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Cornelius Augustt – Côte d’Ivoire. |
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Cape Town – Essop Brothers.Nxumalo Musa Alternative-kidz. |
Dondo Calvin.
Sad Eyed Model – Ricardo Rangel.
Mtethwa Zwelethu.
Idi Amin Executions – Amin Mohamed.
Bob Gosani – The Americans, courtesy Baily Seippel Gallery Johannesburg.
(Lady elder pink-green wall) – Perrier Eileen - 1996.
Studio 3z – RD Congo. |
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Centre for Fine Arts Forming part of the Summer of Photography 2010, the exhibition entitled A Useful Dream celebrates 50 years of African photography and the building of collective identities in post-colonial Africa. It gives a general picture of present-day photography in Africa. Up to the late 20th century, the West had a monopoly in Africa on the view and hence definition of the world. The images from the colonial period deliberately focused on reducing this other part of humanity, in its entirety, to cozy stereotypes, accentuating the different and the exotic. In most African countries, independence signified economic, political and historical liberation. Decolonised people reclaimed their own take on the world. They had to learn to stop seeing themselves with western eyes, take ownership of a self-contemplation and give meaning to the picture, which boils down to giving meaning to themselves. Photography is undoubtedly the best conceivable medium in this process of emancipation and rewriting one’s own history. This lies at the heart of the artistic work of today’s contemporary photographers brought together in this exhibition. From the 1960s up to the present day, they have conceived their very own version of the African identity, increasingly distanced from the established western models and increasingly linked to their own cultural and aesthetic codes.
Doorkeeper at the Moulin Rouge – Ricado Rangel.
Nonsikelelo Veleko, Tebogo, 2006.
Self Portrait, Naledi.
Cindy and Nkuli – Veloko Lolo.
Peter preparing for 'Whore's Ball' – Derrick Tracey. |
Ballroom – Jodi Bieber. |
Abdelazziz Myriam – Portrait of a genocide. "I have been encircled by armed men." |
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Roger Ballen, whirling wires, 2001. |
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Roger Ballen, Cut loose, 2005.
Roger Ballen, Metamorphosis, 2006. |
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Centre for Fine Arts Roger Ballen’s work can be recognised at a glance. His singular universe, from a documentary style in the early days to more pictorial scenes, navigates between dream and reality. In the course of his career, he has built up a body of work which is amusing, enigmatic and disturbing in equal measure. The Centre for Fine Arts is devoting an extensive retrospective to this special photographer within the context of the biannual Summer of Photography and the Visionary Africa festival. Roger Ballen was born in New York in 1950, but has spent his entire professional life in South Africa. He has created a masterly body of photographic work since the early 80s. From the very empathetic and, at the same time, tough photo-journalism in series such as Dorps: Small Towns of South Africa (1986) and Platteland: Images from Rural South Africa (1994), he has evolved towards a unique artistic style that has made a significant contribution to the development of present-day photography. Roger Ballen’s work is therefore also among the most important photographic collections in the world.
Roger Ballen, Confinement, 2003. |
Roger Ballen, Puppy between feet, 1999. |
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EO.1994.37.10, collection MRAC Tervuren; photo A. Speltdoorn, MRAC Tervuren © |
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Theo Eshetu – The Return of the Axum Obelisk.
Mansour Ciss, 50 Afro Bill, Hommage au Pan-Africanisme, 2010.
George Osodi, Beach, 2004.
George Osodi, Ogony Boy, 2007.
George Osodi, Christmas Tree – Oil Rich Niger Delta.
David Adjaye © Ed Reeve.
Abidjan – Côte d'Ivoire, © David Adjaye.
Addis Abeba – Ethiopia. © David Adjaye.
Antananarivo, Madagascar © David Adjaye.
Cairo, Egypt, © David Adjaye.
Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania, © David Adjaye.
Nairobi, Kenya, © David Adjaye.
Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, © David Adjaye, |
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Centre for Fine Arts No fewer than 17 African countries celebrate 50 years of independence in 2010. To mark the occasion, BOZAR and the Royal Museum for Central Africa in Tervuren are organising the Visionary Africa festival, with concerts, exhibitions, theatre and dance performances, a colloquium, and a literary festival. Anniversaries, of course, offer an ideal opportunity to look back and also to look ahead to what the future may bring. GEO-graphics. A Map of Art Practices in Africa, Past and Present, the keynote exhibition of the Visionary Africa festival, combines these two perspectives. In this exhibition ethnographic art enters into a visual and narrative dialogue with contemporary art, thereby offering a fine overview of the enormous wealth and diversity of the visual artistic creation on the continent. A total of 220 ethnographic objects from Belgian private and museum collections span a period from the 16th to the 20th century. This extensive selection includes masks, fetish objects, anthropomorphic and zoomorphic sculpture, ceremonial objects, furniture, musical instruments, and more. One highlight is the paintings on glass, a typical folk art form from Senegal, with often naive pictures depicting religious subjects or scenes from daily life. For the first time, these traditional works of art are looked at in relation to contemporary cultural life in Africa. Over the last ten years independent initiatives have emerged here and there on the continent. Eight of these centres for contemporary art have been invited to Brussels: Doual’art (Douala, Cameroon), La Rotonde des Arts (Abidjan, Ivory Coast), Centre for Contemporary Art Lagos (CCA Lagos) (Lagos, Nigeria), Centre for Contemporary Art East Africa Nairobi (CCAEA Nairobi) (Nairobi, Kenya), Picha (Lubumbashi, Congo), Darb 1718 (Cairo, Egypt), Appartement 22 (Rabat, Morocco), and Raw Material Company (Dakar, Senegal). Each of these centres occupies a space within the exhibition, in which it presents its own artistic identity and shows work by "its" African artists. The selection includes a presentation of Pathy Tshindele’s commissioned work in the Congolese village of Makwacha, a video installation by the Ethiopian artist Theo Eshetu, paintings and sculptures from the collection of La Rotonde des Arts, and a probing series of photographs by George Osodi of the difficult living conditions in the oil-rich region around the Niger delta. In addition, photographs on show throughout the exhibition present Africa's extraordinarily diverse and proliferating urban landscape. This series of photographs is the result of ten years of research throughout Africa by David Adjaye, a world-renowned architect with Ghanaian roots who is also the artistic director of GEO-graphics. The exhibition is organised thematically according to the continent's geographical zones: Sahel, mahgreb, desert, savannah, forest, and mountains/highlands. Adjaye argues that the natural environment influences cultural output, so that a shared culture reaches beyond national boundaries. Since 2007, however, Africa has seen unprecedented urban development, which is bringing with it major changes and raises fundamental questions about artistic creation. Each of the exhibition's geographical themes includes both ethnographic art, which mostly has a ritual basis and comes from the tribes in the countryside, and contemporary art that is being produced today in the cities. In this way, GEO-graphics links present and past and creates a bridge between city and countryside. Although there are many different contemporary art scenes on the African continent, they clearly do not get enough support from government institutions and the world of politics. By inviting these eight arts centres to Brussels to show how they are creating a basis for cultural development on the African continent, the Visionary Africa festival hopes to initiate a debate on the "fragility" of Africa's cultural institutions. To this end, an Atlas Room has been set up at the entrance to the exhibition; this information space presents in the form of timelines, texts and images, an overview of the national and international cultural policies, decisions and documents that reflect on the past, present and future of the cultural sector in Africa. The exhibition's artistic director, David Adjaye (born in 1966), is recognised as one of the greatest architects of his generation in the United Kingdom. With his practice, Adjaye Associates, he has won various prestigious competitions and has established himself through numerous architectural projects, exhibition designs, and plans for temporary pavilions and private homes. The construction of arts centres and major public buildings in London, Oslo, and Denver are recent examples of Adjaye's strong interest in the integration of architecture into its existing surroundings. President Barack Obama recently asked him to design the future National Museum of Afro-American History and Culture in Washington. Adjaye is organising this exhibition together with Anne-Marie Bouttiaux (head of the ethnographic department of the Royal Museum for Central Africa in Tervuren), Koyo Kouoh (independent curator, "cultural producer" and director of Raw Material Company in Dakar), and Nicola Setari (director of the Visionary Africa festival). Its scenography has been entrusted to David Adjaye and the Belgian architecture practice SumResearch. The Royal Museum for Central Africa in Tervuren is about to undergo major renovations. Over the next three years the Centre for Fine Arts will become a platform for the expertise of the museum. The two institutions will together carry out research into the contemporary presentation of ethnographic art and into how the ideal museum for African art might look. GEO-graphics is the first step in this project and marks the beginning of a long-term cooperative project. The Centre for Fine Arts has produced a publication, Visionary Africa, in three volumes; this includes the catalogues of the two exhibitions •GEO-graphics. A Map of Art Practices in Africa, Past and Present• (Volume 1) and A Useful Dream: African Photography 1960-2010 (Volume 2). The third volume is a literary dossier entitled African Renaissances, an anthology for which the journalist Bernard Magnier has selected 28 African writers who focus on the anniversary of African independence. This publication will be followed by another, special publication, Atlas/Manifesto, a compilation of intellectual and political documents about Africa's cultural heritage and contemporary cultural output.
