A JANUARY 2025 EDITION

What a privilege it is to try again.
We must learn to proceed without certainty.
Outcome oriented action is corruption.
Uncertainty is where the magic happens.
You cannot suffer the past or the future because they do not exist.

A monolithic island formed from earth and the aggregate is the workspace and a gathering point. Curved openings and thick walls soften movement through the house. There are no abrupt shifts from one space to another.

An in-between space, neither fully inside nor fully outside, offering shelter without enclosure. This is where life slows down, where gathering, resting, and quiet observation just co-exist.

Traditional construction techniques are used and nothing is disguised, embellished, decorated . Earth looks like earth. Straw reads as straw. Texture, grain, and imperfection are visible and expressive. With Ca Na Pau I see kinship with African earth architecture.

The artwork lock your eyes in. They punctuate this room rather than dominate it, yet remain oddly functional. Each piece earns its place, allowing negative space to work just as hard as form.

Weathering brick and lime has a potentiality to develop a beautiful patina depending on age, use and exposure. When curated with wood, art work , fabric and softened metals it forms a tactile backdrop that feels almost archaeological.
The palette leans into clay reds, softened browns, chalky creams. They are soil colours, very warm and settled.

I love the tension here, solid almost architectural furniture softened by curved lines, woven fibres, and gentle irregular artworks.
The slight roughness of surfaces, the weight of glass, and the softness of textiles create visual depth and curiosity. It feels intimate and considered in a way that invites slow observation rather than instant impact.

The memories that live in our mind and are alive and mutable; they are dynamic, they evolve. They have a capacity to redefine our perspective on the past and act as an engine to drive social change. Art, design and architecture are each silent witnesses to culture and civilisation, and memory works to relate them all through a context of associations. They too become mutable: the meaning of a work of art or architecture shifts with its socio-political space and time.

His paintings reference the European tradition of portraiture that depicted people in power in the manner and fashion of their time. His work exploits this association of historical portraiture with status, power and superiority to celebrate and memorialise those whom such power historically sought to deny and conceal. Wiley preserves the “pose” or a posture of the figures in European portraits, voids them and replaces them with black bodies. These heroes, as objects of adoration, are transfigured into new protagonists and the results are jarring, engaging, surprising, shocking and delightful.

As one reads in the exhibition’s presentation notes: “Taken from an African or African diasporic point of view, the circus and the carnivalesque have historically been opportunities for the formerly enslaved to engage in moments of freedom and grace that were generally forbidden. The paintings are an enactment of an established ritual of grandeur – having one’s portrait taken – to promote an occupation of the voided white space by black bodies, squarely in the territory of the “Old Masters”.

I just keep falling in love with Art Nouveau.
When you don’t have the space for grand staircases or elaborate railings, the language of the movement can live in smaller moments. A door, a coffee table, a panel, but give it a touch of some African geometric rhythm or pattern. Then call it Afro Nouveau.

The self is not a hidden object waiting to be uncovered; it’s a living construction, constantly negotiated between visibility and invisibility.

So rather than asking “who are you when no one’s looking,” the more interesting question becomes: who are you becoming as the world looks back?

Warmly,