Notion of Hybridity in the Discourse of Some Contemporary West African Artists

Abstract

It has been stated that Western collectors, cultural institutions and audiences are decidedly more at ease with artists from Africa laying claim to their “African identity” than with those who do not. The art world discourse assumes that any approach to their work must centre on their own relation to a primordial “tradition”. The six cases under consideration here are no exceptions in terms of expressing their Africanness. But there is something else in them, too. Today, it sounds quite old-fashioned to talk of someone having a “pure African identity” or “a pure European identity”: in fact, it is almost a slogan to talk of “hybrid identities”. In my view, however, this slogan has not been opened too often: how is “hybridity” in various cases constructed, relatively speaking? The six artists under discussion have been classed here into two categories: those living in Africa and those living in Europe.