M8 QUESTIONS ARTS

Chapter 5 The African Artist: Shifting Identities in the Postcolonial World

Crealivil)•as lhe child ef facture The stril,ingly diflerenc actitudes towanJs facture - the actual

process of making-among clifleren t types ofcontem porar y artiscs

across the continent reflect not only cheir m odes of training, but

also the ir experience of patronage and che degree to which they

are fami liar with art and art1naking beyond cheir own communi­

ties. There is no simple way to chart or explain all of these differ­ ences. but it is possible to make ccrcain importanc connections.

Fo r example, it would be difficult for one of the \\'eya workshop

artists (see Chapter four) ro define herselfa. an ' intellectual', given

the fac t that in rur-al Zimbabwean life, incellecrualism does noc

exist as a recognized social ca tegory. There e,·en the designation ·artis t· fits awkwa rdly with being young and fe male, although the

success of the \Veya women has begun to change that assumption

locally. On the other· hand . colonial education opened up r adical

new possibilitiesofself-definition bysituating ar tistic practice in a

new relatio nship co pedagogy. In African countries. as elsewhere,

universities a re the breeding -g rounds for the intellectual class, and a uthoritarian governments tear them, which gives students a much g reate r sense of thei r potential and powe1· to eflcct change

than in \ Vestern dem ocracies. \<\"here the training of artists is

pan of the cu1-riculu111, they too are <,~dughc up in this euphoria of

self- invention_ This sense ofpotential inYested in the young and well educated.

which in most African states .-eached its peak in the 1960s immedi­

ately following independence - al though it still exists in a more

tempered fo rm - has a double-edged significance. I t is largely r espon:-ible fo,· the v itality and ad ,·entw-ou sncs:- seen in the

best work by academica lly trained artists, but because of its con­ nection to a highly developed self:..awareness, it also accounts for

occasional pretentiousness and sc!f:..absorbed rhetoric. :-\ny fai1· assess men t of the role of African artis t-intellectuals must cake

into account this sam e range or talent and creativity as fo und

among untrained and infon1ially trained artis ts.

1 2+

= \\akerere student finalist :;.anng for painting exhibition.

u.-oa~.Uganda, 1996

A forma l art-school educatio n does two things in ,1ddi tion to the creation of this artistic conscious ness: it o ffers a mas tery of

techniques which take time and practice, but a lso specialized

mate rials a11d equipment, and confers some level of familiarity with world art history. These experiences dis tinguish the for m a lly

trained artist from their untrained o r informally trained counter­

parts. Take n together, they incu lcate both a sense that artmaking is a true profession in which on e is qualified through a long and

demancling cour e of s tudy, and the \Nestern-derived ideology

that to be significant, artworks must place a high premium on

originality and uniqueness (unlike either t raditional African

ge nres or comm odifiecl forms, both of which siwate originality

within the boundaries ofa prototype). Training, or the lack o f it, deeply affects attitudes towards

originality or jts opposite. emulation. In an apprenticeship there

is a pre-existing set of models which the aspiring practitioner mus t learn to emuJate and il makes little difference whethe1- it is a traclicionally organized kjn- based workshop o r a muc h larger.

modern cooperath·c. On the other hand, in a shon-term workshop in which pa1-tic ipants are more o r less of equal status, c , -eryone

except the o rganizer is cast into the ro le of a learner, and replica­

tion is usually discouraged as a matte r of principle. In art-school ins truction, which is mo re highly structured, more comprehe n­

s ive and longe r term than the work shop. s tudents reccin: a mixe<l

125

message - do no t sla,;s hly copy. but, on the o cher hand. here, in the art-his tory lectures. is the s ig nificant art which has changed

the course of his tory.. . learn from i t. Students are encouraged to

de,·elop a knowledge base that situates their practice within a ·wide 1· and longer art his t o ry t:han any w o rks h o p o r u n trained

artist usually encounters. In the bes t school s, it includes African art history as well as European and A sian. which in turn creates

its o wn pedagogic issues: the d e\'e)o pment o f a m ore pan-African

sen sibility, but also the tenden cy to folklorize unfa rniliar tradi­

tions. rinally, the relatio n b etween art-school s tude nt and teach­

ers is firmly lod ged in African no tions o f respect for authority which pe rmeate all le ,·els o f schooling an d which reach back into

the much o lder pedagogy of appren t iceship. As young intellec tuals, these s tudents also de ,·e lo p an awru·e­

ne. s of the postcolonial conditio n . Som e s tudent artis ts become

so mired in the implications of this that they subs titute a po liticized n o tio n of ·o rig ins · for the Jess certain o utcomes of solitary e xper ime ntatio n. One such case was the Ecole de

Dakar. discussed in Chapte r six. Others en gag e in what Da,i d

Hammo nd-Tooke. a o uch African eurator, calls ' hig hly per onal

atte mpts at p sychother apy·. A few a rc able to break rhro ug h this

inte nsive self-consciou sness and see beyond chemseh ·es, but they constitute quite a small qmgt1ard, wo rking for the mos t part in

isolatio n, or in small experimental settings which r esemble either

the workshop o r the appren ticeship m odel. Laboratoire AG IT-Art

in Senegal exemplifies an egali tarian worksite while Bruce

Onobrakpeya·s On1o maror o Art Studio in Nigeria, with its students and assistants, more clo sely approximates a master­

apprentice model. By contras t, no n-academical ly trained artis ts are s imply not

encumbe red in this way: their encounters with P icasso or " ·ith

conte mporary art in far- flun g places is haphazard rather than acade mic. Those who arc 'disco\'e r ed' by critics and collecto r s are

o ften sent abro ad to pru·ticipate in symposia or internatio nal e xhi­

bitions s uch as Nlagide11s de /11 Terre in Paris in 1989 and Africa E xplores in N ew York in 199 1. T he scenario in that ca e is d1e

hoped-for dialogue be tween authentically ·naive· artis ts and

·sophis tic.·n ecl' fore ig n critics and audience, which freque ntly. in fact, re \'eals the sophis t ication of the artis ts and naivete of the

cri tics and audience. Co n,·e rsely, wo rld art occasionally comes to them, either from books o r travelling exhibition s. As we ha\'e

already seen in Chapte r three. F rank M cEwen, rhe firs t directo r of

the Kational G allery o f then-Rhodesia and we ll connected in the

1 2 6'

::0. Objects of Performance • _ ...100ratoire AG IT-Art. Dakar. Senegal;1992

art world from year:, spen t in Paris, arranged for a t r a\'elling Picasso show to come to Salisbury in the early 1960s. Thomas 101

;\ lukarobgwa remembered it well. although he saw Picasso not as onc of the g reat paradigm-shift:- in \\'c:-tern art hi:-tory (:-inl·e he did not ha,·c chat kind of academic kno,, ledge). but as a 11101-al exemplar. someone whose worth lie:. in the fact chat he did not copy ocher artists. ;\lukarobgwa·s a, crsion co e mulation came from his long membership in the \ Vor kshop School. where ;\ k tw\:11°:, p1·imar y injunction was 'n ever copy!" In a 199£, intcr ­

,·icw he explained:

P icasso, he was doing a stmigltt lhingfrom l11s mmd. I le did11·1 used lo

look in lite book OIIJ'Wil)'. P eople [,,rtisls in Zimbalnue] are now looking al the u-ork <if P icasso and try·i11g lo do some ef those tlti11gs now. But

1/ ..L-011 ·1 ..L-orl.,)·ou see ..L·hal I mea11?... there are quite II number ef our children wlto never grow out in lite bu sit 11nd wlto never see the 11r1/um/

tltmgs in lite bush. Tlte_y·vcgrown i11 tltecil)', became older... without

seemg the bush very· 11111d1.... 1011 can see women even no-u..: 17J·ing lo

stretch their ltair and become w/11/e. 1011 can ·1 comparr with somrone

out in the buslt. 11:~ different. o tltose kind.~ <if women, onefiwu /hr bush. onefrom here J-Jllrare-, lite,· do dilferenl I/zing. I think this

:imitatio11 <if thingsfareig,C is wltat spoiled the people when tltey

are doi11g their work.

127

10l . (below. left) Thomas Mukarobgwa. w ith work in progress. 1996. Mukarobgwa always followed lhe practice of 'doing the thing straight from his mind'. and therefore admired and spoke of Picasso·s independence. but did not lfeat his work as a specific source of ideas.

102. (below. right) Kizito Kasule Maria . studio painting in progress, 1997. This treatment or the Mother and Child theme by a young artist who has studied with Nnaggenda retains Picasso as a distant iconic authority lhOugh Its more immediate sources are closer lo home at the Makerere Art School. Uganda.

