The Artist and Life Beyond the Studio

Many artists face challenges beyond producing art. With its exhibition, Outside the Lines, the School of Creative Leadership hopes to address some of these challenges. Okechukwu Uwaezuoke writes

It is just another day in Artist X’s studio. He has finished a painting he has worked on for months. It has been a long journey with false starts, sleepless nights and abandoned ideas. Now that it has come to an end and he finally has the relief of taking a step back and admiring the finished piece, he believes the world should see it.

Then the practicalities set in.

How will he sell it? How does he protect it? What is copyright and what does it protect? What do the contracts mean? What do the clauses mean? What is he getting into? The artist, who seemed to effortlessly manipulate and wrestle his ideas and thoughts into the physical reality, suddenly finds himself on less familiar grounds.

The business of being an artist, he soon discovers, is more than making art. It also involves  finding an audience and market, negotiating, protecting intellectual property, as well as keeping one’s dignity and artistic integrity. While the studio is where the art is produced, the aforementioned are what really defines the artistic profession.

Outside the Lines, an exhibition organised by the School of Creative Leadership (SCL) through the First Fellowship Programme, explores these concerns. The exhibition, which opened yesterday (November 14) at No Parking, 15 Military Street, Onika, Lagos Island, features works by nine fellows from Lagos, Ogun, Abuja, Niger and Ondo states, as well as London, UK. It runs until November 21.

Jacqueline Suowari, SCL’s founder, has spent years passionately supporting artists and other creatives through her Passion for Art Initiative. Launched in 2011, the initiative has since mentored and supported more than 2,000 individuals. Suowari has encountered several talented and gifted individuals who have the capacity to do extraordinary things. However, throughout the years, she has come to realise that being talented is not enough to cope with what an artistic career demands.

Art schools, of course,  have the responsibility to teach future artists the requisite skills and knowledge that will enable them produce works of art. Unfortunately, teaching and helping artists build a successful career and practice beyond the next show is often neglected. Artists and students are usually not equipped to network sufficiently, manage their finances, comprehend the gallery/art market, price and sell their work, find their audience and establish career structures and systems. 

Moving on to a related problem, artists are celebrated for being able to imagine alternative possible ways of seeing the world. Yet, their ideas, often appreciated and acknowledged, are largely ignored and not acted upon. 

It is at this point that Suowari’s notion of creative leadership is most useful. It isn’t a case of changing artists to conform to somebody else’s idea of leadership. It is more about artists identifying their core values and determining what they want in terms of engaging with the society around them.

Nor does SCL restrict success to marketplace achievement. Many paths to success and legacy are valid. Building a body of work, founding an institution, negotiating commissions, building a team or artistic collective, leading a movement, making a change, or creating a legacy that stands the test of time are all legitimate paths. All of these are ways to make an indelible mark and, more importantly, transcend the mundane, and are certainly not for sale.

Leadership, by definition, is after all more than influence. It requires the ability to engage and inspire others to make a change and build something that will last beyond the leader’s time. SCL challenges its fellows to consider who they can influence, what they can build, and what they can improve. In the fellows’ descriptions of their work, they aim to respond to these challenges.

SCL’s credo is based on three interrelated notions: voice, authority and impact. Voice defines an artist’s distinctive aesthetic language and values, as well as her understanding of the significance of the work. Authority refers to the knowledge and ability to uphold and safeguard that voice. Impact takes place when Voice and Authority go beyond individual ambition and serve the public domain, through a corpus of work, enterprise, community initiative or advocacy for policy change.

 This philosophy is translated into practice through the Learning-Telling-Doing approach. Fellows acquire basic knowledge and skills, learn to communicate, advocate for and promote their work before learning to utilise that knowledge for others, and not just for themselves. The first Nigerian pilot has already achieved a number of results. Some fellows have organised solo exhibitions. Others have established art clubs and engaged in arts based community projects in Badagry, Lagos. The goal is to forster artist-entrepreneurs as well as artist-facilitators who assist others in identifying and creating opportunities for themselves.

While acknowledging that artificial intelligence (AI) and automation will transform employment, Suowari believes that innovations in technology ought not to be considered as means to bypass the obstacles facing the creative industry. There are socio-cultural and political barriers that define the nature of employment and are beyond the scope of technology. She advocates for investment in the creative industry to be coupled with the improvement of the region’s technology. 

On the future of SCL, it is bouyed on hopes to connect more fellows across the continent. The school is optimistic that alumni will in the next 10 years, found arts institutions and advocate for improved funding and policies. Additionally, the it aims to nudge artists to take charge of their careers and stop waiting for benefactors.

Outside the Lines shows the artist’s innovation and eagerness to push artistic boundaries. It will be accompanied by an artist talk and a Capstone review, Social Impact: The Rebirth Canvas. The Artist Talk will take place later today (November 15) at 5 pm. 

 The exhibition title, meanwhile, raises several questions. The title may allude to artists breaking traditional barriers and norms in the field. However, there are other limitations and barriers that constrain artists. These barriers may keep artists out of the public domain and other realms, and leave artists to paint and imagine worldly scenes and conceptualise alternate realities.