Spring
means art in Paris. From the end of March, the city becomes awash with the colours of
impressionism, retrospectives of master painters, modern art and contemporary
works, as museums launch grandiose exhibitions.
Each
spring as well, the Art Paris Art Fair welcomes dozens of galleries to the imposing
glass-domed Grand Palais exhibition halls, and this year Africa was the guest
of honour, with 139 galleries presenting works by an array of artists with
links to the continent.
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| Artwork by Marion Boehm |
The
19th edition of the art fair (March 30 to April 2) featured both monographic
exhibitions in the Solo Show section and up-and-coming artists in the section
titled Promesses (Promises).
Among the 29 countries represented were galleries
from Angola, South Africa, Cameroon, the Ivory Coast, Senegal and other African
nations.
The
goal, said the organizers, was to “showcase the talented emerging generation of
artists from both the African continent itself and from its diaspora”. Around
15 “Western galleries” chose to show the work of their African artists, who
included Omar Ba of Senegal, Kendell Geers of South Africa and Chéri Samba from
the Democratic Republic of Congo.
In
all, the participating galleries presented some 100 artists at the fair, with
the African focus being under the direction of cultural consultant and
independent curator Marie-Ann Yemsi.
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| Artist Marion Boehm poses with her work. |
Some
of the works that drew particular attention were created by European-born
artists who had lived in Africa - such as Marion Boehm, whose massive
paper-and-fabric collages put African subjects at the centre of traditional, Western-style formats.
Boehm
said in an interview that she had always been bothered by the “peripheral”
placing of African characters in European paintings of the past; so her pieces
(which share certain aspects with the work of Senegalese photographer Omar
Victor Diop and that of American painter Kehinde Wiley) depict subjects from
colonial eras as principal actors.
The
fair also displayed works by Senegalese sculptor Ousmane Sow, who died last
December at the age of 81. His larger-than-life “Mother and Child” sculpture gave a reminder of
why his art was so celebrated during his lifetime.
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| Visitors view Alexis Peskine's "Wolof Cosmic" - created with nails, moon gold leaf, paint and varnish on wood panels. |
Works
by other notable artists were spread around the fair, attracting viewers even
though the pleasant weather outside provided stiff competition.
Still, the current act of showcasing these artists shouldn't obscure the fact that “France
is backward in terms of its appreciation of contemporary African art”, said
curator Yemsi.
“If
it would be inexact to say that nothing has changed in France over the last
thirty years ..., the history of art as it continues to be taught and
disseminated has hardly contributed at all, contrary to other European
countries, to the much-needed decolonization of knowledge and imagination,”
Yemsi wrote in the fair’s press book. - Tasshon
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| Ousmane Sow's "Mother and Child", Bronze 2001. |