►•

Picasso is an all-encompassin g syn1bol in th e minds o f many

African artls ts . T he Sudanese pain ter Ibrahim El Salahi says that

he applied the lesson of P icasso·s C ubis m to b1·eak apart and

recons titute Sudanese caJJigr aphy In Senegal in the 1960.s, poe t­ President Uopuld Ste11gho r tried to convince artis ts at the E cole

des Beau x-Arts that P icasso \\'as the best role model for them beca use he h ad helped inve nt mode rnis m while re taining his

Andalusian cul tural identity. At :vtake rere Art School in ganda

this m ed iation has com e m ost recently thro ug h the inAuen ce of

artis t-teacher s s uch as F r ancis )Jnaggenda who, trained in Europe.

has continued to pose fo r himself som e o f the pro ble m s raised ini tially by Picasso and Braque with analytical Cubism. T hose

issues, now several times re moved, have been picked up nearly a

cen tury late r by Nnaggenda's s tudents an d appear in the ir o wn

wor k. Given Picasso's well-publicized receptivity to African

sculpture in his early ,·is its to the the :vtusec Trocadcro in Pa ris, it is especially iro nic th at the g hostly presen ce ofAfrican fo rms in the work of a European artis t fro m the early twe ntie th century

s hould h ave fi lte red hack into contempo rar y African art prac tice

by this circu lar ro utt!. fro m colony to me tro pole and no\\' back to

the pos tco lony.

r

12 8

.2 below. left) Picasso. -ecJWoman.1927

- below. right) Francis .,,:agg.,.1da. untitled studio

e:cn, 1997. It would never K:;:...· ro Nnaggenda to emulate ~ in any direct way. but

-.:;;netheless continues to use _ essons of Cubism to work

:--,:i:gti certain technical issues -is work such as how to

~nt the interpenetration -e mother's gaze with that

- --e child on her lap.

\V hat this throws into shar p relief is not on ly the differen ce between acade mically trained artists who see themscl\'eS as part

of an interconnec ted web of w orld art and those whose sense of

artistic identity is \'Cry locali7.cd, but it also reveals an attitude LU\\ an.b th<.: exemplary which i:s radically diffe r e nt from th e:

Euro-American one. Far from regarding emulation as a ma rk of weakness, it was - especially in the form ally structured appre n­

ticeship- until very recen tly a s ig n of competence. And far from

there being negath:e conno tations to copy ing the wo rk ofa master,

it was. and s till is, a for m of 1·cspect and therefo1·c wo r thy. Ir w as

aJso pragmatic, a solution which was seen to work . \1/estern notions o f o riginality sit uneasily in such a s ituation

because they require the rejection of African cultural m od els o f

how reaching and lear ni ng take place. In this sense African prac­

tice is culturally much closer to Asian t han to conte mpora1·y

Eliropean m odels. \-Vhile African a rt-school studen ts do absorb notions of one-oF-a-kind originaJjcy, these are deposited upon a

foundation ofearly learning that s tresses e mulation as the proper

and natural path towards com petence. In an eflort to banish su ch

notions, not only art schools, but also workshops, run in the 1950s

and 1960s by expat1·iares inculcated the importance oforiginality

129

and that it is wrong to ·copy·. Such cases we1·e not just the sancti­

monious imposition by expau·iates of the tenets of modernism: they became partofa conscelJation ofideas ,,·hich African in ccllec­

tual themsel\'es promoted. In East Africa, the artist Elimu ~jau·s widely quoted dictum became, ·copying puts G od to Sleep·. But

the fact that such declarations were required at all is proofof the

proble matic natureofemulation .

Art.forwhom ? Acceptance c111d denial <if its commodity status The aniwdes towa1-ds selling an further exacerbate the differ­

ences in artistic self-consciousness between artis t who ha,·c been

academically n·ained and those who have not. Artists working in

cooperatives h ave a clear goal when they make something - it is to be sold. I ts commodity s tatus is therefore unambiguous at aJI

stages in the c reation proces . but art-school training is a good

deal less candid on this point (as it is a lso in the \Vest). The com­ modity status of the artwork is clothed in. and e,·en denied by. a

rhetoric which says that art is cr eated as an act of self-rea lization for the artist. \ •Vhat eventually happens to it on ce it is con1pleted

is tTeated as a secondar y issue. At the sam e ti me. it is obvious to

all studen ts that one of the main meas11res of success for an arti r is the recognition whid1 comes from ha,·ing his 0 1· h er work

collected. which is to say, purchased . So the w ork's commod ity status is s imultaneously affi r med and denied. The unsettling

nature o f this premise was expressed in a discussion between the

autho r and a group o f Ugandan artists in 1996. T he economic

rea lities of the art marke r are ,·ery difficul t to ig no re in Uganda. a

small country where a large number of formaJly trained artists s truggle to Slu-,·i,·e in the aftermath or twenty years ofchaos, civil

war and the disappearance of art patronage. Ye t se, ·eral of the

artis ts disagreed very fundamen tally o, ·e r whether a rc had to be market-dri\'en at all.

F IRST ARTIST(an unidentified middle-aged female prinanakcr):

T oday we have to live 011 art. lf eha-veto be able to play the lune. Given

your [ means q[; e:r:pressio11, you have lo know whal is JIJ·i11g' 011 lite

market .... In the e11d,J•ou are prod11d11g art which is dw,me/led along

rerlai11 thus.

SECOND ARTIST (Kizito Kasule lVIaria. a young m ale painter and sculpto r):

D ealers are saJ•illg to us, please tlo tvork like this, I w1111/ it to be with

this 11pproaclt. (l you arl' the type <if person w ho is one h1111dredper cent

130

independe11t in art,you aregoi11g lo be ny"ected,you ore 110/ going lo be

'adv,111cing· in art. About tlte art being produced in Uganda, I can

dassijj•ii in two categories: there is real art, w /11d 1 ;·011 produce with all

J 'Otlr heart, yo11 put ii in your studio, if someone comes,yo1111egotiate, {/' In: does11 ·, give) 'OIi m oney [Ju: shrugs], he lettves lite work. ... There's

another category. Tou produce cheaper work: instead ,y· ~-pending [ a

long time] ,you complete ii i11 tl,ree da;•~and seli lhal work cheapL;•. But

this kind ef art ... is destro;·ing real art.

Patronage .tlso affects the artist's self-awareness through the

channelling of work by different types of artists in to correspond­

ingly diflerent , ·enues fo r it to be exhibited and sold . According to

one criterion, used by bo d1 local ar t establishments in African

cities and d1e a,·erage foreigner, wo rk sold in places that call them­ seh-es a ·galle ry·. 'museum· or ·cul tural centre' are automatically

accorded the status of art. Paintings, batiks. carvings and othe r media which are sold by hawker s on the s ffeec, 0 1· uy s111aJ I n·aders in places like d1e Blue Marke t in Nairobi (an entrepre ne urial ha,·en

of kiosks, which tu1til it was bulJdozed by the city council in July 1998 o,·erflo,,·ed from the City Marke t), have a much more uncer­

tain status. Scoured by bod1 die local cognoscenti and touris ts

looking for •fi nds·, such places operate with , ·ery low overheads,

corre pondingly low prices a nd n o galle ry aura. E,·cn serio us galle ries s uch as Tuli Fanya and Nommo Galle ry in Kampala

include a crafts sectio n to he lp cover costs. A thir-d kind of pos tcolon ial art venue. the ;boutique· (Niger ian

pidgin: butik). m ediates the gap between gall ery and sou,·enir o r

craft market. Some. like Cassava Republic in Kampala (Uganda), are artis t-enlrepreneurs aiming at a touris t m arket for hand-painted

cards, poste rs and T-s hirts. Other s. such as African H e ri cage in

:--airobi (Kenya) and Ndoro Traders in Harare (Zimbabwe), are

well-capitalized businesses which stock hand-made goods rang­

ing from paintings and sculpture to nomadic j ewelry, wire toys, baskets and te xtiles. Nonetheless, they retain the cultural rules

of the craft market in which the individua l artist's identity is

submerged by an ethnic. g rou p or regio nal idc11tity. The workofa uni,·er sity-trained artist such as Kizito is clearly

out of place in the boutique, the city marke t and. most of all, o n the street. E,·eryrhing s uch artis ts ha,·e been taught, especially the

denial o f the commodity s tatus o f their work, milita tes against it being presented to the public as m erchandise. The other major

o bstacle is the anonymity of the artist that cus tomarily accompa­

nies the sale of art in the str eet or marke t. The corollary co the

13 1

105. Adebisi Fabunmi, The Birth ofOshogbo, 1977. Fabunmi emerged as a highly original printmaker in the 1964 Oshogbo workshop and began to experiment with yarn compositions in the late l 960s. Here. the yet-to-be town of Oshogbo is enclosed inside the womb or a monkey-like animal, its circular body repeated in egg-shaped forms arising from Its head.

con,·iction that t.he work ofart ought to be original and one-of-a­

kind is that its maker ought to be recognized as an indi,·idual. not j ust as a member of a g roup. G alle ric reinforce these convictions

and ar e ther efore the only ,·enues that give due respect to t r a ined artists· o w n ideas of selfhood and singularity. But cherc an:: ft:w

gal le 1·ics in African cities which arc nor boutiques in disguise. T his

places t r a ined ar tis ts in a difficult position - they either accept

the polic ies and conditions of the local gallery or they resign themseh ·es to exhibiting their work in the houses of friends or.

increasingly, in galleries abroad. T hose forrunate enough to teach in u niversities or r un their own wor kshop-srudios (such as Bruce

O nobrakpcya in Kigeria) develop small circle of di ciple. and

admi rers who create the profi le needed for direct patronage.

