Africas: The artist and the city (2001)
Review of exhibition at The Centre de Cultura Contemporania de Barcelona.
artdesigncafé | café library | Published 03 January 2010
This review was previously published in Sculpture magazine in May 2002, 21(4), page 76.
Curated by Pep Subiros, the goal
of “Africas” was “to highlight the
vitality and wealth of contemporary
African art and its close inter-relation
with the ever-increasing
rate of urbanization on the continent.”
Presenting a selection of
almost 200 works (including painting,
sculpture, photography, cinema,
video, and installation) by
24 artists, the show concentrated
on selected urban centers on the
continent—Dakar, Abidjan, Lagos,
Harare, Johannesburg, and Cape
Town—and African presences in
Paris and London.
In order to provide a contextual
framework for those viewers with
limited knowledge of contemporary
African art, Pep Subiros divided the
exhibition into three sections. The
first addressed relations between
Africa and the rest of the world,
including economic and political
dependence, as well as migration.
The second section organized eight
city-areas into three sections—
Francophone, Anglophone, and
South African. The final section
centered on the “new forms of
individuality and subjectivity”
emerging in contemporary Africa,
particularly urban lifestyles. Within
this context, several sculptures and
installations offered a unique window
onto selected art practices.
-
El Anatsui. Visa queue, (1992). Tropical hardwoods, 20 cm. high, length and width variable.
In the introductory space,
Ghanaian El Anatsui exhibited
Visa Queue (1992), a small-scale
work in the form of a long, winding
mass of nondescript bodies,
which raised issues similar to those
in Sorious Samura’s documentary
of West African economic emigrants
bound for Europe. In striking
contrast to Visa, El Anatsui’s
Crumbling Wall (2000) rose to
the ceiling, its rusting, perforated-metal
form seemingly impenetrable,
yet beginning to collapse.
In the central space, the eight
art-city areas included not only
art but also a reference section—
with photography, literature, press
information, educational materials,
and music—that offered
viewers the opportunity to learn
more. From Paris, Patrice Felix
Tchicaya’s video installation The
Seventh Cycle. Icosonographies
(2000–2001) questioned representation
and its meaning via alternatively
projected portraits and
first names of (African) men and
women. Sokari Douglas Camp
(born in Nigeria and residing in
London) exhibited Freud White
Sacrifice (1998), in which the analyst
is depicted in a stiff formal
position aside a female figure
with arms crossed and breasts
exposed. The artist put the sculpture
in motion, with Freud spinning,
perhaps questioning the interaction
and representation— a serious
and humorous social commentary.
Willie Bester, who resides in
Cape Town, presented Dog of
War (2000), which looked like a
futuristic terror-machine from a
Terminator film. With a sinister
machine gun-like form strapped to
its waist, the assembled techno-dog
refers to conflicts both on the
continent and beyond, and more
abstractly, to change in general.
Jane Alexander, also from Cape
Town, exhibited Bom Boys (1998),
an installation in which nine small
male figures with animal appendages
such as rabbit ears and a
beak were arranged in contrasting, isolated groups to pose questions
about identity and society.
In the final section, landscapes
predominated. Bodys Isek Kingelez’s
Project for Kinshasa for the Third
Millennium (1997), which portrayed
a glittering skyline for the
Congolese capital, recalls grand
schemes for new cities around the
globe. At the same time, the work’s
emptiness and references to dysfunctional
consumerism question
such plans, raising issues of inclusion/
exclusion. Lastly, Moshekwa
Langa, born in South Africa and
resident in Amsterdam, exhibited
Temporal Distance (with a criminal intent) you will find us in the
best places (1997). Also a landscape
in miniature, this work
depicts a more abstract scene—
with threads, wool, and yarn mostly
on spools and randomly placed bottles—
laid out across the floor. In
contrast to Kingelez’s more “rational”
design, Langa’s is intentionally
chaotic. For the artist, this piece
gives “a physical form to an imaginary
space, perhaps harking back
to a more romantic childlike, or
even childish vision of the world,
but through knowing eyes.”
“Africas” formed part of the first
Barcelona Art Report 2001 triennial
“Experiences,” which highlighted
Barcelona’s diverse art production
and examined the contemporary
city and socially critical art.
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