USA Africa Dialogue Series - Okwui Enwezor, the Nigerian Origin US Art Scholar and Curator Who Rose to the Pinnacle of the Art World: Olu Oguibe on his Own Role in the Contexts of Enwezor's Achievement

                                                                                                                       

                                                                       

                               

                                                                                        Okwui Enwezor

                                    Nigerian Origin US  Art Scholar and Curator Who Rose to the Pinnacle of the Art World

                                             Olu Oguibe on his Own Role in the Contexts of Enwezor's Achievement

                                                                          Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju

                                                                                       Compcros

                                                               Comparative Cognitive Processes and Systems

                                                "Exploring Every Corner of the Cosmos in Search of Knowledge"  

When I learned about the great  curator and art scholar   Okwui Ewezor through a Nigerian newspaper announcing his directorship of a globally hugely illustrious art show, Documenta 11, 2002,  he seemed like a myth. 

How had a Nigerian penetrated so deeply into a bastion of Western high culture and finance, art in the West being one of the most valuable of commodities, commanding huge sums?

I was later to learn that this man, with only a BA in Political Science, was yet a Professor of Art, published by some of the world's most prestigious arts publishers and was a co-founder of Nka, a journal that was strategic in the global positioning of non-Western art.

I eventually got to see his CV. An amazing document.

Documenta 11 turned out to be a precursor to another towering achievement-his directorship of another stratospheric art event, the Venice Biennale in 2015, making him the first person to have directed those two events.

The Western press was also agog in wonder as to the scale of his achievement.

I watched his progress from a distance, another highlight being his appointment as the director of the prestigious Haus Der Kunst museum in Germany.

This was clearly a man dramatizing a practically ultimate vision of meritocratic attainment. 

Sadly, I later learnt the master had contracted cancer. He died this year.

This year alone, Nigeria lost three cultural giants.

Olabisi Silva, strategic in placing African art more decisively on the world map from her base in Lagos. 

Okwui Enwezor whose work contributed to re-configuring how art is perceived and presented, highlighting an international  configuration at the global centre represented by Western dominance of the global art world, an internationalization that contributed to better positioning for African art. 

In the Nigerian newspaper story where I first read about him, he had put out an open call for photographers to submit work for Documenta.  I kept in touch with a Lagos photographer who exhibited in Documenta 11 on account of this call and who  described to me how viewers  in the exhibition thought his pictures of the huge masses of people crowding Lagos bus stops were photo-shopped.

We also lost Pius Adesanmi, a supreme master of the use of the Web as a vehicle for high quality discourse,  a highly accomplished scholar and pedagogue, in action across Africa, the West and the Internet as an academic guide.

Now that these masters have left, the need to take stock of their achievements, mapping and interpreting them,  is as urgent as ever.

I am particularly interested in the three of them on account of their distinctive ways of addressing the questions of the value of individual qualities and attainments in relation to  geographical positioning in making global impact, each of them addressing this question in their distinctive ways through their lives.

Adesanmi's name is being immortalized in a number of ways. I am exploring the significance of the achievements of Olabisi Silva and Okwui Enwezor through organizing information about them using Facebook Pages. 

One of my first presentations on the  Enwezor   page is  what is now better understood as an ironic and particularly moving 2013 Facebook post by his former collaborator, Nigerian origin US art professor, culture scholar, artist and poet Olu Oguibe and the  discussions inspired by that post. 

I present here responses to the same post on Oguibe's   Facebook  account and in the  Facebook group the University of African Art.

1. From Oguibe's Facebook account

                                      Olu Oguibe - Okwui Enwezor and the Venice Biennale 

Olu Oguibe

December 6, 2013 ·

Okwui Enwezor and the Venice Biennale

Just the other day while reading the recently embargoed Diary of Malcolm X, I mentioned to friends here on Facebook that I thought it rather curious that on the day that Martin Luther King won the Nobel Peace Prize on October 14, 1964, (at age 35), there was not a single mention of the news in Malcolm's diary. Fair enough: Dr. King and his affairs did not much preoccupy his fellow leader and brother. Still, to someone like me, the silence did seem curious.

