DISCUSSION 1O INITIAL ARTS

Chapter 3 Networks of Practice: Globalization, Geopolitics, Geopoetics

Between Art and Life: Spectacle of the Everyday The central focus of this chapter is the rol~ o~balization1n the

emergence of networks and discursive circuits that became central to the development and visibility of contemporary African artists in the last decade of the twentieth century. Before we explore some of the rea­ sons for this emergence, however, it is important to underline the fact that, until very recently, contemporary African artists lacked visibility in the international arenas of artistic reception and within the regimes of historical discourses of artistic modernity. A general account of con­ temporary art during the early 1990s reveals a shift to more heterodox methodologies of historical engagement, in which the substantive theo­ retical models of postcolonial thought and references were embraced by critics, historians, and curators as tools of analysis not only of aesthetic

but also of ethical engagements by a host of artists positioned in dif­ ferent circumstances and circumscribed within specific ideological and social situations across the world. This, in tum, reflected the declining power of the Greenbergian accounts of artistic modernity, the claims of notions such as artistic autonomy, along with the waning influence of contemp01azy offshoots of these forms of historical orthodoxies. If the

_ Grel!J;!bergia,n)criticisms of art were based on the ideology of aesthetic decontamination, in the purification of art and voiding it of content or any reference to the real-~h was seen to collude with capitalist

-Consumerism and therefo e kitsch-a reverse, but determined contes­ tation of the meaning and ml:erpretation of artistic contemporaneity_

-sought to contaminate art, to render it as impure, hybrid, and deeply

entangled with the "spectacle of the everyday."' According to the modernist interpretation of artistic innovation, the

patently figurative and realistic paintings by such artists as the Congo­ lese Moke and Cheri Samba would have been anathema to the critical asceticism often adopted by historians in Greenberg's mold. And, like the questioning of such critical orthodoxies and the powers of their exclusionist commentaries, the idea of the nation-state as the authori­ tative arbiter of the proper and legal was as well placed under critical scrutiny. In addition, the erosion of cultural frontiers, the upsurge in the idea of border crossing as a strategy in cultural production, the emergence of postcolonialism and multiculturalism as theoretical para­ digms in artistic practice, and the rise of the global network of exhibi- tion systems- museums, biennials, art fairs, art schools, galleries, artist residencies-pointed toward the heterogeneity of contemporary artistic practices. Each of these shifts in the constitution of the global artistic sphere also witnessed the emergence of a new generation of intemation- , al curators hailing from outside Western Europe and North America. The appearance of curators from Africa, Latin America, Asia, Eastern Europe, and the Middle East also paralleled the creation of new exhibition sites, such as Istanbul, Johannesburg, Gwangju, Shanghai, Dakar, Manifesta, Site Santa Fe, Berlin, Sharjah, Liverpool, Bamako, Melbourne, and Asia- Pacific, in biennials and triennials that stand in direct competition with the dominant institutions of the Western establishment as arbiters of curatorial knowledge.

The rise in prominence of biennials as new circuits of exhibition opportunities for transnational artists should also be understood from the perspective of the historical transitions which made the creation of

some of the biennials possible. For example, the collapse of th ·et lhtlon in~ oincided with major historica transfo~ons an~

poliffcaf rea lignmenfs::Jhe Johannesburg {1995), Gwangju {1995), and Manifesta {1996) biennials were founded as direct responses to historical shifts in South Africa, South Korea, and Europe, respectively, at the end

of traumatic political eras in the 1990s. Frg_m_ the_ fall of the Berlin Waif

.J!!..l.?89 o the end of apartheid in South Africa in the early 1990s, to tbe defeat of dictatorship in South Korea in,_1987) the artistic networks of the biennial era experienced t he unleashing of diverse critical prac­ tices from localities once routinet[ excluded from international exhibi­

tions before 1990.J~orientatioh of curatorial selection to include wider spheres of practice would become a boon to the traf\5formation of\ contemporary African art;\from the ethnographically dominated view of

its exhibitions to a reformed perspective centered on the work of Afri­ .£!.n artists as individuals. In <@apter one, we discussed this shift in rela­ tion to th~nsion between the ethnographic museum and the museum of art. In chapter two we concluded with the move from authorlessness tp autho~hip as part of the shift from colonial criticism to postcolonial reflexivity.

