The first African artist at Amsterdam’s Van Gogh Museum

DW (English)

When Nigerian artist John Madu was invited to be the first African designer to exhibit at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, he chose to showcase pieces that breathe new life into historic artworks. Let's take a look.

Transcript

00:01Art history has long told only one side of the story.

00:06Now, John Maddo's brush adds a bold African voice, rich with identity and rhythm.

00:13What happens when the canvas finally speaks our language?

00:17I feel when the canvas finally speaks our language,

00:20it actually tells people the truth about where we're from,

00:25and no stereotypes involved because there are a lot of stereotypical notions

00:31about certain places we've never been to.

00:34I feel it's deeper, there's an African renaissance.

00:37John Maddo is the first African artist to exhibit at Amsterdam's Van Gogh Museum.

00:43This groundbreaking partnership was initiated by the museum's ReFarmers,

00:47a group dedicated to diversifying its perspectives and bringing in new voices.

00:52ReFarmers in this exhibition called Paint Your Path are a group of young adults

00:58that try to bridge a gap with the Van Gogh Museum and the rest of the world,

01:05and what is contemporary and what young adults would relate to.

01:10They saw my work and liked it because I've always had, like,

01:13for a long time I've always referenced Van Gogh in my paintings

01:17because of how I feel I could understand his journey as an artist.

01:22So they probably have followed my work for a while and they reached out to me

01:27and we've had the conversation for over, like, almost a year before the show started.

01:31John, who admired Van Gogh's art from a young age, saw parallels with his own journey.

01:38This inspired him to reinterpret some of Van Gogh's masterpieces through a West African lens,

01:44bridging local narratives with a global audience.

01:48Me having contact with Van Gogh's work as a young creative myself,

01:52and learning about his history, having the experiences as a young child actually made me see clearly, like,

02:02oh, this is what this artist was going through at this certain time.

02:06It had an impact on me because of my connection with my childhood

02:11and how I was feeling at the time, how the reaction to people with what I was creating.

02:17Most of my work, there are indigenous materials, some motives, some iconography,

02:23which the Western world, universal, global experience can recognize,

02:31like the mono-blockchain, like the Ghana must go bag.

02:34You know, these are things that have different interpretations all over the world.

02:38Through colour, texture and metaphor, John is building a dialogue across time.

02:44How does he bridge time with the canvas?

02:47Growing up in Lagos, I would say the environment around me shaped my visual language

02:51because back then there was a lot of popular culture that was coming into Lagos

02:56and our cultural heritage mixed together.

03:00It gave me a nuance, a fresh aspect and perspective to how I see the world.

03:06But the Van Gogh Expo is more than just an exhibition.

03:10It is rewriting of artistic narrative.

03:13For most of the work on this show, it's mostly all paints, little acrylic, some ink,

03:19figurative paintings, landscape, basically.

03:23For John, his Van Gogh reimaginations are a walk beyond recognition toward representation.

03:31And he is sure this is a significant moment for African art globally.

03:36Being the first African artist, Nigerian artist, to show at the Van Gogh Museum,

03:41it's a personal milestone for me because this is an artist I've known, read about, studied as a child.

03:52It's a mind-blowing experience.

03:54With his West African answer to Van Gogh, John Madu has achieved a pioneering feat.

04:00What role does African culture play for him in reshaping a global art history?

04:05African has a role to play in the rest of the world with what we have to offer.

04:09We have to offer our rich culture, our knowledge, our heritage in general.

04:15So it's inevitable.

04:18What's next for John Madu? And how does he plan to keep working forward?

04:23I have like residency programs lined up. I have other exhibitions. I have more work to create.

04:30John Madu's journey from Lagos to Amsterdam is a first step in the direction that African art history is not a marginal phenomenon.

04:40It is the starting point.

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