To Have and to Hold: Victor Ishaya

The Kaduna Fashion and Art Festival (KAFART) is back this year for its 6th overall edition and 1st edition as a biennial. The theme is “To Have and to Hold.” We had earlier spoken to the festival director, Ganiyat Sani, about what this edition promises. We spotlight some of the exhibiting artists and designers, asking them questions about their creative origins, their distinct interpretations of the theme, and how their heritage and local communities shape the narratives they choose to preserve against the threat of erasure.

Take us back to where your relationship with art began. What are your earliest memories of making, and who or what first made you feel that creating was something you could do, and perhaps needed to do?

My first contact with art was sketching, i remember picking up books because they had intersing book covers which i sometimes drew. I had pages filed with comics, and anything else that caught my interest as a child.

This continued till I entered secondary school and in an assignment, we had to choose a package we liked and recreate it, painting it as it appeared and then crafting it into a box. I chose a Good Morning Cornflakes carton. And my teacher at that time really loved the outcome. But while I worked on it, I felt something I still struggle to explain, it felt something was ignited in me, like everything had colours again, like a break from all the things I hated about going to school because I did hate the 4 corners of the class room. But then after then it disappeared and all I was left with was a longing…curiosity about what I felt, and since then I be chasing that feeling…have i found it?… once in a while 

It is also fitting that the object that started it was a carton, the same material I build with today.

This year’s theme, “To Have and to Hold,” asks what we choose to hold, what we let go, and the cost of holding on. When you first sat with those words, what did they stir in you, and how do they show up in the work you’re bringing to KAFART?

Answer: When I first read “To Have and to Hold,” I thought of hands before anything else: hands that grip, hands that cradle, and hands that eventually have to open. I realised there are two ways to hold. One is to literally pick something up in your hands. The other is to carry it in your heart. The words made me ask what I hold onto in my life and my practice, and what that holding costs.

In my practice, that question became a refusal to let go. I collect discarded carton from dump sites, markets, and streets, then cut, layer, and glue it into form. Carton was made to protect, to hold and shelter what is inside it. No matter how much I change its appearance, it still looks the way it was meant to look and keeps that protective nature. I chose to hold on to that nature instead of hiding it.

The corrugated surface of the carton reads like a fingerprint, a trace of someone who once touched it. My work asks what we keep, what we release, and what is left on the surface when we do.

Tell us about the piece, or body of work, you’re exhibiting. What is the story behind it, and what do you hope someone feels or understands when they stand in front of it?

Answer: I  am exhibiting two works, What the Hands Hold and Kâi sárkī nē̃. Both begin with a Kambari saying: the head is king. In Kambari belief the head is sacred, a vessel that holds lineage, spirit, and continuity. Many cultures balance heavy loads on the head, but the Kambari will not. They carry loads on their shoulders or around their waists, because the head is meant for crowns alone. Kâi sárkī nē̃ draws directly from this belief.

What the Hands Hold carries the idea into the body. A carton figure pulls at strands of red beads at its throat and grips an hourglass in its other hand. Both objects measure out what is passed down. Time is spent in portions, and tradition is inherited before it is chosen. The figure asks us to decide: will we keep wearing down the beads of ceremony, or are they also a chain that keeps us from advancing? I built it from carton collected from dump sites, markets, and streets, layered like skin. Carton was made to protect and was then thrown away, which felt right for a story about what we carry and what the world overlooks.

When someone stands in front of these works, I hope they feel the weight of what is carried. I want them to ask what they hold onto in their own lives, what honours them, and what holds them back, and to see dignity in something they would normally walk past.

Tell us about the piece, or body of work, you’re exhibiting. What is the story behind it, and what do you hope someone feels or understands when they stand in front of it?

Answer: My work began with a limit. Near the end of my tertiary education, I wanted to make a large-scale piece, but I couldn’t afford conventional art materials. A mentor showed me that unconventional materials could be manipulated, and that advice changed how I work. I went looking for what was already around me, and I never stopped.

Today my process still begins with collecting. I gather carton from dump sites, markets, and streets, and I think of the work as a collaboration, between me and the material, and between the material and the idea I have in mind. The carton shapes the idea as much as the idea shapes the carton. It was made to carry and protect things, then thrown away, and I like to start from that history.

From there, I cut the carton into small pieces and layer and glue them one at a time, building figurative and abstract forms the way skin builds over a body. The corrugated edges are what I return to most, because every cut shows the ridges that make the surface read like a fingerprint. I build with that texture instead of hiding it.

I know a piece is finished when it has a presence of its own and I can stand in front of it without wanting to add or take anything away. 

What surprises people most is how I manipulate the material. Something rigid becomes almost malleable in the finished work, yet it still carries the evidence of its rigid nature. People are also surprised by the stories the materials tell, because every piece of carton arrives with a history of its own.

KAFART asks what endures in the face of erasure and forgetting. Is there a story, tradition, skill or memory from your culture, family or community that you feel is at risk of being lost, and how does your work help you hold onto it?

Answer: Coming from Niger State, I am concerned about the gradual loss of cultural knowledge, traditions, and ways of life that once connected generations. As younger generations move away from traditional practices, stories, beliefs, and skills risk being forgotten before they can be passed on. My work explores identity, memory, and endurance through sculpture, drawing from my environment, personal experiences, and the materials that surround me. By working with upcycled materials, I transform overlooked materials into forms that hold traces of everyday life. For me, this process is a way of preserving memory, giving overlooked things a new voice, and questioning what society chooses to remember or erase. My work becomes a space where fragments of the past can continue to exist, evolve, and speak to future generations.

What does it mean to you to show your work at KAFART, and how has your community, your city and the way you grew up shaped the way you see and make?

Answer:Showing my work at KAFART means a lot to me because it gives me the chance to share my story and connect with other artists from Northern Nigeria and beyond. As an artist from Niger State, my surroundings and the people I grew up with have shaped how I see the world and make art. Growing up in Nigeria has taught me about our traditions, the challenges people face, and how we find ways to keep going. These experiences influence the materials I use and the ideas behind my work. I use discarded cardboard and other unwanted materials to create sculptures that speak about identity, memory, and endurance. For me, KAFART is an opportunity to share where I come from, learn from others, and show how our everyday experiences can become meaningful works of art.

What is the work you haven’t made yet that excites you most, and what do you hope people carry with them after experiencing your work at KAFART?

Answer: The work I haven’t made yet is the one I’m most excited about: a series of vibrant works. It will bring in a much wider range of found objects, and it will be the first time colour enters my work. Until now, most of what I have made carries the brown of carton. This series will open up a new, extended palette, and I am curious what the material does when colour joins it. I would rather not say too much about it yet, because part of the excitement is that I am still finding out.

After experiencing my work at KAFART, I hope people carry a changed way of looking. I want them to see dignity in what they would normally walk past, and to ask what they hold onto and what they let go. If they pause the next day over a discarded object on the street, the work has done its job.