ART on view
62
Ex-Africa
Histories and Identities
of a Universal Art
By Deborah Dainese
After Africa. Capolavori da un continente
(Africa: Masterpieces of a Continent)
(2003) and Africa. Terra degli Spiriti (Africa:
Land of the Spirits) (2015), Italy will once again
host major works of Sub-Saharan African art
this spring in what promises to be a very exciting
exhibition called (Ex-Africa. Histories
and Identities of a Universal Art), produced by
CMS.Cultura and organized by Gigi Pezzoli and
Ezio Bassani (to whose memory the event will
be dedicated), with the assistance of a number
of prestigious Italian and European specialists
in the field. The show will offer the visitor a
general overview that will lead to deeper understanding
of African cultures through the exploration
of nine thematic sections featuring some
hitherto unseen material.
The exhibition’s common thread is stories—
the stories of art, people, identity, fortuitous encounters,
and both large and small events. The
exceptional nature of stories such as these and
the facts surrounding them were even recognized
by Pliny the Elder in his monumental work Naturalis
Historia. In it, he referred to the proverb
Semper aliquid novi Africam adferre (“Africa
always produces something new”), which later
became Ex Africa semper aliquid novi (“From
Africa, always something new”). He was alluding
to the novelties and the unexpected and the
extraordinary things and events that have always
been characteristic of Africa.
The term Ex-Africa, which the exhibition’s
title includes, is thus an ancient one, but that,
Pezzoli suggests, now also alludes to something
else. As he puts it,
... a traditional African world that has disappeared
and has been definitively transformed by
the influence of a Western cultural and consumerist
model. It is now time to put forward a global
vision that will reaffirm its uniqueness and the individual
histories that make or break certain relationships,
as well as reexamining artworks, their
creators, those who collected them, and those
who surround them, especially in exhibitions.
Our intention here is not just to evoke objects and
people through the prism of their original condition,
but also to examine the objects and people
who are outside of Africa, because these questions
are now inseparable. This approach underscores
FIG. 1 (above): Reliquary
head, eyema byeri. Fang,
Gabon. Late 17th century–
fi rst part of the 18th century.
Wood, metal, mirror. H: 48 cm.
Musée d’Ethnographie, Neuchâtel.
Photo: Alain Germond © Musée
d’Ethnographie de Neuchâtel,
Switzerland.