CROSSROADS

Afrika Heritage 2000 is the biggest news from PACA in the last ten years, perhaps. It is the association’s third Biennale. It held in Enugu and Lagos (Nigeria) under the theme, Crossroads: Africa in the Twilight. The theme was specially chosen to reflect the twilight that ushers out an expired millennium while heralding the arrival of a new one.

                There were participating artists from Nigeria, South Africa, and Senegal. In the exhibition halls at the National Museum, Enugu, and Didi Museum, Lagos, about 70 works of art were shown. The artists tried in their avangardist oeuvres to address the wide-ranging theme of the exhibition, as it applied to various aspects of life, including politics, religion, history, and being. Certainly, life in its totality is a variant of creativity in Africa and at no time in history has it been more contradictory (in Africa) than in the tormented 20th Century, the acclaimed “American Century.” What with the stigma of slavery and the conflicts in values brought about by colonialism. What with the apathy occasioned by the bitter reality of neo-colonialism often christened postcolonialism.

                These are the issues the artists grappled with in the various entries reviewed by the Committee of Selection chaired by foremost African sculptor El Anatsui. Thematically, the works all put together were a brilliant tapestry into which was woven the trajectory of Africa’s history, from pre-history through the opening and pregnant months of the 3rd millennium.

                Dehors the works of art, the Biennale provided artists with other platforms on which to explore their thoughts and imagination. There was a major Commemorative Conference at the National Museum in Enugu which attracted several scholars from the arts and others disciplines. Participants presented papers in three panels which had Peter Ezeh, Jerry Buhari, and Okay Ikenegbu as chairs. The papers focused on African art and the African situation. While some here thought-provoking, others amounted to mere committal of ink to paper. In addition to the conference were roundtables in Enugu and at the National Gallery of Art, Lagos. While the roundtable in Enugu dwelt on the relationship between art and myth, the Lagos forum discussed “Re-imaging African Art in the 21st Century.” At Enugu where Dr. Chike Aniakor could not attend to deliver the lead paper, Anthropologist, Linguist and Art Critic Peter Ezeh mounted the rostrum and gave a most lurid talk about what art and myth are and are not, thus kicking off the exciting discussion. In Lagos, too, the respected Print-maker Bruce Onobrakpeya filled the vacuum left by Prof Ola Oloidi’s inability to attend and present a lead paper. Among the distinguished audience was Yukiya Kawaguchi with his suitcases, ready to depart Nigeria same evening, having been around for about 14 days as the International Commissioner and Diamond Guest for Afrika Heritage 2000.

                Kawaguchi had visited Nigeria in 1991. During that trip, he rented a Toyota car from Briscoe in Lagos and had a chauffeur drive him to different parts of the country. On some occasions during that trip, Olu Amoda the master of metal, drove Kawaguchi around in his Mercedes Benz to show him interesting sites in and around Lagos. The Japanese Curator also made some acquaintances, one of the major ones, perhaps, being Prof. Dele Jegede, formerly of the University of Lagos.

                Kawaguchi’s “second coming” was more exciting, as he himself admitted to a few people. He was able to visit more places this time; he interacted with more people and was able to appreciate better African hospitality and all it encodes. And why not, when he opted to make some of his domestic travels in commercial buses; when he alighted at every opportunity to take pictures upon pictures of local people and scenery even in the market places; when he occasionally rode on byke-taxis popularly known as “Okada”; or  when he tarried to eat roasted corn and  local pear on the road to Uche Okeke’s Asele Institute – all in the company of some PACA officials.

                Not only that. The Commemorative Lectures he gave at the National Museum, Enugu, University of Benin, Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, and the National Gallery of Art, Lagos, were all well attended. They gave him an opportunity to share his blossoming experience in African art and aesthetics with African audiences. The discussions also brought him face to face with the realities in the African art landscape which are far-removed from the alluring smokescreen of the Eurocentric DakArt where he had served as International Commissioner twice – in 1998 and 2000. He once told the Senegalese painter Sidy Seck and me while we were sitting in a taxi trapped in a traffic snarl in Lagos: “Ici je vois un petit exposition, mais plus Africaine qu’au Dakar. Ici, peu d’argent, peutetre, mais beaucoup d’ambition!”

                I could neither agree nor disagree, having not been opportuned to see the Dakar event. But I remember Sidy Seck, nodding his head like a pertly mechanical bird and saying “Oui! Je suis bien d’accord.” Yet I must concede that if Afrika Heritage must grow to become an authentic African biennale, “beaucoup d’argent,” to the contrary, would have to come in to amplify the courage and perseverance already exhibited by the officials of PACA.

