The Observer and the Observed: The Dynamics of

Representation in African Art

Nadia Lampkin (260402130)

Thursday March 20th 2014

Anth 322 Social Change in Modern Africa

Word count: 2562

Abstract

Representation has always been two-way between Europe

and Africa. Through the concentration on artwork from the

colonial encounter until post-colonial times, this paper

seeks to highlight both the agency and different forms of

resistance from the side of Africans, which have responded

to the forms of representations that have been created by

the West. These responses by African artists demonstrate how

there has always been a process of Africa “observing the

other” while at the same time inverting the images of Africa

that have been created by foreigners.

Introduction

Kwame A. Appiah states: “The central cultural fact of

African life remains not the sameness of Africa’s cultures,

but their enormous diversity”.1 Appiah’s statement is a

direct critique to the historically simplistic and

essentialized representations of Africa from the view of the

West. Much literature has focused on European representation

of Africa, stereotypes and images of the “primitive” and

1 Appiah, Kwame Anthony. 1995. “Why Africa? Why Art?” The Royal Academy Magazine 48 (Atutumn): 40-1

“exotic”, which depict Europe’s perception of African

inferiority.2 There is however, a lack of focus recognizing

the agency on the side of Africans, who have also “observed

Europe” while also consistently responding to these

representations.

I wish to highlight how representation goes both ways

and the forms of resistance and agency from Africa,

particularly in the form of artwork, which has taken place

throughout the trajectory from the colonial encounter to

post-colonial times. I will examine the ongoing

conversation and power dynamics between African artists and

the West to argue that while the West has played a part in

the definition of “African Art” through essentialist

representation, Africans have also been representing “the

other” while also resisting and seeking to invert these

image of Africa created by the West.

I will examine the satirical carvings created in

Guinea-Bissau, which served as a parody and caricature of

colonial administrators and by extension a colonial

2 Grinker pg 11

critique. Secondly, I will assess the use of the very word

“African Art” in the present day international art market. I

will demonstrate through the case of “African Prints”, the

dilemma over the use of this label and the resistance from

African artists like Nigerian artist Yinka Shonibare, whose

work features these prints in order to highlight the foreign

origin of these prints and serves as a form of opposition to

the use of “authentically African” in the international art

market.

Africa Observes Europe: Art as a from of resistance

During European exploration and colonialism, Europeans

often brought back artwork, which served as exotic keepsakes

and souvenirs of Africa.3 They were viewed, and often

continue to be seen as a having a “pre-colonial aesthetic”

which remained unchanged, reproducing itself until it was

“contaminated” by European contact.4. While the west created

a binary opposition between these works as “traditional”

3 Grinker, Roy R, and Christopher B. Steiner. Perspectives on Africa: A Reader in Culture, History, and Representation. Second edition Cambridge, Mass: Blackwell, 2010. Print.Pg. 3284 Ibid

versus the European “modern”, African artists were also in

the process of observing the European and provided a

response through the form of art to these representations of

Africa. During colonialism, there is evidence of a striking

theme of resistance in the work of African artists of

colonialism who used art as a channel to resist and critique

the changes taking place in their society.

During Portuguese rule Manjaco artisans of Guinea-

Bissau began to produce statuary carvings of white colonial

officers to include among their other ancestor figurines,

which decorated important graves.5 This “figurative

innovation”, which these artisans undertook in their

carvings, took place in the context of political change. The

scramble for chieftaincies that went on after the scramble

for this part of Africa redefined the technologies of power

and authority in Manjaco villages. 6 These carved wooden

figures that look like caricatures of Portuguese colonial

5 Landau, Paul S, and Deborah D. Kaspin. Images and Empires: Visuality in Colonial and Postcolonial Africa. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002. Print.Pg 3236 Gable, Eric. "Bad Copies: The Colonial Aesthetic and the Manjaco-Portuguese Encounter." Images and Empires: Visuality in Colonial and Postcolonial Africa. (2002): 294-319. Print. Pg 311