Kader Attia, Open Your Eyes, 2010, detail, Courtesy National Museum of African Art at The Smithsonian Institute, Washington D.C.
Yoruba, Nigeria, Collection MRAC Tervuren; © MRAC Tervuren.
Masque Bamana, Mali, Collection MRAC Tervuren; photo J.-M. Vandyck, © MRAC Tervuren.
Mask Songue, Congo, collection MRAC Tervuren; foto D. Beaulieux, © MRAC Tervuren.
Mask Songue, Congo, collection MRAC Tervuren; foto D. Beaulieux, © MRAC Tervuren.
David Adjaye © Ed Reeve.
Sculpture Nkondi, kongo , D.R.Congo. J. C. Marian collection (Brussels). Wood, ritual residues, nails, mirror, kaolin (clay), h. 35 cm. |
EO.1994.16.12, collection MRAC Tervuren; photo J.-M. Vandyck, MRAC Tervuren © |
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Ceremonial heirloom hanging or ma’a, Gujarat, Central Sulawesi, Mid 15th-mid 17th Century, Collection of the Asian Civilisations Museum, Singapore – Ex Roger Hollander Collection. |
Giant Bronze Drum 2nd C. BCE Laos National Museum.
Pottery mounted woman with a lynx Tang Dynasty, 618-907 Collection of Xi’an Municipal Institute of Cultural Properties Protection and Archaeology.
Manunggul Jar, Terracotta, incised and polychromed, 890-710 BCE, Palawan, Philippines. |
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Centre for Fine Arts Together, Asia and Europe form a single gigantic continent, Eurasia, with an endless variety of landscapes, climates, fauna, and flora and an equally great diversity of peoples and cultures. For millennia past, Asia and Europe have had intense relations with each other. Both by land and by sea, commercial and political links developed between East and West. Conquerors such as Alexander the Great, Attila, and Genghis Khan set out in search of glory, wealth, and power. Marco Polo was fascinated by what he saw on his travels through Central Asia and the Far East. Vasco Da Gama and Magellan sought new routes to China. The Chinese admiral Zeng He sought diplomatic contacts with the West by sea. Two cultural factors seem to have brought East and West into contact with each other over thousands of years: trade and religion. The land route between China and Rome, which later became known as the "Silk Road", was not the only network of trade routes. Greek, Roman, and Chinese historians noted the existence of shipping routes and ports along the coasts of the Red Sea, Yemen, the Persian Gulf, India, and South-east Asia. Commodities such as tea, spices, ceramics, and jewellery and exotic products such as ivory, perfume, incense, feathers, and even living animals were often transported across thousands of kilometres. In the wake of the traders came pilgrims and religious and spiritual leaders. The great religions, including Buddhism, Hinduism, Christianity, and Islam were carried along the same trade routes. Their adherents also brought with them cultural traditions, architecture, and other art forms; these found their way throughout the continent of Asia. Trade and religion, hand in hand, made their way right across Eurasia. The A Passage to Asia exhibition throws light on 2,500 years of exchange between Asia and Europe via a selection of over 300 objects. From ancient times, it includes imposing burial urns, ritual bronze "Dongson" drums, and sophisticated jewellery in gold, glass, and semi-precious stones, alongside Buddhist and Hindu images from India and South-east Asia. The spread of Islam and Christianity led to the intensive production and trading of ivories, manuscripts, miniatures, and liturgical objects. Old maps and illustrated travellers' tales give an idea of the travelling conditions of the time. Mongol weaponry from the time of Genghis Khan conjures up images of the Silk Road and world conquest. Other highlights include expensive textiles from India, superbly woven and decorated, whose use as a means of payment persisted into the 19th century. The exhibition also presents recent discoveries made by underwater archaeology: the cargoes of shipwrecks that have preserved merchandise from the East down the centuries, as in a time capsule, untouched by human hand. The works of art in A Passage to Asia form part of the cultural heritage of 16 Asian ASEM countries. ASEM stands for "Asia-Europe Meeting", a political-economic organisation that brings together the 27 member states of the European Union and 16 Asian countries: Brunei, Cambodia, China, India, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Laos, Malaysia, Mongolia, Myanmar, Pakistan, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam. The ASEM summit takes place in Brussels on 4 and 5 October 2010. Exhibition curators are Jan Van Alphen and Kenson Kwok.
Covered Jar with Shell Departement of Museums Malaysia.
Sounding the Ocean. |
Folding screen Namban. Coll. Museu do Oriente de Lisbonne © Fondation BN P Paribas / Photo Hugo Maertens, Bruges. |
