Art
Ethiopia | US
Kebedech Tekleab: Creating an Ethiopian Narrative in America
By E. Ethelbert Miller
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Serenity, 1993 © Kebedech Tekleab.
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Kebedech Tekleab is one of the foremost Ethiopian artists
today. While her “interest on human conditions globally” has inspired much of her work, her own personal narratives and her love of literature, music, drama etc. are equally great sources of inspiration. Tekleab’s pieces have been acquired by the Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center
and the Embassy of Ethiopia, among notable others. She is currently a
professor of Foundation Studies at the Savannah College of Arts and
Design in Savannah, Georgia.
Tekleab first collaborated with E. Ethelbert Miller, literary activist and author of the recent memoir The 5th Inning on The Handprint Identity Project–an
exchange between artists and poets. What follows is a conversation between two artists and friends.
EM: When creating new artwork how important is memory and vision?
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A-Day, 2003. Acrylic on canvas © Kebedech Tekleab |
KT: I find this question interesting. If it deals with the issue of time, then memory and
vision try to bridge the past, the present, and the future. It is true that there are times
when creating new work one might depend on personal or social memories. The existing
objective condition might also be the source of inspiration, or subjective ideas may serve
to create visionary directions.
EM: How has this notion of memory and vision as bridging the past, present,
and future impacted your pieces?
KT: I completed “A-Day,” (2003) a piece about
the Iraq war the day “Shock & Awe” began. I
started working on it when the world felt the war
in Iraq was inevitable. The day it began, I was at
my studio working on the piece and listening to
the explosion of bombshells on the radio.
There was nothing to depict but to feel;
visualization dominated observation. I dealt with
the present but the process evoked a great deal of
memory, social and personal, and time lost its
boundary. I titled the piece “A-Day” and in doing that I marked time, the time of my
inspiration, which happened to be timely and historic.
More on Tekleab’s conversation with Miller.
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Art
Nigeria | Britain
Yinka Shonibare: The Art of Victorian
Dress
By Patricia Spears Jones
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How to Blow up Two Heads at Once (Ladies)
© All rights reserved Yinka Shonibare, MBE 2006
United Kingdom
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The Yinka Shonibare MBE (Member of British
Empire) exhibition is one of the most impressive
shows presented at the Brooklyn Museum of Art and shows the changing views on contemporary
art as African artists take the lead in creating
different and new perspectives on image, object making, and identity.
In this mid-career retrospective, Shonibare, the London-based Nigerian artist, examines
Victorian dress forms and culture as a way to explore imperialism, globalization, and
African identity. In the magnificent Scramble for Africa (2003), he recreates a meeting at the
Berlin Conference of 1884-85: European nationals, clothed in well appointed suits made
from colorful Dutch wax fabrics that were originally designed for an African market,
decide how to carve up Africa. The portrayal is an ironic commentary on the indifference
of these historic figures to the African nations and peoples they were about to alter in
terrible ways.
Shonibare’s animated figures bear no identifying racial color and instead are presented in
a neutral palette. However, it is their Victorian costumes that denote status, privilege, and
discourses on race. In todays label-obsessed, status driven culture, Shonibare reminds us
that wealth, class, and power continue to widen the distance between the have’s and
have-not’s.
At the Brooklyn Museum of Art through September 20, 2009.
Curated by Rachel Kent, Senior Curator of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney
Patricia Spears Jones is a columnist for Calabar magazine and is the author of two poetry collections, Femme du Monde and The Weather That Kills.
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Photography
Patagonia | South America
Mustafa Abdulaziz: Cowboy Stories from the Bottom of the World
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“The power of the photograph can shine a light of
knowledge and inspiration into places where there
was once only darkness,” says photographer Mustafa Abdulaziz.
Coming from a Dutch/Afro-Caribbean heritage, Abdulaziz’s work centers on “people and cultures
whose lives may not contain the drama of spot
news or the visceral power of war and conflict, but
whose daily struggles and ways of life are
changing as our world moves into this new
century.”
