Annie Lennox Traveled the World and the Seven Seas—and Made an Exhibit of Her Life
Even when Annie Lennox is trying to blend in, she can’t help but command the attention of the room. I’m standing in the lobby of the Bowery Hotel for mere seconds before I spot the Scottish rock star, lounging in the back patio amongst other patrons working from their laptops and sipping midday cocktails. She’s sporting the signature bleach-blonde pixie crop she’s been rocking since the ‘80s, an era she helped define as a member of the synth-pop duo Eurythmics alongside David A. Stewart. Buoyed by the runaway success of their 1983 single “Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This),” Eurythmics continued to record hit albums and songs like “Would I Lie to You?” and, in a duet with Aretha Franklin, “Sisters Are Doin It (For Themselves).” When the duo parted ways in 1990, Lennox made the transition to a critically acclaimed solo career.
But Lennox has always been more than just a singer-songwriter, albeit one with four Grammy Awards, an Oscar, and 80 million records sold worldwide. She’s a mother to two daughters, Lola and Tali, the latter of whom Lennox is visiting in New York. She’s also a prominent political and social activist, championing humanitarian causes around the world with an emphasis on the HIV/AIDS pandemic in Africa and the ideals of global feminism. Lennox has always had too much creative stamina to be confined to just one path.
Which is exactly why she decided to take on a project that brings together the multiple directions of her career. An art installation entitled Annie Lennox: Now I Let You Go will open on May 25 at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (Mass MOCA). Described as “part material diary, part art installation, and utterly human,” Now I Let You Go is a conceptual tribute to and extension of the 64-year-old pop icon’s life, career, and memories. Vogue caught up with Lennox for a rare interview to talk about the origins of the exhibit, how the objects we hold onto and let go of define us, and making peace with the inevitability of death (you know, polite chitchat).
From David Bowie to the Velvet Underground, musician-curated exhibits are becoming more common, but Now I Let You Go feels very singular. How did this exhibit come to fruition?
It's something I've wanted to do for many years, but I thought the idea might be a little hard for someone to fully understand and embrace. I went to Mass MOCA five years ago and I ended up being taken around the museum and just being blown away. Last fall I sent [museum director] Joe Thompson an email and said, “I hope you don't think this is hubristic, but I've had this thing ever since I visited Mass MOCA years ago and I wanted to take this idea to you because I think you'll understand it.” And then he immediately emailed me back saying, “Yeah, let's talk.”
The press release described it as a “site-specific exhibition across and within a massive earthen mound winding through two galleries.”
I know, it’s elaborate because it's not easy to describe. It's kind of like a summation of a life. I've lived one life with many different aspects. Like being a public performer is just one facet of being a writer, or being a musician, or being a singer, or making videos. These are public projections, but then there's another aspect, which is motherhood and it totally changes whatever's happening in your relationships and whatever's going on in the news. And in a way this is a statement about time. Time has always been something I've been obsessed with because time seems to be something that only ever goes forward, and yet it goes backward in our memory. We access the past through memory and our consciousness, and with photographs and caught moments of time.
Is your activism one of the facets represented in the exhibit as well?
Yes, it has a presence there because it was and still is very much a part of my life. As I was making this exhibit and putting objects into it I stepped away and realized I was manifesting a dream, really. I think the lyrics to "Sweet Dreams" are really profound and they're like a reductive mantra about life, you know? "Sweet dreams are made of this.” Every person, once they get to a point of consciousness thinks, “Where's my life going, who am I?” Children ask “Who am I? What am I? What is life?”: these very fundamental questions.
This exhibition, in a way, is going back to that question: Who am I to disagree? Living through this life, I traveled the world and the seven seas. It's like everywhere I go all around the world, everybody's looking for something. Maybe it's survival, maybe it's happiness, maybe it's fulfillment, it could be so many different things.
In terms of the objects on display, I was most struck by your children’s shoes lining the walls.
