In conversation with the supermodel at GTBank Fashion Weekend about the Legacy Project and representing Africa

Mahoro Seward: It was interesting to hear you talk about having to be an ambassador for your race. It often feels like black people in public-facing roles are under pressure to represent their communities.
Adesuwa Aighewi: It's a duty! It doesn't matter what you do. Often, you'll see certain prominent figures do something, which people will comment on. Then they'll respond saying that it's not their responsibility to serve as a role model. But the truth is that it actually is a responsibility, because we're not there yet, we don't make up a majority and we can't just act how we want to. I think it's actually rude to do so.

MS: Yes, you can argue that, in order to gain an even footing, you have to work twice as hard to get there. But you also spoke quite extensively about the idea of preserving African culture, while simultaneously advancing it's legacy. What does that mean to you?
AA: Well, you just described what I'm doing with Legacy Project to a T! It's about preserving it, admiring it, but it's also about promoting self-sustainability. It's about adapting to the new world: Africa is old! In certain respects, that is. We need to adapt: the world is changing, and we need to change too, otherwise we'll die out. That's why I'm so militant in my speeches, why I go so hard. There is a new scramble for Africa happening right now. The colonisers never actually left, they just left behind a parasitic mindset that we hold ourselves down with. Africa is BIG, but across the continent, everyone seems to have accepted defeat. But we have the power, we are imminent.

I remember, earlier this summer, I was in South Africa—I just spent my summer travelling around different African countries, learning and talking to different people—and I realised that, if my parents were South African, they would have experience Apartheid: they would carry that trauma. I was speaking with this one man who told me what I'd only read in books. Hearing it directly from his mouth made it tangible—he was like 50! And then I went to the Apartheid museum and learned of how the cops opened fire on kids... it's stress, trauma. Those experiences are intense, and so we have to go hard.

MS: When it comes to this idea of going forward with force, trying to show people what Africa looks like from an African perspective, what is the Africa you’re trying to present?
AA: When foreigners have come to Africa, they haven't seen us as people. When people die in Africa, no one cares. They don't change their Facebook profile pictures for us. There was a strike somewhere in central Paris, where someone fell and the world was crying. But that same week there was a mudslide in Sierra Leone in which over a thousand people died. Nobody cared. They didn't have the materials necessary to retrieve the bodies, so dogs had to pull out body parts, with wheelbarrows then used to carry them away. And then I'm in America, at some fucking charity event for Africa, and these bastards had a wheelbarrow race to see how quickly you can carry someone... I mean, what the fuck?!

And historically, everything the world has seen of Africa has been one sob story after another. Even our books are sad! But there's happiness here! There's wealth here! Opulence! People actually live here. I mean don't get me wrong, there's shit that happens here that's fucked up, but guess who started that?

My point is that when you look at Africa from that Western viewpoint, it's not a clear perspective.

MS: It can often be quite singular. And that even extends to aesthetics, specifically the idea of a uniformly 'African aesthetic'. I mean, you're from Nigeria, I'm from Rwanda—there may be certain similarities, but there are also huge differences.
AA: Night and day! Even here in Nigeria, Lagos couldn't be more different from my hometown, Benin City, which is three hours drive from here—people look entirely different.

MS: I think that singular attitude translates to how the fashion industry looks at blackness at the moment—while there are all of these conversations about the surge in black models, there's still a dominant, very specific aesthetic that's fetishised.
AA: Exactly, and I'm by no means the standard of black beauty. But I'm the non-threatening black girl that works over there [in the West]. I understand how both sides think and talk, as I grew up between the two, so I can literally speak both. That's the purpose behind Legacy Project, taking African art and translating it to something that the West understands. They then buy it and the money’s brought back here so that the artists can sustain themselves.

At the end of the day, Africans need to see the power they hold. Especially the ones that have experienced trauma, whose visions are clouded by all the fucked up things they've seen: it's important that we talk about the power we hold. A Nigerian man just won a major boxing championship, Wizkid's out there, I'm over here looking sexy. So many Black people are doing things around the world—Rihanna's changing up the whole make-up industry... We need to eradicate this colonised mindset, to start appreciating ourselves, and to stop complaining!

MS: It's also about inserting ourselves into narratives we’ve typically been excluded from. Which is what I really liked about your film, Spring in Harlem, seeing the girls looking amazing in their hijabs, but then also wearing HBA sunglasses. You created a space for those girls within the exclusionary realm of fashion imagery.
AA: Yes, that's exactly it! People are speaking the same language, but not saying the same thing. In my films, I want to address an issue that I want to talk about, but I also realise that people like visuals that are pretty. In Spring in Harlem, I gave you that pretty, but then I snuck in my message—inception!

When we as black people express ourselves, there's often a lot of pain, it can come across quite harsh. And the people watching it can get defensive, they just lock up and they don't want to listen. But you have to approach things with humility, recognise why you're angry, and then take action. You can't speak from a place of anger, because nothing will get done.

MS: Using fashion as a vessel for your message is at the core of Legacy Project; it's quite similar to what you did with Spring in Harlem taking things that are typically othered and integrating them into a relevant narrative for Western customers.
AA: Yes, because they won't understand it otherwise. So many people have never spoken to a girl wearing a hijab, but do they realise that she watches Nickelodeon just like everyone else? The hijab was literally made to protect girls, to remove elements of classism, rather than as the religious thing that people think it to be, but people just don’t know that.

When I'm in certain places, like Kano, for example, I wear it. I was there for Legacy Project, on my travels around Africa finding different craftspeople. We also have belt buckles in bronze made in my hometown. And we're making jewellery with Benin brass, much of which was stolen during the colonial era, making heads of kings as pendants. Any skill that you have, I will help you translate it to something that someone in the West will want to buy, and get you the money.

MS: You're planning on holding a summit for young Africans, could you tell us more about that?
AA: Well, once again, we're all dealing with individual and group traumas. In black communities, there is often a sense of competition, of not really helping each other out—we're still operating on survivor mode. But we need to educate ourselves and realise why we're doing that: why aren't we helping each other? Why aren’t we coming together more? We need to change the narrative, because our issues are just too much to deal with individually. If we all came together, things would get done way faster.

So for the summit I’m planning, I want people from every area and discipline imaginable, I'm talking architecture, urban planning: what are the alternatives for this or that? If you have a hair company, how can we teach black people to look after their hair better and stop wearing fucking weaves, which feeds the Indian business for human hair?

Everyone's so scared, because they're doing everything on their own, but if one person, or two or three, starts the conversation and says 'Hey, what's up? Let's build!' then things will take off. And I do see more of that now. I was thinking of how cool it was that all my homies came out here to see me speak. They're skateboarders, fashion people, and they showed me that I have a home here, which gave me the courage to stand up here today. I can't stand up and speak for everybody, but if my friends are there behind me, I can echo what we've discussed.

Read our interview with Roksanda at GTBank Fashion Weekend here
Read our GTBank Fashion Weekend catwalk report here