AFRICAN ARTS最新文献

{"title":"African Textiles, Fashionable Textiles: A Historiography","authors":"Sarah Fee","doi":"10.1162/afar_a_00715","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1162/afar_a_00715","url":null,"abstract":"I did not go looking for textiles, they came looking for me. I originally went to southern Madagascar in the late 1980s with the intention of studying funerary monuments, which from the nineteenth century had become ever more visible and elaborate. But in the village that graciously hosted me, women soon drew me into helping them card and spin cotton, which the neighboring village then dyed and wove into burial cloth. It became apparent that as much— or more—energy, artistry, and money went into weaving and shrouds than into tombs. Yet, when I proposed the dissertation topic of handweaving to my supervisor, a French archaeologist, he was aghast. Why this frivolous topic? He, like many others, would continually try to steer me to Malagasy funerary monuments, made by specialists—by men—of stone or carved wood. A microcosm of early African art history—with its notorious preference for sculpture—perhaps compounded by the fact that in Madagascar weavers are most always women. Female and frivolous, associations that scholars show fed into the academy’s longstanding rejection of textiles, dress, and fashion as serious subjects of inquiry. What set me free, and many in my generation, was the collective volume Cloth and Human Experience (Schneider and Weiner 1989). Its mostly feminist-anthropologist authors shed blinding light on the great social and aesthetic significance of cloth around the world and women’s creative agency in making and activating it. The volume’s chapter on Madagascar by Gillian Feeley-Harnik ultimately helped win over my supervisor to my cause. Typical of the time, few chapters focused on dress, and my own dissertation was in the mold of “the anthropology of cloth,” exploring the making, gifting, and ritual use of handweavings. Still far in the distance in the 1980s, as Victoria Rovine (2015) has observed in hindsight, was seeing fashionability in Africa; only in recent years has she, and many colleagues, replaced the noxious F-words with a set of I-words: innovation, impetus, intention, individual .... Thus, if some quarters were debating whether African textiles were worthy of study, others simply got on with it. Textiles rank among “the most potent field of an indigenous aesthetic,” as John Picton, an early pioneer in the field, concludes (this issue, p. 82). And researchers, for this and many other reasons, simply could not ignore them. In the 1970s and ‘80s, the pages of African Arts offered a steady stream of articles, mainly by female scholars, on particular traditions, many of which have come to form the familiar African textile canon: resist-dyed indigo, kente, ikats of the Dida, Kuba raffia, kaasa blankets, Akwete brocades, Sokoto robes. Articles included, too, newly invented traditions such as tapestry and screen printing, born of cooperatives. Major monographs and surveys appeared, with a volume of Textile History (Idiens 1980) dedicated to “traditional African weaving and textiles.” (For detailed overview of the historio","PeriodicalId":45314,"journal":{"name":"AFRICAN ARTS","volume":"56 1","pages":"1-5"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-08-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44461095","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Textiles in the History of the History of African Art","authors":"J. Picton","doi":"10.1162/afar_a_00723","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1162/afar_a_00723","url":null,"abstract":"My work is described, conventionally, as “abstract.” However, given that there is a very precise, knowable set of resources at the back of it, I would describe it rather as schematic: not like a map, but like a reaction to or interpretation of a map. It is about ownership, a way to finding myelf, where I am. In that sense my work enhances a viewing of Kumasi and Ghana … my work is the outcome of a series of engagements be - tween practices, forms and visual environments that are specific to me in Ghana (Kwami 2013: 355–60).","PeriodicalId":45314,"journal":{"name":"AFRICAN ARTS","volume":"56 1","pages":"82-91"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-08-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43469406","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The Language of Beauty in African Art curated by Constantine Petridis","authors":"Edleeca Thompson","doi":"10.1162/afar_r_00712","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1162/afar_r_00712","url":null,"abstract":"The first major exhibition of African art at the Kimbell in twenty­five years, The Language of Beauty in African Art encouraged visitors to consider how African language is used to describe concepts of beauty in African art.1 More than 200 works, representing fifty­six sub­Saharan countries, were gathered from over sixty collections around the world. Seven years in the making, the exhibition was organized by the