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  Donna Pido

  Kenya’s Independence monument resides at Uhuru Gardens in Nairobi (Figure 1a), most likely because this is where received Independence (Kiarie 2022).  Though only a few people visit Uhuru Gardens and get to see the monument, it reminds us of 12 December 1963, the day of Independence and when Kenya Army soldiers first raised the national flag on Mt Kenya.  Mau-Mau and other guerilla soldiers see hoisting the flag as a visual symbol of military victory over King’s African Rifles and their British collaborators though some felt it is the same collaborators who inherited power from the British (Branch 2007).  In this context, Independence is remembered as a military defeat of the British sense of military invincibility.  However, a political class  comprised  of ‘under-educated’ intelligentsia saw Independence as an intellectual contest and a defeat of so-called colonial arrogance.   Rural dwellers, on the other hand, seemed spectators with the view that Independence was coming ready with ‘owners’ (politicians, businessmen and educated elite).  That Independence has owners who enjoy it while rural remain on the sideline is evident the persistent poverty thriving in rural Kenya (Njeru 2018).  So, even Uhuru Gardens and the Independence Monument have ‘owners’ who are not rural dwellers; it is clear that the monument is the collective memory and visual culture of its ‘owners’.  

   

  It seems the majority of rural dwellers understood Independence according to what politicians said- wealth as the accumulation of money, health as getting treatment in hospitals, education as attending school and passing examinations (Kenya African National Union 1969). We are not sure they are able to read and understand the Independence monument at Uhuru Gardens.  Why KANU did not install the rooster at Uhuru Gardens draws considerable curiosity. That is beyond our scope here.  One with a thick African cultural knowledge could easily choose the image of a rooster instead of that of hoisting the national flag because KANU was a nation-wide party and the rooster has cultural meanings nationwide.   Among the Luos of Western, establishing new homesteads entailed carrying an axe and rooster to the site of the first house; this ideology is well-represented in the KANU flag (figure 1d).  In other parts of Kenya, the rooster is a symbol of manhood required to make many children (Wikipedia. 2022).   By crowing early in the morning, the rooster does not simply announce time but also sets the work-eat-rest rhythm of life in rural areas.

   

  Before discussing WWII monument and of pre-Independence flags, we want to briefly address meanings in choices of colors and other elements in party flags and the national flag.  The black, red and green stripes in KAU, KANU and the national flag have the same meanings. The black stood for the indigenous population, red for the common blood of all humanity or blood shed during the struggle for Independence. Green symbolized the nation’s fertile land or landscape of the country, while the weapons were a reminder that organized struggle was the basis for future self-government (Smith 2001). No doubt the shield and spear are common traditional Kenya tools of offence and defense. It is said that white represented unity and peace.  It is rather clear that a section of Kenya’s coat of arms is modeled on KANU’s flag- colors and the rooster carrying an axe. Meanings herein are similar to those we mentioned in our discussion on KANU’s flag; the shield and spears also bear the same meanings as we mentioned when discussing the national flag.

   

  

  The combat boots (Figure 2b, Internet sources) tend to strike a note that is closer to the Acholi collective memory of WWII because they refer to it as too bin (Acholi for ‘come ye death’).  Among the Acholis of Northern Uganda, the combat boots symbolize the massive death in the War and the sacrifice of people forced to be loyal to the King of England. There is quite a stark contrast between the intended collective memory and the actual one.  At least among the Acholi, the boots are infinitely more meaningful that the bronze images so hapless servant/soldiers.

   

  Many of us in Kenya may not be able to remember the pre-Independence flags presented here because they were in use a long time ago.  Between Indonesians, Indians and Arabs, we are not sure on who first visited Kenya.  However, Arabs came in greater numbers over a longer period, intermarried with the local population and eventually set a government with the Sultan of Oman as its emperor or king.  We included the flag of the Sultan of Zanzibar (3a, Internet sources) as a part of the visual culture of Kenya.  The flag does not fly anymore but Arab dhows and their sails are prominent visual feature at the coast of Kenya. History has it that the Portuguese followed and displaced the Arabs  and built Fort Jesus- we included Portuguese flag (3b, Internet sources) of that time since we consider it a part of the visual culture of Kenya at that time.  Apart from Fort Jesus in Mombasa and the Vasco da Gama monument in Malindi, there seems no outstanding visual feature that rigorously reminds us of the Portuguese.

   

  We turn now to the World War II monument standing on Kenyatta Avenue, Nairobi (Figure 2a, Internet sources).  Our action was driven by the thought that the monument is also a reminder of how Africans were roped into a war they did not start, meaning, they did not have any special interest in the war.  While the British saw this monument as honoring the regional war dead, we remember our own who died in North Africa, Burma or elsewhere as WWII raged.  In any case it would have served us Kenyans more meaningfully if the monument had represented Kings African Rifles in action instead of as the transport company that was its main function.  The figures of this monument are just standing as if posing for a photograph.

   

  

   

  The eagerness related to the partitioning of Africa and the establishing of colonies saw the Germans come to Kenya and German East Africa (Tanganyika) where the German flag flew (Figure 3c).  Heller, the German coin is the most outstanding collective memory of German East Africa; old folk still refers to coins as heller (hela, eeera, Figure 4a and 4b, Internet sources).   Though rupee was more popular as an Indian coin, it was also used in German East Africa and its name was integrated into many languages that still use it to mean ‘money' (Figure 4c, Internet sources).

   

  

   

  Some people think that if Germany had won World War I (WWI), East Africa would have been a German colony.  But that was not to be; various parts of East Africa were under Brisstish rule until Independence in the early  1960s.  The Witu flag (Figure 3d) was hoisted soon after the British drove Germans out of East Africa, this was followed by the British East Africa flag (Figure 3g, Internet sources) and flags (Figures 3e and 3f, Internet sources) were used in Kenya colony, specifically.   The Union Jack was prominent in flags for British East and Africa and Kenya Colony.  British influence is massive in Kenya and related visual culture is so massive that it deserves more attention that is possible here.  Meanwhile we note that the structure of Kenya’s coat of arms is similar to emblems and related devices that were in use when Kenya was a colony.   

   

  Summary of Discussions

   

               We embarked on writing this article hoping to add to on-going efforts in exploring collective memory in Africa.  Our short article touched on political collective memory including but not limited to past and existing monuments, flags, coat of arms and emblems.  It is difficult but possible to argue that pre-Independence devices form a part of Kenya’s visual culture; we argue thus for believe that the past makes today as the present makes tomorrow.  Heller, the German coin of colonial Kenya, provides one example of how past visual culture persists through time to be a part of the present and does so with  little cultural transformation.

   

               In this article, monuments, flags, emblems, coats of arms and coins provided fodder for discussions.  It seems the Independence monument is a Government object that only officers of Government and the intelligentsia communicate with and use it to remember Independence and WWI.   Kenyans who paid the price of WWI and Independence have yet to enjoy whatever benefits may accrue from the two.  The once very powerful KANU that received Independence from Great Britain is now a pale shadow of the political party it was.  However, its rooster remains a visually powerful emblem that speaks of time, space, majestic manhood and connection with the universe.  

   

               We do not know why KANU’s rooster is dwarfed in the coat of arms and is absent in the national flag.  The absence or minimizing of such a powerful symbol can raise questions.  For example, is it a part of continued colonization that thrives on suffocating local expressions?  Or was it a matter dictated by non-Kenyan concepts of design?  These questions need addressing soon and with more concerted efforts.

   

  References cited

  • Branch Daniel 2007: The Enemy Within: Loyalists and the War Against Mau-Mau in Kenya, in Journal of African History, Volume 48, Issue 2, July 2007, Cambridge University Press
  • Kenya African National Union 1969: The K.A.N.U Manifesto, University of Virginia
  • Kiarie Maina 2022: http://www.enzimuseum.org/museums-of-kenya/monuments/uhuru-gardens
  • Njeru Timothy Njagi 2018: What is Driving Persistent Poverty in Rural Kenya, in: The Conversation https://theconversation.com/whats-driving-persistent-poverty-in-rural-kenya-99765
  • Smith Whitney 2001: https://www.britannica.com/contributor/Whitney-Smith/4445
  • Wikipedia 2022 Cultural References to Chickens: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_references_to_chickens
  • Woods Steven Paul, Weinborn Michael, Ryan Yangi Li, Hodgson Erica, Amanda R.J. Ng, Bucks Romola S. 2015 Does Prospective Memory Influence Quality of Life in Community-Dwelling Older Adults? in: Neuropsychol Dev Cogn B Aging Neuropsychol Cogn  https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4537668/

   

  For further reading: Lydia Waithira Muthuma. How Public are Public Statues? (Public statues in Nairobi)

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  Karimatu Dauda

   

  Many of the group of pupils that were trained on Bura culture and Bansuwe dance in Ruby Springfield College are from this ethnic group, Bura. However, a good number of these pupils did not have prior experience of the Bansuwe dance. Consequently, the facilitator who taught them the dance relied on videos of Bansuwe dance and songs, played through a computer and a portable speaker, to teach them the dance steps from the scratch. This was accompanied by direct demonstrations and direction by the facilitator. Although the facilitator is not a specialised dance teacher, she is from the Bura ethnic group and a skilled Bansuwe dancer who had been performing for many years.

   

  

  The lady in yellow was a parent of one of the dancers who came to cheer the dancers. The person in green is the principal of the school who also came to cheer the dancers. Cheering of dancers and throwing some money at them is a common practice in Nigeria. It is meant to both encourage and show appreciation to the dancers. (Photo: Karimatu Dauda)

   

  Bansuwe dance is popular among the Bura and is usually the preferred cultural dance at weddings, funerals and other important ceremonies. Yet, the experience in this school shows that there are a good number of Bura people whose children do not know the Bansuwe dance. Part of the reasons for this is that some of the children have never been taken to their villages where cultural practices are better sustained. The Boko Haram conflict in the region also discourages social gatherings which are often potential soft targets of insurgents.

   

  The cultural day events usually involve the presence and participation of pupils’ parents and other guests which makes it a good channel for the sustainability of culture. More girls ended up performing in the dance because many of the boys were unable to pass the final screening for the cultural day. The dancers were dressed in traditional Bura attire called Japta. The audience cheered the dancers and at intervals some would join the dance briefly. This dance was accompanied by traditional Bura music made by drums, xylophone, flutes and vocals.

   

  

  The boy with the basket was picking the money thrown to the dancers by the audience in appreciation of their performance. (Photo: Karimatu Dauda)

   

  The pupils, especially those from Bura, could easily learn more about the Bansuwe dance from their parents and relatives at home. Since dance often carries specific meanings within the social settings it is situated (Pusnik, 2010), there will not be a shortage of what to converse about concerning the Bansuwe dance. Traditional dance in Nigeria is used as a channel for communicating social values, sensitization and even carrying out social sanctions. In addition to these, Bansuwe dance is also used to convey merriment during ceremonies and sadness during funerals and each is reflected by the tone, tempo and messages of the music chosen.

   

  

  Bansuwe Dance (Photo: Karimatu Dauda)

   

  In the case of the cultural day of Ruby Springfield College, the dance was clearly conveying merriment and the central message of the song was that people should come together as friends and brothers. This message was according to the central purpose of the cultural day which was to encourage mutual cultural understanding among the pupils of the school.

   

  The excitement accompanying the performance of Bansuwe dance by the pupils of Ruby Springfield College is a testimony to the fact that it left a lasting impression on them. This is because, for some pupils, it represented the first time they witnessed and participated in the Bansuwe dance. This enthusiasm by pupils, and even by some parents, is behind the determination by the school to sustain the practice of the cultural day annually. This in turn will ensure that Bansuwe dance is sustained, as younger generations get to learn and participate in it every year at school.

   

  While the annual cultural day cannot be compared to dance subjects formally being taught in the classroom, it is no doubt a contribution to arts education albeit as an extra-curricular activity. It serves as the next best thing in the absence of a dedicated dance subject in the curriculum of schools. In addition, it will be an important space for the sustainability of Bansuwe dance possibly for many generations to come. It is important to sustain this dance because it is one of the few remaining cultural activities which brings together people of all ages, gender, and social status to interact equally on an informal basis. Such a gathering would provide a good space for the conversations on cultural sustainability.

   

  

   Bansuwe Dance (Photo: Karimatu Dauda)

   

  Arts education is part of the curriculum of primary, secondary and tertiary academic institutions in Nigeria. This does not mean, however, that the teaching of arts is done in every school in the country. The situation is further compounded by the fact that schools offering arts education are often selective about the arts subject they teach. In most schools, fine arts or creative arts make up the totality of their arts education subjects. While their creative arts subject includes lessons in music, dance and theatre, there are also dedicated music and theatre subjects in schools.

   

  In contrast, dance is hardly, if ever, exclusively taught as a subject in formal education settings. Like in many other countries, dance is not taught with the same frequency and depth as painting, theatre or music (Mosko, 2018). Even if there were a dedicated subject for dance education in the country, the hundreds of ethnic groups in Nigeria would make the choice of what dance to teach in formal education settings quite challenging. This is because a typical classroom is made up of learners from diverse cultural and ethnic backgrounds. Generally, arts education in the country is facing a number of challenges, as identified by Enamhe (2013), including the discouragement of children from taking arts subjects by parents, the fear of the perceived difficulty of the creative aspects is arts subjects, and the high cost of materials needed for arts education both for learners and academic institutions.

   

   

  References

  • Enamhe, B. B. (2013). The role of arts education in nigeria. African Journal of Teacher Education, 3(1), 1-7.
  • Mosko, S. (2018). Stepping sustainably: The potential partnership between dance and sustainable development. Consilience: The Journal of Sustainable Development, 20(1), 62-87.
  • Mtaku, C. Y. (2020). Continuity and change: The significance of the tsinza (xylophone) among the bura of northeast Nigeria. Center for World Music – Studies in Music, Universitätsverlag Hildesheim.
  • Pusnik, M. (2010). Introduction: Dance as social life and cultural practice. Anthropological Notebook, 16(3), 5-10.

   

   

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  Patrique deGraft-Yankson

   

  School crests, school logos or school emblems as they are variously referred to are a popular feature in the functions of all academic institutions in Ghana. They are normally designed to visually reflect the key ideologies and philosophies upon which educational institutions thrive. In determining a logo for academic institutions therefore, efforts are put in place to ensure that they serve an appreciable level of visual representativeness. By this, school logos in so many ways establish emotional connections with parents, students and other stakeholders, whose interpretations and perceptions determine their level of confidence and trust in the institutions.

   

  This logo, by its very visual appeal, informed by the familiarity of the key compositional element and simplicity, generates a point for discussion. Moreover, the popularity and the history of Achimota College always makes it an important destination for various studies pertaining to senior high school education in Ghana. In my current interest in the study of icons and symbols therefore, the Achimota School crest comes handy, worthy and accessible.

   

  The designer of the Achimota School crest is not really known as most of the literature on the school's history is silent on the subject. However, judging from the fact that the key concept behind the logo emanated from a popular quote from Dr Emmanuel Kwegyir Aggrey, the Old Achimota Association attributes both its origin and design to him (OAA, 1973). The creation of the Achimota School crest follows strictly the conventional crest design procedures which inform the design of several school crests in Ghana. It is composed of a classic narrow base shield, with the all-important motto of the school, ut omnes unum sint (Latin phrase meaning ‘that all may be one’), rendered in an arc form below the shield to provide a mantling and support of a sort to the design. In a rather minimalistic fashion, the key element of the design which also represents the main ideal of the school (the piano keyboard) has been rendered in amazing level of simplicity which makes it easy to perceive and reproduce by all graphic reproduction methods.

   

  By this design process, the Achimota school logo offers a depth of meaning without being too literal in its composing elements. It has a pleasing contrast between dark and light, and connection to the existing school structures. Most importantly, the logo has sustained the semiotics and narratology which students, parent and stakeholders have always responded to since the establishment of the school.

   

  It can be said that the logo of the Achimota college is more than a visual representation of the ideals of an educational institution. By mere consideration of the diversity in the caliber of people who masterminded its foundation, the school’s logo could indeed be described as the very foundation upon which the school was built. The logo seems to echo silently a belief that underscores the essence of peaceful coexistence of all manner of people, as exemplified in the collaboration of people of different colours from different parts of the world coming together to establish an institution of that caliber. It must be noted that the use of black and white keys of the piano to signify the harmony that comes along with peaceful co-existence of people of all races mean a lot more than anti-racial advocacy. It is obvious that Aggrey, drawing from his own experiences as a black young man who has been able to successfully attain the feats that could be equaled to what any white young man of his age could attain, was drawing the attention of the African youth to their own strength and capabilities. This is because Aggrey lived in a time when the “black man” looked up to the “white man” as an embodiment of all wisdom and custodian of all the goodies that mankind needed for their existence. The idea that he, as a black young man could attain a higher education just as the white man had not been very much considered. Aggrey making himself a case for the possibility of the black race mixing up perfectly with the white race to produce something good therefore seemed to be the underlining principle for the creation of the logo of the Achimota school.

   

  The question of Aggrey creating this logo not for some cooperate body or a church is also an interesting factor to consider. As far back as 1924, Aggrey sought to established the efficacy of ‘education’ in the promulgation of ideals, principles and philosophies. This is deducible from the efforts he put in co-founding the Achimota College with Sir Frederick Gordon Guggisberg and Rev Alec Garden Fraser; opening up the college for both male and female; and ensuring that teachers were made up of blacks, whites, males, females. This indicates Dr Aggrey’s confidence in education as an important avenue for the promotion of peaceful co-existence and harmonious living.  He believed strongly that quality education would contribute to balance and a peaceful society, and promote his conviction that ‘black keys of the piano give good sounds and the white keys give good sounds, but the combination of the two gives the best melody’. What a beautiful reason for all mankind to live as one!

   

  Considering ongoing efforts towards the achievement of a coherent global community, as well as the premium laid on education as a single unit that can be used to achieve the sustainable development goals, it could be concluded that the relevance of the Achimota school logo is important today more than it has ever been.  It therefore makes a whole world of sense to argue that the logo of the Achimota school could be considered as a strong icon for well-balanced education and a perfect advocate for education for sustainable development (ESD).

   

   

  References

  • Old Achimota Associstion (1973). Dr Aggrey. Retrieved August 3, 2020, from Retrieved 03 https://sites.google.com/site/oaa1973akoras/home/founders/dr-aggrey
  • Wada, K. (2010). Achimota School. Retrieved August 3, 2020, from https://www.blackpast.org/global-african-history/achimota-college-achimota-school-1924/

   

   

  published August 2020

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  Leonie Chima Emeka & Stefan Eisenhofer

   

  Born 1984 in Nairobi (Kenya), Armitage received his artistic training in London (UK). Living and working in both places today, he praises each of these cities as substantial to his creative practice. His inspirations spring from many different sources – from political events, mass media affairs and pop culture to personal memories and experiences as well as from Eastern African and European folklore. He merges together the stories and experiences of two cities and weaves them into a narrative of interregional interest. Often starting with Kenyan local myth he is developing global tales of political critique and rebellion concerning global demands on democracy, data protection, ecological and human rights — always overlaid  by the meaning of the break between the “West and the Rest”, between human and un-human, between the exploitation of life and its inviolable dignity. In his work, Armitage investigates the idea of Africa as a mirror for Western phantasies and success stories of the Global North: the wild and untamed nature on the one side and the violated racialized bodies and political and ecological catastrophes on the other.

   

  The painting “Baboon” was on view in the exhibition "The Paradise Edict“ at Haus der Kunst in 2020 as part of a series of five oil paintings depicting tropical animals. On tropical background various monkeys in erotic posture invite the viewer to an examination of sexuality at the boundaries between animality and humanity, erotics and exotics. Also the “Baboon” strikes the eye with its suggestive sexuality. In the clearing of an overgrown rainforest, the monkey lies on the ground in a very human attitude. A bare stone supports its right arm as if the ape was resting on a natural chaiselongue. Within the apparently wild environment, the animal seems rather cultivated.

   

  The baboon oscillates between human and animal; not only in its posture but also in its physique: Feet and face are animal, while the rest of its body looks almost human; it has no fur or hair but pronounced muscles on his bare chest. Despite its muscles the ape’s body looks youthful and slightly lanky. It reminds to Michelangelo’s David for which it is commonly known that the legs and arms are extra-long compared to his body in order to mark his youth. Like a juvenile not yet fully grown the baboon, too, has long arms and legs. Neither a child nor yet a man, both an ape and a human body, the baboon hovers between child and man, between man and animal, between innocence and animal sexuality.

   

  Instead of the characteristic fig leaf of early modern European sculpture, there is a large bundle of bananas between the monkey's legs. The individual bananas, sketched on the yellow surface, are quite phallic in shape and the banana bundle tends to overemphasise the male sexual organ, while the ape’s physical penis is hidden behind it. The banana is probably the most common fruit in the Global North that still bears the tag ‚exotic‘. It is not the monkey’s body, that is sexual; but the bundle of bananas both hides and emphasises the phallic and states an allegory for the conceptual connection between exotic and phallic.

   

  Its absence makes it ever more present, as its leaves the concretisation of sexuality to the viewer’s imagination. In fact the image could be both innocent or sexual, as not only the penis is hidden behind the bundle, but also the ape’s left hand that reaches out to his underbelly. We can not see, but only guess where it rests, and what it is doing there. In his suggestiveness Armitage opens a space of confusing erotic tension and a critique of the sexualisation of race. With the figure that hovers between youth, man and animal, Armitage challenges the relations between black masculinity and sexuality in the Global North. It was Franz Fanon in "Black Skin-White Masks“ (1952), who once posited, that in European Subconscious "the Negro“ is the genitals par exellence, reduced to a giant penis. In this painting Armitage investigates the complex relations between blackness and phallus in Western concepts of masculinity.

