Sponsoring art for Zimbabawe

The publisher and editor gratefully acknowledge
the following who have contributed to the production
of this issue of Gallery magazine

Hos
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APEX CORPORATION OF ZIMBABWE LIMITED

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cover: Marc Standing,
The Whisper, 2000

90 x 150cm,

oil on canvas

above: Keston Beaton,
Bird Instrument, 1998
found objects

Contents september 2000

2

Artnotes

3

Altered States: the paintings of Marc Standing and Duncan Wylie

by Frances Marks

13

Farewell to Authenticity: the Dak’Art Biennale
by Sabine Vogel

7:

The Poetry Caravan, from Dakar to Timbuktu
by Koyo Kouoh

25 ,

Forthcoming events and exhibitions

~~ SMILAS

© Gallery Publications
ISSN 1561 - 1574

Publisher: Derek Huggins
Editor: Murray McCartney
Designer: Myrtle Mallis
Origination: Crystal Graphics
Printing: A.W. Bardwell & Co

Contents are the copyright of Gallery
Publications and may not be
reproduced in any manner or form
without permission. The views and
opinions expressed in this magazine
are those of the writers themselves
and not necessarily those of Gallery
Delta, Gallery Publications, the
publisher or the editor.

Articles and Letters are invited for
submission. Please address them
to The Editor.

Subscriptions from Gallery
Publications, c/o Gallery Delta
110 Livingstone Avenue

P.O. Box UA 373, Union Avenue,
Harare, Zimbabwe

Tel & Fax: (263-4) 792135
E-mail: <gallery @icon.co.zw>

Artnotes

This issue of Gallery, Number 25, marks the
start of its seventh year of continuous
publication. The first issue was launched in
September, 1994, on the occasion of a
commemorative show of Robert Paul’s
painting to mark the centenary of the house
at 110 Livingstone Avenue, which had
become the home of Gallery Delta three
years earlier.

Writing about the event at the time for The
Northern News, I summoned the roll-call of
short-lived local art and culture publications
— ZED, Zimbabwe Insight, Southern African
Arts, The Artist — and wondered for a
moment at the quiet confidence of Barbara
Murray’s first editorial:

...despite the problems, the fact remains that
the arts in Zimbabwe, in Africa, need
publications to record, review, criticise and
publicise the activities and work of creative
artists.

My response was unambiguous, and as I
read it again now, six years later, it serves as
a reminder of the debt which many of us
owe to Barbara’s passionate and unstinting
labours:

On the evidence of its inaugural offering,
Gallery, intended to be a quarterly
publication, looks well set to achieve these
ambitions. It is well written, serious but not
scholarly, readable but not superficial ...
the printing and reproduction quality is
excellent.

The challenge, of course, is sustainability.
Gallery Delta has shown a remarkable
capacity for turning setbacks into
challenges, and challenges into successes.
110 Livingstone Avenue is a monument to
that as much as it is a monument to anything
else. Gallery is bound to succeed. For if
Delta can't do it, perhaps we should
conclude that it can’t be done at all.

What my otherwise prescient crystal ball
failed to reveal, was the generous moral and
financial support which Gallery would
attract from the Dutch development agency,
HIVOS, and that I would ever be asked to
follow in Barbara Murray’s footsteps and
edit the magazine myself.

I do so with a mixture of humility and
trepidation, and I do it at a time when
Zimbabwe is enduring its most difficult days
since Independence. With the economy in
tatters, with a dark pall hanging over the
livelihoods of most of the population, with
few outsiders caring to visit the country,
with uncertainty stalking us whichever way

we turn ... given all of this, might not the
publishers of a minority-interest magazine
be accused of fiddling while Rome burns?

If we were doing nothing more than putting
an optimistic gloss on the reality around us,
and ferreting out “feel good’ stories with
which to decorate and amplify our hopes for
the future, the answer might be ‘yes’. But
Gallery has never taken that view, either of
life or of art.

At its best, art is always a challenge to the
status quo, whatever the medium through
which it is expressed. It need not insist,
bluntly, that reality be transformed (although
it may do this as well), but it will certainly
insist that we look at it in a new way, review
our Own perspectives and prejudices, and
consider the alternatives.

The alternatives can be presented to us in
many different ways. We may be persuaded
to see an apparently familiar subject from an
unfamiliar angle. This, as Frances Marks
argues in her review of his recent exhibition,
is one of the things Duncan Wylie achieves
in his unsettling approach to the built
environment: what could be more ‘normal’
than looking at the architecture of our city?
And yet what more disturbing than the
perspectives we see through the lens of
Wylie’s imagination?