While this tension gave great fillip to contemporary African artists in t he expansion of opportunities into museums of art and global exhi- bition circuits, however, it did not mean the disappearance of curatorial exclusions of these artists from major exhibitions. Instead, that tension often highlighted the dichotomy between artists from wealthy countries and those from less resource-capable regions. 112 this equation, other issues-such as race, ethnicity, gender, identity, multiculturalism, and _po stcolonialisin=::-were._as unportant in the discourses in which artists were presented as were any ideas about aesthetics. As a direct result of tile dismantling of the ideological border between East and West, and as new technologies eroded tightly controlled gates on the national frontiers of information, the control of curatorial authority which had

earlier concentrated power in the museums and institutions of Western democracies was, in turn, called into question. The inclusion of an art- ist's work in museums of art or in biennials did not so much reorient the dynamic of power, control, and authority, as much as it illuminated the paradoxes olihe._gloha~stic realll!:.._Yet, a direct cons!quence of structlU_ai.andinstitution~ irnbalanc~ etween arbstsrrom the so-called First, Secona, and Third Worlds, did provide greater impet~

to t he possibility of the redistribution of artistic visibility in.new .Qf!­ center locations. These issues, among others, form the focus of how we will t_ry to situate contemporary African art in the last decade of the _ twentieth century and the first decade of the twenty-first.

Disorientation and Regimes of Redistribution By now it is possible to add that one of the m~ features of t~

networks of confemporary art today-in fact a fundamental c racter- istk of all types of art which are considered contemporary, regardless - of where tne artist is based-is their simultaneous existence within the ~bal sphere.Jly this we do not mean that all art is global in the same sense or is presented to various audiences in the same way, especially in relation to mediating circuits and scripted platforms such as muse- urns, recurring temporary exhibitions, publicity, and the art market; but that contemporaiy ~i global in some fashion, in that it is no longer strictty-isola1ed in regiona styles or along unbreachable lines between the mainstream and the margins, center and periphery. The gl~ al con-

di~ ontemporary art in which contemporary African art is deeply unbficated could be understood along the formulation that the French plritosopher, Jacques Rancier calls "distribution of the sensible." He

e~iatestfils idea in this way: ~ c~ll the distribution of the sensible the system of sell-evident fa.cts of sense perception that simultaneously discloses the existence of something in common and the delimitations that define the respective parts and positions within it. A distribution of the sensible therefore

establishes at one and the same time something common that is shared

Chapter 3 \ 23

d 'tions is based. This apportionment of parts an pos1 . and eidUS1ve_part.§- . d forms of activity that detemune

~'-tribution of spaces, times, an d ·ts If to n•rtici- on a,.... . . thin in common \en s I e """w th ery manner in which some g . this distribu-

e_v d ·11 what way various individuals have a part inpatJon, an 1

oon~ these line(.Rancier lays Qut a concise critical objective that, we b th delimits and enlarges the locus of contemporary

want to argue, o f contradiction between African art. It shows us precisely the absence o. . l Afri .... as

d li "t -tradibona can "'"' the idea that previously sought to e m1 sth ti"c struc· arts of the two ae eanta onistic to contemporary African • of

tur~as separate spheres of artistic engagement. Or of those fohrmstt . d · fart-that once soug 0critique-qua the decontaminate View O • b labe-

nutigate the force and originality of contemporary African artd y . ling it underdeveloped or mimetic of traditions of Western ~o e~~~ - thus perpetuating an exclusionist, stereo~ical ~derstanding of t e artists' complex artistic experiments and innovations. .

