M8 QUESTIONS ARTS

1

Introduction

Contemj,ora1y or modern?

Contemporary African ar t did not just appear from nowhere

towards the end ofthe colonial period, but people often see it that

way- as a response to bombardmen t by alien cultural forms or as

all outcome ofcolonialism, pure and simple: Africa 'Digesting the

'West'. But, in rcality,contemporary art in Africa has built through

a process of bricolage upon the already existing strutilires (Ind

scenarios on which the older, precolonial and colonial ge 1res of

African art were made. It is in this structural sense, and in

the habits and attitudes of anists towards making art, r .ither

thm1 in any adherence to a particular style, medium, technique or

thematic range, that it is r ecognizably 'African'.

vVhat this book descr ibes arc the nrnjor transformations that

occurred within African artistic practice as a result of t he colonial

incursion, with an emphasis on the period beginning in the 1%Os

with the transition from late colonialism to po litical statehood -

for most anglophone and francophone African colonies t his

occurred in the early I96Qs, but for the Portuguese-spe<1king

colonies it was in t he w,os and for South Africa as rcc(,ntly as

I£l[M•. \ ;\/hilc this is the same time-frame used to describe \Vestern

'contemporary' art, the reasons for the importance of the mid­

!950s to mid-l~l(;Os as a watershed decade are different - th is was

when poli tical independence was gained, when colonialism ,vas

cast offand when the enormous inte llectual and creative euphoria

which this engendered emerg·ed. T hus 'c:ontempornry' African art

is riu inte~sentially postcolonial in t erms of its dates, but just as

with 'contemporary' \Vestern ar t, it cannot be explained or even

described aderiuately without rdcre.ncl· to it s historical context.

for African art this history e11co111passes not only t he colonial

period (coinciding with the 'modern' period in the \ ;I/est), but also

m uch older kinds of ar tistic practice which in mr,ny parts of t he

continent have weathered colonialism and still exist today as

'contemporary traditional' art- masks, figurcsculptLire, weapons,

tools, ornamen ts, pottery, textiles arid architecture, to name only

thl, rtlaJOr art forms.

.9

In "\Vcstcrn ar t h istory, the term 'contemporary ' connotes the

art of the ptesenf and the recent past, often beginning with

Abstract Expressionism in the I950s, while the much broader and

more weighty term 'modern ' encompasses an ideological break

with academic practice ,,vhich crystall ized late in the nineteen th

century in France and the subseqlleflt rise ofan avant-garde art in

Europe and America with its various rt1ovements and localized

developments during the first half of the twent ieth century. In

African ar t, however, these terms of reference need to be reinter­

preted to fit African historical experience. A rrujor rnpture in

ar tistic practice occurred in both Europe and Africa in the late

nineteenth and early twent ieth centuries, but for different reasons.

T he change hi1ppened in sub-Saharan Africa not in response to a

small group of artist-intellectuals, but a8 a result of the coloniza­

t ion by European powers following the Berlin Conference of

1884- 8/5. At the same time, the irnpaet of Darwin's tl1eory ofevo­

lution had created the pl1enomenonof the natural history museum

and also a popular ideology which saw the African colonies as

opportunities for specimen-collecting. African sculpture, in its

early role as specimen, began arriving in France and Germany and

because of its anti-naturalisrn was assimilated into rm avant-garde

ideology which rejected academic formulas of representation. It therefore serves as a br idge between two different twentieth­

century art histories, played out on very different stag·es with

very differerll acmrs and audiences. The other impor tan t bridge

between these two art histor ies are the collectors and patrons,

who in both cases have been mainly vVesterne1·s.

The modern and the colonial

If modernism in \Vestern art refers to a quite specific historical

interlude which, in critic Clement Greenberg's famous phrase, linked the newly emergent avant-garde to the bourgeoisie hy 'an

umbilical cord of gold', in Africa it has been far more encompassing,

but less par ticular. T here 'the modern' came hand in hand with

colonialisrn, and is closely identified with the imposition of social

and economic t ransformation based upon colonialist theories of

'improving the native'. Sociologist Anthony Giddens defines moder­

nity as a new kind ofeivilization which has swept away all previous

social orders. To Marxian cultural theorists, modernity is the

'action-hor izon' ofa system ofglobal capitalism, and ideologies of

modernization are the tools of"\Vestern dominance through forms

such as colonialism. But to the typical African citizen, whether

artist, entrepreneur or ordinary farmer, modernity is a mixed hag,

10

2. Trigo Piula's, Matern;;, 1984. JSeS witty juxtapositiOns of E'l and commodity to parody a.'temptsat modernity. This ,.ind of visual pun requires a self­ :onscious distancingof the artist ",om both the traditional and the ~.ooern as practices.

containing hoth good things (education, medical care, consumer

goods)and bad (greed, corn1ption and excesses of power which all

serve to undermine traditional values). It is therefore something

to be sampled, but not nccessari.ly emhraced.

Sim il ;Jr ly, while Vi/es tcrn cultural theory asserts that global­

ization has created a world in which vast terri tories, including

both :C11rope and irn postcolonies, are interconnected through the circulation of g·oods, money and ideas, there are still rnany places in rural Africa where an artist can spend a productive lifetime

without conner.t ing with a global art market. In African cit ies such

JI

..._Nl.o,. ~11..,.._.·*-P>""l )14',C'II,.~ t0cAl~/).- (j-~."b0V',J,I

3. Gedewon, Cherche/Jbi, 1977. This ink drawing was intended as a talism~n which protects the client by swallowing up demons when it is invoked. It is named after the prayer which is inscribed in five of the twenty-seven panels outlined in black and red ink.

as l\airobi or Abidjan where linkages co global patronage through

galleries and cooperatives arc dearly 1·isihle, indi\'idual artists

still makL· choices about the a udiences to whom their work will

be directed. In this balancing an, local, national and trnnsnational

identities are determined not only through the , ·ariecies of

patronage artists arc ahle to attrnct, but by their points of

reference on the compass of the poMcolonial ,.,•odd. T he 011tpllt

of au African a rtist working in London or California is filtered

through a 1·ery difforenc el'cry<lay reality from char of a counter­

part in r,agos or at an c1·en greater dista11-:c. in an upcountry

village in the san1c natio11-srate. And as practising African artists,

tl,ey should all lay eq1rnl claim to our attention. 13ut art books

and catalogues arc written and read in Ne11 York and Los

Angeles. Paris and London, nut in upcountry African towns, ~nd

increasing ly the focus of cr itical attention ha~ come to rest on

12

1

those artists, transnational yet also African, who inhabit this

larger and distant art world. Fm· these diasporic Africans, versed

in the current debates of cultural theory, but also far from home,

curator Olnvui Cnwezor (l1imself a Nigerian intellectual living in

thi; USA} speaks ofthe tension between here and there, the 'seeing

eye' and the 'remembering· mind'. This dol1ble vi_sion is not a part

of the artistic experience for artists who have not migrated, and

for whom the most pressing issue is marginalization in their own

home conntries.

Theposlcolonia! and th.e postmodern

T he rmuority ofAfrican <1rtists havebeen aflccted deeply by the colo­

riia.l and postcolonial condition, most obviously in their continued

economic dc.pcndence on foreign or local European patronage.

But to rdcr to contemporary ar t exclusively as 'post.colonial' is to

deny it any deeper history and connection to what came before the

colonial incursion - colonialism in most African countries only

represents about sixty years OL1l of an art history extending back

at least two thousand years in some places. Admittedly, the colo­

nial era was a period of turbulence and very major change, but

arguably, it was no more important than other m,tjor historical

changes, s uch as the spread of 1petallurgy, the Islamic conquest

or the slave trade. T he network of social relations in which art­

making is implanted - the workshop, the apprenticeship system,

the deference to experience and authority - is in many ways still

similar to that which existed before colonialism, but with the

interesting addition of a colonial model of art edL1cation for elites

and their reaction to it , which since 1970 has come foll c;ircle back

to a newly found respect for precolonial modes ofpractice.

