The 20th century convulsed as tectonic forces swept colonialism from Africa—and most of the rest of the world—releasing powerful socio-political, economic and cultural tensions that still reverberate across the world’s second largest continent today. As turmoil preceded the death of colonialism, so has it pervaded post-colonial Africa despite the exuberance and hope that followed Ghana’s independence in l957.i In the second half of the last century, the sense of alliance and kinship heightened between blacks in the post-slavery societies of the Americas and Africans in anti-colonial struggles on the continent. This gave credence to pan-African sentiments and ideologies at just the moment when the Cold War was shaping global politics and the United Nations was giving voice to the growing number of new nations emerging from European domination.ii The artists in this exhibition were born into this socio-cultural framework.
Despite the more than half a century of colonialism, Africa remains a continent of tremendous diversity with 900 million people speaking more than a thousand languages in fifty-three independent nations. With the world’s largest desert and longest river as well as some of its most dense tropical rainforests and most expansive grasslands, Africa is a continent of extremes where ice-covered mountains straddle the Equator itself. Along with its high mountain ranges, dramatic waterfalls, and huge inland lakes, Africa has abundant mineral wealth—diamonds, gold, copper, oil—the benefits of which has not accrued to most of its people. Instead, the resources and their future potential have fueled constant bloody conflicts, corruption and sustained political instability.iii
Millennia before the rise of Greece and Rome, Africa was home to extraordinarily early and influential Nile valley civilizations in Egypt and Nubia. Egypt gave us very fundamental concepts such as the idea of a state, Divine Kingship, and an afterlife. Classical writers make frequent favorable mention of African civilizations (Ethiops) further south in Kush. Ethiopian Christianity, which dates from the apostolic era, remained closely associated with successive independent Ethiopian empires until 1973 when the Emperor Haile Selassie was overthrown. Despite British efforts in the late 19th century and Italian ones in the l930s, Europeans never colonized Ethiopia. The antiquity of Africa along with its demographic diversity allowed for a wide variety of political arrangements over the centuries. There were expansive empires, such as Mali, Songhai, Ghana and Kush, centralized kingships such as Congo and Benin, loosely bound kingships such as Monomatapa, warrior societies such as Zululand, and numerous smaller tribal chieftaincies and alliances. While these political organizations preceded colonialism, some had direct or indirect ties to wider movements such as the rise and spread of Islam, the impact—in the form of population implosion and wealth-creation—of trans-Atlantic slave trade, and the socio-economic distortion of African development in the support of western industrialization.
In l884, Germany convened the Berlin Conference that brought together European nations interested in securing Africa colonies. By its end in l885, Africa had been largely carved into territories that were awarded to various European states without regard to previous political or ethnic boundaries.iv Borders drawn by Europeans at Berlin or in the thirty years thereafter have been largely retained by post-colonial African states. Fault lines that were ignored by the Berlin Conference and inherited by the post-colonial states fuel continuing conflicts and frustrate building national solidarity in many countries.v This is especially true where the unequal distribution of power, wealth and access acerbate tribal, cultural or historical identities sometimes fanning ancient animosities, as demonstrated by the Hutu-Tutsi genocide in Rwanda of a decade ago.
The collapse of the colonial world order in Africa exploded remarkable new figures onto the world stage. Among them were visionary Pan-Africanist and Ghanaian founding father Kwame Nkrumah and Senegal’s brilliant politician-poet Leopold Sedar Senghor. Others include the exceptional statesman/liberation fighter Nelson Mandela, Nobel Prize winning writer Wole Soyinke (Nigeria), United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan, and pioneering filmmaker Osmane Sembane. The post-colonial stage has also presented despots such as Idi Amin Dada (Uganda), Mobuto Sese Seko (Democratic Republic of Congo), and autocrats such as Robert Mugabe (Zimbabwe).
A difficult and thorny problem in post-colonial Africa is management of the transition of power. After a long period of frequent coups d’état and civil wars acerbated by cultural and tribal differences, corruption, and external meddling, failed states are on the decline, with the conspicuous exceptions of Sudan and Somalia. African states are seeking to address their political problems through continental international structures such as the African Union which in 2001 succeeded the earlier Organization of African Unity. Despite the ravages of HIV/AIDS and lingering problems of poverty and underdevelopment, the last decade has witnessed an increase of stable states with relatively democratic governments across Africa.vi Still, significant challenges abound. Traditional societies must be transformed into modern ones that elevate human potentiality without regard to gender or clan. Old values and often outdated power relationships must be rebalanced. Cities where population growth has completely outstripped physical, social and economic infrastructures must find effective approaches to housing, energy demands, and other problems; otherwise they will continue to degenerate into terrible slums. Whether in rural, transitional or urban settings, health and education are tremendously pressing concerns, for the future hangs on these two factors, perhaps more than any others.
