Maison Tropicale directed by Manthia Diawara (review)

Manthia Diawara’s engaging and thoughtful documentary explores the history of the maisons tropicales—tropical colonial houses—that were constructed in former colonial West Africa, while also exploring questions about art, politics, and the contemporary conundrums of postcolonial Africa. The documentary presents a history that is little known through its focus on the three houses designed by the famous French designer Jean Prouvé during the years following World War II. Prouvé’s work was funded by the colonial French government, which in 1951 envisioned the prototype houses as a means to address the shortage of housing in the French colonies of West Africa. The prefabricated aluminum structures were modular and made to be flat-packed, constructed, and dismantled with ease. As Judith Rodenbeck explained in a very interesting article featuring an interview with Diawara,

The prototypes took advantage of the excess production capacity in the French aluminum industry after World War II (raw materials came from French West Africa). Fabricated out of sheet goods, chiefly aluminum panel and welded and folded steel sheet components, the building elements were designed so that they could be easily lifted, packed, and then assembled on site by a minimal crew using relatively simple tools; they were flown by cargo plane from Nancy in France, to their destinations … and raised in about two weeks.

(“Maison Tropicale: A Conversation with Manthia Diawara,” OCTOBER 133 [Summer 2010]: 107–8)

However, “Prouvé’s experiment turned out to be too costly, and the innovative designs too aesthetically challenging to relatively conservative French tastes, [so that] further production was abandoned” (108). For the most part, the prefabricated houses (two in Brazzaville, Republic of Congo, and one in Niamey, Niger) were left untouched for almost the next fifty years in the wake of decolonization. When the French left both colonies in 1960, the houses remained, enduring war, famines, and the wrenching climates until “a Parisian furniture dealer named Eric Touchaleaume touched down in Africa, negotiated the purchase of all three buildings, and had them dismantled and shipped north, restored, and rendered into objets” (108).

In order to delve into the obscure historic trajectory of the maison tropicale, Diawara embarks on a journey, along with the Portuguese artist Ângela Ferreira (whose own art installation, also titled “Maison Tropicale,” was displayed in the Portuguese Pavilion in Venice in 2007 and whose work, like Diawara’s, is funded by the Portuguese Ministry of Culture/Institute of the Arts). Their quest is to understand how the houses fit into the overarching “wealth drain” of art objects from Africa to Europe. Diawara’s documentary is a nuanced examination of this one-way flow, exploring how African art has been the victim not only of Western capitalism and consumerism, but also of civil war and the failure of nations to protect and foster the artistic culture of local communities. The documentary reveals interesting debates as the filmmaker seeks answers to the socioeconomic inequality in Africa that has led to the dire postcolonial condition of the present era. This condition is rooted in many factors, notably the failure of contemporary African political will, neocolonialism, and global capitalist structures that foster the continuance of Western domination and exploitation of Africa.

In the film Diawara and Ferreira interview West Africans, such as Mireille Ngatsé, who lived for several years in one of the Brazzaville houses. Her maison, Ngatsé explains, had no electricity or running water, but she found it comfortable and “loved the fresh air and the light coming in through the round blue windows.” However, one day four Frenchmen came from France, packed up the house, and took it away in containers. A similar scenario took place in Niamey. Diawara and Ferreira delve into the history of these houses as they have become works of art, exhibited around the world as precious objects of a bygone colonial era. One of them was recently displayed in “New York’s Summer 2007 design auctions … on Vernon Boulevard, under the...