This double issue of Critical Interventions represents the outcome of a four-year research project entitled African Art History and the Formation of a Modernist Aesthetic. The project was administered at Iwalewahaus, University in Bayreuth (Germany), and ran from 2015 to 2019. Our objective in the project – and thus also for this special issue – was to bring different academic, curatorial and artistic approaches into a productive dialogue with one another and therefore to contribute to the complexification of research on African Modernisms – and the history of art in and from Africa at large. It was also to respond to the recent increasing interest and awareness of public institutions and private collectors both in the Global North and South in this period of artistic production on the African continent and its diasporas. This has recently been impressively demonstrated by auction results such as the sale of Ben Enwonwu’s Tutu (1974) for more than 1.8 Mill. GBP in 2018. In addition, the increase in numbers of exhibitions on the modernisms of the Global South such as Ibrahim El Salahi: A Visionary Modernist (Tate Modern 2013), Okwui Enwezor’s Postwar (Haus der Kunst, Munich, 2017), Microstories of an Ex-Centric Modernism at Kunstsammlung NRW (D€ usseldorf, 2017–2018) and more recently Iheanyi Onwuegbucha’s Layers (Labanque, Bethune, 2018) show that African Modernisms are recognized as a significant part of the art and cultural history of modernity of the continent. Also some important publications on African Modernism have been published in the last years, often accompanying exhibitions (e.g., CBCIU & Kunstsammlung NRW, 2018; Enwezor et al., 2016; Gaensheimer et al., 2018; Hassan, 2010). We believe that this publication can be another step forward in a much-needed direction of formulating ideas and visions on how to study this tremendously important epoch of African art history that sits somehow uncomfortable between what is considered as “traditional,” “indigenous” or “classical” African art and what is called “the African Contemporary.” Already this concept of a linear trajectory is highly problematic, because we have to question its historiography: when did African Modernism actually start? And has it already ended? What are the criteria to mark African Modernism as an epoch? Is it when African artists started to engage with the artistic methods of Western modernism, such as two-dimensional easel painting? Or when they negotiated subject matters that are considered to be modern topics such as urban life, industrialization or political oppression? Perhaps it began when African artists started to define themselves as modern subjects within a process of decolonization and the anti-colonial struggles? When they formed collectives, wrote
Artistic production is informed, shaped and negotiated within complex situations. In the case of Ghana, the political and economic instability and its resulting woes on society, education, aspirations, opportunities and creativity from the late 1990s onwards have resulted in artist-led initiatives and emboldened artistic practice experimenting with materials, site-specific work, installations, new media, performance and non-art public venues. The role of institutions, which provide a supporting environment for the artist, can be overlooked or seldom acknowledged. Whilst Ghanaian artists gain international reputation, I examine the work of Nubuke Foundation, a private nonprofit institution based in Ghana, which provides practice development opportunities including mentoring, talks and exhibitions for artists. Strategies adopted within a changing art scene, little state support, scant financial resources, and few trained and qualified personnel from 2006 to date are highlighted here -in addition to its future with a new purpose-built exhibition gallery.
It has been shown that Africa’s cultural production continues to be presented to the wider world through the frames of methodologies and terminologies constructed and sustained by Eurocentric perceptions of creativity and alterity (see, for instance, Price, 2013; Abiodun, 2014). It has also been rightly noted that the study of African art has been “a product of Western sensibility and an expression of Western aesthetic responses to African visual culture” (Hassan, 1999, p. 217) and that “this proclivity has led to an unfortunate weakness in the study of African art because it has ignored the discovery, recognition, and analysis of African-derived paradigms” (Abiodun, 2014, p. 1). However, a number of paradigm-breaking publications have come on board since the last decade to address the problem. An important work that comes to mind is Salami & Vison a’s edited volume, A Companion to Modern African Art (2013), in which several contributors (especially Drewal (2013) and Sanyal (2013)) attempted to read Africa’s modern and contemporary cultural production not from a Eurocentric perspective but from an Africanist one, especially regarding the ways in which Africa has contributed to global modernism. Yet, following what appears to be the epistemological roots of the art history discipline, works that fall under the so-called craft category, especially what has been categorized as traditional pottery, have been marginalized in the examination of African art modernism (art that emerged essentially out of the colonial encounter in which African artists and designers have demonstrated an awareness of a wider creative field beyond their indigenous sources) as evident in such important studies as those by Beier, 1968; Kennedy, 1992; Ottenberg, 1997; Kasfir, 1999; Okeke-Agulu, 2001, 2015; Ogbechie, 2008; Enwezor & Okeke-Agulu, 2009. Two important compendia of scholarship on African pottery, representative of the thoughts and methodologies of leading scholars in the field, can be found in two special issues of the African Arts journal published in Los Angeles. These underscore the discursive and methodological tones, as well as scholarly interests, set for the discussion of African pottery in the last two decades. The first appeared in February 1989 as the outcome of the “African Ceramic Arts: History and Identity in Clay” panel held at the African Studies Association meeting in Denver, Colorado in 1987, which explored “how ceramic traditions contribute to our understanding of the roles, meanings, and history of art in Africa” (Berns, 1989a, p. 32). Five of the papers delivered at that panel constituted the 1989 African Arts special issue under the broad theme “Ceramic Arts in Africa” and with an introductory article of the same title by Marla C. Berns (1989a). Contributors to the volume (Berns, 1989b; Schildkrout, Hellman, & Keim, 1989; Smith, 1989; Spindel, 1989 and McIntosh, 1989) offered a wide ranging