I just came across the news that Okwui Enwezor will direct the 56th Biennale of Venice. Although this is obviously not necessarily the high point of his illustrious career, I nevertheless think it's a historic moment that no one could have imagined nineteen years ago when we began working together. He's now directed practically every major global contemporary art event in Europe, making him the most accomplished American curator of international contemporary art of this generation (as well as African, of course). Still, the biennial of Venice is special for being the pioneer international art biennial. I am certainly glad to see his career reach this peak. It is well deserved.

Enwezor and I went our separate ways many years ago, and our differences are irreconcilable even till death. However, I know no one who has contributed more to our knowledge and understanding of global contemporary art or inspired so many to believe that even in the dark and treacherous dungeon of contemporary art and its often diabolical politics, with exceptional talent, persistence and singular focus, it is possible to navigate one's way to prominence and relevance. And, despite the contentions of his many discontents, there is no doubt how many artists, curators, and cultural practitioners out there today, of all origins and nationalities, owe something of their career to Enwezor and his work.

Personally, even in my relative obscurity, I cannot help but recognize that Enwezor's appointment is the positive culmination of the work that I began as a young critic in Nsukka in the 1980s bringing a uniquely and clearly absent African voice to the global appreciation of contemporary art. 

When I began to write about artists and their work in the London weekly, West Africa, I was barely 22, in a rural university town in Nigeria struggling to begin my own career as an artist, and I had no role models. All I had was my small manual typewriter and a sense that there was important work waiting to be done. Yet, that early work, and the pioneering work of people like Widdup Coubagy, Salah M. Hassan, and Skoto Aghahowa would inspire Enwezor and others to transform the discourse of global contemporary art.

The moral, I think, and the lesson that I often try to pass on to young people today, is that you're never too young to change history, and to do so, you need not look to monumental or spectacular acts. Sometimes, just going with your guts, believing in yourself, and doing things different while having a sense of history are more than enough. Never say; O, but I'm only just 22, and never belittle your talent or marginalize yourself.

I have never doubted Enwezor's enormous talent or his competence, and there's no doubt that as far as the tried and tested conventions of global mega-exhibitions go, he'll do a decent job. And, whatever else he does or doesn't do, his mere presence has made and will continue to make a difference.
12.5.13

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  Anne Collins Smith Olu, "Authentic/ Ex-Centric: Conceptualism in Contemporary African Art " inspired my whole curatorial practice and introduced me to the work of Berni Searle. Thank you

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  Obi Nwaegbe Casting personal prejudice aside to pay glowing tribute. The stuff of greatness...

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  Olu Oguibe Thank you, Anne. We both owe that to the unassailable vision of Salah M. Hassan.

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  Shaheen Merali "Sometimes, just going with your guts, believing in yourself, and doing things different while having a sense of history are more than enough"- groundwork, lovely, thank you

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  Okey Ndibe Olu, this statement earned you as much credit as it did Okwui. Since getting to know you many moons ago, I've respected your versatility as an artist and intellectual, your extraordinary talents as an artist and deep knowledge of issues that bear on art and culture. I'm saddened by your suggestion that your differences with Okwui are irreconcilable unto death. I hope Okwui doesn't share that sentiment, and that you will come, in time, to reconsider and revise it. For those of us who know Okwui, you, and Chika Okeke-Agulu, the absolutely most exhilarating scenario is to see the three of you collaborate on some project(s). Why, none of you should set out to foreclose that heart-lifting possibility. Biko nu!

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  Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung Thank you for this Olu Oguibe... you all paved the way so well with all tools at your disposal. All we are doing today is just a trial to walk that path with courage, respect and diligence. Kudos to you guys!

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  Clamlab By Clam great

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  Uzoma Nwaekpe Prof. Olu Oguibe, at your place in Brooklyn, I remember once asking you about the rift between you and Okwui. You made some explanations to me, but never did I sense any speck of bitterness in you that day. It is a mark of your great spirit to read this glowing tribute to Okwui. Either way, you two have attained, you two are pathfinders. My respect is laid out of course, any day!

