Since the project of a biennial in Johannesburg failed in the late nineties, Dakar has now become the focus of the African art landscape every two years. Whereas Johannesburg tried to play in the league of the world’s big biennials, operating at a »global« level and using the model where the curator is vested with extensive powers, DAK’ART sees itself as a pan-African event - as a meeting place and showcase for African art, even the art that has not (yet) gained a foothold on the »global« market. Non-African art is also presented in separate exhibitions, but plays a rather secondary role. To do justice to the variety of contemporary African art production, the Biennale has rejected the model of a curated exhibition, favouring instead an open application procedure and a changing selection committee. The way this variety is interpreted, the topics and aesthetic approaches that dominate the exhibition, and thus the image of African art presented depend upon the way this committee is composed and works. No matter how differently the results of this procedure turn out each time – and between 2002 and 2004 the differences were considerable -, the structure of DAK’ART has often come under strong criticism.

The difficulties involved in a biennial of African art start with the question of its scope. In the face of a continent that, like no other, must be taken together with its diaspora, the issue of what actually constitutes African art is controversial from the beginning. In addition, in view of the considerable developmental differences existing within African societies and the historical evolution of individual countries or regions, no definition of »contemporary« can simply be taken for granted. A further difficulty – and regular trigger for discussions – is the twofold objective of the Biennale: to provide an important contribution to the integration of African art into the global, i.e. Western-dominated, art industry, and to prevent the levelling out of specificity by an »international style«. And then there is the long history of the differences between Africans living on the continent and those of the diaspora with regard to the concepts of identity, the relationship between tradition and modernization, the social role of the artist, etc. »There seems to be some suspicion between the Africans of London, Paris or New York and those in Harare, Abidjan or Douala,« wrote Yacouba Konaté in the catalogue of the DAK’ART 2002, »they are not all Africans in the same degree, and some believe they are more entitled to be Africans than others.«

Even at the conferences two years ago, the debates about »Africanness« in art and ways and means to strengthen its international importance were coloured by differences of opinion like these. This year, these differences came very much out into the open owing to the strong presence of (African) Americans, who, under the rhetorical leadership of Okwui Enwezor, brought their sometimes justified criticisms of the Biennale to bear in such a way as to convey the impression to the organizers that DAK’ART is not a centre, but rather a province within the discourse about African art. It is doubtless correct to say that the Biennale has a number of organizational flaws. Openings and the publication of the catalogue are postponed time and time again, works arrive late or not at all, the facilities themselves are partly unsuitable. How much of this is the fault of the Biennale or results from the general conditions (budget, customs duties, transport, etc.) cannot be assessed here. There was also criticism of the way the special exhibitions were divided up into the sectors »Africa«, »Diaspora«, and »World« - a rather awkward attempt to define the position of Africa in the world, especially as the main exhibition brings together artists living both in Africa and abroad. Finally, the American group demanded the abolition of the selection committee and the introduction of the curator principle to allow a more professional and concise representation of African art. However one may view this question, it was made more controversial by the professionalism of the American contribution, curated by Salah Hassan, displayed at great cost at the fringe of the festival. It tried to score points with a gigantic video installation in a remote industrial district, its own café, a comfortable shuttle service, a concert in the National Theatre, extensive advertising and conferences that sometimes took place parallel to those of the Biennale. The three American works were not better or worse than many others, but their presentation – coupled with the criticism of DAK’ART – conveyed the message of how the whole thing could look if it was run by the right people. There was, however, some speculation in Dakar - a city decorated by a not inconsiderable number of anti-American graffiti and pictures of Bin Laden - that US interests of a political and economic kind could be behind this competitive appearance, interests running counter to West Africa’s traditional connections to France and Europe;.

Whereas the main exhibition two years ago was still heavily characterized by rather drastic symbolisms, figurative sculptures, recycled materials and earth-coloured paintings, this year the jury1 took a clear step towards technical media. Parallel to the artistic means, the themes addressed also seemed to be treated in a more topical and less metaphorical fashion. Probably because of the high proportion of women in the selection committee and the fact that almost fifty percent of the artists were also women, gender issues received a great deal of attention. In her video installation, Michèle Magema from Congo, one of the prize-winners, examined the training of bodies in dictatorial regimes. She contrasted old footage of dancing women paying homage from Thierry Michel’s documentary film »Mobutu, roi de Zäire« with the image of a woman of today who has apparently internalized the behaviour of the drilled masses. In the video »Dansons« by Zoulikha Bouabdellah from Algeria, we first see a belly dancer wrapping her hips carefully in ornamented cloths. As soon as the orientalist window-dressing is properly in place, she starts dancing to a blaring version of the Marseillaise. As well as politico-historical references like these, gender is also addressed in relation to public and private spaces: for example, in the »Cairoscapes« in Cinemascope format by Maha Maamoun from Egypt, in which the flowery patterns of women’s dresses contrast with the geometry of urban spaces, or in the case of Samta Benyahia from Algeria, whose installation »Je suis femme« examines the traditional space of the woman behind the Arabic mashrebeeya.

