Georges Adéagbo’s Postcolonial Cabinet of Curiosities

Abstract

This article explores the installation art of the Beninese artist Georges Adéagbo who is based in Cotonou. His work focuses on themes of slavery, archaeology, socialism, art, space, religion, or historical figures, and is made up of diverse materials collected by the artist in his home country and in the West, including local and global consumer goods, African sculptures, natural objects, and texts. Schmidt-Linsenhoff criticizes the Western reception of the artist for being dependent on preconceived notions of “primitive” art and on the readability of Adéagbo’s installations in terms of contemporary artistic tendencies and postcolonial theories. The author then examines how his work might resist aesthetic integration into Western models of taste and interpretation by considering his work in the context of its production in Cotonou.

Keywords:

• Georges Adéagbo
• West African art
• Benin
• contemporary art
• postcolonial theory
• sculpture
• installation art
• colonialism
• globalization
• Western reception of African artists

Notes

1. Victoria Schmidt-Linsenhoff, Ästhetik der Differenz. Postkoloniale Perspektiven vom 16. bis 21. Jahrhundert. 15 Fallstudien (Marburg: Jonas Verlag für Kunst und Literatur, 2010), 13.

2. Ibid., 11.

1. On the installation in Kassel, see Documenta 11, Kurzführer (Ostfildern-Ruit: Hatje Cantz, 2002), 8; and on the version in the Museum Ludwig, see Georges Adéagbo. Der Entdecker und die Entdecker vor der Geschichte der Entdeckungen—! Welttheater (Cologne: Walter König, 2004). The best overview of the works created between 1995 and 2001 is found in Silvia Eiblmayr (ed.), Georges Adéagbo. Archäologie der Motivationen, Geschichte neuschreiben, exhibition catalogue Galerie, im Taxispalais (Ostfildern-Ruit: Hatje Cantz, 2001). Based on the analysis of the installation in both of its versions, Kerstin Schankweiler develops essential insights on which this section is based; see Die Mobilisierung der Dinge: Ortsspezifik und Kulturtransfer in den Installationen von Georges Adéagbo (Bielefeld: Transcript, 2012).

2. Kerstin Schankweiler, “Künstlermythos und kulturelle Differenz. Selbstverständnis und Projektion am Beispiel von Georges Adéagbo,” in Ethnizität und Geschlecht. (Post-)koloniale Verhandlungen in Geschichte, Kunst und Medien, Graduiertenkolleg Identität und Differenz (ed.) (Cologne: Böhlau, 2005), 175. Examples of an ethnicizing critical reception of the installation in Kassel are the articles in Kunstforum International, 161 (2002): 72 and 278; and for the Cologne version, see Johanna di Blasi, “Treibsand der Welten,” Kölner Stadtanzeige (October 30, 2004).

3. Thomas Fillitz, Zeitgenössische Kunst aus Afrika: 14 Gegenwartskünstler aus Côte d'Ivoire und Benin (Vienna: Böhlau, 2002), 163.

4. Until 2000 Georges Adéagbo lived in his parent’s home in the Aidjedo quarter in Cotonou, in whose courtyard he had set up his installations since 1972. Since 2000 he has lived and worked together with Stephan Köhler in the home and studio “Villa Dieu seul sait,” built according to plans by Stephan Köhler outside the city on the beach of the village Togbin.

5. Cf. Eiblmayr, Georges Adéagbo, 70ff.

6. On the concept of the cultural biography of objects, whose status and meaning change according to their mobility, see Igor Kopytoff, “The Cultural Biography of Things: Commoditization as Process,” in Arjun Appadurai, The Social Life of Things (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 64ff.

7. Homi Bhabha, “La question Adéagbo,” in Georges Adéagbo. Der Entdecker, 25.

8. Didier Houénoudé has identified this for Frédéric Bruly Bouabré (Ivory Coast) and Romuald Hazoumé (Benin). See Didier Houénoudé, Entre stéréotypes et affirmation identitaire: Quatre artistes contemporains d'Afrique occidentale (Dissertation, Trier University 2007); for the art infrastructure in Benin, see 264.