   

  Like many of Armitage’s paintings also the “Baboon” presents an overlay of heaven and hell and is taking up the title of the exhibition “Paradise Edict”. They are referring to African and European as well as global paradise fantasies and hopes. They are aiming often at an ordered, decreed and prescribed paradise. They reveal the mandatory and obsessive aspects of these Garden of Eden-Imaginations, disillusioning global Out-of-Africa-fantasies, distorting eternal and natural laws to man made illusionistic laws.

   

  Armitage uses lubugo, a fabric made from fig-tree bark, in lieu of canvas for his paintings. This cloth is Ugandan in origin and has a long history of social, religious and political meaning and use there. Armitage first came across lubugo in 2010 on a Nairobi tourist market. The use of this now somewhat Pan-East-African-material corresponds with his visual vocabulary. Armitage combines European with Eastern-African materials, forms and strategies and waves them into complex, yet alluring compositions that remember the entangled history of painting through the ages and continents and rewrites new relations in between.

   

  published January 2021

   

  About Michael Armitage's initiative in Nairobi "Nairobi Contemporary Art Institute (NCAI)" see Link.

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  Osuanyi Quaicoo Essel

   

  Catching a glimpse of the feminine hairstyles (re)presentation in rows on a single support, brings to memory the barber salon promotional campaign artworks that served as visual displays to invite potential customers in parts of Africa in the past. Artists in the community were commissioned to create picturesque signages that display plethora of Afrocentric hairstyles on wooden boards and placed in front of hair salons or vantage points to attract potential clients. The artworks served as form of advertisements to the salon operators. Some itinerant hairstylists moved around with these signages in search of customers. The painted images have been replaced with printed catalogue of pictured hairstyles printed on large sheet of papers and flexy materials which are displayed in and outside salons in the communities. The picturesque hairstyles signage presented in this exhibition reminisces the artistic practice of creating these portraits as form of hair salon advertisement in Togo, Ghana, Nigeria and other West African countries. 

   

  

   Cutout from anonymous artist, second half of the 20th century, plywood, oilpaint, Image: Osuanyi Quaicoo Essel.

   

  Uniformly arranged on a support, the artist presents fifteen Afrocentric feminine flashy plaited coiffures in portrait orientation. Of the fifteen hairstyles, one occupies the epicentral position of the entire composition in frontality of pose, depicting her full facial details in simple flat tone of brownish colour with the hair stylization rendered in black. Her rigged neck, pronounced eyebrow and bejeweled ears depicts her feminine characteristics. In Togolese culture, wearing of earring is a preserve of females as in the case of Ghana and some West African countries. The artist’s treatment of this centrally placed figure gives hint of Togolese feminine beauty standards. Four of the hairstyles are shown in side view, facing the left. Similar to these four figures in profile are the type-form head, rigged neck details and varying earrings. The rigged neck features found on these four figures also appear on the centrally placed figure in the composition. With this treatment, the artist makes visual notation of feminine beauty culture standards that characterised some West African countries. Rigged neck feature is considered as a marker of beauty ideal, and commonly depicted in West African feminine sculptures. For example, Akuaba (wooden doll, predominantly used as fertility figure), of Ghana is often armoured with rigged neck characteristics. Understanding the beauty culture ideals of Africa depicted in this simple but interesting hairstyles composition offers viewers of African art a better understanding of the art.

   

  To reveal a great deal of the level of sophistication of the hair stylizations, the artist showed ten of the figures in back view posture, three each atop and down in horizontal placement, while four are arranged in a kite-shaped arrangement in the middle portions of the painting. The artist generates visual interest with the arrangement of the figures to create a sense of movement, variety and rhythm. For example, in the depiction of the clothing of the figures, shades of reds were used in a serpentine orderliness that forces the eyes to traverse gracefully upon a gaze from the topmost middle part to the down and vice versa. Similar colour treatment is achieved with shades of blue from the top left, moving in diagonal direction to far right of the middle portion of the painting, and orchestrating another diagonal turn towards the down left part. One striking feature that bedews the ten hairstyles in back view posture, is the skillful use of the negative and positive spatial relations that creates visual curiosity for deeper gaze of the hairstyles. With the exception of the blue-shirted figure on the last row of the composition, the remaining blue-shirted figures wear trumpet-shaped hairstyles with multi-sectional visual interests.

   

  All the hairstyles represented by the artist are a reflection of the Afrocentric standardized beauty ideologies and practices inherent in the social environment of practice. These hairstyles make use of no hair extensions and or wigs; and are also practised in Ghana and other neighbouring countries. Females usually cared for their hair to grow long and plait it with black twine to form long narrow stripes which are then arranged in a particular manner by way of styling. Based on the society that wear them, the hairstyles may be given names and have symbolic meanings. The hairstyles portrayed are usually worn by the youthful and middle-aged females.

   

  Colonialists’ invasion, slavery, Western religion, racial discrimination, amongst others, contributed to Black hair stereotyping which has caused some Black women to resort to hair beauty ideals of the colonialists. Historically, the discrimination resulted in some Black women who found themselves in foreign lands, hiding their hair by using coverings, especially, in public places. Some Black women use artificial chemicals to straighten their hairs to imitate the beauty ideals of the colonialists. Despite the counter-resistance to the stereotyping of Afrocentric hairstyling through civil right movements and visual (re)presentation by its practitioners and artists, many African women now wear extensions and wigs, a trend that raises the question of identity crisis and politics. The work of the artist in this context sheds light on the purely Afrocentric hairstyling culture of Togo and its neighbouring countries, and makes unapologetic statement of turning away from the colonial past.

   

  The work brings into focus the need for fashion art educator and artists to join hands in contributing to institutional restructuring of teaching and learning of African fashion history including standardised beauty ideologies and ideals for reclamation of the past, and impenitent practice of Afrocentric beauty culture. Towards this end, teaching and learning should be focalised on the African cultural reorientation, concept of sankofaism (return to fetch the goodies of the past) and respect for one another irrespective of geography, skin colour, hair type or physique. Learners must be taught to build positive self-esteem and love for their culture, and demonstrate love for individual differences.

   

   

   

  This article is part of a gallery: Perspectives from Ghana on Museum Objects in Germany
  

   

  published January 2021

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  Mary Claire Kidenda

  Kenya is extraordinarily rich in creativity, materials, and ideas sources of inspiration reflected in their artefacts which has evolved to its current prosperous state over the centuries. The Kenyan culture can be seen in the visual arts, applied arts, food, music, dance, sports, fashion, literature, and theatre. The artefacts are an extraordinary source of inspiration and nourishment for the artist. Their designs embody African design aesthetics that have retained traditional designs as they also reflect elements of innovation, hybridity, sustainability and modernity (Maina et al., 2017). The artefacts reflect religious beliefs and cultural values – two inseparable elements enmeshed in Kenyan craft. The Kenyan traditional art is fundamentally functional, meeting some specific utilitarian purposes, whereas its aesthetic consideration is typically regarded as having some secondary significance. Art was integrated into everyday aspects of life from formal ceremonies and religious rites to daily household tasks. The arfetacts were produced by skilled experienced crafts persons who were found in the societies.  Art is an expression of a particular community or culture through the employment of local materials and craftsmanship.

   

  The Jua Kali manufacturing subsector is the predominant creator of craft products in Kenya (Maina et al., 2017). Jua Kali is a self-organising community of practice producing goods. It is comprised of artisans running micro and small enterprises that are not fully integrated into the mainstream formal economy. The artisans learn skills through traditional apprenticeship (TA). Apprenticeship training is regarded as a critical contributor to skills supply, fostering economic development in Kenya. It involves the transmission of the tacit rather than the explicit knowledge and is the most tangible exhibition of the intangible cultural heritage. It facilitates the transmission of skills from a custodian of knowledge, the Master Craftsman. It combines ethnic design and aesthetics and contemporary styling in craft production in Kenya. Involves the transmission of the tacit rather than the explicit knowledge through observation, imitation and reputation. Besides, apprenticeship ensures that the knowledge and skills that relate to the craft are passed down to future generation so that they continue to be produced within their communities. The learning of the Kenyan design, aesthetics is therefore, an intergenerational phenomenon.

   

  Kenya's ethnic groups can be divided into three broad linguistic groups Bantu, Nilotic and Cushite. The Nilotic tribes  in Kenya include Luo, Kalenjin, Maasai and Turkana (Hino et al., 2019). The Nilotic speakers migrated from Sudan and Egypt. They are traditionally pastoralists and fishermen and reside in Kenya's vast Rift-Valley region and around Lake Victoria (Madut, 2020). Each of these communities has its traditions, customs, and practices, imbued with multiple layers of culture, colonial legacies, and migration that add to the rich Kenyan cultures (Deisser & Njuguna, 2016) . The distinctness and confluence of these cultures have served as artistic inspiration for many a cultural product creatively fashioned out of raw materials primarily sourced from the natural environment.

   

  The Luo or Lwoo (also called Joluo, singular Jaluo) are an amalgamated agro-fishery and Nilotic Dholuo ethnolinguistic groups in Africa that inhabit an area ranging from South Sudan and Ethiopia, through northern Uganda and eastern Congo (DRC) (Ojwang, 2021; Prince & Geissler, 2008), into western Kenya, and the Mara Region of Tanzania west Kenya, eastern Uganda, and in Mara Region in northern Tanzania. The name Luo or Low means "God's life-bearing exhalation.' The past economic activities of the Luo included fishing and cattle farming (Ndeda, 2019). Agriculture, especially that which involves staple crops such as maize and beans (Ojwang, 2021). Nilotic communities such as Turkana and Pokot (ekicholong) and even Bantus such as Kamba (mumo ya muthamia) and Taita (kifumbi) in Kenya have traditional stools that have been used for various cultural and functional purposes (Somjee, 1993).

   

  This paper discusses the Luo Traditional Three-Legged Stool called “Kom Nyaluo” in the Luo tribe (Hoehler-Fatton, 1996). My interest in this stool arose because I am a Luo lady married to a Luo man who owns the stool.

       

  Kidenda, “Domestic Exhibition of Kom Nyaluo to EVC Expert Panel Discussing the Versions of the Traditional Stool”, Wood and Beads, 2022 Karen, Nairobi

   

  The circular top of Kom Nyaluo symbolises the round universe and a miniature universe on which the husband reins in a home. It is a sign of prestige and leadership, reflecting the status or power of men or the husband within society and a reflection of the round traditional Luo huts. Its legs embody male masculinity and virility (Biko, 2010). Only the father was qualified to sit on the seat as he had requisite authority and was the owner of all the women he brought forth life with. He would sit on it when addressing issues; women and children would sit on the ground.

   

  The traditional Kom Nyaluo was small, with a height of about 30cm from the ground and decorated with beads (Hoehler-Fatton, 1996). Each elder had their stool, and women and children were forbidden from sitting on it. Kom Nyaluo is associated with the authority the elders wielded and the respect that they were accorded in their homes and society. The stool design reflected the traditional activities of men and women. The men worked and socialised outside the home, and the women mostly worked inside and around the house and garden (shamba). A married young man with a few children applies for an eldership position in a ceremony where he hosts community elders. He would be dressed in traditional regalia, carry a spear and fly whisk. The elders would sit him on Kom Nyaluo and crown him as an elder.

   

  Most traditional Luo homes were polygamous, and the stool played a significant role in controlling the wife, which enjoyed marital favours and childbearing. The husband or man of the house would send the stool to the woman's hut. He would want to spend the night in her hut. The stool would be sent secretly, and early the following day, the man would sneak back into his hut so that the other wives would not know whom he slept with. This brilliantly averted obvious petty jealousy will arise from a polygamous home. If one wife felt that she didn't have the stool in her house often enough, she would ask the first wife to intervene on her behalf. "If the first wife didn't like her, she would ensure her complaints did not reach their husband. The seat symbolised love and joy and sustained life in a traditional Luo homestead. Literally and figuratively, of course. Kom Nyaluo did not only represent the authority of the man but also love and joy and sustained life in the traditional Luo home (Biko, 2010).

   

  Kom Nyaluo was used during the levirate ceremony or "tero", where a widow was remarried to a relative of their deceased husband. The levirate union is consummated by sexual intercourse on the first night. If the widow invited the elders for a drink the day after the night of "ter", it was a sign that the night had been successful. During the drinking session, there was the enthronement ceremony of the new head of the home onto the stool of the deceased, "Kom wuon dala" (seat of the homeowner). With the enthronement, it was as if the dead man was alive again (Lutta, 2015). After marrying and having a few children, a Luo man applies for elderhood by hosting the elders at a party where he will be crowned and dressed in traditional regalia. Signs and symbols of authority that include a spear fly whisk and a three-legged stool are given to the elder.

  Production Process

  In this case study, the Kom Nyaluo is produced by an artisan from Siaya County Jua Kali Association craftsman. He learned his father's craft skills through traditional apprenticeship and made his products on demand. The Luo traditional stools are carved with logs from ober (mvule tree), ngo'wo (fig tree), duwa (oak tree) and the member (mango tree). The logs are chopped by a power saw and dried for one week. These are hardwood types that are strong, durable and water-resistant. They also feature unique colours and grain patterns that create a stunning display. Oak is light yellowish-brown and generally straight-grained; it is also hard and durable. Mvule wood comes from the African teak, known in Nigeria as the iroko tree; it is challenging, dense, and durable. Fig tree wood sometimes contains latex, which can be toxic or an allergen. Since the fig trees seldom grow straight, their boards tend to be shorter. However, the wood is soft and not very strong. Mango wood is relatively easy to work with; it is easier to shape, plane and sand while still strong and durable. It is also friendly to waxing and staining, making it excellent for furniture or other household objects.

  

  Kidenda, “Wood Logs used for curving out Kom Nyaluo”, 2013, Siaya, Kenya

   

  Each log costs the artisan ten thousand Kenya shillings (Ksh. 10,000), equivalent to sixty-seven (67) euros. The stool is carved from a single block of wood, the wood between stem and roots, which has twisted grains that are more durable and cannot break or crack. The stool is made without using joints or nails. The seat takes the shape of a log. The carver uses Koyo (adze) to fashion Kom Nyaluo from the log, which does not require nails or joints.

   

  

  Kidenda, “Curving out the Kom Nyaluo from a log”, 2013, Siaya, Kenya (photo by Mary Clare Kidenda)

   

  Its top takes the circular shape of the log, and after carving, it is smoothened with a furr (metal scrapper for smoothing wood).

   

  

  Smoothening the Circular Top Using Furr, 2013, Siaya, Kenya; Furr, the handmade metal tool used to smoothen the top of Kom Nyaluo, 2013, Siaya, Kenya (photos by Mary Clare Kidenda) 

   

  They are then sandpapered and vanished using paintbrushes.

   

  

  Sandpapered and vanished sets of Kom Nyaluo, 2013, Siaya, Kenya (photo by Mary Clare Kidenda)

   

   

  A compass is used for drawing geometrical patterns on the top of the stool.

  

  The drawing of geometrical patterns using a compass, 2013, Siaya, Kenya (photo by Mary Clare Kidenda)

   

  Supposedly the design is inspired by a parquet floor in a European-style house owned by Tom Mboya. The wire inlay practised by the Kamba may also have been a model. Thereafter, wood, glass beads, metal, and colourful Maasai beads are banged onto the top, providing intricate decorative artwork.

  

  The inserting/banging of beads into the top of Kom Nyaluo, 2013, Siaya, Kenya (photo by Mary Clare Kidenda)

   

  Finished: A Luo Dignitary Stool “Kom Nyaluo”

   

  Variety Designs of Finished Kom Nyaluo, 2019, Karen, Kenya (photo by Mary Clare Kidenda)

   

  When Sara went to the US for the inauguration of Mr Obama as president in January 2009 Mama Sarah carried a similar stool. In 2015 when President Obama visited Kenya, he was given  a traditional Luo stool (Langat, 2015).

  

  Kom Nyaluo Created by Luberastus Onyango, Wood, glass beads, metal, 2020 Smithsonian National Museum of African Art.

   

   

   

  Luberastus Onyango was a renowned Kom Nyaluo craftsman (he died in 1988) whose stools have been given to at least 2 US presidents as gifts President, including John F. Kennedy and Barrack Obama.

  

  Variety Designs of Finished Kom Nyaluo, 2019, Karen, Kenya (photo by Mary Clare Kidenda)

   

  A generation of Kenyan artists and designers are translating their view of Kenyan design into beautifully crafted products and creating an aesthetic diverse as the tribes and cultures that make up Kenya. This is evident in the JKS in the preservation and modification of the designs like Kom Nyaluo through a traditional apprenticeship that is the critical training methodology of apprenticeship used in Jua Kali Associations. This is evident with the continued production of Kom Nyaluo because of for its cultural utility and aesthetic functionality in the contemporary modern spaces. Artisans and designers are to re-direct and co-create new narratives that re-position philosophical discourse on aesthetics, among other contemporary debates. A generation of Kenyan artists and designers are translating their view of Kenyan design into beautifully crafted products and creating an aesthetic diverse as the tribes and cultures that make up Kenya.

   

  References

  • Biko, J. (2010). When in Kisumu, make sure you visit the museum. Eastern African Publication. https://www.theeastafrican.co.ke/tea/magazine/when-in-kisumu-make-sure-you-visit-the-museum--1297986
  • Deisser, A.-M., & Njuguna, M. (2016). Conservation of natural and cultural heritage in Kenya: A cross-disciplinary approach. UCL Press.
  • Hino, H., Langer, A., Lonsdale, J., & Stewart, F. (2019). From Divided Pasts to Cohesive Futures: Reflections on Africa. Cambridge University Press.
  • Hoehler-Fatton, C. (1996). Women of fire and spirit: History, faith, and gender in Roho religion in western Kenya. Oxford University Press.
  • Langat, P. (2015). Mama Sarah reveals her special gift to Obama during visit. Nation. https://nairobinews.nation.africa/mama-sarah-reveals-her-special-gift-to-obama-during-kenyan-visit/
  • Lutta, C. (2015). The Traditional Levirate Custom as Practiced by Luo Of Kenya. University of Gavle.
  • Madut, K. K. (2020). The Luo people in South Sudan: Ethnological heredities of East Africa. Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
  • Maina, S. M., Rukwaro, R. W., & Onyango, W. H. (2017). Infusing Design In The Jua Kali (Informal Sector) Production Processes. Journal of Humanities and Social Science, 3(2), 1–12.
  • Ndeda, M. A. J. (2019). Population movement, settlement and the construction of society to the east of Lake Victoria in precolonial times: The western Kenyan case. The East African Review [Online], 52.
  • Ojwang, H. H. (2021). A study of Luo Ethnobotanical Terminology with implications for Lexicographic Practice. Lifelong Education Material Publishers.
  • Prince, R., & Geissler, W. (2008). Becoming “One Who Treats”: A Case Study of a Luo Healer and Her Grandson in Western Kenya. Anthropology & Education Quarterly, 32(4), 447–4.
  • Somjee, S. (1993). Material culture of Kenya. East African Educational Publishers.

  

  Osuanyi Quaicoo Essel

  Pan-African collective memory: Sociocultural power and identity making on indigenous stools from Ghana and Kenya

   

  Indigenous stools play significant roles in Ghanaian and Kenyan cultures and societies, especially, among the Akan and Masai ethnic groups in the two respective countries. Stools in the sociocultural context serve many functions. One of the primary functional roles is that, it serves as object for sedentary purposes. It is used as a utilitarian object for sitting, welcoming visitors, relaxation for people, for example, family and friends. In Ghana, it is customary to offer a visitor a chair (stool) by way of welcoming, serving him/her water, before asking the visitor of his/her motive for the visit. In the first instance, a visitor is given a sit to relax, followed by cup of water for drinking before asking the visitor to give purpose for the visit. Offering a visitor a chair shows an overt acceptance and respect for his/her presence. This traditional etiquette of serving visitors is ingrained the sociocultural life of both Ghana and Kenya.

   

  Amongst the Akan of Ghana, a visitor is usually given a traditional stool as a seat that may befit his/her status in the traditional society or culture. A family may have different stools: those for showcasing power and authority of its user, honouring guests, and everyday usage by the household. The usage of stools in this context depicts its status-defining tendencies.

   

  Apart from signifying status of individuals, stools, among the Akan of Ghana symbolises the authority of the ethnic or nation states. Stools in Ghana, generally serves as a symbolic soul of the society which links people to the traditional leadership (Antubam, 1963; Amenuke et al, 1991). The stool carries authoritative presence and signifies leadership concept. Warriors, clan heads, chiefs, kings used it to signify their status.

   

  Stools serve as scared and authoritative object in the traditional chieftaincy institution of the southern part of Ghana. Kings/chiefs are enstooled in southern Ghana while those at northern part are enskinned. This implies that in the cultural rituals in the making of Kings/chiefs, stools are inevitable. Amongst the chiefdom, there are several ritualistic uses of stool. Some stools in the court of a chief may be used only once in his or her lifetime. Some are also used once a year during traditional festivities while some are used on daily bases.

   

  As an object strongly connected with power and authority, the Ghanaian stool has three basic parts: the arc-shaped top, the middle portion and the flat base. Its arc-shaped top symbolises loving embrace of women or the concept of motherliness (Amenuke et al, 1991; Antubam, 1963). The middle portion usually gives the stool its name based on the symbol used in representing a concept or idea. The name of the of a stool could be based on a proverb, Adinkra symbol (Figure 1), traditional emblem or idea. For example, the stool in Figure 1 derived its name from the Adinkra symbol which has been stylised to occupy the middle portion, hence the name Nyansapow Stool.

   

  

   Figure 1: Nyansapow (Wisdom knot) stool, wood, Ghana National Museum, Photo: the author.

