The Seamingly Seamless Subversion of Sime (original) (raw)
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The Observer and the Observed: The Dynamics of Representation in African Art
Representation has always been two-way between Europe and Africa. Through the concentration on artwork from the colonial encounter until post-colonial times, this paper seeks to highlight both the agency and different forms of resistance from the side of Africans, which have responded to the forms of representations that have been created by the West. These responses by African artists demonstrate how there has always been a process of Africa "observing the other" while at the same time inverting the images of Africa that have been created by foreigners.
1-54 Contemporary African Art: a [not-so] decolonial heterotopia
This research critically analyses the Contemporary African Art Fair 1:54, in London. Created as a space of resistance to promote African art and artists within the international art scene, it is sustained that indeed, the counterspace is the casualty of a manoeuvre of the Western art world to renew itself after the end of art in postmodernism. The art fair 1:54 fails its purpose because, being in its nature, purely commercial and following the Western model of art market, it becomes accomplice of the spectacularisation and further exoticisation of the works of art produced by artists of African heritage. Furthermore, it is argued that, being part of the mainstream is the ultimate goal of artists of African heritage and therefore, their art practices respond to parameters establish by the West that enable them to get it. As a result there is no such a thing as African Aesthetics anymore. This investigation proposes further research looking at decolonial art practices happening in the continent and the Diaspora, which favour social value over exchange and surplus value.
1997
Editor: Katy Deepwell with contributors Fatma Ismail Afifi, David Koloane, Murray McCartney, Tony Mhonda, Barbara Murray, Everlyn Nicodemus, Olu Oguibe, Chika Okeke, Ola Oloidi, John Picton, Colin Richards, George Shire and Ola Bisi Silva. African Art and Society Series [ISSN 1740-3111] Editor, commissioning editor and general editor: Sajid Rizvi. Published 1 December 1997 by Saffron Books, London, ISBN-13 9781872843131, ISBN-10 1872843131. See links for table of contents, additional information
An Epic Chronicle: ‘Renaissance’ of Ethiopian Contemporary Art (2005-2015) RP Vol. IX No. XXX, MMXVI
The history of art in Ethiopia goes back millennia as depicted in the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahido Church paintings. Modern art in Ethiopia is pioneered by Artist Agegnehu Engida (Geberew, Aénd Béel… died of unknown causes in 1950, shortly after finishing the painting Twelve Donkeys). This was followed by Artist Ale Felege Selam’s painting and the modern art belongs to titans such as Maître Artist Afewerk Tekle (glass elimination), Gebre Kisrstos Desta (abstract), Alexander Skunder Boghossian (magic scrolls) & Lulseged Retta (The coordinator of the Art of Ethiopia). Taddesse mamecha is a ‘drawing’ pio¬neer. Other pioneers are Taddesse Mesfin, Worku Mamo, Abdulrahman Sherif, Desta Hagos, Taddesse Bekayneh & Worku Goshu - not necessarily in that order. Art can transform any experience into beauty, and by so doing transforms its horrors in such a way that they may be contemplated with enjoy¬ment. Scho-penhauer believed that the forms of the uni¬verse, like the eternal Platonic forms, exist beyond the worlds of experience, and that aesthetic satisfaction is achieved by contemplating them for their own sakes, as a means of escaping the painful world of daily experience. Fichte, Kant & Hegel are in a direct line of development. Schopenhauer was influenced by Kant's view of disinterested contemplation. Nietzsche concurred that life is tragic, but thought that this should not preclude acceptance of the tragic with joyous affirmation, the full realization of which is art that con¬fronts the terrors of the universe. True to these centennial philosophies, Art of Ethiopia has opened the doors to the world stage for young Ethiopian artists. Through the years, it has come of age in all possible dimensions. Forms and content of Art of Ethiopia have also expanded enormously. Though each has its particularities, yet, each year’s Art of Ethiopia encompasses oil paintings, water colour compositions, sculptures, graphics, art on canvas, cotton, acrylic, crayon and charcoal art works. Mr. Antony Wade, General Manager of Sheraton Addis said, each year it is becoming more difficult to choose which works of art should be exhibited, as the population of talented artists is ever growing and the quality is continuously improving
Autonomy and Self-transcendence in Contemporary African Art: resilience, change and renewal
Museum International, 2000
This article examines the recognition and legitimization processes of African art. He highlights the specificities of art dynamics in Africa. Art is often utilitarian and the oral tradition, which is still very much alive, plays an important part in creativity. Now, the existence in Western societies of institutions that legitimize art, such as galleries and museums, and, in our time, the desire to gain acceptance in the eyes of an international audience determine the way in which African artistic expression and art exhibitions are staged. Even today, Africans are producing art with Europeans in mind, and African heritage works are valued, sold and/or exhibited outside the continent where they originated. In the context of growing globalization and the post-colonial legacy, this article examines the power of art in the face of poverty, and strategies to legitimize the oral tradition and ensure appropriation of new technologies.
