Reading the Contemporary: African Art from Theory to the Marketplace. - Review - book review

Black Issues Book Review, Sept, 2000 by Geoffrey Jacques

Reading the Contemporary: African Art from Theory to the Marketplace Edited by Olu Oguibe and Okwui Enwezor The MIT Press, May 2000, $35.00, ISBN 0-262-65051-7

For the past decade, writers and curators Olu Oguibe and Okwui Enwezor have been talking in public about contemporary African Art. Their efforts are joined by a small number of institutions now seeking--and gaining--an increasingly appreciative public's attention. Their collection of essays on the subject explores the visual and theoretical terrain and challenges posed by African art at the turn of the 21st century. Oguibe and Enwezor claim African art is in a "golden age." Its new visibility, they assert, challenges centuries of comfortable notions about the West's cultural authority and authenticity. As Oguibe notes, these artists challenge "the colonial desire for the faceless native, the anonym," which still lives in some international art circles.

This book shows us art that asserts the authority, autonomy, self-assertiveness and sheer breathtaking scope of African creativity today. It surveys the scene with theoretical essays which may interest the art insider more than the general reader and with accessible essays on individual artists, countries and genres.

New York University Professor Manthia Diawara's survey of contemporary African cinema is informative and rewarding, as are the essays on Senegalese and Nigerian contemporary art. Also included are essays which survey the work of artists like Ivorian painter Ouattara, Namibian artist John Muafengejo and portrait photographer Seydou Keita from Mali. Oguibe and Enwezor have compiled a book that is richly illustrated with photos of the artists' work; anyone interested in contemporary art should add this thoughtful collection to their library.

Geoffrey Jacques, author of Suspended Knowledge, is a poet and writer whose essays on art have appeared in numerous publications.