Bimbola Akinbola, "Transatlantic Disbelonging: Unruliness, Pleasure, and Play in Nigerian Diasporic Women's Art" (Duke UP, 2025)

Summary

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Podcast Summary: New Books Network

Episode Title: Bimbola Akinbola, "Transatlantic Disbelonging: Unruliness, Pleasure, and Play in Nigerian Diasporic Women's Art" (Duke UP, 2025)

Host: Abigail Selles

Guest: Bimbola Akinbola, Assistant Professor in Performance Studies at Northwestern University

Original Air Date: April 6, 2026

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Overview of the Episode

In this episode, host Abigail Selles interviews Bimbola Akinbola about her book Transatlantic Disbelonging: Unruliness, Pleasure, and Play in Nigerian Diasporic Women's Art. The conversation explores how Nigerian diasporic women artists leverage “disbelonging” as a strategic, generative practice—one marked by agency, unruliness, pleasure, risk, and play. Rather than viewing alienation solely as loss, Akinbola's work investigates how outsiderness, taboo, and marginality can serve as tools of self-definition and community building across visual art, performance, and literature.

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Key Discussion Points

Rethinking Diasporic Alienation and Disbelonging

• Project Origins

  • Akinbola describes her project as emerging from her dissertation research, originally rooted in exploring trauma among first- and second-generation immigrant cultural producers.
  • Her perspective shifts after engaging with artists (especially Ruby Amanze) who explicitly reject trauma as the central narrative of their work.
  • "What I realized it was is, oh, I'm looking for trauma, and I'm wanting to write about trauma, but actually all of these artists are offering us something else..." (04:29, D)

• Defining Disbelonging

  • Akinbola identifies "disbelonging" as under-theorized in diaspora studies—too often just a negation of belonging. She moves to define it as the embrace of outsiderness, taboo, and alienation as creative and strategic practice.
  • Disbelonging is not passively received; it is acted out, chosen, and embraced as a “tool or strategy.”
  • “Disbelonging, I’m thinking about it as an approach or a tool or a strategy that one does or one enacts rather than something that happens to you.” (10:56, D)
  • It disrupts respectability and assimilationist impulses, creating new, nonviolent forms of community.

Introducing the Artists and Corpus

• Artists and Their Interconnections

  • The book analyzes four core visual artists (Wura-Natasha Ogunji, Ruby Amanze, Zina Saro-Wiwa, and Njideka Akunyili Crosby) and one novelist (Nnedi Okorafor).
  • Their inclusion was organic, motivated by Akinbola’s own admiration and prior engagement. Most had existing ties or had collaborated—reflecting how their works often intersect and converse.
  • “It started with Wura Natasha Ogunji...she was the one that, you know, connected me with Ruby Amanze…” (15:08, D)

• Brief Profiles

  • Wura-Natasha Ogunji: Performance and visual artist, explores diasporic belonging through performative acts in Nigeria.
  • Ruby Amanze: Works in drawing, themes of hybridity and world-building.
  • Zina Saro-Wiwa: Video artist known for exploring intimacy, the erotic, and vulnerability (e.g., "How Do Africans Kiss?").
  • Njideka Akunyili Crosby: Painter, engages with hybridity, erotic intimacy, and the negotiation of identity within diaspora.
  • Nnedi Okorafor: Speculative and young adult fiction writer, examines Nigerian girlhood and diaspora through magic realism.
  • These creators are lauded not as exclusive or “the best” but as points of departure in a rapidly expanding field. (21:23, D)

• Pleasure and Play in the Research

  • Akinbola foregrounds her own pleasure, curiosity, and play in selecting and writing about these artists, mirroring the art’s own emphasis.
  • “These were artists that you wanted to talk about…that were interesting, that kind of piqued your curiosity or posed a certain kind of challenge...” (22:48, C)

Chapter Breakdowns & Key Arguments

Chapter 1: Unruliness and Performative Returns (Wura-Natasha Ogunji)

• Unruliness as Practice and Theory
  • Diasporic returns are often mythologized as seamless or redemptive, but Ogunji’s work embraces the messiness and uncanniness of outsider status.
  • Unruly return is exemplified in her performance pieces—in public spaces in Lagos, disrupting norms and expectations of respectability for women.
  • "Her crawling on the dirt road, you know, where cars have to sort of maneuver around her, be aware of her, and people are looking at her and they’re like, what are you doing? I think that unruliness is like an extremely powerful tactic." (28:46, D)
  • The impact is not merely symbolic: younger artists report being emboldened to take risks after witnessing or participating in such performances.

Chapter 2: Erotic Ambivalence and Disbelonging (Njideka Akunyili Crosby)

• Eroticism, Ambivalence, and Cultural Stakes
  • Njideka Akunyili Crosby’s large-format paintings depict herself and her white husband, using family and cultural archives to layer intimacy and historical burden.
  • The erotic becomes a site of risk, ambivalence, and negotiation—choices that disturb notions of “authenticity” and challenge diasporic/postcolonial gender norms.
  • "I wanted to think through what it means to have a desire and feel uncertainty around that desire, but acknowledge that the desire is so strong that you have to do it anyway. And that's a lot of what I feel in Akunyili Crosby's work." (31:47, D)
  • The works do not resolve tensions, but make space for their coexistence—“a landscape of acceptance.”

Chapter 3: Vulnerability and the Visual Record (Zina Saro-Wiwa)

• Risk and Intimacy in Video Art
  • Saro-Wiwa’s video pieces candidly explore vulnerability and the risk involved in public display of the private (e.g., kissing, heartbreak).
  • Both participants and the audience are drawn into a cycle of risk, discomfort, and connection.
  • "I’m always curious...how do you get people to buy in?...How do you get people to just, like, share about their heartbreaks?" (37:19, D)
  • The simple, durational format “requires you as the viewer to encounter yourself and really, like, be with yourself.” (38:34, D)
  • Immersive exhibition formats accentuate the invitation—and challenge—to vulnerability on part of the viewer.

Chapter 4: Speculative Girlhoods and Present Worldmaking (Ruby Amanze & Nnedi Okorafor)

• Queer and Intergenerational Disbelonging
  • Connects Ruby Amanze’s drawings and Okorafor’s speculative fiction to examine how "disbelonging" practices emerge in diasporic girlhoods—queer, creative, intergenerational.
  • World-building is not merely imaginative for the future but actively transforms the present.
  • “This work isn’t just about being in diaspora, like this work is. It is the experience of being in diaspora and being in the work is relational and it is the community that we seek...it’s urgent and real and happening.” (43:51, D)
  • The artists operate across mediums (drawing, writing, performance, music), reinforcing the idea of disbelonging as an expansive, cross-disciplinary strategy.

