Black History Month profile:
Bokani Tshidzu (continued)

In this third and final instalment, Bokani shares her deeper inspirations and advice she would give to her 16-year-old self. The conversation ranges from being inspired by friends and family to Tik Tokkers, the Virgin Mary, Moses, and music.

You can read part 2 of our conversation with Bokani here. You can also read part 1 here.

Part 3

Shanon: What inspires you to keep going?

Bokani: Friendships, firstly. I keep coming back to this because I think my friendships are the love affairs of my life. Both friendships and my family. I’m lucky that I get on famously with my family even though we disagree and argue all the time. My immediate family, my aunt and my sister, don’t always see eye to eye. But I know and feel that I’m loved, and somebody cares about me, and part of the reason I can go out in acts of faith and make art and live this deep spiritual life is because I am cared for.

I read a lot. I listen to a lot of books and I sometimes read physical books and the writers whose ideas mean a lot to me. We talked about Audre Lorde, bell hooks, I’m reading about mysticism by Simon Critchley. He’s a philosopher. I read about economics, and I read trashy romance.

Shanon: We do need the trash as well. It’s like the dessert. Everyone needs maybe 10% junk food in their life.

Bokani: Right! So I try and have a balanced diet of inputs. Yeah, I enjoy music. I have an eclectic taste in music. It’s a really helpful way to change status, just to move. I mentioned being in nature. It can be as humble as being in a park, sitting in a garden, enjoying a good fruit.

And moments of stillness and quiet. I try and do a silent retreat every year. I haven’t managed one this year, but I already have one booked in for next year. I find silence really rich to hear with a bit more clarity God’s voice in my life.

Shanon: Something that you said while we were having lunch before this was when you were in Zimbabwe recently, there was dancing as well.

Bokani: Yeah. I really wanted to hang out with my cousins and go dancing. Like we always meet up and we do like, you know, family duty stuff. And I’m like, where’s our capacity for just being free in our bodies? And I walk a lot when I’m in Zimbabwe and I enjoy that enormously. I’m not a very good dancer though. I break the stereotype – I’m the one Black woman who can’t dance. I think it’s good to have one, otherwise people’s expectations will be too high. I can’t dance, but I enjoy it. I can’t sing, but I enjoy it.

Shanon: (Laughs.) What about specifics? Like you said music and reading. You mentioned Audre Lorde, whom we talked about earlier, and bell hooks. Who else? To me, these are relationships, too, in addition to my friends and family. bell hooks is a presence, and Audre Lorde. Björk, I don’t know her, but she’s there for me. Who are these friends for you?

Bokani: There’s two TikTokers that have become really important to me in the last year, Ismatou Gwendolyn and Justin Scott, who have searing critiques of the world we live in. I first encountered them on TikTok, which is not where I thought I would go for profound political analysis or philosophy at all. And Ismatou Gwendolyn has made all her writing freely available, which is part of what informed my gifting my work. To be a public thinker but not in the ways that we currently think of what that is. You know, not doing TED Talks and having sold-out books. All her writing is freely available.

Musically, I listen to Amapiana, which is South African house, and gospel, but I guess I want to call it diaspora, because it’s Afrobeats does gospel, so does the Kingdom Choir based here. And 1980s and 1990s South African jazz, I really enjoy in communal spaces. So if I’m hosting a dinner, that’s the music I’ll put on.

I think we’re full-bodied creatures. My being Catholic really makes sense in that context because I do need to listen, I need to taste and see, I need to stand, kneel and genuflect, I need an embodied experience, faith, and one in which I can be fighting from within to say, I think these things need to change. And so far, they haven’t excommunicated me, so that’s a plus.

Shanon: That’s the interesting thing about the faith journey as well, isn’t it? Like, maybe the Counter-Reformation might have involved colonial and imperial expansion, but it also gave us a lot of amazing progressive social action and artistic expression.

Bokani: Yeah. And when I’m painting, I’ll either be listening to hip-hop sometimes if I’m in a really angry mood, and then opera, and then some canticles of Hildegard von Bingen. And all these influences are happening in my studio. I’m bringing these presences into my work and so I when I show work now, I typically try and have a soundscape that goes with whatever exhibition or piece. Some sort of sound element because I think it creates a world in which you’re seeing artwork.

Aesthetic experiences are God’s windows and doorways into our lives that allow us to then see more clearly.

Shanon: That’s something I’ve never thought about. But with more and more of my artist friends, I notice they like talking about what they listen to while they’re in the studio. That’s such a fascinating conversation.

Bokani: It distils into the work somehow, because music has a rhythm and painting, I think. Even the way I do it, which is a very flow-based painting, has a rhythm. And you can see a sense of movement in my paintings, a pattern. And I went to a Shostakovich concert. I don’t normally go to these things myself. My friends were like, we’re going to a concert. They know I’m typically open to whatever. And I was sat there, and there was this painting I’d made. And I was sat there listening to this music and I was like, this painting finally makes sense. Because I had thought that painting was a mess. But I’m listening to this piece where it was all over the place. You’d have like huge brass sounds and then these tiny flutes. Like not in any order or structure. And yet it worked, it was beautiful. I got back to my studio and I was like yeah, okay, this Shostakovich piece and this painting are part of the same continuum.

Shanon: I used to get really annoyed with myself when I went to concerts and my mind would wander. I’m listening to a piece but suddenly I’m thinking about, say, a piece of writing that I’m in the middle of, and I’m suddenly working out something about it in my mind. But I think maybe from what you’re saying, it’s like, the music is activating another part of my brain that’s helping me to solve my own creative conundrum, and then my mind flits back to the music. It’s back and forth.

