DISCUSSION 1O INITIAL ARTS

C to,- 2 · l Ut pia Frames of Referenee: Between Postcolon1a o and Postcolonial Realism '

' In the preceding chapter, we emphasized the histoncal debates

· • 'ti' t ponses tosunounding contemporary African art and artiSts en c~ res. those debates. We also took up the question of the relationship of con· temporary to traditional African art, and how the dialogue _with past African traditions could be ur.derstood u inhibiting reflectio~ on ~e complexity of the utistic jl,XPd11ctioo ~t evolved out of the dial~cti­ cal encounter with(Western modernism, especially as it occuned 111 the twentieth century.

In this chapter. ~e take up thl' concept of contemporary African art in its response to culturc1l and political agend~ed..npt bv an en• CllUnter with a trad1twal p~t. but with th\postcolonial prese)i under the cc-ndit.on• of tht cnsis of sub_Ject and the trisis of subjectivity. To the extent that the post-colony can be distinguished from ex-colonies, the postcolomal situation today can be analyzed by uniting the histori­ cal expenence~ of the coloruzed and colonizer in the new global dissolu­ tion of absolute centers and peripheries. For contempo~ African art, this dissolution of the boundaries between former empires)nM0~er colon esins been an unportant an1mating)ictor, creattng vectors that not bntf lay bare the complexity of geography but also eitJ)Ose the fault lines of nationality and the yet-to-be-fully-redeemed promise of global affili.ltion.'

The postcolonial situation of the independence period, whereby mul­ tiph! voices and narratives emerged to define new African subjectivities brought about by decolonization, r~esented a fu~ment~patture­ both theoretically and historically-froru a; ap~d institutfoll#l- ized history within which earlier writings on contemporaq African art were elaborated. Postcolonialism provides a horizon of theoretical contemplation, because it illuminates some of the liveuest dfsputes. bout the stalt of contemporary African societies. It describes a dy­

namic landscape in whlch the questioning of power, canons, sovereignty, agency, nationality, subjectiV1ty, and ideology organized the critical core of postcolonial Afri, a. Lib the term •contemporary~ the postcolonial is a traveling. polysemic term encompassing diverse historical experiences, traditions, and archives. In Africa, the period before(198,V'e11resents a OIQlll;'nt 1n wluch the attempt at cohesion engendered by decolonization productd many nrw schools of thought on how to be free, African. and modem-and with that, the desire to construct, as it were, forms of na­ tional culture.

This penO'I ~panning the SlQstwar deradwtrongh th(._1960und be­ fo1e the onset of austerity measures at the end of the 1970s, epresented a time or great experimentatiol\ with the idea of national cultu~ nation state, atiztnship. civil society, social modtls, and political institutions.· We tend to lhink of this era as the.moment when attributes'\inked to postcolomat\ltopia)'lere most visible, when the arts were flourishing, and when artists and writers were maugurating new ideas and narratives. In the walce or independenct, new claims toAfricanity Jnd authenticity were built through the search for a usable past. Contemporary artists, Wet earuer modernISt precursors, articulate?the postcolonial situation ~hrough man_ifestos, exhibitions, and criticism. Sometimes they reorgan­ tzt"d the curnculum of art studies by emphasizing the decolonization of a sthet1c knowledge.

Uct-.e Okt'kt. who -as an art student at the Nigerian College of Arts, Science md Technology, Zaria (now Ahrnadu Bello University) in the late 1950s, a~d as a founding member of a radical student group, Art Socie­ ty ~artJculattd one of the earliest points of decolonized aesthetic in the manife~to Natural Synthesis, sought not the outright erasure of Western aPstheltc but an accommodation to it. by making research into local forms acrucial part of art education. In the early 1970s;'when he was

11 IChlptn 2

. d th h d of the art department at the Uruversity of Ni . ~mte e ea ;...;..--...,,..~~-.--~~ liz. his Nsukka he finally ha4.the OJ)~~Y to tnstilllti0na • e . progres-

51. id;as of a _postcolonialaesthetic into a, .:..- rtul artistic move_ powe....... nt ve~ -,.c~bloed in•'-;. 19.805 one..of tbc rnostcall Uli ,movernen. U1d ~s:

imitated ~tic forms Ill Nigeria. Ul1 • a mura • and body-paintln~radi . l racticed bylgoo-men in Sou.theastem,N19ena...!Y.J>1cal110n most y P 1~ • I ~ d bstract idonnraphlc painting stytes, applied direct U)i j>attems epIoy a ~v,:, , 'PL. ! - ,I

on adobe walls of shrines, houses, and b tes as decoration. u~ ~ -

,ditionalf folJQ..of abstraction evoked fo keke d many oth r artiSts a ••.1. • ad at'Stht'tic reference that expand anil enncned Uie canon o

rt:au.y rn e od mis • h W abstract fonns that could more easily be read u m e t m t st· ~n sense one which they had developed in theu acad mk tra.infng 111

~ schoo~. Soon, however, their work evolved from its flat , two-dimen­ sional horizontality to three~nsional sculpture and \ow-reU rwood carvjpg.-Ille e~ntwitt_Ul_!)nfluen~ed the d • pment of other utfa'ditiona~nting references in Ntgena, SUcli Jlna1:5 a style relit ; Yoruba mural painting, These expe.timents m formal artistic processes

-;howed the degree to which [Q"stcolonia a.estnetlt zeconsi'aerations wer steeped in research conceived in the realm of direct exp rlence of dassi cal formal styles and their subsequent transformation mto r.xperimenta artistic forms.

