BOOK FORMAT Paperback, 9.5 x 12.5 in. / 366 pgs / 250 color.
PUBLISHING STATUS Pub Date 11/30/2009 Out of print
DISTRIBUTION D.A.P. Exclusive Catalog: FALL 2009 p. 168
PRODUCT DETAILS ISBN 9788862080927TRADE List Price: $60.00 CAD $79.00
AVAILABILITY Not available
TERRITORY NA LA
This large-format survey features full-color reproductions of works by 200-plus African artists organized by decade in three sections. The images follow seven essays cowritten by Enwezor (formerly, San Francisco Art Institute) and Okeke-Agulu (Princeton), who use art theory to highlight the complexity of objects and artists who often are underappreciated. The useful appendix records relevant major artist groups, exhibitions, workshops, and concepts, accessible for the first time in one publication. Some artists--Ofili, Kentridge, and El Anatsui among them--have enjoyed wide exposure. A greater number are emerging in the global art arena. However, almost all are concerned with the racialized body and aesthetic shifts that define postcolonial Africa. Since the 1990s, the exhibition world's recognition of contemporary African art has increased. The authors' stated goal--"to delimit a specific historical datum, one in which artistic works, conceptual strategies, and formal procedures can be coherently organized"--is an effort to gain inclusion in academic courses on contemporary art and establish what is presently a fledgling area of study for future research and scholarship. The essays are analytical and reveal African artists' objectives and methods in an effort to bring together coherently an exceptionally diverse selection of artists who hail from a vast continent. M. R. Vendryes, Choice Reviews Online
Contemporary African Art Since 1980 is the first major survey of the work of contemporary African artists from diverse situations, locations, and generations who work either in or outside of Africa, but whose practices engage and occupy the social and cultural complexities of the continent since the past 30 years. Its frame of analysis is absorbed with historical transitions: from the end of the postcolonial utopias of the sixties during the 1980s to the geopolitical, economic, technological, and cultural shifts incited by globalization. This book is both narrower in focus in the periods it reflects on, and specific in the ground it covers. It begins by addressing the tumultuous landscape of contemporary Africa, examining landmarks and narratives, exploring divergent systems of representation, and interrogating the ways artists have responded to change and have incorporated new aesthetic principles and artistic concepts, images and imaginaries to deal with such changes. Organized in chronological order, the book covers all major artistic mediums: painting, sculpture, photography, film, video, installation, drawing, collage. It also covers aesthetic forms and genres, from conceptual to formalist, abstract to figurative practices. Moving between discursive and theoretical registers, the principal questions the book analyzes are: what and when is contemporary African art? Who might be included in the framing of such a conceptual identity? It also addresses the question of globalization and contemporary African art. The book thus provides an occasion to examine through close reading and visual analysis how artistic concerns produce major themes. It periodizes and cross references artistic sensibilities in order to elicit multiple conceptual relationships, as well as breaks with prevailing binaries of center and periphery, vernacular and academic, urban and non-urban forms, indigenous and diasporic models of identification. In order to theorize how these concerns have been formulated in artistic terms and their creative consequences Contemporary African Art Since 1980 examines a range of ideas, concepts and issues that have shaped the work and practice of African artists within an international and global framework. It traces the shifts from earlier modernist strategies of the sixties and seventies after the period of decolonization, and the rise of pan-African nationalism, to the postcolonial representations of critique and satire that evolved from the 1980s, to the postmodernist irony of the 1990s, and to the globalist strategies of the 21st century. The main claim of this book is that contemporary African art can be best understood by examining the tension between the period of great political changes of the era of decolonization that enabled new and exciting imaginations of the future to be formulated, and the slow, skeptical, and