Not since Africa Remix in 2005 (at the Hayward Gallery, London) have I been surrounded by and rejoiced at so much African art in one space.
Afro Modern at Tate Liverpool features over 140 works by more than 60 artists and a whole floor is dedicated to this temporary show.
Subtitled Journeys Through the Black Atlantic, it looks at the impact of different African diaspora cultures from around the Atlantic on art from the early 20th century to the present day.
There is art not only from continental artists but African artists based in Europe, and the Americas. Visitors will gain an historical overview of major international artistic and cultural movements.
This rare spectacle is to be celebrated at the level that it gives the African diaspora UK citizens a chance of acknowledgement, and international cultural markers that may offer a sense of place.
Interestingly, a familiar story from artists featured is that artists from the African diaspora are not usually discussed for their art but rather their identity as “black” becomes the focus.
But the rub comes when the experience as a visible minority in the diaspora leads to art being informed by representations of one’s own identity from external forces.
Though the art on display speaks for itself, there is still a sense of otherness – a sort of European voyeurism that has reinterpreted these works to allow them to sit together under themes such as Exhibiting Bodies, the Middle Passage, Dissident Identities, and Avant Gardes.
The initial influence for the exhibition was the African British scholar Paul Gilroy’s text The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness (1993), and an African British consultant curator was involved in the process. Nevertheless, this is in essence a European – Tate – production.
Having said that, I enjoyed it and will be going back. But the day I will truly revel in is when an exhibition on this scale is an all-African interpretation from start to end.
Afro Modern is at Tate Liverpool until 25 April
