AFRICAN ARTS最新文献

{"title":"Carnival and the Theme of Migration","authors":"Umana Nnochiri","doi":"10.1162/afar_a_00679","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1162/afar_a_00679","url":null,"abstract":"| african arts WINTER 2022 VOL. 55, NO. 4 Carnival Calabar1 is an annual international event that occurs around Christmas time in the city of Calabar in Cross River State, Nigeria. The festivities offer a platform that displays cultural hybridity, translating Caribbean carnival aesthetics in a local context that values fun but also provides an avenue for addressing important social, cultural, and political issues. Carnival Calabar tells a story that is uniquely our own, full of joy, pain, triumph, and struggle. From the point of view of a costume designer, I will explain how the visual language of carnival links the conversation on migration and helps us to understand the past, present, and future. Each year the state government, through the Carnival Commission, chooses a broad theme encompassing many stories that are first and foremost part of human experience, not limited to a specific time or culture. Themes over the years include: Carnival Queen (2005), Our Beauty, Our Culture (2006), Celebrating Our Heritage through Culture (2007); Sustaining Earth Treasures through Our Culture (2008), Land of Our Birth, Our People, Our Heritage (2009); Our Strength and Resilience, the Bedrock of Our Future (2010); Endless Possibilities (2011); Celebrating a New Dawn (2012); Ain’t No Stopping Us (2013); Celebration Time, 10th Anniversary (2014); Climate Change (2015); Climate Change (2016); Migration (2017); Africanism (2018); Humanity (2019). I design costumes for the Passion 4, the band who won in 2017. Our band has won the most competitions for best band (eleven times out of fourteen) so I’m proud to be a contributing member of this group. Costumes, as Barbieri (2018) finds, are principal ingredients for interpreting and communicating understanding about a performance to the audience and enhance visuals for the performance. Passion 4 competes annually with the other major bands such as Freedom Band, Master Blaster, Seagulls, and Bayside. There are other noncompeting bands from government organizations, such as the Joint Military and Paramilitary Band and the Governor’s Band; and from sponsors such as First Bank, United Bank for Africa, and Dangote (a large African manufacturer and supplier across Africa). The competition bands, or the major bands, have remained the same from carnival’s inception.2 The judging categories focus on floats, band on the move, costume and make up, interpretation of theme, best reflection of carnival spirit.3 The obstacles to putting together such a large and complex event are many. My account of the 2017 Carnival Calabar and the theme, Migration, is intended to share insight into the visual language of carnival design created with visual metaphors built from textiles, costumes, props, floats, and performances that traversed the twelve-kilometer route through a city that has been at the center of numerous migrations. Dancers’ feet move across the land that fueled the Bantu migrations, enabled a major outlet for the trans-Atlanti","PeriodicalId":45314,"journal":{"name":"AFRICAN ARTS","volume":"55 1","pages":"18-31"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-11-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48575327","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Khatt Islāmi: Sacred Scripts from Islamic Africa","authors":"E. Sutton","doi":"10.1162/afar_r_00673","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1162/afar_r_00673","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45314,"journal":{"name":"AFRICAN ARTS","volume":"55 1","pages":"91-93"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43262586","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Media Primitivism: Technological Art in Africa By Delinda Collier","authors":"Allison K. Young","doi":"10.1162/afar_r_00675","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1162/afar_r_00675","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45314,"journal":{"name":"AFRICAN ARTS","volume":" ","pages":"95-96"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46607454","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Aïda Muluneh's Homebound: A Journey in Photography & Addis Foto Fest: Nine Years Survey","authors":"Kristen D. Windmuller-Luna","doi":"10.1162/afar_r_00671","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1162/afar_r_00671","url":null,"abstract":"I wish I were visiting this exhibition in Sharjah, enjoying the experience of viewing art alongside others. But I’m not. Like most, I’m sheltering at home from a pandemic that has left us anxious and lusting for the before times of physical connections with art and people.1 For many, the virtual world has proven a feeble shadow of its gloriously three-dimensional counterpart. What does it mean to virtually experience a tangible exhibition in sensorial stillness, ourselves homebound in a very different way? Thanks to a virtual immersive 360° tour by Virtualeyes.ae on the Matterport 3D Showcase platform, Homebound: A Journey in Photography and Addis Foto Fest: Nine Years Survey are accessible from anywhere, at any hour. Originally scheduled to open March 23, 2020, the digital tour was created following the exhibition’s postponement. Bilingual in person, the virtual experience exists in Arabic and