By Juliane Foronda
I vividly remember when I first met Anna Karima. It was in Dakar, around a table full of food, under the shade of a mango tree. Now looking back over two years later, and reconnecting in one of the most unexpected places, I can’t imagine a more fitting first encounter.
a rememory that belongs to somebody else was recently on view from May 4 – 12 at the Museum of Impossible Forms. This solo exhibition by Helsinki-based Senegalese artist Anna Karima Wane was filled with gestures, questions, (hi)stories, rehearsals, and radical acts of hospitality that echo far beyond the formal parameters of the work. In the space, I first noticed the CRT television screens scattered across the floor playing a four-channel video titled, How to Eat a Mango, with a large rug and a seating pouf in front of the screens, inviting guests to take their time and get comfortable.
Along the wall were photographs of archival material that documented her research trip in the Archives Nationales d’Outre-Mer, coupled with hand-written journal entries ripped straight from her notebook, with their hands being present both literally in the photographs, as well as through the vulnerability of teared pages. On one wall were two longer texts that share the stories of two women in her family, Aye Touré, and her grandmother. These stories fill the space with a mix of authority and tenderness.
Finally, there was her dining table that was transported from her home in East Helsinki. On the table rests a few more journal entries, trivets with images of colonial Jamaica from her grandmother’s home, and laser engraved napkins with digitally altered images of colonial Kindia. There were also chairs around the table that gently offered themselves to host the guests, giving everyone a place to sit, consider, and rest.
Anna Karima immediately offered me a cup of mint, jasmine, and orange blossom tea upon arriving at this conversation, and told me that this is the tea that her mother makes for her back in Senegal. My hands naturally wrapped around the mug to take advantage of the warmth.
Juliane Foronda: We’re sitting here now in the middle of your exhibition at the Museum of Impossible Forms in Helsinki. How did this work come to be?
Anna Karima Wane: The first thing was The Story of Aye Touré, which I wrote in 2020 when I was first starting to look into this story. I was very inspired by Saidiya Hartman’s Venus in Two Acts and thinking about the importance that is given to the archives and how we find our place within this record that has tried to erase our histories. Then going to France and going through the Archives Nationales d’Outre-Mer in 2022, and having that experience was a little bit surreal in many ways. I remember writing in my notes that I didn’t know what I was looking for. I was taking these images of files and documents, but also wanted to show myself within it and think about my own position in this. I wanted to also bring back this idea of the gaze into it and talk about why we are doing this. This is a document. It has been kept, sure. But then, why am I looking for it? And how does me being here change the relationship to whatever this notion of truth is? The archive erases a lot of lived experiences and a lot of lived realities. I had to keep reminding myself that this is not everything. It’s interesting and you can keep going back to it, but you cannot give it too much weight.
JF: It’s interesting to hear you talk about the gaze, and maybe stretching that into ideas of performance. In the show, the video work is perhaps the most obvious performance or performative piece. But then I also see your hands being very present in the archive photographs showing that it’s your perspective, your gaze. It’s not just any generic gaze from online archive documentation, but a person’s hand is holding the documents. It’s a Black person’s hands holding them, a family member’s hands holding these things. It’s quite powerful to document yourself in these photos.
AKW: I think that at some point I was hesitant about including these images in the show, and I think I still have a lot of work to do with them and about the conversation that I want to have with my grandmother about these things that I found. I really wanted to think about this exhibition as a book in a way while thinking about how I tell these stories. Writing is also an important part for me throughout this whole experience and for my practice in general. I really wanted to write about these experiences and write about the process of going through the archive.
