The Art World: What If…?!, Season 3, Episode 3 with Kemi Ilesanmi
Kemi Ilesanmi is planting seeds for the future. Three years ago, she stepped back from running The Laundromat Project, took a gap year in which she visited 13 countries, and came back full of ideas and possibilities.
Now she's an independent arts worker. A diaspora weaver. A connector of people and worlds.
She says that five core values drive her work: Assume abundance. Foster connections. Multiply knowledge. Center joy. Manifest dreams.
In this third conversation with host Charlotte Burns, Kemi reflects on building sustainable institutions, the women who shaped contemporary art across Africa, and why she believes in looking for "new suns" even in difficult times, sharing insights about the projects and people inspiring her now.
The ecosystem needs tending, she says. The seeds need space to grow.
What if we stopped trying to do it alone?
Transcript:
Charlotte Burns: Hello, and welcome to The Art World: What If…?!, a podcast all about imagining new futures.
[Audio of guests saying, “What if?”]
I'm your host, Charlotte Burns, and in this episode, we’re joined by long-time friend of the show, Kemi Ilesanmi, who is planting seeds for the future. Three years ago, she stepped back from running The Laundromat Project. She took a gap year, visiting 13 countries, and came back full of ideas and possibilities. Now she's an independent arts worker, a diaspora weaver, a connector of people and worlds.
Five core values drive her work: Assume abundance. Foster connections. Multiply knowledge. Center joy. Manifest dreams. And she's putting them into practice everywhere. From healing and art research in East Africa to legacy convenings in New York. From art tours in Nigeria that spark residencies across continents, to oral histories capturing voices before they're lost.
Kemi sits on influential boards. She helps shape foundations. She builds networks that stretch from Brooklyn to Lagos to Dakar. The ecosystem needs tending, she says. The seeds need space to grow.
What if we stopped trying to do it alone?
[Musical interlude]
Charlotte Burns: Kemi, thank you so much for joining me again. Third time's a charm.
Kemi Ilesanmi: Thank you. I'm so happy to be back. How are you doing?
Charlotte Burns: Good, good. It's always a pleasure to see your face and to be in conversation with you, so I'm really looking forward to this.
Now our conversations have stretched over a few years, and I was looking back to the first episode. I think it's gonna be interesting to talk to you about what's changed, what remains constant. I thought we should just dive in. Are you ready?
Kemi Ilesanmi: I am ready.
Charlotte Burns: Let's go.
So when we first spoke, you were just stepping back from an amazing run of 10 years as the executive director of The Laundromat Project. Then, for our second interview, you'd come back from a gap year.
So, let's talk, Kemi, about what you are doing now. What can you tell us?
Kemi Ilesanmi: [Laughs] I can tell you that I've landed on the language of “I am an independent arts worker”. I get to pursue passions and my own personal mission as it relates to Black and brown arts network-building and institution-building, and I get to try different things.
I have learned a lot from watching artists and the way they go into the world and move in the world, where they're making this wonderful body of work over years and decades, when they're lucky enough to do that. And each project is its own little universe within that. And they're putting together a series of projects, and that's one of the threads that I pulled from them into the way that I'm thinking about the work I do. And it's really varied.
Charlotte Burns: Let's start with an interesting project that you're doing on the power of healing.
Kemi Ilesanmi: The beautiful thing now is being in a position to respond to things that I am interested in building.
Last fall, I had lunch with Jason Drucker, who is at the American Friend[s] [Service Committe] Society, which we commonly refer to as the Quakers. He was just at the beginning of thinking about pulling together a convening and a bit of research around healing.
Unbeknownst to me, certainly, Eastern region of Africa is actually one of the areas with the highest growth in Quakers. So, he and I started talking about what it might mean to start looking at a bit of research in that region about the way art is showing up in their work around peace building, gender, anti-violence work. The Quakers have been in that region for going on 100 years.
Charlotte Burns: Wow.
Kemi Ilesanmi: I also didn't know that.
Jason had also led a convening project in the MENA region, so the Middle East, North Africa region, during Covid to maybe around 2021, 2022. A report had come out of that looking at social practice work in that region and how that was showing up.
So, this is an addendum to some of that research, but looking again at the horn of Africa and East Africa.
We were able to pull in an African research firm called Andani Africa, run actually founded and run by an artist, actually Molemo [Moiloa], to help us think through what a convening would look like, what some of the key questions might be, what we know or don't know or should know about how arts showing up in this region that has been both fraught with issues of conflict and post-conflict, and how to re-knit together as societies, how to pursue peace, how all the different art forms and the artists engaged in this, living on the Continent, how are they working through those issues? How are they using their artistic skillsets and creative innovation to pull together conversations, people to talk about things that are difficult?
Charlotte Burns: So, who was it convening for? Was it for the artists or the organizations?
Kemi Ilesanmi: For the artists.
Charlotte Burns: So interesting. What's the report going to focus on?
Kemi Ilesanmi: This report is really going to look at the history of this work of healing and art in East Africa, specifically, but also beyond.
What artists are both doing, and struggling with, in that context, and what are the possibilities and, to a certain extent, defining it. What is arts and healing? What is the connection between arts and resolution in a country or a community? How might that work look in Sudan, and how might that be different in Ethiopia, and how might that be different in Rwanda, right?
So just being able to take a closer look to learn directly from artists who are doing the work is the heart of the report.
Charlotte Burns: So interesting. And the Quaker organization is underwriting that work in an effort to facilitate more healing, essentially?
Kemi Ilesanmi: Yes. Part of their mission is very rooted in peace-making, peace-building. Peace for humans doesn't just happen. There's a lot of work and we continue to pursue. We have not yet arrived.
