CAMOUFLAGE

Anthony Olubunmi Akinbola

In Conversation with Haley Clouser

For his solo exhibition, Good Hair at the SCAD Museum of Art, artist Anthony Olubunmi Akinbola repurposes everyday objects associated with Black hair, such as durags, pomade cans, and barber poles, to convey the intersection of commodities and their broader sociopolitical implications. Mediating between the boundaries of sculpture, painting, and installation, his works showcase the aesthetic potential of these familiar items while exploring their diverse associations with race, art history, commercialization, and personal life.

On the occasion of his show’s opening, IMPACT Magazine asked SCAD MOA assistant curator Haley Clouser to speak with Akinbola to discuss his creative upbringing, signature practice and style, as well as his new works featured in Good Hair. The following interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Haley Clouser: Thanks, Anthony, for collaborating on this amazing show and taking the time to discuss it with me further! I’d like to start our conversation with some background on your upbringing, as it seems like these early moments of your life influenced how you became interested in art and impacted how you see the art world today.

Anthony Olubunmi Akinbola: I grew up in Columbia, Missouri in a normal suburban neighborhood. I'd go to friends' houses, hang out in the creek, ride my bike – just what I believed to be “normal kid’s stuff.” I was also raised in an environment where my sister and my parents were all artists. My parents also ran a non-profit art organization and studio, which was at the back of their store. Originally, the space had been a cafe but it later became a store, where my parents sold African clothing and sculptures or works that they made.

Columbia is also a college town with Stevens College, University of Missouri, and Columbia College. When I’d go to my mom's store, which was downtown and around these schools, I was exposed to a lot. For part of my upbringing, I was always in this studio, even though it wasn't my studio. I was actually there more than in my mom's store. But I wouldn't say I was super interested in art at that time. I was making things, but I was probably more interested in wrestling or skateboarding.

HC: So art has always been a part of your life?

AOA: Yes, art was always there. When I was growing up, I remember going to art exhibitions and visiting the Columbia Art League with my family. I think it was second nature for my parents to take my sister and I to art shows. I grew to think that it wasn’t such a crazy idea for someone to spend their life making art, but I also didn't grow up thinking I wanted to be an artist. It was much later in my life, especially when I started seeing conceptual art. I'd never really been driven by paintings or sculptures in that way. It was really due to conceptual art, found objects, and works that challenged the idea of what art could be.

HC: While pursuing your undergraduate studies, you began dabbling in the visual arts. Could you walk us through your artistic journey at this moment in your life?

AOA: I had gone to three different colleges. My first college was Edinburgh, second was Nyack College, and then, I transferred to SUNY Purchase College, where I graduated in communications and media. I had always been creative at those three universities. At Edinburgh, I would do photoshoots and try to make movies with my friend Devonte. He inspired me to be creative, even at a D1 school that was primarily focused on sports. And then, I went to a school like Purchase and it's the exact opposite, where it's all about art. At Purchase, I was able to find an environment that really nurtured my art skills, and where I could manifest, solidify, and realize some ideas, when previously, I never had the avenues to execute them. I actually remember having my first art shows while I was going to Purchase.

HC: Would you say that you became an artist in college?

AOA: Even though I was making art throughout school, it’s hard to say when I became an artist. I think I know what art “is” more, as I continue to make it. Making art and being an artist are maybe two separate things.

If I were to identify a moment, I feel like I professionally became an artist when I got a studio, and was able to dedicate and invest in my practice in such a way that allowed me to go to the studio regularly. If we’re talking about when I started really thinking about artistic ideas and became an artist conceptually, I think maybe when I went to Purchase or began creating conceptual, narrative films in college. I would also maybe say it was when I focused on a certain medium and was really interrogating my ideas, which was when I was about 25.

HC: What kind of work were you making back then compared to now? At what moment did you feel like people were beginning to identify you with your work, and what work was it?

AOA: I started out making this really political work. It was meant to be about all of the ills that were happening. One of the first works I made called Target Practice, in 2015, was this collage piece where I took portraits of my college graduating class, mainly Black male friends of mine, and juxtaposed their images against targets and the American flag. It was accompanied by an audio track of interviews with them, asking them about their experience being Black and being in a Black body. A lot of the feelings with this piece evoked this idea of having a target on your back since birth. I then started making other works like the Camouflage series that were also heavily packed with social commentary and political themes, but that early collage work is what I believe I became known for.

At that time, it felt like I wasn’t making this work for myself. I'm familiar with these ills because I have experienced them, and it felt like I was creating works for my non-Black audience. Now, I'm just making work that's about me and about my life. It feels like that's how I can be happy as an artist, by making things about where I’m at in my life, like a diary. Even if it's really simple, I want to make work with conviction, and that I can confidently make work about this experience, thing, or idea. What is important throughout all of the work is that it will be connected with me, or I'll be connected with it.

