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The Art Bulletin

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Kongo Ins-(ex)piration in Contemporary Art

Bárbaro Martínez-Ruiz

To cite this article: Bárbaro Martínez-Ruiz (2016) Kongo Ins-(ex)piration in Contemporary Art,The Art Bulletin, 98:3, 291-296

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00043079.2016.1157410

Published online: 06 Sep 2016.

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WHITHER ART HISTORY?

Kongo Ins-(ex)piration in Contemporary Art

B�arbaro Mart�ınez-Ruiz

Initial contact between Africans and Europeans established apervasive paradigm for the Western understanding of Africanreligious, cultural, and artistic practices and judgments abouttheir inferior location in the intellectual universe in compari-son with European traditions. Remnants of these attitudescontinue to influence contemporary dialogue on African art.Studies of colonialism and imperialism, along with recogni-tion of the biased political and cultural narratives andabsence of local agency such systems engendered, haveresulted in newly constructed narratives within academic dis-ciplines, including art history, but have failed to fully replaceassumptions regarding the primitive nature of “traditionalart.” Dichotomies in contemporary art theory betweenmodernity versus modernization, culture versus nature, andhigh culture versus low culture continue to position art inopposition to traditional culture. Generally speaking, fine artis understood as distinct from and hierarchically superior totraditionally produced craft or the anthropological “artifact,”with the former produced for its visual and aesthetic valuewhile the latter remains rooted, even mired, in traditionalculture and in the way in which a society relates to and makessense of the world.

The still-evolving approach to the study of Kongo art hasnot prevented contemporary artists in Africa and the dias-pora from creating powerful responses to and extensions ofKongo visual and cultural practices (Fig. 1). Indeed, thework of many contemporary artists can inform modern dis-course about Kongo art. Their work, and the increasinglyglobal art scene in which it is produced and consumed, en-ables the exploration of the manner in which Kongo princi-ples are taken up, extended, and reinterpreted by artists in anew cultural paradigm. By intertwining Western and Kongovisual practices and melding concepts of “modernity” withhistorical elements, these artists attempt to bridge the per-ceived gap between art and culture. In some cases offeringnew interpretations of archetypal images, contemporaryKongo-influenced work also reveals the pervasiveness of cer-tain Western conceptual memes and highlights the difficultyin exploring Kongo art on its own terms.

The large number of contemporary artists in Africa,Europe, the Caribbean, and North and South Americainspired by Kongo visual history cannot be covered here, norcan this essay catalog the body of work featured in recentexhibitions highlighting Kongo influence around the dias-pora. Instead, I have chosen to highlight the manner inwhich selected artists have drawn on Kongo history, art, ico-nography, religion, and philosophy in creating contempo-rary works of art and explore their approaches to such sourcematerial. These approaches range from artists, such as Jos�eBedia, with firsthand experience of Kongo religious practicewho represent and reinterpret deliberately selected Kongo

images and forms to those who utilize but decontextualizeiconic Kongo objects and to others who have not inten-tionally looked to Kongo art history, much less Kongo prac-tices, but whose work nonetheless reflects aesthetics similarto those of some Kongo forms. Together, their art presentsan opportunity to reflect on how the resulting work can beused to move forward contemporary discussions of the over-lapping spheres of historical and contemporary African art.Cuban-born Jos�e Bedia uses his art to explore his double

cultural heritage, seeking to reconcile the Kongo visualinheritance of his Palo Monte religion with conflicting atti-tudes toward the visual arising from his Western backgroundand academic training. By creating systematic representa-tions, groupings, and arrangements not previously seen inthe Kongo Cuban visual tradition, Bedia explores the diver-gence and convergence of the various strands of his identity.In giving them equal prominence and validation, Bedia’smethodology is consistent with the Kongo artistic principlenfuanani, which means equality or egalitarianism1 and hasbeen described in the context of visual presentation aswork with “shifting layers, having no clearly subordinate‘background’ and no clearly secondary themes.”2 Such anapproach was groundbreaking in contemporary Kongo art, avalidation of Kongo cultural principles and a recognitionthat an “artist” in Kongo terms can be an artisan, a maker ofreligious objects, or an expert in Kongo religious matters.Bedia’s work with Kongo artistic principles also exemplifies