Marc Standing, in the same show, presents a
slightly different challenge to our social
orthodoxies, pushing our noses against the
school-yard fence and forcing us to
reconsider our notions of childhood: its
anguishes, torments and silent terrors.

Marks’ assessment of these two young
Zimbabwean artists is in keeping with
Gallery's commitment to tracing the
activities and trends in the domestic art
world. In the next issue of the magazine we
will take a broader look at this theme, and
consider how it is reflected by the National
Gallery’s Heritage Biennale 2000.

National boundaries, however, in the arts as
in so many other fields of endeavour, are
becoming ever more permeable. Exhibitions
travel from country to country, and so do the
artists themselves; newspapers, magazines
and — increasingly — the Internet, are making
the world a smaller place. As Barbara
Murray emphasised six years ago, our
concern must go beyond the art of
Zimbabwe alone. She and Derek Huggins
have done much to link Zimbabwe to the
currents flowing through the African arts, by
visiting exhibitions elsewhere on the
continent and beyond, by organising touring

shows of Zimbabwean art outside the
country, and by contributing to publications
and discussions. International links have
also been facilitated by our principal
sponsor, HIVOS.

Sabine Vogel’s contribution to this issue, in
which she casts a cynical eye over the

Dak’ Art biennale in Dakar, Senegal, is one
of the many fruits of that international
engagement, and is a reminder of how close
Africa is to the centre of global debates
about the form and content of contemporary
art. We hope to publish further commentary
on this important exhibition in a future
issue.

Before Dak’Art opened its doors to the
public, the west African city was the starting
point for another excursion into the
workings of the creative mind: La Caravane
de la Poésie (The Poetry Caravan).

Although two Zimbabwean poets were
amongst the company which followed the
long road (and rail, and river) from Dakar to
Timbuktu, that alone is certainly not enough
to justify coverage of the event in a
Zimbabwean art magazine. Our reasons for
reaching beyond the visual arts on this
occasion are twofold. Firstly, given the
prominence of Francophone Africa within
the continent’s cultural development, Koyo
Kouoh’s article offers an illuminating
introduction to the philosophy and
sensibilities of a region which receives too
little attention in our southern latitudes.

Secondly, the initiative of the Gorée Institute
in organising such an event may contain
instructive lessons for creative programming
in other realms of artistic endeavour. To be
sure, poetry is a more mobile medium than,
say, sculpture, and so lends itself better to
the caravan treatment; but must the plastic
arts be as physically circumscribed as we
often think them? It is true, too, that poetry
appears to bind itself to the oral tradition in
a way that has few parallels in the visual
arts; but is this always necessarily so?

Just as Zimbabwe’s place in the world will
not be determined only by the visions and
action of Zimbabweans themselves, so are
the visual arts constantly touched by the
echoes and ideas of other creative mediums.
As and when those echoes reach us, Gallery
will give them a voice.

Murray McCartney
Editor

Two young Zimbabwean
painters, Marc Standing and
Duncan Wylie, recently exhibited
together at Gallery Delta.
Frances Marks takes a look
through the prisms of their
creative imagination.

(above) Duncan Wylie,
Africa Unity Square 1, 2000,
180 x 180cm, oil on canvas

(right) Marc Standing, Crisis, 2000,
100 x 100cm, oil on canvas

(right) Marc Standing, Girls, 2000,
50 x 50cm, oil on canvas

»

arc Standing, The Red Shed,
x 200cm, oil on canvas

“Oh, it’s dead — been and gone!” Or so critics have said of the figure
in ‘new’ art. For those of us who remain worried that, portraiture
aside, the figurative tradition in painting is on the wane, I have some
reassuring news: it isn’t over yet.

Exhibiting jointly, under the respective legends Psychosis and
Rupture [Gallery Delta, 19 September to 7 October], Marc Standing
and Duncan Wylie revealed more than just a mild flirtation with the
human figure as a vehicle for the intimation of emotional and
existential states. Stylistically, neither artist trod on the toes of the
other, or on those of painters from the recent, or not so recent, ‘past’.
Instead, we were presented with two very different — but oddly
complementary — styles of work brought together by a mutual, yet
independent, interest in altered states. This is not to suggest that
theirs is a curiosity that abstracts, deforms or defaces. It is quite the
opposite. Both Standing and Wylie show an artistic raison d’étre
that is firmly grounded in reality, even if the exact nature of this
reality is derived from the invisible or the intangible.

