"The Global Africa Project" - on display at the Museum of Arts and Design

"The Global Africa Project," currently on display at the Museum of Arts & Design, examines the jewelry, fashion, architecture, basketry, ceramics, painting, and design of the continent. The show presents 200 works by nearly 120 people, teams and collectives. It represents artists, designers, and artisans who produce works that represent the area. 

The show aims to "explore the impact of African visual culture on contemporary art, craft and design around the world." Items on display include the work of Baltimore bead sculptor Joyce Scott and 'drapos' by Haitian artist George Valris. Photographs by J.D. 'Okhai Ojeikere of African women's headdresses and elaborate hairdos are also on exhibit, alongside crocheted hats by artist Xenobia Bailey. Other featured artists range from such well-known figures as Yinka Shonibare, MBE, Kehinde Wiley, and Fred Wilson; to Nigerian-born, London-based fashion designer Duro Olowu, and Paris-based Togolese/Brazilian designer Kossi Aguessy. 

The show is curated by Lowery Stokes Sims, MAD's Charles Bronfman International Curator, and Leslie King-Hammond, Founding Director of the Center for Race and Culture at MICA. The exhibit is organized around several thematic ideas, which include: the phenomenon of intersecting cultures and cultural fusion; the branding and co-opting of cultural references; how art and design is promoted in the international market and the creative global scene; the use of local materials; and the impact of art-making on the economic and social condition of local communities. These themes will, according to the curators, "encourage audiences to discern how global African artists grapple with the commodification of art production and the meaning and value of art in society - an increasingly significant issue for nations in a rapidly changing global context."

Who Knows Tomorrow in Berlin, Germany

Who Knows Tomorrow – this piece of worldly wisdom, heard everyday over large parts of Africa, provides the title for a remarkable project held by the National Gallery, for which it has invited five internationally acclaimed artists, whose work is primarily shaped by their African origins, to join together in creating a major exhibition in Berlin. Their works, completed and installed, for the most part, in prominent positions outside four of the National Gallery’s separate venues, will together serve to spark a dialogue over questions that are now more topical than ever before, thanks to the radical upheavals currently sweeping political, social and economic systems that had, until now, been considered unshakeable. These questions include: is uncertainty over the future now the greatest certainty we have today? Whose history needs to be told and faced up to now? What is art’s contribution to helping overcome (art) historical constructs, clichés and stereotypes?


Who Knows Tomorrow eschews the common practice of presenting artists in group exhibitions as representatives to speak for an entire continent. Instead, the participating artists reflect and interpret our own history and present us with their views of our culture, against the backdrop of four of the National Gallery’s iconic buildings, which themselves reflect German national identity at various points in the country’s past. The artists’ works bear the signs of historical complexities and ties between Africa and Europe and deal with aspects of the search for identity and globalisation, both of which have currently become extremely topical once again.

In the process, a clear link is established between the history of Africa’s colonisation and the situation in 19th century Berlin, then capital of the German Empire. While the question of national identity, so fiercely debated in and around Europe during this period, was hardly raised at all in colonised Africa at the time, it has now undergone a dramatic shift in today’s world.

The artists involved in the Who Knows Tomorrow exhibition frequently lay bare forgotten and overlooked cross-ties between Africa and Europe, as well as those that are being formed as we speak. Despite the fact that their works bear witness to a process of intercultural fusion, in which overlapping and mergence become a conceptual stylistic medium, a method, it would be wrong to assume that they merely reflect their own aesthetic history. They amount instead to an analysis of the history of art from a social perspective, over many epochs and cultures. By calling for the salvation of memory and making diversity into a principle, their works challenge us, their audience in the Western world, to reflect critically on ourselves and realign our relation to them.

The exhibition is accompanied by an extensive programme of events and a reader packed with insight from a multitude of perspectives.

Artists involved include: El Anatsui, Zarina Bhimji, António Ole, Yinka Shonibare MBE and Pascale Marthine Tayou. The exhibition will run through September, 2010.

For further information, visit the Official Website of the Exhibit.

African Artwork 'Nelson's Ship in a Bottle' Unveiled in London's Iconic Trafalgar Square

Nigerian artist Yinka Shonibare MBE, became the first African artist to display artwork in any public space in Great Britain, when he unveiled his work 'Nelson's Ship in a Bottle' in London's Trafalgar Square on May 24. Yinka's piece, sitting on top of the Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square, consists of a scale model of Nelson's HMS Victory set in a glass bottle, and is the largest recorded ship in a bottle in the world, measuring 2.8M by 4.7M. The ship's 37 large sails are made of exuberant and richly patterned African cloth, and symbolise African identity and independence. The artwork is sponsored by Guaranty Trust Bank of Nigeria who earlier in 2010 registered another first when it sponsored Chris Ofili's collection at Tate Britain, making it the first African corporation to sponsor a major artwork in Great Britain. Available video includes shots of the artwork being crafted, video from the unveiling as well and soundbites with Yinka Shonibare, Guaranty Trust Bank CEO, Tayo Aderinokun, and Mayor of London, Boris Johnson.

Source: The News Market

Contemporary Nigerian Artist Yinka Shonibare's Show is Successful, but Finished

Nigerian artist Yinka Shonibare MBE’s exhibition closed Sunday, March 7th completing his four-month run at the National Museum of African Art.

Since November, visitors have trekked across the Smithsonian to view 14 years worth of the British-born artist’s most celebrated works. These pieces include a colorful mixture of photography, film, sculpture, paintings and large-scale mixed media.

Shonibare’s artworks explore the themes of retaining African identity in light of British colonialism and the Enlightenment era’s debate over rationality versus irrationality. They also reflect his ancestry, which includes Nigerian and British roots. The MBE in his name stands for Member of the Order of the British Empire.

Viewers of Shonibare’s exhibit have spanned the globe, attracting visitors as far away as Europe.

“I enjoy the way he conceptualizes his art,” said Suzanne from Germany. “It’s both beautiful and political.”

District resident Muhammad Salaam agreed.

“He’s depicting what’s actually happening in the world,” said Salaam. “That includes colonialism and of course, the rape and murder of a whole nation of people.”

The 48-year-old artist’s paintings include Dutch wax print fabric. Since the mid-1990s, Shonibare has blended politics and aestheticism with his use of this material. Manufactured in Europe for the West African market between the early 19th and 20th centuries, the wax fabric represents both mercenary and racial relationships between Europe, Asia and Africa.

As far as sculpture, Shonibare usually creates headless figures and drapes them in ornately designed clothing reminiscent of the period preceding the French Revolution. He references art history for his sculptures, drawing inspiration from the works of French painter Jean-Honore Fragonard.

While Shonibare’s sculptures borrow from art history, his photography draws from past literature.

Of Shonibare’s two major suites of photographs featured at the African Art museum, his depiction of Oscar Wilde’s Dorian Gray drew the most attention. Gray centers on a man who forfeits his soul to prevent aging; he succumbs to moral decay as a result. Shonibare captures Gray’s dilemma in a series of black and white photographs presented in a linear sequence.
Visitors crowded around the piece and shared their thoughts.

“I’m a huge fan of Oscar Wilde and of his novel, ‘Dorian Gray,’” said Amy from Ohio. “This is unlike anything I’ve seen, though. I think it’s more emotionally intensive seeing this in still photograph form as opposed to reading it or even watching the film. You’re forced to ponder it. There’s no background noise.”

With reactions like these, it comes as little to no surprise that Shonibare’s exhibition has run so long.

Source: The Hilltop Online, Howard University

By: Jessica Harper