Postcolonial Thoughts by Christopher Hutchinson

Postcolonial Thoughts: Notes on honesty in an artist’s practice

June 25, 2015 | 0 Comments

by Christopher Hutchinson



sculptor/model maker Joe Fig http://uploads.neatorama.com/images/posts/989/67/67989/1387704872-0.jpg

Ownership of Material

There is a tendency by artists to believe that they have ownership privileges given to them due to the fact that they have been using a certain material for a long period of time. Artists come to believe this delusion when their work has not yet achieved an honest dialogue. Instead, they rely heavily on specializing in a material or a specific skill. When one’s work is in this underdeveloped state, everything appears to threaten his/her creative process. This artist will often have a bunch of “if I had the right ______” or “if I could afford______” and especially “I have been using this for years now–how can someone be using this material without my consent?” The truth is that it was never their material to begin with, and everyone has access to it. To believe that because you ordered this material from some catalogue or Sam Flax that somehow this is your unique material/process is just not valid. To what end are you seeking ownership of a specific medium? Many artists can afford better materials and still not achieve an honest dialogue within themselves about the work.



http://www.independent.co.uk/incoming/article9756607.ece/alternates/w620/38-paint-gt.jpg

This is not encouragement to go and appropriate your fellow artists’ work materials, methods, processes, or ideas. In fact, it’s the opposite. The time spent appropriating is time spent away from the honest work necessary for an artist’s own development. This is where the focus of ownership should be, not on a particular material or skill. In many ways appropriation is an avoidance of the diligent work necessary to become a master of one’s own narrative. Each and every material added to your piece either clarifies or masks that narrative. That should be the primary concern with choosing a medium/material–not because it’s shiny, red, large, or because it’s been used it for a number of years. The question is: how well does this material/skill clarify this current narrative?

Ownership of Narrative

Another major illusion by many artists is the ownership of a narrative so broad that it cannot be owned. These artists have been doing this specific subject matter for years but only achieve getting swallowed up into a larger narrative that has nothing to do with them at all. This is easily uncovered by challenging why they are interested in this topic at all. After the challenge it soon becomes readily apparent that this was merely a reactionary or conversational interest that can only be used in decoration. There is no way to craft your own narrative out of something like slavery, jazz, identity, and the sensationalized black body. If used, these narratives usually end up in a very generic commemorative type of work that references external commodity–not an artist’s own interest.

An artist’s job is to make a narrative clear, as well as present, responding to this moment. Certainly artists must practice their craft, often by copying the masters. But then he/she must use that understanding to push the past to this present. “This work reminds me of _________” is not a compliment. It means that artist has not done enough to separate and master his/her own narrative.



http://media.mlive.com/chronicle/news_impact/photo/9195824-large.jpg This Nelson painting is called “Safe at Home.” It’s part of a collection of the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in Kansas City, Mo. KC’s Jackie Robinson is depicted sliding under the tag of Cleveland’s Quincy Troupee

Ownership of the figure

Again a serious delusion and hypocrisy occurs when a painter paints an image that is not his/her own. The irony is that these same artists, because they use technical skill to appropriate the image from photo to painting, believe they have achieved a more honest dialogue than a Richard Prince. In truth Richard Prince’s direct appropriation is more honest than the copy of an image painted and decorated with one’s so-called individual style. While your technical skill may place that image out of copyright law danger–that narrative does not belong to you.



Eduardo Kobra: Tupac and Biggie
https://c4.staticflickr.com/8/7312/11377371203_0fcac63794_b.jpg

When an artist begins an artwork in which an image or narrative does not belong to them, it is impossible to make that image or narrative, through said artist’s own manipulation and style, into honest ones. The artist has now created a massive obstacle to his/her own truth. Many artists who practice this never actually get to that truth, not recognizing that they themselves are the cause of their own stagnation. They mostly succeed at making knick knacks of popular iconography: horses, chickens, American flags and the like.