officers, were used in the Manjaco ethnic group to

commemorate their ancestors.7 The Portuguese viewed these

carvings as evidence that Manjaco were seduced by Western

culture and were rapidly losing their own culture. 8

However, Gable argues in “Bad Copies: The Colonial Aesthetic

and the Manjaco-Portuguese Encounter”, that the

appropriation of outsides, among the Manjaco, is a long-

standing cultural practice, whereby icons of foreigners are

valued according to local matrices of meaning.9

It is also important to note the visual representation

of the Manjaco that was being constructed at the same time

by the colonial administration. Artur Martins de Meireles

served as an administrator in the Manjaco region for fifteen

years.10 During his time in office he used his authority to

undertake a study in which he recorded the presence of

scarification on the torsos of over 20,000 Manjaco women to

not only portray a “savage” element of the Manjaco but also

7Ibid pg 294 8 Ibid. pg 3119 Ibid.10 Ibid. pg294

to illustrate his thesis that Manjaco culture, as epitomized

by scarification was in decline.11

Just as colonial imagery depicted the Manjaco in a

manner of parody as “the primitive other” which served to

legitimate their authority over a “savage” culture, the

Manjaco also undertook a process of “observing the other”

and appropriation of Europe into their symbol system, which

is evident in their visual culture. Their carvings of

colonial administrators can be viewed as a satirical

depiction and as subversive images against colonial rule.

These carvings can be interpreted as a sort of satirical

commentary on colonial activities, by incorporating the

“foreign” into their art they served as an expression of

resistance, as Gable states: It is the Manjaco who

domesticated the European and not the other way around.”12

11 Ibid. pg 294 12 Gable, Eric. "Bad Copies: The Colonial Aesthetic and the Manjaco-Portuguese Encounter." Images and Empires: Visuality in Colonial and Postcolonial Africa. (2002): 294-319. Print. Pg 323

Figure 1. Two Manjaco ancestor posts, one of them by

Jon Biku Pinambe. Photo by Eric Gable

Figure 2. Cluster of Manjaco ancestor posts. Photo by

Eric Gable

Problematizing “African Art”

For some scholars, the very use of the category

“African Art” can be problematic. The contention over its

use is directly related to the long-standing debate over

cultural unity in Africa. In our collective imagination we

have come to accept a category of objects we call “African

art”.13 But can geographic continuity alone suffice as a

criterion for cultural classification?14 When there are more

nuances to the category European art such as Greek statuary

or Italian Renaissance, does an exhibition on “African Art”

truly demonstrate the diverse artist expressions that are

separated by space and time?15 Kwame Appiah is among those

who has argues there is no cultural unity in Africa, he has

committed critically on the use of the term. “What unites

these objects as African,” he writes, “is not a shared

nature not the share character of the cultures from which

they came, but our ideas of Africa, ideas which have now come

to be important for many Africans and thus are now African

ideas too.”16 Scholars like Appiah and V.Y Mudimbe are

critical to the category “African Art” as it is a category,

13 Grinker, Roy R, and Christopher B. Steiner. Perspectives on Africa: A Reader in Culture, History, and Representation. Second edition Cambridge, Mass: Blackwell, 2010. Print.Pg.1314 Ibid pg 13 15 Grinker, Roy R, and Christopher B. Steiner. Perspectives on Africa: A Reader in Culture, History, and Representation. Second edition Cambridge, Mass: Blackwell, 2010. Print.Pg. 1316 Appiah, Kwame Anthony. 1995. “Why Africa? Why Art?” The Royal Academy Magazine 48 (Atutumn): 40-1

which has been historically constructed by Western

discourse, and is guided by Western models of art and

aesthetics rather than African aesthetic perceptions.17

Mudimbe writes, “What is called African art covers a wide

range of objects introduced into a historicizing perspective

of European values since the eighteenth century.” 18

Contemporary art making has been dominated by the West

and has been defined largely as a Western enterprise. 19

Through its preoccupation with African Art the West has

created an opposition between “traditional and authentic”

