A Fiction of Authenticity 2004

“A Fiction of Authenticity: Contemporary Africa Abroad.”

This exhibition first appeared at the Contemporary Art Museum in St. Louis in September 2004. Co-curated by Shannon Fitzgerald, the show featured the commissioned works of eleven artists of the African diaspora, all of whom maintain close ties to the continent but have chosen to live abroad. They are identified in the catalogue by their multiple sites of origin/identification: Siemon Allen (South Africa/New York), Fatma Charfi (Tunisia/Bern), Godfried Donkor (Ghana/London), Mary Evans (Nigeria/London), Meschac Gaba (Benin/Amsterdam), Kendell Geers (South Africa/Brussels), Moshekwa Langa (South Africa/Amsterdam), Ingrid Mwangi (Kenya/Mannheim, Germany), Odili Donald Odita (Nigeria/Tallahassee), Owusu-Ankomah (Ghana/Lilienthal, Germany) and Zineb Sedira (Algeria/London). The catalogue includes seven new essays focusing on the diaspora artist in relationship to place, citizenship, and exile.

According to Fitzgerald, the goals of the exhibition were to expose the "constructs of perception (fictions) about what constitutes an authentic Africa within that continent and abroad." Through a series of commissioned works, she hoped to analyze "how these fictions have skewed what it means to be African and to what extent one's Africanness is expressed, understood, exploited, and relevant in contemporary global culture.” [1] Many of the works speak back to Western representations of Africa; Ingrid Mwangi’s installation, according to her, is a depiction of "the strength, creativity and potential power of the African women as a symbol of motherhood and created [that] counters the media portrayal of Africa as poverty-stricken, disease-ridden continent with a confused post-colonial society, generally corrupted political systems and chaotic, non-functional economical infrastructures."[2]

However, as Elizabeth Harney points out in her review, Fitzgerald’s attempt to understand “to what extent one's Africanness is expressed” is extremely problematic, leading to an overemphasis of biography and the attempt to find aesthetic markers of influence. As Fitzgerald notes, “Surely practices of living and processes of identity formation cannot be broken down into physical geographies anymore but rather need to operate as intellectual processes. While one is all in support of the broader curatorial latitudes Fitzgerald seeks, one must caution against a wholesale reinvention of a faceless postcolonial whose lack of roots is compensated by his or her multiple routes.” [3] Unlike the similarly-themed show, “Authentic/Ex-centric,” (2001) in which work like that of Yinka Shonibare and Gottfried Donkor visually deconstructed specific notions of an authentic African or European aesthetic, “Fiction” seems to rely on the ostensible contrast between an artist’s birthplace and chosen residence to critique notions of authenticity, as few of the works convincingly address the theme. Though Fitzgerald’s stated intention was to question notions of authenticity and influence, the exhibition’s selection process seems to insist upon geographic determinism of artists’ styles. Though the show highlights the diversity of African diaspora artists and underscores the arbitrariness of museum discourses surrounding the “African artist,” the structure of the exhibition mires us in new essentialist traps as soon as it has freed us of the old ones.


-Molly Klaisner

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[1] qtd by Elizabeth Harney. “Canon Fodder.” Art Journal. Vol 66 No. 2 (Summer 2007) 126.
[2] http://www.cmu.edu/PR/releases04/040806_artists.html
[3] Harney, Art Journal, 127.