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| Bristle Disguise by Walter Oltmann, a South African artist. (Photo: A. Pokroy) |
Organized in
collaboration with the Seattle Art Museum (SAM), the show brings together
contemporary artists working in Africa and America. For two years, SAM’s
Curator of African and Oceanic Art Pamela McClusky, and Consultant Curator
Erika Dalya Massaquoi, sought out artists who explore the idea of disguise in
their work.
They selected
12 contemporary artists to represent the core themes of the show, and eight of
those artists were commissioned to produce new visions and sounds specifically
for the exhibition.
According to
McClusky, the artists were encouraged to use SAM’s collection of African masks
as a catalyst for creating fresh visions of masquerade. The work they produced includes photography,
drawing, video, performance, installation and sculpture.
Alongside
their creations, examples of the same mask genres from the Fowler collection
are on display during the exhibition - which the Fowler says goes beyond
disguise, representing a “bold move” to bring masquerade into the museum.
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| Neo Primitivism 2, by Brendan Fernandes, Kenya/Canada. (Photo courtesy of the artist.) |
The 12 artists comprise six from continental Africa and six Americans of
African heritage, who employ “artistic strategies of disguise" as well as "key visual
and performative elements of traditional African masquerade in their work”.
The group
includes British-Nigerian author, artist and filmmaker Zina Saro-Wiwa, who was
born in Nigeria in 1976 and whose father – the writer and environmental
activist Ken Saro-Wiwa – was executed in 1995 in the Niger Delta.
Returning to the
region in 2013, Zina Saro-Wiwa began a journey of cultural discovery, according
to the show’s curators. “She went in search of masquerade culture in her
indigenous Ogoni homeland and came across a modern form of masquerade started
in the late 1980s called Ogele, a masquerade featuring a heavy, tiered mask
that told stories about modern day politics as well as animist deities.
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| The Invisible Man by Zina Saro-Wiwa, US/UK/NIgeria. (Photo courtesy of the artist) |
A selection
of the Fowler’s Ogoni masks is shown beside her work as inspiration. “I want to
bridge the gap I always feel when I go and see African masks in museums. I want
emotional connection,” Saro-Wiwa has said.
Curator
McClusky told SWAN that all the artists have taken an old art form to produce
contemporary and “entirely new masquerades” to challenge viewers ideas of
disguise and identity.
“It’s a common
fact of life that we disguise what we’re thinking and feeling, and masks force
us to realize this,” she said.
Marla Berns, the Shirley and Ralph Shapiro Director of the Fowler (a position named after major
funders), added that disguise in African masquerade can be a tool for facilitating
transformation but that the featured
artists use it to “comment on the challenges and complexities” of our increasingly
digital and globalized lives.
“The artists
meld carved wooden sculptural forms with new electronic media; they create
spaces for women in masking traditions formerly dominated by men; they
challenge our understandings of what constitutes authenticity in African masks;
and they stimulate questions about the heritage of African masquerade and the invention
of modern Western art,” Berns said.
To accompany the exhibition, the Seattle Art Museum and Yale University Press have co-published an illustrated catalog containing artists’ statements, an essay by McClusky, and an interview with Dalya Massaquoi.
To accompany the exhibition, the Seattle Art Museum and Yale University Press have co-published an illustrated catalog containing artists’ statements, an essay by McClusky, and an interview with Dalya Massaquoi.
(The Fowler is part of UCLA Arts and is located on the university's campus.)
