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"My working practice aims to challenge the assumed
knowledge that perpetuates the continual systematic denial of
advancements in Africa both past and present in relation to those
of the West. Within the field of the arts, there are often suspicious
views by the Western establishment that confirm the claimed intellectual
superiority of Western contemporary art über alles. This
holds true despite the well-intended efforts of political and
cultural correctness...
To watch almost anything on television about Africa in the West is to experience varying degrees of voyeurism. We are not presented with anything other than a tragic, phenomenological account of disasters and conflicts, man-made and natural. Africa continues to be naturalized, a poor relation to the developed world. What are needed are positive and real images of the materiality of Africa. It is this very same materiality that has been plagiarized so often, Africa literally carved out by others who sought to consume its resources, while the only ones who didn't get a share of the spoils are the Africans themselves... The Unmasking compares two workings of the same material, iron ore within Africa, as a metaphor for ideological stances, by the deconstruction of the very framework that is often used in anthropology, science, and art to define Africa. The first process is the development of the iron-smelting process in West Africa around the sixth century B.C. leading to the production of bronze artifacts some five hundred years later. The second is the mining process in Southern Africa more than one thousand years later, the process that has sustained the oppressive biological-political system called apartheid. The refined nature of the technology that led to the production of the fine African bronze heads that populate many private and public collections in the West is now being hailed as a precursor in many ways of the Western industrial revolution. The project will be presented with digital technology precisely to locate it within that domain where it belongs... My return to Nigeria has led to complex works such as Well Without End (1994), Homeward Bound (1995), and the works in progress Rich Reddish Earth and Africa On Europe (documentary video, working title). These works problematize my own relationship with Africa and existence in Europe. It is my intention to destroy the antiquated views of Africa through my works, which offer images challenging those seen in the mass media, a strategy that I believe necessary for the normalizing of African representation." O.A.B. |