Sikhuthe Head 19th century Wood, patina H. 11,5 cm North-Nguni, KwaZulu-Nat
Sikhuthe Head
19th century
Wood, patina
H. 11,5 cm
North-Nguni, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa
About profiles of africa
Manuel Valentin, Maître de conférences Hors Classe – Musée de l’Homme, Paris
Profiles of Africa. The adventure of a South African collection
The collection Profiles of Africa is the result of an independent and personal initiative which developed during the last two decades. It is based on a mixture of dreams, will and hope, which lead to fascinating artistic universes and to sharing the discoveries with others. This approach was led by the certainty that art is above all a powerful instrument which has to be used for education and peace.
The artworks gathered in the collection owe, much not only to chance and opportunities but also to an audacious and intuitive eye. The collection comprises many masterpieces and many fascinating ethnographical objects, but their real interest lies in the history, or rather the short stories they can tell us. They constitute eloquent evidence of a definitive past and are precious material memories of forgotten artists. A series of objects were collected. Together the pieces invite comparisons and analogies with art from elsewhere, while stressing ruptures and continuity of forms, designs and colours. In this sense, they open a wonderful way of appreciating more contemporary art productions. Representative works of well-known African cultures can be placed next to pieces from more "enigmatic" populations. In Europe, the public is unaware, for instance, of the art of the Venda, Hlubi and Ntwane (South Africa), or that of the Lwimbi and Mucobal (Angola) or Mbunda (Angola/Zambia). The "Kwere", "Tongwe", "Zela" or Chipeta also hardly evoke anything. Indeed, the art of these people has been overshadowed by a relatively standardized vision (or version) of African art in European and North American museums, mainly dominated by great art specimens from Western and Central Africa collected many years ago. The collection "Profiles of Africa " explores African art from the south to the regions situated further north, from Angola on the Atlantic side to Tanzania on the Indian side, before venturing northwards. Every item is viewed as a tiny link with a specific place in this vast geographical and cultural area. They aim to restore the importance of the "forgotten" or underestimated societies in African artistic heritage. Nevertheless, it appeared quickly that this approach was insufficient and risky as it could trap African art in a solely ethnic vision.
Some works were acquired for the collection neither for their ethnic attribution, nor for their ethnographic interest, but because of some formal or iconographic elements which connect them to civilisations outside Africa in a completely independent and fortuitous way. These works open another dimension in this journey. They are fairly unusual for this type of book, but enriching for a collection of African art. A dimension which can transport you in Africa while reminding of Asia, America, Oceania or Europe. Such visual analogies were already experienced during the 20th century in Europe and North America with avant-gardist artists. But here it is a journey in which spectators are free to establish visual connections between works, according to their own cultural references and knowledge. Indeed, a cultural imaginary museum within which similar human or animal forms justify a link between, for instance, a Tonga pottery from Zambia and a gargoyle on a gothic cathedral.
Some Short Stories of the Collection
In Europe, all the important private collections of African art have a tendency to tell only one story, that of the owner whose name they carry. This phenomenon has increased in recent years, an ultimate consequence of the cultural and trading valorisation of this form of art since the beginning of the 20th century in Europe answering the fascination it held for the avant-garde artists, intellectuals and collectors. In France, the sale of the collections Goldet (2001), Breton (2003) and Vérité (2006) are still in the memories. Each item was marked as if by a seal, ignoring the ethnographic sense and their real aesthetic values. Buyers were acquiring less the creation of an African artist than a piece of the memory of a known personality. In the western African art market, to say that such work had belonged to the Charles Ratton collection, a well-known Paris collector and dealer, is a valorising element more efficient than its original identity or its cultural interest.
Though recognized at a later stage compared to western and central regions, the art of Southern Africa has been dragged into a similar scenario. Objects which were or are part of the collections of Lowen, Horstman or Conru benefit from such recognition. The collection represented here tries to evade this kind of egocentrism in its name, Profiles of Africa, and avoid the reef of a narcissistic projection which would pass on the name of the owner/collector to posterity. Assembled and preserved in South Africa itself, in Cape Town mostly, it proposes a journey following the meanders of the African artistic creation. As for every collection, it is always interesting to ask how it was created and the circumstances leading to the acquisition of works now put together.
