Abstract Minded: Works by Six Contemporary African Artists (review)

How much responsibility does the curator have to present a framework for the pieces on display, and when does she run the risk of over-explanation? Is the “curator” the person who leveraged connections to get the work on display, or the person who assembles a group of artworks that enlighten the viewer on a heretofore unknown/misunderstood topic? These aren’t new questions in the field of exhibition-making, but they were certainly on my mind as I viewed these nineteen artworks hanging in the BNY Mellon Gallery of the August Wilson Center (Fig. 1). Curated by painter Osi Audu, this small exhibition debuted at the N’Namdi Center for Contemporary Art (Detroit, MI) before traveling to The Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art (New Paltz, NY) and concluding at the August Wilson Center in Pittsburgh.

Those who follow contemporary African art would be familiar with the styles of the six featured artists: Osi Audu, Nicholas Hlobo, Serge Alain Nitegeka, Odili Donald Odita, Nnenna Okore, and Elias Sime. The artist-cum-curator aside, all exhibitors are represented by major established galleries: Stevenson, James Cohan, Jack Shainman, etc. These associations were noted in almost every publicity and didactic text. So what differentiates this exhibition from a glossy commercial gallery installation? With fifty-word labels that introduce each artist’s practice generally, but none of the works on display specifically, the viewer must turn to Audu’s short introductory text to determine the underpinning raison d’être of this exhibition:

Abstraction is as indigenous to African visual culture as it is to other parts of the world. The exploration of purely formal elements is not only readily evidenced in the rich traditions of textile designs and other decorative practices from the continent, but is also present in the stylizations of much figurative work from Africa. The six artists in this exhibition, all born and/or raised in countries in Africa, produce work thematically or conceptually connected to the continent by pursuing the use of abstraction as a way of engaging in a broader conversation about art. In our increasingly global existence of the 21st century the world is becoming less and less exotic, and is being experienced more as a sphere of commonalities of being, dreams, fears and aspirations. Cultural ideas once thought as discrete are now being understood as archetypical, having resonances across the wider world. Aesthetic engagement with form is as important a part of the content of these artists’ works as is their symbolic, historical, socio-political, or conceptual significance.

1.

Installation view of Abstract Minded: Works by Six Contemporary African Artists, August Wilson Center

Photo: Joseph L. Underwood

2.

Osi Audu

Self-Portrait, Benin Head (2016)

Acrylic on canvas; 193 cm × 241 cm

Photo: courtesy of the artist

3.

Osi Audu

Self-Portrait, Ogoni Head (2017)

Graphite and pastel on paper mounted on canvas; 142 cm × 241 cm

Photo: courtesy of the artist

4.

Nicholas Hlobo

Benzeni (2015) (detail)

Ribbons and leather on linen canvas; approx. 101.6 cm × 203.2 cm

Photo: Joseph L. Underwood

5.

Elias Sime

Tightrope Contrast (2017)

Reclaimed electronic wires on panel; 186 cm × 401 cm

Photo: courtesy of the artist and James Cohan Gallery

Art history certainly boasts a fraught discourse when it comes to the categories of “African art” and “abstract art,” from waves of European appropriation, to the categorization of primitive arts as malformed fetishes, to the erasure of pioneering abstractionists altogether. We might read Abstract Minded as a pushback to MoMA’s Inventing Abstraction: 1910–1925 (2012), which entirely elided the influence of both historical and contemporaneous artmakers from the African continent. Unfortunately, while the work on display is quite strong, the curatorial text’s implication of formal continuity does not aid the average viewer...