The videos of the Egyptian Khaled Hafez, who was also awarded a prize by the Biennale, deal with gender trouble too. »Idlers Logic« shows directionless, swaggering, drinking young men between media idols, the pressure of old and new role images, involuntary idleness and sexual uncertainty. What connects these and many other works apart from their concrete references is an interest in the positioning of subjects in real and/or imagined spaces, at borders and transitions. In the film »The Tourist« by the South African Gregg Smith, for instance, a man on the street in a strange city is badgered by various people and sent in different directions. In his video, Achillekà Komguem from Cameroon has one black leg and one white leg put one foot in front of the other, thus evoking something like a double consciousness of post-colonial subjects. In »Migration« - migratory birds, hung up high, made of acrylic glass with African patterns -, the Senegalese Cheikh Niass, who lives in Austria, alludes to the hopes associated with a change of location, while Sue Williamson uses the example of migration within Africa itself to South Africa to show with what realities such hopes can be confronted. She does this by employing a striking reversal of the principle of the studio photography that is so popular in Africa. While in the latter genre people are normally portrayed in front of backgrounds that represent mobility, modernity or wealth, the portraitees in the video »Better Lives« are shown in front of completely average drink stalls. In rigid poses, as in a photo, they tell their stories of flight from civil-war-torn areas in Burundi, Angola or Congo, and talk about the xenophobia with which they had to struggle after their arrival in South Africa.

All the above-mentioned works can be seen as being relatively homogeneous, »contemporary« and »international«, both in the problems they depict and the means and methods they use. But the exhibition also featured more formalist, experimental approaches, as well as conventional painting and sculpture. Because altogether only 23 artists represented a selection of contemporary African art here, it is obvious that this selection is too tendentious for some and not rigorous enough for others. Here, however, one inevitably asks oneself why the main exhibition at DAK’ART doesn’t simply show more. The application procedure and the necessity for compromise within the selection committee mean that there is no way it can be a conceptually tight exhibition anyway. So why doesn’t it simply give more insights into the African art scene, even if perhaps at the price of accepting some aesthetic differences? Such differences, which have their basis partly in regionally and culturally diverse traditions, are part of an African reality that also includes the absence, for the most part, of a canon of modernity and the institutions and publications associated with it. The larger exhibitions of African art and their academic reception mostly take place in Western centres and are not easily accessible for artists and the public in Africa. For this reason, the demand for an institutionalized continuity of research and presentation on the continent itself is often the focus of discussion. Rasheed Araeen, for example, the editor of »Third Text«, wrote an open letter distributed at the Biennale in which he called for the end of the African accusatory discourse with regard to the ignorant West and appealed for the setting up of a »research institute to create a body of knowledge of the last 100 years of African art and history«.

Okwui Enwezor also stressed the necessity of creating historical awareness, citing the sixties, when, under Léopold Sédar Senghor’s leadership, art acted as an important factor in political and social projects and the »Festival des Art Nègres« in Dakar contributed to the new African self-image of the decolonization phase.
In view of this historical dimension, the presentation of the magnificent sculptures by Christian Lattier in the National Gallery were a highlight of this Biennale. Lattier, who died in 1978, came from Ivory Coast, but spent the largest part of his artistic life in France. His sculptures, created from the fifties up into the seventies – figures, groups and masks made of wire and string – strike a balance between pure form and representation; they can be read as a sort of translation of the cubist sense of space and treatment of surface back into the conceptual world of their African sources; they also contain contemporary references, however. Yacouba Konaté showed Lattier along with two other sculptors in the »Africa« segment of the special exhibitions. »Diaspora«, curated by Ivo Mesquita from Brazil, had to open without a few works that hadn’t arrived, and the »World« segment consisted of a rather unambitious DVD compilation for which Hans-Ulrich Obrist had strung together somewhat far-fetched works by Rirkrit Tiravanija, Philippe Parreno, Carsten Höller, etc.. At its first presentation, there were soon almost only white viewers to be seen in the display room of the old Palace of Justice, while, on the other hand, many European visitors to the Biennale had little time for certain forms of African art – unless they happened to find their »Africanness« attractive: alongside the increasing globalization of the media and methods employed in contemporary art, widely differing habits of reception still exist.

DAK’ART is still young and has certainly not yet found its final identity. It will have to become more professional at an organizational level if it is not to deter worthwhile artists from participating. It will also have to draw up more precise guidelines – whether it is run on the basis of applications or uses a curator – for being able to discuss the contemporary aspect of African art without forcibly levelling out aesthetic differences. The Biennale could possible increase its importance as a place where different practices and attitudes relativize each other’s »normality« if it named and addressed the existing differences so as to give a form to the much-cited exchange.

 

 

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