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  Clamlab By Clam Oga olu please do listen to okey, thank you, please do reconcile...please...do.....

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  Bröther Owusu-Ankomah Wonderful, inspiring, historical and prophetic. You are not obscure in our consciousness great Olu Oguibe. Your legendary presence in the history of contemporary African and world art is secure.

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  Joshua Amaezechi Some differences are by their nature convincingly irreconcilable but so long as we are willing to keep the doors open to working together in those areas of agreement, there is hope for the future.

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  Anne Collins Smith Magda!

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  Anjalika Sagar I don't like gatekeepers of any description... many many people were involved in charting a course of relation to contemporary and modern cultural practices in Africa and India and South America ... . we are all influencing each other all the time. I do not like gatekeepers, they seem very much trapped by another era and are out of the present in every way imaginable.

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  Chiedu Ogosi What more can I add than to beg the political fine artist, olu to allow for reconciliation ......deje!

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  Lanre Ayoade Inspiring. Olu setted out at dawn.

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  Olu Oguibe Anjalika, where some of us see gatekeepers, others see door openers. Or both. I do my best not to ignore or deny the positive simply because there's an element of the negative. There's far too much cynicism in the world, and that, I think, is corrosive and ultimately reactionary. I try to acknowledge the positive work that people have done, no matter what I think of them as individuals or what they think of me.

  
  You're right that we are all influencing each other all the time. Yet, we can't pretend that people play no part in creating opportunity or enabling talent, and we can't disregard the critical importance of pioneering work or simply take it for granted. I honestly believe that Mr. Enwezor has done more than his fair share in those regards.
  

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  Steven Holmes Mandela and de Klerk. Oguibe and Enwezor? Yes.

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  Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons Let there be peace, love, tolerance. Then light shines to and for all.

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  מיכאל פרדיננד We have much to learn from all of you.

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  Annie Paul Now an added impetus to visit the VB. thanks for this Olu, have always wanted to know how you feel about Okwui's exploits...your honesty and generosity are inspiring.

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  Ololade Bamidele Well said Olu, and quite magnanimous, considering your fairly well-known irreconcilable differences and the bad blood some people feel it spawned. I have followed both your work and that of Okwui for over a decade now. But, did your ever publish "The Curatorial Burden"? Just wondering....

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  Akinwolere Muyiwa @Steve Holmes,i love your comparism!

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  EL Loko Hi to all of you, and especially to Olu Oguibe, I haven´t try to understand what the comment of Olu Oguibe and Enwezor is about. My concern is about the reaction of the artists in which most of them try to give right to what Oguibe is writing. I am so …See More

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  Ikengwu Steve This tribute is Olu's handshake to Enwezor for a historic achievement in spite of their 'irreconciliable differences'. Good elders dont habour eternal differences except in matters of God & Satan. I commend Olu for praising a worthy achievement of a combatant. One day both men might share a common glory & the dustbin of history will be glad to welcome their so called differences.

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  Patricia Obiazor Ijoma-jacob NEVER???

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  Andile Magengelele Smoking a peace pipe....

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  Lanre Ayoade Lets not
  dwell on crisis where there is none. It is the significance of Olu's  post here that matters, and it is the that achievements of both Ewenzor  and Olu hold the light up for Africa. We are there right in the center  of it all, autonomously contributing to the global context. We are no  longer some peripheral objects of curiousity. The evidence of it is  glaring in the recent unprecedented visibility contemporary African Art  enjoys globally.

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  Gbenga Adesina This is high, this is high.Highness of spirit...

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  Bröther Owusu-Ankomah Well said EL Loko, at last, comes a voice of maturity and wisdom, which boldly witnesses to the truth. If we do not come together as one to rebuild the black nation, who will?.

