UNMASKED: EXHIBITION IN CHELSEA CELEBRATING AXIS GALLERY 20 YEAR OF SHOWING AFRICAN ART

Seminal Cape Town artist, Sue Williamson’s photographic installation, Joyce Seipei – as a mother- Winnie Madikiza Mandela, 1988 at Axis Gallery which addresses the South Africa Truth And Reconciliation hearings is so timely. While it relates to the court appearance of Winnie Mandela and reveals the truth behind the atrocities during Apartheid it points to how facts and statements can be manipulated: Viewers can shuttle fragments of statements within the work, reordering truth and shifting appearance and interpretation. Sound familiar?

Her work is part of a larger exhibition Unmasked curated by Gary Van Wyck and Lisa Brittan for the Axis gallery in New York in honor of the 20^th anniversary of their gallery that includes the work of Theo Eshetu, Jebila Okongwu, Graeme Williams, Sue Williamson and Herve Youmbi.

True to their original stated mission of highlighting the tensions between ‘traditional’ and ‘contemporary’ African art in Western minds they have put together a group of works, largely conceptual, that challenges the West misconception of non western art, its idea of authenticity in African art, and reveals underlying social and economic power dynamics between Third and First World. As if this was not quite ambitious enough they top it all by debunking the idea of the American Dream. Graeme Williams’s triptych, which incorporates photographs of urban and suburban environments with collaged ‘posters’ that reference an idealization of America that excludes its black population, reveal the bleak physical reality of the American dream.

Probing the underbelly beneath surfaces appearances the exhibition includes three stills from Theo Eshetu’s Atlas Fractured, a multimedia installation shown at Documenta 4, that layers images from diverse cultures and periods. Portraits of living people were projected over ethnographic masks. The layered faces are set against a black background in the photographs and gain in intensity. While quite beautiful they are disturbing. Theo Eshetu remarks: “The now is grotesque, uncertain, and burdened by the ghosts of the past. Yet there is also beauty in the present, a vitality for new justices, a search for new harmonies, and, contrary to facile political tendencies, acceptance and desire for hybrid states hitherto unknown.”

Expanding on this idea of the hybrid, the masks included in Herve Youmbi’s multi-media installations entitled Visages des Masques/Faces of Masks combine diverse cultural sources. They are a hoot: One of them includes the Halloween Ghostface mask from Wes Craven’movie Scream. They debunk the Western popular notion of clear stylistic distinction in the African masking tradition or tribal styles.

I was particularly intrigued by this body of work. Youmbi initially in 2013 commissioned Bamileke craftspeople from Cameroon to create a Ku’ngang mask incorporating the face of a Dogon mask from Mali. The mask was later activated during a ritual ceremony and thereby accepted by the Bamileke leaders. Youmbi filmed the ceremony and the video was included in the original installation. I had already encountered the notion of hybridity in the Yoruba masking tradition when I had done s research on the subject years ago during my post graduate studies. Indeed Yoruba masking has shown itself to be open to innovation and able to integrate elements from Islam, Christianity and the Western world, thereby keeping it relevant to the new generations. The Gelede mask includes modern day motifs such as motorcycles, planes, and other mass-produced items such a sneakers, Halloween latex masks. Youmbi expands on this phenomenon more recently with these masks that incorporate, or should I say, appropriate western elements.

Arriving late at night after a late flight from Paris I settled with my traveling companions from the Museum for African Art in the Salam hotel, which lay on the West Bank of the Niger River in Mali’s capital, Bamako. Jerry Vogel, our knowledgeable American guide and Senior Adviser for the Museum for African Art, soon gave us some local tidbits of information that made me realize how complex Mali’s perspective must be on the recent events that had taken place in Libya.  Qaddafi has been very generous with the Malians and provided significant economic support, investing heavily in infrastructure and improving their living conditions over all. In particular, money given by Qaddafi has funded in great part the neighboring stately buildings. I found myself wondering how his death would impact Bamako’s economic situations. In a strange twist, which illustrates the many paradoxes typical to that part of the world, the hotel we were staying in was overrun by American military personnel accompanying the delivery of military equipment to the Malian forces posted up North.  There was some serious politicking going on, or so it seemed to me. Why were the Americans there was my first question.

Bamako was shrouded in haze; the air was laden with sand and dust, which blew down from the Sahara. I found myself very quickly itching to get out of the city and discover rural Mali, in particular the Dogon country, which was to be one of the highlights of the trip.

 I didn’t have long to wait because the next day we flew North into Mopti, which is located just South of Timbuktu and the Sahara desert.  After driving through a somewhat barren landscape for a couple of hours in the blistering heat we arrived in Dogon country to the town of Sanga which is situated at the edge of the Bandiagara Escarpment, a sandstone cliff up to 1600 feet high, and 100 miles long.  Because it sits near a dam the town benefits from a fair amount of water. This allows for active agriculture. I stared in amazement at women and children who undeterred by the rocky terrain cultivated green onions on tiny patches of land scattered between the rocks.

