Usually I like to go to see the Venice Biennale long after its late spring opening, any time from September to November. This year was different because several African artists whose work I own were going to be included either in the Biennale Pavilions or in side events. I wanted to meet up with the artists and share the moment with them.

I showed up for the preview week and while the streets of Venice were not yet overrun with tourists, the vaporettos (water buses) that ferry us back and forth to the Guardini and the Arsenale were jammed packed  with art enthusiasts from all over the world. People were queuing up to enter the various pavilions in the Guardini. Patience and persistence and a sense of humor were one’s best assets!

The South African pavilion was worth the wait! Two excellent videos installations graced its small allocated space. Mohau Modisakeng’s black and white three channel video installation Passage was particularly gripping and aesthetically beautiful.

I became the witness of three characters, each distinctive by the tailored clothes they wore, and each one lying in a slowly sinking rowing boat struggling with the rising water. Modisakeng makes reference to past transatlantic slavery and comments on current displacements of people created by political and economic upheaval. While the restraint of the performance conveys a dignity to the characters, who never try to escape and allows the viewer not to feel overwhelmed, the watching does take you down underwater leaving one out of breadth to say the least.

Candice Breitz’s seven channel installation Love Story was just as absorbing and disturbing. First I was watching two well-known actors, Julianne Moore and Alec Baldwin, alternate impersonating two refugees on an oversized screen. I was captivated by their performance in part because of the harrowing stories they were recounting but also because they are two Hollywood actors that I am familiar with. Breitz made it easy. It was just like going to the movies. However it is a performance. Then in a room behind on 6 smaller screens I saw the real refugees tell their true story that I could only hear if I took the step of picking up the earphones and of listening to their voices. Breitz makes a point here of having star actors overshadow the ‘real” refugees highlighting the role of the media structures in telling the refugee story and “overshadowing” the personal stories.

After a couple of days I set off to trek through the web of streets of Venice in search of the other African Pavilions that were scattered across the lagoon. On top of my list was to attend the opening of the Kenya Pavilion whose location had been in constant flux prior to its opening. At first it was to be in Dorsudoro and its location was included in the map provided by the Biennale team. I then received an email from Lavinia Calva of ArtLabAfrica the night before the opening informing me that the venue had changed location and was now far in the Guidecca at the Palladio school. The process had been a real challenge she said :”it’s been a real struggle. They lost two places for lack of funding. The artists have been brilliant and sorted everything out themselves with zero support!”. However because of the last minute change the Kenya Pavilion is not listed on the Biennale map.

Just hearing that made me determined to be there. After two days of being spoon fed art I was ready to work harder to encounter it. I walked across the Dorsudoro, feeling that I was walking away from a Venice that makes me look back and romanticize history. I was also shaking off this thing that happens to me when I see too much art all at once, this feeling that I am consuming art, and turning into someone that seeks to be entertained or inspired and reassured about humanity. I reached the Zattere vaporetto station where I picked up the waterbus that crosses the Canale della Guidecca and dropped me off at the Palanca stop. I was now in a different Venice, one where the working class Venitiens live. It was around four o’clock and school was out. I passed mothers pushing strollers with their young children zipping past them on their scooters; here was the laundrymat, the convenience store. I walked deep into the Guidecca and I knew that I was getting close when I saw Simon Njami holding forth at an outdoor table. I finally arrived in front of the Palladio school, a partially empty building , and noticed a small yellow sign with “Another Country, Kenyan Pavillion” written on it. I climbed to the third floor where the work of 5 Kenyan artists selected by curator Jimmy Ogonga occupies each an empty classroom and followed the sound of familiar voices.

Peterson Kamwathi was being interviewed by the Zucca Project team that provided last minute funding and saved the pavilion from a certain demise. Soon walked in Beatrice Wanjiku, another Kenyan artist whose work has been included in The European Cultural Centre exhibition and a good friend of Peterson. They shared the financial and logistical challenge it had been for all of them, and the thrill of being here. Peterson had no idea of the space where his work was going to be hung and had to travel with his artwork on his flight from Nairobi. He felt  now that it was  up he could expand its scale. I concurred. His current subject is one of migration and scaling it up would be quite effective. But overall it was the thrill to be finally here that dominated. The government failed to come up with the funds but the artists made it happen anyway. I am moved by their persistence and commitment! Beatrice is housed on the mainland and has a 1h30 commute in both directions! Nothing is taken for granted here.

