Tate Collective Open Call Writing and Art

Lynette Yiadom-Boakye is known for her mysterious portraits of fictional people. Her artworks are often paired with poetic titles, as writing is central to her artistic practice. She describes these as ‘an extra brush-mark’. They are part of the works but are not an explanation or description. They are springboards for our imagination. 

We asked Tate Collective to write up to 500 words inspired by paintings from the Lynette Yiadom-Boakye exhibition. They could submit creative writing, prose, a poem or something more experimental. The winning writers were invited to read their works at a special event programmed by Tate.

We're pleased to announce the winners of the open call are Salma Ali, Abondance Matanda and Toyo Odetunde. Our runners up are Seun Olayiwola and Godelieve de Bree. Read the winning pieces below. 

Salma Ali, The Generosity

Our love has no mouth. A cluster of fraying hands all grasping and giving and holding and touching, all leathered skin and splintered nails rimmed in red. Language is sleight of hand. Our love skins grapes and splits the skin into eights and fills centuries of stomachs. Waits for you to finish your dinner and notice the plate is empty, wince at the scratch of ceramic under steel. Our love makes a stage of man. Look down and see that emptied hands are full and catch the misdirection- the pity is all mine you shameless thing, but can a rock pity the sky? In your vicious nightmares, scuttling hands roll around you ready to be crushed, but the soft pulp by your fist twitches, and out stretches a tattered finger, beckoning. You’ve only ever been audience to the way we held the music and these moments, where naked clothe naked, make mountains tremble into rocks and rocks melt into soil and soil bloom into life. The sky grieves for what it cannot hold.

The hands that take are the ones that open vessels in the chest, caves that bleed red pulsing lights. All your ebony-coloured visions of a vase of life rest in a cluster of hands that open their palms in teaching. Imitate until you are free. We can soothe explosions brewing in the stomach, so turn your face toward the fire and let it find you. The rivers of paradise thread up our wrists, the skin splits where you lash, the skin knits. Into our arms, heaven collapses like a lung. Blood is easy to clean, of course, it is almost all water, but colour is not. Not until you reach out to touch it and fall through scattered nothing. Dark light diffracts into illusion, diamond prisms under your feet. Our love is the breeze that wakes the veil, so touch the world you bleed. Enough of words, restless tongues, our love will cost your hand.

Abondance Matanda, No Such Luxury

i dunno about u boy
but i aint got no
such luxury as lookin like
anything less dan god's child
from da beauty of my smile
to da screw of my face
it is by force for all dat
i feel within me to get worn out

so i betta walk out
like say my concrete jungle come
like some runway ! dis is
a intricately crafted crown
i carry so dere aint no such
luxury as lettin it slip as if
i don't always deserve to be
coated & dripped wiv da regality
i was gifted as a birthright.

don’t u kno dat
no such luxury exists
as pullin up to dis table
empty handed. even if
all u could bring me
is a prayer between ur palms
or ur finally brave enuff
to lay down ur arms
i cant afford to
have chaos corruptin
dis sanctuary i crafted
wiv da luv dat i
dedicate my days to diggin for
don’t u kno dat
i don't serve no food
for no thought
u best consume it!

how can i hold my breath
about a next person tryna
decide if im worthy of more
dan survivin on da sidelines of life
when in my mind i'm centre stage.
da sun don't set until i tell it.

i aint got no such
luxury of waitin to
exhale on ur say so uno
not when i'm set up
to air out or dash way anything
soon as it start to
even look a likkle rotten
trust me i’ve proper paid for it
dem times dat i lacked

lettin my tongue lay
dormant in it’s cave
aint a option! dere's roofs to raise.
glass ceilings to buss. dem shards
must become slippers
for all my cinderellas
who dont kno all now dat
we’re worthy of sittin pretty.

i aint tryna give
nobody no such luxury
as hearin my hopeless heavin.
everybody best wait
for me to make a
melody outta my misery
den we can slow
dance dat despair
outta my system. u must can
synchronise ur support
to da sound of my sorrows
once i lay down da riddim
dat i want da luxury of
surrenderin to…

Toyo Odetunde, Condor and the Mole - The Twin Story

You remember Moni, the story Mummy used to tell us? The 'twin story', we called it. She
would whisper it to us energetically as she tucked us into bed. That double bed we entangled
ourselves in because we refused to sleep apart. Or perhaps the truth is that I smothered you in it. With every word that surged and spiralled from her tongue our pupils must have widened, until our eyelids became heavy and reclaimed them. Our feverish energy always gave in to thatstorytime-induced stupor. Goodness. So long ago now. "Taiwo was the first-born twin", remember, Mummy would say, digging her index finger into my belly button. I would squeal, catapulting myself off the bed, which would send you into a frenzied fit of glee. "Then came Kehinde", she would announce. And she would push up your eyebrows, planting an invisible thumbprint on each one. Taiwo came to taste the world first remember? Sent by Kehinde to ascertain whether the world was beautiful enough for Kehinde to descend to. I suppose I always did taste the world first for you didn’t I? I wanted the world to be beautiful for you, always.

You remember, when we would go for dinner with Mummy, and Daddy? How Daddy would order for us? "Good to try new things." When the alien potions and parcels arrived, flamboyant, neatly arranged shapes emanating all sorts of odd aromas - I would valiantly plunge my fork into a suspicious article on your plate and then take a hefty bite to judge whether you would like it, all the while frowning with investigative sincerity. Mummy would slap my hand. "Leave her food alone." I just wanted the meal to be beautiful for you.

Remember that Easter holiday? We were eight no? Daddy insisted we go to the beach even though the sky looked like dishwater. Mummy complained. "The girls will catch a cold." But we eloped from their puerile noise. We kicked off our sandals and ran, tumbling clumsily for what felt like miles. Their bickering became so indistinct, eventually dissipating completely, subsumed into that gently warbling wind. I just remember your skirt, red as a rose, piercing through the dimness like blood diffusing through a river. No one in sight. It was all ours, ours and ours alone. Remember that small rockpool you found? Was it a rockpool, or actually just a puddle? We couldn’t see the bottom of it. You said it might swallow us up. Or be filled with foul marine beasts like sirens. Or crabs with unforgiving and angry claws. I dipped my right toe in to see. I had to make sure it was safe for you.

They say it won’t be long now. I wanted to say goodbye by making you smile. Life has been kind to us. We are gratified, not sad. But Moni, I do wonder, before you transcend back above, who will taste the afterlife first to make sure it is beautiful for you?

Oluwaseun Olayiwola, No Such Luxury – Gossiped Sonnet

spoken from the voice of the figure in Lynette Yiadom-Boakye’s
‘No Such Luxury’

–

See, my mother pinched the pink from her lips
and dipped her pickings into ginseng tea, then
like any woman in the setting of another’s testimony,
lifted and sipped her long-brewed elixir like worship.

She’d say I was her will, her legacy blood-dark
as a collar cut dry from the skin. She’d say
she didn’t hate my eyes, but hate, like love,
was an action, was a gaze puncturing the face––
O how they swung like swords, our touchless pinkies.

At the table, we stiffened into brown walls
creaking like wooded fires though not a soul moved
in our numbed house. She thought me a mirror.
In one sense, I was. But these eyes…these eyes
were a voice: smooth, unblinking, pain-full like jazz.

Godelieve de Bree, The Generosity

[the share of us which is water knows the closest thing we have to hope is patient transparency]

Tate Collective is supported by Jean and Melanie Salata with additional support from Garfield Weston Foundation, The Rothschild Foundation, and Tate Patrons.