Interrogating Western Paradigms: Rethinking Authencity in African Art

International Tue 01-02-2011

Interrogating Western Paradigms: Rethinking Authencity in African Art
Simao Souindoula

In the middle of the 80s, the International Bantu Civilizations Centre (CICIBA) launched the two-yearly modern Bantu plastic art exhibition, one of the most famous events in the field in Africa, the Biennial of Contemporary Bantu Art; and become a focus for study of the growth of art forms in Central, East and Southern Africa.

One of the major purposes of this project was to display all the analogy which exists in modern plastic creativity among Bantu people; after the historical, linguistic and anthropological harmony clearly highlighted since the end of the nineteenth century in this cultural part of Africa.

We could in this way notice, after having organized six of these contest and plastic art exhibition that most of the painters, engravers, sculptors, ceramists, copper beaters and many of their equivalents mainly drew their inspiration from old Bantu and even from old proto-bantu traditions.

Concept of Bantu

The expression “Bantu”, previously the term of academics, entered well-liked vocabulary in early eighties, approaching into frequent use in 1982, when the preparation to open the “Bantu House” was realized.

Ten States (Angola, the CAR, Comoros, two Congos, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Rwanda, Sao Tome and Principe, and Zambia), which signed the convention setting up the institution of Agondje in January 1983 confirmed the continuation of the concept of Bantu civilizations and entrusted the fresh body with the significant charge of highlighting their characteristics – stating the evident, of course, but release the Bantu thought from its archaeological, historical, philosophical, anthropological, and anthropological, considerations to take in other disciplines such as traditional medicine, ethnomusicology and arts as well.

Objectives

Although the central aim of the Biennial is to underline convergences and differences in the various forms of expressions and plastic techniques, it has not only to emulate, but also to:

Present works showing the plastic creativity of present-day Bantu artists; the CICIBA has arranged a free and open framework embracing all forms of plastic art, without any constraint as to subject matter;
Encourage contacts, discussions and exchanges by artist s (painters, sculptors, ceramic artistic and engravers) by running workshops with the framework of the Bantu Association of Plastic Artists;
And keep the best in the Contemporary Art Collection of the future CICIBA Museum, thereby making them available to the public.

CICIBA’s Biennial have all featured authentic bantu works, the profound meaning of which will be lost on no art critic, as the creative skills of the artists of the region have burst out in all their diversity and dynamism on theses occasions.

SCHOOLS, TRENDS AND STYLES

1. Painting and Engraving

a) Naturist Way

The personal touches of the Bantu artists bring out their love of nature, one of the dominant themes of their works, with great emotional force. In this school, we discover the adulthood and refinement of some of the naturist painters, such as those of Angola, the CAR, the two Congos, side with the hasty, lovely works of arquelago Sao Tome and Principe and Rwanda.

Exciting greens, reds and yellows and delicate shading make these canvasses unforgettably bright. “No blue. Above all, no blue” (for Africa), Gustave Hervigo used to say, but he is proved wrong by the enchanting figurative naturist and realist brush of Van (“As aves”) from Angola, Protasio Pina (with “Pico Papagaio”), Cupertinho and Cesaltinho of Sao Tome and Principe, whose island views, fishing studies and even portraits are all against an azure background.

Other well-known naturists are Iloki (“Les oiseaux”), Hengo (“L’antilope”) from Congo Brazzaville, Tibund Makouna (“Sous-bois)” from CAR and Manzambi (“Paysanne dans le bois”) from DRCongo.

In Lubumbashi, works of art have been produced by the skill and passion of Mwenze, famous for his streaks, and Pili-Pili, whose similar but smaller polychrome streaks have made him an international name.

And many of these painters are familiar with the techniques of impressionism and will no doubt be giving us new means of expression.

b) Realist Way

Realism in the Biennial is represented by the works of Tomas Vista (“A quitanda”), Augusto Ferreira (“Danca de circuncricao cokwe”), Kapela (“O Mercado dos Congoleses”), Marcos Ntangu (“Fome”) & Afonso Matondo (“Jovem mumuila”) from Angola, Fylla (“Mere, fils et flamme”), Ngavouka (“Guerriere”), Eugene Malonga (“Le musicien paralytique”), Annie Mounzota Ndieye (“Allaitement”) & Boboma Mionzo (“La marchande”) from Congo Brazzaville and Cicero (“O curandeiro”) from São Tome and Principe.

There are many outstanding works of this sort. There is “Luanda”, by Vaz De Carvalho (Angola) for example, a suburban view of the Angolan capital made attractive by the control and balance of colour.

And there is the village homestead by Ouabanga, the painter originate from CAR and his engraver compatriot, who specializes in rural scenes of life both of them artists of the naïve school using polished techniques to portray humble scenes.

There is also the Congolese accomplishment of the almost expressionist work of Lema, (“Propulsion”), Tshiboko (“Bonheur”), Mpane Enkobo (“Coiffeuses”), painters who in their stylized manner bring to life everyday evens or ceremonies, portraits, market and hunting scenes.