A recent graduate of Cape Town’s Michaelis School of Fine Art,
Standing is currently concerned with the articulation and expression
of human universals; those states of mind that most of us have
experienced at one time or another. Chiefly confining himself to the
realm of the child, he succeeds, with a maturity that belies his years,
in capturing the rawness of the pre-pubescent who faces the adult
world. Yet Standing is far from concerned with Proustian
madeleines, focusing instead on the resurrection of uncomfortable
circumstances, angst-filled moments or traumatic events.

Perhaps the most crucial aspect to this recall of ‘infantalia’ is that the
finished work is intended as much for the viewer as it is for the
artist. Standing’s work is not the cathartic by-product of a tormented
soul nor is it a personal means of understanding a very private past.
With this knowledge and having dealt with the initial element of
strangeness - these paintings are not classically beautiful - every
viewer should be able to recognise or remember a parallel situation
in their own history. In this regard, Crisis is undoubtedly one of
Standing’s most immediately accessible compositions. The clarity
of the title notwithstanding, few could fail to comprehend and be
affected by the aura of guilt, disapproval and uninhibited anguish
which emanate from the young boy, the father and the small girl
respectively.

Despite this consequential nature Standing has quite clearly stated
that the paintings on show at Gallery Delta are not to be regarded as
traditional narratives. One should rather approach each as a
distillation of many unspecified events and then create, if necessary,
an appropriate explanation for oneself. Girls for example, evokes
for me memories of the atmosphere that pervades many a
playground; conjuring up the noise and effect of taunting, the
teasing, the victimisation of the weak or the outsider by those who
feel (paradoxically) similarly misunderstood themselves.

That there is scope for such individual interpretation does not imply
that Standing’s works are at all unfinished. We are only allowed to
historically ‘rework’ each image as a result of a deliberate balance
between the inclusion and exclusion of particular forms or details.
For example, Standing’s painted worlds are shadow-less and the
surroundings are unnaturally bare. The sense of time and space is
accordingly disrupted and is accentuated by the eerie effect of his
muted and chalky palette and the occasional bursts of pure colour.
The issues of ‘when’ and ‘where’ are made redundant.

Standing also plays with our emotions by slightly disengaging us
from the subject matter without losing the disquieting effect. I
personally found this true of Conviction, which summoned forth
feelings that were distinctly voyeuristic and critical — quite unlike
Degas’ Absinthe Drinkers of which it was peculiarly evocative. In
works such as The Red Shed and Goggles Standing turns the tables
on our sense of frailty and we ourselves seem to become the
critically observed.

Marc Standing, Conviction, 2000,
50 x 50cm, oil on canvas

(right) Marc Standing, Goggles,
2000, 50 x 50cm, oil on canvas

Quarantine,

(below
200 n, oil on canvas

(right) Marc Standing, The Mute, 2000,
50 x 50cm, oil on canvas

(below) Marc Standing, Mammy, 2000,
90 x 151cm, oil on canvas

Common to almost all of his canvasses is a consistent level of facial
ambiguity. By blanking out definite features Standing allows us to
project self-determined identities and relationships. In Mammy the
three or - depending on how you see it - four sitters are sufficiently
amorphous to be unrecognisable as known beings but seem alike
enough for us to conclude that they do share a measure of
consanguinity. Beyond this, and the subtle guidance of the title, the
final associations are all of one’s own making.

Standing, then, unconsciously aligns himself with the British ‘New
Metaphysical’ painters, working from a similar intellectual level as
Fiona Rae or Jenny Saville, marrying painted forms and ideas in a
semi-disruptive way and thus forcing the viewer to really think about
the relationship between content and meaning. Many of the
questions that Quarantine brings to mind are highly topical but are
less heart-wrenching than the thoughts which fill one’s head upon
viewing The Mute. Or are they? Once again, it depends upon the
mind-set of the viewer standing before them.

Duncan Wylie is also concerned with perceptual perplexities, and
has been since graduating from the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris,
but he has adopted a very different standpoint. His paintings depend
much more on theory and the intellect than on the machinations of
memory and emotional recognisance that dominate Standing’s
oeuvre. This is of little significance to the passive viewer whose
enjoyment of any work is purely formal, but for those who engage
more closely with a work of art the effect is quite striking. Contrary
to first impressions, Wylie comes off as the more private painter of
the two in that the viewer is more closed off from his paintings, even
in the case of Africa Unity Square 2, which offers an observable
narrative element that is close to us all.

In terms of narrative, Wylie reworks the established and highly
classical tradition of episodic history painting, with its dramatic
action and story revealed, in book-like fashion, across the canvas
from left to right. By purposely omitting one of the sequential
moments Wylie does not so much tell us a story as alert us to the
nature of the time and space in which it takes place. The key
narrative element is rendered invisible and resides in this, his self-
styled ‘rupture’.

