The Culture Preserving Habit of Art Collecting (Part 01)
- ramatiart
- Jun 22, 2017
- 2 min read
In recent years, African art has began to get international attention with the likes of Sculptures by Ben Enwowu, selling in auction with a final bid of £300,000 earlier this year. Of course it is said that art is dead and all possibilities have been created, but now in the Contemporary, we could say there are a number of contradictory possibilities yet to be made, especially from the context of the African Art scene. Although some Africans are taking note of this creative awakening, some still don't see or regard art as an important part of our lives and current social epoch. Nike Okundaye in an interview with Clay expressed her desire, to see more African youths going into art and focusing on what they do with utmost passion and diligence. Africans in general must realise that our worldview of things goes a long way into determining if we would retain our cultural identity or not, in the sense that a lot of times, a lot of Africans view their cultural values and principles as inferior to western cultural values and to me, it's an aberration of nature- why? This is because I stand from a viewpoint that no culture is superior to another. Unfortunately, this social consciousness and mentality is innate and is as a result of the colonial and post colonial social conditioning most Africans have experienced through western media and education, that sink deep into the recesses of the mind.
One should note that I'm not buttressing that western cultural values are detrimental or un-beneficial to African development, but we as Africans must understand the need to decolonize our educational and social systems, not to dismantle the Structures that exists but to raise our standards far above what it currently is. This would ensure that younger Africans are socially conditioned to be pro-African, patriotic but at the same time, still aware of the contributions of Western Culture. That aside, Africans need to understand that there is a way to consciously preserve cultural values and principles through Art. In a modern society of rapidly evolving technological advancements. From the late 19th century through till the 20th century, the colonial epochs of exploitation were the order of day in Africa, with a lot of African cultural relics being taken forcefully to the West to be adorned in glass displays as African Art. In this day and age Neo colonialism, the new form of imperialism is the order of day, which is the worst form of exploitation. Africans must realise that ,these artworks are one the few ways that we can immortalise the present for mother Africa to be seen by the people of the future. At the same time more Africans have to come into the social consciousness and start investing in African art, so as to avoid the past repeating itself, by outrightly giving the West, elements of our cultural exuberance to be viewed outside Africa.
It is said that beauty is from inside so let's not just make it a duty to society to preserve the present for the future, but lets collectively beautify Africa from within out for preservation of our self identity by investing in African art today.
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