   

  The recognition of the presence of God in the society, gender roles and the presence of children is also acknowledged by the middle part of the stool. Design of a stool may adopt basic beliefs and practices of symbolic significance to the society in general. The symbolic adaptation speaks to the visual presentation of Ghanaian societal values including concept of societal functions, cosmic beliefs, family and gender roles.

   

  As a utilitarian object, the stool plays vital roles in the rites of passage (birth, puberty rites, marriage and death) in indigenous Ghanaian and Kenyan cultures in different context. In indigenous Masai culture, stools are used by husbands as object of announcing their eminent visit to their wives on rotational basis. In many African societies, marrying more than one woman is an accepted norm just as same sex marriage are acceptable in other continents of the world. African society holds polygamy as a culture and not in negative perspective as non-African wrongly perceives it. Masai men with more than one wife usually build their houses in circular orientation, allocating a room each to the wives. The house of the man is situated in the middle of the circular-arranged houses. With this traditional set up, the stool is used as a preserve for the husband to signal his presence and authority. To announce his official intention of visiting one of the wives in the same compound, he sends his messenger to send his stool to one of the wives he intended to visit. By seeing and receiving the stool, the wife interprets this symbolic gesture to mean official announcement of her husband’s visit.

   

  Figure 2: Traditional Kenyan stool used in negotiating visitation to wives, Found in the personal collection Mary Clare Kidenda. Kenya, Photo: the author.

   

  The design of the Masai stool of Kenyan (Figure 2) varies from that of the Akan of Ghana. The Maasai stool features a circular-shaped top and prominent three-legged phallus-shaped upright stands.  Usually decorated with traditional Masai beads, the top of the stool has bowl-shaped surface that serves as a comfortable receptor of the buttocks of the user. The tip of the phallus-shaped stands touches the ground and gently bends inward, and depicts crown-shaped cork memetic of the phallus. These observable characteristic features symbolise the presence and potency of the manhood in procreation. Despite its simplistic appearance, the stool creates a collective memory of marital relationships and the supervisory power of males and the loving embrace of women. Interestingly, this depiction to the African, is not a show of chauvinism but a reminder to males to protect and care for women within their power. Generally, having secret rendezvous or extra marital affairs is frond up by society. Performing official marital rights to marry a lady is the traditional expectation rather than having them as mistresses.

   

  In Ghana, the head of a clan, warrior, chief/king and queen mothers uses the stool to symbolise authority. For that matter, the presidential seat was fashioned with inspiration from the shape of the stool. Despite the difference in design concept of the Kenyan and Ghanaian stools, both signify a collective memory of marital relationships, idea of procreation, leadership authority and the loving embrace of women in the society.

  References

  • Amenuke, S. K., Dogbe, B. K., Asare, S. K., Ayiku, F. D. &  Bafoe, A. General knowledge in Art for senior secondary schools. Evans Brothers Limited.
  • Antubam, K. (1963). Ghana’s heritage of culture. Koehler & Amelang.
  • Asihene, E. V. (1978). Understanding the traditional art of Ghana. Associated University Presses

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  Ngugi Waweru

   

  Preparation in Nairobi

  The Wakujuu collective (link) was invited to Documenta in 2022. The process that started from there has been long, not only to make the art work to be presented in Kassel, but also to become part of Lumbung, the concept the curators proposed. We went through a long process coming up with ideas, collecting materials, shaping it, discussing among ourselves as artists and also with the artistic team from the Lumbung Network. In addition, we decided, before we take our exhibition to Germany, we do it here in Nairobi to share it with our community, fellow artists and other people. Thus, we started local workshops with different people, artists, photographers, musicians and community members. These workshops led to a huge festival in the community in 2021 which was part of our offsite project for documenta, together with the exhibition we did in Nairobi. The idea was to share with our community what we bring to Kassel.

   

  

  Workshop in Nairobi (Courtesy the artist)

   

  It’s important to mention that in our collective, all individual artists have their own ideas. So, we started to look at the objective for the whole collective. We discussed and then we decided that every individual artist does his own artwork, but we discussed as a collective, supporting each other, giving ideas, criticizing.

   

  Preparation in Kassel

  When we came to Kassel, we brought some material with us and we found other material there. At the Documenta we were supported by a team. It was challenging, but still most enjoyable and it created a lot of learning.

   

  For instance, we were excited to work together with Instar from Cuba, Britto-Arts Trust from Bangladesh and Wakali Wood from Uganda, as we were sharing the same spaces. The idea of Lumbung is sharing. And it doesn't matter what you're sharing: stories, food, materials or tools. We got to sit together and discuss also with Jatiwangi Art Factory. We lived like a family. And this is the most memorable thing that I will take with me forever, not only with the Lumbung members, but with the Kassel community. It's a thing you wish to repeat over and over.

   

  When we were invited to come to Germany the first time in 2021, there were incidents of racism. And I started feeling I don't want to go to Europe. But this time it was different, apart from the antisemitism accusations that seemed to halt the whole event.  Even with the German people with whom we worked at Documenta halle we just connected immediately; we just became family.

   

  Our art works at documenta

  The different artworks we made for Kassel had different themes, but all tackling what is happening in the world, not only in Mukuru slum (where we are based in Nairobi^[1]). The world is one big village and we all have the same challenges that are affecting us as humans, like climate change, war, economic hardship, failed systems, pandemics and so on. When you look at the world, it's fragile, it's dangerous, and it’s not livable. Everything is tough. But there are also good stories.

   

  

  Construction of the tunnel in Kassel (Courtesy the artist)

   

  The tunnel

  For the entrance to Documenta Halle, where we exhibited our works, we used the corrugated iron sheets that the houses are made from in Mukuru. Our installation started with a tunnel, built by Kimathi Kaaria and Lazarus Tumbuti from our collective. You enter the tunnel and hear a sound. You go inside and you don't see anything. There is just darkness, and you hear this sound, recorded randomly in the streets in Mukuru.

   

  The title of the installation is “Wakija Kwetu… ”. It is a Swahili name that means: “When they come to our home they get to know us better.” The sound is bringing you to Mukuru. The idea is to move you from Kassel to Mukuru and give the impression how it feels like to be in the streets there. And when you go inside, you see the corrugated iron sheets, you see the walls of our houses. You have this feeling of being in Mukuru.

   

  Inside you are welcomed by three installations, ‘misingi wa nyumani’ by Joseph ‘Weche’ Waweru, ‘wrapped reality’ by Shabu Mwangi and ‘kahio kugi gatemaga o mwene’ done by Ngugi Waweru.

   

  

  Inside the tunnel (Courtesy the artist)

   

  Ngugi Waweru. Kahio kugi gatemaga o mwene. Used knives, motorbike chains, corrugated iron sheets. 2022

  The situation of the world is the theme of my work “kahio kugi gatemaga o mwene”, in which I used old knives. I heard from many people, that the world is beautiful and brutal at the same time, it's scary. And I said to them: “Exactly, it's scary now to be in the world.” There was COVID, there is war, there is hunger - it's scary. It's like you are surrounded with death or illness.

   

  Ngugi Waweru. kahio kugi gatemaga o mwene. Used knives, motorbike chains, corrugated iron sheets. 2022 (Courtesy the artist. Photo Avi Sooful)

   

  My artistic process always starts in the brain and how I feel when observing the surrounding. For my Documenta work, I was studying those people who come to the community in Nairobi to sharpen knives for the butchers. I realized that they sharpen the knives over and over again until they are worn out. That led me to knives and I started collecting them long time ago. I didn't know what I will do with them. But, when we started talking in our collective about the exhibition, I came across a proverb: Kahio kuhiga muno gatemaga o mwene. It is a Kikuyu proverb that means “When a knife is too sharp, it cuts the owner.” I remembered that I had these sharp knives. This is how I came up with this idea of my art work for documenta fifteen.

   

  In the older days before we were colonized proverbs were used to educate or warn people. In this case I used the proverb to warn people. This Kikuyu proverb warns against the possibility of being harmed by one’s own decisions. The human quest for advancement in various spheres­­ (technology, education, religion, economies, or colonizing other planets, etc.) is also marked by a growing distance between people and the qualities that makes us human beings – our capacity for love, kindness, care, understanding, sharing, community. Just as a knife is eroded as it is sharpened repeatedly, so are we made less and less human by the actions we take to adapt and survive within our present society.

   

  

  Ngugi Waweru. kahio kugi gatemaga o mwene. Used knives, motorbike chains, corrugated iron sheets. 2022 (Courtesy the artist. Photo G. Tenter)

   

  Background

  But we have also good stories, the Wajukuu story, our story, e.g.. This story is creating hope where there is no hope. Building community and togetherness. Sharing is what we are doing to solve our issues, as artists, as a community. The world can learn from us. It doesn't matter where you come from, it doesn't matter what you have or what you don't have: We all have challenges. We have to come together and find solutions.

   

  Before the white man came to Africa, art was part of our life. When a child was born there was a ritual, a dance and a song to welcome the child into the family/community. In other traditions there was painting of the house. When the white man came, all of this was demonized. They forced us to start living their life. Even in school, we learn about Picasso or Leonardo da Vinci, but there were African artists whom we never heard from. They were masters, and the elders taught the young. Since we went through the white man’s education, art is defined according to the name. Now it's art, before it was our lifestyle.

   

  When the colonizers came, they took away three most important things, our land, our freedom and our religion. When they left they gave back our land and some part of our freedom but they never gave back our altars. What the white man also left is capitalism. But, with capitalism there is no way to connect with our Gods and our planet. Capitalism creates appetite for profits. With this appetite we destroy our home, our earth in the quest for riches. The capitalism system all over the world is suppressing our spirituality, our creativity, and our being human. It's making people to be workers, not free people or free thinkers. It took millions of colonizers’ soldiers, hundreds of years to disconnect us from our true being and our true Gods. What we are doing as Wajukuu Artists is like a tear drop in the ocean, but we are able to ignite a spark that will connect us to our roots. Our role in the community is to ignite a spark of change and alternative way of thinking.

   

  When we started to make art in Mukuru, the kids came where we were worked. At first we chased them away. But they would come again and again, because kids are attracted to the good things and art attracted them. After a few unsuccessful attempts to chase them away we decided to take them in. We realized if we don’t take and train them they will grow with the same vices we grew up with. For us, it's not about teaching them to be artists, but to create a platform for the kids to express themselves and give them an alternative education. We intend to find land to start practicing agriculture, teaching kids how to take care of the soil, to take care of the plants, the trees, and the environment, and also to reconnect with our spirituality, with our roots. This means, we teach kids our traditions. We also incorporate traditional dancers and traditional instruments in order for us to go back to our ways, not necessarily exactly, but to have a connection with our past.

   

  published February 2025

   

  ^[1]           (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mukuru_slums)

  

  Johannes Kirschenmann

  Documenta

  For over half a century, documenta in Kassel was considered the most important exhibition of contemporary art in Europe and beyond. It marked the respective current state of the art discourse in and for the Global North. The documenta in 2002, curated by the Nigerian-American Okwui Enwezor, corrected the existing narrow focus on art mainly from America and Europe for the first time.

   

  Twenty years later, in 2022, documenta was curated (again for the first time) from the Global South and additionally by a collective: ruangrupa from Jakarta. ruangrupa organized this documenta under the theme “lumbung”, the Indonesian name for a shared rice barn. Applying the lumbung ideal to the art world means that artists and collectives should work together sharing knowledge, resources and ideas. Instead of the purely market-oriented art business, the exhibition should focus on social, ecological and economic sustainability. Thus, the curators did not only ask the artists to present artworks, but offered support for their collective work in the public space. This is one of the reasons why, in addition to the existing museum spaces, numerous other places such as old factories or churches in Kassel were included as shared spaces.

   

  An outstanding example of the implementation of the Lumbung concept was the Wajukuu Art Project working in the slums of Nairobi. (Wajukuu is Kiswahili for grandchildren, or other relations of the second generation.) Wajukuu's installations at Documenta drew on used materials, furniture and everyday objects from the slums. In this way, they offered an aesthetic as well as socio-political examination of questions of identity:

   

  

  Entrance to the Documenta Halle through Wajukuu's tunnel (Courtesy the artist)

   

  Anyone who wanted to visit the documenta-Halle in Kassel, a modern hall with a glass façade built in 1992, first had to pass through an installation by Wajukuu: a tunnel-like, dark corridor made of corrugated iron, rusty Mabati, a building material commonly used in the Mukuru slum. “In reference to the vernacular architecture of Maasai housing, the meandering tunnel that contained the installations was covered by thin dark-brown reeds.” (https://www.textezurkunst.de/de/articles/eric-otieno-sumba-documenta-sell-the-vision/) The contrast between this noisy, dark scrapyard atmosphere and the light-flooded modernity and transparent rationality of the documenta hall could hardly be starker. In the tunnel, you could hear dogs barking, engines rattling and sirens wailing.

   

  During the creation process two other worlds collided: “In a ‘Post Documenta Artist Talk’ (Link) on October 13, 2022, two members of the collective reported that it took some negotiation to obtain clearance to build the tunnel without professional architectural guidance. The artists convinced the two firms that had been commissioned for construction to allow the structure to be built outside of construction norms and standards.” https://www.textezurkunst.de/de/articles/eric-otieno-sumba-documenta-sell-the-vision/#id4

   

  

  Inside the tunnel (Courtesy the artist)

   

  At the far end of this tunnel, visitors (with their predominantly Western-influenced view) stood in front of enigmatic sculptures. These were again made from used materials from the slum. Together with videos on screens, they encouraged visitors to reflect on life in the slum and prompted speculation about their possible use and meaning. Soft materials, for example, formed a resting place in the size of a typical one-room dwelling (Joseph Waweru Wangui). Next to it was another installation by Shabu Mwangi: a mirror set in a bed of sand, with a cloud floating above it, a wickerwork of bent woods, with two human figures. Behind them emerged two half-arches, formed from used sharp knives: the work of Ngugi Waweru “Kahiu kogi gatemaga mwene” (“If a knife is too sharp, it will hurt the owner”).
  
  

  

  Ngugi Waweru. kahio kugi gatemaga o mwene. Used knives, motorbike chains, corrugated iron sheets. 2022 (Courtesy the artist. Photo Avi Sooful)

   

  This work of art, which is not quite two meters high, stands in a basin filled with reddish, sandy earth - the edge of the basin is covered with motorcycle chains. On this "pedestal" is a construction made again of corrugated iron, which is covered with more motorcycle chains and, above all, sharp meat knives. In two large fields at the front, which are at a slight angle to each other, 'streams' of knives each frame a large opening in which the rusty corrugated metal construction is visible. For the viewer, it is above all the knives that make an impression. (They can also be found - less ornamentally arranged - on the back of the sculpture). This effect is certainly due to the fact that - as with El Anatsui e.g. - their ornamentation and the glitter of the flashing blades unfold their splendor from a reduced colorfulness. A splendor, however, which - with the narrow, long blades - is quickly associated with violence and destruction, torture and death, threat and power.

   

  

  Ngugi Waweru. kahio kugi gatemaga o mwene. Backside (Courtesy the artist. Photo Ernst Wagner)

   

  In respect to these associations, images from European cultural memory come to mind, from Caravaggio's Beheading of Holofernes by Judith to Arman's "accumulations" with knives or Marina Abramović's performances. Immediate impact and these associations play together to steer a perception between beauty and threat - in the given context obviously a symbolic expression of the slum experience. This specific form of aestheticization has also been questioned by art critics: is the work about the authenticity of the real experience or does it not rather serve a certain cliché of African slums? (https://www.textezurkunst.de/de/articles/eric-otieno-sumba-documenta-sell-the-vision/)

   

  However one decides, the impression of the work that it leaves behind remains, for which its artistic quality (according to the standards of the Global North) is decisive: it is visually striking, formally consistent and coherent, it draws on familiar aesthetics while at the same time is innovating, and it remains open for interpretation, the viewer is invited to. This artistic quality was certainly also decisive in Wajukuu being awarded the Arnold Bode Prize in 2022, a prize that is awarded every two years by the city of Kassel to outstanding contemporary artists. The concept of creation, the relationship between the work and its anchoring in the social process in the slum was certainly a decisive factor as well. Thua, the jury of the Bode Prize has also honored an important social project and acknowledged the work to improve living conditions in the slum.

   

  

  Award ceremony in Kassel 2022 (Courtesy the artist)

   

  With the awarding of the prize, all the voices that did not see "l'art pour l'art" thinking in the Wajukuu Project, but rather the will to change something in the reality of life with the help of art, were heard once again. "The Art Project uses art to create a future that shapes and improves the path for the next generation. Art forms the core of Wajukuu, not just as a practice, but as a way of life with tangible implications in the lives of its community." (Ann Mbuti: From beginnings. Laudation for the award of the Arnold Bode Prize 2022; source of the text: Cultural Office of the City of Kassel)

  
  Finally, the city of Kassel purchased this particular work by Ngugi Waweru, "Kahiu kogi gatemaga mwene", for its collection in the Neue Galerie (https://www.kassel.de/buerger/kunst_und_kultur/documenta/index.php). Now, it is isolated as a single work by a single artist, which was originally a contribution to a group presentation of a collective and which (together with the corrugated iron tunnel) was perceived as a unit. The transfer of the sculpture to the museum thus raises questions about the loss of context and the resulting transformation of meaning: Collective art practice and social commitment become (another) work of art in a museum, which at best still documents the Lumbung approach of 2022. Without context, without informative videos about the artists' work, without the other sculptures by the Wajukuu artists, we are confronted with an aesthetic object that continues to fascinate, but has lost an important dimension, its context.

  
  Accordingly, the interpretations of Waweru's now solitary sculpture were strangely sparse. The title of his work was interpreted in all publications as a warning to people in a meritocratic and consumer society, according to Ann Mbuti in her tribute at the award ceremony. Not a word about the sculpture itself, its materials, its atmosphere and effect. Not the question of what we see and feel. Arnold Bode, the ingenious stager of modern art, would also have awarded the prize to Wajukuu, but he would have strongly objected to the isolated presentation of Waweru's sculpture after the documenta.

   

  Published February 2025

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  Prudence Lau

  State Theatre, originally named Empire Theatre, was opened in 1952. According to interviews with veterans from cultural circles, the Theatre was the “very origin of Hong Kong’s entry to the world of high arts” (South China Morning Post, Jan 11, 2017). It was Hong Kong’s cultural hub and only to be eclipsed by the City Hall that opened four years later in 1962. Located in North Point on Hong Kong Island, it was founded by a Russian-Jewish impresario Harry Odell, a legendary giant in the history of Hong Kong entertainment. Odell had started a film distribution company ‘Harry Oscar Odell’s Commonwealth Enterprises Corporation Ltd.’ in the post-war years and arranged for internationally acclaimed artists to perform in Hong Kong and in the theatre, including the late Taiwanese famous pop singer Teresa Teng, the late British tenor Peter Pears and Katherine Dunham’s Broadway dance company (South China Morning Post, March 2, 2016).

  
  The Theatre was also a popular venue for live shows such as Chinese drama, opera and musical performances. The roof of the auditorium is suspended from external parabolic concrete roof trusses, which are exposed to the public and serves as a prominent feature and trademark of the building. This ingenious design also freed the auditorium from pillars and allowed for flexible internal arrangements. Designed by a Chinese architect S.F. Liu, the Theatre is moreover fronted by a large decorative relief panel with the artwork by renowned Lingnan artist Mui Yu-tin featuring the ancient Chinese tale of ‘The imperial warlord Dong Zhuo and the legendary beauty Diao Chan’. Together with the framed squared architraves and banded windows harmoniously fronting the elevation of the Theatre, there is a distinct Modernist and Art Deco quality to the whole building.

   

  In 1959, it was renamed State Theatre, and due to practical reasons the building has since then been converted into a theatre-cum-shopping complex, and a multi-storey block with shops, residential flats and a night club was opened in the adjacent site. The Theatre finally ceased to operate in 1997, and has today changed its use to a billiard centre with removable partitions sealing off the upper deck of the auditorium. The rest of the complex currently consists of a rundown shopping mall, still in function, and small residential flats.

   

  In July 2015, a local property developer started to purchase various property rights within the State Theatre complex, and rumours of demolition and redevelopment of the site started to spread. Eventually, after substantial consolidated public efforts towards the Theatre, it was finally given a Grade 1 historic building status in March 2017. The State Theatre, narrowly escaping demolition, is only the third building after the Bank of China (built 1952) and the City Hall (built 1962) listed as a Grade 1 historic building in Hong Kong that is built after 1950, indicating a flaw in local heritage policy to value modern built heritage.

   

   

  published January 2020

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  Bongani Mkhonza

  In this chapter, I trace the original source of the image that inspired the artwork by Sethembile Msezane titled, ‘Chapungu- The Day Rhodes Fell (2015). I envision that to get to the bottom of it, the etymology of the word ‘chapungu’ as used in the title of the artwork will have to be retraced and given context. The second section of the chapter discusses the content of the artwork in relation to how it endeavors to employ the old classical imagery in an attempt to negotiate new meanings. Lastly, borrowing from a family of critical discourse analysis theories (Fairclough and Wodak 1997; van Dijk 1997; Wodak 2001b) the strategies of monumentalisation as constructed by the dominant political culture will be analysed.

  
  What is in the title? The etymology of the word ‘chapungu’.
  
