Exhibition Review

exhibition review Visionary Africa: Art At Work Railway Station Gardens, Kampala September 18–October 14, 2012 KLA ART 012 12 Boxes Moving, Kampala October 7–14, 2012 Uganda Golden Jubilee Celebration October 9, 2012 reviewed by Sidney L. Kasfi r Kampala, Ouagadougou, Addis Ababa, Cairo, coincided, wherever possible, with a major 1 Visionary Africa pavilion, designed Harare, Bujumbura, Kampala.1 Th e itiner- local event, such as the fi ft ieth anniversary of by David Adjaye, Railway Station Gar- ant platform known as “Visionary Africa: Art the end of colonialism marked in seventeen dens, Kampala, 2012. at Work,” an omnibus exhibition-cum-con- African countries during its run. In the case of 2 Excerpts from Simon Njami’s A ference, artist residency, and workshop, put Kampala, it was this lavish celebration of fi ft y Useful Dream: African Photography to rest the question of whether or not it was years of political independence on October 9, 1960–2010, Visionary Africa Pavilion. really feasible to move a complex exhibition 2012, which took place during the fi nal week vehicle among a group of six cities in Africa. of the exhibition. all photographs by author To judge by its appearance in Kampala, where However inadvertent, the contrast could I saw it, the answer was a resounding yes, not have been greater between the “Visionary attributable to its meeting several logistical Africa” exhibition, which took place in a small hurdles. Th e exhibition itself had to be small, park in front of the Kampala Railway Station self-contained in its own pavilion designed by in the hope of reaching a wide, non-elite audi- David Adjaye (Fig. 1) and mainly pre-curated ence, and the simultaneous fi ft ieth anniversary by Simon Njami, although augmented by a celebrations a few miles away on Kololo Hill local curator at each city. It had to be resilient (the home of the diplomatic corps and wealthy and easy to transport, which came down to Ugandans) with their tight security and care- photography, mounted directly on minimalist fully screened guest list that included fi ft een unpainted gallery walls (Fig. 2). And, perhaps too obvious to mention, it had to be paid for by a sponsoring organization, in this case the European Commission, Directorate General for Development and Cooperation, and led by a European organization, the Centre for Fine Arts in Brussels (BOZAR). As the press releases stated, when the EU and the African Union met (in Cairo in 2000 and Lisbon in 2007), it was decided that “culture and creativity” ought to play a central role in development policies fostered by the two organizations, since culture ought to be seen as “a sphere in which society explains its rela- tionship with the world and plans its future.” Th is optimistic and developmental view of culture, it must be said, is a departure from the more conventional culture-as-heritage posi- tion of most African cultural bureaucrats and was attributed to Louis Michel, the former EU Commissioner of Development and Coopera- tion. To emphasize this connection to both past and future, the three-week exhibition VOL. 47, NO. 2 SUMMER 2014 african arts | 79 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/AFAR_r_00141 by guest on 28 September 2021 140315-001_76-96_CS6.indd 79 3/18/14 11:06 AM 3 Girls attending Gayaza High School around while the North Koreans fashioned theirs in 1900, archival photo, Katrin Peters-Klaphake and Margaret Nagawa. “Traces and Routes,” concrete in just under four weeks from start Visionary Africa Pavilion. to fi nish: an image titled Th e Unknown Ugan- dan Soldier. Executed in the old-style Soviet 4 George Kyeyune and Maria Naita, Jour- Realism still cherished by the North Koreans ney, Uganda Golden Jubilee, Kampala. in their public commissions, it was already 5 DPR Korea Paekho Trading Corporation, beginning to crumble by the time of the cel- Unknown Ugandan Soldier, Uganda Golden ebration. Jubilee, Kampala. Although vastly diff erent in style, materials and concept, the biggest diff erence between “Visionary Africa: Art at Work” and the Inde- pendence monuments was public accessibility or its lack. Even a fortnight aft er the indepen- African heads of state plus the Aga Khan (who dence celebrations were over, I could only visit underwrote part of the cost). At the Railway the site of the two monuments in the company Station there were the images of urban Africa of George Kyeyune, one of the sculptors, and and popular culture displayed in David Adjaye’s then only because the soldiers guarding the and Simon Njami’s two interdigitated photo- site had come to know him. As Njami states graph exhibitions, supplemented by Katrin in his catalogue essay “Of Curating and Audi- Peters-Klaphake and Margaret Nagawa’s instal- ences,” public art, when ordered by the state, lation of “Traces and Routes,” in two parts: is guided by a political rather than an artistic a small exhibition