The Long Journey Home: An Interview of Composer Sbusiso Shozi and Fondation Cartier Artistic Director Isabelle Gaudefroy

Picture © Zivanai Matangi

intro by Karly Quadros
interview by Oliver Kupper

Before judging someone, walk a mile in their shoes.

It’s an age-old adage. Our shoes carry the weight of our daily lives, our stories, our hardships. They represent the wear and tear of our history but also the tenacity and possibilities of new paths forward. 

For writer, composer, and musical director Sbusiso Shozi, shoes are a way to explore the many pathways of the African diaspora. Blending traditional South African musicality, oral tradition, and contemporary instrumentation, he’s mounting a new performance, African Exodus, for the Centre for the Less Good Idea, in collaboration with Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain. 

Founded in 2016 in Johannesburg, South Africa, the Centre for the Less Good Idea is an incubator for experimental and cross-disciplinary art. The “less good idea” is the one that is more marginal, more daring and more ripe for invention and discovery. It also has to do with resourcefulness; a Sechuana proverb advises that ‘when a good doctor won’t cure you, find the less good doctor.’ The Centre for the Less Good Idea is the first organization to be hosted in residence by the Fondation Cartier, beginning with a week-long takeover of Fondation Cartier’s performance spaces in Paris in May 2024. African Exodus continues that partnership at the Perelman Performance Center in New York City, running from February 27 to March 2.

Autre editor-in-chief Oliver Kupper sat down with Sbusiso Shozi and Fondation Cartier artistic director Isabelle Gaudefroy to discuss performance and the two organizations’ ongoing partnership.

OLIVER KUPPER: How did you discover The Centre for the Less Good Idea, and how did your partnership come to be?

ISABELLE GAUDEFROY: Melanie Alves de Sousa, performing art curator at the Fondation, went to see a performance from some of the Centre for the Less Good Idea’s artists in Berlin. Later, William Kentridge and Bronwyn Lace, the co-founders of The Centre, came to visit our space and we discussed the possibility of hosting the Centre in residence for a week of performances and workshops at the Fondation in Paris.

I have to say that our trip to Johannesburg, on the occasion of Season 10 at the Centre — celebrating years of collaborative, experimental, and interdisciplinary work – was a life-changing experience. It truly convinced us of the importance of showing the creativity, vitality, and talent of this group of artists. Through the residency in Paris, and now this new step in New York City at the Perelman Performing Arts Center, we hope the public will experience The Centre’s creative process firsthand.

KUPPER: Sbusiso, you explore the intersection of music, language, and culture. How do you approach blending traditional African sounds with contemporary influences?

SBUSISO SHOZI: Blending traditional African sounds with contemporary influence requires one’s understanding of the context where the traditional music is performed. African music performance emphasizes the functionality, language tonality, and instrumentation. I compose music in its purest form, and then I get to explore contemporary influences such as vocal four-part harmonies for decoration. However, it depends on the results of such explorations whether it holds and makes sense or not.

KUPPER: What role does storytelling play in your compositions, and how do you translate narratives into sound?

SHOZI: Storytelling in African music is a tradition that has been in practice for many years and is still partly used in rural areas today. This tradition serves as an educational and entertainment tool in Africa. Grandmothers and grandfathers would be surrounded by their grandchildren and perform their storytelling usually accompanied by songs to keep the listeners entertained or by putting an emphasis on the educational element, which is easily absorbed when there is a song reference. 

My compositions are very much influenced by such songs, and it is through these songs where we receive some sort of an archived music kept in its truest form from older generations. I then sample such sound into my own compositions. I sometimes translate my lyrics into any African language and add indigenous instruments for enhancements. This brings richness in the music and connects people of different ethnicities.

KUPPER: You use shoes as a symbol for migration but also as tools, props, and percussive instruments. Can you talk a little bit about the metaphor of shoes?

SHOZI: Shoes symbolize paths, directions, developments, and collapses in African Exodus. Their percussive usage also symbolizes the journey – people walking in different rhythms and paces throughout the years of human existence. They are soul bearers of the wearer, as they have experienced the hardships, wealth, tears, blood, and sweat of the wearer. All human experiences are carried on the shoes. 

When people migrate they are most likely wearing shoes to protect their feet from the journey. However, in African Exodus, we ask for a deeper connectedness – a performer’s and audience’s introspection about one’s personal life experiences. The Transatlantic slave period has been another form of migration. Some Africans in the diaspora have been trying to connect with their bloodline, but the question is, what happens when research and history fail us? We then need to search from within, and this is what the music and usage of shoes in African Exodus aims to evoke.