There is also thequestionofpostmodernity: how 'postmodern'

is contemporary African art? Above all, postmodernisrn presumes

a conscious awareness ofmodernis 11, its a<;<;omplishments and its

limitations.This consequently reduc;es the discussion to that small sector of the artist community in a position tootler a critique of

modernism, whicl1 is to say, those who have strived for and achieved

it, but found it wanting, those who have examin(!d it, found it irrel~

ev<1nt to their purposes and have cl1osen to bypass it in favour ofan

nlternative vision of the world, and fi nally those who, to quote the

curator Richard Hylton, critique it by 'wittily question[ing] the

linearity of history and identity' . Hylton was speaking of Yinka

Shonibare (see Chapter seven), a London-bow Yoruba artist, but

the same description could apply to Trigo Piula (b. 19.50s), who

lives and works in Congo-Brazzaville. In his painting ]Vlalema

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4. (opposite) John Gaba, Odeil­ E-Uiy (No. lJ. 1992. Although derived from muct1 Older mask genres, Ode-lay masks developed into a form or urbari Street theatre in Freetown, Sierra Leone, in the l 97Os, with youths' associations asserting rival claims to political legitimacy and territory through public performances of masks such as this one.

(1984-), a visual double en/endreon I,ongo images ofmater nal po,-l'er

and the ·magic of consumerism', imported evaporated milk t ins

and the face ofa European milkmaid become the icons of modern

Kongo motherhood. But given the very different modernities that

Afridm ar tists experience, their formulations of the postmodern

are bound to be sporadic and highly individual. finally, while the

postmodern as a condition continues to unfold, 'posnnodernisrn'

as a set of strategic practices was identified with the art of the

I~J80s in the \Vest. It is thC'rC'fore already 'historical' rather than

contemporary in a strict sense.

The Ghanaian scholar Kwame Anthony Appiah has asked, is

the 'post' in postcolonial the same as tl1e 'post' in postmodern?

T he answer is both 'yes' and 'no'. Many of the same philosophers

and cultural studies theorists who define modernity as the spread

of global capitalism also identify the postcolonial condition with

the postmodern, especially since modernity was seen to be the

engine that drove colonial ism. \.Vhile a tidy formulation, it ignores

the problem that there have been very differen t colonialisms, both

g·lobally and wi thin Africa itself In some, the sheer brutality of

early colonizing practices created an unbridgeable abyss between

colonizer and subject. In others {such as the Brit ish in Africa)

white cultural superiority was more subtly enforced through

the educational and social system. The result ,,,as a wide range

of postcolonia!ities once the Belgians, F rench, Gerrnar1s, British

and Portuguese packed up and left . rn n1ral locations, ,vhere most

Africans live, modernity itself only began to be a possible cul tural

choice in the postcolonial period, and has remained highly selcc­ ti,'e and fragmentary.

Therefore the most striking si111ilar ity between the postcolo­

nial and the postrnodern has been this very condition ofhybridity

- Samburu Warriors with spears and Christmas ornaments in

their hair, or educated lawyers and government bureaucrats

videotaping themselves in traditional pC'rforrnances in their own

natal villages. And as Appiah points out, both also share tl1e

cen tral premise of cornmodification of artwork and thc dcm1inance

of an international art market. On the o ther hand, he argues th~.t

much of African popular culture is uncritical of the seemingly

limit'less appetite for imported media and genres, and therefore

offers no critique ofeither colonialism or modernity. In tl1at sense, it is neither postcolonial nor postmodern.

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5. (above, left) Pende bl<1cksmith Ngoma Kandaku Mbuya has taken off his· shirt to work more freely on a mask (Thengu ya lukumbi) lor the boys' initiation. He is working with such quick assurance that t1is adze has blurred out of sight. Chief Kendc, who commissioned the work, hovers in the background. Note lhe pot of food between U1e two men. Ngoma •.voutd not begin until the chief had offered food and palm wine to 'encourage' him in his work. Ndjindji, Democratic Republic of the Congo. Pholo Z. S. Strother July 6, 1987.

6. (above, right) A colon ial period news agency photograph of the Pcnde sculptor Kesaya­ Ntambwe at work on the left while the European visitor M . R. Verly scrulinizes t11e work of an apprentice. Pende sculptors have produced art for both Pende and l':uropean patrons since the early colonial period. Ngonji, Congo, pre 1958

The newart map qf the continent

'All other things being· equal, the 11ew will arise where the old

simply docs not exist', that is, where it does not have to compete

with a tradition already in place. T herefore, since the primary

kinds of an production in the well-known sculpture-producing regions of\Vcst ,ind Central Africa continue to emulate or revise

older forms, many ofthe ne\.v genres ofcontemporary African ar t

have sprung up elsewhere. And al though, with a few exceptions,

the older types of African art originated in a social order wl1ich

was kinship-centred and based in traditional pat terns of authority, the new ones arc more likely to occur in urban contexts and be

lodged in an emerging class structure. The places where new art is

being produced in the g reatest variety and quantity therefore fall

into two categories: cities everywhere and several regions of the

continent which have not been m,1jo r sites of precolonial image­ making. Countries sLtCh as Zimbabwe, Senegal, South Africa,

l'l:enya and Ugar'1da that are seldom represented in museum

collections of tr itditional sculpture arc major locales for the pro­

duction of new forms. By the same logic, a substantial pl·oportion

of artists in Mali, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, .Cote d' Ivoire and the

Congo cOl1tinue to be involved in the production of masks and figures, some ofwhich are stil l intended fiw local use and others for

a global market. New an has also developed in these countries, but

here its formation must take place within a milieu of existing

practices, producing hybrid images ar\d reflexive content wl1ich

uses or comments upon them. T hese range from John Goba's

16

- . El Anatsui, Pate/Jes of History /, 1993. The sculptor, discuss~d

·nChapter six, experiments t1ere ;lith n"rrow strips of wood as ii u1ey werestrip-woven textiles. :,urning in designs reminiscent ricloth patterns.

(b. I fH·1·) extibernnt Ode-lay masks which combine paint-store

pigments ,rnd porct1pine qui lls - used by the Ode-lay society, in

masq1,1erades in the I 9i0sin urban Frel'lown,Sierra Leone-to the

sophisticated reworking of adinkra (hand-stamped Akan f~meral

cloth) and kenle (strip-woven Alrnn royal doth) designs in the

relief pieces of Ghanaian snilptor El Anatsui. The fol lowing

chaptc·rs attempt to achieve a balance betwecri the critical 1·e­

cxamination offrequently discussed artists, groups or workshops

from several of these countries and the introduction of less

publicized or more recent material. \Vherever possible, I have

allowed artists to speak with their own words.

J7

Chapter 1 New Genres: Inventing African Popular Culture

Urban arts and colonialism

The Introduction considered the continual renegotiation of the

past with the present in relation to precolonial art forms. This

chitpter introduces new genres of art. that owe their emergence

to three of the social processes which accompanied European

colonialism in Africa: urbanization, the inrroduction of vVestern

technology and material culture, and the expansion of literacy

through formal schooling. To these nntst be added a fourth, con­

sidered fully it i Chapter four, but underlying a ll of these changes:

the development' ofan 'art market' under European patronage. The

first three set the stage for the development of a new, to,vr\-and­

literacy-based popuhtrculture, ,vhile thefourth pronounced certain

of these developments 'art" and introduced them into institutiona­

lized artworlcl settings.

The creation ofl;irge urban centres where noneexisted before,

as well as the t ransformation of older, precolonial ci ties, brought

together people from a plethora of ethnic groups nnd with very

differentvisual and performing tradi tions. \Vhile mostcity dwellers

in Africa have continued to retain strong ties to the upcountry

communities where they originated, they are no longer, like their

relatives in the rural areas, essentially self-sullicient. Instead, they

depend upon salar ies, wage laboiir or v;irious for1ns of entrepre­

neurship to provide them with food, clothing, rent money and school fees, as well as whatever luxuries they can afford. \Vhile

African cities have produced a large class ofunemployed and under­

employed workers, they have also created a distinctive urban class

ofconsumers whose tastes and aspirations are different from those

in rural cultures ;ind are frequently shaped by ideas and goods from

the colonial (and ex-colonial) melrOpole. T hese ideas and goods,

however, are creoli.zed and reinvented in an African cultural setting·

which is distinctively different from the European one from which

they orig inated. Nol only are vVestern ideas and goods appropriat­

ed, but extensive cultural borrowing and reinterpretation also

18

~ Se,dou Keita, untitled portrait - _-a, from Bamako, Mali ,

:..=...:. 7-is young man in a -~...zsted white suit.

