Salon designed by Hassan Hajjaj ash entrance including his photographic work.

Labyrinth by Youssef Limoud, and the upside hanging house by Pascale Marthine Tayou

Photographic installation Ouakam Fractals by Simon Baloji

Safaa Mazirh, Sans titre, Maroc

Safaa Mazirh

,

Joel Andrianomearisoa,

Mimi Cherono Ng’ok

William Kentridge, a wonderful installation/film.

Outside in the park some of the photographs were displayed for all to see.

Aida Mulaneh,

Mario Macilau.

I just came back from two weeks in Paris and London where I checked out the extensive showing of African art. I am just amazed how the showing of Contemporary African art has taken off in Europe and in particular Paris. The efforts of curators, gallerists, collectors, and institutions are bearing fruits.

Paris is changing. It is home to an increasing amount of people from North and Sub- Sahara Africa. As a result there is a concerted effort to share African art and culture with a broader audience. Going beyond the exclusive art fairs and museums African art is made accessible at the Parc de La Villette with an exhibition “ Afrique Capitales” that partially spilled into the park with its large scale photographic works and where the admission was only 5 euros!

Furthermore recognizing at once the increased relevance/impact of African culture in a society that includes a growing proportion of people of African origin and the creative potential of a collaboration/fusion of Western and African fashion, the department store, the Galeries Lafayette, hosted under the title “Africa Now” a series of artistic events .

It asked the Nigerian photographer Lakin Ogubanwo to design the department store window displays. I was quite thrilled to see that he had been selected and that his work was going to be exposed so broadly. Lakin started his photographic career in fashion so he brings to the task at hand his sleek sense of style, and colorful palette. He combines and layers his stylish photographic and video work, with the recent fashion lines by designers who have been inspired by African prints (wax, batik, kasai).

This is not the ravaged and poor Africa but a colorful and exotic Africa. Some would say that it further promotes an essentialist vision of Africa at the detriment of a more nuanced and diverse reality. Obviously it is true – how could people of 54 countries all be the same – however we are in the world of consumerism, branding and fashion. Simple ideas sell better than complex realities. Furthermore, Lakin lives in vibrant and chaotic Lagos and conveys here his experience of the creativity he sees in his city where many African and other cultures coexists.

On the first floor art gallery of the department store Marie- Ann Yemsi curated an art exhibit “ Le Jour qui vient” – a lovely poetic title – of emerging contemporary African artists works. It favored video and photographic works and mixed media installations.

Ruby Onyinyechi Amanze wonderfully playful drawing on paper was the exception to the rule. Gone are traditional materials such as paint. Materials and images are recycled, rearranged, layered.

Turiya Magadlela stretches women’s tights across the canvases creating colorful grids, Igshaan Adams uses string, rope, beads, found fabric like curtain tassels to create a majestic tapestry that makes me think of a wall of foliage.

Clay Apenouvon drapes black plastic along the wall and lets it spill like black oil onto the floor seemingly oozing out into black puddles, which morph into plastic garbage bags. Frances Goodman uses the yellow hood of a BMW as her canvas. Color and material matter. They mean something and yet that meaning shifts as the material is reused in a different context. Ideas, materials, people circulate reflecting migratory patterns, a questioning and breakdown of traditional classifications , a more global world and a continuously shifting landscape.

The romantic and exotic idea of the “African Landscape” considered a colonial legacy, is challenged in two photographic works. Monica De Miranda proposes the jungle landscape but hers is interrupted, one might say ruptured into three disconnected parts. Mohau Modisakeng’s photographs from the Bophirima series places him wearing a horse’s headgear walking through an asphalt landscape. It is stark and foreboding and speaks of the long history of violence in South Africa.  Mohau is showing at the Venice Biennale and I am looking forward to seeing his work there.

Under the Galeries Lafayette’ vaulted glass roof  hung Joel Andrianomearisoa‘s black banners which unfortunately I did not see.

African contemporary art is gaining serious traction in Europe – lots of galleries, exhibitions, and an art fair were scheduled to show work from African artists this fall in London, and another art fair in November in Paris. That is really exciting. However considering the fickleness of the Western contemporary art scene – it is like love affairs, they heat up and eventually cool off – it is of great importance for the long term that the focus be on developing African local contemporary art markets and here I mean artists, art spaces, galleries, collectors and obviously schools. South Africa has a vibrant art scene, West Africa is also very dynamic with two major events this October in Lagos ( Lagos Photo Festival and ArtxLAgos). East Africa has trailed behind markedly. However there are signs that this is changing.

At the Armory fair in New York City in March the focus was Africa and I was pleased to see an Ethiopian gallery, Addis Fine Art included as well as a Kenyan gallery, Circle Art Agency which showed a video by artist Ato Malinda, whose work I had noticed prior to the fair and found appealing.

She has just received the Smithsonian African Awards for 2016!

I started chatting with Danda Jaroljmek, head of Circle and we decided that I should stop by the next time I was in Nairobi and she would tell me about the exciting developments happening in the Nairobi art scene. That was welcomed news!

I remember how around nine years ago during my first visit to Joburg I had run into Simon Njami and he had commented on the lack of creative energy emanating from Nairobi. Not that there was no art being made there, but it stayed traditional.

