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Melanie Demos
Capstone Research Paper
Spring 2014

The Uses of the Benin Bronzes and African Art in Cultural Identity Formation, and the Struggle
of Tradition vs. Modernity in the Contemporary Art Market

My aim in this paper is to analyze the multiple ways the Benin bronze plaques have been
used by people throughout history, and also how this fraught history is being dealt with today. I
will then connect this case study to the larger tension that exists in the art market between
modern African art and its creators, and what is thought of as traditional African art.
Historicity is a key player in the framings of how the Benin bronzes have been part of political
uses. Michel-Rolph Trouillot identifies two types of historicity: historicity 1 and historicity 2.
Historicity 1 is the materiality of the socio-historical process, or the actual events of history,
and historicity two is future historical narratives, or the creation and telling of the events
(Trouillot 1995:13). What I will begin to do here is employ Trouillots tactic of exposing that
which is silenced during the historicity process.
The Benin plaques were made from the 16
th
to 17
th
century time period in Nigeria by the
metalworkers employed in the Benin royal court. Benin Kingdom had a flourishing economy
during this period built on military success and trade with the Portuguese (Ben-Amos, 1999:57).
These metalworkers used cire-perdue, a complex lost-wax casting technique, to craft these
pieces. One fashions the desired object in wax, usually beeswax, invests it with clay, and heats
the mould so that the melted wax either runs off from the mould or is absorbed into it. The form
is left impressed on the inside of the clay mould. Molten metal is then poured into the mould
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which is later broken open to yield the object in. (Dark 1973:1). The objects are actually brass
although they are popularly known as the Benin bronzes.
To begin Ill approach the plaques from a formal analysis, as the form and use of these
plaques in their original context brings much to light. Over 900 plaques are known to exist today
and focus on the themes of warfare as well as courtly grandeur (Ben-Amos 1999:54). Each
plaque is handmade using the skilled system previously described and depicts a different scene.
The action within these designs centers on the Oba (king) and the activities of the royal court.
These plaques alone are vessels of historicity 2 as interpreted through the eyes of the royal artists
who were commissioned by the Oba. Each one is a story of an event that occurred, but the exact
detail and specificity of the figures and the occasion has been lost through time. They acted as
collective memory devices that hung on the outer walls of the kings palace, which we know
because this use is depicted on one of the plaques showing the outer walls of the palace.
In the recordings of history there are always silences and this situation is no different.
The plaques only show the royal court; there were no depictions of the common people and their
everyday lives. In these renderings a technique called hierarchy of scale is used where the most
important figures appear largest compared to the others. The largest is usually the Oba with his
attendants depicted smaller beside him. In addition to this exclusion the figures are only male,
and only show the glories of the royalty without any strife or hardships. These plaques may have
been forms of government propaganda perpetuating the strength of the ruler. This form of royal
art fossilizes the winning version of history and puts it on public display at the site of authority.
The casting even took place within the walls of the palace, completely controlled by the Oba
(Gore 1997:56). In the Edo language they use the phrase sa-e yama to mean to commemorate,
which literally translates to to cast a pattern in brass. (Ben-Amos 1999:134). The very medium
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from which the art was made was already rooted strongly in the minds of the people to be a long-
lasting image and story or message, which in turn drew parallels between the strength of the
material and that of the divine ruler. It is evident that the plaques visual potency was recognized
and utilized by the administrative forces of the Kingdom.
Today these plaques do not reside in their original home but around the world in the U.S.
and Europe. This came to be because of a very controversial event that took place when contact
with Europeans became unfriendly. Earlier on in the 16
th
and 17
th
centuries the Benin kingdom
encountered Portuguese traders, and they cultivated peaceful relations. Once the period of
colonization began with European powers in the 19
th
and 20
th
centuries things shifted in a darker
direction. The event that moved these important objects from where they rested in Nigeria is the
British Punitive Expedition of 1897. At this time the Scramble for Africa was going on which
is a time of rapid colonization by European powers who divided up the territories of Africa for
their own gain of accessing their natural resources. The expedition was instigated when a group
of 8 unarmed Europeans and their porters traveled to the Benin City capital to negotiate with the
king about obstructions to their trade. Just outside the capital they were met by a war group from
Benin and all but 2 survived the attack. When word of it reached England they were enraged and
decided to send retaliating forces to the city to punish the King. When the forces arrived they
sacked the capital and pillaged the palace, afterwards setting fire to the city. The plaques were
some of the loot carried back with them to England.