What determines the introduction of any ethnographic object in an African art collection? This question often gets quite evasive answers, or simply non-answers, as a collection seems to be created through a personal itinerary which includes more or less secret factors. From the creation of an object, its discovery in the field, until its final domestic destination, very little or nothing is known. Information on the artist is even rarer. However, the road followed prior to its final acquisition can determine what the piece will become. The owner and collector is at the end of a chain of sometimes many intermediaries who arrived at a monetary value of the object. In parallel, some field collected works can be submitted to important physical alterations. Removal of organic decorations, vegetal fibres, feathers, elements of skin, gut or leather, thus rendering the wooden sculptures more visible and emphasizing their beauty to potential buyers. From this initial interference, main aesthetic features are revealed, even magnified, to correspond to an essentially westernized vision of African art. Sometimes, only the noble part is kept. Many sticks, staffs or sceptres have been reduced to the figurative pommel and now become small free-standing sculpture. This is more or less what has happened to the sculpture baptized the Sikhuthe Head, one of the most subtle objects in Profiles of Africa.
As the story goes, in 1992, a collector of ethnographic artefacts bought it in the little village of Sikhuthe, in the Lebombo Mountains, north of KwaZulu-Natal. The head was the pommel of a staff which had been broken and replaced. The head was kept and fixed on another more rudimentary staff and joined by a brass ring. It was brought to Cape Town and was put for sale in an art gallery. No-one was interested because the replacement made the piece suspect. In this context, the head was removed from the stick under the disapproving eye of the seller in front of whom the head was separated from its detracting addition, at last unveiling its plastic qualities. Sometime later, a base was made by the very same person who had collected it in the first place!
Such anecdotes accompany many pieces in Profiles of Africa. Little stories associated with the circumstances of their acquisition are carefully recorded by the collector. It is the case of the Ovimbundu staff purchased in 1998 on the beach at Scarborough, not far from Cape Town, where its owner was using it to play golf with little stones. Looking at the quality of the pommel with its feminine head and its delicate coiffure, one trembles at the sad end it faced. Ignorance? Lack of education? The golf player had no idea of the artistic value of the object he was handling. He had found a use for it in relation to his own need, to play golf.
Even more amazing is the Karanga headrest block from Zimbabwe, with a smooth intense patina marked by deep rich golden reflections. It was used to keep open the door of a gallery of African art! This was in 1992. We can also mention the Venda statue of which only three are known so far, which came out of a garage sale in Louis Trichard where it had rested for many years until it was acquired in 1994. Its form was surprising. Was it a copy of the well-known statue kept in the British Museum in London, or a real previously undiscovered work with the same form but carved by a different artist? There were some hesitations before it was selected for the Ubuntu. Arts and Cultures of South Africa exhibition in Paris in 2001. In reality, it illustrated the lack of knowledge about South African sculptures, and the difficulty of giving a positive opinion, particularly when it would be compared to a supposedly unique sculpture.
Many works in Profiles of Africa were simply purchased in shops or African galleries like the statue made by a Pygmy sculptor from Kungu (DCR) marked by an oversized head. It was purchased at the last minute before the owner left Cape Town.
The same applies to two little Chokwe adzes obtained when the Potchefstroom Museum was reorganizing its collections in the early 1990s. Swaps and purchases were done with other collectors. Some pieces like the Shona and Tsonga headrests possess their own little history. They were obtained before 1920 by the missionary F.W.T. Posselt, who was a native commissioner in Matabeleland (Zimbabwe). Others were bought on street corners, notably pottery from Angola and Zambia. The quality of human contact was paramount in the genesis of the collection. Many visitors, collectors, amateurs, and officials were surprised at the rapidity the collection was enriched with unknown works of great aesthetic quality. The nucleus of the collection was achieved in a little less than a decade. There is no mystery or doubtful trafficking here but simply circumstances, an open mind towards others and more particularly an indefatigable search were the keys to the adventure.