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  Olu Oguibe "If the entire universe persuaded me to reconcile with the defendant I would not." EL Loko, could you identify for me whose words those are? I bet you simply can't. Those are the words of Nelson Mandela in 1996, referring to his wife and companion of 38 years, the woman who held his family together and saw him through 27 years of imprisonment. Mandela stuck to those words to his last breath. When Enwezor and I worked together many years ago, we did not come to you for advice. Anyone who knows Olu Oguibe also knows that he does not live by the uncritical, unreasoning instincts of the herd. I look to history for examples, and not to people whose ideas and reasoning are too uninformed and unsophisticated to be useful or meaningful. By the way, I also find your comments quite offensive because you sound as if you know why Oguibe and Enwezor went their separate ways. That's not very intelligent, but I'll forgive you.

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  Anjalika Sagar This all seems very macho territorial. I have seen that territorial attitude and it stinks is nothing to do with art and artists is all to do with power and lifestyle. Artists are pawns in the games and lunacies of super curators. So let's see how politically emancipatory this process will be for everyone concerned.

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  Olu Oguibe Lol. Anjalika, I worry that you presume too much. I also fear--and please correct me if I'm wrong--that you may be too heavily inclined toward the negative, as is my friend El Loko above. That usually makes people see things that are not there.
  I come to most issues from several angles. I think that sometimes, people forget that I am an artist, too. I am not a career curator, and certainly not a super curator. The very first show that I put together for an institution, for Bluecoat Liverpool in 1994, I asked not to be credited as curator. Over the years, I've declined numerous invitations to curate.
  More importantly, for me, criticism without appreciation is like faith without work. I believe people should focus on work, and not on rote deconstruction or conspiracy theories. There's always several sides to every coin.

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  Anjalika Sagar I am not talking about you but about the system that is produced by such characters. Mine are not conspiracy theories they are facts.

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  Widdup Coubagy Mon Capitan, Some of them do not understand your position. The opportunists see doors opening for them.. "If the entire universe persuaded me to reconcile with the defendant I would not. That is heavy stuff. I feel the same way about certain people. I understand you." Malcolm X. Martin Luther. Most of the readers are not seeing your point. Let us be the Che Guavera's. Fighters. Thinkers. Intellectually honest. Uncompromising. And let them be the power and exhibition hungry.

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  Olu Oguibe EL Loko, anyone who thinks of Olu Oguibe as a "typical Black man", whatever that means, is retarded. I have no desire to engage you further. I wrote the note above for two reasons. First, to recognize what I consider in all sincerity a landmark moment in the long struggle to open the space of global contemporary art and art history, and second, to acknowledge a deserving pioneer whose contributions to that struggle are irrefutable. Had I not added the single sentence about Enwezor and I going our separate ways--a single sentence in a note of several paragraphs--you would have nothing to write about. I think that some people recognize that sentence as honest. I sincerely have no desire to engage in a back and forth centered on ignorance and negativities: I have far too many other things to do. Now, if you please. Thanks.

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  Widdup Coubagy Oguibe is our Bernard Berenson. There is a big difference between Berenson and Alfred Barr. Oguibe. Generosity of heart. Nobility of character. And yet, hard and noble as brass.

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  Olu Oguibe @ Anjalika, I'm sorry if I misunderstood you. I oppose the gatekeeping, but I actually do not retain a distaste for the individuals and I'd be surprised if you do. What I see among the major curators at the top today is a methodical rotation of assignments rather than a contest over territory. And yes, they may then try to control admission into that group. My attitude to that, however, is to recognize that just over a decade and a half ago, there would be no African or Asian on that roster. Today, there are, and these individuals are able to curate not only in Mumbai or Delhi or Dakar or Johannesburg, but at the Tate Modern and Documenta and Venice Biennale, also. That, in my view, is significant, because the presence always opens up opportunity. I believe that every foot in the door is, in the long run, a positive thing.

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  Steven Holmes "What I see among the major curators at the top today is a methodical rotation of assignments rather than a contest over territory." COULD NOT AGREE MORE. Very well said.

