jS one who was involved in some of 
[ivities that marked the big 
ssque1 festival in England last year, 
,and perhaps also as an involved 
in the drama of modern(?) Afgc 
discourse, my reading of 
One Mor 
szor's inspired critique of that 
Jated issues is in the least 
|king. There is no doubt that 
the issues he raised in 'Occupied Territories; 
Power, Access and African Art' (GR 
1:3) bring to the fore, the politics of representation 
of the cultural productions by 
African artists in the continent, and the 
Diaspora. 
Chika 
Okeke 
One recalls also Olu Oguibe's powerful, surgically 
sharp deconstruction of Susan Vogel's Africa Explores 
exhibit, in African Arts, some years ago. Both critiques 
essentially harp on the problems of articulation, presentation 
and representation of art and artists from Africa, 
especially in the latter case, by non-Africans. But the basic 
difference between the two events is that where Africa 
Explores was one big, high-toned exhibit that travelled 
around America and Europe for some years, Africa 95 
was a festival of visual, performing and literary arts that 
unleashed itself on Engiand in a spate of about five months 
(except for the two exhibits at the Royal Academy and the 
Whitechapel that toured beyond Britain in 1996). Perhaps 
also, whereas Africa Explores with its magisterial 
promulgation of classificatory devices with which 
the seemingly intractable 'African art1 could be 
broughtto order, the major contemporary 
art exhibit in Africa 95, Seven Stories 
at the Whitechapel, 
showed the progress made so 
far in presenting art from Africa, 
by not classifying the art. However 
there is a similarity in the fact that 
both events were devised by two non- 
Africans, or as Vogel would term it, 
'intimate outsiders', and of course they were 
essentially organised specifically for Europe-American 
audiences and spectators. However, Seven Stories could 
not hide the sheathed swords that must be exposed by 
those who bother about showing cultural productions of 
Africa, in the West. 
The West has always felt it had a duty to understand 
other cultures as part of its inherent tendency to 
conquer and assimilate, on its own terms. From the 
period in the cultural history of mankind when the art of 
writing came to Europe from outside, from the moment ancient 
Europeans recognized the power of the text which Achebe calls the uli 
that never fades, and which Derrida in this century articulated beyond 
compare, the power to configure existence and the relationship between 
existences, they have never given up that power. The dictatorship of the 
written word had yielded for them political, economic and cultural 
domination of the entire universe. History, art and philosophy belong 
only to those who have written them down. And for them that have little 
or no written evidence of these phenomena, like much of Africa, their self 
enunciation comes against a backdrop of written history and theories of 
their being non/sub-humans, savages, slaves, freed slaves, colonials 
and post-colonials who must work hard at convincing the West that they 
African Quarterly 
on the Arts 
Vol.11 NO 4
have really come of age in 
evolutionary sense. This self 
enunciation has incidentally 
been given greater impetus 
and attention only recently as 
a result of historio-cultural developments 
in Africa and, more 
pertinently, in the West, 
Multiculturalism. 
With the crisis brought 
about by a logical dissatisfaction 
with the modernist project, 
and the ensuing acceptance 
of multiculturalism and other 
hitherto 'unacceptable' cultural 
phenomena, the West has 
found itself at crossroads. 
Apart from the exigent need to 
re-investigate the death-bound 
Western culture with the right 
medication from Africa and 
other non-occidental cultures, 
there is also with the flirtation 
with multiculturalism, thedominant 
morality that the wheel of 
human progress would turn 
faster if all cultures in all their 
diversities should become 
equal participants in the construction 
of the Babel. (This 
attitude is similar to the humanitarianism 
of the Romantic 
era in Europe; the period of 
the noble savage). But it is 
almost certain that the latter is 
as fictive as the former is real, 
and drugs become useless 
when the patient recovers. So, 
multiculturalism, or 
postmodernism and its other 
manifestations can not be but 
another great Western project 
which the West is paying for. 
Only the West stands to gain. 
