Pretoria
Matthew Krouse spoke to curator Erna Beumers about her mission to return African art to Africa
To say that each item on the Africa Meets Africa exhibition carries its history with it is an understatement. The mystery is reinforced by the tags on each that don’t date the exhibits by when they were last used in their authentic environments. Rather, each is dated according to the year in which a Western collector laid claim to it.
The collection has been assembled and has toured largely due to the efforts of its curator, anthropologist Erna Beumers who is the head of the Africa department of the Museum of Ethnology in Rotterdam.
Are these objects works of art in a Western sense?
In a Western sense yes, but in an African sense not. Almost all are functional art. They function mostly as objects that visualise the most important values in society, to make “thought ideals” – they’re materialised ideas. Take for example the helmet mask from Sierra Leone, it is the ideal of good living. African aesthetics represent ideas of good living. It is the first role of African art. It shows how to be a good person. For example, the bulges around her neck look like jewels but that is just fat. In other words, you can’t be well fed if you don’t live in harmony with the environment and other people. That beautiful is good, is also one of the themes of the exhibition. The high forehead, for example, means a wise person.
The first function of a culture is to cope with death and to cope with the fact that people can’t live alone: they tackle the issue of how to organise people so they can live together. And so you see masks and sculptures, and so on, that are examples of good living.
Where would they be kept?
That depends on the different people. This mask, for example, belongs to the women – this is a mask that walks in front when they come back after the bush school where they learn to be good women.
Has any of this been adapted as time goes on?
It’s not as literal any more. Later come other standards. Previously the portrait face was quite abstract but now you see very naturalistic portraits. Now you see a beautiful woman. Then, a beautiful woman was a woman who was living well.
Now there is other material, with other influences from outside. It was also the reason that I combined traditional art with contemporary art, to show the continuity of tradition. In our culture very often tradition is looked at as a very rigid concept. I don’t know how it is worked here, but in Holland you always see contemporary African art and traditional art in separate exhibitions. Also, I didn’t make a division between art and craft. Because art in itself was a European concept, but in most African cultures the word art does not exist.
How did you find out your information?
This exhibition was the occasion of an important donation from a couple, the Sanders family. For years I had thought of making an exhibition together with Africa and to bring it to Africa. So I invited 40 specialists, all specialists on a certain people or subject and I sent them photographs. I invited the art historian Elza Miles and Karel Nel and I co-operated with South African specialists including Marilee Wood and Arlene Amaler Raviv.
But the poet Mazisi Kunene was the umbrella. At the opening here and in Europe he recited his poetry. He said that “life does not begin with us”. The point it made for Holland was that while our ideal is to be unique and individualistic, in African cultures it’s just the cycle of life.
Is there any moral obligation to return these works to their places of origin?
In Holland it was on the national news, it got a lot of attention. Journalists asked, are you going to give it back? And I said, “Not yet, first I want to show it.”
I said that this exhibition may be the starting point of the discussion about where African art belongs, and I am merely an active participant in this. But I can’t say “just leave the art” – because it is not the moment.
To bring this work back to African countries you need a stable infrastructure. I’ve seen, in Mali, it went back on to the art market again. I’m scared to say it, it sounds so patriarchal, but this work is very, very valuable. We are talking about millions of rands. I heard that there is more money going around the art world than in drugs.
At the same time, we in Europe are not allowed to acquire traditional pieces any more, to protect the cultural heritage. In Europe we also have protection – famous pieces also have to be offered first to the country of its origin. The code of ethics that governs the acquisition of non-Western pieces is a law signed by lots of countries.
The Africa Meets Africa exhibition is on at the African Window Gallery, Visagie Street in Pretoria until December 15. Tel: (012) 324-6082