However I had had an inkling that things were changing. Two years in a row now ARTLab Africa, a Kenyan art space had shown at 1: 54, in London and New York, works from several Kenyan artists who were doing interesting work. I had purchased a couple of works and was keen on meeting the artists. One of them, Beatrice Wanjiku, was painting such raw emotion in her canvases that I wanted to hear her talk about her artistic journey. I was planning my yearly bush walk in Kenya that was to take place during the summer so I scheduled to stay a few more days in Nairobi, something that I generally avoid doing. I would spend those days meeting with several artists, and talking at length with some core players who revealed the history and the current state of the art scene. My research was not all inclusive but it was a good start.

Road works!

Getting around Nairobi is not an easy feat as it is plagued by terrible traffic jams. Timing meetings and showing up on time is a challenge and finding the place is another one. Most of the art places and artists studios are not in downtown Nairobi but more on the edges of the city and don’t have street frontage.

Danda Jaroljimek of Circle Art was out of town for a couple days so my first visit was to the small cultural platform ARTLabAfrica run by Lavinia Calza. I had made arrangements to meet at the organization’s premises two artists: Beatrice Wanjiku and David Thuku. Tucked away in a small office in back of a one story building I found Nadine Hugg, Lavinia’s assistant waiting for me .

Beatrice Wanjiku soon walked in. A woman of medium height, her hair pulled back in a soft bun, her sunny disposition was soon apparent despite the disturbing content and imagery of her work as a painter. Very vivacious, quick to smile, verbally effusive and intense she spoke of her work during the next hour with beautiful honesty, conviction, and passion.

Beatrice’s work is visceral, uncompromising, deeply personal reflecting her challenges – loss of her single parent and the cultural costs of choosing, as a woman, to be an artist in Kenya – but also her courage. Finding her voice has been an arduous process and now that she has found it she is not concerned whether you like her work or not.

She manipulates her paint with an expert hand: it stretches, tears, pulls, hide, reveals, drips. The interview provided important insight into her personal story, her artistic methodology and commitment. To read the interview click to the link.

An hour into the interview David Thuku strolled in with few large sheets of thick paper under his arm and no folder to my amazement! A member of what they call there – the fourth generation of artists – David is a relative newcomer to the art scene. While earning a living painting theatre backdrops and murals he and two other artists founded the BrushTu art collective in the Buru-Buru neighborhood of East Nairobi, which offers residencies and also sells art. More recently he has been focusing much more on his own work and has completed a residency at Kuona Trust where he still keeps a studio. He is developing his own particular style, which has been very well received. .

His work is done on paper of varying colors which he at times paints (treats is his word for this) with color, cuts and tears deliberately according to a carefully thought out message that he wants to convey. Every intervention on the paper is purposeful and he sees it as part of a process of extracting, revealing, digging out what lies underneath what at first one sees. He speaks of his working process in physical terms but it is also a mental process whereby he gets to understand “things” better.

David cut-outs are comments on the social, cultural and political situation in Kenya. Being a naturally reserved person he poses questions more than answers them for now while calling on the viewer to contend with the issues at hand.

Thuku tutors young artists from the Kenya Empowerment Program, The Buru-Buru and Kenyatta Universities as well as teaching art students under the Langalanga Scholars Association project.

Exhausted and hungry after those two hours or more discussing their work, Nadine, Beatrice, David and I grabbed a bite around the corner at a restaurant in the local mall. By the way security is pretty tight and you get checked as well as your car before you can get into the mall.

David and I would go to Kuona Trust in the afternoon. There will be a post on Kuona and the workshop system that has prevailed in Nairobi followed by an interview with Danda Jaroljmek from Circle Art Agency where she talks about galleries in Narobi. In particular she speaks of the art auction she started in 2013. It makes for a good read so be on the look out  for both posts!

Beatrice Wanjiku as a female artist breaks away from Kenyan traditional  expectations, in her art and in her life.

The Quintessence of Loneliness III, 2016

Beatrice Wanjiku was born in the Ngong Hills near Nairobi in 1978. She did her art training at the Nairobi’s Buruburu Institute of Fine Arts from which she graduated in 2000. She now lives in Nairobi, Kenya.

Her canvases and works on paper waver between figuration and abstraction and have a rawness that is provocative. Always starting from her personal experience she delves in the human psyche, revealing its struggles as it contends with loss, social dictates and political instability.   Beatrice’s work is visceral, uncompromising, and reflects her personal challenges. Finding her voice has been an arduous process and now that she has found it she is unconcerned with others’ opinion of her work. Indeed sometimes her imagery is hard to look at. She manipulates her paint with an expert hand. The paint stretches, pulls, hides, conceals, reveals, and drips. During my visit to Nairobi this August I had the pleasure of interviewing her. The interview provided important insight into her personal story, her artistic methodology, and her commitment.

State of Existence , Immortality Series, mix media, includes X-rays.

Disquieting Muses, Straight Jacket Series, 2016

Isabel Wilcox: When did you know you liked making art?

Beatrice Wanjiku: I would doodle on walls; my mother used to be very irritated about it. I always had the need to understand how things work. I studied art at the primary level and in high school I dropped history and took art instead. So when I graduated from my high school I knew from inside I wanted to be an artist.

IW: What did it mean for you to be an artist at that stage?

