IS AFRICA FOTO FAIR… FAIR TO AFRICANS ?

/: If a picture speaks a thousand words, what do thousands of photographs of impoverished Africans taken and exhibited by contemporary African artists really say about us? :/

Three years ago, I went to the Africa Foto Fair (AFF), a cultural event launched in December 2022 in my home town, Abidjan, by the world renowned Ethiopian photographer Aida Muluneh, which has now become a growing yearly affair but which initially peaked my interest because, well, I happen to be a photographer and an admirer of Aida Muluneh’s work.

I decided to go visit the fair as soon as I heard about it, literally a day before it closed, even if it meant losing my way to the new Museum of Contemporary Art (MuCAT) in Abobo before being shown the right way by a willing police officer in exchange for, how can I say this, a typically small Ivorian gesture.

Thus I arrived at the museum (an otherwise welcome project intended for the consumption of everything artistic) not knowing what to expect but somewhat worried about seeing the type of works international photo exhibitions typically put forth i.e. creative artworks courtesy of a bevy of competent artists which too often show Africans inhabiting the many stereotypical attires the continent is known for: struggle, poverty, illness, powerlessness and hopelessness.

Mind you, there is nothing wrong per se about using art to show suffering (even if, I admit, it’s not my cup of tea) and one could argue that the main purpose of art is to convey what surrounds a given artist at any given moment. So, in that sense, African artists being mostly surrounded by, well, poverty, illness and hopelessness, it’s understandable that poverty, illness and hopelessness would be what they tend to express artistically.

Right?

Well, are African artists actually mostly surrounded by poverty, illness and hopelessness nowadays? Or is reality a little more nuanced, especially in the 21st century, especially when talking about the slice of Africans who create and consume visual arts in general?

I was pondering the matter after signing the museum’s visitors sheet under the glaring eyes of the duo in service (which seemed to silently instruct me to press harder on the pen so it could go back to chatting) when I finally entered the main exhibition room and, five minutes later, found myself standing right in front of what I had feared even more so than being lost in the middle of messy old Abobo: huge walls mostly covered with creative works about, well, impoverished Africans.

I sighed with resigned frustration and tried to appease my disappointment by remembering how useful AFF could be, if only to promote photography as an art form and introduce many a new African talents to a wider audience. This fact alone was, indeed, cause for celebration… but I was still sulking until I saw The light in the shadow (mistakenly listed as Life in the shadows) courtesy of Rwandan photographer Alice Kayibanda, a strikingly powerful black and white picture which reveals the resilience of an otherwise secluded young Albinos child learning maths in what looks like braille. I found the photograph so impressive I immediately inquired about purchasing it, which took me a few days, a few more phone calls and a direct contact with the artist until I got my wish. The chef d’oeuvre (in my opinion) has since been matted, framed and hanged in my home where it still melts my heart to this very day.

More importantly, however, I couldn’t help being mentally lead back to my questioning of the overall exhibition and its stated goals, a questioning which has been increasingly bothering me since the second AFF in 2023 (which I found quite uninspired) and the third AFF in 2024 (which I found disturbingly regressive). It all came to a boiling point which had me pick up this very pen when, a few days ago, I saw the announcement for the 2025 AFF, read its program and asked myself if I should even bother visiting the fair this year. All while I recalled an article I read in Le Monde last year, which investigated the secretive but booming visual arts business in Côte d’Ivoire and went as far as naming some of the biggest art collectors in the country, lead by the founder of MuCAT and followed by a number of other high-profile businesspeople and politicians. So, yeah, not exactly the hopeless type…

Aida Muluneh couldn’t possibly have ignored this, could she? She launched Africa Foto Fair in Côte d’Ivoire, on the other continental side of her native Ethiopia, years after having launched the Addis Foto Fest n her home country. Down the line, she felt the need and found the opportunity to switch coasts and create a bigger, well-sponsored, obviously-costly-to-organize-and-promote international exhibition in a West African country known, unlike Ethiopia, for its naive promotion of non-Ivorian anything, which opened its arms and its means to her project and applauded its expansion four years in a row (and counting).

