In some ways Tate will have an easy time in its mission to show the diversity of African art. If there is one certainty about the continent, its people, culture and history, it is its heterogeneity.
However, can Tate back its statement that its recent acquisition of a major artwork by Meschac Gaba, part of a programme to build on its existing African collection, “challenges preconceived notions of African art”?
Gaba’s installation, the Museum of Contemporary African Art 1997–2002, comprises 12 rooms that make a statement on the interconnectedness of art and life.
Next month (3 July–22 September) all 12 sections of the artwork will be exhibited in the UK for the first time at Tate Modern, London.
Tate describes Gaba as Beninese living in the Netherlands and therefore drawing on European and African influences. Gaba is concerned about documenting the now.
“If I use it, it’s part of my culture,” he says. “I have nothing against traditional art, I respect it, but we have to document how we live now.”
Traditional vs contemporary
In addition to Gaba’s work, Tate will exhibit a retrospective (3 July–22 September) of more than 100 works by Ibrahim El-Salahi, an artist who was born in Sudan in 1930 and trained at the Slade School of Art in London before returning to his homeland.
Tate is also buying work through its Acquisitions Fund for African Art,supported by the Nigerian-owned Guaranty Trust Bank (GTBank).
It has been buying works with the support of the recently formed Africa Acquisitions Committee, including works by El-Salahi, Cameroonian photographer Samuel Fosso, and Ghana-born artist El Anatsui.
Events and talks related to African art are taking place in London, Ghana, Cameroon and Nigeria as part of Tate’s two-year Across the Board project (see below). This programme is being run in partnership with GTBank.
Elvira Dyangani Ose, Tate’s curator of international art, whose post is supported by GTBank, says that the western canon of art has determined what constitutes African art for a long time.
She adds that the concept of “Africanness” needs to be challenged and that Gaba’s project is one way of doing that.
“This will make the public more familiar with the field,” Dyangani Ose says. “The more you know and see of African art the less likely it will be misinterpreted.”
For Dyangani Ose, it was important for Tate to get involved with experts in Africa – to reveal the “here and now on the continent”.
The traditional (masks, sculpture, basketry, etc) versus the contemporary is a much-discussed area, not only in African art, but also in relation to its wider culture and history. Of particular interest is how such objects are interpreted by the west.
There was international interest in art from Egypt and Nubia as early as 2500BC when goods were traded across the Mediterranean.
Romuald Hazoumè is an artist from Benin whose work includes La Bouche du Roi, a multimedia installation that features 304 “masks” made from plastic petrol cans, a CD of sounds and voices, and a short film detailing the lives of motorcyclists who run petrol between Bénin and Nigeria, a form of modern-day slavery.
The work was bought by the British Museum in 2007 to mark the bicentenary of the parliamentary abolition of the transatlantic slave trade.
Impact of African art
Hazoumè says a negative spin was placed on African art because Europeans wanted control over it. African art was dubbed “traditional” or “primitive” and early collectors and explorers saw it as an exotic curio.
The British Museum’s Kingdom of Ife exhibition in 2010 gave prominence to Nigerian sculpture from the 12th century. The show referenced the time when West African sculpture – the Nok terracottas from 500BC to the Benin Bronzes of the 16th-18th centuries – was found or seized by Europeans, and the subsequent disbelief that Africans could have created such great works.
This was at a time when the work of leading European artists such as Matisse, Picasso and Brancusi was deeply influenced by African artistic traditions.
The British Museum’s ethnographic display of its African collections is being considered for redisplay.
And there are European conferences this year debating whether the ethnological museum has a future. While these debates continue, traditional African art is still being made and there is plenty of contemporary art being produced.
The commercial October Gallery in London was one of the first in the UK to champion contemporary art from Africa in 1979. The gallery is currently displaying two works by El Anatsui to coincide with an installation by the artist that will cover the front of the Royal Academy during the Summer Exhibition.
Artistic director Elisabeth Lalouschek joined the October Gallery in 1983. She was interested in bringing art to the UK from all over the world, not just Africa.
“I was trying to open peoples eyes for several years,” Lalouschek says. “We were on a mission. We saw artists across the world but they weren’t supported as the European and US artists were.”
The British Museum has been at the forefront of collecting contemporary art from Africa in the UK for almost two decades and has about 250 pieces.
The museum also holds exhibitions of more traditional art, such as the one earlier this year focusing on the history and continued significance of textiles in eastern and southern Africa.
But why this growing interest in African art? Last year, Manchester hosted We Face Forward: Art from West Africa Today. This ambitious city-wide exhibition was spread across Manchester Art Gallery, Whitworth Art Gallery and the Gallery of Costume (Platt Hall), and there were also events in non-gallery spaces.
“Breakthrough” exhibition
Maria Balshaw, the director of Manchester City Galleries and Whitworth Art Gallery, says that the centres and agencies that have helped African artists have generally been French-speaking, leaving the UK behind, but Britain is now paying more attention.
“I don’t want to think about African art as separate from art of the world,” she says. “We have been a bit slow in the UK to realise this.”