BW: In art school later I was taught the theory of art and art history. The funny thing was that when I graduated I did not know who I was. I learned to do all these things: One paints and it looks like Renaissance or Impressionism. “But who am I as a painter?” I asked myself. For a longtime I used to do traditional subjects like mother and child. It felt familiar. I borrowed from the context of my environment. The context was social. When my mom fell ill, it was then that my work changed. My work lost color. I could not see the beauty in color. The context of my work had totally shifted. My mom was the only parent I had known. My dad died when I was very young. My mom and I were very close. So when she died I felt like someone had pulled a rug under my feet.

I remember during the wake my mother’s family telling me that I had to put on a brave face. So here I was this cheery person, chatting them up. Wakes are funny because people just sit down, have tea, catch up, and share stories and laugh. It is a time of tragedy but everyone is laughing. We buried her and everybody left and I felt the stillness in the house then. I felt like I was almost buried with her. It was just quiet. She was gone. Before that you are so bombarded by everything you don’t have a moment to actually think. And then you know she is not coming back. You don’t know what to do. It is almost as if you lose sight of who you are. Everything I am, my identity is very much attached to her. So who am I without her? So how do you function like this? I started not to care if my work was positively received. That was in 2006.

Prior to that an artist from Belgium and I had done a workshop with people who were HIV positive. When they shared their stories I was shocked. At first I did not understand this whole idea of empathy. There was a divide somewhere. Eventually I opened myself to them. There was so much hope, and fear! I started doing this series of portraits where the resemblance did not matter. I was trying to express the emotions, the things that we hide because I realize that faces become masks. People are not allowed to express what they feel. I realized from that workshop that we are mirrors of each other. I became more open; I had more empathy.

IW: How did that show in your work?

BW: The only way to grieve is through my work. That is how the portraits I made after my mother’s death felt for me. You present this front and people think you are OK but you are not.   I painted the Immortality series, which explore the notion that we may die physically but we are very much alive in the memory of the ones we have left behind. I believe that when we have stopped remembering that person is completely dead. I finished the series in 2009 but in a way it morphed into the next series.

IW: Is that what you are working on now?

Currently I am working on the Straight Jacket series. It is about my identity as a female in a very patriarchal society. I look at the boundaries that are set by society. Being an artist, female, single, everyone is asking me: “when are you getting married?” Being married and having kids is the pinnacle of success especially in an African setting. I am not married, don’t have kids, and work.

My work is very autobiographical. It is my story. When you stop caring how people look at you and at your work, you are freer. I am even surprised at my own work.

IW: How would you describe your creative process?

BW: I mull over something for a very long time. Most of my inspiration comes from something I have read or watched. The image of the straight jacket becomes a metaphor for what I am thinking or feeling at that time. I take note of what I am thinking. I sketch.

I have books on anatomy. There were in my family’s library. My dad wanted to be a doctor. I utilize them. I am very fascinated with how the body works. The flesh, the blood like in the anatomy books. I see it as color and think about how I can put it into my work. I try to use the exposed inside as a metaphor for what is happening to a person. I tend to feel that I can’t be the only person feeling like this. So I try to put it into a universal context.

I love the human form. It is central to my work. After I prepare the canvas I sketch. After that color takes over and I can paint a layer and leave it, just look at it for the whole day, thinking about how I can develop it. I find accidents I can play around with. But I am very deliberate.

IW: What do these dark areas of color that spill over refer to?

BW: The dark shadows…it is something that has been recurrent in all my paintings. I did the Immortality series when my mom died. Everybody moved on I felt like there was a shadow trailing behind me. I could not catch up with people. I felt stuck and people did not understand that. There are things that you never stop mourning.  “For life” I say.

I never use black. It is almost dark purple.

I am very content with my life but the world is not content with who I am because I don’t follow a typical idea of who I should be.

IW: The figure screaming. Is it about rebelling against conventions and expectations? Could it also be that you are struggling with that shadow?

BW: When I speak of shadows it points to my presence in the work. My figures are androgynous, neither male nor female. The Straight Jacket series is about breaking with conformity.

IW: Tell me about your way of painting?

BW:I love the idea of layering, there is much building of color. I want the final color to be so thin that you can see underneath it. In the Straight Jacket series I paint the form first and I paint the reds that denote the internal organs, the chest cavity exposed, like it is almost drooling blood. It is so gory at times. I put the straight jacket on. I put it in such a thin way, but I want it to cover yet one needs to see through it.  Other works are very solid.

IW: What makes you want to do choose transparency over opacity?

BW: I don’t want to be too analytical. Sometimes it feels like an out of body experience. People come to my studio and they are shocked. They ask me if I am ok. It must be something in my unconscious that needs to come out. I do not care if it shocks you. It is there. I have a sense of peace when I look at my paintings. I am mentally exhausted and need to sleep then.

My work takes a long time to develop. I am always thinking about it, taking and adding. I don’t work on a single canvas. I work on multiple canvases. They can look messy. But they will be done. I like the idea of peeling away the skin.

IW: It seems to me that you are very deliberate with the composition.

BW: I am very particular about form. I don’t like constraining my form to the canvas. When you think about ourselves as human beings, we see ourselves as finite. We die but I feel our spirit lives on. You live and grieve beyond the canvas. When I constrain my figures within the canvas I feel like my figures are almost not breathing. I want the viewer to feel this person is living beyond the canvas.

In a new piece I just did there is no straight jacket. I am thinking about our roots, not just the sense of what family we are born into, or where we come from, but how we are brought up with ideals. I find that we are self-consuming. We stand in our own way. It is more about how we think and stand in our own way. At times my work is almost literal. You can see that one figure is devoured by the other.