Bokani: It is. I mean now I have a little notebook that I take into concerts sometimes because I don’t want to bring my phone out, but I can just jot something down. Because, yeah, insights are given. Maybe aesthetic experiences are God’s windows and doorways into our lives that allow us to then see more clearly.

So those insights being given are because there’s a sort of parting of and for music to get you into a spot where you’re inspired. Maybe it’s something important that’s happening.

Shanon: For me, there’s something in here about how creativity begets more creativity. I mean, the Magnificat itself is a song of praise. So, even in the Bible, how is the Virgin Mary responding to the news that she is bearing the son of God? She responds with a song, the Magnificat. And then people afterwards have set this to beautiful music in so many different ways.

Bokani: And I’m about to set it to visual art actually. I’ve been asked by St. James’s Church Piccadilly to make an altarpiece for Advent for them and my first thought was the Magnificat, because I like the idea of Mary and Elizabeth meeting in that moment. I’m just really fascinated by what she says, because Mary’s a badass. Just extraordinary.

Shanon: To me, the Magnificat is a hymn from a woman’s experience, so yes it’s mystical and it’s about creation, but it’s also about justice. It’s about how, okay, this thing that’s happening in my body is going to undo this whole corrupt system.

I think of art as a burning bush because if you don’t take your shoes off and reverence this thing that you’ve been given, it will consume, it will burn and consume. The thing that keeps it burning and not consuming is the fact that it’s a Divine gift, it’s holy, but it needs to be reverenced.

Bokani: And something else that I haven’t figured out how to relate theologically to the Magnificat is that I always talk about the gift of being an artist as being like Moses turning towards a burning bush. I think of art as a burning bush because if you don’t take your shoes off and reverence this thing that you’ve been given, it will consume, it will burn and consume. The thing that keeps it burning and not consuming is the fact that it’s a Divine gift, it’s holy, but it needs to be reverenced. But what does God say out of that? Turn your eye to the spectacle, but the spectacle isn’t the point, isn’t the only thing.

So just as an artwork is not just like, look at this beautiful thing, God out of that says, ‘I’ve heard my people’s cry. I will end their slavery in Egypt.’ And it’s a call to liberation. And for you, Moses, to be a part of that liberation. I don’t know that Moses was like, sure, this is for me. He’s like, wait, what? I need to go and do what now? I don’t think so, mate. It takes seeing this beauty for him to have this realisation. And that experience of liberation to then go on and do what he does, to be inspired and fed by that.

There’s something about the Magnificat that’s saying we are participants in our freedom-making. We’re not waiting for something out there. We have been called to do this, and the thing that I’ve been called to do is liberate. At least that’s how I’ve been understanding the Magnificat this year.

Shanon: Yeah. And it takes two pregnant mothers in conversation. To produce that synthesis.

Bokani: Completely. And like before I have a new series of body or work, I always dream of pregnant women or like just friends will announce that they’re pregnant. And so there’s something like I know then to prepare my mind. So, I start reading up, I start researching. I know to start paying attention in ways that, yeah, that something new is coming. And yeah, I don’t know what those altarpieces will look like.

Shanon: I can’t wait! And I love this conversation. When you were talking about Moses, in the Islamic tradition, he has a stammer. He stutters. And so, one of the prayers that Muslims will say before giving a talk or before convening a conversation is Moses’s prayer before he has to confront Pharaoh. It’s in the Qur’an, and I’m paraphrasing the translation wildly here, but it’s something like, ‘Please God, untie my tongue so that my words will reach their hearts’, or something like that.

Bokani: My God, that’s beautiful. That’s so fascinating.

Shanon: We’ve come to the final question. What advice would you give to the 16-year-old you?

Bokani: What a tough question! So, this would be good advice to get when I was 16 so that I could use it when I was 17. I went on a summer school at Eton College. They have the summer school for kids who come from state schools, or less privileged kids, to help them get into Oxbridge. You apply as if you’re applying to university with your personal statement, et cetera. And I applied for English literature for the summer school. At the time I was given the same grades for English lit and economics.

Coming back from the summer school, I was like, I really want to go and study literature at Oxford. And my aunt was like, absolutely not. You’re getting the same grades for economics. What job are you going to do as an English lit graduate? Makes no sense. Go and do economics.

So, I applied for economics and didn’t get in. I always regretted that. I thought if I’d applied for English I would have gotten in. But, more importantly, I didn’t know how to articulate at the time that being skilled in understanding language was a strength, and that I should play to my strengths, and whatever I did while playing to my strengths I’d be successful at. Whatever the circumstances. And so often we try and do the logical thing in the hopes that that’s the thing that will keep us safe, or that’s the thing that will secure our livelihoods. And I understand the reason for the advice that I was given completely.

It’s just, I wouldn’t give that same advice to16 year-old-me now. I would say if your strength is literature or language or the arts, keep doing that because everybody else will be fighting to do what you’re doing. Because that isn’t their natural strength or gift. If you don’t, you’re playing with half the strength. That would be the advice I would give. What you’re passionate about and your strength are usually related. That passion will help you make the most of that strength. When times are difficult, it will give you the extra boost of energy.

And what is calling for you will find you anyway. Am I not now writing books? What you’re called to do, your vocation will always come for you. I ended up making art, I ended up writing anyway. Because it was in me, and listening to that, I knew sort of it was there, but I didn’t know how to discern and therefore how to share that discernment process in my family.

Shanon: [Quoting the Book of Isaiah, 43:1] ‘Fear not, for I have redeemed you. I have called you by name. You are mine.’

Bokani: I’ll say nothing more to that. That’s beautiful. Thank you.