Condition Report 3: - Am MIT spezialisierte KI-Forschung

Condition Report 3:
Art History in Africa
Debating Localization, Legitimization
and New Solidarities

Ruth Simbao, Koyo Kouoh, Ugochukwu-Smooth Nzewi, Suzana Sousa, and Emi Koide
all photos by Ruth Simbao except where otherwise noted

Ruth Simbao: Following on from the African Arts

dialogue, “Zimbabwe Mobilizes: ICAC’s Shift
from Coup de Grăce to Cultural Coup” (Simbao
et al. 2017) this dialogue considers another im-
portant event in the visual arts that recently
took place on the African continent. Like the
International Conference on African Cultures (ICAC) that was
held in Harare in 2017, this event in Dakar contributes in import-
ant ways towards a shift of the center of gravity of the global acad-
emy, particularly the study of art history in and of Africa.1

The Raw Material Company’s Condition Report 3 sympo-
sium took place at the Musée des Civilisations Noires (Museum
of Black Civilizations) in Dakar, Senegal September 20–22, 2018
(Feige. 1). Organized by Koyo Kouoh (Feige. 2) and Ugochukwu-
Smooth Nzewi, the workshop was themed Art History in Africa,
and discussions focused on ways of localizing art histories; the role
of Senegal—in particular Dak’art—in shaping the arc of art his-
tory in Africa; the history of “African art history”; platforms that
expand conventional praxes of art history; and the importance
of situating Africa as the legitimizing site of knowledge creation.
Invited presenters were Salah Hassan (Feige. 3) and Paul Goodwin
(keynote speakers), Sylvain Sankalé, Massamba Mbaye, Peju

Ruth Simbao is the National Research Foundation Chair in Geopolitics
and the Arts of Africa and a Professor in Art History and Visual Culture
at Rhodes University in Makhanda, Südafrika. r.simbao@ru.ac.za.

Koyo Kouoh is the Founding Artistic Director of the Raw Material
Company in Dakar, Senegal.
Ugochukwu-Smooth Nzewi is a curator at the Cleveland Museum
of Art in the United States.
Suzana Sousa is an independent curator and writer in Luanda, Ein-
gola, and a PhD candidate at the Instituto Universitário de Lisboa in
Portugal.

Emi Koide is a Professor of Visual Arts at the Center of Arts and Hu-
manities (CAHL) of the Federal University of Recôncavo da Bahia
(UFRB) in Brazil.

10 | african arts SUMMER 2019 VOL. 52, NEIN. 2

Laiwola, Elizabeth Giorgis, Suzana Sousa, Ruth Simbao, Babacar
M. Diop, Emi Koide (Feige. 4), Dominique Malaquais, Zulu Mbaye,
Yaëlle Biro, Susan Gagliardi, Dulcie Abrahams Altass, Eva Barois
de Caelvel (Feige. 5), Iheanyi Onwuegbucha, Sean O’Toole, Ntone
Edjabe, Bonaventure Ndikung, El Hadji Malick Ndiyaye, and Nana
Oforiatta Ayim (Feige. 6).

Far from being a comprehensive analysis of every conversation
at Condition Report 3, this dialogue includes the reflections of a
few participants on some of the issues that emerged. Wichtig,
not all of these authors or all of the participants at the symposium
share the same views. By the time participants reached the final
plenary session and engaged in lively discussion with the audi-
enz, it was very clear that these conversations had only just begun.
Evidently there is great need for scholars, Kuratoren, and artists
working in Africa—whether at universities, museums, galleries,
or independently—to continue to debate how we create and shape
our knowledge and how we do so in collaboration with other
people locally as well as globally.

The Raw Material Company positioned the city of Dakar as
a “protagonist” of this event, with the symposium “enquiring
deeply into the histories of its locality and bringing these to the
fore through site visits and a commitment to holding discussions
in spaces that are the stages of new art histories.”2 As one might
expect, participants went to the Musée de l’Institut Fondamental
d’Afrique Noire (IFAN Museum) where they met with curator El
Hadj Malick Ndiaye. Of particular interest, obwohl, was the fact that
the symposium was hosted in the Musée des Civilisations Noires a
couple of months before the new building officially opened.

According to Raw’s Dulcie Abrahams Altass, the choice of this,
at the time, yet-to-be-launched venue was a deliberate interven-
tion.3 The 150,000 square feet, four-story, circular museum, welche
was built with Chinese money (costing over US$30 million) Und
designed by the state-owned Beijing Institute of Architectural
Design (Braun 2018), is situated opposite Dakar’s Grand National
Theater, which opened in 2011 and was also funded by the
Chinese. The Art History in Africa delegates convened in a cav-
ernous room with signage that was only in Mandarin and English.