People ask me why do I decapitate my characters. We are never present in our lives. We are almost mechanical.

I say to people: If you want pretty pictures, I don’t know how to do that anymore. Beauty is so temporary.

There is loneliness when you break the rules of the community.

By wanting ones own path, people shun you people, don’t include you.

It has its costs.

People did not buy my work when I was doing “Renaissance” painting. It had no center. When I did the Immortality series it was shown in a restaurant in Westlands. People bought my work. I was grieving; I found it disturbing. I felt utterly exposed. My work transformed because I spoke of the human condition. I am painting what is very real to me.

IW: Who was your most important influence?

BW: People have referenced Goya, Soutine. I had no idea who Soutine was.

I was so inspired by Richard Kimathi and Justus Kyalo.

IW: While your work is autobiographical, can you tell me what else feeds into it?

BW: My ideas also come from what I see, the special situations like the political one, and what affects me in my environment.

During the post election I did a painting called Point of Entry that spoke about the first time I felt afraid. As human beings we are capable of such extremes. I remember not leaving the house. It felt like house arrest. I lived in apartment block where different tribes lived. The tribes were the issue of the violence. You say to yourself: “How can human beings do stuff like that?” Unconsciously it stays with you and you are haunted by it.

The news was the only entertainment. At some point I had to get out. I got out and drove. There was not a single car or person on the road. It felt like an apocalypse had happened. Yet it was a relief to get out.

Beatrice Wanjiku’s works have been exhibited nationally and internationally. Group exhibitions from 2015  Paper II at Circle Art Gallery in Nairobi; and Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner at Richard Taittinger in New York, USA.

Total commitment to the art of mark-making.

Toyin Ojih Odutola just had her fourth solo show at Jack Shainman Gallery. Odutola’s medium of choice is drawing. She is quite aware of the inherent challenge to restricting her practice to drawing, which has always been considered in Western art as secondary to painting. Yet she embraces the medium with the same ambition, scale and vision that one would associate with painting and feels quite gratified that despite this prejudice her work is getting full recognition.

In this particular body of work she has eschewed color and limited her palette mostly to black and white. I remembered the vibrant colors of her previous show at Shainman and was at first taken aback. Yet quickly I became fascinated with her obsessive mark making and the patterns it creates. These patterns activate the surface of the skin, which loses its particularities and shifts from being something identifiable to something unstable. At times it is hard to say where one figure starts and the other ends. Odutola’s subject is portraiture and yet she says little about the identity of the people she chooses to portray. Identity is subsumed under the structured patterning. We don’t know if the skin is white or black. In this body of work she moves deliberately away from politics of identity – ie her Nigerian identity – and the prescribed idea of portraiture to focus on perception and art making.

A transformative force in the Niger Delta: Through the art of performance Zina Saro-Wiwa highlights the importance of the people’s emotional and spiritual relationship to the environment.

Loaded and painful history has a funny way of leading us on roads far away from our beginnings to avoid reckoning with our past and delay our coming fully into our own. Some of us never come back home. Others have the courage to return to their place of origin, face their grief, come to terms with their past and make a new beginning.

Zina Saro-Wiwa is one of those.

A couple of years ago she returned to Port Harcourt in the Niger Delta and challenged the status quo while honoring her father’s activist legacy and her cultural heritage. Zina’s father Ken Saro-Wiwa was an activist who fought against the environmental degradation due to oil exploration in the Niger Delta and was eventually murdered. As a result the Saro -Wiwa name became associated with environmentalism and activism. In Zina’s new body of work she is proposing an alternative conversation around the idea of regeneration.

Zina engages in a process of self-determination while also acting as a transformative force. Within the context of local and cultural dynamics and of the legacy of years of corruption and environmental degradation she first makes room for herself and then puts forth her essentially positive vision for the Niger Delta. Setting aside the old narrative of the Niger Delta as a doomed place she constructs alternative narratives that highlight the Delta as “a verdant place, abundant food producer, and provider of crude oil and natural gas.”

First she opens a gallery, Boy’s Quarters, in Port Harcourt in the Niger Delta where she exhibits contemporary African art. At the same time she embarks on a new body of work that is on show in Houston at the Blaffer Museum. The exhibition is called Did You Know We Taught Them How to Dance and was conceived by Amy L. Powell, curator of modern and contemporary art at the Krannert Art Museum, University of Illinois and co-organized with the Blaffer Art Museum.

In this body of work she is keenly aware of the physical degradation but her emphasis here is on the spiritual and the emotional, two spheres that have been deeply impacted by the oil exploration.

Indeed the focus of the local people has shifted to oil and its monetary rewards and away from an engagement with land, tradition and culture. In the exhibition she puts forth a new alternative where the emphasis is on the richness of the produce that comes from the land, on local culinary culture, religious rituals, and the century old tradition of the masquerade.

She believes that what you put your attention on is what grows. This is a process of repair.

She gets emotional. It all matters a lot. She has hope.

Zina’s engagement with her subject – the spiritual, and the social ecosystems of the Niger Delta – is deeply personal, and at times emotional. She expects the same engagement from the viewer and I found myself propelled into a world of intense emotions, hers but also mine.