Ho wever, m any trained artists arc cut off from the public by the

132

.06. Ylnka Adeyeml. Baboon - 1J11ter andMagical Ante/ope, •977 Yinka was not one of -ie partK:1pants in lhe Oshogbo .ofkshops run by Georgina

:ieler, but was l ramed by Susanne ·;enger in the art ol batik which 'le practised herself l.Jke several

-ner Osnogt>o arusts he u~ ~ntasy arch1tec1ure as a senmg ..., encounters wuh crealures "Oln I.he spirit world, bul also -.corporates the human subJect

scarcity of acceptable exhibition spac-es, which makes chem a beleaguered. ifpri,·ilcged. minority.

Those who are workshop-trtLined. especially in Nigeria. ha,·e seemingly blurred the difle rences between themselves and acad<.'­ mically trained artists by hoth thei r cr itic.11 and their finan cial succes:, on the international an circuic. But for m ,my years the :-.'igenan cultural bureaucracy denied them that recognition. During the planning for FE TAC, the econd Inte rnational Black and African Festival o f Arcs ancl Cul tllrc held in 1977 in Lagos and throug hout the country. the re was an attempt (later on:rruled) to exclude" o rkshop artists altogethe r. The fcs ti,·al was supposed to highlight ~ige ria':. offi cial commitment to the arts. but " orkshop artis ts found chemseh ·cs left out of the bureaucratic \'ision o f ·rraditional' and ·moder n· art exhibitions. the former consisting of the treasure:, ofthe :-:ational :\1useums in Jos and Lagos, and the latte r ofthe wo rk ofart school-trained artis ts.

T he apparent invisibility of artists such as Adebisi Fabunmi, 105

Yinka Adeyemi and Jimoh Buraimoh, despite their by-then inter- 106

national recognition through d1e Oshogbo workshops a decade earlier. exposed the sharp clea,·ages between the o ffi cial and uno tlkia\ versio ns of Nigerian art. In the government's vision of

133

art in the late 19 70s, the minds of cul t ural bureaucr ats were still com fortably focused on the seemingly sharp and irresoh·able con­

trast be t,.\·een tradition and modernity, the d ominant cultural par­

adigm of the early 1960s when they had been s tudents themselves. T his ·cwo worlds· app1·oach is echoed in nume,·ous ,,-ri tings of

t he pre- and ear ly independence period from 1\lricheru Gatheru'

Child ef T u.-o lf'orldr and Camara Laye·s L 'Er!fent .-~.:oir to Chinua

Achebe"s great no,·els Arrcru1ef Godand ThingsFollrlparl. Because

workshop artists of this period were no t educated e l ires, and in the t\vo- w or lds mode l of African culture, ·mode rn· certainly meant

educated , they did not seem to be essential playe rs in this dialectic

of progress. But in the 19 Os and 1990s, iro nically. it is precisely these artiscs who ha\'e com e to seem most reprcsentati\'e ofcon­ tempo,·ary artistic practice.

And in this rever sal of fashion. a consid erable number of

Fre nch, G er man and I ra lian c ritics. galleries, museums and collec­ tors who publish and ex hibit contemporary African art a re di. -

posed to bypass the wo rk o f trained artists in fa,·our of that by practitioners w ithout diplo mas and degrees. A s early as 1968,

U ll i Beier 's seminal Co11/empomry· rlrt i11 Africa d e, ·oted less than

one-fifth of i ts text to formally trained artisL<; and poin ted ou t

the de ri,·ati\'e nature o f much o f their w or k and thl! inherent problem in ina·oducing V/este rn models. Andre :vragnin a.nd

Jacques Soulillou·s Contemporary Ari ef .-ifrica published n early

thirty years lace,- in J996 selected artists to be discussed according to this sam e criterio n. Of the s ixty-odd artis ts included, nearly

all we re trained thro ugh apprenticeships, workshops. o r by self­

exper ime ntation. A handful, s uch as the Vohou-Vohou painters of Co te d" h ·oire or the wcll- kno " ·n Senegalese artis t-activis t Issa

Samb, are included as examples ofartists in rebellion against their o riginal academic tra ining. The authors make the ir position on

this point clear:

Nl a11y artisl,<farmed in the schools ef art, where Lhey acquired a solid

background in modern art ef the ff esl ...produu r_.,-ork tlwl u/1 loo

'?fie11 slays well within the realm ef that tmditio11.... For them. the

.field ef art basically remains corifined lo ledmical issues and begs tire

111ore.f11ndnme11tal question qf the purpose ef Lita/ ledm ique . . .. • uc/1

recourse lo these chamc/erislic sty les and leclmiques ef ff eslen, modern

art inevitably.favors a h)•bridi.zalio11 ... ceaselessl)•.fi1eled h.r its sources. Unhappily. sur/1 afi,=y aesthetic in which co,!f11sio11 reig11s, wltirlt

r~11ses lo strike out in 1111k11ow11 lerrilor,v, nm.~ //,e ri.~k qf being .fi1lal to ll11.

13-J.

.07. Theodore Koudougnon. 5¥>..ads, 1988. As in Senegal, -e1>ellion by artisl•intellectuals .against academic 1Jadit1ons in :O:e d'Ivoire has a distinctly -rancophone flavour - the Johou-Vohou group to which ".oudougnon belongs ,ssues .,,.,nffestoes which invoke .:.•ncan identity claims while =multaneously making fun of -,anifesto writing.

The attack o n hy bridity seem s somewhat m isplaced in this con­

text - it is the ,·c ry fact of its hy bridization and a 'fuzzy aes the tic·

that g h-cs much o f the wo rk o f untrained artis ts its emergent q uality and thus m akes i t interesting to critics s uch as Magnin and

Soulillo u.

/11c/11sion and exclusion: the a uthority qf coffee/or and curator

As the Cl1ban critic G er ardo l\llosquer a has no ted , ins tead of

colonizing the Third \,Yo del, the \Ves t now sends curator s as post­ colonial explorer s o n ,·oyages ofdisco,·e1T T o e x tend his m etapho r,

collectors are then a kind of advan ce-guard, scouting the te .-ri tory

and trading with the natives before any treaties are s igned. The firs t

m ajor t ravelling e xhibition o f conte mpor a ry African art. KrmslAus

..J.frika ( 19 7 9). ex hibited the private collectio n o f Gunte r Peus and featured ( thoug h not e xclusive ly) the w o rk o f untrained artis ts

from the yotmg Cheri Samba to Middle Art (sec C hapter o ne). The

same was true o f the m ajor rra,·el I ing show, / {f,-ica J-loy! ( 199 I ),

which was based o n the coll ection o f Jean P igo zzi. This en cy­ clopaedic a nd hig h ly d sible collectio n also pro, ·ided al I bt1ta re,,.of

the artworks in l\ lagnin and Soulillo u·s Co11te111pora1J' drt qf rljhar and many of the e xamples for this book. At this stage when the

/ 35

108. (opposite) Bodys lsek Kingelez, detail from Kimbembele lhunga (Kimbev,JJe). 1993- 94

critical discour se on postcolonial African art is still emerging, the

tastes and preferences of a handful of priYate colJectors and the

curators who work closely " ;th them ha\'e had a great influence on the way in whjch contemporary African art is being defined for its various publics - ·autodjdacts' a r e pri,·ileged over formally trained

artists, women anises a rc nearly in,·isible, and \\'ith the exception

of South Africa ("'hich has its own corps ofcurator s and cr itics). the anglophone countries are se\'erely underrepresented relative

to their artistic importance. Two important exhibitions ofcon temporary African art that

we re shown as partof the Africa ·95 festi,·al in London illustrated

both this set ofpreferences and a majorartempt to challenge them.