On Autobiography, Storytelling, and Research Method

• Artists as World-Builders Rather than Solely Biographical Subjects
  • The studied works mix autobiography with fiction, often blurring boundaries.
  • “This is about me, this isn’t about me. There’s some things borrowed from my life. But, no, this is fiction.” (50:40, D)
  • Akinbola notes the historical burden for Black artists, whose works are often flattened to autobiography, and calls for insisting on the multiplicity of meanings and effects.
• Interviews: Messiness, Connection, and Vulnerability
  • Akinbola foregrounds the unpredictable, often unsatisfactory nature of ethnographic connection—ghosting, missed connections, uneven intimacy—mirroring the book’s own theory of disbelonging.
  • “It felt important to name that because I was like, right, this is also part of the disbelonging thing, right? You don't just find belonging with the people that are supposed to be like you. Sometimes...we just feel alienated. We just don't quite click.” (55:26, D)
  • The author is candid about longing for community but also encountering disappointment, proposing that these feelings are not personal failure but common, even generative for diasporic experience.

Diasporic Homemaking and Tethering

• Practicing Spacious Belonging
  • Disbelonging is framed as a “practice of diasporic homemaking” that tethers people to one another rather than to place or genealogy—it’s dynamic, adaptive, and tenuous.
  • “Touch base...a belonging that's a bit more like spacious. Like tethering as like a spacious mode of belonging” (62:33, D)
  • The writing process itself became aspirational—Akinbola often reminded herself of her own arguments during moments of personal struggle.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On redefining trauma in the study of diaspora:
  "The artists I had chosen actually were not interested in trauma... which is actually about discovery and invention and play and possibility." (03:29, D)

• On the agency of disbelonging:
  "Disbelonging, I’m thinking about it as an approach or a tool or a strategy... rather than something that happens to you." (10:56, D)

• On unruliness as a tactic:
  "Her crawling on the dirt road... just scream unruly... I think that unruliness is like an extremely powerful tactic." (28:46, D)

• On the limits of epistemic categories:
  “There’s a way that these works... blur autobiography and fiction, and maybe that’s where their strength lies.” (50:38, D)

• On the book’s aspirational quality:
  “I feel like I had many times writing this book where I was like, I need to read my own book... Academic books, it's like, aspirational, right? Like, we're not, like, we're not arguing the thing because we know we figured out how to do it. It's like, what we hope. We hope what we hope.” (60:40, D)

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Key Timestamps of Important Segments

• Origins of research & shift from trauma to possibility: 02:30–06:14
• Defining “disbelonging”: 07:09–12:04
• Selection and biographies of artists: 13:11–22:48
• Discussion of unruliness & performance art: 24:38–30:05
• Eroticism, ambivalence, and Akunyili Crosby’s painting: 31:41–35:22
• Zina Saro-Wiwa’s vulnerability, risk in video art: 37:08–42:17
• Speculative fiction, present-ness, and worldmaking: 43:51–49:22
• Medium, autobiography, and multiplicity: 50:36–53:23
• Interviews, research vulnerability, and the myth of stable community: 53:23–59:17
• Diasporic homemaking, tethering and writing as practice: 59:17–64:21

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Concluding Reflections

The episode closes with a reflection on the ever-shifting nature of belonging, both in diaspora studies and lived experience. Disbelonging is ultimately positioned as not just a concept for analysis, but an active practice of home-making, relationality, and experimental possibility—spacious, adaptive, and, at times, deeply aspirational.

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For listeners and readers, this episode offers an accessible yet nuanced journey through contemporary theories and art practices of Nigerian diasporic women, emphasizing how pleasure, play, risk, and unruliness can carve new forms of connection and meaning—inside and beyond the boundaries of diaspora studies.

Transcript

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[Interviewer - Abigail Selles]

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[Guest - Mimbola Kimbola]

Welcome to the New Books Network.

[Interviewer - Abigail Selles]

Welcome to the New Books Network. I'm your host, Abigail Selles, and I'm here with Mimbola Kimbola, Assistant professor in Performance Studies at Northwestern University and author of Transatlantic Unruliness, Pleasure and Play in Nigerian Diasporic Women's Arts. This was a book published by Duke University Press in 2025. So thanks for being here, Bimbula.

[Guest - Mimbola Kimbola]

Thank you for having me.

[Interviewer - Abigail Selles]

All right, so I'm really excited to talk about your book today. So in your book you challenge some of the dominant understandings of diaspora, notably the idea that the experience of alienation. So alienation, both in the place where one lives and in the place where that one or one's family left behind is exclusively an experience of loss. So instead you propose that this belonging creates possibilities, possibilities for connection, for community, and it can serve as a strategic positioning that allows for growth, experimentation and self definition. So why don't you start by telling us about the origins of this project and how you came to the research question and corpus?

[Guest - Mimbola Kimbola]

Yeah, absolutely. This project emerged out of dissertation research and when I initially started my PhD in American Studies, I was interested in writing about the cultural production of first and second, first 1.5 second generation immigrants. I was really thinking about, or I guess children of immigrants, grandchildren of immigrants. And I was wondering how they metabolize trauma, specifically the trauma of their parents and the trauma of their grandparents through visual art, through performance art. And so the project started off as being a comparative project that was going to look at art produced by Nigerian diasporic women, but also look at other racialized groups in the US and think about similarities and differences. And I would say about the fourth or fifth year that I was working on the project, I hit sort of a crossroads where I realized that while I was interested in trauma and I was looking at the work through the lens of trauma, I. The artists I had chosen actually were not interested in trauma. And that happened through revisiting an interview that I had read that I had found that Ruby Amanze had done, where she literally said, my art is not about drama, and spoke to the ways that when people look at her African body, at her identity as a woman, they sort of immediately project this narrative of trauma onto her work, which is actually about discovery and invention and play and possibility. And so that really pushed me to reimagine. Suddenly, everything came together in the project. I think I was sort of noticing, like, some tension or something wasn't quite lining up. And what I realized it was is, oh, I'm looking for trauma, and I'm wanting to write about trauma, but actually all of these artists are offering us something else to think through in relationship to their experience of displacement and their experiences of alienation. And. Yeah, and then, you know, I finished the dissertation, and that was where the sort of idea of disbelonging started to take shape and started to kind of come into being and just kind of continued. I don't know. I really have thought about this project as a collaboration with the. With the artists and with the works of art. And so it has been just many, many years of looking at the work over and over again and really trying to, like, understand what is the work actually saying and what is the work actually showing us versus what is the argument that Diaspora Studies is sort of making about that, you know, like, sort of thinking about. You know, that's really the big one of the major interventions. It's like, what does the visual and performance art of Nigerian diasporic women actually tell us about diaspora and how diaspora comes in to being? And so in some ways, it's. Yeah, it's been sort of searching and it's been returning to the same piece over and over again and returning to the words of the artist over and over again in order to discover what is transatlantic just belonging about, actually.

