Nine contradictions in the new golden age of African art - First Word

African Arts, Autumn, 2002 by Suzanne Preston Blier

5. Exhibitions. The new globalized, heavily publicized arena of biennials has brought contemporary African art to the foreground in blockbuster shows such as the 1997 Johannesburg Biennale. They are curated largely by outsiders (though they might be African), with international funding and other support, sometimes leaving few possibilities for local artistic engagement. Indeed, artists living in these areas on occasion have been excluded, particularly if their work lies outside the parameters of the sometimes rigid postmodern visual rubrics being promoted. In other contexts, national boundaries still retain a heavy pull, with the exhibited artists being largely local or regional. In short, a lot of contemporary art just doesn't get shown, or doesn't get shown together.

6. Gender. Nearly all the newly acclaimed artists are men. Some of their most provocative works involve the appropriation of image making historically identified with African women--examinations of fashion, shrine constructions, performative takes on ritual acts, and painting (once largely a woman's art). Historically, women were not only among the principal subjects (which is no longer true in the contemporary arena), but in many contexts they were also the primary patrons and users. But while women have become invisible, certain themes such as homosexuality, rarely addressed overtly in the earlier forms, are now viable subjects. The question of how and by whom contemporary art is being delimited is salient with respect to a number of issues, since African women historically have been central figures not only in artistic production but also in the economic wellbeing of their communities.

7. Banishing the past. The Golden Age of contemporary African art has in some ways further marginalized earlier or ongoing historical African art forms. These works are sometimes now shunned if they haven't already been swept out of sight and out of mind. The reasoning varies. "Traditional" African arts are alternatively: a) too African (i.e., "exotic"); b) not where they should be displayed (in Western museums rather than in "traditional" African shrines); c) despite a century of rebuttal, stuck with a "primitive" patina that threatens to contaminate contemporary artists and artworks nearby; d) too ritually charged, thus inappropriate (sacrilegious) if viewed by the uninitiated of the West; e) too complex in their signification to be viably examined and exhibited outside their native lands.

8. Political ideology and global engagement. Key discussions of contemporary art are sometimes being framed around theories of power difference,(among these, the enduring problems of colonialism and, more recently, globalization). Yet in some ways the post-1950 Cold War between East and West had a more direct impact on this generation's Golden Age artists. Indeed, it can be argued that the heated Soviet-Western fight for the minds and resources of Africa wreaked more havoc there than it did elsewhere around the globe, as both political spheres promoted heavy-arms build-ups as a principal form of foreign aid (a "gift" that continues to plague the continent), while at the same time supporting hugely corrupt dictatorships if they could be counted on as allies. While in this case, too, power difference is important, in some respects (U.N. votes, for example) Africa during this era was accorded the role of a vital player. Having grown up in a time of highly charged (and restraining) political ideologies, many of these artists today seem all too happy to be freed from the burdens that these and other ideologies impose.