:,e, / t:Jespectaclcd and 'Xie,g a flower. t1as become ~ --.ost frequently reproducoo

• oY Keila. It sums up the !!50-a;,oos towards modernity ~ .?:e<olonial Bamako and their ::::---ections lo French, as well JS r-c genous, models of beauty, ::::-c.JCI and status.

occurs among the many indigenous subcultures which make up

the urban centre. To add further to the complexity. these cultural imports no longer comeonly from rheformer colonizing eounn·ies

in Vlcstern Europe - since independence, African markets have

also been saturated with cheap mar1L1factured goods from China

and othc1· Asian countries and from Eastern Europe. And in many

respects, it is America and the African diaspora thar are the source

ofthe most powerful images of modernity: not only clothing, h<1ir­ styles and luxury g;oods, but also musical styles such as reggae and

rap, and in the colonial pcriod,jazz.

Ne" arts and goods, ne" · poli tical awareness and daily contact with imported media were part of this urban sub-culture right

from its late nineteenth-century beginnings- radios, newspapers,

Bibles, telephones, postal systems, identity c,1rds, imported foods (both crops and cuisine). bar s and \ Vestern fashion all took s

root and in due c;otirsc were transformed into loc,11 versions,

some highly distinc;tive and others emulations of their Eiiropean

19

counterparts. In recent years, imported films (often produced for

Third \1/orld consu1nption) and pirated music tapes have become

ubiquitous in African cities, while both imported and locally pro­

duced television programmes and video reconlings have fo und a ready market among urban consumt.:rS. Countries such as :Nigeria,

Ghana and South Africa have their own music and Yideo indus­

tries. Indigenous filmmaking fr,r international audiences has been

l imited ma.inly t(J Scrnth Africa nnd francophone West African

countr ies soch as )Vfali, blll is sporadically developing elsewhere.

In Kigeria, for example, the emerging film indtistry began with

Minist ryofinfiYrmation documentaries and locally produced tele­

, ·ision drauh1S, which, in turn, were modelled on live performances

of plays by local theatre troupes.

These new visual genres, like their counterparts in literature

and oral culture, call for their own modes ofinterpretation which

are inevitably different from those appl icable to older forms. Not

only are tl1e new genres frequently created out of matcri,tls and

techniques which were not used in older ones, hut they may also

involve different production conditions. To paraphrase Elizabeth

Tonkin·s argument about oral performances, while genres have

certain 'repeatable and stereotypic features·, they will be misunder­

stood if they are treated solely as expressive forms in themselves,

detacl1ed fron) these production conditions. This is one reason

why exhibitions of contemporary African art are so frequently

misunderstood by both critics and public, who see them only as

'detribalized' aberrations from tradition.

One major difference between francophone and anglophone

countries in Africa sterns from their distinct iw colonial policies.

The British policy of Indirect Rule, constructed by Lord Lug-ai·d

after \Vo rid,var I, stated that '11ative peoples' (as they were described

in the colonial documents) shonld be aJlowed to accept change at

their own rate and in theirowri way. To implement this, their colonies

were to be governed by their own indigenous rulers at district and

local level. Indeed, where there were not any such lou t! rulers, the

colonial government created them by appointing salaried 'white

men's chiefs'. Among other things, this meant there could be little

British influence on everyday life and material culture. The Frencl1,

on the other hand, tried conscio11sly to accul turate Africans in

their colonies, making them citizens of France, which is readily

seen today in the French influence on styles of dress, food and

enter tainment in urban areas. The Congolese saj,eur, who imitates

the latest Parisian men's fashions in dress down to the sinallest

detail, has no counterpart in anglophone countries. The difference

2 0

'?. Hausa tracler selling brightly ::,-oo le;ither l1orse trappings in ::,e Kurrni lvlarl<et, Kano. Nigeria. :.989. Kano is the terminus of ;:r ancient trade route across =,e Sahara and Kurmi { Hausa ":,''jungle' which refers to its s:irawling rn,uc-like layout) is = ofthC largest traditional era it -:arkets in 1Nest Africa am;! one :;the few to sell decorations ~ equipment for the well­ ::aparisoned horse. This \ypc ::i eatherwork has survived -,ainly because it do<;s not -zte to compete with imports ~ abroad.

between I"rench and British ter ritories was most obvious wben a

single people was divided between the two. The Jlausa homeland,

for example, includes both northern Nigeria (a forrm:r British

colony) and southern Niger(a former French colony). On the Kiger

side of the border, French baguettes were still being sold on street

conwrs by Hausa traders in 1980 while on the Nigerian side,

street vendorn hawked traditional Hausa sweetmeats. Conversely,

Hausa architecture is much better preserved on the Niger side,

due to French enthusia~m for mosque preservation programs

inspired by Viollct le Due, wl,ile in Nigwia buildings arc crurnb­

]ing, subject lo the vicissitudes ofweather and local politics.

Goods fi-0111 abroad have had at least two maj or cflects: they

have turned Africans into global consumers and they have in

certain areas strongly undercut local manufacturing traditions.

This is most noticeable ,vith locally made pottery, weaving and

ironworking, all of which have been partly displaced by imported

enamelware and plastic, factory-made cloth and mass- produced

hoes and other iron implements. Goods that have survived this

competition have been specia.lized and particular to local cultures

- certain types of prestige (:loth used in ceremonies, elaborate

leatherwork for horses, or r itual pottery and iron ornaments,

with which foreign manufactured goods cannot compete. \\There

patrons have continued to demand them, these types of g-oods are

still being made. Hand-made crafts also SLir,·ivc, and oc;casionally

flourish, in areas far from urban markc.(s ,vhere manufactL1red

goods are expensive and hard to come by. \Vhat has disappeared

on a large scale, on rhe other hand, have beenloc;il goods which are

easily and relatively cheaply replaced - hand-made, bLrt strictly

utilitarian, clay pots for cooking· and carrying water, or lrn iYes and

hoes made by local blacksmiths have given way in most cities and

also rural areas to aluminium p(ltS, plastic jcrrycans and hoes

impor ted from China. However, both old and new types do often coexist in the same community and even the same household.

Urban Africans are not only consumers and patrons ofthe new

visual n1edia, they arc also its producers. In African cities, the· majority of workers arc employed in what economists call the

Infonnal Sector which includes all those businesses and indus-

tries, usually small scale and conducted in the alleys and market

places rather than in factories or offices, which operate without

formal stnict.ures. Among them are the sign painters, forniturc 10.11

makers, blacksmiths, tailors, photogh1phcrs, buildel's, drum

makers, woodcarvers, street painters, jewelers and producers of

all manner of curios from banana-fihre pictures to soapstone

21

elephants. Hecyclia, goods handmade from previously used mate­

rials, account for a good deal of this production: some is traditional

( cmv tails transformed into fly whisks), some ingenious (Christmas

tree decorations used as hair or naments), some rrtercly cheaper

substitutions (plastic replacing ivory ornaments) and some driven

by utility (suitcases made from discarded rolled sheet metal). In

Kenya, all these forms of material culture production, as well as

related kinds of small-sc-ale anisanship such as bicycle and radio

repair, are known cc)llectively as Jua Kali(Swahi]i: 'hot sun') which

refers to the informal outdoor spaces where they are practised.

To Lmdcrstand fully that urban forms are simultaneously art

and commodity, historian Rogumil .Jewsicwicki argues, one must

re-examine the assumptions implici t in most critical discourse in

the \,Vest. T he most deeply grounded of these is the belief that an

artwork ought to he singular - a onc-oki-kind creation. The other

assumption is tl1at an artwork is not a commodity (see Chapter

four). Rut much of the art being produced in Africa, especially in

urban workshops, is marketed unpretentiously as merchandise. It

only begins to take on an 'art' status when it becomes part of

\Vestern or elite collections.

10. 'Expensive Cut' barber's sign, Ghana, advertising men's ·t1at-top' hairs~/les fashionable in the USA in the early l 990s, with gl impses of the 'correct' clothing as well as tools of the trade: comb, scissors and a jar 0i p0rnac:le.

22

_: _Signpainter's kiosk on :c,_--.,ernment Road in Mombasa. •arya, 1991. Mombasa isan :.cSwahili Coast port city

-:-ae successive waves of --:iigrants have introduced ,;_ -ultitude of styles and genres :::,,g the centuries. One of the ~ recent is Rastafarianisrn, ~ in the form of paintings -:,-;tie home (left} and tailgate -uals (right} which have been --:;ridized with a mythical -z11aii' instead of Jamaica.

