’s guest-lectured in several of my classes at Iowa State University, and she’s always an inspiration to students and a highlight every semester. (She’s also an excellent friend and hiking buddy.)
Akwi is an artist who creates as a writer, performer, and textile artist. Her work and words have appeared on stage from California's Wine Country Festivals to New York's Fashion Week.
She is a 2016 Iowa Arts Council Fellow, founder of The Hook, visual artist, storyteller, and producer of multi-media artistic events in the Midwest. Her collaborative partners include Emmy-award winning composers, nationally-renowned dancers and choreographers, and companies and organizations ready to think differently about the power of story told through art.
One of Akwi’s most recent community collaborations, In Living Color: Black Arts in Iowa was a pop-up exhibition at her home.
14 Black Iowa artists, including Jordan Brooks, Jill Wells, and Rami Mannan, exhibited work throughout her house. Guests were free to wander anywhere, which created a fun, low-key vibe. The evening included a live musician and an informal talk by Chicago-based Black art collector Patric McCoy on why we should all be art collectors and the democratizing power of collecting visual art.
Akwi was born in Iowa City, Iowa, and raised in Cameroon, Africa. Her experiences as a Cameroonian and Cameroonian-American (in small-town Iowa, and a bi-racial teenager in the most ethnically diverse school in the city) provided an eclectic foundation for her early writing and observations into human relationships, tension between the "outsider" and "insider" and the power of story.
Akwi's work explores the complexities of gender, parenthood, race, political and social issues, tensions between "outsider" and "insider", and concepts of home. Her audio-visual exhibition enuf is currently on display until March 18, 2023 in the Commons Gallery at CSPS in Cedar Rapids. Best of all, you can listen to her enuf album here (and I really REALLY recommend you do that, pronto).
Follow her on Facebook, Instagram, and sign up for her newsletter to keep up-to-date with her future projects.
And a brief introduction to The Hook before we get started…
Running from 2016 to 2020, The Hook served to harness the power of creative personal storytelling in various forms to explore a community's strengths, challenges, history, and culture. Programming ranged from intimate generative writing sessions called Write Nights to robust productions of performance art which incorporate dance, music, visual art, and words to creatively tell a community's stories on stage.
enuf explores movement, intimacy + connection, compassion + joy, urgency. The imagery and written content is inspired by the theme of “being enough” (and adopts the spelling of ‘enuf’ as used by poet and playwright Ntozake Shange) that emerged in Akwi's writings and correspondences (to herself and others) since June 2020. The lyrics and lines in the audio album are drawn directly from Akwi's writings, in some cases written to herself in 1st and 2nd person.
Released: February 1, 2023.
Written and voiced by Akwi Nji.
Produced, recorded, and arranged by Lyrikal TMG. Executive produced by Lyrikal TMG and Akwi Nji.
Who are you in 10 words?
Cameroonian-American mother, daughter, artist, neat freak, chaser of dreams.
What are your creative rituals?
Gracious. I feel like I’m only finally developing these, after so many years of flailing around desperately squeezing “creativity” into whatever random cracks of time I stumbled upon in my schedule. These days, the “rituals” to be my best creative self start the night before. I set my pot of coffee for the morning (if my mom is visiting, this is her cue that it’s time for her to leave LOL); go through a bedtime routine with hot tea, reading, and incense; wake up early to the scent of coffee brewing, waddle out of bed and pour a cup of coffee, turn on an instrumental playlist, light more incense, and write my “morning pages” (an exercise from The Artist’s Way). If I do these things, I feel rested, in control of my time and schedule, clear-headed, and able to drive through my day with urgency and determination. I also block off Sundays for self-care (which usually means I’m in my pjs most of the day) and to set goals and intentions for the week. If I do these things, I find the creativity free-flows more easily.
What community rituals do you value?
Wow. This is an interesting question. I don’t know that I value many of them. I see so many ways in which we go quite wrong in how we ritualistically leave various stakeholder groups out of important conversations, or ignore the subtle ways we keep diverse groups from the proverbial table, or gatekeep sections of our communities which ultimately fosters homogeneity. I try to dismantle some of that, but risk coming across as “controversial” (which I was called in a recent job interview) or “difficult” or abrasive.
Correspondence, one of the rituals Akwi has in store for 2023, invites folks to write - to ourselves and to others. Participants receive a beautifully inspired, and inspiring, prompt to their inbox once a month.
This yearlong project is funded by the Iowa Arts Council and the National Endowment for the Arts. To join the party, scroll to the bottom of this page and sign up for her newsletter.
How do you merge your creative work with your community work?
Founding The Hook was a way for me to directly merge my creative work with community work. My vision for The Hook was that it would be an organization that designed community experiences (not “events”), consistently and frequently, to erode homogeneity, foster inclusivity, encourage empathy and authentically amplify and celebrate diversity. And all of that would happen with creativity as the catalyst.
How has that changed recently?