[Interviewer - Abigail Selles]

Yeah, I like how you're framing it in that the art and the artists are really the ones teaching you. Right. Because I think it's normal in the research process. We start with our hypothesis with a research question, and we're kind of Expecting to find something. And I think it's really powerful to see in your book how you had this very humble research process of looking towards the artists and the artworks and patiently kind of learning what they have to say about us. And we'll get back, we can talk at the end again about the role of artists and interviews and all of that. But maybe to stay with kind of the framing concepts, maybe why don't you tell us a bit more about how you define this belonging and why it was important for you to think about, think through and with this term in the context of the artists and artworks of your corpus.

[Guest - Mimbola Kimbola]

Yeah, absolutely. Disbelonging was a word that I was finding was showing up a lot in diaspora studies, like in articles. Disbelonging would be used in titles a lot. And so I went sort of digging for a clear definition because I think I initially wanted to just, you know, I was looking to just define this belonging and then, you know, decide what I wanted to do with it. And I couldn't find. I couldn't really find a good, strong definition that was being utilized. I realized that this belonging was being used as sort of a vague indicator of not belonging. The opposite of belonging is this belonging. But not a lot of time was being spent with the term. And so, you know, I had. I had a couple of options. I had the option of taking this belonging and offering a definition. And then I had the option of choosing to just use a different word. And I think at that point I had just been thinking with and through disbelienging so long, and I wanted it to have a definition I wanted. So I'm using disbelonging in this project to really speak to the embrace of outsiderness, of taboo, of alienation in order to create other types of belonging. And so thinking about alienation, taboo, outsiderness, anti respectability as a jumping off point for, you know, like. Like more whole ways of existing for diasporic women and for Nigerian diasporic women specifically in this project. Disbelonging I think really pushes up against, I think, and this is me speaking as like a Nigerian diasporic women, this impulse to maybe that people feel when they're interfacing with the homeland or with sort of home, community or family, to assimilate in particular ways, to sort of to fit in, to do things the way you're supposed to do. And I felt really curious about all of these artists because I was really noticing the ways that they had that option and were choosing to do something else. And so, especially if I think about my first chapter with Ura, Natasha Ogunji, thinking about what it means for her to, you know, this idea of unruly return, I feel like through that, that was the first chapter that I wrote. That was the first piece that I wrote in this project. And thinking about unruly return, I think actually really captures the spirit of this belonging, where it's like she could have gone to Nigeria for the first time and wore all of the appropriate attire and blended in and just like, did everything the right way. But she instead takes the approach of doing this performance art, of taking up public space with Nigerian collaborators, of almost like, really like fleshing out the outsider. Like. Like being so outsider, doing things so strangely. And through that is able to teach us so much about community and about relationality. And I just thought that was really beautiful. And I had never thought of. I had truly never considered that as an option. And so, yeah, just belonging, I mean. And I think the other important thing about disbelonging is that disbelonging, I'm thinking about it as an approach or a tool or a strategy that one does or one enacts rather than something that happens to you. So the way that disbelonging a lot of times is written about like, sort of in the vague non definition of the word, it's sort of like you can belong or you can be sort of cast out or be denied something, and that is the disbelonging. But it's not necessarily something that a subject actively participates in or chooses. And I was really interested in the option. Like, what does it mean when someone chooses outsiderness or chooses the alienation or leans into that? And. And how might that just like, produce a. Like. Like a really full and expansive idea of what belonging to and with community, like, actually could feel like, actually could look like. You know, I've been saying this belonging offers us an idea of belonging to community that isn't dependent on like, violence and exclusion and surveillance. And like all of these, I don't know, like. Like all of these elements that I think especially women really like, women in community really notice. And so.

[Interviewer - Abigail Selles]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think that that element of agency that you insert through this belonging is really important. And even the fact that belonging remains in the term. Right. It's not alienation, it's this belonging. So there's something much more kind of ambivalent or kind of. Yeah, there's the possibility of belonging that's still in the very term.

[Guest - Mimbola Kimbola]

Absolutely.

[Interviewer - Abigail Selles]

So you started talking about one of the artists in your corpus. So you Discussed the work of four visual artists and also novelists. So why don't. Before we get into each chapter, why don't you tell us a bit about each of them and kind of some of the things that made you want to put them in conversation. Because even though each chapter focuses on the work of one artist, there's also a lot of kind of referencing back, referencing forward. There's a lot of common points or common conversations that the artist seems to be having. And some of them are actually friends and know each other and collaborate.

[Guest - Mimbola Kimbola]