In the Serpentine Gallery's Big City, which was also based on the

P igozzi collection and curated by Andre l\1agnin. the dominant themes we1·e enigma and fan tasy, such as Kimbeville. the imagi­

nary cardboard city and icon to mode rnity built b)· the Congolese artist Bodys Isek Kingelez. Fi\'eofthe ix artists then appeared in M agn in and Soulillou·s survey. Taking a very different stance, the

\ Vhi techapel ArtGallery's much m ore inclus i\'e project Seven Stones about M odern rl rt in Africa presented the work of academically trained, workshop and unn·ained arrists, and tra,·e anglophone

Africa long overdue attention, as well as women artists and cura­

tors a voice. Parr of its ambitions stemmed from rhe organizer

Clementine D eliss·s desire to ha\'e a group ofAfrican curators and contributors for the sho w who would also \\Tite and organize

texts for the cataJogue. Some contributor {Everlyn Nicodemus..

El H adji Sy, D a, ·id Ko loane and Chika Okeke) were also practising

anises, o thers ( \.Vanjiku Nyachae and SaJah H assan. as \\'ell a:, Clementine O eliss herself) we re closely invoked with contempo­

rary art. working as curators or cri tics. .-\s the \\'hitechaper.,. dii·ector Catheri ne Lampert put it:

Gradually, the romanlir authenlicity ,wlomaticall_y a.<sociated wit/, Jiu

'untrained' artist ltas become a11 exhausted ll.f.mmptioJL, e.ccept ill the

media and amongsome collectors. Indeed lite curators andgalleries

participating in this e.:r:/Jibitio11 ltave chosen an approac/J tlwt welcome.>.

educated and i11tellect11ally rigorous l!tinki11g and acknowledges Afn"ca 11 art as beingcosmopolilu11 w hile al the same time its content

may abound in local andpersonal references.

The overall cflective ness of Se-ven Slories about Aloden, .A,1 in A.fri,­ (some of the 'stor ies· more compelling than others) restored hr:!. French- and English-speak ing artist- intellectuals to the conrer;-:­

por ary art d iscourse.

I .'J6

Hrl comesfrom art. ' (Or does it?)

This s tate m ent, made in an inte n ·iew by the American poet laure­ ate Robert Pinsky, expresses not o nly the obser vation that the

wo rk o f e, ·e r y artis t is in pa rt concei,·ed o ur of the wo rk o f o ther artis ts either past 0 1· c urrent, but also the con, ·iccio n that it ought

to be that way. I t is a po werful idea considered axiom a tic by m ost

a rt his to rians and c1·itics. But what is perhaps overlooked by its

o therwise compelling s implicity is the poli tical force its m eaning has in a colo nial conte xt. A palpable tensio n be tween identity and

pedagogy de, ·eloped along with the inde pendence mo, ·ement in

m any late-colo nial s tates. One of the results o f this tension ha

been the ·schizophre nia in the arcs· described by ano ther poe t.

Chinweizu. writing about inte llectual life in the ~igcria o f the 1970s. African artis ts and writers, com posers and filmmaker s have

both wanted to break on to a wo rld s tage. to assert that Africa is a

player a nd not s imply a peripher a l audience. a nd at the sa me time ha, ·e w anted to e xpress an identity whic h is no t o nly ·not

European · but is bo th African and anticolonial. This has led to a

dilemma drh·en by bo th the uncertain ties o fpos tcolo niaJ identity and an equally llnccrtain role played by colonia l-s ty le education.

In irs s implest form e xpressed in the 1960s it was the child-of­

two-wo r lds arg ument abo ut the conflic t between t radition and

m ode rnity, Africa and the \Vest. Since that rime, these terms haYe been s ubstantially c,;ricized and r ede fined, and in the mind ofa self­

reflexh·e artis t s uch as Ibrahim El Salahi o fche Sudan . what is old

o r n ew, African o r Is lamic o r m odern, d o not exis t as free ch oices.

but as partly intentional and partly predete rmined . In a Third Text

inten;ew with Ulli Beie r, he re,·ealed that he o ften felt caught between two elem ents in his wo rk - o ne O\'e r which he has no co nn·ol that simply appear s unbidden in his wo1·k and which he

n :cogniz.es as the same images that used to appear to him as a child in Kharto um and the o th er \\·hich he consciously tries to impose a,,

a trained artis t \\·ith an arsena l of imagery and techniques at

h is disposal.

UB : /low lhe11 does the S uda11e.~e elem,mtji1se with your Qalur or

Eng lish expe-rie11a?

!ES: If ell. tire S udanese e.rperie11ces are in ! Ire inwges. ..Js a child I had

images <if people. The_,· t1JJpeared mid I saw them ph_,·siml?,·. T he lhi11p

I draw are no/ imagined: 1/u•y appear injronl q/ 11~v i:ves.... S ometimes. /il.·e ofraclion <if a second, lite hori::011 opens and I Sl'e

//,em .... I work like II medium, so my imagery i.~not somellr ing l //,ink about. I do nol create them, /Irey create themselves. IT"/un I a 1111e lo

138

England, I learned two things: J lean,ed about leclmiques, and 1

learned about the people. I was keen lo acquire the tools of pai11ti11g. ... But 1 was aL~o anxious lo Jmow about ... the background q/ tire R enaissance, about earfy Christian painting, the contemporary movtm11:nl~.... lf'fu:n Twent to /;vein tire ,--Jrab world my e.rpl·rience

linked again with my early childhood. Amb culture is linl.-ed with the Arab language, with th,• Komn and calligraphy. And calligraphy is a 10'3

most important su~;ectJbr me, because it is abslractedfarm, with symbols which airrJ' sound and 111e11ni11g. First, I used Lo w rile calligraphy t1s it is: poetry or words qf wisdo111. Bui later on, I applied some qf the techniques 1 had learned in Europe. I like what P icasso had done with Cubism, taking the visuaZfon11 and breaking it into ii original componenlf, and then reconstructing ii i11 a newform. Tthink I did the same I/zing with calligraphy .... 1 tried to go deeper and break :down] the actual shape qf llze symbol lo its origin- lo lake it back to animal.forms, or water. ... Andonce I opened this door and went through it~ it was like bret1king glass! I had lo walk caref'ully: sometimes you could cul )'Ourself. ... I was breaking and breaking... and.figures appe,1red... the same.figures or spirits that used to come lo me as a child! They came to me when the)' werefreed ef the rzgidfarm ef /he le1te1:

UB: ... Thest' images were strikingly African. 'lou could almost have tJ1011ghl they fwd emerged.from some culture in the Ivory Coast. There

109. Ibrahim El Salahi , Calligraphy. n.d.

139

was t/,is extraordi11a,)' t1Ji11it;•: maybe there is some deep layer ef co11scio11s11ess that reaches 011/ way beyond its 1/llrro-.i: geographical

local ion ....

JES: That is quite true. ,-Ji.first I u.:asj11sl taken i11 b)' them. I ,·ouldll'f eve11 think about il, because they u:a11ted to come 011l 1111d I brought them

out; and the;• kept coming and coming. ... Later I used lo 1J,i11k: here I

am, thi11kingef myseff us a11 rlrab, but these do lool.· like African

masks! H ow come? l am tJ)•ing lo refine"')' ralligmpli_y and these kintb ef images emerge!.... This can c1111se a dilemma. this process qf weddi11g wlllllj/01.1,•sfrom within with ·wlralyo11 have acquired.from

outside_ H ow to weigh tire two elements, which may be quite

contradictory with each other, that is the naf11re ef the u-ork. Because

ideas are idea.,, 110/ art..-1rt is what;·ou make ef tire ideas.

UB: ... Couldyou say !hat this image that appears. 1111co11/ro/led and

1111solicited, is real~\' some ki11d ef archaic identil_,•. a11d //wt tire intellec/ualproCl'ss tlren.fi11ds some common denominator betwee11 it

and all tl,e other acquired idenlilie.~?

JES: 1es. Lei 11.~ say that the work ef art is the meetingpoint.

1-J.0

'Id 111 . Ibrahim El Salahi. 00P(>S1te) and Faces

e both early 1960s. While • glance sIm1lar. Faces ~ six Stra ight nosed,----c- t-haired faces w ith the

ts::x,,-s between them fifled w ith -"r!Cate designs. while Head ~ a solitary Atncan face. ~ a self-portra,1. against a

suggested background. - ta tentative, unfinished ·1 - and the ·archaic identity·

_.. i Beier recognized.

Fi nally. wha t is m os t in te resting he re is that bo th El Salahi and

Beie r we re in tellect11ally 'formed ' in the I 950s and 1960s, and that

consequently both a rtis t and cri tic sec the unbidden elem ent as a kind o f Africa n essence which reli ,ses to be complcte ly contro lled

by outs ide forces. h i~ part of a larger arg ument abo ut the e xis­

tence of p rimo rdia l identi t ies, whic h a younge r g eneratio n would view with a certain scepticism.

