For the first time in the last 14 years a year has elapsed since I have set foot on the African continent. Health issues got in the way of my travels, however my engagement with African art has not waned. Indeed during the past year I have been discovering the 1970’s photographic work of Paul Kodjo from Abidjan,  in the Ivory Coast. I am about to fly out to Abidjan to meet the artist who is now in his 80’s. I will be there when he signs the photographs that I have bought and discover the city!

The first time I saw Kodjo’s black and white photographs I found them immediately compelling. 

Working within the tradition of African traditional studio photography but pushing its boundaries, Kodjo photographed his subjects outside of the studio in staged modern domestic indoors and in the streets of Abidjan,  creating a unique record of Abidjan during  the years  of the economic boom of the early post-independence years. While blurring the lines between the real and the imaginary Kodjo used a cinematic approach and introduced movement and dramatic tensions drawing the viewer into his subjects lives: their relationships and emotions. These carefully crafted scenes  echo the shifting social and familial dynamics against the backdrop of  renewal of the urban landscape shaped by modernist design and architecture. But they also speak to the city dweller’s aspirations.

I first responded to the emotional aspect which I feel is lacking in some of contemporary photography which is more focused on the surface aesthetic and loved the sets and his talent as a portraitist.

Then as I learned about his practice which also includes photojournalism, fashion and event photography, and the condition under which these images had been brought recently to the public I was hooked! 

So hooked that I will now be showing Paul Kodjo’s works  from my collection at the 1:54 Contemporary African Art Fair in New York city, May 2-5, 2019. I have now turned into a curator ( with the help of curator Lydie Diakhate). The exhibition will be complemented by a panel on Saturday May 4th on Kodjo’s work. The panelists are Ananias Lèki Dago (photographer from Abidjan and Founder of Les Rencontres du Sud) ) and Antawan Byrd (art historian and assistant curator of Photography at the Art Institute of Chicago) . The moderator is Claude Grunitzky (Founder of TRACE magazine  and TRUE Africa) .   

It was through Ananias Lèki Dago, photographer and founder of Les Rencontres du Sud ( a photographic platform in Ivory Coast in support of Ivoirian photography) , that I first came across Paul Kodjo’s work. In 2008 Paul Kodjo had asked Ananias to take on his photographic archive. It was a mixed blessing.  It was an honor, as Kodjo had been one of the  preeminent photographers of the 1970’s in Abidjan, but a huge challenge as the negatives were in very bad conditions due to terrible climatic conditions, and economic and political instability. 

“ On the day [I] returned to Abidjan, I saw a boy carrying a large trunk on his head walking towards me. When he reached me, he put his burden down at my feet. It was Paul who had sent him. I still remember the shivers that went down my spine  when he opened the trunk and I saw the roaches, spiders, and other insects, all too alive, scuttle away from their hiding places. I put my hand on the pile of negatives and old prints damaged by humidity. ….In the end, I agreed to be responsible for taking care of Paul Kodjo’s archive.” 

Ananias took the archive to Paris where the negatives were then shielded from the negative effects of the humidity but it took a few years before he had the time and the money to be able to fully start the preservation process with the help of the printer, Toros. By 2018 Ananias was able to show portions of the archive to the Musèe du Quai Branly in Paris who bought a selection.  The photographs are not vintage but contemporary prints made from this archive. As a result a few show signs of this history, others look totally pristine. As an art historian by training I liked those traces of history.  There is so much artistic work that has vanished in Africa and the history of its artistic production is still in the making. 

Ananias send me a whole lot of information.  I discovered that Kodjo was one of the few at the time that had sought formal training in photography: He had followed a correspondence course with the New York Institute of Photography when he was quite young and then continued his formal training in photography and cinematography in Paris in the late sixties.  

He was the first in the Ivory Coast and possibly (?) in West Africa  to turn to popular media for the production and dissemination of his photographic production. He adopted the roman-photo or photo-novel,  which was published in the national periodical Ivoire Dimanche with broad popular exposure. 

I did research of my own spending hours at Northwestern Herkovits library and the New York Schomburg library where I found  copies of the periodical Ivoire Dimanche which include Paul Kodjo’s roman-photos (photo-novels). Not only did I read the roman-photos but also read many articles that spoke of marriage ( infidelity, monogamy, polygamy,)  shifting aspirations, women and men at work which are all subjects raised in Kodjo’s roman-photos. 

Paul Kodjo worked in photography, in cinema; he also was an actor ( there is a wonderful picture of him playing the role of a woman in a play)  and a musician.  

