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Kiluanji Kia Henda, ‘The Merchant of Venice’ (2010). Courtesy: Galleria Fonti, Naples, Fondazione di Venezia.
Since the Angola-Golden-Lion-Sensation in Venice we have been approached a lot of times by journalists with that one question:
“So. . . is contemporary African art the next big thing? Can we even call it a HYPE?”
The media’s huge interest in the new “Boom” led us to the idea of, instead of answering that question ourselves, forwarding it to artists, curators, directors, or advisors to ask for their personal opinion on what they think of it:
More than twenty years after the time when the West was stating with no shame that there was no contemporary art in Africa, more than twenty years after a long series of blockbuster exhibitions mostly selling the continent as an exotic brand, twenty years after the birth of landmark magazines such as Third text (London), Revue Noire (Paris) and NKA (New York), it seems that the world has little evolved. As if nothing has been done to knock down all the preconceptions and clichés shadowing the critical discourse produced by African artists, curators, critics, historians and researchers. Contemporary art from Africa had its ‘moment of glory’ in the 1990s. At the turn of the millennium, it was widely accepted and acknowledged that artistic production from Africa was not “authentic”, “traditional” and “nice looking”. It is the voice, the guts and the soul of people who have something to offer theoretically, conceptually, and aesthetically. It is a critical look at all the societies around the world by a group of intellectuals and artists who just happen to be from Africa.
Africa is the “hype”? So sweet. After all, not so long ago they would call it the Dark Continent. I guess we should be grateful to be in the light now, in case somebody did not notice that it has already been the case for a long time…
N’Goné Fall, curator and art critic
