Cutting Edge of the Contemporary: KNUST, Accra, and the Ghanaian Contemporary Art Movement

October 21 2021 African Masking Systems: An Archive Of Social Commentary Samuel Nortey, Samuel Nortey Samuel Nortey is an artist and an associate professor in the Department of Industrial Art (Ceramics Section), Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), Ghana. He holds a PhD in African Art and Culture. He is a multicultural fellow of the National Council for Education of the Ceramic Arts (NCECA) and has worked with several art centers in Ghana developing the frontiers of art production. Nortey's publications are in ceramic art, art history, art education and issues of contemporary art. He has been involved in many local and international exhibitions and reviews. snortey.art@knust.edu.gh Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Scholar Edwin K. Bodjawah, Edwin K. Bodjawah Edwin Kwesi Bodjawah is an artist, associate professor in the Department of Painting and Sculpture, KNUST, and the coordinator of the Opoku Ware II Museum at KNUST. He is a principal trustee and patron of blaxTARLINES, KUMASI. Through decommissioned materials he researches serial reproduction of African mask forms. Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Scholar Kwaku Boafo Kissiedu Kwaku Boafo Kissiedu Kwaku Boafo Kissiedu (Castro) is a cofounder and the administrative director of blaxTARLINES, KUMASI. He is a senior lecturer at the famed Fine Art Department of KNUST, Kumasi, Ghana, where he, and other colleagues, have pioneered revolutionary changes in fine art pedagogy, turning out emerging artists who are making waves worldwide. Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Scholar Author and Article Information Samuel Nortey Samuel Nortey is an artist and an associate professor in the Department of Industrial Art (Ceramics Section), Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), Ghana. He holds a PhD in African Art and Culture. He is a multicultural fellow of the National Council for Education of the Ceramic Arts (NCECA) and has worked with several art centers in Ghana developing the frontiers of art production. Nortey's publications are in ceramic art, art history, art education and issues of contemporary art. He has been involved in many local and international exhibitions and reviews. snortey.art@knust.edu.gh Edwin K. Bodjawah Edwin Kwesi Bodjawah is an artist, associate professor in the Department of Painting and Sculpture, KNUST, and the coordinator of the Opoku Ware II Museum at KNUST. He is a principal trustee and patron of blaxTARLINES, KUMASI. Through decommissioned materials he researches serial reproduction of African mask forms. Kwaku Boafo Kissiedu Kwaku Boafo Kissiedu (Castro) is a cofounder and the administrative director of blaxTARLINES, KUMASI. He is a senior lecturer at the famed Fine Art Department of KNUST, Kumasi, Ghana, where he, and other colleagues, have pioneered revolutionary changes in fine art pedagogy, turning out emerging artists who are making waves worldwide. Online Issn: 1937-2108 Print Issn: 0001-9933 © 2021 by the Regents of the University of California2021Regents of the University of California African Arts (2021) 54 (4): 52–63. https://doi.org/10.1162/afar_a_00612 Cite Icon Cite Permissions Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Search Site Citation Samuel Nortey, Edwin K. Bodjawah, Kwaku Boafo Kissiedu; African Masking Systems: An Archive Of Social Commentary. African Arts 2021; 54 (4): 52–63. doi: https://doi.org/10.1162/afar_a_00612 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search nav search search input Search input auto suggest search filter All ContentAll JournalsAfrican Arts Search Advanced Search African masking systems have the potential to contribute to the conversation around the relationship between contemporary art and providing an archive of social commentary. In precolonial times and in geographical locations across Africa, these masking systems connect and integrate cultural practices and the infrastructure of these communities. Nortey, Bodjawah, and Kissiedu (2019) have explained that most African masks were not used in isolation, as mere objects offering visual pleasure, but were part of ceremonies that were cross-genre in nature, often embedded with layers of history, politics, and other important provenances. These African sculptures come alive in a variety of exhibition spaces; every member of the audience is engaged in the discussion or documentation of history through the communal nature of these masking ceremonies. History also chronicles the significance and contribution of the environment... © 2021 by the Regents of the University of California2021Regents of the University of California You do not currently have access to this content.