Collecting in the Course of History
Profiles of Africa had the benefit of being initiated a few years before the end of apartheid, before genuine South African art started to be mass produced and aimed at the tourist market. A few visits to the S.A. Museum and the National Gallery gave pointers and created an interest in South African cultural creations. After a trial period, the collector’s eye sharpened and he engaged with the idea of the series and the collection now includes important series of great quality, particularly weapons, pottery, milk containers and spoons. This was at the beginning of the 1990s. Traditional artisanal art of the main groups were beginning to create an interest amongst collectors, which soon reached Europe and the U.S., after the end of apartheid. Just in time, the collection acquired Ndebele, Zulu and Xhosa beadworks of exceptional quality like a nyoga, a wedding train used by Ndebele women.
Profiles of Africa soon branched out towards new horizons, crossing the geographic frontiers of South Africa to reach a better understanding of the aesthetic productions of Southern Africa. The collection grew to include unique series of mukeke, wooden dishes from the Lozi region, and weapons with old wirework from Zimbabwe and Mozambique.
During the same period, after the war ended in Angola a flow of ethnographic pieces opened together with works by local artisans. Dealers arrived from Angola, coming to South Africa because it was near and less onerous compared to the cost of travelling to Europe. After many meetings, the collector developed close relationships with these dealers. Works were purchased for their ethnographic and plastic qualities. Masks of the mukanda initiation school which entered the collection were considered of great interest by visiting foreign academics and private collectors.
Peace followed the independence of Namibia and opened contact with the Kaokoland in the north-west of the country. Several trips in 1995 enabled the collector to discover the aesthetic universe of the Himba. Series of headrests in particular, completed and considerably enlarged the panorama of plastic expressions created by these attractive little objects very common in the southern, and eastern areas of Africa. In parallel, the Namibian experience permitted the discovery of other objects worn and used by men and women, different from the omnipresent glass beadworks of South Africa. An interesting series of omakipa was obtained. These ivory pieces are worn by married Ovambo women who show them on leather strips as their number increases their social status. To this day, the omakipa collection is, as far as I know, the most important in existence.
Human Contacts, the Keystone of the Collection
From the middle of the 1990s dealers arrived in South Africa, coming from west and central Africa and speaking French became important in these contacts. Some from Senegal, but mostly Cameroon and Mali and, of course, the DRC, offered a mixed bag of artisanal objects made for the westerners. All they wanted to do was to sell their wares as quickly as possible. Many had borrowed money from their family to pay for the goods, transport and accommodation. They made a little profit as they could not possibly return without anything. Discussions were rife, polite in good humour and wit. They showed their treasures to the potential buyers in hotel rooms or even street corner, where rendezvous were organized. Sometimes the sellers knew the origin and the cultural value of the pieces. Often, they had no idea. Truthfully, there were no comparative prices available and a totally new market developed. If someone showed an interest, incredible stories were told. Classic was that of a mask or carving which had belonged to a prince or even a king. Some stories were extraordinary like the one told by a seller about a Benin bronze which he had sold during the soccer world cup in Korea to a bodyguard of the Queen of England. Back in London the man would apparently have sold the bronze to the Queen! This story was meant to punish the collector for not buying this bronze.
All these dealers made a profit and tried to come back with objects their clients asked for. In order to stay in touch with the dealers, the collector telephoned them but encountered problems as many of them had the same name, so code names were established. For instance, there was Ousmane the Sage, Ousmane the Mumuye, because he came from that ethnic group in Nigeria, and Ousmane the terror, because he always wore army camouflaged trousers. These nicknames established a kind of humorous complicity, which eventually led to serious business and mutual respect. Sellers informed others and frequent calls came from as far as Mopti, Abidjan, Kinshasa or Lubumbashi, to offer their merchandise. Some of the sellers had an important impact on Profiles of
Africa as they realized fully the aims of the collector. One such was Theodore Kwete, to whom the collection owes several exceptional pieces.