Next door hung Paul Onditi’s’ richly layered paintings capturing a global world order collapsing into chaos. Onditi’s manages to make beautiful a nightmarish scenario, capturing the terrifying seductiveness of chaos.

In another classroom working in direct dialogue with the classroom’s architecture sculptor Arlene Wandera created a sculpture “ On the ladder” using a repurposed ladder that she stood in the middle of the room with tiny figures of men standing on a beam positioned across the ladder and another hanging from a wire. In the dichotomy of scale to my eyes the ladder became the towering framework, and a metaphor for the established structures of power that exist within which the tiny figures must navigate. Unfortunately the piece seemed a bit lost in the space and I felt her idea was not flushed out enough. The pavilion includes also works by Mwangi Hutter and Richard Kimathi.

I was soon off : Nigeria was having its first pavilion ever and it was a distance away. It was quite a long waterbus ride before I saw the Nigerian pavilion nestled against the church of San Stae. The show is titled How about Now. First it was the past that greeted me as I walked directly into Victor Ehikhamenor’s enveloping installation A Biography of the Forgotten, walls draped with canvas painted with geometric patterns and small Benin bronze heads (replica of real large size ones that were taking from Benin) and mirrors hanging from the ceiling.

In the words of the artist Ehikhamenor: ‘The symbolism of the mirror is two-fold: on the one hand, it was one of the objects the white man exchanged for African art, commodities, and human slaves. It also serves as a metaphor for self-reflection – a selfie if you like- a way of introspection.’

On the upper floor the sculptural scale shifted to life size with the work of Peju Alatise Flying Girls who brings attention to the girl-child and her vulnerability in Nigeria. Not only have many girls been abducted by Boko Haram and sold as sex slaves, but Nigerian society itself allows young girls to be enslaved and married while being underage. Alatise bases her work on a story she wrote about a little Yoruba girl called Sim who is nine year old and is rented out as a domestic servant in Lagos. Here the artist offers us a flight of fancy, an escapist vision, something that the little girl imagined to manage her anguish. Eight life size sculptures of young girls sprouting wings are set in a circle amidst flying birds and butterflies. Overhead, in a sound piece, girls’ voices chatting away brought a smile to my face reminding me so well of the delight of childhood and the poignancy of what was at stake.

Finally the video recording of the work of dancer and choreographer Qudus Onikeku was particularly powerful and moving. With a focus on the present and the now as a way to encounter the past, through performance, and movement that often felt self generated the performers including Qudus enact extremely poignant scenes. I felt in my own body the violence that played itself out. More effective than words it conveyed a historical trauma deeply embedded in the collective unconsciousness of the Yoruba people.

‘ Body memory is something that has always been a fascination to me. The appeal results from the capacity of the body to be a storehouse and to keep memories we are not aware of until it manifests in consciousness. For me, it’s also a way of looking at ourselves, as Africans, as black people, and how the body has been the thing that has passed through the tunnel of what we might refer to as history.’ Qudus Onikeku..

I was sorry to have missed his live performance.

The Ivory Coast Pavilion was set in the grand Palazzo Dolfin. I met up with Joana Choumali, a photographer from the Ivory Coast who I had met in Lagos a couple of years ago. I found myself quite engrossed with her new body of work that was included in the Pavilion. In this work, Choumali delicately embroiders with colorful threads her photographs that she took in two hemispheres, the North and the South. By cutting out a figure from the photo taking in Africa and repositioning it in another location she speaks of migrations and highlights the longing of those who wish to leave but also the vacancies and the loss that it engenders locally.

Jems Roberts Koko Bi’s sculpture in wood was particularly effective and poignant. He was present on the beach in Grand BAssam near Abidjan where a terrorist attack took place in March , 2013.