Art Institute of Chicago and curated by Constantine Petridis in collaboration with Jennifer Casler Price, the Kimbell’s curator of Asian, African, and Ancient American Art. Price commented that the exhibition focused on “looking at African art through the aesthetics of the indigenous people” rather than through a lens rooted in Western art history.2 The exhibition occupied eight galleries in the Renzo Piano Pavilion and focused on spe­ cific cultural themes and artistic conventions. Gracing the entrance were larger­than­life photographs of Igbo Maiden Spirit maskers (photographed in 1935 by G.I. Jones near Awka, Nigeria), setting the stage for exploring concepts of ugliness and beauty in African art. An Acoustiguide mobile app featured Director Erik M. Lee introducing the exhibition, with commentary by Yaëlle Biro on the history of Western appreciation of African art. For all its successes, The Language of Beauty in African Art at the Kimbell highlighted the challenges museums face when displaying African art in the formal museum environ­ ment. Renzo Piano’s architectural color scheme of gray concrete walls, oak floor, and diffused natural light made for a warm gallery atmo­ sphere, with casework and label copy echoing Piano’s color palette. While didactics promoted indigenous perspectives, the display environ­ ment maintained its postmodern aesthetic. The first section, “Whose Beauty?” consid­ ered how African art has been displayed and interpreted in and outside of Africa. A male figure identified as the Chokwe royal ances­ tor, Chibinda Ilunga, introduced visitors to the duality of meanings in African language, while recognizing the sculpture’s utotombo, or craftsmanship, as well as its cibema, or beauty and goodness (Fig. 1). Another display of Kota reliquary figures exemplified the Western fascination with figural abstraction and aes­ thetics of African art rather than its indigenous functions. The “How Objects Speak” section included prestige works, decorative cups, headrests, and stools. From this gallery, visitors had an open view into the next section, which explored the “Moral Meanings of Beauty.” An impressive Baga shoulder mask (d’mba) commanded the space as a monumental symbol of the beautiful, maternal power of women along with personal adornments inscribing status and moral distinction (Fig. 2). A collection of helmet masks (sowei) evidenced the high­ est “Standards of Beauty” for women; their","PeriodicalId":45314,"journal":{"name":"AFRICAN ARTS","volume":"56 1","pages":"91-93"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46926681","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Art du Bénin d'hier et d'aujourd'hui: de la Restitution à la Révélation curated by Léa Awunou Roufai and Yassine Lassissi (contemporary art) and Edmond Toli, Alain Godonou, and José Pliya (Danxomèan art)","authors":"Degenhart Brown, J. Adandé","doi":"10.1162/afar_r_00711","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1162/afar_r_00711","url":null,"abstract":"On November 17, 1892, Colonel Alfred­ Amédée Dodds of the French Army raided the palace complex of Abomey, capital of the Kingdom of Danxomè, with a force of 2,164 Marines, engineers, sharpshooters, artillery units, Foreign Legionnaires, Senegalese light cavalry, and volunteers from the neighboring kingdom of Xogbónù (Alpern 1998: 193). Having conducted successful colonial cam­ paigns in Réunion, Senegal, and French Indo­ china, Dodds sought to bring the Danxomèan Kingdom under French control amid Europe’s manic scramble for Africa. Facing Dodds was King Gbéhanzin, a fearsome ruler and cunning military strategist, who had resisted French depredations since his enthronement in 1889. Anticipating Dodd’s attack on Abomey, Gbéhanzin torched the city’s palaces and retreated northward. Despite armed resistance and sporadic incursions mounted by Gbéhan­ zin over the next two years, Dodds’s taking of Abomey spelled the end of the second Franco­Danxomèan War (July 4, 1892–Jan­ uary 29, 1894), and with it, three centuries of uninterrupted Danxomèan rule.1 The fall of Abomey also precipitated the consolidation of one of the last autonomous African kingdoms into the Third Republic’s sprawling West African empire and cemented France’s position as a colonial powerhouse at the dawn of the twentieth century. Shortly after Dodds’s men hoisted the Tricolor above Abomey’s smoldering ruins, they discovered multiple caches of hastily buried jewelry, fabrics, thrones, statues, weapons, portable shrines, palace doors, and ritual paraphernalia (Beaujean 2019: 239). Rampant pillaging ensued, and what Dodds and his men could not take with them, or what they deemed worthless, they destroyed. Less than a year later, a newly promoted General Dodds made the first of two donations of pillaged Danxomèan objects to the Musée du Trocadero in Paris. A second gift in 1895 increased the Trocadero’s “Dodds Collection” to twenty­six objects. Over the next century, Gbéhanzin’s royal possessions were exhibited and otherwise held at the Musée du Tro­ cadero and the Musée de l’Homme before being transferred