I live in a city, New York,  where art is too often discussed as a commodity.  It saddens me because I have had the most moving experiences and insights into the human mind and spirit in front of paintings.  I do profoundly believe in the power of art to communicate, to make us dream, to move us, and to access and reveal our deepest longings. So when I encounter endeavors such as  the Lalela Project I am reminded of art’s life altering powers and I experience a surge of optimism and elation.

The Lalela Project founded by Andrea Krezner is based in South Africa and organizes art projects and art workshops in schools  in poor communities. Art is seen as a healing tool and becomes a way of inspiring these children to dream, and have goals. To start it keeps them off the street  and provides a safe environment to explore their creativity.

The word “lalela” means “to listen” in Zulu. It is in listening to the children’s stories that the project is able to tailor workshops to the needs of these communities and effect positive change through the use of art and music. The Lalela Project has just completed a project with South Africa born Jason Rhode at the Stevenson Gallery in Cape Town. The exhibition was called Paries Pictus, which means “wall drawing”.  It is a site specific intervention of drawings over the walls of the gallery. Rhode is a multidisciplinary  artist  who espouses a street based aesthetic deeply rooted in the communal South African tradition of story telling. He does 2 dimensional renderings which become the basis of a performance executed by a protagonist ( often the artist) who transforms the wall drawing into a 3 dimensional experience for the viewer.

In this particular case Rhode wanted to engage the community and  emphasize the communal process of wall drawings familiar to him from his childhood. He describes himself  in that occasion as “the conductor of the drawing process”  where the joy of play becomes a central component to the performance. The artist and his art are not existing in a rarefied sphere and art making becomes life changing for the community.

The children used oversized crayons to color in geometric vinyl graphics applied by Rhode.

They sure look like they are having fun!

By the end of the project I would guess some of the children were thinking that being an artist is pretty cool.

This collaborative exhibition came after a very similar one which took place in New York City at the Lehmann Maupin gallery  that included  children from PS63  from the South Bronx through an organization called Time In.

On a Sunday afternoon I went to the Newark Museum to attend a talk by Romald Hazoumé on the occasion of the opening of the exhibition African Cosmos: Stellar Arts, which explores the interactions of African cultural astronomy and the arts, traditional and contemporary. Hazoume’s Rainbow Serpent /Dan Ayido-Huedo is a large snake biting his tail more than 12 feet high whose scales are made out of flattened out metal jerry cans.  Like a gateway, it towers at the entrance of the exhibition.  Albeit paradoxically massive it also stands in  for the celestial vault.

I associate the celestial vault with my experience of Africa: I have slept so many times under the stars during my many walking safaris even sleeping in the middle of the riverbed with just a mosquito net. Late evening study of the skies and its stars was a daily occurrence to the point that the celestial vault has become an integral and spiritual part of my journeys to that continent.

However, Hazoumé’s associations are clearly of another nature, they are less abstract and aesthetically easy to behold. However, I soon found out his associations were no less spiritual. They reach deeply into his Yoruba heritage on one hand and the harshness of contemporary life in Benin on the other.

“It is about how we, people from Benin are fighting and how we survive” says Hazoumé while speaking to a small gathering. He describes how people from Benin rely on Nigeria for their petrol. They get their oil from petrol rich Nigeria but instead of buying it legally they smuggle it from Nigerians who have siphoned crude oil from the pipelines. They fill up jerry cans, which they carry on their bicycles into Benin where the petrol gets sold on the black market. While this allows them to make a living it is also terribly dangerous because any mistake can lead to certain death.  The filled jerry cans are highly flammable. Hazoumé says that each jerry can represents a life lived dangerously.

While repeatedly emphasizing the activist aspect of his work, which he directs to a local audience, Hazoumé is foremost a deeply spiritual person. He will not proceed with any work unless he has had a sign from his orisha (local deities). Though the sculpture is predominantly dark green, spots of color brighten the scales of the serpent. Each color in fact represents a particular orisha  (there are many) and was painted on the jerry can by the original owner.

Hazoumé’s profound attachment to his community was palpable and his fiercely independent personality came across in his forceful opinions about the West and contemporary African leaders. He has little faith in the dealings of contemporary African leaders and multinational oil companies drilling oil in Nigeria.

The subject is a sensitive one and is centered around the Nigerian Delta where Shell and a few other multinational oil companies have been drilling crude oil. I first came to be aware of the subject through George Osodi’s provocative photographs of the devastation effected on the eco system of the Delta and the grim life of the locals who are not benefiting from this drilling. The tragedy came to be internationally known in the 90’s through the efforts of Ken Saro-Wiwa and MSOP, a non violent group militating for greater autonomy, a fair share of the revenues and repair of the environmental destruction wrought by the oil companies notably Shell. Their efforts ended in disaster with the hanging of Saro-Wiwa and eight others by the military government.

More recently some have taken arms against the multinationals. I actually own Osodi’s disturbing portrait of a masked rebel who carries his bullet belt like a grand necklace. At the time I had been studying the masking tradition in Yoruba land.  Seen within the context of that tradition, I found the image particularly interesting. It used to hang in my office and was usually greeted with puzzlement by my friends who did not quite think it matched the otherwise genteel environment.

Other locals in the Delta are siphoning gallons of petrol from the pipelines and smuggling it out of the country.  The black market that Hazoumé references, is just the tip of the iceberg it seems. From recent articles I gleaned that this black market has grown into a shadow industry. Journalist Benoit Faucon describes what goes on:  “Local thieves are drilling plugs in to the pipelines and pumping oil onto barges. Some of oil is then processed at rudimentary refineries and sold to fuel distributors that own tankers trucks and filling stations.” It has reached such levels that the UN estimates that 7.5% of the country oil production is stolen. The problem seems intractable as every one seems to bear some responsibility not the least being rampant Nigerian corruption, foreign callousness, and very few employment alternatives for the local population.  For more images on the Delta situation see Samuel James photographs.

Within that context Hazoumé’s Serpent becomes the devouring snake and can be seen as symbol of self-destruction.   Alternatively the circular shape of the sculpture and its cyclical associations also highlights the self-sufficient aspect of the black market.

Born in 1962 in Porto Novo, Benin, Hazoumé came to be known in 1992 with his “Out of Africa “show at the Saatchi gallery. He now lives and works in Cotonou though travels extensively.  “Much too much” he says. Most of his work belongs to collections outside of Benin. There is sadly very little institutional support in Benin.  He prefers being at home off fishing on his boat where he finds his inspiration.