Yeah, yes, yes. The process of selecting their artist happened really organically. They're all artists that I, whose work I enjoy and whose work moved me before I decided that I was going to write about them. Yeah, I don't think anyone in this book like I encountered for the purpose of writing the book or, you know, like they were all artists that came across my feeds. And so there's a bit of that. There was a bit of like the moment of realization that I could just write about this work that really moves me and excites me. It started with Wara Natasha Okunji, who is a mixed race artist whose father is Nigerian. Was Nigerian, passed away before she was able to meet him. And so I was really interested in her relationship to. To Nigeria because it wasn't mediated through sort of like our ideas around like blood lineage and familial connection. I mean, yes, but not in the literal, like you go and there is like a family member there to receive you. And I think it speaks so much to how, like, to the way that she went about thinking about belonging and thinking about how to like be in Nigeria. She is trained, you know, as a visual artist primarily in photography, but starts making video art after her first trip to Lagos. And so I was also really interested in that like the relationship between the visual work that's happening before she ever steps foot in Nigeria and then the really like highly relational performative work that happens once she's there. I think she works in so many different modes and I was able to. And I think because the project started with her, I really see her as, you know, she was the one that, you know, connected me with Ruby Amanze, who I initially encountered as. And so they've collaborated on a number of pieces and performances. And so I had seen Ruby's name in the context of these performance pieces that Woora had done. But Ruby and I just met in Lagos. I was in Lagos. Woora wasn't going to be there, but connected me, said, oh well, here are Some people that will be in town, and here's their information. So I connected with Ruby and we hung out and it was. I hadn't actually seen her work in person. And then, you know, a few months later, I saw her work for the first time at an opening in New York. And I was like, oh, my gosh, I have to write about this. This is, like, perfect. We actually, like, became friends first. And then I made the decision. Dina Sara Wiwa I had been. There was a work called How Do Africans Kiss? A video piece that was circulating on Facebook a ton at that time. I loved it. I was so, like, enamored with this video piece. Zenithroiwa works, yeah, mostly primarily in video. Video installation. And it's sort of, you know, what is the word? Like, she coined the sort of form of Alton Hollywood sort of alternative experimental Nigerian film. And so I. I don't know. I mean, I think I started with How Do Africans Kiss? I grew up actually, like, hearing a lot about her father, Kim Sara Wiwa, who was a Nigerian environmental activist. And so I also felt like I had this, like, long sort of really. It was sort of this thing where I grew up hearing about Kim Sarah. We. And then later on learned, oh, like, he has these, like, children, and, like, one of them is an artist. And so in some ways, I think that, yeah, maybe zenithroui was always going to be a part of the project, even if I didn't know that. And I, you know, how do Africans Kiss? I think I was just really this. I. I know that type of question was not the type of question being asked. And the idea of the installation piece where it's like, you know, African couples, like, kissing for 15 minutes. I just think there was something about her engagement with the erotic, with intimacy, with sexuality, with love that I was not a conversation that I was seeing. I mean, and she talks about that how, like, know, like, she didn't grow up, like, really seeing Africans kiss or seeing Nigerians kiss. And so she makes this work. And I think this work actually plays a really foundational role in shifting a bit of. Now we see a lot more of that in Nigerian media. And I won't say it's only her, but I do think that it was like, it was a. A part of that momentous shift. Indijeka Akumli Crosby, at the time that I started writing, was really at the height of her career. You know, sold out Art Basel in, like, an hour, got a Guggenheim Award. Her work was everywhere. I would say, by far, like, she was the most sort of Famous, like, you know, mainstream, if we can use that language. Nigerian woman artist at that time. And so I felt like, you know, I knew that I wanted to write about her. The work is stunning. But also I noticed and because I was already sort of thinking about the erotic, about intimacy, about sexuality, I noticed that there was a lot of writing about her work as sort of third culture space, about sort of hybrid identity and not. I couldn't find really any writing that was about these earlier images that she had, all of these, like, portraits with her and her husband. And I just was like, isn't. Like, doesn't someone. I mean, sometimes I feel like, you know, I just. I. My plan is just to find the article and read it because I am curious, and then I don't find it. So then I'm like, oh, I guess I will write it. Yeah, I think I. Honestly, with that. With that chapter, I wasn't entirely sure. I mean, I knew that it was really bold and risky, the images that she was depicting. And so I felt that. And I think that I'm attracted to that in all of the art, I'm really attracted to risk, which, you know, becomes this belonging. But I think initially I was thinking about, oh, this is risky. This is. This is risky. This is taboo. And I. And I want to know more about their decision to do that. But, yeah, the risk of sort of depicting these really highly erotically charged images. And I'm trying to think, like, what else that I don't know, just like a real curiosity about maybe like, the hesitancy of others to write about it. I think that it felt a little bit like, oh, maybe people don't know what to say about it or. Because it's not offering. It's not like a clear message. And so the opportunity to think about the ambiguity and the ambivalence and the tension and the tension in the work felt very exciting. And then that leaves one, right? That's Nnedi Okorafor. And so the last. Yeah, I was Nnedi Akora for I read Akata Witch. And I mean, also another artist that especially the kind that I was writing, was just really writing so many books. And, you know, Akata A Wovich, you know, became. It's like a. Became is a series and thinking about speculative fiction, I just. I was really attracted to the character of Sunny. I really saw Sunny in conversation with Ruby Amanze's Ada, the alien character. Like, as soon as I was reading Ekata Witch, I was like, these worlds need to be in conversation. I want to have these worlds in conversation. I want to think about these characters in conversation. And I think it's also important to think about. And I wanted to think about girlhood and Nigerian and African diasporic girlhood. And so it felt important that it was not only speculative fiction, but also that it's like young adult fiction to sort of think about the strategy of disbelonging as something that is not just for adult women, but also is for children. Like, that also kind of offers us a new way of thinking about, like, how we. How we, like, learn how to be women and what expectations there are and what norms there are and how that gets passed down and, like, what is the relationship. So, yeah, I hope that. I feel like there's so much I can say, so I'm like, okay, I'll say what feels like the most important thing. But, yeah, I think that all of these are so phenomenal. There are so many more. And I. And I. It feels important to say, you know, like, I didn't pick these artists as, like, they are the only ones or they are the best ones. But, you know, at the time that I started working on this project, there were. There were not as many Nigerian diasporic women cultural producers that. That I could like, easily access. And I think that it's been really incredible to see, like, how many more, like, it feels like it's been exponential. And so I really hope that this book just becomes a jumping off point for, like, I want them all to be written about them. I want more Nigerian diasporic women to be written about and known and in the canon of, like, Nigerian diasporic art criticism and writing. And. And this is just like, my small contribution.

[Interviewer - Abigail Selles]

Yeah, yeah. But it's a fabulous entry point. And I think it's important to note that you kind of started out by saying that pleasure and play were also kind of motivations. It's not just something that you talked about in the work, but kind of in your own project. These were artists that you wanted to talk about that were interesting, that kind of piqued your curiosity or posed a certain kind of challenge, and that you simply liked their work. So I think that's an interesting resonance with how you see the artists themselves approaching kind of questions in this pleasurable or playful way.

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[Guest - Mimbola Kimbola]

Survey.

[Interviewer - Abigail Selles]

Yeah, so you told us a little bit already about unruliness, but it's kind of really the kind of lays the groundwork for your, for your project. So let's talk a bit more about that. It's kind of the. The focus of your first chapter, thinking about how artists create a home via unrulyness. And you call this unrulyness an act of disbelonging, which really echoes what you said at the start of the conversation, that disbelonging is not something that happens to you, but that you make happen or embrace or strategically pick up. And so for you, unruliness is this, it's a framework, a framework for diasporic return. So maybe tell us a bit more about how this plays out in Ogunji's performance pieces and how it complicates the place of return in diasporic thinking in theory, which return is this kind of the thing? It is the animating force of diaspora studies in a way.

