Edinburgh Festival of Art

International Tue 07-09-2010

Edinburgh Festival of Art
By Sophie Alal | AfricanColours.com

Memory is a delicate thing. A single witness can only hold so much, however a team of archivists can create a mosaic powerful enough to reclaim the past and to await a better future. In a bid to halt the deleterious effects of time, artworks have become vessels through which people cling to their memories, by bearing witness to their pasts.

As is common in most parts of the beautifully weird and winding city of Edinburgh, sandstone steps mottled with a patina of moss descend to the offices of the English Speaking Union. On that chilly August afternoon, the curator returns from his break, and delves straight away into articulating his thoughts to a duo of visitors.

Minuit a Aborney by Dominique Zinkpe

Ed Cross, a gentle, soft spoken man was keen on opening up new avenues for the exposition of African artists in places where they are relatively unknown.

The exhibition entitled Witness: The Spectre of Memory in Contemporary African Art, showcased five important names; Richard Onyango and Peterson Waweru Kamwathi from Kenya. Senegal's Soly Cisse and the Beninois Dominique Zinkpè, while Zimbabwean Lovemore Kambudzi was a lone herald from Southern Africa.

Ed Cross describes Richard Onyango as “an extraordinary character." In Kenya, he is probably the most eccentric and yet he lives in a place that is being brought to its knees by tourism, “slightly sleazy tourism”, that feeds on generic artworks that do more to cripple creativity than lift up the artist.

There is a perverse humour in Richard Onyango's Large Ladies in Athletics. The canvas shows voluptuous women, with ample rolls of flesh, frozen in the act of performing gravity defying feats such as gymnastics, triple jumping and pole vaulting. A menacing contraption bearing lights and cameras, which are the recorder of visual memory, hovers above the Large Athletes capturing and relaying their every move onto two large screens.

The stadium is devoted to Drosie, his morbidly obese lover who died unexpectedly. So the dead do return, full of athletic grace. This painting seems as much about love as it is about longing, and how longing can fabricate fabulous fantasies. Yet in this dreamlike world of possibility, the menace of death is counteracted by every last drop of paint offering immortality.

Onyango's vision of social justice is a romantic one, where body image doesn't hinder anyone's aspirations. In fact it becomes a compelling case against modern perceptions of beauty in the media, and its unhealthy obsession with youth that thrives on fitness and firmness of our clothed bits. Strictly speaking, Drosie our eponymous heroine is going to have none of that.

Large Ladies In Athletics by Richard Onyango

On the darker end of the spectrum hang the works by Peterson Waweru Kamwathi. For all the major points in his bearings lead to one conclusion; a debilitating injustice labelled corruption.

Known for his woodcuts and printmaking, he is establishing himself as a young artist with considerable talent. He has featured prominently at home and away through a host of exhibitions at the Rahimtulla Museum of Modern Art in Nairobi, 2010 Dak' Art Biennale in Senegal and also winning a residency at the prominent Rijksakademie in Amsterdam.

He employs symbols extensively, and whether it is a donkey, queue or a ballot box, it is etched full of relevant commentaries. For example his latest series of works are themed on the queue.

An untitled wood cut turns out to be an ambitious trompe d'oeil. Initially it shows a plethora of things that appear to be simple boxes, but on closer inspection it becomes apparent that there are images hidden behind dark etchings and outlines of ballot boxes.

A matronly woman is at the end of the queue facing right, while in front of her stand men in suits. The sixth man at the front of the queue has his hands in his pocket and looks down, with an expression of dejection in his face. The technical execution of the piece is evidently in a league of its own, while the subtlety of his meaning is open to various interpretations of disenfranchisement within civil society.

From this perspective, the exercise of democracy through elections seems a bogus and confusing concept whose ritual abuse has become a political tradition.

