(read
more)
The debate surrounding
modern art in Africa has been all the rage both inside
Africa and outside the continent from the beginning of
the century until the last decade of the XX century. From
one coast to the other, words ring out: Black Identity,
African Identity, the trap of mimicry, the trap of academism,
the trap of the international market, the forced marriage
of tradition and modernity, the political desire for social
art with a social vocation before and after the independence
movement.
Mixing genres is frequent
between still living ritual art, popular art, urban art,
recovery art and the art that certain people would like
to call sophisticated. 
Social
Anthropologists fight with too few art critics to assert
a solely contextual reading. All speeches are good and
accompany varied productions of varied talents. Contempt
for artists who are conscious of their work has long resulted
in there being seen as "sexual psychopaths sacrificed
on the altar of acculturation". Attempts have even
been made to portray these artists as merely "bastard"
products of an impossible synthesis between Africa and
the West. People want something that is authentic, true
and pure, even if they have to invent it. Artists wishing
to paint, sculpt or produce as they see fit have been
tossed around, knocked down, and mostly ignored because
they only partially participate in the debate from which
they are the first to be excluded. (...)
Everybody is willing to subscribe to the idea that Africa
is a single unit, provided, however, that the basis and
content of this unit are specified. In actual fact, it
is, quite paradoxically, a multiple unit.
It
is a unit of condition, first and foremost. In all of
human memory, no continent has had a fate quite like Africa's.
On the negative side, this fate is a long succession of
hardships, from the slave trade to colonial domination,
to post-colonial abuses. On the positive side, it is a
sort of ongoing success story, in which the continent
constantly gets up after being knocked down, overcomes
the gravest of crisis, each time regaining an autonomy
that is unceasingly threatened. That is why these issues
of memory are so important in today's African communities,
as can be seen in it's storybook, film, musical and of
course, scientific production. The message is the same
in all of it's languages: restoring the greatness of "Africa
the cradle of Humanity" and land of notorious empires
and glorious heroes.(...)
This is why we can bet that the Africa of tomorrow will
be, in people's consciousness and in fact, both a cultural
area and a plurality of cultural areas.
source: "An Anthology of African
Art- the XX century" - N'Goné Fall & Jean
Lup Pivin
photos: (c) Grimaldi Forum, Monaco
click
here for SUGGESTED READINGS