Flour-sack}'a inters in tlu: Congo

Perhaps the best-documentcd example ofa q uin tcssen tially urban

genre enjoying both art and commodity status arc the flour-sack 12

painting·s of l{inshasa, Kisangani and Lubumbashi, Congo (then

Zai're), during the 1970s. T he artist-entrepreneurs who made

them originally created pictures for a clientele not very difle rent,

in economic and social terms, from themselves. Pain tings on flour

~ack stretched over a frame were carried <1bc)ut and rnarketed on

the streets, often by young boys working·for the painters, and were

intended for a local audience of urban workers and clerks. But

g iven the vast distances and poor communications in a country

such as the Congo, both the thematic content and the primary

audience for th is artpopulaire varied from place to place.

In Kisangru1i, the major city in north-east Congo, the invasion

ofparatroopers during the attempted Katanga secession became a

popular theme for urban paintings. Historical themes such as this

and the 1\l6 l assassination of the Prime Minister Patrice 13

I ,umumba have been more characteristic of the eastern mining­

zone cities than of 1'.inshasa. Even though there is li ttle or no

tourist or foreign patronage, a market for paintings has also

12. Chin in front of his workshop, Kinshasa, Congo, 1990. The front oi a popular painting studio w ith adverti$ernent$ in the form oi completed portraits and signage. Young boys like those in tl1e background are employed It) hawk such pictures in busy streets and markets, blurring distinctions between paintings and other forms of merchandise.

developed among an etuergent entrepreneur ial class involved in

gold traflicking. M uch rr1()re recently; a parallel genre has begun to

develop at l'l:ilcmbe copper mines in western Uganda. l n l'tinshasa,

hoth themes and p,1troni1ge have been more wide ranging.

Gradually as a few foreigners - scholars, JOlu-Jialisrs. resident

expatriates - noticed and purchased the work of these street

painters, it became kno,,vn among a small group of cognoscenti

and its status g rew from straigl1tforwarcl decoration for the clerical worke r's rcn tcd rooms to collectible an. By this process of

recognition, a few such artists gradually developed an interna­

tional clien tclc as well as a local one.

The most widely known of these, Cheri Samba (b. 1956 ), has

cu'!erged in critical circles as ;i highly succcssfi:11 pain ter following

his inclusion in the I'vlagiciens de la Terre exhibition in Paris held in

1989. Prior to his 'discovc,ry', Cheri Samha created flour-sack

paintings for a Kinshasa audience. In his early work, moralizing

was already a dominant theme and was played out in popular

stories such as that of La Sirene (the mermaid or 1\Iamba Muntu,

or in \;\Tes t Africa, Mami \Vara, 'mother of the water'). In La Sircne

2 1·

:3. Tshibumba Kanda-Matulu, - -eHisloric Death of Lvmumba , :?70s. Beginning in 1973, m bumba Kanda-Matulu made ; series of one hundred paintings :r> the history of Congo (then 21re) for the anthropologist ..o.,annes Fi,lbian, expounding =: Fabian the historical evenh . -x:heach picture narrated. :'cme, such as the capture and :SSaSsination of Prime Minister :>,,.rice Lumumba in 1961. "'8'e made in multiple versions. ,;; told Fabian,' in my view, ~ -numba was 1t1e Lord Jesus :;Zaire. AhOve I painted six stars, :a:ause he died for unily.'

the central iwn is a voh1ptuous mermaid accompanied by sn akes,

who is t1Sl1 ,illy represented in opposition to such symboh as the

Bible, while the moral dilemma is explained in CheriSamba's work

by t ex t panels at tl1e top or bottom of the picture - if one follows

her one will become rich L'asily, but a high price wi] lh ave to be paid

for the transgression o f moral principles which this implies. Cheri

Samha also places l1imsclf in the narrative by including <l self-­

portrait which is speaking· or reading the Ki ble near the upper

edge of the picture space. Jol1annes F abian's explanation of the

popularity ofthis t heme in urban settings has been that it actually

represents colonial power it self- distant and foreign (La Sirene is

often depicted as a E L1rnpean woman), capricious and arbitrar y.

Unlike the Alhcan rural far mer or herder who js largely self

sufficient, the urban worker is much rnore dependent upon the

largesse and competence of the government (whether colonial or

postcolonial) which controls t he prices ofbasic commodities, local

transportation, the water supply and many other things which can

make the worker's life either comfortable or miserable. La Sirene

symbolizes, among other thin gs, this unstable and unpredictable

aspect of urban life. Prom the late U)80s, Cher i Samba's developing reputation

among collectors allowed him to begin painting· in acrylic on canvas.

25

LA SEDUCTION &""'" L.....A. ~JDEL.....ITI= A LA SISLE

opposite) Cheri Samba, _:_ Seduction, 1984. While La ~appears as a seductive, cr;---hairec! European, t11e artist -o.= above, propelled by .r,.,.,rs wings and holding his .:fl weapon of resistance, ,.s:tle. On another level, the cr',subverts the law against e ooblic depiction of nudity by ::ioiing it in immoral terms.

:3.. Llight) Cheri Samba, Tlte _:"=-..,gtitsman Cheri Samba, ~31. Cheri Samba has always .:cs, his own best subject and ,s ,,ork, filled with the earnest :--llols of Congolese 'vernacular -cGemity' of the seventies .;s;JOttom trousers, Afro hairstyle, ::iz.:;orm shoes, record player, :a::cric fan, refrigcralor - bears =roarison with Ille older and ~self portrayed in plate 1.

ctllOli'V'l:o!.l bU,\llfHr ~HOr.m((J . GUl3fMY. ODY fJ.NNIT ,e11 ,r&1-'IC'K tA.US.t 1Tl1!!.S 1WJ. M:(SSAU r.snCAt'c.Y 1Rf1tE'ARE T(:G i fflU'fNAU.!1 rm: rwci Tf"C'KNltSi - 01Ato1.nmEf ~l»o Ptt:ruir.· n1t.s (i,11/'lft.S " U1$N ro 111! 1111!".S WHO~!1.IMU HU~

i eT; l'41 Am,- T)J.'CHT fl(S/)N. .tti'H'Jl'(:t.:.~NiUIUL N 'i$1~/3.~t,~ .Jt''ll.fi'Og,fq1I mJr l!FJl!U. .V.1,I Y.. ;:;J\f~.\!= ~'Nl gj(SfH.St:)._.(. iAA'i'Slll5T [t,\',!1.1!,tS.t~j' !IJa°&'Jt-S'f

il~ nSW!.US. ,Mlt. ·'"11/ 1'/Sf !1L'A i'CClai';~:J~..U ~WJ IJ.(i,1,J:~:t-1;) ! t]~f;;'.;,(Tl' C!tA. O':I~ !ilAf rt,"/.l lr(()ll,• ,j mix Qvr::t.ff~.~1 ~~f N"S ~Vlil~'1RS. .tc:1.grA.-.ir_,aS'JIS ,\~TJ~Al(l".QlJ~C'T~ ~ IN ~ollPta 1t11 !Qflll'GE ~-- iCi>~m PE .II.II IWEJIG!!= }ti. il(t/MI~ u.~,1 ~.lJl?QU !II.OJ.Alt~ll'SF

t'~! 'l'f}l;t X!',ffS'II QAJ(Q'JI NA Ai~ , a=,uaK,\ JU.IU.,6'.t"/Ell7V.!IE5. ,mll(,tJl'GIJ -..~~UI ,~~ urn fl,Ull.'l:' T.E. Hm.l>.t,~ U M !f:ML

Many of his themes have cont inued to deal with the problems of

urban life in i\frica, from prostitution and A IDS to potholed

stn:ets. He has also commented eloquently on the desire for the

;icquisit ion ofEuropean goods- television sets, upholstered forn i- 15

ture, fashionable dothes - as well as on the dangers for Africans of

European social behaviour. Hoth moralist and humourist, he has

made himself the subject ofhis own incisive vis1rnJ commentaries,

as in his J990 painting, WhyHa.ve!Signed a Contnu;tP, in which the

artist, well dressed and now obviously s\lccessful, is being pulled

in opposite directions by ropes tied around J1js neck which plainly

represent the shackles imposed by an exdusive gallery contract.

