Tag Archives: Contemporary African Art

Report Symposium ‘Mixing the Colors of the Rainbow’

Posted on 05/10/2012

This summer the Dutch Museum Beelden aan Zee curated ‘Rainbow Nation’, an exhibition of contemporary South African sculptures. In the final weekend the symposium ‘Mixing the Colors of the Rainbow’ was organised, to discuss the current status of South African art and art history. Head of exhibitions Dick van Broekhuizen started the evening with a short introduction to ‘Rainbow Nation’. To provide a contextual framework guest curator Annelies Brans-Van der Straeten referred to the historical time line of the new art historical encyclopaedia ‘Visual Century. South African Art in Context 1907-2007’. Editors of ‘Visual Century’ Gavin Jantjes and Lize van Robbroeck were invited to explain the realization of this historical overview and the accompanying struggles with methodology. Dutch art historian and curator Esther Schreuder was invited to present her view on South African art history.

Introduction by head of exhibitions Dick van Broekhuizen

Gavin Jantjes


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Project ‘1975’ Essay Rikki Wemega-Kwawu

Posted on 22/12/2011

Artist and writer Rikki Wemega-Kwawu wrote the sixth Project ‘1975’ ‘The Politics of Exclusion’. In this essay Wemega-Kwawu criticizes the fixation on Contemporary African Diaspora artists and the powerful position of curator Okwui Enwezor.

The Nigeria-born American curator Okwui Enwezor is often acknowledged as the representative of African art and artists. The first Johannesburg Biennale in 1997 and the Documenta XI in Kassel in 2002, are just two examples of the many exhibitions he organized. With these presentations and publications on the topic of African art, Enwezor played a crucial role in the production of a definition of contemporary African art. Wemega-Kwawu criticizes this definition in his Project ‘1975’ essay, as he signalizes an ‘Enwezor School’: a group of African artists, now living in the West, that are preferred and circulated well above their counterparts living in Africa. Wemega-Kwawu argues that Enwezor hereby defines contemporary African art by the artists’ experience of Diaspora: “as if nothing worthwhile is happening on the continent”. By the maintenance of this definition African artists living on the continent, are hindered to enter the international art scene. Click here to download Newsletter 125 ‘Tala Madani – The Jinn’ and to read Rikki Wemega-Kwawu’s essay ‘The Politics of Exclusion’.

Rikki Wemega-Kwawu (Ghana, 1959) lives and works as an artist and writer in Takordi, Ghana. He is alumnus of the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Maine, U.S.A. In 2008, he was an Adjunct Professor in Art at the New York University – Accra, Ghana Campus, where he taught ‘postcolonial studio practices’.

Extra: Article N’Goné Fall ‘The Repositioning of Contemporary Art from Africa on the Map’

Posted on 21/04/2011

Internationally operating curator and art critic N’Goné Fall has recently published an article in which she maps out the landscape and the positioning of contemporary art from Africa. Fall contributed with this article to the catalogue of Ars 11 in the Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art in Finland, an event that will ‘change your perceptions about Africa and contemporary art’, in which also Alfredo Jaar participates.

Fragment of N’Goné Fall’s article:
“As a curator with an obvious focus on art production in Africa, I often had the bad feeling that I was seen as a wood dealer or a hyper enthusiast promoter of hand made mass-produced tacky exotic junk for tourists. And no I am not paranoid. For decades, ethnographic museums had the monopoly on non-western cultures. […] While looking at the work of Matthew Barney or Olafur Eliasson people will never refer to their supposed Celtic or Roman origins.”

Click here to read the article on the website of GAM – Global Art and the Museum.