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1 The Condition Report 3 symposium on
Art History in Africa took place at the Musée
des Civilizations Noires (Museum of Black
Civilizations) in Dakar, Senegal, a couple of months
before its much-anticipated official opening. Der
building of this museum, which was a dream of
Senegal’s first president, was finally realized with
the assistance of Chinese funds, highlighting
contemporary geopolitical complexities and at
times tensions.
Foto: Ruth Simbao

Speakers were staged in front of a large wall clad in copper (Feige. 7),
welche, as Dominique Malaquais stressed, raises important ques-
tions about labor, resource extraction, and the violence that often
inhabits our spaces.

Beyond the typical question about whether China’s presence in
Africa is neocolonial (a question that is too often asked and an-
swered in over-simplified ways; see Yan and Sautman 2013), what
are the implications of meeting in a museum that was a dream
of Léopold Senghor in 1964 and was finally realized with the as-
sistance of the Chinese government fifty-two years later? Citing
“David Hume’s canonically illiterate discourse on Africa,” Donald
Trump’s “shit hole” comment, and the “bankruptcy of European
contemporary discourses and practices on Africa,” the museum’s
press statement explained that the choice to turn away from the
west and accept Chinese aid was deliberate (Braun 2018). Bei der
opening of the museum in December 2018, the Chinese ambas-
sador to Senegal, Xia Huang, stressed solidarity when he recalled
the “common fate” and “friendship” that “unites” Africa and China
(Braun 2018). Wie, obwohl, can we reconsider solidarities of the
twenty-first century that function beyond the “Big Man speak”
of government and capitalist investment, and how might mean-
ingful solidarities be manifested in spaces such as the Musée des
Civilisations Noires?

As the presence of this new museum reveals, the current geopo-
litical landscape is very different to what it was when the history
of “African art history”—at least the dominant history in the acad-
emy that largely positions the west as the progenitor of a particular
type of academic study—began. This new geopolitical landscape
demands an intricate analysis of the deep complexities of global
interaction and global south5 possibilities if the dominant history
of “African art history” is to be meaningfully unsettled.

On the first day of the symposium an audience member from
South America asked why western-styled art history always turns
Zu 1989 (and western exhibitions at that time) as the key geopolit-
ical turning point, when this continues to uphold a western slant
and timeline.6 The fact that this question was not sufficiently ad-
dressed is, meiner Meinung nach, a missed opportunity to earnestly recon-
sider the import of contemporary geopolitical shifts and to take

seriously the art history research of various Asian, Latin American,
and other global south contexts. In my view, the engagement with
theoretical and experiential resonances across global souths needs
to be part of the ongoing process of delinking from worn-out
western art histories.

During his keynote address, “In and Out of Africa: African
Art History as a Paradox!” Salah Hassan recalled the solidarity of
the African independence eras and stressed the need to reclaim
or reignite an axis of solidarities. In the discussion that followed,
Elizabeth Giorgis (professor in art history, Kritik, and theory
at Addis Ababa University) argued that, working on the African
continent, she doesn’t experience the solidarity from outside that
Hassan talked about. In Beantwortung, Hassan stressed that a revival of
solidarity should be a goal—something that we need to strive for
in our present context.7

What might solidarities mean in the current geopolitical land-
scape that has shifted significantly since the early anticolonial and
independence era? Certainly, there is much value in Hassan’s sug-
gestion that we need to revisit and reread the contributions of black
intellectuals such as Léopold Senghor, Aimé Césaire, and Stuart
Hall. How might we do so within a broader contemporary climate
of returning to and reassessing solidarities, as can be seen in the
revived interest in the 1955 Bandung Conference in Indonesia,
where leaders from twenty-nine Asian and African states met
to discuss anticolonial struggles and the rebuilding of their own
spaces “in their own image” (Prashad 2007: 48; emphasis added).
In his book Making a World After Empire: The Bandung Moment
and its Political Afterlives, Christopher Lee (2010: 3–4) asks how
we create a new “geopolitical communitas” and how can we recu-
perate solidarities of the past in ways that are relevant today? As we
consider art history in Africa, what facile solidarities do we need to
shake? And what new solidarities should we embrace that enable
us to strengthen art histories of the African continent?

In my presentation, “Geopolitics and the Arts of Africa: A Walk
with Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o,” I argued that it is critical—as Ngũgĩ sug-
gested when fighting for the decolonization of the study of English
literature at the University of Nairobi in the 1960s—to begin on

VOL. 52, NEIN. 2 SUMMER 2019 afrikanische Kunst | 11

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the ground where one places one’s feet (Ngũgĩ 2012:39). For an
analysis of art history in Africa this means that the starting point
should be particular art histories in various African contexts, Dann
cross-continental comparisons, and then a consideration of various
global south situations before assessment is made in relation to the
Euro-American history of “African art history.” In line with Ngũgĩ’s
notion of decolonizing curricula, this would radically change what
is viewed as the legitimizing measuring rod (Ngũgĩ 2012: 42–43).