The attempt to even formulate a space, such as _one called con art in which conditions strategies, networlcs, andtemporary African , ' . • th

institutions are delimited, is part of Ranci~re:s l".1ger dis:uss1on ase e politics of aesthetic. These politics, to our thmking, are ins~parabl from the attempt to forge a platform, to delineate a t~eoreti~a\ and empincal horizon of something in common among African artists on the one hand, and between those artists and their peers globally. I!!LJpace, an!l.ne~orlcs of activities in which African artists work today are part of the evolving aesthetic politrcs of the contemporary, namely, ~ow given practices, originating from diverse spaces, stru~red by diff~r~nt .esthetic predilections, governed by divergent mecharusms of mediation, translation, interpretation, and supported by agendas of identification or non-identification ground our understanding of contemporary art glo­ bally. This discursive diversity-the disorientation of monolithic trajec­ tories and homogenous paradig~is perhaps, what the French curator ~ critic Nicolas Bourriaud fers to as the a/termodern, in which he

enunciates a deterritorialized conception of contemporary art, one that 1s no longer bound to an intrinsic or foundational point of origination. This idea is, of course, not a new one, being as it is a restatement of the theoretical arguments of postmodernist and postcolonial thinking that each sought another type of delimitation, namely undoing the grand narratives of European enlighten~t and universalist spirit, and mod­ ernist totalization of history. Rancier~ notion of the politics of aes­ thetic, insofar as the distribution of the sensible is concerned, emanates from the -delimitation of spaces and times, of the visible and invisible, of speech and noise, that simultaneously determines the place and the stakes of politics as a form of experience.-• This view is very well in con­ cordance with Terry Smith's shaping of the idea of multeity (of things and practices all occurring at the same time in multiple locations) in his theory of contemporaneity. Dipesh Chalaabarty offers another insight toward this expanding interpretation of history with the notion of the heterotempora\1 (multiplicity of temporalities) in the construction of the experiences of modernity. Giorgio Agamben interjects that "Contem­ porariness is, then, a singular relationship with one's own time, which adheres to it and, at the same time, keeps a distance from it.1•Fina\ly, with specific reference to artistic practice, Ranciere concludes: "Politics revolves around what is seen and what can be said about it, aro~d who has tlie ability to see and the talent to speak, around the properties of spaces and the possibilities of time:•

The Drifting Boundary: Migration and the Discourse of Displacement

- w, "'''"""'th,;:~"";"·,...ra," coat,m,o,a,y Af. ri'4!l ~ is oncemed, in se~f. the_ihysicaCmoveme!!!Jf artists

/ and ob1ects of art.. and th una~~ofideas and con:-" 1

cepts. These two sense~ reflect the fuodalITies,and m~chanisiiu of\xten­ sion, distension, and boundary breaking (to be in one's owntim~nd keep a distance from it, or to constitute an artistic paradigm around the properties and the possibilities of time.) Therefore. the question of con­ temporary African art today strikes us as inexorably tied to the dialectic

does not exist any network-outside of the historic African diasporic community in Europe and the Americas-of expatriate Africans that can be said to have molded itself into a visible cohesive community and that distinctly fashions itself as such.) As Abdessemed's work shows, for artists negotiating this split between home and exile, place and place­ lessness, a further dialectic between politics and poetics, ethics and aesthetics, identity and subjectivity, citizenship and power, continues to create new forms of critical meditation. These represent different re­

gimes of artistic conceptualization and modes of subjectivization of the fraught relationship between art and life, politics and aesthetics, images and representation, and hence the preponderance and proliferation of figuration and quasi-documentary modes in the work of such artists as Marlene Dumas, Gazbia Sirry, Penny Siopis, Tayo Adenaike, Bruce Ono­ brakpeya, William Kentridge. With migration at the center of the artists' active memories of territorialization and de-territorialization, yet anoth­ er realm of engagement could be discerned in the relationship between geopolitics and geopoetics. We call this realm continentalism.