9. Edouard Beaucamp, “Die Entdeckten entdecken die Entdecker,” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (June 14, 2002); and Beat Wyss, “Kreolität für Europa! Georges Adéagbo’s Installation in der Binding-Brauerei,” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (June 9, 2002).

10. See Case Study 14 in Schmidt-Linsenhoff, Ästhetik der Differenz. In contrast to Georges Adéagbo, who subordinates himself as collector to his collection with the motto “ma personne de Georges,” in the photographic portraits Breton appears as a strong subject, lending meaning to the ethnographic collection.

11. Michael Wetzel, “Der Autor als Künstler. Von der Wiederkehr eines ästhetizistischen Konzepts in der Kunstpraxis der Gegenwart,” in Martin Hellmold et al. (ed.), Was ist ein Künstler? Das Subjekt der modernen Kunst (Munich: Fink, 2003), 238. See also Heinz Knobeloch, “Portrait des Künstlers als Nomade und Bastler,” in Hellmold et al. (ed.), Was ist ein Künstler?, 213ff. On the masculinity of the artist myth, see Birgit Haehnel, Regelwerk und Umgestaltung. Nomadistische Denkweisen in der Kunstwahrnehmung nach 1945 (Berlin: Reimer, 2006).

12. Cf. the exhibition catalogs Deep Storage: Arsenale der Erinnerung: Sammeln, Speichern, Archivieren in der Kunst (Munich: Prestel, 1997) and Interarchive. Archivarische Praktiken und Handlungsräume im zeitgenössischen Kunstfeld (Cologne: König, 2002).

13. María do Mar Castro Varela and Nikita Dhawan, Postkoloniale Theorie. Eine kritische Einführung (Bielefeld:Transcript, 2005). For the consequences for art history, see Viktoria Schmidt-Linsenhoff, “Postkolonialismus,” in Ulrich Pfisterer, Metzler Lexikon der Kunstwissenschaft: Ideen, Methoden, Begriffe (Stuttgart: Metzler, 2003), 278 ff.

14. Kien Nghi Ha, Hype um Hybridität. Kultureller Differenzkonsum und postmoderne Verwertungstechniken im Spätkapitalismus (Bielefeld: Transcript, 2005).

15. Bhabha, “La questión Adéagbo,” 28.

16. Hans Peter Hahn, “Global Goods and the Process of Appropriation,” in Peter Probst and Gerd Spittler (eds), Between Resistance and Expansion. Explorations of Local Vitality in Africa. Beiträge zur Afrikaforschung 18 (Münster: Lit, 2004), 213 ff.

17. Michel de Certeau, Kunst des Handelns (original publication: L'invention du quotidien. 1, Arts de faire. Paris 1980) (Berlin: Merve Verlag, 1988), 13. Clementine Deliss was the first to connect de Certeau’s Arts de faire with the articulation of African subject positions in contemporary art; see Clementine Deliss, “Lotte oder die Transformation des Objekts, Stadmuseum Graz und Grazer Kunstverein, 1990,” Durch 8/9 (1990), 3ff.

18. Elikia M’Bokolo, “La ville Africaine,” in Oliver Sultan, Hélène Leray, and Stéphanie Clarissou (eds), Africa Urbis. Perspectives urbaines (Saint-Maur-des-Fossés: Sépia, 2005), 7 ff.

19. Xavier Crepin, “La ville Africaine,” in “Africa Urbis,” special issue of Revue Noir, 31 (1999), 51.

20. Gwendolyn Wright, “The Ambiguous Modernism of African Cities,” in The Short Century. Independence and Liberation Movements in Africa 1945–1994, exhibition catalog (Munich: Prestel, 2001), 225ff.

21. Arjun Appadurai, Modernity at Large. Cultural Dimensions of Globalisation (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 1997).