to the new Musée du quai Branly–Jacques Chirac in 2004. On December 24, 2020, following decades of campaigning and negotiations by Béninois heads of state, African art scholars, artists, and cultural activ­ ists, President Emmanuel Macron signed into law Restitution Bill n° 2020­1673, formalizing France’s intention to return the twenty­six works taken from Abomey by Dodds in 1892 (Castex et al. 2020). On November 10, 2021, France repatriated the objects in one of the most significant acts of object restitu­ tion to date. After more than a century of exile, the Danxomèan court treasures were displayed on Béninois soil in Art du Bénin d’hier et d’aujourd’hui: de la Restitution à la Révélation (Art of Bénin from Yesterday and Today: Restitution to Revelation). Opening in Cotonou on Febru­ ary 20, 2022, the landmark exhibition paired the objects seized by Dodds with more than one hundred w","PeriodicalId":45314,"journal":{"name":"AFRICAN ARTS","volume":"56 1","pages":"78-90"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48776383","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The Arts of Africa: Studying and Conserving the Collection, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts by Richard B. Woodward, Ash Duhrkoop, Ndubuisi Ezeluomba, Sheila Payaqui, Ainslie Harrison, Casey Mallinckrodt, and Kathryn Brugioni Gabrielli","authors":"Michael S. Baird","doi":"10.1162/afar_r_00714","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1162/afar_r_00714","url":null,"abstract":"This catalogue, dedicated to the permanent collection of African art at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond, Virginia, is innovative in both approach and form and makes a distinct contribution to the genre of museum catalogues centered on African art in major museum collections. The Arts of Africa emphasizes scientific analysis and conservation, providing a perspective that has not been applied to a book­length, compre­ hensive treatment of an African art collection in a major US museum. Objects that were the subject of analysis by the conservation depart­ ment cover a wide geographic and temporal expanse, from a depiction of the Last Supper from eighteenth­century Ethiopia to a Twins Seven­Seven work. Instead of treating objects as exemplars of particular types, the emphasis on conservation as a mode of inquiry consid­ ers the specific objects within the collection. The conservation perspective brings into focus a central argument and structuring principle of the book: the biographies of objects do not end with their entry into the museum. Instead, the works continue to acquire meaning in their interactions with new audiences and their transplantation into a new environment. The publication is notable for these efforts to make the museum a self­conscious presence, an element of the objects’ stories. Accordingly, the conventional photographs of isolated objects are complemented by photographs representing objects within the life of the museum, including in the context of educa­ tional programs, in the galleries, and in the conservation lab. The Arts of Africa was published to mark the end of a multiyear, cross­departmental, Mellon Foundation­funded initiative that aimed to apply expertise in the fields of cura­ tion and conservation to the study of African art objects. It is the second publication from the VMFA’s African art collection; the earlier catalogue (Woodward 2000) was consider­ ably shorter—94 pages, compared to the 296 pages in this volume. While The Arts of Africa is accessible to nonspecialist audiences, the most seasoned expert will surely appreciate the unique perspectives on even the most canoni­ cal works. For example, the inclusion of rarely seen views of objects, like the back of a flour sack painting by Congolese artist Tshibumba Kanda­Matulu, provide literally new per­ spectives to complement the methodological contributions. The book consists of an introduction, six chapters, and three appendices. Chapters 1 and 2 cover the early history of African art at the VMFA and the establishment of the museum’s permanent collection. Chapter 3 outlines the changing conceptions of the goals of conservation for African art, addressing ethical as well as aesthetic concerns. By far the largest section of the book, chapter 4 details findings of the conservation initiative in relation to specific objects in the collection. Chapters 5 and 6 contextualize the collection of the VMFA within larger trajectories of the display and collect","PeriodicalId":45314,"journal":{"name":"AFRICAN ARTS","volume":"56 1","pages":"95-96"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42293622","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Artifacts from the Perspective of Effutu Masquerade Performance: An Aesthetic Album","authors":"V. Micah, Evans Kwadwo Donkor, Owusu-Ansah Ankrah","doi":"10.1162/afar_a_00709","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1162/afar_a_00709","url":null,"abstract":"| african arts SUMMER 2023 VOL. 56, NO. 2 The creation of masquerading artifacts like masks, hats, stilts, flywhisks, African