The Things We Now Call Fake Will in the Future Become Authentic Objects: Global African Art Markets and the Space and Time of the Fake

Abstract

ABSTRACT “Invented” out of a history of colonial displacement and the modernist art movement, African art has long been valued for its supposedly precolonial and tribal qualities. Objects made within a traditional context are deemed as authentic, whereas others made for sale, often imitating traditional styles, are deemed as fake. While such a distinction continues to be upheld and perpetuated by different actors in the transnational African art trade, I argue that the regenerative vision of time and diversified geography of interactions have begun to challenge the pervasiveness and inconvertibility of authentic and fake in African art. Specifically, I use my study of the African art market in Lomé and a Chinese collection and display of African art in Beijing as starting points to look at the constructedness of authenticity, and the time and space of the fake. The aim of this article is to show the effects of market commoditisation and changing geographies of participation in reinforcing and destabilising the distinction of real and fake in African art.