Africa Remix (Cv/Visual Arts Research Book 161)

Africa Remix, currently at the Hayward Gallery in London, and due to be seen later at the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris and the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo, is yet another well-intentioned, but in fact doomed, attempt to align contemporary art from Africa with what is happening in the West.

The first major attempt of this kind, which incorporated other regions in addition, was Les Magiciens de la Terre, seen in Paris in 1989. This was widely criticized for presenting non-European artists as irretrievably ‘other’. Jean Hubert Martin, the curator of Magiciens, has also been an adviser for the present show, and uneasily defends his previous effort in one of the catalogue essays. Read more…