bells with ring strikers (castanets), and costumes from the inception of the culture in Ghana has been a matter of strict philosophical discourse, especially within the conceptualization of forms in a blend of mostly European and, rather less, from African perspectives. To date, the masquerade artists and the leaders of Winneba have maintained a blend of European and African frames of reference in conceptualizing their ideas and costumes. The Effutu Municipal Assembly notes that Winneba was traditionally known as “Simpa,” “which was derived from the name of the leader of the Effutus, ‘Osimpa’, who led the Effutus of the Guan ethnic stock from the Northern part of Ghana to the present location” (2015: 3). The name “Winneba” originated from European sailors, who were often aided by the favorable wind to sail along the bay; the constant use of the words “windy bay” turned into the name Winneba. The town was one of the first communities in the country to meet European traders; it served as a port where foreign goods were discharged and transported to the interior and to major commercial areas such as Agona Swedru and Akim-Oda. Because of its role as a harbor town and a place of early European settlement, it became the administrative capital of the then Central Province of the Gold Coast (Ghana). The cocoa boom in forestry areas led to the relocation of major trading companies in the 1940s to Agona Swedru, and this affected the growth of Winneba. The township incurred even greater loss when the port of Tema was completed and port activities in Winneba were thus shut down. With this, most commercial activities also shifted from Winneba to Tema and Accra (Effutu Municipal Assembly 2015). Winneba is primarily a fishing community that uses dinghies for fishing. The Effutu people in Winneba have rich cultures, including the Kakamotobi masquerading festival, Aboakyer deer hunt, and others. The fishing community is gradually turning into a cosmopolitan area, which has taken a toll on the citizens (Micah 2014). Davies (2010), discussing Phyllis Galembo’s fascination with masquerades in Ghana, reveals that the Kakamotobi masquerading festival began as a party. Galembo’s masquerade photographs support the historic antecedents of Effutu’s masquerade culture:","PeriodicalId":45314,"journal":{"name":"AFRICAN ARTS","volume":"56 1","pages":"48-63"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-05-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48641216","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Colonial Legacies: Contemporary Lens-Based Art and the Democratic Republic of Congo by Gabriella Nugent","authors":"Pedro Monaville","doi":"10.1162/afar_r_00713","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1162/afar_r_00713","url":null,"abstract":"| 93 living and the dead. These objects commanded astonishment in their form and power, tran­ scending all notions of ugliness and beauty. The exhibition opened with a symposium and lectures by curator Petridis, Babatunde Lawal, and Frederick John Lamp. Friday and Wednesday evening lectures included talks by Christa Clarke, Zoë Strother, and Elyan Jeanine Hill. The Kimbell also hosted guided tours, workshops, films, book readings, and a special Juneteenth celebration. While displays did not include audiovisual interactives, patrons seemed genuinely interested in the objects and frequently revisited galleries. That said, the missed opportunity to engage visitors with additional audiovisual content could have enlivened an already dynamic collec­ tion of art, capturing a wider range of visitor demographics. Without question, The Language of Beauty in African Art at the Kimbell was one of the most important exhibitions of traditional African art in recent years. The scope and quality of objects was only surpassed by attention to detail in descriptions of cultural meanings through didactics and audio tours. The thematic approach in the arrangement of objects provided more focused comparisons of cross­cultural styles and techniques. Placing emphasis on language, and verbal expressions used to describe physical and moral beauty, allowed for deeper learning about the meaning of the art for African peoples. The Kimbell’s website featured discussions between Jennifer Casler Price and Constan­ tine Petridis, a video on the making of the exhibition, and a virtual tour. The catalogue includes contributions by Yaëlle Biro, Herbert M. Cole, Kassim Kone, Babatunde Lawal, Constantine Petridis, Wilfried van Damme, and Susan Mullin Vogel. (Constantine Petridis, ed. The Language of Beauty in African Art. The Art Institute of Chicago. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2022. 