The establishment of colonial metropolises in Africa was an important step in strengthening the conceptualization of urban and rural space. Some precolonial cities became cosmopolitan by undergoing remarkable transformations, often due to the spatial reorganization of colonial administrations whose quarters were swiftly urbanized, while other parts of the same city may continue to present as more rural in character. These specific circumstances of urbanization held serious consequences for the lives of everyday people, but also for artistic production and reception. The two case studies considered here prove useful in understanding such a process. The first is the experience of Magou Amédée in his long quest to connect rural regions to contemporary art production. The second is devoted to Eclosion Urbaine’s original experience in Porto-Novo, which demonstrates how interactions between urban contemporary artists and rural social practices can still be successfully achieved within an exclusively urban context.
Benin has not only produced some artists of international renown, but the country also has a vibrant contemporary art scene. Despite this, historically grounded knowledge about Beninese artists and their artistic practices is still academically unstructured and primarily passed on through oral transmission. Because it is difficult to access written archives on African art contexts, Beninese art historians have argued to use oral history as a research tool in their context. In African studies, oral history became an important method through publications like Oral Tradition: A Study in Historical Methodology by the anthropologist and historiographer Jan Vansina (1965). Oral history foregrounds the richness of local oral traditions and recovers pre-colonial pasts while privileging African voices – and therefore counterbalances Eurocentric ethnographic perspectives (Gayibor et al., 2011). Oral history initially evolved from the self-reflective tradition of critical anthropology; a heightened awareness of the role of the interviewer and his or her subjectivity is central to this disciplinary perspective (Fabian, 2002; Thompson, 1978). Partially due to the efforts of writers and curators such as David Sylvester, who has repeatedly interviewed artists from the 1960s onwards, and Hans Ulrich Obrist, who started his famous “conversation series” in the 1990s, interviews have gained prominence within the domain of visual arts. Since the 1990s, interview methods have also increasingly been used to discuss modern and contemporary art in Africa, by scholars as well as by artists (Grabski & Magee, 2013). Oral history approaches and artist interviews have the potential to democratize art historiography. Particularly in the research on regional art histories – for example, on Egypt (Winegar, 2006), Senegal (Harney, 2004), Ghana (Woets, 2011), and Cameroon (Schemmel, 2015) – artist interviews have proven to be valuable historiographic sources. They enable researchers to capture the polyphony of artists’ voices within the context of their art worlds. Such a methodological approach calls for new forms of documentation and therefore innovative qualitative research tools. In terms of media, interview sources typically consist of recorded interviews and their transcriptions. However, within the context of modern and contemporary art, audio-visual source material can offer researchers more insight into a given artist or practice. Film documents interviews with artists and critics, as well as group discussions. It also enables the coverage of studio visits, including dialogical interpretations of artworks. Moving pictures capture social interactions and performative aspects of the interlocutors’ actions, including facial expressions and the speakers’ body language, whereas audio recordings convey tone, rhythm, volume, and speech patterns only (Ritchie, 2003; Whitaker, 1981).
Virtually Mine (2016) is a mixed media installation art work that, according to a sketch that the artist Immy Mali provided, comprises of “Screenshots of conversations with a lover (Mali, 2016).” T...
This paper adopts comparative analysis as a classic art historic methodology for the study of resistance in the art during African modernism in Nigeria and South Africa. Other methodologies that are combined in this paper as an underlying paradigm and analytical methods include formal analysis and cultural history. While the comparative analysis is adopted to interrogate commonalities for similarities and differences regarding African modernism and resistance art produced by some modern artists in Nigeria and South Africa, the formal analysis is articulated to focus on gathering information exclusively from the visual elements of each work and the meanings conveyed to viewers and the cultural history method is adopted to narrate a history that is recalled or invoked in each art. The comparison reveals that, while the South African artists were engaged in resistance art which convey political commentaries, Nigeria artists were engaged in resistance art that relayed cultural commentaries.
