An essay on "African Art"

[This paper was an essay for a theory course I did, the topic of which was to look at female African artists not residing in South Africa. All writings have been checked and referenced as far as possible. This paper was not made for monetary reward and I post it here in the hope of assisting further research. All information gathered for this paper can be found in the public domain.]

AESTHETIC AFRICAN WOMEN

A look at the binary logic behind African Art
by
Ben Winfield

"We create oppositions as we process our experiences. Often, when we think, we process our thoughts using a fundamental logic of the binary structure"
-J.M. Haluska, 1999.

This essay is an attempt to come to terms with the contemporary female, African artist by looking at various exhibitions, artists and critics. I will begin by looking at the (under)Representation of the African female artist within curated exhibitions. From there I will briefly attempt to look at 'modern' femininity within African art through the exhibition, Like A Virgin. In the section, Understanding Ndidi Dike, I will be looking at a number of sources to gain an insight into the inner workings of Ndidi Nnadiekwe. Finally I will take a look at the international art critic, Bisi Silva with regards to ideas around diaspora in Africa.

A Look At Female (under)Representation at Exhibitions
In researching for my essay I read a number of books from exhibitions on African art trying to ascertain the representation (if any) of female artists in Western collections. One such collection is the Jean Pigozzi collection. Of the sixteen artists represented in the 1992 exhibition titled Africa Now (Magnin, 1992), one was female. Her name was Esther Mahlangu (South Africa). This exhibition, which only went on display in Spain, The Netherlands and Mexico, resurfaced thirteen years later with African Art Now (Magnin et al, 2005), except now there were double the artists (thirty-three in total), with double the amount of female artists on the show: two; namely Seni Awa Camara (Senegal) and Esther Mahlangu.

A list was composed by Baaba Maal, Owusu Ankomah and seven others for the newspaper, The Independent, that consisted of fifty of the best artists in Africa (by 'artists' they imply 'cultural figures'). Of these fifty "cultural figures" there were only five who fall into the category of professional artist. Of those, two were female: Tracey Rose (South Africa), "a mixed-race feminist who uses identity and sexual politics as incendiary devices" and Sokari Douglas Camp (Nigeria), "one of the first female African artists to have attracted the attention of the European art market" (The Independent, 2006). I point this out only to show the kind of representation that female artists have been given within an international African context.

Another booked I read was title, New Traditions from Nigeria: Seven Artists of the Nsukka, 2007 by Simon Ottenberg. It tells the story of seven Nigerian artists that are "also the subject of an exhibition sponsored by and held at the National Museum of African Art, Washington" (Ottenberg, 1997:11). In the book he mentions that his choice of artists for the exhibition "probably reflects biases deriving from my own background and American experience" (1997:11) which explains why he felt that one female artist, Ada Udechukwu, would be sufficient a comment on female artists in Nigeria. Dele Jegede elaborates by saying, "we can respect his biases although this does not obviate the problems attendant upon this arbitrary and subjective selection process." (Jegede, 2000: 401). He continues in his criticism by saying that "Ottenberg goes on to imply that Ada UdechukwuÕs exploration of textiles as a medium is predictable because it is the acceptable art form for women" (2000). He finds this ridiculous because "contemporary Nigerian society abounds with many successful women artists who express themselves in as assortment of media, including textiles" (2000).

I use these examples in an attempt to show that one of the factors that results in the under-representation of female African artists in exhibitions abroad is the lack of awareness on the part of the curator or collector. Awareness with regards to historical knowledge of African art and female artists, as well as for equal representation of women in exhibitions with their male counterpart.

A Brief Look At Femininity in African Art
African women throughout the ages have at times been at the forefront of civilisation. In Bongi Bengu's masters thesis Power gained - power lost: Aspects of Contemporary African women visualised, 1997 she points out various "powerful women leaders" (Bengu, 1997:5) to come out of Africa: Cleopatra, Queen Nzinga of Angola and Ndongo, and Queen Aminatu of Nigeria (1997).
However, over the past couple of hundred years African women have become increasingly repressed to such an extent that "woman in Africa, who by the very nature of circumstances of history and culture has become a serial victim of cultural dictates and social embarrassment has not had the opportunity to faithfully and truthfully tell her story" (Nwachukwu, 2009). This restriction of the the individual has carried over into all aspects of life, including art.

The recent exhibition, Like a Virgin, features two female artists, Lucy Azubuike (South Africa) and Zanele Muholi (Nigeria) has been "ideologically programmed to redirect the focus of contemporary female art" (2009) to such an extent that it focuses on "issues that previously were not talked about: issues of female genital mutilation" (2009). Such an issue creates a much needed dialogue in a society that has for too long ignored the voices of women. Over the years, as Nwachukwu points out, artists have "adopted the ingrained patriarchal standard, which over time has subdued the womanÕs voice in the representation of history" (2009), and through exhibitions such as Like a Virgin, female artists can create a platform on which to continue the discourse around the (under)representation of the African female.

In the next section I will be looking at an artist that has gained ground in subverting traditional Yoruba uli art. Through this subversion she has reclaimed an art form that was once an "aesthetic language of empowered women" (Haluska, 1999) which, over time, men had taken over for "their own use" (1999).