Ugu11da: lmd 1lio11alisl, modl'rnisl a11d 11al1011alisl ped agogJ'

I t is a lso possible to follo w this dialectic o f the inner and ou ter con­

:-ciousness a~ it wa~ played o ut in thc educatio n of those African

artists w ho d id not go to Euro pe to be trained . :-.:o ,, here can this

rhe to ric be traced mo re clearly than in the dc"elo pment oro ne o f the continent's m ajo r art schools a t l\ lakc rere Un iversity in pre-

and post-independence Uganda. ,l\1argare t Trowe ll. its founder.

rep,·esented a colon ial pedagogy whic-h g re w out of Britis h

Colonial Oflicc notion s o f na ch·c pe rfectibility and progress. As a

go, ·e r ning s t r a tegy. Indirect Huie had ad hered to the principle of least interference wit h e xis ting tradiuon. In like manner. Trowell advised, '\\'e s tart from it. swdv it, and ho no ur it .· H er instinc ts

~

therefore " ere to build upo n the anisanal prac tices which already

1 -J.J

99

112. Peter Mulindwa's. The Owl Drums Death (the Uganda Martyrs). 1982, is an example of a classrc Makerere genre in which mythology carries both a pictorial and a narrative load. The Uganda Martyrs were early converts to Christianity who died at the order ol a despotic kabaka {king) and so signify martyrdom under modern despots as well .

existed. but to introduce new technicaJ knowledge as a pragmatir way to "de\·elop· the ,·isual ans in a region of Africa where repr~ sen tational art was rare.

Trowclrs teaching s trategy was a conscious rejection of th.c­

moclel put forward by European modernism and set l\1ake re reon~ course which, while late r redirected, earned ic an early repu tatior­ among ou tsid er s as an o lJ-fashionccl late-colonial institution Uganda is not c,·en mentioned in "Iii Rcicr·s rcx t of 1968. al tho u gt Makerer e was well establi shed by that time as the majo r ccn n·e for

f ..J.2

training ar t is ts fro m a wide regio n of eas tern Africa, fro m the

Sudan to Rho desia. Trained as an artis t ac the S lade, Lo ndo n, and as an a rt teacher at the Ins titute of Education at the Univer s ity o f

London , Trowell introduced her s tudents to \:Vestc rn techniques

s uch as easel painting and s ilkscreen printing . \\' ithin dlese picto­

ria l genres she encouraged the use o fnarrat i,·c, whic·h until then, had resided majnly i11 oral tradition. The pic torial narratiYe, which was ra r e prior to 1900 as ide from prehis to ric rock art, has become

a s taple o f re p1-esencatio n in African art almost e ,·erywhere, from

1 4..'J

the heroic exploits of the gods to the s truggles o f e,·eryday life and

the chillingallegories of military rule.

Sculpnire. while unable to carry the same complex narratfre

load as pajnting. could the marize both mythic and genre subjects. Trowetrs m o:n o uts tanding early s tuden t , the l-.e nyan Gregory

Maloba. de ,·clopcd a powerful monumental style u sing Ugandan

hardwood s and other mate rials, and assisted Trowell as an instruc­

tor a t M akerered uring the 1950s. later returning to Kenya to heao

the D eparcment of D esign at the fled gling Unive rsity o f~airobi.

In the early period. the firs t E ast African arris t to be exhibiteo abroad was the Tanzanian Sam Ktiro. His career as a painter ana

Maloba's as a sculptor. both in m any ways parallel to Ber Enwonwu·s in ~ige,;a. had been pro mo ted initiaJly by Trowel!

just as E n wo nwu·s had been e ncouraged by the legendary .Kenne th Murray. Bo th :'l.1urray and T1·o well as expatriate ar:

teacher s had insisted on g ro unding their s tudents in their o"­ local system s of kno wledge and artistic practice - a d eep in tere '-•

in pre,en ·ing these traditions led Murray to be<:ome >:igeria·­

firsr DiTector of .--\ntiquities and to collect m e thodically boc;

objects and e thnographic documentation for the Lagos i:'vluscu m. Trowe ll was Director o f"rhe Uganda Museum ( 1959- 1-5) wht:r

she ini tiatcd art classes ar 1\ lakererc and later wro te two inHuenn...

s tudies. Classical African S culphtre ( 195+) and .-J.frican Design ( 1960

Bo th :vfurray and Tro well arranged fo r their most promisio:­

s tudents' wo r k to be shown in Londo n - Trowelrs s tudents at the.­ Impe rial Ins titute in 1939 and Mw-ray·s at the Zwemmer GaJl~

113. (left) Gregory Maloba. Death. c. 19-!::

114. (opposite) Shangodare. The Triumphant Return ofShango from Battle 197 7. Unlike The Owl Drums Death (see plate 112). made in Uganda around lhe same time. this narrative's intention is no; to draw explicit parallels with contemporar political events in Nigeria. but to validate Oyo Yoruba culture's mythic past. Shango the fourth king of Oyo. whO was later deified as the god of thunder and lightning. returns on his horse from a successful t>anle, accompanied by a line of chaineo war captives. The artisl is a disciple of Shango and the godson and protege of Susanne Wenger (see plate 39l.

J •J..J.

in 1937. They sent the best s tudents o n to the Slade Sc hool o f F ine

Art, or the Royal .-\cade my ofArts in London for further training.

But paradoxically this assured that th ese early s tudents would

take on lar ge r- than-life re pu ration s as archety pes of the ·mod ern African a rtis t' in the minds o f the Britis h public a s well a s at h o m.e

in the colonies. They were expected to epitomize the educated

colo niaJ eli te. but also to represent an essenrial Africanity.

l fT1·owc U re presented a traditio nalizing approach common

to the projects of the 1950.s, her So uth African successor Sweeney

(Cecil) T odd was fully committed to an African m od ernism based on a knowledg e of twenticth-<:entury de\·elo pments in Europe a.,

well as canonical African art. Students we re gi\·en a tho roug¼­

crajning in w or ld art his tor y, scientific colo ur theory and lif"° drawing . Li ke Trowell, T odd ins is ted o n s tuden cs achic \·inga higf­ level of technical skill and making use of indigeno us m ateriaJs. .'b

a white So uth African, he shared som e of the sam e goals in trrun­

ing young African anis rs as his counrerpan Cecil S komes had ai:

the Po lly St reet Centre in Jo hannesburg a few years ear lier. B1.ot

wherea s in South Africa the early Po lly Street artis ts - Duran·

Sih la li. L ucas Sithole, am o ng others - we re no t encour aged t

lear n about s ty les and m ove ments elsewhe re. T odd a nd his s ea.­

soug ht to make M akerere s tude nts conversant with a wide rangtc of world art. 1.-onicaHy, while T odd 's position was considen?L

a neocolonialis t one in the 1960s. in the 1990s it was rein terprer.,..

by many younger African artis ts as a form o f e nlightenec'.

'inter nationalis m·. If ear ly South African atten1pts to avo

115. Gregory Maloba teachmg at the Makerere Art SchoOI. Ug,anda. in the 1950s. Students and teacner alike are In the British colOO'

school uniform of the time model! ing small-scale figures in clay.

:: Ben Enwonwu at work in

·

-OOdon studio. 1957. The • oJrir:an Review published

. ~rograph with the caption, onwu the Bohemian', and

::oservation, 'Apart from ;;,e,ephone at his elbow ..:ould be a garret in 19th

ry Paris." On the easel is .-'inished paintingof Nigerian ..a women and on the left a -:.ed male head.

·con raminati.ng· a1· tists with Weste1·n ideas now seem s paternalis­

tic and short-s ighred , this shifting of \'alues among the em erging

gene1·a tion ofartists and critics is partly the resultof their g reate r·

likelihood to exhibit, publish and e,·en live abroad. But the Makerere of the 1960s caught up in the i.nteUectuaL

euphoria of nation ali.smand anticolonialism was ,·ery diffcrcn t from

ci rhcr the la te-colo nial M akerere o f Trowell or the postcolonial

internatio na lis m o f today. Todd was unwilling to condone s tudent

radicalism that rejected Britis h pedagogy, symbolized in the Uni\'ersity (though not the ArtSchool) through the official subor­

dination of Make rere·s d egree-gr anting s tatus to the University of London at that t ime. \Vhile the intellectual debate was us ually

couched in terms of African literature and the importance of

teaching th e wo rk of African writers along with Shakespeare. it

a lso spilled over into art and music. Three young artists whose ideas T odd opposed were the

Ugandan painter Eli Kyeyune and the T anzanians Sam Ntiro and

Elimo Njau. Njau, an outspoken and charismatic artis t who h ad 11a

been trained by Trowell herselfand g raduated in the firs t diploma class. was not indeed by Todd to teach i.n the Art School and

Kyeyune, who later wo n an inte rnational artists' competition

sponsored by the then-AedgLingjournal rlfrica11 Aris, left wit hout

fini shing his deg1·ee co follow Njau to Nairobi. There Njau set up Paa ya Paa (" the antelope rises') Culrural Centre which, despite an

i.nadequate s taff and operat ing budget, managed to sun;ve over

the years with a c hanging clie ntcle ofYisiting artists, tourists and

14-7

(opposite) M ichael Adams, from Fazal Abdullah's

_~

-

·

-

-,ers House. t.amu. c. 1966. cams, a brilliant colourisl , set

?I standard for Makerere s...:.ents in his painting classes.

