If you’ve been here before or noted the URL, you’ll notice the site header is updated to Naa, Nai & Co. This reflection is about the new header, how it informs and is informed by my creative process.
Reconnecting with Kpele
Nai is a figure in the Kpele spiritual system (indigenous to the Ga people), whose primary domain is water. Growing up in a ghanaian-american family, I heard references to Kpele and was familiar with some of the traditions, but I really just thought of them as Ga traditions more generally. Until adulthood, I didn’t engage with this spiritual system in any intentional ways because the dominant religion where I lived was Christianity.
At some point I reconnected with Kpele through the book ‘Kpele Lala,’ and it felt like a missing puzzle piece came into place. Being areligious, this was less about believing in the ideas literally or doing any particular practices, and more about resonating with the way the spiritual archetypes and philosophies were described in the book. After a very eurocentric education, I appreciated connecting with other black americans searching for ways to decolonize spirituality, in part by exploring alternatives to organized religion. Even still, african-based mythologies and spiritualities were often absent from, or very vaguely referenced in, those conversations. Not because of a lack of interest, but because of the erasure of so many aspects of our indigenous cultures. I am really happy to see how much more information is being disseminated globally about the diversity of spiritualities, medicines, mythologies, astrology, and so much more that originated on and are still practiced throughout the african continent. (Speaking of which: if you are interested in reconnecting with mythologies of melanated peoples and have not read Love in Color by Bolu Babalola, I recommend it — it felt like good medicine to read it.)
That reconnection with Kpele folklore influenced my work as an artist because I experience creativity and spirituality as interconnected. For me, spirituality is recognizing and nurturing a connection with source energy (ie the energy from which we are all made and through which we are all connected). Some artists experience source energy as ‘The Muse,’ others may identify creative ideas as coming from events, or their own minds, or from the collective. ‘Source’ is what resonates with me.
The gifts of the creative portal
I came to think of ‘daughter of nai’ as an energetic studio name: an entry point into the portal of creativity, to allow what I am invited to create to come through me, without as many restrictions or hang-ups from the self I tend to in day-to-day life. For example, I use photos of myself / my body in some of my work. My day-to-day self would rather not do this, because of shyness, because of cultural conditioning, because of stigma associated with women gazing upon ourselves rather than being the subject of a male gaze. When I set the intention to enter the creative portal, I am inviting ideas to come through that may feel uncomfortable for my ego, but which may help me not only to produce artwork, but also to access a more expansive experience of being.
Following that creative instinct to use photos of myself has helped me understand that the discomfort of self-portraits isn’t really mine; it is internalized from external narratives. If the fear is being perceived as self-absorbed or vain by using one’s own form, I realized that all art can be viewed as equally self-absorbed, equally vain. When someone paints a flower, that’s how that person sees, or wants to see, a flower. When a man photographs a woman, it is his—and the camera’s—projection of that woman. We are there, in everything that we make, even and perhaps especially when we think we’re not. None of that is wrong; it’s just what is, but it was hard to see in that fear-state of ‘ohhh but maybe I shouldn’t follow my creative instincts because what if people think my art is too personal?’
I had interpreted that personal = feminine = less objective = less good. Thankfully I began unraveling the holes in that supposed logic, and to see: 1) I suspect one reason we internalize personal as less good in art, is that we assume it requires less labor to produce. There is no objective basis for that assumption — how could we possibly measure what creative labor is for one person vs. another? The physical production of an artwork is the tip of the iceberg, and we’ll never know all that goes on under the surface, for any artist. 2) Why is the perception of strenuousness our gauge for the quality of somebody’s work? Unless the artist states it, I wouldn’t know if they were sweating over the piece they made, or if it came through a process of surrender more than one of pushing. And if came through surrender, I wouldn’t know how much work they’d had to do, for how many years, to achieve and listen to that state of surrender. And 3) personal does not automatically mean factual. The stories I tell with photos of my body, or bits and pieces of lived experiences, are through me, not about me. The stories are their own, inviting the use of my body or the framework of lived experiences to express truths more expansive than facts could accommodate. It’s personal and it’s a projection, a fiction. The creative portal of daughter of nai has been helping me, in these ways and many others, to clarify how I actually experience art as a maker of it and a viewer/experiencer of it. And, to allow people to interpret it as they will / to let go of the perceived responsibility to either correct or carry those interpretations for others.
nai and the ways of water
The nai / water theme has also grounded me thematically. My work (so far) explores themes of home, belonging, and displacement. I am drawn to the perceived tension between desires for rootedness and desires for liberation (in psychology this is basically the authenticity / attachment paradox) — where those desires intersect, where they are in conflict, where they can be layered harmoniously. Inviting the element of water into that investigation is helpful for me, because it is very real, very tangible, home to many, and yet is not rigid.
The concept of ‘daughter of nai’ has helped me acknowledge and explore the porousness and purpose(s) of identity. Where it serves us, where we are best served to let it go. That we are children of our families of origin, nations of origin, communities of origin, yes, and that we can also understand ourselves as family members of all else in the Universe.
The name has been as intriguing as it is challenging to me; nai, to my understanding, is described as a male-identified spirit. Because feminine archetypes are prominent in my work, I was drawn, from the beginning, to incorporating naa, a female-identified spirit, into the website name. I didn’t do that for the very practical reason that my given name has ‘naa’ in it and I worried that could be confusing. So initially, I decided to embrace the tension / discomfort / invitations involved in the name daughter of nai, and to see what lessons were available there. It did help me to unpack this idea of what it means to be a daughter, of anyone or anything (or in archetypal terms to be in the ‘Maiden’ season of life). It also helped me to confront my discomfort with the masculine — especially, with the wounding I’d internalized as a black woman who seldom felt affirmed in her femininity.
Now, I’m feeling the need to expand the concept, both to make room for my own growth and to reflect my current experience of that creative portal I was referencing. Like everything on this site, it is subject to change, but I’m going to try out ‘Naa, Nai, & Co’ and see what, if anything, that does to/in the creative portal.
TLDR: My sun is in Pisces ;)