Daring a New Look at African Art
However, it happened to be more difficult to find a way through the extreme diversity of the western and central African artistic expressions, because the South African museums lack representative collections from these parts of the continent. The absence of reference collections comparable to the ones exhibited in European and North American museums could lead to random or hazardous acquisitions. If it is true the market is inundated by copies of traditional figures and masks, fakes and archaeological works of all kinds realized with great dexterity, one does not have to agree entirely with curators and specialists in African art, who swear all ancient pieces of high quality are now in western collections and Africa has run dry.
Facing such obstacles, the collection faced a pussy footing period before creating its own criteria. Many doubtful pieces were kept, observed attentively and later discarded while a continuous supply reached Cape Town with unknown works, as well as refined pieces of high plastic quality.
Most carvings have sculptural and visual qualities which cannot be denied. But sometimes appearances can be deceiving, demonstrated by the radiography of a very small Luba headrest taken by a dentist. The diagnosis was clear. The headrest was an assemblage. Nevertheless, it was purchased because of its delicate creation of various composite elements. To hesitate too long is risky as good pieces are hunted by other collectors. The competition is merciless when one deals with important pieces. The collector of Profiles of Africa insisted even more explicitly on unusual plastic form and the search for works never seen before in published books or in the possession of museums. A taste for unfamiliar objects became the driving force of the collection. Masks from the collection illustrate this orientation, giving priority to pieces from less known populations from regions ignored or poorly represented in African art books, such as the Ovimbundu, the Mbunda, the Luchazi, the Makoma, the Makua and the Nyamwezi. The usual criteria used to define the authenticity and interest for African art now had to be redefined. Free from arbitrary classification and artificial barriers separating ancient, traditional, contemporary, or touristic productions, Profiles of Africa was able to acquire several interesting groupings from the plastic point of view. Medicinal calabashes from Tanzania, pottery from the DRC (Democratic Republic of Congo), headrests from the South Sudan, Ethiopia and Kenya were collected. In parallel the number of works issued from syncretic religions were reinforced with Mami Wata pieces, skeleton figures of shadow eaters called ilomba, crucifixions and statues of the Virgin Mary. The latter one being selected, not so much to illustrate the historically based religious syncretism phenomenon, but rather to acknowledge great artistic skill invested in such traditional iconographic topic, oblivious of its previous geographic origin.
This new attitude had an important impact on the southern African section as it contributed to creating a different structure from the elitist vision of the masterpieces. Rich typological and thematic series revealed a profound and hidden continuities between cultures, often separated in time and space. Works were chosen for their sculptural quality, original or even humoristic expression and finally, their aesthetic specificity. Such surprising pieces came in the collection because they suggested details referring to other cultures, defying time and geography. A three-face mask directly out of a surrealist painting, a Zulu headrest reminding one of the Japanese civilisation. Voluntary or not, these glimpses towards artisans and artists through their creations, opened a new vision. It allows one to transcend the limit the west considers traditional art. Here one must mention a ceramic on which sits an animal with an open mouth sending you straight to the gargoyles of gothic cathedrals, while other containers are reminiscent of pre-Columbian Mochica pottery characterized by a stirrup spout. Of course, there is no direct or indirect link between these works. Their chronological and cultural contexts are very different. On the other hand, these multicultural connections demonstrate creativity and ability to ignore separation between imaginary borders.
Beyond the realities of national or ethnic frontiers, objects finally show some dynamism and aesthetic unity which can only exist between variable multiple cultures. While it obeys the tendency of isolating masterpieces or exceptional works in single glass display or in full pages of a book, Profiles of Africa tries hard to create a dialogue between objects by favouring series. It is actually thanks to a series that the eye can be educated by differentiating details or comparing graphic compositions, but also by noticing incoherence or defects. Decorative patterns or inscribed signs seem to be repeated
from one work to the other, ignoring ethnic origins and political frontiers. The interest in a work is not to consider it a masterpiece, but to perceive it more as a unique link with multiple significations inscribed in the vast lineages of the African artistic creation, from past to future
Our History
Founded in 2005, profiles of africa has been a cornerstone of the local art community for over a decade. We have hosted numerous successful exhibitions and events, featuring artists from around the world.
Our Gallery
Our gallery space is designed to showcase art in the best possible way, with ample natural light and open spaces. We believe that the right setting can enhance the beauty and impact of any piece of art.
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