HC: In your early works, like Target Practice and these films, you were applying elements of the figure and rendering more representational artwork. It seems like you then turned to abstraction and began creating readymades that prioritized objects as art forms, using items like durags, palm oil, and even Cadillac SUVs. For years now, you have created this painting series called Camouflage, where you disassemble and stretch durags of various textures and colors into large, paneled canvases. Where did this idea of using materials as artwork originate, and how did you become inspired to specifically use the durag? Out of all of the objects, what spoke to you most about the durag?

AOA: They are significant in what they represent – I feel like the durag is a very polarizing object. There are all these different attitudes around being able to wear a durag or getting kicked out of a place because you have a durag on.

I think that I found a more concise way to have these heavy conversations. The durag works can still be as heavy as Target Practice, as they both evoke feelings of being targeted as a Black person. There's a lot of notions about respectability embedded in that material. I don’t want to say that the durags are not political, but they are also just objects – I interpret them in the same way that I did the targets, or when I decided to paint with palm oil or cassava. I knew that people had a visceral connection to these things, even when they weren’t in art and existed outside of art. And that's what I liked.

HC: You’ve often mentioned your interest in conceptual art and its influence on your practice - the fact that it can be so compelling through simplicity. Do you consider yourself a conceptual artist?

AOA: I've always considered myself to be a conceptual artist. I often ask myself, how do I pull this idea of the lived world from a material. I think depending on how overt your message is as an artist, it might get wrapped up into political art. I was kind of working in that way with a lot of my earlier works, whereas my durag paintings in Camouflage were a little more painterly. It felt like more of an artistic practice that I could do day to day. It wasn't about ordering stuff and executing an idea; it was just about being in the studio and working with color. Some days, I would just sort durag colors, and through this sorting, I'd come up with a composition.

HC: It’s interesting how you describe your routine in the studio. It’s very much like a painter, but instead of sorting pigments or paint tubes, you are sorting and organizing durags. Could you talk more about this thinking behind identifying your Camouflage works as paintings and the significance behind this classification?

AOA: I feel like there are politics and aspects of respectability that exist in painting, where if it's not a certain way or doesn't follow certain rules, it's not really considered “painting.” What I understand as painting has to do with mark-making and color. Not that you can only speak about color in the medium of painting, but for me, these are things that I associated with painting when I was younger. So, I think that these works can be paintings, but they can also be sculptures, installations, or even performative when they move. I started calling them paintings because I wanted to treat them that way in my production of them.

HC: I wanted to go back to the title of the series Camouflage – how did you come about this title and what references are you trying to make by calling it Camouflage?

AOA: The word camouflage stuck out as a title because I felt like that's what I observed in the actual loss of the durag’s material identity in the total form of the work. It just becomes a painting. It just becomes marks – you don't really know what it's made out of. I think about the history of the durag and the idea of it being a tool to straighten hair as a means of assimilation. And then, I think of camouflage in the idea of losing one's identity. Wearing a durag flattens the experience of being Black in a way where it’s difficult to identify if the person is Caribbean or if they are from this place or that place, yet it is the stereotypical idea of a “Black guy.”

HC: On this idea of the durag flattening Blackness and blurring the specificities of Blackness, there was an amazing article in Carla written by Ikechukwu Onyewuenyi about your exhibition Sweet Tooth at Night Gallery in 2023. In this article, Onyewyuenyi suggests that the way you approach abstracting and breaking down the durag – denying any identification of what the material is – makes Blackness illegible as well as expansive. How does this interpretation of the durag expanding Blackness – not just flattening it – resonate with you?

AOA: It's kind of the goal. There's so many ideas as to what Black art is or should be, and then there is this material like the durag where I think about how to pull it from its identity and how to free it from being looked at in this one way. The work could be about color relativity or mass production, but because it's the durag, it’s often a conversation about race. It’s a conversation that I don’t mind having, but as an artist, you challenge yourself, and especially as a Black artist, it’s a question on what I am trying to have this work be about.

Whatever way I was going to use the material, the idea of bringing a durag into a fine art space also allowed me to subvert certain dynamics. There's an asymmetrical information share, where the durag is coded and read differently by different people. There are very few things that are just for Black people, and the durag is literally just for Black hair. That's how it's protected culturally. I feel like there's few things that are guarded in a similar way.

HC: I love how you use the word “protection” because it relates back to how perfect Camouflage works as a title. Camouflage is a defensive mechanism of protecting oneself, and here, you are alluding to how the durag is not only functionally protective but also protected by cultural practices.

AOA: Yes, it works in different ways, even from assimilation all the way to potentially sticking out because you're blending in.