The next morning after the banquet I returned to the Blaffer museum to see Zina’s exhibition located on the second floor. I climbed the stairs, and once on the landing, a series of earphones hanging from the ceiling caught my attention. I proceeded through the sound piece listening to each recording where I heard Zina’s voice repeating, “I am sorry.” Her tone shifted in each recording.   At first she sounded slightly defensive, then more sincere. The tone changed yet again. She sounded like she was making an abject apology that morphed finally into what seemed to me an act of self-flagellation. It reminded me of all the ways one says, “I am sorry” to a person who is reluctant to accept the apology and desperation rises in the voice of the apologizer. I was transported back to times in my life when my apologies sounded so similar when no forgiveness was forthcoming.

The title of the piece. Hubris room: Killer of Ancestors says it all.

She makes us witness to her internal conflict as she is torn between her attachment to tradition and history and her need to break from it to redefine herself.

I love how Zina speaks of her creative urges as if some unexplainable spiritual force is driving her.

In the next three works, she turns to cultural traditions that are deeply rooted in the Niger Delta. Zina appropriates their form to assert her reality and vision for Ogoniland while highlighting their potential for effecting change.

In her five channel digital video Karikpo Pipeline (2015) she celebrates a playful masquerade tradition  where male dancers wearing antelope masks dance around decommissioned pipelines or areas where pipelines once existed.

You see them dancing on roads that were once considered possessed because of the presence of the pipelines.

Zina filmed this video with a drone and was therefore able to capture the landscape in all its beauty and breadth. At a more conceptual level the drone makes reference to the surveillance effected by the oil companies but perhaps more importantly for Zina it stands  for invisible spiritual forces.

Long drawn out shots of sand on the ground create moments of abstraction that take on deeper meaning when Zina told me that sand was added to absorb the oils spills and leaks.

The dance is athletic and playful and the mood is at time contemplative.The dancers become playful spirits that are reclaiming Ogoni land as theirs. No longer restricted to a narrow conversation around oil, through the art of performance Zina presents Ogoni land as a site for culture, history and life. She is proposing a different solution than the AID or NGO paradigm. This is regeneration from within.

While I sat watching this video I heard the preaching and singing coming from her other video Prayer Warriors. I didn’t understand the words they were saying but I felt the intensity of the emotion. It was raw and passionate. As a result, while the masqueraders’ dance and the beauty of the landscape unfolding in front of me seduced me, I could not forget the backdrop of the human drama. Zina explained to me that female pastors come to your home to pray with you. It is their version of Christianity infused with local tradition.

Moving away from the videos I walked through the dark space towards The Invisible Man, a sculpture/mask representing Zina’s decision to immerse herself in the spiritual life of the Niger Delta. Inspired by new styles of masquerades she discovered in Ogoniland – particularly a masquerade called Ogele – Zina commissioned her own Janus-faced mask (a two faced mask) intended for masquerade performance.  In part the motivation was to help her confront ” the invisible man”, a spirit of her tragic familial past that seems to follow her around,  she says. It is  only to be worn by a woman which is a very novel idea in Ogoniland and anywhere else in West Africa. Masks and masquerades have been traditionally the sole domain of men.

The set up was dramatic and situated the sculpture within a conversation where the spiritual, the emotional and culture were at the core. Emerging out of the darkness of the exhibition space the massive two-faced mask, one side painted white and the other pink, bears the weight of the figures of Zina’s father and young brother both deceased. More than a simple sculpture, this awesome mask is imbued with personal emotion and symbolism. It is also a gesture of catharsis and cultural connection. The weight of it born by the bearer during the performance/ masquerade is meant to mirror the weight of the absence of departed loved ones.

Zina has spend years in the UK and the US but Ogoni mythology stays close to her heart. In another body of work Kuru’s Children she turns to folklore and inserts an African  feminist agenda.

Table Manners was another very effective installation that included 5 TV screens arranged on a table covered with periwinkle shells. Each video shows a person eating a meal from beginning to the end while looking directly at a stationary camera. The tableaus were carefully constructed half way between documentary and fiction and point to regional identities and personal style. The people come from all over the Niger Delta, which includes 5 kingdoms and 111 villages.

I found myself being stared at unblinkingly, at times defiantly by these men and women eating their food with their fingers and relishing their experience. It was a show of resistance. I could imagine them saying to me: “Yup, this is the way I eat and I am proud of it. I am not apologizing and I am rejecting all your western definition of proper manners.” I was laughing because I was remembering my reticence to embrace their custom the previous night at the banquet. Furthermore the sexual aspect of the performance was not lost on me.

Of equal importance was the focus on produce locally grown, on the idea of a bountiful land, of sensual pleasure and joy of cooking and living. The land is no longer seen as depleted or ravaged but as a source of life.

Zina is promoting a nuanced view of the Niger Delta. Most of the photographs I have seen of the Niger Delta have been by George Osodi and while they are stunning shots they focus on the ravaged land, struggling farmers and armed militias.

In her last video Niger Delta: A Documentary, she gives us a bucolic view of the river where a man transporting sand upriver in his boat floats by on peaceful waters. The river is now a place of leisure. A red chair sits on the beach facing the viewer. It is a sign of rebirth and fertility.

Zina is making her own mark,  not quite following in her father’s footsteps, but surely with the same spirit of courage, commitment, and love. Something about her journey catches my imagination and emotions. Her struggles with her grief, her determination to confront her past, embrace her cultural roots, and her commitment to create space for her own values while engaging in a process of repair and renewal are sentiments I can relate to.

She turns to western notions of performance art as evident in her Table Manners installation as well as African performative practices such as masquerades to highlight art’s power to shift perceptions.

