Jabu Arnell

Meet the Residents / Siena is a seasonal series of interviews with Amant’s Siena Studio & Research residents. The conversations take place in the Amant residency studios in Chiusure, in the heart of the province of Siena.

In the summer of 2024, Amant’s Chief Curator, Tobi Maier recorded this conversation during a studio visit with resident artist Jabu Arnell. With this transcript of their conversation, we introduce Arnell’s practice to our wider audience and discuss questions such as: What is the impact of the Chiusure and Siena context on our residents’ practices? In what ways has the proposed project changed since arriving and why? And finally, what is artistic research and how is it done?

Tobi Maier ™: Jabu, could you tell us a little bit where you came from? Where were you before you came to Siena?

Jabu Arnell (JA): I live in Amsterdam, and I’ve been there most of my life. I was born on St. Maarten, a French/Dutch island in the Caribbean.

TM: And you were telling me that you studied at the Rietveld Academie with Jonas Ohlsson, one of the artists that I know from having worked with at Frankfurter Kunstverein in 2008.

JA: Yes.

TM: How was that for you and how is your practice developing at this point in Amsterdam? You told me that it’s sort of hybrid because you’re also working in a very challenging healthcare job at the same time, so I think that’s also important to consider in contrast to this very concentrated and solitary experience of working in the studio here, right?

JA: Yes, first about Jonas. When I was at the Rietveld–I did the DOGtime program- Jonas Ohlsson was mainly giving drawing classes. He invited me to take some classes, and what I believe to have learned from Jonas is the sense of freedom in creating art, and being free in it. When things tend to become too serious, the work being made can become too contrived; but he taught me to have fun, to be uninhibited in one’s process of making work; that’s what I remember. Working in healthcare is something special because it allows us to help those in need of assistance and guidance. I believe that healthcare and creative disciplines complement each other beautifully. I continuously try to find ways of merging these two worlds. After this residency here in Chiusure, I plan to move forward with a project I’ve been developing. I’ve already reached out to some colleagues and families of residents affected by dementia, asking if they’d be willing to work with me. Everyone was really enthusiastic about the idea! At the Melly Institute, I will be making Disco Ball #13 over a period of roughly 5 months; what I would like to do is create an accompanying video, in which we talk about dementia and about our memory of the disco ball. By way of editing, I hope to merge the two subjects into one, not knowing until the very end what the affect of the effect will be. They found the idea interesting, so that’s going to be a beautiful conceptuitive challenge for us when I get back, to see if we can realize it. I’m really excited about that.

TM: You have talked also about this transversal approach to visual expression. Could you tell me a little bit more about this and how you approach your research, what a research project is for you?

JA: For me, a research project emanates through a question of probability of a concept. The research often finds me roaming the streets in search of material for building the work; also having oneon- one conversations with people from all walks of life. An example was building the sculpture The Black Outside (Shaded Feelings): Love & Death at FCA (the Foundation for Contemporary Art) last november in Accra, for the group exhibition titled Delay and Encounter and/or Other Proximate Unknowns, initiated by OtherNetwork, curated by Sinethemba Twalo and Gabi Ngcobo of NGO (Nothing Gets Organized). I was in constant dialogue with just about everyone who was a part of the production crew or just visiting the dynamic set during the buildup of the show. My work gradually transformed into a portal, which served as a gateway to this specific safe space filled with diversity, in which there was a true sense of ‘Akwaaba’.

TM: And so, the transversal is then something that bridges disciplines and bridges your own workspace with the outside world, but also is sort of permeable, leaves the inside and lets the outside in.

JA: I guess that it is an attempt to create links with the unlinkable, trying to match the unmatchable, in the most basic way possible; hoping that the artwork raises questions more than it gives answers, that it may be interpreted in many ways.

