“Ex Africa”, “rewrite history” between contemporary art and ancient African arts
“Ex Africa” at the Quai Branly museum.
The work “Untitled” (2020) by Théo Mercier shows a bunch of masks broken during their journey between Africa and France.
© Siegfried Forster / RFI
Text by: Siegfried Forster Follow
11 min
The 150 works in the new exhibition at the Musée du quai Branly in Paris promise "an unprecedented visual dialogue" between the 34 contemporary artists and the ancient arts of Africa.
The digital opening for all of "Ex Africa - African presences in art today" is scheduled for February 21, pending the reopening of museums.
Interview with Philippe Dagen, art critic, professor of art history and curator of the exhibition.
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: Many exhibitions have already addressed the relationship between contemporary art and Africa,
Magiciens de la Terre
in 1989 until the new vision of the world and the art of
Afriques Capitales
in 2017
.
How does your exhibition offer an unprecedented visual dialogue on African presences in contemporary art
?
Philippe Dagen
:
I think it is new insofar as it is absolutely not a question of taking a panorama of current artistic creation in Africa.
It is about rewriting the history of the relationship between the ancient arts of Africa until the colonial period, and contemporary art.
The exhibition begins in the 1980s and has a number of works dating from 2020 and some even from 2021.
The title
Ex
Africa
and the selection of works by such different artists such as Léonce Raphael Agbodjelou, Jean-Michel Alberola, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Orlan or AR Penck, do they follow an aesthetic, artistic, geographical, political, historical approach
?
The exhibition answers all of this.
It clearly responds to a historical approach insofar as I want to undo the relationship of subjugation that has long linked the ancient arts of Africa to the western avant-garde arts.
In the latter, the arts of Africa - like, moreover, of Oceania or the Amerindian arts - were considered exclusively as species of reservoirs of formal ideas, without any consideration either for their own meaning, or for political or religious or moral which were theirs, nor for the conditions in which these objects were found in public and private collections in Europe, initially, and in the United States in a second time.
From this point of view, it is an exhibition which has a historical character and also a political character, since all the works are considered from exactly this single point of view: their proximity, their complicity, sometimes their metamorphosis in relation to what Africa has given humanity in matters of sculpture, representation of the human figure, etc.
View of the installations by Romuald Hazoumé (“No Return”, 2019) and Pascale Marthine Tayou (“Eséka”, 2020) in the “Ex Africa” exhibition.
© Siegfried Forster / RFI
What do artists like Myriam Mihindou, born in Libreville, Gabon, and Gloria Friedmann, born in Kronach, Germany, or between Romuald Hazoumé, born in Porto Novo, Benin, and Annette Messager, born in Berck, have in common? , in France
?
The fact that - in a very different way - they looked at these [African] cultures, looked at them with the will to understand them.
Then they drifted from these examples in completely different directions.
The work of Myriam Mihindou is undoubtedly one of those that is most explicitly carried by a reflection on the slave trade, slavery, the way in which populations were forcibly trained in the Americas.
Romuald Hazoumé's work is just as political, because he talks about migrants and the death of migrants at sea. Each time, the report is held with forms and often also very precise artistic references.
In the case of Romuald Hazoumé who is himself of Yoruba origin, the spiral shape or that of the snake that he uses [in his installation
No return, note
], has a meaning very strongly anchored in mythologies.
When Annette Messager brings together a large female figure inspired by [Ivorian] statuary Attié and a Barbie doll that she seems to be breastfeeding, the African breastfeeding the Westerner, I believe that, allegorically, the relationship at play in this work of art is quite easy to decrypt.
What surprised you the most while preparing for this exhibition
?
What deeply pleased me is first of all the fact that the artists all immediately accepted, without hesitation, to embark on this adventure and for some and some to create absolutely new works.
Sometimes even quite far from what is expected of their work.
For example, with sculptural works, Gloria Friedmann is very far from the video works that we know of her.
When they came to install their works, for example Sarkis, they immediately had a feeling of familiarity between them and between their works.
The dialogues work in all directions and basically everyone speaks in their own language, but they agree to speak of Africa.
“Attye avec Barbie” (2020), work by Annette Messager in the exhibition “Ex Africa - African presences in art today”.
© Siegfried Forster / RFI
In 2017, the exhibition
Art / Africa, the new workshop
,
the Louis Vuitton Foundation was structured in two parts, a section devoted to the collection of billionaire Bernard Arnault, the other reserved for the rich collection of the heir Jean Pigozzi .
The whole gave the impression of seeing appearing today new demarcation lines created by the greatest collectors.
Here, it is simply a matter of creating a common space in which the artists - whatever their family origin, their age, their sex - can meet.
From this point of view, we chose a museography full of exhausts, enclosing at least the space so that there is this circulation.
As to the question that current African art has become something more desirable for a number of collectors, one can always wonder about the reasons that make it desirable for a collector.
Are there some opportunism, perhaps even other speculative reasons?
For now, given the ignorance and contempt by which African art has long been held, from colonial times until the 1980s, with very rare exceptions you did not see African artists in the field of contemporary art.
So, the first thing is that we now know, recognize and collect them.
And by collecting them, you allow an exhibition like this to take place.
Then another question will arise which is less that of European or American public or private collections than of African public or private collections.
There, there will indeed be an effort to be made so that African artists today have more venues than they currently have to show their works on the continent itself.
For now, there is the Zinsou Foundation and a few happy exceptions, but hopefully there will be many more in the times to come.
View of the “Ex Africa” exhibition through the work “Trophée” (2020) by artist Myriam Mihindou.
© Siegfried Forster / RFI
Your exhibition takes place at the
Quai Branly
museum , very concerned by the issue of the restitution of African cultural heritage. In their
report
, Bénédicte Savoy and Felwine Sarr called for a new relational ethic, a new relationship with Africa.
Is this exhibition part of this process
?
This exhibition is not part of any political approach in the sense that it would have been inspired or in correlation with any approach of any government, neither African, nor French.
Originally, it was a personal project, which then found a very favorable response to the Musée du quai Branly.
If there is a political dimension, it is a dimension almost more of political ethics than of administration or foreign policy.
You are an art critic, but also a professor of contemporary art history at the University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne. Today, what do students learn in their university studies about African presences in art today
?
I am not the only one at the University of Paris 1 to speak of contemporary African arts.
We are several teachers.
We have put in place a relatively solid base of studies.
However, it is recent and we had to fight to get a first teaching post ten years ago.
We can hope that in the not too distant future there will be others.
But, if you want me to say that both the ancient arts and the current arts of Africa are very insufficiently represented in higher education in France, I tell you immediately and moreover with the greatest pleasure.
There is a considerable recruitment and training effort to be made.
At the present time, it is still a very good sign, each year we have between half a dozen and a dozen students who choose to specialize in questions of contemporary art history. African.
We can hope that some will become conservative-teachers.
We are at the very beginning of this process.
And I think I can say that Paris 1 is the only university in France, apart from a colleague at the University of Rennes, who, in a very proactive way, really emphasized the creation of a department.
“Untitled (Demoiselles de Porto-Novo series (2012)”, work by Léonce Raphael Agbodjelou, in the “Ex Africa” exhibition at the Quai Branly museum. © Siegfried Forster / RFI
►
Ex Africa - African presences in art today
, exhibition at the Quai Branly museum, in Paris.
The digital opening (free and accessible to all) of the exhibition is scheduled for February 21 at 8:30 p.m. on Culturebox, Channel 19 of TNT, and the france.tv platform.
It will then be available in replay and on social networks.
As soon as the museums in France reopen, the exhibition will be open until June 27, 2021.
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