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A conversation with Okwui Enwezor - curator
Art Journal, Summer, 2002 by Carol Becker
This interview took place on September 8, 2001, in a public forum at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago. It was sponsored by the Department of Museum Education in conjunction with the exhibition The Short Century: Independence and Liberation Movements in Africa 1945-1994, which was curated by Okwui Enwezor for the Museum Villa Stuck in Munich and presented at the MCA for its U.S. premiere by the curator Francesco Bonami from September 8 to December 30, 2001. (1)
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Carol Becker: In preparing for the exhibition The Short Century: Independence and Liberation Movements in Africa 1945-1994, Okwui Enwezor asked, "How do you put together an exhibition about a continent?" and answered, "Impossible. "Yet he found a way. To show all the areas colonialism penetrated, one needs to see all the sites of resistance that developed everywhere, simultaneously--the representation and presentation of history and culture as manifested in multiple creative forms. Therefore the breadth of the exhibition is immense, and it is essential to tell the story. The complexity is all in the title.
First are two important dates. In 1945, the Pan-African conference met in Manchester, England, and the representatives of the colonies sanctioned African anticolonialist movements. They contested the European right to rule Africa and other colonies, and they marked the end of Europe's imperial age in Africa. In 1994, the African National Congress government was voted into power in South Africa's first democratic elections. Nelson Mandela was elected president; Thabo Mbeki was elected deputy president. This was the first instance of black majority rule in South Africa. The year 1994 might also be understood as the time when the Truth and Reconciliation Commission--the vehicle for exposing the actions of the apartheid era--was being negotiated; and in 1995, the Truth and Reconciliation Act was put into effect. As Enwezor points out, 1994 also witnessed horrific genocide in Rwanda, a catastrophe the world chose to ignore and a devastation that is still not reconciled. The year 1994-the end of one process and the beginning of another.
The show is bracketed by these decisive moments and by the words liberation and independence. Liberation movements imply violence, armed struggles, a rupturing of the system. Independence movements are associated with working within the system, pushing up against its boundaries, with a discursive discourse to change consciousness. Liberation and independence provide the polarity in the search to reconcile the complex issues of identity in the face of colonial rule. The complexity of African art, culture, literature, film, music, graphics, architecture, and political and social theory are all contextualized by the massive transitions in colonial society during these decades.
Seven areas are discussed and displayed in the exhibition--all manifestations of modernism in the postcolonial period. The scope and vision of the show are awe-inspiring. The exhibition challenges the manner in which art is traditionally curated. It questions how art is contextualized and raises the bar not just for the way in which modern African art needs to be understood and discussed, not only for how all postcolonial art needs to be displayed, but for how all art is contextualized and then understood. All art exists in history, not only within a given moment and not only in the history of art. The inspiration for art and popular culture at any given time is infinitely complex. The Short Century reveals that complexity, focusing on a particularly important time of transformation.
Second is the pedagogical nature of the show. The breadth of the exhibition forces the curious viewer to read the texts that are on the wall and to read the catalogue. (2) The massive publication is indispensable--not just for appreciating the breadth of what is to be seen and understood, but because the archival work that comprises so much of the show is extremely well documented within the text. Here are not only some of the most lucid and exciting explications of modern art, African art, cinema, literature, and architecture discussed by the most informed writers; there is also an anthology of original source material, such as speeches by Patrice Lumumba, Sekou Toure, Kwame Nkrumah, Jean-Paul Sartre, Aime Cesaire, Amilcar Cabral, and Frantz Fanon. These historical documents contain words that changed the world. The words let us understand the role of intellectuals and political leaders in articulating the questions raised by the populace. The words and the text became the manual for action, as Enwezor says.
Third is the timeliness of the show September 7, 2001, ended the "World Conference against Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia, and Related Intolerances," which was held in Durban. Many read about the issues of colonization and retribution that were raised there. History and its memory, the archive, were omnipresent.
One might ask, why is all this happening now? Why is the world now ready to deal with what occurred forty years ago? Why has Chicago's Museum of Contemporary Art graciously, miraculously, given over almost all its galleries to these issues? And what does it mean to have this show in the United States, which has still to deal with its own acts of imperialism?