In the 1980?• group of artists (including Obiora Udechukwu and a Anatsui, two influential professors in the art school at Nsukka} rga .AKA 'Circle of Artists, which promoted this semib1Uty in annual exhibi­ tions. Similar groups and corresponding critical wn~ devoted to these activities were develoPe.9 elsewhere. In 1964, Farid 8'lbhia, Mohamed Ch~ and Mohamed Melehi-introduced a mtematic restructuring of the curriculum of .Ecole des Beaux Arts in Casabla~ 111 favor of artistic research-into Wimtc calligraphy and Berber arts and crafts. The so-called ~allisUnove.m nWn Sudan developed its own view of ~ism ~ a confluence of Western modernist aesthetic and pin-Arabic secul.az thought. In Senegal, \'Ecole de Dakar was developed along tM lines of J!egritua~ It became not only the leading art school. but in btcncl:.c; ing cultural ideology and state patronage 1t also took on the role of an aesthetic vehicle, ushering in its own orthodoxy or artistic PI tice that would later be challen~ by ~m~rs of Laboratoire Agit•Art.•

Cultural, political, economic, social, artistic, and literary theories.and perspectives on national culture produced lively debates~.c:ourit 1

discourses. In. a memorable response to the Oitory of N!?!jritud which, since the early 1g30s-first in Euro~ and later in Africa and the canb­ bean-had constructtd a formidable discourse on the uses of an African Past, the young Nigerian writer Wole. Soyinka Te~ed what he thought. was an essentialist predisposition towards race in an infamous quip at the 1962 African Writers Conference: "the tiger does not boast about his tigritude." To which Senghor disarmingly replied that •the tiger does not tallc:"~ Each of these discourses was staged at the intersection of cultural ~adi~ons and archives, and each was replete with autopian sensibil- ity directe~ at realizing Africa-centered solutions to African issues. for ~unger thinkers, ?owever, emphasis on a racial past was an impedi­

~ to the theonzation of the contemporary, because the early ears of_ i~dependence and decolonization had produced a set of conditions for cntique, and for the conceptualization of new African sub. ectivities and systems of representation. 1

~ de_lineating the situation of the early independence years as manifesting a utopian m t d

omen , we o not mean to sugg st that artists and cultural producers of that period were nttessan1y t .d listi naive Instead . oo I ea c or

. . , wt recogruie the extent to which cultwal production was m convergence with pressing tasks ,_,_._ ,i...... •

• •uu1 as proL._.... of soaal and

political identification, and with the policies and ideologies of nation­ building and modernization. Naturally, modes of subjectivization in literature and art which argued, for instance (as was the case in the Kampala conference in 1962), for an African aesthetic in the genres of visual art, theater, and the novel-by such artists as Okot p,llitek,, Uche Okeke, and Ngugi wlThion__g'o-were based on calls for the constitution of contemporary African literary and artistic forms from specific national cultural archives. Ngugi, then a young novelist who was politicized by the bitter struggle agafnst the British during the Land and Freedom Army (Mau Mau) uprising in Kenya between 1951 and 1959, partici­ .patedin ibglishing_!lie English department at the University of Nairobi )n-1966. Experimental theaterincluded Duro Ladipo's "Yoruba Oper~ the establishment of the Mbari Artists and Writers Club, Ibadan, and the Chemchemi Creative Art Center, Nairobi, among a host of other activities in the 1960s.

If it was clear that the @Opian processes ol..th('60s ad run their £:Ourse by the end of that decade, the ?Os and '8Qs manifested increas­ yig skepticism toward the manipulation of the sentiments and symbols of decolonization. The dire situation in which African societies found themselves was beginning to unveil a ~w sense oJ reaus51. not only in the subjects, but also in fue im~s and~rgingin works of art, ~eating situations generated by the austerity measures that had trans­ [Q_rmed the po~olonial economy into a state of ~ofound crisis. BuL._,this sj_tuation did not sprout overnight. As ~lj.._as 196~•.even as decoloniza­ tion imbued Africans with a sense of optimism.) trenchant critical ob­ servers-especially artists, writers, and filmmakers-wer-e for~rounding the disenchantment with the utopian illusio11$ of the postcolony. In the novels of African writers, for example, an incipient skepticism toward the direction in which independent African countries were headed pro­ duced sober works like Chinua Achebe's A Man of the People {1965), Ayi Kwei Armah's The Beautiful Ones Are Not Yet Born (1968), Yambo Ouo­ loguem's, Le Devorr de Violence (1968), and Wole Soyinka's memoir, The Man Died: Prison Notes (1972). In cinema, Ousmane Semben~ film Xala (1975) and Djibril Mambety Diop's seminal counter-cultural film Touki­ Bouki (1973) offered images that stood in contrast to the ostentatious power of the ruling class. These critiques of the power and corruption of African elites presented early moments of an emerging realism in rep­ resentation, in the films of Youssef Chahine, in the political theater of Athol Fugard, in the music of Fela Anikulakpo Kuti, and in the paintings of Obiora Udechukwu.

Structural Adjustment, Austerity, a.nd the Politics of Aid _ /J. and Dependency 7"'

Before discussing the effects o{ Structural Adjustment Program (SAP)' policies on African institutional and artistic networks, it is necessary to lay down a few signposts in the transformation of contemporary Afri. can art over the past five decades. We have already noted the phase of decolonization in the 1960s with experiments in new African identities and the critique of colonialism. By the late 1970s,pany independent African countries were approaching their third decade of sovereignty. However, as the saying goes, the bloom was off the rose, as the ~ce of modernization and nation-building schemes were beginning to slow with declining economic growth, stalled~litical reforms, and erosion of governance. The initial stage of stagnatioq was making its first visible appearance among the network of institutions. This was soon followed in the 1980s by theneoliberal economic policies of StructuralAdjustment Programs that further weakened structures of econo~ and cultural activity. Th~} marked by the end of the Cold Warj>etween Eastern and Western powers, was a decade of lar_ge-scale migration among artists, intellectuals, and writers. Finally, the nse of globalizatio_Qnd the ap­ pearance of QeW transnational and diasporic African spaces outside the continent ushered in the new millennium"\

The narrative we have set forth follows these traject: focus- ing on artistic experimentations of th~w postcolonial r · of the 1980s, ahd shifts in increments to the glooalization and transnationalism of contemporary African art in recent years. By the mid 19805 many Af.