Furthermore by going back to the Niger Delta and focusing in her videos on the land instead of its cities  Zina identifies it as playing an important role in the determination of a spiritual, emotional and social identity.  In other words she proposes the rural as an alternative to the urban as a fertile and relevant site for the foundation of an African identity.

This summer I had the good fortune to be asked to write an essay on the photographic work of Nigerian photographer George Osodi .As a result I found myself esconced in the Metropolitan Museum Watson Library doing research and struggling over each word of each sentence! This was not to be a blog post but something more substantial and so the pressure was on!

Researching portraiture I found out that an exhibition on West African photographic portraiture was scheduled at the Met in early fall. So here I was yesterday off to the Met in search of this exhibition and another exhibition of South African Jo Ractliffe’s photographs. With the extraordinary exhibition on the Kong It seemed that it was Africa month at the Metropolitan Museum. While there were plenty of panels directing one to the wonderful Kongo: Power and Majesty exhibit, unfortunately there was almost no indication for the two photographic shows which had been tucked away on the mezzanine level off to the side of the modern and contemporary galleries. Not located next to each other, one could see one exhibit without even knowing that there was another one nearby. That was unfortunate.

The exhibition In and Out of the Studio: Photographic Portraits from West Africa though too modest in size considering that photographic portraiture was an established genre during the one hundred year period examined here included some true gems. The eighty photographs were drawn in most part from the Metropolitan Museum’s Visual Resource Archives with additions from the Department of Photographs.

The photographic material was mostly of small scale and included some wonderful postcards from the late Nineteenth century. At the time patrons would have themselves photographed professionally according to their wishes. Often they favored a formal portrait and these postcards would be exchanged as gifts and more often than not circulated beyond their circle of friends to end up in the collections of colonial collectors.

Amateur photography was practiced and there are some exquisite candid shots taking during leisure time from the early 20^th century of people from Saint –Louis, Senegal, evolving in a familial setting.

There are early photos, the size of a postcard, from Malick Sidibe, which are framed in decoratively painted cardboard. Works by Oumar Ka, Seydou Keita, J.D.Okhai Ojeikere and Samuel Fosso complete this small selection, which includes mostly early works of these artists who went on to shape a unique West African style of portrait photography.

The Aftermath of Conflict: Jo Ractliffe’s Photographs of Angola and South Africa was a very sobering exhibition. Mostly through photographic landscapes Ractliffe focuses on the aftermath of the Border War between Angola and South Africa (1966-89) and the Angolan Civil War (1975-2002) ,which ended up by being a proxy war between the US and the Soviet Union. By addressing themes of displacement, conflict, history, memory and erasure she sheds a stark light on the lasting effects of these conflicts on the local population and war veterans. . Her idea of landscape goes against the ubiquitous idea of the romantic African landscape rich in color, tone and texture. In other words her landscapes are not at all like the shots that I like to take as I walk the bush in Kenya where I favor deep vistas, and dramatic perspectives! Only using black and white film, in a very deliberate fashion she avoids dramatic perspectives, anything sensational and even shies away at times from being explicit as to what is the main point of interest in the landscape. She favors bleached out empty landscapes, with little tonal contrast. In no way does she attempt to seduce the viewer or allow any flight of fancy to creep up in our minds except for a pervasive sense of silence and emptiness.

A beach scene with the wreck of a Chinese ship in the background, shanty huts perched on the side of a hill littered with garbage, a close up of a thorn tree covered with drying laundry, a barren desert with objects perched on a stone outcrop give scant information as to the significance of the scenes.

The pole protruding from this outcrop carries a banner that marks the place as a memorial, of what? One is not sure. However this location is close to a Cuban base at Namibe I on Angola’s southwestern coast where an extensive network of trenches , bunkers, and antiaircraft defense are located.

A grass field that seems empty except for a sign saying “Terreno Ocupado” establishes the historical context of Angola with its long history of occupation and turmoil.

Conflicts that seemed abstract when she was growing up become subtly concrete as she reminds us of the many lives impacted by these wars. By making us feel their absence they become alive.

‘There are some very poignant things in the landscape, like these markers, that seem to say, “I have been here, people have been here.” ’ says Jo Ractliffe. Leaving the exhibition I found myself walking with a heavier heart.

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….

We landed in Joburg at the crack of dawn after a 15 hours flight, which while long was stress free! Listening to some of the other people we met up with at Joburg who had taken at least 24 hours to get there our journey looked like a piece of cake! This was the first time I was taking my boyfriend to Joburg so I was making sure to limit the hurdles. We met up with Diane and Chuck Frankel who were there with members of the Getty photography council. Diane was introducing them to the Joburg art scene. It is good to know that the Getty is interested in exploring the work of photographers from the African continent!

The next few days were filled with art visits much of them organized by Diane.

While Joburg can seem miles away from everything some of the main galleries there are showing artists that have a worldwide presence.

