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'Guess who's coming to dinner': exposição em Nova Iorque reúne vários artistas africanos

Published3 Aug 2015

Tags Arte Contemporânea Negritude

Imagem: Installation view at Richard Taittinger Gallery

A exposição Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner? na Richard Taittinger Gallery,em Nova Iorque, reúne trabalhos de vários artistas africanos; Halida Boughriet, Gopal Dagnogo, Sam Hopkins, Onyeka Ibe, Amina Menia, Chika Modum, Aida Muluneh, Chike Obeagu, Amalia Ramanankirahina, Ephrem Solomon, Uche Uzorka e Beatrice Wanjiku. A exposição, cujo título se inspira no filme homónimo de Sidney Poitier de 1967, tem curadoria de Ugochukwu-Smooth C. Nzewi, co-curador da 11ª edição da Dak’Art Biennal, que escreve no site Contemporary and sobre o significado desta exposição, em termos da marca "África" no circuito de arte contemporânea.

While the understanding of contemporary art has taken on a capacious nature, one observes that the work of a majority of artists from Africa is still mostly read against the grain of how it conveys cultural values or imagined ideas about the continent. The exhibition takes this peculiar system of value as its conceptual basis. Through the works on display, the exhibition problematizes this burden of “Africanness,” which, arguably, continues to inform the reception of contemporary art by African artists in the Western and international imaginary. Yet the twelve exhibiting artists do not disavow their connections to Africa either as a place of birth or a context of immense significance. Individually, they reflect localized experiences, histories, memories, and extant material conditions that intersect with the global or the universal.

Amina Menia focuses on Algeria’s recent past, fraught with colonial violence and anti-colonial pushback, which feed postcolonial anxiety.  Her work in the exhibition is a selection from the ongoing photography series entitled Chrysanthemums which captures commemorative stelae and monuments dedicated to martyrs who laid down their lives in service to Algeria during the Algerian War of Independence (1954–62). Uche Uzorka’s connect the past and the present in addressing the challenges of nation building in Nigeria in the riveting ink drawings Alien Citizen, Alien Indigene (2014) and One Night’s Crossing of Color and Dream (2014). His other work Tear and Wear (No Place like Home (2014) explores processes of urban street culture in Lagos.

THE RISING CONTEMPORARY AFRICAN ART BRAND AND THE BURDEN OF AFRICANNESS 

Visões sobre a negritude na fotografia

Published14 Jul 2015

Tags Negritude fotografia arquivo Sebastião Salgado

Imagem: Fotógrafo desconhecido, Retrato de estúdio do Rei Khama III. África do Sul, início do séc. XX

A exposição Distance and Desire: Encounters with the African Archive esteve patente no C/O Berlin, em colaboração com o African Photography from The Walther Collection. Elsa Guily, crítica de arte radicada em Berlim, analisa esta exposição, confrontando-a com outra, Genesis, de Sebastião Salgado, do ponto de vista da representação dos estereótipos e da perpetuação, ou não, da perspectiva ocidental dominante sobre a negritude.

 Its eloquent title, Distance and Desire: Encounter with the African Archive, announces its preconceived purpose upfront: asking questions as to the role of archives and the impact of the photographic image in the writing of history. The project was organized into three sections, beginning with photographs from the Walther Collection and juxtaposing images from historical archives of photos taken in southern and eastern Africa around the turn of the twentieth century with works by contemporary artists from African perspectives whose approaches seek to reinterpret the ethnographic and colonial archive. From the outset, the visitor is clued in:  it is impossible to view these photographs without realizing the violent relations inherent in European colonialism in Africa, and equally impossible to detach them from the historical contexts in which they were produced. The displacement of these archives invites us to examine our own gaze with a certain critical distance in order to reflect upon the processes of identifying and constructing difference, especially racial and gendered difference. The project re-envisions the archive as the bearer of collective memory, restoring the agency and individuality of the subjects portrayed and thereby creating alternative narratives of history.

In parallel to Distance and Desire, the Genesis project by photographer Sebastião Salgado intones an ecological message to humanity. These purportedly “socially conscious” photographs, which amount to a romantic invitation on an “eco-tourist” journey, perpetuate the representation of ethnicized bodies beside immaculate landscapes in black and white. The portraits’ subjects are made anonymous, their identities reduced to objectifying and vulgarizing captions that describe their practices and customs. Considering that both cultural visions are embedded in the same globalized, post-migratory space, it seemed to me that despite the Distance and Desire project’s noble intentions to deconstruct the white supremacist gaze, an ambivalent complicity might lodge in visitors’ minds. Thus I was compelled to interrogate both exhibition spaces jointly in light of the problems of images’ circulation and the act of “making visible.” How is the viewer positioned in relation to the discursive powers of representation? What relationships are formed between the photographer as an auteur, the individual photographed, and the viewer? At what point does the act of observation begin to dictate the subject’s development?