Cosmopolitanism, Transnationalism, and Continentalis Between the categories of 1denti~ hnicity, religion, nation lies

the..spac~ of-cosmopolitan ~frican identity.91'his identity is lo~ts.. stance and trans~ iriits traversal al cultural border-t_ Cosmopoli- ~sco se is generally formulated ~cvu-recourse to race, ethnicitr, national origin, retig1on, or language. It is 'a.way olbeing_at ho~. so to speak, not in the world, per se, but living among others, drinkin.9.~ it were, from the stream of diveJ'.Sa experiences; in short, osmopolitan a.is­ course"ensts in proximity with difference. By no means do we ethe idea as "anything goes" rootlessness, but rather as a tolerance for condi­ tions of multiple temporalities. We take the definition of who a contem­ porary African artist is in a similar manner. The lines are not stratified into normative distinctions of belonging and exclusion, but around shared and aleatory patterns of identification. Much of this thinking was common to cultural debates among African intellectuals and artists

in the post-indeQendence period between cosmopolitans and counter­ cosmopolitans. Two of the best nown proponents of this contempor~ characterization of African cosmopolitanism are the Nigerian and Con­ golese poets Christopher Okigbo ancLTchicaya U'tamsi, whose poetry is dotted..with references to Lorca, Rimbaud, Mallarme, Homer, Virgil, Eliot, Pound, Hopkins, Senghor, Yoruba Oriki, etc. In a now-famous incident at the First Festival of World Negro Culture in Dakar in 1966, Okigbo refused to accept the award for first prize, commenting that he was a poet, not an African poet. In a letter to the literary scholar Sunday 0.

Anozie, Okigbo w~tes: "About Dakar. I did not go. Did you? lfound the whole idea of a negro arts festival based on colour quite absurd.) did not enter ant worlc either for the competition, and was most surprised when I heard a prize had been awarded UMITS. I have written to reject it."10 Moreover, according to Anozie, Okigbo himself suggested instead that U'tamsi was the better poet than he and therefore more deserving of the prize if awarded purely on the grounds of poetry. 11 The festival in Dakar was certainly an instance-like the conferences on African and diasporic African literature organized by Senghor and Alioune Diop in 1956 and 1959 in Paris and Rome, respectively-an attempt at the worlding of African aesthetic production.

So--while artists may celebrate freedonrni.ssociated with'gl~m and transnationalisrn, such broader participation, detached from the markers of nationality and identity, is not without its contradictions. For it seems that, at the very moment when African artists could present themselves as part of a denationalized global field of artistic production, their'.:Africanness is re~. Nevertheless, it is important to explore issues of uneven development in the conditions of artistic prac­ tice between African artists residing in Europe and North America in re­ lation to those residing in Africa, as a consequence of sAfs:rn the last two decades, as African artists increasingly migrated anas~ttled in the West, avenues J opportunity were seen to have opened.fox them profes­ sionally, tJ!ereby widening their access to a variety of resources s h as education, exhibition systems, grants. media, technology, and collectors.

Bolstering th.is access was the sense that entering a broader discursive

circuit of international practice affected the production values of the work of these artists, and ~vided(!!_ansnational African)rrtists, residing in the West more advantages over those living on the continent. Work­

ing in the West also conveyed discursive visibility. In recent years, as a response to this discrepancy in access, a kind

of ontinentalism and ~eful authenticity)has been noticed as art- ists and curators who live and work in Africa seek to reverse forms of cultural capital accruing to the perceived privileges d( "diasporic') nd transnational Africans working in the West. This new debate, in which authenticity is argued solely on the basis of being on the ground (but not necessarily being from a place) emerged exactly at a moment when contemporary art, and especially the art of African artists, had become globally visible through countless group and solo exhibitions. Especially of concern is the fact that very few of these exhibitions are ever seen on the continent, making contemporary African art a sort of privileged export, to be enjoyed only in the West. Some of these concerns have merit; but the reality is quite complex. And when treated with simplem­ indedness, a distorted picture takes precedence over the radical reshap­ ing of the field of contemporary art in general, in which contemporary African artists are playing an important part.

