The White Hunter: African Memories and Representations by Marco Scotini (review)

Italy as a scene for major international exhibitions dedicated to contemporary art from Africa and the African Diaspora has only in recent years made waves on the international arena, with the 56th edition of the Venice Biennale directed by Okwui Enwezor in 2016 representing an important landmark. In an art world dominated by Anglo-American and French institutions and their art markets, Italy today plays an emergent role in breaking that tradition. It is offering curators a new challenge for representing Africa from a position that is both hegemonic—Italy as one of the historical “centers” of European art and an ex-colonial power—and peripheral at the same time, which makes the Italian landscape an exciting space to watch.

Curated by the artistic director of FM Centro per l’Arte Contemporanea Marco Scotini, The White Hunter: African Memories and Representations brought together the artworks of thirty-seven artists from Africa, France, Italy, and the African Diaspora, featuring artists such as El Anatsui, Yinka Shonibare, William Kentdrige, and Meschac Gaba (among many others) that have the greatest visibility in the contemporary art world today and could be said to share the greatest burden of representation. The exhibition therefore took a risk: how to present artists we have grown all too familiar with, without replicating a generic, global perspective of contemporary African art.

With this in view, the curator undertook a collaborative approach, engaging prominent advisors including Simon Njami and Gigi Pezzoli for contemporary art and Ezio Bassani for historical art, as well as the communications focused cultural organization lettera27, which works to subvert multiple stereotypes that surround the African continent and to amplify the voices of intellectuals, artists, and cultural activists from Africa and the Diaspora.

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Section 1: “The Cabana,” in The White Hunter: African Memories and Reflections at the FM Centro per l’Arte Contemporanea, Milan. Two works by Pascale Mathine Tayou: (l) The Soul and the Spirit (2010) and (r) Vestige D (2015).

Photo: Alessandra Di Consoli

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Detail from African Cabana (2017) by Pascale Mathine Tayou.

Photo: Helena Cantone

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Section 2: “The Colonial Presence,” featured a video by Kader Attia, Open Your Eyes (2014).

Photo: Helena Cantone

This component of the exhibition was key to telling its own story, one set in juxtaposition and in dialogue with the history of African art in general (European constructions, images, and myths of Africa filtering through European exhibitions of African art); Italian colonial history during the Fascist regime (1920s–1940s) seen though archive material from this period; contemporary and historical African artworks from private and public collections in Italy from the early twentieth century to the present day, representing a dramatic shift in focus on collecting contemporary art. This combination of past and present successfully managed to take the audience on a curatorial journey through Italy’s colonial past to the present and beyond, looking critically towards the future. As Marco Scontini writes in the exhibition brochure:

Recognition begins with a radical criticism of our view of Africa. Are we sure that what the white hunter saw, at the beginning of the previous century, is not still the same subject of our gaze? What should be heard throughout the entire exhibition is how this view (that of the hunter) has been fundamental in the construction of a subjugated Otherness. At the same time, we need to investigate the possibilities that cannot be assimilated that have been excluded.

The exhibition set the tone straight from the start. The public walked through a corridor transformed into a site-specific installation entitled African Cabana (2017) by Pascale Marthine Tayou that seemed to purposefully play with the idea of displaying tourist memorabilia as a hunter would display his “catch” in a safari-style hut. The walls and ceiling were covered in rattan mats with an eclectic collection of objects—textiles, masks, gourds, horns...