The Tate Modern Gallery in London has an exhibition of photography on display which challenges our Western view of art works. With a focus on photography and African photographers it is complementary to the many other photo exhibitions. We have a world in common, says the title of the exhibition. The images, however, reveal another vision of African photographers. Other perspectives on beauty, architecture and the distribution of wealth and waste across the world becomes explicit. Beyond the documentary effect of a lively African scene of photography and past colonialism the forward-looking vision of African photographers is also evident. Colours and Imagination of a unique kind allow us to look beyond the current state of affairs. Rising from the ashes and western waste the colours of Africa will prevail.
Only through the force to imagine a different trajectory for the continent we shall eventually be able to see new flowers blooming.
Positive images have to be put in front of the “negativity bias” in Western media when reporting about African countries. The light, the sun, the sea and coast lines, all can contribute to the rise of Africa in various ways. The photographers in the Tate exhibition demonstrate an impressive power to go beyond the day-to-day topics.
Broadening our scope of visuals with more images from Africa certainly are fist steps to enlarge the spectrum of photography and art. A chance to browse through the catalogue allows to go back from time to time to counter our usual stereotypes. (Image taken from Tate catalogue A world in common, 2023 Muluneh Aida 2018 p. 202-3).
Archer
The Archer is a recurrent topic in art. We find lots of examples around in Berlin just as in front of the National Gallery. Historical references are manifold, too. The exhibition in the Martin-Gropius-Bau with works by Daniel Boyd adds temporarily 3 paintings. But wait, beyond this shared anthropological phenomenon across continents, this exhibition challenges our western, imperialist perspective on human existence.
Please take of your shoes, at first entry into the museum entry hall. Unsettling for most of us, we are continuously confronted with our narrow perspectives on perceptions. Poetics, philosophies, perceptions and cultures are all to easily classified and devalued.
This exhibition achieves to surpass our traditional western concept and empathy for land, room, light, air and water. Eurocentric narratives still dominate the world of art and art history. Daniel Boyd manages to unsettle this through his relentless effort to differentiate from this narrow perspective. Aiming for a difficult to accomplish solidarity across resistance movements, he highlights the common injustice “First Nation People” had to go through. These original inhabitants of continents claim their right to own languages, customs and spiritual or spatial perception. It remains a challenge to start to like the notion of opacity (Éduard Glissant) rather than our western aim for transparency, associated with the enlightenment philosophical tradition. The archers in Boyd’s work aim into the, maybe opaque water, maybe clouds, maybe into the twilight. It sometimes seems more like a ritual than a weapon. Family histories find their way into his works based on photographs of grandparents. The images are different from our conventional depictions of First Nation people, just to highlight the limitations of our western photographer’s eye and mind. 