African Modernism in America, 1947–1967

Sometime in 1975, I walked into the office of Arnold Rubin (1937–1988), an associate professor in the department of art at the University of California, Los Angeles, inquiring about graduate study in Africanist art history. Students of African art, he assured me, would be at the forefront of mighty changes in the academic world. He promised that we would blow the dust off the hidebound field of art history. Rather shaken by his passionate rhetoric, I left thinking I might be too conventional for such an avant-garde enterprise. So after a much more pragmatic conversation with Herbert M. ("Skip") Cole about the shrinking number of teaching positions in art history, I headed to the University of California, Santa Barbara, for my graduate work. There I was plunged into a program of instruction and research that was full of its own unexpected adventures and rewards. While I have always been immensely grateful that Skip Cole agreed to be my advisor and guide, I have never forgotten Rubin's vision, his assertion that Africanist art historians would overturn entrenched paradigms and revolutionize the study of art.This issue of African Arts celebrates a generation of scholars—the elders of our discipline—whose contributions shaped the journal when it was launched as african arts/arts d'afrique some fifty years ago. Arnold Rubin was one of these, as he had been appointed editor of "graphic and plastic arts" when the second issue of the fledgling magazine appeared in 1968. As a member of his students' generation, the cohort charged with bringing the study of African art into the twenty-first century, I would like to revisit my initial encounter with this influential scholar and teacher through the lens of African Arts. Has his vision indeed become a reality? Have Africanists reshaped the narrative of art history over the last fifty years and brought novel, interdisciplinary, Africa-centered approaches to a staid Eurocentric discipline?Clearly, I encountered Arnold Rubin during a time when his own views had been shaped by the theoretical and methodological debates swirling around the art department at UCLA, and by his awareness of the new and rather tenuous position of Africanists within the discipline of art history. After all, in the United States the first dissertation on an African topic presented for a PhD in art history (rather than anthropology or Egyptology) had been written less than twenty years earlier, in 1957, by Roy Sieber (1923–2001). While art historians such as Douglas Fraser (1930–1982) may have taught courses on African art as "Primitive Art" during the 1950s, it was not until the 1960s that Africanist scholars such as Sieber and Frank Willett (1925–2006) could draw on their own fieldwork when they offered classes in American art history departments. Rubin presented his thoughts on the development of the field at a conference on "African Art Studies in the 1980s" held at UCLA in 1979 and reviewed for African Arts by Marla Berns:1Although his ideas were disseminated in the classroom as well as through his many creative research projects, it is Rubin's association with African Arts in the first decade of its publication that allows us to examine how his goals for Africanist art history intersected with other impulses during a unique period. Fifty years ago, personal and professional relationships linking Americans and Africans promised to forge new ways of seeing and describing the world, and the excitement of this promise permeated the journal. I should note here that my own memories of that time were recently refreshed by a visit to an African country I had not seen in almost half a century. My brother arranged for me to join childhood friends and family members for a visit to Malawi, where our fathers had worked from 1964–1969, and where our mothers had volunteered in local colleges and hospitals. The church we had attended, constructed by members of the Church of Scotland congregation before 1891 (Briggs 2013:206), was still a vibrant place of worship in Blantyre (Fig. 1), its physical structure intact. I had only vague memories of an even earlier precolonial monument, the Mandala House, which had been the headquarters of the African Lakes Corporation in 1882 (Fig. 2). The interior is now a bright, sunny space managed by La Caverna, an art gallery specializing in paintings by Malawi's most influential modernists, while the upper floor houses the library and meeting rooms of the Malawi Historical Society. This venerable building thus enshrines the art history as well as the history of twentieth and twenty-first century Malawi, both pivoting around the nation's independence in 1964.Flipping through the first few years of african arts/arts d'afrique, the bilingual precursor of African Arts, also brought me back to the heady days of the 1960s. Just as my father and his American colleagues set up a technical college as a "contribution from the people of the United States of America to the people of Malawi" when that nation became independent from Britain,2 the very first issue proclaimed, in boldface print, that "The African Studies Center of the University of California Los Angeles presents a gift [of the magazine] to Africa." Since the journal and the technical school were offered to Africans at the height of the Cold War, when the continent and its resources were seen as vulnerable to influences from the Soviet Union, postcolonial theorists might characterize both as instruments wielded by the US government