Footnotes

Provenance
Acquired from the Studio Museum, NYC, 1972;
A private collection.

Exhibited
New York, Studio Museum, Skunder Boghossian, (May-June 1972)

Literature
New York, Studio Museum, Skunder Boghossian, (May-June 1972) (illustrated as 'Ju Ju's Conference Acrylic/Goatskin 22"Diameter')

Completed in 1972, Ju Ju's Conference was executed in the same year that Skunder Boghossian began working at Howard University teaching painting. This year was also marked by the height of the Black Power Movement in the aftermath of the Civil Rights Movement in America. Skunder became a mentor to many rising artists from Africa and the diaspora, inspiring second-generation Ethiopian artists such as Tesfaye Tessema who joined Howard University and studied under him. Curator and historian Salah Hassan described Skunder as an integral figure at this point in history who provided a lens into the lived experience of decolonisation movements, inspiring solidarity and supporting "a new vocabulary rooted in the African experience.".

Leaving Ethiopia for Paris and London provided a foundation for Skunder to truly discover who he was as an artist. Skunder described going to the Musée de l'Homme every day for a year during his time in Paris where he observed masks, totems and fetish dolls, "this wasn't a study of forms for me, I was discovering African Art, apart from my Ethiopian tradition; and all that I absorbed became part of me as well as my painting." (Skunder Boghossian 'Afro- Metaphysics on Canvas', Menen, (May 1966) as quoted in Elizabeth Harney, 'Constellations and Coordinates: Repositioning Post-war Paris in Stories of African Modernisms', in Mapping Modernisms: Art, Indigeneity, Colonialism, (Duke University Press, 2018), pp. 318-319.) This supports Ulli Beier's understanding of Skunder as an intellectual painter. These intellectual and academic underpinnings are seen in his later paintings; described by F. Douglas Lewis as a 'sensitive, concerned teacher', in the introduction to Skunder's solo exhibition at the Studio Museum, New York of which the present work was included. This exhibition held in June 1972 would be the artist's last solo show. Curator of the show Rosalind Jeffries, described Skunder in the following words:

"In observing old energies, interacting with the forces of our fast changing society, he raises questions as to our value system, man's humanity to man, man's humanity to the universe; questions as to the relationship of American stars and stripes "the eagle" to the traditional bid symbol and from the ancient times throughout the continent of Africa." She continues, "there is an implied indication perhaps as to the continuity of African cultures, and the unity of Blacks throughout the world." (Rosalind Jeffries, Commentary of the Skunder Boghossian, 1972).

Skunder's later works were described by Beier as 'lighter in structure, the paint is more transparent, the composition less tight.' (Beier, p. 40) Yet, maintaining the cosmological themes that had been instilled in his practise from his years in Paris, 'he forces us to forget all our everyday terms of reference and to go all the way and meet him in his personal metaphysical world' (Beier p.40). This format was coined as Afro Metaphysics, the harmonising of the material and spiritual aspects of reality. Skunder blends this type of metaphysical imagery with graphic figurative painting, creating a visual dialogue that establishes our human reality as one with the forces of nature. Chika Okeke-Agulu notes how the artist's aesthetic developed, 'Boghossian's use of dense, circular, or dotted marks to enrich parts of his canvases - a trend that began some time in 1962 and became increasingly inalienable in subsequent years.' (C.Okeke-Agulu, p. 176). The present work employs a synergy of these qualities in this flowing composition, employing Orthodox Christian and iconography from Ethiopian and wider African mythology, contributing to the sense of mysticism.

Bibliography
C.Okeke-Agulu, Postcolonial Modernism: Art and Decolonization in Twentieth-Century Nigeria, (Durham, 2015)
Ulli Beier, Contemporary Art in Africa, (London: Frederick A Praeger, 1968), pp. 37-40.
Salah Hassa, 'Skunder Boghossian', To Conserve a Legacy: American Art from Historically Black Colleges and Universities, ed. Richard Powell and J. Reynolds (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1995), 44-45.