PHOTOGRAPHY: Greg Constantine: Slum Warriors: Kenya’s Nubians. Kibera’s 100,000 strong Nubian community has lived there for over 100 years on land give them as compensation for fighting in the Kings African Rifles. “Nubian” is not officially recognized as a Kenyan tribe, so unless they are “vetted” at age of 18 to get Kenyan ID cards they become essentially stateless.
PHOTOGRAPHY:: Zwelethu Mthethwa: Inner Visions. Studio Museum in (the sweet village of) Harlem brings together a number of Mthethwa’s large scale images. Go see.
Zwelethu Mthethwa: Inner Views brings together three series by South African photographer Zwelethu Mthethwa (b. 1960). “Interiors” and “Empty Beds” document the domestic lives of migrant workers around Johannesburg, South Africa, while “Common Ground” focuses on the shared experience of natural disasters in urban areas, featuring houses in New Orleans, Louisiana after Hurricane Katrina and on the outskirts of Cape Town, South Africa, after wildfires.
See Also: Talk between Mthethwa and Okuwi Enwezor last year at Aperture gallery at the launch of Mthethwa’s monograph.
ARCHITECTURE: Tanzanian-born star-chitect David Adjaye has a show at London’s Design Museum. Urban Africa contains over 2000 images that he has taken over the last 10 years of the civic/commercial/residential architecture of all of Africa’s 53 capital cities. In a BBC interview[audio: interview starts around 5:40] he talks about how people have strong visual connections to the wild landscapes of the continent, but are a little baffled when told about about how cosmopolitan the cities are. The show’s goal is to redress this situation.
I wish I could go see this show. These days when I go back to Nairobi, I see the architecture in a different way. There are many old buildings that intrigue me (designed to address a certain notion of africanness and local climate needs) and new ones that leave me aghast (designed to mimic some bland, uncreative notion of modernity).
“There is a wonderful Malik Sidibe picture in our show of a couple dancing at a Christmas party, a barefoot girl in a full-skirted party cress looking like the most gorgeous model dipping, with one of her legs raised, and a guy totally dapper guy, just grooving,” said Vince Aletti, curator of “This Is Not a Fashion Photograph,” currently at the International Center of Photography. “When you think about an image like that, you hope that there is some better sense of Africa available to people than some romanticized colonialist, stuck in amber, image of bracelets and long necks.
Herewith, a randomly ordered year end list of stuff of note from 2008 here at casa forota.
1. MUSIC: Post everything music: BLK JKS, Esau Mwamwaya, Santogold, Vampire Weekend, Radioclit, Diplo, et al found new ways to mash up musical, cultural, epochal influences to create music influenced by everywhere, but of nowhere. Brilliant soundtracks for our rootless time.
2. PHOTOGRAPHY: Most Favorite Image: “Blue Print, Rio” at Sartorialist. Not sure why but I kept coming back to this image.
3. PHOTOGRAPHY: Second Most Favorite Image: “Kwaito in the streets of Alexandra” by Krisanne Johnson from FADER 52. Another image I cannot get enough of.
4. POLITICS: Obama vs Palin. A vote for the open, interconnected, inclusive future vs the insular, backward looking, divisive past. Choice was pretty clear.
5. MAGAZINES: Vogue Italia: A Black Issue. Proved it is still an issue to be black in the beauty business if one needs an issue for black people. Intriguing step forward, though.
6. BOOKS: Chemise by Malick Sidibe. Hipsters, on perusing Sidibe’s images: “Oh look, African hipsters from long ago!”
7. RACE: Black but not Black: Rising Black American middle class, emergence of “Afropolitans” or second generation African immigrants, growing awareness among Afro-latinos is rendering the label “Black” and its connotations pretty obsolete. See also: The End of the Black American Narrative by Charles Johnson.
8. ART/MUSEUMS: “Flow” at Studio Museum of Harlem. Nicely curated collection of Afropolitan art. Also cool: Exhibitions of works by Kehinde Wiley and Barkley L. Hendricks.
Screenshot from “Cross River Nigeria” image series from Phyllis Galembo’s web site
Phyllis Galembo has an extensive series of portraits documenting the masks and costumes worn by priests and priestesses for religious rituals in Nigeria, Benin and in the diaspora from candomble in Brazil to voudou in Haiti. Her work is currently on show at the Steven Kasher Gallery in Chelsea.