The issue of Eontinent~3E also be understood in geopolitical J terms, as yet anotllefform of resistanc-;, having to do with the con­ testation of '-°nteroporary African art being defined from the outside, cither by intimate outsiders qr diasporists with access to institutional .power. The seemin_g_ambivalence towards so-called diasporic Jifricans is one legacy/of SAP~z It compels a debate between those who stayed behind and suffered the deprivations of scarcity, institutional deficits, political marginaliution, and social invisibility, and those who left and supposedly enjoy the fruits of plentiful resources bestowed in the West. But fundamentally, the issue ot continentalisrn\is part of the politics of resources within artistic networks on the continent, deracinated by chronic official institutional deficit. By highlighting what seems to us a simplistic line between residents and expatriates, between natives and transnationals, continentalists and diasporists, we draw attention to issues of res~ control in framing h.£Y!.artists who build careers in Africa ar v.alorized,iand how different orders of authenticity are pro­ cluced by those who control not only resources but also wider access to

g!gbal networks. This circumstance, perhaps, makes African artists far more attuned

to the imbalances that define the current stage of globalization. It certainly points to how they are engaged with the world-making mecha­ nisms that today describe contemporary global, geopolitical, social, and cultural strategies. Against the backdrop of the large-scale global change that has witnessed the emergence of diverse postcolonial societies, in view of the wide-ranging social and cultural realignments taking place within many African societies, and in the wake of the globalization of capital and culture, it comes as no surprise that the circumstances of contemporary African art are marked by such dynamic and excit- ing processes of critical possibility. The creative ferment that this has unleashed is certainly a great boon to what is constantly underscored

throughout the different sections of this volume. What the economic and social conditions of the 1990s underscored

and made vivid is that mass migration not only produced massive insta­ bility in cultural and intellectual networks, it also illuminates the fact that migration's concomitant effects produced new cartographies and reordered the epistemological and artistic networks of contemporary African art, while also calling into question standardized perceptions of who is an insider and who is an outsider, who is a stranger and who is estranged, who is rooted and who is displaced. But as the work of con­ temporary African artists became more globalized, it revealed a bifur­ cated space of production and reception between artists who migrated to the West and those who stayed on the continent. It brings into sharp relief, and challenged the ideological systems that concentrated power in the institutions and markets of Western centers, while at the same time revealing a gate that showed the processes of decentralization

Chapter 3 \ 25

occurring as new scenes of artistic discourse were being constructed within Africa itself. Such changes are evident in such exhibition events as Dak'Art: Biennial of Contemporary African Art in Dakar, and Rencontres africaines de la photographie biennale (1994) in Bamako. The first dec­ ade of the twenty-first century, therefore, belongs to the visible effects of globalization which cemented the centrality of artistic practices for­ merly existing on the periphery of mainstream practices.

With these changes in the routes and networks of contemporary art and cultwe, this chapter, therefore, concerns the new situation in which contemporary African artists are working: the massive migration that took place m the 199Os and the globalization immediately following it. Since these developments, interest in contemporary African art has grown, requiring both historical and theoretical perspectives to grapple with its complex critical and formal conditions. The task at hand is to map the connections between African artists and the larger global pub­ lic sphere, as well as to examine the discursive circuits in which these artists operate. from local to global. national to transnational, conti· nental to transcontinental. The diverse affiliations, networks, circuits, routes. boundaries, and trajectories. etc.• in which the artistic activities are conducted, offer capacious spaces for this examination. Here, new situations of production reveal new artistic archives and extend the various artistic, cultural, and conceptual mechanisms that give rise to the landscape occupied by African artists living both on the continent and outside of it, from 1980 to the present. To come to terms with the disparate practices drawn from all regions of Africa, as well as from Eu· rope and North America, it is important to position the understanding of contemporary African art in this larger historical context.

