Thami Jali roundtable conversation
KZNSA Gallery
17 March 2024: 9:30-12:30
ASAI and KZNSA convened an informal roundtable conversation in honour of Thami Jali. The intention was to enable fellow creatives to reflect on his multi-faceted contribution to the arts and to society. The discussion was convened on the eve of the closure of his exhibition, Mphendla Ndlela.
9 November 2021
It is ten years since the publication of Visual Century: South African Art In Context 1907–2007, a four-volume boxed set featuring commissioned texts from over thirty authors. Arguably, the most ambitious research project ever undertaken on the art of an African country, Visual Century remains relatively little known and celebrated. What were the achievements and shortcomings of the project? What is its relevance today? How does Visual Century speak to contemporary trends in researching and publishing art historical accounts of contemporary South/African art?
Writing South/African Art History: Visual Century 10 Years Later
It is ten years since the publication of Visual Century: South African Art In Context 1907–2007, a four-volume boxed set featuring commissioned texts from over thirty authors. Arguably, the most ambitious research project ever undertaken on the art of an African country, Visual Century remains relatively little known and celebrated. What were the achievements and shortcomings of the project? What is its relevance today? How does Visual Century speak to contemporary trends in researching and publishing art historical accounts of contemporary South/African art?
This webinar featured three of the architects of Visual Century — artist and curator Gavin Jantjes (initiator and director of The Visual Century Project), art historian Mario Pissarra (chief editor and project manager) and art historian Lize van Robbroeck (editor of volume two). The discussion was moderated by art historian Nomusa Makhubu. The panel reflected on the editorial, commissioning and writing processes of Visual Century as well as on the challenges of academic publishing and book distribution. They also engaged alternatives, including the need for more open access publishing, and the potential of new technologies to reshape the field of contemporary publishing.
Visual Century was published by Wits University Press and The Visual Century Project (2011). It was project managed by the Africa South Art Initiative (ASAI). Funding for Visual Century came from the Department of Arts and Culture, Republic of South Africa; the Foundation for Arts Initiatives; and the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg.
Awakenings: The art of Lionel Davis, Book Launch at District Six Museum, Cape Town (2017)
Lionel Davis in conversation with Mario Pissarra, moderated by Andrew Lamprecht.
District Six Museum Homecoming Centre, Cape Town, 13th October 2017.
The book signing was held at Robben Island Gateway,
Multi-faceted painter and poet, Lefifi Tladi shares his wisdom concerning the role of the human senses in both the making and the appreciation of art.
Tuesday 5 April 2016
Old Medical School Building, Hiddingh Hall campus, UCT
Conversation facilitated by Dr Nomusa Makhubu
Event convened to celebrate 10 years since the establishment of the ASAI website, held at the Institute for Creative Arts (formerly GIPCA), Hiddingh Hall, UCT.
A SELECT READING LIST ON AFRICAN ART – COMPILED BY ANDREW LAMPRECHT
This is a suggested reading list for an undergraduate who is not an art major but wants a good rounded understanding of that complex subject "African Art". I included two specialist works (Gelede and Uzo Egonu) as they show the way that other research can be done but generally all the books (and one journal!) are accessible to the interested layperson. I avoided titles that focus exclusively on SA and on books that include not-African material.
Willett, Frank. 1971. African art: an introduction. London: Thames & Hudson.
One of the first ‘modern’ surveys of African art, attempting to avoid Western biases and be inclusive. Revised edition, 1993.
Gillon, Werner. 1984. A short history of African art. Harmondworth: Viking.
An excellent short survey, still valuable after three decades.
Drewal, Henry John and Margaret Thompson Drewal. Gelede: art and female power among the Yoruba. 1990. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Though very specialized and now somewhat out of date this is a foundational work on the way that African art has been ‘opened up’ to new ways of looking and the defiance of western categories of art making and aesthetics.
Hassan, Salah M., Chika Okeke-Agula and Okwui Enwezor (founding eds). 1994 onwards Nka: journal of contemporary African Art. Duke University Press.
Not a book, but rather a journal of immense value and importance.
Deliss, Clémentine (ed) .1995. Seven stories about modern art in Africa. Paris, Flammarion.
A response to Tom Phillips’ exhibition and book Africa: Art of a Continent.
Oguibe, Olu. 1995. Uzo Egonu: an African modernist in the West. London: Kala Press.
A foundational work in the (re)location of modernist practice to Africa.
Kasfir, Sidney Littlefield. 1999. Contemporary African art. London: Thames & Hudson.
Oguibe, Olu and Okwui Enwezor (eds). 1999. Reading the contemporary: African art from theory to the marketplace. London: inIVA.
One of the best and most influential general ‘readers’ on contemporary African art.
Fall, N’goné and Jean Loup Pivin (eds). 2002. An anthology of African art in the twentieth century. New York: D.A.P.
Despite some inaccuracies still one of the most valuable general surveys of modern and contemporary African art, based on articles in the journal Revue Noire.
Njami, Simon (ed). 2004-2007. Africa remix: contemporary art of a continent. (Various editions of exhibition catalogues).
An important travelling exhibition that has several iterations of the catalogue and a number of excellent essays.
AFRICA MONTH READS – COMPILED BY NOMUSA MAKHUBU
Although this list has a slight bias in favour of Nigeria, it does include literature on Ethiopia and Senegal. In some ways, it responds to the significance of West African (except Ethiopia), curators, writers, artists and filmmakers in contemporary global cultural discourse. It also addresses traditional arts, modern art and contemporary art: all categories that cannot be so easily defined. Ethiopia is also particularly important as the only African nation that was not colonised by European power and had radical artist movements that had political and social relevance.