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  Anjalika Sagar I retain an indifference to those who appear to be constituted on the side of the good based on presumptions due to their class race or gender. Capitalism has already commodified binary forms of agency and things are not always as they appear. Essentializing was never a good idea anyway. My position is this : I refuse that which has been refused to me as I do not believe that we will be liberated in the current system. (Jack Halberstam on Fred Moten and Stephano Haney from The Undercommons): "What black people, indigenous peoples, queers and poor people want is this - We cannot be satisfied with the recognition and acknowledgement generated by the very system that denies a) that anything was ever broken and b) that we deserved to be the broken part; so we refuse to ask for recognition and instead we want to take apart, dismantle, tear down the structure that, right now, limits our ability to find each other, to see beyond it and to access the places that we know lie outside its walls. We cannot say what new structures will replace the ones we live with yet, because once we have torn shit down, we will inevitably see more and see differently and feel a new sense of wanting and being and becoming. What we want after "the break" will be different from what we think we want before the break and both are necessarily different from the desire that issues from being in the break". I do not believe 'we' have got anywhere because Black people are in Hollywood films or that Obama is in power or most certainly I do not believe we have progressed as a political body because of Venice .. No .. quite the opposite .. One has to avoid being captured in these traps of representation and expectation and produce something else. These ' Black' figures are constituted to play with our expectations and this is a mistake because in fact they are like cloaked weaponized Trojan Horses capable of unleashing all kinds of power including vicious conservative agendas. It is better for all of us if these kinds of platforms were interesting and within our view, tangible and useful. But they are not. I agree these positions of cultural power are rotational. A radical potentiating proposal would be far better and will unfold because otherwise is schizophrenic.
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  Anjalika Sagar Inspired by Fred Moten and Stephano Harney and their new book entitled The Undercommons - Fugitive Planning and Black Study.

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  Warren Neidich touche Olu.

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  Best Ochigbo That irreconcilable differences was reconciled at the cross. Congratulations for high praises made possible by Jesus Christ himself. You have chosen the good paths.

2. From the  Facebook group the University of African Art

28You, Moyo Okediji and 26 others

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  Karen Seneferu "so many to believe that even in the dark and treacherous dungeon of contemporary art and its often diabolical politics, with exceptional talent, persistence and singular focus, it is possible to navigate one's way to prominence and relevance. "

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  Benedict Onyemenam Dr. Oguibe, many thanks for this contribution. Some of us in our 40s are still young enough to receive your words as great inspiration! Dalu.

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  Bröther Owusu-Ankomah Wonderful, inspiring, historical and prophetic. You are not obscure in our consciousness great Olu Oguibe. Your legendary presence in the history of contemporary African and world art is secure.

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  Wiz Kudowor Well said. You express everything so clearly. Cheers

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  Ernestine White Thank for this.

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  Annette Loubser This is really interesting and inspiring - never to young to make a difference especially for me.

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  Moyo Okediji Dr. Olu Oguibe, couple of things:
  First, nobody does African art better than you do.
  And nobody writes African art better than you do.
  
  Yet there are major problems that you and many others are ignoring—and this must irk you, yet it is my duty to say it.
  
  Like you, I hate slavery. As Sojourner Truth is quoted as saying, she probably would have freed more slaves if only they knew they were slaves.
  
  Africans once slaved for the world. Yet, as our kingdoms, cities, and villages crumbled, we built the great citadels of the modern west, including the White House in Washington, DC.
  
  Now African art is slaving for global art. African artists, art historians, and curators are turning into apes and parrots of Babylonian culture.
  
  Once they drop us a banana or some nuts, you get the drift.
  
  We need to rethink who we are, as we throw around these jargons of modernity, contemporary, postmodern, and all the shibboleths that they make us ape.
  
  We cannot continue to build the empire of Babylon.
  Not even in Venice, a great slave port.

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  Moyo Okediji No, Olu Oguibe, I'm not saying it is wrong to participate in these international biennales. It is wonderful that we can do it. But who else could have picked the cotton fields, and tended miles of sugar cane plantations, without the melanin and muscles of Africans? I congratulate us that we can do it. But can we now begin to do it for us too? Can we get to that point, where we can build things for Africa? Where is our Mandela in African art? Or is it okay for us to continue to live in the ghettos of global art apartheid, in these reservations and homelands made specially to keep Africans down? These are questions that we face today, Dr. Oguibe.