So their work around the world, and particularly in that region—they have a head office in Kenya, and another hub for research in Addis in Ethiopia—is very centered around issues of peace-building, gender equity, and other kinds of efforts to make the world a better place, in a really concerted way. And this work, and how does art fit, is something that's been on the periphery, that they wanted to take a moment to look at in a more concentrated and centered way.
Charlotte Burns: It's really fascinating. As I'm listening to you talk, I’m reminded of something you said in one of our conversations over the years, where you talked a bit about your career and how, at the beginning of your career, you were dealing with international contemporary art, and then it was American contemporary art. You were at the Walker [Art Center], then you were at The Laundromat Project where you were dealing with the local community, and when you were leaving, thinking about what it meant to expand that again and think about community in a different sort of way.
And it's really interesting because you're talking now about projects that you would have to catch several planes to get to.
Talk me through the kind of guidepost you built yourself for creating a career after leaving an institution, what your own missions and values are.
Kemi Ilesanmi: So, it's interesting. One of the first things I did after leaving The Laundromat Project was I sat down and wrote myself a personal mission and a set of values.
This is because I had been at that organization for 10 years and really felt driven and deeply connected to the mission and the values of the organization. And when I left, I felt a little unmoored, frankly. I wanted to have a sense of how I was gonna show up in the world as an independent arts worker.
So, I wrote a mission that was about strengthening and supporting an ecosystem for Black leaders, Black institutions, and Black networks. So, really thinking at the ecosystem level, after having thought through and been deeply grounded in an organizational level.
And I also defined a set of values for me, for Kemi. They're just five of them. I want to assume abundance, foster connections, multiply knowledge, center joy, and manifest dreams.
And ever since, over the last two and a half years now, since I left The Laundromat Project, believe it or not, time flies, that’s what I ground myself in.
Charlotte Burns: I've written them down: “assume abundance, foster connection, multiply knowledge, center joy, manifest dreams.” I wanted to talk to you about all of these things. Actually, they're all written down anyway in my list of questions, so that's great.
I want to talk to you about another gathering that you organized for Hue Arts [NYC] last year. Can you tell us a little bit more about that convening?
Kemi Ilesanmi: So, not long after I returned from my gap year, Stephanie [A.] Johnson-Cunningham, who I had partnered with on the Hue Arts research work during Covid, reached out because she was starting a leadership academy, actually, growing out of that Hue Arts work, right? So, this idea of things being able to ripple out over time.
Museum Hue had just received funding to put together a six-month academy for POC arts leaders in New York State, so everywhere but New York City, actually. There were about 10 of these leaders, and we met once a month, over six months in 2024.
One of the opportunities this gave was, in partnership with Museum Hue, I was able to build out a six-part, six-month curriculum that looked at what is needed to be able to build a lasting organization, a lasting institution for Black and brown leaders across the states. They were dance organizations, history organizations, film…a range, right? What it looked like to connect them to each other.
The sense of isolation was really strong among them. Among the fellows, there were leaders who had been running their organizations for decades. They were working in a lot of just very different geographies, and often the only organization like themselves for tens, if not hundreds, of miles.
We actually did a bit of peer coaching and learning to draw out what each of them knew into the room, to help each other through dilemmas, and we invited different leaders to come and speak with them; Black and brown leaders who were running organizations of their own and have been that they could learn from. That was everyone from Thelma Golden at the Studio Museum [in Harlem], of course, to Marcia Minter at Indigo Arts Alliance in Portland, Maine, to Ayesha Williams, who was my successor at The Laundromat Project, who came in to talk to us about the power of using money in interesting ways.
Being able to sit and work in partnership with someone I'd already been in partnership in the past, and to create something that could be meaningful and helpful and invest in our long-term strength as an ecosystem, was a real dream come true.
And they're now doing a New York City version. And we'll be working and building on some of that, and I'm really cheering them on in being able to keep moving this work forward.
Charlotte Burns: So, the question of what is needed?
Kemi Ilesanmi: Mm-hmm.
Charlotte Burns: If you had to distill that, what is needed to build those lasting institutions?
Kemi Ilesanmi: I believe that one of the things that is most critical to building a lasting institution is to be part of an ecosystem and to be connected to one another. That's a running theme in all of our conversations, Charlotte, that sense of not trying to do it alone.
So, for instance, there were 10 organizations and that sense of isolation, it just kind of keeps you looking down, that feeling of precarity and fear is so strong because you don't have examples or connections of folks who've been able to keep it going or to know what to do when the money runs low or you're trying to work with your local government to create a policy that supports the work, or any myriad of things. In fact, applying for state support or other kinds of support can be really mysterious.
So, being able to just connect, and hear, and build together and partner, particularly Long Island—there were a number of organizations in that region and they started building connections and visiting one another. And then there was another little bubble in the greater Albany area. “Oh, you are not that far away. You're 30 miles down the road,” et cetera—being able to just feel in connection, because the issues of resources and time will always be the issues. They're just there, but they're not insurmountable when one can get creative in community and with other peers.
So, at some level, if that sense of we deserve to be here, we can survive, and that feeling and understanding of that, and we can center our vision, center our joy, and we can build these dreams together, feels really critical and central to me. And it's a lot of what I'm seeing and manifest as well on the Continent is that sense of, how do we start looking up and at each other and moving forward as a collective unit?
Charlotte Burns: Do you think it's possible inside institutions? And the reason I'm asking that is because on our last podcast, you said that you were “looking for freedom of movement, freedom of ideas, and freedom of manifestation of those ideas. And right now it feels like I can only find that by working outside of any singular institution.”
Because I know these convenings we're talking about, they're different convenings. One centered very much on artists, one was on institutions.
Kemi Ilesanmi: Mm-hmm.
Charlotte Burns: And I'm wondering, do you think institutions are where we're going to see the next great chapters of culture being held, given that so many people like you are leaving institutions? Or do you feel that institutions can hold those changes?
