The Contemporaneity of the world

I could not have imagined a selection of artists more capable of giving an idea of the intrinsic reality of what is today called “Contemporary African Art”. The origins, the techniques, the times and the subjects addressed show that it is wrong to think that African creation is uniform. And if all question the problematic concept of identity, it is never in a Manichean and essentialist way, quite the contrary. They open the way to a personal quest which, in these troubled times, is the only one worthwhile. Their work comes as an answer to that old question stated by Ernst Bloch, the essential questions, this “Self and We-problem”. The We is a notion that transcends borders and histories, even within Africa itself. It can only be experienced as a choir of soloists. And the very fact that they have all agreed to participate in this charity auction demonstrates, if proof were needed, that we cannot think of ourselves as outside of the world, and that art remains perhaps the only place where difference can be celebrated. From South Africa to Ethiopia to Cameroon, they redefine the emotional map of a world whose foundations are shaking. The rumour of a different world that swells from Africa begins to make itself audible in the four corners of the world, in an organic wave, a salutary wave. It is no longer a question of return but of departure, of departures, towards other forms, other philosophies, other ways of envisioning the “living together” beaten in breach by all the nauseating nationalisms. And if I felt an immense pleasure to work with each of the artists gathered here, it is because, in my eyes, they incarnate the quintessence of the contemporaneity of a world which refuses to be subjected to the claws of globalization.

— Simon Njami