rican economies saddled with enormous foreign debt were running nega­ tive growth rates. These swelling deficits fu@er increased indebtedness, which, in turn,~o an even greater dependency on foreign aid. These structural changes metastasized.into a full-blown crisis furthered by the debacle of,-Structural A<!j~tment Programs (SAPs))nstituted across the continent 'oyffie1iGemational Monetary Fund and the World Bank in 1983. bl this era of austerity and tAPs, contemporary African artists were faced with great institutional instability, the erosion of cultural networks, lack of access to markets, e.£litical repression, and censorship. Economic collapse coupled with weakened social regimes created a fluid historical context and instability ~in artistic communiti~

T~SAPs)lay an important role in the rationale for beginning this survey in 1980. Beyond our own individual experiences growing up in Nigeria in the 1970s and 1980s and witnessing first-hand both the eu­ phoria or the oil boom of the 1970s and the deflation and collapse of the Nigerian economy ::-Which brought (jeneral Buharito power, and General Babangida after him, and the murderous Abacha'!regime after that-1980 revealed a forceful realism in visual art..,ln the economic realm, and for survival itself, ~ were evolving al.:'trategy of malce-rlo:I putting­ together, building a (!:twork of Tokunbo 111arkets for second-hand goods import~d from the West, because it was clear to many that Africa had entered an era of protracted and painful stagnation. In a single decade, across every socio~onomic ind~ Africa was faltering. Per capita output fell precipitousty;-life-expectancy averages declined as well, and infant mortality rose. These staggering occurrences and the statistics that ac­ company them delimit a distinct caesura}that reveals a line between two competing visiOll.$ of the African situation after independence. This pe~od was a watershed moment that colored the circumstances in which art and intellectual production occurred, and tested the allegiances of artists and intellectuals in the maintenance of a robust African public and civic sphere.

As Achille.Mbembe and Janet Roitman described it, this collapse was not just the crisis of the state, but also the crisis of the subject; and of subjectivity itself.9 Writing in the 1990s on the state of events in the wakeofSAPs-a situation which gave great impetus to the traumatic deracination of social well-being-Mbembe and Roitman elucidated a process of collapse that was, as they put it, defined by the acute eco­ nomic depression, the chain of upheavals and tribulations, instabilities, fluctuations and ruptures of all sorts (wars, genocide, large-scale move­ ments of populations, sudden devaluations of currencies, natural catas­ trophes, brutal collapse of prices, breaches in provisioning, diverse forms of exaction, coercion, and constraint) that make up the fundamental experiences of African societies over the last several years. 10

With limited resources, many countries became susceptible to violent changes of government and civil conflict. This gave rise to a sense o(pre­ cariousness) instability, and impoverishment) It is an understatement to refer to SAPs as merely disastrous. They were catastrophic and traumatic.

SAPs were world-changing on many levels. Within adecade of its introduction, and as the acronym SAP ironically suggests, entire. national economies were hollowed out, their life drained from them. SAPs further contributed to the stagnation of African economies, exacerbating already fragile situations. Their widespread adoption, seemingly overnight, ne­ gated many of the advances made by postcolonial national state1 after. independence. In Planet ofSlums, urb'an theorist Mike Davis echoes Mbembe and Roitman's point, writing:

Urb.n Afric1 md Lllbn Americ1 1me_ tJw lwdest hit by tht lrtificill depression engineered by the IMF llld the White House-indffd. Ill many countries the ecoiiiimic impact o!SAPsjluring the 1980s, in tandem with protr.ictead,ought. rising oil prices, soaring interest rates, and falling commodity prices wu more sevue and long_Luting than the gTtlt depression.

SAPs also made governance from above untenable and agitation from below endemic. The illegitimacy of the rule Of "big men"-"-autocrats. and plutocrats-who choked cultural and political expression, forced artists to devote more attention t9 fashioning serious critiques of the depreda­ tions and abuses of power that were happening internally. The target

Chapter 2 \ 19

,- ' d ·ts neoliberal Westen)·was the comipt postcolonialstate. apparatus an r r · backed sponsor$, Worn by artists such as 0biora Udech~'s fycoon and Slivtdorts (1980) and Exile Train {1980), Tayo Adenaikes Face~ m's the Streets (1982). Ibrahim El Salahi's The Inevitable (1984), Iba Ndiaye_ Le ..-autour (1985), Rach1d Koraichi's ANation rn Exile (19~~). and _Chen Samba's La Bourgeo.sie.(1981) all reflected_ the explicit cntique of de· fQr"" '.d Afric.an ~tical ru Along tht' same route, out of the severe politiul reprewons in a~heid_South Africa, arti.sts chal~enged ~es s "t7sattempt to silence its cnt1c~ Paul Stopforth s graphite draw_mg • such as The Interrogation Room, 1-V (1983), and Elegy (For Steve Br~) . , (1981), Jane Alexander's sculpture Butdrer &rjs (1985-86). Fenny SioplSS Potierre on OHMument (Jg&7}, amo~ny artistic works, explored new avenues of social and political critique.l

It is agamsl this backdrop that CQntemporary African Art Since 1980 was formulated. Most accounts of the contemporary art of Africa have virtually nothing to say about this period and how it produced a differ­ ent perC!_ption of the critical urgency that suffused artistic practice or their relation to other artistic traditions around the world. Throughout the 1980s. corollary developments in the field of contemporary art, analogous to the situation in Africa, were also taking place in China, South Korea. Chile. the Soviet Union, and througliout Eastern Europe. However. these links are rarely made in the explication of contemporary African an. Or even how African artists view the work of their peers or rework inherited artistic protocols within the field of historical transi­ uon. Al the great transformations of twentieth-century modernity swept away large social structures on which the cultural values of many African societies had depended, it was clear that the ~fAma:were eq~lly_ pulled into the QOntingenb historical transformatiJ>ns that were remaki_M the aesthetic paradigll\£.of the arts on a global sc~e.