27

16. (below) Moke, Motorcade Vlith Mil/erand and /v!ob(l/u, l 989. The two leaders ride in a motorcade amidst modern power symbols and a crowd of onlookers choreographed to wave the French and Zafrean flags at the right time. n,e artist reserves comment.

17. (opposite) Stephen Kappata, A Country without Her Own Traditional Culture i, Deacl Indeed, 1987. lvtakishi masqueraders, wl,o appear al boys' initiations, perform for Zambiansand expatri;Jtes as President Kaunda and his entourage look on approvingly.

\o/hile Cheri Samba is rhe best known ofrhe Kinshasa painter s,

his international success and his original choice ofthematic subject

matter make him atypical. Many themes popubr " 'i t h paintcrs and

their audiences in tlie 19,0s and 1980s (the period when most

of tbe work discussed here was collected) represented the

inequalities ofpower under the colonial regime and subsequently

in the posttolonial era. The subjects of urban Congolese painting

encompass a wide reper tory, from the idyllic representation of

rural life in an unspecified time past, to parables of the colonial

condition and postcolonial dictatorship spelled out in nar rative

and couched in a form which draws upon the collective memory of

ordinary citizens. Unlike the work ofCheri Samba, paint ings such

as Moke's iWotorcade with Mitterand and lviobutu (1989} with its

'28

threatening symbols ofsi11ister authoritarian power are not about

the encOlmter with modernity as epitomized by city lite and

material goods, but stand as witness to the political violence ofthe

twe11 tietl1 century. Zambian artist Stephen Kappata (b. 1936) has 11

explored th<;> same range of pictorial theml!s as Moke and Cheri

Samba, from his recollections of the latc-{colonial experience in

Barotscland to the encounter between 111odern Zambian politi­

cians and 'traditional culture' in the I~)80s. Kappala employs the

flat perspective and linear narrat ive a~~ociatcd with 'naive· painters,

but with a self awareness that is ~1su.illy missingin thei1· work.

In contrast to these genres, the depiction ofan idealized Africa 1s

undisturbed by change and epitomized in scenes ofrural domesti<: life has had a wide currency with urban painters far beyond the

borders of the Congo. Not only are such subjects very popular

with tourists and expatriates, but they are also equally coml)lon in

the homes of th<;> African middle classes. Furthermore, they are

painted by street artis ts ('autodidacts') in such places as Congo,

Uganda, Kenya and Zambia and by workshop and academicall.y

trained artists as well. The street genres have heen translated into

banana fibre and batik, which )lave becqme the quintessential

media for tourist versions of these themes. But it would be short

sighted to assume that their predictahle appearance on the urhan

scene throughout the continent is entirely market-driven. \Ve

must also explain why Africans themselves wish to display these D

pictures, and why they have CL1rrency for art ists who do not

view their ,vork as merchandise. Scholars such as Fabian and

Bennet ta Jules- llosette see the idealized rural village as part. of a

larger phenomenon irwoh ·ing the historical and political themes

'29

18. Landscape, early 1970s. Although signed by Tst1iburnba Kanda-lvlatulu, this pain ling of an idyllic lakeside village with fishermen is more Iikely to be by Burozi, the oldest of tl1e Shaba (for·rner Kalanga) ilour­ sack painters from whom Tshibumba Kanda-Matulu learned tile trade, according to Bogumil Jewsiewicki. As agenre, il has proved very durable since ii mirrors the nostalgic fantasies of several different audiences, both local and foreign.

of Zairian urban paint ing, so the village scenes are assimilated

into a visual history of the past which ex tends from mythic time

througl1 colonial.ism and up to the present. They open\le in a

similar way to the images ofJ,a Sirene or :Vlami,vara - they can be

read purely as nar rative description (the way they would be read

hy an outsider such as a tourist), but they symbolize something

else for their local audience. Hegardless of where in Africa they are

made, idyllic rural narrative paintings can lay claim to several

possible readings which vary according to the experience of the

viewer - for instance, a collective social memory ofan actual rural

past (a recent experience for many urban dwellers), nostalgia for

'tradition' (a quite different reading requiring social, Spatial or

temporal distance on the part of the ,•iewer); a cul ttlral ideitl of

harmony couched in a rural family idiom, an escape fan rasy driven

by grinding urban poverty. or even a symbolic rejection of

anything Vlestcrn. It is t his shifting quality - the abili ty to be

interpreted on several levels - which has made the rural genre

scene a viable choice for so many types of artists and audiences in

so many places .

.'/0

1

~ Joel Oswaggo, The ::;;;;omaker. c. 1987 . One ~ employed lly untrained r.s:s is to approach painting as .:.nm of documentation of loc,11 T.3:loon, in this case the maker --=-.:,rtars, pestles and stools. ::S.,;ggo, who comes from -==,n Kenya, has said, 'All

- crawings arc based on the ..tient times and how those 'irti,nl people lived.'

Recasling the boundaries 1.!f' j,opular 11/'t

An important <1L1estion raised by the qise ofthe Kinshasa painters.

and especially by the success of Cheri SaJJ1ba, is what is 'popular'

painting in theAfrican contex t? Ifpop11lar art is indeed something

produced by 'the people' (in the sense of wananchi, i.e.. ordina1·y

non-elites) and for 'the people', one would have to conclude that

financial success in the form of gallery patronage would exclude

an artist from this category. The Magicie11s de la Terre exhibition

atid Cheri Samba's debut there created an international audience

for \Vhom he was a majo1· 'discovery'. In turn, this audience, com­

posed of foreign collectors, scholars and critics. is fundamental ly

very diffenmt from the tlour-sack painters' original <11.1diet1ce -

urban petite bourgeoisie. Artists in Af1·ica are both driven by, and

limited by, the patronage they arc given. Cheri Samba and others

lucky aml talented enough to be 'discovered' abroad have found

new themes and techniques, as well as new financial success, and

inl;'vitably this has meant that their m1dicnce has shifted from a

'popular' Otle (in the sense of ordinary urban dwellers) to a more

international one. This is not to say that such artists no longer feel

attuned to the local scene and people - Cheri Samba has bem

emphatic that he is a 'l'i:inshasa man' - but that the focus of their

creativity may alter to include other issues and arenas, and if they

wish to maintain their tics to a local clienrele, they niust adopt a

two-tiered strategy for making·, prici 1g· and nrnrketing their work.

T he result may embrace two diffe1·ent genres being produced by

the same artist- a practice discussed in Chapter four.

In the marketing of popular music in countries which have

been 'discovered' by \Vestcrn perfr,rmers, imp1·esarios and audi­

ences an almost identical situation has arisen. Hecording stars

such as Alhaji ChicfAyindc Sikiru13arristerand l{ingSunny Ade in

20. This nincteent11-century carvecJ Swahili door of a house on Lamu Island off the c9,J,;t of northern Kenya bears the chalked messageadvertising a video showing, one of tt1e marks of modernity that has filtered into the narrow streets along with reggae music and soccer.

Nigeria often produced one version of their music (both live

performances and tapes) for Joc.al mnsumption and another for export. each geared to the tastes of the target audience. The

production and rnarkcting· of exported music has become in ter­

twined with the '\;1,1estern-based 'world music' industry in such a

way that reHects former connections between colony and metro­

polc: Salif Keita (Mali) and Angelique Kidjo (Bcniri) make their

export recording·s at sound studios in Paris arid under contract to

vVestern producers. In the same way, successful artists such as

Cheri Samba have found themselves enmeshed in the '\Vestern

gallery systel'n to exhibit and market their work. This often has

unexpected consequences, usually to the dismay of the Africall

artists involved. Commercial. ga lleries abroad freqLtently hold

unsold work by African artists for years " ·ithout either returning

it or compen~ating them financially. Because artworks that circulate abroad are usually one of a kind, they are ,-'ulnerable to

unscrupulous practices in ways that musical productions are not,

=: Mark Anthony, Farmer -;a'!!!I by an Angel, 1995 Postc, ratising the play 'Some Rivals ---s '.>angerous' by Super Yaw =.ufs Band, Gh;ina. Tt1e story >o =it a hustJanrJ wt10 goes to

..,.....-- with his senior wife's child. - 5 ;unior wife (a ,vitchJ sends ~~nt to kill tile boy, but God :;;;cs an angel to save him.

though the latter also fall foul of contractual obligations which

often replay the former economic inequalit it:s ofcolonialism.

