A arte africana em debate

Imagem: Contemporary and

Jean-Pierre de la Porte é investigador, escritor e director do Institute for Advanced Studies in Architecture and Infrastructure, em Joanesburgo. É um dos convidados da rubrica The Interview Issue, do site Art South Africa, com artistas, curadores, pensadores comprometidos com a mudança de perspectiva sobre a arte produzida em África. Nesta entrevista, discute-se o conceito "arte africana", a definição de artista, a posição ocupada pela África do Sul no cenário artístico. 

The need for a pan-African perspective arose in specific conditions inside the African diaspora around 110 years ago and seems to owe as much to American Hegelianism as to anything else. We should trace the twists and turns it has undergone, particularly thanks to the interpretative and tactical brilliance of the early African National Congress.

Today, any artist may label him/herself in any way they desire, but the label remains in candidacy for recognition by suitably disposed peers and (like any binding self-ascription operating within a normative rationality) it is up to the future commitments of the artist and his/her followers to show whether the label has interesting consequences. Criteria for adopting any label cannot be isolated in advance but must be adduced in retrospect from their consequences. Today it is worth prefacing as much as possible with the qualifier 'African', even if just to bring out the concerned missionary sensibility lurking within Western critics and commentators one more time.

Entrevista completa, aqui.