The stories of change and t.ra.nsitioll, utopia and realism, colo~ ism and postcolorualism,neocolonialism and neoliberalism"'migration and globalization, which we have laid out in preceding pages, .constit)l.te.. elements of a micro-narralive of contemporary cultural productionJ!! Africa. However, this book is not simply ~ narrative history of contempo­ rary Afncan art. Rather it IS a retrospective Btld prospectus of works and ideas of contemporary art prod~ in°iperiod of fervent..enuuciatiQn of the precarious state of African societies and it examines how the artists whose work is featured in lhis volume wrestled with the changing states of culture and society. We want to avoid sweeping generalizations about contemp11rary African art, while at the same time recounting the many diverse occasions and events-like those already outlined-in which these artists produced their works.

At this juncture it is important to reiterate how the arts interpel­ lated the changes that realigned the political. cultural. social. and econonuc orders, as well as the organizational structures and institu­ tions of African societies, during the era of colonial modernity (be­ tween 1885 and 1945), and postcolonial modernity (between 1945 and the present). By now it is fairly well established that contemporary African art has always been enmeshed in structures of colonial media­ tion-the museum, the academy, the art market-and reflected.in.its disciplines~ropology, ethnography, art history-that the attempt to theorize and historicize contemporary African art also engages with vestiges ouesistance to those structures. To the extent that our un­ .derstanding of Africa to~ is mediated by the discourses and~oll.di: lions of colon~l modernity, it needs underlining that postcolonialism Jiu giwn u.s a radically different view of Africa. The question we ask is how lhe resistance lo the structures of colonial mediation addresses the situation of African art and its artists.

Art Without Artists?

.E. H. Gombrich ~ously began his seminal book The Story ofArt, which was first published in 1950, with the statement: 'ihere really is no such thing as art. There are only artists.# 12 The striking idea behind these hnr1e~. and ~artling brevity, was to make a simple point: that there can be no art withou~mbrich's statement reflects a key aporia when applied to the early Western museological and

. . tion of precolonial African art as an art without indi- art-histoncal concep d by a mass of authors, known as . l thors but rather one compose . .

vidua au ' th hi . ascribed. In this way. precolonial Afncan the tribe, to whom au tors_ \Pm·ute"'retation was the carrierofacollective

d r the ter1S of co orua •.. ----= . . art un e . tribwnd ancestors. The dirnmu- wiconscious, as the mter~r between ,. f ·t ha dl

. the category ofJ.L[ilial"'art, or I was r y tion ~f authors~p :ve:nse meant by ~mbriclf Curiously, Gombrich perceived as art m e Led • A'-'

. ed- the name of a single artist who wor-. U\ mca amongtinever men on - h his ·ods and styles•11 to whic magnum opus•the wealth of names, pen • .

1'-=-rl Einstein in his book on African sculpture, was devoted. To be sure, ~ . . . I Ni erp/astij (1915), was prescient U\ theoretically fr~ng the conc~ptua f9 1 ·gnifi ,.. of African art and wrote a ,enous cons1d ration ofand fonna SI can...~ • •

African sculptures as art rather than as ethnographic objects. However, h too ascribed no author to any of the sculptures he wrote about. In 1935.

Alfred H. Barr and James Johnson Sweeney orgmized the landmark exhi bition African Negro Art at the Museum of Ml'dl'rn Art._N York making it one of the earliest known exhibitions of African an m a modem art museum, and the fourth in the United States after an earlier exhibtbon in 1923 at the Brooklyn Museum, and two others in 1926 and 1928 at th Newark Museum. Again, the evidence shows no African artisu mentioned by name in attributing any of the works. There is no record to show that Einstein or his contemporaries were ever discursively intuested in African artists as such. Nor is there any evidence of interest in modern African artists who were working at that time either in Europe or in the various European colonies.

What was always noted in these accounts. hOWMr, was the insupe1- able power of African art, albeit a power without authors. Whitt the centrality of African art was pivotal to the conceptual transformation of -European avant-garde ~rt in early twentieth century, living African artists 'otthe period-be they modem easel painters like 0nabolu. or sculptors such as Bamgboye of 0do-0wa worlcing in seemingly pre-colonial African styles-were never consideredas part of the evolving debateJ on the nature of modem art or as contemporanes of their European pee1s. The work of artists like Bamgboye could only feature in the discourse of the structural relatior1Ship lo modernism, rather than in its deeper discursive affinities. Only objects of African art were accorded histoncal vis1b1Uty, even though a great number of the works commonly ref rred to as tnbal were, in reauty, contempo1aneousto the work of modem Western aJ1!m in the late nineteenth and early twenti th .centuries. In f~. given the dates of a gmt number of so-called "tribai- an-many wer made in tht same decades in which modernist art was made-the1r nameless creators were undoubtedly contemporaries of modem avant-garde • u.

A.rTerry ~ .~rsuasi~ly argues in ~hat he calls cond1tions...of contemporanerry, if we think of something as contem~r~ in relauo to its time, and not in terms of its-belonging to an approved ~ style then the focus on African objects as tribaL and the elimination of the African artist in the consideration of what makes an object a work of art. produced a clear historicist fallacy about the conditions of African a.rtisUc pr-Oduction in ti- namtive of colonial modemicy. And if we follow Go­ mbrich's reasoning, then there can be no African art if we eliminate the category of African artist from the equation by the Y!ry fact that it was produced as part of a tribal community rather than u part of the work of accomp~hed individual artists. This certainly would add great fillip to the entire apparatus of ethnographic practice. To be faiI, a mass of authors, understood as one collective whole, does not in itself mean the complete absence of individual artists. It means simpl that th l tradition of authorial attribution in art the ...~..~.:. Y l f the no~ t . • u,uu...u; va ue o e signa- u1ei ~~ discarded. But is the signature essential for any art to exist? . his IS an old argument. However, the absence of artistic author­

ship accorded to African b · cts "Pri - . .. . 0 ~e • as was the case in the 198-4 exhibition0

m, Vlsm rn 20th Century Art at the Museum of Modem Art New :ork, created an important debate in the months following its o~n- mg.