1e contrast here is between the dark interior of a Swahili

..se and the almost blinding 'ght reflected off the Indian

:ean and the coral stone walls -e house exteriors. which

~ ly washes out all detail.

_.s. (right) Elimo Njau. M ilking . ~-2

internationaJ student g ro ups unti l it was tragically destroyed by a fire in D ecember I 997, but partly ,·eopened with the help of local

and donor support on ly a year later. Ntiro had been TroweJl's protege and after completing further

training at the S lade in London, he retu rned to the Art School but was later dismissed by Todd. Ntiro went back to Tanzania and became a commissioner for culture in the social is t government of Julius Nyerere. T odd was also assisted by a teaching staffofextra­ o rdi nary younger (and predictably mo re iconoclastic) ar tists including Ali Darwis h (Zan zibar), Jonathan Kingdon (Tanzania) and ;\,l ichael Adams (UK), aJI with burgeoning careers of their 117

own. For all of these ar tis ts as well as their proteges among the students. the No mmo Gallery in Kampala provided the necessary access to patrons and audience. Ada ms and Kingdon were eYen r esponsible for teaching p rintmaking after hours to the Art School"s custodian Richard Ndabagoye, who proved to be a more formidable t:alent than most of the students and liel<l a u11c-man 119

s how ar the No mmo Gallery, a1though he was im prisoned shorcly

afte1· and his careercut short. T odd"s major project was the construction of a gallery at the

School to house cl1e permanent collection of works by staff and students, funded by the politically conscn ·ative Gulbenkian Foundation. This, too. dro,·e a wedge between him and the group of radical East African intellectuals who were setting the terms of the firs t disc l1ssion s about postcoloniality. Many of these debates took place in the pages of Tra11silio11 magazine, the liter ary and 120

149

119. Richard Ndabagoye. Mume na Mire (Husband and Wife). 1969. The contrast between the dour-faced elderly husband and the inscrutable, unlined face of his obviously younger wife says much about arraneed marriaees Their ,;;tiff hie1atic pose is reminiscent of subjects before a village photographer. Ndabagoye never ·studied' artso his work has no obvious models. though he imbibed the Makerere ethos that an was not about the art mari<e:.

FO/iEl6N 'EYf>ERT.S" ,tNOf'OoU! CORPS s-M me CXJ<JNTRY LIKE I/IIHfTE Al(13.

UGANDA'S CONffiTVTlON~

PROPOSALS

120. Cover for TransitJOn 32, 1967. Michael Adams drew the cover illustra!JOl"I for Paul Theroux's lead article, 'Tar-2:an is an Expatriate·. Devoted in about equal measure to discussions about postcolonia politics and cultural criticism, and about anempts to annoy traditionalists orall types. Transition flourished until its editor Rajat Neogy was accused or treason by the Uganda government and made to stand trial. The magazine tater moved to Ghana under the editorship of Wole SOyinka. butnever took as well to West African soil. Since 1991 ithas been successfully retooled as a more diasporic journal edited in the USA by Henry Louis Gates Jr and Kwame Anthony Appiah.

__ Francis Nnaggenda, untitled ;iwre, Makerere studio. n.d.

~nda prefers towork on :-ge scale in wood. scrap

-,ee or a combination ofboth. ::i!!:aUSe or its size. his work

,s;s mainly in public spaces r :ne Makerere Art School.

~da. where it has colonized a-,ailable space outside his

..c.o. He also paints in a style "iscent of later Cubism (see

;lll!CE104).

political journal founded by Rajat cogy in Kampala in 19(-i I and

supported by the same group of artists. writer s and inte llectua ls

who founded the Nomm o Gallery and directed such projects as the

National Theatre and the national dance troupe, 'Heartbeat of

Africa'. Unlike 1'ige ria, South Africa or Congo, Uganda is a small

country with a single inte Uectual cen tre, Kampala. E very artist,

poet, play wright., no,·elist, gallery directo r, newspaper journali s t

and public intellec tual knows one another, creating a high le,·el of

cross-fertilization in the arts. In Paul Theroux·s words it was, a ·small g 1·een city... full o f distinguished people'. But whi le w.-ite rs·

work could be published and sold abroad, ,·isual artis ts we re depen-

dent primarily on local patronage by elites and the gO\·ernment.

This all e , ·aporated with the coup d'etat of 197 1 which b 1·ought Idi

Amin to power in Uganda. Within a short tim e. all public criticism was stifled, and artists and intellectuals who sur vived - some d id not-either went into exile or tried , like other Ugandans, to I in~Ly

their wits. One effect of the Arn.in regime was to force the depar-

ture of e xpatriates, as well as politically outspoken Ugandans,

from the University. As more and more Ugandans including the University's own vice chancellor •disappeared' into Makindye or

Luzira prison ne,·er to be seen again , Makc1-ere s truggled to stay

open by employing its own recent BA graduates as teachers. So

iro nica lly Lh is reign of terror becam e a time of opportunity for

young arti:-ts, particularly if they were able to turn out commis­ sions for the regim e. One of the artists who narrowly escaped

imprisonment was the Ugandan sculptor Francis Nnaggenda,

whose la rge-scale sculptures in w ood and m etal explore the ·m achine in the g arden· m etapho r, as well as the resilience o f 121

the human body and spirit under the assault of war, dole nce

and technology. T o day internationalis m is in the air once again, which wo rries

some of the o lder artis ts who have lived through each of these

phases in turn. Nnaggenda, who generally suppo n s the interna­ tional curriculum, also sees it as a process which inevitably erodes

African syste msofknowledge.

F.V : Todayyo11'/l.fi11d ayoungftllow, wlumyou talk to him in

Luganda, he will tell you that I don't understand w h.atyou're saying,

please speak in Eng lish ... even )'OIi may say a certain proverb and lte

/Jas nt:ver heard if it.

SLK: Areyou suggesting that there i< now ~-itch a distance.for this person

from his onm cu/turf' that he approaches it.from the outside looking in?

l.'H

F-:-.T: Exactly. It is true... these students who t1re here, Liley should learn

about Yorubas, they should learn about .rlsanles, they should learn about

D ogons; because w hen the D ogo11S talk, althougl, we are distant here on

the conti11e11t, I've come to reali:::e tliat w l,en you look at !lie core, we are the same. we are tlzesame ... if we can '/ lear11fi·om ourselves the,z we become, how doyou call ii. thin.

A paralle l set ofpedagogic debates took place at the same~

in Nige ria, first in what was to become the Fine .-\rtD e partme ntat

Ahmadu Bello Unive rsity in Zaria, and then at the UniYersity o~ Nigeria at X sukka (see Chapter six). In each of these countries - Sudan, Uganda. Nigeria- the actor s and scenery changed , but tht'

cultural script re mained the sam e - how did one continue to be African and still be a mod ern artist? l t was the burningquestion 0:

the 1960s among artists across much of the contin ent. I t is still

salien t for many artis ts who came ofage during that period and i,

belatedly being played out in South Africa today. tied as it is oo issues of cultural nationalism . But to e\'en ask this question is ro

betray one's psychological dis tance &o m what Thomas l\1ukarobgwa

referred to simply as ' the bush' - it is an intelleccual's question .

152

~ 0

tY,1c; --..i ~rn

/\ 0 < :,~"'-J '~

~Y::141 fll :;,Lt~A.;j}J~il.J tlJ.3C ~!~--- nv>►~-

.:.: (opposite. above) Oossou &<.ldou, Yoruba (Nago) Gelede -~, Benin. n.d. In the whole

enory orcanonical Yoruba art. ;...e:)e masks offer the greatesl

of inventive sculptural bilities. Oossou Amidoo.

• ng in a village near Ketu in .es:ern Yorubaland. exemplifies

_ nventiveness. Yet. when ..ork was selected for the

,igoens de la Terre exhibition =s1s. he replied modestly,

7 work. Ican't define what call art.'

...:.1 (opposite. below) ::i.a;mbelo. One is Never ~Served than by Oneself.

