Lowery Stokes Sims (at right) set herself a rather impossible task when she decided to organize an exhibition called “The Global Africa Project.”
She wanted to illustrate the idea that African artists have had a global impact, even as they have been influenced by their colonial past — “cultural fusion.” More daunting still, she did not want to stick with design, craft and fashion — her initial charge — but rather broadened out her search as curator to painting, sculpture, photography and installation work too. She believes all those lines separating design from fine art are a blurry mess.
The result, which she describes as “big and chaotic,” in now on view at the Museum of Art and Design, and the subject of my article and interactive feature in this weekend’s Arts & Leisure section of The New York Times.
Sims thinks most of the work in this exhibit will be new to most people, though it is sprinkled with a few well known names, like Yinka Shonibare and Sheila Bridges.
As one of the artists I interviewed, Kim Schmahmann said, “I think many things wil come out of it. Her focus is showing that Africa is more than the stereotype, and the work coming out of Africa has incredibly wide range and it reflects on the history Africa has with many different colonial powers and many different cultures coming and going — and that has never been done under one roof.”
Schmahmann, a South African who left decades ago and has settled in Cambridge, MA., has a very interesting, complicated, and quite beautiful work in the show called “Apart-Hate: A People Divider” (at left).
I’ve posted a few additional pictures of some works in the show on my website.
Photo Credits: Courtesy of the Museum of Art and Design (top); of Kim Schmahmann (bottom)