Kofi Setordji
The fall 2010 edition of Africa Arts magazine carries a survey by the Dutch doctoral student, Rhoda Woets, on Genocide, the famous installation by Ghanaian international painter/sculptor, Kofi Setordji. Genocide sends us on a grim journey of the Rwandan Genocide, recapitulating the ghastly, inconceivable inhumanity and brutality of one man`s action meted against his fellow brother, whilst the whole world sat and watched unconcerned.38 The Rwandan Genocide will forever remain a deep, indelible scar on the consciousness of humanity. Kofi Setordji`s macabre work is a scathing reminder of the atrocities of war, and a blatant indictment on all the culprits involved as well as the larger apathetic world, which failed to intervene promptly. It is indeed a landmark in Africa`s contemporary art and political history, and is comparable to other great political or socially oriented works, like Picasso`s Guernica.
How come Kofi Setordji`s Genocide is conspicuously missing in the recently published Contemporary Africa Art Since 1980 by Okwui Enwezor and Chika Okeke-Agulu, the latest survey on contemporary Africa art, especially considering the fact that the book devotes an extensive essay on the politics of Africa, the military coupes d’états, the wars, the economic morass, SAP, bad governance, etc, and how that has negatively impacted on the growth of art on the continent?40 Setordji’s Genocide, a mélange of a sculptural and painting installation, a very postmodernist artistic language, confronts Africa`s negative politics squarely, without any qualms, yet Enwezor and Okeke-Agulu chose not to feature him in their book. Is it because he lives in Africa and, therefore, was not captured by their Western-biased critical radar? I have a detailed critique of this book coming out soon, so please be on the lookout for it. The Kofi Setordji example is only being mentioned in passing, and it only goes to confirm the politics of exclusion being propagated by Okwui Enwezor and his cohort of disciples. There are many more examples, which I cannot get into now. I must say.
Utopias and Realities
I must say, African artists living in Africa are so enraged and incensed by Enwezor’s curatorial work, with its African Diaspora bias; they see it as a diabolical strategy against them, ultimately calculated to undermine their efforts in Africa, and hamstring their growth, conceptually, technically and professionally. So, instead of working in unison for the common good of Africa as African artists, African artists in Africa now see themselves being pitched in an unholy confrontation against their counterparts abroad: the local versus the Diaspora. This development is very unhealthy and must be nipped in the bud.
Since Okwui Enwezor has the clout for organizing mega-shows, it greatly behooves him as well to quickly re-address this lop-sided status quo through new shows and new publications focusing on artists on the continent, and to correct the negative perception he is creating or has created in the minds of African artists in Africa. I know he can do it. And he should do it, he has no option. He would be saving his own tarnished image and legacy as well; or, as Sylvester Ogbeshie seems to suggest, Okwui Enwezor could be facing the possible wrath of our great African ancestors for having handed the African continent cheaply on a silver platter to the West. Globalization does not mean selling yourself short through self-defeating strategies. Enwezor and his team have to look for the necessary funding and embark on frequent curatorial trips to Africa. It is imperative they do that. In fact, that is the only way to know exactly what is going on on the ground in those individual countries. As the Igbo (Nigerian) adage goes, “You cannot stand at one place to watch a masquerade.” The dynamic, ever-changing flux of contemporary African art can be likened to a typical African masquerade – a mesmerizing, pulsating, dizzying and kaleidoscopic performance. If you are removed from the masquerade, you even miss more. Enwezor cannot be confined to his base in the US and claim to know what “Contemporary African Art” really is. He has to be frequenting Africa on field research trips, sometimes with extended long stays to be able to do that.