Taking a look at the way this event was reported uncovers more silences due to the
obvious political motivations that formed the basis for their actions. The reports from the New
York Times are good examples of the way the Western world painted the picture of the events
that happened. On Jan 22, 1897 the article was titled The Massacre Near Benin, Details of the
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Murder of the British Expedition, The Members Went Unarmed into a Savage Country and Were
Ambushed and Killed Without Mercy. The writer also calls the King of Benin a Ju Ju Man
and states such an expedition would have to proceed to Benin City in a short time, even had the
massacre not occurred, as the whole of the Niger Coast Protectorate was suffering from the
cruelties and exactions of the King of Beninhuman sacrifices and cannibalistic heathen rights
are matters of daily occuranceit will be necessary to suppress the King with a strong hand.
(New York Times 1897:7). The Other who is barbarous compared to the civilized Western
world is dramatized and the description insinuates inferiority. The political aims are revealed in
the last sentence: The country is said to be very rich, and it would not be surprising to find that
one result of the punitive expedition would be the annexation of the whole territory to the British
possessions in West Africa. (New York Times 1897:7). It is evident that Britain wanted to
increase its hold on territories in Africa and gain access to their rich resources like timber, gold,
or palm oil used in the lubrication of machines during the Industrial Revolution. Again there are
silences in this historicity narrative, which does not include Ralph Moor, the newly appointed
Consul-General, and then James Phillips, acting while Moor was on leave, pressed the Foreign
Office for an expeditionary force to-in Phillips's words-"destool the fetish-priest." (Nevadomsky
1997:20). The King was performing the Ague ritual and admonished them not to come. In
reality they had been warned not to enter the city, but did so anyway and were also going ahead
without permission of the Foreign Office.
What springs forth from this controversial event is part of a new wave that takes over
Europe, a fascination with all things primitive and African. From Africa the pillaged brass
plaques were brought back to Europe and dispersed into museum collections or sold to private
collectors to make up for costs of the expedition. African art like the plaques became part of the
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western imaginary which fostered ideas about the fetish object and primitivism. A fetish is an
inanimate object worshiped for its supposed magical powers or because it is considered to be
inhabited by a spirit. The description of the objects as primitive shows the European idea of
African art to be crude and rudimentary. Creating this binary in which African art was
uncivilized put the West in position as the opposite civilizing helper to the barbarous people
whom they colonized. Their narratives of history pinned Europeans as progressing forward
whereas Africa was an ahistorical entity. The Kingdom of Benin was a window into a society
stuck in the past, a past that the Europeans had moved through, whereas Africans were dwelling
on this stage. The plaques turned this telling on its head when England saw how advanced the
skill is that is needed for their technique of lost-wax casting. As said by British Museum curator
Charles Hercules Read: "It need scarcely be said that at the first sight of these remarkable works
of art we were at once astounded at such an unexpected find, and puzzled to account for so
highly developed an art among a race so entirely barbarous." (BBC A History of the World:77).
The plaques must have come from Ancient Egypt, or perhaps the people of Benin were one of
the lost tribes of Israel. Many thought the sculptures must have derived from European influence
when this was not the case.
Even 20
th
century artists of the time were greatly influenced by African art like the
plaques brought back from colonies. Modernists like Gauguin and Picasso spearheaded a
movement of Primitivism, in which they wanted to appropriate the art and culture deemed
primitive to create a revolution in their own culture and in their own art. The artists
appropriated this art style and created their own new narrative of the Other as avant-garde.
