Quick, When I Say "African Art", What Do You See?
Malick Sidibe, Christmas Eve, 1963
Ouattara Watts, Dream Support
Jane Alexander, Butcher Boys
Samuel Fosso
Willem Boshoff, Kaartland
Kamala Ishaq Ibrahim, Loneliness
12th-14th century Yoruba shrine head
Not. You probably, with all the rest of us, visualize tribal art, as if Africa had no other past or present:
19th c. Fang mask, Louvre
Even if you're as hip as
![[profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gloeden and me, you'll probably know little more than the post-colonial camp -- a polemic -- of the heavenly Afro-Brit, Yinka Shonibare. It's hard to get past:
Yinka Shonibare, Reverend on Ice
And while I am much less expert than most of you in the matter of indie rock and cultural appropriation, I submit this: of all the things the indie band Vampire Weekend may be guilty of, their joyous rendering of Afropop music is a good thing. Knocking them for ripping off African happy music, or, more crudely, as I suspect is the actual case, knocking them because they're not playing tribal mask African music or politically correct tormented revolutionary polemic African music, is racist in a particularly ignorant and yet arrogant way.
Clickez ici, as we say in Africa, for a short review of the art exhibit which accompanied The Short Century: Independence and Liberation Movements in Africa 1945-1994, which every citizen of the world should own. The first show of its kind curated by (gasp!) an African, Okwui Enwezor.
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