ARTAFRICAFEATURE / ARTS WRITING IN AFRICAWIELDING THE PEN / HOUGHTON KINSMAN 4/10 ARTAFRICA
- AMIE SOUDIEN
Amie Soudien was born in Cape Town, and received her BFA
from Michaelis School of Fine Art in Cape Town. She currently
lives in Chicago where she is studying towards an MA in New
Arts Journalism from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.Do you feel your decision to move abroad for your
masters – as opposed to completing it somewhere
in Africa – was necessary to develop your writing
further? Why?I don’t think I needed to move abroad to develop my writing – that would not do justice
to the writing programs available in South Africa. However, it was a unique opportunity
at a well-respected school. I chose the School of the Art Institute Chicago specifically
because it was a writing and journalism program in an art school. My decision to move
away was based mostly on a hope for a change of scene, and to experience a different
academic environment.- SERUBIRI MOSES
Serubiri Moses is an independent art critic, scholar and curator.
He has contributed to Africa is a Country, Contemporary And
(C&), START Journal, The New Vision and Another Africa.
He has recently curated panel discussions, exhibitions and
publications in East Africa.In your article Which Art history in Africa for Africa
is a Country, you raise a pertinent point about how
our encounters with art from Africa are shaped by
“a trajectory of Western philosophical discourse.”
Bearing in mind that you are an art writer, and in many ways have a role in shaping
these encounters, how have you chosen to view or address this situation?My response is to work through both critical thought and curatorial research. These
are two aspects that may be missing from current art writing within East Africa, and
I suspect from Africa in general. By ‘critical thinking,’ I refer to investigating various
cultural phenomena within contemporary society and the question of political culture,
or as Ugandan historian Pamela Phanakwa calls it, ‘politicised culture.’ As we try to
articulate the artistic work we see in galleries, studios, theatres, television, Internet and
performance stages, do we also attempt to understand the political cultures of the various
countries in Africa?