An exhibition addressing the question of artistic activism

“Global(e) Resistance” poses theoretical questions, ranging from the articulation of aesthetics and politics to the very relationship between the museum and politics within the art world. Resistance through a practice that is both artistic and political, or even activist, has often been the prerogative of artists living in situations of oppression or inequality. The end of colonization has raised many voices to start new paths of resistance, whether on a purely political level or to question the stories and memories that are too tenacious or threatened with disintegration. Resistance was also organized through art itself, in a poetic or discursive way.

The project deals with current re-readings of history through excavation and memory. It takes as its starting point two founding works from the 1990s from the Centre Pompidou collection: the film The couple in the cage (1993), in which Coco Fusco and Guillermo Gómez-Peña question the contemporary persistence of colonial reflexes, and the video Partially Buried (1996), in which Renée Green brings to light the role of subjective memory in the writing of history. In a time of turmoil and urgency, the aim is to explore how these contestations participate in the transformation of systems of thought and change the way we look at the world.

Visitors are welcomed into the forum by Barthélémy Toguo’s sculpture Redemption, revealed for the first time since its acquisition within the walls of the Centre Pompidou. The work evokes the North-South encounter, pan-Africanism and the question of the redemption and salvation of peoples. The project then unfolds on the fourth floor of the permanent collections (museum gallery, graphic art gallery, gallery 0) over nearly 1500m2. The tour is punctuated by slogans printed on the walls, made from works by Barthélémy Toguo. Manifest works open the exhibition: Guy Ben Ner and Khalil Rabah evoke the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Teresa Margolles the Mexican border, Yin Xiuzhen the armed conflicts and Nadia Kaabi-Linke the wandering of migrants and the homeless.

Inspired by Robert Smithson, Renée Green’s work initially structures a strategy of polysemic resistance thought on the scale of the landscape as well as the territory, but also linked to an intimate memory. The complex imaginary of certain cities such as Braddock (LaToya Ruby Frazier), Johannesburg (Subotzsky and Waterhouse), Dakar (Cheikh Ndiaye), marked by economic decline, socio-political contestation or urban recomposition, haunt several works.

At the same time, the artists accompany the fervour and anxieties arising from decolonization (Kiluanji Kia Henda, Abdoulaye Konaté) and especially in South Africa, where apartheid persisted until 1991 (Penny Siopis, Kemang Wa Lehulere, Sue Williamson). The questioning of the communist hypothesis, addressed by The Propeller Group, and the progression of an authoritarian world, reflected in the installation of Pratchaya Phintong, are the starting point for committed works that attempt to reconcile individual narratives and collective trauma. The works of Chim↑Pom and Yin Xiuzhen denounce the ecological threat. In a more contemplative section, literature and philosophy serve as receptacles for a more subterranean resistance, as in the work of Mohssin Harraki or M’barek Bouhchichi or in Song Dong’s emblematic work Facing the Wall, which mixes Zen and spiritual warfare.

In a second phase, in the lineage of the Amerindian masquerade of Fusco and Gómez-Peña, certain residues of the colonial world, awaiting a multicultural recomposition, are brought to light: the ethnographic “circus” of the “good negro” in Brazil (Jonathas de Andrade) is put into negotiation in a world that bends under the weight of scars (Otobong Nkanga). Further on, the question of mobility at the heart of the contemporary capitalist system is considered: migrations (Younès Rahmoun, Halil Altindere), the body as a tool of resistance (Evelyn Taocheng Wang, Ming Wong) feed into a series of works conceived as crossings. Feminist struggles are finally activated in the work of Susan Hefuna and Marcia Kure, as well as new questions on gender issues.

An exhibition presenting several artists from the continent

Global(e) Résistance presents a large panel of artists from the continent and/or the African diasporas. We can find the artists Billie Zangewa born in 1973 in Blantyre, Cheikh Ndiaye born in 1970 in Dakar, Omar Ba (born in 1977 in Loul Sessene) or Georges Adéagbo born in 1942 in Cotonou.

“GLOBAL(E) RESISTANCE”

Centre Pompidou

July 29, 2020 to Jan. 4, 2021

Place Georges-Pompidou

75004 Paris

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“For a transitory enchanted moment, man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder.”