 Despite this agricultural activity times are hard for the local population. Desperate for business now that tourism has almost vanished as a result of the kidnapping of French journalists a couple of years ago, young adult girls and boys pursued us insistently trying to sell us their goods or to hold our hands to help us walk through the markets and over the unpaved village paths hoping for some desperately needed cash. It quickly became very uncomfortable. There was no way I could or wanted to buy all the goods and as I am fiercely independent, I for sure did not need help walking! At once I was reminded that the economic dynamics particular to colonialism have not vanished with post-colonialism including the paternalism, huge economic disparity, and racial and gender prejudices. Just being there and touring the village felt problematic and yet we were welcome. Knowing French, which I do, went a long way towards negotiating these awkward and even tense encounters. It helped me engage with the people I met on a more personable level by breaking down the anonymity and shift away from perspectives based on stereotype.

 On our way to our main destination, the Dogon and Telem villages, we stopped at a divination site, a large rectangle of dirt framed by small rocks. A pattern of symbols had been carefully drawn in the dirt. The diviner explained that each symbol stood for some archetypal concept (travel, desire, family). Villagers consulted with him when they were confronting their life problems and it was by closely examining the footsteps of a jackal wandering through this symbolic code that he was able to give individual seekers direction going forward. As I found out, there is nothing simple about this coding system!  Indeed the Bambara divination is based on fractals, the mathematical properties of which are way over my head! So I’m moving on.

As we approached the Bandiagara Escarpment, nothing in the flat landscape prepared us for the magical sight we were to meet at the edge. Before us, as we stood there, we saw ancient villages nestled at the foot of the escarpment and beyond, the vast Seno plain. This area is steeped in history: According to oral history, the Telem settled in that area during the 12^th Century A.D. They were cave dwelling people and buried their dead in the cliffs. One can see holes in the cliffs where graves have more recently been dug out. The Dogon came later during the 14^th / 15^th century from Mande near Bamako to escape Islamization. They built their villages in defensible positions along the wall of the escarpment.  Hearing about the waves of settlements reminded me that the history of peoples in Africa is a history of displacement as it is still today.

Throughout the late 19^th and 20^th century, these burial sites in the cliffs became seen as a treasure trove because they were an invaluable source for ancient Dogon pottery. The Dogon people also interred their dead in big ceramic urns, which were then buried in the earth. We visited an ancient grave site later in the trip. You could see the top of the urns, which were barely visible in the grass. Excavations are still going on today.

We descended into the village of Songho from the top of the escarpment by going down a steep set of steps. As we meandered through the village we caught a glimpse of daily life. Mud granaries with their steep roofs were some of the more typical architectural structures. Wooden carved ladders that looked like sculptures to my eye leaned against the walls of the granaries allowing access to the stores of millet or sorghum. 

The mud mosques and minarets – Islam did eventually catch up – and the togunas where the council of elders meets to make decisions concerning the community were also architecturally interesting. Togunas have very low thick roofs to prevent any one from standing upright in case of disagreement. I could not help thinking that some of the parliamentary sessions in Europe and the US could use such a thing! Wise men, these African elders! Often, the togunas are held up with carved pillars, which have been sought after as art objects by western collectors. Doors and shutters are traditionally carved and some of the more ancient ones also figure in Western collections of African art. Ugh! It is sad to think that many of these historical pieces are now outside of Mali. Yet, I thought those doors and shutters attractive and the fact that they were recently made did not bother me. Old or not, they reflected the Dogon people’s aesthetic sense.

Our next destination was the male circumcision cave. Inside were phenomenal red and white paintings of animals and plants. The simplified, almost abstracted forms were very pleasing to my eye, which has been shaped by the modernist aesthetic. Circumcision is still practiced today every three years and these paintings get repainted each time.

The crowning event of the day was the Dama dance, a masked funeral ritual at the Tirili village. The performance has been tailored as entertainment for the tourist but it is based on an actual ritualistic dance or masquerade, which takes place every three or five years at most.

The traditional purpose of the dance is to chase the departed souls out of the village so they can become ancestors. I was totally enthralled, enchanted, and impressed by the skill of the musicians, who elders of the community are dressed in garments made of indigo thick cotton cloth and the strength and the virtuosity of the dancers who bore colorful dress and various masks, one more fascinating than the next.After parading all in a group, each mask got a chance to be center stage and dance its role to the rhythmic sound of the drums.  Carefully orchestrated and with dramatic flair, the dance was a most beautiful spectacle.

On our way back, as we drove along a ridge, we got a final view of these remote villages, which are at once timeless and deeply steeped in history, now in the shadows as the sun set behind the escarpment.