English-language versions. The presentation comprises two intertwined exhibitions. Galleries 1–4 present a mid-career survey of Muluneh’s fine arts and photojournalistic images curated by Salah M. Hassan with Sataan Al-Hassan (associate curator) of the Africa Institute of Sharjah (collaborative organizer of the exhibition with the Sharjah Art Museum and Sharjah Museums Authority). It is the first offering of Muluneh’s work in Sharjah, and her largest solo museum exhibition to date; works were mostly produced following her 2007 return to Ethiopia. The remaining four galleries comprise Addis Foto Fest: Nine Years Survey, curated by Aïda Muluneh. Available on the AI’s website as a PDF, the colorfully-designed bilingual catalogue replicates the checklist and wall didactics. An artist’s talk was presented digitally (Hassan 2020). Homebound includes 77 fine art and photojournalistic photographs.2 The exhibition does not diachronically chart Muluneh’s artistic evolution. Viewers must consider for themselves the internal themes and feedback loops of her oft-fantastical compositions. “Art” images are uniformly presented as white-framed large-scale prints, generally 80 cm square. In contrast, her documentary work is framed in black, and presented at variable scales. The latter framing and sizing conventions are also (above) 1 Installation view of works from the series The Memory of Hope, The Distant Gaze, The World is 9, and Past/Forward. Photo: Virtual tour screenshot by the author","PeriodicalId":45314,"journal":{"name":"AFRICAN ARTS","volume":"55 1","pages":"84-86"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44702502","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"100 × Congo: A Century of Congolese Art in Antwerp","authors":"Hugo Deblock","doi":"10.1162/afar_r_00672","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1162/afar_r_00672","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45314,"journal":{"name":"AFRICAN ARTS","volume":"55 1","pages":"87-90"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42807862","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Exchanging Symbols: Monuments and Memorials in Post-Apartheid South Africa","authors":"Amy Nygaard Mickelson","doi":"10.1162/afar_r_00674","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1162/afar_r_00674","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45314,"journal":{"name":"AFRICAN ARTS","volume":" ","pages":"93-94"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42405979","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Practicing Decoloniality","authors":"Chepkemboi J. Mang’ira","doi":"10.1162/afar_a_00665","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1162/afar_a_00665","url":null,"abstract":"| african arts AUTUMN 2022 VOL. 55, NO. 3 of decolonial work currently being undertaken in UK museums (Museums Association 2021). Meanwhile the government has warned museums that “as publicly funded bodies, you should not be taking actions motivated by activism or politics” (Dowden 2021) and projects exploring colonial legacies have received high-profile criticism from MPs and the rightwing media (Doward 2020). The sector also continues to wait for much-delayed guidelines on repatriation and restitution (often seen as a cornerstone of decolonial work) from Arts Council England. Yet “decolonizing” is now a term that appears regularly in funding bids, on museum websites, in redisplay projects and exhibitions amid concerns that the term has been co-opted, is becoming meaningless and is, anyway, impossible from within the institution (Kassim 2017). Some of these concerns echo those of de Greef, Goncalves, and Jansen about the university (2021: 1). In light of this, it is important that this exhibition is taking place at the V&A not only because of its high profile and international reputation, but also because of its long and troubled relationship with Africa. Founded in the mid-nineteenth century with a focus on art and design, today it holds the UK’s national collection of fashion and textiles and has extensive Asian holdings (which also include fashion), but Africa has not been part of its remit. As recently as 2009 the V&A’s collecting policy stated, “Objects are collected from all major artistic traditions ... The Museum does not collect historic material from ... Africa south of the Sahara” (V&A 2012). Although the policy only excluded historic material, in practice contemporary material was not collected either. North African objects were included and the museum has a large collection of embroideries from the urban coastal regions, but it did not, until recently and due to the work of Angela Jansen, collect North African fashion (Stylianou 2013, Jansen 2022). Furthermore, for much of the twentieth century the V&A not only excluded African fashion but also deaccessioned dress and textiles collected in the nineteenth and early twentieth century (including Madagascan weaving, Nigerian rigas, military uniforms, and royal Ethiopian robes) on the grounds that it was, and could only be, of anthropological interest (Stylianou 2013). When one thinks about the invisibility of Africa in fashion histories and museum practice, the V&A has surely been the example par excellence. This absence needs to be addressed. However, making African fashion more visible is not without its problems, not least that in bringing postindependence Africa firmly into the fashion canon (as an exhibition at the V&A must