African Arts

I will give an example from my work about the question of restitution of [Congolese] objects.... [B]eing an artist, I try to appropriate for myself these objects and this history, because they don’t have meaning anymore [as they did] when they were taken. The objects are dead ... because their history has been interpreted differently by the people who stole them.... I try to have these objects; by putting them in my works, for me it’s a kind of restitution. I try to give them back their rightful value, their powers. My work is entirely a work of self-appropriating this history of these objects. —Eddy Kamuanga Ilunga, Kinshasa, 20191

The subject of this article is the application of Intellectual Property Rights (IPRs) to Africa's cultural economy, and its implications for development. Drawing on extensive research, including field work in Africa and interviews with key people in the field, the study explores the concept, definitions and various ways in which Intellectual Property is formulated, particularly with regard the production and international trade in cultural goods. The paper tackles two widespread assumptions: the first is that Intellectual Property is a necessary condition of successful cultural production; and second, that Intellectual Property is antithetical to African culture-that an effective Intellectual Property regime in Africa is inoperable. On the first point, the paper observes Africa's extraordinary levels of cultural production, without substantial IP protections; and on the second point, it explains that while property rights in Africa are complex, an effective IP regime could indeed be devised. With reference to various events and projects by the World Bank and others, the author sets out the necessary conditions for an IRP development in Africa.

‘I want theatre in Kenya to be truly professional. You, as an actor, can be a brand. And make money…The quality of the shows has really gone high because the professionalism of the performers.’ – David Opondoe, Managing Director of Phoenix Theatre, speaking at the Kenya Cultural Centre in August, 2013

This unparalleled analysis of Kenyan theatrical activity and the lessons we can learn from other theatre communities, like Broadway, is invaluable for thespians, art critics, theatre students and  other stakeholders.

After half a century at the forefront of scholarship, the topic of artistic creativity in sub-Saharan Africa has lost much of its glamour. In light of her apprenticeship to a basket maker in northwest Zambia the author revisits the work of several scholars who have written on the topic, arguing that visualism and logocentrism are ultimately detrimental to the understanding of the creative process. Creativity, she argues, blossoms in art making when the artist’s mind and skillful body coalesce in engagement with materials. Consequently, a theoretical and methodological reorientation to the study of creativity is in order, one in which, together with observation and interviewing, the experiential methodology of apprenticeship is uniquely promising.

... Danse masquée. ; Tradition et modernité. ; Islamisation. ; Christianisation. ; Mouvement séparatiste. ; Langage rituel. ; Genre. ; Division sexuelle. ; Jola. ; Localisation / Location. INIST-CNRS, Cote INIST : 23465, 35400007513303.0010. Nº notice refdoc (ud4) : 2469772. ...

This essay evaluates how the field of African art history deals with the problem of cultural and discursive changes de riving from its canonization of specific objects of African art by interrogating the Mbari architecture of the Owerri-Igbo, a ritual complex of distinctive practices that is largely extinct, and whose archival inscription and contemporary interpretations are thus open to debate. It interrogates the increasing gap between the continued representation of distinctive ethnic forms of material production through historically dated art objects and the emergence of contemporary forms of art in those contexts that bear little formal resemblance or meaning to canonical cultural artifacts. The problem engendered by this conjunction of temporality and historical specificity can be defined as the problem of discursive obsolescence: If iconic objects assume different forms and meanings in different historical periods, how do these changes affect scholarly interpretation of the objects and of the archives that narrate their historically specific meanings?

Aim of this paper is to investigate the question of the ornament in Ernst Bloch’s work Spirit of Utopia, and in particular the remarks contained in reference to Carl Einstein’s Negerplastik a short text written by the German-Jewish art historian. The focus of these aesthetic reflections of Bloch is the theme of the anachronism of images, as it appears in the context of the Negerkunst, and as it appears in the avant-garde artistic movements of the early Twentieth century. The topic of anachronism is a fundamental trait in both
Bloch’s and Einstein’s readings of African art, as well as being an ever-present subject in Bloch and one that lays the groundwork for his whole thinking, including his concept of “utopia”.