Farafina Magazine, Issue Two
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Thirteen essays by one of Nigeria's best-known art scholar are collected here, most of them first published in the 1990s. Though the distinction is not absolute, roughly speaking the first four represent that trenchant and profoundly sceptical critique of the ethics and practices of the art world that has brought Oguibe to prominence over the last decade. The others are more conventionally rooted in traditional Art Criticism.
To deal with the latter group first. Here there are accounts of the history of African art, mostly from the recent past. A chapter on photography begins with a slightly dull inventory of the work of African photographers since the late 19th century. After that, Oguibe becomes much more interesting as he discusses the spectrum of ideas, from the false to the more perceptive, that we hold about the realm of photography, about its supposed objectivity, about notions of human agency (who or what makes the photo what it is, you or the camera?), about the iconic and the subjective. Oguibe is especially good on artist Rotimi Fani-Kayode's work with and on images of Esu (for further reading, one could well recommend Kobena Mercer's account of Fani-Kayode in his collection Welcome to the Jungle).
There is a chapter on memory, a subject that is increasingly seen in the West as being indivisible from spectacle (as Oguibe remarks, the West seems neurotically devoted to the creation of museums and other shrines, which may place constraints on the objective performance of memory rather than enabling this). Here Oguibe discusses the work of that marvelous artist, El Anatsui, focusing especially on his explorations of the relationship between memory, text and history.
Not all of the discussion is on African artists. The work of African Americans is explored extensively and Oguibe gives some time to the Australian Fiona Foley; there is a beautiful discussion here of the special qualities of pastel as a medium, delicate yet exceptionally durable. Throughout, Oguibe is very good indeed, on the ways in which the work of art might explore the crux between community, history and communication, and the gulf (especially in the realm of race relations) between what is and what is perceived to be. See, for example, his account of an installation by Glenn Ligon and Byron Kim. Titled Rumble, Young Man, Rumble, this comprises a free-hanging boxing punch bag inscribed with statements by Muhammed Ali (in service as a Muslim minister): to read the text, the viewer must circle the bag, thus imitating the movements of well, who in the ring? Oguibe suggests Ali, but surely, it must be his opponent.
Despite the riches in these essays, it's that clutch of four that open the book that will likely make the biggest impact. Here Oguibe explores cultural brokerage, that is, the way that dealers, collectors, critics and curators promote art, the criteria on which they choose what they wish to promote and the rhetoric of value that they perpetuate. Specifically, of course, Oguibe's focus is on what one might call the acceptance world in the West and those for example, African artists who operate on its margins.
For the non-Western artist negotiating this world it is not so much a question of choices as of contingency. How does one respond to the reading of difference that is projected on one; how does one fit into the frame, the given scheme of things (things, because as an 'African' artist, one is pinned down, subjected to limitations and thus objectified). Oguibe is shocking but right on here, when he compares this situation with the functions and processes of pornography.
Oguibe can be coruscatingly funny, as when he discusses an interview between the Ivoirien artist Ouattara and a Western critic who has already fully determined what he thinks an Ouattara is. As the interview proceeds, "the white boy fails to read the sign on the native's face;" from this seemingly light satirical aside Oguibe builds up a commanding, devastating critique of the situation Ouattara finds himself in (though "finds himself" doesn't touch the full problem: Ouattara has willed himself, worked himself here, that is, into the New York art scene, and will not be defaced, erased, by the art brokers).
In essays that deserve canonical status, Oguibe explores ways in which an artist may choose to respond to the plea from the West to "Play the Other" and to affirm whatever it is the West needs to see coming out of Africa. Or ways in which they may choose not to do so. There is a sparkling discussion of the work of Yinka Shonibare, British-born, brought up in Lagos, then returning to the UK to create the work Double Dutch, which hilariously inspired appreciative critics to get all its signifiers wrong in their attempts to Other it (though, in a rare slip, here Oguibe misses at least one crucial layer of meaning in the work's title (that is, gobbledygook) and accounting for Shonibare's formative years he himself massively Others the city of Lagos).
Anyone concerned with what it means to be an African artist in any sense, in communication with the West should read these essays. The critical and analytical language Oguibe uses isn't always easy, but then it isn't opaque either; it just invites a steady, thoughtful read. One way to tackle it might be first to read Phoebe Hoban's biography of Jean-Michel Basquiat, an artist who was abused with vampire-like persistence by his agents (Basquiat: A Quick Killing in Art) and then to turn to Oguibe for a consideration of the theoretical dimension to these matters.
