are no 
ONTEMPORARY. Modern. Postmodern. The 
art world is full of class and pigeonholes 
invented by the West. Since the impressionist 
period and early modernism, art gener- 
Krydz 
Ikwuemesi 
ally has moved from ism to ism following the 
fleeting whims and caprices of the Western 
avantgarde. After the dismantling of colonialism 
in the politico-social arena in Africa, 
art, science and technology quickly became 
the next available keys to the heart of 
Africa, the veritable tools for neo-colonialism. 
Consequently, African culture, whatever 
it was, has gone through a series of 
effacement, arriving at a stage where what 
is left of it is, I am afraid, less than a hybrid. 
Contemporary African art is a classic 
example of that situation. 
Encumbered by the ethos of Western education 
and the dictates of internationalism, the African 
artist in these times is a victim of a paradigmatic 
dilemma, torn between the need to remain African 
and international at the same time. In a general 
sense, African artists are all faced with this problem 
as art in the 'contemporary' era cease to be fully 
integrated with society, becoming more elitist than 
ever and its institutions more highly policed than 
in pristine times. Art in Africa is no longer life; nor 
African Quarterly 
on the Arts 
Vol. 2/No. 4 GLENDORA
is life art. The two are severed, only 
occasionally touching each other with 
long poles. This is a function of Western 
academic influence. 
It is a fact that no society can remain 
stagnant culturally. A society that is alive must 
have a past, a future, a history. Its artists will 
dream dreams. And in the process of concretising 
those dreams, which is the creative process - the 
very riddle of art, they may be affected by other 
perceptions, of other things, other trends, traditions. 
But in internalising and manifesting these 
influences, does the receiving culture have to 
snuff itself out? Does it have to choke itself on 
mores which it believes would rescue it from the 
periphery of the global village? 
Perhaps the anthropological binary of the 
'Self and 'Other' contributes to this situation. African 
artists want to be heard. They want to be seen as 
artists just like Picasso or Hockney were, without 
necessarily being pigeonholed into a geo-paradigmatic 
signifier. Olu Oguibe, in the catalogue to the 
just concluded Uli exhibit at the Smithsonian, argues 
that he is not necessarily and Igbo (African) artist or 
Uli artist, but an artist like any other'. By this, Oguibe 
wishes to situate himself, to my mind, within the 
centre of the global village which Western hegemonic 
scholarship would readily reserve or arrogate to its 
artists and critics. But in doing that, does Oguibe, 
indeed the African artist, have to jettison his 
heritage? Even if he had to heed Caya Makhele's call 
that he should cease to be immutable magicien de la 
terre and creator of masks and fetishes, does the 
African artist have to give up that Africanity - that 
inner essence - which has continued to save his art, 
at all times and places, from becoming counter-art, 
in spite of the glaring curse of postmodernism and the 
nihilist Zeitgeist known as technoart? Whether the 
geo-political origin of an artist is highlighted or not 
does not really matter to me. All art are, in my 
opinion, as parochial as they are international. In the 
effort to exorcise the'neo-primitivising' ghost of the 
Western anthropological construct of 'otherness', 
African artists must not loose their Africanity - that 
inner philosophico-cultural essence that saves it from 
African Quarterly 
on the Arts 
Vol 2/No. 4 
GLENC 
the kind of emptinessand whimsicality that has befallen 
Euro-American art in the dying years of the present 
century. 
I make the above assertion because it is obvious 
that the era of the scramble for identity by African artists 
is over. The crass Westernisation which pervades the art 
of living in most parts of Africa has crept into the art 
scene. African artists consciously bother about jargons 
and trends churned out-in good numbers - from the 
mill of Western artistic imagination. They engage in the 
endless debates of new internationalism, instrumentalism 
versus formalism, all those empty isms which 
characterise and calibrate the movement of contemporary 
art. A very ridiculous enterprise. Especially for an 
artist who has a confirmed tyranny at home or one 
whose town has neither electricity nor portable water, 
not to mention one whose national consciousness is 
defined by corruption and other vices. An Igbo proverb 
avers that a man whose house is on fire does not chase 
a rat. African artists have enough issues and problems 
to address at home with their art rather than the 
bamboozling rhetorics of postmodernism. Even if one 
contended that African artists should be involved in 
verbalising their activities and creativity on internationally 
acceptable modes, one should concede that the 
audience for such theorisation is either unripe or nonexistent 
inside much of Africa. 
But I must hasten to add that I do not preach autoisolation 
of the African artist. One is only saying that he 
should not allow the burden of neo-colonisation to 
weigh too heavily on him, that he should not allow his 
psyche to be beclouded by a complex of inferiority. As 
Gavin Jantjes put it, '...we cannot challenge (Western 
artistic hegemony) by acting on the continent alone. 