Honesty

Artists that develop their own honest narrative are not paranoid about fellow artists coming into their studios. They are not paranoid about people appropriating their technique, because it will be so obvious that the appropriator must cease and desist. Even if the appropriator doesn’t feel any guilt, he/she cannot sustain their art-making anyway because that dialogue was never theirs. Many artists do not continue to create after art school because all along the way technique, material, and imagery got in the way of their ability to access their own narrative. Artists that ignore their personal narrative are doomed to reduce their work to notions and gestures, something that looks like art but only succeeds as empty decoration.



 
Christopher Hutchinson is an accomplished Jamaican conceptual artist, professor and contributor to the art community as a writer, critic and founder of the nonprofit Smoke School of Art. He is a Professor of Art at Atlanta Metropolitan State College and has been featured as a lecturer including prestigious engagements at University of Alabama and the Auburn Avenue Research Library. For two decades, Chris has been a practicing artist. His works have been exhibited in internationally recognized institutions including City College New York (CUNY) and featured at the world’s leading international galleries such as Art Basel Miami. He has always had an innate passion for creating spaces where Africans and people of African descent contribute to an inclusive contemporary dialogue—ever evolving, not reflexive but pioneering. This requires challenging the rubric of the canon of art history, a systemic space of exclusion for the Other: women and non-Whites, and where necessary he rewrites it. He received his Master of Fine Arts Degree in Painting from Savannah College of Art & Design, Atlanta and his Bachelor of Arts Degree from the University of Alabama in Huntsville, Alabama.

Christopher Hutchinson Writes on Kehinde Wiley

Our Front Porch: Would Atlanta Ben­e­fit from a Post­colo­nial Dialogue?

Writ­ten By Christo­pher Hutchin­son on Jan­u­ary 24, 2012 in Our Front Porch for Burnaway.org



Art credit: Kehinde Wiley (Amer­i­can, born 1977), from the series, The World Stage: Brazil, oil on can­vas, col­lec­tion of the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, 2010.8. Image cour­tesy the High Museum of Art.

What is Kehinde Wiley really saying?

The idea for BURNAWAY orig­i­nated from a front-porch con­ver­sa­tion about the need for more dia­logue about local art. Please wel­come Christo­pher Hutchin­son, today’s guest writer of Our Front Porch.

I vis­ited the Atlanta Con­tem­po­rary Art Cen­ter dur­ing the National Black Arts Fes­ti­val last year, and when I sur­veyed Melvin Edwards’s exhibit Inside & Out, I was stunned. Really!? Is this sup­posed to be the most con­tem­po­rary African Amer­i­can artist work­ing in the Atlanta art scene? While I enjoyed the exhibit, I was dis­ap­pointed that the most con­tem­po­rary dis­cus­sion you could have about Edwards’s work would be based on a con­cept that is over 60 years old—formal analy­sis circa 1950.

But, depend­ing on your per­spec­tive, Edwards’s exhibit may indeed be viewed as rad­i­cally advanced in com­par­i­son to the anti­quated African Amer­i­can art often found at Ham­monds House Museum. The art typ­i­cally pre­sented at Ham­monds House con­tin­ues to roman­ti­cize con­cepts crys­tal­lized in the Harlem Renais­sance, which hap­pened over 80 years ago. Nos­tal­gia is being per­pet­u­ated, and a liv­ing, evolv­ing cul­ture is mar­gin­al­ized, bot­tled up, and pack­aged for sale. We’ve grown up on Good Times, but why are there still African Amer­i­can artists whose high­est aspi­ra­tion is becom­ing “The Black Picasso of the Ghetto”—stuck attempt­ing to fig­ure out syn­thetic cubism. Aaron Dou­glas fig­ured it out a long time ago.

Dis­cussing a work strictly in for­mal aca­d­e­mic terms—line, color, form, com­po­si­tion, value—carries with it a con­scious uni­ver­sal lan­guage that ends up being the edit­ing of cul­ture. The post­colo­nial dia­logue con­cern­ing African Amer­i­can art is out­dated and diluted. This prob­lem is global and is also one of the major con­tribut­ing fac­tors for the archaic state of the Atlanta art scene. When will African Amer­i­can art enter into an avant-garde dia­logue in step with cur­rent times, instead of always work­ing in retrospect?

