Ignoring the Tyranny of Linear Time
by John Matshikiza
Somewhere in the bowels of Europe's museums of colonial history, or in the privacy of the salons and vaults of the wealthiest heirs of the conquering nations, lie Africa's looted treasures.
Art or artefact? Cult or culture? It did not matter to Picasso or Braque and their colleagues, pioneers in what came to be known as the Cubist Movement. The missionaries and explorers who had nailed down the Dark Continent a generation before had also opened up a Pandora's Box, a rich harvest of sculptures and paintings created by unnamed African artists, images that undermined the internal structures of Western art forever.
The battle to retrieve Africa's sacred and secular artworks is given scant attention by African governments. Meanwhile, on the streets of Africa's cities, tourists pull out their wallets and ponder over grotesque wooden sculptures that mock the continent's artistic heritage - giraffes, elephants, warthogs, and occasionally a finely wrought likeness of a Benin head.
Is this art or artefact? For the tourist it does not matter. This is big game hunting without the messy business of gun bearers and bullets and gore. This is what modern Africa has to offer.
But there is another side. Imperialism scorched the African continent, but did not succeed in destroying everything. Millions of slaves were exported, and millions of priceless works of art were looted or burned. Indigenous cultures were ruthlessly suppressed. But the language of art survived.
In many of Africa's hard-pressed galleries and museums something, however small, is being done to keep the link between historical and contemporary art alive. The Harare (previously Salisbury) is (or was) a case in point. The Goodman Gallery in Johannesburg and the MAM and Doualart Galleries in Douala, among many others on the continent, are outlets where local artists seek out, and are sought by, the wider world.
But how many people really pass through their doors? Above all, how many citizens of Africa are able to gain access to the beautifully eclectic visual minds of Africa's contemporary artists? Art remains for the most part an elite pursuit - elites that are for the most part not even indigenous. African contemporary art risks following its legions of historical predecessors into the splendid silences of the diaspora.
The Virtual Museum of Contemporary African Art is an eye-opener. Even someone like me, possessed of no more than a clumsy spoonful of knowledge of the visual arts, can let my fingers do the walking across a computer keyboard and delve into the endlessly intricate world of contemporary African art. And into the intricate and varied minds of the artists who make it. By doing this, I start to take possession - whether metaphorically or literally.
Every picture tells a story. Contained inside it are the wisdoms and prejudices of the artists, products and interpreters of their post-colonial societies. In beginning to find out who they are, we start to question who we are.
Ankie, from the San people, was born in the desert wastes of Botswana "in 1930 or 1940" - which leaves the viewer with quite a wide margin for creative adjustment in defining her age. In her age as in her art, she is able to ignore the tyranny of linear time, her simple yet striking images letting the world unfold as she sees it from one moment to the next.
Thamae S., also from the San of Botswana, was born somewhere between 1960 and 1970. Again, the impression is that linear time, one's place at a given moment in the relentless grinding of the universe, is immaterial. This artist's work is reminiscent of the native Australian style that became so hot on the European and American art markets in the 1970s and 1980s - a coincidence, or an indefinable link between two races of discarded, nomadic people a world away from each other?
Gabarit, from Benin, is master of the sleekly modern carved abstract in wood (Main d'Oeuvre a haute intensite) as much of the abrupt, street-wise installation that deals with the harsh realities of the world from the mocking perspective of the dispossessed (Mauvais Gout and Le Pouvoir).
Nso, from the schizophrenic ex-colony of Cameroon (an arbitrarily mapped out country that passed successively through German, French and British hands) is the daughter of a cocoa farmer. In her own words, she says that her major influence as a painter derives from tales her father told her in her childhood, which explains why travelling through one of her striking, richly coloured images is like being regaled by a bizarre but utterly believable story told by Amos Tutuola. "Art," she says, "is about being daring." And the older she gets, the bolder she becomes.
And there is more. Mozambique, Mali, Angola, South Africa are all there. More will join the party as the gallery expands.
This is not the first gallery of visual art from contemporary Africa. A number of artists (if they have the time and resources) have set up their own websites. But this is the first, to my knowledge, that consciously seeks out artists from an ever expanding palate of African countries, establishes a relationship with them, and passes on that knowledge of the art and the artist to the visiting public.
And of course, it has a political edge. Knowledge is power. Knowing your artists and how they envisage the world we take for granted gives you the power to look deeper into yourself. And knowing yourself, through the shifting mirrors of these first exhibits of contemporary African art displayed in the virtual sphere, is a further step towards liberation.
John Matshikiza, columnist with the Mail & Guardian newspaper, is an actor, writer and director based in Johannesburg.
This column piece was previously published on the Virtual Museum of Contemporary African Art website in 2002 under the same title. It is reprinted with the kind permission of the author.
