Snap
Judgments: New Positions in Contemporary African Photography
Through May 28, 2006
This critically acclaimed exhibition brings together some of the most forceful
propositions by contemporary artists and photographers on how to look at Africa.
May 10, 2006 NEW YORK.-Snap Judgments: New Positions in Contemporary
African Photography is the first major U.S. exhibition in a decade to examine
current photographic works from Africa. Organized for the International Center
of Photography (ICP) by Okwui Enwezor, one of the world’s foremost curators of
contemporary art, the exhibition will present over 200 works by 35 artists from
a dozen countries. Encompassing the African continent from the Muslim cultures
of North Africa to the sub-Saharan nations of the south, Snap Judgments will
feature a range of highly individual artistic responses to the enormous changes
now taking place in economic, social, and cultural life throughout Africa. The
exhibition is on view at ICP (1133 Avenue of the Americas at 43rd Street), its
only venue, through May 28, 2006.
African photography has changed dramatically since 1996, when Mr. Enwezor
organized In/Sight: African Photographers 1940 to the Present for the Guggenheim
Museum. In that groundbreaking show, the studio portraiture of such
now-acclaimed figures as Seidou Keïta, Malick Sidibé, and Samuel Fosso
predominated. Today photography has come to play an expanded role within the
spectrum of contemporary African art. Reflecting the increasingly close relation
of photography with other forms of experimental art in Africa, Snap Judgments
will include not only photographic works but also multimedia installations and
documentation of performance art.
In addition to conveying the individual voices and views that inform African art
today, Snap Judgments will examine the ways in which recent photographic art has
moved beyond both African traditions and Western influences to explore new
aesthetic territories. Four recurring themes in contemporary African photography
will interweave throughout Snap Judgments:
Landscape and Environment: A number of African artists have sought to reinvest
landscape with a sense of cultural specificity. In their work, landscape serves
as a vehicle for understanding historic trauma or social alienation. For
example, Zarina Bhimji (Uganda/UK) explores the erased landscape left behind
after the expulsion of Ugandan Asians in 1972. Zwelethu Mthethwa (South Africa),
in his magisterial environmental portraits of workers, traces the impact of
global capitalism in post-apartheid South Africa.
Urban Formations: Many African photographers are now examining the rapidly
changing modes of urban living in the continent’s postcolonial cities. The
work of Depth of Field, a loose collective of photographers residing in Lagos,
Nigeria, charts that city’s complexly layered system of formal and informal
living arrangements. Randa Shaath (Egypt) brings to light the improvised
domestic architecture that is now flourishing atop countless buildings in
crowded central Cairo.
The Body and Identity: Some of the most provocative art being made in Africa
today focuses on the body and identity as sites of contested social meaning. In
her imaginative and elaborate photographic tableaux, Tracey Rose (South Africa)
creates haunting allegories of sexual and racial difference. The innovative
performative works of Oladélé Bamgboye (Nigeria/UK) explore the shifting
boundaries of identity, gender, and sexuality.
History and Representation: The works of many younger African artists
reconstruct history by challenging or reinventing the narrative of the colonial
past. In his quasi-ethnographic film Trip to Mount Ziqualla, Theo Eshetu
(Ethiopia) questions the social and religious issues raised by the rituals of
the Ethiopian Coptic church. The starched, formal military uniforms photographed
by Hentie van der Merwe (South Africa) in the Museum of Military History in Cape
Town evoke the spectral shadow that overhangs the country’s transition from
colonial to postcolonial institutions.
read also:
Read
excerpts of curator Okwui Enwezor's essay from the groundbreaking
catalogue that accompanies the african photography exhibition.
Snap
Judgments: New Positions in Contemporary African Photography