HC: Right, the durag is an extremely loaded object. It’s connected to how people navigate and respond to both Eurocentric and Black beauty standards, whether by conforming to them or challenging them. I also wanted wanted to talk about your decision to keep the durags intact versus cutting them into strips, as well as choosing to show the durags right-side-up or inside-out. Could you talk about the significance behind these formal approaches?

AOA: I think about how to show the information. When I’m trying to make something that feels a little more heavy or calm or slow, I will make the durag baggy or have them sag. There are moments where I really want gravity to do the work for me and I want the work to feel weighty, but other times, I want the work to feel really tight as if there’s a loaded energy, like a rubber band that’s spring loaded with tension, so I stretch the work tight.

The magic of objects is that they can speak for themselves, so I take the time to listen. For instance, I think about what a durag with its “Made in China” tag sticking out says compared to when its tag isn’t shown. This theme communicates labor in a way that you don't see it when the tag is on the other side. When you're just working with one material over years, you learn how to cook it in different ways.

HC: It seems like there are a lot of other associations that you try to extract from the durag apart from notions tions of race – for example, the way you reveal the “Made in China” sticker to talk about labor. In other interviews and exhibitions, you also emphasize the durag’s relationship to commodification and fetishism, as well as its function as an object of cultural currency that can determine social status. What other meanings do you draw out of the durag?

AOA: When I first started, I really wanted it to be about being Black, you know? And then, I started to learn that this thing is an international commodity that has its own economy.

Since the durag is a mass-manufactured product, there are questions about its ownership, where it’s being produced, and who is selling it. The color palette also speaks to actual dynamics of supply and demand, which readymades are subjected to. I'll passively collect durags for two years, but I never really stop collecting them. I’m always on the search for these different colors, and I can't just get 1,000 light green durags. People just assume you can get durags easily. The durag has also gotten so popular that people are raising the price, but people are not going to just stop using durags because it’s a cosmetic kind of garment that you’ll use forever.

The durag can represent all of these things and that's the power of it. I didn’t want to hold it to just being about Blackness or culture. I think anything that can be there should be pulled out of it.

HC: You now have a solo exhibition at the SCAD Museum of Art called Good Hair, where you’re debuting three new works: Sunday’s Best, Spinnin’, and The Price of Oil. Could you speak about your exhibition at SCAD Museum of Art and the show’s thesis?

AOA: I think it's mainly about color. There is a conversation about hair, but it is also about color – both literally and metaphorically. For instance, a kid being forced to cut their hair to compete in a wrestling tournament is about hair, but not about hair. It is because they are Black.

It would be beautiful if the show can be about these very heavy themes, while also being a celebration of what these things mean. Durags can definitely make you look threatening depending on who is looking at you, but it can also make you look cool, which shows how Black culture is glorified and vilified. I want the show to be about seeing these items objectively, and realizing that we often view them with subjectivity. The show also raises questions on what these products could be doing to the world, like what does the durag mean culturally to history or what can a barber pole signify or say about our world?

HC: When you first proposed the title of the exhibition Good Hair, I was excited because I think it perfectly evokes ideas of respectability, subjectivity, and notions of value. We also talked about how it might inspire connections to popular culture, like Chris Rock’s 2009 documentary, Good Hair or even Beyoncé’s 2016 song, Sorry, that boasts the iconic line “He better call Becky with the good hair.” Could you elaborate on your thinking behind titling the show Good Hair?

AOA: The title Good Hair plays to subjectivity, and reveals how people look at all of these objects and make their own associations — it shows that who has good hair is very subjective. I want the show to not necessarily reference anything specifically, but to touch on a lot of aspects. I do think of Beyoncé’s song or Chris Rock’s documentary, but I also think the phrase “good hair” has been a part of culture. As a young kid, we’d talk about having good hair, which was usually having it relaxed or kept. “Good hair” in the Black community usually means not having your hair unkempt or rough-looking. For me, there is a side of the title that references pop culture, but I also want it to touch on the subjectivity of good hair. Success would be for visitors to see all of the ways that this show is talking about different things that aren't maybe so directly associated with race.

HC: To continue this conversation on unpacking titles, could you speak about your painting Sunday’s Best and how you decided that name?

AOA: Sunday’s Best is the largest work to date from my Camouflage series, measuring 48 feet wide by 12 feet tall. It spans the entire gallery at SCAD MOA, and stitches together hundreds of durag swatches in a striped, colorful composition. The work is called Sunday’s Best to evoke getting yourself ready to go to church. I knew that it was going to be a multicolor composition, but I actually hadn't known what the title of the piece was going to be at first. As I was making the painting and placing colorful stripes together, I realized I wanted to reference colors seen at church. When you go to a Nigerian church and you’re sitting in the back, you see a sea of color. You might see someone wearing light pink, white, blue, light brown, or orange.

It also ties into this idea of my work being about my lived experience. I wouldn't always brush my hair, but I’d make sure to have a haircut for church to be in my “Sunday’s best,” so the title also plays with notions of respectability and maintenance. This piece isn’t meant to be super deep or critical, but nostalgic and celebratory.

