This spotlight features Sheila Chukwulozie. Sheila is a writer and performance artist whose performances and installations have been shown in cities like Lagos, London, Johannesburg, Prague, Boston and Amsterdam.
She is passionate about the power of art to transcend reality and change mindsets and loves finding new ways to fuse art and political theory specifically for Africa’s development. While attending the African Leadership Academy, Sheila founded EmoArt, a student enterprise that teaches life skills and leadership capabilities to young South African girls through artistic channels.

What is your profession?

Creator of expansive worlds

A brief bio?

Sheila Chukwulozie is a writer, filmmaker, tea maker and performance artist. As a writer, the essay is her way of combining memory and theory, dream and myth, rumour and fact. As a performance artist, her aim is to get paid to live a life other than hers for a few days, months, or years. She lives with her sister, her two nieces, one nephew, and their dog, Bingo (how cliche).

What time does your alarm go off?

Which alarm? The first or the 18th?

What do your mornings typically look like?

My mornings look like turning off the AC, crystals on my window, palo santo, apple cider vinegar and hot water by a very tiny balcony, resisting the urge to smoke yet another cigarette, the great big sky and its old friend, the rising sun. I love the rising sun.

How did you get on this career path? 

You mean into “these career paths” yes? I have a few career paths all hinged upon my talent as a wordsmith. I have worked in offices and corporations since I was 16. I started my first non-profit organisation when I was turning 17 years old. I went to an A level school that was all about entrepreneurship and leadership. This meant that I was trained to see opportunity in any roadblock. My mother also works in a huge market in Lagos. It’s so huge, the running joke is that you can find body parts if you wanted to. Maybe it’s not really a joke, but I choose to laugh and hope it is. Anyway. Being the child of a hustler means that I was born into a hustler’s world. I understood at a very age that whatever you found worth doing was whatever you could do as a job. My mother has worked as a seamstress, a shoe and bag seller, a cement trader, a chalk manufacturer, a filling station manager/trainee, an English professor, a french tutor, etcetera, etcetera. It’s so funny how she continuously asks me when I’m going to get one real, good job, meanwhile, I grew up seeing her have so many. So I guess even before my A levels education, I have always understood that one’s work was supposed to accompany one’s lived life and not the other way around. So instead of looking around to see what was being sold to me as the only possible option, I always started from what I was already doing and enjoying. I had often won English awards as a child. I remember being asked to lead the morning assemblies in my primary school because the teachers loved to hear me read. Even while we were praying, my parents were always very impressed with how I read out these really long elaborate catholic prayers. I’ve always loved words. And in turn, words have always loved me. By the time I was in college, I figured that words are only one letter away from worlds. I saw words to be the invisible but irreplaceable concrete upon which worlds were built.

Tell us what a typical day looks like?

I don’t have typical days.

Can you share some of your most memorable moments?

Spending two weeks in Mali, going back and forth between Abouabakar Fofana’s studio and his farm in the middle of nowhere. Spending one month with my friend’s mother in Freetown who was never taught to read English but spent her whole day listening to BBC on the radio. She had her favourite TV show on Zee world about these two lovers- Pragya and Ranjid. And for some reason, the day before each new episode came out, there would be pages and pages of facebook posts, narrating the whole episode that was about to premiere. And guess what she would do? She would ask me to read the posts aloud to her. Then the next day, we would watch exactly what we had just read the day before. So funny. I miss walking through St. Louis in Senegal and just smelling this really piercing scent of the ocean that I have never since then, smelled anywhere else in the world. It smelled like both blood and salt. I loved seeing how people would chase their goats into the ocean for a bath. I have too many memorable moments. Sometimes I feel like an old woman. Send me a rocking chair if you love me.

It would be profitable if we saw that there are many underdeveloped and underpaid jobs that needed more respect. Like makeup work. Have you guys seen how badly we treat fantasy work in this country? is black eyeliner the only way to let someone know that they are now a monster? We also need people who do more prop work. The more realistic and safe a prop feels, the more performers can feel comfortable taking performance risks that deepen the character on stage or on screen. Also, once again, pay artists. And artists/artisans, pay people their work. A “lack of discipline” is not a synonym for “freedom of expression.”

What do you love most about what you do?

I love that it is imperative that I transform to have something to write about. I love the listening I have to do to speak with any substance. I love that attention is the hefty price I have to pay to call myself an artist. I love that living is the research I have to fulfil to represent my characters without simply “pretending” to be someone I’ve never been. I actually love my job so much, and it makes me emotional to sit and realize that I am overflowing with reasons I love my job.

What do you not like about what you do?

I hate the debtors I meet on my road as a freelance artist. I hate having to threaten artisans who consistently overpromise and then underdeliver. I don’t like dealing with the snobs in the creative industry. I don’t think bullies are cute. I also don’t like dealing with people who insist on asking questions like “SO WHAT’S THIS THING SUPPOSED TO MEAN?” once they step into a gallery/show/experience. They already walk in intending to reduce things they cannot understand into things not worth understanding. I also don’t enjoy when practicing what I preach comes to bite me in the ass. I’ve had moments as a theorist where I proposed solutions to end some worldwide inequality, only for me to go and realize that the laws of physics set some limit on the body that the mind can afford to not care about. It’s a love-hate thing where the universe’s lessons teach me and challenge my artistic propositions. In other words, there are many moments on this journey when I sigh and say to myself, “you know nothing, Jon Snow.”

What do you do after work?

Once again, I don’t know of a moment in my life called “after work.”

What do you do on the weekends?

Wax. Work.Tea. Sleep. Eat. Pray. Play. Pole dance.

Who in the creative industry (globally) inspires you and why?

Rihanna, Laurie Anderson, Simone Yvette-Leigh, Charlotte Braithwaite, Daniel Day-Lewis, Janet Jackson, Buchi Emecheta, Flora Nwapa, Charlize Theron, Agnes Varda, Jamie Foxx, Onyeka Onwenu, Beyonce, Toni Morrison, Eloghosa Osunde, Enajite Efemuaye, Steve Harvey, Agnes Obel, Okwui Okpokwasili, Njideka Akunyili Crosby, my mummy and last but not least: Frank Ocean. Why? Courage.

What does societal change mean to you?

The courage of the individual to express her needs and prefer her preferences.

In your opinion, how can the creative industries contribute to social change/social cohesion/improve the Nigerian society?

It would be profitable if we saw that many underdeveloped and underpaid jobs need more respect. Like make-up work. Have you guys noticed how badly we treat fantasy work in this country? is black eyeliner the only way to let someone know that they are now a monster? We also need people who do more prop work. The more realistic and safe a prop feels, the more performers can feel comfortable taking performance risks that deepen the character on stage or screen. Also, once again, pay artists. And artists/artisans pay people for their work. A “lack of discipline” is not a synonym for “freedom of expression.”

If you were not doing what you are doing now, what career path would you have taken?

Is there any career I’m not doing now?