Arts - Data Of Africa

African body arts and live performances

admin — Wed, 11 Jun 2025 10:39:25 +0000

Public performance has been common in Africa for a long time. Masquerades in the primary sense, that is, shows where masks are shown, accompanied by dances and songs, are consubstantial with African culture. Even in the case of secret initiations, some parts of the rites are public, as in the Makishi masquerade in Zambia, which is listed as an intangible cultural heritage of humanity, just as the invocation of spirits (rain dance, etc.), a typical occasion for masquerades, is public. Traditional dances and songs were even promoted by the colonizers, contrary to their general attitude towards African culture, because their tourist potential. Dances became “folkloric” because they were stripped of their cultural (even if only the language) and religious connection between the actors and the spectators. This was recognized as early as the end of the Second World War. Oral literature is intended for an audience listening to the words live.

Actors, dancers, singers, and storytellers are not necessarily professionals in the performing arts, except at the court of kings and, for the part of West Africa concerned, the caste of griots. However, troupes of paid professional dancers were created during colonization in the 1930s.

Theatre is absent from traditional culture. Specific to urban culture, it was imported by Westerners and gradually became established in the modern era.

The art of costumes, jewelry and various adornments, hairstyles, body paintings and scarifications is as varied as African culture with a thousand ethnic groups can be. Body art served to make visual one’s belonging to an ethnic group, a religion, a sex, an age group, a marital status, a social situation, etc.

The colonial regime was strongly opposed to these practices and incessant campaigns were conducted to encourage health and decency in matters of dress and to eliminate all body art. Studies on the subject are therefore rare and late. Post-independence governments were no more tolerant of this point of view, some regimes even creating from scratch national costumes whose wearing was supposed to reflect adherence to the national identity of the new state.

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African music and dance and their influence on a global scale

admin — Wed, 11 Jun 2025 10:23:29 +0000

In addition to the masks, the dances and songs that often accompany them have given sub-Saharan Africa its own identity. With a thousand ethnic groups and a billion inhabitants, Africa is culturally diverse, but African music and dance share some distinctive features. In traditional culture, music, dance, and the display of masks often form a triptych. The music is essentially rhythmic and focused on oral transmission, hence the great importance of the text. The instruments are very diverse, but the rhythm gives pride of place to percussion, particularly drums.

Despite a sometimes traumatic encounter between African and Western cultures, Africa has influenced certain Western music, such as jazz, which was directly inspired by the rhythms of West Africa and created by black slaves deported to America. Other examples include Afrobeat (1970s), created by Fela Kuti, and Highlife (1920s). Africa’s own music from the contemporary era, such as Congolese rumba, soukous, and coupé-décalé, was exported throughout the world from the 1960s, and even more so with the cross-breeding of world music, as seen in Paul Simon’s 1986 album Graceland. “Negro art has inspired Picasso and other artists; and the syncopated rhythms of African music and dance resonate around the world today.”

North Africa, for its part, mainly offers Berber music, an extension of the culture of the first Libyan inhabitants, followed by Arab-Andalusian music.

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Symbolic thought of african arts and architecture

admin — Wed, 11 Jun 2025 09:58:18 +0000

Africa is the “cradle of humanity” and, perhaps, the cradle of the emergence of symbolic thought in modern man. The continent is home to approximately 200,000 prehistoric sites, caves, and rock shelters; it is the richest on the planet in this area. Some of the oldest artistic representations, such as decorative objects and abstract engravings, markers of symbolic thought, have been found there.

In the early 2000s, ornamental beads made of Nassarius shells were discovered in the Blombos cave in South Africa, dating back 72,000 to 75,000 years. Additionally, engraved ochre plaques found at the site are estimated to be around 100,000 years old. These discoveries rank among the oldest artistic representations in the world, along with those of Oued Djebbana in Algeria, which also contained ornamental beads dating back 100,000 years, and those of the Pigeon Cave in Taforalt, Morocco, which yielded Nassarius gibbosulus beads dating back 82,000 years.

