Category — Art

This exhibition is currently taking place at the Musée Quai Branly in Paris and covers magazines, letters, cartoons, photographs, paintings and others types of expression. The exhibition features some of the most revered names of jazz, among them, Billie Holiday, Bessie Smith Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington.

Some of the paintings and photographs as featured here are rather magnificent.

The painting at the top is Jazz (Variante) by Fernand Leger. The 2nd is Homage to Duke, Bessie & Louis by Romare Howard Bearden. I find these and the 1927 Josephine Baker (I must blog about Josephine Baker one day) poster quite lovely.

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Over the last few months, what we have seen of Africans (mainly Kenyans and occasionally Zimbabweans) on the BBC have been people in extreme situations. The images have either been of people dying or dead, people running away from vigilante groups or the police, people demonstrating or people (and especially and worryingly, children) looting and burning. Sometimes the images have been of people doing all the above, all at the same time.

Watching the No 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency based in Botswana on the BBC the other night was a relief as the story featured Africans getting on with their daily lives. Fancy that. The drama/comedy, gentle and funny, featured the utterly lovely Jill Scott as Mma Ramotswe, the detective and was lovingly directed by Anthony Minghella who unfortunately died a few weeks ago.

Credit must also go to the cinematographer who managed to capture the heat, dust, bright, vivid colours and the complex beauty of Africa. It was almost possible to taste this dust and feel the heat in far away (and wintry) London.

The story dealt with difficult issues including domestic violence and superstition from Mma Ramotswe’s point of view and here, the issue was all about Jill Scott’s amazing talent and the strength she brought to the character. Jill Scott had the Botswanian accent down to perfection and looked the part (being of ‘traditional build’). She was authentic and everything focused around her (the camera certainly loves her).

My only gripe was Jill Scott only sung once. She should have sung around the house, while driving, etc. Any excuse to hear Jill Scott sing.

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On International Women of Colour Day, I celebrate by highlighting the work of Magdalene Odundo, Professor of Ceramics at the University College for the Creative Arts.

I cherish the memory of a workshop I attended where Magdalene, soft spoken and charming, presented her work. We, the audience, gave a collective gasp of awe and admiration as we watched her hands adroitly create poetry from clay as she built a stunning pot from scratch – a process brilliantly executed in the most superbly simple way one could imagine.

Magdalene’s work has been exhibited in many places including the Crafts Council at the Victoria & Albert Museum, London, the Museum fur Kunst und Gewerbe, Hamburg and the Hood Museum of Art, Hanover, New Hampshire. Her work is also found in museums worldwide including the Smithsonian, the Gardiner Museum and in private collections. Due to their uniqueness and excellence, the works are sold for quite large sums of money – in 2006, for example, a piece of art was sold for £28,405.

If you look closely at her work, you can see the various forms of women represented; among them, flaring hips, the belly of a pregnant woman and a graceful long neck with the head elegantly tilted back.

Magdalene and her superlative art make me want to stand on a spire and tell the world: This is who we are. See what we are capable of.

Viva Magdalene.

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In early January, I received an e-mail from a man, Mr. Pierre, who wrote to say he was the artistic agent of Florence Béal-Nénakwé, an ‘artist-painter who paints the reminiscences of the African childhood’. He also told me that Florence Béal-Nénakwé ‘paints of oil on canvas, in all vibrations as well as in the field of form as of the chromatic range’. He finished by telling me, rather charmingly I thought, that he was inviting me to ‘divide and discover her artworks and her African imaginary’.

Subsequent e-mails to discover what he meant when he asked me to ‘divide’ remain unanswered.
As Mr. Pierre did not provide any other information on Florence Béal-Nénakwé, I undertook a Google search and found that Florence Béal-Nénakwé is a cubist artist from Cameroon and has exhibited her work quite widely. I also found the information below from this website.

Confirming her African roots through her art, the artist Florence Beal-Nenakwe paints recollections of her Cameroonian childhood. Entirely self-taught, she brings us a picture rich in colour, the inner energy alone linked to her native Cameroon and to her personal life enables her to project this gaiety and hope on canvas. Going from exhibition to exhibition since 1996, she displays her canvases and shares a message of tolerance and acceptance of the difference in the physical or in forms.

I did ‘discover’ Florence Béal-Nénakwé’s artworks as Mr. Pierre had thoughtfully provided the artist’s website.

I love the bright, vivid colours which remind me of the colours you see on a Sunday morning in Africa when people are dressed in their best church-going clothes. I am also intrigued by the messages and stories to be found in different layers when one spends time looking at the artwork.

The paintings below are my favourites.

African carnival

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First a graffiti artist, Banksy’s work has many lovers and an equal number of detractors. I love what he does and think his work is amazing and post-modern as he tries to subvert ‘art’ but with a wicked sense of humour. For his outdoors art, Banksy takes simple and everyday images and blends them into the scenery.

Banksy’s work reminds me of a fantastic mural that used to be at Kenyatta University which I heard was sadly defaced a while ago.

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