At the Zimbabwe Pavilion I liked Admire Kamudzengerere 900 Post-It self-portraits that he did to remember his recently deceased father. Speaking about this body of work that was shown in New York at the Catinca Tabacaru Gallery he explains:” It was a slow process of calming down by looking into the mirror and drawing one [portrait] after another. It was my way of trying to understand who this man is and was and our shared connection.” Not one self-portrait is alike. Quite an amazing feat and mourning process! Knowing why he did this made me look at each post-it with a different eye and emotion. This was not narcissism but a quest for the departed loved one.

I stopped at the Future Generation Art prize organized by the PinchukArtCentre. South African artist Dineo Seshee Bopape was the winner of the 4^th edition and Phoebe Boswell (Kenya/ UK) had received Special Prize.

Bopape’s installation consisted of an earth sculpture made of black local soil acting as a platform for organic and geological objects. I was dying to touch everything. I thought of the natural wealth of our planet or in particular South Africa with its soil rich in minerals including gold before it became altered by man and transformed into objects. Installed in a richly wooden paneled room with high ceilings, bookcases and century old brass chandeliers the juxtaposition of materials could not have been more thought provocative.

Other works were from

Ibrahim Mahama

Kemang Wa Lehulere

Njdeka Akunyili Crosby

Beatrice Wanjiku at Personal Structures – Open Borders.

Abdoulaye Konate at the Arsenale.

The presence of new pavilions was a welcome development. However I felt overall there could have been more artists from Africa and its diaspora included in the Guardini and the Arsenale. There is excellent work out there that deserves to be shown. There was a Diaspora Pavilion but  too often the attention was given to the message and not to the actual form of the artworks which I found disappointing. The issue of migration is obviously at the forefront of the works on display but I missed the personal impetus that is necessary to make a work convincing and memorable.

This superb tabernacle was an eloquent illustration of how Africa’s wealth ( mineral, and human) has played an important part in Western civilization economic achievements. Today is a time  for  Africa to focus on the richness of its continent  and design its economic and culturel future shifting its gaze away from the West or as we say today the North.

Sometimes things work out well. I was long overdue for a visit to a dear friend in Charleston and there was a large exhibition of Contemporary African art at the SCAD in Savannah. So I found myself touring the old quarters of Savannah and Charleston, places of old privilege wholly supported at the time by the slave trade and pondering the work of African artists exploring Dante’s themes of Hell, Purgatory and Heaven.

The exhibition called The Divine Comedy had been curated by the writer and art critic Simon Njami and was traveling from Germany where it was shown at the Museum Für Moderne Kunst in Frankfurt. Including original commissions and renowned works of art by approximately 40 of the most dynamic contemporary artists from 19 African nations and the diaspora it was to stay in Savannah for four months and then travel to Washington D.C. Since exhibitions of African artists are hard to come by in the United States I was thrilled that two US cities were included in the tour. I had bought the thick catalogue prior to the visit and had attempted to read the essays by Simon Njami and others to understand how Dante Alghieri’s Divine Comedy related to the works selected. The premise of the exhibition was that Dante’s visions are applicable to many cultures and religions. In fact, the catalogue failed to elucidate the connection. A selection of very erudite essays left me feeling confused as to the artists’ thinking and process as they responded to Dante’s work. I could not understand the necessity to validate the work of African artists by showing their ability to relate to a great work of Western literature from the 14^th Century. The premise seemed an artificial construct.

However, I liked the exhibition very much. The works were at times provocative, thoughtful, beautiful, relevant, and poignant. While there was no wall text there were students available to answer any question we had which allowed for a livelier visit and also a more direct experience. I was there with my friend who knew nothing about art coming from Africa and was very eager.

The exhibition was organized according a reversal of the order of the three states laid out in Dante’s Divine Comedy. It started with Heaven moved on to Purgatory and ended up with Hell. I must confess I soon abandoned any desire to make sense why certain pieces were in a section. I just let myself enjoy the process of discovery. I did feel a sense of elation as I walked into the foyer with Ndary Lo’s flying metal figures floating above our heads and approached Abdoulaye Konate’s wall hangings made of textiles, which exuded positive energy. Graceful dancing cutout figures anchored on a deep blue or red carpet-like ground conveyed a sense of joy, grace, and even intimacy.

