African Art Now: Masterpieces from the Jean Pigozzi Collection.

African Art Now Masterpieces from the Jean Pigozzi Collection Museum of Fine Arts, Houston January 29-June 5, 2005

Double Consciousness Black Conceptual Art since 1970 Contemporary Arts Museum Houston January 22-April 15, 2005

In the spring of 2005, the city of Houston hosted a series of exhibitions on the art of Africa. Various institutions participated in the "citywide celebration of contemporary African Art" (as the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, press materials put it) and "African Art Now: Masterpieces from the Jean Pigozzi Collection" was the centerpiece. Several smaller exhibitions-including "J.D. 'Okhai Ojeikere: Hairstyles" at the Blaffer Gallery, the Art Museum of the University of Houston; "Perspectives 145: Bodys Isek Kingelez" at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston; "Romuald Hazoume: La Bouche du Roi" (the mouth of the king) at the Menil Collection; installations by Esther Mahlangu and Barthelemy Toguo at the Project Row Houses; and "J'aime Cheri Samba" at the University Museum, Texas Southern University-were staged in conjunction with "African Art Now," and a program of lectures, discussions, films, and educational events was launched. At the same time, the permanent collections of traditional African art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston and the Menil Collection were on display. Though not on par with London's "Africa05" festival, Houston's cluster of events demonstrates a commitment to art from Africa and the Diaspora in the United States.

"African Art Now" was installed on the mezzanine level of Cullinan Hall, a building designed by the modern architect Mies van der Rohe. In this modernist space, the exhibition was bordered on three sides by floor-to-ceiling windows. The fourth boundary was open, but temporary walls were constructed to mark the beginning and limits of the exhibition. The large space was divided into sections by walls that seemed designed to match the scale of the building to that of the objects. Short introductory panels with identical texts were installed at two different points, but a true beginning and end were not designated. A defined flow was not established; rather, viewers were encouraged to meander through the galleries, where they encountered two hundred works by thirty-three artists who hail from fifteen sub-Saharan African countries.

Instead of grouping the works according to medium, subject matter, or country, the exhibition was arranged according to artist and aesthetic affinity. In one gallery, the figurative paintings of Zinsou Hounsa Godono were displayed alongside the futuristic ink-and-graphite drawings of Abu Bakarr Mansaray, the large-scale paintings of Richard Onyango, and the mixed-media installations of Georges Adeagbo. Similarly, in another gallery, Efiambelo's polychrome funerary steles were installed with Rigobert Nimi's mixed-media machines and Frederic Bruly Bouabre's small-scale revelatory drawings. Extended labels provided biographical information about the artists and displayed maps in order to locate the place from which they come, but did not address the stylistic differences between the works. Especially problematic was the lack of information about individual objects. Nowhere was this was more evident than with the labels accompanying Cheri Samba's paintings Une peinture a defender (1993), Hommage aux anciens createurs (1999), and Quel avenir pour notre art? (2001). The paintings are complicated because they alternate between addressing the collecting of African art in the past and present, critiquing how traditional and contemporary African art and artists have been used, lamenting the lack of exhibition opportunities for African art and artists, celebrating the artistic patrimony of the Democratic Republic of Congo, and establishing an artistic continuum of master artists into which Samba can place himself. The labels did not provide a platform for viewers to incorporate such interpretation into their analyses of these and other works, and the texts assumed a naivete on the part of the audience and threatened to primitivize the artists.

Other galleries in "African Art Now" were more focused. Take, for example, the enclosed structure that housed Depara's photographs of Kinshasa, taken between 1950 and 1970; Malick Sidibe's photographs of Bamako, taken during the 1960s and 1970s; and Siaka Paul's, Emile Guibehi's, and Nicolas Damas' lifesize, polychrome sculpture of dancing figures that forms part of the Clubs of Bamako project (2000). This gallery was unified by the general theme of popular culture and conveyed a nostalgic idea of modernity. It also demonstrated the tension between traditional and contemporary practices and subject matter that was an ever-present but unspoken thematic in the exhibition.

One of the strongest bodies of work in the show was Pascale Marthine Tayou's Snapshootafrica (2004). Commissioned by Pigozzi's Contemporary African Art Collection (CAAC) for "African Art Now," the series of site-specific videos focused on about a dozen of the artists featured in the show. The videos functioned in a documentary capacity because they provided information about the artists and the environments in which they live and work. What was remarkable about them is that they were recorded and edited to convey the color, pattern, and rhythm of the artists' physical landscapes as well as to emphasize the materiality of video. Standing among the groups of monitors gave the viewer a sense of walking through a crowded street or marketplace.

