{"id":676,"date":"2011-09-24T09:50:59","date_gmt":"2011-09-24T09:50:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mtls.ca\/issue10\/?page_id=676"},"modified":"2011-11-26T17:39:22","modified_gmt":"2011-11-26T17:39:22","slug":"rikki-wemega-wawu","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue10\/writings\/essay\/rikki-wemega-wawu\/","title":{"rendered":"Rikki Wemega-Kwawu"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Politics of Exclusion: The Undue Fixation of Western-Based African Curators on Contemporary African Diaspora Artists<\/strong><\/h1>\n

Rikki Wemega-Kwawu<\/p>\n

(Part 1)<\/h1>\n

There is a new phenomenon emerging in Europe and America as regards the curating of contemporary African art shows and the publication of surveys on the subject. It is without doubt that African artists living in the West are being preferred, and given better exposure, well above their counterparts still living in Africa. If it is an exhibition, the number of foreign-based artists always outweighs the number of continental-based African artists. If it is the latest book survey on contemporary African art, it is all about African Diaspora artists, dotted with one or two well-known names based on the African continent. Contrary to what is actually happening on the ground, it is nearly always the same representative names re-circled from one show to the other, and from one book publication to the other, as if contemporary African art is caught in a static freeze of a granite rock. This emergent development of contemporary African art curatorship is seemingly innocuous but, indeed, harmful and, increasingly and insidiously, detrimental to the growth of contemporary art on the mother continent, even though some may argue that these African Diaspora-biased contemporary African art shows have put contemporary African art on the world map and that there is a resurgence of interest in African art. But the truth is, the negatives totally outweigh the positives. Some African curators and writers living in the West are actually responsible for this deceptively positive but degenerate trend in the development of African art.<\/p>\n

The latest in this line of lop-sided contemporary African art exhibitions is the blockbuster exhibition, dubbed, Who Knows<\/em> Tomorrow<\/em>, which took place in the German capital of Berlin. For the benefit of readers who may not know about this show, I would like to give an overview of it before I veer into the substantive issue for this article, which was sparked off when I was reviewing the exhibition and its accompanying catalog (book).<\/p>\n

Who Knows Tomorrow <\/strong><\/h1>\n

On September 26, 2010, the curtains were sadly brought down on the blockbuster contemporary African art exhibition, Who Knows<\/em> Tomorrow<\/em>, in the German capital, Berlin. For four months and throughout the summer, Berliners and visitors to Berlin were treated to this spectacular show. Five leading African artists, El Anatsui, Zarina Bhinji, Ant\u00f3nio Ole, Yinka Shonibare MBE and Pascale Marthine Tayou had their works prominently displayed in four of Berlin\u2019s State Museums, with each artist\u2019s work confined to one museum. El Anatsui was at the Old National Gallery on the Museum Island; Ant\u00f3nio Ole at the Hamburger Bahnhof, the Museum of Contemporary Art; Pascale Marthine Tayou at the beautiful Mies van der Rohe – designed New National Gallery near Potsdamer Platz and Yinka Shonibare at the Friedirichswerdersche Kirche, the latter being the first contemporary artist to be featured in this historical German space, now a branch of the National Gallery (Nationalgalerie).<\/p>\n

This year 2010 actually marks 125 years of the infamous Berlin Conference, which split Africa into bits and pieces and began the scramble for the continent, from which yoke and bondage the African continent is still reeling and struggling to extricate itself in spite of all the liberation struggles of the 20th Century. With this exhibition Germany has confronted its responsibility for its colonial history as well as the post-colonial present by inviting African artists into its special spaces closely synonymous with its self-image and national and spiritual identity. This would have been unimaginable 150 years ago; not even in your wildest dreams. Indeed, Who Knows Tomorrow? At that infamous conference, there was not a single African present when that dastardly decision of Europe was taken to move in to annex the African continent. Whoever thought 150 years hence, Germany would be gleefully sharing some of its most sacred spaces with Africa. What a wonderful way to reflect on Germany\u2019s shared history with Africa, and contemplate its future bilateral relationship with the continent.<\/p>\n