"While 'popular " cultural production in the newly postcolonial

Africa ofthe l 1)60s and I 970s was intended for newly literate m1di­

ences of urban wor),ers with strong tics to rural cultural idioms

and vah1es, popular culture has been moving steadily in the past

twentyyear s towards an increasing ly more wphisticated audience

witl1 strong interests in electronic media such as videotripe and

te!eYision. · 1·he most s tunoingexample of this media shift has been

the Yoruba travelling theatre phenomenon.They started as a group

of itinerant troupes who staged their repertor y ofplays in towns

all over south-western Nigeria, but nowadays it is mainly video­

taped performances ofthc plays which travel from town to town.

How has this happened in a space oft wenty years? Part of the

explanation lies with video cassette recorders (VCR~), which have

proved to be cnormol1sly popular in urban Africa just as in other

parts of the world. Africans for tunate enough to travel abroad

broug·h t them back home as a "'ay to circumvent the limited pro­

gramming on local tele1·ision and even more limit ed film offorings

in cinemas. \ Vit h Yoruba popular plays, t he new technology was

g-iven its init ial impetus rhrough locally produced m usic videos

which arc in turn a by-product ofa large and competitive Nigerian

music industry. Furthermore, any African c<_>mmunity ur ban

enough to have electricity can have a 'video theatre', which is often

simply a room with chair~ and a VCH attached t o a tclE·1 ision

20

screen. A second factor has been Nigeria's downward economic

spiral since the oil boom ofthe late I 0 7Os. Under such conditions,

it made perfect sense for the Yoruba travdlirig theatre tTOllpes to

cut their production cos ts at)d videotape their performances, which

can now be seen by a llll1Ch wider audience, including Yoruba com­

munities in other pans ofNigeria and even beyond. Not only that,

the ,rideocassette can, in the words of one Nigerian performer,

'walk on its legs' from town to town. Itinerant theatre and music

have numerous forms in Africa, most of them a good deal more

10\.v- tech than videotapes. Popular theatre performances in (,hana

are part of larger enter tainments known as Concert Parties and

have produced a distinctive poster art which is used to advertise

the performances and draw c11stome1·s. A,s such it is both com­

modity and expressive vehicle for the play. The road life ofa po~ter

(known locally as a 'car toon'} is short, as i t must be stowed in the

back of a lor ry, but the best artists, such as Mark Anthony, also

pain t smaller versions on flour sacking which are intended for an

art market offoreign collectors.

Painted vehicles ands(1;11age

Film and video have made major inroads in to non-performative

visual media as well. T he urge to decorate a flat surface has Jed, as

the Congo example shows, to murals being painted on the walls of

urban buildings such as bars, hotels and cinenias, and to painting

buses and lorries. In Nige1·ia the painted or low-relief clecc)ration

ofmud-wall surfaces in rural settings was usually an arr practised

by women as an extension of their activity as potters and house

builder s or as body-paint ing artists, hut these new genres ofmural

22. Anonymous tailgate mural

depicting Django, the Italian cowboy film hero, 1,,te 1970s, northern N igeria.

34

~ Abdullahi "0", tailgate mural ~~1uya, a durable power symbol -= Islamic nort11, Jos, Nigeria, ~ :970s. While the symbolism ,;a ::;erent, it derives ils power :;,;s;;, 'o'isual image fr9m t11e same =r,:iination or human ancl ::-.-21features as La Si rene -••ami Wata elsewhere.

painting are largely the province ofyoll!1g men raised on Kung Fu,

cowboy and Rambo films. As film characters move in and out of

fashion, so too do their images <1s a subject of tailg·ate mural art,

T hus Django, a popL1lar her() of Italian \~/esterns in the 1970s, 22

who was depicted on Nigerian Jorrie~ of that period pulling his

coflin containing his deadly machinc-gun, has faded from the

tnick art repertory of the 1990s, as has the deadly shark inspired

by the film Jaws. Other representat ion~ that employ local images of power and

violence such as lions and elephants rather than imported ones of

weapons and fighting arc more durable. In lfano and Kaduna in

northern Nigeria - important centres for long-distance trade

and hence lorry construction - these images include mikiya; a 23

well-known representation throughout Muslim Africa, and the

hawk, the subject of Hausa folktales. In Yorubaland (south­

western Kigeria and Benin), the lion has long been a common

subjccroflorry painting. In the 1960s the lion was usual ly heraldic

in form - derived from the nineteenth-century Afro-Brazilian

archi tecture in Lagos - but g radually, under the influence of

33

24. Babie Coach, Maralal, nortllern Kenya, I 996. Tllree members of 'Plastic Boys', ,i g,oup ol young Turkana entrepreneurs, help to load and unload 'Babie Coach' . a bus that c,mies passengers and goods along t11e dusly I rack between Maralal and Wamba - !owns which, despite U1eir small size, unpaved streets and rernoleriess 1/orn lhe capital, represent modernity in an area inhabited by nomadic cattle pastoralists.

books, magazines and films, it has been incorporated into narra­

tives of action. A second kind of power image employs the

paraphernalia of real or imagined \Vestern material culture -

1·adio cassette players, bicycles, sleek motor vehides. or pistols,

ammunit ion belts and holsters. A third, more prosaic, type oftruck

art straight-forwardly adwrtises the products the whick trans­

ports, such as perfect giant carrots or tomatoes. En·n these, however, take on a specifi cally local character in their use of

signagc to contextualize the imagery.

Painted tailgate murals arc not fo und e,·erywhcrc in Africa,

but the ubiquitous passenger vehicles such as mini-, ans, lorries

and buses are themselves icons of modernity and have become

moving representations of urban culture. In l\airobi, the matatu

(rniili-v:m) is the fastest and most co11\'enient mode of transpor t

between city and subllJ'b, but passengers arc submitted ro the

brash behaviour of touts and loud popular music played on the

36

2-1

driver's tape deck. One could say without exaggeration that buses

and lorries in Africa serve as portable stages for the encounter

with modernity ln cities, they blend in to an already hetero-

geneous mix ofpeople and goods; in the l1interland, their appear- ances herald the arrival ofan urban, commodity-drive11 way oflifo

and serve as magnets for small-tmvn youth. Due to the influx of various print media since the beginning

of the colonial period and the widespread impact ofliteracy, text

messag;es are often combined with vis1)al images on these vehicles as

well as in other mural work and smaller-scale paintings. Language is powerful ,vhether spoken or written, and everywhere in Africa,

lorries and buses display slogans and rnessages. In l\igeria, many

are Islamic or Christian: 'Allah ya kiyaye' (Allah Protect Us), 'Jesus

My Protector', or more cryptically, ·Psalm 100·. These reflect the

dominance of l lausa M uslims from Kano and Christian lgbo traders from Enugu in the long-distance truching· business, but

also the real danger whicl1 road travel represents. Accidents are

frequent and unlike in most countries, wrecks in I\ i geria arc left at

the roadsides indefinitely, grisly reminders to other drivers aad

passengers ofthe possibility ofsudden death.