This manipulation of time is most readily appreciated in Seated 1
and Seated 2, where its passage is clearly demarcated by the
‘splitting’ of the canvas into two distinct but contiguous areas. In
both, our attention is drawn to reconstructing the movements of the
observed and the observer, mentally recreating the ‘b’ necessary to
join ‘a’ and ‘c’ together. Readily admitting to an interest in Cubism,
Photo-Cubism in particular, Wylie has found a simple solution to the
problem of admitting a fourth dimension into the canvas.

The scale of these focal lapses and omissions is intensified in “/50 x
170” (stop and) which for me brings home the dislocated worlds of
the daydreamer, the overly-preoccupied and the short-term amnesiac.
‘Before’ and ‘after’ are themselves interchangeable and thus ‘during’
assumes a dual character. This canvas is more than a matter of
spotting and establishing the temporal differences; it also plays with
our psychology of perception. By rotating the imagery through 90
degrees in relation to the well-known subject it depicts, we are made
acutely aware of the picture plane and the spatial relationship of
inanimate objects to it.

Africa Unity Square 1 amplifies and further complicates this issue of
‘before’, ‘during’ and ‘after’. None of its four panels, each in
delicious ‘Wine Gum’ colours, have any static element in common.
Though each of the ‘players’ has a role in all four, not one of their
gestures, positions, or situations remains unchanged. Our innate
visual tendency to organise and rationalise is almost confounded,
time — the binding compositional element — having been so cannily
distorted.

Which brings me back to Africa Unity Square 2 and the
consequences of an intellectual appreciation of its content. One of
the questions it poses is: whose passage of time is being marked —
hers or ours? Or, put more simply: who is moving — she or we? In
this area Wylie pays his own particular homage to Suprematism, an
early twentieth century Russian approach to art, characterised by the
use of geometrical shapes and a narrow range of colours, that was
determined to offer the viewer a different but equally valid view of
reality. Though the forms Wylie uses have little in common with
Malevich’s elementary prototypes, his concept and manner of
abstraction — the removal of the familiar from the known
environment — do meet with the finicky suprematist argument about
the artist as creator not imitator.

Time, space and the connections with the architectural form are as
important to Wylie as are connections with the figure. In many
ways, the building offers him more room for manoeuvre, as its
inherent static quality can perhaps be more readily subjected to an
exercise in the ‘misorganisation’ of space. In “//0 x 150” (2nd

(left) Duncan Wylie, “150 x 170” (stop and), 2000,
150 x 150cm, oil on canvas

(above) Duncan Wylie, Africa Unity Square 2, 2000,
oil on canvas

10

(above) Duncan Wylie, Seated 7, 2000,
150 x 150cm, oil on canvas

(right) Duncan Wylie, Seated 2, 2000,
150 x 150cm, oil on canvas

11

State) and, to a greater extent, in “72 x 150” (Ist State), Wylie first
establishes a level of ambiguity as to the precise position of the
picture plane by repeating the same motif twice over and literally
altering its perspective. He then plays with the depth of field by
pulling the ‘wrong’ areas into focus. Only the skies are seen as if
from a fixed spatial point, finalising the impossibility of such a view
but only if the composition is considered as representative of a
single glance. The overall effect is one of entertaining upset.

Wylie’s architectural and figurative compositions are more than just
natty perspectival rearrangements; he uses them to quietly draw our
attention to the importance of the negative in art. His use of negative
space and negative time, or their absences, serves to subvert our
vision.

It is in this area — the consideration of that which is not shown — that
Wylie and Standing seem to be at their closest in this exhibition.
Standing’s desolate rooms and stark backgrounds are no less lacking
in content than are Wylie’s ethereal elements. For both of them,
‘empty’ is in fact ‘full’.

(left) Duncan Wylie, “172 x 150” (1*' state), 2000,
172 x 150cm, oil on canvas

(below) Duncan Wylie, “170 x 150 (2 state), 2000,
110 x 150cm, oil on canvas

All photographs by Frances Marks

Jems Robert Koko Bi, Diaspora, 1999
50 x 80 x 130 cm, poplar wood

Sabine Vogel, until recently on the staff of the
Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin, visits
Dak’Art, the biennial exhibition of

African art in Dakar, Senegal.