So much of con­tem­po­rary art today is con­nected to con­tem­po­rary philosophy—philosophies that are often French and the­o­ries of art that are con­stantly evolv­ing, but deriv­ing most of their power from Mar­cel Duchamp. In order to have a truly con­tem­po­rary African Amer­i­can art dia­logue, we have to be just as flu­ent in mod­ern and con­tem­po­rary black/African Amer­i­can phi­los­o­phy, such as the writ­ings of James Bald­win, Frantz Fanon, Fred Moten, and Stu­art Hall.

Are Atlanta’s insti­tu­tions of learn­ing equipped with the resources for teach­ing stu­dents how to decon­struct African Amer­i­can art through the lens of these philoso­phies? Through my own expe­ri­ence as a Jamaican/American artist and pro­fes­sor of art at Atlanta Met­ro­pol­i­tan Col­lege, and after receiv­ing my MFA from Savan­nah Col­lege of Art and Design, these prob­lems and ques­tions are present in my own prac­tice as well as teach­ing. Omis­sion and inclu­sion into the his­tory depends on whether we have an ade­quate vocab­u­lary for crit­i­cally ana­lyz­ing African Amer­i­can art.

Post­colo­nial­ism envi­sions a men­tal space where peo­ple affected by colo­nial­ism may return to an orig­i­nal con­text of their own his­tory, in one’s own lan­guage. Put plainly, post­colo­nial­ism takes the aspects that are impor­tant to a cul­ture, from that culture’s per­spec­tive, and uses them to build that cul­ture up.

The dia­logue has made a lit­tle progress in Amer­ica. Thelma Golden and the Stu­dio Museum of Harlem, for exam­ple, has engaged in the dia­logue by intro­duc­ing some the most famous black/African Amer­i­can artists of late, one of the most notable being Kehinde Wiley. Wiley uses a West­ern visual nar­ra­tive to por­tray the spec­ta­cle of hip-hop, the spec­ta­cle of black­ness, in a roman­tic light.

Using hip-hop, slav­ery, and art his­tory to point out the omis­sion of Africans and African Amer­i­cans from his­tory is not actu­ally post­colo­nial­ism. It just points out a redun­dancy: colo­nial­ism exists. Can we truly say that Kehinde Wiley is using his own lan­guage, or is he using the exotic nature of hip-hop and spe­cific links to art his­tory as an “in” to the con­tem­po­rary art scene? Using the lan­guage of acad­e­mia has been a deci­sive choice for African Amer­i­can artists. The African Amer­i­can artist’s con­flict is “how do I edit my work just enough for it to be accepted into what­ever institution?”

The nos­tal­gic pack­ag­ing of African Amer­i­can cul­ture is not just restricted to exhibits at the Ham­monds House Museum. I found the same ideals fused into Rad­cliffe Bailey’s exhibit at the High Museum. To its credit, it was a truly suc­cess­ful exhi­bi­tion that received a great deal of acclaim and press. And over­all it was ben­e­fi­cial to the Atlanta art scene. Nonethe­less, with the excep­tion of a few pieces such as Wind­ward Coast and Cere­bral Cav­erns, the exhibit was once again nos­tal­gia at its finest. Base­ball fields, gui­tars, music, and ref­er­ences to Satchel Paige were all pack­aged into large-scale mem­o­ra­bilia, again mar­gin­al­iz­ing the African Amer­i­can experience.

Char­lene Teters is one artist that has embraced post­colo­nial­ism. She reclaims her Native Amer­i­can cul­ture from a colo­nial aes­thetic and returns to the rit­ual prac­tices of her native tribe. She does not attempt to fit into the mold of a West­ern aes­thetic or nar­ra­tive. Teters could care less about the for­mal ele­ments. She does not use a West­ern nar­ra­tive to engage the viewer. Her intent is to destroy the exotic nos­tal­gia present in Native Amer­i­can cul­ture. As a result of her work, many “Indian” mas­cots and imi­ta­tions of Native Amer­i­can cul­ture have been eradicated.