African art, versus “modern” art. An obsession with the

“authentically African” art has been created, which has real

consequences for the African artist who struggles to

establish him or herself in the international art scene.20

Oguibe notes how often times, western attitudes over

highlighting the “authenticity” of the work, disconnects the

17 Grinker, Roy R, and Christopher B. Steiner. Perspectives on Africa: A Reader in Culture, History, and Representation. Second edition Cambridge, Mass: Blackwell, 2010. Print.pg.329 18 Mudimbe, V.Y. 1986. “African Art as a Question Mark.” African Studies Review 29(1):3-419 Grinker 32920 Ibid.

artist from their work. Until recently works of classical

African art were attributed to the “tribe” rather than the

individual.21 He argues that instead of the artist being in

the forefront as an innovator, anonymity is imposed which

erases their authority over the work and imposes a

collective and anonymous production.22 This anonymity for

Oguibe, is what makes the “authentic” element of much of

African art exhibited in the West. He connects this to

colonial ethnography and the colonial desire for the

faceless native, which emphasized the “otherness”.23

One case, which truly represents the problematic use of

the term “authentically African”, is the case of African

prints in the global art and fashion market. The second part

of this article highlights the history of these prints from

its foreign origins, and their present hybrid form in order

to reveal the dynamics of cultural authenticity, the way in

which western representations has obscured over their

21 Oguibe,Olu. “Art, Identiy, Boundaries. Postmodernist and Contemporary African Art,” Reading the Contemporary :African Art from Theory to Market place. Cambridge, MA:MIT Press, 20-21, pg. 23-2522 Ibid23 Ibid. pg 23-25

history and finally the resistance from African artists like

Nigerian artist Yinka Shonibare who seeks to challenge the

conventional categories of African Art.

African Prints: Foreign Origins and Authenticity

During the last few seasons in the European fashion

market, there has been a growing trend of what is commonly

referred to as “African prints” or sometimes “tribal

prints”, in major fashion labels such as Burberry and H&M.24

While typically regarded as a style that has its history in

West Africa, these prints actually have a crossbred cultural

origin.

The introduction of the wax print in to West Africa is

a result of a long historical process of imitation and

mimicry. 25 From the 17th century onwards batik cloth made

24 Felsenthal, Julia. “The Curious History of “Tribal Prints”. Slate Magazine. March 12 2012. http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/design/2012/03/african_fabric_where_do_tribal_prints_really_come_from_.html25 Matthews, Kevin. Q&A: Nina Sylvanus. International Institute UCLA. April 24, 2007. http://www.international.ucla.edu/article.asp?parentid=67940

their appearance in West Africa. 26 The wax-print in its

current version only appeared towards the end of the 19th

century, at the peak of the European textile export to West

Africa. The invention of the Javanese batik cloth was

imitated and reproduced by the Dutch for the Dutch Indies

market, present day Indonesia however, the industrialized

reproduction process was poor in quality as it left fine

lines on the fabric that resulted from the cracking of the

wax technique.27 Largely unappreciated by the Javanese,

these signs of imperfection became highly appreciated in

West Africa.28 The transfer of batik to the West African

market was created by a long-term process of adaptation to

local demand and aesthetics, which were very different from

their Javanese equivalents and were constantly adapting to

different tastes. 29

26 Sylvanus, N. "The Fabric of Africanity: Tracing the Global Threads of Authenticity." Anthropological Theory. 7.2 (2007): 201-216. Print. Pg 20727 Ibid28 Ibid29 Ibid. pg 221

There has never been a mistaking of the European-ness

of these prints in the West African market.30 Chinese

imitations have become the newest producers of these

fabrics, however, Sylvanus identifies how the local

complexity of hierarchic consumption structures and

practices do not allow the Chinese copies to achieve the

status as European produced ones, which for the West African

market forms its authenticity.31 Most recently, these

fabrics have found their way into European fashion brands

where they are often labeled as “Africans prints”. The irony

is that of these fabrics in the form of clothes or

accessories, are marketed by their “authentic African

nature” and “exotic or tribal” appeal, which obscures, the

very complex and foreign origins of these prints as well as

the symbolic significance that different designs have for

communities in West Africa.