  The word chapungu is associated with a language used by the Shona people found in Zimbabwe. The Shona language developed as part of the greater Bantu heritage populating the central and southern Africa. According to the online VaShona project dictionary, the word chapungu refers to: “Any large, rapacious bird of the Falcon family, esp. of the general Aquila and Haliaeetus. The eagle is remarkable for strength, size, graceful figure, keenness of vision, and extraordinary flight” (https://vashona.com/en/dictionary/sna/chapungu). The Shona tribe of Zimbabwe created myths about the chipungu bird. Some elements of those myths seem to have been inspired by other world’s mythologies of birds with mythical powers. In the beliefs of the Shona, “the bird called chapungu (bateleur eagle) is a good omen, bringing protection and good fortune to a community” (Muzari 2013:1). The chapungu bird is also seen as a symbol of strength hope and renewal. The attributes used by the Shona people to describe the myths and beliefs about the chapungu bird seem to flow into the metaphor of a phoenix bird. Accordingly, I maintain that the context is key in recapturing the derivation of meaning behind the title of Msezane’s artwork. Shedding light on the etymology of the word ‘chapungu’ brings us to appreciate the connection between Cecil John Rhodes and the Shona people of Zimbabwe. Of course, to assume that the title ‘Chapungu - The Day Rhodes Fell’ (2015) is not connected to Cecil John Rhodes might be too farfetched. Evidence drawn from history shows that there is a direct relationship between Rhodes and Zimbabwe (formerly known as Rhodesia). Moreover, when you ask the Shona people where does the word Zimbabwe originate from, they will inform you that it is a Shona word for ‘Stone houses’. Stone houses are a “historical stone structure known as Great Zimbabwe, which is the second largest in Africa after the Egyptian pyramids” (https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/role-cecil-john-rhodes-british-south-african-company-conquest-matabeleland). Cecil John Rhodes and the British South African Company (BSAC) invaded Zimbabwe in 1890. After the invasion, the lands were named the Southern and Northern Rhodesia, to honour Cecil John Rhodes (https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/cecil-john-rhodes). This connection enlightens us in terms of what might have probed the artist to use the Shona word, ‘Chapungu’ as part of a title of her work.

   

  Old image new meanings
  The foreground of the artwork depicts an image of the artist spreading her arms far wide projecting a takeoff position. It is known knowledge that humans will never fly by flapping arms with wings. Therefore, this self-defining act transforms her incapable human physicality into a metaphysical creature that is capable and ready to fly. The act by this metaphysical creature can also be received as its yearning for freedom and justice. Moreover, it also becomes a creature that is able to defy and transcends time and space. In her artists statement Msezane (2016) concedes that “she employs strategies of creating self-definition that are deeply rooted in looking at her own past, be it through spirituality or relearning South African history and its alternate narratives” (Msezane 2016). The image of this creature is strategically deployed for the audience to perhaps liken its agency to that of a myth of the phoenix rising from the ashes.

   

  Associated with the temple of the Sun in Egypt, and re-invented in Greek mythology, the story of the phoenix has been appraised as one of the world’s most-loved stories. It is the mythology of the world of modern monsters as told and retold by writers, philosophers, artists and poets through generations. Tacitus and Ovid are the two great authors from the classical period who stand out when painting a picture of the phoenix mythology. Perhaps it is mostly because of the way that Tacitus ventures out to humanise the attributes and actions of the phoenix and he refers to it as ‘he/him’. While, Ovid negates the phoenix of subject pronouns which are only used when referring to people. In telling his story, Ovid refers to the phoenix as ‘it’.

   

  Tacitus narrated the story in the following detail, “in the consulship of Paulus Fabius (A.D. 34) the miraculous bird known to the world by the name of the Phoenix, after disappearing for a series of ages, revisited Egypt. It was attended in its flight by a group of various birds, all attracted by the novelty, and gazing with wonder at so beautiful an appearance. The first care of the young bird as soon as fledged, and able to trust to his wings, is to perform the obsequies of his father. However, this duty is not undertaken rashly. He collects a quantity of myrrh, and to try his strength makes frequent excursions with a load on his back. When he has gained sufficient confidence in his own vigour, he takes up the body of his father and flies with it to the altar of the Sun, where he leaves it to be consumed in flames of fragrance” (Bulfinch 19AD:[sp]).

   

  Ovid’s story is almost similar the one told by Tacitus. Ovid’s version is narrated as follows: “Most beings spring from other individuals; but there is a certain kind which reproduces itself. The Assyrians call it the Phoenix. It does not live on fruit or flowers, but on frankincense and odoriferous gums. When it has lived five hundred years, it builds itself a nest in the branches of an oak, or on the top of a palm tree. In this it collects cinnamon, and spikenard, and myrrh, and of these ‘materials builds a pile on which it deposits itself, and dying, breathes out its last breath amidst odours. From the body of the parent bird, a young Phoenix issues forth, destined to live as long as its predecessor. When this has grown up and gained sufficient strength, it lifts its nest from the tree (its own cradle and its parent’s sepulchre), and carries it to the city of Heliopolis in Egypt, and deposits it in the temple of the Sun” (Bulfinch 19AD:[sp]). To this end, Msezane’s (2015) artwork references a known classical image of the phoenix to negotiate her struggle to recover her lost forms of visibility as a black woman in South Africa. In this way, it can be said that she is born again. Msezane (2016) is quoted as expressing that, “by examining past and present representations of black women…, in public and private domains, [she] focuses on the omission of iconic black women in history and mythology” (Gallery Momo 2016:[sp]).

   

  At the background, the stage of the statue of ‘Rhodes falling’ is set. The site is loaded with the ambience of euphoria, yet almost similar to the scene of tragedy; it also gives you a baffling feeling of trepidation. A sense of uneasiness perhaps also emanates from an inferred ever presence of violence. Intended or imagined, the violence is visibly signaled by a force of a crane removing the statue. To anyone with eyes and curiosity, the crane’s arm also propounds an idea of a machine-gun. Unlike Camus’ (1942) existential theatre of the absurd, this background theatre in Msezane’s artwork seems to seal the fate of Rhodes, as if ‘he’ was going to be destroyed either way. Either by the truck that is physically depicted removing ‘him’ to a point of obscurity or by the machine gun.

   

  Monuments and dominant political power
  In concluding notes, monuments form part of a critical discourse in the legitimisation of a dominant political power structure. The public installation of powerful elites as iconic figures is either a precursor or descendant of the formulation of a nation. Either way, monuments and monumentalisation are a political construct that is trapped within the discourse of inclusion and exclusion. In response to this dilemma, Msezane’s artwork (2015) deploys a struggle to affirm the existence of the excluded in the formulation the powerful symbols for the nation. Most of all, her work challenges the percieved role of national symbols and commemoration spaces as key features in the portrayal of women as invisible subjects in history. As a young women growing up in Cape Town South Africa, Msezane looked around and saw no reflection of herself represented in public space such as the statues and monuments. Her performance piece where her female black body stands upright holding her wings straight out to the sides as if a phoenix rising from the ashes is indeed an act of self-affirmation. Msezane asks for no permissions but use the re-imaging as a strategy to re-insect her female black body as evidence of her existence.

   

  Bibliography

  • Birch, D. 2009: The Oxford Companion to English Literature (7 ed.) The Theatre of the Absurd (1942). Oxford University Press.
  • Bulfinch, T. 2019: AD Bulfinch’s mythology: the age of fable: the age of chivalry: legends of Charlemagne. New York: Modern Library.
  • Fairclough, N. and Wodak, R. 1997: Critical discourse analysis, in T. van Dijk (ed.), Discourse Studies: A Multidisciplinary Introduction. Vol. 2. London: Sage, pp. 258–84.
  • http://www.krugerpark.co.za/africa_bateleur_eagle.html (Accessed 20 January 2019).
  • https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/role-cecil-john-rhodes-british-south-african-company-conquest-matabeleland (Accessed 19 January 2019).
  • https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/cecil-john-rhodes (Accessed 19 January 2019).
  • http://www.unwomen.org/en/news/in-focus/women-and-the-sdgs (Accessed 23 January 2019).
  • https://vashona.com/en/dictionary/sna/chapungu (Accessed 20 January 2019).
  • Msezane, S. 2016: Artist statement. Gallery Momo, Johannesburg.
  • Msezane, S. 2017: Kwasuka Sukela: Re-imagined Bodies of a (South African) 90s Born Woman. Exhibition catalogue 2017, Gallery Momo, Cape Town
  • Muzari, G. 2013: When a luck-bringing bird falters. The Standard News. Zimbabwe.
  • van Dijk, T. (ed.) 1997: Discourse Studies: A Multidisciplinary Introduction. 2 Vols. London: Sage.
  • Wodak, R. 2001: What CDA is about — a summary of its history, important concepts and its developments, in R. Wodak and M. Meyer (eds), Methods of Critical Discourse Analysis. London: Sage, pp. 1–13.

   

   

  published November 2019

   

   

   

  

  Janina Totzauer

  "Rhodes Must Fall" - Personal Experiences of a Guest Student in Cape Town

  
  The protests around Rhodes Must Fall were a unique and cathartic experience for me as a German guest student in Cape Town in 2015. When I arrived in January, the city was on fire. Literally, because it was the hottest summer in a long time and Table Mountain had caught fire; figuratively, because something was boiling under the students. While the fire-fighting helicopters thundered over our heads, I caught up within a few weeks what the German school books on colonial history denied me. Cecil Rhodes, great colonial ruler and self-proclaimed philanthropist, had once donated large tracts of land to the University of Cape Town, securing for himself an imposing statue on the main campus. Sitting on a throne, the eternal bronze image gazes down from the heights of Table Mountain to the plains of Cape Town, the so-called Cape Flats, where even today many of the poorest of the poor live. The only problem with his patronage is that he illegally appropriated the building land that secured him the eternal gratitude of the university, befitting a colonial ruler. In other words, he stole the land from the locals and drove them out.
  
  Twenty-one years after the fall of Apartheid in South Africa, it seems overdue that such a ruler be overthrown. The first generation of "Free Borns", all South Africans born in free South Africa after 1994, had reached their third year at the University of Cape Town and they yearned for this reminder of the colonial past to fall.
  
  I remember hot afternoons spent in the streets. We demonstrated; all of us, white and black, "coloured" or "Indian" as they say in South Africa. Water bottles were passed around, the heat brought some of us to our knees. By the second demonstration, there were many more of us, hundreds. The driveway to the university was blocked. We were better organised. Water bottles, oranges and yoghurt were passed around. When I squinted puzzled at the countless milk cartons, they explained to me that they were there in case we had to wash our eyes out if the police would shoot at us with tear gas. I was still laughing. Later that afternoon, I provided milk to screaming faces and watery eyes. Art students staged performances and the main leaders fired up the crowd through the megaphone. "Rhodes Must Fall!", "Decolonise our University!" In between, old struggle songs were sung in Zulu. Songs that once accompanied the fall of Apartheid. I didn't understand a word, yet the power of the crowd pierced me. Something big was happening here, the history of the country yearned to be rewritten in the coming weeks.
  
  I pushed my way to the student-organised congress about the next demo on the main campus. I wanted to know where to help. The atmosphere was heated. There was a lot of shouting. Anger spoke from many speakers. I wanted to get involved and raised my hand when, after a while, it was announced that no white people were allowed to speak today. I couldn't believe it at first. I was raging inside. I was on your side. I had been forbidden to speak and I was outraged. To this day, that small and subtle moment is a big turning point for me. Over the next few weeks, I worked my way from indignation to the realisation of what a privilege life I must have lived if I was so outraged to be banned from speaking for once. What a democratic paradise I must have grown up, if I take it for granted that I am allowed to speak and be heard. The fact that the ban was issued because of my skin colour brought me back into the prevailing conflict. If this one ban on speaking upset me so much, how must the majority of people in South Africa have felt during Apartheid. A trauma that even the first generation "Free Borns" have not yet let go of.
  
  We were standing in front of a government building - I don't remember which one exactly - when the howling grenades went off. We were only about 40 students that day. I knew many of them from the art campus. It was hot and they kept sending white students forward to demand water from the government building's securities or to stand in the front row as a buffer against the police who besieged us. Skin colour as a defence mechanism. The demonstrators implied that whites were less likely to be attacked by the police. That they would be treated more politely and thus have their water bottles refilled. Just two small examples of grievances that seems to be out in the open in South Africa, but disappear under the colourful emblem of the "Rainbow Nation". When a small scuffle broke out between the young demonstrators and the few police officers, there were suddenly two bangs. So loud that the world seemed to sink into eternal silence afterwards. Everyone bursted apart, a young man sunk to the ground. He held his ears. He was later taken to hospital in a taxi.
  
  It is the 9th of April when the protests are heard. The university has been closed for weeks because of the demonstrations, but today everyone gathers on the main campus. Cecil Rhodes is going to fall. We can't believe it yet. A crane is ready and thick winches hang around his body. Mr Rhodes' head is dripping with red paint, his jacket decorated with graffiti for weeks. We stand on the steps at Cecil's back, also looking down on the city. The city that in a few minutes will be a bit more free. More decolonised. There is singing and dancing. For the first time in weeks, the mood is exuberant. There are hundreds of us, representatives of all political parties take the microphone again and again, wanting to make sure they were there at this historically important moment. And then it happens, the statue is lifted from its pedestal. The crowd screams, drones circle in the air. Smartphones capture everything for eternity. And when the construction fences can no longer hold back the crowd, people also dance on the truck that slowly drives a Cecil Rhodes crowned with a dirty bucket off campus. The crowd continues to dance into the evening hours and as classes tentatively resume at the university the following week, the spirit of revolution is in the air. "We have been heard". To this day, the fall of Cecil Rhodes stands for a first strike in the struggle for the decolonisation of South Africa, not only on university campuses.

   

  Published December 2021

   

  Translation by Matthew Bremner

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  Kwasi Ohene-Ayeh

   

  The Ghana National Pavilion at last year’s 58th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia served to augment the fervent energy of contemporary art already simmering in its locality. The Pavilion staged a stellar intergenerational selection of six “multi-local”¹ artists from Ghana— Felicia Ansah Abban, El Anatsui, John Akomfrah, Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, Selasi Awusi Sosu and Ibrahim Mahama— whose works range between photography, painting, film, video, and installation. Stationed in the Artiglierie within the Arsenale, the Pavilion displayed the artists' works in continuous cylindrical enclosures designed by architect David Adjaye, and executed with laterite soil couriered from Ghana. The nation’s debut outing at the Biennale, titled Ghana Freedom, summoned the “boundlessness” and euphoria in the spirit of self-determination promised in its mid-century Independence moment and epitomised in such cultural events as the World Festival of Black Arts— the first being Festival Mondial des Arts Nègres (FESMAN) which took place in 1966 in Dakar, Senegal, and then the Festival of Arts and Culture (FESTAC) which happened in Lagos, Nigeria, in 1977. “There is no longer any need to look back in the same way as an act of reclamation or reaction”, writes the curator Nana Oforiatta Ayim, since “these pathways remain with us and evolve”(Ayim, 2019, pp. 31).

   

  The emancipatory ideal summarised in the titular of the exhibition is a poignant basis for this evolution given the colonial mediation of Ghana’s formal education in general, and art education in particular (seid’ou, 2014; seid’ou, 2016). In this regard, Ghana Freedom could be said to have countenanced an approach to the practice of art that is unconstrained by the de-contextualised imposition of the beaux-arts tradition which became ingrained through colonial instruction in the Gold Coast (pre-independence Ghana) from the late-19th century to the late-1950s, and which prevailed in the postcolonial mediation from then till the first decade of the 21st century. Exhibitions of this dispensation predominantly lacked curatorial direction. Indeed, the Ghana Pavilion, however obliquely, can also be said to have announced the inventiveness of emergent exhibition practices in the country. For example, Ibrahim Mahama’s early site-oriented and itinerant exhibitions in public places is a pragmatic and critical response to the derelict infrastructural conditions an art practitioner in the country has to contend with. Mahama’s attitude to this systemic neglect is traceable to the interventionist ethic and affirmative politics of blaxTARLINES KUMASI.²

   

  It goes without saying that  the spectacular occasion of the Pavilion accumulates cultural capital for the nation in asserting a compelling place and reputation as far as the global mainstream of art is concerned— more especially for a nation which has been treated as a footnote in literature on the history of art in Africa. It is therefore our task to, so to speak, “brush history against the grain” (Benjamin, 1969, pp. 257) by practically intervening in it through such exhibition making ventures. In this vein, the success of the Pavilion highlights two major points for discussion.

   

  The first is a dialectical situation. At a time when cultural institutions and producers are enduring famishing conditions as far as state support or infrastructural systems are concerned, the state has demonstrated that it is possible to alter this fate— seeing as the Ministries of Finance and that of Tourism, Arts, and Culture, respectively supported and commissioned the Pavilion. But now that the impossible has happened, one would have thought that prioritising a National Pavilion would pave the way to launch serious longterm cultural policies ensuring continued presence in Venice itself, and also to invest in and build the necessary economic and cultural support structures for those local practitioners who are in dire need of it. As this is yet to happen, it will be crucial for Ghana to sustain the legacy of the Pavilion beyond the rhetoric of representation, even if it turns out to be a one-time affair.

   

  Secondly, turning our attention to local relevance, the intention of the organisers to, later that year,  bring the exhibition to the National Museum of Ghana to be able to show it to local audiences and to generate new knowledge has yet to materialise, for whatever reasons.³ This is unfortunate given the curator’s unequivocal concern for institution building and the “possibilities of artistic development in Ghana itself” (Ayim, 2019, pp. 140). If we keep in mind, apropos Borges, that every exhibition, at any given moment, based on its arguments or claims, “creates its own precursors” and therefore holds the potential to alter our conceptions of both past and future within that genealogy,⁴ then it presently counts as a missed opportunity not to have optimised Ghana Freedom in terms of creating history rather than solely staging one. What I mean is that the exhibition could have served as an epistemic site through which to actively produce and update the history of contemporary art in Ghana. For example, by citing⁵ or acknowledging the timeliness in the return of the exhibition to the National Museum falling on the 20th anniversary of South Meets West⁶ — the seldom talked-about contemporary art exhibition of African artists based on the continent and in the diaspora which also took place at the National Museum in 1999 with an artist lineup including Atta Kwami, Tracey Rose, and Yinka Shonibare— in addition to such “precursors” as FESMAN, FESPAC and “Authentic/Ex-centric".⁷

   

  Such an instance would have contributed to the intellectual legacy of Ghana Freedom in fulfilling the task of theorising the newly emergent curatorial and artistic paradigms in Ghana, all the while establishing the critical connections, differences, and evolutions between postcolonial and transnational antedatings of such political attitudes to exhibition making. This is especially important when we take the emancipatory promise of contemporary art seriously by considering the exhibition as a system that is not only meant for [re]producing spectacular displays, while taking the commodification of art for granted, but as one which deploys the convergence of symbolic and material consequences enveloped in the immanent tensions of history and power. Particularly when we acknowledge that the National Pavilion structure of the Venice Biennale impedes the institution from turning towards the non-imperialist substance of contemporary art.⁸

   

  It remains to be seen how far representation of culture as the sole basis of participating in such blue-chip events as the Venice Biennale can get us⁹ (or any nation with egalitarian aspirations for that matter). Let us also not forget that biennales have not always existed, nor should they necessarily always exist in the future.¹⁰ Accepting this, at least, cautions us not to take its existence as well as what it promises for granted. If we succeed in the latter it breeds conformism which can be opposite to true freedom. To boot, the present COVID-19 pandemic has gone a long way to expose the fragility of existing exhibition conventions as it threatens to revolutionize our economic, socio-cultural, health and political sectors on a planetary scale. The institutions by which we traditionally associate the production, circulation and experience of art— i.e. galleries, museums, the art market, etc.— have all suddenly ground to a halt and are facing the challenge to structurally rethink their modus operandi. Therefore the future of exhibition making, as we know it, is what is currently at stake. We are confronted with the task, now, as in previous times in history, to be more inventive with the exhibition form. Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung, artistic director of Sonsbeek (2020-2024), articulates this grammar of contingency well enough in the epigraph.

   

  Where Ghana goes from here in verifying art as an egalitarian universality and creating particular models to suit its locality is entirely up to us, its protagonists. And so the question becomes, when such real threats and crises have paled the superficiality of representation (in other words, when all the pomp and pageantry of Ghana Freedom has disappeared), what will its historical substance be posthumously based on?

   

   

  Read more on the Ghana pavilion from a different perspective: "Red Ghanaian Soil" by Natalie Göltenboth

  About Selasi Awusi Sosu's presentation at the pavilion see: Link

  About Ibrahim Mahama's "Savannah Center for Contemporary Art" in Tamale see: Link

   

   

  Footnotes

  ¹Taiye Selasi uses this term in her essay Who is Afraid of a National Pavilion? in Ayim (2019 pp.38-44).

  ²Both Mahama and Selasi Sosu are alumni of KNUST and active protagonists of blaxTARLINES who espouse these transformations. This internationally networked collective has been functioning as the contemporary art incubator in the Department of Painting & Sculpture in Ghana’s foremost Art College at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science & Technology (KNUST) since 2015, and has radically upended the hegemony of salon style display formats erstwhile ubiquitous in commercial galleries, hotel lobbies, and other spaces which had contrived the realisation of artistic potential primarily for the patronage of tourists.

  ³Nana Oforiatta Ayim confirmed in her lecture in ibid. (in June) after its opening on May 11th that the show would be at the National Museum of Ghana later that year.

  ⁴I appropriate this thought from Jorge Luis Borges in his essay Kafka and his Precursors (1951).

  ⁵By citing, I do not mean merely mentioning (since the curator succeeded in mentioning FESMAN, FESPAC and “Authentic/Ex-centric” as precursors), but through curatorial research, and coming to terms with their historical, theoretical, and aesthetic substance and formulating an argument that deals critically with the claims and implications of these events through an analysis of their significance to our own epoch. 