My ques­tions for BURNAWAY’s Front Porch:

What can be done to move past nos­tal­gic blackness?

Does Atlanta have the power and resources to be at the helm of the post­colo­nial dialogue?

What cul­tural lex­i­con or lex­i­cons are present now in Atlanta? How can art relate and incor­po­rate these languages?

 
Christopher Hutchinson is an accomplished Jamaican conceptual artist, professor and contributor to the art community as a writer, critic and founder of the nonprofit Smoke School of Art. He is a Professor of Art at Atlanta Metropolitan State College and has been featured as a lecturer including prestigious engagements at University of Alabama and the Auburn Avenue Research Library. For two decades, Chris has been a practicing artist. His works have been exhibited in internationally recognized institutions including City College New York (CUNY) and featured at the world’s leading international galleries such as Art Basel Miami. He has always had an innate passion for creating spaces where Africans and people of African descent contribute to an inclusive contemporary dialogue—ever evolving, not reflexive but pioneering. This requires challenging the rubric of the canon of art history, a systemic space of exclusion for the Other: women and non-Whites, and where necessary he rewrites it. He received his Master of Fine Arts Degree in Painting from Savannah College of Art & Design, Atlanta and his Bachelor of Arts Degree from the University of Alabama in Huntsville, Alabama.

Website: Christopher Hutchinson

Postcolonial Moderism by Professor Chika Okeke-Agulu

On Thursday June 18th, Goethe Institut present a new book  on art and decolonization “Postcolonial Modernism” written by prominent African art scholar, Chika Okeke-Agulu.

Postcolonial Modernism chronicles the emergence of artistic modernism in Nigeria in the heady years surrounding political independence in 1960, before the outbreak of civil war in 1967.

Chika Okeke-Agulu is a professor of African Art at Princeton University. In this new book, he traces the artistic, intellectual, and critical networks in several Nigerian cities: particularly Zaria, for its major role in modern art from Nigeria. It was there a group of students formed the “Zaria Art Society” in 1958 and inaugurated postcolonial modernism in Nigeria.

Okeke-Agulu explores how these young artists were inspired by the rhetoric and ideologies of decolonization and nationalism in the early and mid twentieth century, and later, by advocates of negritude and pan-Africanism. They translated the experiences of decolonization into distinctive postcolonial modernism that has continued to inform the work of major Nigerian artists.

The book will be reviewed by Toyin Akinosho.

Date: Thursday, June 18th 2015
Time: 3pm – 6pm

Venue: Goethe-Institut Lagos, 4th Floor, Lagos City Hall, 30 Catholic Mission street, Lagos Island.
The book presentation event is free.

Postcolonial Modernism cover was designed at Duke University Press and the cover image is Demas Nwoko’s painting. The book is currently available at the Center for Contemporary Art (CCALagos) Library, in Yaba for interested readers. Dewas Nwoko is one of the founding members of Zaria Art Society.

Buy a copy: Postcolonial Modernism

Written by one of the foremost scholars of African art and featuring 129 color images, Postcolonial Modernism chronicles the emergence of artistic modernism in Nigeria in the heady years surrounding political independence in 1960, before the outbreak of civil war in 1967. Chika Okeke-Agulu traces the artistic, intellectual, and critical networks in several Nigerian cities. Zaria is particularly important, because it was there, at the Nigerian College of Arts, Science and Technology, that a group of students formed the Art Society and inaugurated postcolonial modernism in Nigeria. As Okeke-Agulu explains, their works show both a deep connection with local artistic traditions and the stylistic sophistication that we have come to associate with twentieth-century modernist practices. He explores how these young Nigerian artists were inspired by the rhetoric and ideologies of decolonization and nationalism in the early- and mid-twentieth century and, later, by advocates of negritude and pan-Africanism. They translated the experiences of decolonization into a distinctive "postcolonial modernism" that has continued to inform the work of major Nigerian artists.

