Art Exhibition

MEET ME HALF-WAY: AT THE INTERSECTION OF ART, CULTURE & POLITICS.
An exhibition bringing together artists, architects, writers, designers from Ghana and beyond.

Rationale
‘It is, of course true that the African identity is still in the making. There isn’t a final identity that is African. But, at the same time, there is an identity coming into existence. And it has a certain context and a certain meaning. Because if somebody meets me, say, in a shop in Cambridge, he says, “Are you from Africa?” which means that Africa means something to some people. Each of these tags has a meaning and a penalty and a responsibility. I’m an Ibo writer, because this is my basic culture: Nigerian, African and a writer. . . no, black first, then a writer. Each of these identities does call for a certain kind of commitment on my part. I must see what it is to be black – and this means being sufficiently intelligent to know how the world is moving and how black people fare in the world. This is what it means to be black. Or an African. Or is it the same? What does Africa mean to the world?'
Chinua Achebe

On November 5, 2008, the world’s first truly global politician was delivered by popular vote to the White House. Barack Obama’s win was watched by almost a billion people, according to CNN and, outside of the US, possibly nowhere more keenly than in Africa. But whilst the Obama victory is certainly a political one, its social and cultural significance is often overlooked. A ‘black’ man in America, yet a ‘white’ man in Africa, Obama’s hybrid identity has been a major factor – in both positive and negative terms – during his long campaign. On December 28, 2008, Ghanaians also went to the polls, and although marginally less important to the rest of the world than the US election, this election, coming in the same year as Obama’s historic win, nevertheless offers us a moment of reflection, not only on the events of this year, but of the previous fifty – and the fifty to come. It is often said that art and politics make uneasy bedfellows. The artists whose work is featured in this exhibition believe otherwise. Politics is art, culture is political, though not always consciously so and not always in the ways we might expect. Fashion, architecture, literature, photography, music and design are always products of their time, just as time in itself is a product of that which has gone before. Meet Me Halfway is an exhibition that attempts to explore the juncture between art, culture and politics at a very special moment in time and history.

Africa’s relationship to modernity has always been an uneasy one, characterised more fully by its mistakes than by its successes. For many of the cultures and countries on the continent, the struggle to resolve the tensions between tradition and modernisation, between the past and the future, between self and others is on-going and fierce. Yet, as the pieces in this exhibition show, a new, more complex sense of self is slowly emerging that engages this dilemma head-on. Africa is, and has always been, a place of multiple identities. The vast majority of Africans speak at least two languages, often three or four. Thinking simultaneously in English, French or Portuguese; dreaming in Twi, Yoruba, Swahili; living and working side by side with other Africans, Europeans, Americans, Asians; sending resources, people, raw materials back and forth across the ages and the sea . . . the continent’s long history of cosmopolitan endeavours (both good and bad) ought to stand it in good stead for the complex times ahead.

Meet Me Halfway is an exhibition of the work of twenty-four artists of multiple origins whose work in some way engages the tensions between Africa and the outside world, between tradition and modernity, between self and other. Africa is most commonly portrayed in mass media and popular culture as a place of failure or as the grateful recipient of celebrity philanthropy. These representations only tell a partial story – in choosing to focus their gaze on specific moments, places, ideas and images, the artists presented here offer multiple perspectives of an Africa whose influence extends beyond geography and individual identity, whilst remaining conscious of and connected to the continent’s complex past. The diversity of media and expression in the exhibition is a direct reflection of the multidisciplinary training and backgrounds of the individual participants, as well as their creative and critical reflections. Through film, sound, poetry, paint, perspective, they offer up a view of culture, politics and place that is at once contemporary and specific, yet at the same time historical and global. Mannequins, models, fertility dolls, ceramic, plastic, celluloid, sound . . . nothing is out of bounds for these artists and nothing has been left out. Like its subject matter, the exhibition is concerned with movement – of ideas as well as people – and seeks to show how, despite popular perception, Africa’s long history of movement and exchange has unwittingly provided astonishingly fertile ground – for artists and audience alike.

Lesley Lokko, Accra, 2009