Other slogans refer to the film cliaracters depicted in the mural images: 'Rambo', 'Challenger', or to the lorry or pnssenger Yehicle

itself strnggling against the odds presented by tl1readbare tyres,

worn-out parts and untarred, potholed or flooded roads: 'Road

Warrior·, 'No Fe;ir' (both Kenya). Others oile r popularphilosophy: 'God's Case, l\o Appeal' (Nigeria), 'No Condition is Permanent'

(both Ghana aad Nigeria), 'Fear Woman' (Ghana) and 'No Moles t'

(N"igeria). In response to tl1e frustrations oftravel, or life in general,

there is ·No Hurry in Africa' (Kenya), or the verbal shrug, 'I3a

Kome' (No Mattei-) in Hausa (Kigcria) or 'Hakuna Matata' (No

Problem) in Swahili (lfrnya and Tanzania). T l1e most recent genre

of messages and slogans in eastern Africa relate to the dangers of A IDS and re!1ect the fact that its main path of propagntion there

hns been the trnck route around Lake Victoria whicl1 passes

through l{enya, Uganda and Tanzania: 'One Man, One \ ;\,!ifc',

Think First', and 'Zero Grazing' " ·hich literally means, keep cows

at home instead of putting them out to pasture, but in l{enyan

popular speech, is a reference to marital fidelity. Related to these mural forms and slogans on vehic:les are the

ach-erts that appear on roadsides, bars and hotels. Advertising ar l

has two very diflcrcnt forms in most African countries - the fea­

tures and layouts on television, roadside billboards (hoardings)

and in glossy magazines, which closeLy emulate their \Vestern

8 7

25 Middle Art (Augustine Okoye) .

'Ohl God Bring Peace to Nigeria· saidBello in Praying, 1970s. Sir Ahrnadu Bello, one of lhc early nationalist leaders of Nigeria, is shown in Northern dress holding a gigantic string of Islamic prayer beods. His head is framed by a saintly halo into which his name and title have been prinlecJ and from whicl1

rays of I igl1t radiate outwards.

c:ou1Herpai"ts, substituting African elite subjects for ·western sub­

jects, and the locally produced sign art which, like vehicle murals

and slogans, reflects more directly the encounter between modern

life, commodity form and the African ar tistic imagination. V{hilc

this kind ofadvertising would be expected in the unplanned urban

sprawl ofcolonial cities like Nairobi and Johannesburg, it has also

become a par t of the visual environment in old cities like Jvfombasa

and Lainu in Kenya, Djenne in Mali and Zaria in northern Kigeria.

\Vhile some representations are homegrown and relate to local

customs, people and places, many others are hybrids boi"m: of

\\Testern cinematic images arid impor ted music such as 1-cggae,

which has its own visual symbob associated wirh Jamaican

Rastafatianism, but is itselfa creolization ofAfrican symbols.

Sign artists rarely achieve an artworld reputation - despite the

popularity of signage, particularly barbern' and hairdressers'

signs, among collectors of contemporary African art, the work is

not usually connected to a named individual artist when exhibited.

l\1ost commonly, it is treated as anonymous folk art, which allows

it to be absorbed into either the notion of commodity SL1ggested

above or a fictionalized Vlestern colonial-period idea of 'the

primitive ar tist' as being one without individuality ofstyle or even

a traceable identity. Sign ar t ists are firmly situated in the informal

sector, on the street, and within a matrix of entrepreneurial

activity which surrounds so much urban popular art. One example

of this \\;as a painter who signed his work Abdullahi "O'" and was

part of a lorry- painting firm based in Jos called SunnyArts.

i\bdullahi, whose special ities were Kung Fu and cowboy fi gures,

was known all over northern Nigeria in the HJ70S and 1980s

because of the mobility ofhis artform.

T he work of :VIiddlc Art (Augustine Okoye), from Onitsha in

eastern Nig·eria, came to the attention of Ulli Beier, an important

patron ofNiger ian artists who was then at tl1e University oflfe, so

Middle Art was lifted out of obscurity in the H)6os and his work

exl1ibited as art rather than commodity. Sign ar t, when rec<mtex­

tualized in an art gallery, becomes aestheticized and moves closer

to genres such as popular palt1tings that contain text messages.

vVhile the content ofsign age texts is usually an advertisement for

goods or services, and that of textual ized paintings is usually an

explanatory device to heighten their visual narrative, tbey both

rely on an interplay between visual and verhal messages in an

effor t to attract an audience which is newly literate. It is not surprising· then that 'Vliddle Art was able to cross tl1is somewhat

blurred boundary between the t,vo genres and produce images

.'38

which were no longer tied to adver tising, such as his commemora­

tive painting of Ahmadu 13ello, the Sardauna of Sokoto - a full­

length poi-trait painted on plywood in which the head is probably

based on one of the official photographs of the Sardauna found in

shops and homes in Kigeria's nor thern Emirates. Middle Art's

sty!{• combines a strong concern \-vith the accuracy ofsmall details

such as the Sarclauna's garments with a lively realism achieved

par tly through the placement of the n1ain figure very close to the

viewer's space, and partly through the carcfol modelling of the

face after a photographic likeness. The very stl"Ong presence this

creates is then placed within a narrative fra me\vork through the

message ofthe text.

The urban sign artist's work is marked by its place of 01·igin.

]\.fiddle Art's home and usual place of business \vas Onitsha, a

sprawling· tO\\'n On the Lower Niger l{iver which \-,-as both home

to a historically impor tant precolonial lgbo state and at the same

t ime the site ofone of the largest markets in \Vest Africa prior to

the Nigerian Civil \.Var. Thousands of small-scale traders, as well

as large-scale ones, and lll1cks tC:rs, as we 11 as honest en trepre11eurs,

made their living here, and sig·nw1·iters and mun1l painters were in

constant demand. Middle Ar t, like Cheri Samba, was a moralist

and specialized in cartoon-strip story pictures which emphasized

the values ofhonesty and clean living· while g-raphically dcpicti11g

the evils whicl1 could befall a person if not vigilant. Later, after the

Civil \,Var ( HJ67- 70), his pain ting developed a visionary aspect, with depictio11s ofheaven and hell and even angels dwelling on the

moon and singing to the world through microphones, '\Ve arc

angels of the rnoo11. \;\/e are always happy. Your good acting will

bting )'O LL here to enj(iy with us.'

Still. other forms of visual art production reflect the intersec­

tion of popular urban culture with tourism in the form of

souvenirs of' all kinds. All ofthese have close counterparts sold i11

street fairs and Africa-centred boutiques throughout the African

diaspora from London to Los Angeles. The term :'\frokitsch' hits

been coined to describe some of these ar tefacts which appear in

\,Vesten1 markets, though this term, ,-vhich defines them in rela­

tion to a largely foreign clientele, obscures tlrcir connection to a

vibrant urban African culture wl1ere they are purchased by local

people to decorate their l1omes. It is also a 1·c,mindcr of the

artificiality ofseparating some types of'popular· art from 'tourist'

art. Both are la1'gcly urban, both exist in tl1e streets and markets,

usually (though not always) outside the gallery-museum circuit,

and both arc produced as unselfconscious commodities by people

40

1

who usually think of themselves as artisans (unless they happen to

de"elop an elite audience). \Vhile an historians ~uch as Susan

Vogel have held out for the exclusion of tourist ar t from the ranks

of authent ically 'popular' art production because it. is not made

primarily for a local clicntek, anthropolog·ist l{arin Barber argues

that all such genres are manifestations of popular culture, it is jnst

that some are more commercially motiYated than others. In doing·

so, she locates popular art and culture in an indeterminate, contin­

ually negotiable space between traditional and high culture, both

of which are largely in the hands oft,Jite patronage.

"transitional art?

The development ofnew popular genres i 1most AjJ·ican countries

has initially taken place against. a back.ground of local pat roni1g:e,

with occasional outside intenentions in the form of 'discoYeries'

of artists by foreign collectors, scholars and curators. Much of

it - bar murals, aclvertiscrnents, theatrical productions - is not

collectible in any case. South Africa is somewhat different in that

it alone has a largely indigenous, mainly white and educated,

patron/collector hase. It also has artificially created 'hon1elands'

which became repositories of 'authcntic' African culnll'e for white

city dwellers. I t has more g·aller ies, cur;Jtors and other artwork[

institutions than any other African state and has a class ofvigilant

intellectuals who, long having beel\ unwilling participants in the

apartheid system, /Jreprone to continual sclf~examination and the

search for a 'real' South African art. Beginning in 1980, certain new productions which until then had only been a, ailable t.o

visitors to the rural homelands were brought into the gallery

circuit and labelled 'transitional art', in the sense ofbeing neither

·traditional' (i.e., intended for ritual or domestic use), nor 'modern'

(i.e., being part of hig h-art notions of uniqueness). The forrnati,·e

moment was the I985 T ributaries exhibition in Johannesburg

curated by Ricky Burne tt which broug:lit the wqrk of Noria

iVlabasa, Dr Phutuma Seoka, Jackson Hlung:w~ne and se, era!

others to the attention of the gallery-going public, decontextllill­

izing and reframing· their work not as tourist cL1riosities or rural

SOll\'enirs, bur as legitimate art. So is ' tral1Sitional' _just another

tern1 for what Barber called 'popular';, Or is it, in critic Colin

l{ichnrds' word~, a con\'enicnl 'form of invisible mending [ in

which] rends in the cultural fabric ... are magically made good'?

