EXHIBITION

Through western eyes

Africa 95

The easiest starting point for the Africa 95 arts festival is the Seven Stories About Modern Art in Africa exhibition. In seven regional strands it shows an enormous variety of works. There are highly politicised pictures, like Paul Stopforth's photos from Steve Biko's autopsy, or the horrors of life in Obote's Uganda viewed through Josephine Alacu's mythic monsters. Most exhibits are less overtly political, but throughout there is a celebration of how African art is influenced both by various traditional forms and modern Western art, itself heavily influenced by various African forms.
This influence is overt on artists like Picasso and Klee, and raises the question of how art is defined. Are Western artists making 'art' more creative than craftspeople who worked for religious or ritual purposes? Much has been made of the fact that there is no word for 'art' in any African language, but this is a pointless exercise. Art as a commodity is a product of capitalism. In English the use of the word in its modern sense does not appear until the 18th century. A Renaissance painter and a traditional Dogon sculptor would find it equally baffling to see their work in a public gallery, simply to be looked at.
The massive exhibition, Africa, the Art of a Continent, provides a historical background. It opens with ancient Egypt, and circles the continent to close with Islamic treasures from 14th century Cairo. North Africa is often left off discussions of the continent, encouraging racist views that these civilisations interacted with Europe and Asia, but not with sub-Saharan Africa. Exhibits from the obviously black civilisation of Nubia or from the long history of Ethiopia, show how untrue this is.
The diversity of the exhibition includes 14th century Toruba figures cast in metal as skilfully as anything contemporary from Europe, the use of coloured beads traded by Europeans to create new forms of 'traditional' sculpture, and beautiful clay statues from the Nok culture in Nigeria, created around 500BC.
Sometimes in the festival there is a careless confusion. For example, at the Crafts Council, a series of spears are labelled Maasai and Zulu with no indication of which is which, though the Maasai are a pastoralist people from east Africa, and the Zulu a settled people from south Africa. Did they make their spears or use them in the same way? We are not told. Similarly, an exhibit of photographic portraits at the Serpentine Gallery is not individually labelled, thus distancing them from a very specific time at the close of the French colonial presence in Mali.
It's impossible to consider Africa 95 without mentioning imperialism. Sponsors De Beers, Anglo American and Minorco state that they are 'proud of our African roots, proud to help an ancient rich and varied culture claim its rightful place in the world'. They seem less keen to remind us of their role in funding South Africa's apartheid regime which spent so long trying to stop blacks having their culture taken seriously. It is one of the ironies of capitalism that companies can sponsor exhibits which graphically show the struggle against apartheid. Indeed sponsoring an event such as this is much more painless than supporting the rights of the black workers they still exploit.
Much of the historical art was looted by imperialists and now resides in Western museums. An enormous Sudanese drum was General Kitchener's booty, presented to Queen Victoria and later donated by the royals to the British Museum. The fact that there is far more art from the former French colonies than the British is simply because the French took more interest in their subjects' creations, and so stole more of them. It says nothing about the inherent creativity of the varying peoples.
This raises the issue of why 'Africa' is a confusing concept. In any pre-colonial period the creators of the artefacts would not have considered themselves 'African' but Yoruba, Kikuyu or Zulu. Conversely, look at the music in the festival. Zap Mama, a Zairean vocal group based in Belgium, plays a mixture of European choral, West African harmonic and Hindi influenced music. It's great that they should be included; no African with access to the experience of cultures from other parts of the world or indeed other parts of Africa should be expected to reject them.
What unified culture there is in Africa is a result of the experience of and resistance to imperialism, which is why it can speak so powerfully to those who are resisting the effects of capitalism elsewhere, even as the art is turned into commodities to be sold on the international market.
African art is political by its very nature, because Africa is dismissed as primitive and backward. To challenge that is to raise questions of racism. But confusion arises in terms of modern artistic production. This can be seen most clearly in post-apartheid South Africa. The attempt to develop a national identity is not a response to colonialism, but a part of bourgeois nation building. It is not a purely African activity, but one which occurred in Europe and wherever modern nation states were created.
We can't look at traditional artefacts as their creators would have done. Whether they are European or black African, people from a modern capitalist society do not share the original artists' assumptions. Modern Africans, whether conscious artists or the creative craftspeople of the townships, are creating something different and something more universally understood because it is a response to the experience of a global economy.
Finally, any socialist will gladly welcome a series of events and exhibitions which prove that Africa is not the blank, dark continent the racists would have us believe. If there is too much to take in a single festival that is something to celebrate rather than condemn. For now, see and hear as much as you can.
Ken Olende
Main exhibitions: Africa the Art of a Continent Royal Academy of Arts, London, until 21 January 1996; Seven Stories About Modern Art In Africa, Whitechapel Gallery, London, until 26 November 1995. Other events nationwide until the end of December, details from Africa 95 on 0171-637-4388.