14

(below) Fatma M’seddi Charfi, Numismatique (detail),
1999, 33 x 30 x 7 cm, Plexiglas, metal, tissue paper

(right) Mamady Seydi, Euvres regroupées (Waxi maam)
Parole des Anciens, 2000, iron, wood

a significant part by the French, and it
certainly succeeds in shaking off its
touching image of being a ‘bush’ exhibition.
The authenticity of being African can no
longer hold. This slogan was not only stated
at the obligatory symposium, but repeated at
the newly founded Forum for African Art,
introducing itself at a specially called press
conference. An African-American initiative,
the Forum is sponsored by the Ford
Foundation, and aims to increase the
participation of black artists in international
show business.

The Biennale in Dakar, the (just postponed)
Photo Biennale in Bamako, the Islamic
Biennale in Cairo and the Film Festival in
Ouagadougou are the most important
cultural events on the African continent,
with the Johannesburg Biennale and its
successor, the Ubuntu Festival, having come
to nothing.

Therefore, everybody was there: Harald
Szeeman, the artistic director of the mother

of all Biennales in Venice, getting a taste of
Art from Africa; the artistic director of the
new Forum, Okwui Enwezor; and Simon
Njami, curator and publisher of the Parisian
art magazine Revue Noire, trying to get away
from its image of a pure ‘africanité’.

Dakar is the ideal place for that. Léopold
Sédar Senghor, President of the first post-
colonial Republic of Senegal philosophised
in the past about ‘negritudé’, not as a
cultural pureness, but rather as a signal of
the potential for intercultural dialogue.

The main exhibition in the museum was
dominated by installations, which suffuse
the catalogue of Eurocentric
internationalism. Multimedia, video,
photography, conceptual sculptures, an
avoidance of Afro-clichés like Magic,
Naiveté, Primitivism .... and, as everywhere
else on the globe, hardly any painting, other
than that offered in defiant counteraction by
Senegalese painters in the numerous satellite
exhibitions around the city’s parks.

The Jury prize went to the truly multimedia
installation by the Geneva-based Tunisian,
Fatma M’seddi Charfi. Having filmed
artificial insects, she moulded them in
plastic to form a coin collection
(Numismatique), embedded them in gauze
and placed them as tiles onto the floor.
Gauze, bandages, drapes — and the local
variation, the fishing net — are the materials
of choice this season. And the main themes?
Identity, Displacement, Migration and the
Diaspora, the context being immediately
apparent in the working title, or hidden
behind the metaphor of suitcases, mattresses,
cages and ID papers. Only a few works with
any ethnic reference sneaked in, such as the
sculpture by the Senegalese Mamady Seydi,
a homage to the sayings and wisdom of his
people. And the response? ‘These figures
with aprons are ridiculous, who wears them
any more?’ complained Barthehemelemy
Toguo from Diisseldorf, whose poetic
drawings were recently seen at the
exhibition ‘Heimat Kunst’ (Art from the
Homeland) in Berlin.

Even if — as curators would have us believe
— there is no true African ‘Heimat Kunst’
any more, there are still African conditions
Man and his Sheep, by the Brazilian Ana
Maria Pacheco had problems entering the
country. The art trunk of the South African

Kay Hassan, containing about a thousand

pairs of old spectacles, was stuck at customs.
On the morning of the opening he went into

treets and bought up the complete stock
of a spectacle repair shop, and placed it
without any modification into the exhibition
hall. It worked, of course. The magicians of
this earth already understand — even if they
didn’t actually invent — the concept of
contextualisation.

Ana Maria Pacheco, Man and his Sheep (detail),

1989, 200 x 450 x 400 cm, painted wood

Photographs from the Dak’Art catalogue

Bili Bidjocka, a Cameroonian from Paris,
put up flags all over city. In about 30
significant sites his pink “fast forward’ signs
fluttered in white parachute silk.

‘Take a Cab’, was the luridly coloured
message on a flyer marking the spots on a
town map. But how to go about it?
Travelling by taxi in Dakar is not an easy
undertaking, and is full of surprises. Back in
the desert wind, passing concrete mosques
with their bleached minarets, passing street
sellers trying to sell you an ironing board
through the car window, and women whose
elegance takes your breath away. Get out at
the bus terminal, where the taxis to St. Louis
depart and where the hot dust dries the
puddles of urine...

At the same time as the Biennale, a Designer
Salon and Fashion Week are traditionally
held. At least six shows each evening of the
most progressive African fashion designers
celebrate African creativity, sensuousness
and beauty — without being forced to define
or conform. The Queen of the West African
fashion designers, Oumou Sy, despite being
illiterate, has opened the first Internet café in
Dakar. In the local language, Bambara, it is
called ‘Metissanca’: Long live the hybrid. . .