to ensure the loyalty of African allies.3 It was true that my father had been hired through an American university with funding from the Agency for International Development, while the growth of the African Studies Center at UCLA was nurtured by government grants and fellowships. Faculty and graduate students at UCLA were provided with funds for research on the African continent, allowing the African Studies Center to act as a "think tank" that was continually renewed by contacts with Africa. Former Peace Corps volunteers, sent by the US government to promote democracy and economic progress in Africa, enrolled in graduate programs after returning home, joining the ranks of scholars who studied the arts of the African continent. Yet despite their origins in hegemonic political policies, educational programs and initiatives such as african arts/arts d'afrique fostered a discourse that exposed Americans to African ways of knowing, to epistemologies which would lead researchers such as Arnold Rubin to challenge the assumptions of his own academic traditions.In the second issue, the editors wrote that the purpose of the new journal would be "to record the art of the African past, to provide an outlet for the contemporary African artist, and to stimulate the creative arts in Africa" (Povey 1967:2). Judging from other short entries, the publication was a highly experimental enterprise. According to a later reflection written by John Povey (1929–1992), the specialist in African literature who was one of its original editors, "the entire original concept of African Arts derived from a purely serendipitous seat proximity on an airline which brought Paul [law professor Paul Proehl (1921–1997)] and [Sudanese artist] el Salahi together. They communed and agreed that what was really wanted was a magazine that would display the manifold arts of Africa—hence the plural title—to the world" (1991:6).4Arnold Rubin had joined the editorial board quite soon after his arrival at UCLA. He was almost immediately joined by Skip Cole and by Eugene Grigsby, a professor of African and African American art history at Arizona State University. Other editors worked with them to assemble material celebrating a broad spectrum of African creativity. The first issues featured short essays on architecture, dance, theater, the cinema, music, literary criticism, and oral literature, in addition to an overview of the archaeology of Ife by Frank Willett, a reflective piece by Léopold Sédar Senghor, and reviews of contemporary art. Some of the discussions in these first volumes, such as a long essay by Bohumil Holas, were deeply primitivist, and John Povey himself could give way to paternalist pronouncements: "Somewhere between the inhibiting forms of the tradition and the too facile fashionable fads of contemporary art in the West, rests the legitimate area in which the African artist can create" (1968a:1). Yet in these years Dennis Duerden stated, "I am looking for an African kinetic artist, or one who uses a computer" (1967:30). Too few contributors would join him in expecting African artists of the 1970s and 1980s to engage with developments happening elsewhere in the world of contemporary art, and apparently neither video artists not digital arts would appear in the pages of African Arts prior to the twenty-first century. John Povey himself was startlingly prescient when he humbly acknowledged that "We hope that the possibilities supplied by the presence of this forum will encourage Africans to write their own account of their arts. Such essays will undoubtedly reveal to us areas of perception which are inevitably denied even to the most sympathetic of outside critics" (1968b:1). Unfortunately, the "presence" of the journal would diminish in African libraries and art centers during the following decades (Nettleton 2017, Okwuoso 2017), and as Simbao has clearly demonstrated (2017), scholars based on the African continent would be hindered from publishing their research in the journal by a variety of constraints. It is now clear that the laudable sentiments of Povey needed to have been accompanied by sustained action.Soon after its inception, the editors announced an annual competition, with monetary prizes for winning submissions of art (two- and three-dimensional work) and literature (plays, poetry, short stories, excerpts from novels) that would be published or reproduced in the magazine. Each issue would include reports by African "correspondents" providing "perceptive analyses of the underlying situation that confronts the African artist" (Povey 1968b:1). As a showcase for African literature, african arts/arts d'afrique was bilingual, offering essays in French and English. At the time, this was a sophisticated, European approach that addressed a wide, intercontinental readership, even if the possible incorporation of other languages commonly used in Africa (such as Arabic, Portuguese, or Swahili) was not mentioned. In many ways the magazine resembled creative modernist publication projects such as Minotaure, produced in Paris in the 1930s, or Black Orpheus, published in Ibadan after the 1950s, or Transition, launched in Kampala in the 1960s. What is striking, however, was the offer by the editors of african arts/arts d'afrique to distribute their color illustrations of African contemporary art to schools so that teachers could mount them on bulletin boards (Povey 1968a:38). This was a didactic effort to reach out to the American public, a program to dispel misconceptions about