| Fowokan | |
|---|---|
| Birth name | Kenness George Kelly |
| Born | 1 April 1943 Kingston, Jamaica |
| Nationality | British |
| Field | Sculpture |
| Training | Self-taught |
| Works | Say it Loud 2001,Property of a Gentleman 1807 c1996, |
| Patrons | W. E. B. Du Bois Institute, National Portrait Gallery, |
George 'Fowokan' Kelly (born Kenness George Kelly 1 April 1943 in Kingston, Jamaica) is a visual artist who lives in Britain and exhibits using the name 'Fowokan' (a Yoruba word meaning: 'one who creates with the hand'). Fowokan's work is full of the ambivalence he sees in the deep-rooted spiritual and mental conflict between the African and the European. His work is rooted in the traditions of pre-colonial Africa and ancient Egypt rather than the Greco-Roman art of the west. Coming to the visual arts late in life he deliberately chose not to be trained in western art institutions as he felt that these institutions could not teach him what he wanted to know. They being too deeply entrenched in their own traditions with little or no understanding or interest in the things that interested him most - the ideas that lie behind the art and culture of Africa.
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Examples of Kelly's work are held in many public and private art collections, including that of the W. E. B. Du Bois Institute at Harvard University, Unilever and the National Portrait Gallery London. In the mid-1980s, the artist exhibited in the ground-breaking 'Creation for Liberation' series of group exhibitions which was organised in Brixton, South London by Linton Kwesi Johnson and his colleagues in the Race Today Collective. Kelly's work has also been shown at the Studio Museum, New York[1] and the British Museum, London.[2]
Fowokan is a largely self-taught artist, who has been practising sculpture since 1980.
He decided to become an artist while on a visit to Benin Nigeria, in the mid 1970s. he had travelled to Nigeria as a musician where he experienced some kind of spiritual transformation or enlightenment. He returned to London determined to acquire knowledge of the technique of sculpture, which he was able to find in books and through trial and error.
The philosophical aspect of his oeuvre came through a deep intuition and travels through various parts of Africa, exploring the spiritual side of his ancestral/ spiritual home; this was his art school and university. The intuitive/spiritual aspect of reality he believes still abounds in Africa. He sees African art not art in the western sense but creations associated with religion, magic and ritual.
The encounter between the African and the European has brought about deep rooted spiritual and mental conflicts at the core of the African, along with the belief that the African is nothing more than “the reflection of a primitive and barbarous mentality.” He believes that this point of view cannot be left unchallenged, and that art has an important role to play in the struggle to define and redefine a contemporary African world-view.
In today’s African artists’ work he argues we must see the eyes and hands of the contemporary artist, looking anew, not at, but through the prism of an African aesthetic, speaking in a new world with the voices of the ancestors; voices for so long silenced; in doing so, their art will offer new generations the opportunity to look again with fresh eyes, to see themselves in new ways.
The primary motifs of Kelly's practice are naturalistic portraits, such as his bust of Mary Seacole.[3] But, the artist also introduces forms that allude to the artist's fascination with Africa and the African Diaspora, such as 'The Lost Queen of Pernambuco' which, according to 'Nerve' magazine 'has a beauty that overwhelms'.[4]