The Condition Report 3 program asserts that, “methodologies
and epistemological frameworks for scholarship have yet to shed
their historical west-centric frames of reference,”8 and the sym-
posium aimed to find ways of delinking from old frameworks
and grappling with new, locally driven epistemologies. Als solche, ICH
was surprised to hear the assertion made by a participant in the
final discussion that no one on the African continent is teaching
“African art history.” What could such an assertion mean and what
does it reveal about processes of legitimization?

I imagine that underlying such a proclamation is the assumption
that no one in Africa is teaching “African art history” as it exists
and is taught in Euro-American contexts. If this were the impli-
cation (indeed the charge), then the simple answer to the ques-
tion, “Does ‘African art history’ exist on the African continent?”
would be probably be “No.” This, Jedoch, would be a reductionist
and skewed approach.

Having completed a PhD in the United States and having lec-
tured in art history on the African continent for thirteen years, ICH
have experienced the stark differences in these scholarly spaces.
US art history programs are often completely separate from visual
studies or fine art programs. Professors in art history mostly hold
PhDs in their area of specialization, and in one art history depart-
ment there can be as many as twenty-four art history professors.
Areas of specialization such as “Islamic art,” “African art” or “Latin
American art” tend to follow or grow out of an area studies model
initially linked to Cold War-era thinking that positioned western
knowledge as universal and other knowledges as “foreign case
studies” for the North American academy. Im Gegensatz, art history
on the African continent is largely taught within fine art or visual
studies departments, which means that many students (and often
lecturers) major in studio practice. Relatively few people teach
art history and art theory (and even fewer teach only art history);
many lecturers do not (yet) hold PhDs, and most are forced to
teach a broad range of courses beyond their chosen specialization.
While the differences are significant (and there is more variation
across the continent than this summary captures), it is too easy to
allow the issue of resources or lack thereof to drive conversations
about value and legitimization. Certainly there are strengths in the
privileged art history programs of the north, just as there are weak-
nesses in the teaching of art history in Africa,9 but it is important
to recognize the blind spots of privilege in terms of a geopolitics
of knowledge (Simbao 2015), particularly with the problematic
legacy of area studies and anthropology that shapes the “African
art history” of the north. It is also important to recognize the ways
in which African universities and independent platforms are at the
forefront of transforming the discipline.

I am very heartened by the exciting and cutting-edge research
that a number of current PhD students are conducting on the
African continent. The next generation of art historians in Africa
(who are training at this time of significant geopolitical and
12 | african arts SUMMER 2019 VOL. 52, NEIN. 2

2 Koyo Kouoh, coorganizer of the Condition
Bericht 3 symposium Art History in Africa.

epistemological shift) Wille, I believe, change our discipline as we
know it. A few examples of students’ PhD projects I am currently
working with are: Andrew Mulenga’s PhD on speculative futures
with a focus on contemporary Zambian art, Gladys Kalichini’s
PhD on representations of women freedom fighters in Zambia and
Zimbabwe, Barnabas Muvhuti’s revisionist art history research that
focuses on Job Kekana and Zimbabwean modernism, Hu Binjun’s
PhD on Chinese art collectors in contemporary South Africa, Und
Claire Nalukenge’s PhD on a feminist reading of Nakayima’s power
objects at Mubende Hill Cultural Site in Uganda (a project that
relates in significant ways to Rose Kirumira’s article in this issue).
At Makerere University Angelo Kakande and Amanda Tumusiime
are supervising the following PhD projects: Eddie Butindo’s PhD
on contemporary public art in Uganda, Dorah Kasozi’s PhD on
women and paper beading in Uganda (see her article in this
issue), and Esther Ndagire’s PhD on textiles and the stigma of
sickle cell in Uganda.

These are just a few examples of current PhD research projects
that are growing directly out of students’ own interests and their
own experiences on the African continent and that are responding
to twenty-first century epistemological transformations.10 Notably,
many of these PhD candidates are women, which I submit will
impact the future of African universities in valuable ways.

Reassessing art history in Africa—as the Condition Report 3
symposium has importantly pushed us to do—I am encouraged
by the significant role that these and other PhD candidates are
playing in shaping what art history in Africa is and will be in the
future. Considering this work in African universities alongside the
cutting-edge work of independent platforms such as Chimurenga,
the Pan African Space Station, and the ANO Institute of Arts
and Knowledge, knowledge creation on the continent can play a
leading role in situating Africa as the legitimizing site of new art
histories of Africa.

