Angry families and politicians are stepping up a nearly 30-year fight to bring back the head of a grandmother executed 117 years ago for standing up against colonialism. It is believed her head lies in one of Britain’s famous museums.
In 1898, Nehanda Charwe Nyakasikana, or Mbuya Nehanda as she was known, was a powerful spirit medium, a person who speaks to the gods, and heroine of the First Chimurenga, the revolt against the British South Africa Company in Matabeleland. She led the uprising by Zimbabweans against colonizers and was hanged and decapitated. It’s believed her head was shipped more than 12,000 kilometers to England.
“We cannot have other people keep the remains of our ancestors in a cardboard box elsewhere,” says Godfrey Mahachi, Director of the National Museums and Monuments of Zimbabwe.
Nehanda was not the only one. Her skull could be at the National History Museum in South Kensington, London, with the remains of the other executed leaders, Sekuru Kaguvi, Chingaira Makoni, Chinengundu Mashayamombe, Mapondera, Mashonganyika and Chitekedza Chiwashira.
“There are implications to do with how we treat the deceased; these implications have a bearing on the past, present and future,” says Mahachi.
Sixty-three-year-old Donald Kamba is a direct descendant of Chief Chingaira and an estate agent from Rusape, in eastern Zimbabwe. He says this is where the headless body of his ancestor is buried.
&#8220;Ever since Chingaira&#8217;s head disappeared, every subsequent Makoni chief, irrespective of their house, went blind,” says Kamba.
“The British have been called upon on a number of occasions over the last three decades or more for the return of the remains of Chingaira in particular. The party went to Britain in 1988 and they were advised that there were no such remains of Chingaira and that they were to try South Africa,” says Kamba.
Zimbabwe’s Minister of Higher and Tertiary Education, Jonathan Moyo, stirred emotions on Twitter.
“How can we focus on the economy when the skulls of Mbuya Nehanda and Sekuru Kaguvi are displayed in a British museum? These barbarians have been displaying the skulls of our First Chimurenga heroes and heroines in their libraries!” says Moyo.
On Heroes Day in August, President Robert Mugabe claimed the British were performing “racist moral decadence, sadism and human insensitivity” in keeping the skulls as trophies.
“The formalities are being handled by the foreign affairs ministry in collaboration with the British government. It has always been our wish to have those remains back home but we have to proceed in this process with much caution,” says Mahachi.
“Proper identification and research needs to be conducted so as to ensure that whatever we bring back to Zimbabwe is ours.”
The British museum denies having displayed any of the remains. It says it is not clear if any of the remains are from the First Chimurenga and implied that repatriation could be a long process.
The descendants of Nehanda and her comrades hope it won’t take another 117 years.

