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As attention turns increasingly towards the art of the African continent and its diaspora we reach a conundrum on how we add to the continuing debate about the destiny of Africa. The above epigraph taken from a poem included in the work Wild by the celebrated poet, novelist and artist Ben Okri is characteristic of the duality contained in his works between strife and hope and potential. Working through the prism of postcolonial and postmodernism Okri looks to the possibilities presented by the future informed by the adversity of the past.

In 1995 Denis Ekpo coined the theory Post-Africanism as an alternative to postcolonial thought. Ekpo defined Post-Africanism as an attempt “first to deconstruct the disaster-prone emotionalism, hubris and paranoias indwelling to most ideologies of Africanism whether in art, politics or development discourse and, second, to seek newer, fresher conditions for a more performative African intellectual engagement with Africa, modernity and the West.‟ (Ekpo 2010:182). In making this proposition Ekpo notes the failure of the post-colonial rhetoric of Africanism that informed modern African and post colonial discourse – read African identity, African nation, African rationality, African personality, African authenticity (Ekpo,1995:125) – that misconstrued itself in the conflict of Africa vs. the West. He posits a future which rejects post-colonialism as well as the over emotional harkening on the past and focuses rather on Africa’s position in the (post) modern world in which we, “learn, copy or steal” from the west to hasten the growth of Africa.

In recent practice the re-imagining of black culture and identity has presented ideological ways forward; the landmark exhibition The Black Fantasticby curator Ekow Eshun conceptualised this concept as beginning from an understanding of “race as a socially constructed fiction rather than a scientific truth, albeit one that maintains a determining sway over popular perceptions of the world” going on to say “it also operates with a skepticism about Western narratives of progress and modernity, predicated as they are on the historical subjugation of people of color.”

More recently Lesley Loko notes in her positioning for the BIENNALE ARCHITETTURA 2023 “For the first time ever, the spotlight has fallen on Africa and the African Diaspora, that fluid and enmeshed culture of people of African descent that now straddles the globe. What do we wish to say? How will what we say change anything? And, perhaps most importantly of all, how will what we say interact with and infuse what ‘others’ say…”

In discussing our way forward we question what the future of Africa in the 21st century holds for cultural practitioners. Considering the opposing views taken by Okri and Ekpo above together with the position taken by Ekow we question; How do these shifts in discourse colour the future for the practices and ambitions of artists, curators and collectors of cultural history.

2 September 2023
10:00am – 11:30am