Picassos views are evident in this quote: They were against everything, against unknown
threatening spirits I too am against everything. I, too, believe that everything is unknown. I
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understood what the Negroes used their sculpture for. All fetishes were weapons. Spirits and the
unconscious, they are the same thing. (Errington 1994:213). Again there is this perception of an
irrationality seen as innate to the art that is a part of the building of the Eurocentric historicity 2.
Now I would like to bring it full circle by analyzing the way the events concerning the
plaques in the past greatly impact what is happening in the world of museums and cultural object
ownership today. The brass plaques have gotten a lot of publicity as well as the museum that
houses a large display of the plaques and is in the midst of a repatriation battle with Nigeria.
Because the plaques were obtained illegally and through unjust means the Nigerian government
wants the objects, which were taken by force through the violence of war, to be returned to
where they came from. The British Museum is not a fan of this idea seeing as they would like to
hold on to their treasures, but there are many sides to this coin of controversy.
First, I would like to look at the perspective of a museum professional James Cuno and
what he thinks of repatriation. He was director of the Art Institute of Chicago from 2004-2011 as
well as a past director of the Association of American Museum Directors, and now CEO and
President of the J. Paul Getty Trust. Cunos view is that antiquity belongs to the world and that
archaeology must be shielded from nationalistic laws and politics. The sad truth is that
nationalist cultural-property laws are not intended to protect the world's ancient heritage. Instead,
they are meant to claim that heritage as the property of the modern nation-state, important to its
identity and esteem. They are used to legitimize modern governments' claims as heirs to an
ancient past (Cuno 2008:4). As someone who is a prominent figure in the Western Art Museum
world there are obvious biases present in his argument. Museums benefit from holding these
ancient objects and curators gain prestige through the amount of objects they add to the
collections. Yet, there are still grounded reservations concerning where such objects should be
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held. Joseph Nevadomsky describes the Benin City Museum when he visited: The museum
barely offers a haven for its own collection. Bleak and dusty cases with scribbled labels testify to
objects on loan, but no one knows where. You are not sure that displayed objects are genuine.
Security for the collection is in the hands of a curatorial staff holding religious evangelical
antipathy for ancient objects. They also have the benevolent incompetence of minor government
officials everywhere. (Nevadomsky 2005:73). Although colorfully written, this shows there is
some basis to deciding where the safest housing is for the objects. This is a tangled issue that
must take into consideration a multitude of factors. Lets look at another view point.
A direct counter argument to Cunos was made by Andrew McClellan. McClellan
highlights the portion of Cunos argument that centers on the nation state as an imagined
community. Cuno argues that because this entity of unity is based upon imagined constructs the
objects should stay in these universal museums and not be permanently repatriated. McClellan
takes the side that yes, these are imagined communities, but this is an important aspect of our
world history not something to be disregarded. In his words To wish away the reality of the
imagined nation state is disingenuous idealism on Cunos part. It is all the more disingenuous
because it ignores the historical origins and purpose of the very museums that now trumpet the
cause of altruistic universalism. (McClellan 2009:169). Some of the most well-known museums
like the Louvre and British Museum were a part of the infrastructure that helped mold these new
national identities as government-sponsored machines of national identity and pride.
Encyclopaedic in scope, they were in good part patriotic in purpose. (McClellan 2009:169).
Why are nationalist motivations bad? On the contrary they can be helpful when pride and politics
strengthen the reasoning for governments to take care of and display their material culture. At the
same time revolutions can put the objects in danger when there is instability in the nation.
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Nationalist archaeology does not necessarily mean mistreatment or disregard for objects and
artifacts. McClellans view provides some strong persuasive arguments, but did anyone ask the
people of Nigeria? This usually overlooked point of view must be brought to light as well.