[Guest - Mimbola Kimbola]

Yeah. Yeah. Excellent question. You know, I think that right. Risk, return, return is. Is still at the core of how we think about how diasporic subjects relate to homeland and maybe and what they desire. What we desire. And so I was really thinking about the idea of the Sankofa, this idea, the sort of idea of going to fetch it, the sort of like linear idea of just like going back. And, and I think in that linear idea of going back or in that fantasy of going back. And I think this is also, it speaks to the obsession with blood lineage that there's some there's a desire for a sort of seamless. A seamless return. A return as if, you know, you returned like, I don't know, like a broken piece of a plate, right? You put it together and. And you're there. And if that felt just completely opposite from how Ogunji was going about it. So the notion of unruly return really came from me thinking about the performance pieces, the rational performance pieces that are very right, like, what does it mean to sit with your hair braided with other women in, like a bus park? Or what does it mean to be. You know, the piece that she did with Ruby Amanze at the beach where they're sitting on these platforms and the police come and tell them that they can't be there, and they just say, like, we're praying and are left alone for a bit more time. What does it mean to return to the homeland? Know that you don't quite belong or you don't quite fit in and. And then just continue to do that and continue to behave in ways that are unruly. Not just through the performance or not just through, you know, doing something like going for a daily jog, which, you know, she would also do, and talks about how that was also perceived as very strange, but also sort of like, refuse to obey the rules or like a few refuse to get in line, particularly as a woman, refuse to stay in the house, to be in public space in disruptive ways, to literally disrupt traffic in the case of will I still carry water when I'm a dead woman and everything. To me, when I look at Ogunji's performances in Lagos, to me, they just scream unruly. Her crawling on the dirt road, you know, where cars have to sort of maneuver around her, be aware of her, and people are looking at her and they're like, what are you doing? I think that unruliness is like an extremely powerful tactic. And then through the thinking of unruliness, I was able to, you know, do a bit of research about radical rudeness in Uganda and think about rudeness as sort of anti colonial strategy that. That was utilized that pushes against ideas of being nice or being polite and actually causes a rupture that maybe creates like, the fertile ground for something else to. To grow, for something else to develop. And to me, what I saw. What I saw come out of Ogunji's unruliness, especially through talking to younger artists who met her and engaged with her at that time was a real, like, you know, she did these workshops at Yaba College, which is like an art school or that has, like, an art program? Yeah, no, the whole thing is an art school. And, you know, the artists, some of the students that ended up being a part of these pieces would be like, you know, like, it was like, we didn't know. Like, we did this crazy thing. You know, we were invited to do this crazy thing, but we did it. And. And I think also hearing from them, and it was cool. And it made me realize, like, you can just do that. Just do that. You just do that and, like, nothing will. Nothing will happen to you. Right. Like. And so, yeah, I just. I think that. I think that it. And I. I don't know. I feel like that type of work created. I don't want to, like, over, you know, like. Like, I. It's hard, right? You don't ever want to attribute all of something to one person. But I know that she really, like, shaped a number of young performance artists that are making performance, that are making risky performance work now. Because they were a part of those pieces or because they saw those pieces happening in Lagos.

[Interviewer - Abigail Selles]

Yeah, that's great. So then in the next chapter, in chapter two, you turn to Akmuni Krosgy's paintings, which are risky in a different way. Right. So Gundry. It's like a very physical risk, also kind of risk of social judgment, but really kind of putting herself, her body, in harm's way in some cases. With Camille Crosby, it's a little bit different. You look at her large format erotic portraits, which are, as you rightly pointed out, had not been analyzed a lot. They've kind of. They've not drawn as much critical attention at some of her later work. And so you see these portraits as a kind of performance of disbelonging. So again, we have disbelonging not as. As something that happens to you, but something that you kind of choose and make happen. And you say that this performance of disbelonging holds space for all of the ambivalent, uncertain feelings that desire elicits, which also draws in questions of authenticity and conflicting loyalties in diasporic context and postcolonial African cultures. You know, she's painting portraits of herself and her husband, who's white, who's American. And it seems there's a sense sometimes of unease. And these portraits, especially when other family members are present. So I'm wondering why the erotic was such a powerful way to bring forward both the kind of destructive and generative processes of acts of disbelonging in diaspora.

[Guest - Mimbola Kimbola]

Yeah, yeah. I think that, you know, I started thinking through the erotic, because I wanted to think through what it means to have a desire and feel uncertainty around that desire, but acknowledge that the desire is so strong that you have to do it anyway. And that's a lot of what I feel in Akwenili Crosby's work. I really admired the way that she was able to, you know, even in interviews, talk and think critically about, what does it mean? Like, what does the love for my white American husband mean in the context of everything, the sort of love of America that I. That I was raised in and with. And is it even possible to disentangle those two things and to do that in a way that wasn't about, well, I should not marry this person, or I shouldn't be with this person. Like, to sort of be like, oh, no, I love him and I want to be with him. And also I want to name that. I want to name this. And her willingness to name the fear of losing, like, the stakes, what the stakes are, were for her as a woman. And I think in a lot of cultures, the women are sort of seen as the heritage keepers, the ones that pass down the culture to the children. And so to have all of this sort of cultural and familial response and national responsibility. Right. And representative of the nations, state. And to. Yeah, yeah, I think just. Yeah. To name the stakes of that and to really. And then. And then to put it in the work. And so we see the ways she's sort of doing that culture bearer work through all of the archival pieces that go into the paintings in a way like she is. And then she's putting them in the same images of her lying nude with her husband. And there's a sort of refusal to turn away from her family or from her husband, to turn away from Nigeria or turn away from the States, to hold it all together in these pieces and ways that feel, I mean, truly overwhelming. I don't know if you stood in front of one of her pieces. They're, like, so, like, visually saturated and dense. And so there's something overwhelming about the experience of being with the work, which I think just captures, like, the affective. I think there's like, an affective story or sort of resonance that she's telling about what it means to be an Idyrian diasporic women in terms of these expectations and also, like, to hold the expectations alongside your own sort of intense desires. And so, yeah, I mean, I think, right. The way that Audrey Velour talks about the erotic is like, exactly that. Right? It's exactly that. Like, you're the place of your deepest, most irrational desires. And, and I want. And I wanted to point to the particularities of that. For people who have been shaped by colonial violence, like, from. Like. Like, for people from places that have been shaped by colonial violence, that, that, that. That means that there. And that there is a There. There's a relationship between that violence and between desire. And there's nothing to be done about it, and there's no place to resolve it. And so how does visual work allow us to just be with it and to just witness it?

[Interviewer - Abigail Selles]

Yeah, and as you mentioned, in the painting she's collaging using transfers of photos from family archives, from kind of visual culture archives, more broadly, newspaper clippings. So you really have that kind of weight of history, both familial and national, in these very intimate and erotic paintings. And so for you, that's part of this creating a landscape of acceptance, you know, through this intervention in the visual record. Yeah, and. Yeah, and this kind. This idea of an intervention in the visual record is also picked up when you analyze Sara Wiwa's video works. You call them, and I'm quoting you here, a visual record of African diasporic vulnerability. And so you contend that these moments of vulnerability, even if uncomfortable, are also points of connection that build effective communities. But of course, that's required. Requires taking risks. Right. It requires experiencing discomfort, fear, shame at sharing intimate thoughts or acts in a public setting. Even if we understand, as you mentioned, that those feelings, that, you know, connection between violence and desire that can be uncomfortable or bring us shame is also, you know, historical, culturally conditioned. It's outside of us, but it's in us. So I'm wondering how you see Sara Owa's video works engaging with those risks for the artists, for the participants of her works, and also for the viewers that come with acts of vulnerability.