Review

"In this work of prodigious scholarship, Chika Okeke-Agulu draws on a trove of previously unexamined archival resources and subjects the artistic and literary production of Nigeria's pioneer modernists to critical analysis. Redirecting our understanding of the modern art movement in Nigeria, his book will interest a broad range of scholars, including those studying comparative modernism, global art, visual culture, history, and literature. This groundbreaking work affirms Okeke-Agulu as a rigorous critical thinker and interdisciplinary scholar." "With this impressive book, Chika Okeke-Agulu has written an expansive, incisive, and dazzling account of the production of a new spirit of postcolonial artistic modernity in Nigeria at the denouement of colonialism in the 1950s. Postcolonial Modernism: Art and Decolonization in Twentieth-Century Nigeria is perhaps the most important book of its kind to appear in years. In succinct and lucid language, and lavishly illustrated pages, it offers a vigorous analysis of the artistic forces that lend a new understanding of the complex formations of global art history."

About the Author

Chika Okeke-Agulu is an artist, curator, and Associate Professor in the Department of Art & Archaeology and the Center for African American Studies at Princeton University. He is a coauthor of "Contemporary African Art since 1980" and coeditor (with Okwui Enwezor and Salah M. Hassan) of "Nka: Journal of Contemporary African Art," also published by Duke University Press.

MUMUYE SPIRIT FIGURE TARABA STATE NIGERIA

Mumuye artists are famous for their wooden statues known as iagalagana.

Until the 1970s most Mumuye sculpture was misattributed to their neighbours the Chamba. With no royal system, the Mumuye are organized by age classes and choose a village chief who is assisted by a council of elders. The vabong secret society regulates Mumuye religious life. Entry into the society is achieved through initiation ceremonies. The initiation of boys begins at the age of ten
and takes place in a tsafi hut, where the statues are kept.

Even though the Mumuye show great respect for the sculls of the ancestors, their statuary does not depict ancestors, but rather incarnates tutelary spirits. Yet, statues reinforce the status and prestige of their owner who, as he holds them in his hands, has a dialogue with them and thus ensures his personal protection. The functions of sculptural figures are varied. They were used by both diviners and healers, whose professions included diagnosis and cure of ill health and other kinds of misfortunes. The figures were used to greet rainmaker's clients, guard the house, serve as owner's confidant, and in trials when men in dispute swear on the statue, which they must kiss. Elders used them to reinforce their status in society. It was not unusual for a figure simultaneously to serve two or more functions.

The size of statues varies from 20 centimeters to 1.6 meters. Mumuye figures are highly abstracted, perhaps in part because they invoke forms of human and supernatural authority. The statue may have added elements: beads, belts, bracelets, chains, leather laces, ropes or braided vegetable matter, brass wires, or cowrie shells. The statues’ principal characteristic, unique in African art, is the openwork between the body and the arms, which forms a scroll or a spiral around the slender, cylindrical bust. The legs are usually angular, and ribbon-like arms wrap around the torso with elbows clearly marked. The heads may display a coiffure in the form of a crest. Scarification on face and body is delineated and nasal septum may be perforated for the insertion of a short section of a stalk of Guinea corn.

A number of such sculptures have large ears with pierced and distended earlobes for the insertion of plugs. The Mumuye distinguish the gender of the figures on the basis of the shape of the ears; only Mumuye women distend their earlobes. This may be the only clue to determining the gender of a
figure in the older examples.

Sources: Zyama.com

MUMUYE SPIRIT FIGURE TARABA STATE NIGERIA
Spirit Figurine
MATERIAL: Wood, pigment, fibre, textile.