A great draw in the CICIBA Biennial is the realist sensitivity of the popular urban painters of Kinshasa, the successful school of artists which includes Cheri Samba, Sim Simaro, Moke, Tuyindula, Bodo Bodo and Vuza Toko, who have a critical approach and whose meaning lies in the imperturbable, caricature-like representation of frenzied life of the capital. These Congolese popular artists, much admired by art-lovers internationally have been labeled amateur and their pictures quite wrongly called naïve.

Although the school is not in the mainstream of conventional academic painting, its works are not without quality and its representation of society is intelligent. Moke and his fellow countrymen portray everyday life in Kinshasa with a sharp wit and an unrestrained eye and as far as they are concerned, their audience can take it or leave it. They depict the Mami Wata (African’s white-skinned siren), mythical subjects (chimpanzees on motors-bikes and animals of the forest playing in a band), religion revived by the country’s severe economic crisis (the red valley of purgatory and other apocalyptic visions) and sex (denunciation of the end of sexual taboos in out-of-control Kinshasa).

c) Symbolic Way

The power of Bantu creation which the Biennial revealed in symbolist painting is both varied and complex and not confined to a particular genre or theme.

The works encourage meditation, suggest the decoding of legends and generate optimism and they recreate subtle messages, communicating the artist’s symbolism in pictorial form, an echo of the souls of Bantu peoples.

The long civil war in Angola encourages the emergence of symbols as is apparent for example in the strong tapestries of Marcela Costa (“Sobresaltos”), or in the powerful handling of the old carnival figure at Luanda’s annual festival by Luzolano. And, traditional Cokwe picture making is both inspiration and fascination to Jorge Gumbe (“Uma recepcao).

The fragile Augustine Missie of Cameroon opts to paint on velvet, a successful technique in Africa with “Vicissitudes de la vie”,a resume of anguished social life.

The well-known Poto-Poto school is a systematic coming together of the popular plastic expression and that of the art school, and it is one of the major symbolist trends to be represented at the Biennial.

The Poto-Poto painters - first generation Ondongo, Zigoma, Iloki, Ngavouka, Ouassa and the up-and-coming Dimi, Bokotaka also Mbaki, are all there faithfully to their particular styles in their masks and symmetrical patterns. But this school has seen its major developments.

A peak has been reached and fresh impetus is called for, maybe from an independent artist such as Gotene (“Mythe,”, “Guerre et Paix”), trained at one of France’s best art academies.

The works of those great hopes of African painting, the Gabonese artist Onewin, actually Deputy Minister of Culture, Ekore, Minkoe Minze, Pambou Boulaz & Mendome are impressive indeed with their ritual marks and their representation of the ambiguity of the continent; the cultural drama of traditional with modern and their deliberate limiting of the of use of colour creates a sobriety symbolic of a Gabon as difficult to understand as it is deep in anthropological meaning.

Equatorial Guinea is represented by “Los Afligados”, a fine canvas from the brush of artist Menan, a Spanish speaker who is greatly attracted by the work of Picasso.

But, the bantu influence comes out more strongly in the work of Esteban Bualo, whose initiation rites are painted against a background reminiscent of Equatorial Guinea’ s forests.

The Congolese symbolists show great mastery and clear technical maturity. The distinctive “sand artists”, such Mukalenge and Tuzolano stand out with, their “little bit of sand, little bit of glue, little bit paints and a lot of talent” and the originality of their attractive technique “Sandism”, a new approach to picture making which is already a success in Central Africa is bound to grow.

DR Congo, a country of constant artistic creativity, is source of another original technique too, that of paint scraping, the great exponent of which is Kamba Luesa, a master of astonishing effects reminiscent of cave painting.

2. Sculpture, Ceramics and Modeling Copper

a) Realist and Figurative

Wood, stone, the more modern bronze, brass and aluminum all have their place in the collection of the realist and abstract sculptures, inspired by traditional Bantu and contemporary occidental art in which the Biennial highlights the dynamic approach of the Bantu sculptures of today.

The time-honored art of wood carving has been carried on here by Mouanga Nkodia (“Le martyre”), Mounkala (“Le lien unificateur”), Douniama (“Le cri”), Mbia (“Masque de joie”) from Brazzaville, Babicka from Libreville, Hakizimfura (“Bas relief “) from Kigali, Massongui (“Jogo de mascaras”) from Luanda, Demba (“Paysanne ngbaka”), Djatao (“Statuette bicephale”) & Mbotowo (“Factice kaloboungba”) from Bangui, Nguema (“Efectos de Guerra”) from Malabo, Armindo Lopes (“Forca de mulher”) from Sao Tome, Ndong Menzamet (“Presentation”) from Gabon and Congo Kinshasa’s Mpane (with wonderful sculpted ebony ) BeyaTshidi “Protection” and Lubanza-who took the main prize at the second edition of Biennial with his “La Pensee”, symbolizing the coherence, the balance and the anthropological dimension of Bantu philosophy.

