Modern African Artists Their Struggle for Tradition and Self
How does an artist work out of and from a tradition that has colonizedhis or her people' By colonizing one's people, one also colonizes the artof one's people. Indeed, through the act of colonization itself, a nationsuch as Britain has deemed an African's very self hood, very person not tobe part of the artistic production of tradition, but merely an object ofexploitation. African artists almost as a whole must grapple with the factthat their nation has been oppressed and colonized by Western forces, yetmany of these artists also wish to draw up
Rather than attempt to reconfigure their own traditions,many African artists have approached Western art and culture in a spirit ofparody and satire, familiar tools of the oppressed to communicate theirdispleasure with humor. African artists cannot entirely embrace the West, nor can theyentirely reject it if they wish to move forward in their own nation's art,in their own self-expression as an artist in and individualistic andWestern-influenced world, and also to profit personally as all artists muston some level. Moreover, these African artists do not wish to merely recopy andrecapitulate old, African forms of art, nor could they, anymore than theycould recopy and recapitulate aspects of African tribal art within theirown social experience. on the rich artistic resources ofthe West. They must appropriate both the West and theirAfrican pasts anew, to create works that are creative in their syncretism,and representative of both traditions-not an easy task. Such African artists currently live in a world ofmodern commerce that valorizes the individual artistic experience, asopposed to the communal and tribal tradition that produced most traditionalworks of African art. Also, African artists whom are betwixt and betweencultures, located both in colonial nations and in cultural communities thatembrace their ethnic heritage, have become particularly adept at straddlinga delicate line between creating a new form of cultural identity, makinguse of the cultural tropes around them, yet still paying a kind of homageto African forms and features.
Common topics in this essay:
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,
Moreover African,
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recopy recapitulate,
one's people,
african forms,
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