The Courier: Africa in Venice

Creativity

Issue Nr. II (N.S.) – September/October 2007

Africa in Venice

The African Pavilion at the Venice Art Biennale international exhibition has been considered one of the greatest innovations of the 2007 edition of this major event. Born at the end of the 19th century, the Biennale not only attracts art specialists’ attention, but also a large number of spectators. The African Pavilion raises several questions: why have Andy Warhol and Miguel Barcelò in an African Pavilion? Why give space to a single art collector? And where are the usual corporate sponsors?

Yinka Shonibare MBE, How to blow up two heads at once, 2006. Installation, dimension overall: 175 x 245 x 122cm.

Courtesy Sindika Dokolo African collection of contemporary art

But let’s start from the beginning: the 52nd Biennale Director, Robert Storr, wanted to showcase the African continent. During the professional week of Dak’Art Biennale in Dakar, Senegal, Storr visited several exhibitions, including peripheral ones – which made up the ‘off programme’ – and participated in numerous conferences. He also collected catalogues and publications. The result of these investigations is the diverse representation of African and African-American artists in the Biennale International Exhibition, entitled ‘Think with the Senses – Feel with the Mind. Art in the Present Tense’.

This exhibition is marked by a large number of political artworks focusing on issues such as war, terrorism, migration, borders and death. The display is marked by a slow and thoughtful succession of artwork: well-placed photographs, paintings and videos with a clear and simple setup where African artists’ works hold a dialogue with the surrounding displays, producing mutually enriching meanings.

Artist Adel Abdessemed’s blue neon signs, placed by the exits in the Arsenale’s rooms, indicate the ‘Exile’, instead of the expected ‘Exit’. The geometrical abstractness of Nigerian painter Odili Donald Odita brightly shines with African colours. Chéri Samba’s paintings tell sad stories with bitter irony. The wonderful black and white photo portraits by Malian Malick Sidibé, awarded with the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement, represent the proud participants in an art project to fight AIDS.

The most amazing work: the two incredible tapestries made of metal cans and bottle caps by Ghanaian, Nigeria-based El Anatsui. These are ably set up in the ‘Arsenale’ between two rows of enormous brick columns sparkling with sea salt, creating a single gigantic installation. All spectators stopped to admire it.

Another remarkable event was the presentation of African comic works, which were a first at the Biennale. A sorrowful migration story was the theme of the 46 plates of the comic album Une eternité à Tanger, by Faustin Titi and Eyoum Ngangué. The comic was awarded with the ‘Africa e Mediterraneo Prize for the best unpublished comic strip by an African author’ by the association of the same name.

Storr made another key choice for the Biennale: the creation of an African Pavilion. While it’s true Africa has had some individual and collective presence at the Biennale since the 1920s, only Egypt had traditionally had a national pavilion until now.

To prepare the African Pavilion, Storr diffused a ‘Call for ideas’, which was criticised but gathered more than 30 projects and aroused considerable expectation. A jury comprised of African and African-American curators and artists decided to entrust the pavilion to Simon Njami and Fernando Alvim.

Njami, is a Cameroonian critic, writer, founder of Revue Noire and curator of ‘Africa Remix’, an important exhibition on ‘the continent’. Alvim is an Angolan artist and curator of the Gallery ‘Camouflage’ in Brussels and of the Luanda Triennale international art exhibition. Their project was to show a selection, a ‘check list’, of Sindika Dokolo’s art collection, with the addition of other artworks commissioned for Venice. The name of this young Congolese businessman started reverberating in the contemporary art world.

The first criticisms came from those who in the past undertook important initiatives on African art in Venice and now felt dethroned. Then came an article by Ben Davis, published by Art Net, a New York web art magazine, which accused the collector of rather shady business during African wars.

Alvim’s answer: “If we come to ethics, many should feel shameful: Italy and the USA, who attacked Iraq without justification; bank, owners of most of the artwork, with their unreliable investments; and big collectors with mysterious wealth. Let’s put ethics aside and let’s go deeply in the artistic projects. For the first time ever you see a totally African project, managed and financed by Africans in Africa.”

Dokolo already owned an international collection of contemporary art. In 2003 Fernando Alvim persuaded him to buy Hans Bogatze’s Brussels collection to prevent his family from selling it to European galleries after the collector’s death. Dokolo and Alvim involved some Angolan companies and banks, which financed the acquisition, creating the most important private collection of contemporary art in Africa. This collection formed the basis of the Luanda Triennale, held in 2005/2006.

“We added ‘Luanda Pop’ to the initial title ‘Check List’”, Alvim explained during the press conference, “to underline the direct connection with the energy springing from the adventure of 2005 Luanda Triennale”.

“It is not only a cultural project, it is a political statement”, Simon Njami added during the press conference, “We don’t aim at showing an exhaustive portrait neither of the whole continent, nor of ‘African contemporary art’, a rather indistinct concept. We simply propose our choice. That’s why the posters around the Pavilion show persons such as Franz Fanon, Bob Marley and Ghandi. They are not Africans, but people who talked about a free Africa and who built Africa, not as a place but as a philosophy”.

This is also the reason of displaying Andy Warhol and Miguel Barcelò artworks in the African Pavilion, side by side with works by young Angolan authors such as Yonamine and Ihosvanny, or by internationally recognised artists such as Yinka Shonibare, Marlene Dumas and Kendall Geers. “This is not a collection of African contemporary art”, points out Sindika Dokolo, “but an African collection of contemporary art. An African vision. I consider the creation of my collection a political gesture because Africa cannot access its past aesthetics, whose best pieces were taken off the continent. Compared to Africa’s basic needs, maybe art is not the priority, but I think we have to act on African human beings. If they don’t know where they come from, if they don’t learn how to exercise their critical ability, there won’t be progress. Now we have to consider how to achieve a concrete impact on the people. This is just the beginning. We have to get moving ourselves, both artists and public, including the governments, education, museums, galleries, collectors. If we cannot tell the world who we are, if we do not show them the best of what we are capable, we will never see an end to incomprehension, condescension and prejudice”.

This is, at last, Africa who chooses, Africa who watches.

Sandra Federici

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