Kodjo embraced contemporaneity in a way that artists do today in terms of culture, technology, and media. He deserves his rightful place in the pantheon of West African photographers. 

After just a couple of weeks in New York I am off again to London to see the 1:54 African art fair. I will be arriving after everybody as I am stuck in New York being a good citizen by doing jury duty and visiting my mother who has Alzheimer’s and no longer knows who I am though she gives me more kisses and hugs than during all her sane years. She is the reason I got so interested in art.

She was an amateur painter and a collector though she would never have called herself that- calling oneself a collector is a recent thing.   As she ages and slowly vanishes she is a constant reminder of what are life’s priorities; People and one’s loved ones, not things! She loved things too though.

During my childhood I was a witness to her creative process and to her struggles as she was painting. As a result I gained a keen interest in the creative mind. And so here I am on the trail of new artists, new voices, new visions. The African fair is gaining traction, which is great and the prices are going up it looks like; or should I say it felt like that was the case for my latest photographic purchase! Yes, indeed I have bought something already though I am still in New York! I knew the photograph and when I saw it pop up in one of the galleries’ selection I jumped on it.

Bonhams’ has timed two sales of Contemporary African art for the two last weeks of October. The results for the Africa Now sale that took place Thursday October 15 were disappointing. I was not surprised as the quality of the work was generally sub par.

Shortly after, I will be off to Lagos, for the Lagos Photo Festival. It will be my first time to Nigeria and I am looking forward to seeing the local art scene. Nigeria has a burgeoning local collector base and I am really keen to see it in action. It is great that African photography is gaining traction in the Global North but even more necessary is the development of a local African collector base. Hopefully the work will be less oriented to appeal to a foreign audience and truly reflective of a more novel and local aesthetic.

Last year I noticed and bought the work of Nemsa Leuba at the Lagos Festival Booth in JOburg and now she is being shown at the 1:54 Fair. So I look forward to making more discoveries!

1:54 premiered in New York during Frieze week and just like the main art fair it was situated outside of Manhattan. Located in Red Hook, a fun, and super cool spot at the Southern tip of Brooklyn with fabulous views of Manhattan and the Statue of Liberty the contemporary African art fair was a more casual and smaller version of the 1:54 fair in London. It featured 16 galleries, half of them from Africa and half from other countries showing work described as “African”. A congenial atmosphere prevailed and I soon found myself absorbed in Bobson Sukhdeo Mohanlall’s color portraits of Zulus dressed in traditional dress and admiring the richness and depth of the hues, in particular the reds. Axis Gallery curator Gary van Wyk soon explained to me that Mohanlall was one of the first photographers to produce color portraits in Africa and described the long process of restoration of the original negatives that had been recently completed. Cleaning and restoring the colors to their original state had been a painstaking task but well worth it!

Passing by Ivory Coast artist, Aboudia’s heavily layered painting I felt stared down by the oversized child like figures drawn with vibrant colors against an ominous darkness. I find Aboudia’s work at times too busy but this one was remarkable. The gaze of the figures was inescapable nailing me to the ground. Tightness started to grip my chest: either something was about to happen or I was guilty of something I felt irrationally! Work that engenders that kind of emotion has to be good!

Less confrontational but potent nonetheless Moroccan Rim Battal’s photographic installation had a quiet and pared down aesthetic that also delivered a powerful message though I think a larger scale would have benefited the work. She expands on the idea of the female body as territory first seen in the traditional terms of man’s conquest of the female body and draws a parallel with the domination that comes with colonization.

Playful creativity, a sense of infinite possibilities emanates from Nigerian multimedia artist Amoda Olu’s installation that reads like a grouping of drawings though made from a combination of scraps of paper, drawn or recycled, paint marks and old nails all glued on plexiglass.

Many other good works could be seen but I particularly lingered in front of Fabrice Monteiro’s arresting photograph of a gorgeous and proud bejeweled African woman. “Dressed to the hilt” in a sumptuous black and gold gown, her shoulders draped with a matching scarf, her head coiffed with an oversized African wrap tied in the Yoruba fashion, she is smoking a long wooden pipe while holding an African fan. The theatricality of the posture, her proud carriage and the fusion of Western and African fashion in her costume caught my eye. Here was no ordinary woman and no victim! She is a signares explained Marianne Ibrahim, the owner of the gallery, herself a striking woman. These are African women from the island of Gorée in Senegal who in the 18^th and 19^th century married colonizers. Both benefited from the union, the women gaining trading power as they helped their husband in their trading transactions. I am particularly fond these days of images that highlight the strength and richness of African culture versus images of victimhood, not because I want to deny painful histories but more because it is times one celebrates the strength and richness of African cultures.