[Guest - Mimbola Kimbola]

Yeah, yeah. I think that Sara Wiwa's pieces are incredibly risky. I mean, there's a way that she's really curious about the sort of ethnographic gaze or anthropological gaze. And so I think that's the first risk. There's always sort of the possibility of a viewer coming to the work in that way. I think that there's, like, a part of you as the viewer that has to give yourself over to her work in order to really experience the emotional vulnerability that's happening. But at sort of immediate, like, if you just kind of look at it in a glance, I think it would be easy for it to sort of be this kind of voyeuristic, weird Thing. So the form feels like a risk. It's obviously. Yeah, it's a risk for all of the viewers. I mean, it's, you know, and how do Africans kiss? There's like a moment where one of the women is like, are my parents going to see this? Or so I think, like, talking about these things that aren't necessarily talked about all the time, especially at the time that the piece came out, like, everyone took a risk. And I'm always curious, when I watch these pieces by any artist, I'm like, how do you get people to buy in? How do you get people to just, like, share the. Share about their heartbreaks and, you know, or the question that she asked in that video, how do you like to be kissed? You know? You know, like, these are like, you're vulnerable questions.

[Interviewer - Abigail Selles]

Yeah.

[Guest - Mimbola Kimbola]

And, you know, she asked the guy about his last. The last time he was in love and the last time that he had his heart broken, and he kind of opts out of answering the question. And I feel like the risk is also there for Sara Wiwa. You know, when you, like, ask people to open up in a particular way, they can. They can also say no, and they can. They don't have to trust you and they don't have to see what you're trying to do. And so it kind of requires everyone. It requires vulnerability of everyone. It's a good question, though. Like, what is the risk for the viewer? I think they're. I think they can be uncomfortable for the viewer. I don't know if that's the same as Risk, but I know that there is, like, there's something about the simplicity of the videos that really requires you as the viewer to encounter yourself and to really, like, be with yourself. I don't know. I don't know how quite how to explain it, but there's something about, like, all of those are not a lot of, like, wild editing or movement or anything to keep your attention. And so I think personally, it's hard to sit down and watch. To watch it and not sort of think about how you would answer the question or think about what similarities you might share with another person's experience or to think about your heartbreak or to think about the ways that you can't connect to your own body. Like, to me, it's like an invitation for us all to do that work. And depending on your positionality in this world or what body you occupy or what history you come from, yeah, it can do some. It can do some, like, serious sort of emotional shaking up for the viewer. If, if you allow it to.

[Interviewer - Abigail Selles]

Yeah.

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[Interviewer - Abigail Selles]

Yeah, I think especially in the formats that you mentioned. So you. In the book, you mentioned that you watched this video once in a laptop in a cafe and how that was different from being in the full screen immersive projection at a museum. And, and I think in those formats, especially when the viewer's body is really immersed in the visuals, it's a big invitation and I think it kind of shares this burden of responsibility that shares the responsibility of risk. That was.

[Guest - Mimbola Kimbola]

Yeah.

[Interviewer - Abigail Selles]

And you're not sure by that? Go ahead.

[Guest - Mimbola Kimbola]

No. Yeah. I feel I've been feeling increasingly interested by like video rooms and museums and in exhibits and just like going and noticing how long people say stay there. I don't know. They make people really, they, they make museum visitors really dodgy. I don't that there's like all of this anxiety and I can feel it like people are like, like the commitment. I think how long is this going to be? Should I sit down to. Not now. I'm sitting down. When can I leave? And so I think that I started thinking more about that once the book was already out. But yeah, and I'm now like increasingly interested in like why does like why does the video room make people so anxious?

[Interviewer - Abigail Selles]

Yeah, yeah. It's like it's asking you to commit something to something and makes people anxious. But it's an interesting kind of other side of the coin with the first chapter. When you're talking about Ngunji's durational performances, where these video pieces kind of ask the viewers to do a kind of durational viewer viewing or durational performance in the museum space. Right. You're not going to be walking around moving at your own pace. It's like inviting you to subject to the artist's video. But let's go ahead and talk about the final chapter which compares experiences of queer diasporic girlhood in a series of drawings and in young adult fiction. So by you suggest that by embracing disbelonging and creating a community of the disbelonged their works show disbelonging to be a queer and intergenerational practice that shapes both the self and the world. And through speculative world making projects, you were more interested in how these speculative and worldmaking projects transformed the present, notably through leisure and play. So it's less kind of future oriented and more thinking about, okay, how does speculative fiction or speculative worlds change the present experience? So why was this temporal shift to the present important for your reading of these works?

[Guest - Mimbola Kimbola]

Yeah, I think that I wanted to think about these works and it might be. I think it's the quote. It's a quote that I use at the beginning of that chapter from Amanze. Give me just a second to. Yeah, it's as much about beauty and make believe as it is a commentary on cultural hybridity. This isn't social science. It's magic realism and the power of drawing to invent worlds for ourselves. For ourselves. I'm a storyteller, not an advocate, and so I like that quote. There are a number of things that, like, the artists that I write about said at different points in interviews that really I felt they held with me as I was writing. And that was absolutely one. In terms of thinking about what does it mean to understand, like, this work is real, like, real and about the present and not just like representational and not just like imagining something else, but active world building in the present. What does it mean? Like, what is it doing? What does it do for us now? What does it do for the artist now? When I stand in front of one of, let's say, like, Ruby Amanze's pieces and I see all of these sort of corners, queer, hybrid characters, how does that, like, rearrange my, like, my sense of the world and rearrange, like, the possibility and how I see myself? And I don't know, I don't know if I have like, a clear and fast way to speak to it, but there's something about it that feels really existential and spiritual almost to me where I'm like. I don't know how to say it, but it's like this work isn't just about being in diaspora, like this work is. It is the experience of being in diaspora and being in the work is relational and it is the community that we seek and. And it. And it does sort of. And the work is sort of like, that work is like, urgent and real and happening and like changing the future, like in this very moment in ways that we can't necessarily perceive, but it's like happening in real time. And I feel like I learned that from Ruby, you know, like. Like, I learned that from how Ruby talks about the act of making a drawing. Not like, I had an idea and I'm going to make this drawing about a thing, but, like, actually, like, world building. Like, I'm building a world. Building a world for me to exist in. Building a world for you to exist in if you want to. And I think when I. You know, there's this great conversation between Ruby Amanze and Akwaeke Emezi about. I mean, it's a. It's like the Shaumber hosted it, but they talk about a lot of stuff. But I think that I was really struck by how they were each able to talk about the worlds that they had created through their own work and how they had each found belonging through, like, the work of the others or like. Or were able to find language to describe experiences that they had already had through, you know, reading each other's work or, you know, seeing visual work. And so there's like, a way that the art actually makes the experiences of these diasporic women artists more real. Like, life happened, the thing happened, but it doesn't become real until you stand in front of a painting or you read something which is just like. I don't know, I have a hard time wrapping myself around it, like, wrapping my mind around it. But I also think it's really profound and really incredible. And I also feel like I experienced that writing about these artists in ways I didn't necessarily, like, know. Like, the ways that I was, like, changed by spending so much time with these works. I had, like, another thought that was a little bit of. A little bit going back, but I. That it might have escaped me. Oh, just thinking about all of the mediums that I. That the different artists write about. And I didn't say this when you were asking me to talk a little bit about each of the artists, but like, Ruby as an artist primarily works in drawing, but also has, like, written beautiful things that inspired works that, you know, or that like Woo Rao Gunji, Warunifashio Ogunji used in her work. She also is a performance artist. She also identifies as, like, an athlete. And Ruby and I have collaborated, like, doing like, durational work before. I just think there's something really fantastic about all of the mediums and modes, like, all of the artists that I write about in a Sarah. We were made like, like a musical album. And also, like, works like, extensively in Food Nidiakora for, like, you know, primarily writing, but also, like, you know, has been like working a lot in like film. And so I just, I, I think like all of these artists are like pulling on all of the different. On all of the different mediums that they work in to build these worlds and to build these realities and. And it's also really special to see the ways that they kind of have overlapped, like being in shows together. Like, you know, like they, they all, even if they're not all friends with each other, but like, there's a way that there is this like other parallel realm. It feels like that all of where all of their work speaks to each other.

