Arte digital em África na era da globalização

Imagem: Vídeo de Emeka Ogboh

A exposição Post African Futures apresenta, desde 21 de Maio, na Goodman Gallery, em Joanesburgo, palestras, projecções e performances no âmbito da criação digital, num continente  com 280 000 utilizadores de internet,  de acordo com o Internet World Stats, com a Nigeria, África do Sul e o Quénia no topo da lista da conectividade. 

But who is narrating our story and creating and mapping Africa’s digital footprint?

In the creative sphere, across Africa, the narrative is already being digitally rewritten and archived by artists who have been troubled by hackneyed and problematic representations of the continent and the dangers of globalisation.

“What I attempt to do through my work and in my life is to unlearn all the nonsense I’ve been fed with growing up in the West,” says 26-year-old video artist Tabita Rezaire, who grew up in Paris but has been living in Johannesburg for the past 10 months. “I am trying to free myself (and potentially others in the process) from the spiritual, social and political oppressions of the colonial matrix of power. It is about unlinking with Eurocentrism and the pervasive hierarchy between races, genders, cultures and systems of knowledge.”

Rezaire is one of 19 artists who are showcasing their works as part of an ambitious and potentially game-changing exhibition, Post African Futures, curated by Tegan Bristow, an interactive digital media artist and head of interactive media in the digital arts division of the University of the Witwatersrand’s school of arts.

Bristow says the exhibition is an extension of her doctoral research through the United Kingdom’s University of Plymouth and came about because she was concerned about how we are “teaching European digital media and digital arts practice to students who aren’t even looking at digital media and digital art in that way at all. It’s a little destructive.

“There’s all kinds of different social political agendas around global technologies, which I think everybody in South Africa is aware of since we are specifically represented in global media in a very closed-minded way.”

O artigo completo em African digital art in the age of globalisation