ABend in the Road: Geocultural Diversity and Aesthetic Hetero­

geneity Like any survey concerned with the contemporary art of a given

geographic area, this book is bound to raise questions about the efficacy and comprehensiveness of its account, about who is included versus what is left out. Some of the commentaries will wrestle with the catego­ ries and historical reasoning that underpin the analysis. Such questions and commentaries are essential and necessary. They are the serious measures on which a field of practice can be thought, and they will de­ tennine how the analysis of its critical content can be articulated. We welcome them, not so much because this book organizes concrete historical points of rereading contemporary African art, but because it is an attempt to elaborate an uneasy synthesis between the ethnographic and the art historical. Therefore, we tend to think of our critical pro­ gram, not as an absolute caesura but nevertheless as a break from earli­ er an~lyses of contemporary African art, but instead as a methodological bend m the road, around which a new comer is turned.

With a continent such as Africa, and its manifold differences shifting ~olitical currents, and unstable cultwal frontiers. even ~ore complex ~sues become part of the bargain, especially if the focus on geograp~c specl_flcity shifts to geocultural diversity and the artistic het­ erogeneity that it entails. Over the past thirty years the production of c~~tempor~ African. art has been shaped precisely by the wider recog­ nition of pomts of eptStemological rupture and discursive convergences ~uch as ~e ~ave detailed in the first two chapters, along with the recent LSsues h1~hlighted by the processes of migration, cosmopolitanism transna~~nalism, ~nd globalization. Though the current geopoliti:al c~mpos1ti~n of Africa_was formed between the late nineteenth and rrud twentieth c~ntunes, ~ccording to the various spheres of influence co~po~ed by ruling colomal powers, it is nevertheless axiomatic that Africa LS not one unified entity but rather a bundle of cult llisi ' many competing

wes, a ~o on of multiple temporalities, national frontiers politi- cal bo~nd~es, an~ linguistic particularities that have been in flux for centunes. _Given this b~ic dimension of Africa, the identity of contem­ porary African art and its many cultwal spheres cannot .d · m any sense be perceive m one sweeping, singular overview. Instead we surv "t h as a tapestry of overt . . • ey i ereod . appmg, contingent, and incommensurable spaces of Pf uction whose features change and blend into new aesthetic systems

26 IChip\n 3

and artistic cultures as they interact with and absorb diverse influences. both in situations of engaged exchange and in critical resistance.

Contemporary African art varies, however not only according to this

logic of diffusion and reception based on historical factors, but. als~ by means of the diverse traditions and aesthetic archives from which it derives. As a result. the art which is labeled contemporary African art becomes precisely discontinuous due to the nonuniversal and nonlinear nature of the development of the arts in different parts of the conti­ nent. These include the diverse colonial legacies (Anglophone, Franco­ phone, Lusophone, and Arabophone) in which they are grounded; the receptions and experiences of modernity that delimit distinct aspects and textures of cultural life-between indigeneity and coloniality, lo· cal and foreign, tradition and modernity. One remarkable part of the African experience is the cultural and ethical entanglement reflected in what Ali Mazrui characterized as Africa's "triple heritage" of Islam, Christianity, and indigeneity.13 This tripartite space means, for instance, that the cultural traditions and archives of Northern Nigeria-with its rich Islamic heritage and with its centuries of trans-Sahara trade and exchange-reflects a distinctly different frame of cultural contact than that of Southeastern Nigeria. Or consider, as well, the differences be­ tween the Southern and Northern Sudan. Questions of race, ethnicity, religion, language, political institutions, civil society, and educational systems play no less a role in defining the remarkable diversity of the African continent, rendering a map composed more on jagged spatial contiguity than seamless temporal continuity. From North Africa to Southern Africa, East, West, and Central Africa, modern African identity has been profoundly shaped by many encounters, points of interaction, processes of exchange, acculturation and deculturation; the continent has been transformed in diverse ways by colonial encounters and global movements, by intra-African exchanges and pan-African solidarities. Each of these dimensions of the modem and contemporary African expe­ rience, in tum, have been organized according to other spheres of influ­ ence, social and ideological allegiances; and from them contemporary postcolonial institutions and identities have emerged.

