TO DISCOVER HOW MY ANCESTORS DREAMED THEIR WORLD MAKES IT EASY FOR

ME TO COPE WITH THE WORLD IN WHICH I AM TODAY. -CHINUAACHEBE

by Brett M. Van Hoesen

THEE
CENTU RY
CONSTRUCTING A CONTEMPORARY CRITICAL BIOGRAPHY OF AFRICA

THE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT THAT HISTORIES ARE CONSTRUCTED,

an idea frequently denounced by those
who believe in preserving a concept of
"history with a capital 'H'," is undeni-
ably an important, intrinsic component
of contemporary historiography. Okwui
Enwezor's recent exhibition and accom-
panying catalogue. "The Short Century:
Independence and Liberation Movements
in Africa, 1945-1994," experiments with
the possibility of constructing alterna-
tive chronologies as a means to high-
light historical periods that deserve
greater attention and revision. According
to Enwezor, this densely packed. truly
multimedia endeavor seeks to create an
interdisciplinary "critical biography" of
Africa by focusing on the crucial period
from the end of World War 11 to the mid
1990s. The dates that bracket the show
emphasize specific historic events: the
1945 Fifth Pan-African Congress in
Manchester, England, which was a ral-
lying cry for the emancipation and inde-
pendence of colonial Africa; and 1994,
the year that marked the official end of
apartheid in South Africa. As suggested
by the exhibition's title, these events are
signposts that demarcate the beginning
and end of the "short century" of African
independence and decolonization.
Although this block of time serves to
situate the project. drawing attention
to two of the most significant public
events in Africa's recent struggle to over-
come colonial rule, there are several
points throughout the exhibition that
escape the confines of Enwezor's cir-
cumscribing dates. Some works that
date from 1945 stylistically recall a
period that predates that year, and
many contemporary works from the late
1990s to the present are included. In
tandem, the show's somewhat grand
and problematic aim of constructing a
"biography of Africa" prompts pause
and query when one notes that the
exhibit includes the work of artists who
represent 20 of the 53 nations of Africa.
This is not to say that the show should
provide, in an antiquated "survey" fash-
ion, works that represent all African
countries. However, while the exhibition
claims to narrate a comprehensive polit-
ical, social, and cultural history of a
continent, there is a pronounced
emphasis on work from South Africa.
One could speculate that this focus
simply reflects the recent end of
apartheid, and the privileged role that
South African artists have in telling a

36 NEWARTEXAMINER
contemporary story of African independ-
ence and liberation. On the other hand.
this emphasis reinforces the fact that
this "critical biography of Africa" has
been curated: the authorial tenor of
Enwezor's own voice in selecting the
various biographers and biographies
comes to the surface. This significant.
modernity with which to judge and eval-
uate not only African cultures, but cul-
tures in general.
The interplay between the tenets of
European Modern art and African alter-
natives to this "tradition" is the under-
lying focus of three significant sections
of the show. Paintings made from the
mid 1940s to the '60s, by Ernest Mancoba,
Gerard Sekoto, Ben Enwonwu, Ibrahim
El-Salahi, Ahmed Cherkaoui, Skunder
Boghossian, and Iba Ndiaye reinforce
the bridge or dialogue African artists
constructed between certain formal
. . . .. ..

