We recently connected with Akwi Nji and have shared our conversation below.

Akwi, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Have you ever had an amazing boss, mentor or leader leading you? Can you tell us a story or anecdote that helps illustrate why this person was such a great leader and the impact they had on you or their team?

The best boss any of us can have is our internal boss. That’s the one that tells it straight, no chaser. And, if we’re doing right by ourselves, tells it with compassion. A practice I’ve embraced over the last few years is to write letters to myself — write them with full-heartedness, stuff them in envelopes, stamp them, and mail them. It’s been worth every penny.

In these letters delivered to my mailbox in self-addressed, stamped envelopes, I celebrate my wins and reflect on my losses. Shortcomings are addressed with the sensitivity I’d offer a friend. I’m my biggest cheerleader and my most honest critic.

I don’t look to outward signs of worth anymore. If my internal compass says I’m on the right track, then I’m on the right track. The bosses whose voices and guidance I consider as valuable are flexing muscles every day and I’m so thankful to know it when I see it!

Akwi, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

Akwi Nji is an artist creating in words, performance, and visual art. She specializes in creative personal narrative storytelling across artistic mediums and through producing and curating community-focused arts programming. Her work and words have appeared on stage from California’s Wine Country to New York’s Fashion Week.
She is owner of Threshold Gallery, an artist-run gallery and micro venue with a mission to support women artists and artists of color in the Midwest; creator of The Remoir Project, a nationwide audio and visual storytelling arts initiative; and a champion of the artist and the arts through her role as producer of multi-media arts events in the Midwest.

Akwi has served as an arts ambassador in multiple roles including as founding executive director of The Hook; an Iowa Arts Council board member; producer of nearly 100 events in recent years, involving more than 300 writers and performers; and advisor of Arts Midwest initiatives.

Her art serves as manifestations of her exploration of race, gender, Black history as American history, and a parallelism of current social issues with their historical and cultural counterparts, tensions between the ‘outsider’ and ‘insider’, and concepts of spiritual and geographic home. As a writer, voice artist, performer, and producer her collaborative partners include Emmy-award winning composers and nationally-renowned dancers and choreographers. She has been an Iowa Arts Council Fellow and, for her efforts in the business community, she was named one of Corridor Business Journal’s Forty Under 40.

Akwi’s professional background is in nonprofit leadership, public education, journalism, and strategic communications. In addition to maintaining a robust art practice, she has most recently served in administrative roles at some of the largest school districts in Iowa. Her professional expertise uniquely spans the corporate and creative world, positioning her as a sought-after voice on strategic and creative communications in the Midwest region.

Akwi advocates for inclusionary arts as a critical component of civic wellness. She is an advocate for multi-ethnic and multi-generational inclusion in the arts and in community-building initiatives. She is also an advocate for the democratization of art-making and de-mystification of art-collecting, increased accessibility of the arts to traditionally underrepresented artists and patrons, and strengthening arts ecosystems through professional development opportunities for emerging artists.

Akwi was born in Iowa City, Iowa, and raised in Cameroon, Africa. Her experiences as a Cameroonian and Cameroonian American inform her work as artist and advocate. She lives in the Midwest with her two daughters, the family dog, and her daughters’ cats.

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?

When COVID-19 hit and shut down the globe, my artistic practice was solely as a writer who primarily wrote for performance or words to be delivered on stage. I’d just resigned from my six-figure gig in order to pursue writing and performance full-time. Suddenly, that was no longer an option.

They say “take the leap and the net will appear” or “you can build the plane as you fly”, but in that context it felt like I took the leap and the earth opened up into complete abyss below me. And there was no parachute, no net, nothing.

It forced me to reimagine who I was as an artist. I’d always identified as a writer only because that language made it easier for people to understand what I did, but it was never truly accurate. I’d actually created all sorts of work for over two decades, but refrained from calling myself an artist. It seemed like a label reserved for “arteests”.

But 2019 and 2020 were a bit brutal in my world. Of the five most traumatic life events a person can go through, I knocked 4 of them out in 8 months. And then some. I’d gone through a divorce, moved into a new house, pandemic hit, a massive natural disaster swept through my city and ravaged our landscape and destroyed parts of my “new-to-me-house”, George Floyd was murdered and the nation erupted into protests. A previous version of myself would have written content responding to all of these experiences and performed it on stage. But, in the context of the pandemic, there was no stage. There was no way to get out of my body all the fury and frustration and confusion that was boiling over within me.

There was a moment when I stood at the island in my kitchen, fuming from the inside, without a creative outlet. My older and very intuitive daughter was laying on the couch, looked at me and said, “Mom, what are you going to do with all that energy?”

I looked at the island, I looked at my hands pressed against the island. I said out loud, to myself, “You’re not just a writer. You’re an artist. You better get on with making art.”

I took the energy that I’d normally alchemize into writing and started making visual art, informed by work I’d created 20 years before. Since then, it has become my primary form of art-making and communication through the arts. I continue to write, but the writing is in conversation with — or in support of — the visual art.

And the evolution has led me to a place of art-making that intersects voice, visual art, literary art, and movement into a place where I’ve always wanted to be. I couldn’t have planned it better if I’d tried.

What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?

My creative journey is a search for home. I’ve always said that I’m in search of geographical, spiritual, physical, creative home. My most recent work (including an audio album of spoken word) is directly about this search for a sense of home.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.akwinji.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/akwinji
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/akwi.nji.studio
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/akwi-nji
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/AkwiNji
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6lVs33HcRY7HFA_8dZsxBw

Image Credits
Amanda Dee Photography Lyrikal TMG Mark Woods Alisabeth Von Presley