KUPPER: What do you think makes South African theater unique on the global stage?

SHOZI: South African theatre has evolved tremendously through the years, and it has reached the point where we’re not only writing fictional stories or true life events, we’re creating work that demands emotional involvement and interpretation from both the performers and the audience. Even musical theatre works somehow break away from the usual Western musical patterns and are more deeply invested in following the emotional and physical movements of an actor, giving the sense that a performer becomes a conductor and the music responds. 

South Africa is a multilingual society, therefore we have a wide range of options for selection in terms of culture and languages during the creative process, leading to a more nuanced, layered performance.

KUPPER: As the Artistic Director of the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain that is part of a French institution, how do you see your responsibility now and in the future? How do you contend with the zeitgeist?

GAUDEFROY: Our purpose is to accompany artists in their project and foster new ideas and initiatives, independently from the zeitgeist. We endeavor to work collaboratively with artists, as we believe they can provide us with new perspectives and outlooks on the world. We rely on their visions to transform specific modes of expression into projects which can be shared widely, enhancing what we have in common rather than what divides us. There is no better tool for this than art. 

KUPPER: Sbusiso, from Durban to international platforms, how has your journey influenced your artistic identity?

SHOZI: I was born in Durban, a city located in the province of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, however, I grew up in rural areas. My father was a prominent member in the community as he was a leader of Amabutho [Regiments/ Warriours], leading them in songs and traditional dance, a position called IGOSA. This upbringing shaped my musical fondness and shaped my taste in more traditional forms of music. My compositions align with tradition, and sometimes I juxtapose them with contemporary influences in order to appeal to international audiences. In African Exodus I went beyond my voice’s comfort zone as its sound transgresses South African borders.

KUPPER: How do you see African music evolving in the next decade, and what role do you want to play in that evolution?

SHOZI: I would like to see the evolution of African music and creativity without hierarchical order, comparisons, superiority and inferiority – music that is understood in its truest form without exotic stereotypes. It’s work like African Exodus that resonates and advocates for better humanity (Ubuntu), work that calls for introspection and healing of the soul. Oral tradition is not enough as some information could be lost through the years. As we live in digital times, I would like to see our works being documented and archived for future reference.

KUPPER: How do you see the relationship between The Centre and the Fondation Cartier continue from here? 

GAUDEFROY: Partnering with the Perelman Performing Arts Center in New York City is a unique opportunity for us to connect with New York’s artists and audiences, all the while supporting independent thought and creative research embodied by The Centre for the Less Good Idea. The North American debut of African Exodus in New York is a continuation of the relationship between the Fondation Cartier and The Centre, following the Centre’s May 2024 residency at the Fondation in Paris.

African Exodus will be performed as the Perelman Performance Center in New York City from February 27 to March 2.

Everything She Touches Turns to Gold: an Interview of Colette Lumiere

interview by Karly Quadros

Fuck art, let’s dance.

It’s the attitude that Colette Lumiere had become known for, immortalized in a mural that she painted on the wall of iconic ’70s downtown New York nightclub and art scene haunt Danceteria. She’s celebrated for her bold personas and expansive multimedia projects from street art to installations to fashion collaborations, yet her later evolutions have received less attention. A new show at Company Gallery, Everything She Touches Turns to Gold, running until March 1, explores the artist’s career in the ’80s as she ventured off to Berlin under the guise of a new persona, the mysterious Mata Hari and the Stolen Potatoes.

Lumiere always had a surprisingly contemporary attitude toward blurring the boundaries between the public and the private, between art and commerce. She began by painting cryptic sigils on the SoHo pavement at night and has shown art everywhere from the MoMA to Fiorucci shop windows to German nunneries to nightclubs. Her longest running piece was a 24/7 installation in her own apartment, stuffed from floor to ceiling with champagne and blush-ruched fabrics, a polymorphous punk rock Versailles. Lumiere took that louche crinkling of fabric from her Living Environment and translated it into harlequin frocks that she wore like a uniform. Her influence reverberates widely from Vivienne Westwood and Madonna’s ragged, spunky takes on period clothing to the elaborately staged personas of Cindy Sherman and Nadia Lee Cohen.

Growing frustrated with the limitations put on a young female artist, in 1978 Lumiere staged her own death in a performance at the Whitney Museum. She emerged a few days later at PS1 Contemporary Art Center, beginning an ongoing dynasty of artistic personas and eras. Everything She Touches Turns to Gold features the artist’s under-celebrated paintings, mostly from the early ’80s, “metaphysical portraits” exploring herself, her friends, and the subconscious. While her ’70s works recall historical reclining nudes including staged photos and durational performances in which she napped in poses modeled after classical paintings such as Manet’s Olympia. Her Berlin period, instead, foregrounded motion. The figures in her portraits wave. They evade. They drift and dream and run away.

