At the moment Brussels is the scene of numerous cultural offerings in the field of so-called »contemporary African art«. This flurry of activity stems in part from the »Africalia« organization founded at the end of 2000 by the »Belgian Ministry for Development«. »Africalia« is dedicated to cultural promotion in accordance with an EU-ACP (Africa/Caribbean/Pacific) regulation. A second institution involved is the »Royal Museum for Central Africa«, which is currently under reorganization. With respect to these two institutions, which have a direct connection to the national government in one case and to the European administration in the other, the following questions naturally arise: What approach do they take to presenting »contemporary art«, and what constitutes »African« art for them? Can some sort of »government agenda« be visualized in the exhibits, or something resembling an »official government relationship« to the African countries of the ACP group, even one that can be taken to represent all of Europe? After all, this focus on the »African« is taking place in a setting that would like to be thought of as the »Heart of Europe«, a city that functions as the headquarters of both NATO and of the European Parliament. But the Brussels cityscape is also still strongly inscribed with reminders of Belgium’s colonial days in the Congo. At the same time, a traditionally large black community lives in the Brussels district of Matonge.

The picture Africalia paints of »African contemporary art« becomes quite clear upon viewing the organization’s most representative exhibition, »TRANSFER(T)S«,1 at the Palais des Beaux Arts (PSK). The show was curated by Afro-Belgian artist Toma Muteba Luntumbue – who is also »Coordinator of Visual Arts« for Africalia. A certain discomfiture about endeavoring to exhibit the art of an entire continent could already be discerned in the exhibition announcements. While the first PSK folder referred to »Hedendaagse Afrikaanse Kunst«, a later edition bore the subtitle «Tentoonstelling van Hedendaagse Kunst.»

The 25 stations in the exhibition opened with artist Bili Bidjocka in the central Horta Gallery: a walk-through installation, based on the central perspective that characterizes Renaissance pictorial space. A sign on the outside wall read »On est dans l’espace de la peinture ou on ne l’est pas…«. The interior of the room was divided into two equal parts by a picture frame placed perpendicular to its longitudinal axis, and in each part the scene in Leonardo’s Last Supper was reconstructed using wallpaper tables covered in tablecloths and set with plates. A viewer could thus stand on one side and participate in the pictorial space while observing himself on the other side as if in a mirror or framed interior.

Works by Tracey Rose (»Lucie’s Fur«), El Anatsui (»Man’s Cloth«) and Sue Williamson («Better Lives») were juxtaposed in such a way that their interrelationships pointed up their methodical heterogeneity: first photographs dealing in a theatrical way with sexually- and identity-charged policies, then a sculptural wall object that quoted applied-arts recycling, and finally three projections showing documentaries of immigrants in South Africa talking about their lives.

Making reference to the AU (African Union) space, Pascale Marthine Tayou’s installation worked as a counterpoint to Bidjocka’s European »Renaissance space«. In closely packed rows, the 54 flags of the AU hung in a scaffolding constructed of narrow squared metal bars. »Afrodiziak … aphrodisiaque … afrosisiaque« was the name Tayou gave his imaginary space. The scaffolding was placed along the longer axis of the exhibition room, at the end of which a row of black table fans blew wind to make the flags flutter. This visualization of the AU is interesting above all before the background of government policies on admission to a transnational group: the AU forms a very different pan-African entity than does the ACP as conceived by the EU (or EC), which is designed to transform a former colonial relationship into modern terms. 2

The work that formed the most disturbing contrast to Horta’s art nouveau architecture was contributed by Gaston Damag. Replicas of traditional African wood sculptures were placed in the context of mechanized violence, shown in glass cases as ostensibly prepared in accordance with curatorial/scholarly or ethnographic practice. One figure was gored along its length by a heavy motor-powered axle. If the motor was switched on, the rotation of the unbalanced figure took on a menacing character vis-à-vis the delicate architecture. Close by in a video cabinet Alfredo Jaar’s »Epilogue« was playing, part of the »Rwanda Project« he carried out from 1994 to 1998 in the border zone Zaire-Rwanda-Uganda. In a video projection slowed down almost to a freeze frame, the gleaming whiteness slowly gels to form a face. The initially bright, contrastless (white) face bit-by-bit takes on individual features and turns into a portrait of an old, crying Hutu woman, who directly witnessed the genocide of 1994. Between these two pieces were placed Mona Marzouk’s lacquer paintings and sculptures, whose silhouetted profiles synthesized architectonic forms found in the Indian, Arab and African cultures.

