THE SHORT CENTURY

March 2002
		How can art be used as a political tool? "Short Century" Associate Curator Lauri Firstenberg and Robert Hinton, associate director of New York University's Africana Studies Program, answer your questions.

Online Special: The Short Century Browse the NewsHour's coverage of Arts and Entertainment	"The Short Century: Independence and Liberation Movements in Africa, 1945-1994", explores late 20th Century Africa's rapid social change in the move from colonialism to independence. Using a wide variety of media, including photography, installation pieces, pop music and paintings, the exhibit focuses on a period marked by intense politics, and a modern cultural Africa often overlooked in the West. Combining art with social history, the exhibit provides an entrypoint into the debate over whether art is a crucial tool in shaping a cultural identity. Can art accurately portray history, and help heal wounds left by violence and political turmoil? To what extent can art permeate a culture? Lauri Firstenberg and Dr. Robert Hinton answer your questions.
	Matthew Cornner of Washington, D.C. asks: _____________________________________ In your opinion what was the extent of the European influence in this art? Dr. Robert Hinton responds: ___________________________ In most of the work in "The Short Century," you see artists trying to figure out what it means to be "modern" and African. "Modern" is a European concept based in the Christian European concept of linear, as opposed to, cyclical time. In the African experience,"Art for art's sake" is a European notion. Traditional African "art" is/was utilitarian, often religious, in nature. Before the colonial experience, in Africa there were few, if any, secular, commodified art objects. The extent of European influence varies from medium to medium. The sculptural tradition is Africa is deeply rooted in religious culture. Traditional painting is largely decorative. In my opinion, with a couple of notable exceptions, the painting in "The Short Century" was weak because it was so derivative of European painting. I found the photography to be especially strong, despite the fact that the technology of photography was originally "Western." The photography is a good example of how the form can be "Western," while the content is African. Lauri Firstenberg responds: ________________________ The dialogue and traffic of influences you reference here functions in many ways, and in a range of directions. The Short Century attempted to present not only a counter narrative to the hegemonic history of modernity, of the European sort, but to offer up a multiplicity of modernities operating in disparate localities, but temporally parallel. This is an overarching question that cannot be answered simply. The artists represented in the show came from a variety of contexts. There is a concrete historical basis for reading some of the expatriate artists who worked and lived in Europe in terms of European “influence,” of course For instance, Ernest Mancoba, born in South Africa who studied in Paris and joined the artist collective Cobra in 1948 is a prime example whose work rehearses formal terms of both African and European painting. It is futile to detach the cultural production of continental Africa from its colonial and post-colonial histories, but the question of influence should be approached on the basis of individual experience, education, travel, etc relative to the specificities of each art context. The Online NewsHour asks: ___________________________ In general, what was the socioeconomic background of those who created these works? Were there common factors that led them to express themselves politically and creatively? Dr. Robert Hinton responds: ___________________________ The backgrounds of the artists probably span all the possibilities but most are probably from relatively privileged backgrounds. You can't make art when you're concerned about survival. To feel a need to make art in the "Western" tradition you need some degree of exposure to "Western" culture and education. These artists were working at the moment of "independence" and/or "liberation." This required the artists, and most Africans, to think about their collective and individual identities. For example, before colonialism, there was no such place as "Nigeria." During colonialism, the British told them what "Nigeria" meant. After independence, the "Nigerians" had to define for themselves their Nigerianess, and to redefine themselves, individually, within that. Otherwise, African artists "suffered" from the same motivations as all other artists - whatever those might be. Lauri Firstenberg responds: __________________________ The Short Century represents artists across the board from the “self-taught” popular history paintings of Congolese artist Tshibumba Kanda Matulu to artists like Ghada Amer and William Kentridge who exhibit internationally and have great commercial success in Europe and America. Dr. Juliet Tapia of Austin, Texas asks: ___________________________________ Would you say that there are certain global themes in contemporary art? If so what are they, and how does this exhibit explore those themes? Dr. Robert Hinton responds: ___________________________ Much like dogs and graffiti writers, artists act on the need to mark their presence in the world. A painting or scuplture announces "I was here." In "The Short Century," one curator brings together individual declarations and presents them as his version of a collective announcement that "Africa is here. We are in the world." The history of Africa is a history of being defined from the outside by others. "The Short Century" is one manifestation of cultures around the world who are beginning to define themselves, on their own terms, using globally recognized signs, symbols, and media. Lauri Firstenberg responds: __________________________ Much of the work featured in The Short Century addresses questions of identity construction at the brink of liberation. Particularly in the photographic work represented in the show, photographers such as Seydou Keita, Samuel Fosso, Santu Mofokeng, Zwelethu Mthethwa, and their contemporaries use portraiture as a kind of stage to reiterate subject formation again and again via the camera. This kind of staging of selfhood in visual terms is witnessed internationally. However the work coming out of African in the forties in Mali, in the case of Keita, through the nineties in South Africa, in the case of Mthethwa, translates in a multitude of ways to different audiences. Yet, the images of Samuel Fosso working in the Central Republic of Africa making performative self-portraiture in the seventies can be likened to the auto-portraiture of New York based artist Cindy Sherman. This would be an ahistorical leap, but the comparisons are transparent. Dr. Juliet Tapia of Austin, Texas asks: ___________________________________ How does the art of Africa fit into the global conversation(s) about art, politics and our interconnected world history? Dr. Robert Hinton responds: ___________________________ Art is a necessary tool for teaching history. As long as history is lived by and written by human beings it will be a distillation of collected "emotional personal experience." The problem in the past has been that only certain subjectivities had voice. As the other subjectivities find their voices, as in "The Short Century," we begin to get a fully three-dimensional sense of the human experience Lauri Firstenberg responds: __________________________ The Short Century attempted to provide a framework for the discussion of cultural and political histories that are not only the provenance of Africa, but of Europe, America, and beyond. The global resonance of the exhibition is profound, particularly in the archive it begins to produce around issues of dictatorship, religious war, genocide and the artistic production derived out of those circumstances. For instance, the material on the history and legacy of South Africa abounded in the show due to the level of accessibility of material provided and research conducted on that territory. The legacy of apartheid as a global imperative is quite critical.