Three years ago I decided to put together a small collection of African contemporary photography. I am a collector at heart, I love the process of looking , getting to learn about the artists and the world they live in, understanding the particular issues being addressed in their art,  following the new developments, selecting what I like, and making  the decision to buy.

I wanted to learn more about the art being made in Africa, and wished also to be supportive. So every year  I allow myself  a purchase or two. This year was the work of Samuel Fosso.

When I attended the opening of the exhibition “The Progress of Love’ at the Menil Collection in Houston last November, I met the photographer Samuel Fosso and his French agent Jean Marc Patras. I was quite thrilled. I like very much Samuel Fosso’s work and had had it in my mind to add him to my collection of African Contemporary photography.  At Paris Photo in 2011 I had seen his latest series African Spirits exhibited as part of the collection of Artur Walther and had been quite taken by the display of his impersonations of iconic historical figures of the Black movement.  I like the performative aspect of his work and the complex layering of signifiers.

Samuel Fosso started with straightforward self-referential auto-portraits done in his studio in Bangui in the Central African Republic in the 1970‘s capturing the stylish glamour of the time. These auto-portraits gradually evolved towards portraits that were more impersonations with sociological undertones, such as ones from the Tati series, Le chef qui a vendu l’Afrique aux colons and La femme Americaine liberée.  

In his latest series African Spirits Fosso steps into history and pays tribute to the figureheads of the Black movement in Africa and in the US. His discourse which was quite personal in the 70’s, shifted towards the sociological to now adopt a much more politically engaged stance. The world is a much bigger stage in this mature period of his life. The characters he impersonates are many legendary figures that set the intellectual and political course of Africa and in so doing Fosso addresses the issue of Negritude. As Simon Njami in his forward to the catalogue of Samuel Fosso’s work published by the Revue Noire reminds us, “ Even if we find faces which we might be able to associate with real names, we are inside a metaphor. Inside the abstraction represented by symbols. Fosso has disappeared entirely. The bodies that we see represented are no longer his but those of the people he impersonates.”  Fosso’s work is increasingly relevant to his community and also to a broader audience. It is always gratifying for me to see an artist expand his vision, and in so doing gets his voice heard more broadly.

I met up with Jean Marc Patras in Paris a month ago. He took time to describe Fosso’s production process, which involves tech guys and make up artists. Fosso selects carefully before the shooting session the images he wishes to capture. He often bases his compositions on real photographs found in photo archives of his characters. Nothing is arbitrary in his process.

He chose to represent the Ethiopian emperor, Haile Selassie I, with the Star of David hanging from his belt to identify him as the leader of the Rastafari who see themselves as the real Children of Israel. Thereby Fosso highlights Selassie’s almost God like importance to them. He shows Muhammad Ali as Saint Sebastian, his body pierced with spears referencing the time Ali refused to be conscripted in the US military during the Vietnam war and was arrested for avoiding the draft. He was not able to fight in the ring for the next four years. With my own art knowledge grounded in art history the art historical reference was another reason I was keen on the Ali image.

Fosso looks phenomenal as Angela Davis! I also wanted to include one of the most influential figures in the shaping of Negritude, a literary and ideological movement founded by francophone intellectuals in Paris. It centered on the fact of being black and opposed colonialism and racism. I chose Aimé Cesaire, who appears quite stern and stylish with his astrakhan hat, which he wore even indoors during a visit to France. He felt cold coming from Martinique. Finally I selected an African leader, Patrice Lumumba, whose tragic end is an example of the problematic and shameful meddling of Western powers in the affairs of the Congo.

As of now, the battle still rages in Fosso’s world. He is living through a dramatic time in Bangui. There has been recently a coup in Bangui and President Bozizé was deposed. The rebels have taken over the city and pillaging and killings took place notably in Fosso’s neighborhood. Fortunately he is  safe for now.

Many years after its hard won independence in 1960 the Congo has not found peace.  Seen in this context African Spirits is a reminder that responsibility is the key to achieving peace.  These leaders spoke up and took responsibility for themselves and their future. They are and can be a source of pride and inspiration for this generation of black people. Jean Marc Patras recounted how he saw a group of young cool black youths walk into his space  and be totally enthusiastic when they understood that Fosso had impersonated these key figures. They shared their pride in their own people’s history.

With all the war news coming from Mali I thought it was timely to remember that Mali had a very active cultural scene. Last time I went which was for the Bamako Photography Biennale in 2011 I visitsd the studio of Abdoulaye Konate, a well- established artist in Mali whose works have been shown extensively internationally. I have to say there is nothing better than going to visit an artist in his own environment.

I was part of a small group of women mostly curators from the US, most of whom knew his work. I did not, so it was all a discovery. Born in Diré, Mali, he obtained his diploma from the National Institute of Art in Bamako and from the Higher Institute of Art of Havana, Cuba. Trained as a painter, he eventually turned away from paint to working solely with textiles and making very large-scale works. Paints were hard to find and Mali had its own traditional techniques that Konaté found rich in expressive potential. He uses textiles, gris-gris, found objects and makes powerful sociopolitical statements in his huge cloth panels.

We climbed up to the second floor of his house to his studio where we were welcomed by a couple of his assistants. Against the back wall was hanging a diptych: “Croix de Sang”, “Croix de Lumiere” 2010.The panels are made out of stitched thin strips of colored cloths layered on top of each other and carefully arranged in a gradation from black to white with strips of contrasting color bursting through arranged in the shape of a cross. The effect was dramatic and achieved great optical effect.    Konaté sees color in black and indeed the depth of these panels, which appear at once austere and rich attest to his approach. There is something Rothko like about these works in terms of depth of color, and spiritual meaning. Using the same layering and gradation technique he turns to more vibrant colors like blue, here the symbol for the Touaregs in the North. These works are his most recent works and draw on the striking plumage of the guinea fowl. These birds appear in Malian tales, legends, theater and literature.

Konate runs a studio and his assistants are the ones who stitch each strip to the backdrop cloth panel. They unrolled for us to see a panel still in the process of being made. It revealed the construction method. Long horizontal lines were drawn working as guidelines for the layering of the strips.

Konate’s panels are bold visually, most of the time abstract though at times he will include figures, which are flattened, abstracted.  He will also include gris-gris, which are amulets that are used for protection against evil. When used extensively these huge white drops made out of cloth create a sculptural effect. Konaté addresses important socio political themes in his works. Some of his major themes have been environmental issues, Life under dictatorship, AIDS, the relationship between power and religion, genocide.