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  Moyo Okediji As we congratulate one another on our "abilities," we must remind ourselves of our responsibilities. We have not yet accomplished a "global" art culture. Everything is still local. And sometimes I wonder why these illusions are not easy to see for the trompe l'oeil effects that they truly are.

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  Moyo Okediji The entire city of Venice--including its metropolis--is under 2 million in population. Lagos metropolitan area is about ten times that number. Where is the Lagos Biennale? Well, we will wait. We will wait until "they" find us money. Until then, we will stare at the wall. And we will continue to enjoy Venice as the ultimate dream, and long to be invited, because aren't we just apes and parrots of Babylon?

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  Benedict Onyemenam Ah, may the day come when we can celebrate only, and vent no remarks on our abiding disadvantages. So many non-Africans built their scholarship on Africa, often at great personal sacrifice. One of ours is doing the reverse, a strategic adjustment probably made at great cost, and with few guiding precedents. Celebrations alone are due. The scope of Olu's comments above are sufficiently QED. What remains is that we pop champagne and profer generous toasts; and when fully recovered from our reveries, we may then strategise on the several challenges that so eloquently confront our beloved continent and peoples.

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  Moyo Okediji May the day come indeed, when we can celebrate only, and not have to continue to struggle. That day is not here today. We have no abiding disadvantage, Benedict Onyemenam. We are supremely positioned to master our own fate. Let us celebrate. And let us realize what we are celebrating. And where we need to go from here. It is not the time to sleep. It is the time to wake up. I look forward to the day we can celebrate only, and that day will only come if we keep reminding ourselves that the journey ahead is really far, and the road rocky.

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  Olu Oguibe Lol. Sorry, Moyo, but I don't get the drift. The Venice Biennale was not established by an artist or a curator. It was established by the City of Venice, just like the Johannesburg Biennial was established and discontinued by the Johannesburg Municipality. As you know, I don't do the "Babylon" thing. It's too fuzzy and inchoate for me. I am not a slave. Enwezor is not a slave. El Anatsui is not a slave. Yinka Shonibare is not a slave. I leave it to you to decide whether you are a slave because you do your job and do it well. You can't hold honest men and and women doing the very best they can to excel in their chosen fields before the whole world responsible for the failures of cities and states. That's not valid logic to me: that's sentimental illogic. The City of Busan spends $40 million every two years to mount its biennial. Olu Oguibe does not have $40 million to mount a biennial. What he has is the modest gift to make art, and the will to bring the talent of others to the knowledge of the world. That's what he will strive to continue to do.

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  Moyo Okediji People are cities, Olu Oguibe. There is no city of Venice independent of people. You are doing great--much better than most of us. But, the shackles you don't see, you cannot remove. It's been the problem we face for generations in Africa. This is why I invoked Sojourner Truth. We just don't see the shackles. We think they are gilded bracelets.

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  Olu Oguibe Thanks, but I'm neither deluded nor stupid. There isn't any "shackle" that I don't see but you do. Let's drop the shackles and slaves discourse. I recall speaking of doing what I can to revive a once proud but disadvantaged nation not so long ago. Who was among the first to raise the flag of fear and trepidation? Prof. Moyo Okediji. So, no, keep the slave talk for your undergrad seminars, sir, lol.

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  Benedict Onyemenam Prof, I do not refer to any innate disadvantage, but rather to our justified remarks on the paucity of due recognition for art and artists of African origin. Going forward, and in full agreement with you, the future is in our hands. How we address it is another matter. It suffices that this is not just a problem caused by or for non-Africans. Attributing fault will not suffice. I operate a 200 square meter gallery here in Vienna, and I need curators and critics who may advice my Galerie program. I need networks to those who know much better, before I drown in the opacity of my own uninformed enthusiasm. The future will come when enough Africans have or harness the knowledge you guys have, along with the emerging private wealth within the continent. African cities and institutions, by themselves, can not act transformationally. It starts from private initiative.