Kemi Ilesanmi: It's such an interesting question. My first instinct is that it's a little bit geography-based. I think within places like the US, the most interesting work and possibilities is medium and small organizations, institutions. And really at a kind of grassroots level is where I see the bravery, where I see the willingness to take risks, partially because it's not a choice. Risk-taking is built in at that level, and different value systems are at work, particularly smaller community-based.
I believe, very much so, that POC-organizations often, not always, but often lead with a different value system, and I think this political moment, again, calls us to our core selves. If we circle the wagons, and who we circle them with, begins to tell us our stories.
I think precarity wears itself differently for bigger organizations. It's one of the reasons that I haven't worked in one for 20+ years. It's not where I'm putting my investments. It's not where I think the greatest change can happen.On the other hand, if I move to Africa as a Continent, or if I move even to Nigeria and Lagos as a geography, the building of institutions feels much more critical and needed. And the opportunity is that, because we are in a time of building new institutions and trying to root them, we can also bring a different set of values, and we can actually learn from what we see in other spaces to build things up, from the ground up.
So, I actually put a lot of heart into institution-building on the Continent.
So, there's something about the geography, the longevity, who's involved in the conversation, and where the opportunities are. I'm not writing off American institutions, but it's not where I'm putting my efforts.
[Musical interlude]
Charlotte Burns: So let's talk about those institutions on the Continent.
When we were preparing for this conversation, you and I had a phone call, and you had said that you really wanted to center part of the conversation on the women who had been shaping culture on the Continent, specifically Bisi Silva and Koyo Kouoh.
That was before we had the tragic news that Koyo had died. And I was thinking of you a lot. We were messaging as well and talking a lot about this.
Let's pick up on where you wanted to go.
Kemi Ilesanmi: Yes. I was in Lagos last month, and gave a talk about Black institution and network building at Angels & Muse, a wonderful artist-centered space founded by Victor Ehikhamenor, an artist and, as part of that talk, I shared that I felt like three women, all working around the same time-ish in the ‘oughties’, had really propelled Black arts institution-building on the Continent forward and planted all these incredible seeds that we were all continuing to till and harvest.
They would be Bisi Silva and the founding of [Centre for Contemporary Art] CCA Lagos; Koyo Kouoh, who of course had founded RAW [Material Company] in Dakar and at that moment was running [Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa] MOCAA in Cape Town; and the third, who in fact was mentored by Koyo, is Nana Oforiatta-Ayim, who has been working in Accra, Ghana for 15+ years running an organization called ANO [Institute of Arts & Knowledge].
There's so much they have done to make the current return, deepening, of contemporary arts and institutions on the Continent manifest. They have all been visionaries, dream builders. They've all challenged systems and really pushed against the grain.
It's interesting that they were all curators and brought some of that energy to the work. And each of them really thought about ecosystems and knowledge building, running fellowships and training, and in Nana's case, working on an encyclopedia of African culture. Such incredible work.
One of the things I've been thinking about is the kinds of spaces that are needed in Black and brown networks and spaces, and arts ecosystems are spaces where artists can think, can play, can fail, and can disturb the peace, and what it means for our societies, our democracies, with whatever asterisk we have to put on that, in whatever the spaces we're in.
We don't get to survive for long, talk less of thrive, and build, and change, and move forward, if we don't have spaces where artists can do those things. They can experiment, they can push, they can ask us those hard questions, they can challenge us, they can build new things, they can do it right and then do it wrong, and then come back and try to do it right again. Whatever that is, right? Pushing that forward. And those three women created those kinds of spaces. And they were doing it in 10, 15, and 20 years ago. So they just planted a lot of the seeds that I see us continuing to try to till, even now.
Charlotte Burns: Bisi died young. She died in 2019. Koyo tragically died recently—which we're all in shock about—ahead of organizing the Venice Biennale next year.
Do you see other generations coming up underneath that? Obviously, Nana's still doing great work. You're on the Continent a lot. Do you see other spaces opening for artists? Those seeds, have they spread? Have they fostered other plants?
Kemi Ilesanmi: Absolutely! It's been so amazing, and fascinating, and affirming, actually.
One of the things that really struck me upon Koyo’s passing is, we're in the time of social media, and everybody was posting tributes, right? That's all my feed was for that whole week.
But one of the things that really struck me about that was how many spaces—so people, yes, absolutely—but also spaces on the Continent she had visited. Everybody had a photo of her in their space, all over. That was a traveling somebody, right?! Like in the best possible beautiful vision of the word. Like, she really went on the ground.
And Bisi’s Àsìkò school, which continues, is currently in Cairo, and they traveled and moved around the Continent. That was part of that vision.
So that sense of connectivity was really important, and because of that, there are all these folks who are deeply inspired and trying to move that work forward. This idea of pulling and building Black institutions is really central to what people, I feel, are really pulling as one of Koyo's legacies. And similarly, when Bisi died, also unexpected, people around her were more aware that she was also dealing with cancer at that time, but it didn't move as quickly, but the shock, similarly, right?
During the 1-54 [Contemporary African] Art Fair here in New York City, Teesa Bahana, who runs 32° East in Kampala, Uganda, one of the spaces I got to visit, actually, during my gap year, and I've recently joined their board. Teesa was here and, along with Ayesha from Laundromat Project and Amy Andrieux from MoCADA [Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Art], we pulled together just a meet and greet with other community and arts-centered spaces in New York City. She was able to share with us their building project, the artists they work with, and their vision as the first purpose-built art space in Uganda. Full stop. How exciting, how amazing, and yes, Koyo had been to the space. There were the photos, there was Koyo.
So, it's both a shared tragedy, which has made it both hard and easier, and this shared sense of, we can't let her down, we can't let Bisi down, we can't let Okwui Enwezor down; All three of them died before the age of 60. All three of them died of cancer, which has been a really hard thing to take in, how much we have lost collectively by that, but also what they passed on to us to keep holding and pulling forward.
