Photo Credits: Images of paintings Care Giver, Farmer Hans and photos of The Fabric of Tanzania Opening via Eliot Kim Photography – eliotk89@gmail.com Images of paintings Bibi, Adam, Erna, Brothers (Ndugu) & Roadside Vendors via Hans Poppe – hanspoppe@gmail.com
Hans Poppe is a contemporary Canadian artist combining traditional mediums with fashion and culture by using oil on kitenge (African fabric) on wood panel. Born in Tanzania, Hans’s family migrated to Canada in 1987 seeking political asylum. His paintings are inspired by Tanzanian life, drawing from his experiences and observations he showcases the untold stories of day-to-day African life.
NE: You’ve spoken about African identity and your own journeys between Toronto and Tanzania, can you tell me a little bit about that?
HP: I first went back to Tanzania in 2005. I had graduated with honours from Humber College in 2002, graphic design and advertising. I was working in the industry, it was a beautiful challenge and everything was going according to plan, at least at that time. I was still young and creating amazing work, had awesome clients and my employer was a veteran so I learned a ton from working with him.
All that being said, I always felt like there was something missing, at least on a personal level, in the context of who I am. I grew up in TZ, I came here when I was eight and at home we always spoke Swahili, the food we ate was usually African, so naturally I identified as a proud, young, East African. But by the time I was a young adult, I had lived in the Greater Toronto Area longer than I did in Tanzania. As Canadians we have a tendency to self identify based on where our family comes from, I always said “I’m Tanzanian”, but I started to wonder what it really meant to be African.
I started to question my future. I saw myself working in this industry, having 2.2 kids, getting a mortgage at a certain age and a fancy car, moving every two to three years to another agency to climb that career ladder and so on and so on. The idea that my life was already so clearly outlined simply scared me. It gave me a bit of a panic attack, so I threw a monkey wrench in my life. I decided to go home to Tanzania to reconnect with my roots and relearn who I am.
I told everyone I was going back for about three months; I ended up staying for over a year. The first while I was there I had to learn how to just sit and do nothing. On our side of the world we’re constantly on the move, especially here in Toronto. If you are not constantly moving, working, earning, something doesn’t feel right. I remember just sitting from the beginning of the day to the end of the day catching up with my grandmother and family members under that beautiful sun. They have a saying in TZ that initially annoyed me but later I learned to appreciate, “There’s no hurry in Africa”. I suppose in many ways I can say I learned a lot about myself. After I was settled and caught up with family I needed to get moving again.
NE: You paint on kitenge on wood panel, how did that happen?
While people watching I noticed that everybody was wearing these fabrics. The women would divide them into a top and skirt, sometimes a third as a head dress. The men would turn them into shirts and pants. Initially I noticed it was just older men who would wear these patterned fabrics with pride. The younger men all dressed in western styles, but now it seems to be changing, it’s coming back as a young trend. I think Nigeria has a lot do with that actually. If you look at the hip hop videos from that part of the world they’ve really begun to embrace the fabrics and their culture again.
I remember sitting watching women passing and thinking there was something to these fabrics. I started noticing that the fabrics, the specific types of fabric that I work with, were worn by women who were celebrating something. It was what women would wear to weddings for example. They’re expensive, special and so they save them for those highlight moments of their lives. Kangas are similar fabrics but they’re more like your jeans and t-shirts, your everyday wear. Slowly I started paying attention to the colours and patterns and the more I studied them, the more I realised that there was something really beautiful about them and very specific to the region.
I didn’t start painting until 2008 but I felt connected to the fabrics and what they represented in terms of the culture. When I finally decided to work with fabric I knew I wanted to use what they considered the best, what they wear to celebrations of life, weddings, funerals, births.
NE: Tell me about the inspiration for your subjects?
HP: I grew up identifying as East African with pride but the African art I saw, and the imagery in the media, always seemed to concern something bitter, angry, depressive or from a colonial era. I wanted to show Tanzania the way I see it, to feature happy children and women, to fill the gap in the public discourse with positive images about what it means to be Tanzanian or African in general. I paint what I never saw and knew I was.
NE: 2015 was an incredible breakthrough year for you, any advice for new artists?
HP: Stick with it. I started painting in 2008 when I was fortunate enough to take advantage of a lump sum redundancy package and take a year off to paint. I treated painting as a full time job, I enrolled in courses and set myself a goal that I would paint or draw everyday of that year for at least one hour. What ended up happening was that the one hour would turn into two, then four, and so on. My daughter was two at the time, when she went to bed each night around 8pm I would start painting and keep going until around 7am. When I picked up the brush and paint there was something about the release that just felt natural. Everything I was trying just flowed out effortlessly.
In 2015 I rededicated myself to painting. I gave myself a year to put in as much work as possible in pursuing this dream and the response was phenomenal, to say the least. I really believe that when you put it out there the universe provides.
For more from Hans visit www.hanspoppe.com, Instagram & Twitter @hanspoppe or Facebook.com/hanspoppeart