Balshaw says that We Face Forward felt like a “breakthrough” exhibition. “It took a large step forward, presenting a diversity of work of sophistication and political import,” she says.
“It posed some important questions about contemporary art, what it does and what it means.”
The legacy of the show rests with works from 12 artists that have been bought for the Manchester collection.
“It won’t be lost to view or memory,” Balshaw says. “The show has changed the contemporary art collection we hold, just as it should.”
It also proved to be one of the most popular shows in Manchester, says Balshaw, pulling in 250,000 visitors over its three months. Manchester will continue to work with the artists it has built a relationship with through the exhibition and there is a Romuald Hazoumè show planned for later this year.
For Lalouschek, globalisation and the internet have led to a growing interest in international art from outside Europe and the US in the past 10 years.
Festivals of African art and culture such as Africa 95 and Africa 05 in the UK have shown the diversity of African contemporary art, as well as the many long-running and emerging biennials, triennials and festivals on the African continent, such as Dak’Art in Senegal.
In many countries, there are no obvious public spaces to display contemporary art from Africa. As a result, artists are creating their own galleries and spaces, and institutions such as Tate are getting involved in this type of work.
While international cooperation may have many positives, is there another side? Lalouschek is cautious: “Some artists’ work is extremely individual because of their background, but the more globalised we get do we get more homogenised?”
Hazoumè says this is not the case. He argues that art practices across Africa vary as they do between Africa and Europe. For instance, art education is taught in South Africa, he says, but not in his home in Benin.
Hazoumè continues: “[In Benin] the way we think is that we don’t need to make the same thing as European art. We think we have our own way to think and to continue to develop.”
Felicity Heywood is a freelance journalist, editor, researcher and oral history practitioner
Across the Board is a two-year Tate programme, sponsored by Guaranty Trust Bank. It features emerging artists and explores recent practices across Africa.
24 November 2012, Tate Modern, London
The first event of the Across the Board series focused on performances by Otobong Nkanga and Nástio Mosquito in the Tate Tanks. The artists were invited to address aspects of cultural identity within the framework of Tate’s collection.
21-23 February 2013, Accra and Kumasi, Ghana
An event held in partnership with local institutions in Ghana that looked at how people in different communities and institutions produce art across the continent.
December 2013, Douala, Cameroon
Tate will participate in a two-day event as part of the Douala Art Triennial. Cameroon has had a high-level of artistic engagement and practice at a local and international level for many years. The event will focus on art in public spaces and how African cities have become forums for creativity.
March 2014, Lagos, Nigeria
This will explore the legacy of one of the most important events to have taken place in the city, the Fest AC ’77, the second world festival of African arts and culture.
However, can Tate back its statement that its recent acquisition of a major artwork by Meschac Gaba, part of a programme to build on its existing African collection, “challenges preconceived notions of African art”?
Gaba’s installation, the Museum of Contemporary African Art 1997–2002, comprises 12 rooms that make a statement on the interconnectedness of art and life.
Next month (3 July–22 September) all 12 sections of the artwork will be exhibited in the UK for the first time at Tate Modern, London.
Tate describes Gaba as Beninese living in the Netherlands and therefore drawing on European and African influences. Gaba is concerned about documenting the now.
“If I use it, it’s part of my culture,” he says. “I have nothing against traditional art, I respect it, but we have to document how we live now.”
Traditional vs contemporary
In addition to Gaba’s work, Tate will exhibit a retrospective (3 July–22 September) of more than 100 works by Ibrahim El-Salahi, an artist who was born in Sudan in 1930 and trained at the Slade School of Art in London before returning to his homeland.
Tate is also buying work through its Acquisitions Fund for African Art,supported by the Nigerian-owned Guaranty Trust Bank (GTBank).
It has been buying works with the support of the recently formed Africa Acquisitions Committee, including works by El-Salahi, Cameroonian photographer Samuel Fosso, and Ghana-born artist El Anatsui.
Events and talks related to African art are taking place in London, Ghana, Cameroon and Nigeria as part of Tate’s two-year Across the Board project (see below). This programme is being run in partnership with GTBank.
Elvira Dyangani Ose, Tate’s curator of international art, whose post is supported by GTBank, says that the western canon of art has determined what constitutes African art for a long time.
She adds that the concept of “Africanness” needs to be challenged and that Gaba’s project is one way of doing that.
“This will make the public more familiar with the field,” Dyangani Ose says. “The more you know and see of African art the less likely it will be misinterpreted.”
For Dyangani Ose, it was important for Tate to get involved with experts in Africa – to reveal the “here and now on the continent”.
The traditional (masks, sculpture, basketry, etc) versus the contemporary is a much-discussed area, not only in African art, but also in relation to its wider culture and history. Of particular interest is how such objects are interpreted by the west.
There was international interest in art from Egypt and Nubia as early as 2500BC when goods were traded across the Mediterranean.
Romuald Hazoumè is an artist from Benin whose work includes La Bouche du Roi, a multimedia installation that features 304 “masks” made from plastic petrol cans, a CD of sounds and voices, and a short film detailing the lives of motorcyclists who run petrol between Bénin and Nigeria, a form of modern-day slavery.
