In Conversation with Gary Stephens

South African-based American artist, Gary Stephens works in a variety of media including painting, drawing, printmaking, and photography. He portrays women in head scarves or men in hats to focus attention on the power of these everyday symbols of African life, and to capture a sense of contemporary African style and flair for fashion. Stephens is drawn to non-verbal, hypnotic visual experiences and rhythms, such as geometric repetitions, textile patterns, or botanical shapes, often creating layers of patterns that offset and energise the image in the foreground. His works have become veritable sites to assert the African identity and have been featured in many exhibitions across the globe. As an artist straddling several continents and cultures, his creativity stems from his experiences living among societies and the people he encounters on his extensive sojourns around Latin America, Asia, Europe, and Africa.

You were part of the recent exhibition, ‘Prinzip Papier’, at Artco Gallery, Aachen with three other internationally renowned artists united in employing paper or cardboard as a medium. Please tell us more about the show, what you hoped to convey to the public through its theme, and the reception it received.

The show took place in an amazing location, a huge aeroplane hangar converted to an exhibition space in Berlin. I love working on paper and with newsprint collage, pleating and folding my drawings so, it was a unique opportunity since all the artworks were on paper. Artco Gallery presented two of my new large pleated portraits with newsprint collage. They were well received especially because of the pleating, which interested viewers as they create a vibration and shift when viewed from side to side.

Two elements stand out in your practice; the ability to oscillate from one medium to the other—from printmaking and photography to charcoal drawings with interactive displays resulting from the act of pleating the paper, using string screens—and the monumental dimensions. Why is size central to your work and how would you describe your practice?

I prefer making my portraits monumental in scale because the subjects become larger than life—the heroic young generation of Africans. I have always preferred the physicality of working on large-scale and the power of images that are larger than the viewer. I have been lucky these past few years that people want my large-scale works since it is what I prefer. I still love the simplicity and directness of linoleum carving but recently, I have been creating one-of-a-kind pieces.

My work, being quite realistic, begins with photography. One of the strongest themes in my work is the play of busy patterns and how they interact and juxtapose. I stage model photoshoots, shoot hundreds of photos and then select the expressions, light contrasts on the figure, as well as combinations of colour and pattern. The models and I decide together which patterns can be combined and which earring style compliments a colourful scarf. I let the model’s sense of style come through.

I stretch the images in Photoshop before I draw so that after folding, they compress to the correct proportions. The newsprint collage is completed before I begin drawing. I work with masking tape strips that help create the folding lines. The process has many steps and I am quite controlled in my technique. The folding takes place last and requires two people working for four hours.

In recent times, you have begun incorporating newsprint in your drawings in marked deviation from Ankara prints, the focus of your 2012 exhibition in Lagos at Omenka Gallery. Does the newsprint serve any purpose besides the aesthetic?

In some ways, it is not that different since I am still playing with fabric patterns and portraits. Now instead of painting directly on top of Ankara fabric and letting the cloth break through the figure, I am drawing my patterns so I can play with size and change colours. The patterns are still inspired by the large African fabric collection that I have so much fun hunting for in my travels. Over the past ten years, the Joburg CBD has a much better fabric district with lots of variety, not as amazing as the Balogun Market in Lagos, but I enjoy knowing the shop keepers and exploring new patterns that arrive.

The primary purpose of the newsprint is for its colour and the playful way logos and texts randomly appear. Newsprint with its corporate colour advertisements, logos, comics, classified ads, financial listings has an everyday pop culture association I like. I love using crosswords in my pieces. I sort the various colours into boxes that I use like a colour palette when I work. I also select some of the financial listings and classified ads for the rows and layout of the texts, which I glue on the faces carefully, following the angles of the face. A few collectors that work in financial markets were particularly interested that the faces had stock listings as skin. Though truthfully, I am primarily using them for colour and pattern. I let the viewer interpret or give meaning.

Can you explain the thinking behind Lesego with Hibiscus Scarf and Roses, Racheal and Maki, Dress Patterns in Motion and Big Blue Paul with Seed Pod Pattern?

I met Paul, the subject of ‘Big Blue Paul’ when I was leading a stencil making workshop at the African Leadership University in Mauritius. He was a third-year engineering student who told me he wanted to find a way to make electricity available to everybody in Kenya, his home country. I was inspired by his vision of educating himself and finding ways to improve his culture and the quality of life. Paul’s heroic portrait is meant to honour his youthful vision of Africans making a better life for themselves.

I was pleased ‘Big Blue Paul’ sold the first day of my recent show with Everard Read Gallery, Johannesburg. Over the past years, my male portraits became much harder to sell than the women as collectors prefer the softer more beautiful female portraits of scarves and braided hair. After reflecting on how to transform the male portraits to make them more inspirational with a magical poetic quality, I began exploring the use of colour and botanical patterns.

‘Lesego with Hibiscus Scarf and Roses’ shows a young Johannesburg jewellery maker, artist, and model. Lesego wears a scarf of my favourite classic hibiscus fabric pattern. This recent piece was an experiment because I flattened it instead of folding the drawing. I still used tape and masking to create small stripe vibrations on her skin shadows and shift colours in her scarf. Even though collectors have come to know my work for the pleating, I don’t want to get stuck using the same techniques. The pleats work well to enhance and accentuate the large braided hair drawings but I am less sure they are needed in the new newsprint collage works.

‘Racheal and Maki, Dress Patterns in Motion’ is the first in a new series of full-body drawings that show dress patterns while walking to capture a sense of motion. It is the beginning of a new idea. The backgrounds will be botanical fabric patterns like in my recent portraits. Here, I pay homage to Kehinde Wiley’s magnificent portraits of African Americans replacing and reinventing European art history with beautiful African fabric backgrounds. I admire his work greatly.

What is your thinking behind the floral decorative elements?

When I arrived in Joburg in 2010, I was quite fascinated by the Joburg city centre and its street fashion trends: men with gold chains, bucket hats, striped shirts, and women bling sunglasses and big earrings. I showed freeways and cityscapes in the backgrounds and wanted to document specifically contemporary inner-city fashion.

Over time, I shifted away from these themes and wanted more timeless portraits. I eliminated the glasses, hats and bling influences of my earlier work and began placing the figures in a garden setting with tropical palms and flowers as backgrounds. I drew actual hibiscus flowers and lilies floating in front of the models. Eventually, these floral influences led me to use African botanical fabric patterns to represent gardens and nature’s beauty.

Trends in contemporary African art are still largely dictated by Western patrons and scholars, many of whom are Africans residing in diaspora and thus may not be directly influenced by stimuli from the continent. Is this an anomaly, and how can a balance be achieved on the African continent?

This is a big question with lots of layers especially for me. I want to be mindful not to be just another foreigner giving my opinion to Africans. Being asked this question implies you have included my work as part of an African context. Thank you for acknowledging that. I live and make art inspired by my African life even though I was not born here. My opinion as an American could be seen as part of the problem so, my best response is to listen as the conversation takes place.

The issue is how do Africans get to determine for themselves which African voices are authentic and important instead of letting foreign aesthetics and European art history have too much influence.

Hopefully, a wave of young African art curators will emerge; students that studied in Africa and are committed to remaining with their feet firmly based on the continent while they collaborate with museums abroad.

International museums, commercial galleries, and art fairs bring a lot of money and power to influence who gets visibility and attention. It’s a big issue to contemplate how to shift the choices back to the continent. Since most African governments are new to the idea of contributing state funds to establish art museums, the answer will have to come from private African gallerists, curators, and especially collectors whose purchasing choices influence what art gets shown.