ESTIMACIÓN DEL SEXO ALEMAN I, BOTELLA MC, VICIANO J

In 1995, after three years of planning and organisation, Britain hosted an

unprecedented programme, africa95. The hope was to create a more permanent and integrated role for African art in the cultural fabric of Britain. The africa95 programme was built on a desire both to capitalise on the attention being directed towards the Royal Academy of Arts (RAA) exhibition Africa: The Art of a Continent and to counter its historically driven conceptual premise. The initial idea was devised by Clémentine Deliss, Robert Loder and John Picton, who sought to orchestrate a programme of contemporary African art exhibitions that would serve as a response to the traditional exhibition Africa: The Art of a Continent at the RAA. Through a series of exhibitions, conferences, workshops, and educational programmes, the organisers hoped to showcase and legitimate contemporary African art within Britain. While the broader programme had a contemporary focus, the traditional exhibition at the RAA was the impetus for the africa95 programme. The British journalist Alan Riding

(1995:unnumbered page) writes, ―In the end, of course, it was the Royal Academy‘s avoidance of modern art that spawned Africa 95.‖ From its inception, the africa95 programme‘s structure was based on an oppositional framework, one that

contradicted the historical exhibition at the RAA, which was based on ‗traditional‘ and ‗authentic‘ African art, with a larger programme, which aspired to be an ―artist-led‖ interpretation of contemporary African arts.John Picton (1996:22) notes, ―...africa95 was unprecedented in the cultural life of Great Britain, in drawing attention to the contemporary visual and performance arts of Africa, and it had its origins in the need to contextualize the exhibition proposed by the Royal Academy of Arts.‖ In a review of the africa95 programme Enwezor (1996:unnumbered page) described the context:

Aimed at the professionals that make up the cadres of the academy, popular journalists and a general public largely ignorant of the ‗true‘ story of Africa, the festival saw its role as helping to shape debate on issues of artistic practice coming out of Africa and to examine the wide dimensions and dynamism of the African experience, particularly in the 20th century.

The africa95 programme was based upon the idea of altering the position of African art in contemporary British culture through showcasing the art and educating

previously unaware Western audiences. While admirable the programme unfortunately had a negligible long-term impact on shaping the debates around contemporary African art, or in fostering a lasting repositioning of African art in Britain.

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The creators of africa95 envisioned a programme that would remedy the lack of contemporary African art in the RAA‘s exhibition and increase the profile of contemporary African art through exhibitions in mainstream British cultural institutions. Riding (1995:unnumbered page) summarised the aim of africa95 as ―...both simple and ambitious: to find a permanent place for African creativity in the traditionally closed worlds of British and European culture.‖ The President of the Royal Academy of Arts, Sir Philip Dowson (1995:8) noted that the intent of the RAA exhibition was to educate a Western public largely unfamiliar with African art with ―...a bold, synoptic survey of the visual culture of Africa stretching back in time to the very beginnings of artistic endeavour and geographically over the entire continent.‖ This highly ambitious effort was combined with additional exhibitions, which aimed to be the venues where African artists would act as educators and translators of their own work, and offer the contemporary component to the programme. Co-founder and artistic director of africa95, Deliss (1995:16), describes these sites as offering an, ―...‗artist-led‘ approach, which became...the lead characteristic of africa95...‖ 15

Exhibitions of contemporary African arts were essential because through the RAA‘s omission of contemporary African art, the Museum was claiming that nothing of relevance had been created by contemporary African artists. While the RAA

exhibition stated it was showcasing the breadth of African arts, it did so only through the early Twentieth Century. This left audiences with an inevitable sense that only by looking to the past was it possible to experience ‗true‘ African art.

The greater problem that then arose through the broader africa95 programme, was that it was unable to reposition either contemporary or traditional African arts in Britain. Ultimately, the programme as a whole perpetuated stereotypes and a

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In her doctoral thesis, Rachel Lucy Bardhan (2000) gives some insight into elements of the africa95 programme. She investigated firsthand africa95, and how it evolved. While her primary focus was the Pamoja International Sculpture Workshop that was a component of africa95, she did extensive research into the actual planning behind the entire programme. Unable to have seen or participated in this programme myself, Bardhan‘s work provides an invaluable look at the machinations that occurred during africa95‘s organisation. Bardhan contended that instead of africa95 being a promotion of cross- cultural awareness of contemporary African art that utilised contemporary theory, it was instead a case where artists were left feeling misunderstood and misrepresented as outsiders. According to Bardhan, artists were ‗spoken for‘ by curators and academics who attempted to theoretically position and justify the art, which resulted in interpretations that differed from those of the artists themselves. This was in direct conflict with one of the stated goals of africa95, which was that artists should be involved in the presentation of and speak about their own work The result was that many artists left the programme disenchanted and feeling that they were once again being homogenised into a Western dominated international art world. For further reading consult: Bardhan, Rachel Lucy. 2000. “It’s rude to interrupt when someone is speaking” africa95 and the Pamoja International Sculpture Workshop. Unpublished

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Eurocentric, neo-colonial view of Africa and its artists, as artists were segregated, isolated by their difference, which was simultaneously their most valued asset. Enwezor (1996:unnumbered page) describes the limited ability of africa95 to shape debates or accurately portray the dynamics of 20th century African art, arguing, ―The grand selling point of the season foreshadowed the relative scarcity of any sustained interest in Africa that does not privilege its marginality.‖ Marginalisation and isolation of the African artists were the result of a variety of circumstances both in the RAA‘s exhibition and the greater africa95 programme. One factor was the use of an

authoritative language by curators and organisers to effectively ‗dominate‘ the African art and separate it from its Western counterparts. Another factor was the

perpetuation of an ingrained British sociological psyche that operated on the creation of a binary opposition of a self versus an Other. This resulted in an essentialisation of the African artists‘ difference. Enwezor (1996), in his article on africa95, discusses the necessity of difference for the West and references the work of Edward Said who described the fictive space created by the West in order to create the relationship of self versus Other. Enwezor (1996:unnumbered page) writes:

Said argues in his book Orientalism that the Orient is not only a career but an invention and locality of western desire, and to be effective, such a conceptualisation of Africa has to be projected onto the binary logic of the ‗self‘ made more potent through the emphasis of the ‗other‘s‘ limitations.

This philosophy was more evident in the traditional display of African arts exhibited in the RAA show Africa: The Art of a Continent, but was also visible in the greater

africa95 programme.