AFRICAN ART TRANSFORMING THE COLONIAL LEGACY ffrica Remix: contemporary art of a continent Exhibition at the Hayward Gallery, London, February to April Reviewed by Paola Esposito rom the late eighties to recent years, F the Western world has made vari- ous attempts to define and display the ambiguous cultural phenomenon known as 'contemporary African art'. The first of these attempts dates back to 1989, at the Pompidou Centre, Paris, with the exhibition Magiciens de la Terre - whose curator Jean-Hubert Martin was part of the cura- torial team for this exhibition. That event marked the rather controver- sial début of contemporary African art, in a Western context, defining it from a particular European perspective. Doubt- ers and critics on that occasion raised issues such as the juxtaposition of ex- hibiting artists already known in the in- ternational circuit of modern art, mostly from the African diaspora, living and working in Western countries, next to to- tally unknown artists selected by the cu- rators through investigative excursions throughout the African continent. On the one hand, the exhibition pre- sented the artistic reality of individual experiences of eradication, exile and memory. Some of these artists were in- volved in a problematic reformulation of their own African identity, viewing it in relation to cultural contamination and the assimilation of Western influences. On the other hand, Magiciens re-presented the post-colonialist idea of "African art', founded upon cultural stereotypes such as "traditional' and 'primitive', which were considered as reflecting the innate, aesthetic qualities of artistic production in the continent. Because 'Africa' conceived as an homo- geneous cultural area does not exist - a mosaic of languages, histories, identi- ties and origins characterizes almost the totality of the continent - those kinds of generalizations were mostly arbitrary. It is possible that in the case of Magiciens, the choice of artists was deliberately provocative. Alternatively, it was simply revealing an unclear position about what should be defined as 'con- temporary' African art, opting, on that particular occasion, for an unproblematic attempt to match the common, exotic expectations around the cat- egory of "African art'. Africa Remix at the Hayward Gallery starts out from this controversial precedent but also from other, more post-modernist, approaches, such as the event Documenta X, held in Kassel, Ger- 32 many, in 2002, which was centred on issues such as globalization, trans-nationalism and art créole (culturally hybrid art). Again, Africa Remix, in showing the variegated scenery of contemporary "African art', has chosen artists operating in the continent as well as living in other parts of the world, especially in Western countries. This time, however, an extremely wide range of materials, techniques, ideas and sources of inspi- ration fills both the physical space of the exhibi- tion and the mental locus 'Africa', demolishing archetypes and consolidated visions, emphasiz- ing cultural contamination and artistic reformula- tion of political contexts. On the ground floor of the Hayward, the exhibi- tion opens with an uninterrupted succession of images from Africa, celebrated by an astonish- ing creativity with recycled material, from the Waiting for the Bus by Dilomprizulike (Nigeria) and the Mozambican Tour Eiffel by Goncalo Mabunda (using the old weapons of FRELIMO guerrillas), to the utopian futurism of Bodys Isek Kingelez (Congo), who has created an ideal hy- per-coloured Afro-city from waste packaging. On the first floor, the air grows dense with vision- ary projections of identity through the disquieting human-animal hybrids on red bush earth of Jane Alexander's African adventure (South Af- rica), where coloniser and colonised are alike brutalised; while the quasi-shadow-theatre of the animated film Ubu tells the truth by William Kentridge gives the artist's version of the atrocities committed under apartheid, recalling the activity of the Truth and Rec- onciliation Commission (Ubu was the cruel and obscene bourgeois character in Alfred Jarry's plays). From political messages, past and present histories, to images and sounds which con- vey a process of becoming (see, and hear, Tabla by Moataz Nasr, Egypt), most of the artworks displayed contribute to creating a sense of vitality, criticism and irony, humour and sorrow in an exhibition which never leaves the viewer with static impressions. The last image visitors see is themselves in a mirror, in Angolan Fernand Alvim's We are all post-exotics. "Transformative', 'hybrid', "contaminated', "post-exotic', become inherent qualities of this contemporary, differentiated and 'Af- rican' artistic culture that reshapes its own plural-identity. Emerging from violent im- perial pasts, from usurpation and imposed modernity. This art affirms its own creative potential, through appropriation rather than assimilation or emulation of the dominant Western art culture. The celebration of these differentiated, fluid characteristics, and of the inner power of transformation, creates the coherent, collec- tive sense of the exhibition, which thus, ul- timately, takes its distance from established notions and connotations of African art. In the words of curator Simon Njami: It might be said that there is no such thing as "African art". Only African artists'. Although the Western cultural viewpoint here maintains its power, within the delimiting space of an exhibition, it seems nonetheless that the perspective has been widened, and that this space has been occupied by works of autono- mous and imaginative artistic consciousness. Though in one sense promising nothing, Africa Remix still leaves the viewer with the impression of another, more open scenery, and of emerging renewed expectations.