This piece is called Bosnia, Angola, Rwanda. Konaté tells us that it represents the wounded writing a message in blood. He bought children’s clothes in the market, most of them second hand clothes coming from the West and gathered them together laying them down on sand.

This panel is called Asalme and speaks of what Konaté describes as the biometrique generation. The same body is reproduced in different sizes. The reality of immigration is the underlying subject.

Abdoulaye Konaté’s work was just shown at the Revue Noire in Paris in 2012, at Iniva in London, 2012, Documenta 12, 2007, Africa Remix to name a few. He also won the Artes Mundi prize in 2008. I wonder what new work will come out of the military crisis in Northern Mali.

My focus on creativity in Africa and the positive reviews of the play The Suit based on the short story by South African writer, Can Themba, made me overcome my reluctance to see yet again a story about a wife’s adultery and a husband’s revenge. I was afraid it would all feel too familiar and since it was taking place in Africa where polygamy is accepted in many local tribal communities I could pretty much foresee that my blood would boil a bit at some point with the unfair gender standards. Was it going to have a different ending than any of the other precedent works of fiction on adultery such as Madame Bovary, Anna Karenina?  The wife dies and The Suit is no exception from that perspective.

However, I was in for a pleasant surprise.

The story of The Suit takes place in Sophiatown, a Johannesburg township, and centers on Philemon, who works for a middle class lawyer and his wife Matilda. He loves his wife and seems happy with his life until he finds out that she has been seeing another man. He surprises her with her lover who leaves in a rush leaving his suit behind.  Philemon then devises a rather unique form of punishment: the suit must be treated as an honored guest and the wife must take it wherever she goes as a reminder of her betrayal.  William Nadylam plays a husband in full control of the situation, only revealing true emotion at the end when he holds her dead in his arms.  Beautiful Nonhlanhla Kheswa’s Matilda, whose choices in life are so limited, comes alive when she can sing or love.

The play, a production by Peter Brook, Marie-Helene Estienne, and Franck Krawczyk felt fresh and original despite weaknesses in the weaving of the two parallel plots: the unraveling of the marriage and the dismantling of Sophiatown, a black urban cultural hub. The Apartheid Group Areas Act of the 1950’s assigned racial groups to different residential and business sections and as a result nonwhites were forcibly removed and moved to much smaller spaces. This is what happened to Sophiatown, a township of Johannesburg, which was the epicenter of politics, Jazz, and Blues during the 1940’s and 1950’s. Peter Brook’s minimalist but colorful production offered unexpected lightness and humor which combined with a diverse musical score, made the cruelty of both the husband’s revenge and Apartheid oddly bearable. A few brightly colored chairs and several clothes hanging racks were the only props and in a rather fluid and ever changing way became surrogates for beds, doorways, windows and local packed buses.  Most original was the idea of making the suit an instrument of Philemon’s punishment. Peter Brooks suggest that such an idea could only be born out of the violent injustices of Apartheid in South Africa where there was no escape. However, the suit is more than an instrument of torture, it becomes also a reminder of Matilda’s desire for her lover when she so sensuously and playfully pretends that the suit is inhabited by her lover who caresses her.

I loved that it was narrated as a story. It reminded me of how stories are passed down orally from one generation to another in black Africa. The narration also helped make the story of Philemon and Matilda feel like a myth and the spare setting with no specificity further contributed to that feeling. However, that same feeling was quickly dispelled when accounts of local happenings brought forth the harsh reality of the life of black South Africa. The narrator, Jared Mc Neill, describes the rejection South African blacks encounter when they wish to attend “white” churches, which was a phenomenon the author, Can Themba, had investigated during his years working for Drum magazine.

But the greatest pleasure I had was in listening to the songs and to the music. The three musicians playing respectively the guitar, piano and trumpet set the tone for each scene with a selection of musical scores including a Schubert’s lieder, the humming of the African American song about slavery Strange Fruit and African melodies. As a result, the play’s underlying themes of love, revenge and injustice, were no longer limited in time and space and became universal.

My favorite was the last deeply moving song, Maleika, a Tanzanian love song that Matilda (Kheswa) sings beautifully just before she comes to her sad end.

Maleika is sung here by Angelique Kidjo

I love this photograph of Malick Sedibe!

Shortly after my return from Kenya I went to Houston for the opening of the exhibition Progress of Love at the Menil Collection. I had co-sponsored one of the video of the artist Zina Saro-Wiva on Kissing!

Several months before that I had met Zina at a party and we had subsequently gotten together to talk about her work and the positive focus of my blog on Africa.  A former BBC journalist, the founding filmmaker of the alt Nollywood movement Zina is originally from Nigeria but was raised in the UK. She aims in her work to change the way the world sees Africa.  It was quickly evident that we were both on the same page.

Zina explores in her work highly personal experiences. She showed me her recent video project, which focused on the subject of mourning.  She referred discreetly to her personal family tragedy – her father, Ken Saro –Wiwa, an environmental and human rights activist had been executed by hanging in 1995 in Nigeria. She had found it impossible to properly mourn her father in England. Local mourning traditions seemed so unsatisfactory. She had been in search for “ritual and meaning ever since.” It had been so difficult to let herself express her grief. One part of the video shows her with her hair shorn, grieving, and eventually fully weeping.

There was no question I felt uncomfortable witnessing such raw emotion and was keenly aware of it. However it was also coupled with compassion and a desire to join in.  I also could not help but think about how I relate to my own grief – we all have some. All of my reactions were evidence that Zina’s work was powerful, provocative, and emotionally demanding of the viewer. I liked that: I was struck by her courage and the cathartic and healing aspect of the performance.

There is no mourning without love. The video she had shown me was to be shown at the Pulitzer Foundation in St Louis and was to be a part of a three prong collaborative project on the theme of Love and its many forms in Africa and beyond. Zina was in the early stages of making a video about Africans kissing, Eaten By The Heart to be included in the exhibition at the Menil Collection in Houston, one of the venues. The Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts was the second venue and included works by Sophie Calle and Yinka Shonibare.  The third venue was the Centre for Contemporary Art, Lagos, Nigeria and was to focus on the more performative aspect of Love.

Zina described her thinking to me: “ So many of us cite with confidence that Love is universal. But the performance of love is, it seems, cultural. I wonder how the impact of how we choreograph and culturally organize the performance of love impacts what we feel inside and who we become.”

Needless to say, I was on board.

