Letter From New York

International Mon 24-01-2011

Letter From New York
By Osei G Kofi | AfricanColours.com

It was early night, four days after Christmas. The wintry blasts that shut down European airports and blanketed north-eastern USA with tons of snow, stranding thousands of air travelers for days, had mercifully abated by the time my KLM flight 0641 from Amsterdam landed at John F Kennedy, New York.

Rozeal Brown's Young Daughter of a Townsman and Her Lover

The Young Daughter of a Townsman and Her Lover | Rozeal Brown

I later learnt that some pilots had to circle for hours before landing and that others, after landing, had to hold for 4-6 hours before being given a parking bay. My flight had to hold for only two hours, and the crew mercifully put the inflight entertainment system back on. As if a providential hand was paving my path since leaving Nairobi the day before, I got a cab immediately I exited Arrival, while JFK’s exasperating taxi ranks creaked under tons of ploughed snow and a mile of waiting freezing passengers.

Next morning, there was a bonus. I awoke in the loft of friends in Dumbo, right between the Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridges, to a glorious burst of blue sky sunshine, made more blinding by powdery fresh snow framing the shoreline and, directly opposite, the newest addition to the Lower Manhattan skyline, now New York's tallest residential building, ie: Frank Gehry’s shimmering, satiny, idiosyncratic tower on Spruce Street.

Frank Gehry, the tallest residential building in New York

With the destruction of the Twin Towers Gehry now rules the roost in the tower stakes in this part of the city – until the reconstruction of Ground Zero is completed, that is.

A brisk walk across the Brooklyn Bridge into Chinatown for a steaming spicy soup of shiitake mushrooms, noodles and smoked fish was just what the doctor ordered to counter any threat of jetlag later in the day.

Thus fortified I headed for the Upper West Side, precisely, to the Museum of Arts and Design or MAD. The MAD was one of two objectives in coming at this yuletime to New York, New York, the world’s No1 adrenaline-pumping Cosmopolis. You bet, I am one of those incorrigible romantics who keep hearing Ol’ Blue Eyes Sinatra’s voice ringing in their ears each time they come to the Big Apple: “These vagabond shoes, are longing to stray … Right through the very heart of it - New York, New York … I wanna wake up in a city, that doesn’t sleep … And find I’m king of the hill - top of the heap!”

Kofi Osei at the M.A.D

New Yorkers are notorious for their spats over designs for public architectural projects and the reconstruction of the MAD, at 2 Columbus Circle, next door to TIME Warner’s plate glass behemoth, was no exception. The process to reincarnate a 1950s philanthropic family’s endowment for the promotion of “American crafts” into a state-sponsored world class “center for the collection, preservation, study, and display of contemporary artefacts” touched off a battle royal that enjoined the board, trustees, architects, engineers, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Tom Wolfe, Pulitzer prize winning critics, urbanism scholars from the universities, arts writers from the New York Times, etc.

In the end an angular but delicate design by Brad Cloepfil, with a glazed terra-cotta and glass facade that changes colour at different viewing angles, won over a neo-classical design in marble that, dare I say, had the look of Albert Speers’ Nazi era architecture, and an uncanny resemblance to apartheid South Africa’s granite monument to Afrikanerdom outside Pretoria.

But I digress. I hadn’t come for controversy but for the love of art; precisely, the Global Africa Project at MAD. It’d been billed as “an unprecedented exhibition exploring the broad spectrum of contemporary African art, design, and craft worldwide,” featuring the work of over 100 artists working in Africa, Europe, Asia, the United States and the Caribbean.

Works by Kehinde Wiley

Certainly, the 300,000 visitors a year to the MAD since it opened its doors in 2009 are dwarfed by the millions of feet treading the corridors of the MoMA, the Metropolitan, the Guggenheim and other illustrious meccas along the Museum Mile. However, like the Neue Gallerie, another new favourite, the MAD has an irresistible calm and charm the megatons will always lack.

According to curators Lowery Stokes Sims and Leslie King Hammond, Dean Emeritus and founding Director of the Center for Race and Culture at the Maryland Institute College of Art, the Global Africa Project is a culmination of their life’s work; it having been their dream since they, now stylish 50-somethings, met in graduate school 30 years ago.