Through this quote, author John Green noted how the narrator in the famous American novel; The Great Gatsby points us towards the idea of wonder —more appropriately humanity’s capacity for wonder. It’s safe to say that in this age very few things are proportionate with humanity’s capacity for wonder but even more so, very few things are proportionate with our capacity to feel. 

I am not suggesting that our capacity to feel has diminished or shrunk, what I am suggesting is that fewer and fewer things have the ability to move us emotionally. As the rate at which we are being stimulated, entertained, challenged, provoked etc. continues to increase so the rate of affect or affectivity declines. Here we are building on the idea of affect as understood by French philosophers of the last century —affect as the sense of what is felt or as the mental activity required to make sense of the world.

I’m interested in these moments of affectivity that are experienced through a glimpse into someone else’s world; moments that occur through literature, music or art, where one finds oneself understanding or at least wanting to understand the experiences of someone else. Bilongue (an exhibition staged at Stevenson Gallery, Cape Town) is Barthélémy Toguo’s attempt at understanding the experiences of others, where the artist is allowing himself to struggle with these experiences that are too complex to synthesise. The poverty of language would have us identify this as empathy however I think we should perhaps not be so quick to settle for this type of language. 

Toguo’s exhibition is created to pay homage to the experiences of the residents of a settlement in Douala, Cameroon; Bilongue. These are people who are largely facing difficult living conditions. The exhibition brings us face to face with portraits of residents of Bilongue and we are confronted with thoughts, feelings, pleasures and displeasures. Drawings on paper are presented together with wood carvings, where lines are chiselled onto the Zingana wood from the Zingana tree of West Africa ( also known as Microberlinia Brazzavillensis). The lines form contours of the distinct features of each of Toguo’s subjects. We see the artist’s hand through his carved marks on the wood but we also see nature’s marks through the phloem of the tree. The illusion of verticality and deep contouring are heightened by this intersection of natural imprint on the inner bark together with Toguo’s own marks. 

Walking through Togou’s exhibition returns us to possible affectivity. Through a lyrical use of idioms and poetry accompanying tender renderings of various faces, we are brought into a different type of sensibility where we may find a new way of feeling, what I would like to propose we think of as deep feeling. Deep feeling as an embodied and affective type of feeling encountered only through conscious mental labour. In this instance, deep denotes what late American composer and member of Deep Listening Band Pauline Oliveros refers to as complexities, boundaries or edges beyond ordinary or habitual understandings. That which is deep as that which surpasses one’s present understanding or that which has too many unknown parts to grasp easily. By extension, deep feeling surpasses surface-level engagement of understanding another’s experiences. Deep feeling requires effort and calls upon us to dig deeper into our capacity to feel. As we look at the carved wood and the ink depicting the residents of Bilongue, we don’t claim to understand or know their experiences, we are simply pulling ourselves towards our full capacity to feel deeply with (not feel for) another. 

Barthélémy Toguo’s Bilongue brings us right back to that quote from The Great Gatsby—for a transitory enchanted moment we hold out our breath in the presence of these images of the people of Bilongue, compelled into an aesthetic contemplation we do not understand, face to face with something commensurate to our capacity to feel. 

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Organized by the Foundation for the Development of Contemporary African Culture (FDCCA) and curated by Yacouba Konaté and Brahim Alaoui, the exhibition “Prête-moi Ton Rêve” brings together some fifty works by 28 renowned African artists including Jane Alexander, Soly Cissé, Abdoulaye Konaté, Jems Koko Bi, William Kentridge, Chéri Samba, Barthélémy Toguo, Nnenna Okoré, Ouattara Watts.

This collective and continental exhibition, placed under the sign of South-South collaboration, was inaugurated in Casablanca on 18 June 2019 and will travel to a total of 6 African countries.

For its Abidjan stopover, “Prête-moi ton Rêve” is a partner of the 11th edition of MASA, Abidjan Performing Arts Market (7 to 14 March 2020), a major Ivorian cultural event that aims to support African artistic creation.

In parallel to the main exhibition, the Abidjan Contemporary Arts Rotunda will host a tribute exhibition curated by Henri Nkoumo. The carte blanche exhibition will be entrusted to the Ivorian art critic and curator Mimi Errol at the Houkami Guyzagn gallery.

The exhibition “Prête-moi ton rêve” will be open to the public from 12 March and will run until 19 April 2020 before starting its next stopovers across the African continent.

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