Such was the impetus that drew him to the people of Patagonia, specifically, the
Patagonian cowboys, who roam with their cattle in an existence that has changed little
since the 1900s. Abdulaziz was recently awarded the top prize in the “People” category
for his “Patagonia Cowboys” series in En Foco’s People/Places/Things international photography competition, sponsored by Canson Infinity.
Located at the bottom of South America, Patagonia’s vague territory sits between
Argentina and Chile and is geographically the closest point to the bottom of the world.
While breathtaking landscapes, defined by sweeping mountain ranges and vast plains,
take center stage in Abdulaziz’s series, he also documents Patagonia’s commercialization
and the ensuing tensions of a culture rapidly changing and trying to hold onto its
traditions.
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South Africa | US
Photography
Intersections Intersected:
Documenting South Africa’s Past
and Present
By Mohamed Hassim Keita
In Intersections Intersected, currently on view at
the New Museum,
South African photographer David Goldblatt
documents the turbulent decades, landscapes,
and people scarred by racial tensions in South
Africa’s Apartheid past and post-Apartheid
present.
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"A child's salute to the Cradock Four." Cradock, Eastern Cape.
20 July
1985 .
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Goldblatt’s series of diptychs revisits locales he
photographed decades ago, documenting the
transformation and fallout of the often-failed
racial policies of Apartheid. In his black and
white homage to four anti-Apartheid South
African activists murdered in 1985 (“A Child's
Salute to the Cradock Four”) a small black boy raises his pumped fist while standing next
to the dirt mound graves of the Cradock Four, as they became known. Adjacent is a
contemporary color photograph of the same scene: the dirt mounds have now been
transformed into a marble mausoleum to the men.
Several of Goldblatt’s large color photographs, arranged in sets of three, reflect present-
day South African locales with a stillness and desolation about them. Storefronts, closets,
beaten dirt roads, open country, and interiors are often void of people. Within the three
walls of “On Justisie Straat” and “Andy Kula Washing His Clothes,” for example,
contrasting social conditions share an uncomfortable proximity: from the rusty Mercedes
parked on Justisie Straat on a white farm to a township’s dirt road water tap where a man
waits for water. Perhaps, presenting the photographs in diptychs and triptychs is a
commentary on the inherent limitation of the single photograph to document a reality
that is never black or white.
At the New Museum through October 11.
Mohamed Hassim Keita writes on press freedom issues and works with the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). He resides in Harlem.
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Afghanistan
Film
Afghan Star: Mass Media versus Islamic Tradition
By Troy Jeffrey Allen
Early in Afghan
Star, a young Pashtun boy briskly observes
(despite missing an eye) that "If there
were no songs,the world would be
silent." It is moments like these, little
snippets of what happens when art
influences life, that allow you to
appreciate Afghan Star, despite its’ lack
of delivery.
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The documentary takes place in
present day Afghanistan and while civil unrest and Taliban rule are not far behind, pop
culture has returned to the populace—specifically, in the form of an ongoing television
show called Afghan Star. The show follows the American Idol-model, pitting vocalist (and the
unabashed) in a weekly sing-off. The program is a hit across the country, as it
momentarily blurs lines of self-segregation, renovates the zeitgeist, and takes advantage of
more modern forms of telecommunications (you have to cast your vote for each
contestant via cell phone).
But what happens when mass media begins to clash with Islamic tradition? It’s a question
that Setara Hussainzada, a contestant from Herat, has to answer. Outspoken and
determined to become a household name, Setara is quick to shed her burqa, expose her
hair and dance on stage for the cameras. Her actions, meant to inspire individualism,
encourage only death threats and public disapproval from religious scholars and fellow
competitors (specifically, Lema Sehar, who quietly uses her ties to the Taliban to advance
as a finalist).
Read more on Afghan Star
Troy Jefrrey Allen is a Washington, DC.- based freelance columnist, screenwriter, and cartoonist. www.typographicera.com
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