Over A Century Later, Mbuya Nehanda Could Return Home

The international buzz around contemporary African art has never been louder.
African art has always been celebrated on the African continent, but has singularly failed to be regarded as collectible by most Western mainstream collectors and museums. The most important art works created in Africa have long been considered to be antique and traditional.
Modern African art’s exclusion from the Western mainstream has been controversial, so the pace of change in 2013 has been exhilarating. Major museums in London and New York have showcased leading African artists and have been buying their work enthusiastically.
Dramatic installation art pieces—three-dimensional works that are often created in exhibition spaces—by Ghanaian artist El Anutsui are being displayed by major museums both sides of the Atlantic. And London’s Tate Modern, a leader in art trends internationally, has recently set up an African Art Acquisitions Committee to purchase works by contemporary African artists, an acknowledgment that the Tate’s permanent collection was too focused on Western European and North American art.
The Venice Biennale, possibly the world’s most influential contemporary art exhibition, had record attendances from African countries last year, with the leading prize, the Golden Lion, going to the Angolan pavilion, a major boost for African contemporary art.
It all adds up to a sneaking suspicion that this is the age when African art truly becomes collectible.
Ask Bonhams, the only international auction house to specialize in contemporary African art, and they will tell you the African market is booming. Buyers include international museums and private collectors from Europe, the United States and particularly from Nigeria. And Bonhams deny that it’s a bubble.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-31298" src="http://www.forbesafrica.com/app/uploads/2014/10/Lot-129-Enwonwu-Mirror-300x150.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="150" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Lot-129-Enwonwu-Mirror-300x150.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Lot-129-Enwonwu-Mirror-600x300.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Lot-129-Enwonwu-Mirror-768x384.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Lot-129-Enwonwu-Mirror.jpg 1024w" sizes="(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />
For the last five years, Bonhams have held their annual Africa Now auction.
“Five years ago it was difficult. We didn’t know who our prospective buyers were, we had no mailing list, and it was a daunting prospect,” says auctioneer Giles Peppiatt, the director of contemporary African art at Bonhams.
“Contrast that with our latest sale in May last year which was our most successful yet, we smashed 20 world records for prices made by an artist and we sold 91% of items up for sale. In total we achieved £1.3 million ($2.1 million),” says Peppiatt.
“We sold seven wooden sculptures, made by Ben Enwonwu for the Daily Mirror newspaper in 1960, for £360,000 ($580,000) against an estimate of £80,000 ($129,000) to £120,000 ($194,000).”
Bonhams most notable moment came in May 2012 when an El Anutsui wall hanging made from bottle tops welded together with copper wire sold for £542,000 ($890,000). It is the highest price yet paid for African art at auction.
It’s not surprising that prices for El Anatsui, a celebrated Ghanaian artist living and working in Nigeria, are rocketing. His massive sheets of shimmering bottle top installation art have been bought by major galleries, and last summer he won a major art prize, the Charles Wollaston Award, for his giant installation draped outside the Royal Academy exhibition in London.
Major events in Africa focusing purely on contemporary African Art have been building interest for years. The Joburg Art Fair is well established and has been dedicated to selling living African artists’ work since 2008. The Dak’Art Biennale goes back to 1992, providing a creative platform in Dakar, Senegal for more than 20 years.
International art buyers with deep pockets descend on London during Frieze Week in October, and the auction houses and exhibitions compete to take money from them. This year they are joined by 1:54, a new art fair that was launched in Europe, to take the unique energy from the current African art scene and to sell directly to global collectors in London.
1:54 is the brainchild of Touria El Glaoui, the daughter of respected Moroccan artist Hassan El Glaoui.
“By hosting this fair in Somerset House in central London our intention is to foster exchange between artists, curators, collectors and the public from all backgrounds and nationalities,” says El Glaoui.
The fair has been named after the 54 nations that make up Africa, and aims to represent all countries and styles, as well as artists from the African diaspora.
Edson Chagas, the Angolan photographer whose work became the basis for the winning Angolan Venice Biennale pavilion, is one of 70 artists represented at 1:54, as is Abdoulaye Diarrasouba, known as Aboudia, from Cote d’Ivoire.
Several of Aboudia’s large-scale acrylic on canvas paintings have been bought by the Saatchi Gallery and are soon to appear in a Saatchi exhibition. His style is inspired by graffiti and depicts street life and the traumas of war.
Aboudia was born and worked in Cote d’Ivoire’s capital Abidjan until the most recent civil war in 2010. Now he moves between Abidjan and New York.
“I’m exhibiting at the 1:54 fair because I feel it’s important to show my work to people abroad and to venture beyond the Ivory Coast,” he says.
Aboudia thinks others should follow the example of Charles Saatchi, the owner of the Saatchi Gallery.
“He has the courage to search for new things and nurture them. He doesn’t wait until [artists’] careers have already been developed. Life is about taking risks. Emerging artists benefit from being brought to the world’s attention,” he says.
The fact that quality African art is being widely bought by leading galleries is music to the ears of Oba Nsugbe, a leading Nigerian barrister working in Britain. He is a member of the Tate Modern African Art Acquisitions Committee, which is responsible for delivering a detailed strategy to purchase world class African art.
“This would have been impossible to conceive 10 or 15 years ago. We are placing African art alongside other world class art where it belongs—to be conserved in a world-class forum. What more do you want?”   FL