American conceptual artist Joseph Kosuth’s view that aes-thetics and art ought to be considered separately and that artcould be analogous to an analytic proposition, a tautology.3

Whereas Kosuth’s 1965 work One and Three Chairs displayedthe same idea (concept) using three different strategies (aphotograph, a wooden chair, and a text) as a series of self-rein-forcing statements that cannot be disproved, Bedia, exploringthe role of tautology within a Cuban identity heavily influ-enced by Kongo culture, accomplishes multiple levels ofconceptual representation while working in a single bidimen-sional framework. For example, in his 1993 painting Sarabandason los Hierros (Sarabanda Is Iron), Bedia represents the sameconcept in three ways: employing Western writing in the title,depicting Sarabanda, the Palo Monte god of war and technol-ogy, using the Kongo graphic writing system known as firmas(signatures), and creating a unique anthropomorphic render-ing of Sarabanda in lieu of the more typical use of iron toolsto visually represent the god (Fig. 2).Like Bedia’s work with Palo Monte concepts and imag-

ery, Edouard Duval-Carri�e’s art is informed by Vodou, areligion practiced predominantly in Haiti and among Hai-tians in the United States that is based on religious tradi-tions of the Ewe, Fon, and Yoruba cultures of West Africaas well as key principles traceable to “traditional” Kongo

religion and Kongo Christianity. Despite its rich and com-plex underpinnings and the way in which it exemplifiesthe manner in which Caribbean religions emerged frominterrelated systems of cultural exchange and synthesis,Vodou is frequently misunderstood and ridiculed as a

form of “primitive” superstition, characterized in themedia as crude and lacking in formal teaching. Through-out his extensive body of work, including his 1997 paint-ings The Landing and Magic Calabash, Duval-Carri�ereferences Vodou oral literature that describes the waysand means of the lwas (gods and goddesses) and incorpo-rates v�ev�e, a graphic writing system used in Vodou as fir-mas are in Palo Monte. Working primarily in oil paintingand sculpture, Duval-Carri�e creates pictorial narratives uti-lizing anthropomorphic figures meant to capture andexpress the essence of Vodou divinities through tangiblevisual shapes, a technique similar to Bedia’s depiction ofSarabanda, but removed from the manner in which suchdeities are generally understood and depicted within thepractice of Vodou.In addition to incorporating specific visual elements drawn

from Kongo traditions, Paulo Kapela and Ren�ee Stout utilizethe Kongo notion kubika a bundu, which means the “art oforganizing” or “bringing together,”4 in the production of theirwork. Kapela, whose life and work in Angola has enabled himto experience the aesthetic eclecticism of hybrid religiousforms such as Mpeve ya Nlongo, Bundu dia Kongo, and theSim~ao Kimbangu Church, incorporates elements from suchpractices into his work. In contrast to Stout’s circumscribedapproach to the display of objects, which parallels the conven-tional use of pedestals to display museum reliquaries, Kapelareproduces religious spaces, conceptualizing them as new fab-rics capable of hosting vital powers, spirits, personal needs,and hopes. What began with spaces used for historical reli-gious practices in Angola becomes an artistic installationconstructed for Western audiences and predominantly aes-theticized by the inclusion of expressive objects rather than bythe relation between objects and the space.Stout presents images that allude to the historical treat-

ment of Kongo “artifacts,” power figures known as minkisinkondi that were both regarded as fetish objects and pro-moted as iconic central African art by museums and private

1 Nganga mawuku (religious specialist) Pedro Nzakimvena’sreligious house (nzo a nkisi), Mbanza Kongo, Angola, 2006(photograph by the author)

2 Jose Bedia, Sarabanda son los Hierros(Sarabanda Is Iron), 1993, acrylic oncanvas, 617/8 £ 95 in. (artwork � JoseBedia; photograph provided by theartist and the Faber Collection)