It actually changed for me when our current president was elected. That broke me, in truth. I thought, my word, if that’s how divided we are, how do a few little experiences -- which suddenly felt like hollow and impactless events -- change that? If all the work that had been done around the world and country up to that point by people far more capable and resourced and talented than me hadn’t steered the ship closer to empathy, what good could I offer? I struggled to regain my belief that even the small projects can make an impact. If anything, my belief in that has increased in the last six months -- finally -- and I’m operating with more hope and have regained a bit of my resolve.
Akwi Nji, If Not Us, Homebound series, 2020. Photo credit: Akwi Nji.
Akwi writes, “This is one of two pieces in the Homebound series that pays homage to the activism and spirit of Congressman John Lewis.
‘If not us, then who? If not now, then when?’ -- Congressman John Lewis
For John Lewis, whose legacy lives, may we carry the torch. This piece incorporates African wax print fabric which symbolizes the ripple effect our actions have on the lives of all others after us. The design on the turquoise + orange material goes by many names, one of which is "Nsu Bura" which means 'water well' in Ghana. The message suggests that, just as when a stone is thrown into the water causing a ripple effect, our actions -- good or bad -- impact all those around us (and who come after us).”
What has been your hardest community lesson?
I’d worked hard, over the course of many months, to curate an experience that would be held at a local coffee shop. It involved a lot of relationship-building behind the scenes to build trust between a diverse group of people and me and The Hook. I needed to earn their trust so that they’d then feel comfortable with sharing their work in front of an unfamiliar audience, and through our relationship they felt a sense of assurance that they’d be comfortable in an unfamiliar venue and in a gentrified neighborhood that they otherwise felt alienated from. A lot of work went into gathering disparate people in a room as artists and audience members. The night went really well. In fact, it was a phenomenal experience and there was an energy in the room that I’ve not felt since then. Euphoric. Electric. It had worked -- a motley crew of people (as my friend called it) gathered and created, together, a magical evening. The owner had had a bit too much to drink, I think, and felt empowered by the energy, and puffed up a bit and reminded us all that he owned the venue and thanked everyone for coming to his place and said we -- “all y’all niggas” -- are welcome there. That’s the kind of thing people say who “mean well” right? They’re given passes all the time. But I was stunned. Many of us were stunned. The energy deflated from the room instantly. We were shaken, disempowered, made to feel small, reminded of our place. People filed out sort of discombobulated. A lot of people I’d worked hard to convince they’d be “safe” in the space I’d created were disappointed in me and The Hook. We lost a lot of participants and credibility after that and I did a lot of damage control that week, one phone call or one text conversation at a time. It was a reminder to me that when you’re not in position of true ownership -- when you don’t have the proverbial keys to the proverbial kingdom -- even if you architect safe space, there’s always the risk of it being dismantled -- and usually exponentially faster than the time it took to be built.
What has been your most fulfilling community moment?
All of the times someone took one step further, felt “braver”, than they had before. Maybe it was a high school student who went from sharing their writing at a low-stakes Write Night to then sharing it in an Open Mic slot at the higher-stakes Drop the Mic. Or the time one of our writers told me she’d started her own writing group at the VA hospital, after her positive experience with us. Or the Vietnamese-American mother who shared her story on stage and later told her daughter that her childhood dream of being on stage had been fulfilled. And the time we’d packed a hall to capacity of about 200 and my friend said, “I don’t know how you manage to assemble such a cool motley crew of people, but it’s incredible.” I have to remember those little things, I guess.
Akwi began The Remoir Project in 2021, which, in her words, transforms donated fabric from around the country into “True & personal stories of our country. INSPIRED by the fabrics we've held close. HONORED through audio diaries. TRANSFORMED into original art. At the completion of the project, every US state and territory will be represented.”
Akwi, post-installation of the inaugural Remoir Project at the Art Gallery in Iowa State University’s Memorial Union, September 2022. Photo credit: Akwi Nji Studio Facebook page.
What tips might you have for artists who want to dive into community work?
Set boundaries for yourself. I tend to gradually get too swept up in the community work, because it’s so fulfilling and addictive, and I neglect my own personal creativity. I’d say it’s important to honor your own personal practice, keep fanning that fire so that you are emotionally and professionally healthy enough to fuel the community work and do it well.
What tips might you have for communities to better support and work with artists?
Don’t presume that artists of color or from traditionally marginalized populations are not all around you and highly skilled. They’re there. Community leaders just need to get intentional about committing to the legwork of finding them, building relationships with them, and then being ready to compensate them fairly for their talent.
What motto or creed do you live by?
Do good and the “doing well” will follow.
Consider the Meaningful, a collaborative installation at Mainframe Studios in partnership with Ballet Des Moines and the amazing Beau Kenyon. Throughout February 2023, participants were invited to respond to prompts on what it means to care. Photo credit: Akwi Nji Studio Facebook page.
Like learning about the ins and outs of being a community artist or a community arts leader? Check out interviews with artists Catherine Reinhart, Jordan Brooks, Reinaldo Correa, Kristin M Roach, Rami Mannan, and Jill Wells, and interviews with community arts leaders Amber Danielson, Allison McGuire, Andy McGuire, and Jennifer Brockpahler.
Have a phenomenal community artist or an inspiring artist leader to suggest? Comment below or email jennifer@whatsgoodproject.com.