Jellel Gasteli’s photographs of the desert brought me abruptly down to earth. Here the only evidence of human life were the traces left behind by man, like the print of a boot left on the sand, or the battered road signs. What one was left to see was the vastness of the desert yet seen so intimately that the love of the artist for it was palpable. While absent, man’s presence was intimately felt. Gasteli lives in Tunisia and the desert has been a fixture in his life. Paradise? Perhaps. Make sure you have water though!

I spend a lot of time gazing and walking around Jane Alexander’s tableau “Frontier With Church.” Set in a darkened chamber, what seemed to be a procession was at once intensely disturbing and captivating. There was something ritualistic, almost pagan to the scene. Hybrid creatures, humanimals – hyperrealist human bodies with animal heads – were pulling stacked on top of one another, a large crate wrapped in plastic, a luxurious trunk, and a black and white lamb while other creatures followed the convoy looking out to the crowds.

I could not figure out what this sheep was doing on top of the trunk but it brought up memories of images of religious pagan or Christian rituals such as the Golden Ram or the Sacrificial lamb. A Christian religious image glued on the side of the trunk confirmed I was on the right track.

Furthermore, three standing alone creatures were dressed in priestly garb with embroidered crosses and were possibly proselytizing. Every detail seemed significant though what one was meant to read from it was not always evident. Further research helped elucidate the meaning of the tableau. While the artist is making a direct reference to the procession encountered by Dante and Matilda at the Summit of Mount Purgatory she is highlighting the connection to proselytizism, migration and trade. Jane Alexander who is South African and works and teaches in Cape Town is unusual as she rarely sells her work and prefers to not explain her installations leaving the viewer work things out which is just what we were doing.

The Divine Comedy and its three states with its Christian undertones inspired further reflections on the role of religion. Zoulikha Bouabdellah installation “Silence” juxtaposed the two worlds of the sacred and the profane and paid tribute to those women who are not afraid to assert themselves despite the restrictions dictated by their faith. A series of identical prayer mats were cut out in the middle creating a space where golden shoes were positioned. The grid like effect created by the serial arrangements of the mats conveyed to me Islam’s rigid framework while the golden pumps evoked the fantasies of Westernization.

Life has a strange way of testing us. Recently this installation was included in an exhibition in Clichy, a close suburb of Paris. The artist and the curator chose to remove it after the Charlie Hebdo killings. It appears that the “mairie” had been warned by the local Muslim community that that there was a risk of violence. Feeling that the piece would not lead to the kind of dialogue that she wished to foster and getting no support from the local mayor Zoulikha Bouabdellah withdrew the piece although she felt strongly that there was nothing blasphemous about the work. By the way this work was produced in 2007/2008 and has been seen many times in Europe. I can’t help feeling deeply worried when I see the gradual erosion of civil rights as a result of threats of violence. This did not hit the front page of the papers but it is deeply concerning.

Looking back I realized how many of the works that struck me were done by women artists. Their work felt strongly convincing and aesthetically appealing. Their message was conveyed at times with the simplest of means.

Myriam Mihindou’s compelling and disturbing video “The Dress Flew Off” offered a poignant and poetic window into the artist’s torment. It was fantastic! The video zeros in on the artist’s legs and I found myself watching with increasing emotion as her hands struggled with her sheer skin-colored tights – a metaphor for her skin and /or social self. She pulls, stretches, tears the tights, covering and uncovering her calves while speaking of her body, skin, and pain. It is as if she is molting and the viewer becomes the witness of the birth of her “second skin.” Watching her struggle with being a woman of mixed race restricted by the taboos of race became a visceral experience. The simplicity of the performance and of the choice of elements and the power of expression was what impressed me so much.

The photographic work of Kiluaniji Kia Henda was very seductive and I found myself pondering my reaction. Hinda creates an unsettling and provocative visual and political relationship between the naked shape of a black man and the rich brown architectural details of an interior setting dating back to the 18/19th century. In one instance the body lies on the table as an anonymous shape.