1 ' In that exhibition Afri art b. .

of historical time hil 'w can °~ects existed completely outside . , w e estem avant-garde artists sat framed . the light-washed circle of the histo · l m sidered as bein I . nca present. Because African art was con•

9 ocated not m the present but in the past, there were

no__£_Ontempor~_.African artists from..the.scµne era covered by the exhibi· _tion..Jn other words, ~ere were no African'c:onternporaries'1of Western modem artists; that is tosay;"111e two groups did not occupy the sc1me historical time.17

The absence of artists as authors of new ideas and conceptions of African art bears on our immediate reflection on the postcolonial tum in African art. And this pos~lonial tu~e_flects another idea o~stcO'­

~ nial rea~~uense of the self-reflexive explorations by Airic:an artists on contemporary conditi,Q_ns. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s the question of the place of the African artist in the map of modernity represented an important preoccupation with an agenda for reform in the perception of modern African subjectivity. Amajor aspect of that agenda centered on issues of identity and authenticity in the conception of an African aesthetic. The Festival of World Negro Art and Culture, the Negritude-themed mega-festival organized in Dakar in 1966 under the patronage of its chief theorist, the then-President of Senegal, Leopold Sedar Senghor (a Catholic in a predominantly Muslim country), was in­ deed a culmination of the cultural affirmation of black African identity and its authenticities. In the United States, the Black Power movement under postcolonial liberationist ethos made the African-American singer

, James Brown's 'Tm black and I'm proud" an anthem of the 1960s. ...._ ., These issues go beyond formal questions of art and into the concep-

• ~ tualization of African artistic subjectivity. However, they are productiver

to the theorization of the horizon of contemporary African art, first in relation to colonial modernity, then to more recent art. ~ .J.l.!_Oblem 9f modem Afrjcao act is the_wayj.Lcan.be...said..to..inhabit..tw.o

__!yI>es of authenti · : first, n.account of its deviation from tradi­ tional African art; econd, · its. failure to be modem in relation to Western m~n art. This presents a temporal and historical gap. Yetit is a surprisingly fortuitous quandary, as it enables us to analyze, with greater precision, the constitution of the contemporary. Let us explain: in trying to determine how modem African art fits into the map of modernity, what we discovered was that, because it valorized the idea of art qua the artist and veered off the path of a traditional art that was located in a past canon of recognizable tribal styles, ethnographic thought accused it of existing out of the historical time of precolonial Africa in which the tribe was supposedly central over the idea of indi-

". ~, ...._vidual agency. Furthermore, in connection to Western modernist art, { '( ':1.. modern art historians saw modem African art as belated, derivative,

, mimetic, and therefore not on time. , ' '-Contemporary African~rt~hares none of the anxieties of modem

~ n ~can art for several reasons<fus , within categories of time, it is ~ )' neitherbelated nor does it exist out of tim~ second,jecause it is post-

historical, it did not emer_ge out of a succession of historical styles· third:) because it is critical of coloniaLvalorization of an auth~ntic ]ast. it is postcolonial; and (ourth, ·n relation to its postcoloniality, it seeks, ac­ cording to Hans Belting's thesis, to be post-ethnic.1

• The existing out of time, and not being on time, as par'"aiioxical as it is, does have a striking benefit, because it clears the ground for new possibilities of experimen­ tation and the shaping of an artistic language. In fact, both temporal disjunctions provide a prolegomenon, of sorts, for what modem African art, in its ambiguous situation, anticipated: namely the emergence of the contemporary. Neither being out of time nor belated, contemporary African art strategically inhabits a third epistemological space by be- ing in time. Being neither a part of the past (historical in relation to precolonial African art) or on time, i.e., fashionable according the reign­ ing credo of modernist art which follows the trajectory of a succession of styles (such as Fauvism, Cubism, Expressionism, Surrealism, Abstract Expressionism, etc.) contemporary Afric~art, like all contemporary art, is fundamentally of ~e.-I~irihabits-tlie presenl_and doesnot foUow the sequence of periods and styles common to the narrative ohnodern art history. By not being on time, it is far less riddled with the aruoety of 1imeliness and fashionableness. - Rather than imitate ;succession of period styles, ~ontemporary art­ ists generally develop their practice by constituting strategies, Working ~h wnatever is at nanr-~s all artistic media. To b(contem~

~ \

'

also requires a self-awareness of the possibilities and the fault lines that define the present. It means having the conceptual c~pacity to deploy a responseto the present through self-reflexive reanimations of methods of creative inquiry. This self-awareness and self-reflexivity in the midst of change and sociat transformation-in the clamor of the folyglossia of postcolonial fields of practice-constitute the main platform of what can be defined as contemporary. Hence, within the aesthetic structures and formal methods of contemporary ~frican art, artistic concepts and their discourses are deployed in tpanop~of ways. Here local and nonlocal, international and global, acaoemic and neotraditional strategies inter­ mingle, creating the aesthetic glue that binds new artistic languages to contemporary perceptions of art.

With this in mind, the yiew that con~orary..African Jrl ii:anath-' em}:'to ~ditional" art"tat least in seeking to invent the individual art­ lsnnd to avoid a tribal style) is strikingly based on poor critical logic. In the same way that Europeart artists were responding toconrpleicstruc---. tural and conceptual issues in the sculptures of African artists in early the twentieth century, African artists were also encountering European a~mi~s with distinctly different representational logic. In fact, a ~~t:;el of influence was happening during this period, in which &abol~~onded to ~m academic: ainting paralleled Piaasso's, r~ to ~ mas~hese responses at the beginning of the twen-

$ eth C!mtu~esent a vital contemporary moment in which the work of African artists)(even if their signatures remained ambiguous) received ~ticconsideration from artists of a different tradition and, at--thesam-e fime, inspired African artists to seriously reflect on e tra­ ditions of Western art . Rather than follow a path leading to the loss of

'-authenticity, African artists' responses to modernism underscored their artistic adventurousness. They were engaged in dialogue with the values of o~er traditions-through well-considered choice.