Romuald Hazoume's works were also effective, but they required effort on the part of the viewer. Several of his anthropomorphic assemblages, created out of discarded materials and resembling masks, were on display in "African Art Now." On their own, these mask-like constructions were interesting, but they became powerful and uncanny when viewed in relation to Roulette Beninoise (2003-2004), an installation in "African Art Now," and La Bouche du Roi, an installation at the Menil Collection. Roulette Beninoise is a mixed-media work composed of an old motorcycle onto which are attached several plastic containers. The subject is the black market of gasoline and the transport of the commodity across the Nigerian border to Benin. An extended label educated audiences about some of the economic factors that led to this trade, but it was not until viewers traveled to the Menil Collection to see documentary footage of the entrepreneurs speeding down dirt roads with containers of petrol strapped to their bodies during their life-threatening rides, that the full impact of the work was comprehended. For the installation La Bouche du Roi, Hazoume cut off the top portions, including handle and spout, of plastic containers and placed them on the ground in the form of a ship. Many viewers might recognize the shape as a schematic drawing of the hold of a slave ship. Slave songs and a recording of a litany of names played softly in the background. In this setting, the mask-like assemblages gained considerable power because they read as the idiosyncratic faces of anonymous slaves.

Audiences seemed to marvel at the works in "African Art Now," and many left excited about what they saw. For this viewer, the exhibition raised many questions. Why not explain in better detail that the objects in the show were collected by Jean Pigozzi, and that they reflect his taste as a collector? Why did Pigozzi collect these artists and not others, and why were only two women artists included? Why did the curators select these works over others in the Pigozzi collection? A curatorial strategy that engaged the quarrelsome issues that sometimes attend the exhibition of private collections would have been an appreciated addition. Likewise, a discussion of the market established for these artists and by this collector would have added a level of complexity. Equally enlightening would have been a statement about how an exhibition in an important museum, such as the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, will impact the artists and the value of the works. Similarly, an exegesis about how the artists might be categorized--whether under the umbrellas of "traditional," "folk," "untrained," "visionary," "Outsider" or that of "international art star"--and what that categorization says about the persistence of primitivist tropes in the field would have been welcome.

Coincident with the displays of contemporary African art was "Double Consciousness: Black Conceptual Art since 1970" at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston. The title, "Double Consciousness," evokes W.E.B. Du Bois's term, popularized in his landmark publication The Souls of Black Folk (1903), to show, among other things, that the identities "Black" and "conceptual artist" are not mutually exclusive. The exhibition featured objects by well-known black conceptualists, such as Adrian Piper, David Hammons, Charles Gaines, and Fred Wilson, as well as by younger ones, such as Edgar Arceneaux, Annette Lawrence, and Sanford Biggers. Artists like Senga Nengudi, Maren Hassinger, Howardena Pindell, Lyle Ashton Harris, and Chakaia Booker, whose works straddle stylistic boundaries, were also included. David McGee's contribution was Deep Wells and Reflecting Pools, an installation featuring a variety of works from different times and cultures--some of which were beautiful, many of which were disturbing--that depicted images of blacks. McGee selected the objects from the storage of the Menil Collection (which underwrote The Image of the Black in Western Art project and publications) to critique art institutions--one of the main tenets of conceptual art--as well as to reflect on the ubiquity and use of images of blacks in art. The sheer diversity of objects, which ranged from mixed-media assemblages to performance to painting, featured in "Double Consciousness" demonstrated the importance of conceptual strategies to contemporary art at the same time that it argued for a more inclusive definition of the term "conceptual art."

"African Art Now" and "Double Consciousness" proved to be substantial anchors for Houston's celebration because they, along with the smaller exhibitions, engaged in a dialogue that circled around the variety and internationalism of contemporary artistic production. The opportunity to see a critical mass of contemporary art from Africa and the Diaspora was greatly appreciated.

Catalogues accompanied several of the exhibitions. African Art Now: Masterpieces from the Jean Pigozzi Collection (224 pp., 150 color illustrations; softcover $39.95, hardcover $49.95) is published by Merrell Publishers and has contributions by Andre Magnin, Alison de Lima Greene, Alvia Wardlaw, and Thomas McEvilley. Edited by Valerie Cassel-Oliver, Double Consciousness: Black Conceptual Art Since 1970 (112 pp., 78 color and b/w illustrations; softcover $24.95) contains contributions by several authors and is available through the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston. Romuald Hazoumd: La Bouche du Roi (32 pp., 13 illustrations; softcover $19.95) is published by the Menil Foundation and has contributions by four authors. Perspectives 145: Bodys Isek Kingelez (13 pp., 8 b/w illustrations; softcover $2.00) is published by Contemporary Arts Museum Houston and features an interview of Kingelez by Andre Magnin.