None of the artists represented in Who Knows Tomorrow<\/em> should need any introduction. They are all internationally renowned and their works have been shown all over the world and are in major museum collections. El Anatsui was born in Anyako, Ghana in 1944 and today lives and works in nearby Nsukka, Nigeria. That his work, actually a close-up shot of his installation at the Old National Gallery (Alte Nationalgalerie), taking the front cover of the August issue of Art in America (the special 2010 guide to galleries, museums and artists), speaks volumes and should attest to his international stature as an African artist and one of the foremost sculptors of our time. The new high-rise building of the Museum for African art on the Museum Mile in New York City will be inaugurated next year with a retrospective of forty years of Anatsui\u2019s work from April – July, 2011. The show dubbed, When I Last<\/em> Wrote to You about Africa<\/em>, debuts at the Institute for Contemporary Culture at the Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto from October 2, 2010 \u2013 February 27, 2011. After the Museum for African Art inauguration, the show continues on its travel to other major art centers across America for the next two years. The Museum for African Art is the organizing institution for this Anatsui travelling show. \u00a0The latest monograph on the artist accompanies the show. A movie on El Anatsui, Fold Crumple Crush<\/em> \u2013 The Art of El Anatsui<\/em>, by Susan Vogel, has just been released and has been premiered at the Royal Ontario Museum.<\/p>\n

Yinka Shonibare MBE was born in London in 1962 to Nigeria parentage. He grew up in Nigeria and returned to London when he was 16. He currently lives and works in the U.K. A work of his, Nelson\u2019s Ship in a Bottle<\/em>, was recently permanently installed at the Trafalgar Square, London. He was a 2004 nominee for the Turner Prize, which brought him a great deal of critical international attention. In the last two years (2008-2010), a retrospective on Yinka Shonibare originated at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sidney, Australia, travelled to the Brooklyn Museum, New York and finally ended up at the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art Washington, D.C.<\/p>\n

Pascale Marthine Tayou was born in the Cameroonian capital, Yaounde, in 1967. He is literally an itinerant artist. After spending several years in Stockholm and Paris, Tayou now lives and works mostly in Belgium. His work, mostly installations, has been featured in numerous important exhibitions. These include the 52nd Venice Biennale<\/em> (2009), 4th Echigo Tsumari Art Triennale<\/em>, Matsudai<\/em> (2009); Africa Remix<\/em>, D\u00fcsseldorf, London, Paris, Tokyo, Johannesburg (2004-2007); Documenta XI<\/em>, Kassel (2002);\u00a0The<\/em>\u00a0 Short Century<\/em>: Independence and Liberation Movements in Africa<\/em>, 1945 \u2013 1994<\/em>, Museum Villa Stuck, Munich; Haus der Kulturen der Welt\/ Martin-Gropius Bau, Berlin; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center\/ MoMA, New York (2001-2002) and South Meets West<\/em>, Ghana National Museum, Accra and Kunsthalle Bern, Bern Switzerland. (1999-2000). Tayou\u2019s installation, Always All Ways<\/em>, was also recently on view at the Malm\u00d6 Kunsthalle in Sweden through August 22, 2010. It travels to MAC Lyon, France, February 18 \u2013 May 15, 2011.<\/p>\n

Zarina Bhinji, a photographer and video artist, was born in 1963 as the daughter of an Indian immigrant family in Mbara, Uganda. A graduate of the Goldsmiths College and the Slade School of Fine Art, she currently lives and works in London. Zarina Bhinji\u2019s work, Waiting<\/em>, was nominated for the Turner Prize in 2007. In 2003 she received the Infinity Award from the ICP (International Center of Photography, NY) in the category of art photography. Some of the major shows Zarina Bhenji has been featured in are: Bhinji out of the Blue<\/em>, The Art Institute of Chicago (2009), Snap Judgments<\/em>: New Positions in Contemporary African Photography<\/em>, New York (2006); Biennale of Sydney<\/em> (2008), 50th Biennale<\/em>, Venice (2003), Documenta XI<\/em>, Kassel (2002), and The<\/em> Short Century<\/em>, Museum Villa Stuck, Munich (2001).<\/p>\n