~orary African artists ave consistently been involved in shaking th~1Jistemolo_gica1 roots of'"traditional aft\" while employing ~t:ion as-'an-archival resgurce.Jhis is what Uche Okeke did in relation­ Jo l[li painting in Nigeria, ELAnatsu1wit~gard to nsibl~and adinkra> traditions in Nigeria, Ibrahim El S · ~ response to Islamic calligraplfy, in Sudan, and Zehirun Ye e and Wosene J(osrofin relation to the li­ turgical scrolls of Eth" an religious texts':)For example, in modernist Eu­ ropean art-histo · al discourse, what one might call the shaking of epis­ temological roots was conceived as mavant-garde esp.Q!!se to changing tradition, which in tum describes the modernist revolt against high

.A_cademic art, namely the principle<Q.! deskilling. ollowing this process, the neo-avant-garde instituted an idea that articulates the postwar emer­ gence of contemporary art along with postmodernism's declassification of modernist universalism and grand narratives. C~porary African"'art

..Js an art of dia~cal absorptiori)and s&ructural integrationofdiscourses ~f.?__nnal syst~~ In our view, this makes the historical basis of its paradigms open to diverse experiences of tradition and modernity.

Modernist and contemporary African art cannot, however, be con­ strued as coterminous with European avant-garde and neo-avant-garde art, for the simple reason that their different historical trajectories are radically marked by separate, discursive paths. If anything, modern and contemporary African art are each involved in the further deconstitu­ tion of Western art-historical authority, rather than being, according to avant-garde and neo-avant-garde principles, attempts at revolt against African traditions.

Congolese artist,_Cheri Samba response to the European modernist canon are great examples of this reflection. In his painting triptych, Que/ ~ pour notre art? (1997) .._he questions the deginy or future...of con­ temporary African art by an allegorical rereading of the relationship of the African artist to modernism. The mediating object here is a series of African masks set outon a tabl~ between Samba and the European mod­ ernist master Pablo Picasso. In this painting, Samba stages himself in the first panel of the canvas with Picasso as the modernist genius who sits in the foreground of the painting, before a drafting table, contemplating two African masks, a log of wood, and a clay vessel displayed slightly behind him. The masks are arranged on a table, upon which Samba

Chapter 2 I 21

is seated, wearing a white suit Here Picasso is represented as both a modem antecedent, and as a bridge between Samba and "traditional" African art. However, Samba's position is ambivalent. Of course. Picasso serves as a metonymy for the African artist's relationship to modernism and a reflection of his place in the hierarchy of artistic competence and genius. In the second panel of the painting, the ambiguity of the rela­ tionship is further explored. with Picasso no longer an antecedent, but a contemporary. Here, the two artists are now depicted on equal footing, walking side by side down a zigzagging path, clutching beneath their arms white canvases that reveal the partial features of African-mask like heads, reminiscent of one of the faces in Picasso's generative painting Les

Demoiselles d'Avignon (1907). What is even more significant about this image is the positioning of the artist and Picasso at the crossroads of two cultural traditions and aesthetic archives. Behind the two artists is what appears to be the verdant greens of an African village (the site of tra­ ditional African art) and before them lies an open gate leading into the museum of modern art (the site of artistic modernity.) Samba and Picasso are both represented on the threshold of the museum; they are crossing the road separating the village and the museum's entrance, seemingly exiting the old and walking into the new. After this pair of associations with Picasso in the preceding two panels, the third panel shows Samba, out on his own, mingled in a crowd of Africans, Asians, and Europeans in front of the plaza in Beaubourg, at the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris. Undoubtedly, we know that this scene represents that moment of gathering of international artists for the exhibition Magidens de la terre, an exhibition in which Samba and several African artists gained their first European visibility, in what now appears both prosaic and nor­ mal. Whether this scenario announces finally, the long-delayed arrival of the African artist in the scene of historical spotlight is debatable. In fact. Samba leaves no doubt about his ambivalence, through the other language, text, in which his paintings signify. In the beginning of the

I S.. OMl tmmor "Th• fbstcdonLII Conste!la· IN.I IOfflf tlgntu.dt 1w bttn anan.terl thtrt. • See ll<NI tmu,mpo,a,y All in a Stilt of l'tnn,nont Tm• Janhtuu Jahn, A fflsta,y of li«J.AjriC'IJJI Uttrallne, llllOA, ,. AnllllOoltts ofArt and Qi/wrt: Hodtrniry. tnns. OOver Coburn and UrsulJ ~lubwger {London: ~11)'. Con/""potan«ity, od. Tmy Smith. f•btr, 1968). 265-266. Okwui Emrtior. llill!C)' Condee (Durham, 11.t.: Duh 8. Attording to neoUbtril macro,eonanric policies, UMtr11ty l'rlSI. 1008), 207-234, SAi's prescribed I.he remov.l of tht stat, ., an im• 2. Ste flilnti F-n·s duslc Hay, ·0n N>llONl porunt actor in I.he production and cirrulation of Cultnrt: In t:mmo,. Jbstco/ama/ Consttnaoo11., goods and capital. Once lllis oa:umd. llllWl lllort• 38S-393. ages itlllSS all spheres of production occur1'd, not 3, lkht O!ctb. Art In Dtwlapmtnt: A N,g,non Per, the lwtof whldl was In the nttworlcs of tnow1edge IPffll.... ed IAQol, Grltr Lambtn (lfuoo, N19tda: of wruch irtlsti<: production was a pan. By cltJMnd. Oocu11tnli110n C.ntre, ~ lrudtuto: HmnupoUs. Ing that African countries who rtteive financial ,s­ Minn.: Afncon ~ Cultural C.otn, 1912).1. - nom mu\ulattral institutions such., oo 4, Ste Ucht Obke'1 &hon -y. "Nitnril Synthosu: ind World Bank adopt polioo such as tht <fttalu•· 111 Obkt, Arr In O..r/JJpm,n~ 2. for• lull disawlon lion o! currtndes against the dollar; lifting of import of tht lfflhttle ond historical lmpUcatlons of 11atu­ and •:rport restrictions; rertl<MI ol price c.ontrols on ri1 Synthw" and the e'IOtutlon of lilt An Society basic commodities; suppression of state suhsi,!j6 for group In tht dMlopment of postcoloru,.I c.onttmpo­ •~public institutions; adoption of polki!$ of expGn-led ruy Ill In lliCJtria. lff Chiu Okflct.Agulu, "Nigtrlan u