O texto completo em Gazing at a Distance

"Oreo", de Fran Ross, analisado na New Yorker

Published8 May 2015

Tags Negritude literatura Oreo Fran Ross

Oreo, de Fran Ross, de 1974, é um romance satirico e bem humorado, que conta a história de uma rapariga,  filha de pai judeu e mãe negra, que cresce com os avós e que na adolescência resolve procurar o pai. O livro passou espercebido na época da sua primeira edição e ganha hoje novas leituras, à luz das questões identitárias, a nível étnico e cultural. Na New Yorker, Danzy Senna compara-a com outras narrativas relacionadas com a identidade: 

 The titles themselves of these two texts—“Roots” and “Oreo”—imply the profound gap between the works, giving us a clue about the kind of black narratives we like to celebrate, and the kind we’ve tended to ignore. “Roots” looks toward the past. It offers black people an origin story, an imagined moment of racial purity—when the Mandinka warrior Kunta Kinte is kidnapped, off the shores of Gambia. It constructs a lost utopia for us and a clear fall from the Eden of Africa. “Oreo,” from the title alone and its first loony pages, suggests murkier, more polluted racial waters.

Indeed, Oreo’s origin story is one of gleeful miscegenation. The moment Samuel Schwartz falls for Helen (Honeychile) Clark, it’s too late to look back. An “oreo” is, of course, not simply a black-and-white cookie but also the standard taunt directed at black people who appear to “act white.” Ross embraces this epithet, embraces the idea of falling from racial grace. But it’s no mulatto sentimentalism, no simplistic “ebony and ivory” tale of racial mushiness. From page one, both sides of Oreo’s family—the black and the Jewish—are equally horrified by their children falling in love. In fact, James Clark, Helen’s father, Oreo’s black grandfather, is so horrified by his daughter’s coupling with a Jewish guy that his actual body becomes encoded by hate—paralyzed into the shape of a half-swastika.Oreo, born Christine Clark, the biracial progeny of the fall, is our heroine, and, like all good heroes and heroines, she’s on a quest. But, unlike Alex Haley, Oreo is trying to find her white side—her missing Jewish father. Her absent father is no site of longing; he’s a voice-over actor in Manhattan, who has left her an absurd list of clues to help locate him. He’s a bum, according to her mother. “I’m going to find that fucker” is how Oreo sets out on her search, which feels more like an excuse to wander away from her home than a real desire for a father.
O artigo completo em Shades of Blackness

"Encounters and Collisions", de Glen Ligon aborda as questões da negritude

Published7 Apr 2015

Tags Negritude Glen Ligon

"Encounters and Collisions" é a exposição de Glen Ligon, "o artista preferido de Barack Obama", na Nottingham Contemporary, em Londres, onde o artista, americano, convoca, de forma critica, as ideias de negritude, homossexualidade e os ícones das lutas pelos direitos humanos. 

Ligon’s art, with its melancholy neon signs and dense, stencilled canvases, probes black representation, the complex terrain of race and homosexuality, and above all the grand promise – and less beautiful reality – of America. You can see reflections of his own career in the artists he’s chosen, but the show doesn’t treat the art of the past as mere source material. “It’s about the broad influences on an artist’s work,” Ligon says. “Rather than: Richard Serra uses oil stick – you use oil stick! People can walk in and go, ‘Oooh, this is a nice group show!’ But the bigger issue, the bigger takeaway, is the notion of a community of artists.”

Ligon has fleshed out his portrait of himself and his country with photographs that document the upheavals his fellow artists lived through. “Much of my work is engaged with ‘America’ – the idea of America. So it seemed interesting to think beyond art, to think of documents from various periods that were formative for me and the country as a whole.”

Hence the inclusion of Bruce Davidson’s shot of two muscular Guardian Angels in tight singlets patrolling the New York subway in the crime-gripped 1980s – and a Stephen Shames photograph of Black Panther founder Huey P Newton, topless and listening to Bob Dylan, which touches on both the struggle for civil rights and the way black men are depicted, feared, or desired. “He was incredibly charismatic,” says Ligon of Newton. “And sexy. The Panthers were very aware of his appeal. That’s what interests me: this black masculinity.”

He's Barack Obama's favourite artist. But is Britain ready for Glenn Ligon?

Léon Gontran Damas

Published14 Mar 2013

Tags poesia Léon Gontran Damas Negritude

Fundador do movimento da negritude, com Aimé Césaire et Léopold Sédar Senghor, o poeta guianês Léon Gontran Damas faria 100 anos este mês. 

Et Black-Label

pour ne pas changer

Black-Label à boire

à quoi bon changer

Sur La Terre des parias

un premier homme vint

sur la Terre de Parias

un second homme vint

sur la Terre des Parias

un troisième homme vint

Depuis

Trois  Fleuves

trois fleuves coulent

trois fleuves coulent dans mes veines

Et Black-Label

pour ne pas changer

Black-Label à boire

à quoi bon changer

   Black-Label et autres poèmes


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