that marked jS one who was involved in some of [ivities the big ssque1 festival in England last year, ,and perhaps also as an involved in the drama of modern(?) Af- gc discourse, my reading of szor's inspired critique of that Jated issues is in the least |king. There is no doubt that the issues he raised in 'Occupied Territo- ries; Power, Access and African Art' (GR 1:3) bring to the fore, the politics of repre- sentation of the cultural productions by African artists in the continent, and the Diaspora. One Mor Chika Okeke One recalls also Olu Oguibe's powerful, surgically sharp deconstruction of Susan Vogel's Africa Explores exhibit, in African Arts, some years ago. Both critiques essentially harp on the problems of articulation, presenta- tion and representation of art and artists from Africa, especially in the latter case, by non-Africans. But the basic difference between the two events is that where Africa Explores was one big, high-toned exhibit that travelled around America and Europe for some years, Africa 95 was a festival of visual, performing and literary arts that unleashed itself on Engiand in a spate of about five months (except for the two exhibits at the Royal Academy and the Whitechapel that toured beyond Britain in 1996). Per- haps also, whereas Africa Explores with its magisterial promulgation of classificatory devices with which the seemingly intractable 'African art1 could be broughtto order, the major contemporary art exhibit in Africa 95, Seven Sto- ries at the Whitechapel, showed the progress made so far in presenting art from Africa, by not classifying the art. However there is a similarity in the fact that both events were devised by two non- Africans, or as Vogel would term it, 'intimate outsiders', and of course they were essentially organised specifically for Europe-American audiences and spectators. However, Seven Stories could not hide the sheathed swords that must be exposed by those who bother about showing cultural productions of Africa, in the West. The West has always felt it had a duty to understand other cultures as part of its inherent tendency to conquer and assimilate, on its own terms. From the period in the cultural history of mankind when the art of writing came to Europe from outside, from the moment ancient Europeans recognized the power of the text which Achebe calls the uli that never fades, and which Derrida in this century articulated beyond compare, the power to configure existence and the relationship between existences, they have never given up that power. The dictatorship of the written word had yielded for them political, economic and cultural domination of the entire universe. History, art and philosophy belong only to those who have written them down. And for them that have little or no written evidence of these phenomena, like much of Africa, their self enunciation comes against a backdrop of written history and theories of their being non/sub-humans, savages, slaves, freed slaves, colonials and post-colonials who must work hard at convincing the West that they African Quarterly on the Arts Vol.11 NO 4 have really come of age in evolutionary sense. This self enunciation has incidentally been given greater impetus and attention only recently as a result of historio-cultural de- velopments in Africa and, more in pertinently, the West, Multiculturalism. With the crisis brought about by a logical dissatisfac- tion with the modernist project, and the ensuing acceptance of multiculturalism and other hitherto 'unacceptable' cultural phenomena, the West has found itself at crossroads. Apart from the exigent need to re-investigate the death-bound Western culture with the right medication from Africa and other non-occidental cultures, there is also with the flirtation with multiculturalism, thedomi- nant morality that the wheel of human progress would turn faster if all cultures in all their diversities should become equal participants in the con- struction of the Babel. (This attitude is similar to the hu- manitarianism of the Roman- tic era in Europe; the period of the noble savage). But it is almost certain that the latter is as fictive as the former is real, and drugs become useless when the patient recovers. So, multiculturalism, or postmodernism and its other manifestations can not be but another great Western project which the West is paying for. Only the West stands to gain. In the current Western cultural fad called postmodernism therefore one sees a widening of the borders of Hamelin; there are more children but the piper remains the same. When then multiculturalist morality demands a rethinking, on the part of the West, in the man- ner of seeing, articulating and presenting art from Africa, it is bound to expose, once again, the pr'ofoundity of entrenched ignorance, the arrogance which centuries of (written] history bestowed on the West, its institutions, its people. Even here, the postmodernist histo- rian OluOguibecautionsthat the current interest in Africa and its artists follows a cycli- cal pattern of repulsion/em- brace of the still dark conti- nent by the West, especially in this century. Which sug- gests, in effect, that the cur- rent love affair is another peak in what he identified as a thirty-year cycle. The 1980s, with Africa Hoy, Magiciens de la Terre, Africa Explores, and the two Venice Biennales, witnessed the build up that may have reached a cre- scendo with Africa 95. The end of another cycle? But cynicism apart. What if the current develop- ments in the Africa-West rela- tionship do not belong to Oguibe's, or any other cycli- cal theory? What if what is at play is a crude, lateral evolu- tion in the manner in which the West configures Africa? That postmodernist or multiculturalist integrationism defies any doubts about the genuineness of Western in- tentions to 'understand' Af- rica? Then we should heave an anxious sigh while the experiment goes on. In this sense, perhaps, Africa 95, especially Seven Stories, is the latest experiment. 