This tends to push back the date of the emergence of artistic artifacts by at least thirty millennia. For a long time, it was accepted that the oldest adornments, then dated around 40,000 years old, came from Europe and the Near East. However, ever since the discovery of adornments and 75,000-year-old engraved ochres in South Africa, this idea has been called into question.

Ancient Egypt, a powerful and enduring civilization in which religion occupied an important place, produced numerous works. Many of which represented divinities or pharaohs, in the form of paintings, bas-reliefs, high reliefs, sculptures, decorated pottery, metal jewelry, etc. Writing appeared there around 3200 BC. Egyptian literature, made up of religious and secular texts, is among the oldest known, attested from 2700 BC by complex texts on papyrus. Architecture is also a major witness to Egyptian art, especially the art of the pyramids which gave it a universal reputation. The Pyramid of Cheops (around 2560 BC), one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, is the only one to have survived; it was the tallest human construction for 4,000 years.

North Africa, under the influence of the Mediterranean area and later of Islam from the 7th century, is home to the art of late Antiquity—with, for example, the archaeological site of Carthage—(Punic, Roman, Vandal, early Christian, and Arab periods) and then Muslim art, with the Great Mosque of Kairouan in Tunisia, built in 670, which is one of its symbols. In the Islamized part of sub-Saharan Africa, Muslim art coexists with indigenous art.

Sub-Saharan Africa yields artifacts characteristic of the cultures (in the archaeological sense of the term) that have populated it over time. These objects are first and foremost historical objects; the absence of indigenous written sources on ancient Africa south of the Sahara means that they are almost the only witnesses to the past; even the buildings are often absent—we still do not know for sure where the capital of the Mali Empire (12th–15th century) was, hence the interest in the ruins of Great Zimbabwe—and the written sources, Arab-Muslim, do not deal with the subject of art. These historically precious artifacts also acquired, in the 20th century, the status of works of art, which earned them a prominent place in museums, on the current international market, and also generated a flourishing illicit trade.

Left: Situation of sites classified as natural heritage. Right: Sites classified as cultural heritage. Densities are represented according to the principle of heat maps, ranging from the warmest colors for the highest densities to the coldest colors for the lowest densities. The comparison highlights a strong contrast in the density of the two types of sites considered.

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African visual arts from the 15th to the 21st century

admin — Wed, 11 Jun 2025 09:50:11 +0000

Europe encountered African arts, mainly sculpture, since the end of the 15th century thanks to the first Portuguese explorers who brought back carved ivory pieces, some of which were made at their request. These pieces were initially placed in cabinets of curiosities and later in museums starting in the 17th century. However, African art was not recognized as such; during the Renaissance, Europeans, who were keen on Greco-Roman art, considered African creations with contempt, using the term “fetish” – a word borrowed from the 15th century Portuguese that designates the objects of worship of traditional religions – which carried connotations of artificiality, magic, crudeness and primitiveness.

These connotations endured for at least five centuries, persisting until the early 20th century. In 1859, David Livingstone, in his travel accounts, described a “fetish” as a “crude image of a human head daubed with certain enchanted substances.” Similarly, the 19th-century Grand Larousse dictionary, in its definition of “fetish,” referred to it as a “crude worship of material objects.”

Colonial expansion in the late 19th and early 20th centuries allowed the discovery of numerous artifacts, which began to be examined from both archaeological and ethnological perspectives. For instance, the rock art of the Tsodilo caves in Botswana—an area inhabited since approximately 100,000 BCE—had been documented since the mid-19th century, while studies on the rock art of the Sahara, dating back to around 6000 BCE, also began during the same period. The first sculptures from Ife, which span from before 800 BCE to the 17th century, were unearthed in 1911, at about the same time as the sculpted heads of the Nok culture (1000 BCE–300 CE), which became subjects of study in the 1910s and 1930s. Among the early scholars in the field, Marcel Griaule conducted extensive research on Dogon masks in the 1930s. Sculpture—particularly wood carvings and masks—drew the most attention, often overshadowing other forms of artistic expression, which were considered subsidiary.

