Authentic/Ex-Centric
Conceptualism in Contemporary African Art Published by Forum for African Arts, Inc..
Artwork by Rashid Koraichi, Willem Boshoff, Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons, Godfried Donkor, Berni Searle, Zineb Sedira, Yinka Shonibare. Edited by Salah Hassan, Olu Oguibe, Okwui Enwezor. Text by Siemon Allen, Sally Berger, Annie Coombes, Rory Doepel, Maryline Lostia, Gilane Tawadros, Els Van Der Plas, Christian Viveros-Faune, Damien Pwono. Against the musty stereotypes and prejudices that still consider Africa a dark continent full of nameless, Third World nations always striving but never managing to catch up with the West, Authentic/Ex-Centric positions Africa as the source of many of the ideas associated with European modernism. From Cubism's radical abstraction to 70s performance art and its use of ritual, shamanism, and magic, the influence of African art has long been underappreciated. Published in conjunction with an exhibition of the same name held to critical acclaim on the fringes of the 2001 Venice Biennale, Authentic/Ex-centric offers a glimpse of the ways in which African and African Diaspora artists have interpreted and translated the aesthetic and social experiences of post-colonial Africa into new idioms of artistic expression, and argues for their proper location in the broad narrative of global conceptualism.
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