Ìgwèbúiké: Exhibition of Sculpture in Honour of El Anatsui at 75 Years

| african arts AUTUMN 2021 VOL. 54, NO. 3 In his later years dancing figures (Figs. 4–5) therefore became central in his artworks. The center of the exhibition featured a video film by Kemang Wa Lehulere, Where, If Not Far Away, Is My Place? (2015), based on excerpts of the famous interview by curator Hans Ulrich Obrist, and including artists’ commentaries with text and animation. In the video, Mancoba discusses the turning points of his life and the discrimination existing in society. It is a unique resource and a wonderful experience to learn more about Mancoba’s political, artistic, and individual thoughts, as he saw art “as a struggle for human liberation” and “as urgent as working for political evolution,” as he said in his interview with Obrist. Other archival materials also enriched the exhibition, such as Man Ray’s film footage about African art collector and art historian Carl Kjersmeier, who was a friend of Sonja Ferlov’s family, and the reason for her interest in African art and Africa. The exhibition also included works by younger artists such as Mo Laudi, Kitso Lynn Lelliott, Mihindou, and Chloé Quenum as both a homage and a very personal dialogue between Mancoba and the artists as well as a response to his influence upon them. But Mancoba’s inspiring effect was not limited to artists from Africa or Black artists. With the cooperation of the art magazine Afrikadaa and the participation of artists Myriam Mihindou, Fabiana Ex-Souza, Chris Cyrille, and Yann Cléry, Quand les artistes dialoguent avec les ancêtres (When artists interact with ancestors), a performance event and talk with Pascale Obolo and exhibition curator Alicia Knock, was organized on September 11, 2019. After visiting the exhibition, one might also question how Mancoba’s retrospective might affect the Centre Pompidou’s collection and its policy about exhibition making in the long term. A simple online search in April 2021 reveals the permanent collection of the Centre Pompidou has twelve works by Sonja Ferlov and only three works by Ernest Mancoba. Most of Mancoba’s works were acquired by the institution in recent years. In the back room of the exhibition, articles, radio conversations, the artist’s camp diary (which I found important and which contains information about his imprisonment from December 1940–February 1941 at Saint Denis Camp during World War II) were bound as a spiral book. Unfortunately, the exhibition did not have a catalogue, even though one had been announced. In contrast, Sonja Ferlov Mancoba’s exhibition was accompanied by a rich and beautifully illustrated catalogue and a documentary film about her (En dansk billedhuger i Paris, 1977) that could be bought from the museum shop. Ernest Mancoba’s exhibition had nothing of rememberance to buy and keep after visiting the exhibition. Nonetheless, Mancoba’s retrospective exhibition is clearly an acceptance of his presence and importance as a European/African/world modernist in an European museum. While it did not take place during his lifetime as he wished, his struggle and his art will be an inspiration to artists coming from other parts of the world who search for acceptance as he did. It is also an opportunity for a wider audience not only to linger on Mancoba’s erasure in art, as is mostly done, but to talk about his artworks, as rightly deserved.