Francophone African Arts: connection, disconnections, and reconnections
By Pr. Alain Cyr Pangop Kameni, University of Dschang, Visioconference of 29th september 2023 at University of Princeton, USA,
Introduction
Francophone Africa refers to all 31 African states sharing the French language. Africa is thus the continent with the most French speakers in the world. The French language and culture arrived in Africa with the colonization of France and Belgium. These Francophones from Africa now form the most important part of the Francophonie. In each of the French-speaking countries of Africa, French is spoken with local specificities in terms of pronunciation and vocabulary. In 2010 it was estimated that there were 120 million French-speaking Africans. French-speaking Africa is home to countless local arts that reflect a wide variety of cultures that continue to evolve over time. These creations, which significantly influenced modern Western art, were considered true objects of art, especially from the beginning of the 20th century, particularly under the influence of Cubist painters.
The historical trajectory of French-speaking Africa going from the colonial period to the post-colonial period reflects a movement of artistic heritage that I can present here as a diagram: connections-disconnections-reconnections. All these aspects have been the subject of important meetings, reflections and negotiations at the international level. High-end publications bear witness to this. My presentation therefore consists of presenting the management of African cultural heritage and its particularities. Particularities because, not only is it rich and diverse, on top of that, it is endangered. It is subsequently a daily fight for restitution, but also and above all the capacity to manage the rich and diverse heritage of Africa. Management here consists of implementing a policy and actions for conservation, study, safeguarding, promotion, enhancement and dissemination of heritage according to the regulations and cultural policy of the country. The institutions authorized to do this are local authorities, key players in governance and heritage management, and museums.
In the first part, I will talk about the heritage connection of the categories of African art in the French-speaking space, not only to the artist as an individual, but also to the cultural community; this connection links the profane and the sacred, to represent the cosmogony of peoples and constitute their vital force, their art of living.
In the second part of my remarks, I will show that art emanating from French-speaking African countries is an art in crisis, because it has suffered disconnections from their intrinsic places of expression due to colonial conquest. I will report on the consequences of these disconnections.
In the third and final part of my presentation, I will give a quick overview of the speeches of claim and the institutional mechanisms for repatriating cultural objects in exile; above all, the paths of endogenous reconnections will be considered not without mentioning the various obstacles to the restitution of cultural items from French-speaking Africa. Before concluding my remarks, I will discuss the perspectives of contemporary art in the French-speaking world.
I. Connections of traditional African art
Traditional African art, which was also called “Negro art”, is subdivided into a multitude of local arts. But I will consider only two artistic categories: traditional African art and contemporary African art. These two categories are part of cultural heritage which can be material and immaterial:
- Tangible/Material heritage consists of monuments, architectural works, monumental sculpture or painting, archaeological elements or structures, inscriptions, caves and groups of elements which are of exceptional historical value and interest, art or science.
- Intangible/Immaterial heritage can take different forms of practices, representations, expressions, knowledge and know-how. For example, songs, dances, clothing styles, gastronomic traditions, board games, myths, tales and legends, small trades, testimonies, the capture of techniques, oral or written documents and audio-visual archives.
Regarding the contextual and historical significance of cultural property, we can remember that a cultural property can represent the soul of a people. It can symbolize political power; it can be the symbol of a king's power.
Thus, the values of cultural property for local populations are very varied:
1. Ritualistic value. Let us take the case for example of the rite of enthronement of the new leader which is "the transmission of royal power like the exercise of the ordinary function of the Fo is based on a few very highly charged objects: the seat of enthronement, the royal bracelet, the effigies of the missing Fo and Mafo” (Perrois).
2. Totemic value. In African culture, certain totemic objects can often have anthropomorphic qualities, this is the case of Afo-A-Kom which had some strange manifestations during his forced stay in the United States. Afo-A-Kom is considered as protection against evil spirits.
