Arts appointee Okwui Enwezor shares his vision with HAZEL FRIEDMAN
The Yoruba term “esu ulegba” means trickster. It refers to people who slip through the net of definition, avoid closure of any kind and serve as commentators on the vanities of those who take themselves far too seriously. The trickster is not unlike the wise fool in a Shakespearean tragedy. And also a bit like Okwui Enwezor.
The New York-based Enwezor — recently crowned artistic director of the 1997 Africus Biennale — has certainly landed in the gooey thick of things. Due to the tumultuous changing of the old guard in the cultural kigdom he doesn’t really know with whom he’ll be working: maybe outgoing director of culture, Christopher Till. Possibly incumbent director of culture, Victor Modise. Come to think of it, he’s not even sure whether he’ll be working at all, given the resulting froth over the future of Africus.
What better way to to take a crash-course in South Africa’s cultural politics than to dive head-first into the muck?
But even though he’s the last person to minimise whatever hazards lie ahead, Enwezor is a bit like a dung beetle coping with a mountain of manure. The beetle metaphor, incidentally, is not inappropriate.
“I’m like an insect with antennae twitching all over the place,” he says, fingering the air by way of illustration. “Although the challenges are so daunting, it is an exhilarating, refreshing opportunity to be in a situation where the cultural issues are so raw, immediate and alive.”
Those are the last adjectives I would have used to described an aficionado whose resume reads like a conference on contemporary art discourse, let alone an uitlander intent on usurping the cultural throne from its rightful, homegrown heirs.
But words like refreshing, lively, engaging — even naive in an oddly informed sort of way — aptly encapsulate Enwezor. He lacks the arid intellectualism of many of his peers.
For one thing, he’s an incurable social smoker. For another, he’s actually pretty humorous. He describes his curatorial projects as consisting of practical plans and an “extensive wish list”.
He also illustrates lofty theory by means of vivid, earthy examples. For a Cologne exhibition catalogue, he diarised his experience of airport entries and exits based on the French philosopher Michel Foucault’s theories on power.
“I haven’t come to prescribe but to exchange, to start from a position of dialogue, access South Africa’s fractured landscape and, hopefully, scramble the hierarchies.”
He’s not suggesting conceptual superglue for the purposes of mediation or mending, merely a series of public panel discussion where old issues will be revisited and new questions asked.
“Any task has to start from a point of self-critique before it can be defended in the public sphere. Naivety can be turned into an asset.”
He professes respect for those who believe South Africa’s cultural imperatives preclude the indulgence of an “overseas” curator, albeit one born in Africa. He also seems to understand the frustration of the artist as (critic’s) ventriloquist’s dummy and the imperatives of self- enunciation, free from the interventionist powers of others.
After all, when you’re hip-hopping between the conflicting worlds of New York and Lagos, it’s tough being labelled anything other than “other” — a mute object of curious fascination. Perhaps his insights into the prejudices of cultural perception have equipped him to avoid the traps that ensnare cultural nomad-cum-colonialist.
“One always imagines oneself as both global and particular. One has to constantly renegotiate one’s own sense of belonging. I come from a position where so many boundaries have been crossed, resulting in a very complicated picture of what it is to be African in the late 20th century.”
He adds: ” South Africa seems to identify and define itself in terms of pre- and post-isolation. These are the new boundaries.”
It is therefore not entirely unexpected — and only partly due to post-modern trends like globalism (a concentration of diasporas), cultural pluralism and nomadism — that Enwezor’s exhibition proposal for the Biennale, Trade Routes, revolves around the theme of boundaries.
“My metaphoric starting point is the Cape Point, the meeting of the Atlantic and Indian oceans, the main sea trade routes, from which ecomonic imperatives and agendas have produced incredible cultural consequences. I don’t want artists to illustrate my ideas, or attempt interventions in search of great projects. I want — not simply object-makers — but thinkers.”
And hopefully the odd trickster in the pack, or two.