This idea of the exhibition as a book was a constant thought, but the first thing I considered when thinking about how the show would look was that I want it to be like a living room. And even more so, capturing the idea of my grandmother’s living room, even knowing that there’s no way I can recreate that, but I was thinking about how I can make myself comfortable within the space so that I can better host people within it. That was an important question for me because I feel like I have some concerns with exhibition-making, so I just had to think through how I would be able to create that space for myself. Up until the last minute, I was thinking if I should bring in the table, because it’s my actual dining table from my apartment, and I was just thinking about what kind of table I want to have in the space. For me, it was very important that it was the kind of table that you feel like you can gather around as opposed to a desk or work table. Once I wrote the journal entry about the tables, it was clear that I had to bring it in.
JF: You opened your exhibition text with a quote from Toni Morrison’s Beloved. I just want to expand a bit on the term “rememory” and slightly step away from Morrison’s telling of it and talk a bit about your perception or knowing of the term.
AKW: The term rememory kept coming back up, and it was something that I was really thinking about because Beloved is one of my favorite books. I thought back to the beginning of this project in 2020, when I was stuck inside like everyone else, and I was thinking a lot about motherhood and about parenthood in many ways. I read Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home, and then Are You My Mother? in close succession, and was thinking a lot about the “good enough mother” idea from Winnicott. I was reflecting a lot about that, and these ideas of anger at the mother. I started describing it almost as an anger at the mother for not being able to protect herself.
That was also something that I found in the story of Aye Touré. Just hearing it from my grandmother and the way that she was almost erased from her own story and trying to feel these “zone d’ombres,” and thinking about how to tell this story. Beloved is also in that context of thinking about this character of the mother and the choices that she has to make to protect herself and to protect her children. This idea of rememory really stuck with me for a long time – that it is a memory, but also thinking about the action. Even in the quote that I use, she talks about the moments when you walk through a memory that belongs to somebody else, and this active participation in the act of remembering and memorialising. That’s something that resonated with me.
JF: You touched a bit on the role of the archive in this work. The two of us share a deep affinity for archives and have spoken many times about all the curious things you can find in these spaces, but also the heavy bias that comes with an archive. How was your experience working in the Archives Nationales d’Outre-Mer?
AKW: The first things I looked up before I even found these documents was “Guinea 1895 to 1910” and having this wide range of this time period that Aye Touré was there to try to get an idea of what that would have been like. I was reading all these documents and I remember writing in my notes about how the fact that this is so boring is a failure of the archive to capture real life. It was just these dry letters back and forth, they felt so sterile and divorced from reality because in these letters, it’s not like they’re organizing a picnic or something, they’re actually committing acts of violence against people and yet they managed to be completely detached from that. That was the first thing that kind of struck me throughout reading these documents. As I kept going, I just kept thinking, what if I miss something just because I got bored? I wasn’t so much interested in the documents themselves as I’m interested in what is not there, and what is in between the lines, and the things that are there are omitted a lot of the time.
JF: One thing I’ve always found quite interesting with archives is that sometimes the need to preserve kind of stops things in the archive from living or continuing to live. Maybe that’s their paradox.
AKW: I definitely agree with that. I think a lot about when you and I went to the Hotel and Restaurant Museum archives last year and I just remember that photograph of the woman making sausage. In the description, it says something like “hostess making sausage”, and in parentheses are the ingredients. That has really stayed with me because it’s not just telling you that this person is making sausage, but it’s in a way giving life to this archive by giving the recipe to follow. It made me think a lot about how you give life to the archive. I think the handwritten notes were also my way of giving life to these things.
JF: It’s also important to think of the responsibility of the archivist and those who work in collections to give them life. These conscious or unconscious decisions to omit or include certain things, or to decide what’s considered important, factual, or necessary information to include or exclude is a lot of power and responsibility.
AKW: That’s something that I think about a lot for sure. One of the first people who came to see the work spoke to me about the gap – about the fact that you’re telling a story, but you’re not telling the whole story. You’re kind of leaving these gaps and being able to kind of sit in between the gaps and not having to say “everything” because you can’t do that. I think that’s one complication of my relationship with archives, which is the fact that it’s often seen or considered as the truth, but for me, it’s more about complexifying this notion of truth. Like, what does that mean? I go back to this idea of walking through a memory that belongs to somebody else, and not taking for granted everything that is written down, but also finding these connections and relying a little bit more on things that you cannot explain.
