In self-congratulatory tones of tolerance and open-mindedness, the Western gatekeepers of the contemporary art world--gallery owners and museum curators, patrons and promoters--take great pains to demonstrate their inclusive vision of world culture. They highlight the Latin American show mounted "a few years ago" or the African works featured in a recent exhibition of non-Western artists. Non-Western artists soon discover that this veneer of liberalism masks an array of unwritten, unspoken, and unseemly codes and quotas dictating the acquisition and exhibition of their works and the success of their careers. In past decades, cultural institutions and the critical establishment in the West resisted difference; today, they are obsessed with exoticism. Both attitudes reflect firmly entrenched prejudices that prescribe the rules of what Nigerian-born artist, curator, and scholar Olu Oguibe terms the "culture game." In the celebrated, controversial essays gathered here, Oguibe exposes the disparities and inconsistencies of the reception and treatment afforded Western and non-Western artists; the obstacles that these contradictions create for non-Western and minority artists, especially those who live and practice in the Western metropolis; and the nature and peculiar concerns of contemporary non-Western art as it deals with the ramifications and residues of the colonial encounter as well as its own historical and cultural past. Ranging from the impact of the West's appetite for difference on global cultural relations and the existence of a digital Third World to the African redefinition of modernity, Oguibe's uncompromising and unapologetic criticism provides a uniquely global vision ofcontemporary art and culture. An acclaimed artist and cultural provocateur reveals the hidden biases of the contemporary art world.

Culture Game

Arts & Photography

Oguibe, Olu

History & Criticism

Univ. of Minnesota Press

In the celebrated, controversial essays gathered here, Oguibe exposes the disparities of the reception and treatment afforded Western and non-Western artists; the obstacles that these contradictions create for non-Western and minority artists, and the nature and peculiar concerns of contemporary non-Western art as it deals with the ramifications and residues of the colonial encounter as well as its own historical and cultural past. Oguibe's uncompromising and unapologetic criticism provides a uniquely globale vision of contemporary art and culture.

Nonfiction. In this pioneering work Olu Oguibe charts the life and career of Uzo Egonu, from his origins in Africa to his expatiation in Britain. Egonu, a remarkable, compassionate and very private artist, has been described as "perhaps Africa's greatest modern painter," one whose work challenges the impoverished Western myth of the naive African artist. The complexity of Egonu's work is firmly located within the tradition of modernism. What we see is a judicious synthesis of visual languages developed from his critical encounter with Western art and an informed awareness of his African heritage; a synthesis which reaches beyond mere formalist concerns to involve both the experience of his life in the West and the painful turmoils of his country of origin, post-colonial Nigeria. This monograph is a timely intervention in the prevailing debates on the role, position and aesthetic concerns of the African artist in the contemporary world, and offers a unique contribution to the scarce literature on artists of African, Asian or Latin American origin living in the West.

Uzo Egonu: An African Artist in the West

Individual Artists

Kala Press

Over a seven-year period between the late 1980s and the mid-1990s, Olu Oguibe wrote some of the most powerful and apocalyptic poetry ever to come out of Africa. In that period he published three slim volumes of poems that established his reputation as perhaps the finest poet of his generation: A Song from Exile, A Gathering Fear, and the long love poem, Songs for Catalina. Then, he quit writing poetry, almost as abruptly as he began, and declared his work done. Revised and edited by the poet himself, this collection brings together those three volumes as well as other poems, some of them more recent and published here for the first time. Most of the previously published poems are preserved in their original form. These poems echo the urgency and restlessness of the times in which they were written and capture the burden of hope and despair which postcolonial societies must bear. Olu Oguibe is a renowned scholar and artist as well as an award-winning poet. His books include The Culture Game, God’s Transistor Radio, A Song from Exile, and A Gathering Fear. A peripatetic traveler who has lived and worked in several countries across Africa, Europe and America, Oguibe is a senior fellow of the Smithsonian Institution and recipient of the State of Connecticut Governor’s award for excellence and lifetime achievement in the arts. He currently lives as a recluse in an early 19th century home in the old mill town of Rockville, Connecticut.

I Am Bound to this Land by Blood: Collected Poems

Literature & Fiction

Poetry

Uhie

Terra incognito? Heart of darkness? How about "stylish continent," as one magazine once wrote? The gigantic landmass that is Africa, over which a colonial shadow still looms, is a territory of projections and misunderstandings. The West African photographers presented in Flash Afrique!, including Philip Kwame Apagya, Dorris Haron Kasco, Seydou Keita, Boubacar Touré Mandémory, Bouna Medoune Seye and Malick Sidibé, tell stories about the tension between dreams and reality. Elaborately arranged studio portraits reveal how Africa sees itself. Documentary images comment on the sheer craziness of overpopulated cities, and conversations with the photographers open up an art scene only recently begun to emerge from the shadows.

Flash Afrique! Photography from West Africa

Mießgang, Thomas

Kouoh, Koyo

Matt, Gerald

Njami, Simon

Photography & Video

Steidl

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Books by Oguibe, Olu