Who owns African Art?

By Delela Ndela and Adenike Fapohunda

The ongoing conversation about the ownership of African art tends to center historical works and cultural artifacts. From the Benin Bronzes to the body of Sarah Bartmann, the relationship between African cultural production and the west has been characterized in great part by theft, violence, and the outright objectification of African bodies. In a political climate where redress and reparations for colonial crimes are becoming increasingly mainstream, it’s only natural that the return of stolen objects would be a leading demand of African progressives. However, this framing tends to ignore the ongoing reality of art in Africa, a reality in which Africa’s most prominent artists—from Wangechi Mutu to Adel Abdessemed—live, create, study, exhibit and sell work in western cultural capitals. This is a reality in which African cultural production comes to be owned by the cultured classes of the global north.

Cultural Imposition and the destruction of African ways of creating

Neo-colonialism, as described by Kwame Nkrumah, is the exertion of control by imperialist states over their nominal post colonies by economic, cultural and “humanitarian” means, rather than direct military intervention or indirect political control.^[1] In cultural studies, neo-colonialism is thought to take the form of cultural imposition, where an imperial state engages in culture (language, tradition, and art, for example) to assert its power over its colonial possessions.^[2] In African contexts, this has meant destroying indigenous cultural realities and asserting the superiority of western culture while excluding Africans from full participation in that culture.