Valentin-Yves Mudimbe (1988) The Invention of Africa. Oxford: Indiana University Press
Manthia Diawara (1992) African Cinema: Politics & Culture. Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press
Babatunde Lawal (1996) The Gelede spectacle : art, gender, and social harmony in an African culture, University of Washington Press, Seattle
N'Goné Fall; Jean Loup Pivin (eds) (2002), An anthology of African art : the twentieth century, D.A.P., New York
Elizabeth Harney; Jeff Donaldson; Achamyeleh Debela; Kinsey Katchka (2003), Ethiopian passages: contemporary art from the diaspora, Philip Wilson, London
Akin Adesokan (2011) Postcolonial artists and global aesthetics, Indiana University Press, Bloomington
Souleymane Bachir Diagne (2011) African art as philosophy: Senghor, Bergson, and the idea of negritude, Seagull Books, London & New York
Moyosore B Okediji (2011) Western frontiers of African art, University of Rochester Press, NY
Sylvester Okwunodu Ogbechie (2011) Making history: African collectors and the Canon of African art: the Femi Akinsanya African Art Collection, 5 Continents Editions, Milan
Adérónké Adésànyà and Toyin Falola (2014) Art, parody and politics: Dele Jegede's creative activism, Nigeria and the transnational space, Africa World Press, Trenton, New Jersey
'AFRICAN ART': TEN BOOKS WELL WORTH READING – COMPILED BY MARIO PISSARRA
Most of these texts are concerned with finding new ways of looking at and thinking about art from Africa. The list is biased towards studies of work produced on the continent, countering the dominant constructions of ‘contemporary African art’ that circulate in the Eurocentric ‘international’ arena.
Gerbrands, Adrian A,, Henry J. Drewal and Rowland Abiodun (c. 1990) African Art Studies: the state of the discipline, National Museum of African Art Washington DC. An excellent overview of trends in scholarship until the late 1980s.
Thompson, Robert Farris (1993) Face of the Gods: Art and Altars of Africa and the African Americas, The Museum for African Art, New York and Prestel, Munich.
All of Thompson’s books are excellent, for theorising African aesthetics as well as for charting the transatlantic transformations of cultural practices.
Ottenberg, Simon (1997) New Traditions from Nigeria: Seven Artists from the Nsukka Group, Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington DC.
Charts the interplay between collective and individual approaches to aesthetics within a ‘movement’ that has dominated the discourse of modern Nigerian art.
Nzegwu, Nkiru (ed) (1999) Contemporary Textures: Multidimensionality in Nigerian Art, Binghamton University, NY. With excellent essays by Nzegwu, Ogbechie and Moyo Okediji, this severely under-rated book presents serious efforts to interpret Nigerian art through the prism of indigenous aesthetics.
Kasfir, Sydney Littlefield (1999) Contemporary African Art, Thames & Hudson, London. Through highlighting critical trans-national themes and considering these against carefully selected national case studies, this is an excellent introduction to its topic.
Enwezor, Okwui & Olu Oguibe (eds) (1999) Reading the Contemporary: African Art from Theory to Marketplace, Iniva, London. The anthology that announced the ‘arrival’ of a new ‘contemporary African arts” discourse.
Harney, Elizabeth (2004) In Senghor’s Shadow: Art, Politics, and the Avant-Garde in Senegal, 1960–1995, Duke University Press, Durham, NC. A rare full-length study of a national (and transnational) African ideology and its impact on the artists of a nation-state.
Ogbechie, Sylvester O. (2008) Ben Enwonwu: The Making of an African Modernist, University of Rochester Press, NY. A timely reminder of how a major international career is no guarantee against falling off the map. Ogbechie’s restoration of Enwonwu as a pioneer of ‘synthesis’ is also noteworthy for exploring the indigenous aesthetics that inform his works.
Pissarra, Mario et al (2011) Visual Century: South African Art in Context, 1907-2007 [4 vols], Wits University Press, Johannesburg. Yes, I’m biased, but show me another national survey that is as original in its blend of chronological and thematic approaches…
Offoedu-Okeke, Onyema (2012) Artists of Nigeria, 5 Continents Editions, Milan. The new postcolonial “Esme Berman” of Nigerian art history, edited by Ogbechie.
Programming as part of the exhibition held at Iziko South African National Gallery l 15 August – 17 November 2013 l Sanlam Art Gallery 3 December 2013 – 7 February 2014
Against the Grain profiles five wood sculptors from the Cape – Isaac Makeleni, Ishmael Thyssen, Shepherd Mbanya, Timothy Mafenuka and Thami Kiti. Working for decades with little support and public acknowledgment, these artists have produced significant works that are skilful and imaginative, earnest and playful. They address a diversity of themes that engage with the recent and distant past as well as the contemporary present.
Against the Grain questions the dominant narratives of South African wood carving, firmly in place since the Tributaries exhibition (1985), that have failed to recognise the existence of black wood-carvers outsides of the “Venda” region. It also questions the reasons behind the low visibility of black African wood sculptors internationally, suggesting that black wood-carvers have been unduly prejudiced since the development of new discourses in contemporary African art since the 1990s.
Click here for the exhibition catalogue
Michaelis School of Fine Art, UCT | Centre for African Studies, UCT
Cape Town | 31 July 2012
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