The overlapping narratives of colonial and postcolonial processes that regulated these structures make obvious the case that contem­ porary African subjectivities are formed by far more complex, deeply entangled relationships. For instance, contemporary cultural and artistic productions tend to respond to multiple references through the specifi­ city ~f.local discourses, but also in response to cosmopolitan artistic conditions. The forging of symbolic, conceptual. and formal languages of art, often occurs as a result of the aleatory structures of reception and the development of aesthetic models, along with an attraction and sometimes resistance to either local or foreign artistic paradigms. As a c~nsequen~e._ cont~mporary African art as an outcome of the globaliza­ tion ~f artis~c regunes is imbued with a certain sense of radical alterity, both. m relation to forms that may be deemed indigenous, i.e .. •Afri­ can, . and to those understood as foreign to it. Contemporary African art, like all contemporary art across the world ft..;... . th bet . fl ' CAU.., m e gap . ween m uences and zones of exchange. This compels the adoption of a

strategy of combative ambivalence towards any mast th . d fin d artistic t d"ti er em e e as

ra i on. Consequently, what emerges as contemporary is an art

:~::::pleme_n~ and cit~ti~n, set between diverse arduves: between ~ traditions; set m its own invented traditions· colonial and

postcolo~l, local and global. regional and transnationai diasporic and cosmopolitan spaces. •

Because of this strateg f b .ti "t YO com alive ambivalence. upon close scru- ny. ~ appears that one underlying model shared by the artists h

work IS featured in this book is a . w ose qualities embody auth ti type of aesthetic doubt about what

en c contemporary Afri doubt is a boon to the fo . can art. Tlus aesthetic

nnu1ation of this b 00k · h attempted to engineer a h listi. . • mt at we have not

0 c continental artis · grand narrative. Contempora A ·ca . tic style shaped by a attempt to link different _'Yodifri_ n Art since 1980, therefore, is an

eplS es m postcolorual Afri • · opment. It does not seek to nify . can artistic devel· u or summarize· th • re ects an account of thirty ra er it consc1ously fl

years of art-malcing that lS spatially

contiguous rather than seamless, temporally multivalent, discursively polyphonic, and strategically heterotopic. Again, emphasis is brought to

bear on the degree to which all these activities have occurred between the transformational and idealistic period of the post-independence years of the 1960s, the self-reflexive interregnum of the '7Os, the cri­ sis of the '8Os, the migrations of the '9Os, and the globalization of the twenty-first century.

The task we have set before us, therefore, is not to reconcile these various historical periods into one unified, totalized, and universal vi­ sion of artistic culture, but to present its fragments, its discontinuities, its elliptical narratives. We do so, first, to illuminate those moments of cultural convergence and shared political conditions that help pro­

vide insight into how specific discourses and aesthetic languages have been developed; second, to review the works of art produced during this period; third, to explore the paths these works of art have traveled

out of the transitional cultures from late-twentieth-century Africa to the twenty-first century global stage. We have also mapped the artistic strategies, along with the ethical legacies that appeared in response to the complex political and historical shifts occurring throughout Africa in the 198Os. We examine the turn in the 199Os toward articulating the rupture with geography through open-ended forms of transnational and pan-African identification with Africa. Finally, we have explored the globalization of contemporary African art at the end of the twentieth century into this century, and the shifts in the receptions of African art during the last decade. Brought together, the view of contemporary African art represented during this period is distinctively multicultural, transnational, cosmopolitan, diasporic, and pan-African. It presents a view of practice that essentially denotes a geographic point, but departs radically from it and flows into other networks, maps fresh affiliations, and invents new imaginaries.