{English translation by Jutta Jackson]

poetical journey
to Timbuktu

Late last year the Gorée Institute in Senegal organised a caravan of poets —
including Zimbabwe’s Chenjerai Hove and Chirikure Chirikure — to travel
from Dakar to Timbuktu. Koyo Kouoh, the co-ordinator of the event, and the
moving spirit behind it, visited the Zimbabwe International Book Fair in
August, and offers her thoughts about the Caravan’s inspiration, and her
memories of its highlights.

The past is always present
and the future never comes

17

In all beginnings there are words. Words are bridges to the other.
Words are revelation to oneself. Words hang in the air, move from
tongues to ears au gré des vents, words penetrate the soil as
clandestine fertilizer, their sounds, rhythms and melodies
perfuming the air.

One can hardly escape words. Their usage, their influence, their
power for change. When images have faded away in our memory
and objects decomposed, words are still echoing from within. In
this sense it is not surprising that the first to be persecuted or
feared are those who possess the power of words. Many writers
all over the globe run for their lives. The same people are
cherished, courted and celebrated by others who believe in this
power of the word and acknowledge its importance in binding
people, regulating societies and unveiling atrocities. The most
prestigious recognition of excellency in creative expression goes
each year to one member of that select family holding the secret
power of words.

Poetry is one of the first expressions of the soul which
longs for dreams and crazyness.
Were Were Liking (Cameroon)

Modern considerations and democratic achievements have
enabled anyone to have access to this secret. This was not the case
in the ancient cultures of West Africa. You were born in a family
of masters of the word to perpetuate this special ability from
father to son, from mother to daughter. How better to face the new
millennium than with the affirmation of words and songs, which
persist despite all the turmoils that hug the world in a thorny
embrace?

Breyten Breytenbach, South African poet, painter, human rights
activist and member of the board of trustees of the Gorée
Institute, elaborated the concept of creative caravans as a possible
articulation of the Institute’s cultural programme. The concept is
centred around the creative fusion of Africa’s traditional and
modern artistic expressions. It is about the marriage of the past
and the present to project the future. The ‘voyage’ becomes a
metaphor for the exchange and rebirth of the African cultural and
artistic genius.

The idea of a poetry festival in Timbuktu has been wandering in
Breytenbach’s mind at least since he wrote, in Return to Paradise,

Willy the laughing revolutionary poet listened to my
evocation and asked for a drink. Together we dreamed of
the day a gathering of African poets could be brought to
Timbuktu, even if only to pay homage to the passing of
knowledge.

The dream of the Poetry Caravan was to follow the trade routes of
old, along which goods, people, words and ideas flowed for
centuries; for nine renowned poets from different corners of
Africa to share words and ideas in a celebration of Africa’s
achievement to have made the word the core of its societies.

In the language of the sands and merciless winds of the desert,
nature fights its own wars against the human race. The people
fight back by creating new civilisations all the time. Memory
serves them by retaining that which is lived and dreamt in the
human heart and in faraway places. Words are nomads which
cross all borders in search of new patterns of life. The Poetry
Caravan was a search for the voices which gave the West African
empires their glory all over the world. Life began in words, by
naming, singing and reciting. The word transformed itself into
flesh and breath. So did the word share the footpath, the river and
the road.

Oh you on your way to Gao;

go by Timbuktu,

go murmur my name to my friends

and bring them the perfumed greetings of the exile
who sighs for the earth

where his friends, family and neighbours reside.

Ahmed Baba, a poet in sixteenth-century Timbuktu, was
persecuted and deported by Moorish invaders and could only
send words to revive his memory of the homeland. Nothing could
bar his words from reaching home to tell his story, to bring his
breath home where it rightly belonged. Caravans of African
traders are an ancient concept. These primarily commercial trips
always entailed an element of culture as well. Along the trade
routes of West Africa not only people travelled but also their
tales, songs, dances, myths and legends. Trade became a
celebration of the word as the core of human interaction at the
emotional, cultural, economic, social and historical levels.

The poets of the Poetry Caravan celebrated the capacity of the
word to transcend physical as well as emotional barriers. Much as
desert people have the duty to remember the waterhole, so do
poets have the duty to thirst for the word, searching incessantly
for the source, the wellspring where once great minds met and
exchanged visions and dreams. Timbuktu means the well of
Buktu. Buktu was the enslaved black woman who had to tend the
waterhole of life and survival in the desert. Memory is always
written in words and songs. As the desert people moved from
oasis to oasis, their memories also shifted from different sands of
knowledge to other histories. They sang that celebration in words.
It became a caravan of words and songs, the heart yearning for
things past, and things to come.

