Africa Remix

The colorful exhibition of contemporary African art bursts into Roppongi

Samuel Fosso, Tati Series (Self-portrait 2): The Chief who Sold Africa to the Colonists, 101x101cm, Type C-print, 1997 Courtesy of Centre Pompidou-MNAM-CCI, Paris ©Samuel Fosso

The word remix is often attached to tired old songs as they are trotted out in new dancehall versions to make a few more dollars. So seeing the title “Africa Remix” at the lofty Mori Art Museum may leave visitors with the impression that they are entering into a trendy redressing of familiar masks and fertility dolls. Nothing, quite thankfully, could be further from the truth.

Rather than simply remixing what we know, “Africa Remix” is like hearing a piece of new music for the first time. At once universal and cryptic, the imagery throughout bursts with color and reverberates a contemporary energy of life, art and love. The exhibition makes it easy to realize that something powerful is happening in the mostly unknown art of present-day Africa. One is only left to wonder why it has taken so long for such a wide-ranging show to arrive.

This is not to suggest that there is a single simplified Africa on display. By dividing the work into three sections—“Identity and History,” “Body and Soul” and “City and Land”—the curators attempt to wrangle a broad swath of varied content into a readily approachable format. In doing so “Africa Remix” creates a balanced introductory survey of works with overtly political aims and those with more social and humorous outlooks.

Among the most provoking pieces are South African artist Jane Alexander’s installation African Adventure (1999-2002) and Sweden-based Loulou Cherinet’s Bleeding Men (2003). The former is a field of dirty sand in which pale gray animal-human mutants—some dressed in suits and dresses—stand amid rusted farm equipment and crates of explosives. Cherinet’s work is a video projection of young North African men systematically carving up their arms that eerily speaks to our uncertain present.

Other works with a more lighthearted tone use humor as a means for tackling issues of identity, as in Eileen Perrier’s series of gap-toothed portraits Grace (2000), or for coloring daily life with a heightened sense of joy, as in Georges Lilanga Di Nyama’s small wooden sculptures of cartoon-like characters. Likewise, Angolan Antonio Ole’s Township Wall No. 10 (2004) is a joyful aggregation of daily ephemera. Compiled in 16 individual panels, the piece makes use of street signs, bike parts, doors and trashcan lids to compile a wall-spanning abstraction.

As world leaders continue to debate and deliberate on the future of a media-defined Africa of unending problems, the artists here come forward and ask if we really understand what the continent is and will be. “Africa Remix,” it seems, is not a title meant to inform us how to approach the work, but rather an appeal to visitors to open their eyes, see past the headlines, and remix to the reality that is Africa.

Curiously, though, the museum’s gift shops are filled with a mix of traditional dolls and other African ware, proving just how much light still needs to be shed on the “Dark Continent.”

Mori Art Museum, until August 30. See exhibition listings (Akasaka/Roppongi) for details.

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