African visual arts: perpetuating negative stereotypes or reflecting the continent’s grim reality?

Written by Sandile Memela
Wednesday, 06 July 2011 18:33

The common objection to the work of many African visual artists is simple: they oversimplify reality and dehumanise the African experience to please a so-called global audience. As a result, their content is predictable and monotonous. In fact, it is not just an insult but, to a large extent, also a lie.

What I mean is that the African human condition is not just about suffering, war, famine, oppression, poverty and dispossession or just greed, corruption and crime. It is not just an unending series of unchanging negatives. The African experience is complex, dynamic and takes on different shapes.

Human life on the continent is as dynamic, progressive, ever-changing and complicated as in any other part of the world. But one rarely perceives or experiences this through African art, especially the visual arts. Africans are multifaceted human beings too with full human life experiences despite the poverty, unemployment, corruption, crime and violent material condition in which they find themselves.

They have love, joy and happiness or anger, jealousy and rage. But they are, mostly, dehumanised and reduced to victims of colonialism, apartheid, racism and the betrayal of African politicians and government.

What I find disappointing and frustrating about African arts is two patterns. Firstly, Africans are, mostly, portrayed as less than human because of degrading material circumstances. Secondly, they are always portrayed as poor, unequal, corrupt and engaged in war and political crime.
In fact, this image of the African does not change. It has become frozen in the human consciousness – including the mind of the African visual artist. We must challenge and problematise this portrayal of the African and the circumstances that perpetuate a negative view of the continent and its people.
Nobody is denying the fact that Africa, her people and government have serious problems including poverty, war and corruption. However, African artists should consider or reflect on the possibility that the African experience may have some positive elements. It may not be perfect, but the white European experience is just as imperfect.

It is misleading for African artists, particularly, to portray and project the African experience as unique in its imperfection. Unfortunately, white hegemony and economic control makes it almost impossible for African artists to portray a different or positive picture of the African experience.
Some African artists may want to broaden the depiction of the African human experience. But they find that they are prescribed to and limited by those who not only control the purse strings but the power to open up opportunities for them and thus determine the content of their work.
Of course, due to their economic might, Europeans and Americans control and manage the elite cultural industries and thus dictate what happens and what does not. In fact, what they demand and dictate is that the market wants a negative view of Africa.

Thus artistic freedom in the visual arts is limited, which has incalculable consequences, including forcing African artists to compromise their integrity and commitment to African self-determination and freedom for short term gains such as opportunities abroad, fame and fortune.
African artists should seriously consider banning themselves from creating work that portrays Africa in a negative light. They should not deny the tragic reality of the African experience, but artistic expression should capture and reflect the multi-dimensional African human experience and mirror the changing face of the continent and her people.

Despite the poverty, corruption, crime, war and political betrayals, Africans live full human experiences that cover the gamut of human existence. Unfortunately, many African artists seem to lack the ability to conjure up the human face of the African experience. It is time for African visual arts to represent and reflect the human face of the African experience.

Thus African visual art must be willing to explore so that it can shift and change focus. In most instances, it is limited and confines itself to a one-dimensional view of African experience: poverty, poverty and more poverty. It is time to object to this predictable and monotonous view of the continent and its people. Africa is not just about poverty, war, crime and corruption.

Africans must insist that there is much more to African human experience than just poverty and degradation. In fact, what we can infer from how poverty is reflected is that it always has an African face. Poverty is always located in African circumstances as if similar dreadful conditions do not exist in white Europe and America.

What do our readers think? Email sam@contactmedia.co.za