Africa’s post-colonial story of migration and its attendant identity politics is just another chapter in the epic story of Africa. This chapter only makes the Africa saga more interesting. It can, however, not be used alone, as the entirety of the African postmodernist experience, as the sole pillar if you have to recount the African story. A chapter in the book cannot be used to replace the entire book. But that is exactly what Okwui Enwezor has done with his curatorial strategies and theoretical discursiveness of contemporary African art, which relocates contemporary African art practice to the West, hence his undue fixation with Africa Diaspora artists. This is only part of the African post-colonial and contemporary story, and not the totality of it. Okwui Enwezor should equally be, if not more, interested in how the globalization and post-modernist ethos have impacted directly on artistic development and production on the continent of Africa. They should also strive to globalize the local, that is, bring the work of artists based on the continent to the attention of the world. The example of El Anatsui actually encapsulates the ingenuity and creative energy which proliferates and abounds on the continent. There are more El Anatsuis, Yinka Shonibares, William Kentridges, Marlene Dumases, Wengechi Mutus and Julie Mehrutis.
We are living in a highly globalized village now. It does not really matter where you live today to function effectively. As an artist, you do not have to be living in a Western metropolis to be engaged in globalism. At the touch of a button in my hand, I can have a phone conversation with every corner of the world. At every moment in time, through satellite T.V, I am abreast with what is happening around the world. I sit in my studio in Takoradi, Ghana and I see instantaneously an event which is unfolding across the world. Through the internet, I am further put closely in touch with the rest of the world. I can communicate instantly across time and space, and can follow closely all the happenings on the global art front. Unfortunately, this is where the tools of globalization stop for the African artist.
The utopia of globalization which Enwezor postulates presumes egalitarianism, with the free movement of people and goods around the globe. But the reality of the situation as exists now debars the African access to that free movement and full participation in the globalization process. Visa procurement alone to a Western country for an African is a harrowing experience, to say the least. Apart from the many requisite demands and very vigorous and sometimes humiliating procedures applicants are subjected to, astronomical visa fees are taken from applicants only to be refused the visa; the visa fee is never returned. This almost amounts to a rip-off, not to mention the endless, winding, labyrinthine queues in the scorching sun, which El Anatsui so well captured in his work Visa Queue.
The columnist, Akua Djanie, in a poignant diatribe captioned, “The Visa Nightmare” in New African magazine, had some real strong words of admonition:
Something has to be done about the whole visa application process. And our governments should not sit down unconcerned when our citizens are fleeced by foreigners right under the noses of the governments in our capital cities. Until we put our foot down and demand to be treated as human beings, these people will continue to see us as cattle. I also think African embassies in Europe, America and elsewhere should retaliate – a pound for a pound – and institute the same visa regime for Europeans, Americans and others who want to visit our countries. But we shouldn`t hold our breadth because I know they are going to bamboozle us with the usual nonsense about killing tourism and the money thereof. Well, they would say that, wouldn`t they?
In the past, we were forced over to their countries as slaves; slaves who built and developed Europe and America. And today, when we want to go and visit, we are ill-treated. It is ironic that we talk about the world becoming a global village, yet we are not free to travel around this village of ours while they can.
Akua Djanie’s indignant denunciation of a fraudulent visa-system which favors Westerners when they want to travel to Africa, but does not allow the African easy access to the West, epitomizes the general sentiments among Africans about the unfairness and mockery of the whole globalization process.
Okwui Enwezor, the high-priest of Globalization and open borders himself, recounts how, ironically, he was once refused an entry visa to Italy by the New York Italian Consulate, ostensibly because of his African name, even though he was carrying an American passport.42 He had already been named the Artistic Director for the Johannesburg Art Biennale and was in the process of putting the show together.
Unless and until the visa policy of Western countries towards Africans is changed, Africans cannot be considered to be full participants in the homogenization of cultures in the globalization process.
“The Politics of Exclusion” carries echoes of an unhappy tradition in art. When Edmonia Lewis made her gifts known during the American Civil War, she was embraced and mentored by abolitionists. Too soon, however, she found her art unwelcome. My father and I spent years unraveling the neurotic dysfunctions of Lewis and her several mentors.