We opened Crooked Eyed Bird gallery in Tokyo in 2012 as a gallery focused on dealing in contemporary African art.
We named the gallery Crooked Eyed Bird after imaginary birds from two distinct cultures.
One is Sankofa, a bird from a Ghanaian culture.
A Ghanaian proverb goes, it is not bad to go back to fetch what you have forgotten. The Ghanian tradition visualised this wisdom as Sankofa, a bird flying with its face looking backwards.
Modern Ghanian artists reinterpreted Sankofa as they strived to conform to Western aesthetics. They came to use Sankofa to describe their ambivalence between commercial success and truthfulness to their tradition. The international art market is a strong wind that blows an artist to a certain direction. Yet, an artist should keep its gaze toward the Ghanian tradition where it came from.
Hiyoku is the other bird that inspired the name of our gallery. It is a one-winged one-eyed bird from a Chinese mythology, that flies in a pair. It spends its youth in search of its lost half, crawling on the ground unable to fly alone.
Although the bird is a metaphor of a happy marriage, it left us with rather different impression. A crippled bird unable to fly alone, just like many African artists unable to fly against the Western wind.
We named the gallery Crooked Eyed Bird with a humble ambition to help advance African artists and help African contemporary art claim their rightful position in the art history.