Ant\u00f3nio Ole was born in 1951 to an Angolan mother and a Portuguese father in Luanda, the Angolan capital. After extensive studies in the USA, he returned home to Angola and today lives and works in Luanda. His highly charged and provocative artistic works have been featured in exhibitions around the globe: The Biennale<\/em>, Sao Paulo (1987), Expo 92<\/em>, Seville (1992), The Johannesburg<\/em> Biennale<\/em> (1995, 1997), The Venice Biennale<\/em>, Venice (2003), The Short Century<\/em>, Martin-Gropius Bau, Berlin (2001) and Africa<\/em> Remix<\/em>, D\u00dcsseldorf, London, Paris, Tokyo and Johannesburg (2004-2007).<\/p>\n

The show, Who Knows Tomorrow<\/em> was accompanied by a beautiful, hardbound, voluminous catalog, designed to look like the Bible, with a ribbon bookmarker. It had essay contributions by nineteen essayists, many of them prominent writers on African cultural issues. This publication is bilingual (German\/ English).\u00a0But for a clause in the essay by Chika Okeke-Agulu, \u201cNo Condition is Permanent: The Art and Politics of Euro-African Encounter,\u201d I would describe all the essays in the book as excellent and very insightful. The book, Who Knows Tomorrow,<\/em> is realized as a semi-independent project, conceptually parallel to the exhibition and, simultaneously interfacing with the context of the exhibition, which further enriches the exhibition’s project. It is not the typical art exhibition catalog, liberally splashed with glossy pictures. It is more a book to be read. All the essays were specially commissioned and they make interesting reading. They touch on diversified topics such as the African continent\u2019s historical and current diversity, German-African relations, the signs of possible progress for Africa, and many more.<\/p>\n

If you did miss the exhibition, you do not have to, at least, miss the book. It is, indeed, a collector\u2019s item. The editors of the book, Who Knows Tomorrow,<\/em> are Udo Kittelman, Chika Okeke-Agulu and Britta Schmitz. It was published by Walter K\u00d6nig,<\/p>\n

The artists in the show were all asked to conceive independent contributions for the book relating to their respective artistic interventions in the various Nationalgalerie locations; the book provided them additional opportunity to re-imagine their ideas in a small format, that is, extrapolating their ideas in a minuscule format for the book. In describing the artists\u2019 contributions to the book, Who Knows Tomorrow, Chika Okeke-Agulu writes of El Anatsui:<\/p>\n

And finally Anatsui presents photographs from places he visited and events he attended during the two months following his December 2009 site visit to Berlin. This gesture must raise questions as to why an African artist has decided to represent himself and his work with images from places he has been to over a specific period of time. Might this be his coded response to critics who celebrate his residency in Africa, as though it makes him any more African than his compatriots who live and work outside the continent? Clearly, Anatsui wishes to enter the debate about the identity of contemporary African artists like him who are part of the global reality described by Arjun Appadurai: a post colonial world in which subjectivities are mediated by images, travel, nationality, and by networks of finance, technology, and so forth<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Chike Okeke-Agulu, who himself was a former student of Anatsui at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka and is now a Professor of Art History at Princeton University, USA, this time, got it wrong!<\/p>\n

I remember sitting in the large audience in the fall of 2008 in the lecture hall at the Metropolitan Museum, New York, and heard Chika Okeke-Agulu make a powerful, thunderous and unforgettable delivery on El Anatsui, as part of the educational lecture series in connection with the twin-exhibition, The Essentials of African Textiles \u2013 Design Without End and the Poetics of Cloth<\/em>: African<\/em> Textiles\/Recent Art<\/em>, taking place concurrently at the Metropolitan Museum and the Grey Art Gallery, New York, respectively. I mused to myself in the audience: \u201cChika Okeke-Agulu has a profound understanding of Anatsui\u2019s work. So, whence this new argument about Anatsui\u2019s origin and source of inspiration?”<\/p>\n