Below, the organizers of the symposium, Koyo Kouoh and
Ugochukwu-Smooth Nzewi discuss their conceptual framing of

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Condition Report 3. Suzana Sousa, who presented “Art and Culture
in a Complex Geopolitical Context in Angola,” considers what
it means to localize art histories, and Emi Koide, who presented
“The Anxieties and Stalemates Surrounding the History(ies) von
Modern and Contemporary Global and African Art—The Case of
the DRC,” provides insight into her experiences of art histories of
Africa in the context of Brazil and considers what this might mean
for the establishment of new solidarities.

FRAMING THE SYMPOSIUM
Koyo Kouoh: On the African continent there are a number of
art history departments, but they are still few and far between,
small in terms of material and human resources—particularly rel-
ative to the demographic power of the continent’s fifty-four coun-
tries—and often subsumed as modules of study under larger fine
art courses. Darüber hinaus, it is important to remember the acute eco-
nomic pressure in Africa that is pushing large numbers of young
students to move into academic fields that seem more lucrative
in the short term. This disciplinary exodus gravely threatens the
future of art history and is impacting negatively on the production
and critical analysis of artistic production by African artists, af-
fecting the wellbeing of art and society in general. While more and
more examples of hybrid forms emerging from the mix of art his-
tory, curatorial studies, and arts administration are integrated into
curricula that are just as hybrid, hosted in the wide spectrum of
“humanities,” it is fundamental to consider whether this approach
is sufficient. Is it enough to make room for examples of African
art in the grand chronologies of academia, or should a complete
reconstruction of existing art histories be encouraged instead?

In der Tat, the majority of African art history being produced
on the continent is taking place outside of the academic sphere,
emerging within a creative ecosystem that is in turn informing the
discipline and rooting it in local practice. With this in mind, In
order to derive an understanding of what a contemporary African
art history, or histories, may be, it is also important to take into
account the ecosystem within which these histories grow, welche

6 Salah Hassan was one of the keynote speakers
at the Art History in Africa symposium, Und
presented the paper “In and Out of Africa: African
Art History as a Paradox!”

spans art collectives, commercial galleries, fairs, biennales, inde-
pendent exhibition making, and cultural journalism. Today more
and more initiatives are cognizant of their roles as both creators
of artistic movements and active witnesses to practice, archiving
in an often unique and innovative manner. These organizations
and individuals build a bridge between artistic production and its
inscription in art history, serving as models for beginning to rene-
gotiate and renew the entire discipline. The urgency of approach-
ing contemporary African art history from a spectrum of different
practices that go beyond the academy emerged as a lynchpin of
this edition of the Condition Report on Art History in Africa.

Ugochukwu-Smooth Nzewi: When I began the conversation to
coconvene the Condition Report 3 on Art History in Africa with
Koyo Kouoh of the Raw Material Company about two years ago,
it was clear to both of us how crucial it was to address the condi-
tions of African art scholarship and the production of art history
in Africa. For Koyo, it logically built on Condition Reports 1 Und 2,
which focused respectively on independent art initiatives and in-
stitutions in Africa and the state of art education on the continent.
It is important—and rightly so—that such conversations should
be happening in Africa and be driven by people who live there.
I felt that Condition Report 3 could provide the opportunity for
a critical assessment of some of the activities on the continent in
the last few years and perhaps begin the process of articulating a
framework within which to engage with emergent modalities of
knowledge production on the continent that have yet to seep into
the discipline of African art history. The symposium was also an
opportunity to examine African art history scholarship, which has
few African voices and fewer participatory voices of those living
and working in Africa.

Salah Hassan’s keynote captured the debates and positions that
have long defined the arc of African art history. Perhaps the point
he makes about a responsive art history that extends outside of
academia and could hold some real-world consequence is more
important than questions surrounding methodologies and ped-
agogy: it is the idea of revisiting, or rather returning to, the sort
of intellectual solidarity that marked the early postcolonial peri-
ods in Africa. I found this insight quite compelling, although one
must say that factors such as decolonization, cultural nationalism,
or radical movements of that era, which once held intellectual ur-
gency, no longer hold the collective imagination. His perspective
on destabilizing the idea of the insider and outsider, clearly an old
debate, still reflects the high stakes around the ownership of the
discipline and its historical roots.

One critical subtext that shaped the conversations at the sym-
posium was that of the object of African art history, historical and
contemporary. In private conversations with colleagues elsewhere
and at different times, I have pointed out that the narratives of the
historical canon in African art do not fully consider or address the
object in its history. Instead it is the object in the history of the
market or collectors who have possessed it. In dieser Hinsicht, the ob-
ject’s biography has less to do with the source-provenance than it
has to do with its history of changing hands, from one Western
collector to another, or from one Western institution to another.
That is to say that its source origin is not always important other
than to emphasize its historical function, which is the narrative it
is expected to tell in reiterative contexts of scholarship. Auch, es ist
not the narrative of African art’s “object-ness” that is the emphasis;
VOL. 52, NEIN. 2 SUMMER 2019 afrikanische Kunst | 13

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3–5 Participants (top–bottom) Emi Koide
(Federal University of Recôncavo da Bahia,
Brasilien), Eva Barois de Caelvel (Raw Material
Unternehmen, Senegal), and Nana Offoriata Ayim
(ANO Institute of Arts and Knowledge,
Ghana).

instead it is a narrative of its function that lends to its reception.
African art as a global commodity and as an academic discipline
has yet to truly evolve from its colonial origin. Mit anderen Worten, Und
arguably, while there has been a considered push beyond the eth-
nography of the object to a wider consideration of its biography,
such attempts place the historical narratives of African art at the
mercy of Western collectors and institutions.

