Abstraction on the African Continent

Abstract art is one of the most common images that pops into your head when the subject of your conversation manages to traverse into the enigmatic world of the visual surreal. You may picture a Picasso—a sprawling canvas spattered with cubist realities. Or perhaps a Miró?—With its varying oblong shapes in different opacities dancing on yellowed paper. It’s indefinite to describe, but it elicits a feeling nonetheless.

When dissecting the nature of Abstraction, it’s very easy to fall behind the colonial lenses through which most of Art History has based its findings under and look beyond the age-old tales of a Eurocentric Abstract Art Revolution. Everywhere you look in reference to Abstraction as a whole, you’ll see the names of the likes of Wassily Kandinsky, Henri Matisse, and Pablo Picasso as the “Fathers of Abstract Art” and while that be true of the nature of the 1910s Abstract Art Revolution, it is not entirely the truth of the origin of Abstraction in Art as a whole.

According to most Art Historians, the true ‘birth’ of Abstraction is discovered and repacked to be rediscovered throughout several timelines, spanning across entire centuries. As far back as to the Stone Age, “Abstraction” in an artistic sense has existed, however, it wasn’t until the start of the 20th century that Russian Artist Wassily Kandinsky was crowned the “Father of Abstraction” with his 1911 publication, On the Spiritual in Art (IDEELART.com) and the term Abstract Art was coined for a Western audience. This at-the-time controversial deviation of Kandinsky’s questioned the widespread belief of art in its astute depiction in conjunction with Godliness—an idea dating back to the Renaissance Era. Tate Museum goes as far as to say the foundation upon which Abstract Art is built on is to, “not attempt to represent an accurate depiction of a visual reality,” but rather seek to disrupt and challenge what we believe to be real.

So now that we know to a degree what Abstraction is, what’s the deal?

The muddying of the history of Abstraction is one that mirrors many histories of several different cultures around the world. The West has played a key role in carefully orchestrating the debasement of Indigenous Art—specifically African and Eastern Art—as a means to develop and maintain a hierarchy within the modes of creative expression. In layman’s terms, historians have successfully been active participants in cultural appropriation. Art Blogger Michael Owens writes, “African sculptures were presented to a curious public as artifacts from an inferior culture”; this was seen in the demonisation of ‘barbaric and primitive’ African culture and it was thus stripped of any inkling of monetary or intellectual value. This came to be an integral stitching in the cloth of our understanding of Abstraction through the violent acquisition of African artwork by means of oppression.

Within the African context—albeit varying amongst each separate region—Abstract Art has served as a conduit to connect oneself with a higher, metaphysical and spiritual realm.

Commonly referred to as ‘artifacts,’ African artwork seized during conflicts and acquisitions within the continent preserved the identities of a vast number of cultures, spanning across generations. Throughout the African landscape, masks, sculptures, engravings and paintings have had the function to sustain a line of communication to the ancestral ways of being. Specifically, “traditional African sculpture is both functional and expressive. Abstract representations of the human figure weren’t just for decoration. They served a purpose,” (Owens). And of course, these ideals were lost in translation as they were dissected and commodified for Western consumption through means of appropriation.