I was grossly put off by the above clause in Okeke-Agulu\u2019s otherwise beautiful essay and it is this careless commentary by him that has sparked off this essay. I think enough is enough! The curatorship of contemporary African art is fast straying inexorably into dangerous waters and unless the brakes are applied soon, it is going to sink with the whole of the African continent.<\/p>\n

Chika Okeke-Agulu, being an artist himself and living in America, would agree with me wholly that Anatsui\u2019s work has more soul than that of his African counterparts plying their trade in the West. The emotive force and power in his work would never attain its present unsurpassable intensity if he were living in Europe or America. That is an indisputable fact. And Okeke-Agulu is fully aware of that. The African artist born and bred in Africa, transplanted from his African locale to the West, goes through a whole series of emotional dislocation, confusion, a struggle to jettison memory, before eventually beginning to find his rhythm in his new environment. And that could take a whole life-time. Some never recover at all from this cultural and emotional dismembering. What was once described as outstanding creative output from the artist often becomes a pale shadow of itself, reduced to sheer, soulless mediocrity, that is, if the artist is lucky to still be creating. Some laid down their art paraphernalia completely never to come back to it again, and took to some other profession to survive. These are realities, which often befall African creative persons who migrate to the West, and Okeke-Agulu knows all this first-hand. I am not the one to be telling him about it.<\/p>\n

The plight, misery and degradation of African creative persons in the West was explicitly captured in a recent article Olu Oguibe (Dr.) wrote for the Canadian online journal Maple Tree Literary Supplement<\/em>, an excerpt of which he earlier posted on his wall on Facebook. It is captioned Esiaba Irobi<\/em>: The Tragedy of Exile<\/em>. In this article or, rather, moving tribute and frank, illustrative and anecdotal piece, Oguibe laments the passing of a dear friend and colleague, Esiaba Irobi. He\u00a0vividly\u00a0describes the ravaging effect exile had on his departed friend. The person in question was a dramatist – an actor, theater director, playwright and poet. Oguibe thinks that exile dealt his friend a heartless and devastating blow,\u00a0prematurely\u00a0truncating his prodigious talent and ability, reducing him to a mere teacher, who for greater part of his sojourn abroad only reproduced (re-interpreted) other people\u2019s work. Oguibe blatantly concludes in this moving and heart-wrenching eulogy that Irobi\u2019s best work was done when he was back home in Nigeria, before fleeing into exile. He writes:<\/p>\n

In time scholars will eventually leave their opinion, but I dare say that Esiaba Irobi\u2019s greatest work as a poet and playwright was written during this period, whilst he was in his late twenties, before we went into exile. The classic poems that he is now best remembered for: Judy, Soniya, Frankfurt, Mabera, were all written in Nsukka during this difficult period. So were the great, revolutionary plays that now define his theatre, what I referred to back then as the theatre of the bloody metaphor<\/em>.\u00a0Our exile in the West, beginning at the end of the 80\u2019s, saved him from imminent violent confrontation with certain forces in Nigeria, but it also took away from him the very thing that were most crucial to his art; an engaged and engaging community and an appreciative audience. He struggled in Britain to find a place, to get his work out, to locate a space in which to continue to flourish, and when that failed, he relocated to America, yet fate dealt him no easier hand. Exile destroyed his promise, and eventually took his<\/em> life<\/em>.<\/p>\n

