Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art
4525 Oak Street
Kansas City
816-751-1278
Bloch Building Galleries
Tapping Currents:
Contemporary African Art
and the Diaspora
November 17, 2007-April 13, 2008

This exhibition brings the work of seven internationally renowned artists and eight new media works together for the first time, providing insight into the recent explosion of contemporary African art on the international scene.

Tapping Currents accentuates the individuality of each work of art and celebrates the artist's freedom. Identity is no longer linked exclusively to one's country of origin, but instead, to how one creates the self through assimilation of a wide variety of intellectual, psychological and cultural experiences. Artists in the exhibition come from diverse racial, ethnic, social, economic, political, and religious backgrounds. their art encompasses a broad range of expression related to African traditions.

• Samuel Fosso — In a vibrant photograph Fosso manipulates identity and gender in Self-Portrait (1997), a staged self-portrait that presents his fantasy of a liberated African-American woman in the 1970s.

• Odili Odita — Fusion (2006) embraces the hard edges of Minimalism, but is inspired by sources as diverse as Nigerian textiles and landscape, jazz, cyberspace and Op Art.

• Yinka Shonibare — Big Boy (2002) presents a Victorian imperialist, a colonizer, clothed in intensely colored and patterned fabric. The artist uses this signature fabric to question ideas about colonialism, authenticity, commodity, and identity.

• El Anatsui — Hover (2003), made of recycled aluminum liquor bottle tops, is the almost alchemical transformation of a humble material into a dazzling sculpture rich in culturally relevant meanings.

• Kwesi Owusu-Ankomah — Movement 34 (2002) uses symbols from all over the world interwoven with lifelike images of African Men. These are utopian paintings representing a harmonious world of interconnection. It is not important that the viewer interpret all the ideograms. Together, they offer a new global language that transcende time and culture. Owusu-Ankomah's figures represent humankind, and, like the idealized human form realized during the Renaissance, the men symbolize perfection within this new realm.

• Julie Mehretu — Dispersion (2002) with its multiple and dynamic forms, evokes a sense of geographic migration and serves as a metaphor for the fluctuating realities of globalism.

• Georgia Papageorge — Africa Rifting: Lines of Fire, Namibia/Brazil (2001) is a video of an environmental installation using swaths of red fabric along the coastlines of Namibia and Brazil. Africa Rifting uses the ancient geological Gondwanaland rift as a metaphor for the division between peoples and cultures. Papageorge hopes that her work will help heal the rifts between humankind.

In order to expand the number of artists represented in Tapping Currents, eight new media works are presented as a group and screened in Atkins Auditorium January 18 and 19, and April 4 and 5. Like the art in the Project Space, these reinforce the aesthetic and expressive diversityof African art and art of the diaspora. Videos include IngridMwangiRobertHutter's Mzungu (2006), Minette Vári's Quake (2007), Sue Williamson's Welcome to the Jet Hotel (2004), Zoulikha Bouabdellah's Dansons (2003), Yinka Shonibare's A Masked Ball (2004), and Georgia Papageorge's Africa Rifting: Lines of Fire, Namibia/Brazil.

Georgia Papageorge, Africa Rifting: Lines of Fire, Namibia/Brazil, 2001, Photographs: The 400-meter long line is made of banners used for a cross formation; a drawing of the Chi Rho symbol in dune sand, June 13, 2001; flying a banner between the two Diogo Cão Crosses at Cape Cross, Namibia, June 18, 2001.

Yinka Shonibare, from Un ballo in maschera (A masked ball), detail, 2004, colour video, sound, 32:00, edition of 6, Collection of the artist, © Yinka Shonibare, courtesy of James Cohan Gallery, New York.

Samuel Fosso, Self-Portrait, 1997. Chromogenic photograph, 45 x 45 inches. The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. Gift of Nina and Michael Zilkha.

El Anatsui, Hover.

Yinka Shonibare (1962 - ), Big Boy, 2002, Art Institute of Chicago.