BY DR TONY MONDA
Africa is a continent of richness and opulence of cultural material and resilience of creativity. Its
traditions readily adapt to new circumstances.
The post-Colonial period in Africa coincided with the post-Modernist deconstruction of the Euro-centric hegemony in the visual arts, the question has been raised: Are the two phenomena related?
They are – insofar as the multi-culturalism promoted by the post-Modern Movement has opened new doors for Contemporary African Art, enabling it show the world that the creativity formerly associated with its past has been rejuvenated. Yet, much of the so-called post-Colonial African Art is not as independent as implied in the rhetoric of de-Colonisation.
The encounters and embroilments advanced by the Colonisation in Africa have produced complex issues of appropriation and commodification of African Visual expressions. Is it possible therefore, to discuss African aesthetics in contemporaneity without addressing the effects of Colonialism as well as the impact of Christianity on post-Colonialism?
Early in the 20 th Century, expatriate teachers opened ‘fine art’ schools in numerous African centres, many of them in concurrence with their Christian missions; introducing new techniques and aesthetics.
Often these synthesized existing frameworks produced hybrid forms of African art, as in the workshops of Cannon Patterson of Cyrene, Father Groeber of Serima Mission, and Driefontein Mission in Zimbabwe.
Post-Colonial research by Africanist scholars has convincingly exposed the close association between aesthetic conventions and capitalist incentives and agendas. Some African aesthetic styles have been adapted to meet changing economic and political circumstances, to satisfy dominant foreign Western expectations. Across the expansive diversities, African aesthetics can only be appreciated for their very multiplicity and systems of representation that they uphold, accommodate, transform and hybridise.
African arts defy simplistic historical Western categorization. The arts of Africa are fluid and dynamic and do not remain in a stagnant time warp.
How are these images mediated by dealers, curators, critics and Western scholars? Whose visions do these works represent? And whose interests do the works serve?
Given the small, at times marginal and unimportant role afforded to African artists on the world stage over the years, it is no wonder that some Western critics still define Post-Colonial African art as “neo-primitivism”
Today African Art continues to be erroneously defined as the work of “untutored neophyte artists”, despite years of contemporary art practice in pre-and-post–Colonial Africa. This is because many art curators and critics from the Occident and African Diaspora have chosen to ignore educated and enlightened African artists who are critical of the Western hegemonies and art establishments and have opted instead to choose “self-taught” African artists in the hope of perpetuating their romantic archeological Colonial perceptions of the ‘naive savage’ geniuses
Such deliberately calculated curatorial misconceptions of contemporary post-Colonial African art have proved to be detrimental to perceptions and receptions of African art and such terms should be rendered outdated and treated with the contempt it deserves by any forward-thinking, progressive curator, especially those of the Motherland.
Despite an increase in indigenous patronage, contemporary African art still depends largely on Euro-American markets that in turn exert considerable influence on its materials, techniques, form and content.
This influence also extends to what is produced and where it is exhibited outside of the African
Continent. The vestiges of Colonial, now neo-Colonial, influences or machinations, still lurk in the post-Colonial corridors like an old facade in a new countenance.
African arts defy simplistic historical Western categorization. The arts are fluid and dynamic and do not remain in a stagnant time warp. Our Art, like our sense of taste and design, apparel, manners, music and overall culture, have been permanently tainted by the palette of Colonisation.
As a result, Colonial and post-Colonial aesthetic encounters are relevant to any art or cultural discussion of how changing aesthetics shape our present concerns in the broader context of Africa.
Suffice to say, as the artistic landscapes of Africa are extending in many innovative directions, the present-time may be the most exciting era to study African aesthetics. The question that remains is how do we re-invent ourselves as post-colonial Africans?
Dr. Tony Monda holds a PhD in Post-Modern Art Theory and a DBA in Post-Colonial and Heritage Studies.
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