Charlotte Burns: Something that Koyo spoke about on the podcast, and spoke about many times with many people, was the idea of building something beyond “projectiti,” I think she called them.
Kemi Ilesanmi: Yes.
Charlotte Burns: Personality-driven things. And she talked about Zeitz and how proud she was and how focused she was on Zeitz, and this idea that she had to do that job because it couldn't fail.
Kemi Ilesanmi: Yes.
Charlotte Burns: But also that there needed to be so much more. RAW, obviously, continues, and she made sure that would continue beyond, like you said, Àsìkò continues beyond Bisi, so there's already legacy in the actual institutions they created.
But I wanted to talk to you a little bit about that idea of sustainability because on the show last time you mentioned various artists projects that you were visiting and we often talk about those kinds of things as examples of leadership or innovation but to what extent do you think it's because artists have recognized there are things that just aren't existing and they're building something that needs to be there, and how much we just accept that those things exist, rather than saying, “Okay, well maybe they need more help in making sure these institutions and spaces that they're building can have sustainable futures.” Should we recognize who's building what, where the burden's falling, and why it's falling so disproportionately on some folks?
Kemi Ilesanmi: So, one of the things I've been thinking about a lot is research; what we know, what we don't know, and how to make things legible to ourselves, right?
The reality on the Continent is a lot of the most interesting, exciting, affirming spaces being built or tested, et cetera, are coming from artists who have a Western market. Not only, but certainly just coming from artists who want to build a thing that isn't there.
One of the most interesting things that Koyo always talked about was she made RAW because it needed to exist, in the same way that she took the job at Zeitz because it could not fail, and she was the one standing that felt she needed to stand in the breach between utter failure and all the possibilities of success that she was actually able to put in motion.
Often, the people closest to it are the ones who can see and go, “wow.” Artists need these spaces to connect, to learn to be together. So, in traveling around the Continent, one of the things that became even more clear was how much people were doing things on the ground, if you got there and could see it, and how open and porous things feel, which is exciting. And yes, very much also a reflection of lack of investment from what we might see as traditional spaces or traditional sources; Foundations don't exist on the Continent in the same way, don't exist out of the United States in the same way in a lot of places. That's such a unique thing to this particular country.
But when I think about some of the research that would be so interesting to do, some of it is understanding the money, how it flows, where it flows, how it's circulating in art spaces. I'm really curious about the different policy contexts in which different organizations and artists are functioning in. The Dakar Biennial is sponsored, at least in part, by the Senegalese government; the President spoke at the opening. South Africa looks very different than the support in Kenya or Nigeria, et cetera. So people are working in very different kinds of policy contexts.
And the other thing that I really feel would be so beneficial for us to understand differently is models that are being built across the Continent, and I'd say African diaspora. I'm really interested in what's happening in the Caribbean, how Black and brown art organizations are being built and have been built in the United States, and even, of course, London and different parts of Europe.
And I say that because Space NXTHVN by Titus Kaphar here, how does that relate to Angels & Muse in Lagos, or Zoma [Museum], which has been built by Elias Sime in Addis Ababa? Like, how are they speaking to, what can they learn from each other and what, where is their funding? What are they doing? How do they think of themselves in terms of long-term versus short-term?
Because I've also been thinking a lot about notions of longevity—are there times that things should just be there to be catalytic and to spark the next idea, but don't need to be held forever? And the example I have is, the artist Wura-Natasha Ogunji had a really incredible space called [The] Treehouse, that you had to walk up eight stories to the top floor, and it was a space where artists could think, play, fail, experiment, disturb the peace, research. There were shows, there were workshops, there were different ways that she just invited a really high level of experimentation. And, she did that for roughly 10 years. And then her time was done. Last year she sunsetted that project.
Well, don't you know a young artist named Taiwo [Isimi] who had known Wura and spent time at Treehouse, went for a graduate degree in the UK, returned to Lagos, rented an apartment in a neighborhood called Onikan, Lagos Island area, a very historic part of Lagos, and started something called 1-98, which does really similar work. She picked up the baton.
Charlotte Burns: Hmm.
Kemi Ilesanmi: And, sometimes, you don't have to do it forever. If we build a strong enough ecosystem—which is why I'm really focused on this idea of all the different art roles, all the different ways organizations can show up from small to big, from temporary to permanent, from ephemeral to longstanding, and all of the different varieties in between, is that then—the ecosystem, people can pass the baton. You can say, “Wow, I've done this for about 10 years, and I'm moving into a different phase of my life and my career and my time, and I get to step back or move into a different role and trust that something will pick this up.”
And that's similar to me; leaving an organizational setting, an institutional setting, in my 50s with almost 30 years of relationships and experience and thinking in the field, was about trying to do more, not less, by being able to move around, by being able to act as a connector.
And all of that is what I see happening, even in contexts that are incredibly challenging, particularly around issues of monetary resources. But there's so many other ways that people are looking to support each other and move things forward, despite that constriction. And in fact, with other kinds of riches and other kinds of resources that they get to move around from connections to knowledge, to ideas, to just being in support of one another's journey.
Charlotte Burns: That is so interesting to hear you talk about this. And, for you being on that journey of being more free, I know that one of your guideposts is to center joy. Do you ever feel fear, or do you focus on joy?
Kemi Ilesanmi: Fear is just a part of being human. It's a part of life. It is certainly a part of 2025 America. [Laughs] It's more embracing this idea that the only way through is through.
One of the sayings that I'm really holding dear—there are actually two that I'm really centering myself in right now, and I'm very much gonna paraphrase—but one of the things I often think about is Toni Morrison said, oh my goodness, people, racism is there to act as a distraction. It's there to keep us continually trying to prove our humanity, our worth, our value, and we just keep spending all of our time doing that, instead of doing the work, whether it's writing, or building, or making art, or whatever the other 101 things we could be doing, instead of trying to be focused on racism and all the fears that it generates.