In 1992, a handful of European art dealers set off to Bamako in search of the photographer whose portraits had been anonymously exhibited the year before in “Africa Explores” (Vogel 1991), a groundbreaking exhibition of 20th-century African art at the Center for African Art in New York City. The eventual discovery of the photographer, Seydou Keïta (1921–2001), set the course for his meteoric rise to fame in the international art world, where his prints were rapidly acquired by major museums, collections, and galleries around the globe. Keïta’s popularity opened a niche market for mid-century West African studio photography, allowing other photographers to emerge out of the woodwork as international stars, such as Samuel Fosso and Malick Sidib e. Yet the attention intensely lavished upon Keïta and these other individuals has obscured and stymied research into other genres, practices, and histories of African photography. Seeking to uncover deeper accounts of photography on the continent, many scholars have turned to ethnographic methods and local archives in order to circumvent Keïta’s monopolizing presence. This work often involves highlighting overlooked photographers that preceded or worked alongside Keïta, or genres of vernacular photography such as family albums or postcards. It strikes me as curious that the uniting factor among these various narratives, scholarly or otherwise, is that they are overwhelmingly configured within the spatial framework of the nation-state. On one hand, a focused study within a local, bounded area is useful in countering generalizations made about “African photography” (or, indeed, “Africa” more broadly) by attending closely to specific historical or cultural conditions. Yet in centering the local, these national histories of photography may neglect the diaspora-conscious and pan-African ideologies central to the enterprise of decolonization. Even as they gesture toward regional or international influences on local African photographies – and, conversely, these images’ own outward-reaching globalizing gestures – such readings have privileged the national over the transnational. In light of these observations, one of the questions I have recently begun to ask is whether it may be possible to formulate an account of photography whose scope of study prioritizes the transnational dimensions of decolonization. Can such a narrative be told from the perspective of a broader visualscape of African decolonization, rather than from a specific nation like Mali or Senegal? And would it be able to take these localities into account? A transnational reading of photographs like Keïta’s, I contend, would address a separate, but related, issue about these images’ ability to represent social relationships and individual agency in the context of decolonization. This reading asserts that subjects’ ability to choose how they were seen in these portraits indicates their desire for political independence. The shortcomings of viewing self-representation as self-determination have been debated elsewhere, but my concern
The mobility of Malian theater groups has been increasing during the last century, especially since the French colonization. The migration of forced labor workers toward the labor camps around Bamako brought the profane Kotéba theater of the Bamana people to the city, where it developed its own urban forms. After the country’s independence in 1960, this urban theater experienced a flourishing period with emerging theater groups that were inspired by modern international influences. These groups started moving domestically and internationally, and the new influences started flowing back to the Malian villages with theater companies performing in rural districts. Contemporary theater groups such as Acte Sept directed by Adama Traoré, Blonba by Alioune Ifra Ndiaye and Jean-Louis Sagot-Duvauroux, or Nama by Yacouba Magassouba, are moving between rural and urban settings for their performances and are adapted depending on context, infrastructure, timeframe, and local language. By including ancient and modern elements of Malian rural and urban theater forms, the aim of the theater groups is to contribute to a common contemporary art.
