Afrik'arts, Trimestriel d'analyses et de reflexions sur les arts visuels.

Afrik'arts, Trimestriel d'analyses et de reflexions sur les arts visuels

Issues 1-3, August and December 2005, May 2006. First issue in French, second and third in French and English

Subscriptions 18,000 CFA, 45 Euros, 55 US$, 75 Can$, as international money orders, from the Secretariat de Dak'Art, la Biennale de l'Art africain contemporain, 19 ave. Albert Sarraut, B.P. 3865, Dakar, Senegal

afrik'arts is an intellectually challenging and handsome new magazine that blazes paths and fills some gaps. Its editors seek to provide publishing opportunities to complement the artistic events of Dak'Art, the Biennale of Contemporary African Art--hence the "k'a" in the magazine's name. As Dak'Art Secretary General Ousseynou Wade explains in his preface to the first issue of afrik'arts, "each edition of the event that is Dak'Art is an occasion to nourish debate about artistic expression in Africa by interrogating its [that is, the Biennale's] history and its present reality [and] by analyzing its potential and its stakes in the preservation of diversity. To prolong and deepen such debate seems a necessity today--a mission to take up" through afrik'arts. As stressed by Mme Safiatou Ndiaye Diop (Senegalese Minister of Culture and Historical Patrimony) in her own preface, this "new tool for the promotion of African creation" will welcome reflections produced in Africa and the rest of the world--with a distinct accent on the former.

The first three issues of afrik'arts are an auspicious beginning to such an ambitious undertaking. The magazine has a large "coffee-table" format, just a little smaller than that of the now-defunct Revue noire, from which it is differentiated by its more explicit "by Africans, for Africans" approach. Its full-color illustrations are sumptuous, and many are full- or double-page; its layout is engaging, and the fact that afrik'arts is edited, published, and printed in Dakar makes a statement in its own right: Africans are making their own waves, as they always have.

The theme of the first issue of afrik'arts (August 2005) is "Visual Arts: Criticism in Question" A large photo on the cover shows a wrestler upending his adversary in a work by the Senegalese sculptor Mamadi Seydi that seems allegorical here, as African art critics seek to gain the advantage at last. Below is a portrait photo of the Senegalese art critic Abdou Sylla and the statement "Senghor created his own aesthetic of Art negre and contemporary art" throwing this down as a gantlet of the first issue and perhaps those to follow. A lead article by Modou Mamoune Faye further emphasizes the ambition of afrik'arts to credibiliser--'render credible, valorize'--"African art criticism ... especially from African pens ... [and] to legitimize it while placing it on the same sort of pedestal occupied by art criticism from or in other cultural areas."

Articles in this first issue take just such an admirable course: Youma Fall's review of an exhibition organized by Dak'Art and the Canary Islands Chamber of Commerce in Tenerife, the Canary Islands, called "Beneen Bet, Otra mirada" (un autre regard, 'a different gaze'), presents the work of six Senegalese artists-on-the-way-up: Ndary Lo, Cheikhou Ba, Djibril Ndiaye, Seyni Gadiaga, Amadou Kane Sy, and Soly Cisse. The article "Images de la ville" by Sylvain Sankale also features works by Soly Cisse, empowered (or overpowered?) by "fantasmagoric animals," often hazily painted in ethereal blue. Samba Fall is also presented by Sankale through a montage influenced by bande dessinees (comic strips) depicting "the human being as a reflection of him/herself recommenced a hundred times over" Paintings by Camara Gueye, Birame Ndiaye, and Mohamadou Ndoye Douts are here as well, each a reflection of urban realities underlaid by poverty and violence.

Marching through the titles of other articles gives a sense of the animation and excitement of afrik'arts' debut, while introducing readers to authors and artists about whom they will want to know more. Kinshasa is a "ville imaginaire" according to Roger Pierre Turine, while a piece by the well-known Belgian art critic Joelle Busca poses pertinent questions about "critics of African art or African critics of Art." An interview with Yacouba Konate, Ivoirian art critic and philosophy professor, is called "A Critic Who Isn't Known by the Artists of His/Her Country Twists in the Wind" (tourne a vide), as reported by Massamba Mbaye. "Between Uproar and Silence" by N'Gone Fall, concerns how, "caught between the gangrenous context of the unsaid and second-hand commentaries, the artist Modou seeks to make himself understood" Less bombastic is Omar Diouf's contemplation, [Art] "Criticism Permits Evaluation of All Works" In Benin, there seems to be "A Still-Stuttering [Art] Criticism" according to Pascal Zantou, while a richly illustrated design piece by Sidy Seck challenges the reader to consider "When Creativity Drowns in Emotional Effervescence!" A piece on art markets by Youma Fall titled "Between the Artist's Workshop and the Collector's Cave" is followed by "Western Gallery Owners Snub Congolese Critics" (made the stronger by author Paul-Olivier Musangi Ntemo's neologistic French verb, "to snob"). C. Krydz Ikwuemesi wanders the Nigerian scene in "Art Criticism: Sentinel of Creation?" and final refections are offered by Sidy Seck on an exhibition at the French Cukural Center of Lome, Togo, and by Magnim Palam on "Visual Arts Encounters and Residences" in the same country.

