The Global Journeys of West African Art

The influence of West African art on Brazil – a consequence of the transatlantic slave trade – may well be an enduring one. Yet the force of its impact remained unacknowledged for some time, only becoming a point of enquiry in the 20th century. In the 1930s, two iterations of an Afro-Brazilian Congress allowed academics to convene in the Brazilian cities of Recife and then Salvador, to discuss – and ultimately validate – the cultural footprint of the country’s African heritage. Some three decades later, when the First World Festival of Negro Arts took place in Dakar, Senegal, in 1966 – a headline-grabbing event that sought to promote Pan-Africanism – Afro-Brazilian artists were invited to display their work, which was by then considered a national asset. And when Festac (Second Festival of Black Arts and Culture) was held in Lagos in 1977, Brazil even staged an exhibition titled ‘The Impact of African Culture on Brazil’, which included sculptures, paintings, drawings and engravings by 13 contemporary artists.

Regardless of these political displays of affinity (and without touching on the motivations behind them), artists in Brazil and West Africa have invariably been alert to the artistic kinship between the two regions, leading to artworks that share themes, materials and motifs – from an abundance of clay and textiles, and patterns extracted from symbology, to a contemplation of ancestral traditions. ‘Echoes in the Present’, a new curated section at this year’s Frieze London, highlights this correlation through the work of ten artists who hail from Benin, Dakar, Lagos, Luanda, Rio de Janeiro, Salvador and São Paulo. ‘For me, this connection has always felt personal, even if I didn’t engage with it directly at first,’ explains Jareh Das, the section’s curator. ‘Growing up in Lagos in the 1990s, the presence of the aguda – descendants of formerly enslaved Yoruba people who returned from Brazil to Nigeria – was simply part of the city’s fabric.’ Although Das does not belong to this Indigenous group, she was mindful that ‘these histories were around me, and that early awareness shaped my interest in how artists from both regions explore cultural lineages in their work.’

The artists being exhibited as part of ‘Echoes in the Present’ have responded to the West Africa-Brazil connection in differing ways. Water is a recurring motif in Aline Motta’s work, linked to Congo-Angolan cosmologies, in which it represents a boundary between the living and the dead. Naomi Lulendo considers Creole culture through totemic sculptures made of metal and basketwork, which reference the decorated wooden pole at the centre of a voodoo temple thought to mediate between the material and spiritual realms. Focusing on the body, Bunmi Agusto is known for her fantastical protagonists that are part human, part spirit. Her ‘Hybrid’ paintings (2020) are based on a self-fashioned piece of folklore according to which each character is born from DNA belonging to the artist, as well as Obatala, the Yoruba deity, revered as the creator of the world. Tadáskía also foregrounds the context in which she creates her multimedia works. The photo series ‘Familiar Constellations’ (2018) documents her Afro-Guarani origins through images that reflect on family, memory and land.

Alberto Pitta, a master of textile printing and serigraphy, has been working for more than 40 years. Across his vibrant cloth compositions are repeated signs and shapes that stem from Yoruba and Candomblé mythology – a strong presence in Salvador and the Recôncavo Baiano.

Afro-Brazilian art histories are also a focal point at Frieze Masters this year. Abdias do Nascimento, a distinguished figure who was nominated for the second time for the Nobel Peace Prize a year before his death in 2011 at the age of 97, is the subject of a presentation by São Paulo’s Galeria MaPa, which includes the early landmark Oricha’s Mother (Mother Nature) (1971) – a symbolic painting that accentuates the figure of a white woman whose womb contains sea creatures and water that surrounds a Black man’s face. Following Do Nascimento’s creation of the Black Experimental Theater in Rio in 1944 and the foundations for what would become the Black Arts Museum in 1950, the self-taught artist embarked on his first series of geometric paintings in 1968 – the year he fled Brazil’s dictatorship and moved to New York. He flourished in America, mounting solo exhibitions at the Harlem Art Gallery, Yale School of Art and Architecture, and the Studio Museum in Harlem. In 1975, Do Nascimento declared, ‘I am merely a painter of Black art.’ In 1989, he elaborated further explaining, ‘What is important to me are Afro-Brazilian myths, religious history, legends.’

Outside of the fair, art from West Africa takes centre stage in an all-encompassing exhibition at Tate Modern that outlines the development of Modern art in Nigeria. Including more than 250 works by over 50 artists, ‘Nigerian Modernism’ is the first show in the UK to examine this history. It features an international network of trailblazing figures, such as Uzo Egonu, Ben Enwonwu, Ladi Kwali and Aina Onabolu. Many of these artists trained in Britain and adopted European techniques while reclaiming their own Indigenous traditions, at the same time as taking note of Europe’s growing fascination with historical African art. Charting intertwined histories and influences, displacements and conjunctions, ‘Echoes in the Present’ and ‘Nigerian Modernism’ capture the interrelated sources from which artists draw: as broad as the Atlantic itself.

This article first appeared in Frieze Week magazine London under the title ‘There and Back Again’.

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^{Main image: Abdias do Nascimento, Circus, 1971. Courtesy: Galeria MaPa, São Paulo. Thumbnail image: Abdias do Nascimento, Oricha’s Mother (Mother Nature), 1971. Courtesy: Galeria MaPa, São Paulo}