If I felt uncomfortable watching Zina grieve, let me tell you I was very uncomfortable with 12 couples kissing for 3 minutes each. Zina’s starting point was the fact that Africans generally don’t kiss in public and not even that much in private . Things are changing for the young generation more exposed to Western pop culture through the media.She has made use of vibrant colors, various background sound tracks and a careful selection of couples, some gay, some straight, some expressive, some less so, some married, some strangers to reflect the reality of life and love and draw the viewer in. She complemented the video with interviews that can be seen on the website recounting Africans’ thinking about kissing. I recommend checking it out.

The exhibition at the Menil Collection was curated by Kristina Van Dyke, an African Art specialist in charge of revitalizing and expanding the role of African Art in the Menil Collection. The exhibition was at once provocative, thoughtful, scholarly, carefully edited and often visually beautiful and conceptually stimulating.  It presented contemporary African artists’ reflections and explorations on changing modes and meanings of love in today’s global society.

I was totally captivated by Romuald Hazoumé’s installation ONG SBOP situated at the beginning of the exhibition. Hazoumé documents a project he started on Valentine day 2011 in Benin. A non-governmental organization or NGO it is staffed by Beninois and has the mission to help Westerners live better lives. Included in the installation are videos of people, some of them celebrities like the world renown Angelique Kijo, going through markets asking for money for the poor in the West and reminding the Beninois that they should help because they know about love which is something Westerners do not know about. As I am involved with an English NGO that does work in Kenya, this particularly captivated me.  While Hazoumé’s NGO turns upside down the normal paradigm of aid giving and points to one of its shortfalls, it is above all to be understood as an act of self respect for the people of Benin.

Across the way was Felix Gonzales-Torres, Untitled (Perfect Lovers), 1991, a perfect introduction to the personal side of love and its limitations: Two battery-operated clocks set at the same time at the beginning of the exhibition, slowly fall out of sync. It is a reference to love and loss at the time of AIDS.

Yinka Shonibare’s In the Swing installation anchored the exhibition within a historical narrative. A fabulous 3D revitalized remake of Fragonard’s at the time groundbreaking depiction of love, it was without question one of the highlights of the exhibition.  Vibrant – it incorporated as usual his ubiquitous Dutch wax cloth which points to the links between the increased wealth of the Western nations and the economic benefits of the slave trade – playful, exuberant it was gorgeous. What a fabulous appropriation!

The exhibition continued by exploring the role pop culture has in framing ideas of self-love and its representation. Van Dyke showed how film and photographic conventions frame these explorations. Samuel Fosso’s stages himself as the star of his photographic work. He borrows the famous nineteenth century Odalisque pose in a grand gesture of self-affirmation.

Zwelethu Mthethwa’s portraits of South African individuals set in their homes decorated with advertisements, and movie posters are presented in this context as powerful images of an aspiring and affirmative self. They see themselves as participants in this consumerist society and not simple bystanders. Zanele Muholi’s photo stills of the proud gender queer Miss D’vine, give place and space to marginalized communities. To top it all, the tune of the Persuaders’ song Thin Line between Love and Hate, which was part of the minimal sound installation by Nadine Robinson, played incessantly in the background and I walked around in somewhat of dazed state. It had this hypnotic effect, which makes me think of the state one is when in love.

Lynette Yiadom-Boakye’s gorgeous paintings of single figures against non-identifiable backgrounds were a counterpoint to these highly cultured spaces.

Toyin Odutola’s exquisite portraits made with ballpoint pens and markers investigate in depth the skin, musculature, and hair of its subject becoming as Van Dyke says “ meditations on the singularity of the individual.”

All is not easy in interracial love: Ricardo Rangel’s photographs of couples in Maputo bars shows white men and black prostitutes embraced and dancing; yet, they are worlds apart.

I found it a relief to move away from images that quote the world of Western pop culture and sit in the yellow minibus ubiquitous to Lagos while listening through earphones to a young man in Lagos explaining what he was looking in a girlfriend.  This is the work of Lagos artist, Emeka Ogboh whose audio installation was commissioned with the expatriate Nigerian community in Houston in mind and brings the familiar sounds of home to them.

The exhibition ended with another piece by Yinka Shonibare: the video installation Odile and Odette, which explores ideas of mirroring.  Two ballerinas, one white, and the other black, dance most of the time perfectly synchronized on either side of a wooden frame, which creates the illusion that there is a mirror in between them. However, at other times they do fall out of sync and the illusion is broken.  Earlier in the exhibition, Joel Andrianomearisoa had addressed also effectively one’s desire to be mirrored in his installation (Darling you can make my dreams come true if you say you love me too) of 150 pocket mirrors and the impossibility of it.  I stood in front of the piece and could never get a full image of myself.

I liked pondering what is essential to human life.

One day Layla, a little girl in northern Kenya, will wonder how she got her name. Her mother can tell her that back in November 2012, a woman from very far away gave it to her while on a medical mission.

Beverly Orthwein, a board member of Medical and Educational Aid to Kenya (MEAK), brought Layla’s mother a pair of crutches donated by the local hospital in Greenwich, Conn., Beverly’s hometown. Layla’s mother had lost her leg and was getting around with the help of an old pipe topped with rags for padding.

As she tried out her new crutches, Layla’s grateful mother asked Beverly to name the baby. Beverly, who has three sons, chose the name reserved for the daughter she never had.

When people hear you’ve been to Africa, they want to know what animals you’ve seen, but for me this particular adventure is also about bearing witness to the kindness of strangers like Beverly and the volunteers who bring medical aid to the people like Layla’s mother. MEAK’s activities span all of Kenya, but this particular region, known as Samburuland, borders Ethiopia and Sudan and is largely ignored by the government and other non-governmental organizations.

Beverly is returning home after the mission, but Dee Belliere, who with her husband Mike, founded MEAK, remains behind with seven of us—Gerry Boyle, Mike Fels, Pascal Luse from the U.K., and Isabel Wilcox, Alexandria Skouras, Celeste Rault, and myself from the U.S. We arrive at the end of this medical mission to begin a fundraising trek we hope will benefit this mission as well as MEAK’s future endeavors.

The 70 mile journey will take us from the eye mission campsite outside the town of South Horr, through the Seren Valley and the Ndoto Mountains to end at the Milgis where the Parsaloi and Seiya Luggas come together.

Of course the animals and birds–the mysterious tracks testifying to the teaming life of this beautiful terrain–inspire the humbling awareness that out here, we are just more animals in the mix. For the next six days, we’ll make our own tracks south through the steep and rocky Ndikir Laurie pass and through dry riverbeds called luggas.

