How to Blow up Two Heads at Once

Check-list Luanda Pop
Curators: Simon Njami and Fernando Alvim
A part of the Venice Biennial 2007 (the Arsenale section)


The exhibition Check-list Luanda Pop, the first official African appearance in Venice, curated by Revue Noir's Simon Njami and Angola's leading artist and cultural promoter Fernando Alvim, caused a lot of controversy in international press even before it was opened to the public.
Basing the selection on works from Sindika Dokolo's collection, known to be the continent's model, it got critiqued by the global North press, which equated it with corruption on a large scale, reported by various NGOs to be the case, and spreading from a Congo bank to diamond traffic in Angola, all linked to a single man, Dokolo. (For the spicy details read the articles in ARTnews.)
However, the black continent got divided, too: while Okwui Enwezor and Salah Hassan got involved in direct confrontation with the curators that had its finale in long letters published in Artforum in autumn 2007, and the artist Barthélémy Toguo dropped out, Olu Oguibe decided to support the Biennial's director Robert Storr, who stated he had not been aware of the controversial nature of this show.
Not about orange.
But let's concentrate on the works, which seem to be left out from any discussion. We have heard enough about the Rockefellers and MoMA by now. Entering the exhibition hall from the back side I first got struck by the power of Shonibare's headless human-sized figures, dressed in 'authentic' African cloth, invented in Holland during the colonial times, and pointing a gun at each other. Colonizers in a duel. Or a colonial subject ready to extinguish himself in one shot. Able to eliminate the show as well. How to blow up two heads at once is the central piece in the room, and due to its successful installation all other works seem to relate to it or establish invisible connections with it. How to ...? Here you go.
Slowly emerging out of smoke were the features of Ghada Amer's paintings, which at first gaze look like Abstract Expressionism and destabilize your comfortable position as a viewer for the reason that they seem out of place in a 21st century exhibition of contemporary art, especially due to its supposed emphasis on Africa, though a closer observation reveals something else. What you get are the pornographic images of women; that is where their political potential lies. To be more precise: the color splashes (a highly masculine attribute in art history) are placed on top of teasing erotic scenes of women couples in poses worthy of the Kama Sutra, and occasionally individual women, displayed in repetitive patterns echoing Islam and delicately threaded in a web of love, politics and desire.
No, Ghada's paintings are not about orange, even though it is the prevalent color. There's much more to her art, and art-history canons can get lost! now. More dangerous than How to blow ... Politically-loaded, intellectually sharp and beautiful. Getting the governor's attention well enough to stop his killing. A 21st century Scheherazade, who lives in the West.
In a recent study, Abstract Expressionism was perceived as a cultural product of the Cold War that in turn made Cold War possible.
Her paintings, flown in straight from NYC across the Atlantic, get re-framed in a formal coupling with a photo by the young Luanda artist Nastio Mosquito, entitled Mulher fósforo, girl with matches. An ambiguous image showing a transsexual sitting on the street after a night out, giving visibility to the invisible LGBTQ community of Angola, is a rather chilling material ... What was her night like? She seems disillusioned. Her eyes are the saddest in the world. Probably she prostitutes herself. Now she is empty. The future is not hers. “… and we should shine a light on light on night on...” goes the bassline track from London.
Big artists are big people.
Another strong piece in the show dealing with the colonial subject is a work by the Haitian artist Mario Benjamin and consists of two Untitled paintings (a diptych), two portraits of a man, who looks like a zombie, his face consumed by fire tongues, a ghostly figure emerging from an impenetrable dark background.
In the heart of darkness, the survivor and witness of an unprecedented catastrophe.
The paintings differ from one another only, if substantially, in their chromatic specter – while both extremely vivid, one leans more towards orange and the other towards purple, blazing all night.
Marlene Dumas hits us with her black-and-white-ink drawing Big Artists Are Big People and raises some doubts about it. Are they? Not necessarily. Big artists are not always ‘big’. And the canvas can be, as is the case, very small and can nevertheless deal with important issues. And complicate further the 'c'eci n'e pas un pipe' paradox.
Next, a close encounter with a cut-off head of a black man placed on eye-level in the large Noyau Noir drawing by Miquel Barcelo, side by side with a formally similar canvas, bearing a text that deals with the daily pressures of (patriarchal) society on women from the woman's perspective, taking the form of a first-person confession.
Post pop fuck.
Moving forward, a well succeeded Pop triangle, a ménage à trois, consisting of (from left to right) Warhol's boxer Muhammad Ali, Post Pop Fuck by Kendell Geers, that is, a huge white wall covered with black 'authentically African' 'traditional style' symbols that turn out to be fake, a construction (as much as art history for example), and – what a shame – suggest an on-going sex scene, an orgy rather. Black on white. Not about color. Finally, a very large (XL) photo of the owner of the legendary Luanda bar by Kiluanji Kia Henda that gives the title to the exhibition and launches the Angola art scene into international waters.
What is missing in this otherwise excellent show is a wide-scope comprehensive catalogue, enabling better access and easier decoding of the works, some of which demand a knowledge of specific histories and contexts, though they are generally placed within the global circuits of power.
What is remarking is the way they name it: African collection of contemporary art. And not a collection of contemporary African art. A shift from identity politics. Ethnic traffic, racial misconceptions, etc. Instead, they re-claim history. This can be observed also in Eastern Europe and other places distant from the self-proclaimed capitals of Modernism (London, New York, Paris). Because history is not given. It is conditioned, same as the present.
The strategy that proves viable in this concrete situation is the fact that, in order to showcase Luanda Pop, an institution in the West has to finance the exhibition in Africa.
It is what already the Looking Both Ways exhibition quietly pronounced; the shock of being seen has to be bidirectional.
Is that the reason why we could not see it in Lisbon despite of continuous negotiations between Fernando Alvim and Museo Chiado?
To end: Je suis le seule femme de ma vie, porquoi faire.
(An appropriation of the work by Bili Bidjocka)