social decline marked by the era of neo-liberalism and Structural Adjustment programs of the 1980s. These issues are addressed in chapters covering the themes of “Politics, Culture, Critique,” “Memory and Archive,” “Abstraction, Figuration and Subjectivity,” and “The Body, Gender and Sexuality.” In addition, the book employs sidebars to provide brief and incisive accounts of and commentaries on important contemporary political, economic and cultural events, and on exhibitions, biennales, workshops, artist groups and more. Rather than a comprehensive survey, this richly illustrated book presents examples of ambitious and important work by more than 160 African artists since the last 30 years. This list includes Georges Adeagbo Tayo Adenaike, Ghada Amer, El Anatsui, Kader Attia, Luis Basto, Candice Breitz, Moustapha Dimé, Marlene Dumas, Victor Ekpuk, Samuel Fosso, Jak Katarikawe, William Kentridge, Rachid Koraichi, Mona Mazouk, Julie Mehretu, Nandipha Mntambo, Hassan Musa, Donald Odita, Iba Ndiaye, Richard Onyango, Ibrahim El Salahi, Issa Samb, Cheri Samba, Ousmane Sembene, Yinka Shonibare, Barthelemy Toguo, Obiora Udechukwu, and Sue Williamson. Okwui Enwezor, a leading curator and scholar of contemporary art, is the Dean of Academic Affairs at the San Francisco Art Institute, and founding publisher and editor of Nka: Journal of Contemporary African Art. Chika Okeke-Agulu is Assistant Professor of Art and Archeology and African American Studies at Princeton University, and editor of Nka: Journal of Contemporary African Art.
"This large-format survey features full-color reproductions of works by 200-plus African artists organized by decade in three sections. The images follow seven essays cowritten by Enwezor (formerly, San Francisco Art Institute) and Okeke-Agulu (Princeton), who use art theory to highlight the complexity of objects and artists who often are underappreciated. The useful appendix records relevant major artist groups, exhibitions, workshops, and concepts, accessible for the first time in one publication. Some artists--Ofili, Kentridge, and El Anatsui among them--have enjoyed wide exposure. A greater number are emerging in the global art arena. However, almost all are concerned with the racialized body and aesthetic shifts that define postcolonial Africa. Since the 1990s, the exhibition world's recognition of contemporary African art has increased. The authors' stated goal--"to delimit a specific historical datum, one in which artistic works, conceptual strategies, and formal procedures can be coherently organized"--is an effort to gain inclusion in academic courses on contemporary art and establish what is presently a fledgling area of study for future research and scholarship. The essays are analytical and reveal African artists' objectives and methods in an effort to bring together coherently an exceptionally diverse selection of artists who hail from a vast continent."
--M. R. Vendryes, Choice Reviews Online
Featured image, "Les Femmes du Maroc: Grande Odalisque" (2008) is by Lalla Essaydi.
"This expansion of the visibility of contemporary African art across every segment of global artistic networks presents the occasion for critical reflection that goes beyond the celebration of the successes of these artists. Rather, such an occasion leads us to explore the mechanisms of the diverse forms of mediation and diffusion of the work of contemporary African artists. Contemporary African Art since 1980 therefore seeks to address not only the boundaries of the art in question, but also the socio-cultural-political-historical issues that surround the development of the field. However, we must caution the reader that this is by no means designed as a standard art-historical account. Instead, we propose a series of arguments grounded around complex issues of periodization, definition, identification, and thematization that have emerged in the course of the period covered in the book. "We pursue a line of inquiry that seeks to map out certain phases of the discourse. This analysis is shaped by the postcolonial turn of the 1960s, but extends beyond it to encompass the decade of crisis of the 1980s, the mass migration of the '90s, and the globalization of the present era."
FORMAT: Pbk, 9.5 x 12.5 in. / 366 pgs / 250 color. LIST PRICE: U.S. $60.00 LIST PRICE: CANADA $79 ISBN: 9788862080927 PUBLISHER: Damiani AVAILABLE: 11/30/2009 DISTRIBUTION: D.A.P. RETAILER DISC: TRADE PUBLISHING STATUS: Out of print AVAILABILITY: Not available TERRITORY: NA LA
Published by Damiani. By Okwui Enwezor, Chika Okeke-Agulu.
