Wilson: From the Black Ocean Series

Text and photographs by Mendi Kogosowski

What comes to mind when we think of Africa? Is it a mental image of a faraway, mysterious land, plagued by pain and suffering? Perhaps thoughts of people whose cultural practices and everyday lives differ greatly from the familiar?

Whatever may be the preconception; we are cordially invited to leave it at the door of A Collective Diary: An African Contemporary Journey, currently exhibiting at the Herzliya Museum of Contemporary Art (Israel).

Curated by Simon Njami and Mikaela Zyss, this exhibition presents the works of twelve contemporary artists from Sub-Saharan Africa. Each artist uses his or her own medium - photographs, paintings, video works, collages and installations – to offer a journey into the African “self”, and to deal with questions of identity and belonging within a global context. The curators’ goal? For visitors to reject common clichés and generalizations, to understand that  “there is no such thing as an African. There are individuals, with their dreams and anger, hopes and struggles. Each represents a world in itself and, by seeing them all together, we are able to grasp the essence of what a contemporary African artist could be: an artist like any other, but whose story is yet to be told.” (Njami)

One of the exhibiting artists is William Adjété Wilson, who was raised in France and has origins in Benin and in Togo. His Black Ocean is a series of 18 textile pictographs that tells the story of Africa’s development over the centuries.

The Kings of Danxomé: The kings of the Houégbadjavi dynasty of Danxomé (the Fon) often identified themselves as animal with impressive power or wisdom, such as the lion or the chameleon, or with objects of power like the rifle or the royal throne.

Wilson: from the Black Ocean Series

The Middle Passage: The fortified house represents the hundreds of fortresses built by European commercial companies along the coast of the Gulf of Guinea. The slaves are led towards the coast and loaded onto ships, deprived of their humanity and transformed into goods.

Wilson: from the Black Ocean Series

Africa Unite: The three characters symbolize developing Africa. In the center, the woman on whom most of Africa’s hope is placed adorns the pictogram of the crocodile, which signifies endurance and capability. The silhouettes on either side represent the diversity of the continent’s people and resources. The list of names is comprised of great African intellectuals, artists, writers, warriors and political visionaries.

Langa: Phenomenon (left) & Phenomenon – Final Star (right), mixed media on paper, 2008.

Moshekwa Langa was born more than a decade before the official end of apartheid, experiencing it first-hand as a black South African. The traumas associated with racism, displacement and alienation are themes in his work. Langa employs many kinds of materials in his art, due initially to precarious living conditions and to “making the best of what you’ve got”.


Mihindou: from the Sculptured Flesh Series

The female form as well as suffering are important themes in the works of Myriam Mihindou, a diverse Gabonese-French artist who practices photography, video, sculpture, film and dance. A Collective Diary honors Mihindou’s An Empty Column, a video displaying the artist dancing a mourning dance, and Sculptured Flesh (2000), a series of disturbing photographs hands tied and pierced by needles.


Mthethwa: from the Sugar Cane Workers series

The portraits of South African painter and photographer Zwelethu Mthethwa powerfully frame black South Africans as dignified and defiant individuals, even under the duress of social and economic hardships. In his Sugar Cane Workers series (2003), the laborers proud stare directly into the camera, challenging the conventions of both Western documentary work and African commercial studio photography.

El Anatsui: Crumbling Wall

Ghanaian artist El Anatsui’s Crumbling Wall (2000) is a 13-foot-tall, 18-foot-wide construction made out of old graters once used to prepare gari, a staple West African dish made from cassava flour, the production of which is tedious and difficult. Crumbling Wall concerns the survival and erosion of inherited traditions, while paying homage to the artist’s cultural identity.

Moving and thought provoking, A Collective Diary subtly proposes Njami’s beliefs of a land being “a metaphor, a mental construction, an abstract space we all carry in our hearts that helps us experience a sense of belonging”. It confronts the audience with ideas of humanity, serving as a reminder that “when we think of the Other, we should bear in mind that we are all, in one way or another, Others”.

Tweet

Share on Tumblr