Contemporary Art of Africa

An exciting showcase of 60 contemporary sub-Saharan artists, most of them unknown in the West, this important survey explodes conventional categories such as “naive” or “traditional” art or “urban painting.” There is incisive social commentary in South African Zwelethu Mthethwa’s Fauvist pastel Married and Middle-aged in Mbumbulu, in Zaire artist Cheik Ledy’s provocative, posterlike Let’s Not Be Afraid to Buy Condoms, in the jolting explorations of neocolonialism by the Ivory Coast’s Vohou-Vohou group and in The Drama of the Sahel, an installation portraying a human skeleton caught in a mirror by Mali sculptor Abdoulaye Konate. For sheer artistry, there is Benin painter Cyprien Tokoudagba’s astonishing acrylics made for voodoo rituals, or the Nigerian Meek Gichugu’s lyrical yet unsettling pictures of interlocking figures set against a desertlike landscape. Commentaries on the artworks are provided by sculptor Louise Bourgeois, architect Ettore Sottsass, poet Emmett Williams and other American, African and European artists and critics. Magnin is director of the Contemporary African Art Collection, Paris and Geneva; Soulillou, director of the French Institute in Thessaloniki, Greece. (June)