The exhibition in São Paulo seeks to reveal the multiplicity of exchanges among traditional African cultures and colonial culture through symbols that appear in Keïta’s photos.
Untitled. Bamako, Mali, 1949-1962. Seydou Keïta/ CAAC– The Pigozzi Collection, Geneva.
Untitled. Bamako, Mali, 1949-1962. Seydou Keïta/ CAAC – The Pigozzi Collection, Geneva.
Two decades have lapsed between the current retrospective of Seydou Keïta (1921-2001), at the Moreira Salles Institute (IMS-SP), and two of his important participations in exhibits in Brazil, in 1998. In that year, the Malian photographer – known at the beginning of the 1990s for a valuable production of studio portraits of the period preceding independence in 1960, – was one of the participating artists at the São Paulo Biennial, an historic edition dedicated to anthropophagy, and at the África por ela mesma (Africa Presenting Itself) exhibit, at the Pinacoteca do Estado. Four years prior to that, Keïta had held a major exhibition at the Cartier Foundation, in Paris – a decisive contribution to his late consecration, a process that also echoed throughout the Brazilian institutional circuit.
In spite of the importance of the events and its global recognition at that time, Keïta’s oeuvre did not spark any particular interest in Brazil. Press coverage of the Anthropophagy Biennial, only briefly mentions his name among the artists included in the section Roteiros da África, part of the segment created by curator Paulo Herkenhoff to address a decentralized international production, with seven thematic axes. Although post-colonialism was one of the theoretical aspects of that edition, the discussions about art of African origin and the dialogue with Afro-Brazilian production would only reverberate here many years later.
Stigmatization
A report about the collective at the Pinacoteca, published in the Folha de São Paulo magazine at that time, provides intriguing evidence of how the treatment of the subject was still so stigmatized. Titled “Do you know Africa?” and bearing Keïta’s photo, the article appears in a section called “Plural,” next to an “LGBTQ” column. Placing such distinct subjects side by side to assert diversity would already be questionable. More astounding, however, are the erotic advertisements around the page, framing the text about the exhibit – an edition that could have, at the very least, taken into account the history of eroticization and fetishism of African culture and the risk of associating the two themes.
Exactly 20 years later, careless approaches like that may seem unthinkable, especially when debates about racial issues and the origin of African culture in Brazilian art have penetrated institutional discourses. Although Seydou Keïta’s oeuvre does not fit into the discussion associated with a Brazilian context, it is interesting to observe that his retrospective occurs together with MASP’s calendar and extensive annual programming dedicated to Afro-Atlantic exchanges. And at the same time, the CCBB presents the itinerant exhibition Ex Africa, with the production of 18 contemporary artists from the continent and two Afro-Brazilians.
Multiplicity of Exchanges
The exhibition at the Instituto Moreira Salles – open in São Paulo through 29 July and subsequently opening on 11 August in Rio de Janeiro, where it will be on display through January of 2019 – seeks to avoid approximations with the theme to assert identity politics, as Samuel Titan Jr. says, who is co-curating with Jacques Leenhardt. The intention seems to be more about revealing the multiplicity of exchanges among traditional African cultures and the colonizer through symbols that appear in Keïta’s photos. A clear example are the fabrics used in the composition of the portraits or seen in prints worn by women, partly produced by a Dutch company that distributed this textile tradition throughout West Africa at the end of the 19th century – after having appropriating batiks from Indonesia, then a Dutch colony. Or in the notorious Westernization of traditional dress, especially men’s attire, where suits or military uniforms don’t look so different from European or North American fashion during the post-war era, as Anne Grosfilley notes in a text written for the catalog Textiles and Fashion in Mali through the Lens of Seydou Keïta.
It is useful to consider the period during which the Malian photographer was active, from 1948 to 1962, when he maintained a private studio in Bamako, then capital of the French Sudan, for such reflection on multiple cultural appropriations. The rich collection from those 14 years reveals a diverse social panorama of the country of the years prior to its independence, when signs of modernity were already present, for instance, through certain technological props. One of the most important symbols of the diffusion of colonial power, the radio, is one of those objects incorporated into portraits of younger people, like the couple posing in an intimate embrace, their arms resting on the apparatus.
Beyond offering a social record of the period, what is initially striking in Keïta’s photographs is the aesthetic accuracy in the construction of scenes, revealing a formal preoccupation that already indicated a consciousness of the notion of authorship. In that way, the photo included right at the beginning, in which he is signing his own photograph as he leans on a white man’s shoulders, carries a strong symbolism regarding the reception of the photographer-author’s oeuvre which until just recently was presented in an exhibition in New York as “unknown photographer”.
Hybrid Path of Appropriations
Among the collection of 130 photos, all black and white, the variety of formats and enlargements is another interesting choice indicating the diverse contexts in which his oeuvre was presented. There is everything from the rare 18 x 13 cm vintage editions, enlarged by Keïta himself and in the same format that he used when he sold them to clients; the 50 x 60 cm enlargements he was making in the 1990s in Paris, when his oeuvre had already penetrated the circuit of galleries and museums, according to such standards; and others almost the size of murals, measuring 1,80 x 1,30m, when it started earning more value and international prestige.
Also present in the exhibit is a documentary recorded in 1998 that shows the artist at the peak of his notoriety. Having retired over 20 years ago from the position of official government photographer, which forced him to cease activities in his studio, in 1962, he was invited by director Brigitte Cornand to produce a portrait session similar to what he had previously done. What could have been an artificial representation of the “photographer in action,” staged for a French production, ends up showing a highly valued record of Keïta’s process. And, although Europe acts as intermediary, it is still a document concerning his own work which he himself created – another element in the hybrid path of appropriations present in his oeuvre.
Nathalia Lavigne is a journalist, curator and researcher with a Masters in Critical Theory and Cultural Studies from Birkbeck, University of London, and a doctoral candidate at the School of Architecture and Urbanism at the Universidade de São Paulo. She is a member of the Aesthetics of Memory in the 21st Century research group and is working on a project on digital collections and pictures of artwork on Instagram.
Translated from Portuguese by Sara Hanaburgh.
Seydou Keïta, Instituto Moreira Salles (IMS-SP), until July 29th. Galeria 2. Avenida Paulista, 2424. São Paulo, Brazil.
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