  ⁶South Meets West is an exhibition organized by Kunsthalle Bern and Historical Museum of Bern in collaboration with the National Museum of Ghana which happened in Accra in 1999 and travelled to Bern in 2000. The exhibition curators are Dr. Bernhard Fibicher (Kunsthalle Bern, assisted by Eszter Gyarmathy), Dr Yacouba Konaté (Université d’Abidjan-Cocody, Côte d’Ivoire), Dr. Yvonne Vera (National Gallery Bulawayo, Zimbabwe). Participating artists are Jane Alexander, Fernando Alvim, Meshac Gaba, Kendell Geers, Tapfuma Gutsa, Atta Kwami, Goddy Leye, Zwelethu Mthethwa, Tracey Rose, Yinka Shonibare, Pascale Marthine Tayou, Yacouba Touré, Minnette Vári, and Dominique Zinkpe. The catalogue included texts by Oladélé A. Bamgboyé, Dr. Bernard Fibicher, Kendell Geers, Clive Kellner, Dr. Yacouba Konaté, Atta Kwami, Simon Njami, Prof. Joe Nkrumah, Tonie Okpe and Sarah Zürcher. See South Meets West (2000).

  ⁷Oforiatta Ayim acknowledged her debt to Salah Hassan’s and Olu Oguibe’s curated exhibition at the 49th Venice Biennale in 2001, Authentic/Ex-centric: Africa In and Out of Africa. See Ayim (2019. pp. 140).

  ⁸Oforiatta Ayim commented on the problematics of this in our public conversation in op. cit. @thestudioaccra. (2019). Taiye Selasi also points at this issue in her catalog essay.

  ⁹The curator of the Pavilion, Nana Oforiatta Ayim, states her motivations for realising the Pavilion as such: “One of my driving forces [for being in Venice] is this idea of representation— of voice, of narrative— of who gets to speak the narrative.” She made this statement in a public conversation I had with her at @thestudioaccra. (2019, June 27). Ghana Pavilion Venice Biennale: Conversation with Nana Oforiatta Ayim. [Facebook post]. https://web.facebook.com/accrastudio/photos/a.1118364178194088/2491384694225356/?type=3&theater. Audio of lecture is in author’s archives, courtesy @thestudioaccra. 

  ¹⁰I appropriate this thought from Walter Benjamin who, in a similar spirit of contingency, was speaking particularly of the novel form in literature. See Benjamin (1998. pp. 89).

   

   

   

  References

   

  • Ayim, N. O. (Ed.). (2019). Ghana Freedom: Ghana Pavilion at the 58th International Art Exhibition La Biennale di Venezia [catalogue]. Koenig Books.
  • Benjamin, W. (1969). Theses on the Philosophy of History. In Hannah Arendt (Ed.) Illuminations: Essays and Reflections. Schocken Books.
  • Benjamin, W. (1998). The Author as Producer. In Understanding Brecht: Walter Benjamin. Verso.
  • Mitter, S. (2020). Art Biennials Were Testing Grounds. Now They Are Being Tested. 2020. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/01/arts/design/art-fairs-biennials-virus.html. Accessed 6th May, 2020.
  • seid’ou k. (2006). Theoretical Foundations of the KNUST Painting Programme: A Philosophical inquiry and its contextual relevance in Ghanaian Culture [Unpublished PhD Thesis]. Kumasi: KNUST.
  • seid’ou, k. (2014). Gold Coast Hand and Eye Work: A Genealogical History. Global Advanced Research Journal of History. Political Science and International Relations ISSN: 2315-506X Vol. 3(1). pp. 008-016.
  • South Meets West exhibition catalogue. 2000. Kunsthalle Bern, NÀWÁO. ISBN 3-85780-124-7.

   

   

  published May 2020

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  Stefan Eisenhofer

  Owusu-Ankomah received his basic training at Ghanatta College of Art in Accra. He was thirty years old when he moved to Bremen in Germany, where he still lives and works today. Characteristic of Owusu-Ankomah is his devotion to painting. For him the act of painting is a kind of highly concentrated ritual in which the medial properties of his body are used as memory store and energy-field generator, rather in the manner of an action artist.

   

  In the course of his life, Owusu-Ankomah's artistic work has passed through several distinct phases. From an iconographic point of view, his early work is strongly influenced by mask and rock painting traditions from all over the African continent. But it was not long before human bodies, especially his own, became the dominant subject of his work. Naked bodies in his paintings, represented in idealized and naturalistic perfection, demonstrate a shameless and very close physicalness and often seem to radiate superhuman energy. Owusu-Ankomah plays here with the beauty of the human male body and with the harmony of flowing, clear lines. These works also evoke a range of ideas inspired by the human body – the body as instrument of the soul and instrument of communication, as a universal symbol and point of intersection between the physical and the metaphysical, and as a means by which the individual constructs himself, presents himself to others, and negotiates the conditions of his belonging to the world.

   

  In his recent works up to 2008, the figures are covered with markings and signs. They originate from a variety of sources: the artist has combined traditional West African symbols, such as adinkra cloth signs, with symbols from China, America and Oceania, well-known popular logos, and symbols of his own invention. The figures melt into the backgound which consists of the same symbols, and thus become almost invisible.

   

  With these symbols and human figures that compete for space on the canvas and for the attention of the viewer, Owusu-Ankomah has created some highly dynamic and truly pulsating compositions. The works also raise questions concerning self-determination and heteronomy, the tension between the wisdom of collective worldviews and individual creativity, and the personal potential of the individual. This is particularly striking in works showing the Sankofa bird. This mythical bird is well known in large parts of West Africa and embodies the concept of "flying forward while looking back". It symbolizes the idea that one should remember the past in order to shape one's life positively in the present and the future. With its name meaning "go back and pick", the bird also stands for one of Owusu-Ankomah's guiding principles: to look for useful traditions in all parts of the world. Accordingly, Owusu-Ankomah borrows a great variety of elements from very different cultures and periods in his works. He is influenced by adinkra symbols, together with their worldviews and philosophies, but also by Michelangelo, video games and designs by popular contemporary graphic artists. In his ambition to unite elements from very different regions in one great human universal, his works become something that overcomes the borders separating individual cultures. In his search for an existential utopia, he creates a symbiosis out of these heterogeneous elements in fantastic and futuristic spaces. Thus he aims at a common "world consciousness" and global visions of the establishment of universally longed-for values, such as harmony, solidarity and non-violence.

   

  An interpretation of an early work by the artist from 1975, "Deer Hunt", can be found under the following link.

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  Esther Kibuka-Sebitosi

  The Mandela House is located in Vilakazi Street 8115, Orlando West, Soweto. Now a museum, the Mandela House Museum is where the struggle icons Winnie Madikizela Mandela and her husband Nelson Mandela lived. There, they brought up their two daughters Zenani and Zindzi. Nelson Mandela spent little time at the house as he had to go underground during the struggle between 1946 until 1990s. He was arrested in 1962.

   

  Winnie Mandela had to bring up the children while continuing the struggle. She was banished to the Free State town of Brandfort in 1977. Winnie Mandela was born in Mbongweni village, Bizana, Transkei on 26 September, 1936. She married Nelson Mandela in 1958. The marriage to a freedom fighter was a lonely one. The police often raided the Vilakazi Street 8115. Her husband was absent with meetings and amidst the turbulence she had to bring up the girls. In October 1958 she took part in the lady’s march to protest against pass laws. This was similar to the one in 1956 in Pretoria. She was an anti-apartheid activist and politician. She divorced Nelson Mandela in 1996 and was the minister of arts and culture from 1994 to 1996. She led a quiet life  and on her 80^th birthday, she was honored by family friends and politicians, including Julius Malema and the future President of South Africa, Cyril Ramaphosa, and Patricia de Lille, former mayor of Cape Town. This demonstrated her relationships with all political parties. She passed on 2 April 2018. A true mother of the nation.

   

  Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela was born in Umtata on 18 July 1918. At the famous Rivonia trial, Mandela was brought before the court for his involvement in sabotage and violence in 1962. He was imprisoned for 27 years in total. He was first sent to Robben Island but later transferred to Victor Verster Prison in 1988. He was released from prison after 27 years in 1990 and he came home for only 11 months, after which he moved to a bigger home in Houghton, Johannesburg. The former State President, de Klerk, ordered his release and removed a ban on the political movement the African National Congress. Mandela served as President of the African National Congress (ANC) from 1991 to 1997. His Presidency is known for his legacy in ending racism, trying to fight poverty and inequality.  He was dreaming of a nation free of racism with all people living together with all colours; the so-called Rainbow Nation. He wanted freedom without violence but the oppressors started killing his people. He then formed the Umkhonto we Sizwe, a military arm of the ANC. Nelson Mandela received a Nobel Peace Prize in 1993 with former state President of South Africa, Frederik Willem de Klerk.

   

  The Mandela House has four bedrooms and one of them goes down memory lane. It brings both tears and relief, knowing that the Mandelas survived petrol bombs and bullets in the house during riots. The Mandela House Museum contains several honorary degrees awarded to Nelson and Winnie Madikizela-Mandela. It also hosts artefacts, memorabilia and artworks including “Tears of Freedom” by Leonard Katete, a Ugandan living in Kenya. The museum is a monument of history, harbouring family photographs dating back as far as the 1950s.

  The Nelson Mandela Museum is open for public tours and photographs are allowed.

   

  Vilakazi Street was also home to Bishop Desmond Mpilo Tutu, who was an Anglican Bishop and theologian well known for his humorous and critical speeches that call to order the freedom fighters. He played a major role during the anti-apartheid and human rights struggle for South Africa. Bishop Desmond Tutu was honoured with a Nobel Peace Prize for his achievements in opposition to South Africa’s brutal apartheid regime. He took a non-violent yet fearless stance against the oppressors, a characteristic that made him stand out amongst the liberation leaders. He articulated the sufferings of ordinary South Africans in clear manner and at the same time spoke up about the oppressive regiment. It is not surprising that Bishop Tutu’s Peace Prize paved the way for strict sanctions against South Africa in the 1980s.

   

  Bishop Tutu chaired the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in 1995. Due to the fact that South Africa had suffered many wounds during apartheid, the many crimes committed by white rulers and atrocities against the black majority, the commission was established to “enable South Africans to come to terms with their past on a morally accepted basis and to advance the cause of reconciliation." The lack of social cohesion mainly due to racial disharmony led the newly elected Government led by Nelson Mandela to put together the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) under the chairmanship of Bishop Desmond Tutu. Cases such as the Soweto Riots (1976), in which Hector Pieterson was killed, were discussed; the Sharpeville Protests (1960 and 1984) and a number of other prominent cases were dealt with. Forgiveness was recommended as the fundamental condition of healing.

   

  Vilakazi is also known for the Hector Pieterson Memorial and Museum, which were established to remember the Soweto uprising on June 16, 1976. Hector Pieterson was shot during the revolt on the day when schoolchildren demonstrated against the use of Afrikaans as a language of instruction for middle and secondary school.

   

  Vilakazi Street and the Nelson Mandela Museum attract a number of tourists. The street is vibrant with good local food, music and dance. It has created small businesses in the township and is thereby contributing to the local economy.

   

   

  References

  • https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/winnie-madikizela-mandela
  • https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/tutu-and-his-role-truth-reconciliation-commission, retrieved 26 January, 2019
  • https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/1993/mandela/biographical/ , retrieved 26 January, 2019

   

   

  published April 2020

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  Priscilla Kennedy

  CONNECTING THE DOTS

  A Pilgrimage.

  My studio is literally a skein; an element that forms part of a complex whole. Everything that forms part of its composition to me is like a thread being pulled through the eye of a needle to form a tapestry of narratives as body of works. I have absolutely no idea of what impact the connection of these dots/knots will fabricate or the entirety of its arrival and that to me is where I get immersed in roller coaster of jouissance. That is how the idea of process even in the most pleasurable way becomes an integral part of the context in which I work as an artist.

   

  Unravelling.

  Here, I connect the dots/knots within the current situation running through my artistic journey. The space in itself has multiple sub spaces I call ‘moods’’. I swing in-between these moods literally in pursuit of a certain expression towards my interests and concerns. These mood swings take off from my IDEA BOARD (https://www.explore-vc.org/en/galleries-content/idea-board.html) where my thoughts appear partially in flesh. That for me becomes my point of departure into streams of decision making. In totality, it’s a snapshot of all my thoughts as a cohesive whole where I can make choices guided by my ultimate motivation at a given time, on a particular body of work.

   

  Then I swing into my RED BOOK (https://www.explore-vc.org/en/galleries-content/red-book.html) where I narrow down my thoughts into writings as part of a research. In transition from the previous mood of writing to this new mood is the optimum to my purpose, which refers to the making or the tangible expression. I deliberately swing back and forth between these two moods to create a certain dialectical relationship between them as a deliberate and crucial aspect to my practice. This opens up my explorations and discussions of the subject of the body, the politics of marginalization and subjugation from a feminine perspective with the use of materials and techniques connected to a certain body presence (craft).

   

  Enchanted by the Familiar.

  I see the body as a fluid material that morphs with time or momentarily based on certain conditions or instances. It is like that one thing that is connected to several things. I am interested in that materiality of the body that allows it to be transient. And in terms of that materiality, what it can become and what it can do.

   

  So, to me, the idea of the female body aside its continuous flux is my interest in something about it that creates a permanent or ongoing relationship with itself. That is how the idea of the hand with regards to craft becomes crucial to my practice. This is in reference to its past and present subtle association with subjugation or oppression or basically how the idea of subjugation and oppression is tied to work categorized in the frame of the domestic. That sense of marginalization or the coupling of an idea to a body that makes it lay claim to a certain power absence is of interest to me.

   

  With the hand, I rethink the value of craft.

  Through that there is already an acknowledgement of a certain distance that is brought back to close proximity with the body through intimate artistic approaches like thread embroidery and tambour beading. This is where I swing to my TAMBOUR TRESTLE SPACE (https://www.explore-vc.org/en/galleries-content/tambour-trestle-space.html), here, I make laborious and intimate embroideries that feature beads. I perceive this process of beading as a metaphor in reclamation of the self, while highlighting the residue of power that still lingers within the very same system of subjugation. It is a subtle performance that happens in the studio yet inherent to the context.

   

  A thousand Yards Away and Within.

  I am tempted to refer to my whole studio as a bigger idea board where certain themes and artistic strategies come together to form narratives and contributions to subjects of interest. In constant exploration and experimentation, a mash up of all these themes and artistic strategies may birth a work of art that offers a blend of fabric cut-outs merged with beaded patterns or forms in the current state of my practice. Yet, I am open to exploring diverse forms of expressions in relation to the context as time goes on.

   

  Absorbing the Far Fetched.

  I connect with materials from a perspective where I perceive them as political instruments that exist in time and not only as objects of enjoyment. I believe in the idea of a common vocabulary in the use of familiar materials and objects because they inherently possess personal and cultural meanings from spaces they have been.

   

  In Pursuit of…

  If I’m to imagine my destination (the ideal work) from the swinging I’ve been doing for some time now, I assume I’m going to arrive at a magical tapestry composed of fabric cuts outs of feminine bodies fused with other forms of embroidery that may features threads and beads. These materials and artistic approaches may be composed to create fantastical characters, emerging out of a playful hybridization of the human body and sometimes other life forms.

  My destination may not be a narrow one, I believe, but one of diverse interesting processes where I can achieve limitless possibilities in my creative projects. The narratives within the symbolic realm of imagery seek to emancipate the oppressed feminine body through a material and technique culture.

  

  Ernst Wagner

  

   Fig.2 & 3: Table in front of the window with bead embroideries (Photos: Priscilla Kennedy)
  

   

  In the photo we see the artist's studio; in it, work tools (such as rubber gloves, a sewing machine, rulers), materials to stimulate the artistic process (e.g. image sources, sketchbooks, materials) and artistic work results. The room is painted white, even the crumbling block in the right-hand corner. This echoes the idea of the "white cube" with neutral walls as a currently still valid basic model for exhibition spaces of contemporary art. Everything is very clean and tidy. On the three tables in the room, materials and tools are arranged like in a still life. For example, on the table in front of the (curtained) window, an arrangement showing, among other things, a round embroidery frame with a bead embroidery that is not yet finished: work in progress. Everything is obviously deliberately placed in this museum-like working space, which thus develops a programmatic expressiveness.

   

  

  Fig. 4 & 5: Print outs on the wall, red book (Photos: Priscilla Kennedy)
  

   

  Fabrics, textiles play a major role in this scenario. They are simply material (the kente fabrics on the right) or supports for the two larger works (also on the right). But they also play a major role in the many pictures (DIN A 4 printouts on the left wall), now as depicted clothing: women's dresses in older prints, on works of art (from ancient Egypt) to more recent photographs. Surprisingly, there are images of the vestments of Catholic priests and, beyond that, abstract fabric patterns, ornaments. Working with fabric (which also includes the embroidery frame) is repeatedly found as an important field of work for feminist-oriented artists or for a feminist-oriented visual language in contemporary art.

   

  The DIN A 4 printouts are partly annotated in writing, which reinforces the impression that we are dealing with a "picture atlas" in the sense of Aby Warburg or an "atlas" in the sense of Gerhard Richter, i.e. an often surprising compilation of pictures which in this combination can or should provide very systematic suggestions for pictorial design and for reflecting on contexts.

   

  This also includes the other collections of pictures in the room, in the photo album, on the computer or in transparent sleeves (on the right-hand table), which are obviously often biographically oriented, for example through the baby and children's photos, or through images of their own artistic works.

   

  The overall picture is thus dominated by central aspects of current "global art", an art that could just as easily be shown in Berlin or New York. In this one, however, site-specific aspects, i.e. aspects related to Kumasi, Ghana or West Africa, emerge again and again: the kente fabrics, the photos in the album, even the materiality and construction of the walls speak of the place of origin.

   

  

  Fig.6:  Priscilla Kennedy, o.T., experimental study (courtesy the artist)

   

  This coming together of different thematic layers becomes clear once again in a detail, the painting that the artist presents in her studio on the right wall and which she herself sees as a technical experiment (see illustration below).^[1] It shows an adaptation of Ingres' painting "Great Odalisque" from 1814, now in the Louvre. The superimposed head of an older white man (Arthur Schopenhauer) is reminiscent of the same pictorial strategy that the Guerilla Girls successfully tried out with the odalisque in 1989 by putting a gorilla head on it ("Do women have to get naked to get into the Met. Museum?"). While the other elements of the work vary the forms from Ingres' painting, mainly in colour and technique, there is one crucial addition in this work: a small baby in silhouette, black, looking up at Schopenhauer and casting a shadow on the pale odalisque body. The whole thing is printed or embroidered on a transparent, light fabric that throws folds.

   

  

  Fig. Ingres, The Great Odalisque, oil on canvas, 1814, Louvre (Copyright CC)
  

   

  These references make the picture seem familiar to Europeans, but in its combinatorics and with the harsh contrasts it is enigmatic, just like Kennedy's studio itself. Here, an icon of Western art is cheekily alienated, here the canvas becomes a thin nettle, here the woman becomes a man, the soft cushion becomes a hard wedge, the white woman gets a black baby. On the one hand, objects and their meanings are thus unambiguously designated and named, but at the same time, through the artistic formulation and its combination, they are placed in an enigmatic resonance space, which immediately eludes the unambiguous settings that have just been made. An "in-between space" between black and white skin colour, man and woman, opaque and transparent, old man and young child, European (old) art and West African (young) art.

   

  If one looks back through this image (which is taken here - against the artist's intention - as a key image) to the studio, one finds very similar constellations there: empty chasubles of Catholic, i.e. male priests against female bodies in erotically charged clothing, falling, soft fabrics against rigid measuring instruments from geometry lessons, physicality against abstract patterns and ornaments. With such contradictions Kennedy creates an experimental constellation, she spans a field that reports on possibilities in between without letting them culminate in a final work. The open, unfinished field of experimentation thus becomes the actual "work".

   

   

  ^[1]              "This work does not have a title. I considered it as an experiment to try printing with a blend of embroidery. What is actually piercing through from the back is also part of the experimental process where I made heat transfers again behind the fabric to see the interplay of images from various directions of the material. I do not consider it as a work but as an experiment. " (Information from Kennedy to the author via email on 5.10.2022)

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  Esther Kibuka-Sebitosi

  Rainbow Nation

  
  The rainbow in the Bible given in Genesis 9:16 is a reminder that we have a covenant with God not to destroy the earth again by floods. “I set My rainbow in the cloud, and it shall be for the sign of the Covenant between Me and the earth,” says the Lord. God had made a covenant with Noah and his seed for generations. Genesis 9:9. And I, “behold, I establish my covenant with you, and with your seed after you”. Since we are all Abraham’s seed, we are covered in this covenant, although Jesus makes a better covenant in the New Testament. Returning to the rainbow nation, this covenant is saying “ no more destructions”. It is as if God is saying we should no longer fight each other but live together in peace. He made us all people with different colours (rainbow).

  
  The metaphor describes a people with multi-cultures living together. The image of the flag is a symbol of togetherness or unity. The different colours. Adopted in 1994, the red, white and blue were adopted form the colours of the Boer Republic while the yellow, black and green were taken from the ANC (African National Congress) flag. The black colour is a symbol of the people; the green represents fertility of the land while the gold represents the wealth from minerals beneath the soil. The ANC adopted these colours way back in 1925.

   

  Associated with the flag is the national anthem. This is unique in that it has many languages:

   

  • Nkosi sikelel’ Afrika
  • Maluphakanyisw’ uphondo lwayo,
  • Yizwa imithandazo,
  • yethu,
  • Nkosi sikelela,
  • thina,
  • lusapho lwayo.
  • Morena boloka setjhaba sa heso,
  • O fedise dintwa la matshwenyeh
  • O se boloke (Ntate)
  • O se boloke
  • setjhaba sa
  • heso,
  • Setjhaba sa
  • South Afrika
  • – South Afrika.
  • Uit die blou van onse hemel,
  • Uit die diepte van ons see,
  • Oor ons ewige gebergtes,
  • Waar die kranse antwoord gee,
  • Sounds to call to come together,
  • And united we shall stand,
  • Let us live and strive for freedom,
  • In South Africa our land…

   

  Songwriter: Cornelius Jacob Langenhoven

   

  Summary

  The Rainbow metaphor is characteristic of a nation that aspires for peaceful living; building a peaceful nation. The symbol taken from the Bible donating the Noahic covenant reminds us that God will no longer send the floods to destroy us.