I recently met up with Lumiere at Company Gallery to explore the new collection. Now in her  seventies, Lumiere is as true to herself as ever in a ruffled white blouse beneath a hot pink Victorian riding coat. Tunisian-born and French-raised, her accent is caught somewhere between her native French and a dry German lilt. We spoke about Berlin before the wall came down, resisting categorization, and, of course, potatoes.

KARLY QUADROS:  I wanted to focus on the gallery show because it covers this specific period of time: Berlin in the ’80s. Rather than focusing on performances and living spaces, this one is much more concerned with visual art and paintings. A lot of what is written about you concerns a smaller period of time: a lot of your ’70s work, your show at the Whitney where you killed your first persona. But there's still several decades of artwork after that.

COLETTE LUMIERE:  Interesting how people focus on one thing to describe you. They get set.

I really began as a painter. But it wasn't long before I got restless. It was in the air. I was very naïve, and I wasn't coming from Yale or whatever. I was coming from nowhere, actually. It was before street art became popular. There was a bar on Spring Street where I did a lot of my graffiti work. I always had an accomplice, a friend, a girlfriend or somebody helping me out, watching for the police

Simultaneously, I was creating the environments that I lived in. I got intrigued with using space in a different way. This was a time where art changed completely, and unconsciously, I was picking up on that.

I used to go to the nightclubs. It was at Max's Kansas City. No place like it ever again.

The people hanging out there were all famous artists. They were [Colette adopts a macho stance] men, and I was a young girl and I usually had another young girl with me. But one night I met [land artist Robert] Smithson, and we had a long conversation. I said I had learned about him and we were doing the same thing. I think he was rolling his eyes. He had other ideas in mind, but we took him to my place, which was near where he lived and he walked in my environment and then he sobered up. We gave him a cup of coffee, and we talked about art. And from then on, he introduced me to everyone. Richard Serra, Carl Andre. That was my beginning.

QUADROS:  Why did you decide to go to Berlin?

LUMIERE:  Sometimes I just like to give up. Surrender. You always want to plan your life, and then sometimes I find it's best to surrender.

So, I was really at that stage of my life, where my Living Environment had come to an end. I think I was ready to be dismantled. I lived in an artwork that was ongoing. It was very extreme, and I was part of that artwork. And there was another element, which was my landlord, who tried to throw me out from the beginning [laughs]. So it was coming to a climax. And then I get this invitation to go to Berlin. How convenient! 

I don't know why I'm talking about my past again. This is really a problem I've noticed. But this show is Mata Hari. We're talking the ’80s! Berlin was a new beginning. 

QUADROS: Who is Mata Hari the persona?

LUMIERE:  Actually, I didn't know at all about Mata Hari the person when I chose that name. The reason I chose Mata Hari was because I knew she was a spy… You had this image. The Berlin Wall was not that far away.

None of my personas are actually about the name. A lot of people think Olympia, it's Olympia from Manet, Justine, it's de Sade, but none of them are. Of course Mata Hari has something to do with the name, but I had to make something new out of her. So, it became Mata Hari and the Stolen Potatoes. It was the potatoes because it was the food for Germany. Then stolen made it more mysterious, dangerous. That's what I felt Berlin would be like. I would take pictures of myself, running like somebody was going to catch me, like the police or the Gestapo.

I got into [the show’s videos] because it's really old footage. One of them was staged at the opera where I did a music video that was interrupted by the police. I have a tendency to do things I should not do for the sake of art, of course, because I'm obsessed. I had the approval of the director who I had done sets and costumes for at the Berlin Opera.

We were just starting to rehearse. It was a potato song, which is in the show as well. It was called, “Did You Eat?” Well, apparently that was not legal. And everybody came out from the kitchen, from the offices. “What is going on here?” And here I am doing my music video rehearsing. We were just at the beginning, and the police came. And I said, “You're not gonna stop this.” I said to everybody working with the band, “Let's just go. Let's just finish it.” At the end, my wig is like half down. People don't know this when they see the video.

QUADROS: What was the Berlin art community like?

LUMIERE: At the beginning there was a lot of resistance for me, and there usually is. I've noticed this everywhere I go. First of all, I'm a foreigner. And number two, it was the height of the wild painters, the Berlin guys – Lüpertz and Rainer Fetting. It was a whole crew of them. They were very macho, and they ruled the scene. They were very serious, and they drank a lot, and they were very depressed. And here I am, bringing my art to a nightclub. I took a boyfriend's Volkswagen and I painted it and put the potatoes in. I arrived in the Volkswagen, and I did an installation in the nightclub they all went to. It was called, There's a New Girl in Town.

