The Record Belongs to Us

Scry is built on a refusal.

The image machines were trained on the work of artists who never said yes. They take a million hands and average them into nothing, and they call that nothing creation. There is no maker in it. There is no name. I will not build my eye on a theft.

Every image here is real. A photograph someone stood and took. A work someone sat and made. Nothing generated. Nothing invented to fill a space.

And every image here carries its record. The Western museum credits a European by name and reduces everyone else to a people. Yoruba. Benin culture. As though no hand, no mind, no single person ever lifted the tool. It shows you the bronze and hides how the bronze was taken. The Benin Bronzes were looted in 1897. We say so, here, beside the work.

The record belongs to the people it was taken from. To draw from a thing is to keep it breathing. So this is the archive kept the way it should always have been kept. Named where the record holds the name. Dated. Told true.

Draw from all of it. It was always yours.

Anthony Azekwoh, Lagos. The Griot.