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  Moyo Okediji "Therefore, good Brutus, be prepared to hear:
  And since you know you cannot see yourself
  So well as by reflection, I, your glass,
  Will modestly discover to yourself
  That of yourself which you yet know not of."

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  Olu Oguibe Quite frankly, Prof., I find anything that insinuates that I'm blind rather condescending and exhausting. I reject any inference that I am a slave but too stupid to recognize it. If you indulge me, that's crap and I could do without it.
  When was the last time that you presented any interest in Africa--a city, a group of entrepreneurs, a group of individuals--with a carefully drawn up budget to build an art center or a museum, or to establish a biennial? When was the last time you sent money to support an art project in Africa? Unlike you, I will not presume that you haven't. In fact, my natural inclination is to believe that you have. Because I think that we presume too much of one another that is negative, and in that process, we belittle each other.
  When was the last time you helped raise $2 million dollars to hold a biennial in Africa? Enwezor did that sixteen years ago, and you and I have no idea what other projects he may be funding in Africa. You have no idea what I might be doing in Africa. So, to pull out all these deprecatory slave analogies does not make much sense to me, nor is it useful. Again, I don't do the "Babylon" thing because it's devoid of any critical or analytical depth.

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  Bröther Owusu-Ankomah My dear Moyo Okediji, I think you understand the collective blindnes of our people, which i keep harping upon. Does anyone understand your wisdom? Non does even seem to know what you are wrting about to understand you. A whole continent seems to be asleep, within and without. Is there even hope for the Black Nation? "Kai su technon". Contemporary African art is till in it's swaddling clothes. Benedict Onyemenam says it as it is. The future truly lies in our own hands.

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  Malcolm Payne Christ! What the fuck is going on ... in this niche?

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  Bröther Owusu-Ankomah Wow Olu Oguibe, i think you are taking it all too personal. Cool down please. It is not about you. It is about all of us as a collective. What really suprises me is that you do always hvave numbers to like our battle cries. Peace my dear. It is about our coming together as one for a good purpose.

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  Olu Oguibe Malcolm, I have no idea what people are talking about here. Artists are making and selling work in South Africa. Yet according to Moyo and Owusu-Ankomah, they are all slaves. Artists are making and selling work in Nigeria, and they've done so for decades. Yet, according to these folks, they're all slaves. Bröther Owusu-Ankomah, could you explain to me what is so complex and sophisticated in Moyo's comments that I cannot understand it, being so asleep? Do you guys actually recognize when you insult people?

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  Ernestine White These conversations although heated are food for thought. I thank u all for yr candidness. To move the conversation A bit side ways a minute, cape town has unveiled the building of a museum of contemporary African art to be completed in 2016. what would be yr hopes for such an institution? What would be the advise for the curators navigating in such a space?

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  Olu Oguibe Sorry, Bröther, but you and I are not a collective. I do not reason as a collective. I reason as a critical individual. An idea is either valid or it is not. You may be asleep or blind or a slave: I am not, and for the life of me, I cannot see what in the work that I've done over the past three decades would give anyone the idea that you bunch every African artist, curator and thinker together and you refer to them as slaves or asleep "within and without". That's irresponsible.

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  Bröther Owusu-Ankomah My dear Olu Oguibe, you truly know i will be the last person to underestimate your intelligence. I have always admired your high intelligence. But you see, you are wrong to underestimate Moyo Okediji's intelligence and wisdom. He is not talking about buying and selling primarily. He is talking about our cultural independence. It is we must create our own Biennales, Museums and give our artworks the wotth they deserve, dictate our own prices as we educate the rising middle class population, the rich and our governments to chrish art. Most of us if not all, look to the west when it comes to the arts. Are we then not slaves?