We stopped at the Goodman gallery on Jan Smutts avenue to see Liza Lou’s beautiful new exhibition called Canvas. Liza Lou is a California American artist who became known for her beaded life –size replica of a suburban kitchen.  She subsequently moved to Durban, South Africa where she is producing a body of work, which is more minimalist. The surface of the “painting” is the subject of this exhibition.  Liza’s works are made solely out of beads. Local Zulu women weave bands of identical off-white beads that Liza provides for them. She then sows the bands together in a unique pattern that integrates the ruptures, pockmarks, and streaks that stain the surface of the bands and are the marks of the weavers’ lives. The resulting “canvases” inspire a quiet and meditative response much like Rothko’s dark canvases in the Rothko chapel. To fully take the effect in I had to sit down and let my eyes slowly adjust so that I could became aware of all the nuances of color in these monochromatic works. Indeed her beaded canvases call for slowing down, taking in the moment, letting things unfold gradually, and challenges one to sit with oneself. There is no big bang or wow. The beauty lies in the holding of the image and gradually feeling whole.

Her more recent work shows her loosening up her grip and letting in a tiny bit of mayhem in her structured design. I loved that piece too.

That evening David Brodie gave us a tour of Serge Alain Nitegeka show at Michael Stevenson gallery. At the entrance of the gallery I ran into Nandipha Mntambo looking FABULOUS. Wearing her hair long and braided she had totally changed style and was presenting a more feminine version of herself. Wearing muted make up, sheathed in a slim-fitting dress and perched on high heels she exuded happiness and confidence. She was just as thrilled to see Diane and I. We had not seen her since our time together last fall in San Francisco.

We then all made our way through the first room of the gallery, which had been reduced to a narrow pathway. Nitegeka had carved out the space with big black sheets of cardboard restricting our space and movements, in other words constricting our freedom. I felt constricted and aware of trying to keep my balance as I walked through the narrow path. Nitegeka considers himself a sculptor of objects and of space and is well known for his installations. However this particular exhibition Into the Black included mostly of painted wooden panels.  It was clear from the geometric forms painted on crates that space was a major concern.

The most powerful piece to me here was the triptych in the second room. Broad black diagonals defined the surface plane while also obstructing our view of the fictive space in the “painting”.  The black bands become obstacles in the path of the indeterminate figures trying to make their way through a fictive space behind the bands. I felt a sense of constrictive power as well as a feeling of struggle. At once abstract and figurative the triptych conveys in formal terms the anguish and struggle of the migrant.

A tall, handsome and elegantly dressed young man, Serge spoke to us about his work. While his concerns here are the exploration of formal and philosophical blackness he speaks also of his experience of escaping the terrible situation in Burundi and moving to South Africa and of the challenges he encountered along the way. I did not like everything I saw but the caliber of the work and his ability to convey through formal means his experience without being literal is impressive and very effective. He also shows at Marianne Boesky in the USA.

Later that evening during a casual dinner at a local haunt I had a wonderful talk with a very smart and talented young artist who works mostly with photography: Mame-Diarra Niang. I checked out her work, which is being shown this month at the Stevenson gallery in Cape Town and I liked it. Creating mostly urban landscapes Mame is expressing her dismay at how much certain places she has known in Africa while she was growing up are losing their specificity and flavor and becoming sterile.  Her views become abstract spaces and instead of transporting us into another world we are lead to look back into oneself.

On the photography front, my main focus, we met Jodi Bieber who came to talk to us at the Goodman Gallery about her work and in particular her latest series: Real Beauty and Quiet and Soweto. Real Beauty and Quiet are series of portraits of anonymous people who agreed to pose in their homes. In Real Beauty the women pose in their underwear and chose the setting. Here Jodi is challenging the media’s idea of what is real beauty by capturing on camera the pride of these multi shaped women from all age groups.

In Quiet she aims to give us an alternative view of masculinity: the men she photographs are posing in moments of vulnerability.

In Soweto she captures on her camera how life really is in the township of Soweto; not the image of a poor community riddled with violence but of a town where people from all walks of life, rich and poor, live, work and play well beyond the township’s history of struggle with apartheid. I could remember my first time in Soweto arriving with my own preconceived notion and being surprised to see the variety of housing ranging from rudimentary housing to spacious mansions with gardens.

Diane arranged for us to make a quick stop at the fashion designer Marianne Fassler’s home and shop. Marianne is a hoot and her very personal collection of South African art is an expression of her temperament: eclectic, colorful, fun, adventurous. She collects with her husband but he acknowledges that he mostly differs to her taste, as she is the creative one!

No minimalism here; instead there is a focus on crafts, imagination, color, and shapes. We left with big smiles on our faces. Her fun loving, inclusive and generous nature was such a booster!

This was a lead up to the Joburg fair, which was a bustling affair, at least the night of the opening. It was good to see a lot of youngish South African looking to buy art and being quite involved with the dealers. Portia Zvavahera was the star of the fair having won the 2014 FNB Art Prize. A young painter from Zimbabwe Portia lives in Harare and is a mother and a wife when she is not painting. Her expressionist canvases which combine textile-like printed patterns with an almost child like way of painting, are inspired by her dreams and speak of her experience with marriage, childbirth and parental love.

Her figures brightly clad are set against richly colored backgrounds. They consistently adopt postures that convey deep emotion tempered in a way by the child like way of painting, which allows us some detachment to what is being depicted and witnessed. Portia clearly loves color and I very much like the way she incorporates those decorative patterns with the otherwise loose wash.

William Kentridge was signing his latest book – 2^nd Hand Reading – at the Goodman gallery.  Each typed page has one of his many drawings printed on it. I bought a copy since I am into buying artist books these days! Much cheaper than buying an original of each!