Contemporary African Art Since 1980 is the first major survey of the work of contemporary African artists from diverse situations, locations, and generations who work either in or outside of Africa, but whose practices engage and occupy the social and cultural complexities of the continent since the past 30 years. Its frame of analysis is absorbed with historical transitions: from the end of the postcolonial utopias of the sixties during the 1980s to the geopolitical, economic, technological, and cultural shifts incited by globalization. This book is both narrower in focus in the periods it reflects on, and specific in the ground it covers. It begins by addressing the tumultuous landscape of contemporary Africa, examining landmarks and narratives, exploring divergent systems of representation, and interrogating the ways artists have responded to change and have incorporated new aesthetic principles and artistic concepts, images and imaginaries to deal with such changes. Organized in chronological order, the book covers all major artistic mediums: painting, sculpture, photography, film, video, installation, drawing, collage. It also covers aesthetic forms and genres, from conceptual to formalist, abstract to figurative practices. Moving between discursive and theoretical registers, the principal questions the book analyzes are: what and when is contemporary African art? Who might be included in the framing of such a conceptual identity? It also addresses the question of globalization and contemporary African art. The book thus provides an occasion to examine through close reading and visual analysis how artistic concerns produce major themes. It periodizes and cross references artistic sensibilities in order to elicit multiple conceptual relationships, as well as breaks with prevailing binaries of center and periphery, vernacular and academic, urban and non-urban forms, indigenous and diasporic models of identification. In order to theorize how these concerns have been formulated in artistic terms and their creative consequences Contemporary African Art Since 1980 examines a range of ideas, concepts and issues that have shaped the work and practice of African artists within an international and global framework. It traces the shifts from earlier modernist strategies of the sixties and seventies after the period of decolonization, and the rise of pan-African nationalism, to the postcolonial representations of critique and satire that evolved from the 1980s, to the postmodernist irony of the 1990s, and to the globalist strategies of the 21st century. The main claim of this book is that contemporary African art can be best understood by examining the tension between the period of great political changes of the era of decolonization that enabled new and exciting imaginations of the future to be formulated, and the slow, skeptical, and social decline marked by the era of neo-liberalism and Structural Adjustment programs of the 1980s. These issues are addressed in chapters covering the themes of “Politics, Culture, Critique,” “Memory and Archive,” “Abstraction, Figuration and Subjectivity,” and “The Body, Gender and Sexuality.” In addition, the book employs sidebars to provide brief and incisive accounts of and commentaries on important contemporary political, economic and cultural events, and on exhibitions, biennales, workshops, artist groups and more. Rather than a comprehensive survey, this richly illustrated book presents examples of ambitious and important work by more than 160 African artists since the last 30 years. This list includes Georges Adeagbo Tayo Adenaike, Ghada Amer, El Anatsui, Kader Attia, Luis Basto, Candice Breitz, Moustapha Dimé, Marlene Dumas, Victor Ekpuk, Samuel Fosso, Jak Katarikawe, William Kentridge, Rachid Koraichi, Mona Mazouk, Julie Mehretu, Nandipha Mntambo, Hassan Musa, Donald Odita, Iba Ndiaye, Richard Onyango, Ibrahim El Salahi, Issa Samb, Cheri Samba, Ousmane Sembene, Yinka Shonibare, Barthelemy Toguo, Obiora Udechukwu, and Sue Williamson. Okwui Enwezor, a leading curator and scholar of contemporary art, is the Dean of Academic Affairs at the San Francisco Art Institute, and founding publisher and editor of Nka: Journal of Contemporary African Art. Chika Okeke-Agulu is Assistant Professor of Art and Archeology and African American Studies at Princeton University, and editor of Nka: Journal of Contemporary African Art.