   

  The flag is a symbol of unity between the Boers and the African National Congress colours, which represents the whole of South Africa. It is a sign of hope and nation building.

  Associated with the Flag and the Rainbow nation is the National anthem. It is written in many languages signifying the rainbow nation of multi-cultures.

   

  References

  • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainbow_nation
  • https://www.worldatlas.com/webimage/flags/countrys/africa/soafrica.htm

   

   

  published January 2020

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  Elfriede Dreyer

   

  Originally, South Africa was discovered by the Portuguese in 1488, but this was not permanent, just like the Dutch settlement in 1652 that is generally viewed as the birth date of the country. In 1795 the Cape Colony fell under British rule again; it reverted back to Dutch rule in 1803; and again to the British  in 1806. From the onset of colonisation, the transatlantic slave trade was immense and especially South-East Africa was a main source of slaves. The colonisation of Southern Africa had as main purposes the setting up of refreshment posts where food and other essential stock could be collected, as well as the trading of slaves. The indigenous nations were subject to the whims and fancies of the colonisers, and they were sexually and labour-wise exploited; families were broken up and those who resisted were punished and often killed by whipping, shackling, hanging, beating, burning, mutilation, branding and rape. In many cases the slave ships themselves were killer machines since the slaves were packed into the haul like sardines with little attention to hygiene.

   

  In addition, South Africa is extraordinarily rich in mineral resources and gold, which has brought about massive wealth, but also instability. Johannesburg was established in 1886, due to the so-called gold rush, with fortune seekers and diggers flooding to it from all over the world to the country. Since then the gold mines have attracted an influx of locals as workers, which contributed to much nomadism, but especially since 1948 during apartheid, such mine workers were ironically allowed to work underground but once aboveground they had to return to townships outside the large city.

  Since 1948 when the country became locally governed by the Afrikaner-dominated right-wing National Party, whilst still regarding Queen Elizabeth II as head of state as a relic of British imperialism, attempts were made to throw off the colonial yoke permanently, and on 5 October 1960 the country became an independent Republic. At all times there have been resistance to the ruling governments by groups of all cultural origin, but especially during the 1980s and early 1990s there was severe resistance to the ruling policy of segregation: a period that saw much abuse, violence and many incarcerations. In 1990 Nelson Mandela as leader of the oppositionist African National Party was released from prison and in 1994, as part of a peaceful handover, he was inaugurated as the new president of the country with the ANC as government.

   

  It is clear that, as a country, South Africa has been torn apart by politics, and especially by the impact of colonisation. The postcolonial impulse is therefore inordinately robust in this part of the world. The notion of the postcolonial is closely linked to that of the postmodern, and according to Gen Doy (2000:204), author of Black Visual Culture: Modernity and Postmodernity, much of current art practice is “often relating to issues discussed in postcolonial theory such as identity, displacement, mixing of cultures and peoples (hybridity) and indeterminancy.” Post-colonialism could be viewed as a response as well as a resistance to colonialism, whereby issues such as historical events, beliefs, traditions, conventions and languages are evaluated and critiqued in an attempt to uncover the superiority and centrality of certain systems of thinking. Ideas of superiority and power relations play a core role in postcolonial investigations, but a main problem in much postcolonial theory is to nurture the idea of static black culture, which in reality is constantly changing and adapting to new developments and ideas. Decoloniality or decolonialism originated as a Latin American movement which focuses on understanding modernity in the context of a form of critical theory applied to ethnic studies. Similarly it is a response to colonialism. It seems to be more radically critical than postcolonialism which indicates more of a general resistance. Coloniality is generally understood as the sentiment and logic essential to the evolvement of Western civilisation from the Renaissance to today. Foundational to decoloniality is the deconstruction or decoding of the coloniality of power. This logic is commonly referred to as the colonial matrix of power and has its own set of theories and methodologies.

  Since the 1980s, the work of internationally renowned South African artist William Kentridge (b. 1955, Johannesburg) has mainly served the purpose of commenting on socio-political issues in the country. He is best known for his prints, drawings, operas and animated films. A work of special interest is his The refusal of time of 2012 (hereafter referred to as ‘TRT’), since it presents a clear image of postcolonial legacies and decolonial sentiments that have resulted in an eclectic mélange of narratives, experiences and events. Particularly interesting is also how the artist mixes various kinds of technologies in sophisticated way.

   

  TRT premiered at Documenta 13 (2012) in Kassel, Germany, specially commissioned by the curator of Documenta 13, Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, and since then it has been exhibited at various other venues in Japan, Italy, Australia, the United States, Brazil, Holland and Finland. The work was produced in the artist’s studio in the Maboneng district in downtown Johannesburg and as a prelude to Documenta 13, a series of notebooks entitled 100 notes – 100 thoughts was published by Hanje Katz in 2011. In South Africa, the artistic production was shown first from November to December 2014 at the Johannesburg Art Gallery and then at the National Gallery in Cape Town in 2015. A collaborative piece, the artwork entails teamwork with Peter L. Galison, Philip Miller and Catherine Meyburgh. The chamber opera, Refuse the Hour (made in collaboration with Miller, Meyburgh, Dada Masilo and Galison) - with an international cast of eleven, including dancers, musicians, performers and vocalists - is the theatrical accompaniment that laid the groundwork for the artwork and is also an independent production. Prominent in the production is the artist presenting a lecture-performance on productive procrastination, myth, entropy, empire, black holes, the ancient Greek myth of Perseus and Einstein, surrounded by animations, swirling dancers, singers with megaphones, instrumentalists and a solitary physicist (BAM | Refuse the hour 2015).

   

  As an installation, TRT comprises five digital film projections on thirty-minute loops and a large automaton, occupying the entire space of a single, large hall. In the dark enclosed space of TRT, a hive of moving figures and intersecting stop-frame imagery ensues in the five film projections, creating an impression of vibrating energy. The complex imagery includes the artist as one of the performers, walking, reading and performing acts such as changing hats; a female figure, dancing and producing ‘wagon wheels’ and other acts; figures in comical scenes in colonial rooms à la George Méliès; figures in a laboratory-like space, maybe busy with experiments; dispersing and flying anamorphic fragments becoming human figures, representing a kind of chaos rendering; a rhinoceros; silhouettes; ticking metronomes and clocks; and imagery of inter alia megaphones, starry skies, stop-frame animations and drawings. On the other hand, chaotic time is presented as humanly, existentially and imaginatively inferred. Mortal conceptions of the physical body appear in the form of chaos imagery of disintegrating matter; and swirling moving figures, transgressed boundaries, and fleeting script and words render an awareness of temporality and transience in order to defy conceptions of certainty and fixed systems. The moving human agents in TRT ‘transgress’ the confines of the delineated boundaries of each projection by walking across the edges, and by so doing become displaced and emplaced in in-between, liminal zones.

   

  Kentridge positions the human body centrally in TRT. Technically, his scientific and conceptual method levies each projection that transforms intermittently from the graphic, more abstract imagery into the stop-frame animations to human figures (including the artist himself performing), clothed idiosyncratically in contemporary as well as traditional outfits. Other transmutations include a turn to colonial comical scenes with actors performing in rooms with historical architecture; walking and dancing figures; and figures in shadow procession, recalling some of Kentridge’s well-known earlier works. The sculptural automaton and ticking metronomes are given equal presence in the five film projections, which generates the comment that technological development has shown progress from elementary, handmade technologies to advanced digital technologies, but that the embedded techniques and processes are equally relevant.

   

  In TRT, preference is given to a conceptual engagement with the human technological condition instead of a lofty statement about science itself. Kentridge ‘relegates' science to technology and succeeds in generating comment and meaning through the very processes of the techniques used. In the five ancillary virtual ‘rooms’, an artificial environment has been created, entrenched in the technologies of the digital age, which has borne witness to emerging engineerings such as electronic communications, artificial intelligence and biotechnology. Symbolically comment is generated in terms of politics as ‘experimentation’ and human beings as the victims thereof. Set in virtual reality, the rooms in the Méliès-type comical scenes in TRT resemble colonial architecture, but notably these are graphically hand-drawn. Through very technique of the linear and expressive sketching of doors, windows and other paraphernalia, heterotopic ‘frames’ are created that resonate with the racial and gender regimes of the histories of colonial culture in South Africa. Several spaces are represented in the work, but in a dualistic sense they are both material and immaterial, and ambivalently premised.

   

  The flying particles in TRT subtly reveal thin red lines, crossing and indicating geographical points of intersection, but without explanation of what they represent. Metaphorically they could function as boundaries, relational reference points, historical markers, psychographical moments or points of reference wherefrom the ‘walk’ into time takes place or even the liminal ‘place’ where life and death meet. The particles become chaotic and finally disintegrate, almost in reflection of the processes of memory and how everything fades in time.

   

  References

  Doy, G. 2000. Black Visual Culture: Modernity and Postmodernity. Gen Doy London: I.B. Tauris. 

   

  About the artist

  William Kentridge (born 28 April 1955) is a South African artist best known for his prints, drawings, and animated films.  His political perspective is expressed in his opera directions, which involves different layers: stage direction, animation movies, influences of the puppet world. He has staged Il retorno d’Ulisse in patria (Monteverdi), Die Zauberflöte (Mozart) and The nose (Shostakovich). Berg's Lulu  premièred at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, and in 2017 Wozzeck (Alban Berg) premiered at the Salzburg Festival.

   

   

  published February 2020

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  Runette Kruger

  Cape Town based Tokolos Stencil Collective uses stencil and graffiti to address socio-political issues such as lingering racial inequality, labour exploitation, segregation, and poverty. The name of the collective refers to a dwarflike mythical being, the tokoloshe, that materialises at night to frighten unsuspecting victims, now mobilised by the Collective to “terrorise the powers that be”, or, the status quo of inequality (Tokolos-Stencils, 2015). The declared aim of the Collective is to highlight continuing spatial and social segregation in a post-apartheid South Africa (Botha, 2014).  

   

  The social discrepancies whereby the majority of South Africans continue to experience social and economic isolation are addressed by Adato, Carter and May (2006), who cite the Poverty and Inequality report of 2000. In the report, South Africa is described in terms of two parallel worlds, “one, populated by black South Africans where the Human Development Index (HDI) was the equivalent to [that of] Zimbabwe or Swaziland. The other … [populated by] white South Africa in which the HDI [was] between that of Israel and Italy” (Adato, Carter and May, 2006, p. 226). This inequality had, disturbingly, only deepened between 2000 and 2006, and in a March 2018 report by the World Bank, South Africa is cited as the most unequal country globally in 2015, based on the Gini coefficient of 0.63 of that year (World Bank, 2018, p42). The Gini coefficient measures the gap in income between the wealthiest and poorest members of a population. A score of 0 would indicate absolute income equality, and a score of 1 would indicate that one person owned all the wealth. This disparity, as well as the resultant exploitability of the poor, informs the Tokolos Stencil Collective’s main subject matter.  

   

  The most widely recognizable image associated with the Collective is the Remember Marikana stencil, which combines these words with an image of Mgcineni Noki, known as Mambush to his friends and family, or, within the context of the Marikana massacre, The man in the green blanket. The Marikana event played a formative role in the establishment of the Collective – it was founded in 2013 on the day of the first anniversary of the event (Anaya, 2014). The massacre is widely regarded as a watershed crisis, comparable with the Sharpeville tragedy of 21 March 1960, now commemorated as Human Rights Day.

   

  Noki was a community leader who became a prominent news figure in the days before the Marikana massacre, identifiable by the bright green blanket tied around his shoulders. The Marikana massacre took place on 16 August 2012 when striking miners working at the London-based Lonmin Platinum Mine in the North-West Province were gunned down by police wielding automatic rifles, violently ending a six day build-up of tension. Noki grew up in Thwalikhulu, a small village in the Eastern Cape, and was aged 30 at the time of his death. He had a wife and two year old daughter who lived in Carletonville, about 100km away. He is reported to have attempted to de-escalate the growing violent skirmishes, and to focus the gathered strikers on their aim – to increase their wages. The evening before the massacre, the miners were led to believe that if they returned to work, wage negotiations would begin. In the hours before the final events, while the miners’ repeated requests for negotiations were ignored, they were finally beseeched by their union to withdraw. Weighing up the growing indications of a final crack down, Noki began to lead a group of miners away from the outcrop of rock that had been the main scene of conflict over the course of the week. As they reached the nearby settlement their path was blocked by police and barbed wire. Noki led the men another route, only to be blocked again. The ensuing gunfire on the group led to the death of 17 men, Noki among them, identifiable by his green blanket as he lay on the ground. A second group of men were also attempting to leave the site, and were fired at with 295 bullets, resulting in 17 more casualties. The strike continued for another five weeks before the mining company agreed to negotiate. Pay was increased by 7% (Davies, 2015).

   

  I specifically chose this image of Noki, his arm raised while exhorting and encouraging his fellow workers, instead of the dehumanising imagery of up-close, lifeless mineworkers that was freely shared by the press. In contrast, this image in the Remember Marikana stencil shows him as a leader with courage and purpose, and has become an iconic symbol of the struggle for dignity and an adequate wage among the most exploited workers in South Africa, on whose labour an economy that they are unable to access, has been built. Commenting on the lot of the under-classes in 1940, during the impending humanitarian crisis of the Second World War, Walter Benjamin (1969, p. 255 original emphasis) reminds us that “every image of the past that is not recognized by the present as one of its own concerns threatens to disappear irretrievably ... To articulate the past historically ... means to seize hold of a memory as it flashes up at a moment of danger [failing which] even the dead will not be safe”. The Remember Marikana image reminds us that it is crucial to prevent the sacrifices of the most vulnerable members of society from slipping into the amnesia of oblivion.

   

   

   

  References

  • Adato, M., Carter, M.R., & May, J. (2006). Exploring poverty traps and social exclusion in South Africa using qualitative and quantitative data. The Journal of Development Studies, 42(2), 226-247.
  • Anaya, V. (2014, September 10). Tokolos Collective: “Cape Town is a very oppressive place for the poor”. Wiriko Artes Y Culturas Africanas. Retrieved from https://www.wiriko.org/tag/marikana/
  • Benjamin, W. (1969). Illuminations. Edited by Hannah Arendt. New York: Schocken.
  • Botha, N. (2014, November 21). Tokolos Stencil Collective: 'Crap' art designed to unsettle. The Mail & Guardian. Retrieved from https://mg.co.za/article/2014-11-21-tokolos-stencil-collective-crap-art-designed-to-unsettle.
  • Davies, N. (2015, May 22). The savage truth behind the Marikana massacre. The Mail & Guardian. Retrieved from https://mg.co.za/article/2015-05-21-the-savage-truth-behind-the-marikana-massacre.
  • Tokolos-Stencils. (2015). Retrieved from http://tokolosstencils.tumblr.com/. 
  • World Bank. (2018). Overcoming poverty and inequality in South Africa: An assessment of drivers, constraints and opportunities. Washington DC, USA.

   

   

  published March 2020

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  Osuanyi Quaicoo Essel

  Different cultures may practise different hair beauty culture. Some of the hair beauty cultural practise could be unisex or may distinguish between sexes. In this instance, hair becomes a tool for sexual differentiation and serves as a precursor to one’s gender. It may tell which part of the world a person hails from. That notwithstanding, one may borrow hairstyles from different cultures other than his or her own for fashionable reasons since fashion inspiration is multicultural. Based on the cultural orientation and the role of a particular hairstyle to a group, society or institution, hair aesthetic ideals may be preserved as a tool for identity construction. A typical example of a hairstyle that has remained resilient even in the face of (neo)colonial and imperial hair aesthetic regimentation of the West on Africa is kentenkye hairstyle (Akan Women’s Hairstyle, 2008), popularly renamed as dansikran. Legendary has it that, queen mother Nana Kwaadu Yiadom II, (1917 - 1945), the sister of Nana Prempeh I, of the Asante Kingdom, performed the majestic Adowa dance during the restoration of the Asante Confederacy around 1935 in her kentenkye hairstyle, which inspired the then Governor’s description of her kentenkye hairstyle as a 'dancing crown' (Akrase, 2008) due to its visual effect during the dance. The phrase ‘dancing crown’ was linguistically corrupted as dansinkran which has become the popular name of the hairstyle.

   

  The dansinkran hairstyle is noted for its simple, yet iconic stature in purely indigenous Ghanaian cultural milieu. Its selection was informed by its historical epoch, purely indigenous natural hair beauty care and treatment and socio-political significance in Ghanaian chieftaincy. It has proven to be an unadulterated Ghanaian hair fashion practice necessary in the decolonisation of hair fashion discourse. It is important in the decolonisation of hair discourse in the sense that it is purely Afrocentric which has evolved from its symbolic status to contemporary appropriation. The use of purely natural and sustainable hair treatment cosmetics with little or no harmful effect on the body makes it worthy of handing down to youth. This is because, there has been influx of artificial hair cosmetics with detrimental dermal effects which many youth subscribe to in the name of modernity without recourse to its side effects. The historical significance and interest of this hairstyle for posterity, especially as something of Africa practise, contributes in this regard to the decolonisation process. Dansinkran polity and politics among Akan kings, queens, chiefdom and the society in general reinforced its choice.

   

  This hairstyle is achieved by trimming down the peripheries of the crown of the head almost to the skin while the remaining portions are trimmed to define the oval shape of a wearer’s head. The haircut gives the head a calabash-like shape. A natural black pomade-like colourant mixture composed of powered charcoal, soot and sheabutter, is then applied to the hair to give it intense blackened appearance. Charcoal has been in use for hair treatment in precolonial Ghana for many centuries. Considering the intense heat coupled with dust particle in Ghana and other African countries, the use of charcoal as hair treatment helped to protect their hairs from dust build up, dirt, oil and sebum that settled on scalp and negatively affects hair quality and growth. It implies that charcoal promotes hair growth. The natural hair colourant used in this process armours the hair with lustre and protection against bacteria and fungi. It nourishes the scalp and protects it from dandruff infections and maintains the hair’s natural moisture level. The eye lashes are also darkened to complement the facial look of a wearer.

   

  The haircut helps to focus on the facials of a wearer since the hair receives little or no elaborate ornamentation. Usually, queen mothers who wear this hairstyle are not supposed to wear earrings during possessions or durbars. Judging from the benefits of charcoal in natural hair treatment it is not surprising that it features as essential ingredient in modern cosmetics manufacturing.

   

  The dansinkran hairstyle serves as a socio-cultural barometer, political signifier and as a religious marker. This hairstyle help to identify queen mothers and female kings from other females. It is a symbolic hairstyle that was a preserve of the Akan feminine chiefdom and royals. Some priestesses also wear this hairstyle. Politically, the hairstyle symbolises authority, royalty and power of a female king or queen mother. In this sense, the hairstyle is status-defining in terms of the social rank. It is considered as inevitable lifestyle heritage that needs to be preserved among the chiefdom. When a king or chief passes on, a queen mother who is not wearing that hairstyle is not allowed to pay homage to him/her.

   

  In the case of queen mothers, they complement this hairstyle with a feminine Ghanaian fashion classic named queen mothers’ style. This classic consists of a wraparound fashion of a six-yard fabric that stretches from the chest regions to beyond the knee, which is accentuated by another six-yard fabric draped in toga style. The wearing of this classic in addition to the hairstyle has bestowed onto it, the name dansinkran, hence, both the hairstyle and the classic are named as such. Despite the symbolism of the hairstyle, it now worn by the youth in contemporary times. It has acquired the name sweat. The only difference is that the youth who wear the hairstyle do not apply the charcoal mixture on their hairs. It has become unisex hairstyle among the youth.

   

  The Western hair superiority politics could not erode the many centuries old hair identity visual code and marker that characterised the majority of the chieftaincy institutions in Ghana. As a traditional lifestyle culture that has proved unyielding despite black hair discrimination and politics, it is an important tool in the decolonisation of Afrocentric hair beauty culture practice and education.

   

  References

  • Akan Women’s Hairstyle. (2008). Retrieved from https://www.abibitumi.com/community/culture/akan-womens-hairstyles/
  • Akrase, N. (2008). Pomp, power and majesty. Retrieved from http://akrase.blogspot.com/2008_01_01_archive.html

   

   

  published March 2020

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  Kerstin Pinther

  Moulding Tradition (2009) is a work done by the designers Andrea Trimarchi and Simone Farresin of Studio Formafantasma: It consists of a group of five ceramics in different shapes and forms: boat-like bowls of various sizes, vases and bottles. Some of the maiolica objects display special attributes which refer to the sea and to rescue operations on the water such as a pair of paddles and lifebuoys. Others use ribbons, printed with historical and immigration data, to tie framed photographs and other ‘décor’ to the vessels. The project is informed by the tin-glazed maiolica from Caltagirone in Sicily – itself a result of the encounter with (Moorish) Islamic ceramic traditions in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, which in the following centuries triggered a technical and content-related process of adaptation. From the early modern age onwards, maiolica thus became “an excellent indicator and agent of design transmission across the globe” (Ajmar-Wollheim/Molà 2011, 17).

   

  Among the ceramic vessels being produced up till now is the genre of the so-called teste di moro – vases that in a stereotypical, often grotesque and derogative manner depict the faces of people referred to as either ‘African’ or as ‘Arabic.’ In their original form as busts they most probably date back to the seventeenth century, when they were used as flowerpots to decorate balconies and terraces, suggesting an exuberant vegetation. By replacing this generic image with a black-and-white photograph of a known and thus named immigrant from Nigeria, Sofien Adeyemi, Andrea Trimarchi and Simone Farresin update the references and create a link to recent migration movements. A flask with an attached ceramic tile lists the names of the countries Adeyemi has traveled through on his way from West Africa to Italy. His (multiplied) portrait together with written information on present-day migration policies is attached to the ceramic form, thus literally adding a new level of meaning. Yet another  wine bottle recalls fruit picking, predominantly done by migrant workers under harsh and exploitative conditions.

