The new Modern restaurant was opened with the king - dein of Agbor in Delta State, Nigeria. Beautiful and charming, she poses for a photo of her life in a red robe paired with a footstool and a red velvet throne as if she has a job. his king. He holds a white metal curtain in one hand as if to resist the heat (or the concern of the company: this dein is known to resolve conflicts). The king in this painting is seated on a stone throne carved with long chains of cowries. A third appears to be Benin bronzes which are regularly displayed in European museums (re-gifting them). George Osodi's brilliant photographs of Nigerian royalty, of which the West knows little, were painted during this century. When the British ruled parts of Africa during the Victorian era, hundreds of tribal kingdoms merged to form the borders of Nigeria. Even so, the kings of these kingdoms continued to exist, as they do today. These paintings are a testament to the present but also the past.
A Common World: Contemporary African Photography Shows Africa Through Its Own Lens. Inspirational, powerful, captivating, profound art. It is a very important experience, only in terms of pure knowledge. This is the gangsters running in Marrakech and gay scenes in South Africa, the landscape of Cameroon and the streets of the megalopolis of Kinshasa, and the Mauritanian immigrants trying to reach the shores of the Mediterranean. Lazhar Mansouri's black-and-white photographs, taken in his northern Algerian studio in the 1950s and 1960s, provide a vivid account of Bedouin and Berber shepherds, some radiographers, and local residents. said Marlon Brando. Given the population of Africa, now more than one billion, and the large number of images that can be included, careful selection is very important. Some of the 36 artists in the exhibition are famous - Samson Kambalu (last seen at Modern Art Oxford); Fabrice Monteiro, nominee for the Prix Pictet; The esteemed James Barnor, a photographer of the joyous and uplifting Ghanaian people have been released from the Serpentine Institute in 2021. Others deserve better recognition. A beautiful photo of the Angolan artist Edson Chagas was taken exactly as a passport photo.
But each model wears a Bantu cover that is well-represented by Western collectors in the first place. To continue, Chagas invents pseudonyms for each subject - Salvador Kimbangu, Pablo Mbela - Euro-African hybrids who remember Angola's past as a Portuguese colony. Who is allowed to travel, these images seem to ask, in relation to the privileged? The Chagas images in the gallery are attached to the covers and their meaning in Africa as opposed to Europe. Zina Saro-Wiwa simultaneously presents her own films under different guises making her visible as a modern African woman. It ends in horror. In Wura-Natasha Ogunji's piercingly titled performance video - Shall I carry water when I am a dead woman? – a group of veiled women drags a large pool of water on the ground from a neighborhood in Lagos. The men gape; The women bowed their heads, posing respectfully. At one memorable moment in the video, a local woman carrying a weight of water the size of a water bottle that fits over her head passes through the crowd who can't turn around for a second to look. away. The theme of the show is always judged. The spiritual section features a beautiful five-panel polyptych by Senegalese artist Maïmouna Guerresi depicting an old man in a tall black hat reciting Sufi scriptures to four young women in bright red dresses, sat on black blocks around the table. They listen, but only as they meditate and think about the greater things of existence brought about by the shell box and the large gas canister on the table.
Cameroonian artist Em'kal Eyongakpa's extraordinary dark landscape unfolds with shadowy legs, artifacts, and even, in one shot, different bodies: the marks of war lie on the ground like smoke on the ground. But there are pictures of the exiles. Sammy Baloji's security footage of Congolese workers, some of them in chains, appeared in modern photographs of collapsing mines; the company is now dead as forced labor. Two stunning paintings by Angolan artist Délio Jasse on vintage bank and passport stamps, as well as official letters, over 1960 portraits of the Portuguese royal family. You look for some characteristic of Angola itself and find only one black African face, not necessarily that of a slave. The show treats the camera as a tool of empire. I was fascinated by the strange assembly that spread out on the floor of the central museum, full of dusty old files. Stacked, assembled, and cut down, they form the low-rise urban landscape, the architecture of modern Lagos. One of these piles also takes the form of Independence House, which was commissioned by the British, and where secret documents and photographs were hidden. Some of these boxes have now been opened, revealing pictures of the ruling regime under the red and ocher soil of Nigeria. The Enduring Endurance installation is an interesting title A History of a City in a Box. Photography is the way to experience the many different forms of art at Tate Modern - large Cibachrome prints, film installations, and sculptures galore. A beautiful slide show of old, dark, unearthed photographs of 19th-century Africans in Victorian dress, whose identities sometimes emerge. Each is followed by a question. Are those their real names? What did they do for a living? What is this event? And, more importantly, are these paintings "evidence of colonial rule" or have they challenged the image of the "African" in the West? Curated with insight, intelligence, and compassion by Osei Bonsu, Curator of International Art at Tate Modern, this is a wonderful exhibition. And what is remarkable is how many visions of the great continent seem unimaginable to be combined, here and there, in microcosmic details. If only you would look closely at how inspiring these pictures are. The woman with the bowl of drink on her head reappeared, in spirit, as a symbol, more than once. And finally in one of Andrew Esiebo's big cities in Lagos, where pedestrians make their own way in the chaos, people park their cars on the highway, and the demolished buildings are stacked like houses. There he was again, a hero, and not just another person in the crowd.
Each is followed by a question. Are these really their names? What did they do for a living? What is the occasion? And, above all, are these portraits “evidence of mental colonization” or did they challenge prevailing images of “the African” in the West?Organized with so much insight, intelligence, and sympathy by Osei Bonsu,