Wehave to bring our challenge (to the West). This does 
not mean that we need to, or have to, train and practice 
in Europe, or the West, but that we have to bring our 
work and our ideas into this arena. For Europe will not 
come to us to engage in genuine cultural reciprocity. 
When it does come, it will come to appropriate, to take 
charge, to take over, to take away'. 
It is in this light that one must view some of the 
major exhibitions of African art that have happened in 
the West, on its terms, in the last few years: Africa Hoy, 
Africa Explores, Les Mogiciens de la Terre, Africa '95, 
The Poetics of Line: Seven Artists of the Nsukka, Group, 
CROSS/ING: Time, Space, Movement, etc. With these 
the West does not only validate its claim to having or
Tola We we, 'Community Project', Oil on Canvas 45" x 54" 
being the 'international market place', it is also seeking, 
in the words of Jantjes, the 'authentic otherness'. 
Unspoilt, uncontaminated originality, sigalling a rediscovery 
of Africa by Europe yet again. 
True, it is the era of the neo-expedition. As was 
the case in the last century, the West is culturally and 
artistically bankrupt and it is searching for new 
challenges, new catalysts. Cezanne, Braque, Derain, 
and Picasso found such a catalyst in Africa about a 
century ago, and the art of the West breathed a new 
breath that culminate in modernism. Today post-modernism 
and techno-art, in spite of their relationship to 
modern man's quest for truth and unidealised reality, 
are a synecdoche of the death pangs of mainstream 
Western art. No doubt, Africa holds the recipe or 
ingredients for a possible regeneration. The Vogels, 
Delisses, and Ottenbergs thus become the fore-runners 
of an impending invasion. 
Without being uncomplimentary to the West's 
It is a fact that no society can remain stagnant 
culturally. A society that is alive must 
have a past, a future, a history. Its artists 
will dream dreams. And in the process of 
concretising those dreams, which is the 
creative process - the very riddle of art, 
they may be affected by other perceptions. 
of other things, other trends, traditions efforts at propaguting Africa art, it is noteworthy that 
its interest In African art places a lot of demands on the 
African Quarterly 
on (he Arts
The imperative now for African art then 
becomes, in the words of Jantjes 'to gain a 
voice in the mainstream on its own terms... 
(by constructing and arguing) a case with 
the manifestations of our visual practice 
and through the installations of those works 
as relevant to the discourse and development 
of a contemporary mainstream 
African artist The African artist has recently begun to 
question his own authenticity; there is the tendency to 
pander to the rather crazy taste of the West, not only 
to be able to remain relevant but also to remain 
contemporary. Anti-art forms, like installations, have 
caught the fancy of African artists and there, I think, 
lies the curse for 21 st century African art. 
I say so because installation and all its sister 
paradigms have exhibited the capacity to negate the 
principles of art, including art's role of surviving man 
and society. They signify, in their very essence, and 
in their marriage to science and technology, modern 
man's appetite for self-destruction. When I am confronted 
by some postmodernist creations I feel terribly 
lonely and shaken; I wonder what would form the 
basis of tomorrow's archeology, tomorrow's anthropology, 
tomorrow's history. 
I am not unaware of 'how important money is to 
the research, the creation, publication and dissemination 
of visual art.' I am also aware that whereas such 
funds are almost non-existent in Africa, it is easily 
available in the West. I am equally aware that the 
West possesses a more responsive art market. But we 
must be wary, as we approach the next century, of a 
full scale colonisation of African art. For if, as Everlyn 
Nicodemus has stressed 'we uncritically accept (the 
desire and power of the postmodern West to curate 
the rest of the world), flattered by being at all paid 
attention to, we will soon find ourselves in new, even 
more sophisticated forms of cultural colonialism.' The 
imperative now for African art then becomes, in the 
words of Jantjes 'to gain a voice in the mainstream on 
its own terms... (by constructing and arguing) a case 
with the manifestations of our visual practice and 
through the installations of those works as relevant to 
African Quarterly 
on (he Arts 
the discourse and development of a contemporary 
mainstream. 
It is in the light of this logic that the PACA 
Biennale was conceived in 1995 not only as a 
response to'Western cultural monotheism' but also as 
one of the many needed voices inside Africa. This 
year, the exhibition is at its second edition and it 
parades works from Nigeria, Zimbabwe, and the 
United States of America, numbering about 60. In all 
the works, there is the tendency to remain contemporary 
'on our own terms'. There are no installations 
here. Nor will the audience be treated to fleeting 
techno-performances and happenings. What the artists 
have done is to interpret the present through the 
reality of their cultural heritage, thus providing posterity 
and history some cud to chew. The present 
collection may not easily find a place in the West's 
definition of the avantgarde, but they are African art 
par excellence. And I hasten to add that at the end of 
the tunnel when time wears out the prevailing anti-art, 
it is to this paradigm that we may all turn. GR