“Fieldwork in the Art Scene: Places and People Surrounding African Contemporary Art” Contemporary African Culture-Fifteen Perspectives (Seigensha Publishing, 2020)
A book, of which I wrote one chapter as a co-author, is published.
This omnibus book about contemporary African culture is curated by Mr. Sacko, the president of Kyoto-Seika University, and written by 15 co-authors.
Titled as “Fieldwork in the art scene: people and place surrounding the contemporary African art,” my chapter tells stories about the art scene’s expansion to the global art world and development of the art ecosystem in the continent, especially focusing on powerful initiatives that are emerging for these ten years.
Since the last year, I coined the term “the third generation” to show that scene’s development is entering a new phase. This article introduces artists and people from the “third generations,” and art infrastructures that support various kinds of art-related productions, by four categories related to the social life of art; “production and art education,” “appreciation and mediation,” “art market,” and “exhibition and curation.”
Also, within the limited budget, I chose five artists to put the picture of their artwork to show Japanese audiences the diversity of art from Africa and its prominence; Omar Victor Diop, Sammy Baloji, Eddy Kamuanga, J.P.Mika, and King Houndekpinkou.
Two infographics, a map on p.105 and a chronological table since 1989 (printed in fold-out pages in 91–92p), are a new challenge that i put quite an effort into. I worked on this together with Takaishi Mizuki, who is a designer and recently studying academic visualization. On the map, i put the must-know art infrastructures on major cities in the continent with important people on the scene. On the chronological table, i put influential exhibitions, art fairs, and other events since “Les magiciens de la terre” to 2019, and try to show how these exhibitions or curatorial attempts have been establishing the presence of African and diaspora artists in the globalized art world.
This is only in Japanese, but if you are interested, I will send you a copy. Please let me know.