This pressing issue was reflected in a number of presentations
at Condition Report 3, which explored the Western market ori-
gins of African art history and how that origin continues to dictate
pedagogical and scholarly lenses. It is difficult to think of an art
history that does not really attempt at heavy lifting, tracing and
reconstructing the history of the object in ways that document the
changes in the artistic production of ethnic groups, zum Beispiel,
and the nation-state at large. Perhaps the larger task for many of us
is to be able to look back, retrace our steps, and begin the real task
of evolving, vielleicht, a new model of art history that truly centers
the continent; one that recognizes and fully takes into account the
intellectual work being produced from within the continent.

With regard to the contemporary object, during the sympo-
sium, I was asked on separate occasions, “what is contemporary
African art?” by two Senegalese artists in the audience. I thought
the question conjectural but important in that it returned attention
to what still is a major debate in many countries in Africa, where a
modernist mode of artistic production and essentializing notions
of cultural nationalism inscribe the norm. Zum Beispiel, Senegalese
modernism was a state project inaugurated by the country’s
post-independence president, the venerable poet, art patron, Und
cofounder of Négritude, Léopold Sédar Senghor. Senghor enjoined
Senegalese artists to seek an essential African spirit in advancing
their modernist vocabularies. This legacy of Senghorian modern-
ism, which emerged in the wake of decolonization agendas in the
early postcolonial periods and which the two artists hold on to,
flies in the face of the marauding discourse of global contemporary
art that insists on a certain coevalness of artistic practices. Yet the
crisis of artistic identity and a certain resistance to the plethora of
artistic forms and media beyond painting and sculpture are not
peculiar to Senegal. It cuts across the continent, from north to cen-
tral, east, west, and southern Africa. This crisis of artistic identity
may also be understood as a crisis of art globalization and perhaps
suggests two streams of artistic consciousness—one connected to
an international flow of contemporary art and the other to local
notions of contemporary art tied to post-independence modern-
ist roots. What was thus clear at the symposium were disputations
and disjunctions in the narratives of the modern and the contem-
porary in African art when approached using either a localized or
a more globalized lens.

Although the three days of the symposium were filled with

14 | african arts SUMMER 2019 VOL. 52, NEIN. 2

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robust, refreshing, and energizing conversations that underscored
its timeliness, it became imperative to reflect on what kind of art
history we should be engaged with and for whom:

•

Is an African art history that stands distinctively con-
nected to, or folds into the discursive landscape of
global art history? Und

• What does it mean to have a collectivizing vision of
African art history—does it reflect or take into consider-
ation the many micro art histories (national and otherwise)
that abound on the continent without flattening them, oder
does it serve the purpose in academic departments out-
side of the continent?

These are questions that I hope can be addressed in succeeding
fora, should they ever take place.

LOCALIZING ART HISTORIES
Susana Sousa: National contexts have had a particular impact
on African art histories, whether through particular political sys-
tems or whether because they have promoted the characteristics of
specific art worlds. In Angola this was the case for art apprentice-
ship in the years following independence, which were marked by
the lack of an art education infrastructure. That was replaced at the
time by a master–pupil system and training in neighboring coun-
versucht, such as Congo, or even by the construction of a narrative that
promoted nationalistic identity perspectives of both traditional
and contemporary art practices.

Condition Report 3 on Art History in Africa opened up a ques-
tion on the position from which we study art history. The panel
“Localizing Art Histories,” which focused on Angola, Benin,
and Ethiopia, mapped art histories through national history and
memory as the foundation for the construction of art history in
Africa, exploring three different territories as well as political pe-
riods. But other papers, such as the ones presented in the session
on “The History of African Art History” also highlighted the need
to think about location and the need to clarify one’s standpoint. In
her paper, “Shattering Single Stories in the Teaching of Historical
Arts of Africa,” Susan Gagliardi evoked Chimamanda Ngozi
Adichie’s concept of the single story, referring particularly to the
teaching of the historical arts of Africa. Only the specifics of a lo-
cation, which is never—surprising as it may sound—contained in
selbst, can bring the bright colors of detail and difference. The focus
on geography forces our eyes to notice relations in place and its
impact and bring together politics and history, economics and ev-
eryday life, and allow for a fully rounded history of art and objects.
Location also determines what is relevant in a certain narra-
tiv. The paper by Nana Oforiatta Ayim, “Future Histories,” ques-
tions the place of objects in museums and the role of museums
in African societies. From her project and research on a mobile
museum, there seems to arise an understanding that live objects—
objects that are still socially meaningful in contemporary societ-
ies—need new models of museums. It seems to me that they need
new forms of engaging with audiences that the Western model of
museum does not cater for.

