/ 6 July 2010

African design sets the pace

African Design Sets The Pace

I am standing in a storeroom in Accra with my co-curator, Andile Magengelele, and we need to make a snap decision. Do we spend $1100 (R8 366) on a necklace? Titled Giant and created by the young, self-taught Nigerian, Okechuchi, the piece leaves our mouths agape.

And so we use the only useful criterion we have come to rely on in the tricky process of curating a contemporary African craft exhibition: Is it a “wow”? Magengs and I confer: “It’s a wow.”

This process began rather late, in aesthetic pitch darkness. I had made pilgrimages through 20 African countries in the 1990s, tracking down wows for written and visual projects, but I had little idea if or how the continent’s design scene had developed since then. And so, when the department of arts and culture approached me to curate an exhibition of pan-African handmade design, I needed to gather my thoughts. I also needed someone who could gather his thoughts on his feet — and Magengs was the guy for the job.

Clearly, we needed criteria. And fast. We knew what we didn’t want. We didn’t want any animals. We didn’t want any patronising ethnographic work. And we sure didn’t want any naive curios. But what did we want? Just how were we to wade through the glut of readily available African cliché and present a fresh and challenging aesthetic hypothesis? Was there a new direction in African handmade design? And, if so, where, and how would we find it?

The consequent intense process of discovery that has unravelled over the past few weeks has proved the most inspiring of safaris. The designers and mastercrafters we have met, Skyped or emailed a hundred times have come to represent a new wave of Afrofuturism for me — one that might truly find its own in the global design market.

They are our tomorrow.

I guess the first real wow was Cheik Diallo, a Malian chair designer with the imagination of Dr Seuss. The “Nafi” chair, woven in red nylon over a metal frame, may be rooted in dried-up Sahelian economy, yet it ventures into universal whimsy — as does the “Banana Rocker”, a bold wooden arc, bound in tie-dyed Tuareg leather. These pieces transcend their ethnicity without hiding it. They are, if you like, post-African.

Enter another Malian magician, Aboubakar Fofana, who studied shibori dyeing under a master dyer in Kyoto and who has now transformed traditional indigo textile into fine art, creating sublime magical sheaths of blue that preserve his cultural heritage and the health of the planet.

Of course, we love the Japanese connection and we wait with baited breath to see what will be flown in, via Paris, from the Sahara.

We discover Kpando, a women’s pottery group in Ghana’s Volta region that dishes up sensuous earthenware curves that evoke the female form.

And so, piece by piece, thread by thread, PACE2010 begins finding its feet.

It is in Ghana that we meet Kweku and Josephine Forson at Tekura Designs, their small factory at the end of a road so bumpy that Magengs’s many-ringed earlobes swing. Piled pragmatically in the Forsons’ yard, a heap of unpainted and uninspired masks stand ready for the reliable curio market. But then Kweku leads us through to the braver, sawdust-thick wing of his workshop, where we discover, with delight, the “Eye Stool”, as minimalist and Scandinavian as a Fifties’ Alvar Aalto classic, some other pared-down contemporary takes on Ashanti stools and the “Walking Table”. Oh, the “Walking Table” …

An exhibition such as this needs not only national variety but depth, and Tekura’s clean lines need textured, organic pieces to balance them. Hence the powerful abstract canvas, created from gold and rusted bottle tops by Ali Lamu in Kenya — and thankfully devoid of all recycled scruffiness.

The evocative raw porcelain form of Nigerian Lawson Oyekan’s “Passage with Palm Print” is air freighted priority from Cumberland in the United Kingdom. Oyekan “is fuelled by a desire to understand and illuminate the human experience” and his work has struck a chord with academic and design institutions worldwide, which gives PACE2010 some ­heavyweight provenance.

Taslim Martin, a UK-born designer who grew up in Nigeria, has also made his mark in the British art world. When we request the loan of his award-winning Secret Dovetail, his only concern is that it is returned in time for a show at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMa) in New York. The fact that he places equal importance on an African show is encouraging.