unprecedented exhibition and its

impressive accompanying catalogue
would do well to admit this imbalance
and selectivity from the start.
What "The Short Century" does very
successfully is bring to both academic
and public discourse a period of history
yet to be sufficiently addressed on many
>¾ ,
levels. The show offers a number of voices
-past and present-through a variety
of media including literature, visual
arts, film, music, theater, documentary
photography. mass media, and architec-
ture. Interwoven with the art through-
out the galleries are quotes by eminent
figures such as the Senegalese pub-
lisher and writer Alioune Diop: Kwame
Nkrumah. who ruled Ghana from 1960
to 1966, Africa's first president of an
independent nation; dramatist, politician,
and champion of the Negritude move-
ment Aime Cesaire from Martinique;
Frantz Fanon, the writer and theorist of
African decolonization and black libera-
tion, also from Martinique: Nigerian
novelist Chinua Achebe: and Nelson
Mandela, who led South Africa's post-
apartheid independence movement. Their
words ground the visual material within
the textual heritage and legacy of
the struggle for African liberation and
independence.
Divided into nine thematic sections,
the exhibit includes the work of 60 African
artists working within and against the
framework of modernity. Problematic in
its own right, the paradoxical concept of
"modernity" is presented here in a num-
ber of guises to complicate and diffuse
the Eurocentric definition of the term:
parallel modernities, hybrid moderni-
ties, alternative modernities, multiple
-1111~, ..
modernities, and contra-modernities.
CLOCKWISE:
JANE ALEXANDER, Butcher Boys, 1985-86. Mixed media (plaster, paint, bone, horns, woodbench),
Imbued with its own ideological implica- 50,12" x 84" x 35".
tions, each mode signifies the impossi- YINKA SHONIBARE, Boy/Girl, 1998. Wax print oncotton textile, 70'h" x 59" x 27V'.
bility of establishing a fixed concept of SEYDOU KETTA, Untitled, 1958. Gelatine-silver print, 14' x 10".
"The Short Century" premiered at Museum Villa Stuck, Munich in 2001, then travelled to Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin;
Museumof Contemporary Art, Chicago; asd will be on view at P.S.1 in New York in February 2002.
Unless stated otherwise all images courtesy of Museum Villa Stuck.

