Africa, Headlines, North America

/ARTS WEEKLY/MUSIC: Exhibit Poses, Probes, Ponders Fela Kuti

Hillary Miller

NEW YORK, Aug 5 2003 (IPS) - The New Museum’s current exhibit on the Nigerian musician and outspoken activist, Fela Kuti, is a fascinating exploration of the complicated – and often problematic- legacy of a musical revolutionary.

Covering his musical career, political philosophies, and controversial actions, the exhibit in Manhattan includes works by more than 35 artists, who create a variously patterned and always passionate multi-media biography.

A five-year effort by curator Trevor Schoonmaker, the show, on display until Sep. 28, speaks to the complexity of this "personality-political dissident, nativist spiritualist, unabashed sex symbol, husband to 28 women, utopian visionary, and musical pioneer".

Kuti’s various identities are interpreted, exalted, criticised, deified – and often all in the same piece. The range of ages, nationalities, and artistic backgrounds are deeply diverse, as are the media the artists work in, which include painting, drawing, photography, sculpture, digital, sound installation, documentary, and mixed media.

Something of a ‘Greatest Hits’ CD come alive, ‘Black President’ brims with meditations on the political and cultural contexts within which Kuti shaped his distinctive style of music, "Afrobeat".

While Kuti’s fan base in the United States has just begun to grow in recent years, his level of stardom in his native country is unparalleled by any other musician.

The exhibit contains numerous examples of the fusion of "western" modern art forms with those indigenous to Nigeria. For example, Nigerian-born Olu Oguibe uses local materials – including fibre mat rather than Western-style canvas and stretcher boards – to create beautiful hanging murals, both a tender homage to Kuti and a powerful critique of military dictatorship.

"In the art world, the fact that there is a museum exhibition about an African individual is very significant in terms of altering the way in which Africa and its arts have been portrayed," said curator Schoonmaker.

Just as significant is the powerful blending of culture that occurs – kola nuts found alongside cowrie shells, oil paints, and cross-stitch. In U.S. artist Fred Wilson’s powerful sound installation, Kuti’s music emanates from a piece of traditional Nigerian pottery.

Victor Ekput, a Nigerian artist also now living and working in the United States, chose to explore "the burden of patriotism on ordinary Nigerians". Using African symbolism interspersed with foreboding images of oppression, Ekput depicts an African – perhaps Kuti himself – with the injustices of his world on his back: human rights abuses, tribalism, corruption, police harassment, unemployment, military coups.

The exhibit deftly jumps from topic to topic – from the matriarchal presence of Kuti’s equally outspoken mother to the World Bank – always based upon the whim of the artists who chose them. Yet often, it is as ephemeral as the essence of Kuti.

U.S. artist Barkley L. Hendricks, who spent many years travelling with Kuti and visiting his famous nightclub in Lagos, Afrika Shrine, contributed an angelic portrait of his friend.

Barkley immortalises Kuti striking a pose reminiscent of Elvis – holding a microphone, as well as a joint, with a halo atop his head. On his chest is a burning image of an inverted African continent – Kuti’s heart – with a barbed wire crown of thorns around the blood-red organ. Hendricks has also installed an altarpiece at the base of the painting, creating a shrine to Kuti, and his iconic pose.

U.S. artist Adia Millett’s cross-stitched graffiti blends a more ”traditional” Americana craftsmanship with a contemporary form referencing American hip-hop. The piece works to critique African history and racial dynamics, particularly in South Africa and western African, as well as incorporating indictments of slavery and corruption.

Perhaps most satisfying and impressive about this exhibit is its scope: no aspect of Kuti has been left untouched. From his battle with AIDS, his harassment at the hands of the Nigerian military in the 1970s, his imprisonment, his sex appeal, his compound in Lagos (the ‘Kalakuta Republic’) his awakening about the Yoruba religion, to his politicisation through the teachings of the Black Panthers.

Creating the glue to bind it all together is a "music-listening centre" that features more than 100 songs, representing a timeline from the 1950s to the present.

The centre is in some ways "the symbolic heart of the show: new art projects, ranging from music to sculpture, spiral out from it", says Schoonmaker. And the centre is where the listener is able to connect with the prime drive and motivation of Kuti’s life: his aspirations, inspirations, and innovations.

‘Black President’ may not provide the final word on Kuti’s very controversial and very mixed legacy, but it undeniably offers a rare and valuable opportunity for those outside of Africa to experience a taster of just that – a remarkably varied and full life, history, and legacy.