All images are courtesy of the artists unless otherwise noted
While an interview could be described as a view among, between, betwixt, or in the midst of two subjects—from s'entrevoir (see each other); entre (between) and vue (view)—many interviews in art history are hierarchical not only in the sense of an interviewer “authoring” the material received from the respondent, but also in the sense of the theorist or writer shaping the ideas of the practitioner. As discussed in the First Word, “Situating Africa,” there is a tendency for writers in the “north” to theorize the professional practice of artists in the “south,” developing what Gordon Lewis (2006) refers to as a geography of reason. In their book Qualitative Interviewing: The Art of Hearing Data, Herbert J. Rubin and Irene S. Rubin (2012:7) develop the term “conversational partnership” to describe two or more participants who play an active role...