Understanding Ndidi Dike
Ndidi 'Dike' Nnadiekwe was born in London and attended the University of Nigeria in Nsukka between 1976 and 1984 (Deepwell, 1997). In an interview with art critic Bisi Silva, Ndidi Dike says the following about herself:
"On my return to Nigeria, I had a private teacher as art was not available on the school curriculum. I obtained a Diploma in Music Education majoring in voice from the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, before being admitted into the B.A Fine & Applied Arts course. My university experience was not as challenging as expected, as the structure and teaching was still grounded in Beaux Art conservativism. I have had 10 solo exhibitions between 1986 and 2002 and 57 group exhibitions between 1986 and 2005." (Dike n.d.)

In reading Dike's work Katey Deepwell writes:
"The particulars here are again important as Dike's use of African imagery and symbols are not used to develop either a private symbolic vocabulary nor are they available to be read in a straightforward iconographic way. Their particularity is important as a set of floating signifiers which announce a critical project towards a disappearing 'traditional' culture" (Deepwell, 1997)
To further elaborate on the notion of 'tradition' I would like to reference some extracts from J.M. Haluska's conference paper, Our Tradition Is Very Modern: Subversive Art of Africa and abroad. Her understanding of the flaws inherent within the English language and its innate ability to construct, what she terms a "binary structure" (Haluska, 1999) is what "underscores a huge amount of western discourse" (1999). She states that "the western conception of 'tradition' emerged from an underlying binary philosophy" and that the "Yoruba definition was born from a non- centered world sense" where the "Yoruba tradition implies free innovation whereas western tradition encapsulates creative expression through a referential world" (1999).

To understand Dike's work, one was understand the context in which she
creates her work. Dike had started out her art career as a painter, "but later took to sculpture" (Okeke, 1999) adopting wood as her primary material whilst incorporating, amongst other things, found objects into her works (Deepwell, 1997).

Her usage of wood and carving harks back to when "traditionally Igbo doors [would] have been carved by men" and the use of uli being predominantly "a female tradition with a developed vocabulary of abstract motifs drawn from nature" (1997). As Simon Ogbechie says on his Blog, Aachronym, "DikeÕs art addresses questions of race and power within contemporary culture by investigating the transformation of feminine cultural ideals wrought by modernization and its impact on the marginalization of women and militarization of society, which in recent years has become the bane of contemporary African existence" (Ogbechie, 2007)

In Nzegwu's essay Transgressive vision: Subverting the power of masculinity, one becomes aware of the "long-standing cultural attitudes about the medium" of sculpture "and the pervasive Western, Christian, and Islamic ideals of domesticity and womenÕs identity have reinforced cultural perceptions that contributed to the proscription against women as sculptors" (Nzegwu). One could easily see how Western countries could overlook the works of art produced by such artists like Ndidi Dike (and Ada Udechukwu) as without the cultural backdrop and social history on which to hang their work it can easily become construed and misinterpreted. Through the essay of Haluska one can quite easily see how Western critics and curators can become overwhelmed with notions of a "European othering" (Haluska, 1999). Through the analysis of Ndidi Dike's work by Haluska I have come to realise that in order to transcend notions of 'othering' one has to be on the side of artist, and that to continue in the vein of the European aesthetic is to further the aims of the Western 'gaze'. Haluska puts this so eloquently:

"The rebellious always becomes the traditional. The center continually expands at its periphery. The periphery is defined and bound to its center. There is no way to break this linear progression of meaning. There is no art in the west that is not defined or categorized by the center or the tradition of work that came before. However the Yoruba model is not centered. There is no center or periphery because the conception of tradition is not the same. No central position has been defined. No categories have been created as cannon. Since the artist constantly departs the periphery and the center are not defined as such. No binary logic existed in Yorubaland in order to create the polar conceptions of center and periphery." (Haluska, 1999)One can lament the under-representation of the female African artists ad nauseam, but one needs to first identify with the problem that is endemic to these Nigerian artists. I have already mentioned that uli was traditionally a medium reserved for the decoration of the female body, and through colonialism women became repressed which resulted in the men appropriating this way of production. With the work of Ndidi Dike, Nigerian women are only now beginning to reclaim this 'stolen' art form, and through this reclamation it will help empower other female artists. And as a result of this empowerment the representation of the once quieted African female will begin to emerge ever dominantly on the international circuit.

