Africas. The Artist and the City

His coming 29 May, the CCCB presents the exhibition Africas. The Artist and the City, curated by Pep Subirós, forming part of the BARCELONA ART REPORT 2001 triennial, which this year is entitled EXPERIENCES.

The idea behind this exhibition is to highlight the vitality and wealth of contemporary African art, and its close interrelation with the ever-increasing rate of urbanisation of the continent.

The project takes as its starting point a vision of Africa as a seething, highly contradictory reality, bringing together in an intense and sometime explosive mix a variety of temporalities and cultural traditions, concentrating and manifesting the extremes of the problems and potentials of our world.

This situation is particularly evident in artistic creativity, a creativity which is still solidly rooted in its historical, social and cultural bedrock, yet profoundly marked by the transformation of living spaces. If African traditional art is fundamentally a rural art, its contemporary art is basically urban.

The exhibition aims, then, to offer an approach to the new urban realities of Africa through the eyes of its artists. The selection of almost 200 works includes examples of different plastic and visual genres — painting, sculpture, photography, cinema, video, installations — with particular emphasis on photography (both creative and documentary), in view of its importance on the African art scene.

Africas focuses on some of the continent’s principal metropolises: Dakar, Abidjan, Lagos, Harare, Johannesburg and Cape Town, and on African presence in Paris and London.

Parallel activities: To coincide with the exhibition, the CCCB is also organising a series of parallel activities to take a closer look at contemporary African culture. This year’s Barcelona Debate centres on Africa, the Artist and the City and is also directed by Pep Subirós (from 30 May to 2 June). The Africas festival (2, 3 and 4 June), organised by Arquitectes sense Fronteres and the CCCB, will showcase the African cultural manifestations which are emerging around us today: cinema, fashion, music, literature, gastronomy... And, finally, the programme of August Nights at the CCCB offers a cycle of African music and cinema in the Pati de les Dones, organised by the Associació Cultural l’Ull Anònim (August 2001).

The exhibition is divided into three spaces: 1. INTRODUCTORY SPACE, containing works which address, from different viewpoints, the theme of relations between Africa and the rest of the world (the different forms of economic and political dependence, migration, the collective imaginaries of the two sides, etc.). mit El Anatsui , Godfried Donkor, Berry Bickle

2. CENTRAL SPACE, comprising eight art-city areas, grouped into three main sections: Dakar, Abidjan and Paris - Lagos, Harare and London - Johannesburg and Cape Town

In the course of our visit round this central part, we find two clearly differentiated modules: a) a documentary module for each section. These documentary modules form a kind of mediatheque about the cities included in the exhibition, covering both the physical history of each city and its contemporary cultural and creative scene. Documentary photography, cinema, literature, the press, educational materials and even music all play an important part here. b) some strictly artistic modules, with the work of two or at most three artists for each city, one a creative photographer in each case. Their work will explicitly or implicitly address/reflect on issues, problems, attitudes, values, ways of seeing, interpretations, and so on, related to the processes of urban transformation and/or urban lifestyles and mentalities. mit Viyé Diba, Amadou Kan-Si, Ousmane Dago Ndiaye, Anapa, Ananias Leki, Patrice Felix Tchicaya, Dilomprizulike, Akinbode Akinbiyi, Sokari Douglas Camp, Eileen Perrier, David Brazier, Luis Bastos, Calvin Dondo, Penelope Siopis, Santu Mofokeng, Willie Bester, Zwelethu Mthethwa, Jane Alexander

3. FINAL SPACE, centring around the theme of the new forms of individuality and subjectivity to emerge in contemporary Africa, particularly related to urban lifestyles. mit Moshekwa Langa, Bodys I. Kingelez, Samuel Fosso

In keeping with the exhibition, the catalogue will have two complementary yet clearly differentiated parts. The first part is formed by the literary and photographic narrative of the journeys, experiences and personal reflections on which this exhibition is based — journeys, experiences and reflections in which the cities form the background and it is the artists who take the floor. The second part includes brief introductions to the artists participating in the exhibition and reproductions of all the works shown, with articles by Simon Njami, Yacouba Konaté, Akinbode Akinbiyi, Konuba Mercer and Amadou Kan-Si. Pressetext

Africas. The Artist and the City
Kurator: Pep Subiros
BARCELONA ART REPORT 2001 triennial - "EXPERIENCES"

KünstlerInnen: mit El Anatsui, Godfried Donkor, Berry Bickle, Viye Diba, Amadou Kan-Si, Ousmane Dago Ndiaye, Anapa, Ananias Leki, Patrice Felix Tchicaya, Dilomprizulike, Akinbode Akinbiyi, Sokari Douglas Camp, Eileen Perrier, David Brazier, Luis Bastos, Calvin Dondo, Penelope Siopis, Santu Mofokeng, Willie Bester, Zwelethu Mthethwa, Jane Alexander, Moshekwa Langa, Bodys Isek Kingelez, Samuel Fosso