This double issue of Critical Interventions represents the outcome of a four-year research project entitled African Art History and the Formation of a Modernist Aesthetic. The project was administered at Iwalewahaus, University in Bayreuth (Germany), and ran from 2015 to 2019. Our objective in the project – and thus also for this special issue – was to bring different academic, curatorial and artistic approaches into a productive dialogue with one another and therefore to contribute to the complexification of research on African Modernisms – and the history of art in and from Africa at large. It was also to respond to the recent increasing interest and awareness of public institutions and private collectors both in the Global North and South in this period of artistic production on the African continent and its diasporas. This has recently been impressively demonstrated by auction results such as the sale of Ben Enwonwu’s Tutu (1974) for more than 1.8 Mill. GBP in 2018. In addition, the increase in numbers of exhibitions on the modernisms of the Global South such as Ibrahim El Salahi: A Visionary Modernist (Tate Modern 2013), Okwui Enwezor’s Postwar (Haus der Kunst, Munich, 2017), Microstories of an Ex-Centric Modernism at Kunstsammlung NRW (D€ usseldorf, 2017–2018) and more recently Iheanyi Onwuegbucha’s Layers (Labanque, Bethune, 2018) show that African Modernisms are recognized as a significant part of the art and cultural history of modernity of the continent. Also some important publications on African Modernism have been published in the last years, often accompanying exhibitions (e.g., CBCIU & Kunstsammlung NRW, 2018; Enwezor et al., 2016; Gaensheimer et al., 2018; Hassan, 2010). We believe that this publication can be another step forward in a much-needed direction of formulating ideas and visions on how to study this tremendously important epoch of African art history that sits somehow uncomfortable between what is considered as “traditional,” “indigenous” or “classical” African art and what is called “the African Contemporary.” Already this concept of a linear trajectory is highly problematic, because we have to question its historiography: when did African Modernism actually start? And has it already ended? What are the criteria to mark African Modernism as an epoch? Is it when African artists started to engage with the artistic methods of Western modernism, such as two-dimensional easel painting? Or when they negotiated subject matters that are considered to be modern topics such as urban life, industrialization or political oppression? Perhaps it began when African artists started to define themselves as modern subjects within a process of decolonization and the anti-colonial struggles? When they formed collectives, wrote
This paper will explore the concept of ıw a, generally translated as ‘character’, and its possible implications for the study of Yor ub a aesthetics. There is no doubt that the concept of ıw a is crucial to the definition of beauty in Yor ub a thought. Even though most scholars (Lawal, 1974; Thompson, 1971a, 1971b, 1973a, 1973b, 1974) who have written on, or studied the subject appear to have acknowledged this fact, the dynamic and living relationship which exists between ıw a and ẹw a, beauty, has yet to be explained. A Yor ub a aphorism declares: “ ıw a l’ẹw a,” that is, ıw a constitutes beauty. Therefore, one obvious place to begin a meaningful study of Yor ub a aesthetics is with ıw a. For to overlook or under-rate this important pre-requisite for beauty, and to favor instead, external criteria or explanations, will not only further remove us from the Yor ub a aesthetic universe, but rob us of the full enjoyment and understanding of Yor ub a art. Fortunately, scholars of Yor ub a traditional thought and literatures, with their wealth of oral data, can be of immense help to the arthistorian whose studies need to be increasingly less speculative, more Yor ub a-thought-oriented, and contextually relevant. Iw a (Character) has a homophone ıw a (existence) in the language. This homophonous counterpart is a noun formed from adding ı to the verb w a (to exist), a normal nominalization process in the language (Bamgbos: e, 1967). What a scholar of Yor ub a traditional thought, Professor W and e Ab ımb ol a has shed light upon in this regard is the relationship between the two words. He contends that ıw a (character) derives from ıw a (existence) and says that “the original meaning of ıw a ... can be interpreted as the fact of being, living, or existing” whose highest attribute or whose perfect ideal or form is immortality (Abimbo: la, 1975). A cognate
Several identifiable events have propelled local and international interest in contemporary visual art practices in Ghana in the 21st century. These include international exhibitions and art fairs, workshops, symposia and the emergence of significant projects spaces and artists foundations. Much of these developments occurred in Ghana from 1999 to the present day. The Internet, mobile phones, and social media make it possible for young artists to bypass, or subvert, established institutions. The outcome has been largely positive in bringing visiting artists, museum curators, and other art-world notables to engage directly with contemporary Ghanaian artists and seek out new talent. However, despite these formal platforms that have served as crucibles or catalysts for current artistic practice in Ghana, the practitioners themselves have, to a large extent, remained self-reliant. As individual artists may be considered institutions in their own right, it is not surprising that some have established their own art centers: Ablade Glover’s Artists Alliance Gallery, Accra; Kofi Setordji’s ArtHAUS; and Kati Torda’s Sun Trade Beads, Accra, and the Studio. These new developments have exposed Ghanaian contemporary artists to new audiences. A plethora of related activities in fashion, film, and photography have also received widespread attention. My essay carries out case studies of five artists associated with blaxTARLINES KUMASI: Dorothy Amenuke, Edwin Bodjawah, Bernard Akoi-Jackson, Patrick Tagoe-Turkson, and Ibrahim Mahama, who represent the cutting edge of new Ghanaian interactions with the global contemporary.