In the current Western cultural 
fad called postmodernism 
therefore one sees a widening 
of the borders of Hamelin; 
there are more children but the 
piper remains the same. When 
then multiculturalist morality 
demands a rethinking, on the 
part of the West, in the manner 
of seeing, articulating and 
presenting art from Africa, it is 
bound to expose, once again, 
the pr'ofoundity of entrenched 
African Quarterly 
on the Arts 
Vol.11 NO 4
ignorance, the arrogance 
which centuries of (written] 
history bestowed on the West, 
its institutions, its people. Even 
here, the postmodernist historian 
OluOguibecautionsthat 
the current interest in Africa 
and its artists follows a cyclical 
pattern of repulsion/embrace 
of the still dark continent 
by the West, especially 
in this century. Which suggests, 
in effect, that the current 
love affair is another peak 
in what he identified as a 
thirty-year cycle. The 1980s, 
with Africa Hoy, Magiciens 
de la Terre, Africa Explores, 
and the two Venice Biennales, 
witnessed the build up that 
may have reached a crescendo 
with Africa 95. The 
end of another cycle? 
But cynicism apart. 
What if the current developments 
in the Africa-West relationship 
do not belong to 
Oguibe's, or any other cyclical 
theory? What if what is at 
play is a crude, lateral evolution 
in the manner in which 
the West configures Africa? 
That postmodernist or 
multiculturalist integrationism 
defies any doubts about the 
genuineness of Western intentions 
to 'understand' Africa? 
Then we should heave 
an anxious sigh while the 
experiment goes on. In this 
sense, perhaps, Africa 95, 
especially Seven Stories, is 
the latest experiment. 'Occupied 
Territories' therefore is 
one sustained, appropriate 
sigh that, more than any other 
articulated critique of Africa 
95, tells how carelessly designed 
the projects of recent 
cultural technicians have 
been, perhaps also, how far 
they are from achieving any 
meaningful goal. But besides 
articulating the failure of either 
Seven Stories or the entire 
Africa 95 project, there 
are a few important issues 
raised in that essay that related 
indirectly to the nature of 
work produced by artists on 
the African continent. 
It is rather very obvious 
thatOkwui Enwezor's sympathies 
in terms of who should 
represent Africa, lies not with 
artists living on the continent, 
but with the 'exiles', and those 
on the continent who produce 
work that can fit comfortably 
into the convenience bag of 
postmodern and conceptual 
art as articulated by recent 
Western criticism and theory. 
Which is why only one of the 
ten artists he listed as having 
been excluded from contemporary 
African art representations, 
lives on the continent 
(although five were represented 
inthevariousAfr/ca 95 
exhibits). We are told that in 
the works of these ten artists, 
the postmodernist discourse 
makes them eligible for the 
front seat in contemporary 
African art. Does this not 
suggestthatthe intellectual distance 
between African exiles 
and those on the continent is 
irrevocably stretching farther 
apart given the fervour with 
which the new generation of 
exiles have embraced 
postmodernism, and the seeming 
reluctance on the part of 
home artists to join the party? 
Does the fact that a majority of 
young African artists on the 
continent remain sculptors and 
painters point to the growing 
cultural disparities and the dissimilar 
existential circumstances 
between the one and 
the other 'African' artists? 
These are questions that historians 
and critics of art produced 
by Africans must contend 
with now, and perhaps 
in the future. 
It is the aforementioned 
shortage of sympathy on the 
part of Enwezor for the cultural 
realities on the continent 
that influences his decision to 
confer the genius status on 
Georges Adeagbo who was 
deemed a half-sane bricoleur 
in his native Benin but was 
discovered by the French curator 
Andrew Magnin who 
now presents him to Western 
spectators as an artist of the 
first order probably because 
Adeagbo's 'work' reminds 
him of the assemblages of 
Western conceptual artists. Is 
there much, if any, difference 
between Adeagbo's circumstance 
and journey to the 
Western art world, and that 
of Body Kingelez, KaneKwei, 
Jack Akpan or Cyprien 
Tokoudagba, who have been 
presented by Western curators 
as canonical artists to the 
chargin of many African theorists, 
historians and collectors? 
The ever and present danger 
of allowing either 'sympathetic 
outsiders' or privileged 
other to decide what constitutes 
the art of Africa, or who 
its creators are, remains. 