As my girls grew up, the shoe styles changed, so they would go teetering out the front door or coming back in these high heels that terrified me because I thought, They're gonna break their legs! Shoes, in a way, define us. They're the steps that we take. As a mother I realized that when your child is born you constantly sort of stroke their feet. They're tiny, that's the beginning point. And they grow and they grow and they grow imperceptibly, and the way that you measure that is with shoes. That was a part of the reason I never let go of shoes because you can imagine the steps taken and the jumps and the skips and the situations and circumstances of childhood. It's hard to let go of that. It's like, where has the time gone? It's gone. It will never ever happen again.
There's that idea that the more personal and detailed you present your own experiences, the more universal they become.
It’s true, there are universal things for all of us. And I don't want to be too prescriptive about it because I think it's very emotional. Music is a very connective, artistic form of expression. People feel music; it's less intellectual. It is far more about the senses and the emotions versus painting, which is far more of a cerebral process. And I think that what I've created here is a little audacious of me. But it is an opportunity to feel as well as to see.
Without spoiling too much of the exhibit, what are some of the objects you’ve highlighted?
It's quite an eclectic mix of things. It runs from pieces of musical equipment I've used to a pair of twisted wooden barleycorn stem candles that belonged to my grandmother. I've used objects that I've lived with like they're speaking and telling a story. There's a glass flower that was given to me by the mother of a young man that I worked with in Africa. His name was Matthew and he committed suicide. He was a brilliant young man in his 20s and he worked as an activist for an organization called Treatment Action Campaign in South Africa. And all of sudden... I don't know what happened. It was very shocking for all of his friends and compatriots around him because he was so young and so brilliant, so loved.
I made a little film piece for his memorial service because I couldn't be there and his mother sent me a beautiful clear glass flower on a stem and to me it connotes the fragility and the beauty of life. I kept it and I didn't quite know what to do with it, but then I thought I needed to put that in the exhibit. There'll be a little section where things will be numbered, so it'll be an item and a story about either how evocative it has been or the story of this object and what it has meant to me. I made this little dreamscape to tell these stories. The theme of birth and death and life runs all the way through it as well, so it's a kind of summation of my life. I mean I'm still alive, but I know I will die.
But we're here now.
Exactly, I'm here now! We will all die. Death is there in the exhibit because it’s the guarantee for us all. It terrorizes us but we all need to come to terms with it because there are other cultures who have incorporated death. The Indonesian culture for example lives with that parallel notion that death is there. Ooh, it makes me emotional to think about!
Western culture especially seems to want to ignore the concept of death.
Western culture doesn't want to know about death.
I’ve read that that’s the mentality behind why true-crime media is so popular right now, because it’s an entertaining and palatable way of talking about these really grisly concepts.
I think that's a very interesting point, and I would agree with that. We just have a fascination with things we're afraid of really. I mean it's popular, so it must be. It's sold as something that was true but is now entertainment. It's very strange, isn't it? But one thing I would like to say is that through this process I thought it would be interesting for everyone to think about the things they've held onto and how one could let go in a sort of gentle way. Is it just a feeling you want to let go of? Something that is unhealthy that you're holding onto? Or is it an object that represents something that you don't need anymore? What's the clutter in your life?
That goes back to learning to accept the inevitable.
One of my first encounters with death was a great aunt who died when I was quite young. Afterwards we went to her house and it was really striking. The objects that are left behind are resonant with that person who no longer interacts with those objects, sits in that armchair, cooks with those utensils, makes that bed, closes those curtains, puts that television set on, moves through the rooms. It's all these items that represent a life, lived. And they're gone. In that there's a strange sort of questioning: What is left behind once that person is gone?
Given the scale of this project and the fact that you had the idea eight years ago, how has this project contextualized who you are as an artist today?
It's opened up some possibilities. I'm not looking to become a professional artist. I'm doing it because I wanted to do something like this. There's always been a visual element to everything I've ever done. I actually really wanted to go to art school, but it would've been a choice between music and art because I couldn't really do both. I just always had this longing to create things, so it's satisfying in a way. There's this beautiful quote from John Lennon that keeps coming up constantly, that life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans. So you do make plans, but then other things happen and you ride it like that, thinking, Oh this is a missed opportunity, or, Oh, this is different. And we'll see. We'll see what happens.
Originally Appeared on Vogue