African cultures. In today's global art world, where critics value the transgressive, provocative stance of marginalized artists, few curators would attempt to place reproductions of contemporary African art in K-12 classrooms of the United States.As Doran Ross noted in his review of the first twenty-five years of African Arts (Ross 1992:1), submissions of literary works and coverage of contemporary art faded away after the annual competitions came to an end in 1975. Just as Arnold Rubin brought his experience with performance, ephemeral art, and ritual in African contexts to his exploration of American cultural practices, African Arts covered a broad range of urban and rural artistic creativity in Africa and its Diaspora during the 1980s. It became a leading outlet for fresh, new accounts of artists' practice based on fieldwork conducted in communities throughout Western and Central Africa, and studies of arts from Eastern and Southern Africa were featured as well. Given the variety and sophistication of the new studies appearing in African Arts, its readers may not have noticed how few contributors were still visiting the studios of artists working in African galleries, cultural centers, and institutions of higher education. In a "First Word" written as African Arts approached its twenty-fifth anniversary, Povey complained that at the 1989 Triennial conference of ACASA, the Arts Council of the African Studies Association, "contemporary African art … was considered at best marginal, at worst a regrettable intrusion of a tiresome product outside the concerns of serious scholars" (1990:1). Other journals would eventually arise to cover arts identified as "contemporary," such as Revue Noire (in 1991) and Nka (in 1994), and in last decade of the twentieth century African Arts itself would once again turn its attention to artists who had studied in African universities or art institutes. I would argue, though, that by neglecting critical studies of these African artists during the 1980s, Africanists missed the opportunity to interact with art historians in other "non-Western" fields, who were extending their own research methods into the study of modern and contemporary "global" arts (Sullivan 1996, Farago and Pierce 2006, Hay 2008).Furthermore, because African Arts focused on community-based (rather than nationally based) art and architecture during the 1980s, it bypassed a pivotal period in the history of African modernisms. During my visit to Malawi, I was honored to meet Willie Nampeya, now professor emeritus in the art department at Chancellor College in Zomba, who had been a student of my mother, Barbara Blackmun (Fig. 3). After learning of the challenges faced by Prof. Nampeya and his younger colleagues, and realizing that they have worked for many years in relative isolation, I wish that I (and other faculty in American institutions) had been more aware of their need for international recognition and support (see Simbao 2017:6). Whatever the reasons, close contacts between art educators working in Africa and in the United States still tend to be the exception rather than the rule.The switch to a monolingual format in volume 4 (and the adoption of the name African Arts) may have contributed to the diminishing number of articles on modernist cinema, literature, and theater appearing in the journal. One immediate casualty was the coverage of francophone northern Africa. During the first few years, contributors had written about artists based in Tunis and Cairo, providing material that is useful now for researchers reviewing the history of African modernism. The original inclusion of arts from the entire continent had reflected political movements of the 1960s and 1970s, when newly independent African states sponsored arts festivals in Dakar, Algiers, and Lagos that were expressions of African solidarity. Of course biennials and other exhibition events today return to this model by soliciting artworks from across the continent, weaving economic and political networks as part of national cultural policies. And of course many art fairs are sponsored by francophone African nations and produce bilingual texts.The early articles on textiles, ceramics, and other artisanal traditions in the Maghreb were also responses to the work of historians and archaeologists, who were then mapping trade routes and the movements of people and ideas across the Sahara. But in the 1960s, art historians had often been introduced to African art by European modernists, who believed that only sub-Saharan Africa could produce art nègre, authentically "primitive" art. Even after abandoning the tenets of Primitivism, many art historians remained in thrall to the masterpieces of West Africa and Central Africa that had inspired early twentieth century French painters. It is not surprising that the pages of African Arts would be dominated by these regions, even though Africanists such as Rubin and Cole had moved far beyond formal analyses of sculpture to broader understandings of the totality of creative production on the continent in its very first issues.Perhaps the shift away from Egypt and the Maghreb was also a result of the critiques of the field of African Studies in the 1970s, when African Americans affirmed their own ancestral links to ancient cultures. Following the lead of Robert Farris Thompson, many Africanists extended their art historical analyses to the Americas, narrating art histories as creative expressions of the Black Atlantic world. As African Studies in several