2002 I JANUARY-FEBRUARY 37
 GEORGES ADEAGBO, From Colonialization to Independence, 1999. Mixed media, dimensions variable.
elements of European Modernism and the
experiences, languages, religions, and
histories unique to twentieth-century
Africa. For example. the calligraphic
lines in El-Salahi's work recall the
biomorphic forms of Surrealism, while
his visual language is rooted in the cal-
ligraphy of Islamic texts and folk art
from his home country of Sudan.
Boghossian. an Ethiopian artist trained
in London and Paris, is represented
by saturated canvases of mottled color
spiritualized by owls and hybrid animal-
human characters that mark his
interest in the other-worldly and meta-
physical themes of Matta, and, simulta-
neously, the symbolic vocabulary of
Coptic art. Cherkaoui, born in Morocco
and trained in Paris and Warsaw, incor-
porates the variant motifs of Paul Klee
with those of Berber pottery and tattoo
38 NEWARTEXAMINER
patterns in his abstract paintings from
the 1960s.
From a stylistic standpoint, there are
frequent reminders in this section of
the omnipresence of European colonial
history beginning with the Berlin Con-
ference of 1884 to '85. at which European
powers divided African territories
amongst themselves. In a careful essay
in the catalogue, Chika Okeke, a miember
of Enwezor's curatorial team, articulates
the relationship between the colonial
systems of art education and the agency
of African artists. While elements of
European expressionism, Surrealism,
and abstraction were ingrained in the art
and humanities curricula of colonial
institutions, Okeke argues the result
of this education, evidenced in the
works on display, was far from mere
mimicry as African artists actively
revamped, rejected, and critiqued
European models.
From a human-rights standpoint,
the political reality of African artists
must be considered. For example, South
African artists Mancoba and Sekoto,
working in the late 1930s and '40s, both
emigrated to France because of the
limited systems of education and
oppressive living conditions at home.
Sekoto's figurative painting from 1946
to '47, Song of the Pick, painted before
he left for Paris, documents the manual
labor of migrant workers. The rhythmic
human forms and the title suggest that
music propels the workers into a unified
motion while the dark, watchful eyes
of a white male overseer observe their
progress.
In the decade from 1955 to 1965, most
African nations gained independence.
Simultaneously. a wave of African
nationalism reinforced the militant social,
political, and cultural alternatives to
European modernity. particularly Negri-
tude and Pan-Africanism. The former.
established in 1934 by Aime Cesaire.
Leopold Sedar Senghor. Leon Damas.
and a host of African and Caribbean
students in Paris, promoted African
alterity in contemporary intellectual
thought, highlighting the unique compo-
nents of African Modernism with an
emphasis on African subjectivity. Pan-
Africanism. a widespread Anglophone-
based movement, focused on bringing
awareness of African "otherness" to con-
temporary philosophiocal discourse,
and called for the empowerment
of African political and social systems.
African nationalism co-opted aspects of
the Negritude and Pan-Africanism move-
ments in order to increase cultural
autonomy, a growing number of art
schools emerged, including institutions
GHADA AMER, Le Lit, 1997. Embroidery on cotton, 71" x 52". Courtesy of Deitch Projects, New York.
in Nigeria, Sudan, Ghana, and Uganda,
as well as additional independent
venues. For example, Ulli Beier. a German-
born writer and historian, and his
English wife Georgina. established what
is now referred to as the Oshogbo
School. a community of emigr6 European
and native Nigerian artists who worked
together in close contact and produced
distinctive prints, paintings, and large-
scale sculptural and architectural works
beginning in the early 1960s. Georgina
Beier's woodcuts. such as Gelede I
from 1966, focus on her fascination with
specific rituals unique to the Yoruba
culture, including Gelede masquerades,
a tradition that honors Yoruba women.
Her work directly influenced the prints
of contemporary Nigerian artist Twins
Seven Seven, whose visual vocabulary
draws on his Yoruba heritage along with
his own personal narratives.
Perhaps the strongest and least explained
component of the show, operating
under the thematic rubric "Shift:
History, Identity. Authenticity," includes
the work of contemporary artists from
the 1970s to the present. Encompassing
painting, sculpture, photography, installa-
tion, and video, this section chronicles a
wide array of commentary on the identity
politics of contemporary Africa and the
lingering legacy of the colonial and neo-
colonial eras. Works from the 1970s
include selections from a series of 100
paintings by Tshibumba Kanda Matulu
titled "The History of Zaire." These rela-
tively small panel paintings narrate
major mid-century events in the former
Belgian colony, including the assassina-
tion of Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba
in 1961. The collection, created for
the anthropologist Johannes Fabian. is
haunting in its own right without the
added biographical note that Tshibumba
disappeared not long after the series
was completed and has since been
declared a "missing person." From the
TSHIBUMBA KANDA MATULU
Lomumba in BOuno Prison, October 25, 1974, from the
"History of Zaire" series, November 1973-November 1974.
Paint on panel.
2002 1 JANUARY-FEBRUARY 39
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GAVIN JANTJES, South African Colouring Book (detail), 1974-75. Folder with eleven graphic prints, each 24" x 18".