HC: Your works are so interesting for how they are simultaneously reverent and subversive. Here, the work celebrates the memories you had of your church and its bright, colorful atmosphere, all while subverting what conventionally has been deemed as “respectable” in that very space. In contextualizing the durags as “Sunday’s best,” you also reframe what is valued or deemed as the “best.”

In the gallery, Sunday’s Best faces another new work, Spinnin,’ which is composed of two large barber poles presented side-by-side. How did you arrive at this idea of creating a work made simply of barber poles?

AOA: I think there is something interesting about having two poles spinning together. Usually, they are independent or on their own, and there’s something uncanny about observing them as objects working in tandem. At a certain point, how do you abstract these poles to just be about moving color? At the end of the day, when people see them, they become synonymous with the barbershop, but when I'm looking at the object itself, I'm just seeing color.

HC: When you introduced this work, I immediately drew connections to Felix Gonzalez-Torres’ Perfect Lovers, which are two clocks ticking in sync and displayed together. Many writers and curators have also situated you within similar art lineages, from geometric abstraction to Minimalism – have these artists or movements served as inspiration for your practice?

AOA: I am a fan of Felix Gonzales-Torres and we were exhibited together at the Speed Art Museum, which was an honor, but his work is not necessarily a direct inspiration for this piece. For this work, I do like that it pays homage to these practices and movements. There’s even an element of the work that is in the vein of Chris Burden and what he’s done with street lights. With both of these artists, they reimagine and contextualize what the clock means, and here, I’m reimagining what the barber pole means. When you find out what Perfect Lovers is about, it’s not just two clocks telling time next to each other.

For me, Spinnin’ is really about the abstraction of color, and paring down the barber poles so that you can look at them as paintings and see a moving composition of red, blue, and white. I want to encourage everyone to look at their colors and not think about a barbershop, and reveal how our minds are programmed to see them as associated with barbershops. It’s an approach similar to the way I pull the durag far enough away from identity and other predisposed assumptions.

HC: The last work featured in the exhibition is called The Price of Oil, an installation of two enormous retail shelves with hundreds of colorful hair care products commonly used by Black communities. What inspired this work and what are you hoping visitors will take away from this piece?

AOA: I want people to be overwhelmed by the sheer amount of products. I think seeing a big shelf of hair oil or grease is an interesting way to highlight this object. It's a pretty mundane thing. Most Black people have hair grease in their bathroom or on their dresser. I think being able to amplify and honor the mundane is interesting to me – it feels very transgressive.

HC: I like this idea of heightening an object’s material factuality as well. It reminds me of mid-twentieth century Minimalism and Modernist traditions of ready mades, where artists used unaltered mass-manufactured products to emphasize the aesthetic composition of the banal or day-to-day objects. Again, it seems like your works are in conversation with these art historical styles.

While conceptualizing The Price of Oil, you were also also conducting research on the history of hair relaxers and came across Madam C.J. Walker, who became the first self-made Black millionaire in the early twentieth-century by inventing Wonderful Hair grower, a hair relaxer. Are any elements of this history or Walker’s legacy folded into the work now?

AOA: The idea of a Black entrepreneur specifically working and taking a gamble to make a product catered to a Black audience for their enjoyment – and ultimately being successful in that venture – highly resonates with me. It's not a conversation I'd say is directly associated with this piece because I think it’s more a comparison between the value of hair products to actual crude oil.

HC: What feels special to you creating an exhibition at the SCAD Museum of Art? In comparison to the rest of the exhibitions you've done, is there anything that feels particularly special about this one?

AOA: I think because SCAD is an art and design university, I'm really interested and excited to have a show that engages with students. It gives me the opportunity to show my work to people who are into art but can't go to London or another city to see an exhibition. It makes my show more accessible to the next generation of artists.

HC: Is there anything in particular that you hope viewers gain from your work or this exhibition?

AOA: I think having them leave the show looking at the world differently and actually observing how much art exists around them. I'm just bringing art that exists around me into an art space, but I wasn't inspired by art in an art space. I was inspired by the world, and I brought those things into art, and I'm doing that with some of the most simple objects. They should feel like they have that same power too.

HC: If you're able to, can you talk about what else you might be working on and what other topics you’re researching?

AOA: I'm always working on different projects. I think now more than ever, the ideas have been the most important part. I don't know what the medium is going to look like, and I couldn't tell you if it's going to be textile work or if it's going to be sculpture. More recently though, I've been investigating abstraction of the road, especially all of the lines and symbols that we encounter daily. I’m thinking about these normal marks in abstraction and the road as a canvas.

Anthony Olubunmi Akinbola: Good Hair is on view at the SCAD Museum of Art in Savannah, GA through December 22, 2024.

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