Willie Cole’s Africa Remix Trickster and “Tribe” Jean Borgatti illie Cole (Fig. 1), like many African- American artists of his generation— those born or spending their early ALL PICTURES WITH PERMISSION OF WILLIE COLE childhoods in the 1950s—reflects on the necessarily intertwined subjects of sub-Saharan Africa and the his- tory of Africans in the Americas in his work in ways that take Wfull advantage of personal history, the twin developments of the fi elds of American Studies and African Studies in the 1960s, and overall increased access to information. Indeed, he may be seen as an exemplar of this larger phenomenon in his appropriation of African forms and his use of African philosophy, particularly in his works that draw on the imagery of Eshu-Elegba, and his “tribal” identifi cation with Africa through inscribing in graphic form a stereotypical African identity on his own body. The topic of (re)capturing Africa in African American art is complex and rich, and well beyond the scope of this paper.1 Certainly, art-school or university trained African-American artists have refl ected on Africa and the lives of Africans in the Americas since Edmonia Lewis created her versions of Cleopa- tra and Hagar in the late nineteenth century. However, address- ing sub-Saharan Africa came later, in the early to mid twentieth century, as a result of the debate in France, where there was a lively and infl uential community of African and African-Ameri- can intellectuals. Th is debate centered on the ideas of Negritude and pan-Africanism proposed by Aimé Césaire, Léon Damas, Leopold Senghor and, later, Frantz Fanon. Indeed, travel to sub- Saharan Africa to experience heritage became part of an Afri- can-American coming-of-age ritual in the United States, at least beginning in the late 1950s as African countries began reclaim- ing their independence. Th e expression of history, particularly the delineation one’s relationship to sub-Saharan Africa and (re)claiming an African identity, became an important focus for African-American artists, although taking such diff erent forms as Jeff Donaldson’s definition of a distinctive black aesthetic and Fred Wilson’s postcolonial critiques. It has not been not an easy or comfortable trip “home,” however. Howardena Pindell (1994) comments acerbically that racism in America deprived her of learning about African art. It was as taboo a subject in her middle-class environment as was, according to Michael Harris (2003:14), wearing a red dress or eating watermelon in public. 1 Willie Cole Since having Africa as a conscious reference point is hardly 12 | african arts SUMMER 2009 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/afar.2009.42.2.12 by guest on 25 September 2021 Page 12 11093 • 20902122 novel in African American art history, why Willie Cole rather 2 Perm-Press (hybrid) (1999) Metal, wood, and wax; 96.5cm x 20.3cm x 27.9cm than some other artist? First, his wit and treatment of canoni- (38" x 8" x 11") cal African forms in distinctly non-canonical ways makes his Private collection work simultaneously recognizable yet refreshingly original and PHOTO: COURTESY OF ALEXANDER AND BONIN, NEW YORK thus it has great visual appeal to an Africanist audience. Second, 3 Ironmaster/GE Male Figure (1998) his work is not well known in the African art community. Renee Metal iron parts, cord, wood, and wool; 91.4cm x 35.6c x 38.1cm (36" x 14" x 15") Stout and Alison Saar are probably the two best-known African- PHOTO: COURTESY OF ALEXANDER AND BONIN, NEW YORK American artists in this community as a result of the exhibitions “Astonishment and Power” (MacGaff ey and Harris 1993) at the National Museum of African Art and “Body Politics” (Roberts and Saar 2000) at the Fowler Museum at UCLA, in which their well as to icons of American pop culture. His fi gures made from work was shown in conjunction with African sculpture.2 Th ird, commercial irons, deconstructed and reconstructed, recall the the economy with which Cole’s work communicates rich layers proportions, stance, and gestures of African fi gure sculpture, of meaning makes his work more African than neo-African. well illustrated by Permanent Press (1999; Fig. 2) as well as Iron Because Willie Cole’s work is not as well known among Afri- Master (1998; Fig. 3), which evokes the Dogon seated fi gure of canist scholars as that of Renee Stout or Alison Saar, it seems a Hogon or community leader from the Rockefeller Collection useful to provide a quick—but hardly exhaustive—overview, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (Phillips 1995:pl. 87), an particularly of his Africa-related pieces.3 He is the quintessen- institution that Cole