3. Sacred value. The statuettes, although made of a material as noble as wood, “have the function of manipulating the invisible world, a manipulation which can directly affect the daily existence of a given group” (Diop, B. M., Arts d’Afrique Black and Western museums), hence their sacred character. As such, not everyone is allowed to touch it, since it would be endowed with supernatural powers
4. Symbolic value. this value is strongly accentuated by the material(s) which are used for the creation of the statue. Therefore, the elements which are used to decorate the statuettes have a particular symbolism such as:
– Mineralogical elements: the working of metals dates back to a very distant era in African craftsmanship, they have a certain influence on the development of spirituality
– Cowrie shells and pearls: they are found a lot among the people of the Grassfields, where they are attributed magical powers.
All these constituent elements of the statue, combined, give it a particular symbolism:
– Afo-A-Kom symbolizes “royal authority and the promise of continued succession” (Ellis William S. (1974); Afo-A-Kom: A Sacred Symbol Comes Home, National geographic, p 140- 148), it is a symbol of continuity, solidarity, social stability, love, hospitality, generosity, unity, diversity, tolerance, justice and sovereignty (Sumelong, online)
– The Tangué is an expression of the political and economic power of the tribe which built it, it also indicates the hierarchical order of the head of the family.
– Mandù-Yenù is the symbol of political power among the Bamoun.
5. Aesthetic value. The making of sculptures also had a completely aesthetic purpose, just for the pleasure of letting yourself be carried away by your inspiration. Sculpture was and still is part of the activities that fill the life of a traditional society. It evolves and adapts with the times.
The wooden mask, which most often represents a spirit, has long been considered the typical object that best symbolizes African art. But gradually other forms came to light and in 1966 the first world festival of Negro Arts in Dakar (Senegal) took place, presenting to the world the richness of African art, with artists like Ousman Sow, Assane N'Noye, Paul Ahyi or Ashira Olatunde. The renowned poet Aimé Cesaire, responding to the colonialism of which Andre Malraux had defended himself during the festival, presented his historical “Discourse on African Art”. Since 1989, a biennial of contemporary African art has been held regularly in Dakar.
The plastic diversity of traditional African Art shows a prodigious imagination and a magical intensity, revealing the omnipresence of the sacred – which fascinated many Western artists and collectors in the 20th Century including André Breton – and complex rites: ceremonies where the definition of pure and impure, the perpetuation of the lineage, the legitimization of alliances, the strength and cohesion of the clan. Among the everyday African cultural items, we can also find handicrafts such as pulleys, attic locks, ladders, pyrographed calabashes and weapons, personal items (maternity doll, fetish), but also objects like decorative statues sculpted for white people’s villas in the 1950s and 1960s, or as naive shop signs. These objects are “fake” for the purists and the “ethnos” who despise them, but these pieces, now weathered by time, reveal themselves to be things, often very beautiful and very touching, of a truly popular art, witness to a time now gone. For example, the so-called “settler” statues represent the “settler”, the white man seen by the black man, and are often statues full of humor and drollery (colonial helmet, pistol in his belt, hands in his pockets).
The true passion for African art must in certain cases respect the object in its entirety, which therefore means for example accepting the existence – without being impressed – of a layer of dried blood (sacrificial crust) collected during ritual sacrifices. According to the most passionate collectors, the traces left of their use give these objects a magical or aesthetic power that others do not possess.
II. The disconnections of a rich, diverse African heritage, but dispersed around the world
African cultural heritage is a heritage shared between the West and the continent due to colonization. It is therefore mainly represented outside the borders of Africa, and is made up of thousands of items, often acquired fraudulently by Western museum institutions. It is the object of illicit transactions and is mainly found in Western museums. Despite the measures taken to this effect, Africa is still subject to systematic pillaging of thrones, scepters, elephant trunks, weapons of war, musical instruments, etc., thus deported to the West. Five modes of acquisition of cultural property attract attention in all the studies carried out: spoils of war, “gifts”, “donations”, purchases and exchanges.