[Interviewer - Abigail Selles]

Yeah, yeah. They're kind of creating these different realms in a world that is, that are like crossing each other. And characters from different ones could easily be in each other's work. But yeah, it was. As I was reading your book, I was thinking how difficult it is to describe each of their practices because they draw, like you said, on so many different mediums. They kind of do. They really are quite inventive in the practices and mediums that they want to use. But as you've been pointing out, they had this kind of common thread of more, almost of storytelling even that, you know, you're writing mostly about visual artists, but they're storytellers and they're storytellers, they're world builders. But within the storytelling and world building there's also almost like an auto fictional or autobiographical component. So I was wondering if that was something that you noticed more broadly across Nigerian diasporic women's arts, or is this something more distinct that drew you to these five creators in particular?

[Guest - Mimbola Kimbola]

Yeah, that's a great question. I think that a lot. I mean, and it's a hard one to answer because, yeah, it might just be what I'm drawn to. Like, I'm like, oh, I can't 100% say that it's like a common thing. I mean, I think it is common, but I'm very, very drawn to work that is about the self in like explicit and also more distant ways. And I think that all of these artists also sort of like tote that line where there's, where they'll, they'll say like and, and sometimes even contradict themselves a little bit. Like, this is about me, this isn't about me. There's some things borrowed from my life. But no, this is fiction. But, but you read their biography and you're like, okay, but there's like all of these overlaps with your actual life. I think it's also just something that black artists in general, are, like, constantly contending with this sort of. Every single thing that you make gets read as autobiographical. And there isn't a lot of. It can feel like there's not a lot of nuance for people being like, there wasn't a lot of space to even create fiction. Even if you wanted to create fiction, then somebody might still say that it's. It's auto buyer and that it's about your life. And so I. I also. I respect that. You know, I respect the ability of an artist to be like, this is not about me, even though it is about them, because, like, they actually are inviting the audience to experience the work in a fuller way than, like, this is your diary entry. I think that sometimes it can, like. It can just, like, limit, like, limit all of the things that we see the work doing. And also. Right. Like, all of these works, at this point, most of these works were done, you know, takes forever to write a book. And so a lot of the artists aren't. Aren't those people anymore. Like, it was about them. Not anymore. And I really respect that, you know, where I'm like, you know, and it's why I try to. I think the biography of the artist is important. I want that to be a part of the conversation. I don't believe in this sort of, like, death of the author. Like, the work just, like, lives alone in the world. And also I really want to write about. You know, I tried to write about the work and what the work is doing and what we see in the work in a way that even if the artist is like, I don't even like that piece anymore. I don't even identify with that piece anymore. That's okay. Because the work exists in the world and is able to, like, do things beyond what the artist intended for it to do. The artist doesn't have to, you know, continue to strongly identify with the piece for the rest of their life in order for us to talk about, like, the power and influence of what it does for how we understand diaspora and how we understand the relationship between gender, sexuality, and diaspora.

[Interviewer - Abigail Selles]

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And so in addition to biographies, there's kind of a question of interviews. Right. Which we brought up a bit in the beginning of the conversation. So you did interviews with some of the artists, and in introduction, you kind of talk about the role that interviews played in your research. And so there's a lot of different things you bring up. You bring up the idea of artists as teaching us how to see their work. Artists as kind of Theorists and thinkers, not just kind of biographical sources, but someone who is theorizing their own practice. But you also quite beautifully describe your interviews or your desire to do interviews as a kind of bid for connection. Right. So you mentioned you are also Nigerian. Diasporic identify as women. And so there's this kind of desire for connection. But you also are quite honest about how sometimes that was complicated or messy. So there wasn't. There were many times of recognition or shared experience when you did these interviews. There were times when you thought you would have a kind of shared recognition, a shared experience, and it didn't really happen. Or sometimes people stop responding to messages because life is busy. Things happen. We start connections and then we lose them. So I was wondering why was it important to talk about that in the introduction and kind of show all that messiness of the interview process and also kind of the vulnerability and intimacy of an interview process as well?

