interjected the point was that “contemporary African art had transgressed American Abstract Expressionism.”


During the panel ‘At Home & Abroad,’ Professor Pitika Ntuli continued the debate about who constructed African art. “I wanted to respond very strongly. I mean the idea of Africa being an idea is a wrong idea. …evidence of sharing cultures & histories, the whole linguistic thing… little nuances of these are here… There are common histories that actually were in a sense welded together.” He questioned the point of “entering again into Eurocentric binary opposition. … Let us not get stuck into the track of whether or not you are an African, let us look for those middle spaces—the between—which we saw in the painting that Musa actually created.”


Text: Oui a inventé les africaines?’ ‘Who invented Africans?’ 2002 Musa wrote about his experience of africa95 in an essay for the French journal Les Temps Modernes, August-November 2002 (numbers 620-621), pp61-100. The excerpt below offers a taster of his provocative questioning of identity issues and constructions of African art which he terms ‘artafricanism.’ The translation is by E Yang, courtesy of the American journal of contemporary African art Nka. This was ‘africa95.’ There I met a great many Africans, artists, writers, art


historians and exhibition curators. I even met some American and British blacks who were wondering about the authenticity, the ‘African-ness,’ of north Africans… whose work was being shown in London in the same exhibitions. What a funny discussion we had! On the one hand, there were two black artists, one of whom had been born in and had lived his whole life in London; the other…an American. And then, there I was. Someone who feels at the same time Arab, African and Western. According to my interlocutors, north Africans would be seen as foreign on the African continent since they came from somewhere else! This recalls a debate that fed a diplomatic crisis between Nigeria and Senegal concerning attendance at the Festac in 1976 [concerning the participation of north Africans which was supported by the Nigerian organisers]…. ” “…each person carries ‘his’ own African culture.”


On Calligraphy: Correspondence between Hassan Musa and Elsbeth Court M


usa and Court have ongoing, if occasional, exchange about drawing and calligraphy. Following the exhibitions Sudan Past and Present (British Museum, 2004) and Africa Remix (Hayward Gallery, 2005), both of which showcased works by Musa.


Court asked him for a written response to these questions: “(1) When does Arabic writing become Calligraphy? (2) Is it accurate to understand that


calligraphy makes use of Arabic marks in building a graphic vocabulary for re-presentation, to make images? (3) I recall, you are self-taught in calligraphy, which you learned purposefully (when an adult) as an aspect of ‘Sudanism’ and more general Islamic culture, but also for the formal purpose of enhancing your mark-making. Is this accurate? (4) Regarding the development of your practice, I also recall that you refer to your ‘Chinese origins.’ Please explain further.” Responses to questions 1-3 were received by e-mail during April 2005 and to question 4


Performance and Persona • Hassan Musa | 145


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