So that's just one. You could fit in sexism, you could fit in transphobia, homophobia, all of these things, but fear is one of the great manipulators of the human experience, and many people have used it for ill since humanity began, right? Like that's just part of history, and it's one of the things I feel I learned by going to history museums around the world. I'm like, “Oh, we've been up to this bit of shenanigans since we could figure out how to manipulate others.”
So for me, the invitation, and what I try and lean into, is to not let it be a distraction. Which is not to say it's not there. Fear is always… It's there. But I'm always trying to figure out, like, what's the thing I could do anyway? What's the joy that's happening underneath it? And Black Americans are experts at that, which happens to be a community I'm connected with, right? Like, we've always been able to figure out where the joy is, even when the shit was hitting the fan, in all the ways. That’s been our experience in 400 years.
The other thing I'm trying to hold on to is Octavia Butler said there's nothing new under the sun—but there are new suns. I’m constantly like, “What's the new sun?” There's nothing new.
We're such cyclical creatures, as humans. We can always find historical analogies to almost anything we're up to now. We have been down these various roads before, of backsliding and fear-mongering, et cetera. So I can acknowledge that, because it's true. That's just what it is. But I'm going to spend my time, and I'm going to look for new suns, and that's what I see happening in Black and brown spaces. It's what I see happening on the Continent.
One of my most fun things that I got to do last year was completely self-directed. I actually organized a history and art tour of Lagos during Art Week. Five African American women ended up going on this tour with me. One of my main goals, besides introducing them to the city in which I grew up and getting to spend time at art spaces and history spaces, taking walking tours, visiting galleries and studios, et cetera, I wanted to make sure they had their own friends by the time we left. Create these person-to-person connections. Over the course of that week, that's where I led from.
Don't you know, several things have happened since then that had nothing to do with me. One, an artist that we met at the closing night party for ART X Festival [Lagos], is now going to be in residence at Indigo Arts Alliance; Marcia was one of the people on the tour. Her husband, Daniel Minter, is going to be in residence at the G.A.S. Foundation, Yinka Shonibare’s space in Nigeria in the fall. Another person, a curator and artist on the tour, Ashara Ekundayo, is going to be in residence at Victor [Ehikhamenor]’s space, Angels & Muse. Folayemi Wilson, who's a professor at Penn State, invited Nengi Omuku—who we did an incredible studio visit with, a really amazing, beautiful painter—to give a talk at Penn State.
Those are just a few of the things that happened out of that one week of really connecting people together. Create new worlds, new suns. I didn't even know exactly how things would manifest, but I thought very intentionally about how to weave them together.
I think of it as diaspora-weaving, as part of what I can do in the world just because of my experience, my accident of birth, as someone who's African American and Nigerian. So how can I lean into these things instead of the fears? How can I make new suns?
Charlotte Burns: I love that, Kemi. That's so good.
So, tell me about an amazing oral history project centered very much on Koyo Kuouh that you've been working on.
Kemi Ilesanmi: It is amazing and beautiful.
So, the African American Studies Department at Columbia University, currently headed by Dr. Kellie Jones—the woman who led me into this field when I took a class with her in 1997—reached out to me and said they were doing a part two of a project they started at the top of Covid. They have been working on an oral history project with Black American curators from childhood to career. Dr. Deborah Willis, Dr. Kellie Jones, Thelma Golden, Franklin Sirmans, and others were interviewed for that.
They then were able to get continuing support from Mellon Foundation to do a part two that would focus on African curators, and invited me to be the person who captures the oral histories. Three curators that we are interviewing are Tumelo Mosaka, who is South African-born, now an independent curator, but has had a long career including institutional and independent work; Elvira Dyangani Ose, born in Spain to parents who immigrated from Equatorial Guinea, and has had a career that's taken her to a number of different countries—including for a year or two here in New York City—and now is the head of MACBA [Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona] in Barcelona; and the third was Koyo.
And we have already talked a little bit about her history. We were able to capture one of the two conversations we had planned. The second conversation was scheduled. And the beautiful, heartbreaking thing is that we spent most of the two hours talking about her childhood. We only got up to about age 18. At the time, I felt a little guilty because I was like, “Oh my goodness. I'm sure I was supposed to get further chronologically.” But a lot of Koyo’s career and journey through RAW and Zeitz had been captured. I had done all this research. I had listened to your podcast two-parter with her. So I knew a lot of that had been captured. I had new questions. I had other things I wanted to dig into, certainly, in what would've been the part two, but knew that this stuff about her early foundation hadn't been captured in such a concentrated way.
She talked about how she knew her grandmother, she knew her great-grandmother. They lived very close, a five-minute walk of each other. Her mother's journey to Switzerland, her early years, and transition into Switzerland. But we really spent easily 75% of the interview just in Cameroon. Where she had grown up, the language that she spoke, what she did, how art played into that early life. And I feel so lucky to have spent that time to get that story, and to have followed my instincts and followed her joy. She was so clearly joyful to be talking about this matrilineal heritage that she was part of, from her great-grandmother to her grandmother, to her mother, to herself, and spoke so lovingly and expansively about who they were and how they had informed her journey and who she was. And now that's captured.
By the end of the month, I will have finished all of the oral histories with Tumelo and Elvira as well. And these will be captured into a book that I'm helping to co-edit with Kellie and Tumelo—Tumelo is the person actually project managing this. And there will be a public program sometime in the fall of 2026 that builds on the oral histories themselves, the book, and brings it into real time.
Charlotte Burns: Oh my goodness. What a great project.
Kemi Ilesanmi: Yeah.
