ARCO-Madrid 2009

Panelists from left, Raimi Gbadamosi, Bassam El Baroni, Marilyn Douala-Bell, Claudia Cristovao, Khwezi Gule. Photo: Chika Okeke-Agulu


Center: Gabi Ngcobo and Senam Okudzeto with mike


Feria de Madrid: Venue of ARCO-Madrid, 2009. Photo: Chika Okeke-Agulu


Otobong Nkanga's video/performance, Baggage 1972.2007/2008
Photo: Chika Okeke-Agulu


Barthelemy Toguo's installation, Boat, 2007
Presented by MAM (Mario Mauroner)
Photo: Chika Okeke-Agulu


Eugenio Merino's For the Love of Gold
The most attractive--as in attracting the most crowd--work among the thousands in the sprawling fair. A hyperreal, un-pickled figure of a famous suicide: Damien Hirst
Photo: Chika Okeke-Agulu


Detail of For the Love of Gold


Click here for my NEXT ART/world commentary on African participation at the just concluded ARCO-Madrid 2009

Beatification of El Anatsui

El Anatsui. Photo: Chika Okeke-Agulu

It is impossible, after the feature on him by New York Times Magazine yesterday, to miss this point: El Anatsui has come to stay in the quirky consciousness of contemporary art and its validating institutions. Despite that it took all of forty years to get here, it has been indeed a journey of epic proportions.

It is not surprising though that some curators, including someone who first showed Anatsui's work only two years ago--almost twenty years after he joined other important contemporary artists at the first Earth Summit at the Arte Amazonas in 1993; after he won the Kansai Telecasting Prize at the Osaka Triennale in 1995; after his appearance at the Gwangju Biennale in 2004; after his major traveling show organized by the Oriel Mostyn Gallery in Wales, and so on--now want to make the amazing claim to bringing him into the circuit of contemporary art, beyond the supposedly peripheral Africana network. Success, didn't they say, has many fathers (and mothers)!

Thankfully though the New York Times article by Alexi Worth makes it clear that Anatsui's rise to the summit did not happen overnight; not by the inclusion of one work at Venice, but through sustained commitment of several curators, critics and scholars who had stayed with his work long before it became "fashionable." A major part of this story, of course, is the support of Anatsui's work by London's October Gallery which has, I believe, done much more than any institution to keep the artist's work in the world's view.

See the New York Times Magazine feature on Anatsui this past Sunday (02/22/2009)

Legislating the Visual Arts (2)

ART/world: Second installment on Legislating the Visual Arts in Nigeria.
Click here:

My Weekly Column in NEXT newspaper

It is probably no more a secret that I started writing a weekly column called "ART/world" for the Nigerian newspaper NEXT, published in Lagos. What does this mean for Ọfọdunka? That it has to share my bed with "ART/world". I should endeavor though to post links to the columns here in Ọfọdunka. Why "ART/world"? Precisely because it focuses--for the most part, but not exclusively--on issues of salience to the Nigerian art world and contemporary culture. So there is no chance of "ART/world" making Ọfọdunka obsolete? Yes!

Click here to access this week's "ART/world" installment:

"Africa on My Mind" Symposium: 2010

CALL FOR PAPERS

The Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) will host its third biennial Art History Symposium, Africa on My Mind: Contemporary Art, Home and Abroad, February 26-27, 2010. The goal of this symposium is to encourage representation by a variety of media and cultural and geographical areas in Africa and the African Diaspora. Possible topics could address the role of contemporary African and African Diaspora art in shaping regional, ethnic and individual identity; the gendered responses to the colonization of the body and mind; contributions of technology and international art fairs to shaping identity and careers; questions of interpreting and exhibiting contemporary work; pedagogic theories and methods addressing African and African Diaspora art; the vitality of African traditions in coastal South Carolina and Georgia.

Open to scholars and graduate students. The editors of Critical Interventions: Journal of African Art History and Visual Culture have agreed to consider papers by symposium participants for publication. The symposium will feature a keynote address by Simon Njami (lecturer, art critic, novelist and essayist).

Jane Rehl, PhD and Andrew Nedd, PhD
Symposium Co-chairs
Department of Art History

Deadline for abstract submission: May 15, 2009
Please submit an abstract (300 words max) and a CV, including complete contact information (address, phone, and email).

Submit to: arthsymposium@scad.edu

Notification of acceptance: September 30, 2009 via email

For additional information: click HERE

Susanne Wenger: In Memoriam

Hurry as you go
mother of many children and
dreamer of palaces for gods
deafened by sirens
of triumphal armies

Do not look back
Priestess of Obatala and
confidant of cool groves
menaced by hounds
of mercenary hunters

Enter, gnarled spirit
Esu waits at the Gate

(For Susanne Wenger, the Adunni Olorisa; artist, designer, architect, priestess, aged 94)

STOP THE CARNAGE IN GAZA!

Yes, I am still giddy about the election of Barack Obama two months ago, and yes, I know he won't be the president of the United States until January 20 (waiting for this date feels like forever). But I cannot understand; I am even frustrated that he has not made any statement about the carnage in Gaza. How many human beings and how much blood will it take for him to say something, even if to express shock at the number of Palestinian children and women being slaughtered "legitimately" by the Israeli Government, in the name of fighting terror.

The killing of hundreds of civilians is INDEFENSIBLE! And I cannot see how this is going to guarantee peace and security in the middle east, and in our world.