In the cover story of the New African publication of 2010 Osasu Obayiuwana who works
from Lagos, Nigeria discusses the repatriation problem from the perspective of someone who is
from Africa. Rebuking the universalism argument that objects belong to the heritage of everyone
he writes To an African, nothing could be more arrogant than this! Would the British "trustees"
say the same thing if the UK's Crown Jewels were looted by Africans and kept in some museum
in Lagos? (Obayiuwana 2010:12). When they interviewed the past curator at the British
Museum, Dr. Barley, he told New African that its the scholars from the museum who are
responsible for making the African objects well known. Obayiuwana is taken aback by this
reasoning and writes In effect, according to Dr. Barley's logic, Africans should rather be
grateful that the sundry European looters and traffickers of the African treasures bothered to steal
them at all, and we should also be thankful to past European masters like Bill Fagg for minding
to publicise the artefacts and insist that they were indeed African! That reasoning sounded like a
thief telling his victim: "I stole your wallet to prevent you from losing it, so you should be
thankful for my spirit of generosity.' (Obayiuwana 2010:13). In another source from one of the
episodes of BBCs radio special A History of the World Wole Soyinka, the Nigerian poet and
playwright, describes what he thinks the plaques mean to Nigeria It increases a sense of self-
esteem, because it makes you understand that African society actually produced some great
civilisations, established some great cultures. And today it contributes to one's sense of the
degradation that has overtaken many African societies, to the extent that we forget that we were
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once a functioning people before the negative incursion of foreign powers. The looted objects are
still today politically loaded. (BBC A History of the World, Episode 77).
The plaques are in this tug of war between the powerful Western Museums who want to
hold on to these treasures and those who feel that these objects are missing pieces of their
cultural history, which have left gaping holes in their national identity. There is no easy answer
because each side has their own political motivations for possession of the Benin brass plaques.
The plaques have become much more than how they originally functioned as memory and
history vessels. Over time their biographies have lead them to become transnational in their
movement and form new historicities for the people that come into contact with them. This new
population that became exposed to the plaques was affected in their own changing identities
through these objects which helped to bolster their own Western Imaginary perspectives on time,
culture, and progress. The present is constantly being affected by the past events the plaques
were a part of, and the controversy and discussion continues today. It will be a part of a larger
argument on restitution and ownership for museums that will follow through to the future.
This case study has provided a historical context for one instance of African art and its
use in identity creation, but there are more problematic terms which have sprung up in the
present discourse. A brief exploration into the African art market today is necessary to unearth
these biases and systems of value that govern what type of art is in demand. The tradition of
brass casting continues in Africa. One well known family, the Omodamwen, have been brass
casting for generations (Gore 1997:57). This art has been caged and limited by much of the
Western world. Sadly they have not caught up to embracing the ingenuity of the casters still
doing creative work today as Joseph Nevadomsky has started to in his article on the issues
surrounding this sector of the art world. He explains Benin's casters face a Catch-22. The more
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they emulate traditional pieces, the more they are accused of fraud. The more they explore
outside the box, the greater the accusations of ineptitude for not matching the paradigm.
(Nevadomsky 2005:77). Despite the walls put up by the stereotyping of Westerners the brass
casters like the Omodamwen family and those that live on Igun Street of Benin City are
innovating in their own ways. One such innovation is the brass tableaux which involves a multi-
piece narrative scene. This began around 1995 when the Omodamwen family created a tableaux
of the exile of Oba Ovonramwen by British soldiers (Nevadomsky 2005:76). Themes continued
to evolve with another tableaux inspired by U.S. pop culture depicting a scene from the Steven
Speilberg film Amistad (Nevadomsky 2005:77). The artistic skill of this powerful image of
slaves getting beaten by the slave merchants is evident in the emotional reading of expression
and body language.
Still, there is great power placed in the ideas of what is fake/authentic and new/old.
The authentic is highly valued by the West whereas no one is in the market of knowingly
purchasing a fake. This leads to a line of deception by those who market objects that are made to
look old, but in reality are not. Some complete the final filing and finishing them-selves,
sometimes treating the objects to produce a weathered-looking patina. These entrepreneurs act as
cultural brokers: they mark up the value of brasscastings as commodities but also, through their
acquisition in Benin City, authenticate their origin and status (and on occasion their antiquity) as
part of the Benin corpus a status that competes with that of replicas of Benin antiquities from
other centers of brasscasting in Nigeria and West Africa. (Gore 1997:61).
