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June 2021

Nicole Rafiki and Nicholas John Jones are founders of Rafiki Arts Initiatives (RAI) and PRAKSIS, respectively. These two artist-organisers have been in regular contact since their chance meeting at PRAKSIS Teen Advisory Board’s Change mini-festival in September 2020. In late 2020 an ongoing collaboration between RAI and PRAKSIS was established, with PRAKSIS mentoring, supporting and providing facilities for RAI, and benefitting from RAI's areas of knowledge and expertise.

This text is one part of a two-part conversation that probes Nicole and Nicholas' understanding and methods of creating community. Part Two, in which Nicole asks Nicholas about the motivations and approaches of PRAKSIS will be published on YPPĒ in the near future.

Nicholas John Jones (NJJ): Nicole, you have described Rafiki Arts Initiatives (RAI) as “an incubator, a case study and a curatorial utopia” and in previous discussions you’ve discussed strategies that focus on fluidity and liminality as ways of challenging the structural problems that stand as obstacles to real inclusivity in the arts. Before we look at those meaty subjects, though, could you fill in some basics about RAI, such as why you started it, and how it has developed?

Nicole Rafiki (NR): Well, to give you a sense of the contexts for the creation of RAI, I need to take you back to the early 2000’s when I was a teenager. I grew up in the small town of Namsos in central Norway, and moved later to Drammen. Namsos has a population of just over thirteen thousand, while Drammen is bigger: around sixty-six thousand. Nevertheless, in both those places and in every aspect of society, I experienced very little representation of non-white people, and I missed it – especially in the cultural field. I vividly remember the stares and general awkwardness that I attracted; it made me feel out of place and prevented me even setting foot in a Norwegian art gallery.

At the time, the few Black Norwegians that I can remember seeing in popular culture were either musicians – the neo soul singer Noora Noor, or the singer-songwriter Maria Mena, or the R&B artist Mira Craig, or Stella Mwangi – or athletes, such as Norway´s fastest woman, Ezinne Okparaebo. Role models were few and far between.

Growing up Black in those days was conflicting. On the one hand there were many political discussions about multiculturalism, but on the other assimilation was strongly suggested and supported. In short, being Black in Norway was not cool, and being African and Norwegian was almost unheard of. One had to choose either of the categories. The only ways to be “cool” or “beautiful” was being a model, a rapper (or a vixen), a basketball player or something along the lines of commercialised Black narratives that Norwegians, who consume a lot of American culture, were exposed to through mass media. Maybe I would’ve adapted to it more easily if I’d been born in Norway, but for someone like me, who had lived in so many countries prior to my arrival here, the idea of asserting a singular identity was completely unnatural. To pretend to have a singular national or cultural identity would have been a masquerade. All the places where I’d lived and the experiences that I’d been through had shaped me. I was unable to think or live my life in denial of them.

NJJ: I think almost everybody can relate to the desire for their identity to be recognised and to feel accepted as part of a community or communities – to feel fundamentally welcome and supported. Perhaps for many people who take this for granted - as I did growing up in the suburbs of Reading in England - it’s not easy to relate to the harm a seemingly innocent question such as “Where are you from?” can cause - especially if it’s asked on a regular basis.

NR: Absolutely – and especially when you give the unexpected answer, “I’m from Namsos” and it isn’t accepted. The follow-up question would be “Okay, but where are you really from”. Although I was just a kid with a thick dialect from Trøndelag, those comments made me feel alienated from my Norwegian identity. I think Taiye Selasi´s ‘Don’t ask where I’m from, ask where I’m local’ is still a valid alternative. When I started travelling back to the African continent, I experienced huge contrasts: on the one hand being in a ‘foreign’ land such as South Africa, Malawi or Senegal and feeling at home; and on the other being technically ‘at home’ in Norway and feeling foreign. This is a hugely contradictory space to be in. I often met other young people who shared these experiences - and also others who did not, because they grew up in Oslo where there was a lot more diversity. Moving to Oslo made a huge difference for me, there were communities that embraced Blackness and provided platforms for us to meet and express ourselves. I discovered established programmes and forums such as Afrikan History Week, The Nordic Black Theatre and the African Cultural Institute (CAK) that all provided a safe space for me. I remember wishing there was something like that in Drammen too. Eventually, I realised that I had to do it myself –to be the change I wanted to see – and that led to the decision to create that platform myself. That's how the first culture and art festival, “Afrikanske Dager” came about. It was a community effort from the start and it still is to this day. That was the seed from which RAI grew.

Nicole Rafiki with film director Adeyemi Michael, artists Adelaide Damoah and Elladj Lincy Deloumeaux, and designers T Michael and Aïssé N'Diaye at RAI's exhibition Still Rising in 2019

NJJ: Who was involved in this community effort at the start, and who now forms the core community at RAI?

NR: I got a lot of help from people that I met in the different Oslo communities and networks I’ve mentioned. They included Oslo based life coach Miriam Nabunya, who is the present-day Chair at RAI, entrepreneur Jankeh Njie and cultural studies and media scholar Henry Mainsah, who is still my mentor today. Guidance and encouragement from experienced professionals including Antoinette Botti, Cliff Moustache, Hannah Kvam, Birame Diouf, Barth Niava and many more who I consider as my elders in the Afro-Norwegian community, really helped me along the way. Even the mayor of Drammen came to show his support at our initial event. I have come to love the fluid nature of the RAI community: fluidity is a core part of my thinking and working, and that’s why so many different people from different places in the country and different age groups have engaged in our work over the years. We´ve had different youth members since the beginning, including Estella Nicole Gryting, Jocelyne Rashidi and more. People naturally grow and transition into different roles in life so there is always an iteration between new and familiar faces within the RAI community. Similarly, RAI has also grown and transitioned from its early beginnings to where it is now.