Stone sculpture is a rarity at the Biennial, the only exhibitor being Aubin, the ancient head of ENAM, Gabon’s School of Art and Manufacture. Gabon (using stone from the Mbigou area) and Zambia (with the artist Simpungwe Chisha Passion) indeed seem to be the only Bantu countries which encourage this technique.

Liyolo from DR Congo makes a great impact with the slender brass shapes of his “Mirage du fleuve” and together with Tembo and Wuma, have now broken through on the international scene.

Geometric stylization and abstraction typify the work of the Angolan Tela Mateta and Fataki & Makala Mbuta, from right side of River Congo, and impressive symbolism of the outstanding Nginamau-artists who are experienced in large-scale sculpture (decorating Congo’s main public buildings), but who produce a range of smaller works too.

Artists in the copper country have gone in for modeling in copper of course. Lubumbashi is the domain of Kalumba and Chenge Baruti, and the technique has been taken up in Kinshasa too by Pemba (“La maitrise”) & Safi Mwanza Bifulusi, and in Brazzaville by Kitshiba.

NEW AESTHETIC VALUES

The fascination which female magnificence holds for ceramic artists, painters and sculptors alike is apparent in the female masks and heads exhibited at the Biennial.

Woman as the positive symbol of life and the incarnation of attractiveness, is very much linked to ceramic art and Matondo (“Jovem mumuila”) from Angola, Edou Source from Gabon, and Mbaku Miamambi (“Tete egyptienne”) from Congo Kinshasa bring out the nobility of their clay in perfect aesthetic portrayals of women who are extraordinary “alive”.

The centuries-old strain of artistic endeavour which has taken Bantu art to the peaks of achievement has not waned through the 20th century. The only change is in the motives behind it. Modern art has moved from religious, to profane, to art for art’s sake, as it has all over the world, and the Biennial illustrates this admirably.

The panorama it presents does not yet cover the whole of the Bantu world, but given depth by the wood carvings of the Makonde, the Bieri Fang, the Reliquaries Kota, the sculpturesKebe Kebe of Northern Congo, the Nkisi Konde from Kongo area, the Tanzanian inheritors of Tingatinga, the Zambians inheritors of Tayaly and the rounded people of Malangatana Ngwenya.

The Biennial has highlighted the various trends which have taken shape - the Barracao in Luanda, the Poto-Poto School of Brazzaville, the ENAM college of Gabon, the Kinshasa movement, a natural development of art progress which surpasses itself with the “avant – gardists”, the great workshop which produced the sand artists, the highly modern New Generation and of course the school of Lubumbashi in Southwestern DR Congo, all of them living side-by-side with a host of naïve and popular artists.

And although these schools contain a wide variety of talents, their figurative tendencies and their immense feeling for colour & decoration constitute common ground, the result of culling their inspiration from virtually identical traditional social set-ups and - most all - very similar training.

Some Angolan artists trained at the Academia des Beaux - Arts of Kinshasa and use the same expressive methods as the Congolese - Luzolano with his vibrant scraping of colours, Kabisi with his sand picture and Tela Mateta with his slender brass forms.

The Gabonese artists at ENAM have considerable affinities with their training school in Kinshasa too; Ekore, Aubin and Arenaut being outstandingly talented.

Artists do not stick to their schools come what may and exhibition after exhibition brings changes in style with Viteix, for example, moving from oils to engraving, Kabisi displaying as much skill with oils as with sand painting, Ekore increasingly keen on realism rather than the symbolism of masks (even if his fans are unenthusiastic about it) and Menan veering in much he same way.

What Bantu works now have in common is that they derive their inspiration from purely African sources - proof that they are culturally tied to their roots, in spite of using the Western techniques which have enabled contemporary Bantu artists to create new aesthetic values.

These artists very likely devoted themselves in carrying on authentic ideals of their civilization through their way of working out, setting or shaping using endogenous techniques and deriving Greco-Latin methods or deepening modern methods.

Thus we could observe within this regional exhibition hundreds of works such those coming from Kongo local painting techniques called Takula or Ntoto Mbwaki, the utilization-as rest-of the Mpekwa, the Mongo Raffia, the Ngomba, the Swahili banana leaves; the Ibu, the Teke tree barks; the making of frame with the Andala, the palm from Sao Tome; the incorporation of the Ndjabi tattoo called Yimango or the Kimbundu cowry shell called Muzudi.

We also valued the revival of the setting of ancient Umbundu ceramics called Kacimbeya; the making of Rundi calabash called Urubakuzo or Urwaato [Rundi] and Xhosa woven objects called Luka.

Such devotion to the native expressing methods forms part of a strong movement of opening and also of a conceptual and technical adaptation to the modern aesthetics.

The Biennial of Contemporary Bantu Art is now established as a living picture of artistic endeavour unfolding before our very eyes.

About the Author:

Simao Souindoula

Simao Souindoula is a historian, an art aritic and a Fellow of Scientist Committee of World Festival of Negro Arts. This paper was presented at a colloquium organised by South African Visual Arts Historians (SAVAH), under the aegis of the Comite International d'Histoire de l'Art (CIHA) at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg 12-15 January 2011.

Posted By: Allan Kapten

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