In a series tiled Diary of All Things Stolen, Kamwathi uses mixed media to capture the general malaise after the 2008 elections. In greed, individuals and corporations have tacitly agreed to set up a thievery institution to steal everything that is critical to the minor details of daily life; Names, Maize, Oil, Mau Forest and Ballot Boxes.

Lovemore Kambudzi lives in Harare and is completely dedicated to recording the tragedies happening in his country. Armed with binocular vision, he peers into the troubles of contemporary Zimbabwe, and sets about transcribing the perceived ills into his works. Therefore it is not surprising that the sheer brutality that is depicted in his paintings is rather uncomfortable to behold.

Mahure by Lovemore Kambudzi

The ironically titled Peace Through Unity in Diversity is undoubtedly a staggering work of great patience, in which a massive cast of characters display their unique actions in a crowded street. These stylised human forms are absorbed in a free for all gladiatorial spectacle in which a bunch of exaggerated limbs are extensions of weapons for kicking, clubbing, smashing and blood-letting.

His cartoonish work is a controlled cacophony of bold and brash strokes of clashing colours which bring forth violence in techni-colour. By applying one colour at a time, the canvass eventually proves to be a large spectacle.

Additionally the display of wretchedness is as clear as the stock portrayals that lambaste the country through the lenses of foreign media. His insight is a satirical verdict on the appetites of the regime, one that has degenerated into an orgy of brutality.

Dominique Zinkpè was born in 1969 in Cotonou, and is notorious for rejecting offers for formal training because he was concerned that college graduates, “do not make good artists.” In 1991, that thought made him reject an offer to study in China.

Instead, Dominique Zinkpè paints and draws from his imagination. It is as though he is evoking events form his life and channelling some of his mystical beliefs through his work. In an Untitled Drawing of mixed media on paper, the work surface is blotched with brilliant red, and forms similar to human limbs merge from dark blue doodles. It appears as an incomplete narrative, with relatively large spaces left empty and white.

Ed was at hand to offer a plausible interpretation. “Either an exploration of philosophical and spiritual issues,” like how to deal with the sacrificing of a chicken to solve a physical issue? Or possibly, “the complexities of the artists life.”

Inondation by Solly Cisse

Inondation by Soly Cisse

His psychology seems to allude to a rich mystical tradition where spirits fleet freely from the animal realm to the human state to contribute to the celebration of life.

Dubbed the “Dude in Dakar”, Soly Cissé is talented. As a showman, he doesn't dwell on one thing, but fills his canvas with a dreamlike interaction among his subjects. His multi dimensional approach is visible in the two pieces on display; Inondation and Le Petit Prince.

Soly Cissé weaves an eerie feel to Le Petit Prince. Lore comes in different forms. A sumptuously dressed young man with a regal headdress, sits at an elevation. A sort of rodent is sprawled on his lap, above his feet that seem to disappear on a chequerboard.

In his work Inondation, there is another animal whose glacial eyes are tortured below what hints at the curves of a female torso, the profile of George Washington, graphs, figures and bar codes.

As a young man, Soly Cissé was an intrepid hunter. He seems to be beset by the inner conflicts that are present in people who've been torn from the familiarity of the traditional and thrust into the uncertainties of artificial modernity, where the old ways change fast.

Le Petit Prince by Socy Cisse

Le Petit Prince by Soly Cisse

With the effect that his paintings are thoughtful, peppered with nuanced darkness and at times a subtle hint at a lost joy.

Whereas the exhibition occupied a little gallery, and it cannot be contended that throngs passed through its doors, it was a balanced selection of arguably the most accomplished contemporary artists from Sub-Saharan Africa.

Though the rubric of African art has occupied a complex position in the world market, contemporary art from Sub-Saharan Africa is still inching slowly into prominence. A few artists still harness the emotional, mystical and imaginative styles of their predecessors, while others continue in their own unique paths.

Nevertheless, the pieces provided vital insights into contemporary memory, and even when dark and bitter insights fleet around like ghosts from the past, the realm of happy episodes still manages to show though.

Posted By: Hirum Ndungu

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