Exhibit of African art in Dubai aims to present true essence start

For the past few months, the boards of London's National Theatre have shaken to a different groove. Between sobering performances of Hamlet and Ena Stewart's tragicomical view of 1930s Glasgow in Men Should Weep, theatregoers have witnessed the actor Sahr Ngaujah strut his way into an embodiment of Nigerian music's own "Black President", Fela Kuti. Fela! began as a Broadway musical before heading to London at the end of 2010. This charged and fittingly audacious production tells of Kuti's rise to become one of the foremost names in African music and Afrobeat, the genre that he pioneered in 1970s Nigeria. It reflects something of the spirit of that time, and though the songs are played to a seated auditorium rather than in the humid, frenetic clubs of 1970s Lagos, Fela! reminds its London viewers of a very important reality:
as the West quaked with the thrash of punk, Africa had its own vibrant anti-establishment movement going on - typified by scores of thinkers, musicians, writers and artists. It is difficult to come into contact with African expression, not just in music but also in visual art and theatre. Despite the occasional work making its way into the UAE's art fairs, African art remains remarkably under-represented in galleries here and in the rest of the region. Making some headway to redress this, Dubai's The Mojo Gallery hosts As It Is!, a four-part exhibition that draws in some of Africa's most dynamic artists working today. Wole Soyinke, Nigeria's Nobel Laureate (and, incidentally, a cousin of Kuti), has put himself firmly behind the project, and is expected to jet into town when the exhibition culminates in its final outing in March to coincide with Art Dubai. At its root, this series of shows, running monthly until then, may only tease at the breadth of expression coming out of the continent, but it does offer an inroad to a scene that can often appear too vast and diverse to penetrate for newcomers. "We need to get away from what we expect from African art," says Annabelle Nwankwo-Mu'azu, the curator behind As It Is!, who earned her stripes working on several noted festivals of African art in the UK. While unspecific about the expectations that she feels are currently placed on African art, Nwankwo-Mu'azu has forged a curatorial direction that promotes artists with work that demonstrates a defiantly contemporary slant. As It Is! launched in December with a collection of photographers working in the continent and in the African diaspora. Artists ranged from Nigerian photographer Uche James Iroha, who creates startling shots of tradesmen in the markets of Lagos - butchers, for instance, standing in a line with machetes drawn and a stream of entrails congealing in the mud behind them - through to Kenyan photojournalist Antony Kaminju, who has documented the importance that food plays among fans at football games across Africa, used as a form of ritualised intimidation to fans of the opposing team. In the diaspora, Ntare Guma Mbaho Mwine is an American-Ugandan photographer and actor (perhaps better known as Usutu in the US television series Heroes), who presented a collection of images from a recent trip to Uganda.


A baptism, a marriage and a funeral are infused with a sense of epic rawness: an unknown figure is seen cycling beside tall grass with a coffin strapped to the back of his bike; two newlyweds are laurelled with a live chicken. "We wanted to hit Dubai with a true essence of what it's like to be working on the ground in Africa," says Nwankwo-Mu'azu. As It Is! continues now with a roundup of influential African artists from an older generation. Ancestral Spaces - Translated Identities features the work of Tola Wewe, arguably the most celebrated painter in Nigerian art in the past 30 years, and sculptures by the Nigerian sculptor Kehinde Ken Adewuyi, who uses the lost-wax technique to cast diminutive human figures in bronze - each of which have been left immobile by an exaggerated foot, thigh or belly.