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.

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.