Naakai Addy: Embracing Life’s Layers through Collage

 

Naakai Addy is a Ghanaian-American writer and collage artist based in Raasepori. She has written essays and short stories, and is preparing to publish a novel with Ballantine Books. Naakai’s multidisciplinary artwork layers text, digital media, and physical mixed media pieces. Disability, bodily autonomy, belonging, eroticism, and liberation are common themes in her work, which you can find at daughterofnai.com. In 2022, she created her first body of work, ‘are ex-i’, as a series of digital collages with lyrical prose, and in 2023 added to the collection with physical representations of the digital pieces. Since 2023, Naakai has been working on a second text-based collage project called COME HOME.

 

“The function, the very serious function of racism is distraction. It keeps you from doing your work. It keeps you explaining, over and over again, your reason for being. Somebody says you have no language and you spend twenty years proving that you do. Somebody says your head isn’t shaped properly so you have scientists working on the fact that it is. Somebody says you have no art, so you dredge that up. Somebody says you have no kingdoms, so you dredge that up. None of this is necessary. There will always be one more thing.” 

Toni Morrison

  

Contending with the Burden of Proof

Collage is a reprieve from explaining myself, a practice of unapologetic being. For over thirty years, I explained why I moved the way I moved, why I said the things I said in the way I said them, why I did not say the things I was expected to say or at times anything at all, why my face and skin and hair and body appeared the way they did and took up space in spaces apparently reserved for people with different skin or faces or hair or bodies, why I was so tired, needed a break, needed a moment, needed a tender hand rather than a tough one. I learned to self-isolate, so that I could catch a breath from the explaining which commenced the minute I was in most anyone else’s company. Except, by the time I learned to self-isolate, I also learned to spend a majority of alone time pre-scripting explanations for what I had done, might do, or might be perceived to be thinking about doing at a later date. 

I adopted this rigorous, worth-dissolving practice in order to survive misogynoir (prejudice against black women), ableism, and in a broader sense, that human impulse to suppress or cast out people whose ways of being are not immediately digestible or easily exploitable. Art was always part of my life, but it was not until 2021 that I committed to what had once been a longing, and that year, became an intention: to reclaim being, without explanation. I intended to reclaim it by honoring the practice of art and relinquishing the pressure to prove I was worthy of practicing it.  

Creating without Expectation or Explanation

In the summer of 2021, when this intention unfolded into my consciousness, I gave myself an assignment. I decided to make something – anything – at least once a week, for twelve weeks. There were no other parameters, and no expectation of sharing anything I created. One week, I made a decorative clock; another, I covered the box a tower fan came in with black contact paper and used it as a makeshift side table. I played around with my growing library of photos and videos, transcribed sheet music from melodies that came through during the piano practice sessions I used as self-administered occupational therapy. In a later week, I made a jazzy audio-visual invitation on Canva, seeking a +1 to accompany me to my Rituximab infusion appointment (which was not, as it turned out, anyone’s idea of a hot date).  

The timing of these self-administered assignments wasn’t convenient, but I guess that was the point. The lack of rules or standards was very much contrary to the perfectionism I was accustomed to tethering all of my efforts and self-worth to, but I guess that was also the point.   

I started the assignments a little after the MS diagnosis, just after I began treatment. I had been living between two countries; out of fear, I chose to stay in the one I’d spent most of my life trying to leave. It seemed like the most practical decision for my health, and I didn’t feel strong enough to withstand the judgment or confusion I’d face, and probably internalize, if I chose the less obvious path. After choosing the more familiar path, I felt my dreams starting to slip away, dreams I’d spent many years and accrued many wounds trying to manifest.  

