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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