The Africa Project surveys the rich pool of talent out of the African continent and attempts to show their influence on other artists around the world. Through ceramics, basketry, textiles, jewelry, furniture, and fashion, as well as architecture, photography, painting, and sculpture, “the exhibition challenges conventional notions of a singular African aesthetic or identity, and reflects the integration of African art and design, without making the usual distinctions between ‘professional’ and ‘artisan,’” according the MAD’s weblog.

The Africa Project | Mark Bradford

It’s super impressive, this show. The use of space and lighting is clever in what is a compact floor space, compared to other museums. The lift that whisks you to the rest of the exhibition on four of the nine floors is a work of art. It purrs. Your senses are whetted right from the modest atrium-like entrance occupied by South African grandma Esther Mahlangu’s 1991 BMW swathed in Ndebele geometric figures. The BMW is showcased beside a massive glass chandelier.

Esther Mahlangu's BMW at The M.A.D

Other featured artists include Yinka Shonibare, Kehinde Wiley, Magdalene Odundo, Fred Wilson and the over rated Romuald Hazuome. The fashion designers include Duro Olowu and Kossi Aguessy who has designed for Swarovski. There are clean-lined traditional basketry from Rwanda’s Gahaya Links, made up of Hutu and Tutsi women, post genocide. There are cane and wicker works by Wahala Temi, glass furniture by Alexandre Arechea, installations by Olu Amoda, hair extensions styles by Mark Bradford, a weird “Memory Box” by Joel Andrianomearisoa, and calabash and raffia haute couture by Anggy Haif.

Calabash Raffia Haute Couture | Anggy Haiff

Calabash Raffia & Haute Couture | Anggy Haiff

Most are outlandish works but they all come easy on the eye, invariably mirthful, soothing, seductive; such as Iona Rozeal Brown’s, "The Young Daughter of a Townsman and Her Lover with Shamisen Beside." It’s of acrylic and ink on wood panel, and based on Kitagawa UtaMaro's " Lovers" in Utamakura's, The Poem.

One name making waves lately among the crop of rising young stars in American contemporary is Mickalene Thomas. She’s unmissable at MAD. While male artists have female muses, Thomas has no male muse, all are women. Her work appears as a running commentary on and tribute to black women – their sexuality and power. She paints or photographs black women in sublime but sexually charged, and at times, outright provocative poses, melding her woodblock, silkscreen and digital prints with lots of rhinestone in odalisque odes.

Who but Ms Thomas would show Oprah Winfrey, Condoleezza Rice, Michele Obama in Blaxploitation era Afros! What political statement is she making by showing her powerful women Angela Davis-like? Bucking the trend among African-Americans and the growing number of urban Africa women, to eschew their natural hair for sleek Caucasian wigs or extensions made from imported Asian women’s hair?

Thomas’ most well-known portrait, the very naughty “Afro Goddess With Hand Between Her Legs,” has a vantage spot at the show. My favourite from her, though, wasn’t included in the exhibition; and that’s the “Lovely Six Foota,” a period photograph of a sultry lipped, long limbed, knicker-less damsel on a divan, legs ajar, and sporting a how-dare-you-look-me-down-there gaze that would singe the facial hair of any peeping Tom.

Thomas is shown next to her class mate at Yale art school, Kehinde Wiley, the maestro of choice for hip hop moguls and black showbiz stars wanting their portraiture done as luscious Old-Master reproductions or classical historic scenes. Nigerian soccer star Samuel Eto’os portrait is one of three Kehindes at the show.

Samuel E'to portrait | Kehinde Wiley

A portrait of Samuel Eto’o | Kehinde Wiley

To my utter disappointment there wasn’t a single piece from another Yale art graduate and New York resident, Kenya’s own Wangechi Mutu. Yes, yes, we know the thoroughly edgy, compelling Ms Mutu is moving in upper stratospheres these days, and not always easy to get hold of – especially since she won the inaugural Deutsche Bank’s Artist of the Year award (2010). She’s exhibiting at them all hallowed spaces around the globe. But, come on, curators Ma’am Sims and Ma’am Hammond, can one conceivably have a zeitgeist event like The Africa Project and omit Wangechi Mutu? Please, there’s still time to correct the situation.

Intertwined | Wangechi Mutu

And with that, I come to the second objective of my New Year visit to New York: To get hold of Ms Mutu. Ah, but then, on second thoughts, that should be another story - for the next post. Please, watch this space.

* The Global Africa Project premiered on November 17 (yours truly’s birthday!) and will close on May 15, 2011.

Osei G Kofi, Art Africa Investment, Geneva.

Posted By: Diana Achieng

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