JF: That makes me think about the unfair assumption that written language is more powerful or more important than other forms of language or communication. I’m also curious about your use of language in the show because I find your use of language very intentional here. It’s present in various ways throughout the show whether that’s in hearing your voice talk about mangoes, seeing your handwriting, or reading the texts that you wrote. How did you navigate using language in the show?
AKW: It was a bit instinctual and not very planned out, but from the beginning I had the idea that I was going to make a book. I think in words a lot of the time, it’s just one of my preferred forms of expression in a way. It helps me process and create connections between the things I’m thinking about. I feel very attached to writing as a practice.
JF: There’s also the multilingual reality of your work. The entire show is in English other than the text on the archival documents, which is in French. Then thinking of maybe even communicating what you’re researching to your family, that would likely be in Wolof. And we’re in Finland, where Finnish is the primary language. For me, it’s quite curious to think of language in relation to translation. And not just translation between different languages but thinking about how we translate what we see into words, or how we translate an experience into a conversation, or something like that.
AKW: I’ve been thinking about how I’ll share this work with my family, and how the translation would have to be in that direction, strangely enough. I would have to consciously move things towards French or Wolof. There was one text that didn’t make it in, which was about Malinké, my grandmother’s language, and thinking about generational shifts, how things are being transmitted, and how we’re kind of losing a little bit as we go along. It’s also interesting that there’s so much text here, but people are still asking me what the archives are saying. I don’t know… you don’t need to know everything that is being said.
JF: It’s also interesting to think of how language and translation can be an assertion of power because you’re framing things in a certain way. The translator is the one in control of how things will be presented and how perspectives can be shifted. For example, we’ve had this conversation before about when it’s convenient to use “foreign” versus “international” when talking about people, specifically in an arts or academic context. Maybe this example is quite relevant not just to the show here, but to your lived experience in Finland so far.
AKW: Exactly. Showing this work here made me have to think through these questions in Finland, which is a white environment. So, thinking about how this work is related to my family and very personal things, it’s strange in many ways for me right now, because I do feel like I’m in a way sharing myself with people who don’t have a lot of context.
This past year I’ve been thinking a lot about my time in the USA making my bachelor thesis, which was about representation and different ways of representing and talking about Black women, and how much of that was a response to the environment and how much of that was coming out of a need to justify my presence or my existence in this space. So, when working on this, I had to think to myself, what do you want to do? and not just, how can I make everyone understand where I’m coming from? That’s been a really big question for me to try and navigate.
I’ve been reading and rereading this article called Traces, Signs, and Symptoms of the Untranslatable by María Iñigo Clavo and they talk about artists from the Global South or from marginalized communities feeling like they need to translate that context in their work. The text was more specifically talking about Native American practices and how people are kind of shifting certain things to a Western context in a way that will make the Western audience feel like they understand, what really needs to happen for them to understand is a complete shift in their mindset.
JF: Or understand that they don’t know yet and that maybe it’s a learning opportunity for them.
AKW: Yeah exactly, it’s completely different. That’s a question that I have a lot of the time and trying to also find a certain balance. I understand that I’m here. I’m in Finland. I’m at this white institution, and this is the institution that’s going to give me a degree. But then, how do I still make things happen on my own terms without feeling like I have to completely contort myself to fit in? Because I was thinking, too, what does it mean to show this work in Finland? Do people get it?
There are so many memories in the house, so many different people who have passed through it. It’s a very charged place for me in many ways.
JF: Exactly. This show talks about Blackness, Black Ancestry, and womanhood, but it also talks about hospitality and hosting traditions in general, which are widely different in Senegal than in Nordic countries, like Finland. The way you’ve translated all of that in a way that’s understandable by the local audience, but also unwaveringly true to yourself is impressive.