DIMENSIONS: Height 96 cm, Length/depth 17 cm, Width 18 cm
Weight: 1708 g

Provenance | Joe Pollitt Collection

NYTimes Article

Portrait of a Lady

Source: NY TIMES

JUNE 24, 2015

“Agaracha,’’ 1974. Credit J. D. ’Okhai Ojeikere/Gallery Fifty One

By TEJU COLE

A photographer working in a commercial studio in West Africa in the 20th century had a straightforward task: to please his clients. In that sense, the Malian photographer Seydou Keïta was — like his father, who worked as a blacksmith, carpenter, mechanic and electrician, among other jobs — a craftsman. He was paid by the public to make pictures. But like his esteemed Malian compatriot Malick Sidibé, Mama Casset of Senegal and Joseph Moise Agbodjelou of Benin, he produced such fine work that we now consider him a great African artist. These master photographers gave us panoramas of life in Bamako, Dakar and Porto-Novo, a vivid record of individual people, largely shorn of their names and stories but irrepressibly alive. Here are good clothes gracefully cut, glowing skin, beautifully coifed hair, polished shoes: all the familiar markers of a person taking pride in his or her appearance. Here’s someone who looks witty, here’s another who looks querulous, another who’s modest, or vain, or sweet. There we see a renegade bra strap slipping off a shoulder, there a large laughing man with a baby, a woman in a bathing suit, youths partying at night with their Afros, bell-bottoms, precious LPs and endless reserves of cool.

These photographs are ripostes to the anthropological images of ‘‘natives’’ made by Europeans in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Those photographs, in which the subjects had no say in how they were seen, did much to shape the Western world’s idea of Africans. Something changed when Africans began to take photographs of one another: You can see it in the way they look at the camera, in the poses, the attitude. The difference between the images taken by colonialists or white adventurers and those made for the sitter’s personal use is especially striking in photographs of women. In the former, women are being looked at against their will, captive to a controlling gaze. In the latter, they look at themselves as in a mirror, an activity that always involves seriousness, levity and an element of wonder.

A portrait of this kind is a visual soliloquy. Consider, for instance, one of Keïta’s most famous pictures, now called the Odalisque. A woman reclines in a long dress with fine floral patterning on a bed with a checked bedspread. Her head scarf is polka-dotted. The bed is placed in front of a wall, which is draped with a paisley cloth. And even her face is marked with cicatrices. Then we notice, emerging from this swirling field — a profusion of pattern that brings to mind Matisse at his most inventive — her delicate hands and feet, dark but subtly shaded; the right arm on which she rests her head; her narrowed eyes. Her look is self-possessed rather than seductive. She’s looking ahead but not at the camera. It is the look of someone who is thinking about herself, simultaneously outward and inward. The image challenges and delights the viewer with its complicated two-dimensional game.

‘‘Untitled’’ (Odalisque), 1957. Credit Seydou Keïta/SKPEAC via C.A.A.C. — the Pigozzi Collection

Keïta’s and Sidibé’s oeuvres make me think of August Sander’s record of German people in their various occupations in the years between the World Wars, or of Mike Disfarmer’s thousands of portraits taken in Heber Springs, Ark.: faces peering out of the past, unknown to us but as expressive and intense as those we love. Keïta was not directly influenced by these photographers, nor by any of the conventions of photography in the West. In an interview he gave the French gallerist André Magnin in the mid-’90s, he said: ‘‘I’ve heard that in your country you have old photographs that are like mine. Well, I’ve never met any foreign photographers, nor seen their photos.’’ By his own account, he was an original. Looking at the body of his work, we become conscious of implied community, customs and connections, a world that is perhaps now irretrievable.

Malick Sidibé — the younger of these two photographers — made many fine portraits as well, generally working with hipper, less formal poses than Keïta did and shooting more often at night and at parties. There’s one portrait of Sidibé’s in particular that I’m always drawn to. A woman stands alone in a sleeveless blouse and an ankle-length skirt. She has sandals on her feet, a pendulous earring in each ear and hair woven close to her scalp. Her address to the camera is direct. No, she’s not quite alone: A man’s shoulder and arm are visible just to her left. We also see his right shoe and half of his right leg. But the rest of him has been dodged away in the printing of the picture.