From within the caldron of modern Africa, great vitality has bubbled up evincing extraordinary creativity as well as rich intellectual and spiritual resourcefulness. Nigeria’s film industry is thriving and could become an African Bollywood. FESPACO, a biennial festival in Burkina Faso introduces new films and along with FEPAC (Federation of African Filmmakers) promotes African cinema at home and abroad. Performers from South Africa’s Ladysmith Black Mambazo to Nigeria’s King Sunny Ade to Mali’s Ali Farka Toure have enthusiastic national and international followings. Since the pioneering success of Chinua Achebe, African writers using a wide range of languages have attracted international readerships and won coveted prizes. South African theater has successfully survived Apartheid and emerged with fresh vigor. And both visual artists and curators—such as Okwui Enwezor, are increasingly making their presence felt not just in Africa but also in international centers such as London, Paris, Kasselvii and Berlin. In short, it is impossible to ignore the growing importance of contemporary African artists in all media and arenas of current artistic production.viii
A closer look at the face of African creativity in the late 20th century reveals deep fissures and fractures, particularly at the intersection where progressive ideas collide with prevailing conservative reactionary forces. At this grave juncture, artists for whom social consciousness is compelling must chose how strongly they dare speak, for there is a price to be paid when entrenched power is challenged. The consequence of such audacity may include aborted career opportunities, imprisonment, exile or even death. One need only look at the path of Wole Soyinka who was forced to flee Nigeria in order to make his voice an instrument of justice for his compatriots. The phenomenon of artists forced to flee their native land is hardly unique to Africa. It has been repeated throughout modern history. Maybe it partakes a little of the adage that a prophet is without honor in his country. In African-American socio-cultural history, for example, James Baldwin and Richard Wright wrote as exiles in France. And Paul Robeson, after his passport was seized by the US State Department, found himself a virtual prisoner unable to honor commitments abroad and blackballed from performing at home. The mantle donned by artists who speak out from exile is an honorable one sewn with the threads of compassion, hope, love and resistance to injustice. It is a mantle revolutionary in its commitment to humane values and its rejection of hypocrisy.
In Reflections in Exile, five contemporary African artists from four countries comment critically on riveting issues afflicting their homelands, and indeed the continent at large. For all of them, the United States is currently both workplace and home. Additionally, it provides a context in which a clearer perspective on their homelands can be gained within a supportive artistic and intellectual community. For these artists, the United States—with all its flaws—still affords a platform from which to engage the world, as well as a framework in which to present their art. The present state of communications makes exile more like being in the next room than being across an ocean, for you can eavesdrop and comment back without delay, and no one can effectively bar you from being heard.
Reflections in Exile is itself a vehicle for encountering the art of these five powerful artists, discussing its meaning and perhaps engaging the issues raised therewith. The latter two options matter because we live in a time when distance has collapsed, making it possible for our local actions to impact situations half way around the world. Indeed, all of the issues cited in the exhibition may be found extensively discussed in the news or online. It is within the power of viewers of Reflections in Exile to influence the outcome of some of the concerns raised in the exhibition from their computers.
Sudan, the native land of Khalid Kodi, has the longest running civil war in Africa—a war that has pitted its Arabized north against its black African south. As the promise of a treaty ending the war emerged, a new front of violence appeared in the Darfur region to the west. Embedded in Sudanese history are frictions deriving from religious differences between Muslims, Christians and animists, as well as animosities from the era of slave-trading that once gripped the region. Also embedded are frictions between tribal and cosmopolitan life styles and values, as well as contestation between agriculturalists and herders over land uses. Adding to the problems is the probability that significant oil reserves lie beneath the sand, raising the obvious political question of who will control and benefit from its exploitation. Never far away in desert countries are the chronic issues of unpredictable rains and water shortages, either of which may presage famine. Within Sudan, geographically the largest country in Africa, these myriad socio-political, demographic and topographical challenges have led to grave situations of indignity, human abuse, dislocation and displacement. In his work, Khalid addresses the ravages of war, abuse of power, disruption of family life and degradation of human worth that blights contemporary Sudan. He gives us a way to empathize with the Sudanese people, and he pointed out ways that we can register our concern for their predicament.
