This will be your first exhibition on the African continent. How do you feel?

It was written. The universe. I really believe that. The universe is like an ocean, and it moves. If you’re swimming too hard against the waves, then you’re not really in the flow of the universe. If I’m trying too hard for anything, it means I’m not listening. 

It’s great to feel the texture of this and also see this institution. The physical form of it feels like it’s open to possibilities. Some spaces don’t feel like they were designed for an artist to just do stuff. There are a few spaces where you go, “Oh, this is freedom.”

How do you think about the relationship between local culture and a global audience?

The world is in the race to globalization. It moves so fast that people are thinking about locality much more specifically. In modernism, things took a while before they arrived anywhere. Today, Taylor Swift fans get the music at the same time. It doesn’t matter where you are.

But if you’re in Nashville or New York, there’s a certain locality of those artists that you feel in that region. The distribution means now it’s global. So, locally, how can it feel unique here? I think of myself as a global artist, even though I think of myself as an American artist as well.

Why are the materials you work with so important?

I try to find materials that have a very specific set of meaning. You go to art school and they say, ‘Here’s cotton or burlap, acrylic or oil.’ That felt very limited, and I thought, I don’t know if I want to start off with my limitations in life.

What do you look for when you arrive somewhere new?

I grew up in an era in New York where the texture of your neighborhood really drove how the sound of your art felt. The South Bronx has a lot of Puerto Rican folks, so that’s where you get Big Pun and Fat Joe. Flatbush is super Caribbean, so you get Busta Rhymes. Staten Island is Staten Island, so you get Wu-Tang.

Whenever I go to a place, I always believe in the locals. The texture of all those people being next to each other means they’re going to make a certain type of art.

When I come here, it’s about: How do I make sure I don’t come here with a dominating energy, but with a listening energy?

Has anything about Accra surprised you?

This was the first place I’ve come to where everybody I spoke to who lives here said, “It’s such a safe place.” Usually, when you go to places, people are warning you to be careful. It was interesting to be headed towards a place where every part of my defenses was being asked to remove itself.

How does your own perspective shape what you see here?

I’m here, but I’m really making from an American perspective. The art will probably be more of a conversation with myself about what it means to think about how I exist in spaces like Accra.

A lot of the images populating my newsfeed were a conversation between Atlanta, contemporary Atlanta, and Ghana, or even Miami and Ghana. But I didn’t really think that was Ghana. I thought that was a conversation being had between a very small subset of people and a country filled with millions of people. I’m still finding the image.

What kind of collaborators do you want around you?

Gormley said something to me that was really important. He said, ‘Alvaro, you need to work with poets, not insurance brokers.’

What does it mean to you to be among the first artists to exhibit at Limbo Museum?

I see two things: possibilities and responsibility.

If you do a show at MoMA, it has a very specific narrative about modernism. Most museums have a narrative from their foundation, and almost everybody invited to exhibit there is an extension of how far that narrative has reached. When you’re doing something at the very beginning of an idea, you’re helping find what that narrative can become.

Doing it here, at an institution that’s so young, it’s interesting to listen to people and think about what that looks like. I want to create an installation that is about listening, about being in a space that is asking you to listen. I’ve only been here for a few days. It’s just the beginning of the process of me listening, as opposed to coming here with a sense of what art people here need to see.

How do you think about authorship when other people help make your work?

I like to make art that other people can feel like they could make, but conceptually, I’m the only person who could have thought of it because I’m the only person who has lived this life. I love working with people because it helps me get more of my ideas out there, and I have a lot of ideas. I have features that are explicit collaborations, and I try not to work with people who want co-authorship because they are skilled at making my ideas. I feel like they are trying to erase me because nothing in the art is possible outside of the conditions I have set up for it.

What interests you about working in this unfinished building?

The most obvious thing about this is that it’s an unfinished building. Even when we’re standing on top of here, you don’t really know where this project was going to end. Is it supposed to be another five floors added to this building? Is this supposed to be the roof?

It doesn’t have its borders already defined. I wanted to approach the installation as something in progress, something that is having a conversation about its potential.