This German art magazine came out with a story that art in the nightclubs is what's happening. In New York, there was Palladium. It was where all the big artists like Schnabel, Clemente, Keith Haring, Basquiat, and Colette [went], but Colette was on her own always. So, it explained how I kind of started that way back before in Danceteria. Then they were respectful. Then I won them over, and they were nice to me.

QUADROS: Can you speak a little about the Silk to Marble series? Many things come up for me: the seductress, a statue of Venus, a nun, decommissioned artwork covered in a sheet, perhaps even a dead body covered in a sheet.

LUMIERE:  Well, you just described it. It's not that I'm against high tech or having a big budget, but usually I don't have either available. So I'm very good at transforming material. It was an evening at home bored and I'm leaving, [so I said] “Let's make some art!” I had this one sheet. It was very organic. Organic is a big word in my work. 

They were first exhibited in Berlin, in the house, Kunstlerhaus Bethanien, which was beautiful because it was a nunnery, so it had these oval religious arches, white walls. It was perfect for the series. And then out of nowhere at the opening, I appeared behind one of the columns way up – the ceilings were unbelievably high – and there was special music composed for that performance.

QUADROS: A lot of your performance work is inspired by art history and the canon, often subverting or playing with classical images. But these “metaphysical portraits” seem to come from somewhere else entirely. What can the world of dreaming offer us?

LUMIERE:  My art was trying to reach the invisible, the unknown. That's what I'm reaching out for… I don't care what the trend is… I don't like trends because trends are things that happen and leave, and I'm interested in the eternal. Artists – I guess they’re called visionaries – they follow that line, and they're mystical in a way. I try to stay away from describing myself as that, but that's what interested me from the beginning: the metaphysics, magic, the mystery of life and art. I'm always seeking for another dimension. That's what my soul is looking for, and whatever way I can manifest it, whether it's canvas or performance, that's my goal.

The feminine influence is a big thing too. Now it's much easier for women, but at the time I was doing it, my work was labeled feminine, like it was an insult. Even the women were insulted by me. Like I was an insult. Because I impressed my femininity in my paintings and the way I dressed. I always have fun anyway. That's another thing. Fun is very important. 

QUADROS: You like to build the whole world.  It can't just stay in the gallery. It has to be in the streets, and in the club, and in the bedroom. 

LUMIERE: In the bedroom, yes!

QUADROS: Were you part of the punks?

LUMIERE: Oh yeah, of course. But I also wasn’t. I was never a part of anything is what I’m trying to tell you. In the clubs it was so cool to be mean! [Colette adopts a snarl and a tough pose.] I like punk, but I don’t like it when it goes in a very negative direction. So I created my own thing, which was a contradiction. I added the Victorian look, the soft look, and mixed it up with the tough look because it was only black, black, black.

QUADROS: It’s interesting because Victorian fashion is very confined and restricted, like a corset. But your clothing is much lighter and more playful.

LUMIERE: Well by 1980, I was getting restless to get rid of my Environment, but I wasn’t really ready. So, I started wearing it. It was an experiment in walking architecture. The whole idea was to use space in a different way.

I work very intuitively and later, I get what I meant, you know? I think intuition has its own intelligence. We live in a culture where intellect is so celebrated, not that that doesn’t have its role. For me, it’s always been about the unity of the mind, body, and the emotions. There’s a cerebral part of my work. There’s an emotional quality. I think this show reflects that. 

QUADROS: Do you think you can explore something with painting that you can’t reach with performance or fashion or music?

LUMIERE: I love it and I don’t love it. I’m a loner, really. I like my private life. But it’s a contradiction because I also like to have large audiences and speak to lots of people. Painters are usually by themselves. With fashion and with music and with all of the other parts, I’d probably do a lot more, but I don’t want to because this is my first love. Being who I am and on my own time, that’s me.

QUADROS: I do think you were forward-thinking being so multidisciplinary. Nowadays, it’s so hard for people to make a living doing just one thing. So you see artists that collaborate with fashion designers or build window displays, all the things you used to do.

LUMIERE: I was always interested in pushing that line between art and commerce. And now it’s merged. And I don’t approve of that. But I pushed it.

QUADROS: Do you feel responsible for the people you’ve influenced?

LUMIERE: No, because in the end it’s not me. But it is interesting.

Everything She Touches Turns to Gold is on view through March 1 @ Company Gallery in New York City at 145 Elizabeth St.