On a different note, both Dominique Malaquais and Etone
Edjabe provided us with important historical information about
FESTAC 77, the Second World Black and African Festival of
Arts and Culture, the national delegations that took part in the

7 Raw Material Company Condition Report 3
speakers and some audience members in front
of the large, copper-clad wall in the Musée des
Civilisations Noires, September 22, 2018.
Foto: Courtesy of the Raw Material Company

Ereignis, and its music and participants. In these examples we
could find layers of entanglement and dependency, and the de-
terminacy of place and time on the reading of the history being
told. These webs are still in place today, and we should highlight
ihnen, as their importance—although of a different order from the
art object—is tangible.

Despite being stated in the title of the symposium “Condition
Bericht 3: Art History in Africa,” it was easier to talk about the
discipline in general terms—and actually that point of view was
part of the discussions, as if place were a minor aspect and not
connected to the objects produced and the theoretical foundations
adopted to read these same objects. Für mich, location as a stand-
point is also a way to reflect and question views that tend to con-
taminate critical thought on the production of knowledge. Can
we place more value depending on where thought is produced?
Are we aware of this process? By adopting particular theoretical
frameworks, are we dismissing the value of local, sometimes tradi-
tional, Wissen? We are still far from answering these questions,
but the fruitful discussion at the symposium allowed us to at least
question the place of museums; the role of cultural policy; the role,
use, and relevance of objects; and how all these elements are con-
nected through space and time.

CONTEMPORARY SOLIDARITIES
Emi Koide: The symposium brought together researchers,
scholars, artists, and curators from Africa, the African diaspora,
Europa, and the USA, gathering many interesting and relevant
perspectives and topics. As I have been interested in Modernism
and its relationship with the construction of national identities
in Global Souths, I think the panel “Localisation des histoires des
arts,” with contributions on Ethiopian and Angolan modern art
connected to transformations in history and politics, was really
enriching. This panel brought perspectives on the ambivalence of
the production of modern and contemporary art and the histori-
cal discourse about it. I consider this interesting in a comparative

VOL. 52, NEIN. 2 SUMMER 2019 afrikanische Kunst | 15

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transcultural approach with other modernisms, as in Brazil—
where the discourse on Brazilian modern art has been critically
reviewed by considering topics of race, unequal power, multiple
regions and modernities in a continental country. It seems that
comparative approaches on “peripheral” modernisms can disclose
similarities and differences, especially considering their complexi-
Krawatten, ambivalences and negotiations with local traditions, historisch
Bedingungen, Western and other influences.

Although there was a panel on Senegalese art history in which
the debate was about the canonical version of history—the École
de Dakar and the cultural politics of Senghor’s Négritude, sowie
as the opposing experiences of Laboratoire Agit’Art—the partici-
pation of many artists from the Village des Arts as well as curators
and scholar Abdou Sylla was announced, but unfortunately the
artists and Sylla (who wrote extensively about modern and con-
temporary Senegalese art and Senghor’s cultural politics) were not
able to be present. Trotzdem, it was an interesting panel.

During the debate, someone in the audience asked about crafts
and how these would be considered as part of Senegalese art his-
tory; panelists answered promptly that they were presenting a
“Western perspective” on Senegalese art history. As it was the last
session, the debate did not continue, but it seems that this assertion
gives us a lot to think about.

What would this “Western perspective” on art history about
“Others’” art productions be? Would that be the framework, Die
methodology of a discipline, the topics or objects that are chosen?
How are Senegalese and other Global South researchers located
in the chain of production and circulation of knowledge and the
discourse on art history? In spite of some other moments during
the seminar, in which the dynamics of production of knowledge
and its circulation were briefly questioned—such as the difference
between artists and scholars based in Western or Northern institu-
tions and those based on the African continent or in other Global
South institutions—it seems that this topic deserved to be further
discussed and properly addressed.

Most of the “paradigmatic” exhibitions on African art, which in-
tegrate the art history discourse, take place in the West; the main
journals on the topic are from Northern universities and institu-
tionen; and with English as universal academic language, a signif-
icant part of the main bibliography is produced by diasporic in-
tellectuals or Western scholars. While these are certainly very im-
portant, offensichtlich, we continue to know far less about African art
exhibitions that were organized on the continent, as well as there
being little access to bibliographies or research produced by schol-
ars and intellectuals who are based in Africa. It is evident that there
is uneven access to research tools in universities of Global Souths,
of which African and Brazilian institutions probably have much
more in common concerning lack of access to funding, Archiv,
libraries, and collections that are mainly based in the North.