Chaz Maviyane-Davies offers biting comments on political and cultural conditions throughout Africa, but especially in his native Zimbabwe. Formerly Southern Rhodesia (named for Cecil Rhodes), the former British colony declared its independence under Ian Smith in l965 as anti-colonial winds were blowing all around it. A civil war ensued and in l980, the black majority—with the help of the South Africa based African National Congress—won control under the leadership of Robert Mugabe. The country renamed itself Zimbabwe, and set about securing its independent future. Along the way, the liberation hero and first president transformed into a tyrant unwilling to transfer power to a successor, and determined to bend legitimate post-colonial problems such as land distribution into devices to prolong his presidential tenure and cement his party’s grip on the country. As his policies have exhausted the national economy, Mugabe came to embody anti-democratic forces, corruption and political failure. These failings are frequent subjects in Maviyane-Davies’ art, as he calls attention to the need to be politically active and vote. At the same time, he uses his startling juxtaposed images, pithy phrases, and traditional wisdom to underscore that justice will prevail only if it is fought for and defended.
South Africa has a unique history in that British and Dutch settlers colonized the area very early and, after establishing their own civic, educational and religious organizations, came to think of themselves as white Africans. They warred among themselves and with the Africans that they displaced or subdued, eventually putting in place a society that assured white control and privilege and denied virtually all rights to the majority black population. Apartheid, a body of laws and practices made legal in l948 assuring the aforementioned status quo, resembled in many ways the Jim Crow laws that guaranteed racial segregation in the southern United States until the early l960s. In order to guard against the sweep of anti-colonial fervor across the continent, South Africa became a republic in l961, whereupon it reaffirmed and strengthened Apartheid laws. A struggle led by the African National Congress was launched with the goal of ending Apartheid and establishing majority or black rule in South Africa. With international help, this struggle succeeded and the election of 1994 brought Nelson Mandela to the presidency of South Africa. Majority rule was accomplished without a civil war, but not without years of violence and conflict, and imprisonment of many current leaders including Mandela himself.
Though more developed than other African nations, South Africa has grave problems that, despite the noble work of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, still plague it. Apartheid has left behind enormous gaps between the rich minority and the poor majority, as well as bitter feelings of racism and inequality. Perverse workforce practices employed by mining and other industrial interests in South Africa separated men from their families for long period of time laying the foundation for such severe social and health problems as HIV/AIDS. All of these factors have combined with Apartheid’s psychological distortions to make South Africa a very violent society. That violence, expressed in both public and domestic settings, is an ugly fact of the present moment. Ilona Anderson sometimes turns a spotlight of domestic violence in her work as she calls attention to the need for healing. Indeed, healing has become a major theme in South African art as it struggles to visualize a non-racial society with equality for all.
Ethiopia, home to both Ezra Wube and Salem Mekuria, is a genuinely ancient country having early ties to Semitic civilizations in southern Arabia and the Near East as well as to the African interior. Never successfully colonized, its historical lineage include a succession of kingships stretching from before the Axumite Empire to the 19th century reconsolidation of the country under Menelik II. The imperial throne remained in place until l974 when last Emperor, Haile Selassie, was overthrown. For nearly two millennia, Ethiopia had sustained a national church—the Ethiopian Orthodox Church—which though it was under the titular authority of the Coptic Church of Egypt, was formally tied to the imperial government. Under Selassie, independent Ethiopia made many reforms in education and law, and distinguished itself on the international stage with its forceful petition before the League of Nations requesting condemnation of the Italian invasions of the mid l930s. In the post-colonial era, Ethiopia became a leading voice for establishing the Organization of African Unity, the continent’s first practical effort of defining common political goals. Addis Ababa, the Ethiopian capital, became the seat of nascent pan-African organization.
Ethiopia and its people shared a deep pride in their national history. Nevertheless that history was upended by the persistence of patriarchal privileges, archaic governmental forms, and mismanagement of a famine that ravished the Wollo countryside in the late l960s. Other contributing factors to the late 20th century crisis in Ethiopia were the presence of restive Islamic elements in the Ogaden region in the south, and a secessionist movement in the north that later devolved into a war from which Eritrea emerged as a separate nation.
Following the Imperial collapse, the government of Mengistu Haile Mariam sought unsuccessfully to create a Marxist-Leninist state. In the process, the country suffered extreme disruption, with the church becoming fully independent for the first time while huge portions of the population were uprooted and pressed into poverty. As if the disruption of the revolution was not enough, the famine was again being felt and the war with Eritrea was draining the coffers, as well as the supply of young men. Long stable monasteries and other similar institutions were reduced to selling off their treasures as a flood of the nation’s smartest citizens fled abroad where they created large Ethiopian communities in Boston, Atlanta, Los Angeles and Washington, DC.