22. Hahn, “Global Goods” unfortunately does not take into account the aspect of commodity aesthetics in his analysis of West African consumer culture. The first references for an aesthetic analysis are found in the descriptive approximation by Kobena Mercer, “Kunst und die Erfahrung aus afrikanischen Städten,” in Clara Himmelheber, Marjorie Jongbloed, and Marcel Odenbach, Der Hund ist für die Hyäne eine Kolanuss. Zeitgenössische Kunst und Kultur aus Afrika (Cologne: Oktagon, 2002), 19ff.

23. Crepin, “La ville Africaine,” 52.

24. Schankweiler, Die Mobilisierung der Dinge, 63ff.

25. Okwui Enwezor, “The Ruined City. Desolation, Rapture and Georges Adéagbo,” NKA. Journal of Contemporary African Art (Spring 1996), 16.

26. Simon Njami, “Waiting for Rain,” Revue Noir, 18 (Paris 1995), 5ff.

27. Enwezor, “Ruined City,” 16.

28. For the current art infrastructure in Benin, which has not essentially changed since 2002 with the exception of the founding of the private Zinsou Foundation in 2006, see Houénoudé, Entre stéréotypes, 251ff.

29. No catalog was published for the exhibition curated by Brigitte Reinhardt. The installation by Georges Adéagbo was purchased by the museum. For Weickmann’s cabinet of curiosities, see Brigitte Reinhardt (ed.), Kurzführer Ulmer Museum (Ulm: Ulmer Museum, 2002), 66; the loose-leaf series put together by Michael Roth, Kunstwerk des Monats (Ulm: Ulmer Museum 1992–2001); and the exhibition catalog Yves Le Fur (ed.), D'un regard l’autre. Histoire des regards européens sur l'Afrique, l'Amérique et l’Océanie (Paris: Musée du Quai Branly, 2006).

30. For the individual objects, see Roth, Kunstwerk des Monats.

31. See Case Study 13 in Schmidt-Linsenhoff, Ästhetik der Differenz.

32. Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, translated by Brian Massumi (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 1987), 474–5.

33. Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, 8.

34. Ibid., 481.

35. David Theo Goldberg analyzes how in the nineteenth century the term hybridity was transferred from biology to demography, in order to discuss the growing heterogeneity of the populations in European cities in the course of colonial expansion. The transfer of the term, he explains, naturalizes the violent homogenization of a multicultural urban population. See David Theo Goldberg, “Heterogeneity and Hybridity: Colonial Legacy, Postcolonial Heresy,” in Henry Schwarz and Sangeeta Ray (eds), A Companion to Postcolonial Studies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 12ff.

36. Marcel Mauss, “Essai sur le don. Forme et raison de l'échange dans les sociétés archaïques,” l'Année Sociologique, I (1923–24), 30–186.

37. Wolfgang Kemp criticizes an “art history as robbery of context” in whose wake art criticism works. Miwon Kwon points to the derealization of social places through site-specific art. See Wolfgang Kemp,“Kontexte. Für eine Kunstgeschichte der Komplexität,” Texte zur Kunst, 2 (1991) 89; and Miwon Kwon, One Place after Another. Site-specific Art and Locational Identity (Cambridge Mass.: MIT Press, 2002).

38. Thierry Mayamba Nlandu, “Kinshasa: Beyond Chaos,” in Okwui Enwezor, Under Siege, Four African Cities, Freetown, Johannesburg, Kinshasa, Lagos, Documenta 11, Platform 4 (Ostfildern-Ruit: Hatje Cantz, 2002), 186, quoted in Mike Davis, Planet of Slums (London/New York: Verso 2006), 198. Similar observations were made by the urban planner Jorge Mario Jáuregui for the favelas [shantytowns] in Rio de Janeiro; his project was exhibited at Documenta 12. See the interview in Tageszeitung (July 4, 2011).

39. Davis, Planet of Slums, 6.