It was very important that some presentations tackled the issue
of other methodologies, other narratives that are not the classical
Western academic approach—the Benin Project by Peju Lawiyola
and Nana Offoriata Ayim’s ANO project. Both explore other pos-
sibilities of collective construction and a critical approach to local
histories, arts, and heritage, based on other local knowledges, Profi-
ducing art and discourse that are significant to the protagonists of
cultural manifestations as well as to the world. This is very relevant,
and in some ways similar to experiences of pluriversity in Latin
16 | african arts SUMMER 2019 VOL. 52, NEIN. 2

Amerika, which aims to decolonize the production of knowledge.
Dort, initiatives have been taken to construct horizontal, dialogi-
cal approaches between different traditions of practice and thought,
considering also different modes of transmission, recognizing the
“Other”—who is usually placed as an object or informant—as a
subject of the construction of pluriversal knowledge. Perhaps one
possibility to open and decolonize art history production and cir-
culation would be through pluriversal collaborative construction.
For a long time, Brazil was widely considered as a place marked
by its cultural mixing, for its “racial democracy,” which had long
been celebrated, as well as for the importance of its African her-
itage. Trotzdem, this positive view of the country as a melting
pot of cultures and races often hides racism and segregation in
Brazilian society. As the country to which 40% of African slaves
were brought, Brazil was the last to abolish slavery, In 1888. In
2017, according to the Brazilian Institute of Geography and
Statistics (IBGE), around 55% of the population defined them-
selves as being “black” or “brown,” making Brazil the country
with the largest number of black African descendants outside of
the African continent. But Brazil still has to face its denial about
racism, as Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie remarked
in a Brazilian newspaper interview.11

African art in Brazil has for many years remained an area often
considered the domain of anthropology, and the histories and
cultures of the African continent were completely absent from
curriculums in schools or universities. In a profoundly unequal
country, the percentage of black students and professors at uni-
versities remains low. Black movements have been struggling for
access to education as well as for the inclusion and recognition of
Afro-Brazilian history and culture. Seit 2001, some universities
have been implementing affirmative action for Afro-Brazilians.
In 2003, Law 10639—which makes the teaching of Afro-Brazilian
and African history and culture mandatory in the school curricu-
lum—was promulgated by President Luiz Ignácio (Lula) da Silva.
Since then, universities and schools have been trying to include
and connect elements of African history and culture, but didactic
materials and textbooks still lack consistency. Although there has
been much important and relevant research and academic produc-
tion in Afro-Brazilian and African studies, African art especially
remains a minor area. Art history itself is also a fragile area of
Studie. Consistent postgraduate programs were established around
1980, but apart from one or two programs in which African art and
non-Western art history have been included, most of the programs
and curriculums focus largely on Western official art history.

Between 2000 Und 2010, many new universities outside state
capitals were created, with the idea of creating more accessible
and popular universities. I have been teaching in one of these, Die
Federal University of Recôncavo da Bahia (UFRB) in the state of
Bahia, in Cachoeira, a small town rich in Afro-Brazilian culture.
At UFRB, a very diverse university, most of the students are Afro-
Brazilians, in contrast to the older public universities where most
of the students are white and middle class. Students frequently
draw attention to the importance of the need for curriculum
Rezension, especially concerning topics such as the culture of African,
Afro-Brazilian, Afro-diasporic, and autochthonous Brazilian
Menschen. They are also critical of courses that mainly focus on Euro-
American art history.

African art and history are subjects of great interest for our

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students—around 80% of whom are Afro-Brazilians. A recent
project developed by Bruno Moreschi,12 which analyzed most of
the art history books used in visual arts undergraduate courses
in Brazil, concluded that of all artists presented, nur 0.9% war
black, 26.3 % were non-European, Und 8.8% were women. It is ev-
ident that art history teaching and research in Brazil have a lot to
tackle and question.

The African art history course that I have been teaching is an op-
tional course in the current curriculum. The challenges and difficul-
ties are to deconstruct stereotypical considerations of the African
continent as being a homogeneous place, as well as the negative
“primitivist” approach or romanticized view of the continent as a
lost original paradise. It is also important to make students con-
sider contemporary Africa with its complexities, in which artistic
production does not limit itself to masks and statues or “classical
art” and to present to them modern and contemporary art in its
Diversität. Currently I coordinate a research group with undergrad-
uate students, in which, following their own initiative after reading
some seminal texts, they are developing role-playing games and
quizzes and are making a map of African and Afro-diasporic art-
ists. It has been a very enriching experience and some of the games
were tested with young students preparing themselves to go to