It’s also interesting you say that a priority of yours during the exhibition is making connections because to me, this show is all about relationships. You said in the exhibition text that the work roots itself in the relationship you have to the women in your family, but also their relationship to the men they love and raised. Aside from that, I can also see the work itself as evidence to your relationship to place and your relationship to culture.
I think about my grandmother’s house a lot. I grew up there also, so it has been my home for many years. I think a lot about how much life there is in that house and how I’ve lived there from the beginning of it when we moved there in 2000. I feel very attached to that place specifically, and to how there are the spaces in that home that have their own choreography that have been developed over many, many years. It’s like a language that has developed over time and a comfort that has developed over time. When I go back home, I always like spending so much time in that house as well. There are so many memories in the house, so many different people who have passed through it. It’s a very charged place for me in many ways. It’s also very connected of course, to Senegalese culture in many ways in these ideas of hospitality or teranga, as we would say. I won’t say it’s unconscious, but it’s just part of the fabric of the place and of the culture I come from. Obviously, I’m always going to offer food, it’s not even a question.
JF: Exactly. I’ve experienced living and working in Nordic places for a while, so I’m familiar with the reality of what’s hospitable to some is overbearing to others, or what’s hospitality to some is vacant to others. There’s a lot of learning that there’s not one version of hospitality. There’s not one way to host. Even if you’re practicing hospitality, that doesn’t mean that the people receiving it are necessarily feeling hosted. It’s curious how drastically hospitality can differ. What is hospitality to you, especially now being here in Finland?
I think a lot about my studio at school, where I’m sharing the biggest corner space with two of my friends and there was a lot of discussion about what that space could be. Early on, I had this talk with my studio mates, Joel and Romance, about us being able to kind of carve the space that’s open to everyone. If you have it, why not share it?
I think it really relates a lot to the text I wrote for the show about my grandmother always hosting people because as soon as I left home, I became that person. I didn’t even know. When I went to boarding school in South Africa, suddenly my room was where everyone was hanging out. In college in the US, where I lived was just like always open for people to come in and that continued to happen when I moved off campus and my mom came to visit, and she asked me: why do people always come here when they have a problem? Now there’s more intentionality behind it for sure. Now I’m trying to find my boundaries, but I think there’s a big part of me that knows that if someone needs something, I’m just going to be there.
JF: Sometimes some people don’t realise that something exists until they experience it. Like Senegalese level of hospitality, for example. These things that are just common practice to you are suddenly extraordinary to some, and probably confusing to a lot of people as well. So, if we’re talking about what hospitality is to you, I think it’s simply you. It’s how we were raised. It’s how you live and navigate the world. It’s knowing that your ancestors are firmly watching you to make sure you offer people something.
AKW: I guess sometimes these things are just ingrained. It’s not something that is always conscious in these cases.
JF: In thinking of that and talking about school and your studio, I think it’s also important in the context of this show to talk about how this is your MFA show. Final MFA work is typically shown in a group show on campus at Uni Arts Helsinki, and you are the only person out of over fifty students to make the conscious decision to pull away from exhibiting not just in the group show, but outside of the institution completely. You instead are exhibiting your work at the Museum of Impossible Forms. Can you tell me a bit about that decision to step away from exhibiting with your class and what led you here?
AKW: Yeah, in my acknowledgements I thanked the bus driver that left me in London. That was shitty, but it was a moment where I was just stuck in that bus station with my phone dying or dead most of the night and I just went through these cycles of thinking like, what is art? What am I doing with my life? What’s the point of all this? And then in the next five minutes, I was writing all these ideas for new work. I was also thinking about what it means for me to show my work in this white institution, and how I want my work to be seen. At that point, I already had questions, but I hadn’t even had my biggest problems with the school yet, to be honest. It was just starting.