surely do), it only feeds into the colonial/modernity binary that “ultimately reinforces categories of racial, cultural, and temporal discrimination” (de Greef, Goncalves, and Jansen 2021: 4). In the introduction to the forthcoming Creating African Fashion Histo","PeriodicalId":45314,"journal":{"name":"AFRICAN ARTS","volume":"55 1","pages":"8-9"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-08-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49015099","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"After All Is Said and Done: On Fluid Solidarity and Survival","authors":"N. Makhubu","doi":"10.1162/afar_a_00663","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1162/afar_a_00663","url":null,"abstract":"There is no doubt, given seemingly permanent social, environmental, and economic crises, that transnational solidarity is fundamental in the renewal and survival of art institutions. In the last couple of years, there have been several online discursive platforms—panels, symposia, colloquia—featuring artists, cultural critics, and academics to reflect on the consequences of global disasters such as the coronavirus pandemic on the livelihood of art practitioners and the sustainability of organizations and institutions based in the African continent, most of which are dependent on and competing for shrinking funding resources. In response to the precarity and desolation precipitated by crisis, there is revived urgency in solidarity through the ethics of care, healing, self-preservation, and other contingent strategies of survival. Alternatives such as online exhibitions, interventions, and forums seem to offer new prospects for how modes of practice and working relations across the African continent can be refashioned and large-scale transnational support networks can be formulated. Most significant is that a structurally altered art ecosystem modelled on generosity and collective empathy seems palpable. It is now possible, for example, to imagine the repositioning of institutions like museums as “spaces of care” and habituate therapeutic activities—sometimes ritualized and mysticized—in various initiatives, programs, events, and discursive platforms. The focus on recuperation and repair from psychosocial woundedness, ecocide, social injustice, and compounded trauma has enlivened the quest for slowing down to be in communion and to feel with others. Yet with the translocation of the hard work in affective labor from live to virtual spaces, there is also dilution of otherwise pivotal concepts and strategies demanded by solidarity. In very general terms, affective labor—already deeply entrenched in creative practice—is catalyzed and made visible. The disorienting simulation of social contact online, steamrolled by commercial traffic, trivializes the practice of “care,” leaving class polarization intact and impeding meaningful solidarity. One is reminded of the questions that the artist Naadira Patel so pointedly asks in the text included in her art work the future of work (2020): “how do we imagine a sustainable, more generous, more caring, more kind, unbiased, and more calm world of work?” and then “how radical is your self-care if you don’t post about it? [...] try the self-care app of the year? [...] how high is your social justice barometer?” Solidarity—civic, social, cultural, or political—among institutions, organizations, and art practitioners in the African continent is vital but it is predicated on volatile, uneven, constrained, and neocolonially bound societies. Take, for example, one of the rich historical intellectual legacies of cultural solidarity on the African continent: Pan-Africanism. Although bold in its ideals, Pan-Africanism is a","PeriodicalId":45314,"journal":{"name":"AFRICAN ARTS","volume":"55 1","pages":"1-7"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-08-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48726295","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"“Africa's First Woman Press Photographer”: Mabel Cetu's Photographs in Zonk!","authors":"Marie Meyerding","doi":"10.1162/afar_a_00669","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1162/afar_a_00669","url":null,"abstract":"| african arts AUTUMN 2022 VOL. 55, NO. 3 For years, researchers have been searching for photographs made by Mabel Cetu, who “was said to be the first Black South African woman photojournalist” (Siopis 2006: 10). Cetu was a Black woman who worked as a nurse for more than twenty-five years before she was trained as a photographer in 1956, eight years after the National Party took over South Africa’s government and introduced apartheid—a system of institutionalized racial discrimination against people of color. She received her training at the monthly publication Zonk! African People’s Pictorial, which was launched in 1949 as the country’s first widely circulated magazine directed at a Black readership (Maingard 2020: 153). Perhaps because many magazines published their images uncredited at the time, it seems as if none of her images have been found, meaning that they have never been discussed in scholarly research.1 Critically examining Cetu’s photographs printed in Zonk! in 1956 and 1957 and analyzing in how far she might have been able to subvert common representations of gender, I want to reveal gendered power structures determining the field of photography in 1950s South Africa. The search for Cetu’s photographs can be understood as part of recent