-.afaty aloalo (funerary post).

_

_

.::agascar. 1994. Like the :.c.a:ie mask sculptor above.

• -nbelo is an Innovator. 7J/Sea/oafo include buses and

~nesas well as Zebu cattle. C" ·,1ahafaly symbol of prestige

Health. These posts are T'.Ed in the ground surrounding

~mb or the deceased. and -::r iD the arrival o f the French '1adagascar in 1904. were _dered immovable Now

are also collected.

__ right) Frederic Bruly

'i:x;.abre, Knowled8e of the World - ·r,e Bowels of the Verdant - the Subterranean Blue ~.'lashes Our 'Dead' Before

- Reborn as Drinking Water. ::ir:: . Drawn on 3• x s· cards and

---gcoloured pencils and a :ioint pen - in other words. -:ie paraphernalia of the

-.sfs studio butof the llbrary- ;....;atlre's Knowledge of the

"'ld series is a compendium oeas formed 011er a lifetime xservation mixed with poetic

~ical fantasy.

Co11scious11ess and postco/011ialil)• I t would be w rong, howe,·er, to locate the issue of artistic

consciousness solely in chose who have s tudied art in unive rsities

and arc academies. I t requires an awa1·cness borne out an engage­ m ent b c::twcc11 sc::lf and " o riel, and the po:stcolo 11i<1I condition

encourages this on a regu lar basis - particularly thro ugh museums, and their curators, wh ich n ot on ly influe nce the way

that artists s uch as Bo uabre and Adeagbo wo r k, but are also active

agents themselves in cons tructing postcoloniality. Byjuxtaposing

the work of T hird an d F ir st \ Vorld artis ts in a shared space. the

curator of ."1agici1ms de la Terre at the Cen tre Pompidou, Paris, fo 1· instance, suggested shared intention s between artis ts, w he the r· a

Na,·aho sand painter, a carve r of G e lede mas ks from Be nin, a 122

maker of funer ary marker s from M adagascar or a conceptual 12l

artist fro m ::--1ew Yo rk. Their s ide- by-side exposu re conveys,

prom o tes and mediates the claim for some com m on intelligence or consciousness.

F red eric Bruly Bo uabre, born in 1923, was a g oven 1ment 124

offi cial in Core d'Ivoire who worked for lFA1~ (The French Insti tute

for Subsaharan Africa). The £FAN :vfuseum was housed in the

same building in Abidjan and ald1ough it "·as s maller than the one

in D akar it was nonetheless a m ajor pr esence. Bouahre explained in a 199.::i interview about the B ig Citycxh ibition featuring his work

that he loves museum s in t he way that o ne lo,·es o ld books. ' l do not

work from my imag ination . I observe. and what I sec delights me.

And so I want to imitate." This imitatio n, d espite Bo uabre·s decla­ ration . is hig hly imaginati,·e. ye t m e ticulo usly controlled.

The archaeology o f know led ge is also a lo ng-s tanding preoccupation for G eorges Adeagbo of the l{cpuhlic of Ben in , 12s. 126

L' ENSEMBLE l E tvos ·MOfl1'S"AVJ1NfJJE -=- .. 5

125 and 126. Georges Adeagbo, Histoire de France. Cotonou, 1992.

though his sensibility is bounded by a different set ofexperiences.

Initially trained in law and political science in France. he returned to Cotonou, his birthplace, in 1971, where he conso-ucts installa­

tio ns in the sanely courtyard of his compound. These collection,,

of things, constantly being reconfigured and changed, includ..­ pages from newspapers held down by stones. enamel basins.

deflated socce,· balls, dolls' heads, small ase11 (Fon ancestral altars) and objects from vodou altars. He says he is 'fascinated

by histo1·y", which seems to encompass Oahomean. French and postcolonial Beninois events and objects. But the train of hb

thought is not always readily t.-ansparent. and concerned relati,~

worried about his sanity ha,·e admitted him to mental hospital:.

se\'eral tim es. Posrcoloniality in what was French \'\'est Africa has had a gen­

eration to sink into peoples· consciousness. But in South Africa.

it is a very new condition, ha,·ing only been achieved by the fir:.-t

free elections of 199·1-. The period between the Soweto Uprising­ ( 1976) and the 1994 e lection s can be seen as a time ofin tense selt­

examination by artists and writers searching for a ,·iable way to l:Jc.

South African. and also a part of the world. Arri. tic consciousnes,

15 ·1·

_- Sue Williamson. Jenny ~ /5 Schoon, 1985

has the 1·e lo re been a constant symptom o f South Africa·s social

fragme ntation, both for white artis ts conditioned by their pro fes­

sional training to think in term s of self:.realizatio n. and for their

black and other non-white counterparts because they moved with­ in a socie ty oflicially closed to their r e presentation!':.

\-Vhile there was a spectrum of possible all iances, both artistic

and critical practice during the l970s and 1980s respo nded to the

African Nationa l Congress's L eninis t-de rived position that artists

were ·cultural workers· who o ug ht to be engaged in actively resist­ ing an oppressive regime. Few ar tis ts o r even c,·itics were so

explicitly doctrinaire. but the,·e was nonetheless a clear recogni­

tion that the discourse about ,·ace was at the heart of the ANC's

goal of a ·non-racial society' which, in tu rn , made it the recurrent

theme ofm ost a.re. whether by black o r white artists. For the latte1·

this forced u pon them the contradiction between their professed

political ideals and their privileged socio-econom ic position. T he response of ::;0111e white artists was to incorporate thefr

activism into the explici t content of their work. In I 982 Sue 121

\ 1/iJJiaJn son began a series of screen- printed photogr aph ic

collages honou ri ng women involved in the apartheid s truggle. M ostof these were black women such as AnnieSiJinga, im:olved in

the D efiance Campaign o f the 1950s and Mamphela R amphele,

155

128. (right) William Kentridge, Soho and Mrs Eckstein in the Landscape. 1991. A drawing for the film Sobriety, Obesity and Getting Old. Kentridge depicts Soho Eckstein, an aging min ing magnate and ·property developer extraordinaire·, reunited with h is long-neglected wife w ithin a landscape that holds traces o f what has been enacted upon it.

129. (opposite) Penny Siopis, Cape ofGood Hope - A History Painting, 1989-90

now one of South Africa's leading public intellectuals. who as a

m edical s tudent had been a n actids t in the black conscio usnes­

m o ,·ement with Steve Biko. Al,.;o included were Jenny Curtis

Sc hoon, a young white political ac tivist who died in 19 4 when she a11u lte r small uaug,hte1- "er·e blu" 11 up by a pan.:el b u 1nb.

\ Villiam Kentridge·s sensibility has been closely tem pered by the city o f Johannesburg. whe re he has always li,·ed. In 1990 he

wro te, ' In the end all the work I d o is about Jo hannesburg, a ,-arher

despe rate provincia l city. I have ne, ·e r tried to make illus tratio ns of

apartheid, but the drawings are certainly spawned by and feed off

the brutalised society left in its wake. I am intere ted in a po litical

art, tha t i to say an a rt of a mbig uity, contradiction , uncomple ted

gestures and uncertain e ndings. An a rt =and a politics] in which my o ptimis m is kept in check a nd my nihilism a t bay.' lienti-idge

began to combine drawing with an im ation in the 19 Os. Th<!

go ve rnment had declare d a s tate o f em ergency in 19S5 and had imposed press censorship r esulting in new spapers with bl ank

spaces where s to ries had been e xpunged. Ex panding on this idea he created h is o wn ver sion:

The.film was mc1de i11111;)' studio 011 011e shut ef paper. II chro11icles a

history ef images, f!Ve11ts . people, a11d i11Jerc1ctio11s, td l ef w hich are

subseque11tlyerased leaving a blm1k, but bruised shut ef paper. T Iii'

sheet ef d rawingpaper was e.r!tibiJed... with the.film p rojeded

alongside.... Subseq11e11II)·, eve11 blank spaces in 11e-..,v~papers were deemed Lo be sulrilersive and prohibited_

1~Jkj~:-- ~ ;

-

156

130. Alfred Thoba. Race Riots, 1977

Kentridge initiated a s ix-fi lm series in 1989 beginning with

Johannesburg, Qnd Greatest CilJ' ~fter Puris. Ano the r was Sobru:l). Obesit)' and Gelling Old ( I 99 1 ) . A recurrent image in these drawings is an empty advertising billboard set in a burnt-out

landscape holdin g traces of what has happened. a powerful

symbol also deployed by artists such as Jane Alexander. P enny Siopis, an introspecth·e painter concer ned \\·ith d1e

large them es of history has described her use of images of opu­

lence - satin dr apery, flower s. food - in the mid- I 980s as a way of commenting upon the decadence of white South African societ)"':

