Interview With Angelika Wallace-Whitfield

By in In The Community on March 14, 2014

A very fit guy in blue and red spandex called Spiderman once reminisced, “With great power comes great responsibility.”

Maybe this is a first, seeing the names Socrates and Spiderman so close together, but these are the two concepts that stayed with me after talking to Bahamian artist Angelika Wallace-Whitfield. Ven con migo and I’ll explain. Trust, it’s a good one. –

In my free time on my work breaks I love to look at art. I literally sit at my laptop and Google anything art related. I am not an art critic but I’ve experienced the Stendhal effect before, and I’ve been craving that pure, pleasurable evisceration of senses ever since. If you get off on addiction, toss the cigarillos and instead of walking to the store for a pack, make your fingertips work for it.

I believe that the act of looking is sacred. Don’t get it confused with seeing. Seeing is the eventual pay off, but looking is the actual process. So, pay attention, it is muy importante to look, not just at art but at oneself. The ability to take in every detail of oneself across time and space is to Nosce Te Ipsum – know thyself. Well hello Socrates y gracias for putting words to what would have been a contextual dis-ease for writers such as myself who currently have occasional fall outs with montones of meaning.

Now, at some point, all humans actively engage in this discovery- creation mechanism that allows them to dig into their psychoses to understand themselves; where they come from, why they react to certain things in a particular manner and trace a trajectory for their eventual evolution. They become, consciente de sí mismo – conscious of themselves, self-aware.

Angelika Wallace-Whitfield is 20-years-old. She is curator of the D’Aguilar Art Foundation (DAF) and a curatorial assistant at the National Art Gallery of the Bahamas (NAGB). Oh, and she has already had a national exhibition. Can you guess what she describes herself as? If you guessed self aware, felicitaciones! Come on down!

This pizza-loving vegetarian with the wicked sweet tooth is one of the most impressive 20-year-olds I have ever spoken with. Her breadth of emotional intelligence commands a respect that goes well beyond her age. See for yourself:

Read the interview with Angelika by Aurora Herrera, in ARC Magazine

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