Authentic/Ex-Centric: Conceptualism in Contemporary African Art

Before any attempt to map the terrain of conceptualism in contemporary African art, a clarification of what we mean by'conceptualism'or'conceptual art' would be helpful. Conceptual art emerged in the last century from a long series of often unconnected and not altogether intentional acts and interventions in which artists elected or rejected certain forms or strategies in art making and in the process revised received understanding of the nature and essence of art. Because these i nterypntingc nlrurred i n severaI different locations and precede the term itself, most recent historiographers of conceptual art admit that attempts to designate a firm genealogy or lineage can only be futile, or at best viewed with skepticism.' It i s perhaps more helpful, therefore, to look instead at the different traits and characteristics that have come to be associated with conceptual art, at least in the West. The first of these is self-reflexivity, by which the work of art is turned on itself and ultimately on the very notion of art. Different scholars trace the emergence of this tendency in art to different moments and protagonists even several centuries before the advent of conceptual art as a recognizable strategy. Godfrey makes mention of the classical writer Pliny's story of a 4th century ac painting competition between the artists Zeuxis and Parrhasios in which both were required to make the most mimetically faithful still life, and the later won by painting a curtain so realistic that his competitor tried to pull it back to reveal the non-existent still life behind it. An Arab version of the myth sp -of"f i nning painter o polishing the wall opposite his competitor's mural till it shown like a mirror, thus reflecting the other i5 painter's work on his wall rather than executing another mural. In both cases the artwork plays with °= received notions, even convictions held sacred, and raising the question; what is real about art and what • is its true nature? Despite the limited frames within which society embeds it, is art a reflection of reality, or a part of reality, or both, or neither? In Velasquez's Las Meninas the painter takes the liberty quite r unusual for its time to insert himself and his canvas in the family portrait he is commissioned to paint. • Thus the canvas is made to mirror itself, to write itself into the painting, thus revealing itself as no more