Meanwhile, Aida Muluneh’s own fine art (again, I love her work and I have even tried to own some of it) has been permanently shown in the business lounge of the only international airport Côte d’Ivoire has, where well-to-do travellers can appreciate (or ignore) her artistry (let me say it again: a work by an Ethiopian artist is the only work exhibited in the only business lounge of the only international airport in a country which, apparently, does not know it has local visual artist of some fame, including artists who are being showcased in the most recent museum the country has built). How many of these travellers live through poverty and hopelessness nowadays? ‘Little to none’ would be my bet.

So, how about this Africa also being exhibited? Yes, the comfortable, successful, powerful Africa, who can appreciate visual arts and harbours local museums, galleries and exclusive business lounges? If it exists (and it does), what really justifies the need for AFF to actively promote stereotypical woe-is-me works about red-clay Africa alongside much more varied (even random) works originating from Europe and America, the same way occidental exhibitions promoting struggling Africans in shabby clothing usually do? And what does it mean that so many contemporary African artists have repeatedly shown little to no qualms about conveying these specific traits about the continent in their work?

My theory, which leads me (yet again!) to racial and social prejudice is simply this: I believe these pictures, the ones of impoverished Africans in shabby clothing as well as the others, the all-too-common-supposedly-inspired-make-believe-ethnic-studio-portraits-exploring-so-they-say-African-cultural-heritage-through-symbolic-imagery make most occidental art lovers (read: white people) feel good about feeling bad when it comes to talking about Africans’ ongoing ills…. while doing next to nothing about it.

So, their celebrating and rewarding of these works inspire African artists looking (understandably) for success to learn about respected art through this very lens. And what happens? These artists end up chasing (or inventing, for the cause, in studio, with paid models) these pictures of hardships, hoping to win over some international jury. Only problem, these choices also feed the cycle of Africans feeling bad and hopeless about themselves, which in turn inspire other artists to convey these feelings through their art which, again, ends up making gatekeepers (read: white people) feel good about feeling bad, so on and so forth. All this while business-minded well-connected African artists find ways to sell African poverty to rich Africans and non-Africans alike promote the art form.

Maybe it is all unfounded conjectures and useless complaining on my part and maybe I am a hypocrite for pointing this as an issue when, as a photographer, I also fell into this trap of photographing downtrodden Africans in the name of expressive photography. And haven’t I sold some of my own little landscape work to willing and able Ivorians?

Sure, I did and I may have been proud of the work itself but I also recognize that exploring ways to buck the trend so that the other side of Africa (its exuberance, pride, determination and, yes, comfort) is no longer buried under the cloak of occidental conveniently-remorseful bourgeois fantasy is no lesser an engagement than that of creative expression.

It is an urgent combat of importance, in my opinion, that a number of African photographers of yore (photojournalists and landscape photographers along others) had partaken in, wilfully or not, when they testified of the everyday lives of their contemporaries with their lens and had them illustrating newspapers and tourist guides when those were still a thing. Today, a valiant and vibrant youth expressing its creativity through entertainment has become the subject of a slice of African street photographers and courageous portraitists who try to fight the good fight of honest and equal representation of Africans albeit to little or no fanfare.

But they do try, which is as commendable as Aida Muluneh’s own work, which was not exhibited during the first AFF I went to in 2022, even though, ironically, it supposedly stands for African pride and rebukes the very stereotypes I came to witness in multiple editions of her fair so far.

Or maybe I think it does.

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PS : In my deciding to buck the trend and show more than is usually shown, the photographer is me looked around for inspiration, hoping to find a plain representation of authentic stereotype-free African exuberance and I found it nearby, emerging from the rare caste, apparently, of happy, healthy, proud and free Africans. So I pressed click.