Before the analysis of this phenomenon it must be stated that African art goes through a
process of commodification in which the object is assigned worth and acquires a monetary
exchange value. As this goes through the various handlers one piece my rise to a price over a
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hundred times greater than when it was acquired from the supplier (Gerstenblith 2007). African
antiquities are a part of a huge illegal market valued at about 6 billion dollars annually (Agbedeh
2011:23). That these cultural objects are valued so highly for their supposed age shows in the
extent to which people will illegally traffic them for huge payoffs from Western collectors. There
are two main developments that are largely responsible for spurring the African Art trade which
are rooted in the colonial presence in Africa starting in the 1890s. I have discussed earlier the
great intrigue that artists from Europe felt for African masks and carvings which was a large part
of the avant-garde movement. The larger masses of the Western world cultivated this seed of
curiosity after World War One in the 1910-1920s (Steiner 1994:5). The height of this incendiary
scramble for all things African in the art world was in the 1960s-1970s with objects coming
directly from Africa. This then died in large part because people believed that all pieces of
authentic African art had been removed from the continent and now resided in the West. While
art trade died in Africa, the 1980s was a booming time in the West for a recirculation of art that
was already located outside of Africa (Steiner 1994:7).
This leads us into the present day situation where there is an African middleman who
moves between the object source and the customer through this market network. This is where
we uncover another silence. Many Western buyers are of the impression that the runners, or
African middlemen, do not have the refined aesthetic eye to tell real from fake or high-
value from low-value. Thus, the power is in the educated eye of the buyer who is the arbiter
of value. In the introduction of African Art in Transit Christopher Steiner tells the reader of a
collectors wife in New York who told him her husband keeps hoping to find that one
masterpiece, like a real Fang reliquary figure or something, buried somewhere in the junk that
the runners usually sell. (Steiner 1994:10). Even this word implying rote physicality supports
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the idea that the African art trader has been relegated by silence to an invisible cog in the
wheel of a complex transnational market- a market which functions because of, not in spite of,
the African middleman. (Steiner 1994:10). This is where the brokerage of knowledge comes
into play. In the African Art market knowledge is not distributed evenly or else bargaining would
not exist. There is a system in which the traders that have a higher success and knowledge of
what is fake and what is not begin to dominate the antiquits market or what Steiner has defined
as objects which were originally made for indigenous use, but made their way into the art market
and became antiquities (Steiner 1994:33). These are that which are highly valued by Western
buyers. What can be gathered here is that these middlemen are not merely runners, but need to
have a specified knowledge in order to be successful. This stereotype of the contemporary
Africans participation in the art market as ignorant messenger must be shed in order to fully be
aware of the inner workings of the African art trade.
Next I would like to delve a bit deeper into the constructed meanings of what is modern
and what is traditional. In the previous example the traditional style of art objects are those
which are valued by the African antiquits market. These have a tie to the past, to a tradition that
has been passed down through the ages and been carried out in the same way. But is tradition
really as concrete of a cultural expression as society thinks it is? In The Invention of Tradition
the authors Eric Hobsbawm and Terrence Ranger take a look at how tradition can be
purposefully constructed, but also applied in novel ways. I will not get into the complexity of
their exploration, but it is noteworthy that they identify invented tradition as characterized by
reference to the past, if only by imposing repetition. (Hobsbawm and Ranger 1983:4). This is
exactly what the majority of the Western world has been doing to the artists of Africa: imposing
repetition of theme and/or style and squashing any innovation underfoot. The authors also
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identify three types of invented traditions and African traditional art fits in with the first
category. This is part of those establishing or symbolizing social cohesion or the membership of
groups, real or artificial communities (Hobsbawm and Ranger 1983:9). Many times on labels in
museums or when being sold by vendors African art objects are questioned as to what culture the
object is from. This connects all people from one culture or ethnicity, which already has complex
subjective identity creation politics at play, to one singular style of art. This is a broad
generalization which the creation of this invented tradition perpetuates; that of taking away the
individual artist and replacing it with membership under a large umbrella of cultural terminology
and grouping.