Martin’s interest lies in making portrait sculpture and momentous public installations. His work that explores function, such as Secret Dovetail, made for the exhibition Mixed Belongings in 2005, seeks to apply logical solutions in design to resolve complex construction and aesthetic problems. The masterful stainless-steel piece may echo the African and Asian headrests designed to preserve elaborate hairstyles, but its concerns are as global as they are contemporary.

Logistically, shipping from all over the planet during a frenzied football fest verges on comedy. A typical day at PACE2010 headquarters runs something like this: “Where are we with Aida Duplessis? Did she get the transfer for the vetiver carpet in Bamako? And please beg Mabeo in Botswana. We aren’t giving up on the ‘Kika’ stool. [We eventually did]. Let’s get Mark Kwami on the phone. Has his furniture left Berlin? And how the hell do we get it out of customs?”

Kwami is another visionary friend who has emerged in the process. The German-Ghanaian set out on a similar path in 2002, working with 20 West African craft groups to set up his clean-lined Made in Africa stores in Germany. The red “Bole” chair, designed by Tetevie Selassie for Kwami, has a powerful, almost Bauhaus presence. And, yes, it arrives, just after Kubu Crafts’ “Tonga Leg” table pitches up in Florida with Peter Someone, who had schlepped up to Zambia to deliver some gas canisters. Such are the miracles of urgent inter-African trade.

But what about House on Fire? Just how are we to get their weighty, satirical “Black Napoleon” chair to Jo’burg? Could Jiggs Thorne drive the post-colonial jaw-dropper through? Yes.

Local talent is easier to source. Designer and product developer Marisa Fick-Jordaan has recently exhibited her “Lace Wired” platters (a fresh new take on hackneyed telephone-wire baskets) at the International Contemporary Furniture Fair in New York, alongside Ronel Jordaan’s amazing twirl of felt, the “debele Chair”. We also secure some amazingly vibrant leather pieces from Missibaba in Cape Town and one of Limpopo-based Barok’s new appliquéd and embroidered flags. The lion in its centre references a matchbox rather than the Big Five.

Even the “Tintin” piece we source from the Democratic Republic of Congo sidesteps cliché — the blond comic-book hero is climbing out of a Ming case, rather than standing and waiting for tourist attention.

“The Hunted”, a Southern Guild collaboration between Conrad Botes and Paco Rugs, lends the show some grown-up pop.

The space itself looks amazing. I asked for “pods” after spotting an amazing Ernesto Neto installation at the MoMa recently, and the ever-resourceful and utterly determined Nicholas de Klerk creates a series of futuristic white kraal-like structures. We argue about how to balance the pieces. I place a woven pouffe from Khumbalani Craft next to House on Fire’s majestic “Open Bust”, but De Klerk says it hurts him. I don’t want De Klerk hurt, so we move the pouffe. Then back. It’s a delicate and nuanced process. Each piece should complement the one next to it. Magically some hand-worked leather bags arrive from Algeria to balance the forms.

Fofana’s “Indigo” arrives from Mali. I mention casually to his agent that I’m a little disappointed. I had forgotten the fierce honour of the Sahelian people. Fofana is so wounded by my feedback he offers a full refund. I tell his agent the piece is beautiful, just not as beautiful as I’d hoped. Rarely have I heard an artist offer a refund.

Only once the 80-odd pieces are in place does PACE2010 start to make visual sense. The forms communicate with one another, telling their story.

But we do like a sting in the tail. We place ‘The Hunted” at the show’s exit. As a subtle 3m-diameter sphere of tufted rug, tattooed with a sobbing damsel, it could do with some witty repartee. Enter Tekura’s “Walking Table” — a sleek, black, minimalist console, the legs of which are criss-crossed in frozen motion like a headless antelope peering across the veld. And we’re so bust! An animal did sneak in after all.

PACE2010 is on at the CDC-G Gallery at Nelson Mandela Square until July 31