Continental Rifts: Contemporary Time-Based Works of Africa (review)

Nka•163 Geography is not defined by physical topography alone. Territories bear the marks of their histories, the struggles that have distinguished one place from another, and the social and psychological dynamics that inform the ways we relate to one another. The recent exhibition at UCLA’s Fowler Museum, Continental Rifts: Contemporary Time-Based Works of Africa, presented video, film, and related photography by five celebrated contemporary artists who engage these complex dimensions of geography and the ways they are mediated aesthetically. Specifically, the show focused on the African continent but from various global perspectives, including works by artists who live in Africa, a European artist with roots on the continent, and a New York–based South American artist who frequently works in Rawanda and Angola. As captured in the somewhat awkward phrasing of the title, it was not a show of works about or from Africa, but rather of Africa, holding open the possibility of more diverse ways of relating to the continent and, at times, explicitly pressing the question of the nature of belonging implied by the genitive, “of.” In this way, the show specifically accommodated the legacies of both colonialism and the African diaspora; and the works in it consistently presented the continent not as a static landmass, but as changing in light of the shifts in perspective produced by movements to and from it, under the force of history. South African artist Berni Searle’s two-channel video installation, Home and Away (2003), for example, is above all about direction. One screen features an image shot from a small boat with an outboard motor, leaving behind itself a foaming wake as it pulls away from a coastline in the distance; on the other screen, a woman floats on her back in the ocean, wearing a tank top and loose skirt with layers of white, pink, and red. Accompanying the sound of the lapping water and the roar of the boat’s engine, an overdubbed voice conjugates the verbs, “to love,” “to fear,” and “to leave.” The two juxtaposed images were shot off the coasts of Spain and Morocco respectively, bringing into dialogue these two physical borders and evoking the history of migration between them. But nothing in either image identifies the location of the piece as such, and ultimately each work addresses more formal, phenomenological issues of orientation. The boat racing over the ocean moves from and toward, while the woman on her back floats in a space suspended between. Flanked by the two opposing images of the installation, the viewer similarly is suspended in an always-intermediary situation, deprived of any vantage from which to view the piece as a whole, and required to turn his or her attention one way or another. While initially I found the mantra of conjugating verbs somewhat ponderous, ultimately it enriches these phenomenological dynamics, by presenting them not merely as formal intentional structures , but furthermore as affectively loaded and informed by anxiety and desire . For her single-channel video projection , Africa Rifting: Lines of Fire: Namibia/Brazil (2001) the South African artist Georgia Papageorge employs long swatches of deep red fabric to engage, accentuate, and juxtapose the aesthetic wealth of the coasts of Western Africa and South America. In one series of closely shot images, Papageorge ’s camera moves across the surface of the rich red cloth as it extends from green foliage into the sand, finally to be washed over by sea foam. In a second sequence the fabric is shown from a distant, wide angle, hanging off a high, steep rock cliff, and extending over grass, sand, and other rock formations , out to the beach. A third series of images presents shorter cuts from the cloth, mounted as banners on T-bar poles—first three and then as many as seven or ten—and blowing in the wind against backdrops of dunes and crashing surf. In diverse ways, the cloth highlights the dynamics of the landscape . Its folds and shadows mirror the CONTINENTAL RIFTS: CONTEMPORARY TIME-BASED WORKS OF AFRICA FOWLER MUSEUM AT UCLA FEBRUARY 22–JUNE 14, 2009 Yto Barrada, Oxalis Crown–Perdicaris Forest–Rmilet, Tangier, 2007, from Iris Tingitana series. C-print, 125 x 125...