growth; ~~•atlution of state assets suth as ~ Art In tli, lndependonct Decadt, 19S1-19W (PhD upublic utiUti6, ra,1roads, and m,erali:tation of fi.. dlss,,utJon, Emory Unhtmty, 2004). be

nandil nwlrets: and the introduction of frrt marlctt s. ro, •n mensivt dlsawlon or th• fierce d•bates M

syslfms, infrutructures that ""re •lready lettering surrounding IUCh postcolonlal recontHIUIUZitlon of It

c.ollapsed. Ovtr the last deadt, sodil $deotists •nd Afrfm lHthttk thoughll developed around It.role thKOno111ists have been aiatyiing the effects ol SAPl df 0.bl, &et IIWlbftll Ann ~,ney, In S.nghar's waand the Impact on African hum,n and social eapiut. Shod,,,,, Art, Polit/a, and tht AWinHia,dl 1n S.negal leSee Giles Mohan. £d Brown, Bob Milward, and Alfred 1961>-1995 (Dur~m: Duke University !ms. 2004). ~- ~ -WITUams. Structuro/ Adjustment: n.eo,y, toPrac- 6 S.. 11111 £bong, "Negntude: Bet..,..,, lu,k and !l'11<11 and fmpotts_(London and New York: Routledge,flo9: s.n,gileM Cultural ldtology and the 'tcolc de m2000) and Thandika Mkandawi!t and Charlts C. Solu• O.W; In Suson VOgfl. Ajrico Dcplort,: 20th C4rttury hedo, Our Continon~ Our Future: African Pers{l«tiv,s on A/r11:tJn Art (ff~ York: C.nttr for Arrie,n An, 1991) otStrudllra/ Adjustment (Dakar: CODESR!A, 1999). 193-209. ' s..

onalso the ·structural Adjustment Programs• entry in1 Cluriu, Adlth,, Hop,, ond tmp,d,menu: s.ltcted we tht ·c..mprlation· section of this book .

£,soy, /Nfw York: Doubleday. 1989), 24. Soyinka his t~9. Achfllt Mbtmb<, and Janot Roit111An, 'figum oJ bftJI Cf'IOlerl V>rlously on what be said mclly at the Clithe. Subjttt. in Times of Crisis,· in 1/ndtr Stig,: Fou, 'ICon!J),18 Conltrtnrt in 1962 concenung Negritude. African Freetown, Johannesburg, In 1 a11,~ Kinshasa. :

96S. at illotlwr eonlortntt In tngw,d, ht of. Lagos, ed. Okwui En~u,~ eul. (Stuttgut: Hatje lertd • cliribcatlon of his Jtatement: 1 wid: 'A tiger no.Cantz, 2002). 99-126. don ..,,,ds:

not •

p1odiim his tlgntude. be poUOCU: In othe, ley IO.

fo•.•:ec•nt Mbtmbe and Roitman, 'Figurts of the Subject."

IJ9tr d(lfS not rtand in u,., fOttst llld say: (N1 ~tique oltw 99. SAP,,,.. Dambisa lloyo. .. ll90s'. Whtn JOI! (>ill where tht ~ 1 ...tJced Ru Dtod A1d. Why Aid u not ltbtking and HIIW 1'lr1t ,s

btlore. l'Oll lff the slr'4eton nl lhe dllik,r YoU ~ 0 tor Bttte, Woy for Afria, (How York; Farrar, Sinus, •nd •

Ill

.

22 I Chapter 2

. h d the question· "oui mais... ce musee d'art modeme, tnptych, e pose · ' .

. . t ,. and in the last panel a speech bubble emanating n'est-11 pas racis e. ' from inside the Centre Pompidou, declares: uBravo !'occidental.

1 Bravo le

cubisme! Notre musee est tien." . This tri tych and the carefully inscribed texts are telling examples of

the compt!ty of the position of a-eontemporary African artist in rela­ tion to so-called traditional African art and modem art ~ead of seek­ ing a complete rupture with "traditional" Afric".11 art, Samb~ respo~d_s by

positioning hlmself in simultaneous dialogue with pr~-colomal~n. colonia1 modernity, and the ambivalence of postcolorual moderruty on grand narratives of art and cultural traditions. Qu~I avenirpour notre art? could be called a reflexive painting, in that it so nchly demonstrates the idea behrnd..M~notion of ~rendre. Here, Samba stages what one might call a~_!_r~Un the.discourse of modem and contem~o~ art. in which Quel avenir pour notre art? becomes a postmodern pamting.

Similarly, Beninois artist Romauld Hazoume's assemblage sculptUies de­ ploy ironic reworkings of the notion that authentic African art consisted solely of masks and ritual sculptures. Hazoume transforms discarded plastic jerry cans (emblems of the period of SAPs when scarcity and the shortage of resources required creative readaptation of materials) into collages fashioned in the image of masks. Contemporary African artists like Samba and Hazoume thus proffer a discourse pointing to the forms of hybridization common to most projects of contemporary art. 1n t1us engaged inquiry, the artist's bifurcated relationship to African and mod­ em identity is questioned. This discourse also reflects a critique of the binary line often drawn in African politics between tribe and nation; which is given a further twist in situations where secular ideology seeks to subsume all other identities. Each of these many discourses (between colonial and postcolonial modernity, between postcolonial utopia and re­ alism, between transnationalism and globalism) was incorporated in the ever-proliferating strategies and discourses of contemporary African art.