Artists and models at RAI's second exhibition which included young people from Drammen, 2015

NJJ: If you want to build something, it’s critical to have the support of others who share a vision and are prepared to get involved. Earlier you mentioned being the change you wanted to see, and I don’t want to project my own assumptions onto what that is, so could you say more about your vision for change?

NR: I grew up at a time when a movie with the horrific title “Svidd neger” (burnt negro) was uncritically shown at the cinema. Although the film brought up some relevant depictions of identity problems related to the colonial conundrums in northern Norway, there are a number of questionable aspects in it, including the casting of the now accomplished actor and playwright Kingsford Siayor in a role as Ante, a “negro boy” who thought he was an indigenous Sami person. Despite his seniority and competence in performing arts, he was quoted by NRK last year saying that he's often still offered roles based on his skin colour. Many of us who are “minorities” in the Norwegian arts field can relate to that. The creation of RAI was based on the dissonance between our lived experiences and the public representation of everyday life in the arts and in the media.

In the past, many of us have spent a significant amount of time doing “voksenopplæring” – educating our adult White colleagues, friends and the general public on the effects of racism in Norway - so much so that we didn´t have forums to explore and challenge our own concepts of identity and heal personally and collectively. Living in a racialized society makes it difficult to interact with fellow humans on the basis of their human value. These toxic attitudes and structures in society have a devastating impact on our mental health. Although I didn't know how to go about it, I felt the need to create a platform that not only represented the diverse talents I knew who happened to have Black or brown skin, but also provided a space of healing and intellectual restitution.

I think the beauty of the RAI community is that we all come together as individuals with shared life experiences who have an interest in each other and art. Art professionals, institutions and organizations are increasingly becoming a part of the RAI community through collaborative efforts. This development along with gradual awareness in society has allowed us to shift the focus from promoting the imminent need of representation to creating an artistic framework through which people can process, heal, and create alternative narratives through art.

NJJ: There is a gap between the reality of Norwegian society and the image of cultural and racial homogeneity that permeates its portrayal and its perception. I can understand how that gap must alienate people who fall outside of the stereotypical, homogenous, white image of Norwegianess. I (as a blond, white English man) was offended by an advertising campaign that ran in 2020 encouraging Norwegians to support each other by holidaying inside the country. It played on such unreconstructed white stereotypes of what it was to be Norwegian – almost exclusively blond people, often in mariusgenser (Norwegian knitted jumpers) – that I couldn't recognise the Norway I actually live in. As an immigrant from another country (and, arguably, a different culture) I was stunned, and I couldn't help but feel how ostracising this must have been for Norway’s many people of colour to watch.

Shortly after that campaign ran, the appalling murder of George Floyd by a white Minneapolis police officer, together with other police killings, sparked worldwide protest and catalysed a visible, and much needed, realignment in the politics of representation. Norwegian advertising has become visibly more inclusive. I would like to think that the 2020 campaign would not make it to air in such a whitewashed form today, but inclusive representation and societal inclusion are far from finished projects. As such, RAI’s goals – creating space for solidarity and kinship, challenging structural problems, and seeking to increase general public awareness of the nuances of identity politics – are incredibly important. Can you say more about your current projects and their approaches?

NR: That’s an interesting observation because I also saw a number of those commercials but for some reason I wasn’t so surprised. Maybe I got so used to seeing a homogenous depiction of the Norwegian society that I started reacting to diversity, rather. I find it so perverse that it took grotesque criminal acts of violence like the public execution of a beloved father in Minneapolis and the killing of precious sons and daughters, like Benjamin Hermansen or Johanne Zhangjia Ihle-Hansen in Norway to bring awareness about structural injustices locally and globally. These acts are not far removed from the pre-civil rights movement era public lynching of 14 year old Emmett Louis Till in Mississippi in 1955. Sometimes it feels like race issues are at a standstill. Choosing curation, project management and community organisation as an artistic practise has been a huge source of comfort for me.

RAI is importantly at work developing new methods for delivering community art therapy through a collaboration with health economist Jemimah Yombo. Our current projects involve a collaboration with the Intercultural Museum (IKM), the Young Artist´s Society (UKS) and the Joint Organization for Youth (JOY) for the Good Mourning project. Good Mourning is a process-based art project where professional artists and the public together engage in the production of collective performative and conceptual artworks that are both developed and exhibited in a gallery space at the Intercultural Museum, a public space in the multicultural neighbourhood of Grønland, an art talk at UKS and more. In this project, the process, characterized by its experimental and conceptual approach, is equally as important as the exhibition.

Oslo based model Nickosha Arnold featured on the cover of YPPĒ #1, 2017

RAI is also working with Office for Contemporary Art Norway (OCA) for our upcoming edition on online platform YPPĒ. This platform foregrounds work made by artists with a trans-national and complex approach to art, and was launched in 2017 as an annual, bilingual (Norwegian and English) printed art journal. Its current issue focuses on the theme of liminality – the paradoxical condition of being between conditions or states – and includes contributions from writers and art professionals including curator Lise Ragbir, artist Jessica Lauren Elizabeth Taylor, and art historian Maria Esmeral Henriquez.

NJJ: That is really exciting to hear! Thank you for sharing such personal experiences Nicole, I’m looking forward to many more future conversations.

Screenshot from the homepage of rafikiarts.com



Portrait from Afrikanske Dager promotion, 2014. Photo Nina Holtan