If this whirlwind leaves readers breathless, the second issue of afrik'arts (December 2005) increases the wind speed to gale force. Thicker than the first, the second issue is bilingual in French and English and offers even more delicious illustrations. Its theme is "L'Afrique s'installe," transmogrified on the cover as "Africa Turns to Installations," thus losing the more beguiling sense of "African installing itself."

Flipping through the pages, the eye is caught by a boatload of doll heads perilously perched on urban detritus in a 2004 work by the Senegalese artist N'Dary Lo, matched later in the magazine by the humor and pathos of Dominique Zinkpe's lethally overstuffed "Taxi-brousse" (Benin, 2002). Several vignettes from an "Installation on the Rwandan Genocide" by the Ghanaian Kofi Setordji (1997) are found throughout the issue; one featuring terracotta faces partially buried in, partially floating on sand is deeply poignant. Jane Alexander's gruesome theriomorphs in "Mixed Technique" (1997-98), recalling apartheid South Africa, stand in stark contrast to the spare dignity of the late Moustapha Dime's flotsom figures in "Contemporary Dance" (Senegal, 1996). A double-paged spread features Berni Searle's mesmerizing installation of embodied works at Da'Art 2000. Mamady Seydi's "Waxi maam ou parole des anciens" is engaging both for the sculpture and the remarkable photograph of it by Boubacar Toure Mandemory. An interview with Viye Diba reveals his intellectual verve as a cultural geographer by education, a fine arts professor by profession, and a plastic artist by preference. And an amusingly outrageous "installation" of mostly nude, entirely painted Senegalese women in a crazy-quilt-like tableau vivant introduces a long interview between the designer Balthazar Faye and the Paris-based critics Tierry William Koudedji and Lucie Touya. Aside from these captivating images, a remarkable group of mostly African authors present topics such as "the colonization, the installation," "installations' future will depend on whether they can be consumer goods or not," and "installations: a medium against oblivion." To use an apt expression from franglais, the second issue of afrik'arts is un des musts for anyone interested in African contemporary expression, as understood and presented by African artist-intellectuals themselves.

Each iteration of afrik'arts is its own hard act to follow. "Senghor and Plastic Arts" (May 2006) is dedicated to the centenary of "this cultured man," as Ousseynou Wade describes the poet-president in his introduction to the third issue. A two-page spread is emblazoned with N'Dary Los grippingly photo-realist, sepia-toned, immense portrait of Senghor's weathered face, as photographed by the gifted Pape Seydi. This issue is more text-heavy than the first two, and offers compelling accounts of encounters with Senghor matched by scholarly reflections on the man and his enduring influence on contemporary arts of Senegal and the rest of Africa.

Although each article is necessarily brief, the collection presents interesting and important counterpoints and complementarities to recent studies of Senghorian art and politics by non-Senegalese writers. Sidy Seck offers an overview of "The Dakar School: A Historical Fact or an Intellectual Hoax?" (in a harsh departure from the French title, "L'Ecole de Dakar: une histoire et ses zones d'ombres"). The celebrated painter Ibou Diouf muses on "Senghor? The Impossible Testimony," and Sophie Courteille comments on "Senghor, Marx, and Picasso." A long refection by Professor Souleymane Bachir Diagne of Northwestern University considers the expressive transitions "Du Musee de l'Homme au Musee imaginaire," or in less engaging translation, "Senghor's Negritude as Philosophy of Art." A number of other pieces are contributed to the puzzle of Senghor's legacy, including Younousse Seye's "Senghor Sought to Reconcile Man with Himself," Massamba Mbaye's "And the Words of the President-Poet Became Mosaic," Serigne Ndiaye's "A Day with Senghor at Verson," Abdou Sylla's "Senghor, the Arts, and Artists," and Alioune Badiane's "Senghor and the Quest for an African Art that is Contemporary." A number of shorter contributions end the volume, as does Djibril Sy's suite of photographs of Joal, the picturesque seaside village of Senghor's birth.

In sum, afrik'arts is an impressive piece of work and a fit complement to and extension of Dak'Art. One can quibble about lapses in translation into English. One can hope that authors and artists from other parts of Africa will be featured as prominently as those from Senegal have been in the first three issues. But just as the Biennale's hardy staff always pull through in the end, overcoming what cannot but seem the most insurmountable of problems to offer today's arts of Africa in the warmest ambiance of Senegalese teranga (hospitality), so it is that afrik'arts is a stunning accomplishment against all odds. That it may continue, inch'Allah! Does your library have afrik'arts on its shelves yet? Do you have it on yours?

reviewed by Allen E Roberts

Allen E Roberts is the director of the James S. Coleman African Studies Center at UCLA, where he is on the faculty of the World Arts and Cultures Program. He is an editor of African Arts. [e-mail]