Africa, Contemporary Art’s New Hot-spot
Before the first world war the most exciting artists were French; in the ' 90s they were Chinese. Now the hot new place for contemporary art is Africa.
Visitors to the opening of the Venice Biennale on May 13th can go to a Nigerian pavilion for the first time; three days later Sotheby’s will inaugurate its first auction of African contemporary art.
At the end of September, Jochen Zeitz, a German businessman, will open the long- awaited Zeitz MOCAA, which Thomas Heatherwick, a British designer, has been creating for him in a disused grain silo on the waterfront in Cape Town.
Those too impatient to wait should make haste, meanwhile, to Paris, where the Fondation Louis Vuitton ( FLV) in the Bois de Boulogne has unveiled two of the most vivid exhibitions of African artists that the city has ever seen.
For the first exhibition, “Être Là” (“Being There”), Suzanne Pagé, FLV’s artistic director, has selected 16 artists from South Africa. Much of what they have made for the show is creepy, frightening and aggressive. That is not unexpected given that this is the work of a generation grown increasingly frustrated at the country’s inability to live up to its post- apartheid promise.
The second show, “Les Initiés” (“The Insiders”), is more surprising. Drawn from a collection built up by Jean Pigozzi, heir to the Simca motoring fortune, it starts in 1989, when the communist proxy wars in Africa were coming to an end and technology, in the form of mobile phones and internet banking, was but a step away from giving Africans greater control over their daily lives.
It blends humour and inventiveness, in the form of witty masks made from randomly collected domestic objects by Romuald Hazoumé from Benin, an artist whose work David Bowie collected; sculptures of bright, idealised cities by Bodys Isek Kingelez of the Democratic Republic of Congo; magical works made with porcupine quills by John Goba from Sierra Leone; and hilarious face masks, such as “Oba 2007” (pictured), made by Calixte Dakpogan, also from Benin, out of beads, pens, nail- clippers and synthetic coloured hair, which he has found on his walks through his hometown of Porto- Novo.
Here, energy and adventurousness are matched only by imagination, belying any notion that Africa is a dark continent. Death from Generator Fumes A widow and her three children in the Ikorodu area of Lagos lost their lives in a rather cheap manner recently.With no power supply from the electricity company serving their area, the family turned on the generator in one of the rooms in the three-bedroom apartment and went to bed. Page 15 O 'Why I Like Action Movies' What is the concept behind your new movie, ‘Slow Country’? Slow Country is about a woman who made some mistakes in her early days and now she is trying to deal with it. She had a son unexpectedly and in order to take care of him, she took a dive into the dark world of prostitution and drug trafficking. At some point, she wanted to get out of such trades but it became impossible to do so. Page 27 The news of outbreak of Ebola in the Democratic Republic of Congo a fortnight ago has elicited fears among African airlines that the development could hamper flights opera- tions. African airlines lost about $2.3billion to flight cancelations and black listing of some des- tinations inWest and Central Africa following the outbreak of Ebola in 2014. Page 19 Screams were heard as pandemo- nium broke out in NewYork’s busyTimes Square onThursday when a speeding red sedan ploughed into pedestrians on a pavement, according Reuters.The attack reminiscent of a similar incident outside UK’s Parliament on March 22, has so far left one person dead and at least 22 injured. Page 45 Eagles, Togo Friendly Confirmed for June 1 After what appears like a controversy on the possibility of the Super Eagles playing the Hawks ofTogo in an international friendly, the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) yesterday confirmed June 1 as date for the tune up match aimed at getting the senior national team ready for the AFCON 2019 qualifier against South Africa. Page 54