'Occu- pied Territories' therefore is one sustained, appropriate sigh that, more than any other articulated critique of Africa 95, tells how carelessly de- signed the projects of recent cultural technicians have been, perhaps also, how far they are from achieving any meaningful goal. But besides articulating the failure of ei- ther Seven Stories or the en- tire Africa 95 project, there are a few important issues raised in that essay that re- lated indirectly to the nature of work produced by artists on the African continent. It is rather very obvious thatOkwui Enwezor's sympa- thies in terms of who should represent Africa, lies not with artists living on the continent, but with the 'exiles', and those on the continent who produce work that can fit comfortably into the convenience bag of postmodern and conceptual art as articulated by recent Western criticism and theory. Which is why only one of the ten artists he listed as having been excluded from contem- porary African art representa- tions, lives on the continent (although five were repre- sented inthevariousAfr/ca 95 exhibits). We are told that in the works of these ten artists, the postmodernist discourse makes them eligible for the front seat in contemporary African art. Does this not suggestthatthe intellectual dis- tance between African exiles and those on the continent is irrevocably stretching farther apart given the fervour with which the new generation of exiles embraced postmodernism, and the seem- ing reluctance on the part of home artists to join the party? Does the fact that a majority of young African artists on the continent remain sculptors and painters point to the growing cultural disparities and the dis- similar existential circum- stances between the one and the other 'African' artists? These are questions that histo- rians and critics of art pro- duced by Africans must con- tend with now, and perhaps in the future. have It is the aforementioned shortage of sympathy on the part of Enwezor for the cul- tural realities on the continent that influences his decision to confer the genius status on Georges Adeagbo who was deemed a half-sane bricoleur in his native Benin but was discovered by the French cu- rator Andrew Magnin who now presents him to Western spectators as an artist of the first order probably because Adeagbo's 'work' reminds him of the assemblages of Western conceptual artists. Is there much, if any, difference between Adeagbo's circum- stance and journey to the Western art world, and that of Body Kingelez, KaneKwei, Jack A k p an or Cyprien Tokoudagba, who have been presented by Western cura- tors as canonical artists to the chargin of many African theo- rists, historians and collectors? The ever and present danger of allowing either 'sympa- thetic outsiders' or privileged other to decide what consti- tutes the art of Africa, or who its creators are, remains. A view of the art being made by a majority of artists on the continent may appear at best quaint or sluggish if the viewer is sitting in the 'faster' car of EuroAmerican postmodernism. Which may explain the impatience of a number of emergent African critics in the West when they turn their attention to the work of artists on the continent. This is understandable if, as is becoming obvious, the ex- iles' only wish is for their kin- folk at home to jump above their existential, economic cir- cumstances, onto the skate- board of postmodern art as a way of proving their egality with their Western counter- parts. But it is hardly convinc- ing that this should be the goal of African, and indeed other non-occidental cultures and artists. If anything they should learn from the mis- African Quarterly on the Arts Vol.11 NO 4 other modernism takes of the West. Afterall, the present declamation of (West- ern) by postmodernist historians for, among things, commodifying, and sanctify- ing the materiality of art, as well as for placing the same exclusively in the domain of bourgeois experience may be in order, but it need not have arisen had the same society not pushed art to such dizzy- ing, nauseating heights in the first instance. The extent to which this post-era has suc- ceeded in correcting the mis- takes of modernism, or if, in- deed, it ever will, remains to be seen. Beyond the politics of curatorial dictatorship, any group exhibit that makes pre- tense at representing the whole (impossible!) or parts of the territory of contemporary art in Africa, and indeed else- where, must of necessity (and if it must not run the risk of alienating the people it claims to represent) reflect the domi- nant and also prominent artis- tic manifestations in the given territory. Which is what the Nigerian section, and per- haps other sections, of Seven Stories did in the specific con- ceptual territories demarcated by each sectional curator. The artists represented in that sec- tion may not fit into the con- structs of postmodernist criti- cism, but in the context of the story told by the curator, the selection still stands to be chal- lenged, like all but the most innocuous exhibits. The lessons of Africa 95 are many, some of which are, from Enwezor's essay, terribly obvious. The West, with its institutions, is unrelent- ing in its insistence on decid- ing what constitutes art from Africa. This is evident in the Big City exhibit at the Serpen- tine. Also, with the mammoth Art of the Continent at the Royal Academy, there is no mistaking the surrogate nos- talgia for the art that once was in Africa; the art that marked 'the end of art' in Africa. Equally important, but less obvious, in Seven Stories which reaffirmed the danger of relying too much, on the part of Western institutions or native culture brokers, intimate outsiders who become magis- terial interpreters of works by artists from the still 'unknown Africa'. Such institutions that are genuinely interested (the anxious sigh again) in show- ing contemporary art from Africa may discover, as the Whitechapel realised only too late, that total reliance on people who seem to regret the waning powers of the an- thropologist, only result in false starts in the race to re-present Africa. The child has grown and can talk for herself. Which perhaps explains why the Malmo Konsthall, having come to terms with this dan- ger decided to rely more di- rectly on the African sectional curators and less on the'spe- in cialists' when Seven Stories arrived there By all accounts,' Malmo had a much better show. But for taking the initia- tive in carrying out his latest, arguably most realistic experi- ment on ways of representing the Africa the West, WhitechapePs effort is of major historical significance. It may have raised the dis- course on the work of African artists (working in modern, even postmodern contexts) to a level where other major Western institutions can, if the will is present, build upon. In much the Museum of Mankind's Play and Display, the impressive collaborative work with Sokari Douglas Camp, which in itself was a groundbreaking exhibit, remains an outstanding score for those who wish for better and more appropriate visibil- ity for African artists, in the West. These last points are missing in Enwezor's essay. the same way, Nsukka, July, 1996. The signature of Arts & Literature in contemporary Africa is changing ..so Advertise now&Subscri e to a rapidly expanding international Subscription information : All subscribers from North America & Europe should make cheques payable to GLENDORA INTERNATIONAL P. O. Box 50914 Falomo, Lagos - Nigeria. INDIVIDUAL: North America - $24.00 Europe - £20.00 Nigeria-N1,200. INSTITUTION : North America - $40.00, Europe - £36.00 Nigeria- N 1,500. ' An additional $28, £20 per yr should be added for Airmail, postage, handling and guaranteed delivery. Please allow 6-8 weeks for delivery. + Back issues of GLENDORA REVIEW are available upon request. For more information contact: The Marketing Director, GLENDORA REVIEW, P O. Box 50914, Falomo Lagos, Nigeria. Tel: LAGOS 2692762, 680089 Fax: LAGOS 2618083 e-mail: 105271.11@compuserve.com