Charlotte Burns: Amazing that you have that on tape. So sad that you were in between windows of time for that second interview, but like you say, those first questions were the questions that weren't on tape. So it's just wonderful for everybody, but especially her family, that you've caught that history.
Kemi Ilesanmi: Mm-hmm.
[Musical interlude]
Charlotte Burns: Kemi, you're working on so many interesting projects. You'd said on the last podcast that part of your travel, part of your gap year, was that you wanted to give yourself a new identity, and also it was an invitation for other people to think about you differently. Do you think you achieved that? Do you think other people think about you differently now?
Kemi Ilesanmi: I do. The first thing people ask me is whether I'm here or whether I'm traveling. So I do have to remind people the gap year was its own intensive year, and now I live in Brooklyn again. But that travel is a part of what that looks like.
I intentionally—and I know I shared this with you—wanted to work at The Laundromat Project at that community level. I wanted to subway to work. That was intentional on my part. I was like, “Ah, I'm tired of getting on planes. I wanna take subways and see what I'm doing.” And now I'm back on planes again, which is something to get used to, but also enjoyable, because I really want to be at this level where I can see the ecosystem, see the map, see the possibilities for connection, for conversation, for learning.
The things that bring me joy are connecting people. It just, it really does just bring me joy to connect good people together. People can learn from each other, be inspired by each other. It's one of my joys that costs me nothing. And this idea of multiplying knowledge. My values capture what I love doing, right? So being able to do research, to learn about healing and art in Africa, and being able to be in conversation with people about that. So, I do think I have been able to refashion myself in a way that builds on what I was. I didn't abandon anything of who I was or what I've done. I've expanded my own notion of myself to myself, and then I'm doing that by having other people be able to see all these other possibilities as well, and as an invitation for all of us to think about how we get to grow.
One of the cliches that I really leaned into—and I'm building a talk and possibly a workshop around this—it's a corny poem. I don't know when it was written, but decades ago, called “A Reason, A Season, A Lifetime.” And it's looking at friendships, like some friends come into your life for just a moment, and others last a lifetime. Some are just there for a season of your life. I've always known this saying a lot; some people have heard of it, and a lot of people I’ve mentioned it to have never heard of it, but I've leaned on this for decades. So I don't know. I grew up in Nigeria. Maybe it was one of the things we kind of tossed around.
I love it because I feel like my reason for being is to build these networks, to have been able to lean in for so much of my career into building, upholding, supporting, learning about Black and brown artists and the networks and leaders in those spaces. Incredible. That is my lifetime work, and it has only become clearer and deeper, and more interesting to me over time. But the season shifts.
So when I was at The Laundromat Project, I was in a season of really being grounded in one organization and being able to think through that and create a few models that could be adapted and shared more widely. When I was at the Walker Art Center, I was learning, I was new, I was gathering these little seeds. I was really interested in urban spaces, and our residency kind of program helped me learn that. I wanted to learn about different artists, and I met so many incredible artists over the six years that I was there—people I'm still in relationship with 25 years later.
And then now, as an independent arts worker, I am able to pull myself up to this connective, this role of weaving this diaspora, of being able to connect people across space, being able to think at the ecosystem level, the whole animal, instead of just one limb. And that's the season I'm in now. So it means I get to move differently, and it just helped me to think through why different things, different roles serve at different times.
My current season is my favorite season, and my next season will be my favorite season when it comes along.
Charlotte Burns: You’re sort of making me think, it's like a ‘what if,’ like what if you could see things from a bird's eye point of view? And you have insights into so many different organizations, and artists and foundations, academia, and lots of different entities, and people that create the art world in a very expansive way.
And you also sit on boards. That's a different role. That's the sort of governance role. Thinking with that sort of hat on, that board hat, what are the biggest challenges boards are facing right now, and how are you navigating them?
Kemi Ilesanmi: Yes. I'm currently on the Brooklyn Museum board as an appointee for our comptroller, Brad Lander, and I've been on the Joan Mitchell [Foundation] board for about seven years, and I just recently joined the [The Andy] Warhol [Foundation for the Visual Arts] foundation board. I'm only half a year in. And to your point, lots of advisory boards.
I'm gonna speak about the Joan Mitchell piece. It’s the one I've been on the longest, and I've really seen what the possibilities are at a close range, because I think a lot of organizations—boards, institutions, particularly foundations, in this case, two of my foundations are artist-endowed foundations—it's sort of how do you show up in these moments of societal shift? We’re in a sort of kind of earthquake.
And the Warhol board, along with the Helen Frankenthaler [Foundation], jumped in when the NEA [National Endowment for the Arts] canceled so many grants for all of the organizations that I certainly care about, and were able to fully fund the challenge grants, right? Being able to see them, kind of step in, in that way.
The Joan Mitchell Foundation was holding a convening around the legacy field, the field of which they are a part, right? Like Joan Mitchell left her paintings, left a will that said, “I want to create a foundation that carries my work forward and supports visual art and visual artists.”
And there's so many workers in that space. There are people stewarding their family, their father, their cousin, their sister, siblings’ work. There are foundations that have been set up. Some are much smaller offices. There are archives and oral history projects; all of this, these different ways of doing what we began during this three-day convening, to call “legacy work” and “legacy workers”. Some of them are lawyers, some of them are artists, some of them are themselves, some of them have passed on, et cetera. Really, really incredibly broad.
It was an incredible few days. There will be a report, there will be information. And I really feel proud that I'm on a board that, two years ago, started thinking about “There's a field happening,” and there's work that Christine [J.] Vincents and others have been doing at Aspen [Institute]. There's been bits of this, but really let's pull together 120, 150 people from around the country, and a few from around the world, to be in the same room together, have people on stage who are giving us models, telling us challenges, really diving deep into what this looks like.