   

  By introducing further elements of reality in traditional forms, Formafantasma with Moulding Tradition create complex discourses on the historical and present-day entanglements between Africa and Europe and the imbalance in their economic and political conditions. According to the designers, “contemporary public opinion polls have claimed that 65% of Italians believe that the immigrants are ‘a danger for our culture.’” In this context Moulding Tradition speaks of the blind spots of contemporary culture: Neither the explicit transcultural character of the maiolica which had contributed to – if not established – the fame of Caltagirone’s craft tradition is valued, nor are the descendants of those who once introduced this new ceramic technique welcomed. Moulding Tradition also alludes to the fact that in the most recent age of globalization nearly everything – data, information, images, objects – is free-flowing, but some people’s movements from specific geographies are monitored and restricted. Thus, it questions the ideology of cultural segregation and confronts it with the factual migration of people and goods as well as with the various historical entanglements. Furthermore, Moulding Tradition, for which the designers cooperated with a local craftsperson, can also be read as a comment on the role of craft in contemporary society as well as on the question of how craft is sometimes “locked into a tradition repeating [moulding, author’s note] the same objects over and over again” (Studio Formafantasma 2015). In order to counter this tendency, the designers left their products with a kind of raw surface, since normally maiolica ceramic is painted in bold colors after being dried thoroughly. In the case of Formafantasma’s maiolica, the objects remain ‘unfinished’ – a (blank) space to metaphorically be worked on and to open up a debate. Thus, Moulding Tradition stands for Studio Formafantasma’s conceptual and critical design-thinking approach. In this approach, the duo relies on textual information as well as on the haptic and aesthetic qualities of the substances they use: “[M]aterials are not only functional but also have the ability to evoke memories or to testify historical knowledge” (Studio Formafantasma 2015).

   

  The authors of Global Design History make clear how the most recent phase of globalization not only accelerates flows of people, images, information, commodities and capital, but also contributes to the various types of exclusion and border control regimes (Adamson, et al. 2010, 1f.). At a time when design is becoming increasingly politicized, the question of how designers respond to the hitherto biggest wave of flight and migration in the years 2015/16 becomes obvious. Indeed, similar to Moulding Tradition, there are other design objects as well as works at the interface of design and art which can be seen as tools for reflecting on migration and flight. In using design as a tool, the migrancy reference can often be found on more than only one level. Besides its content-related presence, it is also tangible via the objects’ materiality or techniques, which for their part often bear traces of mobility and cultural transfer. Thus, these objects speak strongly to the historical and cultural migration of forms.

   

  References

  • Adamson, Glenn, et al., editors. Global Design History. Routledge, 2011.
  • Ajmar-Wollheim, Marta, and Luca Molà. “The Global Renaissance. Cross-cultural Objects in the Early Modern Period.” Global Design History, edited by Glenn Adamson, Giorgio Riello and Sarah Teasly, Routledge, 2011, pp. 11–20.
  • Studio Formafantasma. “Studio Formafantasma on Words as a Tool for Design.” Design Indaba Conference, Talk on November 3^rd 2015, http://www.designindaba.com/videos/conference-talks/studio-formafantasma-words-tool-design.

   

  published February 2020

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  Osuanyi Quaicoo Essel

   

  In my encounter with the exhibits of the Permanent Exhibition of the African Collection in the Museum Fünf Kontinente, one of the African textile collections that striked me from a distance, and possess high tendency of inviting viewers attention is the ndop fabric. I moved closer to the exhibit to observe its uniqueness in terms of its structural and surface characteristics. From my curious observation, I realised that the ndop fabric has simple geometrical linearity and patterns, yet, spiced with complex dynamism of the arrangements of these patterns that evoke the artistic principles of variety, harmony and technical constrast. This treatment breaks monotony and creates multi-sectional visual interest in the fabric design despite its monochromatic colouration. These observable details, characteristic of authentic African fabric, pulled my visual curiosity to the exhibit. Indeed, it is an epitome of authentic African fabric.

   

  Africans had long developed unique structural and surface decorative techniques for creating fabrics. Structural decorative techniques concern itself with the basic forming or construction of the fabric. Weaving, bonding, netting, lacing and felting include the structural decorative technique. Surface decorative techniques deal with the colourations and other embellishments to improve the surface quality or appearance of the fabric. Examples are dyeing, painting, printing, embroidery and applique. The ndop fabric was struturally woven with handspun cotton yarns in plain weave format in the form of stripes. The stripes were joined together with the aid of a needle to form a wide sheet of fabric after which the sheet of fabric was subjected to resist dyeing to create attractive patterns. In resist dyeing, portion of the fabric are prevented from dye absorption. Techniques used in resisting dye penetration include tying, tritiking (sewing), waxing, folding, twisting and coiling, and or a combination of these techniques. In the case of the ndop fabric, tritiking technique was used where raffia fibre cordage was used to stitch the desired patterns such that it could resist dye penetration after which the fabric was immersed into indigo dye solution locally extracted from plants. After the required time for dyeing, the fabric was removed from the dyebath, rinsed, dried and unstitched to reveal the patterns.

   

  The skilful use of regular geometry in seemingly irregular and asymmetric arrangement style complemented by the handmade rendition, the technical finesse in stitching to create the intricate pattern and the entire arrangement of the geometrical shapes in simple repetitive format create high visual appeal of the surface quality of the fabric. Per its visuality, one may see it as a printed fabric, yet, it was created using resist dyeing effect. The slight unevenness in the dye absorption resulting in patchy shades of the indigo at certain portions of the fabric adds to its creative uniqueness. The varying border designs of the fabric bond well in creating a sense of unity in the entire composition.

   

  

   Ndop fabric. Detail. (© Museum Fünf Kontinente / Photo Ernst Wagner)

   

  Besides the observable trenchant characteristics of the fabric, it also has social and cultural contexts in the Bamum society. The ndop is more than just a fabric in terms of its usage and communicative significance. The fabric is symbolically linked to death, afterlife, and powerful spirits connected to life. Consequently, it is worn during funerals and traditional religious rites. Apart from this, it is worn for its aesthetical reasons.

   

  The ndop fabric falls within the repertoire of indigenous and authentic African fabric creation and decoration culture, which include the Korhogo Cloth (Ivory Coast), Adire (Nigeria), Bogolanfini (‘mud cloth’ from Mali), Kente and Adinkra (Ghana), Smock or fugu (Ghana) and Dogon Cloth. Common to these fabric printing technology of Africa is that the fabrics used are usually cotton, with ocassional usage of silk or velvet. In the case of Ghana, Adinkra printing is made with cutout stamps which are dipped into dyes and transferred on the fabric to register the designs while in Kente and fugu, the hand spun cotton yarns are dyed in different colours and used for weaving. The ndop is dyed. Availble records indicate that indigenous dyeing of fabrics in Ghana, in many instances, were done by uniform application of dyes to the entire fabric. This means that fabrics were immersed without resisting some portions. Kobene (brick red) and Birisi (blue-black) fabrics of the Asante people of Ghana are examples.

   

  As a textiles and fashion educator and artist, I guide learners to examine the hand-made indigenous fabric decorative characteristics of Africa including the ndop fabric in order for them to understand and apply them in their fabric design. In this sense it inspires my fabric designs and that of my students. I also empower them through my teaching with historical knowledge about the contributions of Africa to the global textiles design culture. This is because the unique patterns and characteristics found in the repertoire of indigenous and authentic African fabric technological culture have been imitated with computer effects and printed by some European and Asiatic fabric brands, mostly sold in Central and West Africa. These foreign brands have been deceptively labelled with an umbrella term, African prints, to lure and deceive buyers. The ndop fabric has valuable educational relevance in teaching and learning and historical understanding of African fabric making technology in this context.

   

  

  Presentation at the museum 2021 (Photo Ernst Wagner)

   

   

  This article is part of a gallery: Perspectives from Ghana on Museum Objects in Germany. Published in January 2021

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  Patrique deGraft-Yankson

   

  Some of these signs and symbols depict historical events, human behaviour, animal behaviour, attitudes, plant life forms and shapes of objects, many of which have grown to assume recognizable iconographic dimensions. Others carry rich proverbial messages that are traditionally considered a mark of wisdom. These attributes indeed give credence to the need for the preservation and popularization of traditional symbolism and imagery.

   

  Therefore, in this project (which is one of many others in progress) therefore, has made an attempt to repackage Adinkra and other traditional symbols through animated videos. The aim is to make these age-old symbols more accessible and attractive to the modern Ghanaian youth. Presenting traditional symbols digitally would not only appeal to the youth, but would also ensure widespread visibility, presentation and thus, better preservation.

   

   

  published October 2020

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  Zoe Schoofs

  The oriental carpet — in Europe it was once proof of the owner's long journeys or good trade relations, but in the regions of origin it was an everyday object used everywhere, often with a reference to paradise. With the invasion of Afghanistan by Soviet troops, the aesthetic concept changed — instead of lively gardens and elaborate arabesque patterns, suddenly there were tanks and weapons — so-called war rugs were created. Not only, but also for European viewers, whose idea of carpets is decisively influenced by classical Persian appearances, these new conventions of representation represent a break with the familiar. Soldiers, diplomats and war correspondents brought such pieces with them from their stays in Afghanistan and made them known in Europe and the USA. Enthusiasts and museum staff were quickly found to create collections of these objects, including the collectors Hans Werner Mohm, Till Passow and Enrico Mascelloni, as well as the Museum für Völkerkunde in Freiburg and Die Neue Sammlung – The Design Museum in Munich.

   

  Carpets from the Orient were already popular at European courts in the 13th century, as they referred to the good trade relations with the Near and Middle East and served as prestigious items of the interior. Carpets were imported, but were also knotted directly in European court manufactories. With the enthusiasm for the Orient that emerged in the middle of the 19th century, the perception of carpets, whose origin had been relatively irrelevant until then, changed to a meticulous, scientific analysis, especially with regard to origin and iconography. World exhibitions and museums made them accessible to an ever wider public. While up to then carpets from courtly and urban manufactories had been the object of desire, over time those with a nomadic context became the centre of interest (Jansen 2001: 138). While this interest had already subsided on the part of the ruling dynasties in the 17th century, carpets for decorative use were produced for the bourgeoisie in the course of the industrial revolution. In 1861 William Morris founded his company Morris & Co. in Great Britain. "Over time, the carpet became part of an aesthetic 'spatial concept'. The technique and decorative motifs were first adopted from the Orient, but then adapted to Western tastes.“ (Bristot 2011: 32) They embodied "[...] the romantic ideal of the free and combative nomad in boundless expanse [...] the Turkmen carpet could be regarded as a sign of this independence sought among men.“ (Jansen 2001: 64) Thus the carpets found their way into male smoking rooms and libraries, also as blankets, cushions and seat covers when cut into pieces. The relocation of the production to factories brought with it simplifications of  the motifs and thus further changes. The luxury good was now accessible to a broad section of the population and was thus the object of everyday use.

   

  Carpets from these contexts, unlike woven textiles, are often knotted. They can be found in many different cultures all over the world. Basically, a distinction is made between courtly and urban works and works of the rural and nomadic environment, although there are of course blurred lines. While in the case of courtly and urban carpets all work processes were carried out by the respective specialists (spinning, dyeing, designing, knotting, etc.), all work processes for the carpets from the rural-nomadic environment were in one hand. These objects were primarily produced for the company's own needs and in some cases for the small local market. Courtly and urban carpets, on the other hand, were mostly commissioned works, intended for export or as envoy gifts and made in manufactories. The respective environment had a decisive influence on the appearance of the knotting work. In contrast to rugs made in manufactories, those produced in private homes or a rural community where meant for the local market.

   

  The objects that today are commonly known as classical oriental carpets mostly originated from the Persian Empire and are therefore also known as Persian carpets. At this point, however, it should be noted that a large number of ethnic groups which were united under Persian rule knotted those carpets and that therefore there a large number of different aesthetic concepts. Those from northwestern Persia are most likely to correspond to the European idea of a particularly valuable carpet. The basis for this was an enduring period of peace under Shah Ismael in the 16th and 17th centuries, which is why sufficient resources were available to create works with particularly elaborate motifs (Bristot 2011: 56). In addition to purely ornamental patterns, numerous representations of gardens were created; vases, flowers and trees of life often referred to paradise.

   

  On one hand, various textiles are ubiquitous in many societies: in tents and yurts, carpets have been hung on walls and lain on the floor as thermal insulation since ancient times and hung at the entrance as a substitute for doors. On the other hand, carpets were made in a (semi-)nomadic context in memory of the deceased. These carpets were placed on walls and, in addition to their insulating function, also had the function of commemorating the ancestors. The prayer rug was of central importance for the performance of religious practices. Thus, textile products shape the visual perception of craftsmen and users, and on the other hand, everyday things also find their way into the art of knotting (Frembgen/Mohm 2000: 15).

   

  When Soviet troops invaded Afghanistan on Christmas Eve 1979, war became part of everyday life for many people there; in the course of the years, a civil war broke out. “As early as 1981, the war took on genocidal dimensions. Young and old, men, women and children were affected by unspeakable atrocities.“ (Knauer 1994: 27) "The cultural policy of the [Prorussian] Afghan government was aimed at destroying the traditional ties of Afghan culture to the Islamic world and at adopting the Soviet ideology.“ (Knauer 1994: 28)

   

  As a reaction to these developments, women began to process these impressions into carpet art. The aim was not only to report on specific events, but also to motivate resistance against these conditions and the political system. The resulting carpets originated from the nomadic rural environment. In contrast to large manufactories, in which the knotting and design process was usually carried out by different people, these experiences could be directly converted.

  In Figure 1, three horned hexagons arranged one above the other in a light background dominate the main field, which is lined by a wide, sixfold border. In the inner field of the rhombuses representations of three to four prayer rugs, several stylised mosques and a centrally placed ZSU-23-4 tanks were arranged. Although the tank immediately catches the eye, the carpet looks very calm, there are no other war instruments depicted. This impression is reinforced by the many geometric borders and the structure of the main field, whose symmetrical arrangement is reinforced by the triangles placed on the sides. The similarities to Mushwani carpets from the west and Baluchi carpets from the south are striking (cf. MacDonald 2017: 77 / 78; Parsons 2016: 166/167). The carpet measures 160 x 88 cm and was probably knotted in Pakistan in the 1980s. Since the carpets were mostly in use before they came to the bazaar and to Europe through traders, only estimates can be made in this respect. Since it didn't take long for international buyers to become interested while there was also a market in Afghanistan and Pakistan, such carpets were soon produced in Pakistani refugee camps to generate income.

   

  In Figure 2, a border of BTR-60 tanks frames the midfield, on which two identical representations are arranged one above the other: A hand underneath hammer and sickle is directly related to the map of Afghanistan. Below is the inscription جهاد (Dschihád). This motif of map, hand and writing can be found twice in the carpet. On the right side two AK-47 rifles were placed. On the left side there are two representations of trucks each with a ZPU-4 rifle (heavy multi-bore anti-aircraft machine gun) and also a Mi-24A combat helicopter with glazed bow. The field is filled with pseudo-cyrillic writing.

  In addition to the motifs shown here, there are many other illustrations that can be found on such carpets. Some point out the changes in day-to-day business by depicting weapons, others illustrate specific attacks on cities. But what was the purpose of those carpets whose motifs depict violent everyday scenes? In this respect, too, only speculations can be made. Scientists around the world hold different views on this question. What is certain however, is that the aesthetic change from classical ornamentation to specific depictions was also accompanied by a change in function.

   

  Surely the desire to process the experience played an important role. According to Jürgen Frembgen, it can be ruled out however, that carpets depicting objects of war have found their way into the family space. Instead, he assumes that the carpets were used in the men's house, hujra, or in the reception room of a house reserved for male visitors, otaq — rooms in which conversations and discussions took place. "The use of space and spatial presence are [...] the expression of social interaction and include shared experience. Spaces thus become zones of identity building.“ (Issa 2009: 83) In such a place they could also serve as a call for resistance. The aesthetics of Object 2 resemble anti-Soviet leaflets that circulated in large numbers, often showing the head of state Babrak Karmal, appointed by the Russians, represented as an (Afghan) puppet whose strings were pulled by the Russian hand. In Carpet 2, only the hand and the Soviet symbol were taken from this illustration. A carpet that makes war the subject of discussion could stimulate conversation and strengthen the idea of community. In addition, the homeowner positions himself on the side of the mujahideen. Pursuing the same purpose, they have been presented "in the houses and tents of some mujahidin commanders (sic!) and wealthy people — as ornaments and probably also out of pride about victories won.“ (Frembgen/Mohm 2000: 46) Accordingly, the objects would have been bought and used as "art within resistance" (Frembgen/Mohm 2000: 46). With the resignation and presumably also a further deteriorating economic situation, the objects later came back onto the market and were then purchased by international buyers.

   

  At first glance, it may seem surprising to be processing everyday life in a carpet. Since  particularly Persian pieces are often seen as an investment, timeless patterns or representations of traditional legends are more common. These representations of realities of life therefore mark an aesthetic idea of Modernism in which "the textile is already understood as a pictorial surface in the sense of narrative, sometimes even realistic iconography.“ (Baumhauer 2016: 156)

   

  Since their creation carpets with war motifs have served various purposes: to contribute to financial survival, to express political messages, to represent a medium of processing war. At a time when issues concerning refugee policy in Germany make up a large part of the political debate and there is disagreement about how to deal with migration of all kinds, the carpets have not lost any of their actuality. They are contemporary witnesses of the beginnings of a war that is hardly remembered today. Globalized relationships have made it possible for them to be known to experts around the world. Using various narrative concepts, the carpets with their „pictures against oblivion“ are meant to serve as a reminder of the conditions in the country for the following generation" (Frembgen/Mohm 2000: 45) – thus another purpose can be added, not only in Afghanistan, but all over the world. Although they were not explicitly created for this specific purpose, they could gain it through their display in museum spaces.

   

  References

  • Baumhauer, Till Ansgar: Kunst und Krieg in Langzeitkonflikten. Visuelle Kulturen im Dreißigjährigen Krieg und im heutigen Afghanistan, Berlin 2016.
  • Bristot, Monique Di Prima: Bildlexikon Teppiche, Berlin 2011.
  • Frembgen, Jürgen Wasim / Mohm, Hans Werner: Lebensbaum und Kalaschnikow: Krieg und Frieden im Spiegel afghanischer Bildteppiche, Blieskastel 2000.
  • Issa, Christine:  Baukultur als Symbol nationaler Identität: Das Beispiel Kabul, Afghanistan, Dissertation zur Erlangung des akademischen Grades Dr. rer.nat im Fachbereich Geographie, Gießen 2009, https://geb.uni-giessen.de/geb/volltexte/2010/7483/pdf/IssaChristine_2009_12_08.pdf [15.12.2018], S. 83.
  • Jansen, Simone: Von der Jurte ins Herrenzimmer. Reisen von orientalischen und zentralasiatischen Teppichen, in: Dietrich, Andrea / Herbstreuth, Peter / Mannstein, David (Hrsg.): Orientale 1. Recherchen, Expeditionen, Handlungsreisen (Kat. Ausst. ACC Galerie, Weimar 2001), Weimar 2001, S. 58–71.
  • Knauer, Karin: Afghanistan. Krieg und Alltag (Kat. Ausst. Museum für Völkerkunde, Freiburg 1994), Waldkirch 1994.
  • MacDonald, Brian: Tribal Rugs. Treasures of the Black Tent, Woodbridge 2017.
  • Mascelloni Enrico: War Icons, in: Mascelloni, Enrico / Sawkins, Annemarie (Hrsg.): Afghan War Rugs. The Modern Art of Central Asia (Kat. Ausst. Memorial Art Gallery, University of Rochester 2016), https://mag.rochester.edu/exhibitions/afghan-war-rugs/ [19.11.2018], S. 15–20.
  • Parsons, Richard: The Carpets of Afghanistan, Woodbridge 2016.
  • Passow, Till / Wild, Thomas: Geknüpftes Gedächtnis. Krieg in afghanischer Teppichkunst (Kat. Ausst. WILD Teppich- und  Textilkunst, Berlin 2015), Berlin 2015.
  • Schlammiger, Karl / Wilson, Peter L.: Persische Bildteppiche. Geknüpfte Mythen, München 1980.

   

   

  published February 2020

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  Stefan Eisenhofer

  The philosophy of borrowing materials and tools, as well as visual motifs, from the local environment goes back to his student days at Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology in Kumasi in the late 1960s. It was the creative efforts of local artisans there that inspired him to become interested in the philosophy of "Natural Synthesis" from 1975 onwards at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, where he is now Professor of Sculpture. This manifesto of the so-called "Zaria Rebels", whose members included Uche Okeke, at that time also a lecturer in Nsukka, postulated that local traditions should be interpreted using modern materials and techniques. This idea was to have a lasting influence on El Anatsui.

   

  A striking example of its expression in his work is the metal "tapestries" he has made since the late 1990s, which are actually sculptures rather than wall hangings. They consist of thousands of aluminium bottle caps discarded by Nigerian distilleries. Sorted by colour and prepared by El Anatsui's many assistants, they are stitched together with copper wire into "tapestries" several square metres in size. The tiny pieces of aluminium are arranged in patterns that evoke the narrow-band kente textiles made by Asante and Ewe weavers. However, this classical form of West African cloth is subjected by El Anatsui to a radical transformation in these works, which undermine the idea of metal as a rigid material. He transforms into something pliable and almost sensuous. Closely linked to this is the concept of a "nomadic aesthetic" involving fluidity of ideas, impermanence of form and indeterminacy. For El Anatsui this especially includes encouraging and even forcing the curators of his exhibitions to hang his works in accordance with their own ideas. He himself sees his wall hangings as physically unfixed and insists that there is no final and mandatory way of hanging them.