‘‘Je veux être seule,’’ 1979. Credit Malick Sidibé, from Jack Shainman Gallery

On the brown paper border that frames the photograph are written the words: “Je veux être seule. 1979 — Malick Sidibé.” On the right border are Sidibé’s signature and the date 2009. I suppose Sidibé signed this photograph in 2009 and wrote down what the woman told him 30 years earlier, before he had printed the photograph: “Je veux être seule” (‘‘I want to be alone’’). This young woman, like many others in Sidibé’s work, has decided her own image. The photo’s peculiarity is the mark of her authority.

I love the West African women in the photographs by Keïta and Sidibé, some of whom are of my mother’s generation and the generation just before, women to whom a university education was widely available, and for whom working outside the home was a given. In West African photography of this period, there are many photographs of friendship among women, many photographs of women with their families, many of young women with their young men. And there are photos of women alone, some of whom perhaps might also have told the photographer, “Je veux être seule.”

CreditSeydou Keïta/SKPEAC via C.A.A.C. — the Pigozzi Collection

The confidence visible in photographs like Keïta’s and Sidibé’s can be evoked even when we don’t see the sitters’ faces. J. D. ’Okhai Ojeikere, who was born in Nigeria in 1930 and did most of his work there, understood the expressive possibilities of women’s heads, particularly those crowned with the marvelous array of hairstyles common to many Nigerian ethnic groups. These photographs, made in the years following the country’s independence from Britain in 1960, record evanescent sculptures that are both performance art and temporary body modification. Most of these heads are turned away from us. Has the back of a head ever been more evocative than in these photographs? Ojeikere made hundreds of them, and each head seems to convey an attitude, and even a glance. On the streets of Lagos today, such heads, necks, hairstyles and elaborately constructed and tied head wraps can still be seen, tableaux vivants of assertive elegance.

Photographs by Keïta, Sidibé, Agbodjelou and Ojeikere are united by the period in which they were made as well as by geographical and cultural proximity to one another. There seems to me a correspondence between the energy of these pictures and the optimism and determination of the West African independence movements of the ’50s and ’60s. The photographs’ legacies have had a powerful effect on 21st-century African portraiture, but the contemporary work that most reminds me of them is from farther away on the continent, and made in very different circumstances. Zanele Muholi, one of the most prominent contemporary African photographers, who started working only a few years after the end of apartheid in South Africa in 1994, is in a sense a ‘‘postindependence’’ artist. She has tried to document a specific aspect of the country’s new political, social and economic terrain. One of Muholi’s long-term projects, called ‘‘Faces and Phases,’’ focuses on the portraiture of black lesbian and transgender people, most of them in South Africa. Like her West African forebears, she shows people as they wish to be seen.

South Africa is one of the few countries whose constitution protects its citizens from discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. But persistent preju­dice remains a reality for many black South African lesbians and transgender people, many of whom have been raped and even murdered. Muholi’s work is an answer to those who want to wish them away or intimidate them into invisibility. To look at their faces, in portrait after portrait, is to become newly aware of the power of portraiture in a gifted artist’s hands. Muholi doesn’t grant her sitters independence — they are independent — but she makes their independence visible. ‘‘Faces and Phases,’’ currently on view at the Brooklyn Museum as part of a show of Muholi’s work, is a complete world.

The work of Keïta and Sidibé, too, makes us aware of an entire world of experiences, one in which men are sometimes secondary. Keïta did well enough from his photo studio that, in the early 1950s, he was able to buy a Peugeot 203. Here is that car, used as a background prop for a group portrait made around 1956, featuring two women and a girl. The women’s dark foreheads and cheekbones are echoed in the Peugeot’s sinuous lines. And way off to the right, touching the hood of the car, is a man’s hand. He has been sidelined, just as the man in “Je veux être seule” was. But a closer look reveals another man in the picture. He can be seen in the front wheel well of the car, in the glimmer of its reflective shine. This second man, dressed in white, is stooped over something. He is the photographer, Seydou Keïta himself, in his limited role, collaborating with the true authors of the image: the women.

