Keli Safia Maksud: Anthems (2019-2020)

One can all but hear the songs playing when someone mentions God Save the King, The Star-Spangled Banner, or La Marseillaise… With patriotism reverberating across the global stage, writing a recognisable national anthem has become an integral part of a nation’s self determination and cultural identity. Rather than allowing anthems to be taken at face value as simple songs, Keli Safia Maksud interrogates the political connotations of African national anthems written during post-colonial subject formation. With a growing body of research and artistic demonstration on post-colonial reckoning and questioning of state-presented histories that shelter colonial legacies, Maksud questions the notion of ‘Africa’ that has been constructed by colonial powers. Invented as an ‘Other’, this conception is defined by man-made borders and constructions of a mono-cultural continent, both of which erase the vibrancy and diversities that existed in pre-colonial history. Kenyan by birth, Tanzanian by heritage, and raised in a multi-faith family, Maksud pointedly interrogates the manner of language used to articulate movement and multicultural identities. In particular, she seeks a method to resist both the essentialisation and division of culture, heritage, and histories through her research and her artistic practice.

Deftly composing post-colonial perspectives on power, Maksud engages mediums such as sound, sculpture, installation, text, printmaking, and embroidery. Utilising paper and thread for her embroidered piece Anthems (2019-2020), the multi-media artwork makes a visual play on Maksud’s concern with national anthems. The scores stitched onto the paper are formed by rigid lines and forms, much like the ‘modernisation’ brought by colonial powers through tactics of control. Embroidering the notes from national anthems onto these Western scores, Maksud draws attention to the inherent flaw in their making. Intended to create a shared nationhood and cultural identity after colonial departure, these anthems were presented to the West as a symbol of unification—bringing together numerous voices into one song much like the countless threads that form each score. However, modelled upon the anthems of the former colonial powers and borrowing Western musical notation and composition, these anthems became a sonic mimicry of the very structures the countries hoped to rid themselves of. 

In post-colonial theorist Homi K. Bhabha’s words, “mimicry is a flawed identity imposed on colonised people who are obliged to mirror back an image of colonials but in imperfect form.” This assimilation to Western conventions, in what was intended to be nation-defining art, highlights an adherence to colonial structures and creates sonic-cultural borders based on the geographical partition lines created by colonial powers. As these anthems were adopted, so were colonially inherited political organisations, schools, and geographical partitions, all but baking the legacies of occupation into the quotidian of these newly independent nations. 

While Maksud highlights this juxtaposition between intent and effect of national anthems, Anthems refrains from presenting a singular interpretation through the intentional exposure of the back of the paper. The reverse shows Maksud’s carefully planned stitches, which form geometric constellations of needle holes and threads along the back of paper as she connects each line on the front. 

The web behind Maksud’s embroidered scores illuminates a network of rhizomatic connections that exist within these represented nations. While they may not be what is put forth as the nation’s face, this web of languages, cultures, and systems strings people together, and represents the post-colonial hopes of the continent which were left unmet by these anthems. As she stitches the scores and networks, the force of the needle puncturing the paper’s surface evokes the violence endured under colonialism and contemporary systems of representation alike. These complex patterns meditate upon her area of research: how people’s identities cross borders, how people live entangled with colonial systems, and how these invisible structures fix bodies in space. 

Challenging the colonial and political legacies that restrain a nation’s and person’s movements within predetermined limits, Maksud calls attention to how governments order space, time, and distance and encourages the questioning of the narratives they produce. As former colonies around the world continue to engage in self-determination, Maksud’s Anthems encourage the global community to acknowledge, to bear witness, and more importantly, to listen