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collectors. For example, in her 1992 installation Crossroads:Post No. 1, Stout references a genre of early nineteenth-cen-tury art known as “memory jars,” made by unknown artists,and states that the installation “locates itself within Kongocosmology.”5 Each “memory jar” demonstrates an aspect ofKongo artistic tradition known as ma kisi nsi, visible in atype of mpungu ntutu a nlongo, an nkisi in the form of a bot-tle or other container. An mpungu, often referred to as an

nkisi, is commonly conceptualized as a holder of vitalpowers in which medicine (bilongo) works as a manifestationof phenomenological physical and spiritual properties. Theaccumulation of things on the surface of the jar suggeststhat its maker had some degree of knowledge of kubika abundu, in which an accumulation of dispersed life forcesand problems is central to the object’s production, facilitat-ing the physical emergence of the mpungu’s nature through

3 Nkisi a mpungu at nganga mawukuPedro Lopes’s religious house (nzo ankisi), Mbanza Kongo, Angola, 2012(photograph by the author)

4 Mpungu a nkodia at nganga mawukuPedro Lopes’s religious house (nzo ankisi), Mbanza Kongo, Angola, 2012(photograph by the author)

WHITHER ART H I STORY ? 293

the wrapping and tying of hundreds of palm leaves into aknot until they become a large bundle, known as a kanga(to tie) (Figs. 3, 4).6

However, despite the similarity between the memory jarand Kongo objects that are thought to have influenced it, nounbroken continuity exists between them, and the minkisitradition cannot be understood as having been carried oncompletely in the former. The tradition is distanced even fur-ther as it is again reinterpreted in Stout’s installation. Ratherthan objects that work in seclusion, minkisi operate within acomplex system of exchange with other objects, space, andhumans. Their use is dynamic and shifting, and the religiousand cultural systems underlying their use, as they migrate,necessarily undergo a transformation, marked in part by dis-location (Figs. 5–7).

Congolese painter and installation artist Steven Bandoma,like Stout, utilizes well-known elements of historical Kongovisual culture in his work in an effort to bring historical artis-tic production into the more contemporary, conceptual prac-tice for which Bandoma believes there is little room in theDemocratic Republic of the Congo.7 For example, his 2011pieces Acculturation and Lost Tribe depict minkisi at their core,continuing a tradition of contemporary African artists whoseemployment of these iconographic figures serve as short-hand references to a broader cultural or even pan-Africanidentity, including Trigo Paula (Materna, 1984) and KendellGeers (Twilight of the Idols, 2002). While such shorthand refer-ences are indeed effective and highly recognizable, they riskfurthering the existing conflation of a wide range of distinct,complex practices and legitimizing the oversimplificationand generalization characteristic of the existing Westernapproach to the study of African art.

Similarly struggling with the contradictions inherent inmaking Kongo-based art accessible to a Western audience

is contemporary Angolan artist Antonio Ole. Exploringideas of national integration, nationalism, and culturalidentity in a culturally diverse country recovering fromdecades of civil war, Ole looks to the historical promi-nence of the Kongo and alludes to the idea of belongingto a place in history (Fig. 8). He incorporates imagesemblematic of the Kongo Kingdom at the height of itspower in the sixteenth century, such as early maps pub-lished by Antonio Cavazzi, and pairs these with images ofcopied versions of iconic nkisi figures available for sale totourists in Luanda’s craft market. In addition to alludingto the Western consumption of Kongo visual culture, thejuxtaposition of such politically and culturally chargedimages raises questions about the nature of art and how itcan (and, indeed, whether it should) be used to forge anew, unified national identity at the expense of culturallyspecific definitions of and responses to art and beauty.Reflecting their varying degrees of personal experience with

Kongo and Kongo-based religious and artistic traditions, thecontemporary artists featured here navigate the nuanced andcomplex Kongo traditions in unique ways and with differentlevels of literal reference. Kongo imagery is adopted—in somecases, unaccompanied by a real understanding of the meaningbehind such images or their manner of use—extended, andreinterpreted to form narratives that appear to presenthistorical concepts, yet are constructed within and shaped byWestern approaches to art. The results, unfamiliar anthropo-morphic representations of deities and isolated reproductionsof minkisi, illustrate the artists’ Western orientation insofar asthey focus on the manipulation of static images or objectsrather than the processes through which artistic productioncan express underlying religious and cultural beliefs and themanner in which representational objects are animated andengaged.