of historical photographs vision (2010:28). Th is was certainly the case from three local Ugandan archives, ranging with Th e Unknown Soldier monument com- from girls in traditional Buganda dress attend- missioned from the North Koreans, though ing Gayaza High School around 1900 (Fig. 3) unlike them, Kyeyune and Naita had a free Nsubuga “Sane,” Lilian Nabulime, Bwambale to self-consciously modern views of friends hand in deciding what they wanted to rep- Ivan Allan, Ronex Ahimbsibwe, Donald Was- posed, Malick Sidibe-style, at the shore of Lake resent and how.2 Njami contrasts politically swa, Eric Mukalazi). Xenson’s Nakivubo Chan- Victoria in the 1960s. In addition there was a motivated art with the type of project “Vision- nel (Kasfi r 2013:Fig. 2) and Wasswa’s Letter cross-section of contemporary work by Ugan- ary Africa” has designed, in which the public, from Elephania were situated only a few hun- dan photographers including Edward Echwalu, and not the state, fulfi lls the role of both spon- dred feet from the “Visionary Africa” pavilion Okujo Atiku Prynce, Rumanzi Canon, Kibuuka sor and audience. in the Railway Station’s Park. Mukisa, and Peter Tukei. Th e problem, of course, with doing an exhi- Th e other major challenge was that both At Kololo, the government had commis- bition intended for “the ordinary citizen” and Adjaye’s and Njami’s sections of “Visionary sioned two massive sculptures, one by well- not the gallery-goer is that the wananchi (citi- Africa: Art at Work” were selections from known Ugandan public sculptors Maria Naita zens) may or may not actually show up. In much larger 2010 exhibitions at the Centre for and George Kyeyune (Fig. 4) and the other the three visits I made to “Art at Work,” not Fine Arts, Brussels (BOZAR). Th is included by the anonymous artists of the Paekho Trad- including the opening ceremonies or the visits Adjaye’s photographs of African capitals ing Corporation of the Democratic People’s by art classes from Makerere, it was sparsely shown there in his exhibition “David Adjaye’s Republic of Korea (Fig. 5), which had already attended. But in its third and fi nal week, atten- GEO-GRAPHICS: A Map of Art Practices in received contracts for several Uganda govern- dance was boosted by the presence of two Africa, Past and Present” and Simon Njami’s ment engineering projects. Although both new installations in the same park which were “A Useful Dream: African Photography 1960– groups were paid the same amount of money part of the KLA ART 012 Contemporary Art 2010.” Th ese very diff erent types of images to cover materials and labor, the Ugandan Festival, comprised of twelve shipping con- were combined in the travelling exhibition: work, a group sculpture titled Journey repre- tainers scattered about the city, each curated color versus black and white, buildings ver- senting the fi ve decades of the nation from by a diff erent artist (Stella Atal, Sanaa Gateja, sus people, very small-scale photo-collages childhood to maturity, was modeled and then Sue Crozier Th orburn, Emma Wolokau- versus large scale prints, oft en portraits. But cast in fi berglass over a period of two months, Wanambwa, Bruno Ruganzu, Xenson, Eria more importantly, David Adjaye’s photo- 80 | african arts SUMMER 2014 VOL. 47, NO. 2 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/AFAR_r_00141 by guest on 28 September 2021 140315-001_76-96_CS6.indd 80 3/18/14 11:06 AM 6 Zineb Sedira, The Lovers, Visionary Africa pavilion, Kampala. graphs formed part of a larger argument he excised from both the historical African art tecture component other than his photographs has attempted to make about the importance which preceded it and the contemporary of African capitals and the pavilion itself. Th is of region or geographical zone (forest, savan- experiments which follow it, as seen in the took the form of a sizable one-day conference nah, sahel, etc) to art practices. Taken out of Brussels version prior to travelling. So instead entitled “How Art and Architecture Can Make the context of the “Geo-Graphics” exhibition, of a past-present-future focus as described City Development Inclusive and Sustainable,” which also included a substantial amount of by the African organizers, BOZAR, and the held in Kampala’s Old City Hall, a small and historical African sculpture from the Royal European Commission, all three timeframes beautifully renovated late colonial structure. Museum for Central Africa, Tervuren, and had to be represented by the photographs. Like many such events in Africa, it was replete from private collections to illustrate the sup- In fact, these were implicitly already pres- with speeches from cultural bureaucrats (from posed zones of production, the point was basi- ent, given their range from about 1900 to the the Lord Mayor of Kampala, the European cally lost and the collages became a kind of present.

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