It is just another unidentified object as all the chairs and tables carefully placed in the room. In another photograph the man is naked and sits between two scantily clad caryatids that are supporting the mantel. Here the artist links the economic fortunes of old Portugal to the exploitation of Africa and in particular to the slave trade. Absorbed with the aesthetic experience it took me awhile to realize that the artist was purposefully objectifying the black body to illustrate his point. Through fiction and careful staging of the photographs Hinda points to the historical and contemporary fraught presence of Africa in Europe while highlighting the artificiality of historical truth.

Nandipha Mntambo’s cowhide sculptures had plenty of breathing room, while Nicholas Hlobo ‘s gargantuan sprawling sculpture seemed a little squeezed in the long back gallery.

Tucked away behind Joel Andrianomearisoa’s installation of hinged vanity mirrors I was pleased to finally see Aida Muluneh haunting photographs. However they deserved better exposure. Beautifully composed, uncompromising, and enigmatic, I had a sense that what was being referenced here was dire and deeply personal. Muluneh, an Ethiopian photojournalist by training, forgoes simply documenting victimization and misery (Hell). Instead, through a carefully constructed, stylized and contemporary image integrating tradition and contemporary aesthetics she chooses to point to the burden of a painful history while not eschewing all responsibility.

Muluneh describes her creative thinking while making this photographic series:

“I painted her body white because for me, living in this city that we call Adis Ababa, we don’t need to fantasize about going to the Inferno – I have seen and experienced things that really make me question humanity. I have realized that in order to get ahead here, many people wear masks in order to protect their future. But while doing this, the reality is that I have seen the various atrocities and the great length that many will go to in order to maintain their success. So with that in mind, for me the red hands symbolize the guilt associated with the thirst for upward mobility. The cloth wrapped around Salem’s body is specifically from the southern region of Ethiopia, which has endured centuries of oppression, slavery, and so forth. For the background colour, I chose the off-grey because it reminds me of a dirty snow; this reminds me of my childhood of growing up in Canada, in the midst of the bitter cold, and also the challenges that I faced being an African immigrant in an all-white community.”

This exhibition gathered works that for the most part felt deeply relevant to our times while being wonderfully creative and personal. It will be shown at the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art in Washington DC starting April 8.

This October was the second year that African art was making a showing in London during Frieze week and it was doubling in size! Named 1:54; 1 for one continent, 54 for 54 countries, the title was a reminder that Africa is not one country but a multitude of countries with distinct traditions, styles, and histories. Founded by Touria El Glaoui  the fair was also the impetus for a critical dialogue organized around a series of lectures and panels curated by artistic director Koyo Kouoh.

While I had been in London just a couple of weeks before I could not miss the event. I made a quick jump to London leaving late Tuesday night after attending suitcase and all a fundraising for a cause dear to a friend of mine. I caught miraculously a few hours of sleep on the flight over and after dropping off my bags at a friend’s house rushed first to the Frieze art fair to see the work of Serge Alain Nitegeka, a Burundi artist at Stevenson Gallery. I had put one of his recent panels on hold – I don’t buy from an image on the Internet – and needed to make a decision. An established South African gallery, Stevenson shows its artists at global contemporary art fairs eschewing the African tag.

The booth looked fabulous with Barthelemy Toguo’s large paintings hanging on the walls and works on paper displayed on easels.

I found Serge Nitegeka’s two recent panels in the back room, out of sight. I was immediately struck by their powerful visual impact. Serge paints on large wooden boxes. Abstract geometry here is imbued with potent psychological power.

In one of the panels Serge has chosen to eliminate any illusion of space: heavy black bands delineate a square slightly off center pressed up against the picture plane. There is nothing serene about this square: shards break up its interior periphery; I even have a visceral reaction and experience a sense of oppression and aggression.

In total contrast, the black lines on the other panel open up to a fictive space allowing for a sense of relief and perhaps hope. The contrast between the two pieces is striking and highlights Serge’s increasing ability to manipulate competently geometry for his own psychological and pictorial purposes.