I’d written two manuscripts and had an assortment of other works-in-progress, but had set them aside to focus on making as much money as I could after years of health challenges and housing insecurity. I had twenty-some years of on-and-off practice in dance, music, theater, and visual arts, but the mental blocks that prevented me from tapping into these practices more regularly were formidable. My saving graces were the writing circle I was a part of, the creative and spiritual mentors that had been patient enough to hold hope for me until I could hold it for myself, the disability advocates who guided me to resources, support, and community, and the connections with other artists, seekers, and oddballs throughout my life. But especially when I was struggling with my disabilities or with money – usually the two went hand in hand – I struggled to give credence to creative practice, even though it was consistently the most nourishing resource I had. These internalized ideas – that the only valuable purpose of creating was to produce, to prove, to demonstrate your talent, skills, pedigree, so that other people could evaluate and assess and determine whether you and your work were worthy of being seen, of taking up space – were consuming. Luckily, the part of me that disagreed with those ideas had more of a fight in her than I’d given her credit for. 

That part – the one who knew that the process of creating was its own reward, regardless of external evaluation – deserves quite a bit of credit. The more deeply colonized parts of me did everything possible to obliterate her existence.  

Even after I began intensive medical testing and treatments, I held onto the delusion that I could, under extreme duress, become the person I felt certain people in my life would have preferred me to be. It was several months later that my body, strained past the upper limits of her resiliency, finally forced me to give up the ruse. It took time, but thankfully, that inner artist voice stayed the course, through the stages of (un)awareness and acceptance, through the waves of deterioration, change, pain, and transformation of body and mind.  

Each week I spent in the life that did not fit was counterbalanced, via my creative assignments, by a taste of a life that could. I don’t know, if I hadn’t done those assignments, if I would have pitched my book manuscript, something I could only do once I stopped feeling attached to whether or not anyone understood or accepted it. Or, if I would have left the country I was living in and found my way to Finland, and into a way of living as, being, an artist, all the time, whether I was being paid or recognized for it or not. A way into being myself, all the time, whether I was understood or accepted or not. I don’t know, but I’m glad it happened the way it did. The more time I spent making and being, the more pathways opened to spend more time making and being, and less, explaining.  

Finding and Being Found by Collage

The assignments progressed and in 2022 developed into my first collage series ‘are ex – i.’ The first version was digital, and in 2023 I created physical versions of some of the digital pieces. In 2023, a second project, ‘Come Home,’ started percolating. Clarity blossomed, about the actual nature and purpose of my artistic inclinations, a clarity that had been repelled by that scrambling energy of compulsory, compulsive explanation. Where I’d once internalized that it was unfocused and noncommittal, how I was not only a writer but was also drawn to drawing, photography, dance, fashion design, music, performance art, so many kinds of making and expressing, I began to see these ‘disparate’ forms as potentially (and in my way of being, intrinsically) connected. Just because the academic or professional spaces I’d been in separated the arts into departments, and made archetypes out of who belonged where and was allowed to do what, didn’t mean the forms themselves were separate, didn’t mean they could not or did not have any compatible relation to one another.  

I have been asked, before, to explain my collage practice. I have been unable to explain it until now. Not to my own satisfaction, or any one else’s, probably. Each time I tried to explain it, old ruminations came up, self-inflicted judgments that my explanation was so inadequate it disqualified me as an artist altogether.  As I’m writing this, though, I no longer feel that grip, that pressure. In my body, ‘explain’ used to only ever resonate as ‘justify’ (and if you don’t, you’ll die). Now, my body receives the possibility to explain my artistic practice as an invitation to reflect. Simply to reflect what is, to apply what language I wish to use to reflect how I experience it.  

So here it is: Collage is, to me, a practice where I get to let everything be. I get to let everything be seen, witnessed, expressed, as I experience it, and as it invites being experienced through me. I get to experience it without having to prove that my experience of it is the correct, or only, or best, or worst one, or to pit it against other people’s experiences or expressions of the same objects, people, places, events. Any manipulations of materials, any compression of storylines, any edits to texts – are driven by my own gaze, my innate perception and expression of beauty, and by how the materials and stories themselves communicate with me.   