Poetry is a search for existence; the presence as well as
the absence. The Poet is a nomad on a perpetual march,
an eternal and thorny journey through time and spaces.
Amina Said (Tunisia) 19

The waters of the rivers Niger, Senegal, Nile, Congo and Zambezi
flowed along carrying goods, people and their words. Goods
perished. People perished. But the word remained in the murmurs
and breaths of people. The word was retained in the air and dust
caressing or slapping the others to come. The river becomes the
conveyor of dream and knowledge, through words. Words flowed
with the water and the desert winds, the songs and theatrical
dances of dry feet stamping the river sand into powder.

The past is always present and the future never comes unless we
go back to the source and rejoice. The poets on the Poetry
Caravan joined history in search of the source. They joined those
who, for centuries, have carried salt and gold on the backs of the
camel, in the desert, and in the canoes, in fulfilment of the human
dream to spread the wings of knowledge and power. They joined
those who for centuries carried the stories of the people and their
lives. Traditionally every family and every group of people in
West Africa has its spokespersons. The griot, the djelli and the
gawlo are libraries in flesh and blood. They keep history alive,
transmitting it from generation to generation. The griot was the
literary painter of the social canvas. Even though he belonged to a
so-called lower group in the social hierarchy, his power over the
powerful was undeniable for he was the container of history in
these oral societies.

Poetry is a caravan which reaches the deepest soul of the

reader or the listener. Poetry doesn't know limits. Poetry

slips in everywhere. Poetry is movement.
Chirikure Chirikure (Zimbabwe)

So ee
FE i N,

Between October 24" and November 11" 1999, nine poets from
Egypt, South Africa, Mali, Senegal, Cameroon, Zimbabwe and
the region of Central Sahara went through a unique poetical
experience. In search of inspiration, they made a journey to their
oral colleagues.

The poets left Gorée Island, off the coast of Dakar, Senegal, on a
Sunday morning to go on a journey of 2,500 km through a region
drenched with past glory. They travelled to meet and perform with
traditional poets, the griots, and to pay homage to the historical
places on the route to Timbuktu.

October 24"

The 16-strong expedition leaves bustling Dakar in a mini-bus;
apart from the poets and myself, there is a photographer, a radio
reporter, a doctor, an accountant, and two consulting poets —
Chenjerai Hove from Zimbabwe and Jan Kees van de Werk from
the Netherlands — to make sure the poetic fusion occurs. The three
members of the film crew drive ahead of us in another vehicle.
The road goes through a flat landscape of savannah; very green
this year after the heavy rains of the last season. After 250 km we
stop for the first scheduled performance in Kaolack.

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Kahola (as it was called before French colonisation) is said to be
founded by Mboutou Sow, son of Sega, son of Biram, son of Pulo
who came from Egypt through Tchad, the River Niger and Mali.
Kahola means the place where one has to stop. So we stopped to
symbolically ask the local griots for our way. And they did show
us the path to follow, in a series of praise songs of the voyage.
Thierno Seydou Sall from Senegal entered the colourful poetical
dance praising wisdom and its benefits.

We follow the recommendations of the griots word by word in
order not to get lost on our way to Timbuktu. The sun begins to set
before we reach the crossroad of many cultures: Soninke,
Mandinka, Wolof. Tambacounda is where we have to spend the
first night of the caravan; the sun is now in its pyjamas, but not yet
asleep. We enter the city which welcomes us with many griots,
each representing a particular society. Now the moon takes its
complete shape and the poets slips into the scenery, reciting and
praising the word.

October 26"
The caravan boarded the train in Kayes at the border between
Senegal and Mali to head for Kita. The railway makes its own iron
metaphor, bringing old French modernity on the horse paths of
Mandingo hunters.

Kita is full of myths and stories. Birthplace of Emperor Sundjata
Keita. All over Africa the myth of Sundjata is a cultural reference.
Handicapped since his birth, the young prince rose miraculously
to his feet after many years. His reign was marked by unification
and prosperity, and by the trans-Saharan trade in salt, spices, ivory,
cloth, kola nuts and slaves. At his death, the Malian Empire spread
across what is today Mali, Senegal and The Gambia.

Kita is a place where you feel the breath coming from the lungs of
the continent. Kita is also a place where you see the tears of the
ancestors buried in humiliation. The small town is surrounded by
hills. The Emperor used the hills as a retreat to regroup his forces
before the next battle. The society was regulated in /e vestibule de
la parole: a house of words where no written documents are
allowed, nor any women either.

The caravan’s female poets had a hard time defending the
recognition of women, and their central position in passing

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24

knowledge and cultural values from one generation to another.
The world is still fundamentally a male one on these latitudes.

