Azikiwe Mohammed Artists Statement

I hope to provide services that help Black, brown and marginalized people while making our given circumstances better, whatever better means. I hope to make objects and experiences that allow us to be seen in earnest while providing a space for dialogue. I am tired of being told what we look like or what we are allowed to look at. I hope for us to look everywhere, and in some of those places to make things to look at that look back and when looked back upon, to say yes. To have the things I am responsible for say yes. We hear no enough. I hope that thru the objects and circumstances I make I am able to speak with us and not on behalf of. I hope to be wrong more than I am right and to be enough of a non-ding-dong head to listen and try to do better. I hope to look at which steps I can take to get the actuality of the work closer to what I hope it does. I hope to leave enough room in the work to make enough space for others to enter so that we can share. I don’t need to be the focal point, it is not about me. It involves me, as I am also Black, but that doesn’t mean it has to focus on me. I want to be a continuity point, not a destination. I hope these things are true but that is not for me to say. It is for the viewer to say, me to agree with / disagree with and then choose a point of action depending on which. I hope I can always make space to listen.

– Azikiwe Mohammed