Книга: Enwezor Okwui «Contemporary African Art Since 1980»

Contemporary African Art Since 1980

Серия: "-"

Contemporary African Art Since 1980 is the first major survey of the work of contemporary African artists from diverse situations, locations, and generations who work either in or outside of Africa, but whose practices engage and occupy the social and cultural complexities of the continent since the past 30 years. Its frame of analysis is absorbed with historical transitions: from the end of the postcolonial utopias of the sixties during the 1980s to the geopolitical, economic, technological, and cultural shifts incited by globalization. This book is both narrower in focus in the periods it reflects on, and specific in the ground it covers. It begins by addressing the tumultuous landscape of contemporary Africa, examining landmarks and narratives, exploring divergent systems of representation, and interrogating the ways artists have responded to change and have incorporated new aesthetic principles and artistic concepts, images and imaginaries to deal with such changes. Organized in chronological order, the book covers all major artistic mediums: painting, sculpture, photography, film, video, installation, drawing, collage. It also covers aesthetic forms and genres, from conceptual to formalist, abstract to figurative practices. Moving between discursive and theoretical registers, the principal questions the book analyzes are: what and when is contemporary African art? Who might be included in the framing of such a conceptual identity? It also addresses the question of globalization and contemporary African art. The book thus provides an occasion to examine through close reading and visual analysis how artistic concerns produce major themes. It periodizes and cross references artistic sensibilities in order to elicit multiple conceptual relationships, as well as breaks with prevailing binaries of center and periphery, vernacular and academic, urban and non-urban forms, indigenous and diasporic models of identification. In order to theorize how these concerns have been formulated in artistic terms and their creative consequences Contemporary African Art Since 1980 examines a range of ideas, concepts and issues that have shaped the work and practice of African artists within an international and global framework. It traces the shifts from earlier modernist strategies of the sixties and seventies after the period of decolonization, and the rise of pan-African nationalism, to the postcolonial representations of critique and satire that evolved from the 1980s, to the postmodernist irony of the 1990s, and to the globalist strategies of the 21st century. The main claim of this book is that contemporary African art can be best understood by examining the tension between the period of great political changes of the era of decolonization that enabled new and exciting imaginations of the future to be formulated, and the slow, skeptical, and social decline marked by the era of neo-liberalism and Structural Adjustment programs of the 1980s. These issues are addressed in chapters covering the themes of "Politics, Culture, Critique", "Memory and Archive", "Abstraction, Figuration and Subjectivity", and" The Body, Gender and Sexuality" . In addition, the book employs sidebars to provide brief and incisive accounts of and commentaries on important contemporary political, economic and cultural events, and on exhibitions, biennales, workshops, artist groups and more. Rather than a comprehensive survey, this richly illustrated book presents examples of ambitious and important work by more than 160 African artists since the last 30 years. This list includes Georges Adeagbo Tayo Adenaike, Ghada Amer, El Anatsui, Kader Attia, Luis Basto, Candice Breitz, Moustapha Dim, Marlene Dumas, Victor Ekpuk, Samuel Fosso, Jak Katarikawe, William Kentridge, Rachid Koraichi, Mona Mazouk, Julie Mehretu, Nandipha Mntambo, Hassan Musa, Donald Odita, Iba Ndiaye, Richard Onyango, Ibrahim El Salahi, Issa Samb, Cheri Samba, Ousmane Sembene, Yinka Shonibare, Barthelemy Toguo, Obiora Udechukwu, and Sue Williamson. Okwui Enwezor, a leading curator and scholar of contemporary art, is the Dean of Academic Affairs at the San Francisco Art Institute, and founding publisher and editor of Nka: Journal of Contemporary African Art. Chika Okeke-Agulu is Assistant Professor of Art and Archeology and African American Studies at Princeton University, and editor of Nka: Journal of Contemporary African Art.

Издательство: "Damiani editore" (2011)

Enwezor, Okwui

▪ 2003

      Nigerian-born Okwui Enwezor followed a short and nontraditional path to the peaks of the art world; the part-time poet and art critic began curating important art shows in 2002 without ever having studied art history formally. In February he mounted his first major show, “The Short Century: Independence and Liberation Movements in Africa, 1945–1994,” at P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center in Queens, New York City. Just a few months later, in June, Enwezor put into practice his theory of art as an expression of social change when he became the artistic director of Documenta 11, the international exhibition held in Kassel, Ger. Ambitious in size and scope, the three-month show, held about every five years, was often likened to “the Olympics of contemporary art.”

      Enwezor, the first non-European to host the Documenta exhibition, took a decidedly unconventional and global approach; he prepared for the show with a series of seminars on international issues. He eschewed the trendiness of many art shows. He did not shy away from political issues, including globalization, and was understandably comfortable looking beyond American and European traditions into African arts. His emphasis on ideas over the veneration of objects “art for art's sake” was evident in his development of the “The Short Century” exhibit, which appeared first as a book in Munich, Ger., a full year before becoming a gallery show in New York City.

      Enwezor was born in 1963 in Calabar, a Nigerian town bordering Cameroon. He was raised in Enugu in eastern Nigeria, but he relocated to the United States in the early 1980s to attend Jersey City State College (now New Jersey City University) in Jersey City, where he earned a B.A. in political science. His foray into the art world began as an observer. At various exhibits Enwezor noticed the absence of artists from Africa and started critiquing the shows. He began writing widely for art magazines and even launched one of his own—Nka: Journal of Contemporary African Art—published from 1994 in concert with the Africans Studies and Research Center at Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y. As a curator, he became known for his work on an exhibit of African photography at the Guggenheim Museum in SoHo, New York City, in 1996; at the “Africus” Second Johannesburg Biennale in 1997; and as an adjunct curator (1998–2000) of contemporary art at the Art Institute of Chicago. Later exhibits included a group show that traveled through Europe and Canada and a showing of South African photographer David Goldblatt at the Equitable Gallery, New York City, in 2000. A frequent lecturer and member of many art juries, Enwezor also coedited, along with Olu Oguibe, Reading the Contemporary: African Art from Theory to the Marketplace (1999). His most recent undertaking was the drafting of a book entitled Structural Adjustment, a discourse on contemporary African artists.

Tom Michael

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Источник: Enwezor, Okwui

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