When they’re not filled with water, the luggas appear to be a sort of superhighway for the local herds and herders. Based on the number of animal prints visible in the soft sand, it also seems to be a fast lane for porcupines, hyenas, leopards, tiny deer called dik dik—and every sort of critter that cavorts or crawls.

Our guides, Helen Douglas-Dufresne and her partner, Peter Ilsley, are native-born Kenyans who have been taking groups through this part of the world for 25 years. Emma Hedges, owner of the Desert Rose Lodge, also accompanies us. Together the three of them know every bird, plant, animal track and burrow on the ground and every constellation in the sky, though Pete acknowledges that their Samburu team has a special expertise that comes only from a lifetime spent here.

On our first night at a campsite near South Horr, as the eye mission there draws to a close, dozens of Samburu elders and warriors come together to express their thanks through song and dance. The songs, passed down for generations, seem timeless and free of outside influence, and it is deeply moving to witness a performance so few outsiders have seen.

I know their gratitude is heartfelt and can’t help feeling it myself. We have watched the bandages come off the patients as they smile with delight at their first glimpse of loved ones. They look around in wonder at the world, seeing it clearly for perhaps the first time in their lives.

Despite heavy rains and tribal tensions between the Samburu and Turkana, in four days a medical team of three nurses, one anesthetist and one surgeon have restored sight to 214 people suffering from cataracts and other eye diseases.

The women can return to creating their intricate beadwork, and the men and children can go back to taking care of their livestock. Most of all, they don’t have to rely on a relative or anyone else to guide them.

In the eighteen years since the Bellieres started MEAK, more than seven thousand people—including many children suffering from congenital cataracts and other eye diseases—have been treated. All this has been done with virtually 100% of the contributions. MEAK has no paid employees or administrative overhead, and Dee and Mike donate their personal expenses, as well as their time and expertise.

As usual at the end of a mission, Dee sorts out plane rides to Nairobi for still more patients with conditions requiring treatment at a hospital. Meanwhile Mike is at home in Surrey, UK, planning the heart mission he’ll oversee in a few weeks.

Once we start our trek, we will be off the grid—no cellphone, Wi-fi, Internet. We will be “on safari,” but there are no jeeps, game preserves or posh lodges.

This is an area so seldom visited by tourists that some children have never seen a white person, which is why we can’t take it personally when one look at us makes them burst into tears.

Besides, others are delighted to see us. With our hiking boots and safari hats, we create an exotic and amusing diversion for the youngsters charged with watching the family herd of goats, sheep and cattle.

As they smile and greet us with a bemused “Jambo!” Pete confirms my theory: if you dropped us in the middle of the bush and an eight-year-old Samburu child in an even more remote location, the kid would be home before dark while we would be a few links down from our accustomed spot on the food chain.

The Samburu have an understanding of and relationship to nature I could not have imagined or even thought possible. I look at the side of a mountain and see the beautiful striated outcrop of rocks, the varying hues of green vegetation. The Samburu look at the same mountain and spot a tree useful for making a toothbrush, a plant that’s good for soothing a nettle or bug bite. They know every track and how fresh the animal dung is—and whether or not a prospective campsite is safe.

On my first trip here two years ago, I watched in amazed confusion as Lemongas, one of Helen’s trusted elders, had a “conversation” with a honeyguide. The small gray bird lingered long enough to convince me that, yes, he was listening to Lemongas’s whistles. When the bird seemed to fly off in a huff, Helen explained that Lemongas told the bird he didn’t have time to get to the hive the bird had found.

On this trip, however, the honeyguide gets his way. Lemongas gets another visit from a feathered friend, disappears with him into the bush, and emerges 20 minutes later with his share of the dripping honeycomb.

Although the terrain varies a lot over the course of the week—from flat, sandy luggas to steep mountain passes–there’s a kind of rhythm to each day. It begins about 5:30 in the morning, when one of the Samburu team awakens us with his singing and a “good morning.” He pours water in the little canvas washbasin perched outside each of our tents, and we have time to splash water on our faces and come together for delicious Kenyan coffee and biscuits before we hit the trail. We’ll have a huge breakfast about two hours into our hike, consisting of fantastic muesli, homemade bread, and eggs with bright yellow yokes that tell you how fresh they are.

When we arrive at a new campsite at the end of a day’s hike, we have lunch and grab a mat from one of several dozen camels carrying them and the rest of our gear. By early afternoon, it’s hot and most of us are tired. We park ourselves under a tree for a “kip” as Helen and Pete’s team set up the tents, build a fire, dig the loos and create beautiful showers with makeshift “curtains” from brush they’ve collected.

As the sun goes down, we take turns at the showers and, one by one, arrive at the campfire for tea, snacks and cocktails before dinner. This is my favorite time of day. We recall the day’s adventures and tell stories as we watch the sky, undiluted by ambient light, reveal the planets and stars in all their varied sizes, brightnesses and colors.

You can’t help but be awestruck, sitting in the midst of all this natural beauty. However, the subject matter around the campfire covers a wide variety of “philosophical” issues, including how to maximize the staying power of the bucket of water you get to shower under every night—and whether it’s advisable to walk to the loo if you have to go in the middle of the night.

One morning, just before dawn, Dee announces she hears hyenas—reason #182 not to go to the loo in the dark, I tell myself. Besides, it’s much easier to water the land behind the tents.

We never, however, resolve flashlight controversy.

“Do you turn it off or leave it on?” somebody wants to know.

“Turn it OFF! It attracts bugs!” Mike answers.

“Yeah, but then, well, you’re out there alone, in the dark in…a vulnerable position,” I point out.

Any and all topics one doesn’t talk about in polite company move to the top of the list—and all them reduce us to peels of laughter and a level of maturity that would embarrass a four-year-old.

Clearly we are the most wonderfully good-natured mzungu ever to walk through these parts. As far as I’m concerned, that theory gets confirmed the night it starts to rain and we run around laughing in the mud as we struggle to pull our tent flaps closed.

On the trail, if we stop laughing and talking long enough, we can hear the Samburu team singing to pass the time as they guide the camels. One sunny and hot day we stop to rest in the shade and join in the singing. Before you know it, we are dancing, too. In that moment we all get the rhythm of the song, and even the camels seem to get the beat.

Everyday I continue to enjoy the camaraderie but cherish as well my growing ability to read the surroundings and see how they change based on where we are and what is happening overhead. The rain has left a treasure trove of fragrant sage, blooming cadia, yellow cactus blossoms. From atop the acacia trees, the weavers, hornbills, starlings and shrikes return our gaze.  Some of us, myself included, have learned the hard way to duck well beneath the acacias’ savage thorns.