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  Olu Oguibe And that is such a complex idea, Bröther Owusu-Ankomah, that Olu Oguibe can't understand it, right? And the institutions that people are building in South Africa, in Nigeria, in Egypt and Kenya and Uganda and Ethiopia, those are all irrelevant, right? Art centers, photography biennials, galleries, museums, art journals, university programs, those are all irrelevant, right? Or you just happen to be ignorant of those developments?
  Now, I am presuming that you are also building an art space in Ghana, and that you are sending money to support several initiatives that young people have set up there in recent years to enable emerging talent, and that you've set up and funded a journal to discuss the work of African artists, and that you're fundraising to support the work of African artists and the cause of African art. And not just waffling on here about "our cultural independence", right?
  I like to see what people are doing about cultural independence, not what they're saying. I like to see what Owusu-Ankomah has done about cultural independence, not some waffling on about it. Unless you have some evidence of what you are doing and what you have done in the area of institution and capacity building to advance the work of others and not just yours, then, keep your peace, good sir, and don't speak to others about whole continents asleep within and without. Because I don't think that you're well informed on the subject.

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  Bröther Owusu-Ankomah Life and the arts are not about the individual. It is about the individual in the collective. Each playing her or his part towards the completion of the grand design. You have played your part, and it continues.

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  Olu Oguibe It's not as simple, sir. Are you participating in institution building, or merely going on about a whole continent asleep within and without? I would appreciate an answer.

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  Benedict Onyemenam We often revert to the expression 'Slaves' within a very dubious historical continuum. We were not the first slaves, nor the last. There were no black slaves absent of black slavers, and fifty years after independence, I detest the use of terms such as post-colonialism and slavery to catch any bereft individual African condition. We are our own problem, and nobody outside Africa is holding us back. I remain fascinated by the quantity and quality of published art/historical scholarship authored by near-intrepid Africans - brave engagements which lacked African institutional support and promised no near-term benefits. Add to these the huge challenge of organising art events primarily sponsored from outside and hindered by local challenges. You all have participated in various ways, and must continue, hopefully with increased collaboration. On the other hand, my first intro, two years ago, to the world of online discussion of African art, was the regrettable attacks on Diaspora Africans. It sickened me. To ''enslave'' myself, I echo the thoughts of a Western someone who asked that we focus on what we can do as individuals, and skipping the country bit, I suggest that we rather than denigrate others, we celebrate them, and pursue greater collaborations.

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  Bröther Owusu-Ankomah Why attack me Olu Oguibe? Now i do really think you are undestimating me. Why should i build an art space? I am an artist not a curator, neither am i a gallerist. Or are you building an art space somewhere in Africa? Should we assume you've bought large tracts of land for this purpose that we should know about? Our continent begins slowly to arise. Moyo Okediji and i believe our continent will arise indeed. It is just that the pace is too slow. Do you not think centuries of deprivation is enough? Well, i will be going back home soon. Why not come with me to contribute to the coming unavoidable renaissance. I am still hoping you can one day soon gird up the loins of your mind, to go back to the motherland and take a leading role in the rebirth of the continent. You could be a quickener, a champion, you will rally many good minding intellectuals around you. What are you waiting for?

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  Moyo Okediji Olu Oguibe,I totally expect you would misunderstand me.
  And you are alone. It seems there are no words to describe this imprisonment of Africans in ways people can understand. …See More

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  Charles Okereke Much of eloquent words of fire and water hurled at the same time .Certainly some words do brandish whip which some times seem like an attack and also can infuriates. But as someone commented, it could be the time to purge long concealed bile which in occasions like this seeks for vents.In truth the Africans in diaspora will certainly find this conflict resurfaced in different form without a deeper insight to its causative tendency.If this bitter exchange which i see as useful and appropriate in this times of meaningful artistic growth and pursuit could be assessed objectively by each person, it could well form a new path for those who are humble to be open to accept its underlying truth about "self".A true and free artistic discuss and platform can only emerge out of the soil to which it belongs.To be a great contributor to the hitherto western standards of arts and its rippled influence could be slavish in dependency, also an attempt to dislodge the speck in another, while the beam remains in oneself constitute a Pharisaical approach that could seem one lopsided insulting to certain person(s), and could be perceived as offensive.Like all great minds, who have achieved great accomplishment and has found clarity in their endeavors, moments as this could be used for personal introspection, which may yield a far reaching result, which in its wake will benefit and develop the continent of Africa.

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