While waiting for my book I lingered in front of Kuzanai Chiurai’s photograph called Moyo. An absolutely stunning picture it brings up in me a mix of emotion. I felt mesmerized by the deep sorrow and accusation inherent in the young woman’s gaze and deeply moved, yet the bleeding corpse made me at the same time slightly recoil. A beautiful young woman holds the bleeding body of a young man. The formal composition references the classical composition of the Pieta but here the scene is set in a lush jungle and lit by an artificial light that suggest divine lighting. This image comes from his film Moyo and makes reference to the public acts of violence and in particular the Marikana strike: the wildcat strike in the South African Leonmin mine which resulted in many workers death. The title means Air and the image captures the moment in death when the air or spirit leaves the body. He incites the viewers to mourn.

Chiurai, born and raised in Zimbabwe experienced first hand the violence of the Mugabe regime. Now living and working in South Africa his mixed media work tackles the political and social issues that concern his world.

I love this other image, which is part of a body of work called The State of the Nation. In highly theatrical and provocative images he critiques the corrupt ways African revolutionary leaders have dealt with their newfound powers. Intent in sparking a conversation with the African youth in their context he creates images that are dark and brash in their imagery and humor.

Fighting my way through the crowd – it certainly was not like that two years ago – I stopped at Brundyn + Gonsales to look at Mohau Modisakeng’s new photographs that had been part of a large installation for his debut solo exhibition “Ditaola” at Brundyn + . As with his earlier work, Mohau’s images refer to some mysterious ritual whereby he addresses his concerns with South Africa’s tortuous and violent history and current times while delving into personal memories. In this particular instance it is the memory of his mother recounting her dreams. Mohau has a penchant for the symbolic and the theatrical and in these photographs his body becomes the means by which he constructs narratives that address his personal and political concerns.

Set against a green background wearing a pleated animal skin kilt, he stands like an archetypal warrior holding a gun, a symbol of violence and a dove, symbol of peace. The dove departs spraying white dust and returns in other images. Is this a meditation on the precariousness of peace? I feel I am witnessing a mysterious ritual to which I have only small inklings.

Totally different in tenor and style, I liked also at Brundyn +, Jody Paulsen’s bright and colorful wall hangings and photographs. Paulsen is fascinated with fashion and commodity culture ie: branding, clichés in advertising. He is able to mix quite effectively African and European influences in his eclectic vision. I particularly liked his photographs of figures against patterned fabrics. While they were not portraits they certainly referenced the traditional African Studio portrait now turned into a pop version of itself and hollowed out of its original intent.

I was in the mood for fun obviously that day since my eye and mind got mesmerized with Cristina de Middel installation “The Afronauts”. A body of work that includes photographs, drawings, and sculptures, The Afronauts mixes facts and fiction to tell the story of Zambia’s 1964 space project. Cristina is a half -Spanish, half-Belgian photojournalist turned artist who got inspired by the optimism of this story. It is a refreshing antidote to the troubled image one has of the continent. Following Zambia’s independence in 1964, Edward Makuka Nkoloso, the founder and sole member of Zambia’s National Academy of Science, Space Research initiated a mission to send the first African astronauts to Mars. It came to nothing but I love that Nkoloso believed that he could and even tried! I love this capacity to dream and hope!

I had seen part of the work in Arles the previous year and was thrilled to see it again. This time I talked to the artist, and bought her book.

Walking to the bar to get my glass of rose wine I stopped in shock ( at first) when I saw two sets of couples, naked – two men and two women – each couple holding a mirror between them and moving around the mirror as if in some kind of contest. This dance Ritual Resist was choreographed by artist Kendell Geers.  ” A man and a woman engaged in the martial art of vanity. Neither can see the other and both struggle against their own reflection in a square mirror.” K-G. Why shock? Mainly because I was not expecting this. Many of us obviously were captivated abut some reason no pictures were taken or at least posted anywhere!

I was charmed by Namsa Leuba’s fashion photographs exhibited by LagosPhoto ( part of the festival).  Bright, cheeky, witty and technically brilliant her images focus on African identity perceived by Western eyes. She recontextualises African artifacts to fit a western perspective and in doing so challenges both cultures preconceived ideas of the other.

Another artist to follow is Patrick Willocq whose work was shown at the Arles Photo Festival ( Les Rencontres d’Arles). A few booths were showing his work.

Photography is an important medium in South Africa and particularly in Joburg. The famous photographer David Goldblatt started the Market Photo Workshop in 1989 and artists like Jodi Bieber made their start at the workshop. We went to visit it and met some of the young artists there. See next post.

After four days going around Joburg where one does little walking since it is so spread out I was looking forward to going on many bush walks in Zambia, our next destination. I also needed to hear the sounds of the bush. However I was not relishing a 4 am wake up call to catch a 6:30am flight to Lusaka. The rest of the group stayed in Joburg a few more days before going down to Cape Town for more art viewing.

On our way to Kumasi, we pulled up in front of this nondescript house/warehouse on the side of the road. We had decided to make a stop and see Paa Joe‘s work place and perhaps meet him . I had seen one of his sculpted coffins – an oversized Nikkon camera-  at an exhibition in New York, and another at the Newark Museum.   These coffins are usually selected before the death of the person and are meant to reflect some aspect , ambition or occupation of the individual. The coffins are included in burial rituals and do get totally buried under ground.

We loved this tree trunk with its sharp “fangs” referring to the hold the departed still held on the living.

This car was just at its early stages. One man living in England wanted a coffin made in the image of a vintage sports car!

See more images.