institutions was subsumed under "Black Studies" or appended to departments of African American and Africana Studies, the art historical relationships between West Africans classified as "black" and North Africans seen as "non-black" by outside observers became more difficult to place within an American academic framework. When Sidney Kasfir reviewed Jan Vansina's Art and History in Africa for African Arts, she underscored his inclusion of arts from the northern half of the continent, asserting that this was perhaps "the most alien part of the author's perspective for African art specialists" (Kasfir 1986:12).For the first decade or so, the journal had close relationship with commercial enterprises. In addition to receiving funding from the Kress Foundation to print images in color, african arts/arts d'afrique received advertising revenue from airlines, a mining company, and the Franklin Gallery in Los Angeles. Private collections as well as exhibitions at public institutions such as the Los Angeles County Museum were reviewed. This context helps explain why Rubin wrote his influential essay "Accumulative Sculpture: Power and Display" (Rubin 1974) for the Pace Gallery in New York City before publishing it in the contemporary art journal Art Forum (Rubin 1975). It would be several years before a messy divorce would separate private galleries selling "primitive arts" (or "tribal arts") and the academic world. This divorce was finalized as postcolonial theory pushed art historians (and the editors of African Arts) towards new discussions of professional ethics, fieldwork methods, and collection practices.Arnold Rubin may have been instrumental in moving african arts/arts d'afrique in a direction that was quite different from that originally envisioned by Povey and Poehl. His own, detailed study of Kutep mud sculpture in the first volume contained the publication's first endnotes (Rubin 1968). For its second volume, the magazine featured an extended study of Chokwe arts by Marie-Louise Bastin that spanned three issues and whose overview from the of most early Skip essays on appeared that as a new for critical of fieldwork Rubin's and a in on in the of the literature on and Robert Farris wrote his of African Arts was as a forum for research in the arts by art and other submissions were to as they would be at other journals (Ross Povey when from his editorial that despite its African Arts had became an academic publication in with the of a It could thus could more of a to the discipline of art how has this years ago, Doran Ross wrote a "First Word" in which he complained that "the arts of Africa to be in the world, the art the or the classroom … Even the most courses on African arts a at colleges and the Africanist who to have had the in the field of art history as a wrote in the vision of an to position and the of to the rather than the product of artistic to have been Yet by the of African art history more "African art … has collections and What might we in 2017, a decade are many ways to the of Africanist art historians within the American academic world, from positions of Africanists in art history programs or the number of courses we to the number of on African art published by university or the number of articles and reviews we have in the most The number of Africanists who art exhibitions as or curators might also be in addition to the many gallery art independent and whose academic to their in African art. Yet as faculty members at American college or university such might not us what we really wish to our in the art historical they not us much about or even we have had an the field as a I a the art history When Doran Ross and wrote their African artworks to art as of "primitive" Some African again in the on twentieth century European where they were by the of the where they had been of both of the leading for art history Art the by and Art include on African art that are with on or the The that will provide at to African in an in art history. of artworks from the African also in the of American school students need to for an Art History these on the work of Africanists to working in the on African art history, written almost in the by Skip Cole for Art the and and Roy for Art History have been for later in to provide student readers with a historical Povey might have of these which African art was of when the arts of other As several scholars have serious studies of historical developments in African art forms are few and far and the review was launched in part out of the with the of attention to historical context in African Arts and In many has not been on African artistic of the immediate or to such as (see But that may as art historians and other scholars new research and produce more For in Barbara Blackmun had very to draw when a in to for the family on the following (Fig. The was a But when agreed to for at a in (Fig. we could a literature on that the in historical perspective if the history of African art is in and classrooms so that Africa can become in of its inclusion offer students the opportunity to African artistic practices, and that provide them with new ways of looking and is "African its place in the that african arts/arts d'afrique as "graphic and plastic arts" in a collection of identified by artist, and in the today's African artists can be in such as Art which them into the discourse of global modern and contemporary art and on the of are we Arnold Rubin's of as art within a cultural And if we write articles in Art that showcase African studies of art historical are we to Arnold Rubin's vision of Africanist art history as recently wrote that he Rubin would be to that contributors to African Arts still hope to the discipline of art history, even if we are of how this can be