I am also learning to pay attention to the lay of the ground—not just where to walk but what animals have come before us and to admire the work of nature’s architects, including the termites who create giant nests that look like pueblos.

And who knew dung could be so exciting! Less than 50 yards from one of our camps we see fresh elephant spore. Helen can hardly contain her excitement. It’s the first time in decades the elephants have felt safe enough to come to this part of Samburuland. The Milgis Trust, created to preserve the wildlife and fight poaching, seems to be having an impact.

We promise to stay quiet and try as well to tread as silently as Lemongas, who takes the lead. Walking in silence connects us more to what surrounds us and rewards us with a view of seven or eight elephants on the mountainside across from ours.

From our vantage point, we can also see grey sheets of rain, miles away in the mountains, and when we arrive at our next campsite on the Lomolok lugga, the team know this one may not be dry for long.

Then it comes. A rush of water, the runoff from the mountain rains begins to fill the lugga. Sometimes they can fill so quickly that the force of the water can be deadly. This one, however, is a nice peaceful stream, a welcome sight for the animals, four-legged and otherwise.

As the lugga fills, it strikes me as an apt metaphor:  For centuries outsiders have traveled here from far away and wreaked havoc. But maybe one day the little girl named Layla will be able to say that MEAK and its supporters poured a trickle of hope into this place far off the beaten path.

WE ARE BACK! EYE MISSION SUCCESSFUL , TREK AMAZING

We flew into South Horr, just south of Lake Turkana by midday and met up with Dee Belliere, founder of MEAK, and Helen Douglas Dufresne, our walking guide, founder of MILGIS  TRUST and MEAK’s partner on the ground for this mission.

The eye mission was well on its way and despite some very serious hurdles it was turning out to be quite successful. The location had been moved from the original plan. Due to tribal conflicts in the area the mission had to be moved from Waso Rongai to the Horr valley. The Samburu sports center in the town of South Horr had been made available and the community could not have been more welcoming.

The final count was gratifying: 214 eyes operations were done and 4 patients were referred and flown to Nairobi. The medical team (one surgeon, three nurses and one anesthetist) was smaller than usual – one less doctor – and did an amazing job.

However there was clearly a sense of frustration. This mission had been planned for months and one of the goals had been to treat the Samburu and the Turkana people, neighboring tribes. Traditionally these tribes are often warring each other over their livestock. A lot of effort had been put into promoting peace and it seemed like it was working. Many eye cases had been identified among the Turkana people. Sadly shortly before the beginning of the mission the Turkanas had raided the Samburus and stolen 400 head of cattle. As a result no Turkana would risk coming into Samburu land to have their eyes fixed despite the fact that many needed operations. But such is life in the distant lands of Northern Kenya and the MEAK team that worked in partnership with the Milgis Trust team did an amazing job despite the circumstances.  When I am in Africa I always remember a Clint Eastwood line: “Adapt and Improvise.”

There is still much more that needs to be done!
We arrived in time to see some cataract operations being done, and even more gratifying we witnessed the reaction of many of the patients when the eye patches were removed seeing for the first time in years.  The quiet chatter, gentle laughter, and beaming smiles were a sight to behold!

Cataract operations were the majority but a few patients with Trachoma were treated and other eye ailments were also attended to. Trachoma is prevalent in this area and a major cause of blindness. As a result of recurrent infections the eyelids turn into themselves and the eyelashes constantly rub against the eyeball creating constant excruciating pain.  To address this situation, a team has been scouring the region screening for eye ailments and teaching better hygiene.

We took a day and a half to get our bearings. The night before we took off, the Samburu men, many of them dressed in their warrior gear, treated us to an amazing dance and song performance.  It was a gesture of thank you and a very special gift. These dances and songs have existed for centuries and are profoundly moving. We felt very honored.

Most of the Samburu men would be coming along with us on the trek, leading the camels and setting up camps.

We started our trek south towards the Milgis Lugga through the Ndoto mountains. We trekked through a landscape that was breathtaking. We started at the Horr Valley walking across the south end of Ol Donyo Mara into the Seren valley.

We traveled through open plains, and valleys with the bush in full bloom. See the lovely Cadia (Purpurea) flower!

We climbed rocky hills, traversed the Ndikir Laurie mountain pass, reaching heights that allowed us magnificent views of the Ndotos peaks and valleys. We camped near dry river beds or luggas – one, the Lomolok Lugga, turned into a flowing and bubbling stream in 10 minutes – or on mountain tops in Urra that made you want to cry or laugh or just simply sit quietly in awe at the beauty of our planet.

Once the need to talk waned our senses awakened to the bush life surrounding us.  As I walked I would stop to pick the leaves and seeds of the sage bush delighting in its perfume, or loose all sense of time as I followed the movements of the rosy patch bush shrike whose song had caught our attention, or yet again admire the candelabra like sculptural form of the many euphorbia trees in full bloom.

I stood mesmerized by the vibrant yellow blooms along its cactus like limbs creating a halo around the tree.

We encountered young children who are given responsibility at an early age herding the family goats. We were an oddity in this part of Northern Kenya and a great source of amusement and curiosity to these youngsters. We passed by Samburu manyattas or huts clustered together and protected from predators by an enclosure made of twigs and branches.

We did run into the occasional warrior, armed to the teeth and yet very stylish. I was very lucky to get a picture of one of them.

The level of excitement in the group peeked when we ran across very fresh elephant dung! Our chances of running into a big bush animal were seriously improving. Birds, dik diks, herds of goats were great but we wanted the big stuff!  Total silence was requested which I welcomed with great relief and perseverance paid off. Twice we spotted those majestic creatures on the hills feasting on the trees. Some of us who had amazing eyesight could just see them with the naked eye. I, on the other hand, needed my binoculars!

Every morning we woke up at 5:30am to the song of the Samburu man coming to fill our washbasin with hot water. After a cup of tea or coffee, we departed under the rising sun for our day’s journey. Four camels carrying our breakfast, which the Samburu men would set up mid-morning when we needed those extra calories to help us along, accompanied us. Pete and Helen, our guides, made sure we had a full breakfast!  Fruit, eggs , yellow like you have never seen, homemade muesli  we figured that if we marketed it ,we would make a killing it was so good.

Some of us at the end of the day wanted a final challenge before turning in and climbed some pretty steep hills and encountered baboons along the way.