The work was bought by the British Museum in 2007 to mark the bicentenary of the parliamentary abolition of the transatlantic slave trade.
Impact of African art
Hazoumè says a negative spin was placed on African art because Europeans wanted control over it. African art was dubbed “traditional” or “primitive” and early collectors and explorers saw it as an exotic curio.
The British Museum’s Kingdom of Ife exhibition in 2010 gave prominence to Nigerian sculpture from the 12th century. The show referenced the time when West African sculpture – the Nok terracottas from 500BC to the Benin Bronzes of the 16th-18th centuries – was found or seized by Europeans, and the subsequent disbelief that Africans could have created such great works.
This was at a time when the work of leading European artists such as Matisse, Picasso and Brancusi was deeply influenced by African artistic traditions.
The British Museum’s ethnographic display of its African collections is being considered for redisplay.
And there are European conferences this year debating whether the ethnological museum has a future. While these debates continue, traditional African art is still being made and there is plenty of contemporary art being produced.
The commercial October Gallery in London was one of the first in the UK to champion contemporary art from Africa in 1979. The gallery is currently displaying two works by El Anatsui to coincide with an installation by the artist that will cover the front of the Royal Academy during the Summer Exhibition.
Artistic director Elisabeth Lalouschek joined the October Gallery in 1983. She was interested in bringing art to the UK from all over the world, not just Africa.
“I was trying to open peoples eyes for several years,” Lalouschek says. “We were on a mission. We saw artists across the world but they weren’t supported as the European and US artists were.”
The British Museum has been at the forefront of collecting contemporary art from Africa in the UK for almost two decades and has about 250 pieces.
The museum also holds exhibitions of more traditional art, such as the one earlier this year focusing on the history and continued significance of textiles in eastern and southern Africa.
But why this growing interest in African art? Last year, Manchester hosted We Face Forward: Art from West Africa Today. This ambitious city-wide exhibition was spread across Manchester Art Gallery, Whitworth Art Gallery and the Gallery of Costume (Platt Hall), and there were also events in non-gallery spaces.
“Breakthrough” exhibition
Maria Balshaw, the director of Manchester City Galleries and Whitworth Art Gallery, says that the centres and agencies that have helped African artists have generally been French-speaking, leaving the UK behind, but Britain is now paying more attention.
“I don’t want to think about African art as separate from art of the world,” she says. “We have been a bit slow in the UK to realise this.”
Balshaw says that We Face Forward felt like a “breakthrough” exhibition. “It took a large step forward, presenting a diversity of work of sophistication and political import,” she says.
“It posed some important questions about contemporary art, what it does and what it means.”
The legacy of the show rests with works from 12 artists that have been bought for the Manchester collection.
“It won’t be lost to view or memory,” Balshaw says. “The show has changed the contemporary art collection we hold, just as it should.”
It also proved to be one of the most popular shows in Manchester, says Balshaw, pulling in 250,000 visitors over its three months. Manchester will continue to work with the artists it has built a relationship with through the exhibition and there is a Romuald Hazoumè show planned for later this year.
For Lalouschek, globalisation and the internet have led to a growing interest in international art from outside Europe and the US in the past 10 years.
Festivals of African art and culture such as Africa 95 and Africa 05 in the UK have shown the diversity of African contemporary art, as well as the many long-running and emerging biennials, triennials and festivals on the African continent, such as Dak’Art in Senegal.
In many countries, there are no obvious public spaces to display contemporary art from Africa. As a result, artists are creating their own galleries and spaces, and institutions such as Tate are getting involved in this type of work.
While international cooperation may have many positives, is there another side? Lalouschek is cautious: “Some artists’ work is extremely individual because of their background, but the more globalised we get do we get more homogenised?”
Hazoumè says this is not the case. He argues that art practices across Africa vary as they do between Africa and Europe. For instance, art education is taught in South Africa, he says, but not in his home in Benin.
Hazoumè continues: “[In Benin] the way we think is that we don’t need to make the same thing as European art. We think we have our own way to think and to continue to develop.”
Felicity Heywood is a freelance journalist, editor, researcher and oral history practitioner
Visions of Africa
Across the Board is a two-year Tate programme, sponsored by Guaranty Trust Bank. It features emerging artists and explores recent practices across Africa.
24 November 2012, Tate Modern, London
The first event of the Across the Board series focused on performances by Otobong Nkanga and Nástio Mosquito in the Tate Tanks. The artists were invited to address aspects of cultural identity within the framework of Tate’s collection.
21-23 February 2013, Accra and Kumasi, Ghana
An event held in partnership with local institutions in Ghana that looked at how people in different communities and institutions produce art across the continent.
December 2013, Douala, Cameroon
Tate will participate in a two-day event as part of the Douala Art Triennial. Cameroon has had a high-level of artistic engagement and practice at a local and international level for many years. The event will focus on art in public spaces and how African cities have become forums for creativity.
March 2014, Lagos, Nigeria
This will explore the legacy of one of the most important events to have taken place in the city, the Fest AC ’77, the second world festival of African arts and culture.