From the foregoing, migration or exile to the West is not necessarily the best proposition or panacea for the African artist who wants to move to the \u2018center\u2019 for recognition and a more salubrious environment to create. Many an African artist\/writer, like Olu Oguibe\u2019s good friend, Irobi, has miserably fallen by the roadside, squandering their talents away, what with their work constantly meeting with utter rejection and scorn. Even the most resilient spirit will but buckle under the burden of this cruel isolation and rejection. Needless to say, the attrition rate for African artists who migrate to the West is, in fact, disproportionately far higher than African artists in Africa who abandon their art along the way.<\/p>\n

I, hereby, venture to say, without any fear of contradiction, that Anatsui presenting photographs of places he visited and events he attended during his site visit to Berlin is \u201cno coded response\u201d, I reiterate, \u201cno coded response\u201d, to critics who celebrate his residency in Africa.<\/p>\n

I left Germany, a few weeks before the opening of the Who Knows Tomorrow show. Berlin was one of the cities I visited whilst in Germany. It was actually my first time in Germany. I had a wonderful time there.\u00a0 In fact, I was so well received, with open arms. The people were incredibly friendly, contrary to the perception I had prior to my arrival there. I was simply so fascinated and enchanted by the people, history and beauty of Germany I took tons and tons of pictures wherever I went to, which I liberally splashed on my page on Facebook, to share with my friends and all-and-sundry. I proudly named my albums containing my German pictures Germany 1, 2, 3, 4, 5… I am even yet to upload more pictures from my German visit. I did not have any fore-knowledge whatsoever of the up-coming Who Knows Tomorrow whilst in Berlin.<\/p>\n

The artist is a universal being who speaks a universal language, which cuts across national and geographical barriers. The artist can simply be inspired by anything he encounters in his daily life – by sights, travel, or technology and so on – even if it is far removed from his national geographical origin. Jean Fisher puts it more succinctly: \u201cArtists have always been magpies, alert to new visual strategies and aesthetic ideas, absorbing influences from whatever visual resources are available to them, and limited only by the horizon of knowledge, or the information flow of the society in which they are living. To deny an artist entitlement to this exchange is to imply cultural stagnation.\u201d<\/p>\n

My love with Germany, which makes me want to splash all those pictures I took on Facebook, does not mean I would be entering into any debate about my identity as an African artist in a globalized village. I am overly sure the same goes for El Anatsui. He was simply enamored with what he encountered whilst on the site visit. Everything could potentially be a stimulus to ignite an artist\u2019s creative work. It\u2019s is superfluous for Chike Okeke-Agulu to want to associate Anatsui with any identity debate. The former suggests that Anatsui\u2019s photos of his visit to Germany\u00a0is\u00a0probably a coded rebuttal of those critics who celebrate Anatsui’s residency in Africa; the photos rather suggests that Anatsui is a citizen of the world.<\/p>\n

Anatsui, to a large extent, has always engaged global issues \u2013 history, memory, consumerism, migration, transience and transformation \u2013 even though his work is wholly rooted in Africa, and is about Africa. He has always had a universal outlook on life, and that is the hallmark of any serious artist, and did not have to go to Germany, present photos of his site visit to Germany to \u201center the debate about the identity of contemporary African artists\u201d. He is reported to have once said: \u201cI don\u2019t see anything wrong with exposure [to Western ideas and forms]. In fact, nothing is wrong with it because if one really has a strong personality, the danger of it being eroded is not very strong. Absorb influences, but be yourself. The influence might rather make you stronger… So I don\u2019t close my eyes to influences outside, whether African or European.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

*To be continued<\/h6>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Politics of Exclusion: The Undue Fixation of Western-Based African Curators on Contemporary African Diaspora Artists Rikki Wemega-Kwawu (Part 1) There is a new phenomenon emerging in Europe and America as regards the curating of contemporary African art shows and the publication of surveys on the subject. It is without doubt that African artists living […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"parent":46,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"authorpage.php","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-676","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue10\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/676","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue10\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue10\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue10\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue10\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=676"}],"version-history":[{"count":20,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue10\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/676\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":679,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue10\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/676\/revisions\/679"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue10\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/46"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue10\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=676"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}