Finland is very specific. This is not the first time I moved countries, yet I feel completely lost because their system has so many rules, and there’s no support or guidance for international students. I also don’t feel heard in many ways. Especially on issues like racism, there’s a lot of ignorance. I remember this class that I took my first semester, which was about documentary in contemporary art and the teacher talked about the history of documentary. After a few days of class, I realised that I was going to have to be the one to bring up colonialism because the teacher had still not brought it up at all. I studied documentary in college so I couldn’t understand how you can speak about the history of documentary and not talk about that, and not talk about how documentary in many ways was started to capture the other. I eventually spoke up and said that I feel like the history of documentary is very much rooted in the oppression of marginalized people, and then the teacher just goes, “okay,” and that was it. It made me think a lot about why it is often the labour of the person of color to bring up racism, racial injustice, or racial ignorance.
JF: Yeah, we know that institutions are rarely safe spaces for those in the global margins, but I’m curious about what your Finnish peers are doing when they hear about your experiences. Are they standing with you? Are they the ones speaking up and calling this stuff out?
Yeah, I do feel like I found some people who do. I mean, Finland is really white and ignorant overall, but I’ve never met allies like I’ve met here. Of course, the people who are in charge still are not listening or don’t care and that’s unfortunate.
JF: I do want to speak a bit more about not only the active choice to not have this show affiliated with the institution, but more so the choice to step out on your own.
AKW: The first thing I wrote during that sleepless night at the London bus station was, “You want to put them on shaky ground.” What I meant by that line was the impression I got from my school was that: you are invited, but this is not yours, this is not for you. So, we come in with the feeling of being an unwanted guest in a way. I knew that I couldn’t exhibit at the school because it’s so much about consumption, and I did not want my work to be there. And I don’t want to be tokenized. This work is extremely important to me and is extremely personal, and I don’t want it to be consumed in that way. I’m also concerned with the intentionality of people who will come. Not everyone is going to come here and that’s okay.
The Museum of Impossible Forms (MIF) is one of the spaces that hosts exhibitions without charging artists, which is rare in Helsinki. Their mission statement is very much involved in practices that deal with archives, and that deal with BIPOC, and are centered around people whose voices are not always heard in the mainstream Helsinki art scene. For me, it was kind of obvious at a certain point. I had a studio visit with Chris Wessels, one of the co-founders of MIF who I had connected with at one of their events. We had a lot of conversations around the work so I reached out to him about if MIF would host my MFA exhibition. Maybe it was also the right time because they had just moved here a month and a half ago and this is the first exhibition in this new space. It’s been a good space for this work and allowed for it to stretch out, which I wouldn’t have had at school for sure.
JF: Yeah, it’s easy to say as we’re currently sitting in the exhibition itself, but this is a complete show. It’s not a one-off project to fulfill something in class. This is work that in many ways, you started well before your MFA, before you knew that you would be showing in Finland. It’s a solo exhibition in its own right and it being your MFA work is (at least to me) very secondary to it.
AKW: I feel I was lucky, and I am incredibly grateful. Not just to MIF for hosting, but to the many people who have supported me through this process. Many of my friends are also working on their own thesis and still found time to help and support me in various ways. It all leads back to community… I had a whole part in my thesis about “What is community?”.
JF: Well, what is community?
AKW: What is community? I don’t have the answer.
JF: You have a whole section in your thesis.
AKW: I do have a whole section. It was mostly questions, let me tell you. I feel like working on this project and making this exhibition, I’ve been held up and supported by many people, and by a community of people. I think I didn’t expect it either. I’ve been running around talking about community building and doing all this stuff to try and make it happen. I quickly realized that the school and the institution were not interested, but that it was resonating with other people. I just feel like in making this show, I’ve also felt like the energy that I was putting out, I was kind of experiencing firsthand.
To check out more of Anna Karima Wane’s work visit her website or Instagram.