Ruby Onyinyechi Amanze ‘s exquisite drawing was another treasure to be seen in Marianne Ibrahim’s booth- see my upcoming studio visit review. Playing with scale and space she creates layers of narratives that coalesce into a strange universe populated with hybrid creatures and infused with light.

The tenor of Soly Cissé’s small paintings was totally opposite to the poise emanating from Ruby’s careful orchestrations, but I liked their cartoonish quality and the immediacy of the mark. Here again human and animal forms coexist in a strange way but Cissé’s imaginary universe is chaotic and vibrant with slight intimation of violence.

African art was also to be found at Frieze. At the Vigo Gallery I saw a rarely seen series of drawings “Visual Dairy of Time-Waste Palace” by the Sudanese artist Ibrahim El –Salahi that he did in 1996/1997 while in self imposed exile living and working in Qatar. One of the most important artist coming out of the Khartoum school in the 1950’s surrealism infuses his African modernist approach. It was only recently that El-Salahi was given his due in a retrospective of his work at the Tate Modern.

I left the fair not totally comfortable with the fact it was located so far from any of the other fairs. I welcome the day that some of these galleries/ artists get included in fairs such as Volta or Nada.

However the excursion into Brooklyn was well worth the hassle to get there and I ended the day with a lovely dinner at the Good Fork around the corner .

Here are a few other works that I liked at that fair  :

Vincent Michea
Bintou #2

Barend De Wet

Owusu-Ankomah

Artworks I favored at Nada:

Nichole Van Beek

Brie Ruais

Artworks that caught my eye at Frieze:

Arlene Shechet

Nick Cave

Los Carpinteros

Peterson Kamwathi , a contemporary artist from Kenya had his first solo show in New York City at the Volta art fair in March. ArtLabAfrica had been selected to show Kamwathi latest series “Positions”. This series came about as a reaction to the increasing tension between different religions all over the world which was exacerbated by the Westgate Mall attack in Nairobi by Somali Islamic militants in September 2013. It also feels quite timely taking in considering the current events in Kenya.

His work is rendered in thick layers of charcoal, pastel, watercolor, stencils and more recently collage on thick watercolor paper. While rooted in the figurative tradition it is highly conceptual and addresses social, political and cultural issues. Fascinated by human behavior and daily rituals, in his more recent bodies of work he has turned his critical eye to observing the individual in a group setting: political gatherings, queues, and now group rituals within organized religions.

The structure and anatomy of prayer is at the core of this body of work. Moving away from a more specific rendering of individuality, his static figures are generic, almost abstract set against a background which is either left blank or when densely decorative is void of any vanishing points.  Figures are individually drawn and cut out and then assembled in a group pointing simultaneously to the human vulnerability expressed in the act of prayer and the power found in the collective act of organized prayer.

All too aware of the growing tension between Christianity and Islam locally but also world wide Peterson explores here the similarities in ritualistic positions that transcend difference of opinions, and beliefs. Individuality is subsumed here in favor of the human desire for community, and in this case for surrendering to a spiritual higher power. I liked the body of work and admired Peterson’s courage in engaging with current issues, and endorsed his message of peace and acceptance of differences yet a little voice in my head kept telling me that there was something disturbing to me in these images of group prayer. I could not help thinking of how many atrocities have been committed through out the centuries by deeply religious people who pray a lot!

It is the first time a Kenyan artist has a solo show in New York, and I delayed my departure for my walk in the bush in Kenya to be sure to see the exhibition. I had heard about Kamwathi two years ago when I was in South Africa for the Joburg art fair. While having coffee with Mark Coetze in Cape Town I told him about my particular interest in Kenya and he recommended I try to see Kamwathi the next time I was going to Nairobi.

That November (2012) after a week on a bush walk in the Ndotos mountains in Norther Kenya, a day/night in a hotel room in Lamu feeling sick like a dog, and before getting on my flight back to the US I decided to spend a night in Nairobi and look up Kamwathi. Connecting with him was easy and he gave me an address on the outskirts of the city. That raised some apprehension as I had never ventured on my own in Nairobi to say nothing of beyond!  Once I asked William, a driver the charity MEAK uses when in town, to take me to his studio/house I felt more at ease .