[Guest - Mimbola Kimbola]

Yeah, I mean, I think that part of. Maybe the biggest part of this project is just an invitation to people or the word is not imitation I'm looking for. It is. I want people to walk away from this book not feeling, like, feeling disconnected or feeling alienated or feeling outside is like a personal failure or is something that only they are experiencing and everyone else kind of has figured out. I mean, really, you know, my belief is that the type of belonging that we long for, strive for in terms of community, the sort of like, stable community or familial or national belonging, is a myth. I don't think it actually exists. And I think that it primarily exists, like, in sort of the imagining that someone else has it, which actually leads to a lot of distress and violence and. Yeah, like, so. So what does it mean to. For me in my research process to also be like. Because I had. I had a particular idea around what ethnography or what these sort of ethnographic methods or interviews were like for other people. And because not. Not a lot of people talk. A number of people have mentioned this to me, like, this thing happens, but, like, we don't really talk about it, like, you know, getting ghosted or whatever. And so I think as a result, I had read. This was in graduate school. I had read so much about ethnographic interviews, you know, radical, intimate ethnography where people are queer. Ethnography where people are, like, really connected to their interlocutors and, like, they're. They're like best friends. It's like you just like, make a new family member through doing the research. And I think because my research area Is. Was so close to, like, my personal identities. There was always, like, a potential for that. And so when I was experiencing what I know is just, like, research stuff where it's like, people just don't get back to you in email or like. Or like, they're. They give you a lot in one interview, and then they're hard to get another interview or whenever. Like, all of the wonkiness of that, I felt. It felt important to name that because I was like, right, this is also part of the disbalonging thing, right? Like, you don't just find belonging with the people that are supposed to be like you. Sometimes it just doesn't. It just doesn't work. It's just. We just feel alienated. We just don't quite click. People have social anxiety. People are overwhelmed. Like, what. Whatever the reason is. And that doesn't actually, like. Like, what is it? Like, what could it look like to just acknowledge that and to see. To say, oh, wait, like, I wasn't able to interview you because, you know, we never quite connected, but you gave me and the world, like, these gorgeous pieces that are, like, what you have to give, and, like, that can be enough. And so, yeah, there was something about, I guess, just like, the discomfort of it or the disappointment of it that felt important to name. That's something that I had experienced because I think that that is also a really big part of the experience of the practice of this belonging. It's not just empowering. It's not just possibility. It doesn't just feel good. It also can be very, very hard. And it also can coexist with deep desire for normative belonging. Right. That like. Like, you can do both. That. You know, I'm sure all of these artists. I know I do it. There are times when I'm feeling bolder and I'm feeling like I'm more willing to, like, take the risk or do the taboo thing or whatever. And there are other times that I just, like, wear the thing that I know my mom wanted me to wear, you know, like, whatever that is. And you just do it because. Because I don't. Because. Because this belonging isn't, like, to me, it's not the type of practice that you could just, like, sustain, like, endlessly. Like, it. Like, it's hard. It's hard. It's labor. It's labor, and it doesn't always feel good. And so maybe that's the other takeaway, that it's like, this belonging offers, like, possibility and potential, and it can give us so much. And that doesn't mean it doesn't feel hard and that you don't want to not do it sometimes, you know.

[Interviewer - Abigail Selles]

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. That totally resonates and, you know, goes again so much with this idea of disbelonging. It's. It's ultimately an act that you do or sometimes you don't do. And like you said, there's moments in your life when maybe you are leaning into it and others where you're pulling back from it. But throughout the book, you really position it as a practice of diasporic homemaking and one that longs to be tethered to others perhaps more than to a place or genealogy. So we see that, as we were just discussing in the interviews, this longing to find connection with other people. And I really appreciated your choice of the words tethering, because to be tethered to something is to be connected to something, but also changing when it changes. It's a much more kind of tenuous or loosened adaptive connection than being tied to something. And I'm wondering if the experience of writing the book was, for you also a practice of disbellonging. So did you experience it or did you. Did you learn from the process to be in this mode of kind of tethering and diasporic homemaking?

[Guest - Mimbola Kimbola]

Yeah, absolutely. I feel like I had many times writing this book where I was like, I need to read my own book. Like, I need to read my book to remember how to navigate this difficult situation with my family or this difficult situation. Like, you know, it's like I have, you know, a friend and mentor who always says, like, academic books, it's like, aspirational, right? Like, we haven't, like, figured it out. Like, we're not, like, we're not arguing the thing because we know we figured out how to do it. It's like, what we hope. We hope what we hope. And so I absolutely just belonging as sort of this North Star and as a reminder to me to. And it's so funny because, you know, for it makes sense as sort of a North Star as. Or as sort of a maybe I tethered. I tether to this book. Because me, actually, I am a person that. I mean, I love being at home. I am like, I love. You know, I am. I have a lot of Earth in my chart, like, astrologically. And so this is really, you know, it's like part of it for me is like, the tension of, like, the way that I kind of naturally am. And then, like, me, like, calling that into question, being like, oh, right, like yeah, wouldn't. And I always used to think, because, you know, my family is my. My. Both of my parents are Nigerian. And I just always felt like split between a lot of different places, moving a lot, but both for sort of that reason, but also on more micro scales and always thought, oh, man, it would be so nice to be one of those people who, like, has their childhood home in, like, the same town that they were, like, born and raised. And like, everyone in their family lives there and you just, like, go back and you sleep in your exact same bed. And so. Right. And I don't know that at all. I don't know anything remotely close to that. And so I. So the. So the sort of. The idea of tethering is like, for me, a little bit of a. Like, yeah, I know you, like, kind of want this thing at your core. You romanticize this thing, but this is not actually how belonging is experienced. That's just like all of your stuff is in one place. But that's not. Like, when I think I ask my students this sometimes, like, what does belonging feel like when. When you think about a time that you've experienced true belonging? Like, it felt like you felt it in your bones. What was happening? What does that feel like? How long did it last? And like, I think also through that practice, through my performance practice as well, I've sort of like, like, learned a lot about that. Like, oh, belonging that I feel are. It's always about people. It's always about the people. Sometimes it's a place, but usually that's just like very like, strong nostalgia. And there's like an inherent sort of alienation in that because nothing stays the same forever but people, people. But the people come and go. You might hang out with one group, feel really strong sense of belonging, hang out with the same group. Tomorrow it's gone. So there's something very fleeting about it. So when I was thinking about the tether, it. I was like thinking about like a balloon also, like, you have something that sort of gives you a point to return to and you've. I mean, I guess the balloon doesn't opt in, but, like, thinking about the tether is like something that we like, you know, like. Like we want. We want a tether. We want something that sort of grounds us. It's not restrictive, though. It's not oppressive. You go. But you can kind of touch, touch base. And like thinking about a belonging that's a bit more like spacious. Like tethering as like a spacious mode of belonging, which I think in a lot of cultural settings. Like it's not. It's not the case. It's just spacious. Spaciousness. It would not be like a descriptor.

[Interviewer - Abigail Selles]

Yeah.

[Guest - Mimbola Kimbola]

I don't know if that quite like.

[Interviewer - Abigail Selles]

Yeah, yeah. Absolutely.

[Guest - Mimbola Kimbola]

Yeah.

[Interviewer - Abigail Selles]

Thank you so much. So thanks again for writing this beautiful book and for being so generous in your conversation with me about it. I really enjoyed it and look forward to seeing how other people engage with it and coming back to it in a few years and thinking about how do we feel about belonging now? How has this shifted the way we talk about it in Diaspora studies and also in art studies. So thanks so much for your time.

[Guest - Mimbola Kimbola]

Thank you so much for the invitation and for the wonderful questions.

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