356 pp. 315 color, 30 b/w ill., $65.00).","PeriodicalId":45314,"journal":{"name":"AFRICAN ARTS","volume":"56 1","pages":"93-95"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-05-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45354682","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Present Pasts of Colonial Modernity: Embroideries by Lucie Kamuswekera","authors":"B. Jewsiewicki, Maartin Hendriks","doi":"10.1162/afar_a_00708","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1162/afar_a_00708","url":null,"abstract":"Lucie Kamuswekera’s1 embroideries are not popular paintings, but they are very close to them, even if the latter are usually no longer found in Congolese homes. Born in 1944, Lucie Kamuswekera, who prefers to be known as Artiste Lucie2 (Fig. 1), belongs to the generation of Congolese for whom these paintings reflected the memories and experiences lived between the 1950s and 1990s. In her embroideries, she mostly revisits the iconotheque of popular painting by visualizing the experiences of women, but sometimes raises issues of worldwide relevance, like the COVID pandemic (Fig. 2). Explicitly, the artist’s mission is to give relevance to past and present experiences, to reinscribe them in the collective life and reestablish intergenerational links. In Congolese urban culture, the reception of the image is performative. Like a mask in a ritual, her embroideries intervene in social life and relationships. They carry a knowledge—which Lucie Kamuswekera considers currently lost—but above all they make present and therefore active the incorporated xperience whose intergenerational transmission was disrupted by three decades of armed conflict in the Kivu provinces. As a widow and grandmother, she fully assumes the role of guaranteeing generational continuity that her society grants to women. She inscribes her art in a dynamic continuity of sharing memories in images and words. She uses embroidery, a technique learned at the colonial school, to actualize male pictorial discourses on experiences lived during the second half of the twentieth century. She devotes part of the income from the sale of her embroideries to running a workshop where she shelters and trains four orphans (three girls and one boy), formerly street children, because she wants the art of embroidery to survive. For the reasons we have outlined, we need to introduce the reader to Congolese popular painting and its academic analyses. In the 1970s and 1980s, Congolese popular painting, also known as urban painting, became very popular among the city dwellers of the largeand medium-sized cities of the country then called Zaire. In a quarter of a century, a few thousand painters produced tens of thousands of paintings that were hung on the walls of hundreds of thousands of houses inhabited by families of small traders and craftsmen, workers and employees, teachers, etc. In the West, we would label them the middle class. The local popularity of these works began in the second decade after independence. Urban inhabitants found peace and modest prosperity after a decade of civil wars following independence in 1960. The authoritarian government imposed in 1968 by President Mobutu crushed the political opposition (Van Reybrouck 2015). Largely, urban populations accepted this as the price of a return to normal life. Mobutu’s policies of cultural and economic nationalization were initially well received and promoted the development of a national culture in urban areas. Music played a leading role i","PeriodicalId":45314,"journal":{"name":"AFRICAN ARTS","volume":"56 1","pages":"30-47"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-05-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41332137","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Beyond the “Popular” versus “Serious” Criticism Binary: Towards New Histories of Black Art Criticism","authors":"Pfunzo Sidogi","doi":"10.1162/afar_a_00710","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1162/afar_a_00710","url":null,"abstract":"| african arts SUMMER 2023 VOL. 56, NO. 2 In 2019, the Standard Bank Gallery hosted a major exhibition of artworks produced by Black South African artists from the twentieth century (Fig. 1). Titled A Black Aesthetic: A View of South African Artists (1970–1990), the show was curated by Same Mdluli, at the time the newly appointed director of the Standard Bank Gallery, and this was her first major curatorial intervention as director. A Black Aesthetic was anchored by the University of Fort Hare’s storied collection of twentieth-century Black art, which was initially historicized by Edward J. de Jager (1992) in his well-known Images of Man publication (Fig. 2). Among others, scholars like James Macdonald (2020: 94) were congratulatory of the overall “success” Mdluli achieved through the various “curatorial imperatives” pioneered in this show. However, what interests me is how the exhibition inspired what Thuli Gamedze (2019) described as “a significant art historical exchange” between Mdluli and the prominent art critic Athi Mongezeleli Joja. This public debate between Mdluli and Joja was itself a milestone on several fronts. Unlike the controversy that circled the exhibition Black Modernisms in South Africa (1940–1990) held at the Wits Art Museum in 2016, wherein the exhibition curator Anitra Nettleton, Professor Emeritus at the University of Witwatersrand, was accused of perpetuating problematic race dynamics that privilege White intellectuals as “saviors” of Black