oft en frequented as a resident of New Jer- tial postmodern artist in his eclecticism, his conversation with sey’s Newark area and a university student in New York during art history, and his themes that interweave African and Ameri- the 1970s. In Gas Snake (2002; Fig. 4), Cole plays with “ready- can ideas, forms, and experiences in ways both personal and mades” like the Dadaist Marcel Duchamp, but Cole invests his universal. He takes full advantage of the license postmodernism ready-made with a social message, as did African artists histori- provides, to paraphrase anthropologist Adam Kuper, for selec- cally. In this case, it is about energy use, pollution, and the trou- tive autobiography in the guise of honest “art.”4 Th us, his work bled relations between the United States and the Middle East. combines references, both intended and serendipitous, to Afri- Cole’s Steaming Hot (1999; Fig. 5) evokes Man Ray’s surreal and can art, to the adoption of African forms by modern artists, to threatening Gift (1921)—an iron rendered incapable of anything Dada’s ready-mades and Surrealism’s transformed objects, as but destruction if used—but is a much more playful work, while SUMMER 2009 african arts | 13 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/afar.2009.42.2.12 by guest on 25 September 2021 Page 13 11093 • 20902122 4 Gas Snake (2002) Aluminum tubing with gas nozzle; 184.2cm x 88.9cm x 203.2cm (72½" x 35" x 80") PHOTO: COURTESY OF ALEXANDER AND BONIN, NEW YORK 5 Steaming Hot (1999) Steam iron and feathers; approximately 25.5cm x 11.5cm x 31cm, Plexiglas case 36cm x 36cm x 36cm (10" x 4½" x 12"; 14" x 14" x 14") Edition of 25, published by Artists Space, 1999, to benefi t the organization’s endowment fund PHOTO: COURTESY OF ALEXANDER AND BONIN, NEW YORK such super-sized works as Kanaga Field Iron (1995; Fig. 6)— named for the Dogon Kanaga mask suggested by the carving of its handle—recall the pop art sculptures of Claus Oldenburg: his giant baseball glove or Swiss Army Knife. Despite this element of play, Cole invests his work with mean- ing and history that is deadly serious, and both personal and com- munal. However, he would say that he rediscovers meaning that is already present (Brody 1997). Irons and ironing boards evoke the role of many African-American women as domestic workers in other peoples’ homes. Scorch marks suggest branding, and the intertwined histories of slavery and plantation culture that marked early economic development in Latin America, the Caribbean, and the southern United States. Th e shapes of the iron and board themselves suggest boats, and thus the iniquitous Middle Passage where so many died in their forced move from Africa. Cole notes that his work Stowage (1997; Fig. 7a) is based on a diagram of a slave ship from a book he had in childhood, a well-known image showing the most effi cient “packing” of persons into the ship (Fig. 7b) that he has seen as an ironing board since the middle 1980s (Brody 1997). Visual puns and verbal play characterize his work, creating layers of meaning. However, Cole himself maintains that his work is not about representing the life of Africans or African- Americans but to compress time, to speak about the past, the pres- ent and the future all in one stroke (Shaw 2006). Th us Cole’s work is not simply quotation, document, or intervention.5 Willie Cole was born in 1955 in Somerville, New Jersey, but spent most of his childhood and much of his adult life in or around Newark. He was in high school in the late 1960s, as Afri- can studies came into its own as a discipline and percolated into secondary school curricula. Newark itself was an enclave where interest in Africa fl ourished, linked to an established African- American community. Newark is also the home of the Le Roi Jones (now Amiri Baraka) Spirit House, a center for theater and performance established in 1966 that kept Newark “very African,” according to Cole (Shaw 2006), and of the Newark Museum, with its excellent collection of African art, where Wil- lie Cole began taking art classes at the age of 12. Questioned by Renee Shaw in a 2006 interview in Lexington, Kentucky, regarding his interest in Africa, Cole noted that his art 1 | african arts SUMMER 2009 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/afar.2009.42.2.12 by guest on 25 September 2021 Page 14 11093 • 20902122 instructor at the Arts High School in Newark, where he spent his high school years, used African art to teach his students form, requiring that they create a replica of a traditional work. Ironi- cally, in the light of later developments in his work, at 14, Willie Cole carved a Tji Wara headdress out of Styrofoam.