scholarly interest in female South African photographers working prior to 1994 (Newbury, Rizzo, and Thomas 2021; du Toit 2005; Corrigall 2018; Danilowitz 2005; Thomas 2018). It is interesting that, although most of these photographers, including Cetu, would probably not have considered their photographs as art, nearly all researchers concentrating on their works are art historians. While photographs had been displayed in a fine art context in South Africa from 1858 (Bull and Denfield 1970: 63), the 1950s photographs of Cetu and her contemporaries were only rediscovered in the late 1980s, when they started to circulate “as aestheticised images ... [ascending from the] grainy pictures in magazines” (du Toit and Gordon 2016: 158). The recent interest in these women’s photography can also be related to the efforts made in the field of humanities to broaden the canon and include more works by those groups that have historically been marginalized. For instance, the former director of the South African National Gallery, Marilyn Martin, claims that in South Africa’s history of photography, Black women form “the most telling absences” (2001: 51). During the 1950s, when Cetu began working as a photographer, the field of photography in South Africa was largely dominated by men and White people. The artist Penny Siopis takes the example of the photographs of the notorious 1956 Women’s March to point to the absence of women photographers covering the event (2006: 10). She claims that “Black women did not see photography as a viable profession. Those few chances to build a photographic career seemed limited to men, as witnessed in the photojournalism of Drum magazine of the fifties” (2006: 10). The lack of represe","PeriodicalId":45314,"journal":{"name":"AFRICAN ARTS","volume":"55 1","pages":"54-69"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-08-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49641781","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Iklan Aesthetics in Niger: Identity and Adornment from Servility to Self-agency","authors":"C. Becker, Brian Nowak","doi":"10.1162/afar_a_00666","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1162/afar_a_00666","url":null,"abstract":"| african arts AUTUMN 2022 VOL. 55, NO. 3 Silver pendants, camel saddles, and leather bags are typically featured in museums and books as examples of Tuareg art. These finely crafted objects were made for upper-status families or so-called nobles by artisans belonging to a class referred to as inaden. Such an approach emphasizes the striking objects commissioned by men and women who held the highest status in Tuareg society but ignores the objects produced by and for people in the lower strata, including the descendants of enslaved people. Commonly referred to as iklan, they constitute a diverse, socially and economically marginalized group with a distinct culture that has driven markets while creating new styles of visual representation. Iklan are referred to as buzu in Hausa and bella in the Songhai language in Niger.1 Since the colonial period, ethnographers have translated the term iklan as “slave” or “captive.” Iklan (sg. akli/ekli) can best be described as a socially stratified group constructed from the descendants of outsiders who found their way into Tuareg society either because they were captured or purchased, or because they joined a Tuareg group in search of protection. As we will see, the very name iklan presents problems of translation and identity, especially in relation to the larger Tuareg society in contemporary Niger. This article provides a nuanced look at Tuareg visual culture by concentrating on how formerly enslaved communities have been forging new identities in the twenty-first century (Fig. 1). It considers how iklan have used visual culture to engage in resistance strategies. As asserted by Michel de Certeau, marginalized groups subvert “rituals, representations, and laws imposed upon them” and transform them into something quite different, deflecting the power of the dominant social order (1984: xiii). It is through this lens that we can understand and interpret iklan aesthetics as “tactics” to gain autonomy from hierarchies of power. We examine the choices contemporary iklan communities, as a historically marginalized population, are making to represent their identity, sometimes adopting elite Tuareg aesthetics, often drawing inspiration from newly available goods in the market, or adopting the aesthetics of neighboring people. These various responses to the abolition of slavery and the breaking down of endogamous social categories reveal how the formerly enslaved use visual culture to negotiate their status and resist against the hierarchies that historically marginalized them. We take a comparative approach and concentrate on two Tamasheq-speaking regions of Niger: the Tillabéri region along the Niger-Burkina Faso border and the Tahoua-Agadez region within Niger (Fig. 2). We explore the different tactics used by iklan in aesthetic expression and consider the various institutions and market forces that have contributed to the refiguring of iklan self-identity. A comparative approach allows for a detailed understandi","PeriodicalId":45314,"journal":{"name":"AFRICAN ARTS","volume":"55 1","pages":"10-25"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2022-08-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47498465","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}