Au Coeur de Mai 68 will bring contrast and commonality to the heart of Soweto
What would a pictorial history of FrenchAfrican relations look like? There would no doubt be some colonial prints in such a vast array – European explorers “discovering” fauna and flora across the Sahara desert, down the Nile, in the Congo basin; portraits of noble savages (muscular and inscrutable) staring into the distance.
Iconic paintings, from Géricault’s Raft of the Medusa to Biard’s Proclamation of the Abolition of Slavery in the French Colonies, might give part of the European perspective. The debt of French modernists like Picasso and Matisse to African sculpture would have to be acknowledged.
A clutch of Nkisi figures could hint at shifting Central African responses to colonial encroachment on previously independent territories in the 19th century.
The migration of artists such as SA’s Gerard Sekoto to France after the Second World War could provide another angle. There would also be thousands of photographs to process: occupying armies, imperial atrocities, liberatory struggles, touristic landscapes.
In tone and content, 21st century depictions might be totally different. Contemporary African visual arts publications like Paris-based Revue Noire could give some direction. So could social media: for example, the spate of action selfies by African immigrants in France this week, joking that if they can scale multistorey buildings like Mamoudou Gassama, the “Malian Spiderman” whose heroics saved a toddler’s life, then maybe they too could get automatic French citizenship.
But satirical images are rarely innocuous. The pages of controversial magazine Charlie Hebdo feature numerous cartoonish depictions of African people that are brazenly racist.
To its credit, the French state is not complicit in the denial of the aesthetic legacy of colonialism. President Emmanuel Macron may be guilty of inconsistency in his approach to migration and of a certain clumsiness in discussing African history but he has at least pledged to return stolen works to countries such as Benin and Burkina Faso.
There is one area, however, where a French presence in the African arts scene is an unambiguous good: the funding, networking prowess and creative vision of the Alliance Française and the French Institute of SA.
I have stated before how impoverished the local arts would be without the projects facilitated by European cultural organisations as the GoetheInstitut, the British Council and Pro Helvetia.
Over the past few years, the two French bodies and the French embassy in SA have driven and supported some wonderful visual arts initiatives.
In June — following the conclusion of Five Photographers (showcasing the work of four young
photographers as a tribute to David Goldblatt) at the Alliance Française’s new Gerard Sekoto Gallery in Parkview; and with the Wonders of Rock Art: Lascaux and Africa exhibition under way at Sci-Bono in
Newtown — the relaunched premises of the Alliance Française in Soweto will host Au Coeur de Mai 68.
This travelling exhibition of photographs by Philippe Gras has been around the world but
its arrival in Diepkloof is particularly provocative.
Last month marked the 50th anniversary of the events in May 1968 that saw hundreds of thousands of students and millions of workers embarking on a campaign of civil unrest that almost unseated then president Charles de Gaulle and became a global symbol of youthful frustration with a conservative establishment.
The memories of #FeesMustFall still hover at our universities. And every year on June 16 we mark a much more violent conflict between idealistic youths and an oppressive government. With the recent death of Sam Nzima, South Africans will hopefully have a fresh look at the familiar image of Mbuyisa Makhubo carrying Hector Pieterson.
A fortnight ago, one of the many horrifying pictures of the Israeli military’s deadly attack on Palestinian protestors in Gaza was circulated alongside Nzima’s famous photograph: it, too, showed a young man cradling a wounded (perhaps dead) body, uncannily echoing Soweto in June 1976.
Au Coeur de Mai 68 attempts no such direct correspondences, visually or politically, but the exhibition’s location within walking distance of the spot where Pieterson fell nonetheless invites comparisons. While many Parisian students were injured in 1968, none were shot dead by police. The stakes weren’t as high.