40 NEWARTEXAMINER
same time period, Gavin Jantjes's set
of prints titled South African Colouring
Book reverses the lighting scheme of
the photographic imagery included in
his collaged pages. In. the form of nega-
tives, the images are disorienting. hence
tiny arrows pointing to specific people
are required to accompany the instruc-
tions, "colour these blacks white."
Pairing these pictures with excerpts
from South African segregation laws.
which indicate the absurdity of 1960s
amendments that continued to hone the
exclusionary definition of "honorary
whites." Jantjes flips the color bar to
THE IMPORTANCE OF "THE SHORT CENTURY"
LIES IN THE MULTIPLE WAYS IN WHICH IT WILL
BE INTERPRETED AND REINTERPRETED.
demonize former South African Prime
Minister J. B. Vorster. Represented in a
paint-by-numbers format with the
directions "colour these whites only."
Vorster is instantly transformed into
Adolf Hitler by the artist's simple addi-
tions of hair, mustache, and a swastika
lapel pin.
Butcher Boys, Jane Alexander's
grotesque, life-sized, humanoid sculp-
tures from the mid '80s, sit on a bench
in an 'eerily familiar manner, as if
waiting for a bus. Yet these three pasty-
colored, bulky, nude male forms are
considerably disfigured, made other-
worldly by horns, cranial distortions.
vacant glossy black eyes, missing ears,
and mouths muted by scars. A frighten-
ing commentary on the apathy and
complicit silence of whites during the
period of apartheid, these previously
human characters have morphed into
monsters. Equally effective, although
through completely different means.
Sue Williamson's 1990 For Thirty Years
Next to His Heart is a compelling instal-
lation of 49 photographs of pages from
one black man's South African pass-
port. Williamson's images document the
manner by which this man's travel was
monitored, regulated, and restricted
within his own country under the rule of
apartheid. This piece speaks to the
history not only of an individual, but of
the larger population of blacks who for
generations suffered constant infringe-
ment of their basic human rights.
Additional works from this section of
recent art, some of which were specially
commissioned for the show, include the
untitled photographs of Zarina Bhimji
from 2000, which document rundown
homes and buildings in Uganda that
were evacuated in the early 1970s by
residents of Indian heritage under the
repressive regime of Idi Amin. Address-
ing a post-1994 discourse devoted to
examining the effects of globalization
and transculturation, Georges Adeagbo's
installation, From Colonization to Inde-
pendence, begun in 2000, covers the
walls and floor of a small gallery space
with pamphlets, posters, magazines,
books, newspapers, and other para-
phernalia (including a copy of the
September/October issue of New Art
Examiner, which featured the Museum
of Contemporary Art curators who
brought this show to Chicago). These
objects are meant to link to the colonial
and postcolonial history of Africa to
the various cities hosting "The Short
Century": Munich, Berlin, Chicago, and
New York. Adeagbo's materials suggest
the connection between Africa, Europe,
and America in terms of both past
colonial histories and present attempts
at resolution.
The importance of "The Short Century"
lies in the multiple ways in which it will
be interpreted and reinterpreted. Having
the opportunity to see the show in
Berlin and Chicago. I was struck by the
vastly different ways in which the exhibit
was advertised in each city. In Berlin,
a large-scale poster of Alexander's
Butcher Boys hung in every under-
ground U-Bahn station, a seething
reminder of the fresh and unresolved
histories of colonialism. In Chicago, the
advertisements consisted of an outline
of the African continent cheerily filled
with brightly colored words: "Painting,
Sculpture, Photography, Architecture,
Drawing, Theater, Music, Design, Film."
For a country whose pop culture seems
okay with promoting the image of Africa
as a playground for television shows like
"Survivor Africa," one can only hope
that American audiences will under-
stand that "The Short Century" is far
more than a call to celebrate African cul-
ture. To paraphrase Alioune Diop in his
1955 opening address to the First
Congress of Negro Writers and Artists in
Paris. how is it possible that culture and
politics are sometimes suggested to
belong to two radically distinct worlds? If
one is to believe that "The Short
Century" is a celebration of African
culture, then it must also be a call
to political action: the exhibit and cata-
logue rightly declare that it is time to
reevaluate, reassess, and come to terms
with, on a global level, the lingering his-
tory of African liberation and independ-
ence movements. Considering the United
States's recent track record in pulling
out of the United Nations's conference
on race held in Durban, South Africa, it
appears that this country has a long way
to go in understanding the complexities
of modern-day Africa: clearly, "The Short
Century" is here to help. "4
Brett M. Van Hoesen is a doctoral candidate
in art history at the University of Iowa.
2002 I JANUARY-FEBRUARY 41
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TITLE: The short century: constructing a contemporary critical

biography of Africa
SOURCE: New Art Examiner 29 no3 Ja/F 2002
WN: 0200101521008

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