It was funded by the Mellon Foundation. So it was a partnership, essentially between Joan Mitchell and the Mellon Foundation. And the ripples from this, the things happening in that room were incredible. Again, all the people who run family estates at a very kind of under-the-radar way, not a Joan Mitchell, right? Which people have heard of, but several of these that you haven't yet heard of, they're stewarding this incredible work. Being able to get them in community together, they're now going to do their own, like getting together, supporting one another, and really beginning to move out to that 30,000 feet level, so you can actually see what the ecosystem is. That's incredible work.
The power of being able to convene, the power of being able to pull people together in physical space to plant seeds so that they can take that and be together and learn together. And the power of being able to get all those different models on stage. There were, I counted, we heard from around 50 people over two and a half days.
Amalia Mesa-Bains, the incredible artist who's now in her 80s, started off with a conversation called “How to Become an Ancestor,” and really beautifully grounded us in the ancestral imperative of remembering. And this legacy work is about remembering over again.
Visual AIDS got to tell us this story of this collective work that came out of another moment of a different kind of earthquake, and a different kind of societal crisis, that actually gripped the world, right? Art and artist, and legacy came out of that and continues to thrive till today.
Many people in the room namecheck Teresita Fernández's 2016 gathering around Latinx artists and arts legacies that continues to be giving us gifts. There are still things happening now that people are pointing to. The seed that was planted was Teresita pulling people together.
Those are some of the examples that we were able to learn about together, and that the board at Joan Mitchell was really committed to. We didn't know it was going to land in the political context that it did. But it turned out it was a really important time for people to gather and to think about legacy, while the very notion of who gets to be remembered is being attacked at the highest levels of US government.
So, it was a very highly charged conversation that would've been just as important, but it would've felt really differently a year ago than it did right now. And that's the possibilities of what can happen.
Most of the board was in the room, all of the board was incredibly in support of this and had been over the two years of planning. We all understood why it was so incredibly important right now that we were stewards, we were protectors, right? Like we weren't gonna abandon this work because the world had gone topsy-turvy, but instead would lean into the work, and that we can take those learnings into the different ways that we move in the world.
The Joan Mitchell Foundation, in particular, has many artists on the board. That's actually a really big part of the value system of the organization from the beginning. So that level of investment is there in the room at all times and was in the room during the convening.
Charlotte Burns: That's so fascinating. I remember years ago when I was at The Art Newspaper writing about artist estates like, “there's a growing section of the industry…,” it was Christine Vincent's report, I think, that we were quoting, and since then, there's been so much more. It’s something Allan talks about a lot. Obviously, he works with artist estates and artist planning. But it's interesting because, at that point when I remember writing about it, it this inevitable growth industry from a market perspective, that there were going to be these artists and you were thinking like, “Oh, it's gonna be like Warhol”, and now it's more, well, the market definitely won't be able to support all of those foundations. So how do you have sustainable legacies? How do you make sure that things are preserved when not every estate is a Mitchell Foundation?
Kemi Ilesanmi: Absolutely, and that was so huge. And my takeaway to go back to your initial question is, I love being part of boards that understand their power to shift, shape, and make conversation and to invite others into what that looks like, right? Like that level of influence is very real. So you want people to use it for good and to make space.
Again, 50 voices. A very minuscule number of that 50 were people that were officially part of the Joan Mitchell Foundation. Instead, it was other voices from Indigenous artists, collectives, to South Asian, just this incredible range of examples, and possibilities, and leaning into where we do have power and being able to harness that, shape that, and invite in others who may not have been able to convene and have 150 people show up. And they were all supported in being able to be in that room. That was part of the commitment, to take care of folks' ability to be there.
That's powerful, and that's what feels important and necessary at the board level for any of us. How can we share our power in a way that helps shape the conversations that need to be happening, shape the actions, from there, that need to happen to support what emerges as critical, as necessary? And that's the work that we'll continue to have in our boardroom going forward, and that other boards are doing as well.
Again, Warhol has been such a leader in different kinds of conversations, thinking about the censorship debates of the last great culture wars of the 1980s and 1990s, and the role that that foundation played in helping to move those conversations forward.
So, really feeling like that's where the possibilities are, and not everybody feels comfortable or able to do that, but that's one of the powers that boards have, particularly certain boards. So, that's where I try to lean, or “look for the helpers” as Mister Rogers told us.
Charlotte Burns: That's so interesting. Most workers in the art world have communication through groups. You know, if you think of curators, they often travel in groups. Galleries, there are natural sort of industry convenings. Artists will convene. It's incredibly important to them.
I was struck when we did the Hope & Dread[: Tectonic Shifts In Power In Art] documentary a couple years ago, that boards don't necessarily share information, and they don't necessarily exist in conversation with one another, and there aren't reporting mechanisms for them either, that sort of hierarchy of governance. So it's interesting to hear you talking about a board that's existing more publicly in conversation with others. That isn't the natural thing for cultural institutions. There are state laws and bylaws and things like that that they have to adhere to, but generally there's this board structure and they report internally and that sort of that. So sharing that knowledge, it seems to me that it often gets stuck.
Kemi Ilesanmi: Absolutely, that is an issue, and there are all kinds of reasons, including time, right? Those are like, “I'm doing all these meetings, you want to add new meetings?” And you're right, there are no natural convening spaces, but you sort of have to go searching for it. And I do think there needs to be more of that.
Years ago, Karen Brooks Hopkins talked about sharing board members with intention. Because I sit on multiple boards and I know other people that sit on multiple boards, becomes the way it happens in a not-intentional way. You get to share information, bring new, like, “Oh, we're trying this over there,” or “Hey, can you guys talk to each other and be in connection?”
Again, I always lean into there's so much possibility there, and who's gonna lead the charge to make that happen? And what are the incentives? I'm not sure that everybody sees the pay-off for that and would pursue it. So, somebody has to take that charge.
