Tandazani Dhlakama - Art and Post- Independence Subjectivities from Africa

Lesson part of the course Decolonised History of Art: Global Narratives from 1900 to the Present. Click here for the programme and the full course.

With a focus on the period 1990 - 2010, this lesson looks at artists connected to Africa during the dawn of the invention of the internet, at the height of globalisation rhetoric and at a time where many parts of the world were reckoning with nuanced forms of neo-imperialism. Artists such as Ghada Amer, Mmakgabo Helen Sebidi, Seyni Awa Camara and Wangechi Mutu emphasize the diversity within Afro-feminist expression. Berry Bickle, Yinka Shonibare, Malala Andrialavidrazana, and Meshac Gaba critique tropes around African identity by emphasizing contradiction, complexity, syncretism and hybridity. Similarly, the work of Belkys Ayón , Mary Evans, Samuel Fosso and Luis Meque refuses to be pinned to a specific geography and rather speaks to broader global Black consciousness. Challenging dominant art historical canons is at the heart of Kiluanji Kia Henda, Kamala Ibrahim Ishaq and Jelili Atiku’s practice. Their work is underpinned by pedagogies that refuse to centre the Western canon. What happens when a utopian dream is deferred? We will look at how artists Tracey Rose, Moshekwa Langa, Senzeni Marasela, Zineb Sedira and Mouna Karray tackle post liberation displacement in their practices. Ideas around freedom, liberation, struggle, and post-colonialism have had different meanings for people at different times even within this same time-period. In response to various post liberation challenges, communities of artists were formed through initiatives such as Gugulective, blaxTARLINES Kumasi, Gwanza, Invisible Borders Trans-African Photographic Initiative. They became places for collective critical investigation; while artists such as Amina Agueznay, Tapfuma Gutsa and “Madame Zo” Zoarinivo Razakaratrimo formed practices that also emphasized collectivity, while thinking about the environment. Though many have made work that responds to the pertinent socio-political issues of their time, others refused to do so. This begs the question, to what extent can making art about the quotidian be a form of resistance? Akinbode Akinbiyi, Cheri Cherin and the Kinshasa School, and Magdalene Odondo remind us that artists have also made work that resists the pressure historically imposed on African artists to make work that is so totally, obviously about struggle and resistance.

Tandazani Dhlakama is now Curator of Global Africa at the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM), Toronto. Through her work, Dhlakama explores the complex and interconnected histories of African art and the African diaspora, amplifying marginalized voices, interrogating identity, memory and heritage, and reimagining museum narratives to reflect global and diasporic perspectives.