Africa Remix
Until April 17; Hayward Gallery, London

On the face of it, African art might seem to be a simple concept: art from the continent of Africa. Tribal masks might come to mind, along with carved wood figures, drums and bright patterned fabrics. But of course it’s far more complicated than that.

Africa is a huge collection of countries with distinct languages and histories, just like Europe. A survey exhibition of contemporary European art would struggle to make a coherent statement about the art of our continent – and who would be fool enough to try? In a fairly self-defeating move, the curators of Africa Remix are keen to point out that diversity, not homogeneity, is the key.

Most African states, formed in the last 50 years, are struggling to survive the cultural, political and economic mess left behind by colonial rule. Once Africa was a continent made up of many hundreds of distinct cultural groups, but these strong local identities have been eroded, assimilated, exterminated, and brought into conflict with each other.

As a result of this identity crisis, African art has gone through three phases. First, artists celebrated the newfound independence of their various states by asserting their traditional roots. Then they threw off the African mantle, having become embarrassed and restricted by it. This exhibition is an attempt to demonstrate the third phase: that of maturity.

Artists are no longer bound by a need to assert or deny their Africanness, and instead they simply make art. It’s a common story – artists get on with their work quite happily, while critics and curators agonise over how to categorise it. The lesson of Africa Remix, in all its unselfconscious diversity, is that there should be no Africa Remix.

I’m told that the exhibition will confound all my expectations, so I’m thoroughly disappointed when I walk into the first room. I’m greeted by a column of African masks, and photographs on the far wall of frowning men with machetes. In the middle of the floor, scraps of junk and cloth have been shaped into a motley procession of people like the refugees I’ve seen on television, and the far wall is adorned with an enormous drape of brightly-patterned fabric.

This is exactly what I would have expected, but a little longer in this room teaches me to look twice. The African masks are in fact jerry-cans, turned on their sides. Benin artist Romuald Hazoumé wants to send this plastic rubbish back to Europe where it came from, instead of the ritual masks which we regularly purloin from their Voodoo owners. It looks like his plan has worked.

The patterned cloth is a masterpiece which attracts people like bees to honey. Nigerian artist El Anatsui has made it from flattened bottle-tops and labels, strung together with copper wire. That such hard, sharp stuff can hang so naturally, soft and rippling, is enchanting. Visitors mingle around it, unable to believe their eyes.

The jerry-cans and bottle-tops are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to recycling. The most obvious thread running through this show is the junk which is everywhere. Artists up and down the land use anything they can lay their hands on, from dismantled weapons to black bin-bags, not as subjects in their own right, but simply as materials. That kind of ingenuity is not unique to artists. In Africa, it seems, junk is the one thing in plentiful supply and everybody makes the most of it.

A good example is Angolan artist Antonio Ole’s Townshipwall No. 10, which reproduces the imaginary two-storey façade of a colourful shanty-town. The cheerful wall says many things. If you screw up your eyes it could almost be a classic abstract painting. If you consider the content it says much about the living conditions of the poorest communities, and their unfailing instinct for survival.

Townshipwall No. 10 is made entirely out of local scrap, collected in the exhibition’s first venue of Düsseldorf. The catalogue describes this German junk as “found materials”, whereas the African scrap of so many other artworks is called “mixed media”. The distinction is revealing. European scrap is scrap, and if it’s used in art, it’s conceptual. African scrap is material, end of story.

In this way, and in others, Africa Remix reveals as much about the “Western” art world as it does about the African one. Those artists who operate within the international gallery system are easy to spot, their art being more homogenous than the rest. It’s slick, glossy and restrained. It gives very little away, in comparison with the noisy, dusty bustle of its uninstitutionalised counterpart.

After five exhausting hours in this sprawling exhibition, I’ve learned that Africa has some of the biggest, most crowded cities in the world, and that junk looms large in daily life. Beyond that, I’m confused by the 70 voices from 25 countries, all of whom are meant, somehow, to have something in common. And the Hayward – believe it or not – has the small version of Africa Remix.

Catrìona Black, Sunday Herald 20.03.05