heritage (Fikeni 2016), A Black Aesthetic exposed the intellectual disharmony that persists among the contemporary vanguard of Black professionals within South Africa’s visual arts space. Joja (2019a) penned a thorough and disapproving evaluation of the exhibition, and although he praised the show for its relevance and scale, he concluded that it lacked “the quality and rigour that would inspire critical curiosity and verve.” Joja (2019a) further lamented the “insipid article” contributed by Zakes Mda (2019) and Mdluli’s (2019a) own essay in the thick and beautifully printed catalogue (Fig. 3), which in his view, left “a lot to be desired” (Joja 2019a). In her terse defense against Joja, Mdluli1 evoked David Nthubu Koloane’s (1998) iconic essay “Art Criticism for Whom?” published over two decades prior. Mdluli (2019b) appropriated Koloane’s voice, quite cunningly, to discredit Joja’s review by expressing that “Koloane’s reflection on art criticism is thus important as a basis for framing why certain views on visual arts are often grossly misplaced” (my emphasis). According to Mdluli, Joja’s sentiments revealed an “idleness in arts writing” that was potentially “detrimental to demystifying the perception that art is elitist.” The reasons why Mdluli was not amused by Joja’s justified critique of her show, fascinating as it was, are immaterial here. What interests me is how Mdluli adopted the position that Joja’s criticism—although she did not point to him directly—fell within the ambit o","PeriodicalId":45314,"journal":{"name":"AFRICAN ARTS","volume":"56 1","pages":"64-77"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-05-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49523551","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Touched and Changed: Self-Reflexivity and Reciprocity in Fieldwork","authors":"Jordan A. Fenton","doi":"10.1162/afar_a_00705","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1162/afar_a_00705","url":null,"abstract":"REMEMBERING MY ADOPTIVE FATHER As I stood with a tumbler filled with gin in my right hand, heightened nerves and trepidation overcame me. I was standing in front of the final burial and resting place of my Nigerian adoptive father. It was summer of 2022—the first time I was able to travel to Calabar and see my adoptive family since his passing in 2020. COVID was of course to blame, as it prevented me from traveling. Prior to this, I fondly recall phone calls (and messaging via WhatsApp) from my home in Ohio (USA) with my adoptive mother and the rest of the family about his passing. Yet even with my amplified anxiety as I stood there, I was also oddly calm and at peace. The comfort of my adoptive mother and brothers standing beside me helped subdue the restlessness I felt. I was about to pour libation to my adoptive Papa with the support of my Nigerian family. This was not the first time I poured libation in the name of the ancestors of the Ekpe/Mgbe society. However, even though I had done it before at the request of my teachers, I am never at ease about it. Even though I was well trained on how to do it, following the proper protocol and lengthy steps, there was always a power about the process that I feared and did not completely understand. However, when my elder teachers asked me to do it, and for the sake of my adoptive father, such thoughts left as quickly as they came. Right before I started the offering my mind scrolled to one of the lessons my adoptive father taught me: to respect the knowledge my Ekpe/Mgbe teachers taught me and have confidence when it was time to demonstrate it. The moments after I successfully offered and poured the libation, relief came over me as I felt something hard to put into words. Upon finishing, my adoptive mother and bothers embraced me, smiled, and were content. After, we sat in the room beside my adoptive father’s resting place chatting and catching up about the things that make one whole. At that moment I was so grateful to the Oqua family for asking me to honor our Papa and the family in their presence, as a member of the family. This was one of the many times I was deeply touched and clearly changed, and although the lasting impact is hard to articulate, the best I can offer is that it made me feel at home. While I was touched and changed, a reciprocal experience was also shared by all present. I was given a great opportunity to honor a beloved mentor through the warm feeling of acceptance by my adopted family. In return, the family had their ancestor honored through libation by someone who would normally be ignorant of and clumsy in this act of religiosity. The success of the libation demonstrated the power and fruition of their ancestor’s teachings to a member of the next (and in this case, a foreign) generation; my adopted father’s knowledge and good deeds continue to live on.","PeriodicalId":45314,"journal":{"name":"AFRICAN ARTS","volume":" ","pages":"1-9"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-05-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48908204","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}