A WALK THROUGH NIMAKO’S ART WORLD
The artist explains some of his key works
SMILING DOLL:
This was part of the Building Black exhibition, portraying a “golliwog,” which was created as a child’s doll in the 19th and 20th centuries and was popular with white people. “(Golliwogs) are often depicted, much as Smiling Doll is, with a blazer, bow tie, very ostentatious garb, exceedingly dark skin — like as dark as is available with ink — these red lips, big white eyes and you’ll be hard pressed to find one that doesn’t have a very characteristic big broad smile,” Nimako explains. “Which is very strange to me. It’s one thing to depict a people in this particular way, (but it’s) another thing to depict people that, especially during a time when (the doll) was created, were not having such a good time outside of their home continent.”
FLOWER GIRL:
Also part of Building Black. “The figurative sculptures Flower Girl, Tar Baby and Smiling Doll each focused on a distinct aspect of domestic life during and/or after the North American transatlantic slave trade,” the artist says. “The virtual non-existence of well-garbed, slavery-era, black ceremonial flower girls was something I felt required a particular sort of atonement.”
SILENT KNIGHT:
A commissioned art installation for Nuit Blanche 2015. “Silent Knight is a monument to one of the most extirpated species in Ontario: the barn owl. Considering that the overall theme for the Nuit Blanche zone in which the sculpture was exhibited was ‘Memory Lane,’ I felt it important to focus on a creature that locally exists on the border of actuality and memory,” Nimako says. “The word ‘Silent’ was drawn from the bird’s ability to maintain soundless flight due to its signature serrated feather tips, while the word ‘Knight’ refers to the unique helmed visage of its heart-shaped face, and its guardianship of farmland and protection from agricultural vermin.”
TAR BABY:
Part of Building Black. Nimako wrote a lullaby for the piece. “Darker skin always seems to be the less likable, the more deplored,” he says. “With the Tar Baby lullaby, it was a sombre kind of telling of a mother that in one way loves her child but, in another way, detests her child because she has exceedingly dark skin. I wanted to bring some light to that unfortunate narrative.”