I do think a lot of board members go to art fairs and other things that allow them to connect. They may go in there with their collector hat or their art lover hat or their day job hat as opposed to their “I'm on a board” hat. But I've been thinking a lot about opportunity windows and exclamation points, why they're important. Times of crisis can often be an opportunity window. HueArt's report came out of the crisis of Covid and in fact, more pointedly, came out of the crisis of the George Floyd murder, and really everyone kind of rethinking their relationship to people of color, entities, and Black and specific, but not only being like, “Oh, this is a good time to raise money to do that thing we've always wanted to do and do this research that we've always needed,” and it worked. It took time and effort, and all of that, but there was an opportunity window that allowed that conversation to happen and be positively received because it wasn't a new ask. It was an ask that got a yes, because of the context.
I think we need to be looking for what the opportunity moments are, to think differently, to do differently, to be connected more deeply, differently. And I think we're all still searching for that, but that's my big take. The thing I'm trying to lean into is that new sun. What's the new sun that we get to create in this moment that we couldn't create six months ago? Even though it's hard.
And then I think about exclamation points as the moments that we get together. As an example, this convening, I think is gonna lead to a lot. I think the convening in Nairobi around healing is going to lead to a lot that we can't even predict. I think the convening around artists' legacy work that we just had here in New York is going to lead to a lot of new possibilities, new ideas, new questions, new tools. It is an acceleration moment.
When I was in Dakar for the Dakar Biennale and in Lagos for ART X, a lot of people who care about diasporic arts work on the Continent were in the room. They flew in. So I know these biennials often get a bad rap, but they are the moments when there's a lot of cross-connectivity, a lot of conversation, a lot of those possibilities.
Those exclamation points are actually important as spaces to gather, to exchange, to think, to inspire. And the way that those things happen in person is very different from the way they happen online, even though Zoom has been an absolute game-changer.
Charlotte Burns: Mm-hmm. Totally.
Kemi Ilesanmi: And looking for, what are the opportunity windows? What are exclamation points, and how do those accelerate possibilities?
Charlotte Burns: I love that, Kemi. I'm going to think about that.
[Musical interlude]
Charlotte Burns: Kemi, I'm going to ask you, what is the ‘what if’ that keeps you up at night?
Kemi Ilesanmi: Erm. Just as an aside, you told me this, I saw the text this morning, didn't come up with anything, but…
[Laughter]
Charlotte Burns: Last time you knew this was coming. So the ‘what if’ that had kept you up was this ‘what if.’
[Laughter]
Kemi Ilesanmi: That is true. That is true.
Charlotte Burns: At least you got a good night's sleep this time.
Kemi Ilesanmi: I did. I did get a good night's sleep.
The ‘what if’ that keeps me up at night is related to the crushing reality of this moment, that isn't not true. That this is a really hard moment in the history of humans and humanity, and we've had other really hard moments. And I'm sure the intensity of it is always very present if you're in it, but I don't think that's to be sneezed at. It is to be looked at squarely and moved through.
Charlotte Burns: I agree.
Kemi, what is the ‘what if’ that motivates you to get up in the morning?
Kemi Ilesanmi: There are new suns, and we're going to go finding those suns.
Charlotte Burns: Kemi, what if your younger self could see you now? What would surprise them most?
A new one. I'm throwing a curveball at you.
Kemi Ilesanmi: Yes! I know!
[Laughter]
I think on some level my… I'm going to pick an age…. I think some of my younger selves, my early 20s self, would be pleased, yet surprised, to see me reconnecting to my African and Nigerian heritage with such depth and intention. I spent a lot of time reintegrating, because I moved back at 15, into what it meant to be an African American, Black American, and the joy of being able to be in a new season of my life is being able to reconnect myself to this other part of my heritage that was always there, that I always loved, but had never connected to as a professional. And being able to do that, I don't think my 25-year-old self saw that coming. And it's so exciting, 30 years later to be doing this work.
Charlotte Burns: Okay, final one, Kemi. You've talked a lot in all of our podcasts about the seeds that we plant. So, what are you growing? I know you like to name things, so let's name.
Kemi Ilesanmi: Sherrilyn Ifill wrote a beautiful essay about this being planting season, this moment in 2025. So thank you so much for pulling that into the room.
I like to think that I'm helping to plant the seeds for an African future—and I think about that diasporically—that is a space in which we get to think and to play, and to not get everything right the first time. And to question and to be complex, and to be contradictory and to build things that we love and we care about in the most beautiful, self-determined way, which seems so simple to say, but is not what Africans at home on the Continent, or in diaspora, have ever really truly been given, the space to do that. So instead, we're going to take it ourselves and do that, and that's the seeds that I hope that I'm helping to plant.
Charlotte Burns: Kemi, it's such a pleasure to talk to you, as always. Thank you so much for being our guest today. Thank you so much for the time.
Kemi Ilesanmi: Thank you. This was wonderful as always, Charlotte. Really, really love being in conversation with you over the last, going on, three years.
[Musical interlude]
Charlotte Burns: My huge thanks to Kemi, as always. Join us next time when we’ll be talking to artist Glenn Ligon.
Glenn Ligon: "There's some beauty in things that are normally not looked at. So, nobody really thought about that gold wallpaper, but I just thought it was beautiful. We imagine the way that institutions hang their collections is the way it has to be, but it doesn't have to be like that. It's just conventions that we've grown used to. That’s all. [Laughter]"
Charlotte Burns: It was so hard to choose which clip to include here because there are so many great things that Glenn says. It’s a fantastic episode, and I hope you’ll tune in.
This podcast is brought to you by Art&, the editorial platform created by Schwartzman&, and executive produced by Allan Schwartzman. The series is produced by Studio Burns, with audio design by Tamsyn Kent. Follow the show on social media @Schwartzman.art.