Marcel Mauss defined art as any object recognized as such by a group. It was around 1906 that African arts began to be viewed from an artistic and aesthetic perspective. Their recognition as authentic artistic expressions emerged after this period, particularly when they captured the interest of figures like Picasso and Guillaume Apollinaire under the label “Negro art” – the expression appeared in 1912 – Picasso and Guillaume Apollinaire, in particular, and when they inspired Fauvism and Cubism and then, at the beginning of the 1920s, the sculptor Alberto Giacometti.

Even though artistic judgment has evolved, Livingstone’s “enchantment” continues to be invoked in the 20th century. The interweaving of the sacred and the profane, a defining characteristic of African culture, is particularly evident in art—especially in masks and sculptures, which have long fascinated Europeans. A key feature common to sculptural traditions across Africa is that masks designed to be contemplated as works of art, but to be used on the occasion of social and religious rituals. Therefore, African art, like other so-called “primitive” arts, has traditionally been defined not on the basis of its aesthetics, but on the basis of its socio-cultural role. particularly its role in facilitating communication with spirits. The West, however, postulates that one cannot study an object without examining its socio-historical context., requiring analysis beyond mere aesthetics. This approach emphasizes the need for thorough documentation to bridge the gap between material artifacts and their cultural significance. Ethnological expeditions, such as the Dakar-Djibouti mission (1931–1933), exemplified this methodology, collecting 3,500 objects while also documenting African culture through filmed dances and songs that accompanied the exhibition of masks and recorded testimonies of oral culture.

Like the aesthetic gaze, the ethnological gaze on African art is not always free of prejudices or methodological biases. The association between art and the sacred often reinforces perceptions of African art as “primitive”: The image of African sculpture as both “primitive” and linked to secretive or dangerous rituals continues to influence the perception of “African art”, especially when the connotations (relationship with death, sacrifice, etc.) conveyed by the objects are taken literally. This perspective raises a critical question: Would an art historian of the Renaissance dare to speak of images of the Crucifixion as representations of a human sacrifice? Or of representations of the Blessed Sacrament as evoking cannibalism?

The discourse on African art has been monopolized by the West since its discovery by whites; the African discourse on African art appears with movements such as the literary “Négritude” that emerged during the interwar period and the political movements of Afrocentrism – led by academics including Molefi Kete Asante – and African Renaissance – led by former South African President Thabo Mbeki – as well as through the growing recognition of traditional spirituality through the decriminalization of voodoo and other forms of spirituality, which aim to (re)discover and (re)value traditional African cultures.

From an artistic point of view, efforts to highlight the culture and artists of the continent were organized from 1956 with the Congress of Black Intellectuals. In 1966, in Dakar, the first world festival of black arts was a symbol of the desire for appropriation of art by Africans themselves; the problem of the restitution to the countries of origin of the works present in museums and among Western collectors was already present there. It was also an opportunity to show the diversity of art (painting, sculpture, literature, etc.) beyond masks and fetishes. It was followed by the first pan-African festival in Algiers in 1969, considered by some to be the symbol of the “cultural renaissance of Africa”.

In addition to the strictly historical pieces, masks, statuettes, sculptures and others have acquired the status of works of art. Many of these pieces are not particularly old—due to the perishable nature of materials like wood, raffia, and fabric— with the oldest known preserved African mask dating back to the 18th century. Examples of representative pieces worth significant sums on the market include the statues of Nok in Nigeria (700 BC – 300 AD), the terracotta heads of Ife in Nigeria (12th to 14th century), the bronzes from the Kingdom of Benin, now Nigeria (16th and 17th centuries), the metal statue of the god Gou from Benin (19th century), the reliquary figures of the Kota of Gabon, the Gouro masks, the ciwara crest masks of the Bambaras of Mali, the Senufo statues of Burkina Faso and Ivory Coast, as well as those of the Luba, the Fang masks of Gabon, etc.

The presence of African artworks in Western collections and museums has raised the issue of the spoliation of cultural property from African countries. Colonial powers removed many archaeological and artistic pieces during the era of colonization928 and the flourishing contemporary market for African art contributes to maintaining questionable practices that lead the international community to legislate. In a notable move, in the summer of 2016, Benin filed an official request with France, a first for a former colony in French-speaking Africa, to return the works taken during the era of colonization; the request concerns approximately 5,000 pieces.