MoMA: New Photography 2008, Mikhael Subotsky. The 2008 edition of the New Photography series at MoMA features new documentary work from South African Magnum photographer Mikhael Subotsky. “Beaufort West” features images inside and outside the prison of a small town in the Karoo Desert along the busy route between Cape Town and Johannesburg.
Hugo is one of a new generation of savvy young photographers who have emerged from post-apartheid South Africa with work that challenges our preconceptions about their country. Alongside the likes of Guy Tillim and the young Magnum photographer Mikhael Subotsky, Hugo represents what might be called a new photographic consciousness as regards the representation of Africa to the West.
Screen shot from Mobolaji’s Dawodu’s portfolio site FASHION: Mobolaji Dawodu: Stylist. Nigerian-born, NYC-based Dawodu is a contributing style editor at The Fader magazine (and frequently stylist for Andrew Dosunmu and Marc Baptiste). He is also an up and coming designer.
Wiley is known for his stylized paintings of young, urban African-American men in poses borrowed from eighteenth- and nineteenth-century European figurative paintings, a practice he started in the early 2000s while an artist in residence at the Studio Museum. Over the last two years, Wiley has expanded his project by living and working abroad; he temporarily relocates to different countries and opens satellite studios to become familiar with local culture, history and art. His “The World Stage” series is the result of these travels.
New York Times slideshow of Jamel Shabbazz’ images PHOTOGRAPHY: Chronicle of Urban Life: More Jamel Shabbazz goodness.
New York Times slideshow of Alix Dejean’s images PHOTOGRAPHY: Harlem Lens. Haitian-born, Brooklyn resident Alix Dejean has been taking pictures of Harlem’s residents for decades.
Screenshot of “Empire Strikes Back” images FASHION: The Empire Strikes Black: Part-time Malindi resident Naomi Campbell shoot around New York City with photographer Mario Sorrenti for V magazine. [via ffffound]
Creole. The result of the collision of Africa and Europe. In music, that collision has created what John Ryle called the soundtrack of modernity, which links the Swedish middle-aged man who loves Miles Davis with the Japanese youth who wants to be a b-boy. The result of that collision along with the almighty dollar now form part of the DNA of this thing we call global culture.
Is it the need to reconcile the technological and the human, tradition vs. modernity, civilization vs. primitivism, the seemingly mutually exclusive past and present that gives the culture created by africans all over the diaspora its vitality (soul) and its universality? Whatever, but as the sampling of the media i have been consuming in the last couple of weeks shows, the results are always interesting.
Q (”Interviewer”): Do you consider yourself a painter or a Black painter?
A (Jean-Michel Basquiat): Oh, I use a lot of colors, not just black …. It’s more a Creole, you know … what I mean by Creole is that … it’s a mix of Africa and Europe … you know in much the same way an African in Haiti speaks French.
cover of “BEYOND DESIRE” exhibition catalog
Inherent in all desire is a measure of fantasy, which guides our eye and forms or deforms our image of the ‘other’. Here fashion is a superb gauge. It is accessible, driven by unlimited fantasy, free from any form of politically correct thinking, decorative and superficial, yet, at the same time, it is deeply rooted in our cultural and social subconscious. BEYOND DESIRE shows how two cultures can each adopt the visual language of the other as their own and how their respective longings are projected through fashion and clothing in their fantasy image of this ‘other’.
gnarls barkley: going on
the styling of this video is a kind of “DRUM/soweto” meets “london working class/punk” aesthetic. the look was actually inspired by an, um, inspired fashion spread created by brooklyn photographer clayton cubitt and stylist rene garza called lagos calling
there is an non-pixelated/cleaner version of the video here.
jorge ben: ponta de lanca africano
Jorge Ben drew from the sambas of the hillside slums of Rio de Janeiro and American rhythm and blues to create an original style. He created the most organic fusion of North and South American forms of African music. This affinity is being demonstrated again by the enormous popularity of rap music in the slums, and only in the slums, of Rio. Jorge Ben was also a highly original lyricist who combined street language with images drawn from African and Christian mythology and esoteric literature.
Arto Lindsay in liner notes for “Beleza Tropical”.
