Sites of remembering: The meaning of African art through memory
Keywords:
Ethiopia, Anthropology, Jazz, Fine Arts, PhotographySynopsis
This book is copublished with Routledge. 259pp. Buyers outside of South Africa: Follow the below link to order:
Sites of Remembering - 1st Edition - Abebe Zegeye - Routledge Book
South Africa edition: Unisa Press: ISBN: 978-1-77615-238-4. e-book: 971-1-777615-239-1. SA price: R524.
Orders from within Africa: email to morodjm@unisa.ac.za
Rest of the world: Orders - click here: Sites of Remembering - 1st Edition - Abebe Zegeye - Routledge Book
online orders from TAKE-A=LOT:
Sites of Remembering : The meaning of Af971-1-77615-239-1rican Art Through Memory | Shop Today. Get it Tomorrow! | takealot.com
A richly illustrated, thought provoking and captivating book exploring the meaning and understanding of African art from an African perspective, through African memory. Zegeye challenges us to examine our reference points and to look again as we are taken on a journey through Sites of Remembering. Beginning in Ethiopia, we see that Mulatu the first Ethio-Jazz musician to study abroad integrated Western music into Ethiopian music, rather than the reverse, and the flavor remains Ethiopian. Still in Ethiopia we are lead through the magical universe of the artist Yetmgeta, whose art is deeply Ethiopian in inspiration. Ethiopian Christianity has developed its own unique religious and cultural practices, which parts of Yetmgeta’s work reflect, having echoes of devotional art infused with symbolism and Christian iconography. The work of highly versatile fellow Ethiopian, Elias Sime is extraordinary and profoundly moving. Workneh Buzu, another inspirational and innovative artist whose work draws from Ethiopian Orthodox Christianity, is seen through his collection, Songs of the Angels.
Further south, the exploration of Sam Nhlengethwa’s archived art illuminates our understanding of cultural capital and its value and power in social development. The importance of an archive created by an African depicting Africans and African art is an antidote to the influence of the colonial lens. The need to own and nurture cultural capital and tradition is highlighted in the case of the Mbira, and Mbira music, which had to some extent been displaced through the agency of missionaries and colonisers. We are led past the economic crisis to a crisis of knowledge and its social implications. The chapter incorporates a series of interviews with Albert Chimedze, Mbira artist who founded the Mbira Centre to promote the Mbira.
Zegeye offers a complex critical analysis in the chapter covering Chester Higgins’ diaspora photography which spans politics, art, religion, society and more, and in the concluding chapter on the important exhibition and catalogue of art and essays, Space: currencies in contemporary African art. Teasing out colonial and post-colonial influences and discerning the nationality of the capital driving and shaping art production and value, is extraordinarily difficult, but always worthy of scrutiny and challenge.
During much recent history African art has been curated and written about by Europeans, and this book is a valuable contribution to the pool of African writing on African art.
The book contains a Foreword by Thembinkosi Goniwe.
WHAT THE CRITICS SAY
'... incredibly interesting and significant, especially regarding the narrative of the global south and Ethiopia's rich cultural and knowledge production. The value it can provide is immense.' - Eyob Kitaba, Lecturer and program coordinator, AAU, Ale’ School of Fine Art and Design, A.A, Ethiopia.
CONTENTS
SECTION 1: THINKING
1. Introduction
2. What is contemporary African art?
3. Insurgent memory and African art
SECTION 2: VIEWING
4. Mulatu Astatke: The making of Ethio-jazz
- The magical universe of Zerihun Yetmgeta
- The seemingly seamless subversion of Sime
- Song of the Angels
SECTION 3: KNOWING
- Rethinking archiving: Modes of cultural capital in Sam Nhlengethwa’’s collection of art
- Beyond the construction of crises: The voice of an ordinary Zimbabwean
SECTION 4: REMEMBERING
- Diaspora connections and discontinuities: The photography of Chester Higgins
- In place of a conclusion: Re-centering Space Currencies in Contemporary African Art
References
Cabral, Amilcar. 2008. Amilcar Cabral: Unity and struggle – Speeches and Writings, with a new Introduction by Maurice Taonezvi Vambe and Abebe Zegeye. Foreword by Carlos Lopes. Translated by Michael Wolfers. Texts selected by the Partido Africano da Independência da Guiné e Cabo Verde/African Party (PAIGC) for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde. Pretoria: UNISA Press.
Fee, M. 1995. Who can write as Other? In The Post-colonial Studies Reader, edited by B. Ashcroft, G. Griffiths H. Tiffin. 242–249. London & New York: Routledge.
Foucault, M. 1993. ‘Space, Power and Knowledge’. In The Cultural Studies Reader, edited by S. During. 161–169. London & New York: Routledge.
Griffiths, G. 1995. ‘The Myth of Authenticity’. In The Post-colonial Studies Reader, edited by B. Aschroft, G. Griffiths and H. Tiffin. 237–241. London & New York: Routledge.
Goniwe, T., ed. 2010. SPace: Currencies in Contemporary African Art. Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press.
Jackson, R. 2008. Fantasy: The Literature of Subversion. London: Routledge.
Lefevere, A. 1995. ‘The Historiography of African Literature Written in English’. In The Post-colonial Studies Reader, edited by B. Aschroft, G. Griffiths and H. Tiffin. 465–470. London & New York: Routledge.
Zegeye, A. n.d. The Power of Knowledge. Presentation. Pretoria.
Fig 11.1 Mary Sibanda. The Reign. (2010. 330 x 200 cm. Mixed Media installation. Photograph by John Hodgkiss
Fig 11.2 . Nandipha Mntambo Praça de Touros I, II, III (2008) 111 x 166 cm Archival pigment ink on cotton rag paper