Many contemporary artists from Africa are dealing with this tension between traditional
and contemporary. Each artist addresses this topic in unique ways. Salah Hassan comments on
this in his review of an exhibition at the Studio Museum of Harlem in 1990 called Contemporary
African Artists: Changing Tradition. The definition of contemporary is inseparably attached to
that of the traditional. Hassan brings this dichotomy to light and I agree with the problematic
association of this to the ahistorical and simplistically Eurocentric discussion of contemporary
African art (Hassan 1992:96). Hassan sees contemporary African art as that which is
individualistically centered, made by those who are part of an elite class, and follow Western
modern art models (Hassan 1992:96). I support the truth in much of this statement, but believe
there is more to the contemporary being only individual versus communal. There is a growing
base of contemporary African artists who have become pinned onto a geographical map of
classification, grouped together based on where they are from, which is at odds with Hassans
idea of individualization. This can also bleed into expectations of work and ideas that their art
must reflect their cultural background. There is still an issue of generalization with being seen as
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contemporary and the artists individuality is sometimes clouded. Hassan then picks out
modern as the best term to use out of the bunch because it symbolizes the experience and
practices the art forms embody. (Hassan 1992:97). Naming does hold great influence, but I am
not sure that the choosing of one of these closely related terms will bring about the change in the
paradigm of thought that Hassan hopes for.
It would be fruitful to look into the situations of a few artists that are currently dealing
with these tensions due to their geographic background to support the arguments that have been
laid out. We will start off with a very well-known artist by the name of Yinka Shonibare.
Shonibare was born in London, England but moved to Lagos, Nigeria at the age of three where
he grew up. He traveled back to London to study Fine Art and get his MFA. Shonibare uses
subtle humor and hybrid images in multimedia installation work that touches on the construction
of identity and tangled interrelationship between Africa and Europe as well as the postcolonial
and colonial histories in a contemporary context (Yinka Shonibare 2014:Biography). He is aware
of this liminal space he occupies moving in between the West and the non-West. This is evident
in some of his work such as Diary of a Victorian Dandy: 17.00 hours (Fig. 1) in which he places
himself within the space of the Victorian elite of the historical past or The Scramble for Africa
(Fig. 2) which draws attention to authenticity through his use of Dutch-wax print cloth. This
cloth has been thought to be traditionally African when in fact it was made by the Dutch to
market to Indonesians who did not want it, and then was brought to sell in Africa where it
became very popular.
In an interview from the 2012 Deloitte Ignite Convention Shonibare addresses the fact
that people do not think of the wide range of African art when they think of African artists. He
says We are contemporary people. We evolve, we travel a lot. (Shonibare 1:50). His teachers
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at school in London told him You are African, arent you? So, why arent you producing ethnic,
authentic African art? His response is What?! I grew up in Lagos listening to James Brown.
(Shonibare 3:30). Shonibare goes on to voice his confusion at why none of his English
colleagues were asked to create something authentic English. His work then grew out of the
question of what is authenticity. Shonibare asked himself what his own authenticity was, which
he came to see as hybridity due to his ties to Europe and Africa (Shonibare 5:10).
Another artist Wangechi Mutu was born in Nairobi, Kenya and later on went to school in
the UK and got her MFA in the U.S. at Yale. Presently she is living in New York. Mutu uses
collage, video, and installation work to create art that discusses race, mass media, and
contemporary gender politics. Mutu mentions in an interview that her work is very personal and
intimate and are not clear, all encapsulating narratives (Mutu 9:44). At the same time her
fairytale, dreamlike style can be seen as universal in the way that human beings tell stories (Mutu
10:13). She is therefore asserting an individual contemporary self, but is also appealing to a
universal connection. Mind you, Mutu is not heralding the message of a pan-Africa vision, but
rather a larger connection to the human condition (Mutu 13:12). It is a part of her to be from
Africa, but she does not see this quality as an all-encompassing narrative of her work or identity.