Collage is what I call my art when I’m in a situation where there’s a reason to call it anything, but I’m really not referring to the form of what I may produce. I’m referring to the practice itself: collage as a verb rather than a noun. By my definition, to collage is to explore, engage with, and tend to ways of being and creating that align with our integrity and authenticity, irrespective of what is conventional. It is to center our creations and connections on remembered, soul-resonant truths irrespective of the supposed facts we are taught, the ones that are actually just opinions with successful PR campaigns (e.g. that symmetrical bodies are most beautiful, smooth surfaces and poreless skin are the most desirable, linearity is most logical, simplicity most tasteful). When I collage, I express, in layers of color, text, media, and texture, anything that delights my senses or invites my curiosity: the eroticism I find in bodies visibly impacted by time and gravity; the rapture I experience in the asymmetry, tilt, and weather-wornness of my favorite trees, of discarded material in the craft cupboard, of my own face; anything and everything that supplies body-deep remembrance of liberation, vitality, and enoughness.  

Releasing Explanations, Remembering Worthiness

Collage practice opened space to reflect on and begin course-correcting my many learned modes of self-harm and self-suppression, which were borne of a hyper-consciousness of others’ gazes: the gaze of white people, or Westerners, or my family, or devotees of unfettered capitalism, or able-bodied people, or healing culture evangelists with thinly veiled eugenicist tendencies, or anyone who resents a woman for showing visible reminders of the passage of time and the impermanence of bodies.  

I am not suddenly immune to the weight of these judgments, but collage has helped me integrate more supportive perspectives into my nervous system’s default settings. My art practice invites the layers and textures of things to play, to have a voice in their engagement with one another.  Where and how does a piece of fabric wish to be modified? Does the crepe paper want company, or to stand alone? Is the story asking for the reprieve of mutedness, or an energy infusion of brightness? Is this piece inviting me to practice a new skill, revisit an abandoned one, or stay in the flow of what’s familiar? I see my job as the vessel for the work to listen, rather than dictate, especially in the early stages of a project. When it’s time to edit, I can show up more assertively and analytically, with a goal to shape, tailor, and clarify. So there is still space for the academic training and critical thinking. There is space for feedback from others, not just the thoughtful, constructive kind but also the projections, the reactive judgments and misunderstandings. There is space for all of it. But the work is best served when I use critique and analysis as a support, rather than a ritual of judgment and disapproval. I used to feel I was only a ‘real’ artist if I exhausted myself with ruminations about the quality of my work; I viewed any sense of ease or pleasure in the process of making things as evidence of laziness or poor quality. Now, I’m more likely to welcome and thank ease and pleasure. My body is not always in the mood to experience them, so I am no longer so quick to shoo them away when they are kind enough to show up. Now, I feel I’m doing my job ‘properly’ when I pause, check in with myself, ask: Am I using any knowledge, skills, resources, or accomplishments I accumulate to support the work, or to prove my worth? 

As I’ve let go of the impulse to prove myself, my art practice has guided me to understand my actual, inherent worth. It’s helping me appreciate my wholeness, in all of its ever-shifting layers. As I learn to let the materials guide me, inform me on how they wish to engage with one another, I am learning to respect: the fluctuations in ability and mobility, the pigmentation and toughness of my scars, the contractions in, depletion of my body when I overstep my nervous system’s limits, the gorgeously impractical amount of rest I require to get through each day. Working with stories that ask to be told multi-dimensionally is helping me work through the fear of losing my sight, to explore more tactile, textured ways of seeing. Sourcing materials from recycling piles or leftovers from other projects is teaching me that no experience is ever wasted, never needs to be, if we embrace the opportunity to repurpose its residue.  

This work has become my way of living, creating, and connecting wholly, in a body externally explained as ailing, brain externally explained as broken, mind externally explained as divergent. Where I have been taught lack and deficiency, that the qualities of my mind and body are deviations and therefore in need of correction, I have learned a deviation is, very neutrally, a route. I seek now not to correct a route or kick up the dirt and foliage to cover it – but to follow where it leads (and to kindly ask any foliage that gets stuck underneath my shoes if it would like to be adorned with just a touch of iridescent paint and incorporated into my next creative scheme).  

The routes have led me here, to Finland, and home, to myself. They have led me to being the artist I have always been, and they have helped me to know the enoughness of being (period)  

 

 

Naakai’s portrait photo: Daniel Spycher