Intermittent rain was mostly refreshing though at times it was unexpected and created quite a stir.  One night we went to sleep under starry skies and rain startled us awake in the middle of the night.  Jumping out of our bedrolls, we rushed out of our tents to undo the flaps of our rain cover with the help of the Samburu team. But by the time we got back into our tents, bedrolls and clothes were wet except for some clever ones who had had the prescience to keep their bags packed and had thought of covering their mattress. I was not one of them!  We did not let that happen again!

Under Helen Douglas Dufresne’s instruction we learned to identify Orion’s Belt at night and Venus and Mercury at sunrise. We fell in love with the dogs that accompanied us. More then once I found myself woken up from my mid-afternoon nap on a mattress laid down on the grass by an over eager dog’s paws on my chest.

The real stars of this walk were our Samburu porters who worked tirelessly to make us comfortable and who on an impulse would break into a song and a dance for their own enjoyment and to our utter delight.

Some of us, unfortunately, fell sick but were amazingly brave. We had to adjust the pace of our walk and did not get to see the Latakwen clinic that is my special project. We all made it to our destination though, which was Helen’s base camp, Lkanto, set at the top of a hill situated at the confluence of the Milgis and Sarya Luggas.

We took in for the last time the awe inspiring, view savoring our accomplishment yet a bit sad because of the upcoming good byes. I confess that there is no place I would rather be then on top of that hill with its 360 degree view of the two large riverbeds with to the south, the mountains of the Matthews and Mt Kenya in the far distance, and to the north the Ndotos hills.

After a quick shower we departed for the airstrip where a final treat was awaiting us. The children from the local school dressed in their Samburu outfits performed a dance celebrating a world where man and nature coexist in harmony.

Still under their spell we climbed into our charter plane after effusive thanks to Helen and Pete Insley who had led us very competently and brought us back safe.

Thank you for an amazing journey.

An old Shell gas station is turned into a work of modern architecture

The first time I went to Johannesburg I was terrified of walking around the city.  I had heard so many frightening stories prior to going there that I was sort of paralyzed. Three years later, I had become braver, less prone to think that disaster was lurking at every corner, and Johannesburg had experienced a certain urban revival. Diane Frankel who is quite familiar with Joburg also accompanied me and we had a trustworthy cab and driver.

So we set out one morning to explore. Our first stop was a visit to the Wits Art Museum at the edge of the University of Witwatersrand’s campus in the bohemian district Braamfontein. The Museum had reopened that spring in a new building designed by the architects Nina Cohen and Fiona Garson. This art space had been many years in the making. With the government  providing little funding for museums it had been a long struggle. Part of the plan had been to help change the neighborhood and engage the city. The architects had had to merge three buildings; one of them was a car dealership/ gas station. Soaring ceilings, sculptural lines and full volumes defined the new quirky multileveled structure. The car ramp had been repurposed into a sweeping walkway leading to the second floor galleries. Anitra Nettleton, the director of the Centre for the Creative Arts of Africa, which is located in the Museum, gave us a tour of the space. The Wits Museum is unique of its kind in South Africa. It has a broader mandate than most of the museums in South Africa. The collection was started in the 1960’s and is comprised of 9,000 pieces that include traditional pieces from all over Africa, contemporary pieces with an emphasis on emerging artists and a broad collection of beaded works. Its mandate allows a more experimental approach. Half of the new space is devoted to exhibition space and the rest of it is to state of the art, climate controlled storage and research and teaching facilities.

The display is overall minimalist. Contemporary works hang next to more established names of the South Africa arts scene of the later 20^th century in the sparsely hung main exhibiting space.
Just as we walked in we were greeted by Jackson Hlungwani’s  Altar of God, which is part of a shrine called The New Jerusalem and located in Mbokhoto. The wooden figures represent characters from Jackson’s mythology and are made out of found wood.  The artist who sees himself as part prophet, part artist requested that rocks from the original shrine be added to the sculpture.  This earthy work with the rocks arranged in a helter skelter manner did seem a bit incongruous against the cool and slick backdrop.

However, I liked the glass display cases, which showed the many artifacts to their advantage. I was immediately seduced by the design of the bright, playful, and abstract contemporary beaded headgear done by the Mikula collective in Durban.

The video still of a young man’s face covered with maize by Churchill Madikida is a recent acquisition. Madikida explores Xhosa’s rituals in this video “ Liminal States” of a young man force-feeding himself with maize to eventually regurgitate the staple meal. Madikida was a gang member who turned his life around by building on a natural talent for draughtsman ship and becoming an artist.

In the main gallery Willem Boshoff’s triptych The Purple Shall Govern looks stunning. He reproduced the lyrics from 49 anti-apartheid songs and slogans in Zulu and other indigenous languages across 3 large panels. Boshoff has had a life long interest in archiving language and researched protest slogans from the period for the piece.

Paul Stopforth became well know in the eighties for his politically charged work, which was repeatedly suppressed. He eventually left for the US. His portrait of a man Bather is at once repulsive, fascinating, and beautifully painted.  The hint of his body under water suggests to me what we cannot see, such perhaps the unconscious or hidden motivations..

We ended our visit with a tour of the huge storage space.  We quickly realized that most of the collection is kept out of site.  There was a dramatic shift from the lean and edited public exhibition spaces to the myriad of objects in the storage area.  We entered Ali Baba’s cave. A trove of beaded artifacts were all arranged in drawers and wooden sculptures of all shape, form and color could be seen carefully laid down on the floors which allowed for easy access and viewing. I can’t figure out why she was covered ! The wooden sculpture was carved out of one trunk of wood. It was my favorite piece in the storage.

After a snack at the museum’s café – the cupcakes were so tempting – we went wandering through the Braamfontein district checking out small art venues and the local architecture. We got a view of the Nelson Mandela Bridge.  It was time then to go to Durban, the next city in our itinerary.

I arrived in Johannesburg and it was cold and rainy. After an 15 hour flight I was wondering what in world got me to decide to come to South Africa at this time of the year for just one week going from city to city with no time in the African countryside. I sighed and climbed under the duvet of the cozy bed in the charming Bed and Breakfast . I figured a couple of hours of sleep would help change my frame of mind. Sleep and a quick immersion in the South African art scene at the Joburg Artfair got me out of my funk.

This was my second time at the Joburg Artfair. I had gone in 2009, its second year in existence, so I knew what to expect. It is a small fair, very manageable (what a relief from the mega art fairs), and you really feel that you can absorb the material you see. The gallerists have time to talk to you. In fact they are thrilled to see somebody coming from America, which is still a rare occurrence at this fair. You get introduced to the artists, you can ask all the questions you want and really get a feel of what’s going on. Furthermore, there was an expansive wine tasting bar, which conveyed a sense of conviviality and encouraged visitors to hang around and network.