Mutu shares some feelings relating to this when she says Coming from Africa one of the
things I think is a problem, is an issuebut also is an interesting thing to tackle from a visual
perspective is how an entire continent is codified as archaic and old.. (Mutu 13:21). She asks
the question of what makes us think one thing is from the past and another may not be? Does
the future have shiny things and the past not? (Mutu 13:42). I am trying to play with these
stereotypes that weve created Mutu says (Mutu 14:00). In one of her pieces Cactus Green Nips
(Fig. 3) there is this collage of materials and pictures of objects brought together to create a
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representation of the black female body. Yet, she evokes the grotesque to create these
Frankensetin-esque images using clippings of images from the mass media such as magazine and
pornographic images. There is the idea of power structure and who creates images of the other,
and therefore has a hand in identity formation. Mutu is trying to navigate the questions posed by
anthropologists and art historians of what is authentic and why through her art.
The last artist I will briefly survey is from Egypt and is named Basim Magdy. He was
born in Assiut, Egypt and received his formal art training in Cairo, Egypt receiving a BFA in
painting but uses film, photography, drawing, and installation in his work as well. Magdy is an
artist who is very vocal about his views opposing the classification of art and artists using
ethnicity or geography. His work uses video, painting, slide projection and installation to
examine war, information systems, scientific theories and the visual vocabulary of mass media
(Tate 2013). He has an almost childlike style creating images that recall how people of the past
thought of the future (Fig. 4). Some of his work does reference Egypt, but for the most part it is
not politically charged with his heritage. Magdys essay entitled Walk Like an Egyptian
articulates his feelings that The stereotyping of socio-political art as the preeminent
representation of contemporary Egyptian art leaves them wedged in between institutional
accusations of being influenced by Western trends and Western accusations of neglecting their
local identity issues. (Magdy 2003). These limitations could lead to a restriction in artistic
diversity for Egyptian artists as well as those from the larger African continent. In an interview
Magdy summarizes his views pointedly For me the bottom line is, it is impossible to expect any
international audience to see anything in my work beyond it being made by an Egyptian artist, as
long as I accept to present it to this audience in this particular context. Im very proud of where
Im from, but the last thing I feel that I have to do is to justify anything to anyone through my
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work. The only thing my work should represent is the ideas that I choose to communicate to all
audiences. (Magdy and Hunter-Larsen 2013).
These artists are only a few of a huge pool of Africa modern artists today that have a
voice concerning these issues of identity and modernity. They do share at least one thing in
common, and that is a cosmopolitan identity. They have the ability to travel and were educated in
Western art institutions, easily able to move in between the West and non-West. These qualities
are the markings of an elite status and it is important to remember that this work is not that of a
popular vernacular art, but a trained art student. There are still hierarchical class issues at play in
what consists of Fine Art and valuable art to the Western authority. From the politics of the past
and into the present the worlds of modern and traditional can become blurred. This tension is
present because the stereotypes of the Other need to be deconstructed. Through the voices of
the artists of today as well as the artifacts of the past we are beginning to create a relevant
dialogue concerning these issues.







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Images
Figure 1: Yinka Shonibare, Diary of a Victorian Dandy: 17.00 hours, 1998, C-type print; ed. of
5, 122 X 183 cm (48 X 72 in)

Figure 2: Yinka Shonibare, Scramble for Africa, 2003, 14 life-size fiberglass mannequins, 14
chairs, table, Dutch wax printed cotton

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Figure 3: Wangechi Mutu, Cactus Green Nips, 2009, Mixed media on Mylar

Figure 4: Basim Magdy, Learning about Geometry at UFO Park, 2006, Spray paint and gouache
on paper. 23 x 31 cm.


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