Giff)Q)I, 2009). 1984 • A'lfon,"' U. no. 3 (F.lml.ary 191S) '1 SI 11. Mike Davis. ftanrt of Slums (London: Vtno. and Willi&a lllbill and 1hmlW lt:evili., -i.ttm: 2006), 155.

0n 11on,x LIWJfl lr4wl 011tr.hrt u- AtlFtffll n 12. Ernest Gornbdch. Tllo Story ofArt (London: Pfw. no. 6 (11,y 19'S): 63•71 riw ~ns litn. 1 llmlw don Press, 1950; rev.•nd exp.. II" ed.. 2006). 21. debltt "'°"'()il!IH tllt uhllauon ~ • 1, 13. Ste pr~ to the liut tditian m Gombrich, J7r« t"" Ilffl) It tht Cesitrt l'lomjidou, Pim. whm it Story ofArt. 2006, 7.

&lio. lllldoublfdly lmplnd bJ lnmilmJ:III. ml bop- 14. Ste Ttrry Snuth. What ls Cant,mporal)' ArtJ (Chi­

1119 to otta • arwodal - to lhf ~ c.go. IU.: Onivmity of thlCllgo Prm. fortbeom!ng and f"'l)lllln ol 11011-Wat,m lrt. ~ 11t2009).

isu. rllhn th.an •trllNI•objocu. 1'ft. In &\lla:n w'.111 IS. Ste William Rubin &nd Xlrt VUllfdot fds th; modmrlst cb&unctii:ms btt- Uw ·,,, [IUl)JINll 111d•p,;m,civism· in 2otlr CtntW)' Art: Alfurrry

the -·Cwopw. u,, cuut~ of .lugidnu dmtTn'bal and th• HDdtrn (New York: Museum of Modtm to l\lgllbghl a,ppo,,dly .U-Wlglu Alria:i 11t1SUArt, 1984). Rthor tll.r, SO<ilJ,d ltidnmc.slJJ Umtd-rt,d

1.6. In ~ months foUDTliiig the l'n11ti1MD11 nlribl• Wt11fflliud-.utiltl •bo """ uon •~ pe,ttiwd t.1 bnotI.he Must11m of Modem An, thert followed

or lftilntd, and thtrtfoi. rte«ted I man, ~ . te~ve reviews aru1 ducussions the uhlbl­

UIIC'OmrptNI irloi ol thril otbtmaa. ~ -OU ~ on rn the mojor •rt m,gatln,s. It wu. rlffdlas to Nus.Olhffl'~• r>rirrlra:6.Spedal1-,y, •n trnl)<)IUnt turning point In tht rtl\«tion.s 1990. rltdiatNI ,p,c!liQIJy to Ult 1.au,s iddl-4twffJ\ lh• valots 6pou,ed by tht principil mu• iboYt.

um o! modern an ,ruj the t\hnograph,c Ubenies 17 could htncelorth I.au · Johams Filliar>'s In r,latlon to an from now-,~ 0th,,. b An­

lhropolosy H.a1u lu Ob,«t \N,w YDft: CotllJll!ue non-Western eanan. MoHXs c:untorlal poc{tion Uruwnrty Plea. lff)). rtsrWn$ a d.ulic: 11,rdy ofs strenuously challenged by p10111inent schows

adin~ ~o a debate between tho uhlbitu,n cu,a'. l PMl10rllftlon ht Cills lht dfnial o1 COfniMu In ethnogriphic wnllng.r, WdUam Rubin and Kirk Varnedot and the cntic 18. Hons &tiling's INlls coamns noo differsomas McEvilley, whos, critlcbm of the txhlbition tnJt<tones In the ltlf-<onctpUon of cmumpo­ a scathing review In Ariforum 111A9uint inspired

ated counttr•ttsponsos. In addition. rary thert &rtlstl: rn he damod that ~rt the first. w,th tht ldVlnt d her ~rlous_ ~n~ons on the aesthotk prilid Its ~ contmlpoQIJ Wulffll

which Pnmm,.,,,,, the exhibition and ~ tp artist$ Wlllttd to be ~ to •>aid blYq re deplo•-• ,= 1 ~-ti •nn their 110tk flUlfd only n ,.,. on to non,Wmtm, SO•alltd iC'Cllrdiat u, Wuum dm!· b•I art; ~or reviews of ~ exhibition. Stt James ~I tiad1t1on: on thtothtr ~ llllfl·"1stffll lrtlSIJ

fford, Hlstori., of the Tr!b<l .nd ·•· ~mu. ol nlariubon cl A --m."M u •• •tllnognphk ida&ity

_m•n~ 7}, no. 4 to one ( ; 164-177; and Yves• bteou post-wwc_ So on Apn11985) ffll. Uw

arn Bo": ~ l'tJISff Saovago: Art rn Am« bunltn o( the Wtsttm lltrSt ,r,s- 11,out bN. llllf 4 (Apnl 198S): 178-189, Set ilso Thom.u""" 7_3. on irlOlh,r.. th, non-W..tom artist - contffllld . '1>oetor Lawyer lndlln Ch' 1• McEvil­ With tht ld,,a of the II(!, U..t II U,. ~thor. a.\ting I ovembtr 1984)· ,._ Alt/iln,m 23, no. 3 1

• - 61 , fo"

r rtSpGl\SeS, ·

W""·- Nltlitnt - P"""tNI In his lectmt "tcmtn,po­ bin and kirk Varnedot Tho ,.. .....,., rasy All and th, ~ u,, Global ._ • ,• 0n 'Docto I -- • Illa$ )',e[Y!\lef, "kt• of• eonr. .-,~.. 111 ..,.. pan • t -•1<1 lndJ,n Chitf: 'J'ri , lffl<'f. - kt C1ld •lw x~--. lllld 11

20" Cffltury An ll tht M llllUVIJtn V&tbn City 13-IS Docaob., l006 ~IUIII tlw IUOWII of Modem Art In

SOOth ~"' tht v,uan "-ms.