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Return of the Rudeboy: Ska, Swagger and ‘Sapologie’ at Somerset House
After reading Sean O’Hagan’s thought-provoking preview of the ‘Return of the Rudeboy’ exhibition at Somerset House in London – titled, ‘Rude Boys: Shanty Town to Savile Row’ (The Guardian/Observer, 24th May 2014) – I placed this event quite high on my list of top 10 “must see” summer showcases, and managed to get along to…
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Reflections on the legacies of ‘Statues Also Die’ (Présence Africaine, 1953) re. the museums sector in France today
Earlier this year an article by Tom Devriendt was posted to the online discussion forum ‘Africa is a Country’ to commemorate the life and work of French filmmaker Alain Resnais (1922-2014), who passed away on 1st March (Devriendt, 2014). The central focus of this piece was to celebrate the achievements of Resnais and his co-director Chris Marker…
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![Yinka Shonibare MBE’s ‘Jardin d’Amour’ [Garden of Love] (Musée du Quai Branly, Paris, 2007)](https://museumgeographies.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/mdqb-jardin-the-confession-2007.jpg?w=600)
Yinka Shonibare MBE’s ‘Jardin d’Amour’ [Garden of Love] (Musée du Quai Branly, Paris, 2007)
Yinka Shonibare’s Jardin d’amour [Garden of Love] (2007) was the second – and most high-profile thus far – of the single-artist installations staged during the Quai Branly museum’s early programming history[1]. The artwork consisted of a labyrinthine, reconstructed 18th century Rococo-styled ornamental French garden arranged as three secluded enclosures in which different thematic tableaux were…
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‘Exhibit B’ : A poignant performance art piece, or just the latest incarnation of a racist ‘human zoo’?
Anyone who saw the Guardian’s recent Edinburgh Festival review of Brett Bailey’s controversial installation ‘Exhibit B’ – featuring African men and women sitting inside cages, with labels stating “The blacks have been fed”, and others chained to chairs and beds in equally dehumanizing poses (seemingly to challenge audiences to reflect on the brutalities of European racism…
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Exploring ‘othering’ through the work of Congolese pop artist Chéri Samba
The triptych, Quel Avenir Pour Notre Art? [What Future for Our Art?] (1997) by Congolese pop artist Chéri Samba (b. 1956) presents visual and textual representations of three significant stages in the artist’s life and career. Painted in acrylics in Samba’s characteristic comic strip style he combines self-portraiture, symbolic imagery and textual narratives to pose…