This short glance at the exhibition shows how the works on display varied widely according to media, method and theme. Curatorial accents, for example the juxtaposition of Bidjocka and Tayou, were limited to a very generalized plane. Content tended to be neutralized by rash changes in context. The exhibition avoided any explicit contextualization of the »where« in which »TRANSFER(T)S« was taking place – namely in Belgium, in Brussels and in the PSK. This kind of contextualization was provided only in the exhibition catalog’s introductory essay, »Transferts’ Critical Cartography«. With the term «transfer» the author drew a line from Belgium’s colonial transfer of goods as an »inequitable system of exchange« to the current economic battles on the borders of Rwanda and Uganda, referring to the two million dead there (by now estimates are closer to four million). At the same time the author looked at «transfer» as part of a (survival) strategy, which can also be applied to art.3 One might very well ask if this concept isn’t being hopelessly overtaxed when made to encompass both the rigorously one-dimensional transfer of goods (ivory, rubber, and finally mineral resources) and on the other hand a lifestyle marked by flexibility, experimentation or adaptation -- or taken even further, a corresponding art practice -- even if both can ultimately be traced back to a colonial system of reference.

The curator’s decision to demonstrate the plurality of identities in »African art practice« by showing the greatest possible diversity in media and themes as well as in generations, instead of visualizing this plurality as representing various referential strategies, lets the term »transfer« slide into the noncommittal. A curatorial misapprehension becomes apparent: while demonstrating plural frames of reference does not in and of itself prevent a profile of political identity or of »contemporary African art« from emerging, it does consign such an exhibition to the almost purely illustrative level. This results in a one-dimensional perspective of value judgments with which an overwhelmingly Belgian (or European) audience views an art exhibition in a Belgian museum, knowing only that the artists have been selected on the basis of their being »natives«.

How could the consequences of a deconstruction of attributed political identity have turned out differently? Instead of the »African« in the subtitle, one could have given up insisting on the fact that the works are by native African artists (after all, with the mixed European and African backgrounds of many of the artists, this distinction is useless anyway). Or one insists on the »African« as the other, turns the tables and implies an aggressively explicit questioning in the exhibition, which pronounces more sophisticated, well-considered judgments instead of being wholly subject to a single overriding judgment. Or one brings in the aspect of 120 years of shared history and economics, which affects Belgium/Europe just as it does Africa – although with utterly different implications.4

Another conceivable approach would have been a formal gesture with reference to the PSK itself. This would have been appropriate since the PSK is itself undergoing a reorganization – as is clearly demonstrated for example by its new onomatopoeic moniker, »BOZAR«. Perhaps this is just the right moment to create a window on time – as a sign of the symbolic handing over – and to attempt through a series of exhibitions to come closer in a more differentiated manner to the field of reference labeled »contemporary African art«. But, instead, the galleries were rented at relatively great expense by »Africalia03«.

Just what is Africalia03? The organization was founded by the Belgian Ministry for Development at the end of 2000, on the basis of Article 27 of the »EU-ACP Agreement« of 23 June 2000 in Cotonou. The Cotonou Agreement follows the tradition of the four Lomé Agreements, which have regulated the post-colonial economic relations between EU (or EC) Member States and their former colonies (collectively referred to as the ACP group) since 1975. The way in which Africalia describes its purpose and activities follows almost word-for-word the formulations found in Article 27, which paraphrases cultural promotion as a soft location factor (identity-giving, cultural exchange), and offers financial and partnership support in the areas of professionalization, distribution and institutionalization.5 Africalia has at its disposal a three-year budget of 9.5 million Euros, along with the option to apply for additional project-related funding.6 While during its first two years the organization focused on providing project support within African countries, Africalia is now appearing in Belgium under the title »Africalia03«, with its own exhibitions and accompanying offers of support.7

It was in this capacity as a representative that one noticed Africalia »squirming« in its »TRANSFER(T)S« exhibition to remain within the boundaries of government policy. Thus, any relativizing of what »contemporary African art« stands for as an identity label was anathema to the planned overview based solely on the native selection criterion. The perspectival construct consisted of Belgium (Europe) staging and exhibiting an »Africa«, while skirting the issues of a «mutual» colonial past or the conditions underlying this type of promotional constellation. In this way Belgium (Europe) perpetuates its paternalistic donor and judgment function, a line of argumentation that one is only too familiar with from bygone times. This avoidance of any clear historical reference can also be read as evidence. What else besides its colonial past in Africa’s Congo Basin could Belgium be referring to in its selection of those countries in the ACP group that happen to be found on the African continent, without however letting itself be pinned down (legally, for instance) by getting caught making any explicit reference to that continent? This reminds one somehow of the similarly cagey behavior of the EU at the UN World Conference Against Racism in Durban in 2001, at that time with regard to the undecided question of reparations for slave trade, forced labor, genocide and disappropriation of resources. This culminated in an official government apology – which under British law is equivalent to an admission of guilt. But, instead of reparations being decreed by law, the concept of »moral support« prevailed, as a preventive expression of voluntary reparations in order to minimize the maximum possible demands that could conceivably be made in connection with the colonial period as a whole – a total of 777 billion US dollars.