Tiny figu res and whole narratives are embedded almost micro­

scopically in la rger ones, creating an accoLUH baroque in its detail. They are rhe to rical and r equire close reading - not an art for

a broad public but one which is encrypted with m eanings from

literat ure, psychoanalytic theory and m ore localized South

African history. The issue of con sciousness wo rked in reverse for non-white

a r t is ts under apartheid: as the subjects of constant governm ent

su rveillance they were always at risk o f arrest and imprisonment:

but as the disenfranchised they we re impe lled to find ways ol

expressing a po li tical voice. Their arm1aking was therefore alway:­ carried out in a s tate o f intellec tual tension. \Vhen Alfred Thoba painted the obviously po litical R ace R iols( 1977) he had to mo, e

it with him from place to p lace because it was in criminating

158

~ Tommy Motswai, Lenyalo at - -.e from Rockville, 1988

e,·iden ce. \ Vill ie Beste r is on e o f many artis ts wh o occupy an inter- 132

mediate position between the o,·erly s te reotyped polarities of

the wh i te, formally sch ooled artist with li te r ary-philosophical leanings and the black, in fo rmally trained artis t \\'ho de pic ts the reali ty of life under an apa r theid regime. D csigrw ted 'roloured' in

South A frica n official parlance, he g rew up in M o ntague, a section

ofCape T own. but was ·rem oved' unde r the G ro up Areas A ct that

segregated reside ntial areas. I !is fo rmal instruction was minimal - he spent a year a t CAP (Com m unity Arts Project), the m aj or

t rai nin g centre for non- white artis ts in Cape T own. AJtho ug h h is

su bject is towns hip life, he is far less Ii teral and mo re inclined

to wards layer s of inte rp re ta t ion than eith er the earlier ' tO\vnship

a rtists' of the 1960s o r the C AP poster a rtis ts wo rking in the ·straight resis tan ce mode'. Bester employs the de tritus of the

s treet along with oil or watercolour in a collage-like format

aug me nted by m inute callig raphic fi g ures and symbols. F inally. ther e is the expression of con sciousness throug h sati r e,

of which T o mmy M o tswai is South Afri ca 's mas te r practition er, 131

r i,·alling the best ofthe flour-sack painters in Kinshasa (see Chapter on e). Infor m ally t ra ined at FUBA ( the Federated Union of Black

Artis ts ) and in Bill Ainslie 's s tudio, he has developed a r ic hly

d escrip tive style in which e, ·eryday urban life, as well as rituals such as the to~,·n ship wedding of a n upwa1·dly m obile politician,

re,·eal the borrowings o f Eu ropean cus to m - the tea pa rty. the white wedding d rcl>s. figures with modish haircuts and c lo thing­ butrecontextuali7.cd into some thing uniquely Sou th African.

The uni(ying agenda of an as a form of cultural resis tance came to an end in 199 ~ with the begin ni ng of m:-ijn ri ty r ule. Resis tance arr·s fin, l major repositioning as a cri tica l response to the Kew South Africa took place in 1996 in Faul/lines, an e xhibi­ tion o rganized by playwrig ht-cura to r Jan e T aylo r in Cape T own Castle, the I n telligcnce Head quarters for the South African Defence Fo rce. Faulllinesin\"i ted ac tfris t artis ts to wo rk with the M ayibuyc ( the Xhosa ter m frir "t•ome back") Archive, an e xtrao rdinary collec­ tio n of pu rloined and do nated pho tographs, ,-ideos and pape r documents gathered by friends and mem bers of the A NC while in exile and re tur ned to~ o u th Africa afrcr indepe nde nce. The exhi­ bition also refl ected the controvers ies s t11Tot111ding the fo n natio n o f a Tru th and Reconciliation Commissio n to hea r accounts o f g0Ycrnr1u:11t-perpc11·atecl atrocities u nde r the apartheid regime. The exhibits included iopis"s .\fostly ll ome11 and Children ( 1996), a t33

room ins tallatio n d epicting the aftermath of violence, fea tured a body cast ofan African wo man ly ing amids t a scene o f d estruction , while a fire flickered and cas t s hado ws over the room. I t contin ued he r longstandin g foc us o n wo men as victims an d witnesses in South African socie ty and h er pcnchan t for layer s o f h istor ical

132. Ucfl) Willie Bester. Semekazi (The Story ofa Migrant Worker). 1993

133. (below) Penny Siopls, Mostly Women and Children, 1996

16 1

134. (above) Alfred Thoba, While Nation Has /If-treated Blacks. Thank You Mr F W de Klerk for Handing Over South Africa to Nelson Mandela. Your Kindness is So Handy, 1996

135. (opposite, above) Moshekwa Langa, Untitled, 1996

136. (opposite, below) Kevin Brandt, Piela , 1996

m eaning ( the body cas t w as tak en fro m an e thno logy museum

s toreroom). Alfred Thoba's IJ 'l,ite 1Y atio11 I-las lll- lreated Blacks.

Thank You lv[r F ff/'de K lerk.for I-landing Over South dfrica lo .V e/son

1Wandela . Your K indness is S o I-Ta11dy ( 1996) continued his earlier

po li tical activis t s tance, but with an added ele ment o f scepticism

for the new political order. Kevin Brandt's P iela ( 1996). a duc t­ tape m osaic on an ou tside wa ll ofche Castle becam e, a t the proper dis tance, a pixiJJated TV i111agc:: of the firs t s tudent killed in the

Sowe to rio ts o f 19 76. At the othe1· end o f the spectrum from

these graphicalJy realis t wo rks was Moshekwa Lang a·s unti tled

ins tallatio n ( 1996) o f g hostly pape r s hapes pu trefying with o r gan­ ic ga rbage, suggesting the fate of forgotte n people nor a t the

centre of the poli t ical s tage. But the most con tro,·er s ial piece.

Clive van d en Ber g's 1Vle11 L oving(l996), dealt n o t only w ith politi­

cal violen ce of the pas t, but also w ith the ho mophobia ofboth bladi

and wh ite So uth A fri cans. Two male figures, one black and one whi te, lay to ge the r on a s hared g r a,·e with grass g ro ,,·in g O \ <!':"

them , a re fe re nce to an infa mo us event in South African history

when jus t such a pair we re punished by being tied together and drowned off the coas t o f Robben Is land. T he Faultlinesexhibi tior o pened up bo th ar tis ts ' and the So uth A frican pu bl ic-'s con sciou--­

ness to a much b road er rangeofconflic ti ng issues.

/ 62

137. Clive van den Berg, Men Loving, 1996

Prio r to the partial lifting of the ANC's cultural boycott in 1987, even the m ost recogn ized So uth African ar tists worked in cul tural isolation from the res t of the wo dd. but that began to change with the Ari from Sou/I, Africa e xhibition held at the Museum of Modern Ar t in Oxford in 1990. follo wed by the fi rst Johannesburg Bienn ale in 1995 and the second in 1997 . The So uth ..­ Africa-centred Yiew o f art as a fo rm of s trugg le, upheld by the A C's C ultural D esk and vario us Party comn1ittees, began to be d e tabilized in the mo re internatio nal critical climate u she red in by

no n-South African inte llectua ls. firs t by Da,·id E ll iott at O xford and then by visiting curato r s and ar t cri t ics such as Rash eed Araeen and Thomas M cEvilley in 1995 and Okwui Enwezor in

1997. These outside c ri tics are the n ewest bro ker s o n the scene. While they are un likely to replace mo re knowledgeable South African crit ics and curato rs such as Colin R ichards. D a, ·id Ko loane and Ivor Po well , the ir oper ationa l bases in Ne w Yo rk, O xford and London mean that their o pinions will be taken serio usly by a non­ South A fri can audien ce. E nwezor, a founding edi tor ofthe influen- tial con te mporary African a rt jo urna l 1Y lw, was artis tic di recto r of the Jo hannesburg Biennal e in 1997 . I le bro ug ht an awaren ess of the cultural po litics of artmaking in bot h the USA and _Kigeria,

I 6 -J.

35 Photograph of Kendell .--s· performance piece.

"Ide/a Mask . 1996

both ofwhich gave him reason lo see South Africa diHcrcntly from most South Africans. Iris position that while South African artists frame black subjects as voicel<:ss and passi,·e. or sentimentalize them as victims, essentially parallels the 19 Os critique by Native American artists in the USA that white cul cure is only capable of representing them as stereotypes. In turn, it spawned newspaper and internet debates which ranged from sharply worded denials by some white artists to calculated self promotion by o thers. If South African artists were seemingly moving towards ·one South .-\frica· in 1994, that sense ofcommon identity has now been rup­ tured by global art institution:, such as the Biennale and their accompanying critiques.

165