I did not know what to expect. What did an emerging artist studio look like in Nairobi, Kenya? I have visited several spacious, at times factory-like artist studios here in New York but I had a feeling this could be more like my mother’s make shift studios – at one point she made the large entry hall her studio when she lived on her own in Paris.

Finding the house was not easy. After a few wrong turns in a semi-urban area we found the dirt road that led to his house nestled in lush tropical vegetation. Peterson came out to greet me with a huge smile and led me into his studio, a modest space behind his house where he lived with his wife.

I was encouraged to sit down and relax. No art talk was going to happen before he had made me tea!  I was totally unused to this! Instead of him being immediately the focus of attention as is customary in New York he was making me feel the honored guest.
A bit uncomfortable at first I gradually began to relax and let my eyes wander, taking in his life size charcoal drawings in various stages of completion. Peterson’s creative process was there to be witnessed.

A framed print of a massive bull from his Bull series was leaning against the wall next to a starker rendering of a life size sheep. On the opposite wall, a study of figures set in a row emerging out of a cloud of charcoal hung next to a large cardboard covered with small sketches. An oversized cut out figure of a man hung on top of it all. Peterson appears to works surrounded by his ideas, past and present.

While these were powerful images and beautifully executed testifying to Peterson’s artistic talent I admit I was a bit uncomfortable with the animal imagery. I knew it was my Western taste and experience that was getting in the way. Peterson reminded me that cattle and sheep were equivalent to cash in the bank in Kenya and a metaphor for wealth and power. I appreciated then the symbolism and I liked that Peterson was creating works of art with the Kenyan audience in mind and not only an international audience.

Peterson’s work has been increasingly engaged with the historical and current socio-political reality of Kenya and has evolved from a critical gaze on Kenya’s domineering leadership (Bull Series) and passive electorate (Sheep Series) to a full indictment of the government, the role of the media, the police, the electorate commission and the UN   (Sitting Allowance).

Sitting Allowance, includes eight life size pieces – figures arranged in frieze-like fashion stare the audience down – and is the body of work created in response to the violence that followed the general election of 2007-2008 and which propelled him to national and international attention. These works were groundbreaking in the context of Kenya’s visual arts in as much as they were playing, as works of art, an active part in a political discourse and in a societal self-reflection.

As we were looking closely at his subsequent series Queues we started to talk about the prevalence of queues in Kenya: queues of people waiting to vote, queues of people waiting for a seat in a bus or matatus to name a few. At times one can wait close to two hours for one’s turn for a seat, which means it takes forever to get to work! In his drawings Peterson captures the Kenyans in all their diversity. Women carrying babies on their back, or bundles on their head, men in suits or carrying satchels, or jerrycans of water.

Queues are conceptual tools for Kamwathi. In speaking of his 2010-2011 Queues series, he explains his choice of subject matter:

“ Queues are manifestations of events in humanity. They are testaments or monuments to the consequences of events of the past, are the representation of events in the present and they are also clues and signs that point to events that may possibly occur in the future.”

“I am trying to look at channeling, conditioning and manipulation as symbolized in a queue. This is in the area of politics, culture and economics, in both contemporary and historical worlds.”

It was easy talking with Peterson. A gentle, caring and considerate man he seemed most concerned with the lack of arts facilities in Nairobi. A printing machine was desperately needed for art students! Pretty much self-taught, he attributed his mother as having installed his first interest in art after she gave him a watercolor set. He graduated from the Shang Tao media Arts College in 2005 and became well known as a woodblock master printer.

Printmaking and charcoal drawings have been his mediums of choice. His Queues series stylistically reminded me of the graphic work of Mexican muralists and of the work of William Kentridge and he confirmed their influence.

He then pulled out recent drawings from a large portfolio that he went to get from a room in the back of the studio. Made to look like cut outs, these were totally different from the work we had just been discussing. While the subject was still the human figure, it was drawn with a more abstract line, little shading and set against the white of the paper where all sense of place had been removed. I loved the contemporary feel of these works and told him so. We parted soon after that and I felt moved by this experience. It was the first time I had met a talented artist that was deeply humble yet fully committed to his work and ambitious. The combination is a rare occurrence in New York city!

A couple years later it was with great pleasure that I saw his work in London at the art fair 1:54 and I was totally excited that it was in the fashion of the last drawings he had showed me! Perhaps I had an impact, perhaps not but I felt privileged that I had been a witness to his process.

On a less positive note I read on a tweet about the Venice Biennale that there were going to be mostly Chinese artists in the Kenya pavillon!!!! See article  Kamwhati would have been a good choice.