While the use of these fabrics by European designers

can be argued to have reduced a diverse and historic market 30 Sylvanus, N. "The Fabric of Africanity: Tracing the Global Threads of Authenticity." Anthropological Theory. 7.2 (2007): 201-216. Print. Pg 20931 Ibid

into a reductionist category of “African prints”, there has

also be resistance and critique from African artists. Yinka

Shonibare, a Nigerian artist uses these fabrics in his art

to critique the representation of these prints as “African

authenticity”. Shonibare’s work is generally concerned with

the deconstruction of stereotypes and essentialized

identities of African people in the West.32 Shonibare’s

motive behind the use of wax fabrics is because they are as

a tradition that multiple cultures lay claim to originating.

Due to this, it provides an articulate critique of the

notion that any identity, human or material can be narrowed

down to a single source.”33 Today Shonibare’s source of

cloth comes from the area of Brixton market in the south of

London. Shonibare explains:

“When you realize that African print textiles are designed and produced by people in Dutch and English factories, then that completely destroys the methodology of this seductive African thing. Therefore it is important thatI don’t go to Africa to buy them, so that all African exoticimplications remain fake.34” 32 Gohrisch,J. Grunkemeier, E. “Postcolonial Studies Across the Disciplines.” 2010 Ulrike Schmieder. Pg 3333 Ibid34 Quoted in Rachel Kent, “Time and Transformation in the Art of Yinka Shonibare MBE,”in Rachel Kent, Robert Hobbs &Anthony

Scramble for Africa (Figure 3) Yinka Shonibare Works From a Permanent Collection

Shonibare’s Scramble For Africa uses wax prints to depict the

Berlin Conference of 1884. Each member sitting shares a

style of dress that has been reworked in bright wax textiles

with little to reveal of national or cultural allegiance,

with headless mannequins with a lack of identity, this is

part of the intent of Shonibare to showcase the lack of

Downey, Yinka Shonibare MBE(London:Prestel,2008):12

attention that was paid to the diversity of cultures in

Africa at the time of the Berlin conference.35 Shonibare

describes his work: “Its about people having a conference

about a continent that was not theirs and deciding how they

are going to divide it up without any form of consultation

with those who would be most affected-Africans.36” His

intent is not only to emphasize the lack of diversity

recognized at the time of Colonialism, but at the same time

to highlight the problematic usage of “authenticity” which

blankets over the history of exchange between various

African communities and international forces which produced

what is referred to today as “African Prints”.

Conclusion

This paper has sought to examine how transcultural

representation, from colonialism to post-colonial times has

gone both ways between Europe and Africa. The satirical

carvings created by the Manjaco of Guinea-Bissau, is just

35 Gohrisch,J. Grunkemeier, E. “Postcolonial Studies Across the Disciplines.” 2010 Ulrike Schmieder. Pg 3636 Ibid.

one example of artwork, which was created during colonialism

that was a channel for these artists to represent the

“foreigner”, while also commenting satirically on the social

change undergoing in their society. Yinka Shonibare’s use of

wax textiles stands as a direct form of resistance and

critique to the disregard for African diversity, which

continues to take place through the formation of

essentialist categories like “authentic” and “traditional”

African art. While Europe’s image of Africa can be argued as

being a form of control and colonialism, it is essential to

also recognize the agency and process of representation and

resistance, which is ongoing from the side of Africans.37

37 Grinker, Roy R, and Christopher B. Steiner. Perspectives on Africa: A Reader in Culture, History, and Representation. Second edition Cambridge, Mass: Blackwell, 2010. Pg 27

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