The Long View: Leadership at a Critical Juncture for “African Art” in America

December 01 2013 African Art Studies: Are They No Longer Taking the Paths Less Traveled? Simon Ottenberg Simon Ottenberg Simon Ottenberg is Emeritus Professor, University of Washington, Seattle. otten@u.washington.edu Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Scholar Author and Article Information Simon Ottenberg Simon Ottenberg is Emeritus Professor, University of Washington, Seattle. otten@u.washington.edu Online ISSN: 1937-2108 Print ISSN: 0001-9933 © 2013 by the Regents of the University of California.2013 African Arts (2013) 46 (4): 7. https://doi.org/10.1162/AFAR_a_00103 Cite Icon Cite Permissions Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Search Site Citation Simon Ottenberg; African Art Studies: Are They No Longer Taking the Paths Less Traveled?. African Arts 2013; 46 (4): 7. doi: https://doi.org/10.1162/AFAR_a_00103 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentAll JournalsAfrican Arts Search Advanced Search This content is only available as a PDF. © 2013 by the Regents of the University of California.2013 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Scholarship on modern and contemporary art has emerged as a significant subfield within the larger field of the art of South Asia, especially since the 1990s. Arguing against earlier historicist readings that presented Europe as the center from which modernism was transmitted to the rest of the world, scholars have critically examined transcontinental artistic encounters and radical aesthetic negotiations in the colony and the post-colony. Moving away from a center-periphery model that inevitably marks modern art in South Asia as merely derivative of its Western counterpart, recent scholarship has presented a number of methodological alternatives appropriate for examining the aesthetic and political imperatives of modern and contemporary art in South Asia on its own terms. Much of this scholarship has paralleled, intersected with, and drawn on the theoretical frames made available by postcolonial and subaltern studies. Thus, although a relatively new arena of inquiry, the methodological sophistication and academic rigor demonstrated by recent scholarship has very rapidly transformed the study of modern and contemporary South Asian art into a subfield with its own vocabulary and lexicon. While significant overlaps exist, the key concerns for the study of modernism, however, differ constitutively from the questions that are central to the study of contemporary art practices. Negotiations between traditional forms and modernist aesthetics, intersections between internationalism and national identity, and questions of authenticity and derivativeness have informed scholarly engagements with the art of the late 19th century and the 20th century. In contrast, globalization and its attendant cultural transformations, accelerated migration and the increased global mobility of both artworks and artists, the rise of new media and the reconfiguration of older aesthetic imperatives, and, in recent years, an alteration in the role of the artist and the audience have emerged as organizing themes for studies on contemporary art. Despite this divergence, the study of modern and contemporary South Asian art, nevertheless, shares a set of theoretical and methodological predilections that give this subfield conceptual coherence. Many of the entries in this article demonstrate that these predilections result from a broader interest in questions of anti-imperialism, marginality, difference, and otherness as articulated through visual representation. This perhaps is inevitable given that the genealogy of this new subfield can be traced to the anticolonial tenor of early-20th-century scholarship on modern South Asian art, citations for which have also been included in this bibliography.

Contributors

This paper aims to outline the current Orthodox aesthetics vision on modern and contemporary art, based on a thorough exploration of relevant Orthodox theological writings published in Romania. After going through a significant part of the theological literature that deals with aesthetics written by Romanian authors such as Nichifor Crainic, Dumitru Stăniloae, Ioan Bizău, Mihaela Palade, etc., and by internationally well-known Orthodox theologians translated into Romanian such as Paul Evdokimov and Leonid Uspensky, we are able to highlight the main features of a coagulated Orthodox vision on modern and contemporary artists, art movements and artistic phenomena. There is a general agreement among Orthodox theologians that Renaissance was the age when the spirit of individuality and formal freedoms entered art, which led to a distancing of artworks and artists from God. Also, modern art and contemporary art are usually regarded as harmful to the human soul and to its Salvation. These views also reverberate among some circles of Romanian visual artists and art critics with strong Orthodox personal beliefs. Furthermore, this aesthetic vision might partially explain why the Romanian Orthodox Church has remained fairly uninterested in recent art phenomena and why it hasn’t tried to establish a theological or practical dialogue with the artworld, in the past few decades.