El-Anatsui-Bonhams-Africa-Now

The Smart Money is  on African Art

It’s not easy to be a photographer, not when your father is a high court judge and there are four lawyers and two doctors in the family. Photographer Kelechi Amadi-Obi has made peace with the fact that he’s a bit of a black sheep in the family. And looking back, his family should have known all along that he was going to be an artist.
Growing up in the eastern region of Nigeria, in the city of Umuahia, he quickly developed a passion for drawing.
“It all started with reading comics and drawing Spiderman and The Incredible Hulk. I realized that I had talent with visual arts and I started to draw. My drawings earned me respect among my peers,” says Amadi-Obi.
With the encouragement of those around him, he was spurred on to improve his skills. Unfortunately in the neighborhood where he grew up, there were no museums, art schools or galleries where he could hone his skills.
“I would go to the local library to do research on drawing. The more I read and practised, the better I got and the quicker I improved,” he says.
<div id="attachment_1623" style="width: 235px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1623" class="size-medium wp-image-1623" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/supplied-225x300.jpg" alt="" width="225" height="300" />Amadi -Obi dressed as a barrister</div>
Even with his passion for drawing and the visual arts, his family put his career choices down to law or medicine. Amadi-Obi chose law and duly enrolled at university. Ironically though university exposed him to art in a way he had never encountered before.
“When I got to university I realized there was an active art scene there. I naturally gravitated towards artists,” he says.
The law student became the talk of his campus as his artwork surpassed that of the art students. Yet he kept hitting the law books and graduated to take up a job as barrister. He only wore his gown and wig for one year after being called to the bar.
“After my one year of service I started working at an art studio, where I exhibited my art and became a successful exhibiting artist. Photography came gradually. I used to make photos as a reference material for my paintings. I started making paintings of human forms and took photos of models in my studio with light coming from my window,” says the painter-cum-photographer.
“I learnt to use a camera and learnt to capture light in a very intricate and delicate way to achieve my purpose. The photographs themselves became artworks. I started associating with other photographers too. Once I finished taking images I would go to the darkroom to print my photos. I looked at the darkroom process and it looked very similar to my painting process, only it had quicker results,” he says.
His decision to settle in Lagos shaped his career forever. The city has not attracted many photographers but it has certainly attracted those with an eye for drama. The city exposed him to spectacular sites including the picturesque lagoons of the region, which span over 635 kilometers and cut across the southern part of the metropolis, linking the Atlantic Ocean and Lekki lagoon. But it wasn’t just the beauty of the lagoons, which attract so many artists that inspired Amadi-Obi. He also saw inspiration in the sprawling fishing slums that draw together the huge influx of people migrating to the region.
His photographic career took off in 2001, when a German friend invited him to exhibit at the Rencontres De Bamako or “African Photography Biennale”. Since the exhibition’s inception in 1994, it has caught the attention of jet-setting curators, critics and dealers. It has also popularized African photographers such as Seydou Keïta and Malick Sidibé.
Soon after he was invited to Milan to showcase the collection he exhibited at the Biennale. But while Rencontres De Bamako has opened doors for many African photographers, it has also been a source of controversy.
“Some of the reasons for this controversy are familiar and echo long-standing issues in the presentation of African art to Euro-American audiences,” write Jennifer Bajorek and Erin Haney, who are independent curators.
They claim that such exhibitions perpetuate asymmetries of power and leave young artists and organizers feeling alienated from their work. To overcome these challenges artists are forming new alliances and building their own networks, which are not remote-controlled by the West.
Amadi-Obi is no exception. After his exhibition in Milan he established a career in Nigeria in collaboration with other upcoming photographers. Depth of Field, set up in 2001, is the brainchild of Amadi-Obi and five other photographers: Uchechukwu James Iroha, Toyosi Odunsi, Amaize Ojeikere, Emeka Okereke and Toyin Sokefun. This artist collective was formed to deepen the conversation among the photographers and aims to attract local audiences to their work. They critique each other’s work and share resources including a library, publicity platforms and web visibility.
The ace photographer’s online portfolio is stacked with fashion photos he took before he was commissioned to such a shoot.
“I wanted to shoot fashion but there were no fashion magazines. Still I would call models and take pictures of them like the ones I would see in Vogue Magazine. So I was making a portfolio with no clients.
“When someone in Nigeria bought the South African franchise of True Love magazine [to the country], they needed a photographer and someone recommended me,” says Amadi-Obi.
His work with True Love earned him recognition among mushrooming corporates looking to improve their image with slick photographs in company brochures, annual reports and on their websites. With commissions from companies such as Guinness, MTN, British American Tobacco, the Ford Foundation, Prima Garnet Ogilvy, Insight Grey, Flour Mills of Nigeria and Orange Drugs, his career is on the up.
His passion for photography has made Amadi-Obi a household name in Lagos. To be a successful photographer does not require extraordinary equipment, he believes. When he started his career he used a Mamiya RB67 film camera. Today, most of his images are taken with several professional lenses but he’s hooked on the Canon EOS 5D Mark II body.
“I am not particular with equipment. There was a time when I used to be crazy about cameras but I got tired because they keep changing… To get a good image you just need to have a good eye,” says Amadi-Obi.