Despite the fact that I loved the piece I couldn’t figure out where I would put in my apartment so I decided to be reasonable, urged along by my boyfriend who keeps on trying to curtail my art buying. So I very reluctantly let it go, not sure that I was making the right decision. In fact I later chided myself for not following my inclination. Indeed Serge is a very promising artist and he is having a show at Marianne Boesky in New York opening mid-November.

After a quick walk through Frieze I headed off to the Somerset House where 1:54 was housed. Somerset House is a U shaped neoclassical structure built around a courtyard and since the fair has grown from the previous year it now occupies two wings of the building. I confess it took me two visits to realize that half of the galleries were located in another wing! The lack of information given at the front desk was in part the culprit, but my fried brain resulting from the frantic pace of my short visit to London did not help!

I liked ambling on my own through the galleries, taking time to discover, explore, and understand new and different perspectives. There was a healthy mix of art coming from West Africa, North and Sub-Sahara Africa; a diversity of style; plenty of painting, photography, and sculpture. Some rooms were better curated than others, and overall there was enough good work to feel satisfied with the visit.

I was quite pleased to see Abdoulaye Konaté’s wall hangings in the foyer of the fair and later on during my visit at the booth of Primo Marella Gallery of Milan.

Konaté, an artist from Mali started as a painter and later turned to using textiles native to Mali to create large wall hanging where he developed a unique aesthetic combining a local sensibility for symbolism and color and craft with a global political message. I had visited his studio a couple of years back and felt his work had a striking grandeur.

Sammy Baloji’s photograph from his series “Mémoire”was particularly appealing. I was familiar with Baloji’s work and this image was one of his best ones. Born in Lubumbashi, in the DRC he has created photomontages where past and present collide. Here colonial figures, both indigenous and European, are layered over the contemporary architecture of a local mining town in the Kantanga province. Past and present coalesce to expose the underlying economic alliances that benefited colonial masters and a small minority of privileged indigenous people. The juxtaposition here was particularly successful which I don’t think is always the case in his work.

I stopped to ask questions about Nicene Kossentin’s photographic work (Boujmai Fatouma) at the Selma Feriani Gallery. Kossentin has set ghost-like portraits of her late mother and grandmothers against the backdrop of a dried salt lake found in her native city of Sfax, Tunisia. A line of calligraphy delineates the horizon. Because the wordage has no beginning and end it points to her historical cultural lineage. Kossentin’s work is about memory, about remembering, and mostly about the fear of not remembering. She points to the role of women in her culture as “passeuses de mémoire”- a beautiful phrase – or couriers of memory. Long a tradition in her culture it is also the role of women in many other cultures in the rest of Africa where grandmothers are the storytellers and keepers of the oral history of their community. The images were particularly haunting and poignant.

From there I wandered towards the Galerie Mikael Andersen where I had the opportunity to see the lovely drawings of the late Ernest Mancoba, who while perhaps considered the most important modern artist from South Africa is barely known internationally and deserves a new critical look. His drawings – often stylized figures – done during the 60’s and 70’s and inspired by African ritual woodcuts oscillate between abstraction and figuration and convey a unique energy. Having emigrated to Europe at the time of WWII Mancoba was part of the CoBrA movement in Europe before he returned to South Africa. Always present in his mind was his wish to bring his deep understanding of African culture to European art.

I was seduced by the work of Armand Boua at Jack Bell gallery. Using tar and acrylic on found cardboard boxes Boua captures the street kids from his hometown Abidjan.In the process of layering paint and removing it he creates scenes imbued with light and poetry despite the pathos of the subject. I absolutely loved the work though I was not sure the price was justified. Fortunately by then I had reached a state of  temporary wisdom and this time knew to walk away…no matter how much I was tempted.

Across the corridor The October Gallery had an eclectic selection that needed time to take in. I was struck by Homeless Hungry Homo, a sculpture lying on a low stand in the middle of the gallery by the Nigerian artist Adejoke Tugbiyele.