The article considers contemporary and modern art in Russia as reflected in museum curatorial projects. The concepts of large-scale museum exhibitions are based on certain categories that correspond to following qualities: the connection with the centuries-old tradition, myth-making, ludic aspects and internationality – openness to the perception of other cultures. The article analyses exhibition projects in the beginning of the twentieth century, in which contemporary art is demonstrated in the space of tradition, the media context, the everyday context and the context of cultural myths and symbols. The problem of determination of the aesthetic value of contemporary art is stressed in the space of the museum, and represented artworks receive a bigger expressiveness in the neighborhood of works of traditional art. Exhibition curators effectively use aesthetic and formal contrasts; sometimes classical artworks themselves suggest new ways of understanding meanings, hypothetically included in contemporary art – as seen in the projects at the Hermitage, the State Russian Museum and the State Tretyakov Gallery, where curators can unite or contrast tradition and modernity.

Modernist Art in Ethiopia

Colonial Legacies: Contemporary Lens-Based Art and the Democratic Republic of Congo by Gabriella Nugent

BackgroundStudent Health Initiatives for Enhanced Disease Surveillance (SHIEDS) is a student-driven program that aims to strengthen infectious disease surveillance and enhance healthy lifestyles within university communities in Ghana. This study aimed to assess SHIEDS feasibility and implementation at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), Kumasi, Ghana.MethodsBetween 29th June and 6th July 2024, educational campaigns were conducted, through radio and social media, to raise awareness about sexually transmitted infections (STIs) among the student population. These campaigns ended with free screening for two STIs: human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and Hepatitis B virus (HBV). Participants provided verbal feedback that were reviewed and included in a recommendation report for the KNUST administration. Positive cases were offered counseling and referred for confirmatory testing at the University Hospital, KNUST, Ghana.ResultsThe SHIEDS awareness campaigns reached more than 20,000 people through social media and the radio outreach benefitted over 3,000 students, with 4 and 5-star ratings for overall program delivery and media campaigns, respectively. A total of 228 students, with mean age of 23 years (range of 18–29) consented to screen for STI by rapid diagnostic testing. The combined STI positivity rate was 0.87%, with rates of 1.01% for HBV and 0.77% for HIV detection among males and females, respectively; all being self-reported old cases on active treatment.ConclusionReview of student feedback recommended screening for other STIs including gonorrhea, syphilis and chlamydia, and instituting SHIEDS as an annual event in the university calendar. Feasibility studies in other universities will inform program standardization and implementation across Ghana. Our findings indicated a healthy student community, which could serve as reference for future SHIEDS programs in KNUST, with scaling up at the national level.

May 03 2021 A Quiet Revolution in Arts Education: The Rise of blaxTARLINES Kumasi Kwaku Boafo Kissiedu, Kwaku Boafo Kissiedu kwaku boafo kissiedu (castro) is a cofounder and the administrative director of blaxTARLINES, Kumasi. He is a senior lecturer at the famed Fine Art Department of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Kumasi, Ghana where, together with other colleagues, he has pioneered revolutionary changes in fine art pedagogy, turning out emerging artists who are making waves worldwide. kwakukiss@yahoo.com Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Scholar Ruth Simbao Ruth Simbao ruth simbao is the DSI/NRF Research Chair in Geopolitics and the Arts of Africa and a professor in Art History and Visual Culture at Rhodes University. She founded the Arts of Africa and Global Souths postgraduate research program at Rhodes, and is a researcher with the international Africa Multiple Cluster of Excellence (Rhodes University, Moi University, University of Lagos, Université Joseph Ki-Zerbo and Bayreuth University). r.simbao@ru.ac.za Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Scholar Author and Article Information Kwaku Boafo Kissiedu kwaku boafo kissiedu (castro) is a cofounder and the administrative director of blaxTARLINES, Kumasi. He is a senior lecturer at the famed Fine Art Department of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Kumasi, Ghana where, together with other colleagues, he has pioneered revolutionary changes in fine art pedagogy, turning out emerging artists who are making waves worldwide. kwakukiss@yahoo.com Ruth Simbao ruth simbao is the DSI/NRF Research Chair in Geopolitics and the Arts of Africa and a professor in Art History and Visual Culture at Rhodes University. She founded