Unmixing the Chaos: Contemporary African and Diasporic Art on Display in Global Context
2008
Simon Njami opens his introduction to the 2005 Africa Remix catalogue with a description of the “chaos” and “metamorphosis” of contemporary African art. This paper addresses three exhibits, Africa Remix (2005), African Art Now (2005), and Josephine Baker: Image and Icon (2006) in terms of the political economy, audiences, and semiography of the displays as they move across diverse venues. Both Africa Remix, curated by Simon Njami, and African Art Now, organized by collector Jean Pigozzi, reinvent and reconfigure contemporary African art in relationship to avant-garde genres, new aesthetic themes, and contrasting audience demands. Audience responses and critical interpretations to all three exhibits differed as they moved from site to site. These responses will be viewed in comparative perspective and global context. Although the reception of Josephine Baker: Image and Icon, curated by Olivia Lahs-Gonzales, was more local than the two African displays, it introduced similar issues of provenance, ownership, and audience response. The Josephine Baker exhibit raised questions concerning the iconographic representation of “Africa” in diasporic settings. All three exhibits interrogate how the term “contemporary” is configured and transmogrified in African art, a question that compels curators and participants to “unmix” the chaos and locate traces of homogeneity and difference in the metamorphosis of the global art scene. Unmixing will be used as a performative semiotic method of exploring layers of artistic production and display by manipulating signifiers in the topological structure of an art work and its environment. This manipulation allows the remixing of artistic elements for comparative analysis
academicjournals.org
Art, indeed, remains an effective means of representing reality. It has undoubtedly become instrumental in understanding and interpreting aspects of society -its inherent dialectics -its realities. Drama, therefore, as the most social of art forms invariably predisposes the dramatist/artist as invaluable in the solemn task of mirroring these realities. This paper surveys the socio-political developments, nay realities in two Sub-Saharan African societies, to examine the inextricable relationship between art and society as well as underscore the effect of the past on the present, using relevant works of two prominent dramatists from this region, Ngugi Wa Thiong'o (Kenya) and Femi Osofisan (Nigeria) as paradigms.
“Afrofutures: Africa and the Aesthetics of Black Revolution,” Third Text 31: 5-6 (2017), 633-649.
African American relations to Africaas diasporic relations to a site of originare structured by a complex temporality. Invocations of Africa in contemporary African American art often suggest a concern with the pastpart of a project of recovering black histories that has dominated black diasporic thinking during the twentieth century in what Kodwo Eshun described as 'an urgent need to demonstrate a substantive historical presence'. 1 Certainly, Africa has been a key point of inquiry in black artistic strategies that seek to mine the past and expose the workings of historical discourses that deny black roles in history. 2 However, in the diasporic logics of African American art, Africa can function not only as a means to stake black presence in the past, it can also function as a means to assert black presence in the future, offering aesthetic form through which to project the possibility of radical black futures.
African works: anxious encounters in the visual arts
Introduces a special issue of Res: journal of Anthropology and Aesthetics devoted to methodology in the study of African works of art. The essay picks up Olu Oguibe’s challenge to ask if African artists get asked the same questions as European or American artists. It queries how interviews are used and how they are represented by both anthropologists and art historians. It culminates in a close analysis of Johannes Fabian’s Remembering the Present (1996), which experimented with a number of different strategies for presenting the anthropologist’s exchanges with Congolese painter Tshibumba Kanda Matulu.