Afropolitanism is the modish tag for new work made by young African artists both in and outside Africa. What unites the artists is a shared view of Africa, less as a place than as a concept; a cultural force. This idea, or something like it, lies behind “Flow” at the Studio Museum in Harlem, a fine-textured survey of 20 artists who, with a few exceptions, were born in Africa after 1970 but who now live in Europe or the United States.
i checked out the exhibition last weekend. the works stand on their own as contemporary art that happens to address african themes and subject matter, which frees the work from the “ethnic” connotation that would otherwise diminish its relevance beyond africa. highlights include mustafa maluka’s post-modern, urban/pop culture inspired paintings, as well “lolo” veleko’s landmark street portraits of jo’burg fashionistas”beauty is in the eye of the beholder“.
if you are in the NYC area or plan to be, take that trip uptown. this is a must-see art show.
herewith, in no particular order some observations on ideas, trends, programs, music, magazines of note for 2007 here at casa forota, organized as a randomly ordered year end list.
music: east african urban music arrives: although i have limited exposure to music from home, i was quite impressed with collections like urban africa club and nomadic wax’s nomadic mixtape vol. 2 east african hip hop beatdown where music from artists like necessary noize, professor jay, peter miles, xplastaz and others highlighted the fact that east african music has reached a creative watershed where hip hop/dancehall + sheng + bongo flava = globally aware music that distances itself from the pejorative term ‘local music” that has hung over the imitative music available until quite recently.
ideas: the term “afropolitan” enters my lexicon. as described by author taiye tuakli-wosornu a nigerian-ghanaian writer based in New York City, an afropolitan has a hard time answering the question “where are you from?” why? they have lived in multiple places outside africa (boston, brixton, berlin), claim some part of the continent as home (metaphorically) but inhabit a physical/mental space that encompasses all the places they have lived.
print/web: quality africa-related lifestyle/entertaiment magazines online and off: colures, kitu kizuri, jamati, mimi magazine and pan-african clutch magazine all published to highlight the doings of afropolitans in the worlds of art, music, film, fashion, business. trace (now a fashion mag) and clam were there before, but they still best capture the cutting edge of this quintessentially 21st century experience.
music: global album of the year. migration/globalization are annihilating all kinds of cultural/racial/whatever barriers. with “kala“, maya arulpragasm just dives into it all, equally embracing bhangra, dancehall, africa, australia, digeridoos, hip hop, punk, bollywood, politics, guns, violence, boys to create an album that is a hallmark of the dizzyingly disorienting cultural times we now live in. personal highlight: “hussel” a collaboration with ghanaian/brit afrikan boy sounds to me like the de facto soundtrack for new (illegal) immigrants from everywhere hustling and grinding to get a foothold in their new homes, all while trying to evade deportation.
film: ousmane sembene RIP. [ny times registration req'd] the father of african cinema, all other african directors will be measured against him. he was driven by the insight that film was the most powerful method to convey education/entertainment to africans without the formal education to read books. one of the tragedies of his passing must be that his films commenting on post-colonial african society/politics (xala, moolade, faat kine) were never seen widely outside art movie houses in cities like new york and paris during his lifetime. i managed to catch xala at a recent sembene retrospective here in NYC. if you missed it, some of his films are available on netflix.
race/television: pbs’ brazil in black and white. overt racism is receding everywhere (”it never existed in brazil”, as they like to say). however, social/economic exclusion of black folks in brazil and elsewhere is as plain as day. but how to redress this inequality using policy when there has been generations of racial mixing with african descendants and the identification with “blackness” is sometimes a personal/cultural choice, versus a genetic one? relatedly: the debate in the US on a certain presidential candidate’s blackness.
art/museums: “eternal ancestors, the art of central african reliquary“. brilliant exhibit at the metropolitan museum in NYC that displays sculptural pieces that fired the imaginations of the early 20th century art avant garde (among them picasso). inspired by these innovative, expressive religious artifacts from central africa, these artists found a way to break modern art from its representational (renaissance) roots. the exhibit runs until march 2nd, 2008 go. see it.
Bernd and Hilla Becher’s method of teaching photography at the Staatliche Kuntsacademie in Dusseldorf, Germany.
The Bechers instructed each student to choose a plentiful subject – preferably a class of architecture, but in any case something belonging to the social rather than the natural realm. Next, adopt a uniform style of picture making … so as to minimize the contingencies of expeience and thus the obtrustiveness of the photographer’s point of view, both literally and metaphorically. Finally, make a lrage number of pictures of individual examples, which, because of the rigor of the method will constitute a typology representing the generic identity of the subject through the range of its particular incarnations.
source: Peter Galassi: “Gursky’s World” in Andreas Gursky