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AFRICAN ART: A presence on a global scale

admin — Wed, 11 Jun 2025 09:41:23 +0000

No artistic field remains untouched by Africa in the 21st century—sculpture, painting, comics, literature, cinema, fashion, culinary arts, dance, and music. African art and artists have a strong presence both thematically and geographically, contributing to an art market that has expanded globally. Cross-cultural influences are both numerous and deeply rooted in history. The first carved spoons in Africa date back to the 16th century and were unknown before the arrival of Portuguese traders, who commissioned them from local artisans. Conversely, African artistic traditions, in turn, have had a profound impact on Western painting, fashion, and music.

Contemporary artists are regarded by many as the bearers of a “hybrid” culture, with some even transforming cultural stereotypes into pastiches to distance themselves from them. African art has moved beyond, and no longer seeks to be, solely a reflection of tradition, colonial protest, social criticism, or Negritude. Instead, it is an art form integrated into universal contemporary art, aiming to be judged on its intrinsic qualities, like any other art.

Since the 1990s, the artistic scene has undergone globalization, leading to a multicultural expansion of artistic offerings. Exhibition spaces are now experiencing broader geographical reach, while international cultural events such as the Dakar Biennale, Écrans Noirs, MASA, and many others have multiplied each year. These events attract thousands of visitors, along with experts and cultural professionals from the African continent and elsewhere.

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African film production: a potential capable of shining internationally

admin — Wed, 11 Jun 2025 09:32:10 +0000

The first cinema screenings in Africa date back to 1905 in Egypt and the 1920s in sub-Saharan Africa. These screenings occurred in urban theaters and through traveling exhibitions in rural areas. In terms of film production, Zohra (1922), a Tunisian production, is widely recognized as the first film shot by an African. It was soon followed by La Fille de Carthage (1924), Leila (1926), and Zainab (1926).

Egyptian and Tunisian cinemas rank among the oldest in the world. Egyptian cinema, in particular, emerged as a thriving industry. Pioneers Auguste and Louis Lumière showcased their films in Alexandria, Cairo, Tunis, Susa, and Hammam-Lif (Tunisia) in 1896, with additional screenings in Libya. Albert Samama Chikly, often hailed as the first indigenous African filmmaker, screened his short documentaries at the Tunis Casino as early as December 1905. Collaborating with his daughter Haydée Tamzali, Chikly produced significant historical works such as The Daughter of Carthage (1924). In 1927, Egypt released Leila (1927), the first feature film directed by Aziza Amir, who is celebrated as the godmother of African cinema.

In 1935, Cairo’s Misr Studio began producing comedies, musicals, and critically acclaimed films like Kamal Selim’s The Will (1939). Egyptian cinema reached its golden age during the 1940s–1960s. Youssef Chahine’s seminal work Gare Centrale (1958) laid the foundation for Arab cinema, cementing Egypt’s influence on the region’s cinematic landscape.

Despite these pioneering beginnings, the reluctance of colonial governments and a lack of resources meant that most of the continent only began to see significant local achievements from the 1970s onward. To this day, African cinema remains largely financed by Western funds, and its development has remained modest.

Since the 1990s, film production has declined, and movie theaters have closed, leaving some countries without a single cinema. The Pan-African Film and Television Festival of Ouagadougou (FESPACO)—one of Africa’s largest film festivals, whose 24th edition was held in 2015—continues to strive to preserve and promote African cinema.

SVOD subscribers in Africa by platform in 2029 (Source: Digital TV Research)

However, there is the notable exception of Nollywood. Nigeria produces nearly two thousand films per year, making it the world’s second-largest film producer by volume, behind India’s Bollywood and ahead of the United States. These films, primarily low-budget productions released directly on VCD, are more than half in local languages. Their artistic quality is often considered “questionable,” and their technical standards are too low for television broadcast.

Nonetheless, African cinema has demonstrated its ability to shine on the international stage—just as in other artistic fields—when “the quality, genre, and themes of the films take precedence over geographical or political criteria,” as evidenced by its presence at international festivals such as Sundance.

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