T he artists' histories ha"e be-en important in this framing. Koria

]\.fabasa, a Venda sculptor, 1frst began making clay figures in 1974•,

drawing on images from local Venda life and from television, such

4 1

26 ancl 27. Dr Phutuma Seoka, Dog!Leoparcl, 1989 (above) and Mutunga, Chee/ah Chair, 1998 (below). Sooka's piece is pari of lhe artworld category that has been dubbed 'transitiorial arl' since around 1980 in South Africa and l1as been admitted Lo art-gallery circles, while the animal chair by the Kamba artist lvlutunga still lingers in the ambiguous space wtriell exists in Kenya between ·~ood tourist art' and ·serious art' sold in galleries.

as the highly publici,:ed Si11mcse twins who were separated in a

Soweto hospital. Although her work is commodified (as mul tiples

of the popular clay fi gures) in much the same way as the !:lour-sack

painters in Kinshasa, she is presented by galleries as a serious

artist, usually by focusing on her one-of-a kind wood sculptures

and the fact that they are inspired by dreams. She appem·s to have

two modes of working, one (the clay figu res) wli ich she sells in

large quantities and which resembles l1igh-end tourist art, aild the

otlKT which is singular, private, and not easily cornmodi!iable.

Dr Phuwma Seolrn by contrast is the consummate entrepre­

neur, a herbalist doctor and maker of patent medicines ,.,,Jw started

carving objects to sell to tourists back in the 1960s. He draws very

freely on the work of other anists, ag·grandizing styles and sub­

jects, but. is best known for his corkwood animal sculpture which is

both humorous and threatening. Jackson Hlungwane, like Seoka,

lives in the northern Transvaal, but represents the other polarity

seen in Mahasa\

Animal sculptures very like Phututua's a:re made by a few

Kamba carvers in l~enya, and a disabled artists' workshop makes

work - that of the visionary directed by dreams.

I le is a preacher in the African Zionist Church and has spent the

last thirty years building an edifi ce to God where he borh preaches

and sculpts on a monumental scale. Is there something uniquely

SoLith African about the work of these artists? Or is it the South

African an audience which differs from that of othc,r co11ntries?

28. (opposite) Jackson Hlungwane (also Hlungwani), Throne, 1989. The cxl1ibition of Hlungwane's large­ scale sculptures in a gal lery setting such as this transforms them into art:world 'instal lations' . Seen in their outdoor selling, tt1ey are cl1anged into sacred art once aga in, in this case the seat becomes a lhrone and the vertical element behind it a sent inel-like form, alert and pointing heavenwards.

29. Sunday Jack Akpan, Traditionally Dressed Figure, Soldier$, BusiMSsr't!an. These sculptures in lront ol the artist's studio depict a man in traditional Cross River dress, two solcliers and a bureaucrat in a rnoclcrn suit and necktie, lbesikpo-Uyo, Nigeria, 1993. Akpa11's innovative and extraordinarily ski lful work lils comlorlably into ,in lbibio and Cross River visual grammar in which highly naturalistic 1cpmscntalions are round in certain well•k11own mask genres such as ikem and figure types such as Marni Wata.

whimsical pottery fi gure groups which could ri\·al Mabasa's, yet

they lack the critical apparatus which might reframe them as 'real

art' so are only seen in the curio mad,ets. Nor are thc-y publicized

as the work of named individuab witl1 known histories, another

impor tant step in breaking free from the tourist art mould. One

can safely assume that there is plenty of ' (ransitional art' outside

South Africa, but for the most pan it lacks the backing necessary

to propel it i11to gallery circles.

There arc other kinds ofart that shoL1ld be considered 'transi­

tional' - new genres that arc 1i◊nl'thel ess based on ideas already

socially embedded in local communities. Unlike M abasa's or Seoka's

work these other genres were not originally produced for the ar t

market, nor were t hey the ephemeral products of m-f populaire. Both the late Kane Kwei (and now his son Siunuel I,arn: Kwei) in

G hana and Sunday Jack Akpan in Nigeria make fonerary art for

their own communities. \ N'hile their pairing has become an art­

,,,orld clichc, since the j\ifagiciens de la Terre( 1989) and Aji-iwExplores

( 1991) exhibitions, tht:>ir work is very diiTcrcnt. i\fonumcntal shrine

and funerary sculpture in clay has an established history in central

and southeastern Nigeria and neighbouring parts of Cameroon.

vVhen cement became available as a building mate rial it gradually

began to replace clay and while art historians have rig htly mourned

the loss ofspontaneity with the use ofcemc-nt, local people prefer

it for its p<•rmanence. Akpan·s innovation lies in his uncanny like­

nesses which are cast and then over modelled in wet Cl'rl:1cnt.

Kane Kwei's coffins, on the other hand, do not have the same

grounding in t radit ion. Collins themselves were only introduced

44

30

akshop ol Samuel Kane ..a. -cShie, Ghana, 1993. - .:.r'nishec! colfins, one in ~=:ieof a Mercec!es Benz, - ::i:aa modiiication of the ~ type wil h window-like ~ .-.hict1 are often fi lled

::::..iured papers to '!!Sac.:..e stained glass. The IF - eS. which has become = 'O'-shop's favourite with - :::c_,maian clients and~::ollectors, was originally

:::;u;:aJ by Kane Kwei senior 1:=urial of!lie owner of a ~company.

in the colonial period as a part of Christi,rn burial practice, and

Kwei's represent ebullient innovation and a monument to his

clients' worldly prestige based on this reiatively new form. T he

first coffins ,vcre made for local bur.ials, but their development as

an art form has to be seen in a wider context since in the early

l!liOs they were 'discovered' by a California gallery owner. In con­

trast, the patronage of Akpan's cement funerary portraits has

1·enrnined largelylocal and Nigerian.

As these last examples demonstrate, new genres produced for

a local clicntelc need not be crudely fashioned, inexpensive to

own, or ephemeral. On the contrary, they -:an also be costly

status symbols, available only by commission, and like high-art

categories in the \Vest, an impor tant investment for the o,vne rs.

Another sud 1 genre whicl1 has flourished it!most everywhere

is por trait photography. \Vhile much of t his work is yet to be

documented, that ofSeydou ll.ei.ta has become widely known. As of

1998, he was the only African photographer represented by a

major New York gallery ai1d the only one to have had an exhibition

at the National Museum of African i\rt in vVashington, D.C. I !is

work has also been tl1e subject of a complete c.itnlog·ue by Andre

Magnin and has bc:en included in several an thqlog ies and g roup

43

shows. All ofthis critical attention leads one to ask ifKeita was the

1 lenri Cartier-13resson of Harnako, the d ty in Mali where he was

active from (he end of \Vorld \Var II unti! the 1960s, or whether

there were dozens of others like him across the continen t, as yet

undiscovered and uncelebrated~ If the latter is the case we shall

be fortunate indeed, because Kcita's work is both technically

brilliant and deeply evocative of late-colonial Bamako through

the portrayal of its indigencs. \~/orking with a large-format

carnera inhl·rited from the photographer Ylountaga Dembclc(aka

l{ouyate) in 191-9, his studio props included a radio, a telephone, a

fountain pen and a wristwatch as well as Europcctn-style 111en·s

46

= ::elow) Seydou Keila, ~'ed Portrait ofa Woman.

::ar2....o, Mali, 1956- 57

::;:_ f..gllt) Soba ou Au/oridadc -aGr;X)()a/ I A Tracli!ional Chief

-.='lOrityJ , Benguela, Angola, ..?.:Z.CITA photograpl1er

7:1.SO.

s11 its. But most seductive in these pictures is the play and juxta-

posit ion ofligh t and pattern against skin, most fully realiz~d in the ,1

portraits of women with larg·e expanses of textiles in counter­

point to his own cloth backdrop of flowers, leavi;s or arabesr1ues.

Portrait photography in Africa is indeed a 'popular ' gen 1·e, but one

which in the hands of an artist such as Keila was capable ofa new

kind ofreprcsentarion. The late-colonial African subject was also

documented in large-scale photographic projects by government

bureaus such as CITA (the information and Tourism Centre) in

Angola which between 19 4-9 and 197.'.i captured thousands of

Angolans on film. While many are simply visual records, others ,2

are powerful evocations ofage and class, race and pr ivilege.

47