I . Wt hlvt borrowtd thlt pt,,- ftom tht Chlntst· Frtndl cnti< and C11Rto1 Hou lwuu ftom his uhi· biuon pn,JfCl ro, tht 10th Lyon Bitrualt (2009). S..: http://www.bi•nna\edtlyon.<0m/conttmporar· yut2009/ 2, JKqut$ lwl<itrt. l!tt l'bbrra ofMStMna. tnns.

Gabriti Rocklu11 (London and Now York: ConunuWR. 2004). 12. 3. N,,ow BowNud. Al!tnnodem (London: ~le

Publwung, 2009). 4, Sff lland~ro. 13. S T,ny Snuth, "T11t Conttmpo,.,,.,ty OuHtion." in Annnom,u of Art and G\iltuiw: Hodff71ity, lbstmo­ demrty. Cont1mporant1ty, ed. Ttny Smith, Okwur En>ttzor, Nancy Condtt (Dwhlm: Duk• UruvtRity Prtu. 2008). 9.

6. Diposh Chalmb>rty, preface to the 2nd ed., Pro­ vrOCJG!iZlng Eu.ropt: Jwtcolonial 1'1rought andHiJ!Ofi• mlDlfferr,n (Prinmon: Princotan Uniw,sjty Prtss. 2007). ml. 7. Giorgio Agambfn. What is an Apparatus? And Orb,, way,, tnns. David luluk and Sttplw, ~ dat~ (Palo Alto. C.lif.: Sunfonl Druftmty Pim. 2009), 41.

a. bnclro. n. 9. 11w Ghln.lWI plulosoplwr 1-Anthony Ap­ puh lw written a penetrating rtftt<tion on the idea of a,smopolltanism, uploring the ways in which A/nan <0smopobwusm SU9fS a now tthical Spa<t

beyond the ready-mad• issuts or trac!Jtion ml ••· thenboty. Sff lwame Anthony Appiah. Cosmapa/1- ta,aim: Etlua ,n a World ofSIIO"llflS (llew Yotk: w.

w. Norton, 2006). 10. For i.n ac<0unl or this inddtnt. see Sundiy o. Ano- Orristoplwr Obgbo: °""'"' RMton< (lltw York: Alrtcana Publislung Corpaallon, 1972). 21. 11. Anon,. Chri1toplwr Otigbo. zz. 12. Wt proh!1 to uw tht trrm 'truw1ationallsa" to dr!scnbt th• prtstnt sit11auon of Afri<;an iluug,ants living in the Wtst. but also to dJsnnguuh those Al· ricans from tht Bud Alw,tic Ahian clwpora that ..,.rged out of tht upontnct ofthe MjddJe Passlgo. FurtNrmore. tht ttrm tnnsn•CJonal bttter uptures the process by wluch ir:w,y Afnans move badr. and

forth bttwttn Afriu and tht -· btuust -1 Afrkan •migrants nwnliln suong familwl connK• tions with the <0ntin,nt, whtlh,, through romlt• tancts. second ho-. roguw IMl&il Yisits to the

contlnfllt. and portiapation 111 new ducursiw net·

works lncntiul dtbatt1 wrlhrn th• various rounlrits thty suppoMdly Ith. It -ms to us. at the mo""'nt whtn thousands of Abians dJe at .,.. elldl yu, while Uylng to ,each Euro~. that 1t is especially in· 1pp1opriatt to <0nfidtntly SU!l9ffl a different hamt or d""'1lng .,._ those who .- insidt tht <Onuntnt and thaw who lift tl..-where. A£ lhe MWS or thoir de1ths roaches us through th• meclia and intenYl:IOllal relitef orga,uzations. 1t becomes ...,. dtuer that many Ahiun =tnts an, still in tht plOC.SS or flOlcizin9 th• impact or SAP$. 13. Ali A Mwlli. l!tt Afncrz,ts; A Ttrpl« Htritogt (Boston: Litt... !t'DWII. 1986.

Chapter 3 I 27