Examples Of African Art Post-Colonial Art

“African Perspectives on Colonialism” is a book written by A. Adu Boahen. This book classifies the African responses to European colonialism in the 19th century. Boahen begins with the status of Africa in the last quarter of the 19th century and follows through the first years of African independence. This book deals with a twenty year time period between 1880 and 1900. Boahen talks about when Africa was seized and occupied by the Imperial Powers of Europe. Eurocentric points of view dominated the study of this era but Boahen gives us the African perspective. There are always two sides of the story and Boehen tells us the side less talked about informing us of what he knows.

People of the early African kingdoms were able to create successful trade routes with Europe and Asia, become very wealthy from conquering and gaining land, and were able to have a strong central government. All of this was done before the Europeans had reached Africa. Trade flourished on the East African coast, especially when trading was established with India and Arabia. African kingdoms were prosperous, because of their success with not only trading but also with their ability to conquer land. A governmental structure is key to allowing any kingdom to thrive, and the African people were able to achieve this.

The Nok heads and sculptures of Nigeria are made hallow, life-sized terra-cotta figures with a coiling technique commonly used to make pottery vessels (Thames & Hudson, 2015, pg.451). Nok heads were made with clay and although clay is very durable it is also breakable. However, very few sculpture have been found undamaged. The head of the figures was larger than the bodies because the artists wanted to emphasize the association between the head with knowledge and identity. The Nok head below is from Rafin Kura, sculpted in c. 500 BCE-200 CE. Like many Nok heads, this sculpture has a unique hairstyle, with three buns on top. It also has triangular- shaped eyes with holes in the pupils, nostrils, mouth, and

These beautiful figures are done in a special kind of work. A Hausa artisan talks about the making of the figures is, “done with clay and wax, and red metal[copper], and solder[zinc], and lead, and fire… Next it is set aside to cool, then the outside covering of clay is broken off” (Doc 7). This African culture wasn't the only cultural accomplishment in Africa; the Kingdom of Ghana reached a great feat in wealth from the Saharan gold and salt trade. An Arab scholar named Al-Bakri in 1067 described the kings county in Ghana as a, “domed pavilion around which stand ten horses with gold embroidered trappings.

The reason I chose to go to the African Art Museum is because I have been there before and I enjoy my time when I go. The tours at the museum consisted of talks about certain pieces in the museum that fell in a category the tourist wanted to focus on. Nkechi Obi was my first tour guide and the title of her tour was “Docent African Arts”. Her goal throughout the tour was to show pieces of artwork that showed what Africans may have gone through in the past in slavery. One piece that she focused on that I want to highlight was “Southern Landscape” by Walter Williams Roots. In this piece there various things going on in the photo.

Once we arrived, we looked up possible exhibitions that we could attend. A museum employee recommended African textiles. After hearing the title, I immediately expected this exhibition to have complicated and precise components to the tiles. African textiles are, in fact, made of wool or fine animal hair in a weave patterns. Although the exhibit was interesting, it wasn’t what peaked my interest.

The most influential artist to me in this exemplary in this pursuit for the appropriated traditions is Kehinde Wiley. In his opening speech for the New Republic gallery show he expressed that things such as his work was evolved around the working of chance . In his case, he manipulates the chance of the representation of the black demographic in traditional work. Modifying the figurative works to create the chance for relating a body that is familiar. I see contemporary painter, Kehinde Wiley as a comparable to my work in regards to the topic as well as the manipulation of the human figure. The admirable features I see in Kehinde Wiley’s work in addition to these is the fantasy elements that are incorporated. These features are best exhibited in his piece, “Bound”. The work is a bronze sculpture that stands approximately four feet tall and two-and half feet wide. The composition is inviting as it includes busts of three identical women that have African descent features that are placed on a rounded triangle base. The expressions on all of the faces are of a staring and wondering nature that have a nature of regality as their faces are turned to the right at an approximate forty five degree angle as their all have their back facing each other to form a guard of the leaves the a laid on their base. The bodies are cut organically as it rounds off from shoulder to shoulder, just enough to form the upper torso to see the corset like dress that encompass the figure. Expanding

Finally, the plaques are clear evidence of a mutually beneficial cultural encounter with Portuguese traders in which both parties gained. It could be speculated that the rectilinear form of the plaques arose from Benin craftsmen seeing Portuguese oil paintings, but there is no evidence of this. The plaques, however, do first appear after contact with the Portuguese, following which there was a resurgence in bronze sculptures, probably as a result of the increased wealth and confidence of Benin.

During the 1800s western society began to take an interest in creating political emprise all around the world. With this in mind, many European nations started looking at Africa. In 1880s only 10 percent of Africa was controlled by some European nation. Some of the 10 percent included the French who were in control of Algiers, Portuguese in parts of western Africa and British and Dutch colonies in South Africa. However that small percentage quickly grow with European nations started to gain control of almost all of Africa. By the 1900 European countries, control the majority of African

This sculpture is of a women breast feeding her child. The face of the two people is elongated, as well as the breasts of the mother. This is common to all African Art because they wanted representation of what is being expressed. In this particular sculpture, a supernatural power is being called upon. The power has been asked to protect the mother and child, and to

This posed a display problem to exhibitors including the British Museum as they tried to fit them into the ethnological museum to explain the emergence of ‘civilisation from prehistory’ (Loftus, 2008). The predominating attitude towards the Benin artwork was that it was the exception and lost treasure from an ancient, African civilisation. This resulted in the display of the Benin bronze plaques in the British Museum as a ‘collective wall decoration, halfway up the main stairs, one more element in the eclectic mosaic of artefacts’ (Wood, 2008, p72). The rest of the display of various antiquities of art and functional items like weapons and transport displayed jumbled together in glass cabinets with little or no detail as to the function or cultural value of the artefacts often misrepresenting ideas about primitive life.

The piece is basically a tarp with three arms hanging from the top of it. I automatically related the title of it, Congo with

This unknown piece of art is the Lukasa (memory board). Created by the Mbudye Society “men of memory”, an elite society of men who belong to the Luba peoples. This people group are from the Democratic Republic of the Congo. They created this piece somewhere between the 19th and 20th century C.E. It consists of wood. The piece from the AP 250 is much like the unknown work as it is also a Lukasa (memory board). Created by the Mbudye Society of the Luba peoples, it is from the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It is also believed to have been from the 19th and 20th centuries C.E. It’s made of wood, beads, and metal. Both of these pieces of art are from the same group of people and have the same use. They are a part of a mass collection of artifacts that are similar.

For centuries, powerhouses of the world have been dividing and conquering the lands of “the other.” These imperialistic powers unearth the roots of the conquered lands and utilize the resources for their own capitalistic benefit; however, the effects of imperialism extend deeper than just taking advantage of the soil. There is the physical subjugation of the land and the indigenous bodies that inhabit it, but there is also a much more sinister method of conquering: cultural imperialism. Through the systematic replacement of the original culture, the people of the conquered land lose their sense of place in the world, thus imprisoning them in a cycle that seeps into the coming generations like slow poison. This is exactly what Tayeb Salih is

During the mid 19th century up until the Great War of 1914, European countries began to heavily colonize and come into contact with African nations. This was called "new imperialism". During this contact, European culture was influenced by Africa. The influence of the African people can be seen in the European society of the time. In the 19th and 20th centuries, modern artists embraced African art for its lack of pretension or formal qualities.