I found myself aware of some of my inner prejudices, which were fortunately being challenged. I was at once intrigued and slightly puzzled and even a bit put off at first. The supine figure disturbed me. It felt unapologetically African and so a part of me – the part shaped by my Western training – hesitated to give it its due. Yet it was so bold and provocative: strangely human despite it being a thing made out of yarn, palm stems, metal, African mask, and dollar bills. Would this appeal to a Western audience? I don’t know but I liked the boldness and the artist commitment to her particular aesthetic.

I hope you notice the variety of styles and aesthetics exemplified by all these artists, which makes it all very fascinating.

I moved on then to the ArtLabAfrica Gallery and soon found myself engaged in a long conversation with James Muriuki and Miriam Syowia Kyambi about their recent seven months residency in Kilifi, Kenya at a science research center as part of the Art in Global Health Residency.

I loved looking at the photographic work coming out of this residency, many of the photographs capturing the local architecture of Kenyan small towns. As you know I have a fondness for Kenya so I was just thrilled.

Great was my surprise when I saw hanging on the wall the work of Kenyan artist Peterson Kamwathi. A couple of years ago I had tracked him down on the outskirts of Nairobi. After he had very kindly offered and then made me tea we had spend two magical hours looking and talking about his work. I was so happy to hear that he was experiencing good success and had just had been commissioned to do a public project in Nairobi.

In the center of the booth were two sculptures by conceptual artist Gor Soudan. Using protest wire – a tangled black mass of wire he salvages from car tires burnt during civil unrests in Nairobi – he reworks them into beautiful, wispy, poetic sculptures, which look like drawings in space.

Photography was well represented with works by Francois-Xavier Gbre, Leonce R.Agbodjelou, Edson Chagas and Frank Marshall. I noticed an interesting trend: two photographers that were getting a lot of attention had originally trained and worked as fashion photographers. Lakin Ogunbanwo and Omar Victor Diop both work with a keen interest in form, color, lighting and design and turn to the inclusion of the self as a mean to address their personal and artistic concerns.

An erotic and subversive undertone can be felt in Lakin Ogunbanwo’s beautiful compositions (shown at Whatiftheworld) where he eludes the gaze of the viewer while highlighting the centrality of his presence in a serial layering of his figure.

Omar Victor Diop at Magnin-A in his project Diaspora is the main protagonist as he adopts the dress and pose of African historical figures having lived in Europe, which he combines with more contemporary props pointing to contemporary life.

Another photographer who has a fashion background is Hassan Hajjaj. His work was unfortunately squeezed between two booths but his take on the “Odalisque”, a video piece, was just wonderful: full of wit and incisive criticism. See upcoming post on his work.

Athi-Patra Ruga’s camp tapestry peppered with eclectic multicultural references was an explosive reminder of the hybrid construct of cultural identity. I was mesmerized by his unabashed combination of gaudy motifs, traditional stitching, and profusion of fake flowers that made the tapestry a textural and colorful delight. He was just included in the Phaidon book “Younger Than Jesus” directory of the 500 of the world’s best artists under the age of 33. It was a fitting and uplifting end to my perusing through the fairs.

I enjoyed the more low key tempo of 1:54, the absence of jaded dealers and collectors, and the opportunity to see more work from North Africa. The big fairs are already so big and to my view a bit of a chore, therefore I like the smaller venue.

I got to see some African galleries that I would not normally see mixed with Western galleries which made for a good mix.  For instance Anne de Villepoix, a mid –size gallery in Paris who has a few African artists in her roster liked the low-key atmosphere which reminds her of how fairs where years back.

Is it ideal to set African art apart? Perhaps not as it risks reenforcing the colonial idea of the African being seen as the other. However, one thing I have learned from all my times going to various African countries,  there are no simple solutions. This one seems the right one for now. It is an unique opportunity for many of these artists to be seen by a greater audience. More importantly it gives them a platform where they can explore keeping an authentic voice while contending with a global art world which demands them to fine tune their  skills, incorporate contemporary strategies, and hone their message to make it more effectively convincing .

PS: No one was walking around talking about being afraid of catching Ebola at the fair. That was a different reaction from the hysteria that I was about to witness at the airport when I landed at JFK! All customs officers were wearing masks and plastic gloves. Go figure….

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.