TM: And your approach has also been termed “conceptuitive.” Embracing imperfection and impermanence, often resulting in wabisabi aesthetic, and resulting from dialogic gatherings. You told a little bit about the safe space, the portal to a safe space that you created in Accra, and we also spoke a little bit about these cheap cardboard materials and how they also turn up in other artists’ works like Thomas Hirschhorn’s, for example. But I’d like to hear a little bit more about what you think about this sort of embracing imperfection and impermanence and what is wabi-sabi aesthetic?

JA: The wabi-sabi aesthetic alludes to the simplicity, imperfection and ephemerality of my work. “Conceptuitive” is a phrase I derived when I was at the Rietveld. I remember there was one art professor who posed the question to me, “what sense does it make to create a work that is already totally in your head and that you’ve already totally worked out in your head?” For a long time after that I was unable to produce work because I would have an idea and then think because I had formed the whole work in my head already, it no longer made sense to make it. It took me a while to realize that the concept never outlasts the intuition. Then, talking about impermanence, most of my work doesn’t survive for a really long time: it is eventually destroyed, or eaten.

TM: What material are the disco balls made of?

JA: The disco balls were initially made from mostly cardboard, and any other found material. I love finding cardboard on the streets, or being given cardboard by a friend who knows how much I love cardboard. Cardboard tells a story, gives answers.

TM: Here in Chiusure, you were also planning to work with ceramics. And we can see that here in the studio. Maybe you can tell us a little bit about what you’re working on now, and how these shapes and figures came into space.

JA: It took me a while to get dirty with the ceramics here, because working with clay is special, like a living object. You must be constantly busy with it once you start. I don’t know in what direction the sculpture is headed now. But that’s also the beauty of ceramics, I believe. I need more time.

TM: You also visited some other ceramic practitioners here, or foundries?

JA: Yes, I went to Trequanda, to a factory there. I told Claudio, a man living in Chiusure, about me wanting to work with clay. He then took me to a traditional ceramics factory. It was interesting to see how everything is still done a mano, by hand. And there they gave me a huge chunk of clay.

TM: Which is the one we have here?

JA: Yes. And then I started to work with it. I can’t say that I’m totally satisfied with it as yet, but I’m still happy that I’m learning as I go along, just learning about clay.

TM: Looking at the cardboard sculptures that you have here, some of them are two-dimensional and they are more like pictures, right? You told me about the butterfly work, but others, they are also three-dimensional and look more like architecture. And now we spoke a little bit about Chiusure and the village and its privileged sort of geographical and topographical position overlooking all the valleys here. You also showed me some pictures from your project in Accra. and David Adjaye’s redevelopments on the beach there. How much architecture and your experience of architecture and your research in small or large-scale cities and redevelopments is channeled into these architectural models?

JA: I call them bldg maquettes. Being in Accra reminded me of discussions I would have with my mom as a child, about the preservation of traditional/cultural buildings on St. Maarten. Visiting Osu Beach in Accra, and seeing all the structures/buildings that were created by the local community was beautiful; and having subsequently learned that these very structures will be demolished made me sad. With these maquettes, I ask myself the question whether an alternative vision for redevelopment is possible, one that takes the existing structures into consideration.

TM: I met the other part of the group in Venice and they were telling me, oh, Jabu is so busy in the studio. And then I kind of sense this now, how you kind of had to continue and embrace this moment of continuing this immersion in this newfound studio practice. Is that correct?

JA: Yes, for sure. One thing just started to lead to another.

TM: So it’s kind of ideas that keep spilling out and then you would rather start something new than finish something. Because you can finish it in your imagination …

JA: Maybe yes, and that hopefully others can indeed finish it in their imagination, in their own way.

TM: Can you just tell me also something about the works on cardboard in these paintings? They somehow look almost like sunset scenes or topographical views of waters. But then they’re also very visceral in the way that you are scratching the cardboard. You’re ripping off the surface of the top of the cardboard. Prints and logos remain, or you add a name.

JA: All those elements I guess reflect the moment in time: the environment, the people, the stories, the found material (nothing more than cardboard), the architecture.

TM: Thank you, Jabu.

JA: You’re welcome. Thank you.