No Law Against Chasing Light

There is an old adage that says people who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.
But the good news is you can live in a glass house and make money. Hidden in the hot Kitengela plains of Kenya is a 30-year-old factory that uses recycled glass to transform homes, hotels, offices, churches, museums and other buildings into spectacular sights.
Kitengela Glass is located on the outskirts of Kenya’s capital and borders the Nairobi National Park. The factory stands out like an oasis in the desert. It’s home to glassblowers, glasscutters, artists and sculptors who turn the recycled glass into amazing works of art.
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The studio is owned and run by 68-year-old Nani Croze. A muralist turned glassblower, Croze has been in the business for over three decades. “I am still a German, although I feel completely Kenyan. I am waiting to be given an honorary citizenship,” she says. Croze came to Africa with her first husband in the late ’60s. “We studied elephants in the Serengeti. We planned to go back after four years in a VW van we had converted for our three children. But by that time, my eldest son had grown too big to fit into the van, so we decided to stay.”
Her scientist husband got a job at the University of Nairobi, where he taught animal behavior. The family lived in Limuru, in the highlands, in a rented home. When the owner died, the house was sold to people who felled the trees in the compound. “I decided to look for somewhere with no trees so I could plant my own and no one would be allowed to cut them down,” says Croze. The search for land took them to Kitengela, an environmentally protected area where her husband had previously worked.
“He went to Geneva for a conference and his colleague said: ‘Excuse me, Dr Croze, I think you have a tick on your neck!’ We were living in the bush and he could not take it any longer.” Divorced and with three children to bring up, one of her architect friends advised that she try her hand at stained glass. “I was not going to make enough money to pay for my children’s education painting murals,” said Croze.
She went to the UK for a three-week course. She was told she would need 30 years to learn. So she learnt through experience. “The major milestone for us was that importing colored glass is very expensive, heavy and fragile—it breaks very easily. So I thought, ‘Why don’t we make our own?’ Slowly, we built a furnace with the help of a Finnish glassmaker, and I started collecting waste glass.”
Croze soon discovered that not all glass was compatible as it melts at different temperatures. “It took a long time but I am happy we invented glassmaking in East Africa!” Croze’s son, Anselm, joined her and now does his own glassblowing. She credits a Dutch Catholic priest in Uganda for teaching her some of the tricks of the trade. “I visited him because he also made stained-glass windows in the 1970s. He made his own lead and tools and imported glass from France. He showed me how to make glass in the bush.”
Kitengela Glass prides itself on being the pioneer glassmaker in East Africa. Glassmaking traces its roots to Egypt and part of the Middle East in the second millennium BC. “To my knowledge, glass was never made in East Africa. My interest is in a new craft for East Africa—making glass from recycled glass. We make colored sheets for stained-glass windows locally. We import only what we cannot make.”
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From waste glass, Kitengela produces vessels—anything that can hold a liquid—bowls, flower vases, tumblers and glasses as well as sculptures, jewelry, chimes and chandeliers.
But Kitengela Glass is perhaps best known for making dalle de verre (French for glass blocks), a new technique of making stained glass. “My work with dalle de verre can be seen in various buildings in Nairobi like the Barclays Plaza, CFC Bank and the American Embassy canteen wall. Dalle de verre is popular with banks because it is secure—made of thick glass, concrete and metal reinforcing.”
Used bottles and waste window glass are taken to Kitengela Glass to be smashed and melted before they are blown into vessels, beads or flat glass or cast into dalle de verre blocks. The difference between dalle de verre and stained glass is that dalle de verre is an inch thick and set in concrete, with metal reinforcing for stability. Traditional stained glass is much thinner and can be painted and fired. It is attached piece by piece with strips of lead which are soldered at the corners, then puttied for stability.
“I made traditional stained glass long before we started melting glass. I realized the cost and difficulty of importing colored glass and therefore started to make our own.”
Croze compares glassblowing to flying an airplane. “You must do it all the time to be good at it.” She is currently working on a major project that involves making a centerpiece mural from dalle de verre for a new Catholic church in Tanzania. “The foreground in the lower section is to have images of creation like the savannah grassland, the acacia tree, some footprints to represent Africa as the cradle of mankind and above this will be a scene of the Holy Spirit hovering over the earth.”
Dalle de verre is also used for making staircases, tables and memorials. “We made a memorial in honor of Dan Eldon, a Reuters correspondent killed in Mogadishu, Somalia. The memorial has a lens, representative of his profession, in glass. It looks nice when the sun shines through. Glass needs light from the opposite side.”
Kitengela Glass also decorated the Kenyan home of the French billionaire businessman, art dealer and racehorse breeder, Alec Nathan Wildenstein, who died in 2008. Croze is presently making a memorial piece for Kenyan Nobel Laureate, Professor Wangari Maathai.
“Our handmade glass is like the early medieval glass with bubbles and striations. No-one knows about medieval glass anymore. It is like the taste of tomatoes: people have forgotten what an organically grown tomato tastes like,” she says.

Tag: museums

FORBES AFRICA SOCIAL MEDIA

Over A Century Later, Mbuya Nehanda Could Return Home

The Smart Money is on African Art

No Law Against Chasing Light

The Fragile Business Of Glass