This means, of course, that his writing on late 20th century Black Artists in Britain (ibid, 2014) challenges an art history that is both white and centuries old. Chambers reminded me of a very real challenge. Is historical writing on art in Africa accessible? Is it readable? Beyond the fancy, glossy, pages of art historical catalogues, journals and monographs, are African artists (here, East African artists), whose traditional, modern or contemporary artwork is practically unrecorded. By unrecorded, I do not mean this literally. Yes, their work is recorded, but really not publicly, instead it is personally recorded, or through collective and personal memory. In this sense, for any writer, or researcher, available writing on these artists, many of whom are living on the continent, is quite unusual. As a result of this, as an art writer working in East Africa, I have no available models to craft a practice of writing books on contemporary art in Uganda. When asked what art critics I read to inform my own practice, I am dumbfounded by the fact that my own reading has consisted of white American and French theorists from the 1970s. This often follows with a doubtful look asking: what exactly do you know about Ugandan art? It is as if reading these books: On Photography (Sontag, 2001); Camera Lucida (Barthes, 1981); Writing and Difference (Derrida, 1978); Orientalism (Said, 1979); The Order of Things (Foucault, 1970), places my knowledge of contemporary art theory in the West. Yet this, I have discovered, is not unusual for anyone writing on contemporary art in East Africa. The conversation on contemporary art in Africa often overwhelms the art itself, which gets lost in there, somewhere. Some of the most quoted documentations of contemporary art in Africa in recent years (Enwezor, 2003, 2008; Appiah, 1991; Bhabha, 1993; Deliss, 1995) are not only difficult to read, but they say little to nothing about the art itself. Yet, again, this is not unusual in art writing on contemporary art in Africa, and the African diaspora. Chambers complaining about the naming of African diaspora art history says:
Expressionism in Berlin, Cubism in Paris, Dada in Zurich, Precisionism in New York... These movements and geographies are deeply tied to the notion of Modernism in the visual arts. Modernism as an expression and reflection of “Western” metropolitan cultures of the past century, determining the hierarchies of a supposed art historical canon. This universalizing idea of Modernism either expects any “nonWestern” artistic production to accord to it (Belting, 1995; McEvilley, 1995) or merely perceives it as a mimicry of Western counterparts. Consequently, negating the emergence of Modern art beyond Euro-America. In recent years the idea that there have been multiple Modernisms around the globe from Mexico City to Mumbai, from S~ao Paulo to Shanghai, from Kampala to Qatar ... has slowly emerged within “Western” perceptions of art history. There have been and still are numerous efforts to define a corrective toward the Eurocentric historiography of Modern art. A phenomenon that is often directly connected to the urgencies of economic and cultural globalization of the 20th and 21st centuries. Despite the commonly known fact that globalization is of course not a recent occurrence but goes back centuries to those moments in history when trade networks expanded literally worldwide, which also had an impact on artistic exchanges. A “global Modernism” might be in that sense more the idea of the transnational entanglement of Modernist arts, meaning any art that is not “pre-modern,” “early modern” or “traditional” in their respective contexts. On the African continent Modernism entailed, just as elsewhere, the aim to break with the past and to seek new forms of expression (Hassan, 1996). Artists developed new art forms experiencing and expressing the complex changes, developments and influences during colonialism as well as on the cusp of and after independence. “Modern” does not mean one specific Modern Art Movement or Modernism. Due to the extremely diverse histories and cultures, a multitude of Modernisms developed (Okeke-Agulu, 2001). As numerous analyses and debates about Modern art in Africa have shown (such as Araeen, 1989; Hassan, 1999; Ekpo, 2007; Oguibe, 2007; Tawadros, 2003), these Modernisms constitute an enormously rich part of the visual arts across the continent, which reflects and digests the contradictions, (in)dependencies and influences experienced by the artists. Modernisms in visual art practices in Africa did not simply emerge due to the imposition of Western ideas of art and culture. While artists started to incorporate new technologies and media into their artistic production, they also
This article discusses general changes in Ghana’s contemporary art infrastructure and understandings of art in the 21st century in relation to societal processes such as liberalization, globalization and commercialization of the public arena, growing exchange with other African countries and international interest in the art scene in Ghana. I seek to demonstrate how local and international developments led to the emergence a group of artists and art institutions who stand for work that deals with social, historical, political or personal issues or emotions, who embrace new media forms and materials, such as discarded or everyday objects, and who break out of the confines of the gallery by making site-specific work. In these shifting contexts of increasing global connectivity, new and redefined artistic discourses emerged that conflicted with older, resilient art frames.
This issue of Critical Interventions focused on Ghana comes at an opportune time as significant developments in art taking place in the country challenges the public to reevaluate their definitions...
On the street that surrounds Morro do Cantagalo, facing Copacabana (Rio de Janeiro) on its northern side, a 40 m2-studio shelters an inestimable archive of visual arts. Along with artworks, hundred...
This paper inquires about the forms of art that embody the Ghanaian contemporary genre, particularly in Accra, in the first two decades of the twenty-first century, and what informs the different c...