I have to confess I had the best laugh in front of Ed Young’s sculptural piece My gallerist made me do it. No question, Ed Young is a funny guy! I am talking about the naked man hanging from a nail! I love a sense of humor and whenever an artist can remind me not to take life too seriously I am grateful.  It is true it was mostly women who were staring at the sculpture and taking pictures but it sold very well – it came in an edition of three and all sold quickly !  It was well crafted and realistic, down to the socks and the hair on the legs.  

I spend a good amount of time at David Krut Projects booth with its rich selection of prints.  There are always a lot of people at Krut especially when David is present. Warm, gregarious, generous, he welcomes you and immediately you find yourself drawn into a circle of local artists, printmakers, and gallerists.       William Kentridge has a star position at Krut. They have been collaborating for years on printing projects. Included were linocuts from Kentridge’s Universal Archive Project. Based on ink drawings of birds, cats, and coffee pots,  Kentridge with David Krut’s master printmakers made linocuts on pages of old dictionaries unraveling master texts in the process.

 Another star of David Krut’s artists stable is Diane Victor. I was totally impressed by the emphasis on draughtsmanship in her prints. Her technical skills are superb. The way she puts these skills at the service of her imagination makes her work truly compelling. The end product is provocative, intense, and often satirical.  

In a very different vein, Stephen Hobbs’s prints harness his fascination with the architecture  of urban spaces and present a geometric web of lines that are at times truncated, interrupted thereby conveying an experience of disjunction, which is so familiar to an urban environment. He has a broad artistic practice and he is increasingly involved in public art in Johannesburg. There is much more to say about Krut’s printing project so keep posted for a whole post on it.

At the Goodman gallery Brett Murray’s response to the huge public polemic that surrounded  his painting The Spear depicting President Jacob Zuma with exposed genitals this spring was to the point and illustrated the government’s way of handling dissent: suppression of freedom of expression. It elicited a torrent of twitter traffic.

Next to it was a dramatic piece by Liza Lou, a Los Angeles artist who has been living in Durban for several years and whose beaded sculptures and paintings are now made with the help of local township women. The more I stood back from the piece the more its architectural qualities emerged. I met her later on in Durban. She took us to her studio where the township women were working on a new gorgeous piece made of beaded black, gold, and bright blue patches. These patches are ordered by Liza Lou, made by the women in the townships and assembled in the studio according to a design created by the artist.  Instead of paints, Liza Lou uses beads as her medium of choice. She works very meticulously choosing her colors just like she would use paint except that these beads are either glued or sown together by the township women under Liza Lou’s guidance. Beautiful work gets done while these women now have a sustainable life style. Bravo Liza!

I was very pleased to see that Kudzanai Chiurai was the winner of FNB Art Prize. I got to meet him and he is delightful. More to the point his work has a rawness, which coupled more recently with a tenderness for his environment makes it compelling.  He is an artist to watch for sure. See my remarks on his work at Documenta.

The featured artist, Deborah Poynton, had an installation of 11 paintings entitled Arcadia displayed in a dark room creating an all enveloping environment, the equivalent of a secret garden.

Her gallery, Michael Stevenson, seemed to be challenging the normal fair display format when it included the massive sculpture made from a found petrol tank by Michael Magarry, which was awkwardly stuck in a corner.   I did not like it so much but was more enthusiastic about his work once I saw some of his smaller pieces in their gallery in Cape Town. I would have preferred to see those at the fair.

The AOP gallery had a lovely selection of works on paper. I particularly noticed the work of Richard Penn and the beautifully displayed and exquisite book by Colin Richard. That sold right away.

I started years ago to collect works on paper so I still have a soft spot for them . Dan Halter‘s Things FAll Apart, (The entire text of Chinua Achebe’s) at once text and sculptural object was particularly poetic.

I  met Garth Rooke who had commissioned for his booth ten artists to create designs for full sized surfboards (Pipeline Guns) around the theme of Delftware and executed by renowned surfboard maker Spider Murphy.  Surfing is a very popular sport for those who live near Cape Town. Garth is bursting with projects and a force onto himself. Check out his roster of artists and  this cool site on his Delft project.

Few foreign galleries were present which was a shame.  However, Jack Bell a young gallerist from London was there with a solo show of a very talented artist/photographer from Benin, Leonce Raphael Agbodjelou. I took immediately a fancy to his work. At first I favored his earlier pieces of 2010, which showed portraits of Egungun masqueraders.  These were a more contemporary version of a traditional approach to portrait photography with a special sensitivity to color. However, it was his latest series “ Les Demoiselles de Porto Novo’ which is part of an ongoing portraiture project entitled “Citizens of Porto Novo” that won me over totally.More conceptual, formally complex and structured and more provocative, they tell a visual narrative of Africa and its colonization. The triptych presents a formal symmetry that shields at first glance the complexity of the narrative. It is through closer reading that this complexity becomes apparent. The photos are taken in an old colonial house built in Porto Novo in 1890 by the artist’s grandfather, a merchant who made his fortune selling lemonade to the French and Portuguese armies.  Porto Novo is the capital of Benin and was a major port for the slave trade. While the juxtaposition of the partially naked woman with the colonial architecture highlights to me the erotic appeal that the local black female body had to colonial eyes, the faded grandeur conveys also nostalgia for times gone by, for traditions slipping away perhaps. Being bare breasted was an aspect of traditional dressing for women in villages and the ceremonial Egungun mask point to traditional belief systems.  This work is at once personal and political and it is the layering of both that give depth to its aesthetic appeal. If asked whose work I was most enthusiastic about at the fair, I would choose the Demoiselles de Porto Novo. He is the discovery!

A booth held by the Museum of Modern Art from Equator Guinea was the only other space that showed West African artists. While it is unclear to me what this “Museum of Modern art “ is and who funds it (investors from what I understand) some of the works were intriguing. I liked this tapestry hanging by Placido Guimaraes.

France had a substantial presence at this fair being a partner in the context of the French South Africa season. Three galleries participated and the Maison Rouge Fondation Antoine Galbet sponsored Anthony McCalls’ light installation. A panel around the subject of Hybridization included Orlan, the performance artist who uses her body to address issues of shifting and ambiguous identity, and several French art critics and writers such as Melanie Bouteloup who participated in the curating of the Palais de Tokyo Triennale in Paris. This panel came as a surprise to me and I felt I was at the right place at the right time having seen the Triennale in Paris just a few weeks before .