The Diasporic Bisi Silva
"Nigerian curator Bisi Silva has accomplished an extraordinary feat" (Ogbechie, 2007).
Olabisi 'Bisi' Silva is a independent curator and critic based in Lagos, Nigeria, with an MA in Curating and Commissioning of Contemporary Art from the Royal College of Art London. She writes for ThisDay newspaper in Lagos (Nifca, 2006). The reason I have chosen Bisi Silva is grounded in the fact that she straddles the African continent with one leg in Nigeria and the other in Europe. Her very nature exists in the realm of diaspora through which she allows herself to come to grips with the Nigeria of her roots and the international context in which she resides.
It has become a trend that in order for an African artist to become internationally renowned they need to have left their country. It is almost a prerequisite that somewhere along the line you had to be in some stage of diaspora in order to be accepted as international African artist. Of all the artists researched for this essay on contemporary female African art, maybe one percent (although I will say that I am quite certain I never looked up every single female artist) has never left Africa to live abroad. With each one at some stage or another in their life having found their way to the distant shores of another country in search of something outside of their own. Do not regard my analyses as condescending but merely a statistical insight into the life of an Africa artist. I would go so far as to say that one cannot be a true international artist if you never experienced another country and given at least a small fraction of yourself to it. Jean Haluska makes us aware of the Yoruba understanding of diaspora. They view artists as "itinerant" and art a departure which she says implies that "Yoruba artists must be in a state of psychological departure during creation" (Haluska, 1999) and continues in saying that "Yoruba artists are wanderers. They can not be permanent anywhere because their concepts are never permanent. Literally, artists are nomads" (1999). By this summation she writes that "It was natural for the Yoruba artists to travel because they were conceptually traveling and it was natural for the general populous to expect this because it makes sense in a world where the mind and body are not viewed as discrete" (1999).

It is interesting to note that in this hyper technological age one could be so bold as to say that it does not matter whether an artists lives in diaspora or not. The world has become so small in a sense that even a critic such as Bisi Silva can be in London and still write a review on the Johannesburg Biennale. I am reminded of Gerard Sekoto, a South African artists, who spent the majority of his life living in France. Although he had spent such a large period of his life away from Africa he continued to make paintings that had so-called 'African' subject matter despite his apparent distance from the continent. However, I feel a problem arises when artists make political or socially motivated artwork around their country of origin but have not in fact been home after extensive periods of absence. What one can see happening in the exhibitions, and even Simon Ottenberg's, New Traditions from Nigeria: Seven Artists of the Nsukka, is that artists who have not had extensive contact with their African country of origin get placed into an exhibition where their work becomes misinterpreted.

I feel that the international contemporary art market is looking to Africa for the next biggest thrill and that hopefully in the next couple of years we will see it becoming a burgeoning realm of possibility. The questions have been asked, the debates have been started and all that is needed is the right moment. With the 2010 soccer world cup lingering at South Africa's door, Africa will soon become the centre of world where international will begin right here.

References:
Deepwell, K. 1997. Reading in Detail : An Analysis of the work of Ndidi Dike Nnadiekwe. [Online]. Available: http://web.ukonline.co.uk/n.paradoxa/ndidi.htm [2009, April 08].

Dike, N. [Online]. Available: http://www.ndididike.com/about_ndidi.html [2009, March 17].

Haluska, J.M. 1999. Our Tradition Is Very Modern: Subversive Art of Africa and Abroad. Presented at the International Society of African Philosophers and Studies conference, Loyola. March 1999, Chicago, Illonois. [Online].Available: http://www.jeanhaluska.net/departure3.html [2009, April 8].

Jegede, D. 2000. American Anthropologist, New Series. 102(2):400-402. Blackwell Publishing. [Online].

Jordan, N. 1990. "Black Feminist Statement: Conceptualising Feminism". Westpoint, Connecticut: Lawrence Hill and Company. Quoted in Bengu, B. 997. Women and Power in Africa. In Power gained - power lost: Aspects of Contemporary African women visualised. Thesis. Michaelis School of Fine Art, University of Cape Town.

Magnin, A. 1992. Africa Now. Julio Soto Impresor.
Nwachukwu, M. 2009. Sexuality aesthetics in the art of two African sisters. [Online]. Available: http://www.vanguardngr.com/content/view/28816/83/ [2009, March 22].

Nzegwu, N. Transgressive vision: Subverting the power of masculinity. [Online]. Available: http://www.ndididike.com/about_ndidi.html [2009, March 17]

Ogbechie, S.O. 2007. Ndidi Dike: New Beginnings. [Online}. Available: http://aachronym.blogspot.com/2007/10/ndidi-dike-new-beginnings.html [2009, April 9].

Ogbechie, S.O. 2007. Grand Opening: Center for Contemporary Arts Lagos [Online]. Available: http://aachronym.blogspot.com/2007/12/grand-opening-center-for-contemporary.html [2009, April 8].

Okeke, C. 1999. The Quest for a Nigerian Art: Or a Story of Art from Zaria to Nsukka. In Reading the Contemporary: African Art from Theory to the Marketplace, O. Oguibe and O. Enwezor, Eds. London: Institute of International Visual Arts. 144-165.

Ottenberg, S. 1997. New Traditions from Nigeria: Seven Artists of the Nsukka Group. National Institution Press: Washington.

2005. "African Art Now: Masterpieces from the Jean Pigozzi Collection". Eds. A. Magnin, A. de Lima Green, A. J. Waralow and T. McEvilley. Merrell: London.

2006. Art of Africa: The 50 best African artists. [Online]. Available: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/art-of-africa-the-50-best-african-artists-426441.html [2009, March 10].

2006. [Online]. Availabe: http://www.nifca.org/2006/residencies/AiRatNIFCA/August2006.html [2009. April 08].