Ezra Wube comments on dislocation in many of his works where villagers are seen traversing vast panoramic expanses. Among the themes that Salem Mekuria explores are the hardships and difficulties that face women forced by poverty and political unrest to leave their homes and become refugees. She interrogates patriarchy and cultural assumptions that disempower women, preventing them from fully realizing their autonomous creative potential. Both Wube and Mekuria build upon and enlarge the modernist foundation laid by earlier Ethiopian artists such as painter Skunder Boghosian and filmmaker Haile Girima.
The artists of this exhibition care about the world in which they live. They care especially about the people of the lands of their birth, and the conflicts that beset them. They use their art to call our attention to matters of fundamental human worth, peace, compassion and justice. The issues raised are not new, nor are we without our own experiences with many of them, nevertheless, these artists present their views with urgency insisting that we learn about them and join in changing the world.
Edmund Barry Gaither
As director and curator of The Museum of the National Center of Afro-American Artists, Edmund Barry Gaither has established a vital cultural presence for the black community of Boston and beyond.
Through exhibits of African-American painting, photographs, pottery, fabrics, and sculpture, Gaither’s work encourages black Americans to understand and appreciate their contribution to national and international culture. He has also established a permanent collection of more than 4,000 artifacts and the country’s largest slide archives of African cultural art.
An art historian, lecturer, consultant and writer, Gaither serves as special consultant and adjunct curator at Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts. Gaither formerly taught at Wellesley College, Harvard College and Boston University, and has served as a panel chairman for the National Endowment for the Arts and on President Bush’s Advisory Board on Historically Black Colleges and Universities. He also co-founded the African-American Museum Association.
i Ghana was the first country to gain its independence in Africa south of the Sahara Desert. Tunisia in North Africa had won its independence from France a year earlier in l956.
ii William E. B. Dubois and his associates convened several Pan-African conferences (1900, 1919, 1921, 1923, and 1945) with the intention of uniting the struggles of black peoples in Africa and the Americas against colonial domination. Other leading Pan-Africans included Jamaican-born Marcus M. Garvey, founder of the Universal Negro Improvement Association and a provisional government for Africa in exile, and Edward Wilmot Blyden who was active in Sierra Leone. It was not mid-century that significant African participation was plausible, and though Kwame Nkrumah and Jomo Kenyatta attended the l945 Pan-African conference, the first genuinely intergovernmental Pan African conference was in l958 in Ghana. Shortly after the Organization of African States (OAS) was created in the early l960s, Malcolm X created the Organization of Afro-American Unity seeking to further unify the anti-imperialist struggles of African-Americans and Africans. Specifically, Malcolm X hoped to internationalize the plight of black Americans by charging the United States with human rights abuses before the United Nations where he felt the new African nations would be allies.
iii The mining of gold and diamonds as well as the production of copper and other natural resources was begun in the colonial era, and controlled by European and American companies and/or governments. Using highly exploitative methods, these industries were very lucrative for multinational corporations. In the post-colonial era, foreign interests continue to unduly control the production and marketing of Africa’s mineral wealth through unfavorable international trade and banking regulations, complicity with corrupt local officials, and sometimes support for clandestine movements.
iv At the beginning of the Berlin Conference in l884, 80% of Africa was under local or traditional control, although Europeans had already colonized a few coastal areas. At the end of the conference in 1885, most of Africa had been divided between France, England, Portugal and Germany, with the huge area of the Congo going to King Leopold II of Belgium as his personal kingdom. By l914, all of Africa with the exception of Liberia and Ethiopia had been divided into fifty colonies and distributed to various European governments, including Italy and Spain. Incidentally, the United States was one of the fourteen nations represented at the conference.
v Not wishing to open the continent to tribal conflict, post-colonial Africa kept the borders drawn by Europeans when colonialism ended. They accepted the task of trying to create unified nations out of disparate peoples who often did not share cultural or historical roots. This task has proven a difficult one, especially in the larger states such as Nigeria, Sudan, Democratic Republic of Congo, and Kenya. Even smaller states such as Ivory Coast have struggled to find preserve national unity. Yet there are some successful cases to point to such as Senegal and Ghana, both of which have escaped civil wars.
vi Ghana is often cited as an example of the rising democracies of Africa, but long stable countries such as Senegal should not be overlooked, nor should the political successes of Nigeria, the populous of African nations.
vii Okwui Enwezor, Artistic Director of Documenta 11 in Kassel, Germany (1998 to 2002) and curator of the notable The Short Century exhibition in New York, was born in Kalaba, Nigeria.
viii The rising appreciation of African visual artists is evident by the growth of books and articles in which they are discussed. Among the useful books on this subject are Contemporary African Art by Sidney Littlefield Kasfir (Thames & Hudson), 1999, and L’Art Africain Contemporain: A Guide, compiled by
Nicole Guez (Association Afrique en Creations, 1996. |