Whether at the British Museum, the Dahlem Museum in Berlin, or the Musée du quai Branly in France, the vast majority of objects preserved by these museums were collected between 1870 and the First World War, a period also covering that of the colonial conquest. While in 1880 Europeans controlled only 35% of the planet's surface area, this proportion rose to more than 84.4% in 1914.
More importantly, the ethnographic collections are made up of seizures made during military campaigns, pillaging and raids during which the works of art of indigenous populations were taken away. Cultural items therefore speak not only of the way of being of Others, but also of a complex chapter in the history of humanity of which they are the traces. These acquisitions of works of art took several forms:
1. The spoils of war
2. Legal and illicit purchases
3. Donations
4. Gifts
5. Fairs and Festivals of colonial exhibitions
But again, what effects can the spoliation of heritage assets have on local populations?
1. The history of the people can be corrupted. It is the paradox of circumstantial knowledge that is both rigorous and biased, of knowledge crossed by the tension of methodological demands and ideological imposture… The colonial knowledge was based on four pillars, namely:
– The factual inventory of the exploitable natural and human resources of the colonies
– The anthropological inferiorization of dominated peoples
– The voluntary concealment of the civilizational contributions of these peoples
– Densification of technological occupancy parks
The dispossession of peoples has created a gap that will be difficult, if not impossible, to fill, because the elements that should have served as a visual support for learning for younger generations have been stolen.
2. There is the loss of cultural identity, closely linked to the loss of memory due to the lack of historical benchmarks to retrace its history.
This also has consequences on the psychological balance of populations dispossessed of their imagination, who become alienated and decultured. This psychological balance which is broken, sometimes permanently, by the departure of landmark objects transmitted from generation to generation places the African face to face with acculturation. He finds himself forced to cling to another uncontrolled culture. Ignorance of the existence of illicitly exported heritage has created a break, an absence of continuity in the transmission of identity knowledge.
3. Finally, we have the disappearance of certain knowledge and know-how.
III. Restoration and endogenous Reconnections
Henry Godard said: "Classical war aimed at the heart to kill and conquer, economic war aimed at the stomach to exploit and enrich oneself, cultural war aimed at the head to paralyze without killing, to conquer through rot and enrich oneself through the decomposition of cultures and peoples” (in La Guerre Culturelle, 1979, p. 5). These words, which reflect many postcolonial realities, strongly concern us and make us understand the urgency of measuring the issues and challenges of developing local cultural businesses and industries. Because the cultural war targets the head to put an end to the constructive imagination of the people, thus paralyzing the values it conveys and making compost for a cultural imperialism without faith or law. However, in a context of globalization which is characterized by the porosity of borders and by the economic and cultural domination of the great powers, the old and new practices of African cultures in general are almost marginalized in this atmosphere.
Contact between the West and Africa has therefore disrupted traditional African societies, resulting in the abandonment of local cultures in favor of acculturation. Hence, in the context of globalization, there is the need for the restitution of material heritage. The spoils remain alive in the memory of formerly colonized peoples, as evidenced by the particularly artistic creativity to which they still give rise today. And it is obvious that the societies which manufactured these objects wish to have access to them, in order to rediscover their own history. For Bernard Müller, “The recognition of the principle of restitution is part of a process aimed at admitting an obvious moral and historical responsibility”. The issues surrounding the restitution of looted cultural property can be political, diplomatic, cultural, economic and memorial.
In Africa, the movement working for the repair and restitution of looted cultural property developed in the late 1980s. It was then relaunched in the early 1990s, when the Organization of African Unity (OAU) adopted the principle of “reparation”, particularly in the form of compensation, for slavery and colonialism. The preamble to resolution 42-7 passed by the United Nations (UN) in 1987 precisely states: “The return of cultural property of fundamental spiritual and cultural value to their country of origin is of capital importance for peoples concerned with a view to establishing collections representative of their cultural heritage.”