5 Mpungu a nkama at nganga mawukuPedro Lopes’s religious house (nzo ankisi), Mbanza Kongo, Angola, 2006.Hooton Collection (photograph by theauthor)

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Although the efforts to negotiate and reconcile Kongoartistic practices with the Western artistic tradition withinwhich these artists have trained can inform the evolvingstudy of Kongo art and the broader field of African arthistory of which it forms part, the danger exists that theWestern approach continues to dominate while appearingon the surface to sufficiently consider and incorporatenon-Western components. By using certain images recog-nized and accepted as “representative of” Kongo art suchas minkisi, nails, and packages, these artists risk unwit-tingly glossing over the true complexities and contextualmeanings of the Kongo visual traditions, and the artworld can point to their critical and commercial successas evidence that such issues have been addressed and arenot in need of further exploration. Also notable is thefact that, although these artists draw on various elementsof Kongo philosophy and visual culture, their work is pro-duced largely for consumption by an elite, Western(ized)class; little of the discussion it engenders—or the culturaland financial rewards it earns—makes its way back to thecommunities most actively engaged in the practice ofKongo-based traditions. Until voices from these communi-ties are included in the conversation, it is difficult tosee how a comprehensive framework for the study ofKongo art—or African art, more generally—can be fullydeveloped.

More broadly, although the current contemporary workbeing produced by artists in Africa and the diaspora is excit-ing, its reception in increasingly mainstream circles shouldnot be taken as proof that the challenges facing African arthave been fully overcome. In fact, there is a danger that thesuccess of contemporary African art will lend support to thepernicious assumption that African art is following a trajec-tory similar to Western artistic traditions, evolving from“primitivism” to modernism and moving away from

6 Mpungu a nkama mbenza, Noki, Angola, 2007. HootonCollection (photograph by the author)

7 Mpungu a nvuanzi at nganga mawukuLino Gracia’s religious house (nzo ankisi), Mbanza Kongo, Angola, 2012.Hooton Collection (photograph by theauthor)

WHITHER ART H I STORY ? 295

production driven by and inextricably linked to belief sys-tems whose complexity has been dismissed in the West. Aview that African art is (finally) evolving and should beencouraged in such a process overlooks and dismisses otherforms of artistic production that continue—and themselvesevolve—throughout the region and reinforces the erroneousand detrimental implication that such forms lack artisticmerit.

B�arbaro Mart�ınez-Ruiz is an art historian with expertise in Africanand Caribbean artistic, visual, and religious practices. Previously aprofessor at Havana’ s High Institute of Art, the Rhode Island Schoolof Design, and Stanford University, he joined the University of CapeTown in 2014 as chair of its Art History Department [Department ofArt History, University of Cape Town, 31–37 Orange Street Gardens,Cape Town, South Africa 8001, barbaro.ruiz@orbisafrica.org].

Notes

1. Antonio da Silva Maia, Dicionario Complementar Portugues-Kimbundu-Kikongo(Cacuj~aes: Cooperac~ao Portuguesa, 1994), 343.

2. Robert Farris Thompson, personal conversation with author, Yale Univer-sity, 2000.

3. Joseph Kosuth, “Art after Philosophy,” in Theories and Documents of Contem-porary Art, ed. Kristine Stiles and Peter Selz (Berkeley: University of Califor-nia Press, 2012), 840, 841.

4. B�arbaro Mart�ınez-Ruiz, “Funerary Pots of the Kongo in CentralAfrica,” in African Terra Cottas: A Millenary Heritage, ed. FlorianeMorin and Boris Wastiaus (Geneva: Mus�ee Barbier-Mueller Press,2010), 296.

5. Michael D. Harris, “Resonance, Transformation and Rhyme: The Art ofRen�ee Stout,” in Astonishment and Power, by Wyatt MacGaffey and MichaelD. Harris et al. (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1994),113.

6. B�arbaro Mart�ınez-Ruiz, “Ma Kisi Nsi: L’art des habitants de la r�egion deMbanza Kongo,” in Angola: Figures de pouvoir, by Christiane Falgayrettes-Leveau et al. (Paris: Mus�ee Dapper Press, 2011), 183–90.

7. See http://stevebandoma.blogspot.com.

8 Antonio Ole, N/S, 1994–97, mixedmedia on paper, 121/8 £ 93/8 in. (30.8 £23.8 cm). Collection of the artist(artwork � Antonio Ole; photographby the author)

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