the Arts of Africa and Global Souths postgraduate research program at Rhodes, and is a researcher with the international Africa Multiple Cluster of Excellence (Rhodes University, Moi University, University of Lagos, Université Joseph Ki-Zerbo and Bayreuth University). r.simbao@ru.ac.za Online Issn: 1937-2108 Print Issn: 0001-9933 © 2021 by the Regents of the University of California2021Regents of the University of California African Arts (2021) 54 (2): 1–5. https://doi.org/10.1162/afar_a_00575 Cite Icon Cite Permissions Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Search Site Citation Kwaku Boafo Kissiedu, Ruth Simbao; A Quiet Revolution in Arts Education: The Rise of blaxTARLINES Kumasi. African Arts 2021; 54 (2): 1–5. doi: https://doi.org/10.1162/afar_a_00575 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search nav search search input Search input auto suggest search filter All ContentAll JournalsAfrican Arts Search Advanced Search A quiet revolution has steadily been rising in Kumasi, Ghana. The fluid, experimental network known as blaxTARLINES is a mutable and transgenerational community of artists, curators and writers that is based in, but extends beyond, the Department of Painting and Sculpture at Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST).1 This special issue on blaxTARLINES, edited by Ruth Simbao and Kwaku Boafo Kissiedu (Castro), brings together five articles authored by twenty blaxTARLINES affiliates who, in their own words, trace the rise of the creative and intellectual network that was sparked by the work of kąrî’kạchä seid'ou, affectionately known as the godfather of this revolution. Kissiedu and Simbao first met at the African Tertiary Arts Education (ATAE) meeting organized by the African Arts Institute (AFAI) and the Goethe-Institut South Africa in 2015.2... © 2021 by the Regents of the University of California2021Regents of the University of California You do not currently have access to this content.

This study is to investigate the possibilities of developing a cross-culturally common conceptual visual language. In particular, this study evaluates whether it is possible to develop Collaborative New Art that will depict simultaneously both the Contemporary Art and the Modern Technological Civilization in which we live today. It is a general belief especially in the art community that contemporary art and modern art can enhance the distribution of diverse information, foster a profound universality in the human nature, and thus promote cross-cultural collaborations in all walks of lives. However, such a belief has also been questioned due to the overt differences of arts in structures, styles and philosophies perceived by different viewers. In this study, a set of contemporary arts will be evaluated. The comparative results will used to discuss four important issues: What are the salient sensations and reactions of the general public to the contemporary and modern artwork? To what extent the contemporary conceptual art could disclose the new trend of social value changes. Whether the contemporary art and modern art theory and practice would address and help to solve today's social problems within each society. Whether the contemporary art and modern art has a role in harmonizing people with different geopolitical backgrounds and value systems. Finally, several implications will be discussed on the linkage issue between verbal and nor-verbal expressions of thoughts and feelings.

Introduction With economic growth accompanied by the rise of affluent middle classes and entrepreneurs, art in India has taken on new meaning. Just as importantly, contemporary art in the new India is globally interlinked. The creativity of Indian artists in India and abroad is now more visible, with galleries and exhibitions and commercial exchange through international auction houses such as Sotheby's and Christie's. Art in new India is rife with tensions. The recent growth and institutionalization of the contemporary Indian art scene tries to balance traditional local craft, international conceptualism and commerce. The popular perception of art in India centres on traditional handicrafts, often promoted by the state, and temple art, which most Indians are exposed to on an everyday basis. From a wider societal view, contemporary art appears to be an enclave form of artistic and commercial activity, while within the art market itself, contemporary fine art as understood in the West is still an emergent development. This is partly due to the different definitions associated with art. The modern Western notion of art results from social transformations in Europe during the eighteenth century and like many other things that emerged during the Enlightenment, this specific, historic idea of fine art as something different from popular art or craft was – and in many cases still is – believed to be universal. The idea of fine art centres around autonomy and democracy and its institutional development has been closely linked to the birth of nationstates.