During the 1992 summit, African heads of state created a group of experts to study the issue, co-chaired by Moshood Abiola and the former director general of UNESCO, Mr. Amadou Mahtar M’Bow. This initiative led to the Abuja proclamation in April 1993. This refers “to the “moral debt” and the “compensatory debt” owed to Africa by countries engaged in the slave trade, colonialism and neocolonialism. It demands the return of “looted goods” and traditional treasures (…). Fully convinced that the damage suffered by African people is not a “matter of the past” (…). Convinced that numerous lootings, thefts and appropriations have been perpetrated against African peoples, the proclamation calls on those who are in possession of these looted goods to return them to their legitimate owners. [The proclamation] calls on the international community to recognize the unprecedented moral debt owed to the African people.”
Several agreements on the protection of cultural heritage have already been adopted throughout history, including the UNESCO conventions of 1954 on the protection of cultural property in the event of armed conflicts, of 1970 aimed at prohibiting and preventing the ‘import, export, transfer of illicit ownership of cultural property, of 1972 concerning the protection of world, cultural and natural heritage, of 2003 concerning the safeguarding of intangible heritage
The descendants of Béhanzin, « last » king of Abomey (Republic of Benin) overthrown by the French in 1892, asked, through a written question to the government formulated on November 18, 2005 by the French deputy Christiane Taubira, the restitution of the royal treasure, now kept at the Musée du quai Branly.
Despite the legal complexity that accompanies the transfer of an inalienable object from one heritage to another, restitution is possible. Abdou Diouf, secretary general of the International Organization of the Francophonie, affirmed that the retrocession, presented in a controversial manner, deserved reasoned treatment. It has already occurred several times and certain objects of the controversy have known the path of “return”. The seal of the dey of Algiers seized by the French army, during the capture of Algiers in 1830, was given to President Abdelaziz Bouteflika by Mr. Jacques Chirac on March 2, 2003.
The response of Western museums to the multiplication of requests is, however, unequivocal. The “Declaration on the importance and value of universal museums”, written in December 2002 and signed by nineteen directors of some of the world’s leading museums (notably the British Museum, the Louvre, the Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York, the Prado in Madrid, the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, the Hermitage in Saint Petersburg), is edifying.
As Savoy and Sarr (2018:25) point out, to speak of restitution is to speak of justice, rebalancing, recognition, restoration and reparation, but above all it is to open the way towards the establishment of new cultural relationships based on a rethought relational ethics:
1. The inalienability of collections:
2. The imprescriptibility of collections:
3. The non-retroactivity of the law:
4. The context of acquisition of goods:
5. Traceability of objects:
There remains the question of financing. The return of cultural property naturally requires a transport and insurance budget, which we know can be very high depending on the fragility of the property in question and its market value (Savoy and Sarr). We could take as an example here the return of the Afo-A-Kom statue which cost Cameroon seriously for the repurchase of the statue.
France and Europe have considered two sources of financing for these restitutions:
- The French Development Agency in the cultural field, which has already been financing investments in creative industries and professional training for some time;
- The European Union/African Union Partnership Fund, which is a development support mechanism;
It is also necessary to take into account the cost of managing bilateral expert commissions in the allocation of resources allocated to the process, independently of the jobs required within the museum service.
In addition to financing procedures relating to restitution, there is also the compensation aspect that must be taken into account. The restitution of heritage would serve to reestablish the lost identity of the dispossessed peoples given that the departure of its objects has left the populations in an identity fog. It will undoubtedly slow down the cultural assimilation suffered by younger generations who were not fortunate enough to have the same cultural roots as their parents. The disappearance of cultural property from its place of origin has created a memory void among people; to the point where Hedi Bouraoui speaks of “amputated memory”, because peoples have been deprived of cultural goods which occupied central places in their society because they were constitutive elements of the life of its peoples.
