National Museum of African Art

African Arts, Winter, 2002 by Elizabeth Harney

Question 4: I think the best one can hope for is to work in multiple arenas so that the unique dynamics of any given situation might be better understood. I agree that the flip side of globalism is a continuing localism (Clifford, Enwezor, and others have suggested as much). The so-called fluidity of global practice nonetheless requires a certain rootedness, a kind of constant negotiation of place making and community building. These local forms need not be seen as parochial or pure but rather as rich variations on a shared theme of interconnected living, an imbrication of forms, ideas, and interpretations which is at once understandable and constantly, delightfully surprising to those who do not share in its immediate production.

Global flows remain highly selective, as they did a century ago when sculptures and masks flooded the European marketplaces. Many of us can attest to the continuing presence of foreign cultural centers in promoting works of contemporary African artists both within and beyond the continent. Moreover, the ongoing importance of funding from former colonial powers or indeed multinationals based in the West attests to the limited ability that artists and arts institutions (such as biennials) have in practicing "alternatively" and freely.

At the NMAfA it is a struggle to make the arts of Africa understandable to a public that knows little about the complex realities of the continent in either historical or modern times. One then has to add the challenge of reaching beyond audiences interested in Africa to those concerned also with contemporary arts production who have little or no knowledge and often no desire to look beyond a mainstream institution. The NMAfA represents one kind of platform for these artists that does come to them by virtue of their identity, but it then allows them to speak on their own terms to a wider Smithsonian audience.

It would be foolish to think that an exhibition at P.S. 1 or MoCA for a select few contemporary practitioners signals a twenty-first-century shift--an "acceptance" of artists' works into a truly international arena. These events, along with important publications, conferences, collection building, and criticism are encouraging, but it is too soon to tell if they will be a regular occurrence or necessarily create a significant alteration in an art-world system which remains largely ignorant and indeed bigoted toward works from artists hailing from Africa and Asia, even when they have lived and practiced in Western metropoles for their entire artistic careers.

Surely one must ask whether the aim of success is simply acceptance into a "mainstream," to be shown "with other hip transnationals" as one artist emphatically informed me as he questioned the narrow focus of the NMAfA. Certainly the recent work by Olu Oguibe, Salah Hassan, and Okwui Enwezor, among others, which questions and complicates accepted notions of contemporary practice to include the works of African and Diaspora artists, is critical, but does it fundamentally change the measure of success? It is all too clear to those of us buying works, seeking venues for traveling shows, soliciting trustees and funders for support, and trying to stack our boards with those knowledgeable and interested in the contemporary that the platforms remain extremely limited and volatile. This question of measures of acceptance is one ultimately as much about market forces as it is about the processes of canon formation.

Elizabeth Harney

Curator, Contemporary Arts

National Museum of African Art

Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.