   

  In addition, El Anatsui creates connections with the aesthetic, political and economic roles of textiles – as an important component of global trade and consumer history, and as a significant vehicle for the transfer of ideas and creative ingenuity across cultures. Furthermore, he refers repeatedly to the function of kente cloths as a way of memorializing something, for they are often linked to events, people and historical or current issues: "You can memorialize a lot of things in cloth instead of having a statue in bronze," says El Anatsui and takes this up not only by naming some of his works after kente cloths, but also through the fact that the bottle tops he uses to create his "cloths" come from brands of liquor with names that refer to historical events.

   

  El Anatsui's wall hangings directly continue his idea of creating "transformations" of regional West African phenomena, and experimenting with materials that are important in the local cultural context. His artistic career began with wooden food trays from local markets which he decorated with burned or carved versions of adinkra symbols. The next phase was characterized by a series of broken and partially mended clay pots which served as a reflection on the current political situation in many African countries, and at the same time as an optimistic reference to the fact that clay pots are repairable and new uses can always be found for them: "When a pot breaks it's not the end of its useful life," says El Anatsui. Even breakage can lead to something new.

   

  In the 1980s he again turned to wood as a material, and discovered the chainsaw as a particularly suitable instrument for working African hardwoods. The chainsaw became for him a metaphor of the long history of violence to which the cultural traditions of Africa were, and still are, exposed. "Each process has its own peculiarities or language. [The chainsaw´s] language [is] of violence, of tearing, of clawing, of dividing," says El Anatsui.

   

  In the abstract wood sculptures of this phase the seed is already sown for something that runs through his work to this day: aesthetic comments on globalization and consumer culture, on the wastage of goods – and human lives. It is this aspect that has led to the great popularity of some of his works, for instance "Visa Queue" (1992), and in particular "Akua´s Surviving Children" (1996), which was made in Denmark while he was grappling with the theme of the slave trade. The stylized human figures made of driftwood show the damaging effects of water, wind and weather, the chosen material in itself a symbol of unprotected exposure: "The wood having (like the slaves) been torn from its land source and exposed to the hostile elements of water and wind."

   

  Linking aesthetic creations with political and economic issues is also a characteristic of those works in which he takes up the world's growing ecological challenges. This applies to his "Peak Project", created in 1999, which consists of numerous freestanding "peaks" made from thousands of glittering milk tin lids. Once again, the unfixed nature of the work is a prominent feature, the "peaks" taking on a different shape at each exhibition site. The open-endedness of his works can be seen in "Coal Pot", a work exhibited in the sculpture garden of the University of Kentucky Art Museum. It consists of a 15-feet iron cauldron filled with large pieces of Kentucky coal. In the course of time, the coal will disappear, gradually changing the appearance of the sculpture.

   

  El Anatsui has always been concerned with West African traditions facing the Global North under conditions of modernity, and in his special way he strives to give them new life and meanings that are of relevance today.

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  Elfriede Dreyer

  Matiyane depicts cities of the world in the form of large mixed-media panoramas, utilising a naïve style of schematic outlining and an almost unsophisticated usage of coloured pencils and crayons, not unlike the early travelogues of the Renaissance and colonial explorers. In his panoramas, the landscape is flattened out into a subjective urban picturesque adorned with the city’s commercially most well-known markers functioning as a concise overview of or introduction to its most important historical events and its icons. Although Matiyane generally presents wide panoramas of cities, thus ‘walking’ multi-viewpoint compositions, he often creates panopticon-like designs in which he functions as a kind of ‘watchman’ surveying the city from a single point of observation – his own. In the late eighteenth century, the English philosopher and social theorist Jeremy Bentham coined the idea of the panopticon as a particular type of institutional building design that could allow surveillance by a single watchman in such a way that the entire institution could be surveyed from a single angle. The term ‘panopticon’ has been derived from Panoptes in Greek mythology that was a giant with a hundred eyes and known as a very efficient watchman. Bentham's architectural designs were very much aimed at the design of institutions such as prisons, for instance, or corporate environments, where inmates or workers could be surveyed without them realising it. Bentham’s ideas acted as precursor to twentieth-century technology such as closed-circuit television (CCTV). Having been territorialised under the apartheid regime of segregation and living in Attridgeville a township outside Pretoria, the country’s administrative capital, Matiyane embarks on a kind of symbolic remapping of these histories. Operating without sufficient transport and with minimal equipment and art materials places limitations on his mobility and professional practice; within the context of the strenuous context of his daily battles, the spectacularity of powerful world cities and their apparent glitz and glamour to him seem like places of pleasure and the world like a global utopia where poverty and agony can be forgotten. In his Panorama of Africa: Cape to Cairo, Matiyane expresses a particular sense of place and a human condition, echoed in Alice Ming Wai Jim‘s (2008:264)  description of Hong Kong in ‘Mediating place-identity: Notes on Mathias Woo’s A Very Good City’: Over the last decade, contemporary art in Hong Kong, informed by travel(ing) theory, the special administrative region’s ambiguous (post) colonial-national-global connections and its inimitable set of historical and cultural situations, has been preoccupied with the themes of mobility, transition, and location in its representations of the city. This fixation, or, rather, the urgency of its mediation in not only artistic but also cultural, economic, and political arenas is inextricably linked to an ongoing elaboration of a Hong Kong identity. But assertions of “who we are” are often intimately related to suppositions of “where we are,” and ideas captured in the environmental psychological concept of place-identity. Matiyane’s sense of identity and notion of ‘who he is’ is similarly tied to ‘where he is’, but virtually he can be anywhere. In every panorama, the artist traces the contemporary city’s ontology of mobility and transitivity in images of technology, airplanes, trains and boats. To him these images represent power, positive energy and dynamism, being tropes of transition and movement towards improvement, development and transformation. His utopian imagery can be interpreted as being populated by a multitude of heterotopic elements, such as powerful personae and images of transitivity represented by trains and boats that function autonomously but concurrently in close relation to their socio-cultural and geopolitical contexts; as liminal instruments connecting space and place; and as vigorous agents of change. In a work such as Panorama of Gauteng (2014), for instance, the artist included images as well as the life history of Nelson Mandela, interpreted as the as an iconic symbol of transformation and change, and in Panorama of Africa: Cape to Cairo, he once again presents Mandela as the most powerful legacy in Africa. It becomes a stratagem of power mediation to point out the country’s instruments of advantage within the global sphere of competition. His vision radiates optimism and hope and deconstructs the notion of the processes of historisation as categorically fixed, predetermined and non-negotiable. Through the act of being empowered to depict any place in the world, the artist constructs his identity in the domain of the global self that utopianistically interacts with perceived spectacular environments. By mostly depicting cities that he has never been to, Matiyane expresses a desire and a longing for the exotic Other, yet his relationship to place is transmutative in essence. He imagines places where the home of the place–identity involves a process in which the self and local become metamorphosed into the global world. The artist becomes a ‘nomad’, displaced and diasporic in his pursuit of fame, wealth and global stardom through the fusion with ‘famous’ and ‘successful’ cities in his depictions. Global psychogeography is created in which cultural disparities are flattened in renderings of cities and their surrounding landscapes, each endowed with air and ground transport, patterns of housing, own histories, a national flag and a city centre. Becoming ‘playful masquerading’, the artist’s presentation of panoramic landscapes imbued by factual information makes the real, perceived and imaginary differences between cities, cultures and worlds fall away. Surveyed through the panopticon framework of his panoramas, there are superficially neither perceivable binaries of have and have-not, poverty and wealth; nor anxieties, losses or racial discrimination. East meets West meets Africa in a global blueprint of urban patterning. By crossing the borders of the self and the local in his depiction of cities, Matiyane becomes a virtual flâneur of the cities of the world and a cartographer of imagined spaces.

  Reference Ming Wai Jim, A. Mediating place-identity: Notes on Mathias Woo’s A very good city, in Asselin, O, Lamoureux, J, Ross, C (eds). 2008. Precarious visualities: New perspectives on identification in contemporary art and visual culture. Montreal & Kingston/London/Ithaca: McGill-Queen’s University Press.

  About the artist Major exhibitions since 2008 2018, Venice Architecture Biennale, Japan Pavillion 2018, Titus Matiyane’s Cities of the World, ZAM, The Hague 2014, Cool Capital Biennale, curated by Elfriede Dreyer and Adele Adendorff. Panorama of Pretoria: Mamelodi to Soweto 2014, Reserve Bank, Cool Capital Biennale exhibition. Panorama of Pretoria: Mamelodi to Soweto 2013, Royal Academy of Fine Arts, Artesis University College, Antwerp. Group exhibition, Nomad bodies curated by Elfriede Dreyer 2012, Stevenson Gallery, Johannesburg. Panorama of Polokwane to Sasolburg 2012, Fried Contemporary Art Gallery, Pretoria. Group exhibition, Me 3, curated by Elfriede Dreyer 2011, La Société générale, Casablanca, Morocco. Cities of the world exhibition and Panorama of Western Cape. Curated by Annemieke de Klerk 2010, Fried Contemporary Art Gallery, Pretoria. Group exhibition, Cities in transition, with Eric Duplan and Lucas Thobejane, curated by Elfriede Dreyer 2010, Lille Métropole Museum of Modern, Contemporary and Outsider Art. Panorama of Lille 2010, Big 5 Festival, Teater aan het Spuy, The Hague. Panoramas of Cape Town, Berlin, Tanzania, Mali, Dubai, Johannesburg, Mpumalanga and KwaZulu Natal. Curated by Annemieke de Klerk 2009, UJ Gallery. Cities of the world. Panoramaas of New York, Pretoria, London, Dubai, Kwazulu Natal, Pietersburg to Sasolburg 2008, Aedesland, Berlin. Cities of the world. Curated by Annemieke de Klerk 2008, National Museum Of Mali, Bamako. Cities of the world. Curated by Annemieke de Klerk 2008, Fried Contemporary Art Gallery, Pretoria. Group exhibition, On the globe, with Pieter Swanepoel and Diek Grobler, curated by Elfriede Dreyer 2008, Delft University of Technology, Faculty of Architecture, Delft. Cities of the world. Curated by Annemieke de Klerk Publications Annemieke de Klerk, Melinda Silverman, Stephen Hobbs, Wytze Patijn, 2007. Catalogue for the exhibition, Titus Matiyane: Cities of the World. Afdeling Bouwkunde, Technische Hogeschool Delft. 010 Publishers. Published for the purposes of the Cities of the World travelling exhibition, 2007- 2008 and the manifestation "African Perspectives" held December 6-8,2007, both commissioned by the Faculty of Architecture of Delft University of Technology. Makorakora: Shaping wire into vehicles.  1985. SA Today. Article featuring photograph of model of spacecraft “Challenger” made by artist. Rankin, E. 1994. Images of metal: Post-war sculptures and Assemblages in South Africa. Johannesburg: Wits University Press.     published February 2020

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  Annette Schemmel

   

  The photo at hand was shot in Paris in the 1920s. We are looking at a beautiful young woman with very fair skin who seems to have sunken her head on a table as if for a rest, while her left hand is carefully exposing a polished mask made from dark wood. The woman is Kiki de Montparnasse alias Alice Prin (1901 – 1953), Man Ray’s lover, a model for many painters and herself a successful artist. Supposedly, Kiki was central for the myth of the Montparnasse as an artistic enclave in Paris.³ The mask is simply “African” in the eyes of my pupils at first. I want them to learn that we are looking at a portrait mask⁴ of the Baule people in Ivory Coast. Pupils should also understand that such carved portraits served to honor an important member of a Baule society, a woman in this case. A dancer wearing a similar mask would incorporate the portrayed notable at the occasion of ritual dances, thus celebrating her achievements.⁵ This specific mask’s features are balanced and dignified, harmonious but not realistic, a point to which I will come back later.

   

  Meanwhile I shall argue that Man Ray’s picture thrives on carefully staged contrasts. The title that has come to stick with this photograph hints not only at black-and-white photography itself, but also at the most obvious contrast, at the White and Black⁶ skin or surface of the picture’s protagonists. Yet there are further opposites linking the lady and the mask in the picture, namely the opposites of young, ultra-modern and lively versus ageless, “primitive” and inanimate, matt versus shiny, skin versus wood, a seemingly passive woman versus the upright face of the mask, holding versus being kept. The photo historian Wendy Grossman has described how these opposites relate: “Almost as if it were a direct cast, the vertical mask, with its shiny black patina, is a negative mirror image of the reclining model’s ovoid face, echoing her pursed lips, closed eyes, and tautly styled coiffure. Parallel symmetrical shadows extend beneath the two perpendicular forms, coupling face and mask in a shallow and austere space.”⁷

   

  Clearly, Man Ray has smartly staged the Black and the White. By the time he shot this picture, Man Ray was making a living of object photography in Paris, then the world capital of fashion. It might therefore come as no surprise that this picture made its first appearance in an early print medium dedicated to beauty and fashion, the Vogue magazine. When the issue came out in 1926, everything “exotic” was fashionable in Paris, especially arts from (indirect) African origin, such as Jazz, Josephine Baker or, well, the mask in Man Ray’s photograph.⁸

   

  Beyond its uncontested fashionable appeal “Noire et Blanche” unveils some deeper, more unsettling meanings, some of which I intend to unfold here. A simple reading is ready at hand if one places this artwork in the historical context of the colonial era. In 1926, the mask’s country of origin belonged to Afrique Occidentale Française. On this backdrop, the dreamy woman holding the mask in Man Ray’s picture appears to be a Freudian slip in the form of a photograph, an unconscious idealization of colonial domination. Are we looking at a personification of the imperial power of France carefully embracing its colony Ivory Coast?⁹

  Next, we could follow a feminist lead towards interpretation. This photograph stages two females, whilst an important third actor of this mise-en-scène is invisible, the male photographer. Through his camera, the male artist is looking at the passive naked woman und at the artefact of a culture that is foreign to him. Obviously, the mask has become passive, too, once removed from its original context. In this reading, Man Ray’s photograph appears as a staging of the desire for submission – the submission of the idealized female and that of the cultural “other”. As viewers, we are lured into this voyeuristic pleasure, unless we take some critical distance.

   

  Following a suggestion of some South African colleagues, we shall now look at this photograph through the lens of the Martinican author Franz Fanon. In his famous psychoanalytical text “Peau noire, masques blancs”, Fanon is pointing at the phenomenon of the essentializing construction of a Black soul (“l’âme noir”).¹⁰ Following Fanon, Man Ray’s photograph can be considered one of those efforts by European (and certain African) artists of the classic Modern era to catch hold of an imagined essence of Black culture. This effort needed to objectify Blackness in order to make this construct palpable and acceptable. Arguably, in “Noire et Blanche” the ’black soul’ lies in the hand of a white person and is reduced to an object, the sculpted mask. Furthermore, it could be argued with Fanon that Man Ray used the Blackness of the wooden object, the “noir” that is readily associated with the ‘continent of darkness’ in the collective imagination of Westerners,¹¹ in order to highlight his girl-friend’s Whiteness. We know that contrasts help at intensifying and it is no secret that White is a color (of skin) that Europeans tend to associate with innocence and purity.¹² Arguably, this racialized contrast of the “Noire” and the “Blanche” served to celebrate qualities that Man Ray projected onto Kiki de Montparnasse, his partner.

   

  So far, I have tried to make clear that the artwork “Noire et Blanche” is not only a showcase of female attractivity, but that this photo also has a violent dimension to it because it relies on certain colonial mechanisms of distinction. As an art teacher, it is my ambition to make this picture’s ambivalence understandable for my pupils. I know that pupils are more likely to learn if they are allowed to make their own discoveries,¹³ for instance by exploring ‘real’ scientific data through the Internet. From our classroom, we can access the Metropolitan Museum’s online collections, which include a comparable portrait mask.

   

  

   

  Website of the Metropolitan Museum, New York

   

  Other than the black-and-white photograph by Man Ray, the museum’s more recent color picture unveils the fine shades of brown and red tones that are characteristic of the tropical wood used for Baule masks. Obviously, such masks are not Black in reality. Furthermore, pupils can learn from the provenance info that the Baule mask in the Met’s collection was famous amongst art lovers and artists in Paris and Berlin already before WW1.¹⁴ This insight helps to understand why Man Ray might have chosen a similar object for his photograph: artists tend to learn from each other.

   

  As a continuation, I like to encourage my pupils to sum up the museum’s text about the characteristics of portrait masks by the Baule by means of notes in German language. In doing so, the learners realize that these masks are carved according to a complex canon of beauty, that the forehead is high for a reason, namely in order to represent intelligence, that the polished surface signifies good health and that a representation of a person can convey dignity even if the proportions of its face have been exacerbated. This is new to many youngsters, whose frustration with their own efforts at realistic drawing has shaped their preference for artists’ realistic skills. Pupils also learn from the online information that this mask can only be brought to live as part of a performance, thus discovering a problematic aspect of its preservation in a museum.

   

  Coming back to “Noire et Blanche” with this new knowledge, my pupils realize that Man Ray’s photograph is concealing much of the knowledge that is available today. They understand that it is worthwhile to research background information for non-European art, even if this requires leaving their textbooks behind and going an extra mile with their foreign language skills. In the course of the classroom discussion that follows we are wondering why a Baule community would have let go of their precious mask, a question leading to recent restitution debates.¹⁵ Furthermore, the teenagers understand that the coquettish presentation of the mask in the hands of a naked European woman might be read as a sign of lacking respect by members of its culture of origin. At this point of the discussion some pupils have experienced a change of perspectives. This experience of assuming a position previously perceived as ‘other’ in the course of a lesson is the very purpose of our engagement with this artwork at school, arguably it is also the purpose of looking at art altogether.

   

  Let me summarize this approach. Comparing Man Ray’s photograph “Noire et Blanche” with the mask from the Metropolitan museum’s collection is a way to scrutinize a canonical picture from a critical perspective without denying the aesthetic appeal of the historic photograph. By way of this lesson I hope to enable changes of perspective and to build sensibility for post-colonial readings of pictures amongst pupils. Taking a bold stance, I shall claim that such lessons are conducive to a more general type of visual competence because I like to think that my pupils’ experience with the implications of this attractive historic picture might encourage them to also critically scrutinize any other picture in the future.

   

   

   

  References

   

  [1] For a thorough photo-historical analysis read Wendy A. Grossmans insightful article “Unmasking Man Ray’s Noire et blanche”, American Art, Vol. 20, No. 2 (Summer 2006), pp. 134-47.

  [2] For instance, Man Ray is mentioned in the widely used text-book Epochen der Kunst. Von der Moderne zu aktuellen Tendenzen (Hsg: Robert Hahne, Oldenburg Schulbuchverlag GmbH, 2013, S. 150/51). In this book, information about him and the photo “L’Enigne d’Isidore Ducasse” (1920) are featured under the header of „Fotografie und Film im Surrealismus“. It can be argued that „Noir et Blanche“ is surrealistic as well, since it seems to be illustrating Lautréamonts famous phrase “beautiful as the chance meeting on a dissecting table of a sewing machine and an umbrella” (Lautréamont alias Isidore Lucien Ducasse, „Die Gesänge des Maldoror“, 1874.), with Man Ray’s “chance meeting” bringing together a white woman and a wooden mask.

  [3] en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_Prin (last accessed on August 26, 2019).

  [4] Wendy A. Grossman’s article “Unmasking Man Ray’s Noire et blanche leaves no doubt that the mask in the picture is actually an airport art version of a Baulé mask, by the way (p. 136).

  [5] Collection Records of the Metropolitan Museums (Baulé Masken), www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/317834 ((last accessed on May 3rd, 2017), also https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/319512 (last accessed on August 26, 2019)

  [6] In this text, I will spell Black and White with capitals in order to highlight the cultural construct of Race.

  [7] For the complex history of the title see Wendy A. Grossman, “Unmasking Man Ray’s Noire et blanche”, pp.140.

  [8] More about this fashion in en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josephine_Baker (last accessed on August 26, 2019).

  [9] Research on Man Ray does not support this easy hypothesis however. In Wendy A. Grossman’s article from 2006, the origin of the photograph is described as an open-ended artistic process partly sparked by commercial interest, partly by a collaborator, but not by political intention. However, I would like to argue that art works tend to transmit more or less unconscious convictions of their authors and their peers, which makes of  artworks valuable witnesses of their times.

  [10] Frantz Fanon, “Schwarze Haut, weiße Masken”, translated by Eva Moldenhauer, Wien: Turia + Kant, 2013, p. 14, 147.

  [11] Fanon makes this point in “Schwarze Haut, weiße Masken” (2013), p. 158.

  [12] “Symbolik der Farben, Formen, Zahlen” in Lexikon der Kunst, Bd. VII. S. 153-154, E.A. Szeemann Verlag, Leipzig 1994.

  [13] I am here referring to pupils from eleventh grade of the Bavarian Gymnasium, whom the syllabus obliges to explore aspects of the body in art during half a year.

  [14] Collection Records of the Metropolitan Museums (Baule masks), www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/317834 ((last accessed on May 3rd, 2017), also https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/319512 (last accessed on August 26, 2019)

  [15] For a thorough introduction to this question read Felwine Sarr’s and Bénédicte Savoy’s “restitution report” commissioned by the French state. http://restitutionreport2018.com/ (last accessed on April 1, 2020).

   

   

  published April 2020

  Sound track / Hörimpuls Man Rays Noire et Blanche, 2018 (Schemmel): Link