Their restitution could finally heal this wound that the illicit export of cultural property left behind, it will heal the trauma caused by this sudden departure of cultural property and fill in the blanks that are present among the younger generations. The return of cultural goods will then aim to reactivate a hidden memory and restore heritage to its meaningful, integrative, energizing and mediating functions in contemporary African societies. It will also be a question of reclaiming one’s objects, of once again becoming their guardians for the human community.
The ambition to rebuild healthy relations with African countries in terms of heritage could be a motivation for carrying out these restitutions, for France in particular. It could improve cultural cooperation between countries, limit art trafficking by strengthening the protection of cultural property. It must be understood that this question of heritage is not limited to legal resolutions, but it is also a lot of corridor diplomacy, given that, as far as museum directors are concerned, they are intransigent, museum collections are inalienable and imprescriptible. Since the public collections of museums are inalienable and imprescriptible, governments can use stratagems to gain possession of the heritage.
However, the fundamental question which remains unanswered and which deserves further thought is the following: what life for returned cultural property? In other words, there is an urgent need to think about “endogenous reconnections”. To remedy this situation, management policies have been set up in Africa with the aim of conserving, promoting and enhancing it. The recent establishment of community-type museums and cultural festivals makes it possible to resist the cultural loss. The aim here is to show that these popular expressions are a form of cultural renaissance, a return to the sources to draw – voluntarily and not by force as was the case in the colonial past – from the local culture the traditional and new habits of the natural environment of the chiefdom to cope with ambient modernity.
From the refusal to forget to the need to perpetuate work and a duty to remember, this is the strategic challenge of the growth of national museums, fairs and cultural festivals in the various communities of contemporary Africa. Beyond simple attraction, we are evolving towards a local cultural industry, benefiting from the modernization of technologies. At the beginning of the 21st century, most traditional leaders are increasingly organizing around their populations the rebirth of museums and cultural festivals which are places and moments of meeting, communication, social cohesion, unity, etc.
Apart from the attraction linked to the festival we have the heritage box, in Africa with the emergence of a heritage inventoried, collected, studied, saved and presented at the museum is one of the cultural aspects that tourist guides make assert as soon as the opportunity for intercultural mediation becomes apparent; in short, a popular anchor around which populations are grafted in order to promote their identities, through a whole range of modern innovations. These are imaginary places where cultural diversity is expressed, the basis of a market for cultural products and services that can truly integrate into the global market, with good management in the postcolonial perspective of industrialization. They are arguments for social cohesion, markers of identity where the globalization of cultures leads to identity dislocations.
They are also orders for the intergenerational transmission of collective memory. It is also the place of interculturality to the extent that Western cultures are integrated. These events are a form of resistance which allows Africa not to be marginalized and to achieve new conquest on the international stage.
Conclusion
The question of art in French-speaking Africa is of real concern to political decision-makers and professionals of African cultural heritage. And despite the measures taken to this effect, Africa still suffers from systematic pillaging of these objects thus deported to the West. It is important to know that part of African heritage is scattered around the world, in private and public collections or in private homes. This sparked the nagging question of how these objects got out of the continent.
We have a few cases where heritage has been returned to the country of origin. The fact remains that it is a daily battle. French-speaking Africa in particular is characterized by a rich cultural and linguistic diversity which constitutes what UNESCO in the 2001 universal declaration calls “a common heritage of humanity”.
Today African art is an inexhaustible mine of inspiration for creators who reinterpret it but “outside its environment, removed from its context, not only geographical but also social, the object loses its cultural identity. (...) From the panoply of the "colonial" to the wall of the "collector" associated today with contemporary art, we tend to forget the relationship of the African object with its original environment, ignoring the 'obvious ethnological implication'. In view of the progressive generalization of Digital Arts, otherwise called Technological Arts by the Society of Technological Arts (SAT) of Montreal, the tools and media of creation as well as the means of diffusion now depend on Emerging Technologies or Cutting-edge Technologies, era of all computing and multimedia.