A view of the art being 
made by a majority of artists 
on the continent may appear 
at best quaint or sluggish if 
the viewer is sitting in the 
'faster' car of EuroAmerican 
postmodernism. Which may 
explain the impatience of a 
number of emergent African 
critics in the West when they 
turn their attention to the work 
of artists on the continent. 
This is understandable if, as is 
becoming obvious, the exiles' 
only wish is for their kinfolk 
at home to jump above 
their existential, economic circumstances, 
onto the skateboard 
of postmodern art as a 
way of proving their egality 
with their Western counterparts. 
But it is hardly convincing 
that this should be the 
goal of African, and indeed 
other non-occidental cultures 
and artists. If anything they 
should learn from the mis-
takes of the West. Afterall, the 
present declamation of (Western) 
modernism by 
postmodernist historians for, 
among other things, 
commodifying, and sanctifying 
the materiality of art, as 
well as for placing the same 
exclusively in the domain of 
bourgeois experience may be 
in order, but it need not have 
arisen had the same society 
not pushed art to such dizzying, 
nauseating heights in the 
first instance. The extent to 
which this post-era has succeeded 
in correcting the mistakes 
of modernism, or if, indeed, 
it ever will, remains to 
be seen. 
Beyond the politics of 
curatorial dictatorship, any 
group exhibit that makes pretense 
at representing the whole 
(impossible!) or parts of the 
territory of contemporary art 
in Africa, and indeed elsewhere, 
must of necessity (and 
if it must not run the risk of 
alienating the people it claims 
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The signature 
of Arts & 
Literature in 
contemporary 
Africa is 
changing 
to represent) reflect the dominant 
and also prominent artistic 
manifestations in the given 
territory. Which is what the 
Nigerian section, and perhaps 
other sections, of Seven 
Stories did in the specific conceptual 
territories demarcated 
by each sectional curator. The 
artists represented in that section 
may not fit into the constructs 
of postmodernist criticism, 
but in the context of the 
story told by the curator, the 
selection still stands to be challenged, 
like all but the most 
innocuous exhibits. 
The lessons of Africa 
95 are many, some of which 
are, from Enwezor's essay, 
terribly obvious. The West, 
with its institutions, is unrelenting 
in its insistence on deciding 
what constitutes art from 
Africa. This is evident in the 
Big City exhibit at the Serpentine. 
Also, with the mammoth 
Art of the Continent at the 
Royal Academy, there is no 
mistaking the surrogate nostalgia 
for the art that once 
was in Africa; the art that 
marked 'the end of art' in 
Africa. Equally important, but 
less obvious, in Seven Stories 
which reaffirmed the danger 
of relying too much, on the 
part of Western institutions or 
native culture brokers, intimate 
outsiders who become magisterial 
interpreters of works by 
artists from the still 'unknown 
Africa'. Such institutions that 
are genuinely interested (the 
anxious sigh again) in showing 
contemporary art from 
Africa may discover, as the 
Whitechapel realised only too 
late, that total reliance on 
people who seem to regret 
the waning powers of the anthropologist, 
only result in false 
starts in the race to re-present 
Africa. The child has grown 
and can talk for herself. Which 
perhaps explains why the 
Malmo Konsthall, having 
come to terms with this danger 
decided to rely more directly 
on the African sectional 
curators and less on the'specialists' 
when Seven Stories 
arrived there By all accounts,' 
Malmo had a much better 
show. But for taking the initiative 
in carrying out his latest, 
arguably most realistic experiment 
on ways of representing 
Africa in the West, the 
WhitechapePs effort is of 
major historical significance. 
It may have raised the discourse 
on the work of African 
artists (working in modern, 
even postmodern contexts) to 
a level where other major 
Western institutions can, if the 
will is present, build upon. In 
much the same way, the 
Museum of Mankind's Play 
and Display, the impressive 
collaborative work with Sokari 
Douglas Camp, which in itself 
was a groundbreaking exhibit, 
remains an outstanding score 
for those who wish for better 
and more appropriate visibility 
for African artists, in the 
West. These last points are 
missing in Enwezor's essay. 
Nsukka, July, 1996.