November 3”

Mopti, another crossroad of many cultures. The famous
Bandiagara cliffs of the Dogon on the one hand, the pan-African
Peuhl on the other. A centre of commerce for all types of goods. It
is here where we embark on two pinaces — big canoes sculpted
out of a single tree — for floating poetry on the mighty river Niger,
which rises in the heights of the Fouta Djallon in Guinea and
throws itself into the Atlantic through the Nigerian delta after
flowing over 4,000 km.

We enter the Songhai and Tuareg territories around Goundam. A
performance with the Tuareg master of ceremonies, Amano, who
has gathered representatives of the Tuareg society. The oral
tradition doesn’t hold sway in this region, close to the river bend,
as it does deeper south. Islam forced its way here in the eleventh
century and brought education through the language of the Holy
Koran. Here the spoken word manifests its power. That is to say it
is possible to go beyond language barriers and transmit a feeling,
emotions. The word is rhythm and transcendental. Poets succeed
in giving the words a meaning in languages that must have
sounded strange to the ears of the audience.

November 5"

The final destination is in sight. Timbuktu! We made it. It is
incredible. We are here. The love of words and sharing have
carried a group of people to the ancient place of wisdom and
knowledge. Timbuktu! Not at the end of world at all, neither in
the middle of nowhere. Right there in the cardinal triangle of the
lands of Blacks, the Arabs, the Moors, and the Tuareg. Timbuktu!
Combining the mercantilism of slavery and the fervent acquisition
of knowledge.

A crowd of over two thousand people came together to celebrate
Africa’s most dear commodity, the word. Spoken and written.
Aminata Dramane Traoré, sociologist, woman of culture and
Mali’s Minister of Culture and Tourism pays a homage to the

Photographs by Jan Kees van de Werk
and Chirikure Chirikure

caravan with her presence. The Malian government is refocusing
its approach to the promotion of culture and tourism. The Poetry
Caravan represents a form of exchange which gives the privilege
to learn anew, to look with the heart and the mind; as Antoine de
Saint Exupéry so aptly phrased it: You see well only by looking
with the heart, for the essential is invisible to the eye.

A captivating, three hour long poetical performance. A fusion
weaving together the language tapestry of Tamashek, Wolof,
Shona, Afrikaans, Arabic, French, Songhai, English and Dutch. A
poetry festival as never seen before. The Poetry Caravan was a
significant cultural action by Africans for Africans. The link to
past and present was a valuable step in recognising the importance
of the sources of inspiration. Many African writers dig into these
treasure boxes to create new realities. The Caravan reinforced the
need for continuity and reciprocity. To meet and exchange with
traditional storytellers in their respective environments contributes
to the revalorization of this element of our cultures and societies.
This is essential, and needs to be seen with the heart and mind.

[With acknowledgements to Chenjerai Hove]

Forthcoming exhibitions and events

At the National Gallery of Zimbabwe
the Mobil Zimbabwe Heritage Biennale
opens in Harare on 17 November and runs
until 25 January 2001, before travelling first
to Bulawayo and then Mutare. The show is
considerably smaller than usual, and offers
an uncluttered review of contemporary art in
Zimbabwe. As the catalogue notes, “Gone
at last is the perennial focus on domestic
continuity, the nurturing environment and
urban life at one remove. Instead, one is

confronted by ... an unprecedented painterly

acknowledgement of a far harsher milieu
and a less forgiving society.”

The harshness of the unforgiving domestic
milieu is reflected elsewhere, and in a less
encouraging way. The BAT Workshop,

established in the early 1980s by the then
Director of the National Gallery, Christopher
Till, is in danger of closing. Financial
constraints within the Gallery itself have
been compounded by the withdrawal, after
many years, of support by the British
American Tobacco company. The Workshop
has given invaluable encouragement to
dozens of young artists over the years, many
of whom have exhibited at Gallery Delta in
the past, and most of whom were included in
the show, Colour Africa, which opened in
Munich in September.

On behalf of the NGZ, a fund-raising appeal
has been launched by the Friends of the
Gallery. Further details can be obtained from
Gallery Delta or the National Gallery, and

we would encourage everyone to do what
they can to ensure that the Workshop doesn’t
die.

For those who have managed — in spite of
the difficulties — to graduate in Fine Arts, an
opportunity for post-graduate study is being
offered by KAVD, the Katholischer
Akademischer Auslander-Dienst. For further
information, write to:

Dr Thomas Sheidtweiler

Head of Africa Department, KAVD
Hausdorffstrasse 151

D-53129 Bonn, Germany

Fax: (49) 0228 917 5828

e-m: AF] @kaad.de 25

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