                Indeed Afrika Heritage 2000 remains a challenge by PACA to itself in several ways. Not only has it opened the association’s membership to a greater number of non-Nigerian artists, it has occasioned some standards below which the association can no longer operate. For instance, the exhibition catalogue was more elaborate than those of the previous editions with two critical essays by the Curators Chike Aniakor and C. Krydz Ikwuemesi. Also, there was a major book published by the National Gallery to commemorate the Biennale. It was the first of its kind to be produced by PACA, with Chike Aniakor and C. Krydz Ikwuemesi as editors. There were essays by Hamdi El Altar, Peter Ezeh, Nicole Guez, Norbert Aas, Eddie Chambers, Nkiru Nzegwu, Carolyn Maitland, Yukiya Kawaguchi, Everlyn Nicodemus, besides those of the editors. Excepting one or two, all the essays focused on the propagation, study, and interpretation of African art both inside and outside the continent. Not mere spilling of ink, certainly. The book re-echoed in strong terms PACA’s singular song in the last decade: that Africa must awaken from the slumber and address the world on its own terms through its rich arts and cultures and all other possible means.

                As scientific and technological breakthroughs continue to redraw the physical and psychological contours of the world, it is important for all peoples – especially the not-too-dominant cultures – to keep one foot on their identity if the other must be swept off by the madding wind of globalisation. This has been the primary message of Afrika Heritage since its inception in 1995. The 2000 editions is the first to truly convey that message. But Africa as I see it today seems bent on jumping on the globalisation train not just with both feet but on all fours. In art, religion, everything, ancient landmarks and canons are being removed to make way for extraneous paradigms. Rather than pursue her destiny according to her own potentials, Africa is engaged in the wholesale importation of alien values and moral-culture codes. Caught between the crossfire of the Africanisation of the religion of Europe and the massive vulgarisation of art, Africa is loosing grip of her own soul. A function of neo-colonialism, perhaps. The result is the apparent stagnation of the society. There are no new frontiers except those discovered and sanctioned by the First World and handed down to the others. This is the sickening feeling that overwhelms one when one contemplates most African institutions, including those of art in present times. You could see it in some paintings and so-called installations.

                Without being flippant and without discounting the value or authenticity of installations and its other cousins as veritable art, I must compare them to the prayer of the postmodern Christians in Africa when they claim to “speak in tongues.” To the acolyte or the uninitiated, the spoken “tongues” are mere gibberish as long as they fail to enrich his spiritual experience. Even St. Paul concurs that if you “in a tongue utter speech that is not intelligible, how will any one know what is said? For you will be speaking into the air. There are doubtless many different languages in the world, and none is without meaning; but if I do not know the meaning of the language, I shall be a foreigner to the speaker and the speaker a foreigner to me.”

                Contemporary installations, performances, happenings, and other new fangled zeitgeists in Africa are, like all other forms of West-sanctioned aesthetics, but a sop to Western hegemony. If they harbour anything positive in relation to African art tradition, then it is clear that they live ahead of their time and have little or no relevance to contemporary social realities in Africa. This is without prejudice to those artists who insist on this style and to its undisputed claim to artistry. The pupported uninspiring reaction of local south Africans to the thematic and paradigmatic thrust of the 2nd Johannesburg Biennale can be a measure of the appropriateness of value of the so-called West-sanctioned aesthetics in relation to the sociopolitical and artistic realties in contemporary (neo-colonial) Africa. 

                Indeed, Africa stands at a crossroads. Old problems have not abated. New ones are rearing their monstrous heads. The South African artist Jennifer Ord captured the situation most vividly in the symbolic work she presented at Afrika Heritage 2000. It consisted in a hard file jacket holding five miniature charred-looking papers. On the papers she had inscribed simple symbols at different spots. She called the work Crosscodes – her own attempt at interrogating the major stages in African history and development. As one flips through those charred pages, they do not only confront one with conflicts that abound under one’s nose, they also seem to aver that the solution to the present dissonance lies in the very ruins of it, that the only way out of the crossroads may be to master the crossroads and leave bold footprint there – everywhere -- by all means.          

C. Krydz Ikwuemesi, painter and theorist, is an art teacher at the University of Nigeria. He is the Founding Editor of Letter from Africa, President of The Art Republic and member, Administrative Council of Congress for Cultural Action in West Africa.