The limits of what it was possible to achieve within the scope of government policy were demonstrated in the conflicts the first curatorial team had with the board of Africalia, which ultimately resulted in them quitting. They had, for example, proposed rescuing the threatened archive of negatives from the newspaper »Congopresse Agency« – which was active during the days of the Belgian Congo, the era of independence and the period of Mobutu’s Zaire – from being destroyed by adverse climatic conditions (light, heat and moisture) or sold to private collectors. A research and restoration project as well as a partial publication of these historical documents was planned.

Alternative perspectives

A contrasting perspective to that manifested in »TRANSFER(T)S« can be found in Brussels’s Matonge-lxelles quarter. Recently on view there was a huge plotted picture by the Congolese painter Chéri Samba, the size of an entire building facade. »Matonge-Ixelles, Porte de Namur! Porte de l’amour« is a casual group picture overflowing with such an abundance of details as to be hardly comprehensible. It can be conceived of as something »by and for the black community« and, as a throwaway gesture, addressing as an afterthought the general public as well.

Another picture by Chéri Samba, »Leopard-man«, unmistakably relates explicitly to colonialism. As is written in the right corner, the picture demands from the »Musee royal de l’afrique centrale« nothing less than a »REORGANISATION«. As the focal point of an exhibition entitled »CHÉRI SAMBA moto na Tervuren«, which is incorporated into a gallery showing a collection of »looted art«, the picture hangs next to the bronze »Leopard-man« from the 19th century – an scene of black figures distorted according to the typical European aesthetic of that time.8

The scene depicted in Samba’s painting – a tug-of-war in front of the museum portal between Chéri Samba plus comrades-in-arms and museum employees for this same bronze, the figures of which are placed on a mattress and appear to have come to life – is, to put it mildly, impertinent. It’s a case of planting evidence within the museum of that institution’s malicious irony, implying a certain »sentimentality« harbored by Belgium with regard to its colonial period, the visualization of which finds its most incisive expression in this very museum. The museum’s most recent structural changes were still carried out during the era of Belgium’s colonial hegemony, in 1960.9 But today the museum is about to undertake a new phase of architectural restoration and a substantial reorganization of its collections. This phase should be completed by 2010, the year in which the museum will celebrate its centennial. A historical exhibition focusing on the colonial period is slated for early 2005. The »international commission« assigned to curate the show will consist of equal numbers of Belgian and Congolese scholars.

The fact that the year 2005 coincides with the 120th anniversary of the founding of Leopold’s Congo Free State was not intended, but – according to director Guido Gryseels – pure accident. It’s precisely this incidental coincidence that demonstrates a tangible gravitation between movement and counter-movement. The activities described here surrounding the «African» also allude to the Berlin Africa Conference10 that took place 120 years ago, without explicitly referring to it, or, in the case of Africalia, even wanting to admit knowledge of it.

At this conference the thirteen participating European countries (together with the USA) conferred the Congo Basin on Belgian King Leopold II as a model example of a »modern« colony. By setting up this (African) »Free State«, as a place for slaves to be returned to, and as a way of fighting against the Arab slave trade, the European powers confronted both the crisis in the transatlantic slave trade and the widespread criticism of colonialism that had prevailed since the revolution in Haiti in 1792. At the 1884/85 Africa Conference colonialism was to be relegitimated.

The actual significance of the conference was to prevent conflicts of interest among the European nations as they divided up the African continent amongst themselves during the next 15 years (under articles that regulated their »duty of disclosure« and what constituted »effective occupation«). With the (intended) absence of any supervisory body to monitor the »modern« premises outlined in the agreement, the European nations were effectively provided with an implicit charter for realizing their economic interests, enabling them to set up a system of forced labor throughout broad expanses of the African continent.

This conference, essentially a business conference – where details discussed included tariffs on trade and freedom of shipping – is anything but a remote and closed chapter of history, but rather part of a continuity and can easily be seen as a precursor of today’s familiar economic summits.

 

Translated by Jenny Taylor-Gaida

 

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