Bridge between contemporary and ethnographic African art
In 2010, no fewer than 17 African countries will be celebrating 50 years of independence. In honour of the occasion, BOZAR and the Royal Museum for Central Africa in Tervuren are organising the festival Visionary Africa featuring concerts, exhibitions, performances and a literature festival. GEO-graphics is the central exhibition of this summer festival.
In this show, ethnographic art enters into a visual and narrative dialogue with contemporary art. This provides an engaging window on the tremendous wealth and diversity of visual creation on the continent. “The exhibition aims to reveal the many faces of the interplay between present and past”, explains artistic director David Aldaye.
Ethnographic art
Some 220 ethnographic pieces from the collection of the Royal Museum for Central Africa in Tervuren and other private and public collections in Belgium cover a period ranging from the 16th to the 20th century. The wide selection contains objects such as masks, anthropomorphic and zoomorphic sculptures, fetish figures and musical instruments. Also noteworthy are the paintings on glass, a typical popular art form from Senegal often depicting religious themes or scenes from daily life in a naïve style.
Contemporary art
These traditional artworks will be examined for the first time in relation to the contemporary cultural life in Africa. In the last 10 years, independent initiatives have blossomed in diverse locations scattered across the continent. Eight of these centres for contemporary art have been invited to Brussels: doual’art (Douala, Cameroon), La Rotonde des Arts (Abidjan, Ivory Coast), Centre for Contemporary Art Lagos (Lagos, Nigeria), Centre for Contemporary Art East Africa Nairobi (Nairobi, Kenya), Picha (Lubumbashi, Congo), Darb 1718 (Cairo, Egypt), L’appartement 22 (Rabat, Morocco) and Raw Material Company (Dakar, Senegal).
Each centre has its own separate space within the exhibition, in which the work of “their” chosen African artist asserts a distinct artistic identity. The selection includes a video-installation by the Ethiopian artist Theo Eshetu about the reinstallation of the Axum Obelisk and a probing series of photographs by George Osodi about the harsh living conditions in the oil-rich region of the Niger Delta.
As one visitor to the exhibition enthused: “What I found most fascinating was the work in the contemporary art room. The wooden sloop with sculpted men’s heads made of black, charred wood. But the video images of the African dancers were also memorable. The way that Africans are able to move to the rhythms of the music is amazing.”
Photographic study of urban centres by David Adjaye
Finally, photographs displayed throughout the exhibition capture the extremely diverse and ever expanding urban landscape. This series of photographs is the result of 10 years of study in all of the capital cities of Africa and is the oeuvre of artistic director David Adjaye, who is also an internationally renowned architect. In GEO-graphics he presents photographs of the capital cities of the 17 countries that celebrate 50 years of independence in 2010.
GEO-graphics
The exhibition is thematically organised based on six geographical zones that make up the continent: Sahel, Maghreb, desert, savannah, forests and mountains. Adjaye posits that the natural environment has an influence on the cultural production, which means that a portion of the culture extends beyond national boundaries. The savannah, for example extends through Kenya, Tanzania, etc. It is not so much a question of this country or that country but rather the “savannah group”.
Since 2007 Africa has experienced an unprecedented urban development which is leading to far-reaching change and raises fundamental questions about the artistic creation. Within each geographical theme of the exhibition, there is both ethnographic art, which is primarily based on ritual and is the production of rural tribes, and contemporary art that is currently produced in the cities. In this way, GEO-graphics links past and present as well as building a bridge between city and country.