university. In the last few years, collaborations and possibilities for
exchange with African universities have been taking place, sowie
as new research in African art history and connections with Brazil.
Nowadays, we are facing a very hard and regressive situation in
Brasilien, with the country’s newly elected president, Jair Bolsonaro.
Teachers and professors have been under attack for “ideological
indoctrination”, and federal universities are at risk of losing their
Autonomie. Bolsonaro, a far-right politician, is known for his racist
and misogynistic comments and for his constant attacks against
Afro-Brazilian, indigenous, and LGBTQ communities. He dis-
solved the Ministry of Culture, constantly blames artists as left-
wing indoctrinators, and also disestablished the secretariat in the
Ministry of Education responsible for promoting diversity, menschlich
rights, and inclusion. In these terrible times, universities are also
place of resistance. It has never been easy to develop research, Zu
continue to exist as public universities in this country. We have
a lot to learn from the indigenous and quilombola13 black com-
munities who have been resisting since colonial times in Brazil.
Ways of establishing new forms of solidarity, networks of resis-
tance with other universities across the world, must also be im-
portant for all of us now.

See Simbao 2017 for a discussion of the difference

Notes
1
between “African art” and art of Africa.
2 Raw Material Company, http://www.rawmaterial-
company.org/_2238?lang=en#_2328.
3 Personal conversation, Dakar, September 20, 2018.
According to Altass, a closed exhibition of Chinese art
took place in the museum before it was opened.
4
Shortly after the World Festival of Black Arts
In 1966, Senghor announced his dream to create a
museum that would “present the past and present expe-
riences of black people everywhere” (Thomas-Johnson
2018).
5
I choose to write south, north, east, and west with-
out capital letters, as I do not correlate these terms with
the fixed coordinates of physical geography. Rather I
view the global south (or global souths, plural) as a term
that reflects a situational understanding of geography.
6
See a discussion of the same question in Simbao
2015: 266.
7 This is taken from my symposium notes and is not
a direct quote.
8 Raw Material Company, http://www.rawmateri-
alcompany.org/_2238?lang=en#_2328. Zugriff 12
Oktober 2018.
9 Elizabeth Giorgis, Zum Beispiel, laments that some
curricula in Ethiopia continue to glorify “the formalism
of European modernism” and there is a serious “absence
of critical debate that situates artistic production
and subjectivity within current social, economic and

political contexts.” (Personal correspondence, November
6, 2018).
10 At the University of Lagos, Abiodun Akande
and Babaseninde Ademuleya are supervising James
Opadocu’s PhD, and Akande and Ayodele Otonye
are supervising Peter Ighodalo. I am sure there are a
number of other examples at various institutions across
the continent.
11 Siehe https://www1.folha.uol.com.br/ilus-
trada/2015/02/1591504-fui-a-bons-restaurantes-no-bra-
sil-e-nao-vi-uma-unica-pessoa-negra.shtml.
12 Siehe https://historiada-rte.org/sobre
13 Quilombola communities are the descendants
of African and Afro-Brazilians slaves who escaped,
occupying free lands which nowadays are rural black
communities.

References cited:
Braun, Kate. 2018. “Senegal Unveils a Vast Museum
that Raises the Stakes in Africa’s Campaign to Reclaim
its Art.” Artnet News, Dezember 7, 2018. https://news.
artnet.com/art-world/museum-of-black-civiliza-
tions-1409911.

Lee, Christopher J. (Hrsg). 2010. Making a World After
Empire: The Bandung Moment and its Political Afterlives.
Athen: Ohio University Press.

Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o. 2012. Globalectics: Theory and the

Politics of Knowing. New York: Columbia University
Drücken Sie.

Prashad, Vijay. 2007. The Darker Nations: A Biography of
the Short-Lived Third World. Neu-Delhi: LeftWord.

Simbao, Ruth. 2015. “What ‘Global Art’ and Current
(Re)turns Fail to See: A Modest Counter-narrative of
‘Not-Another-Biennial’.” Image and Text 25: 261–86.

Simbao, Ruth. 2017. “Situating Africa: An Alter-Geo-
poliitics of Knowledge, or Chapangu Rises.” African Arts
50 (2): 1–9.

Simbao, Ruth, et al. 2018. “Zimbabwe Mobilizes: ICAC’s
Shift from Coup de Grăce to Cultural Coup,” African
Arts 51(2): 4–17.

Thomas-Johnson, Amandla. 2018. “Museum of Black
Civilisations Aims to ‘Decolonise Knowledge.’” Al
Jazeera,Dezember 5, 2018. https://www.aljazeera.com/
indepth/features/museum-black-civilisations-aims-de-
colonise-knowledge-181204221519936.html.

Yan, Hairong, and Barry Sautman. 2013. “‘The Begin-
ning of a World Empire’: Contesting the Discourse of
Chinese Copper Mining in Zambia.” Modern China 39
(2): 131–64.

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