Teju Cole is a photographer, an essayist and the author of two works of fiction, ‘‘Open City’’ and ‘‘Every Day Is for the Thief.’’ He teaches at Bard College and is the magazine’s photography critic.

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A version of this article appears in print on June 28, 2015, on page MM20 of the Sunday Magazine with the headline: A picture of a woman is often made for the pleasure of others; in the work of photographers of modern Africa, the portrait is for her. . Today's Paper|Subscribe

Missouri Southern State University Create Tribal Art Database

Source: Joplin Globe

MSSU creates online database of African art collection

Christine Bentley, head  of the art department at Missouri Southern State University, talks about improvements made to a storage space at Missouri Southern for the university's African art collection. A nearly yearlong effort to catalog the art holdings has resulted in the creation of an online, searchable database and is expected to be made public soon. GLOBE | ROGER NOMER 

Posted: Monday, June 22, 2015 11:00 pm

By Emily Younker eyounker@joplinglobe.com

Residents will soon be able to view a one-of-a-kind collection of African art from the comfort of their own homes.

A nearly yearlong effort to catalog Missouri Southern State University’s African art holdings has resulted in the creation of an online, searchable database of the collection. The site is expected to be made public soon, said Christine Bentley, head of the art department.

"It's really wonderful because we have it all online; we didn't have this before," she said. "We at least have a permanent record that is a great first step in the preservation of the objects."

The works — more than 300 in total — had been confined for years in a small storage area in the art building. The collection includes several items that would have been used in African rituals, such as statues and masks, as well as everyday items such as bows, arrows and a headrest for the dead. "It's a valuable collection, and not just monetarily," said Bentley, who added that the artifacts provide a glimpse into the cultures of western and northern Africa.

Work to restore the collection began last summer, when staff members from the Spencer Museum of Art at the University of Kansas-Lawrence visited Missouri Southern to view the collection and offer recommendations about how best to catalog and preserve it. Bentley and others in the art department spent much of the summer painstakingly cleaning the artifacts, cleaning mold off some of them and ridding others of bug infestations.

Then came the more time-consuming work: Researching each artifact and logging its details into a database software called PastPerfect, which is used by many small- to mid-sized museums. The result of that work, which was completed a few weeks ago, is an online database that is set to be made public at artcollection.mssu.edu. Viewers will be able to see photographs of all the items along with information about each piece, such as its dimensions, its materials and any history related to it, said Eric Rasheed, collections care manager.

"I wanted to put something into it that talked a little bit about the piece and what it was used for, if I could find that out, and why it was made and who made it," said Rasheed, who helped conduct research on the artifacts. "If I couldn't find anything about (the specific item), then I would put something in about the people or the geographic area."

MSSU creates online database of African art collection

MSSU's Christine Bentley shows off a double gourd vessel from the university's African art collection. GLOBE | ROGER NOMER

Funding for the restoration and archival project — several thousand dollars' worth — was made available through the university and private donations. The complete collection is worth several hundred thousand dollars, Bentley said. "I don't even want to think what would have happened to it" without the archival project, she said. "I'm still worried, but I'm not as worried because I think we at least have it stable." The collection is currently stored in two buildings on campus in areas where the temperature and humidity can be carefully regulated. It is not publicly accessible, but residents can view it by appointment, Bentley said.

Bentley said her long-term goal is to find a permanent storage or gallery location for the collection. The next steps toward that goal, she said, will be to tag each piece with the catalog number that matches its entry in the database and to build archival boxes for pieces that shouldn't be out in the open air.

Collection details The works that constitute the basis for Missouri Southern State University's collection of African art and artifacts were presented to the university by John and Pam Finley in 1997. Other contributors included Marianna Keown, Vivian Olson, Guy Mace and Ben Pickard.